BROOKFIELD UNITARIAN UNIVERSALIST CHURCH
What Is Religion Anyway?
By Barbara Hale
Sermon given at The Brookfield Unitarian Universalist Church
October 26, 2014
I wonder if you’ve heard this old UU joke. It goes: Dear God (if there is a God), if you can, save my soul (if I have a soul). Amen
When I was a kid, I never questioned the existence of God. Mainly because the fear of retribution was such that even to entertain the thought was dangerous in my mind. I would end up in hell, I was sure, if I ever gave doubt any consideration. I had faith after all. I had to have faith. I was told to have faith. At the end of the day, I had to figure out how in the world to get a hold of faith.
I stressed over hell and lost sleep wondering about Purgatory. I couldn’t figure out how it was possible that the torture and death of someone who lived many, many years ago logically had anything to do with what I was going through that day especially when people are tortured and murdered every day in this world. It just made no sense. In my youthful imagination, I even wondered what would happen when the Communists took over and forced me to make a choice between the firing squad and my Christian religion, which, with my growing doubts, I wasn’t totally sure I could truly defend, much less die for. But, ultimately, it may have been something as simple as the cruel psychology of the Bible story about Abraham and Isaac that pushed me over the edge.
It all sounds pretty silly to me now. But it was real and quite frightening when I was young.
Fortunately for me, when I was in my early teens, in spite of being the product of many years of Catholic education, I quit being able to hold back those creeping thoughts of reason and my personal journey toward my real religion began.
These days and for many years now, my religion does not include a god (if there is a God) or a soul (if I have a soul). And though many years went by when I called myself agnostic – still giving myself a way out of those burning fires of hell, if necessary – I have finally come to the point where I can say that for me, there is no god, no heaven, no hell, no soul. I am a Religious Humanist and I am an atheist. But despite the current majority opinion in this country, I really am not a bad person.
There is a common misconception about atheists that I would like to clear up. Many people think that because an atheist doesn’t believe in a god, an atheist doesn’t believe in anything. But nothing could be further from the truth. I, being a Humanist and an atheist, believe in many things. I will list a few of them here.
I had a friend who once said to me that for an atheist I sure spent a lot of time at church – something she, a pious and devout Christian, could not rectify in her mind. Why would a person like me bother to attend a church at all – if there is no God? Had I known at the time that these comments were coming, I may have had an answer for my friend, instead of being totally flummoxed by her bluntness. I might have said, “Barbara, (her name was Barbara, too, by the way) I don’t have a god but, boy, do I have religion!”
Now, the traditional definitions of religion according to Merriam-Webster are as follows:
3. Religion is an interest, a belief or an activity that is very important to a person or group, as in “Hockey is a religion in Canada.” Or, maybe, to get a little closer to home, “Coffee is a religion to UUs.”
Well, personally, I’m not so sure that Merriam-Webster completely covers it and I would like to posit a fourth definition.
In the book The Art of Being, published in 1971 when Humanism was a great force in Unitarian Universalist churches, Unitarian Edwin T. Buehrer defined religion.
He wrote, “We believe that religion is not something revealed in some mystic fashion to some ancient man in the forest or desert or on a mountain, but that it is living life fully, in constant awareness of our relationship to the wonders of our earth and our universe and our responsibility to the total human family of which we are members.”
He goes on. “Religion is the love of truth…Religion is imagination…It is man’s eagerness to invade the realms of the yet unexplored universe, to let go his thoughts and emotions into cosmic flights of speculation and exploration, and to come back again and again, humbled, purified and lifted up by the grandeur of it all. Religion is love of the beautiful…Religion is love of all things good…Religion is, ultimately, man’s sense of oneness within the great enfolding reality of his universe. It is the deep and satisfying feeling of being intimately identified with the life of the physical world and the life of man...
