Faith and Sexuality

The Religious Right’s Sexploitation

Have you noticed that celebrities generally make themselves publicly available when they have a product to hawk? 

One of the celebrity pastors of the Evangelical mega church movement, Ed Young, Jr. of Grapevine, TX, with his spouse Lisa,  in mid –January published their co-authored book titled Sexperiment: 7 Days to Lasting Intimacy with Your Spouse. (I am reminded of Marabel Morgan’s 1973 anti-feminism book The Total Woman that recommended seducing one’s husband for 7 consecutive day, including a nude/saran wrapped seduction greeting when he arrives home after a long day of work.)

For their book, Sexperimentation, the Youngs disclosed the following in a press release:

"Sex sells" is a popular phrase for professionals looking to catch the attention of the public. This philosophy has most notably taken root in mainstream culture; however, Pastor Ed Young has built many of his sermons around the bedroom. The pastor and his wife have announced the release of a book that illustrates how sex can contribute to marital bliss without straying from God's intentions. The Senior Pastor at Fellowship Church, Ed Young, Jr. has been preaching the importance of sex for many years.

Ordinarily a controversial topic within the halls of religious buildings, Ed Young has brought the issue of sex to the forefront of his sermons. His latest of 14 books, called Sexperiment: 7 Days to Lasting Intimacy with Your Spouse, details a path to intimacy that follows the teachings of God while allowing married couples to become closer than ever before.

Ed Young, Jr. recognizes that there is more to a marriage than sex, but he also insists that sex is a key component of a happy, lasting relationship. Through Sexperiment, Ed Young teaches couples how to create a more intimate connection with one another, improve their sense of purpose and their understanding of God's plan, and achieve a higher degree of open, honest communication.

Published by FaithWords, Sexperiment teaches that sex within a marriage is to be treated as a positive activity, not a chore. In this book, Ed Young, Jr. shares his insight into the intimacy that can be fostered by regular sex and the value that it holds for a marriage.

Less than a week after publication, the co-authors staged a 24 hour bed-in on the roof of the Grapevine Church.  (Young said he was inspired by Yoko Ono and John Lennon’s love-in antics from the 1960s.)  It proved a chilly sexperience, despite the covers, so the Youngs kept their coats on, while hosting a variety of social media networks.

And on Tuesday this week, the 7^th of February, Pastor Young challenged every couple, everywhere (heterosexual and in a marriage, that is) to have sex for SEVEN consecutive days.

A quick survey indicates that Evangelical Christians have jumped on the 20th century’s Joy of Sex bandwagon as it has progressed into the 21^st century.  The most respected Evangelical pastor in the country, Rich Warren, of the Saddleback Church in Riverside, CA has been twittering about sex, to wit:  “Husbands & wives should satisfy each other’s needs. 1 Cor 7:3”  Or another tweet of his with the whiff of personal testimony: “Sex with 1 wife ISNT like playing 1 record over&over but learning 1 instrument well for yrs of beautiful music.”

The mid-January release of another Evangelical pastor’s sex manual, “Real Marriage,” caused the author, Mark Driscoll of Seattle, who, with a flair of the prurient, to list all the acceptable varieties of sex acts.  Within marriage just about anything goes and the wife should be agreeable.  Not surprisingly, Pastor Driscoll has a vein of misogyny that places the performance burden on women.   He also managed to disrespect his spouse, whom he uses as a foil, while crossing privacy boundaries of their relationship.

To be balanced, there are those in the Evangelical community who push back against salacious sex from the pulpit and in the bookstore, recognizing the tone as part of the self-serving, publicity mega pastor persona.

Commentators, within and outside the Evangelical community speak of a deeper objective—to bring a new generation into their churches.  Studies show that Evangelical youth engage in one form or another of sexual behavior, perhaps 80% as compared to the larger populations 88%.  And a growing 31% of youth are non-affiliated.  What would bring young people back to church—SEX.

As in all aspects of American life, sex sells.

From my perspective, the Evangelical initiatives regarding sex, dating  back to the 1980s and continuing with a new vigor today, are all something of putting “new wine into old skins,” the old skins being Bible-based theologies.  I like the following observation by a sympathetic commentator: “Evangelical sex manuals have an apologetic undercurrent that suggests that because God made it, Christians should be having better and more frequent sex than everyone else.  As two scholars who analyzed sex manuals from the early 80s put it, we are apparently ‘God’s chosen people in matters of sexuality.’”

I’ve been sketching a contemporary trend regarding Faith and Sexuality in America among the Religious Right, at least the Protestant sector—a transformed attitude toward the human condition’s sexuality.   I say Protestant sector, since the Roman Catholics have had to deal in the past few decades with wide ranging sexual abuse by their clergy.  And then, the Catholic male hierarchy sworn to celibacy and living outside a family style of life isn’t  culturally authoritative compared to married Evangelical pastors, when speaking to human sexuality/spousal concerns.

I have a strong reaction to the way the religious right looks at human sexuality.  In my estimation, it’s male focused, essentially fearful regarding both women and same-sex relationships, unrealistic as well as late to the party in our sex-saturated culture, and in its contemporary redactions, adolescent.  (I think the bed-in of the Youngs was an adolescent stunt, not to mention creepy.)


