My Notes from A Chosen Faith: An Introduction to Unitarian Universalism by John A. Buehrens and Forrest Church.
The Rev. John Buehrens is minister of the First Parish in Needham, Massachusetts. He was president of the Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations from 1993 to 2001. His most recent book is Understanding the Bible: An Introduction for Skeptics, Seekers, and Religious Liberals (Beacon, 2002) and (coauthored) A House for Hope: The Promise of Progressive Religion for the Twenty-First Century.
Because of my background and current interests, I will at sometime read and comment upon Buehrens' article Pacifists and Pragmatists, about how Progressive communities, including Unitarian Universalist congregations, are prone to painful rifts between pacifists and pragmatists. Looking forward to that.
Every one knows the Late Forrest Church was the son of Senator Frank Church, a famous truth-telling scholar and statesman of the 1960's.
But Rev. Forrest Church was also an acclaimed author of more than two dozen books and longtime minister of the Unitarian Church of All Souls in New York City. He passed last year. As soon as TW finishes it, my turn to read Rev Church's Love & Death: My Journey through the Valley of the Shadow will come.
What follows are my rough excerpts from A Chosen Faith.
First, John Buehrens:A church is not just a specific building, but also a way of looking at a building you're in at the moment. A minister is not just a person who stands in the pulpit on Sunday Mornings, but also the way certain people engage the world. A religion is not contained in a certain book; there's something religious in just about any book.Buehrens quotes Emerson:
Why should we not enjoy an original relation to the universe? Why should we not have poetry and philosophy of insight and not of tradition, and religion by way of revelation to us, and not the history of theirs? The sun shines also today. Let us demand our own words and law and worship.Buehrens quotes Ed Schempp, a UU Layperson from Barrington, (NJ):
Unitarian Universalism is a fierce belief in the way of freedom and reverence for the sacred dignity of each individual. With Jefferson, we have sworn eternal hostility against every tyranny over the mind.
Unitarian Universalism is cooperation with a universe that created us; it is the celebration of life; it is being in love with goodness and justice; it is a sense of humor about absolutes.
Unitarian Universalism is faith in people, hope for tomorrow's child, confidence in continuity that spans all time. It looks not to a perfect heaven, but toward a good earth. It is respectful of the past, but not limited to it. It is trust in growing and conspiracy with change. It is spiritual responsibility for a moral tomorrow.
....In balancing and integrating mind and spirit, Unitarian-Universalism has one goal above all others: to make the religious more rational and the rational more religious.
...faith is not ultimately about believing some proposition in spite of the evidence; it is more like living with courage, gratitude and integrity despite life's inevitable losses. And hope is not a matter of knowing that everything will turn out all right, either for oneself, or even for all of us on Earth together. It is more like directing your life toward a point on the horizon beyond which none of us can see, but toward which we all have to journey if there is to be a worthwhile future for any one of us. And finally, Love is no mere Hallmark greeting card sentiment: it is more like living here and now, serving justice, doing works of mercy, and walking humbly with one another before a Mystery that transcends us all.
Forrest Church writes that,
All theology is autobiography.
(A false generality but a provocative one.)
We are a people who choose. Ours is a faith whose authority is grounded in contemporary experience, not in ancient revelation. Though we find ourselves naturally drawn to the teachings of our adopted religious forebears, these teachings echo with new insights, insights of our own .... revelation is an ongoing process; each of us is a potential harbinger of meaning.....
Religion is our human response to the dual reality of being alive and having to die.
Knowing that we are going to die not only places and acknowledged limit upon our lives, it also gives a special intensity and poignancy to the time we are given to live and love. The fact that death is inevitable gives meaning to our love, for the more we love the more we risk losing. Love's power comes in part from the courage required to give ourselves to that which is not ours to keep ... It comes also from the faith required to sustain that courage, the faith that life, howsoever limited and mysterious, contains within its margins, often at their very edge, a meaning that is redemptive.
Of course, I am a heretic. The word hairesis in Greek means choice, on who is able to choose. Its root stems from the Greek verb hairein, to take. Faced with the mysteries of life and death, each act of faith is a gamble. We all risk choices before the unknown
.... Each of us must assume the responsibility for awakening. Others may be reponsible for us being born, but what we make of our lives, how deeply and intensively we live, is our responsibility, and ours alone....part of being born again, in a Unitarian Universalist way, lies in waking up to the fact that all of life is a gift. The world does not owe us a living, we owe the world a living, our own.
