The Five Smooth Stones of Unitarianism: the Basics of Liberal Religion Part Three

The Five Smooth Stones of Unitarianism: The Basics of Liberal Religion Part Three

Yakima Unitarian Universalist Church Yakima, WA September 27, 2020, Zoom Andrew D. Whitmont, PhD

(Call to worship: words of Galen Guengerich, UU Minister in NYC.) “It’s my view that many people today have rightly recognized that established religions don’t have all the answers, that some of the answers they offer don’t make sense in our world today, and that some of the answers are downright destructive and offensive. But the rise of interest in spirituality indicates that the longing for a comprehensive sense of meaning and a deep sense of purpose, a longing historically satisfied by religion, remains unmet by secularism”

Introductory song: “Spirit of Life”, lighting of chalice, joys and sorrows, etc.

Good morning, everyone. Thanks for coming today. In this talk we I will seek to advance our understanding of the work of Unitarian Universalist theologian James Luther Adams and his “Five Smooth Stones” of liberal religion. Adams, you may recall, was born in 1901, raised in Ritzville, WA, educated at Harvard Divinity School and lived until 1994. He is known as the leading theologian of Unitarian Universalism in light of his clarification of the nature of liberal religion. It’s important to keep in mind that Adams’ work is about religion, an institutionalized social organization dealing with the relation between humans and The Mystery, also called God, Deity, Divinity, etc. Many of you may consider your self atheists, adeists, humanists, or non-believers and might find the explicitly metaphysical and spiritual approach of religion to be off-putting. Nonetheless, Unitarian Universalism is a bona fide religion, 2 with historical roots in the Christian tradition. When Adams says liberal religion he does not mean fundamentalism, atheism or humanism, but a path between these, avoiding their excesses and errors. Adams was the son of a literalist biblical preacher. His assumption of the presence of deity was foundational in his world view, but he rebelled against his family’s fundamentalism. At first he was outspoken in this rejection. When in college, one of his professors encouraged him to go beyond this and dive into the study of theology. He did so, enrolling at Harvard Divinity School, graduating with his doctorate in 1927. He became a Unitarian minister, then a professor of theology at Meadville/Lombard Theological School, at Harvard, and at Andover/Newton Theological seminary. In the process he sublimated his rebellion against fundamentalism to a rich and mature theology. Adams kept his religious roots but changed the fundamentalism to liberalism. To him the human condition could only be understood in the context of the Divine, but not in the old ways. In his day the alternative to fundamentalism was humanism. However, he rejected this. He viewed putting humans first as a huge mistake and he found humanism to be ultimately a failure. It was too relativistic and had no foundation. He considered ideas like situational ethics to be excuses and justifications for every kind of behavior, based on how a person feels. He called humanism a “wanton” condition, one which could only be resolved by resorting to “resolute, but groundless willfulness”, often leading to evil. He saw this as all too common in society, including among those willful people who loudly proclaimed their religious faith and used it to bully others. He saw none of this as moral and none of it in accordance with his non-relativistic and non-chaotic understanding of the human condition. Between leaving Harvard and starting at Meadville he visited Germany to study religion. This was before the second world war, and he was horrified to find there the most advanced thinking liberal theologians of his day engrossed in humanism. He saw that this humanism was providing fertile ground for the emergence of National Socialism and its development into fascism. He saw the bourgeoisie clinging to their comfortable life styles and using their versions of humanism and liberal 3 religion to justify the excesses of truly evil Nazism. He strengthened his resolve to clarify the true nature of liberal religion,so that it would not be used in support of evil, and to fight the demonstrations of willfulness that were gaining popularity in the US under the name of liberal religion. Adams was a practical theologian with a hands-on approach to religion, saying that we need liberal religion to live in this world with all its problems; that we must face the challenges of life in this world, not try to escape them in an imaginary “next world”. To him this required an awareness of God because without God in our lives we can only find the world to be meaningless, chaotic, relativistic and miserable. He strongly felt that we must use our free choice to relate to the world through what he called the Covenant with God; that this is our moral obligation as practitioners of liberal religion. This is what the third stone is about. Our relationship with God, the covenant formed in our behavior and relationships with each other. His work constituted a mid point, then between fundamentalism and humanism. In my previous talks I have not mentioned the word, “God”, only the moral obligation to build communities of love and justice. However, God enters into this discussion since the focus is the work of Adams, who was keen on this concept, and because the concept of moral obligation stems, in Adams’ understanding, from one’s relationship to God. Current day UU’s don’t do a lot of God talk. Many of us avoid it altogether, perhaps because of how we’ve seen it being over-used by other religions, or perhaps because the word God is framed in a traditional way we have rejected. But insofar as Unitarian Universalism is a religion and Adams is a theologian whose work is the source of these talks, lets take a look at God and understand what Adams means by it. God is defined by Adams in several non-traditional ways, and definitely not as an anthropomorphic being “out there”. The complexity of God is consistent with the first of the five “smooth stones”, that revelation is ongoing, and the divine mystery is an open-ended truth, an endless source of creation, which can be likened to a fountain. No one description suffices. God is constantly being revealed because God, the spiritual Mystery at the heart of life, is creatively alive and constantly changing, not something fixed 4 and stable that can be pinned down or described as a closed-ended set of ideas. Interestingly, the Bible agrees, saying in Second Corinthians, 3:6, “The written