Thomas Jefferson Memorial Church--Unitarian Universalist

“Why Religious Freedom?”

Rev. David Takahashi Morris

October 7, 2007 

      What is the “why” that equips you for any “how?”  When life questions us, we need to know where our resources are as we reach for our answers. 

      When I first began studying theology in seminary, I encountered a concept called “embedded theology.”  If you go to any church, temple, synagogue, mosque, or other worshipping community, you can examine their rituals, their music, their way of being with one another, the visual symbols that surround you, and over a period of time the true theology of the community will be revealed.  The explicit theology may be something quite different.  I was struck by this idea because I realized that my entire theology at that time was embedded:  I never spoke of it, but it was embodied in my living and other attitudes.  Much of Unitarian Universalist theology is like that.  We place a higher value on living out our understanding of the nature of things than on articulating it.  That’s good, most of the time.  But sometimes it’s important to take our embedded theology out of bed and bring it face to face with the world.

      It’s a conversation you want to be ready for:  You’re talking about church with someone and they say, “Well, what do you people believe?”

      It can happen any time, in the most unexpected circumstances.  My own most recent experience was in the checkout line at Kroger.  I pulled out my grocery scrip card and said something about my church getting a little bit of every dollar I spent, and she said, “What church is that?”  I told her, and she said she’d heard of us, and then she said, “So what do y’all believe?”

      And when it happens like that, you take a deep breath, thinking OK, here’s somebody who might come to visit us one day, and you say—well, what do you say?

      Maybe you try to get more information before you go out on a limb.  “Believe about what?” you might say.  “Oh, do we believe in God?  Well, that depends. . . tell me what kind of god you believe in, and I’ll tell you if I believe in that.”

      My usual approach is to offer a disclaimer or two up front, so I won’t give the impression that I can speak for everybody in this congregation, let alone every Unitarian Universalist.  “Well, we believe a lot of different things; there’s not one official belief statement that everyone has to agree to before they join.”  Then I’ll start with something from the Principles, something broad and not too startling, like “we believe there’s truth in all the world’s religions,” or “we believe that every person has value.”

      This can become a frustrating conversation for the person you’re talking too, especially if they were only a little curious in the first place.  They probably thought they were going to hear something specific that sounds religious to them.  So I might try for something a little more personal, like, “I believe that God is all around us, and in all of us, and especially in the connections of love and compassion that we make with one another. . .” but then I have to qualify it, or course:  “Not all UU’s believe that, or even uses the word ‘God.’ I’m speaking for myself.  We believe in religious freedom, so everyone finds their own way to express their beliefs,” and so on.  By the time we’re done they’re probably wondering what on earth keeps us together here—but that would be an even longer conversation.

      The conversation is less amusing when it happens to one of our children in a playground confrontation, where it’s often more aggressive and leaves them feeling defenseless.  This makes them mad—at us.  When a classmate says, “I believe that if you don’t accept my religion you’re going to suffer in hell for all eternity,” our children want something more powerful to say than “Well, I don’t believe that.”  And they’re not that satisfied when they tell us about what happened and we respond with a question like “Well, what do YOU believe?”  They suspect this is just our way of saying, “I don’t have an answer for that, but I trust you to come up with one.”

      Of course, there are the Principles themselves, the seven statements that are part of the covenant that joins our congregations together in the Unitarian Universalist Association. I use them a lot, and I think we should all spend some time thinking deeply about what they mean in our lives, what they ask of us.  They are powerful, especially if you’re in an extended conversation with somebody who’s willing to take the time to unpack them with you.   But they’re not that concise, and they’re a little abstract. 

      Sometimes it seems like it might be nice to have a modern “Avowal of Faith” we could fall back on, like that 1935 Universalist statement.  Just a few pithy phrases that sum up the essence of Unitarian Universalism, something we could say we all believe.  Is that really too much to hope for?

      It can make us uneasy, though.  We guard our religious freedom very zealously; especially if we have had experience with religions that felt free to tell us what we MUST believe in order to be part of a “beloved” community where we didn’t feel all that beloved.  “You can’t tell me what to believe” is a phrase that led many of us out of our previous churches and into Unitarian Universalism.  This is a non-creedal faith.  That means we don’t have a statement of beliefs that you are expected to declare in order to join us or be a full participant.

      We cherish our commitment to the freedom of the unforced mind.  It’s enshrined in our fourth principle:  The Free and Responsible Search for Truth and Meaning.

      Of course, for some of us, even the Principles feel a little bit like a creed, especially in congregations that regularly read them out loud together.  What if I don’t believe in the inherent worth and dignity of every single person?  What if I don’t get the idea behind the “interdependent web of all existence?”  Does that mean I’m not a Unitarian Universalist?

