One of the most difficult things about being a Unitarian Universalist here in New Zealand is having to constantly explain what a Unitarian is, so most people tend to keep pretty quiet about being UU. Not because they are in any way ashamed or ambivalent, but because they know it will be followed by the inevitable query - "So what is Unitarianism?" For most of us here in New Zealand that is like getting the last question on "Who wants to be a millionaire" having already used up all your lifelines.
It's the hard one, and not made any easier by knowing that most people expect a nice compact "sound bite' answer, like "I believe in Jesus, or the Bible, or the Koran or Buddha or Joseph Smith or Ron Hubbard or……you get the picture.
So today I thought that I would try to answer that question, at least from a personal perspective. I will also outline why I think that Unitarianism is relevant here, in Aotearoa New Zealand, and now, 2003.
But first, I would like to talk about what makes the question "What is Unitarianism" so difficult.
Firstly, there is the name.
The stock answer says that we are Unitarians because we don’t believe in the trinity, and we are Universalists because we believe in Universal Salvation rather than original sin. Yet ask anyone on the street today in our secular society whether they believe in the trinity and you will most likely get a blank stare. So having a name that is largely irrelevant in the modern context, and that is based on the story of one small tribe at one particular time in our history doesn't really help. I have my own personal meaning for the term Unitarian Universalist, and I will come back to that later.
So then we get to “What is it?”
Perhaps a suitable analogy is to try to describe the wind. The wind is never actually seen directly, (although we have taken to give it names) - but we are all familiar with its effects. You can feel it on your face
You can hear it in the trees, power lines or Aeolian harps
You can see the way that it moves the leaves, the rain and the clouds.
And without it, you would have to wonder whether or not any of us would actually be here at all - given that all our ancestors arrived by one sailing vessel or another.
Unitarianism is a bit like that.
We have no creed, no prophet, and no holy book.
Instead we prefer to be recognised by our deeds - the way we live -and hopefully you can see the effects that our Unitarianism has on us.
What is also challenging is that Unitarianism is a living, growing thing, and therefore constantly changing, as both we, and the world that we live in, changes. For me, taking the words of a prophet or the bible as the sum total of divine wisdom is like cutting a rose. No matter how perfect, beautiful or relevant it is at the time, from that moment on it is dead. No amount of preservation will bring it back to life. So, although as a living tradition Unitarian Universalism changes, the values on which it is based don't change. It is like an ad that appears in Harpers magazine, showing a tie died T-shirt and a peace sign, with the slogan "Styles change - values don't"
These values are succinctly stated on our affirmation:
• The inherent worth and dignity of every person
• Justice, equity and compassion in human relations
• Acceptance of one another and encouragement to spiritual growth
• A free and responsible search for truth and meaning
• The right of conscience and the use of democratic process
• The goal of world community with peace, liberty and justice for all
• Respect for the interdependent web of all existence.
This affirmation is the result of over 400 hundred years of freethinking - and crystallised in this version in 1985. It is no coincidence that the beginning of modern science was also around 400 years ago, and there are several other connections between these two things besides their concurrent emergence.
• Both have an inquiring and open mind as pre -requisites. Or as the saying goes "The mind is like a parachute - they only work when they are open"
• They both challenge the existing worldview. For example, democracy was as foreign a concept then, as was the idea that the earth went round the sun. "
• And they need each other. Einstein put it plainly when he said "Religion without science is lame - science without religion is blind"
• And Unitarians are as far as I know it the only ones that have "the results of science" in the preamble to their affirmation.
Matthew Arnold acknowledged the value of freethinking in his 1875 book "God and the Bible"
when he said, "The free thinking of one age is the common sense of the next"
So how do I describe my Unitarianism? - my free and responsible search for truth and meaning?
My illustration comes from my friend Warwick Freeman, who created the "starform."
Here is how it works. This is the public participation - the part of the service where we hope that nobody walks in!
Here is how you do it (Create starform using fingers and thumbs - see illustration top of page)
What is the meaning of the starform?
• We create it ourselves
• It has infinite depth
• The contemplation of the stars is our direct connection to our beginnings and to our future.
• The framework, the four sides is us - the four sides. For me these are curiosity, imagination, honesty and awe., or the Unitarian Quadrilateral that Peter Ferguson described at Adelaide in April, - self, community, earth, cosmos(god).
• We are all at the centre of our universe - a difficult concept to grasp using Newtonion mechanistic physics, but clearly possible since the discoveries of Hubble and others.
• It is always with us.
Add heart shape our star is surrounded by love and joy.
So why do I like Unitarianism, and why do I find it such a natural fit?
It is challenging - and as Plato said in his Dialogues "A life which is unexamined is not worth living"
It provides the basis of an ethical framework. I find this essential in today's information age. We are bombarded by so much information that it acts in much the same way as the ink from a fleeing squid - it surrounds and confuses us.
My free thinking and ethical search allows me to try to create some wisdom from all the information
• It engages me fully - I don't have to deny any part of me to make it fit:
• It values my own direct experience.
• It promotes imagination - to quote Einstein again, who said ‘imagination is more important than knowledge"
• I can appreciate my Christian upbringing, valuing my parents and their beliefs
• I can explore and develop my humanist philosophy, with all that that entails
• And I can rejoice in my cosmos-centred spirituality - (for me, the universe part of Universalist.)
