What does It Mean To be Religious?

While browsing through a newspaper recently my eye caught the word “Unitarian” in a letter in an advice column. It turned out to be a response to a previous letter which was critical of the inclusion of a Christian prayer at a public function. This reader informed the columnist that, being a Unitarian, he had heard many Unitarian prayers that were non-denominational and inoffensive to those who were uncomfortable with sectarian prayers. The columnist agreed that “non-religious” prayers were more appropriate at public functions.

I was not pleased with the columnist’s reply. The reader had clearly indicated that the prayer was a “Unitarian prayer”, yet the columnist understood that to be a “non-religious prayer”. The columnist may well have been a Unitarian Universalist, himself. Many UUs as well as non-UUs do not recognize Unitarian Universalism as a religion.

This is not a new perception. Ever since Unitarians ceased identifying themselves as exclusively “Christian” we have been more than a little suspect. And when, in the early twentieth century, we ceased requiring even belief in God as a requirement for membership, we found ourselves on the outside looking in. Even the tolerant, ecumenical National Council of Churches kicked us out.

We have been complaining for about a century that a church does not need to be a Christian church to be a religious institution. We have reminded our detractors that while Judaism and Islam and Hinduism are not Christian, no one asserts that they aren’t religions. We have reminded them that the Buddha was not a god, but Buddhism is still considered a religion. We have tried to define religion in an anthropological and a philosophical and a semantic and a literary way, but, it seems, to no avail.

UUs have struggled to find our way in a world that does not recognize what we do as religious. No matter what we do we just can’t seem to convince the world, not to mention some of our own members, that Unitarian Universalism is a religion. It is true that we have rejected many of the traditional formulations of what is usually considered to be religious. Communion and rosaries, yamakas and dietary laws, prayer rugs and chants are not things that we feel are necessary. While we respect the spiritual disciplines implied in performing these rites we don’t require them of ourselves or others. Even UU Vegans reluctantly accept the meat eaters among us.

What then is religious for us? We have, over the last century, climbed on to any number of bandwagons in our attempt to define what is religious for us. Science, social justice and aesthetics, mysticism and spiritualism have all had their turn. We have taken pages out of the books of the Buddhists, yogis, mystics and Native Americans. They have taught us that there are many planes of reality.

UUs have been on the cutting edge in declaring the divinity within every human soul and the absolute equality of every man, woman and child that walks upon this earth. We have exalted every valley and planed the rough places while making the mountains low. Yet, this leveling process, while making everything equally worthy, also has had the tendency of making everything ordinary, mundane, and not very important. In many cases, the sacred seems to be the same as the profane. If everything is profane, what is religious? It seems that we have come to a theological crossroad. We need to go beyond theology to get out of the hole that we have dug for ourselves, but how? IIt is easy for someone to say “think outside the box” but when you find yourself smack in the center of it you might not even be able to find a window.

Thinking outside the box has become the life work of Dr. Diana Butler Bass. Dr. Bass has spent the last year, thanks to a Lilly Endowment grant, trying to understand the contemporary church. She visited over 60 churches and synagogues all over the country, from very small “house” churches to giant mega-churches. She sought to examine the continuing decline in membership of mainline Christian churches. She discovered that, at the same time that many mainline Christian churches are losing members, there is tremendous growth in mega churches. Dr. Bass came to the conclusion that those that continue to adhere to the “modern” understanding of what a church and religion is are the ones in decline, while those churches that understand religion in a “post-modern” way are the ones that are growing.

Now, I have heard the word “post-modern” before but never really knew what it meant, especially as applied to churches. I had assumed that the world was “modern” as opposed to medieval or ancient. I was quite taken aback to discover from Dr. Bass that I have been thinking and living in the past! Dr. Bass maintains that the “modern” world slowly began sometime after the discovery of printing in the 15^th century and continued to gather steam into the 17^th century. By the end of the Civil War, along with the writings of Darwin, modernity had become the prevailing world view. It was a period of the ascendancy of science and logic over against faith and tradition. It was characterized by the understanding that there is only one truth and if you find it you can fix anything. The battles of modernity were the battles between science and religion, Darwinism vs. Creationism, rationality vs. faith. Churches that still fight these battles are, thus, “modern” churches. They base their world view and their sense of meaning on where they stand along the theological scale of fundamentalist-conservative at one pole and liberal-radical at the other. This was in its ascendancy through the 1950s and mainline churches, including Unitarian and Universalist churches, regardless of where they placed themselves along this spectrum, prospered because they embraced modernity.

