The Humanist Gospel

A Worship Service by the Reverend Mark W. Christian

Presented to the First Unitarian Church of Oklahoma City

Sunday March 16, 2003

Reading

From “Making the Manifesto”

By Bill Schultz (pg xiii, xxiv)

Whether they realize it or not, all Americans interested in matters religious…have been influenced by religious humanism…For those of orthodox persuasion, religious humanism—much less its counterpart secular humanism—represents the stark danger that comes with abandonment of biblical authority.  For more liberal Christians, religious humanism reflects a boundary that helps them define their own theological limits.  And to those of a progressive stripe…humanism is of value to the extent that it embodies philosophical pragmatism with the conviction that is so germane to our current struggles, namely that religious certitude leads to division, intolerance and ultimately violence.

Unitarian Universalism, the faith community in which the vast majority of religious humanists are found today, has, in particular, been deeply affected by the religious humanist strain…The Humanist Manifesto of 1933…was consciously designed to encapsulate a religious faith, not just a philosophy of life, and for all its religious failings, it represented a heartfelt attempt to amalgamate intellectual integrity with religious expression…

Someone has categorized religions along a spectrum from the monkey hold type on one end to the cat-hold brand on the other.  In monkey-hold religion, the babies cling to Mama as she strides through the world; in cat-hold religion, Mama holds the babies by the scruff of their necks, dangling them over the abyss; their calling is to take on a healthy dose of trust and enjoy the scenery.  Early religious humanism was monkey-hold religion, through and through.  Today we recognize more readily the wisdom of the feline faith. 

Prayer and Meditation

Transcendental Etude

Adrienne Rich (SLT #665)

No one ever told us we had to study our lives,
Make of our lives a study, as if learning natural history or music,
That we should begin with simple exercises first and slowly go on trying the hard ones, Practicing till strength and accuracy become one with the daring to leap into transcendence.
And in fact we can't live like that:

We take on everything at once before we've even begun to read or mark time,

We're forced to begin in the midst of the hardest movement,
The one already sounding as we are born.

The Humanist Gospel

A Sermon by the Reverend Mark W. Christian

Delivered to the First Unitarian Church of Oklahoma City

Sunday March 16, 2003

How would a dove describe the sky?

What would a shark say of the seas?

What hymn would a comet sing to deep space?

The Dove might speak of wind currents and fluttering feathers

But what of air itself?

The Shark might talk of the tug of the tides and warmth of the Gulf Stream

            But what of the sea itself?

The Comet might speak of the sun and the planets,

            But what would it say of space itself?

And we Unitarian Universalists, how are we to describe Humanism?  We would probably start by observing that Doves, Sharks and Comets don’t speak, or talk, or sing.  As for Humanism, well…

This is all a round about way of saying that Humanism surrounds us.  It is in the air we breathe, the water we drink and the space we occupy.  Other things share our environs, but I would tell you that Humanism is to us what air, sea and space are to doves, sharks and comets.  It is so close that we don’t have to reach to touch it.  It is ubiquitous, ever present in our midst.

This is the fifth in a series of sermons exploring “The Sources of our Living Tradition.”  We began with Direct Experience and have thus far wound our way through Prophetic Words and Deeds, World Religions and our Judeo Christian heritage.  In a couple of weeks, we’ll wrap up the series by exploring Earth Based Religions but today we turn our eyes and our minds toward Humanism.

Reconnecting with my friends the Dove, Shark and Comet (and putting aside the fact that they don’t speak or think in any way that we recognize), the lesson is that speaking of something that is so all engulfing is nigh unto impossible.  In some ways, that is how it is with Humanism and us.  Somehow, I felt comfortable milling the varied and various influences of those other sources of our tradition into single sermons.  When faced with this topic, though, I feel hard-pressed to distill Humanism to a single treatise.  Some of you may recognize this tension on first blush, some of you may not.  Some of you are longtime, convinced and committed, Humanists.  You may think it odd that I say these things at all.  Some of you hear me speak of “Divinity” and “God” and “Spirit” and “Soul” and think me hardly a Humanist at all.

Let me be quite clear.  I consider myself a Humanist it’s just that Humanism is not a monolithic construction.  Humanism is as varied and nuanced as the birds in the air, the fishes in the sea and the celestial objects hurling through space.  I would say that in this religious tradition that we are all Humanists of one stripe or another.  I recently found a list of the different kinds of Humanism—there’s Literary Humanism, Renaissance Humanism, Cultural Humanism, Philosophical Humanism, Christian Humanism, Modern Humanism, Secular Humanism and Religious Humanism as the different “stripes” of Humanism.  I would add Cosmic Humanism to that list and perhaps you begin to see the variety and variegated nature of Humanism.  I am particularly glad to see “Christian Humanism” on that list since that is how I have sometimes described myself—much to the chagrin of Christians and Humanists alike who tell me that what I believe is neither Christian nor Humanist.  Alas, I find I must resign myself to the simple designation of Unitarian.  Such is life.

