“Humanist Reverence”
Unitarian Church of Harrisburg
Saturday, September 23 and Sunday, September 24, 2006
Rev. Howard N. Dana
Humans experience awe. Humans feel sorrow, pain, fear, and humiliation. Humans know love,
joy, wonder, and amazement. As creatures with thoughts, emotions, and physical sensations we
feel. And religion at its best meets human feeling at the gut level. One of my most respected
senior colleagues is Rev. Kendyl Gibbons, pastor of the First Unitarian Society of Minneapolis.
A life-long humanist, Gibbons brings decades of parish experience to her ministry. She has
served as president of the Unitarian Universalist Ministers Association; currently sits on the
board of the UU Humanists; and is co-dean of the Humanist Institute. A fine preacher, Gibbons
leaves her colleagues (and I suspect her congregants) satisfied in head and heart. And like most
ministers in our liberal tradition, she wrestles with religious language in a 21st century world. In
a recent essay in the UU World magazine, Gibbons writes:
As a young Unitarian Universalist in the 1960’s I was educated about human sexuality in
a relatively open fashion; human religious experience, in contrast, was a closed book. I
discovered my spirituality in much the same way that my peers raised in more
conservative faiths discovered their sexuality—accidentally, furtively, without guidance,
moved by overwhelming inner tides, and with some sense of shame…To my parents and
teachers—almost all of whom had grown up in other religious traditions—the absence of
texts, rote prayers, sacraments, holy objects, and moralistic picture books represented
freedom. But without any language for my emerging sense of mystery and wonder, I
came to feel the contrary: deprived of the tools with which to understand or express
those experiences. (UU World, Summer 2006)
We humans express ourselves through language. Yes, we paint, draw, sew, dance, play
instruments, and make things with our hands. But take away language and we are little more
than artistic mimes. Take away language and communication looks quite different. So it stands
to reason that we humans express our religious feelings through language, too. From prayers to
chants to songs and sermons, we use words to express that which profoundly moves us. In using
language to express religious feelings, we may have become over confident in our ability to
capture wonder and awe. We may have tried to tame the profound with sheer verbiage. Now,
Unitarian Universalists are a particularly wordy bunch to begin with. In light of our verbosity,
we must ponder Gibbon’s central question—what language do we use to describe a sense of
mystery and wonder? What guidance do we give children and new members to express their
inner tides of spiritual knowing? How do we speak of reverence?
For those keeping track, we are in the third decade of a prolonged denominational debate about
style. In its starkest terms it has been called the humanist/theist debate. In my opinion this
debate is a distraction from the real work of sharing our life-saving faith with those who seek it.
In that it engages only the most contrary theists and humanists, the humanist/theist debate can be
described as a tempest in a teapot. In our church like many the debate often boils down to
generational differences. Do we like classical or contemporary music? What is our comfort
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level with traditional religious language? How anti-clerical is our congregation? What authority
issues do we have? Who are all these new people who don’t know how things are supposed to
be done around here? And, most telling, why can’t I get any help doing the things I have been
doing forever? How people see their church often depends on the era in which they joined.
Most Unitarian Universalists I know, don’t care a whit if someone believes in God or not. They
care how people live their religion. The humanist/theist debate doubly frustrates me because I
consider myself a humanist—one with a deep sense of the holiness that pervades all of life. The
way I know I am a humanist is that I commit to work within the human community to make ours
a better world. Not for one moment do I think that prayers or religious observances will result in
a supernatural god altering the laws of physics to intervene on our behalf. God does not stop
hurricanes or cancer—no matter how hard we might pray. When it comes to caring for our
world, there are no hands but our hands. There are no hearts but our hearts. There is no will but
our will. We are part of the natural world—with the power to save it or destroy it. We sin
through our destruction—and find salvation through our redemption. I am alone in bringing to
my work the inspiration of men, women, and children through the ages. Humanist examples I
follow include Jesus, Buddha, Francis of Assisi, Hildegard of Bingen, Michael Servetus, Mother
Jones, Thomas Starr King, Harriet Tubman, Margaret Fuller, Henry David Thoreau, Jeanette
Rankin, Martin Luther King, Jr., Gandhi, Ryan White, and so many others.
