Our 4th UU Source: Jewish and Christian Teachings Which Call Us to Respond To God’s Love by Loving Our Neighbors As Ourselves

"Our 4th UU Source: Jewish and Christian Teachings
Which Call Us to Respond To God's Love
By Loving Our Neighbors As Ourselves"

Rev. Tony Larsen

August 9, 2020

Today's sermon is the fourth one in our series on the six sources of our UU faith. (For your ease of reading, they are all listed below.)

The living tradition we share draws from many sources:

• Direct experience of that transcending mystery and wonder, affirmed in all cultures, which moves us to a renewal of the spirit and an openness to the forces which create and uphold life;
• Words and deeds of prophetic people which challenge us to confront powers and structures of evil with justice, compassion, and the transforming power of love;
• Wisdom from the world's religions which inspires us in our ethical and spiritual life;
• Jewish and Christian teachings which call us to respond to God's love by loving our neighbors as ourselves;
• Humanist teachings which counsel us to heed the guidance of reason and the results of science, and warn us against idolatries of the mind and spirit;
• Spiritual teachings of Earth-centered traditions which celebrate the sacred circle of life and instruct us to live in harmony with the rhythms of nature.

So, Source #4 is: "Jewish and Christian teachings which call us to respond to God's love by loving our neighbors as ourselves." This is a very interesting statement and, on first reading, raises a number of intriguing questions. The one I hear most often is: "Why is this in our list of UU sources when it appears to be redundant?" This is actually a good point. Look at the source just before it--Source #3: "Wisdom from the world's religions which inspires us in our ethical and spiritual life." Then this fourth source says: "Jewish and Christian teachings..." And you have to wonder: "Aren't the teachings of Judaism and Christianity already included in the source that came before?" (I mean, the last I heard, both Judaism and Christianity were still world religions, right?) So why are they--rather redundantly, it appears--listed as a separate source?

I'll leave you with that question to ponder, as we now sing our closing hymn.

(Just kidding!)

Well, there's a reason Jewish and Christian teachings were singled out as a source of their own. The reason is that Unitarian Universalism came out of the Judeo-Christian tradition. Although we learn from many world religions, and even celebrate some of them, we didn't grow out of most of them. So to simply say we draw from the wisdom of the world's religions--without specifically acknowledging our Christian roots--would seem to ignore the first few centuries of our 450-year history. For most of those years Unitarians and Universalists considered themselves Christian. That is our heritage. Now, no one in our movement has to be Christian today, of course, but it would be foolish to forget our history and act as if we came on the scene fully formed.

It might help to understand this fourth UU source by looking at the history of how it came to be. When the American Unitarian Association merged with the Universalist Church of America, in 1961 (to form our present Unitarian Universalist Association), there was some concern about how to handle the new denomination's relationship to Christianity. You see, most Universalists considered themselves Christian. As a result, some Universalists were a little leery about joining with the Unitarian denomination, which at that time already had a significant non-Christian population. So when it came time to craft a statement of purposes and principles that both Unitarians and Universalists could be comfortable with, the most hotly debated issue was what to say about Jesus and Christianity.

Many Universalists wanted a very specific mention of Jesus and the Judeo-Christian tradition--they were worried about losing their Christian heritage, once they were swallowed up by the much larger Unitarian group. On the other hand, the Unitarians--many of whom did not consider themselves Christian--didn't want a statement of principles that would exclude them. One suggested compromise statement said one of the purposes of the UUA should be to "cherish and spread the universal truths taught by the great prophets and teachers of humanity in every age and tradition, immemorially summarized in their essence as love to God and love to man." But this statement said nothing specific about Jesus or Christianity, so some of the Universalist delegates pushed for an insert in the statement. They wanted it to say: "To cherish and spread the universal truths taught by Jesus and the other great teachers of humanity ... and prophetically expressed in the Judeo-Christian tradition as love to God and love to man." But that seemed like too much emphasis on the person of Jesus for some Unitarians, so the delegates eventually dropped "Jesus" but kept "Judeo-Christian." That was 1961.