      It doesn’t.  When we say we don’t have a creedal test for membership, we’re serious.  But that doesn’t mean we don’t believe anything together, just that we don’t force anyone to agree with what we do believe in order to be here.  And not having a creed doesn’t mean we don’t have a faith.

      A creed is something we have to say we believe in order to be part of a community.

      Your faith is what you live as if you believe.

      I believe that our faith in religious freedom is grounded in deeply held, shared beliefs about the Universe and about humankind. 

      The first implication of searching for truth and meaning comes from the search itself.  If we are searching, we are declaring our faith that there is something there to find.  This is a basic theological claim:  There is truth and meaning in the Universe. To search for truth is to declare our faith that all of existence is connected in one enormously complex, unified truth, unfolding across time.  This sets us apart from schools of thought that claim the Universe is meaningless, random, and incoherent.  You can believe that and be fully part of a Unitarian Universalist community, but it is not our tradition.  We are part of the great human endeavor of understanding, which includes both religions and science, and which has as its first proposition the assumption that there is order and truth and meaning all around us.  This is the truth that “sounds along the ages,” echoing from the cliffs of Sinai to the Shinto groves of Japan, from the longhouses of the Iroquois Confederation to the philosophical schools of Athens, from the minarets of Mecca to the lecture halls of physicists, biologists, and astronomers.

      We do not all give this truth the same name.  We might call it God, or the fabric of the Universe, or the sum of all being, or Ultimate Truth. We might be reluctant to call it anything.  The name is one of the things we don’t try to agree on, not because it doesn’t matter, but because each of us will find one framework or another most useful to us in our own search. 

      If we rely on freedom in our search, we are declaring our faith that truth is knowable.  The great truth doesn’t need force or coercion; it draws us to itself; it is accessible to us.  This sets us apart from those who declare that one understanding or one religion is the only way, and that all must be compelled to accept it.

      Our direct religious forbears have trusted this power of truth for centuries.  In the 1500s the Unitarian leader Francis David said, “In this world there have always been many opinions about faith and salvation. . . . If they offer something better, I will gladly learn.”  In 1841, the Unitarian and Transcendentalist minister Theodore Parker argued in a sermon called “The Transient and the Permanent in Christianity” that if it could be proven beyond doubt that Jesus had never lived and all the gospels are a complete fiction, the truth of Christianity would remain compelling.  Christianity was not true because Jesus was divine, he said; Jesus was great because the religion he taught was so true.

      David and Parker’s words ring true for us even now.  The 1935 Universalist Avowal we shared as our Call to Worship said it simply:  “We avow our faith in the authority of truth known or to be known.”   I believe we still accept that authority today. 

      When we say the free search for truth and meaning must also be responsible, we are also saying that not every claim about that truth has equal validity.  We don’t actually think you can “believe whatever you want.”  Some beliefs are congruent with the deep truth of the Universe, and some are not.  Every insight, every discovery, every revelation or reasoned conclusion must be tested and analyzed, connected with what we already know, and challenged if it doesn’t stand up to the test. 

      Finally, I think our commitment to a religious freedom is a declaration of faith in ourselves and each other.  We believe that every human being has the capacity to know the deep truths of the Universe.  It is not the special province of any elite—it’s not reserved for any priesthood or professional class, not for mystical teachers or TV preachers, not for particle physicists or psychics. Nobody has a private window showing them truths unavailable to anyone else.  Each and every one of us can discover, in our own words, on our own intellectual and emotional and spiritual level, the unfolding truth and meaning that the Universe offers up to us all.

      So ultimately, we believe in freedom of religion not as a political position, not as a defense against the intrusive efforts of others who would impose their views, and not because we think there is a different truth for every person.  We believe in freedom of religion out of trust and respect—for Truth, for each other, and for ourselves.  We do not need to ask anyone to say words they may not believe, and we do not need to demand that anyone promise to only believe certain things in order to become part of this community.  We have faith in truth and in humankind.

      So is it time for a new Avowal?  Well, this year the Principles that bind congregations together are being studied and considered in congregations around the country—including ours, in classes Leslie will be leading later this month.  Maybe there is more to say than just that we believe in religious freedom.  Perhaps a new version could begin with:  We declare our faith in an all-encompassing truth and meaning, open to all, and in the power of all people to progressively understand it.

      And maybe one thing I could say to that curious cashier at Kroger—or you could say the next time it comes up—is that my church believes the great Truth some of us call God is so powerful and so beautiful that no one needs to be forced to accept it, that it’s available for every one of us to discover in our own way, and that in time, and with all our best efforts, perhaps one day everyone will know it.  

      So may it be.