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.