Some years later a minor change was made to reflect our growing feminist sensibility. "Love to God and love to man" became "love to God and love to humankind." Then in the 1980's the UUA Women and Religion Committee proposed a major overhaul of the UUA purposes, and something very interesting happened as a result. Instead of listing 7 purposes of the UUA (which were at that time:

Support the free and disciplined search for truth as the foundation of religious fellowship;

Cherish and spread the universal truths taught by the great prophets and teachers of humanity in every age and tradition, immemorially summarized in the Judeo-Christian heritage as love to God and love to humankind;

Affirm, defend, and promote the supreme worth and dignity of every human personality, and the use of the democratic method in human relationships;

Implement the vision of one world by striving for a world community founded on ideals of brotherhood, justice, and peace;

Serve the needs of member societies;

Organize new churches and fellowships and otherwise extend and strengthen liberal religion;

Encourage cooperation among people of good will in every land)

Instead of listing all these as purposes, they divided it up into 7 principles, 5 sources of those principles (the 6th source didn't come until several years later), followed by a statement of the denomination's organizational purposes.

Now, the public didn't always understand what happened here. (That is, those of the public who actually cared.) Time magazine sent a reporter to the UUA General Assembly at which this statement of principles and sources was being voted on. The reporter looked at the original purposes, which included "love to God and love to humankind" and noticed that that wording was no longer in the principles. So he figured we had gotten rid of God--whereas, if he had looked a little further, he would have seen that God was still mentioned--only God was in the sources now, rather than in the principles. This reporter also looked at the membership figures in the UUA and concluded that we had lost about 50,000 members in the previous decade. If he had done a little more leg work--or even just asked someone at the UUA headquarters to explain it--he would have found that we hadn't lost members in those years. (In fact, the UUA had experienced modest growth during that time period.) The problem was that he was just comparing a UUA membership number that included adults and children, with one that included adults only. He was comparing apples and oranges!

Anyway, he wrote an article for the religion section of Time magazine entitled "Deleted Deity"--and inferred that our "falling membership" was due to our deletion of God. So he made 3 egregious mistakes:

1. He thought we had deleted God from our statement of purposes and principles;
2. He got our membership statistics wrong;
3. He used his first mistake to explain his second mistake (which was, of course, his third mistake!)

I mention this as a cautionary tale, with a couple lessons for all of us.

First: Whether you're a reporter or not, you should take the trouble to talk to people you're writing about before rushing in to print a story you haven't checked out.

Second: Even a fairly well-respected magazine like Time can have glaring errors in it--and employ reporters who do slipshod work. So take whatever you read (even in a "respectable" publication) with a healthy dose of skepticism.

And third: The general public has no idea what Unitarian Universalism stands for (unless they listened to Garrison Keillor's "Prairie Home Companion" on PBS). Sixty percent of the U.S. population actually say they've never even heard of us!

Now, just for fun, I’d like to try a little experiment with you. You might remember a couple months ago, when I talked about our first UU source ("direct experience of that transcending mystery and wonder, affirmed in all cultures, which moves us to a renewal of the spirit and an openness to the forces that create and uphold life")-- and I asked you to consider your views of God (as 1. supernatural being, 2. ground of being, 3. a force in nature like love, 4. irrelevant concept, 5. harmful concept). And then I told you how UUs answered that question in 1963. Well, I'd like to try that today but on the question of whether you consider yourself a Christian or not. (Then you can compare your answers with the UUs of 1963--almost 60 years ago). So... if you had to make a choice, would you say, "Yes, I consider myself a Christian" or "No, I do not"?

Give yourself a little time here.

OK, would you like to see how UU's answered this question in 1963? Well, at that time 43% said yes and 57% said no. So, it wasn't quite half and half, but pretty close.

OK, but there's another way to ask the question. What if we add in a third category and ask:

How many consider themselves Christian?

How many don't?

How many say, "Well, it depends on what you mean by the word?"

