Friday, August 31, 2007

Spiritual But Not Religious

There is the old adage that denominations survive either by procreation or conversion. Given our demographics the first is not likely to help us much.

I attended UU University in the day before General Assembly began. I thoroughly enjoyed the program and was impressed by the intelligence, commitment, and enthusiasm of my fellow UUs. However, I had one nagging thought – where were all the UUs who are in their 20’s, 30’s and 40’s. I have noticed in my own church that these people tend to cycle through our church fairly quickly – they come to check us out and then leave after awhile. For whatever reason, they are not finding what they are looking for. Why not? What is missing?

The report American Piety in the 21st Century: New Insights to the Depths and Complexity of Religion in the United States may shed some light on this issue. As it turns out 18.6% of people aged 18-30 have no religious affiliation. The figure for those between the ages of 31 and 44 is 11.4%. Even though these are not affiliated, 63% believe in god or a higher power. Nine out of ten of these report never having attended religious services. Only 11 percent of the religiously unaffiliated believe that Jesus was the son of God. Americans who think of God a cosmic force as opposed to an active diety comprise a remarkable 25% of the population.

To my knowledge the UU church has not done demographic studies on visitors in these age groups who visit our churches. My suspicion is that they very much fit the profiles outlined above.

It may be important that those people who are 40 or younger came of age in the aftermath of the 1960s. Many of the great political issues that defined the vast majority of our members (who came of age in the late 1950s and 1960s) were largely quiescent when these cohorts were hitting their teen years. These younger folk grew up in the ages of disco, Wall Street, Reganomics, and Bill Clinton. Those with liberal leanings seem to struggle with issues of materialism, meaning, childrearing and finding community. To the extent they have political agendas, those interests tend to focus on issues of globalization and planetary ecology rather than domestic social justice – a battle they largely (though not completely) see as a sort of mop-up operation. Religiously, it seems that this rather large cohort of people has been strongly influenced by the general dissemination through our culture of religious beliefs and practices derived from Eastern and esoteric traditions.

In short, these people (who are the very future of the UU church) may best be described by the phrase “spiritual but not religious”.

Those who cross our threshold may be looking for a place of likeminded people but they are not finding it. They would be a natural fit for our communities if only we knew what to do with them. They are also the future of our movement if it is to survive.

For a fascinating look at this demographic and what they are looking for, Robert C. Fuller's article entitled "Spiritual But Not Religious" is well worth reviewing. As Fuller notes in his article:


Forsaking formal religious organizations, these people have instead embraced an individualized spirituality that includes picking and choosing from a wide range of alternative religious philosophies. They typically view spirituality as a journey intimately linked with the pursuit of personal growth or development. A woman who joined a meditation center after going through a divorce and experiencing low self-esteem offers an excellent example. All she originally sought was a way to lose weight and get her life back on track. The Eastern religious philosophy that accompanied the meditation exercises was of little or no interest to her. Yet she received so many benefits from this initial exposure to alternative spiritual practice that she began experimenting with other systems including vegetarianism, mandalas, incense, breathing practices, and crystals. When interviewed nine years later by sociologist Marilyn McGuire, this woman reported that she was still "just beginning to grow"
and she was continuing to shop around for new spiritual insights.

McGuire found that many spiritual seekers use the "journey" image to describe a weekend workshop or retreat-the modern equivalents of religious pilgrimages. The fact that most seekers dabble or experiment rather than making once-and-forever commitments is in McGuire's opinion "particularly apt for late modern societies with their high degrees of pluralism, mobility and temporally limited social ties, communications, and voluntarism."

Finally, we also know a few things about today's unchurched seekers as a group. They are more likely than other Americans to have a college education, to belong to a white-collar profession, to be liberal in their political views, to have parents who attended church less frequently, and to be more independent in the sense of having weaker social relationships. So what do we as a church with this information.

There is a tremendous opportunity lying our doorsteps and indeed one could argue that we have a moral imperative to seek to meet the needs of this population. Can we as a church begin to address the needs of these people? Should we? Is this the future of our faith?

© 2007. Matthew W. Wesley. All rights reserved.

Thursday, August 30, 2007

Money, Spirituality and the Meaning of Life


Money is a central question in everyday life. We, as modern people, cannot escape the world of money. It affects every aspect of our lives. Indeed it has already shaped every aspect of our lives. Our socio-economic status is probably the third most important factor in who we are today – after genetics and the dynamics of our families of origin. The amount of money our family had when we were young determined where we lived, who our friends were, the type of education we received, and our college experience (if we had one). It probably influenced who we married and had an impact on the course of our relationship. It has affected our vocation and where we live today and how we are raising our own children. The influence of money in our lives is absolutely pervasive.

The following meditation is a riff on three basic questions: What is money? What is religion or spirituality? What is the relationship between money, spirituality and the meaning of life?

What Is Money?

In my experience, most UUs feel conflicted about money. My sense is that there are some very good reasons for that discomfort and they stem from the nature of money itself and the fact that we are religious community.

On the one hand, we want to say that money is not terribly important. We want to say that the most important things in life are beyond what money can buy. We want to downplay the importance of money. On the other hand, in our culture, money is necessary for survival. It puts food in our stomach, a roof over our heads, keeps us healthy. Without it almost all of us would, quite literally, die.

If we are going to come to terms with this most powerful reality, we have to figure out what it is and how it works in our lives.

One common notion in the simplicity movement is that money represents life energy and in many ways this is a helpful concept. We have to expend a certain amount of life energy to get money. In our society we spend a lot of life energy in getting stuff and supporting the stuff we have. If we think about it in these terms, it allows us to be much more intentional about how important our stuff is to us and how much life energy we are willing to expend to get and maintain our stuff.

While this concept seems to work pretty well from an individual perspective, I fear that it may have some pernicious effects when we apply it on a societal level. Does it mean that the life energy of a migrant worker is worth less than a teacher’s which is worth less than a doctor’s which is worth less than a CEO’s. As Unitarian Universalists, we believe in the inherent worth and dignity of all people and would almost certainly want to avoid putting economic value on people’s “life energy”.

So what then is money? What is money? We can point to a $20 bill and say that is money, but money is not the same as cash. My debit card works to purchase the same thing that the bill does. Beyond that, I can sit at my computer and tap some keys, moving 1’s and 0’s around in cyberspace, with the result that my utility bill is paid. Money, then, is a slippery concept.

There is, of course, a vast literature on the question of the nature of money, but it seems to me that, when you boil it all down, money is like a bathroom scale. It is nothing more or less than a measurement tool and in this case, it is measures societal values. Just like a scale returns the weight of something in numbers, a price tag is a numerical representation reflecting the relative value of the thing it is attached to. While all of this valuing is guided by the proverbial invisible hand of the laws of supply and demand, we learn what society values through the measurement that money provides. If you want to know the relative importance of things, look at how they are priced in the marketplace. Is an iPod valued more than a loaf of bread? Is education valued more than roads? Is social welfare valued more than security? Is health care valued more than oil? All you have to do is look at the allocation of money and the relative price tags of these things and you will know what people and institutions in our society value based on the money scale.

Now I ask you to hold this thought for a minute – that is that money is the measurement tool of determining the relative value of people and things to our society.

What is Religion and Spirituality?

On to our second question: What is “religion” and “spirituality”? In the West there is a very long tradition of thinking about this question. Most Western philosophers tend to view religion or spirituality as rooted in some sense of the divine. Rudolph Otto talked about the religious response to the “numinous” by which he meant a mysterious presence. Paul Tillich talked about the ground of being. For Martin Buber, it was the “I and Thou” of religious experience. And these are the voices of the more liberal religious thinkers. Others are much more explicit in seeing the religious experience as fundamentally rooted in the divine presence – or, God.

