Readings:

From a poem by Walt Whitman:

The sum of all known reverence I add up in you, whoever you are;
We consider bibles and religions divine--
I do not say they are not divine; I say they have all grown out of you,
and may grow out of you still;
It is not they who give [you] life--
It is you who give [them] life...¹

In Our Chosen Faith, the book our current Unitarian Universalist Association president John Buehrens co-authored with F. Forrester Church, Buehrens tells this story:

Early in his ministry, John Wolf, now the minister of one of our largest congregations, All Souls Unitarian Church in Tulsa, Oklahoma, was interviewed by a ministerial search committee. After awhile they said, "We like you very much. We'd like you to be our minister. But there's just one thing we don't understand. Unitarian Universalist ministers are generally thought to come in two varieties: humanist and theist. Which are you?"

"That depends," said Wolf.

Shocked by such blatant opportunism, one of the committee members asked, "What on earth do you mean?"

"That depends on you," John replied. "If you folks are theists, then I'm a humanist. But if you're humanists, then I'm a theist."²

When I came to this Fellowship seven years ago, I found a pretty diverse theological and philosophical community. But I also observed that the humanist perspective was by far the most influential the Fellowship's history, and humanism appeared to be dominant when I arrived in 1990. My assessment was that the services in particular had a humanist feel to them. There was a decidely intellectual focus and a much less significant presence of spirituality. Words like "God" or readings from the Bible were not the norm. I understood from some members that theistic and especially Christian comments were not always greeted with respect.

In the tradition of John Wolf, I decided that in this mostly humanist congregation I would mostly unveil the theistic side of my beliefs. I wanted to see the Fellowship's philosophical diversity widen even more. I wanted to see the Fellowship become even more welcoming to those with distinctly different viewpoints from humanism. I wanted to see the Fellowship become a place that felt welcoming to liberal Christians. In particular, I wanted to expose the hypocrisy of welcoming with an open mind and heart every religious viewpoint except Christianity. I think many Fellowship members, including many of the humanists, wanted to see the same changes. They and I wanted to see growth--not only in numbers, but growth in the variety of perspectives present here. Such growth in variety would only make our discussions about life's meaning more interesting.

I believe that we have realized much of this hoped for growth. If the responses to the canvass survey question we posed a few years about individual beliefs are any indication, there is a fantastic variety of theological and philosophical orientations present here. Certainly over these seven years many people with a more theistic orientation have joined our Fellowship. We have had several newer members identify themselves as Christian--even as born-again Christian. Several longer-term members now feel comfortable sharing their Christian beliefs after years of feeling their beliefs were not welcome in our discussions. We are beginning to do more baptisms, and so far no one among our non-Christians has gone ballistic about a baptism at the Fellowship. Those who have been around longer than I tell me that in general our services have a much more spiritual feel than in the past.

The kind of change we have experienced in the past decade mirrors similar changes in many, many Unitarian Universalist congregations. More and more Unitarian Universalists have become interested in spiritual issues. I suspect that a huge proportion of new Unitarian Universalists across the United States and Canada bring with them a far greater interest in spirituality than was the case thirty or forty or fifty years ago. Within many of our UU institutions, there is today a far greater spiritual focus than ten or more years ago. An illuminating case in point is the Ministerial Fellowship Committee. This committee, known as the MFC, is the body charged with credentialing UU ministers in the United States and Canada. Each candidate for the UU ministry must submit a massive amount of material to the MFC and appear before it for an interview. The candidate gives a brief sermon, and then addresses questions from committee members. At the end of an hour, the MFC members vote on whether to credential the candidate as a UU minister. When I went before the MFC nine years ago, committee members did not ask a single question about my personal spiritual life or practices. What's more, it didn't even occur to me that they might ask such a question. As I prepared in my mind for their questions, I came up with literally hundred of possible questions. Not one was about my personal spirituality. It was just unthinkable.