The religious right’s outlook, though representative of a significant number of cultural and practicing Christians, isn’t the only religious outlook in our culture.

Liberal Religion and Human Sexuality

There is a liberal religious presence regarding human sexuality that Unitarian Universalists have contributed to (rather significantly) and in which we continue to be a mature and thoughtful, faithful and even theological presence.  Of particular note is an advocacy organization known as the “Religious Institute: faithful voices on sexuality and religion.”  A UU ministerial colleague, Debra Haffner, founded the Religious Institute and continues to be its Director.  Here’s the perspective and aims of a faithful, progressive organization dedicated to morality and justice:

Sexuality is God's life-giving and life-fulfilling gift.  We come from diverse religious communities to recognize sexuality as central to our humanity and as integral to our spirituality.  We are speaking out against the pain, brokenness, oppression and loss of meaning that many experience about their sexuality.

Our faith traditions celebrate the goodness of creation, including our bodies and our sexuality.  We sin when this sacred gift is abused or exploited.  However, the great promise of our traditions is love, healing and restored relationships.

Our culture needs a sexual ethic focused on personal relationships and social justice rather than particular sexual acts.  All persons have the right and responsibility to lead sexual lives that express love, justice, mutuality, commitment, consent and pleasure.  Grounded in respect for the body and for the vulnerability that intimacy brings, this ethic fosters physical, emotional and spiritual health.  It accepts no double standards and applies to all persons, without regard to sex, gender, color, age, bodily condition, marital status or sexual orientation. 

God hears the cries of those who suffer from the failure of religious communities to address sexuality.  We are called today to see, hear and respond to the suffering caused by sexual abuse and violence against women and lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) persons, the HIV pandemic, unsustainable population growth and over-consumption, and the commercial exploitation of sexuality.

Faith communities must therefore be truth-seeking, courageous and just.  


We call for:

·        Theological reflection that integrates the wisdom of excluded, often silenced peoples, and insights about sexuality from medicine, social science, the arts and humanities.

·        Full inclusion of women and LGBT persons in congregational life, including their ordination and marriage equality.

·        Sexuality counseling and education throughout the lifespan from trained religious leaders.

·        Support for those who challenge sexual oppression and who work for justice within their congregations and denominations.

·        Faith communities must also advocate for sexual and spiritual wholeness in society.  We call for:

·        Lifelong, age-appropriate sexuality education in schools, seminaries and community settings.

·        A faith-based commitment to sexual and reproductive rights, including access to voluntary contraception, abortion, and HIV/STI prevention and treatment.

·        Religious leadership in movements to end sexual and social injustice.

God rejoices when we celebrate our sexuality with holiness and integrity.  We, the undersigned, invite our colleagues and faith communities to join us in promoting sexual morality, justice, and healing.

If you remember my remarks last Sunday about UU’ism becoming a religious movement beyond the walls of our local societies, Debra Haffner and her Religious Institute is an apt example.  Her organization’s purposes mirror our movement’s evolving understanding of the human condition as it pertains to sexuality, while seeking a coalition with a larger liberal religious community.  (For example one of my colleagues on the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice, Larry Greenfield, a prominent American Baptist minister/theologian, co-founded the Religious Institute with Haffner.)

Unitarian Universalism’s Attitude Regarding Human Sexuality.

The history of Unitarianism and human sexuality chronicles several important, evolving foci.


As early as 1930 Unitarians advocated birth control.  At the 1930 Annual Meeting of the AUA, the following resolution was passed unanimously:  “[For individuals and congregations to affirm] the fundamental social, economic and eugenic importance of birth control, to the end that they may support all reasonable efforts in their communities for the promotion of the birth control movement.”  Remember that access to contraceptives, as a privacy issue, wasn’t confirmed by the Supreme Court until the mid-1960s.  Unitarians and UU after 1961 have had an informal alliance with Planned Parenthood regarding contraception, sexual education, access to services, and reproductive choice and health dating to Planned Parenthood’s origins and Margaret Sanger’s advocacy.

In the 1960s and 70s Unitarianism was transformed by 2nd Wave Feminism with its spectrum of concerns to raise the so-called second sex to a cultural equality between the sexes.  Included in those concerns were the fundamental privacy issues of contraception that included abortion.

As an association, the UUA supported and continued to support the legalization of abortion as established in the 1973 Supreme Court Case, Roe v. Wade.

In the last decades of the twentieth century, UUs were prominent in advocacy of the broad rights of the LGBT, Lesbian-Gay-Bisexual-Transgender community.  In the 21st century, that advocacy has embraced the notion of same sex marriage.

One of the greatest contributions our liberal religious movement has made to the larger culture regarding human sexuality involves age-appropriate, value rich, and medically accurate Sex Ed.   In the 1970s the UUA created a program for teens known as AYS, About Your Sexuality. It became a rite-of-passage for our youth, an acknowledgement that they had passed a threshold toward adulthood.   Now the curriculum, OWL or Our Whole Lives, while still having a major component meant for adolescents, teaches human sexuality from the earliest childhood years through the elder years.  The creation of this curriculum was a major undertaking and was accomplished in partnership with the United Church of Christ, generally considered as within the liberal Protestant faith group.