Now, the UUA didn't ask the question this way back in 1963. But I did, about 35 years ago, when I was still the minister at the UU congregation in Racine. Based on interviews I did with a sample of church members, here's how it went:

"Yes, I consider myself a Christian" 35%

"No, I don't consider myself a Christian." 26%

"It depends on what you mean by the word 'Christian'." 39%

Now, you can interpret this data a couple ways. Since only 35% said, "Yes, I'm a Christian," you could argue that only about a third of UUs (at that time and place) considered themselves Christian. On the other hand, only 26% actually gave a definite no. So if you add up the people who didn't say no, you get 74% who might consider themselves Christian in some way. Basically, then, you could argue that about three-quarters of us are Christian--and two thirds of us aren't!--depending on how the question is worded. So if anyone ever asks you how many UU's are Christian, you might want to answer: "We're pretty evenly divided between yes... no...and maybe so."

Now, I want to be clear about something. Although our fourth source refers to "Jewish and Christian teachings which call us to God's love by loving our neighbors as ourselves"--that doesn't mean we all have to believe in God, or follow Jewish and Christian teachings. (Any more than our 5th principle, which refers to Humanist teachings, means we all have to be Humanists.) It's a source of our living tradition--that is, it's an important part of our history, and helped us get where we are today. But it's not meant to be a creed or a commandment.

On the other hand, if you do consider yourself a Christian, you are just as welcome here as Humanists and Buddhists and Jews and earth-centered traditionalists. (As well as Islamic, Hindu, Sikh, Jain, Daoist, etc.) It's true that our denomination has gradually grown to include many non-Christians and non-theists; but as far as I know, we never passed any resolutions excluding Christians or theists. (Wait. Let me check our UUA covenant. Does it say... No, I don't see any "No Christians allowed" or "No believers need apply." Nope, I don't see that.)

Unfortunately there are always some UU "fundamentalists," who think that because you don't have to believe in God in order to be a member here, and you don't have to be a Christian to be a member here--that you don't get to. "Don't have to" is quite different from "don't get to." The great irony to me is that, historically, Unitarianism and Universalism were Christian religions that gradually grew accepting enough to include non-Christians. Wouldn't it be ironic if, now that non-Christians are accepted, the non-Christians started to exclude the very people who let them in, in the first place? (What a sad irony that would be.)

I'm reminded of something I read by the former UU minister in San Francisco, the Rev. David Rankin. He wrote: "Soon after I accepted the call to be the minister of the First Unitarian Church, I received a letter from a man who warned me to stay in Massachusetts. He was not only disturbed by the fact that I was a Christian, but absolutely incensed over the fact that I believed in God. And he added the cryptic reminder that if I came to San Francisco, my wife and children would be harmed. I wrote him a note asking him to respect my religion, since I had nothing but the highest regard for his psychosis."

Now, I know what some of you are probably thinking right now. You're thinking: "I don't have a problem with Christians being UUs--but doesn't being Christian mean believing that Jesus was God; and doesn't "Unitarian" mean believing in the "Unity" of God, rather than the Trinity? So how could a Unitarian fit that Christian definition?

There are two problems with this argument. One is that it assumes that in order to be a Christian you have to believe Jesus was God. But for centuries there have been Christians who did not believe this. (Heck, even Jehovah's Witnesses don't believe Jesus was God. Are you going to say they're not Christian?) Now, sure, fundamentalists would like you to believe there's only one definition for "Christian." But why would you let them decide who's allowed to use the word? Who gave them the copyright? (I feel the same about the word "patriotism," by the way. Sure, there are people who'll tell you you're not patriotic if you question your president or your country's policies. But who said those people have a monopoly on the word "patriot"?)

By the way, a 1983 survey reported by the Princeton Religion Research Center found that only 42% of the U.S. population believe that "Jesus was divine in the sense that he was in fact God living among men and women." Now, most of this country considers itself Christian, but only 42% of them believe Jesus was literally God. The rest have other views. (For example, 27% believe "Jesus was divine in the sense that, while he was only a man, he was uniquely called by God to reveal God's purpose in the world." This is a view held by a number of Unitarians too--not the majority of us, but a number of us. This also happens to be the original Unitarian position--the view that our Unitarian forebears held several centuries ago.)