“The purpose of worship,” Rev. Buehrer says, “is to make life give us its great moments, so that by the power of their inspiration we may discover deeper insight into our contemporary problems and greater courage to face them. It matters not whether the remembered experience comes to us by way of the Bible or the Koran or the Book of Common Prayer. It may, indeed, be suggested by a laboratory experiment, a problem in mathematics, a Broadway play, a motion picture, or an observable human situation in which we ourselves are the participants. What matters is whether or not it is a true experience. Does it touch life at the center? Does it help us get deeper into the realities of living? Is it a source of inspiration and courage? That is the test, and there is really no other.”
I know, of course, that for some people, for many people, for you, perhaps, dreams, truths and goodness are only possible with a God who is there to watch over the world and to be a guide. And I think that that’s fine. That certainly puts one squarely within the primary definition of “religion” according to Merriam-Webster.
But, through much searching…I hesitate to say “soul searching” here, I have found that kind of belief in a god or gods is not necessary for me to discover and appreciate what is fine about this world and the people in it and to seek inspiration and motivation from them to strive to be a better person. I don’t need to “just believe” in order to experience awe at the world’s natural beauty or to experience wonder and gratefulness for human kindness, compassion and love - or disgust and anguish when I see the evil men can inflict upon this world and their fellow humans, sadly often in the name of some God or another. I don’t need tenets or commandments or fear of some otherworldly punishment-to-come to know in my mind and heart that decency, integrity and generosity are intrinsic, fundamental values that make this world a better place or, regardless of public opinion about my ilk, that it is simply a sound idea to strive to live a good and moral life. After all, in spite of being an atheist, while I am by no means perfect, I have never been involved in a hit and run. I constantly restrain myself from stealing wallets and your kids are safe with me, but please don’t ask me to babysit. Sinning or, getting away from a religious implication, plain old wreaking havoc is just not my thing and it never was…with God or without.
But in all seriousness, the definition of religion, that Rev. Buehrer writes about, speaks to me: Love of truth, goodness and beauty, being lifted up by the grandeur and mysteries of the cosmos, finding inspiration in common human experience and taking from that inspiration the courage to face the problems of our contemporary world and accepting my responsibility to the total human family. That smacks of the kind of religion I want to commit to.
I was in my late thirties when we happened upon the Brookfield Unitarian Universalist Church. The impetus for our search for a church home came in the form of a neighbor kid telling our daughter that she would “fall out of the clouds” when she died because she was not Catholic. And we stuck here for the reason most young families begin to attend church regularly – Greg and I wanted a place of moral grounding for our children. For quite a while, I think that we figured that after the kids were grown, we would be sleeping in on Sunday mornings. But little did I know that when we walked through those then very faded red doors, we would hit the jackpot! This was the church that could give me the religion that Rev. Buehrer talks about in The Art of Being though I didn’t know it at the time and it would also help us give our kids moral guidance that would allow them to realistically deal with the world as it is – it would help to give each of us a sense of oneness within the great enfolding reality of our universe.
I learned my lessons the hard way when I was a kid, so I have never told my children that they are not allowed to believe in God in the unassailable way that I was told that I must believe in God…or else. That journey is up to them.
Certainly, they have never heard that in the religious education program here at the BUUC. On the contrary, unlike most kids who are educated in other denominations like I was, Carrie and Evan learned not only about the Christian God, but also about Allah, the Buddha, about Hindu gods and goddesses, Judaism, Humanism, Wicca and more. They were fortunate to visit a synagogue, a mosque, a Hindu temple and to attend a Catholic Mass. They were handed a plethora of options. And thanks to Unitarian Universalism and the religious education program here at the BUUC, their journeys toward their own real religions will not be fraught with fear of retribution. Should that particular kind of faith in a god that so painfully eluded me in my youth somehow strike them, I would say, “Have at it!” And extend to them my utterly unqualified atheistic blessings. I want them to find and follow their paths after all, not mine. I think that we have all learned here to extend that same courtesy and freedom to others.