The utter and unbiased truth is that one cannot understand Humanism—as a movement—without understanding Unitarian Universalism.  Additionally, I have a colleague who claims that while all Unitarians aren’t Humanists, that all Humanists are potential Unitarians.  Actually, I disagree with both ends of that equation but I think you get the point.  Recently, American Humanist Association Executive Director Frederick Edwords* observed that “Secular Humanists often refer to Unitarian Universalists as ‘Humanists not yet out of the church habit.’  But,” he continued, “Unitarian Universalists sometimes counter that a Secular Humanist is simply an ‘unchurched Unitarian’.”

The utter and unbiased truth is that one cannot really understand Humanism today without understanding something of Unitarian history, theology and practice.  It is equally true that we can’t really understand Unitarian Universalism without coming to terms with Humanism.  Humanism grows out of the Renaissance, starting with Erasmus’ desire to reclaim the Greek Classics but its roots are really much older.  I find the outline of what I understand of Humanism in our tradition in the sentiments of Terrance, the Roman dramatist, who observed in the 2^nd century BCE that “I am Human…let nothing Human be alien to me.”  I also see our roots as a modern religious people in the even older praying question of the 8^th Psalm that asks God “What are Human beings that you are mindful of them, mortals that you care for them?  (Psalm 8:4—Inclusive NRSV)” 

Putting aside the theology inherent in the Psalms—the ultimate point, and the sentiment we share with the Roman Dramatist, is that we struggle with what it means to be Human.  What and who, are we as Human beings?  What is it that is inherent in the Human condition that is therefore never, never, alien to us?  I firmly believe that until we can answer those questions then we have very little business worrying or wonder what God is or even “if” God is.  It is that simple to me.

I met this week with someone new to our community.  I shared with him that I am ultimately agnostic when it comes to the question of God.  I not only don’t know whether, or not, God exists but I sense that this is ultimately unknowable.  I don’t know what evidence would assure me, beyond all doubt, of the existence of God.  I have hunches, if not proof, when it comes to God though.  I have feelings and intuitions and therefore lean toward the existence of something “like God”—toward the Theist or Deist end of the scale.  I find, though, that I cannot abandon my agnosticism.  I have found no evidence to compel affirmation or negation.  I can’t even imagine what that evidence would be and therefore I am profoundly agnostic.  For me it becomes a question of faith above certainty.  I describe myself as a theistically inclined agnostic—and I am still a Humanist.

I am hardly agnostic, though, when it comes to Humanity.  I know we exist.  We are born, we live, we die.  I have seen good and evil come from the lives and minds and words of human beings.  I know we are capable of great goodness and profound evil—not just we, but me.  The religious question, it seems, is how do we, as mortal human beings, live in this knowledge and seek the good while countering the evil?  How do we make the best of the lives we live?  Do we focus our hopes, dreams and aspirations beyond or into this world? 

It is how I answer to these things that leads me to affirm that I am ultimately a Humanist.  I have been all over the map in terms of belief—and disbelief—in God.  I simply can’t remember a time that I wasn’t a Humanist.  Born into Unitarianism in the 50’s and growing up in this church in the 60’s and 70’s my earliest exposures to religion were of an amalgam of Christianity and Humanism.  Humanism has always been a part of my Unitarian Universalist roots.  It has been a part of our institutional manifestation for nearly a century and a half.

Humanism—not always called that but Humanism none the less—began to emerge within Unitarianism right after the Civil War.  By 1900, it was beginning to be recognized.  By the 1920’s, it was beginning to be controversial.  By the time of the signing of the Humanist Manifesto in 1933, it was common and controversial.  By 1950 it was widespread and was developing an orthodoxy.  Some would say that in the last 15 or 20 years that Humanism has been waning in our midst.  I would disagree.  Changing?  Yes.  Disappearing?  No—not by a long shot.  Dogmatic Humanism, Fundamentalist Humanism, Literalist Humanism is perhaps fading—I would say that is the fate of all dogmatic, literalist and fundamentalist faiths.  They ebb and change—but their influence outlasts them.

I really like the way that the Sources of Our Living Tradition addresses the question and the reality of Humanism.  It asserts Humanism in a way that is open to variety and growth.  It sees Humanism as a growing part of our faith.  “The Living Tradition we share…(includes) Humanist teachings which counsel us to heed the guidance of reason and the results of science, and warn us against idolatries of the mind and spirit.”