The problem I have with this emphasis on the divine is that movements that all would clearly call religious have no need for a supernatural being. Zen Buddhism, philosophical Hinduism, secular humanism and…dare I say it… Unitarian Universalism are clearly religious movements which don’t, of necessity, require belief in a divine presence.

So what ties all of these disparate movements together? What element can we point to that is common to fundamentalist Christianity and Zen Buddhism? What do Islam and Taoism have in common?

Again, there is a vast literature, and I could cite Hume, Schopenaur, and William James. In the end, it seems to me that at least one element that ties all of these wildly divergent worldviews together is a common belief that the values or perspectives of the dominant culture are somehow insufficient to address some basic human needs. That somehow there is something missing in the general culture that is necessary to being truly human. In short, religious people tend to set a higher standard. It may be that the higher standard is related to the inner world – a search for enlightenment or truth. Or it may be in the world of action – justice and truth. And in most serious religious traditions, it is both.

As Unitarian Universalists, we hold certain beliefs – such as the inherent worth and dignity of each person. We live in culture that doesn’t adopt this as the dominant belief – it differentiates based on sexual orientation, race or economic status or a host of other criteria. In is fundamentally hierarchical – elevating some and denigrating others. Because we don’t buy this model, we are in fundamental tension with our culture. We believe in a higher bar – in a more demanding standard.

Now let’s pull the two threads together:

If money is the measure of our culture’s values (and we cannot escape the fact that we have been influenced by that culture), and if we, as religious people, have almost by definition a set of values that differs to some degree from the values of our culture – is it any wonder that we feel conflicted about money? If money is where the values of our culture find their most focused expression, is it any wonder that our value system conflicts with those ideas.

Money and the Meaning of Life.

So what do we do with that tension? I would respectfully suggest that the answer to this question has everything to do with the meaning of our lives. This is where I found Jacob Needleman’s book, Money and the Meaning of Life, so helpful. It is not that he offers answers and many in our book group found him pompous and the book badly written – and I cannot say that I disagree. What I did appreciate was that he raised some interesting questions and that he put the money question as perhaps the central question for modern spiritual seekers.

So what is the meaning of life? The question itself elicits snickers. It has been the brunt of jokes, stories, and even full length movies mocking the quest for the meaning of it all.

In philosophy, the question of the meaning of life falls within the field of metaphysics known as ontology. The first ontological question is “Why is there something rather than noting?” Inherent in that question is the question of the meaning of it all. Up until the time of Immanuel Kant, philosophers attempted to discuss this question meaningfully. Most philosophers believe that Kant conclusively demonstrated that the question itself is pretty much unanswerable…at least on an ontological level. That left the field wide open for comics of all sorts.

While the question may be meaningless on the ontological level, it may be possible to answer that question on an existential level.

If a few of us gathered in a room to discuss the meaning of the life of Gandhi, we would be able to come to a relatively coherent consensus on that question. The same would be true for Abraham Lincoln, or St. Francis of Assisi, or Hitler or Martin Luther King. If we can discern the meaning of their lives on an existential or historic level, what is to say that we cannot do the same for our own lives? When we pass on, our friends will be able to gather and have a meaningful conversation about what our life meant.

This all would suggest that we are building the meaning of our lives as we live them. Minute by minute, hour by hour, day by day, year by year. Interestingly, it seems that the living out of our lives ultimately is about the outward manifestation of our inner values. In the end, it seems, the meaning of our lives, is a reflection of our values. Gandhi’s values were worked out in his life, as were Lincoln’s and St. Francis’ and Hitler’s and King’s. Our actions reflect what we consider most important and we act in ways consistent with those values. Over a lifetime the acts consistent with our values creates a legacy that becomes the meaning of our lives.

Which brings us full circle: if money is what our culture values and we, as spiritual or religious people, are in some tension with those values, then how we relate to money is a key issue in working out the meaning of our lives. There is that old adage that if you want to know what a person values look at their appointment book and their check book. There may be some truth to that. How we spend our money reflects our real values. If you want to know the quality of a person’s spiritual life – look at his or her relationship to money. We work out our values in our relationship to money.

So what do I conclude from all of this? I would submit that this all says that our wallets are, in fact, sacred space.

It may be that how we relate to money is absolutely critical in our quest to understand and work out our values in the broader world. If we are to be spiritual people, we are forced to come to terms with how we interact with money and one of the most important “spaces” where that happens is in our wallets and pocketbooks. It may be that the wallet (or the checkbook or the Quicken program) is the most sacred of spaces...more so than the meditation chair, the reading coach, the nature trail, or the sanctuary of our church. We can fool ourselves in any of those other places. Our wallets are not so forgiving. When we look at ourselves in the sacred space of money, we see ourselves for who we truly are – it marks our progress, mirrors our successes and goads us to deeper consistency with what we feel we must become. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t for a minute believe that our wallets are a space for guilt. But I do believe that they are a keen tool for self reflection and knowledge. In that sense, when we are in the sacred presence of money – when we view money as a sacrament – we are in one of the places that can cause us to become our best selves. And it is in this relationship with money that we can find one important avenue for discovering the meaning of our lives.

Amen, Peace, Namaste.
© 2006. Matthew W. Wesley. All rights reserved.

Wednesday, August 29, 2007

First Time Getting Naked?

Welcome to Naked SAMADHI.

Q. What is the purpose of this blog?

This is a new site for Unitarian Universalists which is designed to help lay leaders and others find spiritual sustenance, take new perspectives, and locate some tools helpful for them as they seek to lead their churches. Because it is new, it will be morphing over time. As the site grows you will likely find articles on:

  • Spiritual Life
  • Strategic Planning
  • Developing Spiritual Practices
  • Church Growth
  • Historical Articles
  • Analysis of trends within the UU church
  • Book reviews
  • Movie reviews
  • Hyphenated UUism

Q. How to I get around?

You can always get to the Home page by clicking on Naked SAMADHI at the top of each page. Archives will take you to a list of old articles. Articles in a series will have links at the bottom to the next article. You can also use the search box at the top of the page to look for specific topics. There are also certain pages that list the other site pages relevant to that topic - for example "Books" will contain a list of all books reviewed on the site. The information on the site is designed to be as accessible as possible from several different points.

Q. Do you allow Guest Blogging?

Yes. If you are interested check out Guest Blogging.

Q. Do you allow comments.

I love comments! They are moderated but only slightly to avoid gibberish and cruelty to others.

Q. Do you mind suggestions?

I love suggestions. Fire away.

Q. Why don't you do politics on Naked SAMADHI?

This has been a struggle for me. I am very active in certain social causes and I believe very strongly that the spiritual journey involves active engagement in the world - and I will talk about that. However, I have seen a tendency in the UU church to use politics to see those who disagree with us as "other". It can function as a way to congratulate ourselves on our moral superiority. If that was backed up by truly monumental acts of compassion and efforts at social justice, then I would feel very differently than I do. However, I don't see that many UUs who are so devoted as to claim such exalted high moral ground. I see the fastest way to deep engagement lies through being focused on developing ourselves and our churches to "be the change we want to see in the world." There are so many places to go to get the liberal political views we as UUs hold so dear, but there are relatively few that address the nature of spiritual and corporate growth.

UU Blogs

I always start by searching for UU blogs and material related to my journey at Philocrites. His guide to UU blogs is well done and doesn't disapppoint.

There is also the UU Blogsearch page.

The Naked SAMADHI Home page has a few links and I will be adding annotated links here over time.

Tuesday, August 28, 2007

Comments

Just so you know, comments are most welcome, but are moderated.

Monday, August 27, 2007

What Is the Name All About?

Naked SAMADHI

Here are a few definitions of Naked:

na·ked (nā'kĭd) adj.