What other denomination can you imagine would agree to have me stand in front of you and talk to you about what I have today? Certainly standing in the pulpit of any fundamental or even mainstream Christian church, no matter how liberal, would be out of the question for me, however right it might be for many of my fellow humans. The reason I stand here today, a person with as real a sense of “religion” as anyone, is because back in 1992, we found this church and with it Unitarian Universalism. Being a UU allows me…no, it encourages me to think, to explore and to commit to ideas that feel right and real in my own head and heart. I am not required to swallow a dogma and bark back a creed. Or to stay at home on a Sunday morning as I used to some 20 odd years ago, a part of the congregation of others who worship the Sunday New York Times and nothing much else. I am finally comfortable and happy being a part of a religion that makes sense to me and has, at its core, principles that affirm the belief in the inherent worth and dignity of every person and that promote a free and responsible search for truth and meaning. These things I can truly believe in.
What about you? A lot of us have been sitting next to each other here on Sunday mornings for years. Where would you be without this church, the Unitarian Universalist denomination and the quiet people who share this space with you? Quite possibly some of you would be able to find a church home in a liberal Christian church. But I imagine that there are many of you who would not be comfortable doing that. What we have here at the BUUC is special and unique. In this chaotic and complicated world where we share our lives and where fundamentalism often seems to have a chokehold on society, we have a place to go where our opinions and beliefs can be freely expressed and are peacefully respected and acknowledged, even if those opinions and beliefs aren’t the same as those of the person sharing the pew with us. And we have a place to go where our opinions and beliefs will be respected and acknowledged when we finally lie down for the last time to rest in the comfort and darkness of eternity.
In that, I have faith and, for that, I am profoundly grateful.
So may it be.
___________________________
Buehrer, Edwin T. "The Art of Being." Copyright 1971 by Third Unitarian Church of Chicago
By Barbara Hale
Sermon given at The Brookfield Unitarian Universalist Church
October 26, 2014
I wonder if you’ve heard this old UU joke. It goes: Dear God (if there is a God), if you can, save my soul (if I have a soul). Amen
When I was a kid, I never questioned the existence of God. Mainly because the fear of retribution was such that even to entertain the thought was dangerous in my mind. I would end up in hell, I was sure, if I ever gave doubt any consideration. I had faith after all. I had to have faith. I was told to have faith. At the end of the day, I had to figure out how in the world to get a hold of faith.
I stressed over hell and lost sleep wondering about Purgatory. I couldn’t figure out how it was possible that the torture and death of someone who lived many, many years ago logically had anything to do with what I was going through that day especially when people are tortured and murdered every day in this world. It just made no sense. In my youthful imagination, I even wondered what would happen when the Communists took over and forced me to make a choice between the firing squad and my Christian religion, which, with my growing doubts, I wasn’t totally sure I could truly defend, much less die for. But, ultimately, it may have been something as simple as the cruel psychology of the Bible story about Abraham and Isaac that pushed me over the edge.
It all sounds pretty silly to me now. But it was real and quite frightening when I was young.
Fortunately for me, when I was in my early teens, in spite of being the product of many years of Catholic education, I quit being able to hold back those creeping thoughts of reason and my personal journey toward my real religion began.
These days and for many years now, my religion does not include a god (if there is a God) or a soul (if I have a soul). And though many years went by when I called myself agnostic – still giving myself a way out of those burning fires of hell, if necessary – I have finally come to the point where I can say that for me, there is no god, no heaven, no hell, no soul. I am a Religious Humanist and I am an atheist. But despite the current majority opinion in this country, I really am not a bad person.
There is a common misconception about atheists that I would like to clear up. Many people think that because an atheist doesn’t believe in a god, an atheist doesn’t believe in anything. But nothing could be further from the truth. I, being a Humanist and an atheist, believe in many things. I will list a few of them here.
- I believe that the universe came into being without outside help of the divine variety.
- I believe in the inherent worth and dignity of every person.
- I believe that we humans are an integral part of nature and as such have a responsibility to treat the natural world with reverence and respect.
- I believe that we humans are an intelligent species with insatiable curiosity and with that curiosity and intelligence; we can and should use science to find out the truth.
- I believe in living in the here and now and in learning from my mistakes.
- I believe that it’s a cop out to blame an outside force, in other words, some kind of god, for my troubles or my faults or conversely to credit that outside force when things seem to go strangely right for me sometimes. This is a very complicated world. I believe things do just happen and not necessarily for a reason.