code kills, but the Spirit gives life.” Adam’s first definition of God is that God is the sustaining commanding reality. That is, God is the reality in which we exist, in which we are embedded and alive. Obviously, being ourselves parts of reality we are therefore parts of God, too. To call God the commanding reality means that we must obey. This is a simple fact of life, really. Reality is what it is and must be obeyed. It commands us. And, of course, reality is clearly what sustains us, since this is what we exist in. A result of this idea is that our relations with one another are an aspect of our relation with God. God is also described as the creative force and creative source of this same reality. Humans are invited to realize that we are therefore also creative forces. Using our creative free will we are thus co-creators with God, co-creating reality. In fact, co-creativity is our function in the universe; to co-create life and existence with God. Clearly, we do this, whether we are consciously aware of it or not. The question is how we do it. Adams calls this, “creative freedom”. While this term does not itself constitute one of the five smooth stones, recognition of the existence of creative freedom is a central reason why religion must be free. It is only when it is free that we and it can function in harmony with God. Religion is not only about theology, about God and our relation to God, as opposed to humanism, which leaves this out. Religion is also about social interaction, since, as noted, humans are an aspect or part of God. Religion is a social organization, about society, community, people coming together in groups to discover, develop, review, honor and respect their relationship to God and to each other who are also God. Liberal religion is free religion not only in our creative freedom and our freedom of belief but also in our freedom to come together in groups. This is the second “smooth stone”- free choice to associate with whom we wish, when we wish and how we wish; coming together by mutual free consent, not coercion. When we freely come together how do we relate to one another? This is the material of the third smooth stone. We use our will, 5 our efforts, our creative freedom, to create communities of justice and love, as we realize we are extensions of God and so is everyone else. This is a paradox of human nature, since we feel separate and apart, “not God”. We are able to use our co-creative abilities several ways; in service to God or for willful self-serving ends. Willfulness is broken down into three main groups. These are, will to power and dominance over others; will to knowledge and mental control; will for sensate stimulation and experiences of self-indulgence. These are all self-serving as they all fail to recognize our collective co-identity. Choosing between these forms of willfulness, justified relativistically, or choosing service to God is the issue. Co-creating communities of love and justice is service to our collective self, through which we realize God, not to self-centered willfulness, as true service is selfless, not seeking power, control or sensory self indulgence. Adams says that it is our moral obligation to use our co-creative freedom, our power of choice, to, “direct one’s efforts to the establishment of a just and loving community”. Here we see the tie-in with his definition of God as the creative source and force of reality. Since morality flows from respect for God over self it is clear that service to the source by co-creating communities of love and justice is the opposite of willfulness. Choosing this route is called the covenant. He says, “As creative beings we can act to preserve and increase, or to destroy and pervert, mutuality.” And, “Through the use of this creative freedom, humanity expresses the highest form of vitality that existence permits…. We participate in the divine creativity…This, and not reason alone is the basis for the liberal’s faith in humanity”. God is also described as the transforming reality through which is realized the reign of love. Love is what seizes and transforms life, bringing forth “a new kind of community that provides new channels for love and new structures of justice“. God is love as a whole and the source of the love we can experience. Adams states explicitly, “This love is not something that is ultimately created by man or that is even at our disposal”. It is created by God because God is the love. There is a subtlety here regarding our co-identy 6 as parts of God in that we experience our selves as not-God. Love comes from the God part, although this is technically still our self. The religious mission is to help us strengthen our collective connection, our awareness of our co-identity not our separateness. Love is a mystery. God is a mystery. The love that is God is a mystery. To me this is the core of liberal religion’s theology. This is the primary basis, in my opinion, of what differentiates it not only from secular humanism, but also from conservative religion, which seems pre-occupied with ritual, dogma, righteousness, power, the fear of damnation and the desire for salvation. Its not just God language that makes the difference, but this deep awareness of God as love and the invitation to co-create made explicit in the language of the third smooth stone, the covenant with God, to commit one’s efforts to the establishment of a just and loving community. Love heals and transforms. The reign of God, “heals the wounds of the common life”, via the forgiving and redemptive power of the love that is God. This “provides new channels for love and new structures of justice.” Love is a miracle. Justice is related, since it is motivated by the loving desire to reduce and eliminate unfairness, a large social factor that creates suffering. Justice is about action. Love implies action, but can exist apart from it. Love and justice together constitute our moral obligation since they are in accord with God insofar as God is love, reality, and creative, as opposed to the willful source of evil found in unrestrained human desire for power, sensation and mental control. Furthermore, since love is not a human creation but the creation of God, striving to create communities of love is to put one’s self in accordance and harmony with God, not relativistic human willfulness. Justice follows, as the result of our labors. Working to create justice is how we make love real, how we co-create and realize love in this world. It is also through the creation of justice that new channels for love emerge. This is the essence of morality. If you find this to be an exciting understanding, you’ll love the fourth and fifth stones. 7