  1. without the customary covering, container, or protection: a naked sword; a naked flame.
  2. defenseless; unprotected; exposed: naked to invaders.
  3. plain; simple; unadorned: the naked realities of the matter.
  4. not accompanied or supplemented by anything else: a naked outline of the facts.
  5. exposed to view or plainly revealed: the naked threat in the letter; a naked vein of coal.
  6. plain-spoken; blunt

I will leave it you to figure out which of these definitions fit the content on the site. Fortunately, the definition is broad enough to cover a mulititude of sins. I also have to admit a debt of gratitude to Ken Wilber and the thinkers he has introduced to me which have opened new vistas for me. In part, the name - following his Integral Naked site - is a tribute to his influence on my way of thinking.

And now - Samadhi:

sa·ma·dhi /səˈmɑdi/ [suh-mah-dee] –noun - Hinduism, Buddhism

  1. a state of deep concentration in the object of meditation, a state of being totally aware of the present moment; one-pointedness of mind.

The goal of the site is to be direct, helpful and enlightening. The word Samadhi is deeply meaningful in the Advaita tradition I associate with most closely. Using it in a blog runs the risk of trivializing the depth and importance of the word, but it is my fervent hope that this site will help people live more skillfully and, hopefully, find spiritual practices that take them more deeply into the present moment and the enlightenment that lies there.

Of Creed and Covenant*

In 1931, a young theology professor returned to Germany from the United States. He had been doing post-doctoral work at Union Theological Seminary in New York City and ministering to impoverished black youth in Harlem where he regularly worshiped at a African Methodist Episcopal Church. This young man was a brilliant scholar; he could read and write in six languages and was conversationally fluent in two and he was a polished pianist and a poet. He came from a remarkable family. He was one of seven children. His father was a physician and a professor of neurology at the University of Berlin and chief of the Neurology and Psychiatry at Berlin’s most prestigious hospital. The household was incandescent. Regular guests at dinner included leading writers, historians, academics, artists, scientists and professionals. His desire to become a theologian, which he announced at age 14, made no sense to his humanist family – but he excelled in his studies and his doctoral dissertation became a subject for serious comment and discussion among the theologians of his day. He went on to write several scholarly works on Christology, the sociology of the church, and the nature of man. These works placed him as one of the few theologians who as able to bridge the gaps between radical German theological developments and the development of theological liberalism in the in English speaking world. He was widely recognized as a rising star.

While his career was on the rise, it was in the context of what Winston Churchill later referred to as the Gathering Storm. In January 1933, Hitler was elected as Chancellor and in March he was given dictatorial powers. In the face of the increasing Nazification of Germany, the church, as a whole, stood silent. As the church become yet another arm of the state the voices of those who opposed the dominant political and cultural trends were silenced one by one. Only a few brave pastors and theologians resisted. Our young theologian was one of these. He resisted – quietly, but without compromise, he spoke for an independent church – a confessing church that espoused Christian, not cultural, values. An Anglican Bishop commented “He was crystal clear in his convictions; and as young as he was and humble-minded as he was, he saw the truth and spoke it with complete absence of fear.”

In 1935, he planned to go to India to study with Gandhi. He was deeply committed to pacifism and the principles of non-violent resistance. But as he was making the decision, history overtook him - he was asked and accepted the role of leading an underground seminary at Finkenwald to train pastors for a resisting church. Not one of the university theology faculties was willing to side with this arm of church or prepare ministers that would stand in opposition to the state. In no time the Nazis withdrew all of his Berlin professorships. The young pastor calmly replied “I have long ceased to believe in universities.”

It was while instructing students for ministry at Finkenwald that this young theologian and pastor started to seriously explore the notion of community. These young people were banded together in an intentional community – they lived together, ate together, laughed together, learned together, and prayed together and did so because they know their commitment to the church and to their own beliefs would be costly. He started writing a little book entitled Life Together which explored these notions of community. In that book, he argued that community rests on two pillars – commitment to a creed and commitment to those who share that creed and its implications for living. He argued that it was only in community that true religious strength exists. In it he argued that every community is deeply flawed because it is comprised of human beings who, themselves are far from perfect. But he saw that it was in the radical commitment to the whole community that truth is discovered and true religious experience is found. He argued that it was only in community that the church would find the strength to stand in opposition to injustice and cultural arrogance. His teachings were unabashedly Christian, but the truths they contained were profound in ways that transcended their theological trappings. He argued that the only way for truth to endure was for the community of the faithful to be faithful to one another and to their most cherished beliefs.

The seminary was closed by order of Heinrich Himler in August 1937. It was at this time that he wrote an extended discussion of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount – which I will mention again in a moment. From 1937 until 1939 he traveled secretly from one village to another supporting and encouraging his students who were working illegally in small east German parishes.

In September, 1940, the Gestapo issued an order forbidding him from speaking in public and in the following May he was forbidden from printing or publishing his written works. In 1939, he had begun meeting with elements in German intelligence and other high ranking military officers (including Admiral Canaris and General Oster) and some well-placed civilians who were part of a very serious circle of resistance. Over the course of the next few years, this group slowly and, in many cases reluctantly, came to the conclusion that the only moral course open to them was to conspire to assassinate Hitler. Coming to this commitment to regicide caused the young theologian (who had been deeply committed to a path of non-violent resistance) profound disquiet and pains of conscience. Once convinced, however, he worked tirelessly as a courier and otherwise, to further the plot.

In, 1943, he was arrested for his work in helping a group of Jews escape to Switzerland and was imprisoned, together with his sister and his brother-in-law in the Gestapo’s prison in Berlin. He suffered some torture. In July 1944, Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg was ordered to attend a General Staff meeting at the Wolf’s Lair – Hitler’s headquarters in East Prussia. When he came into the conference room his briefcase was full of high explosives and he placed it under the conference table. After leaving the room ostensibly to take a phone call – the case was moved behind the heavy support of a large conference table thereby barely shielding Hitler from the ensuing blast and allowing him to survive. The ruthless investigation which followed turned up incriminating documents implicating the young theologian.

After summary trial, on April 9, 1945, Dietrich Bonheoffer was hanged from a gallows with piano wire at the Flosenburg concentration camp. He was 39 years old. The camp was liberated 3 days later.

Why am I telling this story about Deitrich Bonheoffer when our subject this morning is community? I bring him up because it is always easy to look at the upside of community, but not so easy to look at the downside. Dietrich Bonhoeffer looked long and hard at the cost of real, intentional community – he realized that community is not simply about warm and gauzy feelings of closeness. To Bonhoeffer community was about commitment – commitment to a creed (or a set of basic beliefs) - and commitment to others who share that creed and its consequent mission in the world.

Creed

Now the word creed is strange to us as Unitarian Universalists. We are fond of joking about our inchoate faith and that you can believe pretty much anything and be a Unitarian Universalist. I would like to raise the rather heretical possibity that, in fact, do have a creed – a set of beliefs we hold very dear. Like all good creeds, it is a simple one. Our creed is embodied in what we say in this community every Sunday when we gather together and light our chalice as one body. We commit to loving our neighbor as ourselves. We commit to searching for truth with an open mind. We commit to making the world a better place to live.

The words can be cheap to say. But I think we all have all found where it is costly in practice. Indeed, we were confronted with the implications of our creed last Sunday when we voted to welcome Tent City 4 as our guests, despite the potential costs. That vote reflected a commitment of faith in our creed (and I say this for both those who voted in favor and those who voted against). Some of us have been pushed out of our families because of what we believe. Some of us have lost friends or been shunned by coworkers. Most of us feel our voice is crying in wilderness in a culture in the predominating values are contrary to our own. Our creed of tolerance is met with intolerance. Our acceptance of all people is seen as subversive. Our call to equality and peace and justice are seen as hopelessly naïve.

We turn to each other for support in our journey. We provide sanity checks to one another and we remind each other that we are not alone. We turn to each other for inspiration, information, laughter and….ultimately, for community. The term community itself derives from the same root as the word common. It is what we share together – what we have in common - that makes us a community. It is what we have in common that binds us together. And it is this common set of beliefs that is the basis of our community.