I’m proud of our rich and evolving UU perspectives on human sexuality.  We are sexual creatures, perhaps foremost; and a philosophy of life or a theology that doesn’t realistically incorporate that into its notions of meaning and happiness is deficient. 

Very Recent Events

It’s been fascinating, relative to my theme, this past week or so to note how reproductive choice and health have played out in the political/cultural wars that continue as our cultural SHADOW. 

First there was Susan G. Komen for the Cure flap when the organization attempted to defund a standing contribution to the Planned Parenthood Foundation of America for breast exams for women who couldn’t otherwise afford one.  The consensus indicates that an operative of the religious right, a vice president of  Komen for the Cure, initiated the defunding.  (She’s since resigned.)  But the national support for Planned Parenthood was remarkable.

Now there’s an even more recent flap regarding the Obama administration’s proposed rule that all employers, including religious institutions such as hospitals and universities, including, yes, the Catholic Church, to provide health insurance that includes contraception coverage.  The Catholic push back on this has resulted in a significant brouhaha about the foundational American right of religious freedom, along with the role of religion on public policy.

How we deal with sexuality as UU’s is one of the complex of reasons that makes me so glad to be a UU.

I’m going to recast Debra Haffner’s Religious Institute’s words just a little in closing:

Sexuality is a life-giving and life-fulfilling gift.  We … recognize sexuality as central to our humanity and as integral to our spirituality.  We are speaking out against the pain, brokenness, oppression and loss of meaning that many experience about their sexuality.

Our faith tradition celebrates the goodness of creation, including our bodies and our sexuality. We figuratively sin—miss the mark of our humanity-- when this sacred gift is abused or exploited.  However, the great promise of our tradition is love, healing, and restored relationships.

A Pilgrim Soul

The Notion of Pilgrim

I want you to envision soul—not the soul of dogma that lives on after death, but the living quality of soul that the refulgent Mr. Emerson proclaimed as the remedy for the dead churches of his day: “...first, soul, and second, soul, and evermore soul.” (Someday I will make a more thorough case for the Unitarians as the first “soul” church.) Specifically, I want you to envision what the Irish poet William Butler Yeats memorialized as “the pilgrim soul” in his celebrated poem “When You Are Old”:

“…many loved your moments of glad grace.
And loved your beauty with love false or true,
But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,
And loved the sorrows of your changing face;”

I’m talking this morning about “the pilgrim soul in you and me”

Pilgrim is a vivid image for Americans. In the popular imagination—New England-centric—the Pilgrims of Plymouth were the first settlers: religious dissenters from a hostile Church of England, who covenanted among themselves, freely if not democratically, as they crossed the Atlantic in search of a free (at least for themselves) home, who wrested a home from a so-called wilderness, and who in gratitude established the Thanksgiving feast. In their quaint costumes, the Pilgrims of Plymouth seem more lovable than their radical Protestant cousins, the dour Puritans of Massachusetts Bay.

I’ve long been fascinated by one aspect of the John Wayne cowboy persona—his mature character’s familiar drawling moniker of not buddy or friend or stranger, but of pilgrim. Pilgrim in this regard has a favorable cachet, is a friendly salutation—suggesting, perhaps, a fellow traveler—probably one who’s known some suffering but who is still on a journey.

Whenever I think of pilgrim as a moniker, I think Annie Dillard’s Pulitzer Prize winning book of 1974, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, which, arguably, had significant impact on the popular understanding of what the condition of a pilgrim might be. Ms. Dillard’s writing in Tinker Creek and subsequent works established her as one of the significant thinkers who bridge the secular and the sacred, demonstrating the secular is sacred. Her writings establish her as a contemporary pilgrim in search of the sacred in the everyday and close at hand.

In recent decades, a more expansive spirituality as contrasted to a narrow religiosity, has recognized pilgrimage as one of the unifying motifs of world religions. Religions have their sacred places and their adherents travel to those places to experience them.

Pilgrimage has become a significant postmodern spiritual discipline. My favorite pilgrimage site/event is the old adobe Sanctuary at Chimayo, New Mexico, on the High Road to Taos from Santa Fe, during Holy Week, when tens of thousands trek to it along narrow highways. A quick search on the Internet brings up a host of businesses that organize religious pilgrimages to sacred places around the world, touching nearly every faith tradition.

And scores of contemporary books have been written about pilgrimages and pilgrims—both as travelogue/tales of discovery (here  is a sub-genre, for instance, of the mid-life crisis pilgrimage of self-discovery) and as more analytical studies of the quest or journey for the sacred.

Mathew Fox, a leading voice of contemporary spirituality, describes pilgrims in apt terms: “Pilgrims are not ‘know-it-all’ people but seeking people. They go on pilgrimage to find something they know they do not have—usually something of the heart. A pilgrim is one who does not have all the answers. A pilgrim is not steeped in righteousness, but in humility, with an awareness that we must all be willing to learn together. A pilgrim seeks what s/he does not have. What his/her country, religion or economic system has failed to give. A pilgrim has looked at the dark side of life. A pilgrim people are keenly aware that they have not arrived, are not yet there. The reign of God still eludes us.


