January 21, 2007 Unitarian Universalist Church of Berkeley
“They are held…over the pit of hell…the devil is waiting for them, hell is gaping for them, the flames gather and flash about them, and would fain lay hold on them, and swallow them up; the fire pent up in their own hearts is struggling to break out: …
There is the dreadful pit of the glowing flames of the wrath of God; there is hell's wide gaping mouth open; and you have nothing to stand upon, nor any thing to take hold of; there is nothing between you and hell but the air…
Your wickedness makes you as it were heavy as lead, and to tend downwards with great weight and pressure towards hell; and if God should let you go, you would immediately sink and swiftly descend and plunge into the bottomless gulf, and your healthy constitution, and your own care and prudence, and best contrivance, and all your righteousness, would have no more influence to uphold you and keep you out of hell, than a spider's web would have to stop a falling rock.”
(Jonathan Edwards, Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God, delivered in Enfield, Connecticut on July 8, 1741)
These words rang out from the mouth of the great Calvinist Minister Jonathan Edwards.
He was a part of a great movement in American Religion, the Great Awakening.
The Calvinism of his day was a bleak and absolutist religion. It was a polarized worldview, one in which you were either good or bad…either holy or depraved.
And most likely you were depraved.
Unless you accepted Jesus Christ as your personal savior, unless you got in line and believed what the church would have you believe, you were destined for the fiery fate.
These theologies of condemnation spread across the colonies and had a number of vocal and powerful adherents.
It was in this landscape, in these days of absolutism, and polarization that Unitarianism and Universalism were born.
For the stricter, the fierier, the more full of brimstone these preachers got, some began to question.
Some began to say, this God I hear you speak of, this angry God of vengeance is not the God I have known in prayer.
Across the colonies, across the world, new ideas were given voice.
John Murray, one of the first and most influential Universalists said, “Give them not Hell, but hope and courage. Do not push them deeper into their theological despair, but preach the kindness and everlasting love of God.”
People began to speak of a God of love…a God who so loved human beings that he could not possibly dangle them above a fiery gaping mouth of hell.
The Liberal Religious voice of the time began to offer an alternative to the stark polarization which categorized the religious landscape of the day. To make space for a new story to be told.
When I hear these words of Edwards, I feel their modern echoes.
We are living in another surge of Fundamentalism.
And we, as our ancestors before us, are called to give voice to a new way.
I see the modern version of this Calvinist Absolutism all around me.
Perhaps most famously with the many modern fundamentalist organizations which espouse hatred in the name of God. Religious people who seek to build walls around those who God loves, and those he would have destroyed.
This is not about one religion in particular, but rather a theological brand of any religion which makes no space for other belief systems.
One which paints the world in stark absolutes, one which peddles in polarization.
And peddles not just to religious seekers who may be looking for a spiritual home, but seeks to have a specific religious ideology made concrete in the laws of the land.
These last few years have seen countless struggles for public policy fueled by religious ideals.
Whether it was the massive push from the Religious Right to mobilize voters in the last Presidential Election Year to deny same sex couples the right to marry, or the decades long saga over a Woman’s right to choose…
Fundamentalist religious ideals are out loud and proud in the public square.
And not just from people you may expect.
It is not only the Religious Right who seeks to polarize our theological world.
Just a few weeks ago, I was waiting for the BART, and I heard writer and zoologist Richard Dawkins on the radio speaking about Atheism and his new book, “The God Delusion”.
At first I loved what I was hearing. He was talking about how morality doesn’t come only from scripture, that we as humans have something innate, some empathic loving-kindness within us which can serve as a basis for some fundamental sense of what it means to be in right relation.
He reminded us that people had established moral societies well before Judaism or Christianity existed.
I also gave him an Amen when he said that Atheists need to know that they are not alone in this country. That in much of the country people may not know that there are other like-minded folks around them, people with whom to connect and explore their beliefs.
I agreed and thought of the Humanist and Atheist groups we have here at the church and in our broader movement. I thought of the powerful spiritual gift which our congregations have provided to people who would not be welcomed within the dogmatic structures of other churches.
I liked some of what I heard, but as I listened, he started to talk about God, and something shifted for me.
He started explaining the premise and title of his book, “The God Delusion”. I soon realized that he was espousing just another brand of singular truth, just in reverse from the normal packaging.
Instead of Edwards claiming that Jesus Christ is the only way, he asserts that belief in God is fundamentally untrue or delusional.
The very idea claims that there is one truth and that the belief in God is apart from that one truth.
I went to his own endorsed official website and found a truly disturbing image.
His website offered poster and flyer sized versions of the image for people to print out and post in their neighborhoods.