We don’t have exclusive beliefs. In fact, we throw our arms open and invite anyone in. And that makes our beliefs are radical. They are counter-cultural and they are more than a little dangerous because they confront deeply held values in the dominant culture. Calls to truly love your neighbor as yourself are fine in theory – but for those who will love you if you are not too gay or too heretical or too homeless or too Islamic or too this or too that, the kind of unconditional love we call can deeply trouble them. For those who think they have stranglehold on the truth, our call to continue to search for truth with an open mind is offensive. It challenges an accepted understanding of the world that brings great peace of mind to many. And for those who like and benefit from the status quo, working to make the world a better place to live is deeply confrontational.

And so we are often out of step with the culture around us. It seems to me that we are in many ways a community of prophets in an age where prophets are not held in high regard. We don’t espouse a doctrine, but I do believe we have a creed that rests in a common mindset - a set of beliefs that sets us apart as UUs. Those beliefs give us our identity and call out to people who are likeminded – we provide a sanctuary for those who need what we need – a community of likeminded people. So we grow in numbers and strength and so we stand firm as a liberal religious presence in Woodinvile.

Covenant.

If Bonhoeffer’s first principle of community was adherence to creed – his second was a commitment to the community. Any serious religious community requires the existence of a covenant: a commitment, and perhaps even a radical commitment, to one another.

A community built on covenant calls for a deeper understanding of individualism than the one held by popular culture. It stands at odds with the notion of religion as an item for consumption – spirituality as something you get as easily as you visit the Gap, as buying into a cheap, uncostly cultural conformity. Our culture, and our civil religion, promote a type of individuality that is conformist, self-centered and ultimately self-serving. Religion in our culture is mostly about feeling good, not doing good. Spirituality is often reduced to a personal “righteousness” on a very superficial and undemanding level rather than a passionate commitment to true justice and a deeper and harder work of cultivating righteousness of the spirit and righteousness of community.

In contrast, our Unitarian Universalst understanding of individuality sees us as part of an interconnected web of all beings and that true individuality exists in our connections with those around us, with the earth, with nature, and even with peoples we don’t know. In our creed, there can be no I without a You. It is in the relationship between the sacred “I” and the sacred “Thou” that we find out who we really are. It is this recognition of the web of being – and its expression in our commitment to love our neighbor as ourselves and to make the world a better place to live – that we come into our own as individuals. We are not islands. We recognize that we cannot truly be an individual alone. Our individuality paradoxically requires that we be in community.

Just as it can be costly to have a creed, it can be costly to be in this type of countercultural community. This type of community is like marriage…it can be the most rewarding thing in our lives or it can be the most exasperating. It requires that we accept one another and hang with one another through it all. It requires that we give in and give up a portion of our lives for the greater good of the whole community. It demands our time, our resources, as we look forward to our stewardship season, our funds, and could, potentially, if things got bad enough, require our very lives in exchange for the ability to claim our beliefs – our creed. That is not likely, but it probably didn’t seem likely in 1930 in Germany either.

Bonheoffer’s book about the Sermon on the Mount, entitled The Cost of Discipleship, begins with these words,

Cheap grace is the deadly enemy of the church. We are fighting today for costly grace….Cheap grace means grace sold on the market like cheapjack’s wares. Cheap grace means grace as a doctrine, a principle a system. It means forgiveness of sins proclaimed as a general truth, the love of God thought as the Christian “conception” of God. The mere intellectual assent to that idea is held to be of itself, sufficient to secure redemption. The church which holds the correct view of grace, it is supposed, has that grace. In such a church the world finds a cheap covering for its sins; no real contrition is required, still less any real desire for transformation. Cheap grace amounts to a denial of the living Word of God….

Costly grace is the treasure hidden in the field, for the sake of it a man will gladly go and sell all that he has. It is the pearl of great price to buy which the merchant will sell as his goods. Costly grace is the good news which must be sought continuously. It is a gift which must be asked for over and over again. It is a threshold we must always seek to cross. It is costly because it costs a man his life. It is grace because it gives a man his only true life.

These words, to us as Unitarian-Universalists, may be, at best be odd, and worst a little offensive as laden as they are with the Christian elements of Bonhoeffer’s theology – words like redemption, contrition, and grace are not words we typically use – yet if we take the time to unpack them they contain a profound truth. What Bonheoffer is saying is that spiritual maturity (however you define it) cannot be had on the cheap. While it is infinitely rewarding, it isn’t an easy journey. While it creates true and profound joy, it is not a comfortable journey. Having a spiritual life (having a truly human life) requires being committed to a creed and to covenant with a spiritual community. I believe that we are far down the road of forging that type of profound community here at this church. Our community is here, in this place, and it is now, in this time. And it is in our community – in all its humanness, weakness and goofiness – that we find that we are able to love our neighbors as ourselves, seek the truth with an open mind and make the world a better place to live.

Peace, Shalom, Namaste, Blessed be.

*Sermon delivered at Woodinville Unitarian Universalist Church on 2.20.2005
© 2005. Matthew W. Wesley. All rights reserved.

Response to Davidson Loehr

Resurrecting Unitarian Universalism

Davidson Loehr in his monograph, “Why Unitarian Universalism is Dying” published the Journal of Liberal Religion, told us that he heard noises and the music of the spheres hearkening the death of Unitarian Universalism. As a layperson, I hear that same music. I appreciate David’s article for its cogent assessment of the movement’s history and its insight as to the core reasons it fundamentally fails as a religious movement. At the heart of his argument is the proposition that Unitarian Universalism lacks a profoundly meaningful “spiritual” message that compels commitment.

Peter Morales, pastor of the Jefferson Unitarian Church in Golden, Colorado, makes the point that people come to church for fundamentally religious reasons. They are looking for spiritual truth, deep answers to life’s most difficult questions. In the end, he says, we, Unitarian Universalists are churches - not lecture halls, or debating societies, or lobbying groups or social clubs – we are churches - and the people who come as guests are looking for the same things that people have always looked for when they have come to church – religious answers to life’s most profound questions. Morales’ observations find a great deal of ancillary support in the Faith Communities Today 2005 national survey.[1]

When Morales’ observations and Loehr’s assessment are juxtaposed, they appear to be flip sides of the very same coin. People want the answers religion promises but, on the whole, we as Unitarian Universalists are unable to fundamentally deliver on those promise in a coherent and consistent way.

I agree with Loehr’s arguments and, at the same time, his observations obviously exist in the broader context of a culture that has become largely soulless. The Western world has largely adopted a view of the world founded on scientific materialism that ultimately provides no true answers, only data. It cannot provide an adequate basis for wonder, awe, gratitude, enlightenment, morals, ethics or social justice.[2] It is about what is seen, not about what is unseen. It is about what is, not what ought to be. On its own, scientific materialism cannot adequately address the fundamental questions that human consciousness, by its very nature, raises.

It is safe to say that meaning in our culture has faded. Indeed, the notion of meaning in life is seen largely as a cruel joke. We have no moorings for determining what is true or false on anything other than a scientific level. We have no measures of determining the veracity of ontological, epistemological or metaphysical formulations. The scientific method works very well in the world of matter and energy. It provides very little help in providing meaning or understanding at the levels of Life and Consciousness. The barrenness of this worldview was laid open and explored by the existentialists of the middle of the last Century. While they did and admirable job of diagnosing the problem, they were unable to create a metaphysical response to the problem nor where they able to craft a rationally based human response that would satisfy the “soul”.