- I believe that I am a responsible person as are you. Collectively, we make the world we deserve.
- I believe that no nebulous being is going to help us out of our problems no matter how hard or how much we pray to him. It’s up to us to deal with our problems, hopefully with help from others around us.
- We can and should do the work and make the changes we need to make this world the best possible place. I believe that our earth is the only home we have and this is the only time we have.
I had a friend who once said to me that for an atheist I sure spent a lot of time at church – something she, a pious and devout Christian, could not rectify in her mind. Why would a person like me bother to attend a church at all – if there is no God? Had I known at the time that these comments were coming, I may have had an answer for my friend, instead of being totally flummoxed by her bluntness. I might have said, “Barbara, (her name was Barbara, too, by the way) I don’t have a god but, boy, do I have religion!”
Now, the traditional definitions of religion according to Merriam-Webster are as follows:
- Religion is the belief in a god or in a group of gods.
- It is an organized system of beliefs, ceremonies and rules used to worship a god or a group of gods.
3. Religion is an interest, a belief or an activity that is very important to a person or group, as in “Hockey is a religion in Canada.” Or, maybe, to get a little closer to home, “Coffee is a religion to UUs.”
Well, personally, I’m not so sure that Merriam-Webster completely covers it and I would like to posit a fourth definition.
In the book The Art of Being, published in 1971 when Humanism was a great force in Unitarian Universalist churches, Unitarian Edwin T. Buehrer defined religion.
He wrote, “We believe that religion is not something revealed in some mystic fashion to some ancient man in the forest or desert or on a mountain, but that it is living life fully, in constant awareness of our relationship to the wonders of our earth and our universe and our responsibility to the total human family of which we are members.”
He goes on. “Religion is the love of truth…Religion is imagination…It is man’s eagerness to invade the realms of the yet unexplored universe, to let go his thoughts and emotions into cosmic flights of speculation and exploration, and to come back again and again, humbled, purified and lifted up by the grandeur of it all. Religion is love of the beautiful…Religion is love of all things good…Religion is, ultimately, man’s sense of oneness within the great enfolding reality of his universe. It is the deep and satisfying feeling of being intimately identified with the life of the physical world and the life of man...
“The purpose of worship,” Rev. Buehrer says, “is to make life give us its great moments, so that by the power of their inspiration we may discover deeper insight into our contemporary problems and greater courage to face them. It matters not whether the remembered experience comes to us by way of the Bible or the Koran or the Book of Common Prayer. It may, indeed, be suggested by a laboratory experiment, a problem in mathematics, a Broadway play, a motion picture, or an observable human situation in which we ourselves are the participants. What matters is whether or not it is a true experience. Does it touch life at the center? Does it help us get deeper into the realities of living? Is it a source of inspiration and courage? That is the test, and there is really no other.”
I know, of course, that for some people, for many people, for you, perhaps, dreams, truths and goodness are only possible with a God who is there to watch over the world and to be a guide. And I think that that’s fine. That certainly puts one squarely within the primary definition of “religion” according to Merriam-Webster.
But, through much searching…I hesitate to say “soul searching” here, I have found that kind of belief in a god or gods is not necessary for me to discover and appreciate what is fine about this world and the people in it and to seek inspiration and motivation from them to strive to be a better person. I don’t need to “just believe” in order to experience awe at the world’s natural beauty or to experience wonder and gratefulness for human kindness, compassion and love - or disgust and anguish when I see the evil men can inflict upon this world and their fellow humans, sadly often in the name of some God or another. I don’t need tenets or commandments or fear of some otherworldly punishment-to-come to know in my mind and heart that decency, integrity and generosity are intrinsic, fundamental values that make this world a better place or, regardless of public opinion about my ilk, that it is simply a sound idea to strive to live a good and moral life. After all, in spite of being an atheist, while I am by no means perfect, I have never been involved in a hit and run. I constantly restrain myself from stealing wallets and your kids are safe with me, but please don’t ask me to babysit. Sinning or, getting away from a religious implication, plain old wreaking havoc is just not my thing and it never was…with God or without.
