Who is Calling Us? Church Beyond Theology By Rev. Dr. Todd F. Eklof November 11, 2012

Transcription

1 Church Beyond Theology By Rev. Dr. Todd F. Eklof November 11, 2012 A couple of weeks ago I spoke about a theological dilemma called the problem of God. It s a largely post-holocaust phrase questioning the existence of a loving, omnipotent God in light of all the evil and suffering in the world. How, after all, could a loving, all-powerful being ever have allowed such a horrific atrocity to happen? Although I ve admitted to being an atheist myself, at least inasmuch as I don t believe in a personal god, I concluded by suggesting the question of God s existence is ultimately irrelevant. Believers and nonbelievers are all in the same boat here on Earth. With or without God, we live in a world where the existence of evil and suffering most certainly do exist. I also concluded with a quote from the atheist philosopher, Jean Paul Sartre, In the end, we are still responsible. We cannot make excuses for ourselves, and we cannot let ourselves off the hook. 1 The other night, as I was dozing off to sleep, I was thinking about this and had an image of Sartre entering a bar and sitting down next to a guy who looked an awful lot like George Burns. Hey, aren t you that famous Comedian? Sartre asked, I thought you were dead? No, I m God, the man said, momentarily removing the half-smoked cigar from his mouth. (Friedrich Nietzsche, who happened to be having a beer at the other end of the bar, overheard and said, I though you were dead? ) You can t be God, Sartre countered, I don t believe in God. I m happy to hear you say that son, God said, now you won t have me to kick around anymore. Okay, that didn t actually happen. But Sartre was also a playwright, so I thought it would be fun to help make his point by including him in a little play. Although I won t get a Tony Award for it, it makes the point that without a God to project all our hopes and expectations onto, we re left in a bit of a lurch. Dues Absconditus, the absent God, leaves us with very big shoes to fill. For if we are not serving God, something we consider greater than ourselves, who, what do we serve? Are we destined, as some theists argue, to become utterly self-serving in all that we do? Of course, historically, the opposite has often proven true, that believers have used theology to justify all manner of selfishness and greed. Regarding the Holocaust, specifically, David Niose, President of the American Humanist 1 Carroll, Jill B., A Dialogue of Civilization, The Light Inc., & The Gulen Institute, Somerset, NJ, 2007, p. 89.

2 Association and author of Nonbeliever Nation, complains about misleading remarks from religious leaders like Pope Benedict XVI who, in 2010, blamed it on atheist extremism and aggressive secularism. 2 But Niose goes on to remind us that Hitler was raised Catholic, was never excommunicated, and rejected atheism. And according to a 1939 census, 94 percent of Germans identified as Christian while only 1.5 percent claimed to unbelievers. 3 there was a long European Christian tradition (both Catholic and Protestant), Niose says, that demonized Jews as the worst element of humanity. Hitler s anti-semitism, while obviously extreme, was a natural outgrowth of a long-accepted climate of anti-semitism in Christian Europe. 4 There were, of course, many European Christians at the time who stood against the Third Reich, but the point here is that the presence of religion doesn t necessarily equate to moral behavior, any more than its absence equates to immoral behavior. Niose s blog goes on to cite the research of sociologist Phil Zuckerman, which counters many of the negative stereotypes and assumptions about nonbelievers. The results of numerous studies, according to Zuckerman, suggests nonbelievers have very strong moral values and opinions, and are more likely to be less prejudice, less anti-semitic, less racist, less dogmatic, less ethnocentric, less close-minded, and less authoritarian than religious people. 5 Social science also finds that nonbelievers tend to be more supportive of gender equality, gay rights, and criminal justice reform, and less supportive of war, torture, and the death penalty. A 2009 (Reader s Digest) study also found that the greenest countries in the world are also the most secular. And, again, during the Holocaust, in particular, studies have found that the more secular people were, the more likely they were to rescue and help persecuted Jews. 6 It seems clear from such evidence that nonbelievers are as capable of serving something greater than just themselves, even if they don t call it god. But the default notion in our culture seems to be that without some kind of theology, people will inevitably slip into a life of selfishness and debauchery that without God, we will only serve ourselves. As Psalm 14 puts it, The fool says in his heart, There is not God. They are corrupt, their deeds are vile; there is not one who does good. 7 But as Unitarian Universalists, we know this stereotype simply isn t true. Nearly half of us claim to have humanist leanings. Humanism, secular or religious, recognizes, as Sartre did, that the responsibility for making the world a better, more just place, lies with us, not God. Unlike the many other traditions we claim as sources of inspiration mysticism, world religions, paganism, even science 2 Niose, David, Nonbeliever Nation, Palgrave Macmillan, New York, NY, 2012, p Ibid. 4 Ibid. 5 Zuckerman, Phil, Atheism, Secularity, and Well-Being: How the Findings of Social Science Counter Negative Stereotypes and Assumptions. 6 Ibid. 7 Psalms 14:1 2