“For the pilgrim, the place one seeks is not to be seized, controlled, owned by anyone. A sacred site is a place of reverence. It is not to be manipulated. One’s shoes are to be taken off. One is to be silent, to listen, to pray, and to open one’s heart. A sacred site can change us, but we do not seek to change it.”

And whenever I think of pilgrims and pilgrimage, I recall the narrative poem of Geoffrey Chaucer, “Canterbury Tales,” dating from the fourteenth century. On their pilgrimage to the shrine of Thomas a Becket in Canterbury the various characters agree to tell each other stories along the way. The stories are entertaining and revealing of the teller. Pilgrimages are often group journeys where diverse strangers discover commonalities and comradeship.

So what are characteristics of a “pilgrim soul?”

Aspects of a Pilgrim Soul

A pilgrim soul has depth. Contemporary commentaries about pilgrims are quick to contrast the pilgrim with the tourist who only brushes the surface of a place, who wants to be entertained rather than transformed. A pilgrim soul wants to be transformed.

A pilgrim soul has an instinct for the sacred that is also a love for Creation, including the most intimate expression of Creation: the Self. A pilgrim soul’s answers to Creation—deep resonating to deep.

A pilgrim soul seeks to experience life first hand. The pilgrim soul’s restlessness and yearning is really zest for experience.

A pilgrim soul is curious and often takes a simple and even mundane act and makes an adventure of it. In this regard pilgrim souls are not turnpikers in a hurry to get to a destination, rather they are shunpikers apt to take the blue highways of life to squeeze experience from the journey.

A pilgrim soul is teachable and perhaps fears most of all the conservative sin of “a foolish consistency.” Again, a pilgrim soul’s curiosity is not for mere entertainment but for knowledge that may transform—leading deeper into the depths. A pilgrim soul pays attention to other pilgrim souls—hearing the stories and telling them, too, like Chaucer’s Canterbury pilgrims.

A pilgrim soul is ever growing. Because the pilgrim soul plumbs the depths, her or his experiences are mottled: the tragic marbles the excellent. A pilgrim soul is etched with a quiet wisdom—is truly soulful. Being a pilgrim soul is not a matter of youth or mid-life but continues to death. A pilgrim soul becomes richer and richer.

A pilgrim soul is companionable because he or she first at peace with his or her own self. Yet a pilgrim soul is also her or his own best counsel.

A pilgrim soul is beautiful and useful, as Life is beautiful and useful. A pilgrim soul abets Creation rather than uses or consumes it.

Discover the pilgrim soul in yourself.

Away from Religion; Toward a Philosophy of Life

Rembrandt, Philosopher's Meditation

Proving and Holding

Here’s an historical sketch about the first Unitarian sermon and the beginning of Unitarianism as a distinct religious denomination.

The prevalent, progressive intellectual outlook of the 18^th century was The Enlightenment—the Age of Reason.  What we now proclaim as American Exceptionalism was the product of an intellectual elite--yes, an elite including the likes of Jefferson, Washington, and John Adams,--an elite well versed in Reason’s way and thoroughly steeped in Greek and Roman Classicism. 

Included in this intellectual elite of the emergent American Republic was a certain group of liberal clergy within the traditional New England Church, mostly Harvard educated and Boston-centric.  Their influence rippled through the Boston congregational establishment.  These liberals gained control of the Divinity School at Harvard in the first decade of the 19^th century.  In reaction, all the conservative ministers abandoned Harvard and the Boston churches, retreating to Western Massachusetts’s newly minted Williams College and then to Amherst college to build a new base, from which a later generation would try to recapture Boston.

For twenty years, between 1805 through 1825, the liberals within the old Puritan church establishment, evolved into a denomination.  The name they took on, Unitarian was originally intended by the conservatives to be a term of derision. In 1825 the fledging liberal New England Churches joined together in The American Unitarian Association.

The turning point for this emerging denomination occurred several years earlier and can be narrowed down to a day and hour in an 1819 sermon given by William Ellery Channing in Baltimore at the ordination of a fellow minister.  This so-called Baltimore Sermon was titled “Unitarian Christianity” by its author. When Channing delivered the Baltimore Sermon, he was the preeminent liberal minister; his pulpit  the influential Federal Street Church in Boston

Channing was a persuasive liberal preacher, distinguished for his presence/demeanor as for his reasoned rhetoric. As the acknowledged leader of the Boston liberals, he had long resisted becoming what he called a sectarian, that is, he didn’t want to tear the liberals who rallied around him from the traditional New England congregational establishment

So, it was a major event that Channing publically declared that the so-called Unitarians were a distinct sect.  That he did so in “faraway” Baltimore cast it as an event of national import.

I still enjoy reading that long ago sermon.  It was a bold declaration offering not only the attributes but also justifications of the new Unitarians.  It’s first among the three important documents of 19th century Unitarianism.  14,000 words in length, it took Channing an hour and a half to deliver it.  It is said that Channing could be heard only by the first three pews. Yet in publication, the sermon became an instant and long running “bestseller.” Through 1830 it was the single must published piece of literature in the country.

