Sunday Morning Celebration
Margie Allen, Summer
OPENING WORDS:
[From Huston Smith, Why
Religion Matters.
Several years ago my wife, Kendra, took a young grandson
to the neighborhood playground where they found two chil
The Humanist Manifesto III, a successor to the Humanist Manifesto of
1933
http://www.americanhumanist.org/3/HumanismandItsAspirations.pdf
http://www.americanhumanist.org/3/HumandItsAspirations.htm
SERMON:
“Whither Humanism?”
But what is really most annoying about Fred’s
declaration in this evaluation (and good supervisors tend to pull this little
annoying trick all the time) is that he is correct. I am a Humanist. My
Humanism is a focus for my 6th Source Unitarian Universalism and my
6th Source UUism is a corrective to my Humanism. The funny thing is,
something kind of opposite happened back in May. I asked him if he knew of any
Humanists in the congregation who might let me interview them for a class in
Religious Humanism I was taking in July. He came up with a couple of names, but
I ended up, as some of you may remember, putting a little blurb in a Sunday
Bulletin asking for a volunteer. And I got a volunteer, thank you Ginny
Reinhart. But when I got into the assigned reading for the class, I began to
see
Barbara Merritt proposes in the UUA
pamphlet called “The Faith of a Theist” that “all but the most isolated members
of this society are humanists.” We are humanists simply because we are human
beings, have seen, supported and benefited from what human beings can do in the
world. But Humanism as a faith statement goes deeper. The Humanism that is part
of my now apparently-hyphenated theological identity is “religious” because it
deals with matters of ultimate concern to human beings in the contexts of the
lives of individuals and of the whole nature-culture complex in which we dwell.
The religious Humanism I am owning up to is a system of theological claims
which views human beings as key to preserving the integrity of the world as we
know it—through exploration, experience, reflection and careful stewardship and
intervention.
My Humanism is an optimistic one, as humanism tends to
be, but I think it is a humanism heavy with a sobering realism. I have to use
the word “faith.” I continue to believe in human beings, often against the
weight of evidence, because I have faith. I have faith that humanity can
develop, before it is too late, the collective intelligence, the sort of
foresight which reaches to the seventh generation and beyond, and the deep
creativity to plan for and ensure the survival of this planet. I have faith
that we can build cooperatively where we have destroyed unilaterally, that we
can work to strengthen the strands which connect us all, living beings and
non-living entities and living breathing Earth, on the interdependent web of
which we are all a part. I have faith that we are already struggling, humbly and
compassionately, to eliminate arrogant assumptions about the primacy of human
needs over Earth’s needs and the needs of the privileged over the needs of the
oppressed, about the “naturalness” of the human desire for power, control, and
comfort. I have faith that we will consent to pay respectful attention to our
place as a gifted and limited species on the web. I have faith that we, the
species whose opposable thumb and mysterious, powerful brain have drawn us to
the leading edge of evolution, will accept our responsibility to the whole,
understanding that all earth’s inhabitants share a common fate.
The defining characteristics of Humanism has changed
over the years and it is still evolving, but the classic humanism of fifties,
the humanism which founded this church, is shaped around principles and
assumptions such as the following. [Corliss
Lamont, The Philosophy of Humanism
(Washington, DC: Humanist Press, 1997, p.13-15)]. The idea of the supernatural in all its forms is rejected. No God, no
Creator, no “First Cause.” Nature is all there is and it is enough. This one
life you and I are living now is all we have. There is no fate or
predestination. There is no life after death; no heaven or hell except on this
earth in this life. Human beings are “functionally ultimate,” that is, we are
free to choose and act to shape our own destiny. Reason and scientific method
are our best tools for gaining knowledge and the only valid tests for “truth.”
By in large there is no place for superstition, myth, miracles, magic, or
ritual. Humanity has the capacity to realize its ends by implementing
scientific method and utilizing technology in all areas of economic, political,
and cultural life. The goal for humanity is “this worldly” freedom and
happiness; and since individual well-being is contingent on contributions to
community welfare, global order and equity, peace and democracy are also
cherished ends.
The Humanist Manifesti, three separate formal public
statements with signatures appended, each describing the Humanism of the time,
have articulated and sometimes embellished or qualified these basic points.
Manifesto I was published in 1933 and signed by the fathers of modern Humanism:
Curtis Reese, John Dietrich, and Charles Potter, all Unitarian ministers, and
thirty-three other men including the philosopher and educator John Dewey.
During the Enlightenment, Humanism in
Humanist Manifesto III, which I
offered as our Reading a few minutes ago, does have the virtue of correcting at
least some of what I consider glaring inadequacies in the previous two
versions. This latest version speaks more often about “the greater good of
humanity,” about humans being “an integral part of nature” with a “planetary
duty to protect nature’s integrity, diversity, and beauty in a secure and
sustainable manner,” about “freedom consonant with responsibility,” about
“respect for those of differing yet humane views,” about cooperative and
peaceful resolution of differences, and the value of “new departures in
thought, the arts, and inner experience.”[http://www.americanhumanist.
org/3/HumandItsAspirations.htm] These
clauses begin to ad
Bill
Murry, minister emeritus of River Road UU
1. Affirms the inestimable worth and dignity of every
human being. Ours is a universal humanism which opposes all forms of cultural
imperialism.