So that's one problem with the statement that "UU's can't be Christian because they don't believe Jesus was God": It gives too narrow a definition of "Christian."

But the other problem is this: Some of us UU's do believe Jesus was God. (Yes, I know, it's shocking! How can that be?) I remember once when an atheist UU saw me doing a baptism and using the words "I baptize you in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit." This person said, "How can you use those words? I thought we were Unitarian, not Trinitarian." And I answered, "Well, it's true that Unitarianism originally meant believing in the unity of God rather than the trinity. But if it still meant that, then you couldn't be a Unitarian because you don't believe in the unity of God--you don't believe in God at all. So if you're going to be a stickler about our UU origins, then you won't be able to be a UU either."

Folks, do we really want to say to people who might be interested in our religion, "You can believe in no God if you want. You can believe in many gods if you want. But if you want to believe in one God, it can't have three persons! Anything else is fine--two, four, five, whatever. Just no trinity."

No, you can be a Christian Unitarian. You can even be a trinitarian Unitarian. We're glad to have lots of views represented here.

Which brings us to another question: "How do you answer someone who asks you whether this is a Christian church?" This is a little tricky. If you say "yes, it is," you're excluding those of us who aren't. But if you say, "No, it isn't"--while technically correct, I suppose, you may give the impression that none of us are. So what can you say? The only accurate answer to give, I think, is: "Some UUs consider themselves Christians, and some do not. As for myself, I personally ..."--and then answer the question for yourself. But please don't give the impression that your particular faith position applies to all UU's. That might be appropriate in some religions--it is not in ours.

And yet, I often hear UU's say, "Oh, I'm not a Christian, I'm a Unitarian"--as if the two were incompatible. I've even heard people say, "Oh, we're Unitarian--we don't believe in God." Or "We're Unitarian, so we don't believe in an afterlife." Statements like that give the impression that we are a creedal church.

Reminds me of the story I heard about two little kids talking, and one of them says, "What are you going to do for April Fools’ Day this year?" And the other kid says, "Gee, we're Unitarian, so I'm not sure we even believe in April Fools’ Day." Please, regardless of what you personally believe or don't believe, don't forget that this is a free faith, and we don't all have to believe the same thing.

(You know, I expect to see this kind of confusion from outsiders. People who are used to all the people of one religion believing the same things may assume that since belief in God and Christianity are not mandatory doctrines in our church, then none of us believe in them. That's an error, but an understandable one from an outsider. But it shouldn't happen with our own members and friends. Because when it does, it implies a complete misunderstanding of what Unitarian Universalism is about.)

Now, let me be clear about one other thing. I'm not saying any of you here should call yourself a Christian. That's completely up to you. But I am saying: Don't assume our church has no Christians, or that the ones we have...got here by mistake. No, they knew what they were getting into. And also don't assume that, of the Christians who are here, they all see their Christianity in the same way. Because they don't. (Trust me on this. I know whereof I speak!) And, most importantly, don't assume that because some of us find meaning in the Christian tradition, that means we are closed to all other traditions.

One last thing I want to tell you. Some of you who do not consider yourselves Christian... may wonder why people who do (consider themselves Christian) attend a UU church. (Especially if you know that they would feel just as comfortable in a Methodist church, or a Presbyterian one, or Catholic.) In fact, this question came up for me some years ago, when I was at a UUA General Assembly, and I agreed to help staff the UU Christian Fellowship table in the display room. And someone came up to me and said, "I don't understand why Christians would want to be Unitarian Universalists. Could you explain that to me?" I immediately took offense and said, "Why would you think Christians have no place in our faith tradition? Unitarianism and Universalism have hundreds of years of Christian involvement, and though we're broader than Christian today, that doesn't mean Christians are no longer welcome." The woman looked at me a little quizzically (as if to say, "Are you done yet?") and then said, "You misunderstand me. I'm glad that there are Christian UU's; I just want to know what they see in the rest of us, or why they would want to hang around with Pagans and Buddhists and Atheists--when there are so many other religions where their views would be more in the majority than they are here."