As with all sermons of that era, it was preached from a Biblical text, a verse from 1 Thessalonians attributed to Paul:  “Prove all things; hold fast that which is good.” 

I maintain that its scriptural verse (“Prove all things; hold fast that which is good.”) has been and continues to be Unitarianism’s (now Unitarian Universalism’s) foundational and fundamental) orientation. It continues to be my orientation to all that is presented to me as truth, especially regarding Religion.

“Prove all things; hold fast that which is good.”

Dr. Suess’s Counsel

Here’s a more whimsical expression of Unitarianism’s proving and holding, from the inimitable Dr. Seuss, Ted Geisel, who once gave an unforgettable and short commencement speech at Lake Forest College:

My uncle ordered popovers 
from the restaurant's bill of fare. 
And when they were served, 
he regarded them 
with a penetrating stare . . . 
Then he spoke great Words of Wisdom 
as he sat there on that chair: 
"To eat these things," 
said my uncle, 
"you must excercise great care. 
You may swallow down what's solid . . . 
BUT . . . 
you must spit out the air!"

And
as you partake of the world's bill of fare, 
that's darned good advice to follow. 
Do a lot of spitting out the hot air. 
And be careful what you swallow.

My Critical Odyssey

I first studied history, expecting to write and teach it in university.  Generally, I learned that what we call history involves the organization and interpretation of surviving information.  There is no one true history, but a multitude of possible interpretations serving the historian and her audience’s point of view.  My early discipline of History honed my analytical/critical skills.

In my early adult years a skill set relating to my study of history and the essential orientation of Unitarianism came together, informing me when I began to study theology.  Forty years later, I've not been dissuaded.

I first look at any particular religion as embedded in its historical time and place.  I also put all religions into the larger context of Comparative Religion that looks at religion in terms of commonalities—as human phenomena.

I have delighted in what now seems a lifelong journey into Religion, less from a spiritual yearning or quest, more as an ENLIGHTENED UNITARIAN charged to prove all things; hold fast to that which is good.  On this journey, I’ve gained considerable knowledge about a variety of historical faiths as well have come to an understanding of from time immemorial.  In recent years, I have self-identified as a Religious Naturalist, and advocate Natural Religion, while continuing to function with an historic liberal Protestant church and denomination context.  To be fair, my sense of Natural Religion bends more to the natural sciences, such as, psychology, than it does to traditional revelation.

In the last decades of the 20^th century I grew into a postmodern perspective that includes the notion of deconstruction, that all attempts to create a system of belief inevitably falls prey to critical analysis—being taken part.  Systems are time bound; and systems are subjective.  Ever-advancing knowledge and an outsider’s point of view cannot be accommodated to make any system universally true.  Postmodernism has made me an ever-more radical Unitarian who proves all things and holds fast to that which is good.  Again, I look at Religion as a human phenomenon.

Having spent a lifetime studying them, I have a lover-of-knowledge’s fascination about organized religions.  For example, the millennia-long conflict among the Abrahamic faiths, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, is a crucial aspect of the world’s immediate future that I actively strive to understand in historical terms and contemporary global dynamics.

And I am studying up on Mormonism, an area of interest way back when, when I studied ante-bellum American history.  Mormonism was one of several enthusiastic religions that followed the course of the Erie Canal’s construction from Albany to Buffalo in the 1820s, a wide swath that earned the region the name of the Burned Over District.   Why my renewed interest?  It looks like Mitt Romney, a respected/influential leader in his Mormon church, will get the Republican nomination for President. His practice of Mormonism will be scrutinized.

A few weeks ago, the NY Times presented a lengthy article on Mr. Romney’s Mormon commitments in Massachusetts, affirming that his Mormon identity is integral in his worldview.

Several years ago, I presented a sermon series on world religions, in part, acknowledging this congregation’s historic interest in world faiths. The leading personality of the epochal World Parliament of Religions (1893), Swami Vivekananda of the Krishna Society spoke here twice in his first brief American sojourn.  In the mid-twentieth century the congregations’ minister was Sunder Joshi, a respected lecturer on World Religions.  During Sunder’s tenure six great paintings, representing six great world religions filled the wall behind me.

My sermon series focused on my approach to world religions, looking not at similarities rather at an “essential truth” each major world religion gives me, for example, Social Order from Confucianism, Justice from Judaism, and Compassion from Buddhism.

As I was putting this sermon series together, I realized my personal perspective on Religion was shifting away from theology/religion and toward what is more properly called a philosophy of life.

A Philosophy of Life Orientation

Throughout my career I’ve striven to keep a practical perspective, that is, how does my counsel relate to two overarching concerns for each and for all: meaning and happiness. That’s what a philosophy of life is concerned with. As a result, I have a growing appreciation for developing personal philosophy of life as compared for a striving to build a personal theology. (This goes against the UU grain a little, since one of the keystone UU adult curricula is called “Building Your Own Theology.”)

To my mind, a philosophy of life recommends a constant testing, a trying out through one’s own life arc and experiences.  A philosophy of life relies on Wisdom.  For me, Wisdom points to a broadly human consensus—a conventional sort of wisdom readily recognizable and affirmed.