Well, when our intern minister Sally Cissna went before the MFC last spring, her personal spirituality and practices were a very significant part of the committee's focus. The change in just nine years is astounding. Spirituality went from an unmentionable in my interview to a centerpiece of Sally's interview. This reflects the seismic change that has happened in recent years within Unitarian Universalism.

The problem when a new viewpoint becomes dominant in the place of an old one is that the pendulum so often swings too far. There is backlash against what only a few years before had been in vogue. I have recently concluded that within our wider UU community and perhaps even here the pendulum has swung too far.

What are some signs of this backlash against humanism? For starters, the open derision I often hear in ministerial circles of the humanist perspective. At one recent meeting of UU ministers, one of us who grew up in a humanist congregation felt compelled to speak up in defense of humanism after a particularly virulent trashing of humanism by several colleagues. The trashing of humanism seemed no less severe than the trashing of "secular humanism" we sometimes here from our more orthodox neighbors.

Another sign of the anti-humanist backlash is the feeling among some Unitarian Universalists that our services must always and constantly have a spiritual tone. This can lead to humanists not feeling welcome and the same kind of scoffing I have witnessed at my ministers' meetings.

A final sign I want to lift up is the apparent move in our credentialling process to viewing the presence of personal spirituality as a litmus test for ministers. While I personally find spirituality and spiritual practices to be central to my ministry, I know there continue to be many Unitarian Universalists--even in this Fellowship--who find spirituality a completely unhelpful concept. And I know there are entire UU congregations who would find the presence of a spiritual life in a prospective minister to be a detriment. Should these congregations not be allowed to consider non-spiritual ministers because the Ministerial Fellowship Committee has decided a personal spiritual life is now a requirement for UU ministry?

As this pendulum swing picks up steam, I find myself thinking of John Wolf and his answer to the search committee who wondered if he was a humanist or a theist. I find myself wanting to focus a little more on the humanist side of my beliefs. This pendulum swing can continue only at great peril--especially in congregations such as ours where humanism is so much a part of our heritage.

Perhaps a quick history of Unitarian humanism will be helpful. I have not focused enough on this subject in the past. I am indebted to David Robinson's book The Unitarians and the Universalists for much of this history.³ The humanist story within Unitarianism begins in the years just after the Civil War. At that time, many Unitarian leaders began focusing more attention on trying to transform their very loose and ineffective national association into a stronger institution. Most of these institutionalists saw a creedal statement--a common statement of faith and purpose embraced by all Unitarians--as a prerequisite for building a stronger association. They could not see how the denominational institution could be strengthened without the centering focus of a creed.

A few Unitarians--who became known as "the radicals"--became alarmed at the possibility of having a Unitarian creed. Most of these radicals lived in the western United States--which in the nineteenth century Unitarian world view probably began somewhere in western Massachusetts. Certainly Wisconsin was seen as being way out in the wild West! That a more progressive side of Unitarianism came to life in the west is not surprising: the cultural context of the West was one of freedom and experimentation. What's more, western Unitarians were far more likely than New England Unitarians to be "come-outers"--people who were raised in other, typically more conservative religions before "converting" to Unitarianism. "Come-outer" Unitarians from more conservative religions--then and now--are very often hell-bent on escaping their childhood religions. Creedal statements are particularly chaffing to many come-outers. Some of the radical Unitarians felt so strongly about their opposition to creeds that they used the metaphor of slavery to describe their feelings. The believed that the adoption of a creed by the national Unitarian association would enslave their conscience. Of course, less than ten years after the Civil, the metaphor of slavery was a powerful one.

In response to the quest for a creed, these radicals formed the Free Religious Association, and later, the Western Unitarian Conference. Given the radicals' distrust of institutions, these organizations were, in the historian Robinson's words, more a "state of mind" or an "idea" than an institution. Neither the Free Religious Association nor the Western Unitarian Conference ever really threatened the national association. But they did eventually win the fight against creeds. In 1894, the national association voted against having a creed. That vote marked the end of significant attempts to adopt a Unitarian creed.