I'm not sure how I answered her then. But I have the answer now. (I don't have the answer to most questions, but I do for this one.) Here it is: When a Christian attends a UU church, it is not because no one else would have them, and this was all there was left. (You know, sort of a church for "left-overs.") When a Christian joins a church that includes non-Christians, it is because he or she likes being with non-Christians. She likes the diversity, he likes the challenge of more than one point of view. Christians come to our churches because they want to be reminded that the humanity we share is much deeper than the labels we use.

I remember what an Episcopalian friend once told me. This friend happened to be a member of a Buddhist group in Chicago, and he told me that when he first got involved in Buddhism he told his teacher that he was a practicing Christian and said he was worried about whether he would be expected to give up his belief in Jesus in order to learn from the Buddha. The Buddhist teacher just smiled and said, "When you make a new friend, that doesn't mean you have to give up your old ones." Don't assume that the Christians in this church--or the Jews or Buddhists or Pagans, for that matter--aren't interested in traditions outside their preferred path. In fact, they often find their own path improved by learning about ones that are different from theirs.

At a UU conference several years ago the Rev. Erik Wikstrom described Unitarian Universalism as a kind of banquet--a smorgasbord. He said, "In order for there to be great Mexican food, and Chinese food, and Sushi, and old family recipes for sweet-potato pie with mini-marshmallows, there have to be people who know how to cook these things. Bringing the metaphor home, in order for us to truly have a smorgasbord of religious traditions in our congregations, there must be people who are actively and deeply engaged with them."

So be glad for the Pagans in this church, and the Christians, and the Buddhists, and the Jews, and the Sufis, and the Atheists and Humanists. Be glad for the people who are engaged in pathways that are different from yours. They may just have something that will help you better understand your own.

So I say: Whatever your source, May the Source Be With You!

Closing Words

As many of you know, when a UU congregation is looking for a new long-term minister, they elect a search committee to interview various candidates. The search committee then arranges to hear each candidate preach at a church other than their own. Here's one UU minister's experience of that preaching and interviewing weekend, and what makes it a little unusual is that this minister's last name is "Christian." So here's what the Rev. Mark Christian witnessed when he got down to the hotel lobby and saw a member of the search committee asking the desk clerk to ring the room where Mark and his wife were staying:

"Would you ring the Christians' room?" the search committee member asked.

"There are no Christians registered in this hotel," the young man replied with a sincere voice.

"Oh, that's right," she blurted. "We put the reservation under one of our committee member's names. Try 'Trinity.' The Christians are registered under Trinity."

My amusement rose as the desk clerk confirmed that, indeed, our reservations were made under the name of Lori Trinity.

The sublime gave way to the ridiculous when I realized that the woman feeding straight lines to the desk clerk was named Bishop, Barbara Bishop.

To go one step further, one of the other search committee members whom we were en route to meet was a committed UU named Nunn, Elwin Nunn.

So here I was, a Unitarian minister named Christian, registered under the name Trinity, discussing Unitarian Universalism with a woman Bishop and a male Nunn.

But it doesn't end there. Mark Christian was chosen by the search committee to candidate at the church, and after a vote of the congregation he was called to be their minister. After his first or second week in the pulpit, the church's publicity committee arranged for him to be interviewed by the local paper. The article bore the headline: "Christian Arrives to Lead Unitarians." This later resulted in a letter to the editor from someone in the community who said, "Oh, would that it were true."

As it turns out, it actually was true. Because the Rev. Mark Christian is indeed a UU Christian. He's one of those UU Christians who is happy to be part of a congregation that includes more than just his point of view. There may be a parable there somewhere.

Benediction:

We extinguish the flame in this chalice, but the fire and the light go on in us.

This service has ended; your service has begun again.

Peace and Unrest.