Justice, while apparently a social issue that can be considered solely humanistic, is truly a theological issue because as Adams makes clear, the nature of justice is that it is the realization of love and love is what God is. This is why Adams says the idea that God is love is the essential core of liberal religion and the primary basis that differentiates it from secular humanism. However, the third stone does not merely speak of love and God as love. It also speaks of action and will; human action and human will. This is why Adams says, “Liberal religion affirms the moral obligation to direct one’s efforts toward the establishment of a just and loving community”. This is about how we act; how we behave. The next way Adams describes God is as what he calls the “Self- Correcting Principle”. This concept brings back the idea of sin; an element he considers too much absent in the lives of the willful comfortable bourgeois religious liberals of the last century, who he felt viewed themselves idealistically and who used their version of liberal religion as an excuse to not resist the forces of evil. Adams said this showed they were lacking in a concept of sin and therefore could not correct themselves and avoid falling into evil. Sin does not mean what you think it means. Adam’s definition of sin is about misdirection, not being a bad person. “Sin” is a Latin word substituting for the earlier Greek word, errare. That word, the root of our English word, “error”, means to miss the mark when shooting an arrow or to stray from a path you may be following. It does not mean becoming a bad person, repugnant to God or destined for damnation. It was only in the later days of Roman Christianity that the word took on the connotation of badness consistent with the church’s political need for a “whip” with which to intimidate people. To stray from the path or miss the mark not only does not mean that you are a bad person, but furthermore, to repent does not mean to ask God for forgiveness. No, it meant what it says. “Re-“ is to do again, as in “re- peat”, and “pent” is “to think”, as in, “penitentiary”, a place originally meant for one to think over one’s errors. 8