Our communions... are named after doctrines. Unitarianism refers to a belief in the unity of God, distinguishing early Unitarians from trinitarians; and Universalism slavation for all people. The two cometogether to form the most doctrinally free of all demoniations which, ironically, has two doctrines in its name.
..... If there is one true God (truth or reality) for all, and if we all have equal access to this, regardless of the speficics of our respective faiths, the only thing which differentiates one person from the righteousness of another is reflected in his or her deeds.
Urges caution:
Doctrinally, Universalism's principal theological contribution lies in striking hell from the theological menu. Complementing this, Unitarianism, (in addition to affirming God's oneness) removed original sin. Together they conspired brilliantly on behalf of goodness. The problem is that even as a theology based upon evil and sinfulness tends to stint on goodness, one based upon goodness may be equally obtuse when it comes to evil and sin. Too much mercy can squeeze out justice, and too much attention to our better nature can blind us to the awesome human capacity for evil.Morality & Moralism: Sin
... morality and moralism are very different things. In fact they run at cross purposes. Moral posturing gives a sense of accomplishment without our actually having done anything. In short, we feel that we have washed our hands everytime we wring them. It's a mock purification ceremony which gives only the appearance of cleansing.Cathedral of the World
Take our response to the religious right. It does not really matter what we may think of the politics or the religion of our fundamentalist neighbors. All that matters is whether we are willing to live up to the promise and the power of our own faith. Morality not proved in deeds is always betrayed by words, however right-minded, lofty, and sage. I call this sin.
Though far from exclusive to Unitarian Universalism, the principal sin many of us today is the sin of sophistocated resignation. This sin is particularly insidious because it comes with its own veil. That is, it appears respectable. It allows us to feel strongly about injustices without prompting us to do anything about them. This sin is tailor-made for us because it is fed by knowledge. We know so much about the world's problems, and their enormity, that however much we want to do about them, we feel impotent ....
Not so the religious right ... are not sitting on their hands waiting. They are organizing themselves to beat the band, to beat the devil in fact, all the way to kingdom come.
This cathedral is as ancient as humankind, its cornerstone the first altar, marked with the tincture of blood and stained with tears. Search for a lifetime, which is all you are surely given, and you shall never know its limits, visit all its apses, worship at its myriad shrines, nor span its celestial ceiling with your gaze. The builders have worked since time immemorial, destroying and creating, confounding and perfecting, tearing down and raising up arches in this cathedral, buttresses and chapels, organs and theaters, chancels and transepts, gargoyles, idols, and icons. Not a moment passes without work being begun that shall not be finished in the lifetime of the architects who planned it, the patrons who paid for it, the builders who construct it, or the expectant worshipers. And not a moment passes without the dreams of long-dead dreamers being out-stripped, shattered, or abandoned, giving way to new visions, each immortal in reach, ephemeral in grasp.DH Lawrence:
Welcome to the theater of the world.
Above all else, contemplate the windows ... there are windows without numbers, some long forgotten, covered with many patinas of dust, others revered by millions, the most sacred of shrines. Each in his own way is beautiful. Some are abstract, others representational, some dark and meditative, others bright and dazzling. Each tells a story about the creation of the world, the meaning of history, the purpose of life, the nature of humankind, the mystery of death. The windows of the cathedral are where the light shines in.
.... Together with the windows, the darkness and the light, we are part of the cathedral, not a part from it. Together we comprise an interdependent web of being; if the web is built out of star stuff, so are we. But we are that part (the known part) that comtemplates the meaing of the whole. Because the cathedral is so vast, our time so short, and our vision so dim, weare able to contemplate only a tiny part of that cathedral, explore a few apses, reflect upon the play of darkness and light through a few of its windows.Yet since the whole -- holographically or organically -- is contained in each of its parts, as we ponder andact upon the insight from our ruminations, we may discover the meanings that give coherence and meaning to both it and to us.
....it appears to me, one gradually formulates one's religion, be it what it may. A person had no religion, who has not slowly and painfully gathered one together, adding to it, shaping it;and one's religion is never complete and final, it seems, but must always be undergoing modification.