Our tradition is focused, at least in part, on the lessons of the Human quest—not on Humanist dogma or doctrine but on what-we-can-learn from what-Humanism-has-to-teach.  The focus is on the learning the lessons of Human living.  We are urged, not commanded, urged to use those insights.  What is the nature of those lessons?  High on the list of those lessons is that reason and science are among our guides as a religious people.  Furthermore, we can draw from those teachings ample evidence to alert us to the fact that as Human beings we are prone toward getting our priorities wrong.  “The Living Tradition we share…(includes) Humanist teachings which counsel us to heed the guidance of reason and the results of science, and warn us against idolatries of the mind and spirit.”

Humanism in our midst has been confrontational and it has been collaborative.  It has been self-limiting and self-surpassing.  Some have sought to codify it and it has proven itself free of such bondage.  Bill Murray, the President of Meadville Lombard Theological School—the institution most closely related to the assent of Humanism as normative in Unitarianism—recently summarized the state of Humanism in our faith by contrasting “Old” Humanism and “New” Humanism*.  This is, perhaps, a useful distinction to make.  He takes on the continued volatility within Unitarian Universalist theology between Humanists, Theists and Pagans while seeking common ground and renewed hope. 

Murray, in his distinction between “New” and “Old” grants that Humanism hasn’t always been what it could or should have been.  He acknowledges that Humanism has tended to be confrontational, sexist, overly individualistic, too “heady,” pollyannaish in its optimism, allergic to mystery, intolerant, more anesthetic than aesthetic, dangerous to the rest of creation and oftentimes condescending.  It has been all these things—and it is still something of great value.

Murray sees a New Humanism already rising.  A Humanism that places the individual in a community—not each person against the world but each person becoming fully human because we exist in community.  The rational side of Humanism he says is already being tempered with the affective.  New Humanists acknowledge that we are thinking and feeling beings—our feelings, no less than our thoughts, make us Human.  Humanism is now acknowledging—as never before—that we are capable of Good and Evil; that there is a tragic dimension to life and that we must create goodness and purpose in the world if we are to put our lives to good use.

The New Humanism that is being born is more open to wonder and awe and mystery than was its predecessor.  It is less reductionist, admitting that our inability to understand something doesn’t automatically mean it isn’t real.  This means that the New Humanism is more open to dialogue with different beliefs—standing more in contrast than opposition—“Agreed to differ, but resolved to love.”

The Humanism, which feeds our church today and will sustain us tomorrow, is one that appreciates the aesthetic.  It accepts that ritual, art, poetry, myth and music sustain whole person while ideas primarily inspire our intellect  Our minds, our bodies and our spirits, must be made whole.  Furthermore, the wholeness we need is more than Human wholeness.  New Humanism does not see “Man as the measure of all things.”  It sees us as a-part-of—not apart-from—creation.  Humanism does not mean that Humans are qualitatively separate from creation.  Our task is not to subdue the world but find a way to live in it.

The New Humanism—the Good News Humanism—that Murray sees dawning is one that is committed to social justice, the ideals and values of true democracy in a non-paternalistic way.  We don’t do Social Justice “for” others we are called to do it “with” others.  As we give of ourselves—we give and we gain.  As others receive and participate, they in turn give.  This is the path of true liberation, which Humanism holds today and tomorrow.

I would tell you today that this is the Humanist Gospel.  It is deep in our marrow as a people and it is in the mortar of our institutions.  The word “Gospel” means “Good News” and I would have you know that Humanism today is the bearer of Goodness and Mercy and Hope as much as it has been the bearer of Reason and Science and Intellect in the past.  There is so much to this part of our faith—How is bird to speak of the sky, a fish to describe the sea or a Human to describe Humanism?

I close with words from Walt Whitman.  He expressed the Gospel of Humanism as few others have.  Hear his words and know they offer hope and good news for the future.

The sum of all known reverence I add up in you, whoever you are,
Those who govern are there for you, it is not you who are there for them;
All architecture is what you do to it when you look upon it;
All music is what awakes from you when you are reminded by the instruments;
The sun and stars that float in the open air,
The apple-shaped earth and we upon it;
Our endless pride and outstretching, unspeakable joys and sorrows;
The wonder everyone sees in everyone else,

and the wonders that fill each minute of time forever;
It is for you whoever you are—it is no farther from you

than your hearing and sight are from you;
It is hinted by nearest, commonest, readiest. 
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;
Will you seek afar off?  You'll surely come back at last,
In the best known to you, finding the best, or as good as the best—

Happiness, knowledge, not in another place,

but this place—not for another hour, but this hour. AMEN