Thus, to repent is to think again, to think over, thus enabling one to get back on the path or to take another shot at the mark; self correction. The main error is to not see ourselves as being the extensions, creations, manifestations and/or children of God, such that as we treat one another we treat our greater self- the whole of which we are parts. God defined as the self-correcting principle means provides feedback, both positive and negative, if one chooses to listen, in judgment of human action. This occurs sometimes directly and sometimes indirectly in ways not explainable by mechanistic causes. This kind of necessary self-correction can produce uneasiness and discomfort when one errs on the side of willfulness, failing to recognize God as the corrective principle. The same self- correcting principle can be experienced as positive and loving when we recognize that it is offering us the possibility of redemption and fulfillment when we see our errors and re-commit to creation of just and loving communities. The judgment of “sin”, comes as “feedback” when we “stray from the path” into the selfish and willful errors of will to power, selfish will and lust for knowledge or willful lust for sensation, instead of love and justice. This corrective principle, in Adam’s understanding, is the aspect of God we can call “grace”. It is the action of God in opening new doors, the opening of new possibilities, and the occurrence of occasions of fulfillment as we establish just and loving communities through which love can and does flow, touching us in the process. This is the same principle identified by analytical psychologist Carl Jung under the heading of “synchronicity”. Adams says, “God is the principle of self-correction, confronting human beings with their own shortfalls and downfalls while at the same time opening up to them their own prospects for redemption by grace.” He also says, “The decisive quality of a personality is its commitment, for the basic commitment determines the self and its interests, instead of being determined by them”. The premise of the third stone, is the “covenant”, the commitment. It has two sides; ours and God’s. Ours is the moral obligation to commit oneself and one’s efforts to creating communities of love and justice. The 9 heart is then enriched by God’s part in the covenant, the self correcting principle, responding to the path chosen. If you do your part, God will respond and your heart will be enriched. This is the covenant. Adams says the self-correcting principle is constantly operative, but some are listening- responsive, sensitive and open to it, while others are not. They are spiritually deaf in their willful unresponsiveness. He then speaks of people as either having or not having a recognition of the self corrective principle. This is his way of saying that they are or are not open, sensitive and responsive to God The covenant is more or less an agreement and is a central element that gives the entire body of liberal religion it’s theological twist, making it religion, not humanism. The agency of God, with whom the covenant is made by humans, is prior to humans and beyond humans. The covenant is an agreement we can make with God as the creative Source and corrective principle. The question for the skeptic will be, “Is this for real?”, “Does it really work this way?”, “If I commit myself this way will grace and fulfillment really follow?” “Where are the empirical data?” The idea of the covenant, that it exists and the implication that if you do this, commit to this covenant, then here is what will happen, all this relies on the operation of some force; a force outside of chance, outside of human will. Is it true? Is it really so? Is this how things actually work out? If so, then it not only proves there is something before and beyond humans, something we can call God, and that religion is justified over and above humanism. It also means that commitment to the covenant is indeed a moral obligation. However, if it doesn’t work out, then this is no better than any other dead mythology. The idea of the covenant does not require an anthropomorphic God image. The idea of God is not restricted to what we are accustomed to being taught by the popular culture. There is no concept of salvation, no personal savior implied. There is only a covenant, a “deal” with something that includes being human and is also before and beyond humanness. We call this God, the divine, life, source, or Mystery. Because it is a mystery, 10 meaning not fully knowable, whatever we say or think will be symbolic not literal. It is something with which we are in relationship and which responds to us by mysterious non-mechanical means. Whether we call this response grace, “synchronicity”, or the corrective principle it has a function that moves the self in a meaningful way toward greater love, even though the process may not always be pleasing to the willful ego. Liberal religion’s concept of faith is not the humanist’s faith in the sufficiency of the self, nor the conservative’s faith in salvation but a faith in the creative and enriching nature of love, justice and the corrective principle through the covenant with the Mystery. This means, in Adam’s words, that faith is a belief in the covenant’s workings and in the “inexhaustible possibilities of mutuality and friendship even in the midst of enmity, absurdity, injustice and the egoism of person, place, gender, social class, race- any of the partial goods in which human beings can take inordinate, destructive and self righteous pride.” What about moral obligation? How can being obligated be consistent with the freedom emphasized in the “liberal” part of liberal religion? Does obligation in this sense mean compulsion? Is it contradictory of freedom? Searching out the dictionary, we find that the term “obligation” derives from Latin, “ligare”, to bind or tie; a word which also forms the basis of the word “religion”, meaning to bind or tie back to God. If we choose, we can make a commitment, a form of binding with which we connect ourselves to whatever principle, practice or belief we wish. Once this is done, if it is a true binding, we have clearly made our self less free. However, it is an act of our own choosing, thus it does not contradict the idea of freedom. This is the same thing we do when we make a marriage vow. We freely choose to give up some freedom. When we connect this term to the word “moral” and speak of a moral obligation it may seem a bit more onerous, since the historical tradition of religious institutions has been to use the idea of moral obligation, and guilt, to compel behavior. However, this is not a matter of being compelled. What does “moral” mean? The dictionary says it relates to right and wrong according to what is just; the quality of being virtuous. It’s 11 etymology is from the Latin word for “custom” or “customary”. As Adams describes liberal religion moral means the virtuous effort to promote the greater good by binding oneself to the effort of making a just and loving community based on our recognition of mutual co-identity with each other as parts of the Creative Mystery. In so doing we are exercising our co- creative freedom and activating the grace and synchronicity of the corrective principle that is also God. New possibilities for love and fulfillment are opened in this process. God’s way of acting in our lives corresponds with the choices we make and the actions we take. Those who have not committed their efforts and will to the creation of communities of justice and love but are following paths of egotistic willfulness, whether based on humanism, false piety or idealism will still receive self correction and grace, but if they are not aware that this is the action of God functioning in the role of the self corrective principle they will not benefit from this factor. If you don’t look you won’t see. When we use our creative freedom in the egotistic pursuit of dominance, sensual indulgence or knowledge for our personal gratification and glorification the corrective experiences can be unpleasant to the ego. If we further resist we become evil, not moral or loving. In summary, the third stone is about how to be moral through being in harmony with God, which is love, the self corrective principle, the compelling reality and the creative source.

Let’s now hear our closing hymn, #121, “We’ll build a land””

I will close with this little story.

On the street I saw a naked child, hungry and shivering in the cold. I became angry and said to God, “Why do you permit this? Why don’t you do something?” For a while God said nothing. Later, that night, in my sleep, he replied, “I certainly did do something. I made you.”

Sound gong. Extinguish the chalice.