As a humanist I am keenly interested in what human communities do to provide for people’s
physical, emotional, intellectual, and spiritual needs. I am keenly interested in how this
congregation reaches out to friend and stranger alike. Do we do what religious communities
must—namely help people respond to reverence. Rev. Kendyl Gibbons puts it this way:
I submit that a religious tradition that does not help its members discover meaningful and
satisfying ways of expressing and responding to the human experiences of reverence that
happen in the course of their human lives is missing a crucial and central piece of its
function. We are not dealing in debate or persuasion here. We are talking about how
we—each of us, in our uniquely constituted beings—recognize and understand and make
sense of the unbidden, overwhelming awe at the wonder, magnificence, danger, demand,
and delight of being alive. (UU World, Summer 2006)
In clearer terms—is this church a place where you can come in grief and not be embarrassed to
cry? Is ours a community that comforts you when a loved one dies? Is it a place where you can
wrestle with faith and be respected in your conclusions? Is it a place where you feel no shame in
admitting fear, confusion, frustration, or doubt? Do we “have it all together” here—or is there
room for brokenness? If there is not ample room for human brokenness among us, what kind of
humanists are we? Again I rely on Gibbons’ essay:
In the 2003 sermon that sparked much of the controversy over the language of reverence
within our denomination, UUA President William Sinkford speaks of a long night sitting
in the hospital with his teenage son, who lay near death: “I felt the hands of a loving
universe reaching out to hold. The hands of God, the Spirit of Life. The name was
unimportant…I knew that I did not have to walk that path alone, that there is a love that
has never broken faith with us and never will.” No one can argue that Sinkford didn’t
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have the experience he says he did. The question is where our faith community is
collectively prepared to help him understand, process, and honor it. (UU World,
Summer 2006)
How do we at the Unitarian Church of Harrisburg do when a member dies? How do we do when
a member commits a crime and is imprisoned? How do we do when a member is abused or loses
control of his or her mind? How do we do with those in our midst struggling with depression or
addiction? These are the humanist questions we need to ask of ourselves.
It is a little known fact that Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. held close sympathies with
Unitarianism. He spoke in some of our churches and attended more than a few Unitarian
worship services with his wife and children. For King, the sticking point between Unitarians and
Baptists was not a theological one. It was a practical one. King wanted to free his people. The
Baptist faith spoke the words of freedom more easily and readily than the Unitarian faith of
King’s day. By remaining a Baptist, King did not have to worry about being shunned when he
experienced weakness, doubt, and despair. He did not have to worry about being misunderstood
when he spoke of the double sins of racism and poverty. He didn’t have to rely on the words of
learned men to inspire change. In short, King did not have to translate in the Baptist church.
The people there knew what he was going through. There was more support there for a black
preacher on a dangerous quest. Of course we cannot go back in history—nor should we try.
What is done is done. But imagine a modern day Unitarian Universalism where a new Martin
Luther King, Jr. might find a home. We never know who will walk through our doors.
Christians and Jews are usually surprised when I proudly tell them how our church embraces
atheists, agnostics, and humanists. They have trouble wrapping their minds around why nonbelievers would want to be involved with a church in the first place. They want to know what
kind of glue holds us all together. With a smile I explain that ours is a “big-tent” religion. We
are guided by a moral code—the Purposes and Principles (found in the front of your hymnal).
And we care more about what a person does with his or her beliefs than the nature of those
beliefs. We care about deeds, not creeds. But even as I describe our faith, I realize keeping a
“big-tent” religion going is a tall order to fill. In a society that likes neat categories—male and
female, black and white, young and old, gay and straight, believer and non-believer—we don’t
fit in. We deal in shades of gray. We traffic in nuance and exploration. Even among our
churches some are more humanist, others more pagan, and some largely Christian.
On a Sunday morning in Boston you can walk less than a mile from King’s Chapel to First
Church Boston. And in doing so you will have walked from an architecturally historic Christian
church that adheres to the Bible to a modern, humanist-centric one that uses the latest poetry and
prose in worship. Both churches are roughly the same age—having formed in the mid-1600’s
when Massachusetts was a young British colony. Both have healthy congregations. And both
are equally Unitarian Universalist. King’s Chapel is no more (and no less) part of our
denomination than First Church Boston. Neither church is more or less Unitarian Universalist
than our congregations in Wichita or Anchorage or Montreal or Miami. There is unity in our
diversity.
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What I think this sermon boils down to is making room for all. People are drawn to our faith for
a variety of reasons. Not the least of which are: Humans experience awe. Humans feel sorrow,
pain, fear, and humiliation. Humans know love, joy, wonder, and amazement. A Unitarian
Universalist church a place where atheists, agnostics, and humanists can find a home. It is a
place where people who speak of their spirituality in theistic terms can find a home—and
everything else in between. An old joke asks, “How many Mexicans can you fit in a bus?” To
which the reply is, “One more.” I know from experience that you can always fit one more
person on a bus. It is true not only for Mexico, but for Peru and Turkey and Korea and Romania
as well. There is always room for one more.
May there always be room for one more here, too. May we live unafraid of what that “one
more” might believe. May we be concerned only that he or she finds us a people with whom to
share “an unbidden, overwhelming awe at the wonder, magnificence, danger, demand, and
delight of being alive.” May we be worthy of the title “humanist.”
May it be so.
Amen
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