3 humanism was actually born of Unitarian Universalism, much of which was conceived in this very church. In 1889, not many years after the Unitarian Universalist Church of Spokane was founded, it adopted the following purposes in its bylaws: The authority of its belief in reason. The method of finding its beliefs is scientific Its aim is to crush superstition and establish facts of religion First principle is freedom of opinion and is subject to no censure for heresy. The man is acceptable to us and, we believe, to God, who is striving to live a noble life and who is becoming day by day a larger, greater soul. 8 These tenants became the basis of what would become the Humanist Manifesto 45 years later, which was signed by 13 Unitarian ministers, including one of the leading founders of Humanism, Rev. John H. Dietrich, who was the minister here from 1911 to Today Unitarian Universalists continue to represent some theological diversity, but, in general, we have never liked kicking God around. We have long acknowledged that the world isn t going to fix itself with magical thinking, but by taking action. If we have faith enough, we may well be able to move mountains, but we ll have to move them ourselves, one shovel at a time! For us, faith has always been about taking action, not holding beliefs. Yet, after the recent Democratic National Convention, during which God was hardly uttered, Fox News commentator Bill O Reilly asked, How can there be an entire section on faith if you don t mention God? When I saw this (later, watching The Daily Show, of course), I wanted to raise my hand and say, Ooh, ooh, I know! While it is true that in our nation religion is largely associated with theological beliefs, this is not the case with religion in general. Religion, throughout human history, has largely been about moral values and behavior and not about any particular idea about God. The notion that one s religion is defined by the theological ideas she or he holds, rather than by one s ethical behavior, is the real anomaly. Unitarian Universalists may stand out as peculiar because we live in a nation dominated by theocentric religion, but we are not, more broadly speaking, all that unique in this regard. Most religions throughout history, including Christianity at times, have emphasized the great folly in talking about God. This is the basis of the Hebrew 8 McDowell, Esther, Unitarians in the State of Washington, Frank McCaffrey Publishers, p

4 commandment, Do not take the name of the Lord in vain, and why Jews coming across the four characters we usually fill with vowels and translate into English as Jehovah, Yahweh, or God, simply say, HaShem, the Name. They understand it is fundamentally wrong to talk about God, which is also why the Jewish Kabbalah tells us, Every definition of God leads to heresy. 9 The Tao te Ching says similarly, The Way that can be spoken of is not the real Way. The name that can be named is not the real Name. 10 Zen Buddhism, according to Fritjaf Capra, transcends all categories of thought [and] is not interested in any abstraction or conceptualization. 11 Hinduism says similarly, one can only say, not not [neti neti]. [It] is ungraspable, for [it] cannot be grasped. 12 And Islam tells us, Allah has a thousand names, just as Christian Mystics like Meister Eckhart called God Absolute Nothing, and St. Denis said, The most divine knowledge of God is that which is known by not-knowing, 13 So I personally don t find any contradiction in considering myself an atheist and calling myself deeply religious. My religion isn t based upon my theology, but upon my moral conduct and principles. This may seem strange within our cultural context, but it isn t unusual in a religious context when we consider the nature and history of religion in a larger light. Yet I am concerned that religion without theology can lead to an unnatural state of self-centeredness if we forget this greater context. If, as is easy to do in our culture, we buy into the fallacy that religion is only about theology, we may not know how to respond to questions of our calling. Whose church are we? Who do we belong to? Who do we serve? Most churchgoers, without hesitation, would answer that God owns the church, or that they serve God. But Unitarian Universalists, whether theists, pantheists, deists, or atheists, understand that no matter what we believe as individuals, our religion has never been theocentric. It s not about God. It s about us. It s not about abstraction. It s about action. Whether we are believers or nonbelievers, we don t have God to kick around! The responsibility for transforming lives and changing the world belongs to us. But what does this mean about our church? Who owns it? Who does it belong to? If not God s, whose church is it? Does it belong to us? Are we its owners? Is our church the property of those who pledge their time, energy, and resources to support it? In our consumer/investor/shareholding society, this answer seems reasonable. We re used to getting what we pay for, so why shouldn t it belong to those who pay for it? 9 Matt, Daniel C., The Essential Kabbalah, Quality Paper Back Book Club, New York, NY, 1995, p #1 [my own translation] 11 Capra, Fritjof, The Tao of Physics, (Shambhala, Boston, MA, 2000) p Brhadaranyaka Upanishad Johnston, ibid., p