The image is the World Trade Center Twin Towers in silhouette. The sun is bright and shining between the two of them. Underneath the image in large letters it reads, “Imagine No Religion”
This image tries to say that religion is to blame for that murderous morning. It is not the complex interweaving of forces, of politics and poverty and global economics and hatred and history and the other hundreds of forces which shaped the plans of those terrorists…it is religion.
I believe that this simplified, polarized logic which would have the vast spectrum of religious life lumped into one single entity…religion…is precisely the kind of “either with us or against us” logic which has gotten us into the global crisis point at which we find ourselves.
Now more than ever, a complex and nuanced understanding of truth is needed.
I believe one of the great gifts, one of the powerful legacies of Unitarian Universalism is that we respect theological diversity.
I love that we create a space here in which complexity can be appreciated.
Like the children’s choir sings, “what we know about God is a piece of the truth.”
What each and every one of us knows and thinks is part of…Truth.
The ten dollar words I like to use for this are, “Ontological Humility”.
Basically this means that I am humble enough to think that what I think is probably as right as many people. And more so that my being right doesn’t mean that you have to be wrong…that your truth is delusion.
Often times I hear people say of Unitarian Universalism that “You can believe anything.”
And I invite you from now on to say that “We can hold multiple truths. That just because we disagree, doesn’t mean we both can’t be right.”
Right now sitting her in this room there are hundreds and hundreds of beliefs on God, on humanity, on politics, on the purpose of life
…and it is this variation, this complexity which is our strength as a movement.
This is the same for other churches, of course, as well. There are
plenty of different beliefs even in the most fundamentalist of
churches, but often there is a right answer that you are to repeat when
asked about God, or about who you love, or about how you voted.
…
For the last few weeks I have been looking for someone to rent my apartment. I posted a listing on Craigslist and have shown it to what has felt like a never-ending stream of strangers.
Every once in a while as I was showing the place I would get into a conversation with people. They would ask what I did and I would tell them that I am a minister. Most would shudder a little bit. They would ask me where, and I told them up here at UUCB.
One couple of young women even asked, “you mean…like a church?”
I could tell from the mix of condescension and fear in their voices that they had a very particular vision of what church was.
Almost automatically I said… “Well, yeah, but not like that…it’s a cool church.”
They visibly relaxed and we talked about Unitarian Universalism…
Religion in our culture is being defined by fundamentalists from both sides of the divide who would have people think on the one hand that all religious people are fanatic dogmatists or superstitious simpletons…and on the other that all secular people are godless heathens destined for an eternity of perdition, or non-believers not yet grounded in the truth of revelation.
Many of you have probably had to explain to friends or family after starting to come here regularly, “Well yeah it’s a church…but not like you think”
And this morning I ask you all…
What if the definition of religion were different?
What if the public face of what it meant to be a church were dictated by churches like ours?
The time has come to begin to retell the story of religion in this world.
We as a nation, we as a world community are facing drastic crises.
From the mounting climate crisis to genocide, from our nations war machine to the global pandemic of AIDS, there are enormous problems on the horizon which will demand a nuanced understanding of truth.
I believe that Unitarian Universalist communities like this one equip us to be able to help transform this world around us.
This world which is crying out.
So when we talk about expanding our welcome, when we talk about moving to multiple Sunday services, it is for these reasons.
It is because the future of our world is being written by those who care enough to mobilize their collective voice.
The future of our world is being written by fundamentalists who seek to polarize and squeeze identities into boxes.
The future of our world is being written and if we are to have a voice, if we are to have a hand in its shaping, we need to reach out to other progressive religious people and build a community of visionary hope…
To organize and speak out in the public square so that people no longer assume that church, that religion is this one arcane monolith that it was hundreds of years ago.
That church is stale and boring, that church is dogmatic and irrelevant, that church is something that your parents abandoned and that you have no use for.
Instead, we need to look in our own backyards like the king from the story and realize the powerful resource we have right here.
Right here we have the blessing of covenanted spiritual community. Right here we have the healing waters of theological diversity, of ontological humility,
Not hell, but hope and courage.
Right here we see and taste the future world we would like to live in, that world of which we heard Megan speak so beautifully before.
But it will not just automatically become so if we stay here in our huddled masses.
If we are complacent, if we sit back and allow the louder, more organized voices to shape our future we will continue to have a world of escalated war, a world of rampant consumption, a world careening towards self destruction.
…
But it doesn’t have to be like that
Come, and lend your singular truth to the unfolding future of our world.
Come and let us widen the doors of this place
Let us share the gift of this spiritual home.
There is a new story waiting to be told.
And our voice is needed.
Amen ♦