Beyond this lack of meaning, our modern American culture also offers very little in the way of connection. We are a culture without villages and without genuine organic or intentional communities. Our affiliations are shallow, transitory and utilitarian. We experience our culture through electronic media and connect through wires and silicon. On the whole, we have virtual, not authentic, communities. The communities we do have are meritocracies or wholly teleological. We have few, if any, communities that exist for the sake of community, let alone for the sake of deriving meaning from life.

Given the above, it is no accident that the dominant religion in our culture is materialism. The outworking of our modern American lives in consumerism, apathy and disengagement and be seen as the logical “ethical” mandate of scientific materialist worldview. However there is clearly a deep dissatisfaction with many aspects of materialism – it simply cannot satisfy the deepest of human needs. There is a vacuousness and emptiness that many intuitively sense – a sense that there is something more. Whether people are consciously aware of it or not, they long for meaning and connection. My sense is that it is those who see through to this emptiness who are the ones who are coming through our doors on Sunday mornings. As Loehr and Morales say, these folks are looking for meaning and for connection.

What is interesting in this is that these needs seem to dovetail nicely with what is fundamental to the religious instinct in man. It seems that grasping for meaning and connection is fundamentally a religious quest. While many definitions of religion exist, these fundamental human drives – for connection and meaning - seem to be common to many of them. Clearly religions define meaning and connection in very different ways, they find different foci and they take on different forms, but these seem to be at least two of the underlying human wellsprings of the religious quest.

If it is true that the two basic failings of modern American culture are its inability to find a way to transcend materialism and an inability to create authentic community, and if these two issues are close to the center of what the religious quest in humanity is all about, then it seems to me that we, as Unitarian Universalists have the possibility of pulling ourselves from the death spiral that Davidson Loehr so aptly details. We also have the possibility of creating a fundamentally religious answer not mired in tired and discarded myths of Christian tradition, in hokey platitudes of the New Age fringe, or the fundamentally solipsistic paths of many eastern traditions. Perhaps we can craft the beginnings of a cogent response to the question of meaning that can bravely answer the fundamental questions that materialism cannot satisfy. [3]

Sri Aurobindo, the 20th Century sage and mystic, states in Life Divine[4], about India, that “any number of religious formulations, cults, and disciplines have been allowed and even encouraged to subsist side by side and each man was free to accept and to follow that which was congenial to his thought, feeling, temperament, and build of nature. It is right and reasonable there should be this plasticity, proper to the experimental evolution: for religion’s real business is to prepare man’s mind, life and bodily existence for the spiritual consciousness to take it up” (Aurobindo, p. 899.) The first portion of the quote could be a flattering description of modern Unitarian Unversalism. We have great diversity, great plasticity, but to what end? If all of this is not driving us to a deeper confrontation with “spirituality” and the emergence of that deeper realization in our lives, it seems to have missed the point.

I would submit that liberal religious thought, in the lineage of Schweitzer, Kierkegaard, Bultmann, Tillich, Chardin and others, is fundamentally played out. It has nothing of substance to offer, no new ideas. It reached its zenith at the same time as the existentialist movement so mercilessly diagnosed the hole at the heart of secular culture. If this is the case, we must look elsewhere for answers and if we continue down the path of liberal religious thought as traditionally understood, we are, it seems, doomed to irrelevance.

So where do we look? How do find our way through the thicket of meaning?

My intuitive sense is that the latest incarnations of the human potential movement that sprung to life in the late 1950’s and has evolved into the transpersonal movement of the later part of the 20th Century is a vital place to begin looking. These ideas exist at the cusp of science and spirituality. Growing out of the work of Maslow and others, they point to things beyond ordinary human consciousness while remaining deeply rooted in scholarship and academic discipline. What is interesting to me is that this movement arose in direct response to the existentialist diagnosis of the 1940s and 1950s. It is the secular version of what we are looking for on a religious/communal level. If the existentialists defined our culture’s plight, these folks are formulating the way out. Their work points to a distinctly religious response, whether they realize it or not. Our job would be to synoptically bring these ideas into the context of religious community.

The most popular exponent of this movement is Ken Wilber. While Wilber has offered some new thoughts, his work is largely derivative. He synthesizes of the works of scholars and learned practitioners who have been working in the field of human consciousness in much more rigorous ways. These folks are on the cutting edge, trying to create coherent world views that account for not only science but spirit. Those in this movement include psychologists, sociologists, political thinkers, ecologists, physicists, writers, artists, poets and a host of others from a wide variety of disciplines. It seems that we need to be paying particular attention to recognized academics and practitioners working in fields of human developmental psychology, transpersonal psychology, transformative studies, East-West studies, and transformative leadership.[5] Much of this work is groundbreaking and it pointing to future stages of religious development, states of consciousness and paths to growth on individual, organization and societal levels. I firmly believe that these academicians can help us as we begin to think through what is next in store for us as Unitarian Universalists as we seek to regain relevance. We need to stop listening to theologians and start listening to these pioneers.

While I agree wholeheartedly with Loehr’s notion that we as Unitarian Universalists espouse the Seven Banalities, I am not sure that I agree that each and every one of them is truly banal. There are two that almost all Unitarian Universalists can recite with heart: the first and the last. These seem to be Noble Truths for us – the inherent worth and dignity of each human and the interconnectedness of existence. And here we have it echoed again – meaning and connection. What seems most interesting is that these ideas lie at the very core of the substance of the work done in the transpersonal disciplines. Perhaps this is a place we can look to begin to find new meaning for a faith that can wrap itself in the lineage of Unitarian Universalism.
[1] The study was sponsored by The Cooperative Congregational Studies Partnership (CCSP), hosted by Hartford Seminary’s Institute for Religion Research.
[2] The Evangelical movement can be seen as a response to this world view. It is a reactionary response to what it sees as the emptiness of modernity. The problem is that it offers no new solutions, only a pre-rationalist worldview at odds with the evolutionary progress of society.
[3] I will not address here the nature of community. Much could be written about it. My own sense of the importance of community grows out a central observation about the nature of the Judeo-Christian tradition. It seems that the core genius of the Jewish tradition and the gospel as taught by Jesus is that salvation is not ultimately about an individual experience. Salvation comes through being inducted into community. Salvation comes from being one of the Chosen People or being part of the Kingdom of God.
[4] This book is one of the most influential but least read books of the 20th Century. The leaders of the human potential movement (the late 20th Century’s response to existentialism) were dramatically and powerfully influenced, whether they were aware of it or not, by Aurobindo’s writings.
[5] A search in Wikipedia on developmental psychology and transpersonal psychology will provide the names of some scholars. Schools that are focused on this include California Institute of Integral Studies and Saybrook Graduate School and Research Center.

© 2007. Matthew W. Wesley. All rights reserved.

Whither Unitarian Universalism?

There has been much written lately of the need to revitalize liberal religion. Theologians and pastors express their desire to reinvigorate a faith that should hold such promise but seems fundamentally unable to deliver what the mind and heart of congregants and society as a whole seek. This wistfulness at times seems to take on a hint of desperation. There are clarion calls for change, cynical declamations of the death of Unitarian Universalism, and a myriad suggestions of how to revitalize a dying theology. We hope for a cure – or perhaps even a resurrection - but the suggested measures seem more and more futile and we seem no closer to revivifying our faith.

Yet as we look around us, our culture is obviously alienated and seeking answers. There are many who cross our thresholds looking for something, who are not finding it, and leave in disappointment. Many of these people cannot put their finger on what, exactly, they are looking for, but they know that the secular culture is not giving them the answers that they seek. They are looking for something fundamentally religious, but what we are offering is simply not addressing their needs.

Perhaps it is time to declare the truth. Liberal religion has managed to make itself irrelevant. We have marginalized ourselves and, in many ways, while endlessly examining ourselves, have failed to observe what is occurring in the broader culture. Because we have been fundamentally unable to correctly assess and understand what is happening around us, we have painted ourselves into a corner. The situation is not hopeless, but it requires our understanding our roots, the ennui of modernity, the failure of post-modernity, and how we, as a church, can fit into what comes next.