 In contrast, a theology has in it the notion of faith, which includes a cluster of attributes such as commitment, trust, and hope without proof.  Theology is religion’s way of knowing, which from an objective perspective makes it easily deconstructed by new knowledge, by other subjective perspectives, or by essential flaws in its tenets of belief.

In my latter years, I’m advocating a philosophy of life over religion and spirituality.  Once again a philosophy of life relates to meaning and happiness.  And it’s also true that a philosophy of life can operate in addition to or to supplement one’s religion, though I also maintain that a philosophy of life can also replace a traditional religion in our postmodern context.

One of my favorite contemporary public intellectuals is William B. Irvine who teaches traditional philosophy at Wright State in Ohio; he has become a contemporary voice for Stoicism, an ancient, influential philosophy of life.  Stoicism’s aim is the achievement of tranquility by taking negative emotions under control.  Professor Irvine speaks not to fellow professional academic philosophers but to an ordinary, albeit intellectually upscale audience.

In October, I spoke to Stoicism via Irvine’s fine recent book A Guide to the Good Life: The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy. I mentioned that Irvine fell upon Stoicism while he was seeking, at midlife, a philosophy of life to order his living.  He wrote: “I was contemplating becoming a Zen Buddhist and wanted to learn more about it before taking the leap. But the more I learned about Zen, the less it attracted me.

“Practicing Zen would require me to suppress my analytical abilities, something I found it quite difficult to do. Another off-putting aspect of Zen was that the moment of enlightenment it dangled before its practitioners was by no means guaranteed. Practice Zen for decades and you might achieve enlightenment -- or you might not. It would be tragic, I thought, to spend the remaining decades of my life pursuing a moment of enlightenment that never came. Zen doubtless works for some people, but for me, the fit wasn't good. …

“I mentioned above that the benefits to be derived from practicing Zen are uncertain. Stoicism, by way of contrast, does not dangle before its adherents a moment -- maybe -- of life-transforming enlightenment. Instead, it provides a body of advice for them to follow and a set of strategies for them to employ in everyday life. The strategies in question are easy to use.”

Irvine offers a cogent description of what a philosophy of life is: “a body of advice to follow and easy to use strategies to employ in everyday life.”  I add that such philosophies of life are a constant proving and holding.  The proof is in the pudding, with the pudding being one’s progressing life.

One of my foundational/favorite philosophy of life is the Old Testament book Ecclesiastes, the testimony of an Agnostic Realist, a Jew living in the yeasty era of Greek hegemony following Alexander the Great’s death, circa 300 BCE, who finds the meaning of life in enjoyment of the gifts of life through Wisdom.

If you want to consider the possibilities of developing a disciplined philosophy of life, I recommend my guide to Ecclesiastes, Wisdom for the Ages.  I have a couple of websites where you can access more information about this carpe diem, seize the day, approach of an ancient and influential text.

Also look to William Irvine’s materials from his personal website.  It includes a link to a compelling video of a lecture by Professor Irvine regarding a Stoic’s outlook on aging.

You are already familiar with various philosophies of life:  Thoreau’s Walden is a philosophy of life that pares life down to its essentials; William Channing Gannett (our first minister) and his famous essay “The House Beautiful” is a philosophy of life on how to make a house a home.  The collected works and aphorisms of Emerson converge in a philosophy of life that urges “Trust thyself.)

I’m going to end with a brief philosophy of life that is often called “My Symphony,” by William Henry Channing, a nephew of William Ellery Channing:  You can follow along in our hymnal, Reading #484.

To live content with small means.
To seek elegance rather than luxury,
    and refinement rather than fashion.
To be worthy not respectable,
    and wealthy not rich.
To study hard, think quietly, talk gently,
    act frankly,

To listen to stars, birds, babes,
    and sages with open heart,

To bear all cheerfully,
    do all bravely, await occasions, hurry never.
In a word, to let the spiritual,
    unbidden and unconscious,
    grow up through the common.
This is to be my symphony.

And what is your symphony?

Identity

The name of our denomination, The Unitarian Universalist Association is awkward.  It has an embarrassing abundance of syllables—16 (17 with The), way too many for contemporary marketing sensibilities.  The customary acronyms or shortened forms don’t do much for me.  How about for you: UU or UniUni?  To the unitiated, these sound bytes might suggest a cult, while doing no justice to the tradition behind the contractions. They also tend to exclude those not in the inner circle.

And then ciphering out the whole name might seem on first hearing contradictory: Unitarian—One; Universalism—All.  One/All!  Is one/all oxymoronic, a self-contradiction, like jumbo shrimp?

When each part of the name stands alone there is often confusion with other religions. Unitarian gets confused with Unity (a new-agy Christian offshoot).  This congregation was founded in 1886 as the Unity Church of Hinsdale—a mission church of the Unity Men, radical Unitarians of the Midwest whose motto was “the Unity of all things.”  Unitarian also gets confused with Unification (the Korean cult of Sun Yung Moon).  Universalism conjures up the Universal Life Church of Modesto, California, which since the 1950’s has ordained anyone who applies to be a minister, able to perform marriages.  (Whenever I read the marriages chronicled in the Sunday New York Times, I’m astounded/amused by the number of officiants identified as Universal Life Ministers.

