Can a Liberal Church be Conservative? Rev. Roger Fritts Unitarian Universalist Church of Sarasota April 21, 2013

Transcription

1 Can a Liberal Church be Conservative? Rev. Roger Fritts Unitarian Universalist Church of Sarasota April 21, Although I serve as a minister to a liberal church, I must confess that, perhaps because I grew up in Arizona, and because my mother was raised a Mennonite, I have a conservative streak. Some may call my conservatism a sign that I am obstinate, or difficult, or outdated, but I prefer to see it as a sign of my wisdom and good taste. For example: Every Sunday I appear in church in a suit and a tie. Friends point out that especially in Florida suits are boring and dull, not the fitting apparel of a dashing liberal cleric. However, I am reluctant to give up the comfort and resilience of traditional Sunday dress for passing fashion fads. I have only owned three cars in my lifetime. The first I bought in 1977, the second in 1985, and the third in This astounds my friends, who remind me that car manufacturers have made many advances such as Electronic Stability Control. Nevertheless, I hope to drive my ten-year-old car a few more years. I see no need to trade in for the latest model. A fiscal conservative, I have only one credit card that I pay off monthly. Downloading from web sites, I faithfully record how much I spend on everything. I almost long for a tax audit, so I can show off my careful record keeping. I listen to classical music, including the wonderful sounds of Bach and Schubert. For a honeymoon, I took my bride to Stonehenge to gain a historical perspective on our relationship. Of course, my conservative streak lives in tension with liberalism, for my parents raised me in a liberal religious church. My roots in the universe, my original points of contact, are out west in the city of Phoenix. I was born sixty-two years ago in an Arizona hospital. During the years I was growing up in Phoenix, I attended the Unitarian Universalist church Sunday morning, a church much like this church here in Sarasota. That liberal church deeply influenced me. I recall the leadership of the many volunteer teachers in Sunday school. In second grade, we studied Bible stories. In fourth grade, we studied the beginnings of life. We studied creation myths, we created models of cells, and we used a microscope to see the cells in leaves. I recall a seventh grade class called the Church across the Street. We visited the services of the Jews, the Quakers, the Roman Catholics, the Mormons, and others. When I was in high school, I learned about life by participation in the youth group, called Liberal Religious Youth. Those were days of floating down the Salt and Verde Rivers outside Phoenix. We took camping trips to places in Arizona like Mingus Mountain or Oak Creek Canyon or Horse Thief Basin.

2 Those are good memories. In a Unitarian Universalist church I found that, in spite of my youth, in spite of my shyness, in spite of my dyslexia, people accepted me. Both my peers and the adults in the church encouraged me to be myself. I felt welcome. That was a good feeling. I learned to associate these feelings of acceptance with the word "liberalism." To be a liberal, I learned, is to tolerate differences, to be open-minded, to value reason above revelation, and to believe in the basic goodness of human beings. I learned about the importance of reason in the church school when teachers encouraged me to base my knowledge on logic, to ask questions, and to experiment with ideas. I learned about the importance of free expression when the congregation gave us a Youth Sunday every year and encouraged us to share our feelings and ideas with the congregation. I learned about the importance of the dignity of the individual when I received aid and support for my stand as a conscientious objector during the Vietnam War. I learned about the importance of democracy when I served as a youth member of the church board. I learned about the need to reexamine customs and laws when I heard sermons from the pulpit examining questions of public policy. I grew up in Arizona a liberal in the midst of a conservative community. The property of the Phoenix Unitarian Universalist church was next to Senator Barry Goldwater's home, a home, with a large American flag, that automatically raised and lowered every day. Being in a liberal minority, I found that pursuing the goals of experimentation and innovation in a conservative community is not easy. In my school in the 1950s and 1960s, when I suggested that interracial marriages were moral, they branded me as a radical. In high school teachers never allowed me to grow my sideburns. Beards were disruptive to the social order of the school system. The school board inspected library books for radical material. Teachers told me that to oppose the Vietnam War was equivalent to being a coward or a communist. However, in the Unitarian Universalist church I found a community where people accepted me. I felt a sense of my own worth and importance as a religious liberal. I suspect this is also the case for many of you. I hope that here you have found a community of people who accept you for who you are. However, I have noted certain dangers in this liberal philosophy of life. The longer I am involved in our Unitarian Universalist religious movement, the more conscious I become of the limitations of a liberal religious identity. 2