A Brief Retrospective

To understand how we arrived at this crossroads, it seems necessary to engage in a bit of intellectual history. I beg the reader’s indulgence with the following walk through the evolution of modern philosophy, truncated though it will be. However, without appreciating the antecedents to our modern liberal faith it is impossible to see how it fundamentally disconnects from our culture and therefore a path to relevance.

Early in the Enlightenment it became clear to a number of forward thinkers that the Age of Reason had profound implications for religion. As Europeans moved out of the Age of Faith, they realized that the world was, indeed, a very complex place and they began thinking in earnest about that complexity. Clearly there was a great deal of physical complexity to be explored and early scientists from the Renaissance forward began their work of understanding astronomy, biology, physics, chemistry and the rest of it. As that work advanced, it became clear that the social order that had been predicated on faith was itself suspect and that suspicion quickly led to a realization that the nature and role of man in the universe was very much up for grabs.

Philosophy, as fundamentally distinct from theology, began to flower in the West as it not had since Ancient times. These early attempts at philosophy took their cues from the ancients: Socrates, Plato and Aristotle among others. The ancient problems of metaphysics, ethics, aesthetics, political philosophy and epistemology become subjects of incisive and profound debate. Against that backdrop two main streams of thought emerged in the late 17th and early 18th Centuries. The Realists, represented by Descartes, articulated a fundamental dualism that distinguished between body and mind. The body, according to Descartes and his lineage, is a machine subject to the laws of physics. The mind was something else again. Truth, according to the Realists, could not be had by observation alone, but only by deduction and, thus, the superiority of mind over nature was firmly established. For the Realists, the body was merely a vessel for the higher functions of the mind and this led to a devaluation of the material world.

The British Empiricists, in reaction to the Continental Realists, developed an epistemology based on sense data. In the hands of Locke and Hume, and their followers, the material word is the fundamental reality. All claims not based in exterior physical reality as perceived by the senses are deemed not proved by reason and met with skepticism. While a tremendous boon to scientific method, this monistic reductionism to mere physical reality created massive philosophic problems when it came to epistemology, and, by extension, ethics and aesthetics. For the Empiricists, it was impossible to reason from what “is” to what ought to be and thus there was a fundamental dilemma at the core or Empiricism. Indeed, the Empiricists managed in a few short decades to dissociate the true from the good and the beautiful and, simultaneously, they redefined the true to exclude matters of speculation divorced from science. They reduced all truth to what can be deduced from the observation of phenomena and thereby gutted the entire philosophic endeavor in metaphysics, ethics and aesthetics. Their epistemological methodology was so powerful that it was a death blow to the Realist point of view which was wholly speculative in comparison and not even remotely capable of rising to the challenge. The Empiricists set the parameters of the debate of fundamental ideas for next one and half centuries.

Immanuel Kant, without doubt the greatest of the Enlightenment philosophers, attempted to unify what the Empiricists had managed to dissociate. His principal books Critique of Pure Reason, Critique of Practical Reason and Critique of Judgment address truth, ethics and aesthetics in turn. At the heart of his arguments is the distinction between phenomena and noumena (that which is perceived by the senses and that which is understood by the mind a priori). Accepting, for the most part, a monological world view posited by the Empiricists, Kant argued that this world is organized by mental concepts for which there is no purely empirical basis. Without these, there would be mere parade on unchoate sense experience. He thus developed a philosophy of Idealism. Yet for all its complexity, critics agree that this sophisticated epistemology was built on a sophistic bit of legerdemain which rendered it fundamentally incapable of reconciling the dissociations generated by the Empiricists between mind, matter and morals. Tried as he might, Kant could not create the unified field theory of this day.

In response to the coldly materialistic and rationalist view that was emerging as the consensus of the Enlightenment sprung the Romantic Movement. The philosophic precursors to the Romantic Movement - Leibnitz, Fichte and Spinoza - argued that nature was monistic, not dualistic. However, unlike the Empiricists, they fundamentally denied the notion that the world of phenomena was the essence of the reality but rather that phenomena were a mere manifestation of a higher reality (typically, God or Nature). Their views tended towards a pantheistic worldview that rendered phenomena fundamentally illusory. They exalted imagination, intuition, faith, and inspiration and had a fundamental contempt for the rational, which they viewed as dissociative and harmful. For some, followers of Fichte, this involved a path of transcending the world of appearance and union with a Transcendental Self. For the followers of Spinoza, there was a movement of identifying with nature. Beyond the original progenitors of this worldview, there was little attempt to develop a thoughtful moral system, it became clear fairly quickly that “act naturally” was not a sufficient moral code in the shadow of the violent callousness of nature itself. Romanticists did (and still do) idealize primitive cultures while ignoring the fact that in these cultures life was far from progressive and, for most, was nasty, brutish and short. Because they devalued reason, the Romantics tended to be fuzzy thinkers.

Into this mix stepped the German Idealists. Schelling and Hegel argued that that the fundamental distinction pointed out by Descartes was a false dichotomy. That mind and nature must emerge from the same matrix, the same “ground of being” and must therefore be unified. At the most fundamental level, there was no meaningful distinction between subject and object (mind and matter). They went on to say that Spirit (Geist in German) was working itself out in the world of phenomena (which contains both mind and matter). This worldview stated that reality is a process of unified reality expressing itself in multiplicity and in a process of teleological development. As Hegel put it, “The Absolute is in the process of its own becoming.” At its root, this developed Idealism proposed a transpersonal reality and a teleological direction to history and human development.

Within a few decades German Idealism was dead letter. It had been supplanted by political systems (such as communism) and by the rise of the nation state, industrialism, capitalism and scientific progress (all of which were the natural outgrowth of the ideas of the British Empiricists). This rush of efficiency brushed aside the insights of these philosophers as quaint and fundamentally irrelevant metaphysics.

Also problematic was the fact that the German Idealists were depending primarily on a flash of intuitive insight. The physical sciences did not support their theories and their worldview could not be substantiated by scientific method (though it seemed to comport with the emerging theories of social and physical evolution). These philosophers were unable to propose a methodology to prove their contentions - a way to show that, indeed, reality was nondual and transpersonal. Their arguments were mere words on a page and lost in the headlong rush of modernity.

The Rise of Liberal Theology

As is always the case, Christian systematic theology took its cues from the general cultural developments. In this case, theology was transformed by the principles of the Enlightenment. Christian theology was subjected to the scrutiny of reason and was stripped of the miraculous and the mysterious. By the middle of the 19th Century, Jesus had become merely an historical figure and the powerful tools of textual criticism had torn to shreds any vestige of the notion that the Bible was the infallible word of God. By the end of the 19th Century, God was dead.

As humanity stepped into the 20th Century, it did so with the awesome legacy of the power of scientific method with its roots in materialist monism. This worldview allowed humanity to make great strides in advancing education, medical care, political freedom, democracy, increased standards of living, technology, and our collective general understanding of the universe. Most of these benefits were relegated to the few. The Enlightenment also spawned the corporation, the democratic nation sate, capitalism, and a view that people and the environment are essentially very complex machines to be used and harnessed for the purposes of men. It should have come as no surprise that the full flowering of this worldview in the 20th Century was, with all its advances, also a moral wasteland of genocides, world wars of unimagined horror, environmental degradation, economic exploitation and a host of other evils. The Enlightenment world view left us with vast technological capability, but did not commensurately advance our ability to think or act morally. It gave us amazing tools, but no equivalently noble understanding of how to use them.