Historically Unitarian has social cachet (its roots are Boston Brahmin after all).  And it has a certain cultural notoriety and will show up in those lists that circulate now and again, offshoots or variations of the classic “how many so-and-sos does it take to screw in a light bulb.”  (I’ll let you figure out the punch line of how many Unitarians it takes—a hint, it involves a committee.) Arguably the best known joke regarding Unitarians involves the proverbial pearly gates and two signs:  one sign reads this way to heaven, the second sign reads this way to a discussion about heaven.  Recently departed Unitarians invariably head toward the discussion about heaven.  The second best known joke, arguably, is Mort Sahl’s rhetorical question,  “What do Unitarians burn on a lawn—a question mark? 

Unitarians are relatively well known in New England, particularly in Massachusetts and in the Boston orbit, which for many Unitarian Universalists is still the Athens of America.  Universalists, though some loyalists still cling to the identity, are hardly known at all, anywhere.  I don’t know any popular Universalist joke.

Unitarian Universalism is a merged denomination.  Merger was effected in 1961 when the Universalist Church of America joined with the American Unitarian Association.  The separate denominations shared some similarities, though there were also differences of substance and style—including significant markers of class.  They both had their origins in the American Enlightenment and emerged in New England at the turn of the 18^th into the 19^th century.  At their beginnings, each had a Unitarian Christology—that Jesus was special but not part of Trinitarian Godhead; each extolled freedom of belief and conscience; and most importantly each eschewed the notion of a creed.  Each evolved doctrinally throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.  The famous quip that still goes a long way in discerning the differences between the two traditions claims “the Unitarians thought humankind too good to be damned by God, while the Universalists thought God too good to damn humankind.”

One of the hot trends within our denomination these days involves writing what are called “elevator speeches.”  Imagine you’re on an elevator and a fellow rider asks you about being a Unitarian Universalists.  What can you say in fifteen or twenty seconds?   

American culture, among its many aspects, is a religious marketplace.  Some contemporary observers argue that the proliferation and vigor of religion generally, in American culture, is a consequence of competition among the many possibilities—that there is at the very least a product branding that distinguishes religion from religion, and that branding sets denominations apart and appeals to religious seekers/consumers. 

A few years ago our Association launched an ad campaign, thoroughly market tested, around the phrase “The Uncommon Denomination^sm.”  (When I first heard of it a few years ago, I flashed the 7-Up campaign around the notion of the UnCola!)

A famous and effective marketing campaign of the 1950s used the line “Are You a Unitarian and Don’t Know It?”  This slogan is the one we used when we placed ads in local papers for our “open-houses.”

I have discerned a yearning among my younger and/or new ministerial colleagues for what is summarized as UU Identity.  Toward this end they have elevated the seven principles of the Unitarian Universalist Association.  No one is yelling, “Let’s make these seven principles a creed,” but many seem to want something to at least hang a hat on.  (The Association is a free gathering of a thousandsome kindred liberal religious societies across the country; the Association has no hierarchical power over the independent congregations; yet the Association promotes even as it serves Unitarian Universalism.)

In the larger perspective, then, the problem of ambiguity—what Unitarian Universalism as a denomination stands for as well as identity for individual Unitarian Universalists—has been a result of the defining features of our liberal religious way: freedom for the individual and independence for the local society, that is, congregation. Unitarian Universalism is many things suspended in an ever-progressing context.

What I love about Unitarian Universalism is its richness—a complex history that has led to an easy eclecticism—that I find on target for a world on the fast track of globalization, but even more on target for a wonderful human heritage I can claim, in any aspect, as my heritage.


A decade ago Jeff Briere, then our intern, and I wrote 101 Reasons I’m a Unitarian Universalist. Jeff and I each wrote 50 one paragraphs sketches about aspects of our liberal religious tradition. It recently has been published as an ebook, and among the niche category of UU books has had success in the UK as well as the States. It is the briefness of the paragraphs and their variety that makes it effective and creates a pointillist portrait of our complex heritage.

In a similar way, what we’re going to do today, sketching our own personal elevator speeches will not only help us hone our descriptions, it will illustrate the richness of our point of views.

Here’s, my elevator speech:

Unitarian Universalism is a non-creedal, liberal religious community of kindred spirits. We value reason, freedom of belief and conscious, as well as respect for one another and for other religions. Character—personal integrity—matters, perhaps most of all. We seek a just and equitable society, not for some but for everyone. And we will continue to progress from generation to generation. We’re never finished.

Winter: A Season of Itself and of the Self

Lawren Harris, "Red House"

I have admiration for many things Canadian.  I lived in Canada from 1970 through 1976—a year in Ottawa and five years in Montreal.

Beginning in those years, I have adored the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, the CBC.  In the 70s, it helped me acquire a cache of Canadian lore, as well as an appreciation of a Canadian point of view. Back then, while still in my intellectually formative years, I listened to its a.m. programing from morning to night.  (For a couple of those years I was working on my theology degree at McGill’s Faculty of Religious Studies.)

Thanks to the Internet and streaming audio, I once again am listening a lot to CBC programing throughout the day. 