3 I have noticed that my liberal idealism and optimism about human beings can lead to an unrealistic view of life. People are not always good. 3 I have observed that my liberal emphasis on reason can result in an abstract, intellectual view of life, to the neglect of both the practical and the emotional elements of life. I have seen my liberal emphasis on the full development of the individual lead to loss of community. I have found that my liberal willingness to encourage change can result in a general contempt for the past and a disturbing sense of rootlessness. I have noted that my liberal concern for freedom of expression can lead to an abundance of vague, grand rhetoric, with little substance behind the words. Furthermore, I have observed that a liberal identity can be a negative identity. I can say that as a religious liberal I am against injustice, against racism, against fundamentalism, and against dogmatism. I am against these things. However, without any positive assertion of what I am, this negativity can lead to a spiritual emptiness. Lacking a positive identity, I can miss the depth and fulfillment that I seek when I participate in a religious community. The more I have become conscious of the limitations of a liberal religious identity, the more I have become aware of another element of my person. I have become aware of a need for custom and tradition in my life. I need order and stability in my life. Liberalism suggests that I can best meet this need for order by using reason. Conservatism suggests that I can best meet this need for order through respect for tradition. I think I need both. I need innovation and custom, reason and tradition. I can greatly enhance my participation in this religious movement if I attend to my heritage. I learn by studying the Bible. I learn by understanding the philosophy and the theology of the past. I grow through an appreciation of the social and intellectual history of our religion. Equally important, I can gain a great deal by attending to the heritage of my family, my church, and the community where I grew up. My roots in Unitarian Universalism, the traditions I grew up with, have given a foundation to my life. The experiences I had in the church school, in the youth group, and in the Sunday morning services, will stay with me all my life. They have not totally determined who I am, but they are important. I suspect that it is much the same with you. All of us have personal rootscour family, the religious group we were a part of as children, the school we attended, the communities we grew up incall of these things are highly significant elements in our existence. We pay a price when we neglect them. When we start on a trip, we need to take some baggage with us or else when we get where we are going we will be too light to land. Of course, it is true that, like liberalism, conservatism has limits.

4 4 The desire for continuity can lead to a rigid support of the status quo and the repetition of inequalities from generation to generation. The reverence for the past can lead to a fear of any kind of change. The emphasis on the concrete and the pragmatic in conservative thinking can lead to a closed-minded authoritarianism. The recognition of human limitations can lead to a pessimistic distrust of people and to a low regard for human potential. However, in spite of the limitations of the conservative approach to life, I believe it is profoundly important. Forty-three years ago, on April 22, 1970, I was a freshman student at Arizona State University. I remember walking down the pedestrian mall at the University looking at the tables that have been set up by various student groups to educate students about the need to care for our environment. From the beginning in 1970 Earth Day has seemed to me to be a conservative movement. Earth Day is an effort to conserve what sustains human life on earth. Conservatism calls on us to care for the arctic ice, the polar bears, the tundra, the permafrost. Conservatism calls on us to protect the tropical and temperate forests. Conservatism calls on us to think about the health of the wetlands and the coral reefs. Earth Day is about conserving the earth so that it continues to be a comfortable home for human beings. Across the country, you can find Unitarian Universalist conservatives. SLIDE: Here some Unitarian Universalists are installing some solar panels at the Unitarian church in Falmouth, Massachusetts. Here they are doing these same in Logan, Utah. This is the Unitarian Church in Fresno, California. This is the roof in Anaheim, California, And in Santa Barbara. This is Washington Crossing, in New Jersey just outside Trenton. This is a Vegetative roof, on the new sanctuary of the Unitarian Society of Madison, WI. Geothermal energy heats the Unitarian Universalist Church in Davenport, Iowa.

5 The Paint Branch Maryland Unitarian Universalists have installed a Geothermal heating system. These are just a few examples of liberal congregations engaged in conservative activities. In Sarasota, the Amish and the Mennonites provide us examples of conservatism. Perhaps because my mother was raised as a Mennonite, I admire the conservative life of the Amish and Mennonite families. What did Gene Logsdon say in the reading? Like the Unitarian Universalists who are putting solar panels in church roofs, AMost Amish do not reject electricity anymore, but only electricity brought directly from the outer world into the home, where it may become an umbilical cord to worldly distractions and unnecessary gadgets.@ The Amish and the Mennonites follow the old and tried, and abstain from the new and untried. In many ways they have my respect and admiration. In my own life I need a balance. As a liberal, I believe I should reexamine customs and laws in light of new experiences and changing conditions. I use reason, logic, and scientific methods to understand life. I value democracy as the proper form of social organization. I value the right of free expression in worship, writing, and speech. However, simultaneously, I try to recognize the limits of reason. I remind myself that tradition and custom can give an essential discipline and direction to my life. Although I believe in innovation, I also believe in the order and stability of tradition. Throughout our lives, both the excitement of innovation and the security of tradition will attract us. Each of us resolves the differences between liberalism and conservatism in our own way, although we never finally settle it. May we each weave a path between them, finding ways that will enrich our lives and the lives of others. 5