But in all seriousness, the definition of religion, that Rev. Buehrer writes about, speaks to me: Love of truth, goodness and beauty, being lifted up by the grandeur and mysteries of the cosmos, finding inspiration in common human experience and taking from that inspiration the courage to face the problems of our contemporary world and accepting my responsibility to the total human family. That smacks of the kind of religion I want to commit to.
I was in my late thirties when we happened upon the Brookfield Unitarian Universalist Church. The impetus for our search for a church home came in the form of a neighbor kid telling our daughter that she would “fall out of the clouds” when she died because she was not Catholic. And we stuck here for the reason most young families begin to attend church regularly – Greg and I wanted a place of moral grounding for our children. For quite a while, I think that we figured that after the kids were grown, we would be sleeping in on Sunday mornings. But little did I know that when we walked through those then very faded red doors, we would hit the jackpot! This was the church that could give me the religion that Rev. Buehrer talks about in The Art of Being though I didn’t know it at the time and it would also help us give our kids moral guidance that would allow them to realistically deal with the world as it is – it would help to give each of us a sense of oneness within the great enfolding reality of our universe.
I learned my lessons the hard way when I was a kid, so I have never told my children that they are not allowed to believe in God in the unassailable way that I was told that I must believe in God…or else. That journey is up to them.
Certainly, they have never heard that in the religious education program here at the BUUC. On the contrary, unlike most kids who are educated in other denominations like I was, Carrie and Evan learned not only about the Christian God, but also about Allah, the Buddha, about Hindu gods and goddesses, Judaism, Humanism, Wicca and more. They were fortunate to visit a synagogue, a mosque, a Hindu temple and to attend a Catholic Mass. They were handed a plethora of options. And thanks to Unitarian Universalism and the religious education program here at the BUUC, their journeys toward their own real religions will not be fraught with fear of retribution. Should that particular kind of faith in a god that so painfully eluded me in my youth somehow strike them, I would say, “Have at it!” And extend to them my utterly unqualified atheistic blessings. I want them to find and follow their paths after all, not mine. I think that we have all learned here to extend that same courtesy and freedom to others.
What other denomination can you imagine would agree to have me stand in front of you and talk to you about what I have today? Certainly standing in the pulpit of any fundamental or even mainstream Christian church, no matter how liberal, would be out of the question for me, however right it might be for many of my fellow humans. The reason I stand here today, a person with as real a sense of “religion” as anyone, is because back in 1992, we found this church and with it Unitarian Universalism. Being a UU allows me…no, it encourages me to think, to explore and to commit to ideas that feel right and real in my own head and heart. I am not required to swallow a dogma and bark back a creed. Or to stay at home on a Sunday morning as I used to some 20 odd years ago, a part of the congregation of others who worship the Sunday New York Times and nothing much else. I am finally comfortable and happy being a part of a religion that makes sense to me and has, at its core, principles that affirm the belief in the inherent worth and dignity of every person and that promote a free and responsible search for truth and meaning. These things I can truly believe in.
What about you? A lot of us have been sitting next to each other here on Sunday mornings for years. Where would you be without this church, the Unitarian Universalist denomination and the quiet people who share this space with you? Quite possibly some of you would be able to find a church home in a liberal Christian church. But I imagine that there are many of you who would not be comfortable doing that. What we have here at the BUUC is special and unique. In this chaotic and complicated world where we share our lives and where fundamentalism often seems to have a chokehold on society, we have a place to go where our opinions and beliefs can be freely expressed and are peacefully respected and acknowledged, even if those opinions and beliefs aren’t the same as those of the person sharing the pew with us. And we have a place to go where our opinions and beliefs will be respected and acknowledged when we finally lie down for the last time to rest in the comfort and darkness of eternity.
In that, I have faith and, for that, I am profoundly grateful.
So may it be.
___________________________
Buehrer, Edwin T. "The Art of Being." Copyright 1971 by Third Unitarian Church of Chicago
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