5 But doesn t such a response feed into the negative stereotype that without a belief in God people become self-centered? Or is it possible, instead, that we pledge support to our church because we too serve something greater than ourselves? When Bishop Oscar Romero first went to El Salvador, where he was eventually assassinated, he found himself caught in the middle of different groups with opposing interests the Junta Revolutionary Government, the Carter Administration here in the U.S., and his own Church hierarchy. He finally came to a that point he had to ask himself, Whose pastor am I? Of a people that suffers or of a people that oppresses? Which side will I defend? Do I defend the powerful or advocate for the oppressed? My mission is not to defend the powerful but the oppressed, and here I am? Notice that he never considered whether he was to minister only to the people in his parish. He considered himself pastor to all of the oppressed, even those he would literally never meet, even to people who were not visible to him. I m talking about all the missing young men the authorities had kidnapped, tortured, mutilated and murdered. The Salvadorans called them, Desaparecidos, the Disappeared, because they had simply vanished without a trace. But even though they had become invisible, Bishop Romero considered himself their pastor, and fought to find answers for their grieving mothers, and worked to put an end to the kidnappings and killings once and for all. Indeed, he was gunned down in his own pulpit while advocating for invisible people he d never met and would never know. Is this, at least partly, our own answer, that our church belongs to invisible people we ve never met and might never know? A few weeks ago we received an from a local woman who isn t able to attend our services at all, but appreciates listening to them online. Please keep this up, she writes, because I'm hoping that one day I can meet everyone in person, but right now the online sermons give me something I desperately need; hope and faith. Does she own our church? Does it belong at least partly to her? Does it belong to a gay couple in Bellingham who will now be able to marry, in part, because we helped create more tolerance here in Spokane? Does it belong to countless African American youth who might never enter our sanctuary, yet might also avoid prison because we are advocating for criminal justice reform? Does it belong to the Sikh community in Wisconsin that will never know we responded to their suffering by wrapping our arms around our own Sikh neighbors? Does it belong to a future none of us may enjoy, but helped save by converting our building to solar power? Does it belong to the inmates on Death Row? Does it belong to the melting glaciers? Does it belong to vanishing species? Does it belong to our next-door neighbors, or to the homeless person on the street? Who are the invisible ones, the Desaparecidos, who own our church? Before Bishop Romero came to El Salvador, Emma Landaverde didn t go to church because, I didn t like the idea of praying, praying, praying, she said. It didn t have any meaning to me. But as Romero s reputation grew she became 5

6 curious. We started going to church and the gospel was given in a different context. It wasn t that contemplative Gospel of looking up at the sky and waiting for divine justice to fall, it wasn t like that. 14 Today, Emma remains a church activist in El Salvador. Bishop Romero was, no doubt, a believer, but his religion wasn t pie-in-thesky, as Emma said, but was grounded in justice. In those days no one knew the Gospel since they read it in Latin and the only ones able to understand it were the priests, farm worker and union activist Manuel Quijano recalls. But when Romero came, He told us that the kingdom of God was not in heaven, it was here on Earth. 15 As Unitarian Universalists, regardless of our theological beliefs, we can relate to this great Catholic Priest, for we too serve justice, and, like him, are committed to something greater than ourselves. We understand, as UU minister Dan Hotchkiss explained in a 2010 UU World article, A congregation's owner isn't its board, minister, or members; it is its mission. 16 Whose owns our church? Who do we belong to? Who do we serve? Who calls us? The answer to all these questions is the same, whoever needs us. 14 Monseñor: The Last Days of Oscar Romero, Documentary by Ana Carringan & Juliet Weber, Produced by Kellogg Institute at the University of Notre Dame (2010). 15 Ibid. 16 Hotchkiss, Dan, Who Owns Your Congregation? UU World (Feb. 15, 2012). 6