2. Emphasizes the importance of covenanted religious
community in which community values demand a balance of freedom and rights with
responsibility.
3. Retains its emphasis on reason, intelligence, and
critical thinking, though not in a dogmatic way, and at the same time
recognizes the importance of intuitive, affective and non-rational factors in
human experience.
4. Takes seriously the tragic dimensions of life.
Religious humanism does have answers to basic questions about pain, suffering
and death. Humanists do pastoral care.
5. Is open to wonder and mystery and transcendence in a
naturalistic framework. Instead of proclaiming “this is the way things are,”
the new humanism can say “This is how it looks to me.”
6. Is tolerant of and willing to engage other
perspectives.
7. Understands and appreciates the importance of the
aesthetic dimension in religion and life. Beauty, music, ceremony, ritual, and
symbols feed our souls.
8. Makes a commitment to the environment, the
interdependent web of all existence, recognizing the mystery and complexity of
life.
9. Is likewise committed to the liberation of oppressed
people and to economic justice.
10. Is open to spirituality and spiritual growth (through
relatedness) (p. 82-88)
[Murry,
William. “Religious Humanism Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow. Religious Humanism (Vol.XXXIV,
no.3&4, p. 54-90)]
Bill
Murry gets at much of what concerns me about classical American Humanism. His
is a more postmodern assessment which offers a thoughtful critique of the
Humanism of modernity. This new Humanism makes a more humble assessment of
human nature, is more tolerant of and inquisitive about ambiguity in life, and
honors a greater diversity of approaches, truths, contexts, and voices. And yet
I, as a 6th Source UU—Humanist (!!), I still feel that I am located
on the other side of a fence from Bill and others who understand their Humanism
similarly. I would go further than he does in a number of areas.
I would go further toward leveling humans with other
entities on the web of all existence. I would go further than he in accepting
as valid sources of knowledge—other ways of knowing—an array of improvable,
irrational, and unrepeatable experiences and investigative methods. I doubt
that I have the faith in science that Bill has, even after or perhaps
especially after, my over twenty years in high-tech medicine. There are many
ways, some of them deeply entrenched in the method itself, in which this
sometime god of humanism, Science, can turn on us. Science is as human as the
scientist in many respects. We so easily walk the path of least resistance, of
short-term gain. We are seduced by knowledge, by science, by machines to look
no further than our own pleasure and safety in the questions we ask, the
variables we control, and the uses we make of data. We are vulnerable to
selfishness, to propaganda, to culture, to marketing, to substance addiction,
to peer and group pressures, to misplaced loyalties, to the satisfaction of
wielding power and control. Science itself is not wise. Science in fact can
become an increasingly involuted and blind end unto itself.
I would also go
further than Bill Murry in looking for a “God,” an entity with properties
greater than and/or different from the whole we call the web or Nature or
Universe. I would interrogate the possibilities, anyway, where he might not.
Might this Whole have powers or a mind of its own, beyond those of its
components; does it tend one way or another; does it want us to survive; does
it draw us towards the Good; does it talk to us, respond to us; can we glimpse
it? I find I sometimes need a “God” to hold my vision of what I want or my
community’s
After you all greeted one another in groups of four
people (a Barbershop quartet!), I lit a candle in this chalice. A “circle of
friends,” arms around one another’s shoulders, gaze upon a common fire burning
in the center of the circle. I have used this chalice numerous times this year
to open group processes of all kinds. I brought it today because it poignantly
symbolizes for me the ways in which humans, in theology, as in other areas, can
turn away from opportunities to understand each other. These humans stand in
solidarity around their little fire with their backs to the world. When you
were in your circles earlier I asked you each to mention another creature,
thing, or person you love. Then I took it out to the next concentric strand in
your web. And so it goes, relationships nourished by love and creative
exchange, generating more love, more respect, more cooperation, more
imagination, more perspectives and ideas, all spiraling ever outward. The real
test of a theology is whether it works in the world, gets us further along the
path toward the actualization of our Principles. We can’t afford to turn our
back on anyone, on anyone’s ideas or beliefs. We must always be on the lookout
for inspiration and insight, for more love, more openness, more readiness to do
the work.
Today in the bookstore after the
service there will be a sign-up for a UUCA Humanist Discussion group. I hope
lots of people sign up, folks who understand themselves as Humanists, folks who
aren’t sure, and folks who know that they are not. I hope the meetings explore
open-ended questions, involve as much listening as talking, and steer
resolutely away from polemics. Think of ways to get the yield of your
discussions back to the community. Show us, tell us, teach us, lead us. And
please come to the second annual Fast Day supper table in April next year and
make your Humanist contribution to the common meal of many traditions. Share a
ritual meal and your Humanist theological identity with people representing
other identity and spiritual practice groups in the church.
Meanwhile I will begin to experience
myself as a person with a hyphenated theological identity. Yesterday evening I
took my Tibetan terrier Keeper and his Scottie friend Mosely for a walk down
toward Dubois. It began to rain just as we started off, a misty kind of rain.
It was around
AMEN
© Margie Allen, Summer
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