When the “baby boomers” joined the civil rights struggle and began protesting the war in Viet Nam and listening to Pete Seger in the 1960s they brought a profound change to society. “Modern” mainline churches, including UU churches, began to stagnate or, even decline, even as a new world view propelled other churches to the forefront. “Folk masses” and the introduction of guitars and contemporary poetry in worship services moved these churches along a new axis. Our current black hymn book was created in 1993. It replaced the one created in the 1950s and was seen as quite revolutionary by containing such hymns as #169 “We Shall Overcome” alongside the more traditional hymns. The paperback Turquoise Hymnal produced in 2005 even contains “spirituals”. This new formulation, a world view shift, may be understood as the tension between “Conventionality” and “Intentionality”. The modern era where churches fought over theology was pushed aside by the “hyper-modern” era. Church fights now had less to do with theology and more to do with style. Orders of service became the new battle ground as members sought a more “in”, “contemporary” church experience.

While we were applauding our relevance, another shift in world view began, according to Dr. Bass while we were napping, in the 1980s and continues as a significant influence in growing churches today. This third shift supersedes the “modern” axis from conservative to liberal theology and, the “hyper-modern” axis from conventional to intentional style. It is a recognition that, on the one hand, in the complex twenty-first century world that we now inhabit there is no longer a single truth but, rather many truths, and on the other, that while the liberal – conservative theological and the conventional – intentional style polarities continue to exist, at the same time, there is a movement from head to heart, from thought to action, from being to doing. Everything is happening much faster today and all at the same time.

Those over forty often get dizzy viewing music videos on MTV. TV news programs are now only a half hour in length with half of that time taken up by fluff. USA Today has been successful partly because it keeps news articles short and you don’t have to turn the page to finish them. And they are colorful. All of our senses are engaged and all at the same time. In the post-modern world there are many truths and they all come at us at once. What blew up the alliance between conservative Christians and the Bush administration was not just the war in Iraq (though that has created a stampede). It was, perhaps more importantly that the Bush administration was so focused on Iraq that it was inattentive to, mishandled, and lacked genuine concern for the victims of Katrina and Darfur while being intransient concerning the threat of Global Warming and being unable to separate the issues of abortion and stem cell research and death with dignity. All of these issues needed to be addressed - and all at the same time. They were all vitally important to the acting – doing “post-modern” twenty-first century religious community. These social concerns that we UUs also feel strongly about and are looking for ways to contribute to, are what are central to the conservative churches. It is these commitments that are fueling the growth of the conservative mega churches in addition to their conservative theology. They are strongly committed to living the love of Jesus in service.

Martin Luther insisted that what was important was “faith not works”. What is important in this “post-modern” era is the opposite - “works not faith.” We are not the first to have seen an era when social concern was at the forefront of religion. We are living in an era that resembles the early twentieth century “Social Gospel” era. The “Social Gospel” era of the late nineteenth through the early twentieth century was a period when the liberal churches traded in their theology for sacrificial service. That was the era of Jane Addams and Margaret Sanger and Theodore Roosevelt. The first World War and the Dust Bowl and the Great Depression put an end to the idealism of that era and pushed Americans into an era of defeat and self concern. The “post-modern” era was truncated and had to wait a century to reemerge. But reemerge it has.

The “Social Gospel” was a liberal and moderate mainline church perspective. Fundamentalism rose to counter it’s de-emphasis upon theological “one truth” “modern” thinking. When we think about mega-churches we probably picture in our minds a rigidly fundamentalist evangelical church such as the ones presided over by Pat Robertson and the late Jerry Falwell. These churches grew partly because of their “modern” traditional “family values” orientation but also because they were the first to discover a new way of being religious. They discovered and took advantage of the “hyper-modern” revision in style, utilizing video images, rock music and sophisticated computer and audio-visual usage. There are any number of conservative independent mega-churches with a conservative Christian theology and contemporary worship style. Yet, not all mega-churches are conservative Christian churches.

Where I used to live, outside of Washington, DC, there is a huge Moslem mega-mosque that is having difficulty getting zoning because is wants to build a football field sized building and the necessary parking on its ten acre lot.

At the same conference where I met Dr. Bass, I attended a worship service and a talk by the Rev. Michael Slaughter, lead pastor of the Ginghamsburg United Method Church located in the small blue collar town of Tipp City, Ohio.

Rev. st1:sn w:st="on">Slaughter is liberal enough that he would probably be very comfortable in a UU church. He is low key and thoughtful but energetic and enthusiastic. In the eighteen years since he first went to a small church in Tipp City he has created a church of over ten thousand members. Worship services are regularly scheduled several times on Saturday as well as several times on Sunday and on other days of the week, as well. HHe has spun off numerous satellite churches working with groups of lay ministers that he has trained.