Recent Theological History

In the midst of the horror of modernity, the Existentialists arose. Growing out of the phenomenology of Husserl and the dismissal of the German Idealists, there was a growing visceral realization of the implications of the fact that materialism provided no basis for ethics and that Enlightenment rationalism was a spiritual cul de sac. The Existentialists reasoned that because matter was all there was, all that was possible was to simply be and to act authentically according to that being. In Christian theology, this movement manifested itself as liberal theology. Soren Kierkegaard promulgated a leap of faith. The great Christian myths were reinterpreted to remove the irrational and transformed into metaphorical realities. Karl Barth attempted to separate Christ from culture. Rudolph Bultmann worked to demythologize Christianity and Paul Tillich sought to find philosophic solace in tying Christianity to the works of Hiedegger and other existentialists. And finally, the process theologians attempted to redefine Christian faith as a pluralistic and inclusive expression of the divine.

Given the political ferment of the mid-Century, Liberation Theology arose as a means to combat oppressive systems. While there is no appreciable systematic theology for this movement, it grows fundamentally out of a reinterpretation of the Christian salvation myth as a mandate for social liberation and change. Growing out of Marxist ideology and a recognition of the mandates of teachings of the historical Jesus, this movement took shape as a social force particularly in Central and South America.

On the intellectual front, post-modernism emerged as a critique of the Enlightenment world view. It’s central tenet, that all thought is culturally embedded and therefore inescapably relative, sought to neutralize the political and economic excesses of the Enlightenment while not discarding its essentially monistic materialist worldview. Because post-modern thought is fundamentally pluralistic and global, it has found great resonance with many people with religious sensibilities. It seems “spiritual” and universal. But while it promises an open-hearted compassion, it fundamentally and irrevocably runs aground on the shoals of moral relativism which, in the blink of an eye, is transformed into moral nihilism. Thus, the core of liberal theology, as it has evolved to date, arises from a world view that cannot fundamentally address the question of moral nihilism because it is fundamentally founded on a radical materialistic monism. Any religion which cannot rise above moral nihilism cannot survive for long.

In the end, most of liberal theology of the last century and the religious formulations it spawned are fundamentally secular ideas dressed in religious language. They are not authentically religious at their core but are rather secular ideas clothed in the guise of religion. And because the secular ideas themselves are deeply problematic, dressing them up in religious language is like the wolf donning grandma’s clothes.

Unitarian Universalism Emerges

The Unitarian Universalist Association, established in 1961, was founded largely on humanist principles. The Humanist Manifesto of 1933 and its restatements in 1972 and 2003 contain many tenants that the vast majority of modern Unitarian Universalists would nominally find acceptable expressions of their world view. The world views expressed in these documents are attempts at creating a wholly secular liberal religion – one devoid of the need to mythic gods or anything beyond the material. They are based on the fundamentally monistic world view of the Empiricists that admits nothing beyond physical reality. While the Humanist documents contain aspirational goals that could be construed as moral, those goals can be immediately dismissed as fundamentally and irrevocably unsupported and unprovable by the very methodology on which the humanists claim to rely…reason. They are articles of pure faith and worse, they are disingenuous because they have been known to be false for close to 300 years. As became evident in the 1700s, reason (in the formal philosophic sense) cannot provide a sufficient basis for morality if all of reality is merely material. What “is” (i.e. material reality) can never be a sufficient basis for what “ought” to be. Put in concrete terms, scientists can splice genes but cannot tell society what the ethical use of that technology should be. This internal contradiction renders scientific materialism, in its pure form, a fundamentally bankrupt worldview when it comes to morals or beauty. It can provide no basis for religion and thus secular religious Humanism was dead on arrival.

Much of the recent hand-wringing over the future of Unitarian Universalism, and its being mired in late stage humanism, weak forms of liberation theology and post-modern multiculturalism, can be attributed to the fact that our faith is premised on this reductionist world view. There is simply no specifically moral or religious power in the tenants of Enlightenment and post-Enlightenment thought. Some elements, while cautious of stating this too directly, have realized the consequences of being too wedded to an Enlightenment world view that is premised solely on materialism. The options are either to dress up symbols of faith as though they have some metaphoric meaning that is intrinsic to themselves, to culturally appropriate and bastardize religious practices from other cultures in a vain hope to import superficial meaning, devolve into mere political action without a fundamental moral base, or to flee into Romanticism. All four are evident in the modern UU church. We are an intellectually bankrupt faith that drifting without a source for deep morality or conviction. We therefore shamelessly plagiarize the secular culture in an attempt to create a pastiche that will pass for meaning. We have been unable to find that intellectual integrative framework that allows us to generate a compelling moral and aesthetic framework. Instead, we are heirs to a cold rational view of the world that ultimately deadens, rather than enlivens, its adherents. We vaguely recognize the horrors of modernity and confusion of post-modernity, but we have not sufficiently questioned the assumptions of modernity and post-modernity such that we would seek a compelling alternative. We are essentially materialists hoping, against reason, for hope.

And so, whither Unitarian Universalism?

The New Physics and the New Age

The early part of the 20th Century brought with it a radical restructuring in the way we look at the physical world. In the very large and the very small, the universe became a very strange place. People began to recognize that these discoveries had massive philosophical implications. Physical cosmology allowed for the regeneration of philosophic metaphysics. One of the first to grasp these implications was Alfred North Whitehead. While he carefully distanced himself from the German Idealist excesses, he revived and recast many of the nascent ideas that had been articulated by Schilling and Hegel. Whitehead, while not completely able to shed the philosophic discussions of the past, was able to resurrect the notion of valid interior reality (and hence the possibility of morality). He articulated a view that reality is process and that “god” is not yet, but becoming. Whitehead’s arguments were difficult to grasp and not readily accessible to laypeople, but a few theologians that saw the implications for resurrecting a viable ground for new understanding of the notion of divinity in the modern world. That theological understanding has profound implications and seems to hold great promise, but it is unwedded to any type of religious practice.

At the same time, philosophers in the East were seeing corollaries between their complex cosmologies and the loose implications of Western science. Sri Aurobindo, educated in the West, wrote extensively to establish, from the perspective of Hindu Vedantic philosophy, a non-dual view of the world that transcended both monism and dualism. Again, the notions were remarkably similar to those of the German Idealists. However, they were also backed by millennia of spiritual practice (in the forms of janna, karma, bhakti, tantric and raja yoga) that made the discussion subjectively authentic and which provided what was missing from Whitehead’s intellectual construct – repeatable, consistent and predictable non-dual human experiences. Aurobindo’s ideas while revolutionary were firmly rooted in the Advaita schools of Vedantic philosophy. Many of his ideas have analogues in philosophical Taoism and the more philosophic streams of Mahayana Buddhism. Moreover, the states of non-dual consciousness reported by yogis parallels similar non-dual states found in virtually all mystic traditions of both the East and the West. Nevertheless, Aurobindo’s writings were the first large scale attempt to integrate deeper Hindu philosophic ideas into a Western framework, informed by Western philosophic debate and then recent scientific developments. People took notice.

As it came to pass, Aurobindo’s philosophy had a great deal of influence in the West. Due largely to the unheralded work of Frederic Spiegelberg, The work of Aurobindo was introduced to key participants in the Beat movement in San Francisco, including Alan Watts, Allen Ginsberg, Michael Murphy, Dick Price and Jack Kerouac. Fritz Perls, Abraham Maslow, and other intellectual and cultural luminaries of the time such as Gregory Bateson, Aldous Huxley, Joseph Campbell, and Ram Dass were also deeply influenced. This San Francisco renaissance in turn led to the rise of Esalen and the founding of the California Institute of Integral Studies Through this lineage, Aurobindo’s influence on the thinking of progressive spiritual practitioners in the West cannot be overstated.