I’m glad that our own National Public Radio has adopted some Canadian programs.  Perhaps you’ve listened to one called IDEAS that is a potpourri offering of cultural and intellectual topics.  It’s simply outstanding.

This program, Ideas, has become the venue for one of the major Canadian intellectual events, the yearly Massey lectures.  These lectures were first offered 50 years ago by the CBC.  The lecturers have been distinguished, including Martin Luther King, Jr. who delivered the five talks in 1967. 

The 2011 Massey Lectures were delivered in November by Adam Gopnik, writer, essayist, and commentator, well known for his work in The New Yorker Magazine.  Gopnik, born in 1956 in Philadelphia, was raised in Montreal where his parents taught at McGill.  He titled his lectures, Winter: Five Windows on the Season.  Those lectures have been published as a book.

The central theme of Gopnik’s Winter lectures involves a modern state of mind.  Modern means an era from the beginning of the19th century through the end of the twentieth century.  He says:

A mind of winter, a mind for winter, not sensing the season of loss and life, and with them hope of life and divinity, but ready to respond to it as a positive, and even purifying, presence of something else – the beautiful and peaceful, yes, but also the mysterious, strange, the sublime – is a modern taste.

Now, modern I mean in the sense that the loftier kinds of historians of ideas like to use this term, to mean not just right here and now but also the longer historical period that begins sometime around the end of the 18th century, breathes fire from the twin dragons of the French and Industrial Revolutions, and then still blows cinder-breath into at least the end of the 20th century, drawing deep with twin lungs of applied science and mass culture. An age of growth and an age of death, the age in which, for the first time in both Europe and America, more people are warmer than they had been before, and in which fewer people had faith in God – an age when, at last, the nays had it.

Gopnik contends that in 200 years of a modern era, winter had ceased to be a season to be endured and tested (fated by God) and had become a season of metaphor (for human imagination to find meaning).  He labels this a Romantic vision.

Gopnik further says:

Loving winter can seem, in a very long perspective of history, perverse. Of all the natural metaphors of existence that we have – light versus dark, sweet against bitter – none seems more natural than the opposition of the seasons: warmth against cold, spring against fall, and above all, summer against winter. Human beings make metaphors as naturally as bees make honey, and one of the most natural metaphors we make is of winter as time of abandonment and retreat. The oldest metaphors for winter are all metaphors of loss. In classical myth, winter is Demeter's sorrow at the abduction of her daughter by death.  In almost every other European mythology it is the same: winter is hard and summer soft, as surely as sweet wine is better than bitter lees.

The taste for winter, a love for winter vistas – a belief that they are as beautiful and seductive in their own way, and as essential to the human spirit and human soul as any summer scene – is a part of modern condition. Wallace Stevens, in his poem the “Snowman,” called this new feeling a mind for winter, and he identified it with our new acceptance of a world without illusions, our readiness to live in a world that might have meaning but that doesn't have God.

And Gopnik summarizes:  My subject is the new feelings winter has provoked in men and women of those modern times: fear, joy, exhilaration, magnetic appeal and mysterious attraction. Since to be modern is to let imagination and invention do a lot of the work once done by tradition and ritual, winter is in some ways the most modern season—the season defined by absences (of warmth, leaf, blossom) that can be imagined as stranger presences (of secrets, roots, hearth).

I invoke Adam Gopnik’s lectures and their central theme, because my UU colleagues have liberally engaged in finding the meaning of the Winter Season we’re about to enter, particularly during the high tide of mid-Twentieth Century humanism.  These colleagues, as have I, have looked through the Winter window, perhaps etched with hoarfrost crystals, and have had their religious imaginations respond to the waterscape they encountered.  Adam Gopnik’s understandings have made me realize that UUs have made Winter, not only a season of the mind, but even more a season of meaning.

This meaning-making is no little undertaking/accomplishment, especially in the absence of God, a mark of the modern point of view.  This morning I invite you to repose in the reflections of a few favorite UU meaning-makers.

Lionel Fitzgerald

Look through this window and encounter your own feelings of a winter landscape.  What feelings, what meanings do you find?

Here are familiar words by Greta Crosby, one of my 20^th century colleagues and pioneering female minister: 

Let us not wish away the winter. It is a season to itself, not simply the way to spring.

When trees rest, growing no leaves, gathering no light, they let in sky and trace themselves delicately against dawns and sunsets.

The clarity and brilliance of the winter sky delight. The loom of fog softens edges, lulls the eyes and ears of the quiet, awakens by risk the unquiet. A low dark sky can snow, emblem of individuality, liberality, and aggregate power. Snow invites to contemplation and to sport.

Winter is a table set with ice and starlight.

Winter dark tends to warm light: fire and candles; winter cold to hugs and huddles; winter want to gifts and sharing; winter danger to visions, plans, and common endeavoring – and the zest of narrow escapes; winter tedium to merrymaking.

Let us therefore praise winter, rich in beauty, challenge, and pregnant negativities.

A. Y. Jackson

This phrase, pregnant negativities,  is my favorite expression of the modern propensity to make meaning, finding metaphor in an activity that comes naturally to we UUs.

[This was followed by readings by Henry David Thoreau, Kenneth L. Patton, and Max Coots.]