A diversity of theological beliefs existed within both the radical Free Religious Association and the Western Unitarian Conference. At the core of both of these associations was the idea of freedom, not a particular theological stance. The radicals included transcendentalists interested in the intuitive side of religion and modernists who preferred to view religious matters through the eyes of science. Although there were some Unitarian Christians among the radicals, the radicals' emphasis on freedom opened the door to the emergence of non-Christian theologies. During these years and the few decades after the 1894 decision not to have a Unitarian creed, Unitarianism grew out of Christianity. For the first time, it was generally acceptable within Unitarianism to be a Unitarian and not be Christian.

The most significant new strand of Unitarian philosophy to develop in this atmosphere of freedom was humanism. Pioneering humanists like Curtis Reese and John Dietrich as well as their philosophical descendants today not only put freedom of belief at the heart of their religion, but also ethics. Humanists affirm that the heart of religion is not what you believe, but how you live whatever you believe in your everyday life. For humanists, the idea of God and theological speculation are largely irrelevant. As Reese put it, "the Humanist regards the universe as a given and is not likely to speculate unduly on either the beginning or the end of things cosmic...The primary concern of Humanism is human development."⁴ Or, as the 1930s Humanist Manifesto put it, the goal of life and religion is the "complete realization of the human personality." When I am asked to give a short definition of humanism, I talk about the humanist emphasis on ethics and freedom and the belief that the existence of God is not necessary to the free and ethical search for life's meaning.

By the 1950s, humanism was the dominant philosophical position within Unitarianism. Humanism had an enormous impact on fellowships created in the 1950s--especially in western lands such as Wisconsin's Fox Cities. Not surprisingly, this Fellowship's statement of purpose--crafted in 1957 and printed in our membership book is a beautiful humanist statement.

The purpose of this organization shall be to join its members into a religious and educational fellowship to develop human character and personal responsibility, to further individual freedom of belief and to advance liberal religion through study, service, and spiritual consecration.

You see, from the beginning, freedom and ethics have been central to this Fellowship's purpose. We in this Fellowship are the inheritors of the radical tradition of the West.

I will continue to critique the weaknesses I see in humanism and the hypocrisy of humanists who defend only their freedom of conscience and not the freedom of conscience of Christians and theists. But I will also lift up humanism's strengths and the undeniable centrality of humanism to the heritage of this Fellowship. I will recognize that I owe a great deal to the radicals of the nineteenth century and the humanists of this century for the freedom of conscience that is so central to my vision of Unitarian Universalism. The humanist concept of freedom and focus on ethics are key for me. This, along with my ultimate uncertainty about God's existence, leads me to declare that I am a humanist.

Last year I said in a sermon that I hoped words like "God" and "prayer" would become more acceptable in our services. I still hope for this. What's more, I hope that the use of such words will always make some among us uneasy--uneasy in a way that causes us to examine our own beliefs. And I hope that some among us will keep critiquing the use of words like "God" and "prayer" so that those of us who use such words will feel uneasy--uneasy in a way that causes us to examine our own beliefs. I hope that the insights of humanists like Len Weis and Robert Nordlander and Bruce Casner and Cindy Duckert and their philosophical descendants here will always be welcome. The humanist perspective is not only central to our Fellowship's heritage, but I believe grappling with the humanist perspective also adds greatly to each one of our individual searches for life's meaning.

(This sermon was delivered from notes. As a result, this manuscript version differs somewhat from the sermon that was given. This sermon should not be reproduced without the consent of the author.)

²Buehrens, John and Church, Forrester, Our Chosen Faith (Boston: Beacon Press, 1989), pp. 142-143.

³Robinson, David, The Unitarians and the Universalists (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1985).

⁴Quoted in Robinson, pp. 147-148.