In addition to these philosophic developments, the 20th Century saw the emergence of a whole new science – psychology – which was specifically designed to explore inner space. For the first time the rigors of reason were turned inwards. However, the same rules that applied to scientific inquiry could not effectively plumb the depths of the human psyche. This inner world turned out to be a weird and wonderful landscape filled with all sorts of realities – rational and irrational. Interestingly, the psychological movement became the human potential movement when it came into contact with the philosophy of Aurobindo in San Francisco in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Some of the manifestations of this collision were truly cultlike but most were seriously grounded in theory and clinical practice. Maslow, Perls, Rogers, Frankl, Groff and others were influenced directly or indirectly by the evolutionary, transpersonal spirituality of Aurobindo and his introduction to the West in San Francisco in the late 1950s and 1960s.

In the 1960s Eastern thought and the human potential movement collided with hallucinogenic experiences and they all went mainstream. At the same time, social unrest brought about by racial injustice and the Vietnam War galvanized a generation. This was a tremendous time of intellectual ferment and radical new ways of thinking emerged about human rights, education, politics, ecology, gender, race and host of other fields. The fact that this was not purely rational in an Enlightenment sense gave permission to many to abandon reason. The resulting consciousness movement is a patchwork of the truly looney and the profound. It is strikingly varied and diverse movement. Many ideas that have emerged in popular culture seem fundamentally unreasonable. Yet serious work based on a fundamentally altered worldview not based solely an Enlightenment scientific materialism is being done by scholars, scientists and academicians. Indeed, these streams of thought are gaining growing recognition in academic circles as having significant insights that are advancing human understanding. In short, some of this movement seems to be an emergence of an anti-intellectual Neo-Romantic movement while other parts seem to be developing a fundamentally Transrational philosophy that has deep intellectual credibility. These later developments are worthy of our serious consideration.

What is most interesting about the New Consciousness movement is that its philosophical tenants are almost uniformly rooted in personal and corporate disciplines and practices. These range from the rationally odd and apparently unsupportable (such as the magical use of crystals and astrology) to the highly disciplined and culturally proven (highly disciplined zen and yoga practices). Some of these ideas seem nothing less than irrational wishful and muddied thinking, but others are sublime in the richness of their tradition and ability to connect ideas and experiences common to the human condition. This is not a small matter. Sorting these out is important work and most people cannot be bothered – they simply label it all as New Age and dismiss it. For thinking religious people, that is a shame. The salient fact is that millions of people are part of this movement and exploring their inner landscape (as well as acting to change the world) in intentional communities with a view to finding truth and meaning. Is that not the very definition religion?

A Modest Proposal

I would submit that “religion” in a rather chaotic and disparate set of displays is happening around us throughout our culture. It is estimated that 20% of the population in the United States is open to the idea of transpersonal spirituality and at least dabble in aspects of that spirituality. This new religion is most definitely not a liberal religion rooted in the Enlightenment but rather a transpersonal religion springing from the implications of the new physics and rooted in both Eastern and Western nondual philosophies. It is a fundamental shift of worldview and, at this point, we, as Unitarian Universalists, are, for the most part, lagging far, far behind these trends because we do not understand them or know what to make of them. We are locked in old arguments about dead issues. The world has moved on and left us behind. Yet, if we pay attention, we as Unitarian Universalists are uniquely situated to participate in what is a major cultural shift that is only gaining momentum. Why is it that we are so well situated to grasp this opportunity?

First, and most important, we are not truly affiliated with a mythic tradition. Our Christian roots have been effectively cut and while we can and should look at the historical Jesus and the Christian tradition, we do so as we would any spiritual tradition. We have no need to perpetuate symbols that have lost their meaning to thinking people in our culture. In short, we are in a very different position from mainline churches faced with the same problems and which must, by virtue of their heritage, cleave to an outdated liberal religion grounded in a fundamentally materialist world view.

Second, our roots in the humanist movement allow us, in all good conscience, to take the next step into world of transpersonal psychology and the academically responsible manifestations of the human potential movement. We can read and incorporate the latest thinking on human development and foster the individual and corporate growth of individuals in ways that allow people to reach their full potential. We provide a community in which that can happen, and with a bit of thought, we can begin to create structures that truly allow congregants to move up Maslow’s hierarchy of needs and live authentic, more psychologically whole, lives. If we do this one thing, our churches will, inevitably grow and grow in very healthy ways.

Third, our religious syncretism can be changed from mere dabbling to a commitment to explore interior space in ways that are culturally authentic and proven. We are ideally situated to assist individual congregants in finding their own spiritual practices from any one of many traditions that allow them to explore and discover their interior space and reconnect with an integrated reality that is neither fundamentally monistic or dualistic. There is something to be said for creating depth around these practices as is the case for many spiritual traditions. Our genius is that we are not wedded to any particular tradition but can help congregants navigate a spiritual practice that will, over time, create great meaning for them and for their communities.

Fourth, our theologians can be at the vanguard of thinking about the moral and sociological implications of the cosmological conclusions that are being derived as this New Consciousness unfolds. It has been said that saving our planet doesn’t involve understanding how to live morally but rather in understanding how to get human beings to agree to live morally. This type of sea change of consciousness requires insight, focus, perspective and a fundamentally integral view of the world that will allow for thoughtful but forceful change. It also requires thoughtful political action designed to unite and integrate world views rather than foster the polarization and divisions that exist in our body politic.

Conclusion

This article is a call for leadership in our seminaries and in the denomination as a whole to begin a revisioning of Unitarian Universalism that is not a rehashing of fundamentally failed materialist viewpoints from the past or the imposition of the moral relativism of the post-modern critique, but rather a brave exploration of the vanguard of progressive thinking about cosmology, human consciousness, modern religious practice and the redesign of the social order to permit sustainable human and ecological structures. We have the potential of turning our churches into centers of spiritual life that are on the cutting edge of intellectual, cultural and moral change. It is an unparalleled opportunity that should not be missed. Indeed, if we ignore it, we do so at our peril.


Matthew Wesley holds a Masters of Divinity from Fuller Theological Seminary and a J.D. from Stanford Law School. He is a member of the Woodinville Unitarian Universalist Church in Woodinville, Washington and is a practicing estate planning attorney.

© 2007. Matthew W. Wesley. All rights reserved.

Books

These books that have influenced me deeply in my approach to life and my understanding of the world in which we live. Not all of these are for everyone - and indeed a number of them will certainly not be many people's cup of tea. I hope you enjoy poking around here to see if something grabs your a fancy. Key books are at the top with pictures. Other less influential, but still valuable books a below as links.

Books That Have Changed My Life:

Life Divine, Sri Auorbindo (1985)
The Life Divine explores for the Modern mind the great streams of Indian metaphysical thought, reconciling the truths behind each and form this synthesis extends in terms of consciousness the concept of evolution. This work has transformed the way many in the west understand the nature of reality. A truly important and profound book.



Process and Reality, Alfred North Whitehead (1978)
I first read Whitehead in college and it has shaped the way I understand life and the nature of reality since. Whitehead's efforts to to revive the remnants of Idealism in the age of the new physics are profound. While it is a difficult read, I cannot recommend this book highly enough. (Note: Because of the difficulty, some suggest reading Sherburne's commentary instead.)



Brief History of Everything, Ken Wilber (2007)
An altogether friendly and accessible account of men and women's place in a universe of sex, soul, and spirit, written by an author of whom New York Times reporter Tony Schwartz says: "No one has described the path to wisdom better than Ken Wilber." Wilber examines the course of evolution as the unfolding manifestation of Spirit, from matter to life to mind, including the higher stages of spiritual development where Spirit becomes conscious of itself.

Upanishads, Juan Mascaro (editor) (1965)
The Principal Upanishads form a series of philosophical discourses between teacher and student that question the inner meaning of the world. Composed beginning around the eighth century BCE, the Upanisads have been central to the development of Hinduism, exploring its central doctrines: rebirth, karma, overcoming death, and achieving detachment, equilibrium, and spiritual bliss.






Other Books That Have Shaped My Thinking

At this point, these are in no particular order.