He is now working with and supporting a “home church” program. He provides resources and support for small groups that wish to meet for worship at different times of the day and different days of the week. Some of these grew out of AA meetings and others out of Bible reading classes. Some look more like play dates for mothers and infants and others revolve around food. Yet the central focus of all of these groups is concern with and attention to what UUs think they own – “the interdependent web” – the environment, hunger, genocide and poverty. Rev. Slaughter is theologically liberal to moderate, I guess. I really don’t know. He doesn’t preach theology. He prays in the name of Jesus and understands himself as being a member of the “Jesus” team, however. That gives Rev. Slaughter an advantage over most UUs. For many, if not most Christians, Jesus remains an important ingredient. Does this, again, leave non-Christian UUs out in the cold? Are we still doomed to be outsiders looking in at the cozy fire burning in those churches that, whether conservative or liberal, can all pray in the name of Jesus? Yes and no.

There are clearly many who insist that simply including Jesus among our saints and seers is sufficient. But the world is changing. I have performed hundreds of wedding and funeral services where I seldom mention the name of Jesus. I have received very few comments, much less complaints, about that. It has been predicted that by the year 2010 there will be more Muslims in the city of Chicago than Methodists.

The number of Buddhists, Hindus and Seeks can’t be far behind.span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> Here in Muskegon we see very few people of non-European descent, but in Chicago, Los Angles, New York and Washington the complexion is rapidly changing.&

There are a number of UU churches that have broken through the racial and ethnic barrier and have been able to broaden their appeal to others nearby. One such is All Souls UU Church in Washington, DC. The growth of that church is fueled by Black, Asian and Latino members who all have found a home in our denomination.

All Souls, like Ginghamsburg focuses on mission and service. Money and volunteers are collected and sent to help with “Habit for Humanity”, and “Beacon House”, an inner city program run by a UU minister. Service, not theology or style is what defines All Souls and Ginghamsburg. Rev. Slaughter, last Christmas, traveled to Darfur for the second time. His congregation has adopted a refugee camp that houses 30,000 people by taking up an annual contribution for the camp. The first year they raised $550,000 and sent over farm tools and seed and advisors so that the people could farm the land. They can now grow all of their own food. They no longer wait for handouts. The next year members of the church contributed over $700,000 which enabled the building of a medical unit. They staffed it with doctors and nurses and technicians and provided medications and medical supplies. T

This year’s goal is $1.3 million to purchase and install six water stations in order to have reliable irrigation and so that everyone in the camp will be able to have fresh water. That should alleviate if not eliminate the rampant malaria and dysentery that overwhelms the medical teams and prevents more from taking advantage of the agricultural program. Rev. Slaughter challenges his congregation to support this program by asking that they contribute the same amount that they spend on Christmas for their family to the Darfur refugee camp program. One member threw a check at him last year while complaining that the check was for the same amount that he had spent to take his family to Europe for the Christmas holidays - $13,000!

Such generosity puts us UUs to shame. Yet, we UUs have been ahead of the curve in our theological understanding of the importance of diversity of thought and theology and of our acceptance of ethnic, racial and sexual diversity. This is not surprising. Since our founding we have always been, theologically, at least one step ahead of everyone else. It took a century for the Methodists and Presbyterians and Episcopalians to come to the same place as us concerning Universal salvation. Our civil rights stands and anti-war stands in the 1950s and 1960s were a decade or two ahead of the pack. Our support of sexual diversity in the 1980s is only now becoming widespread.

Yet we are lagging behind others, not in our affirmation of the “works not faith” understanding but in our acting upon that theological understanding in a post-modern way.span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> We often find ourselves still fighting about theology – worrying about whether someone considers him or herself a Christian-UU or a Pagan-UU or a Humanist-UU – and style – whether Sunday morning is a “Program” or “Worship” and contains traditional Hymns or folk songs or a rock band. Though theology and style are not to be abandoned completely, maybe we need to be putting away the swords over theology and style and picking up plowshares and pruning hooks and getting to work. To me, commitment to and concern with the environment and with social justice and with compassionate service has more to do with being religious than how one gets to the point of that concern.

Local and national and, even, international service and support projects can carry us beyond our own concerns and stretch us so that service, compassion and giving can become a way of understanding what it means to be religious.

The new post-modern formulations of being religious – accepting many, often conflicting, truths – being by doing – works not faith – selfless service vs. selfish comfort – are things that we UUs can endorse much more easily than what came before. We have been talking about just such a religious understanding for decades. Our problem now is how to put words and ideas and ideals into action. We need to understand compassionate service and contributing of our time, energy and finances not as political but as religious activities. And we need to be the first to put aside theological disagreements not only among ourselves but also with those of other faith communities. We need to make common cause with the Jewish, Moslem and Buddhist communities as well as with the mainline Christian communities.

And we need to take the first step in working alongside theologically conservative Christians. We need to explain to them what it means to be religious. We can do that by using their own language and formulations. We can remind them about Jesus’ teaching about Samaritans, that Jesus is the God of Love and compassion, and that doing God’s work can only bring a smile to the face of any god worth worshiping. Isn’t that something? – we can now teach them what it means to be religious!