In short, it addresses my intellectual, spiritual and political needs.
The first two of these, the intellectual and spiritual are essentially personal.
The third, political, leads me to why Unitarianism is relevant in New Zealand in 2003.
Unitarianism has a proud history of being at the forefront of social justice. People like Albert Schweitzer and Thomas Jefferson, with their enlightened Unitarian values, have made lasting impact on humanity, and Unitarians continue to lead wherever the fight for justice and equity exists. For example, the head of Amnesty International USA is the ex head of the Unitarian Universalist Association. In New Zealand, from Sir Robert Stout introducing women's suffrage to parliament, to Larry Ross and our nuclear free status, Unitarians have been, and continue to be, leaders.
Today we are poised at perhaps the most interesting point in our human history, the point that cosmologist Brian Swimme calls "The End of the Cenozoic Era."
For the first time in our history, we have the capacity to destroy ourselves, either by nuclear folly, or our rapacious demands on the earth's resources. The skills and tools that we have acquired over the last 60,000 years have done their job magnificently to this point where we are now alone at the top of the food chain - no question about that.
But can we continue down this same path, or do we require a new direction - a new world view - one that can successfully sustain us through the next 60,000 years? I believe that we do need to forge a new world view, and I believe that Unitarian- Universalism is well placed to play the role of blacksmith.
Why?
• Because it is a religious philosophy that respects and values the wisdom of those before us, both primal people and the great religions,
• It is a religious philosophy that can embrace science and the modern scientific method
• It is a religious philosophy that is open to awe, wonder and imagination
• It is a religious philosophy that fully appreciates the interdependent web of all existence, not only our planet earth, but the entire cosmos
• It is a religious philosophy that has strong roots in social justice
• It is a religious philosophy that fits easily into a secular environment, which is definitely New Zealand in 2003,
• It is a religious philosophy that celebrates being fully human.
So now, more than ever, there is a need for an open, freethinking mind. Wherever you look, either at the GE debate, medical research like stem cell and cloning, or the current political situation, the need to think deeply and rationally is at hand.
So what will be the essence of the required New World view?
In my opinion, it will revolve around changing our reason for being - from one of collecting things, to one of expressing values.
The things that we really need to sustain us as humans with a blinding imagination include love, compassion, humour, generosity, and respect. These are not only abundant, but they increase the more they are used and shared, rather than diminish a point noticed by 20th century philosopher Lennon McCartney when he said "And in the end, the love you make is equal to the love you take"
They are a source of free energy to everyone, yet we devote the majority of our efforts to the creation and ownership of things, consumerism, - all at the expense of the earth, which is seen merely as a repository of materials that are necessary to make more things - a sort of cosmic hardware store.
It is remarkable that we have developed all these amazing skills and tools to create enormous wealth, yet seem incapable of developing the skills and wisdom necessary to share it equitably. Witness the recent breakdown of WTO talks - we still squabble endlessly over distribution.
Perhaps the starkest illustration of the extremes of these clashing worldviews occurred in The Press recently. In the “in Brief” section, were two items side by side. One told about how Australia had joined in on making a new warplane at the cost of $400 billion. The other talked about how antimatter had been measured for the first time. So here we have on the one hand, the cream of the western world devoting (and it is a religious devotion) obscene amounts of money on the ultimate "thing" - a totally redundant weapon. It is useless in the war on terror, and why spend all that money when you can kill 500,000 people and destroy a country's infrastructure with another weapon of mass destruction that costs nothing - economic sanctions.
So while people the world over are starving and homeless, (36,000 children die of starvation related causes every day) the so called "developed" nations are spending the equivalent of the total NZ GNP for 5 1/2 years on the ultimate thing.
In contrast, next door we see measurement of the other extreme - antimatter - literally no thing. It is what Brian Swimme in his book "The Hidden Heart of the Cosmos" termed "the all nourishing abyss", and could well lead us closer to the answer to our deepest religious and philosophical conundrum- " where did we come from?"
That both these stories rate only a fleeting "in brief" shows how distracted we are from addressing the important issues that face us.
As Unitarians, we need to confirm our willingness to participate in this essential debate about the spiritual direction of the human race. We must not be cowed by the fundamentalist view that blames "the liberal tradition" for all our shortcomings.
We have the history, the philosophy and the necessary open mind.
And I believe, as luck would have it, we have the name.
For me, the name Unitarian Universalist has a meaning that is richly informed by the work of Thomas Berry, Brian Swimme, and David Bumbaugh. It literally means “one universe”
The universe is our absolute frame of reference. It includes all that we know and all that we have yet to know so as our ultimate frame of reference it is an appropriate name, just as Christian indicates for them that Christ is their ultimate frame of reference.
With this established, our other divine revelation is that it is one entity -a beautifully diverse, multi-centred interdependent web of spectacular complexity - but one none the less. So the term Unitarian is very relevant if taken in this context. As David Bumbaugh said in Boston, the universe story is our story, all 13.7 billion wonderful years of it.
I think that we are extremely fortunate that a term of derision that was foisted upon us should turn out to be such an accurate moniker for a 21st century religious organisation.
So we have the history, the philosophy and the name -
These need to be matched by courage in our values - that way we can continue to really make a difference.
Kia Ora.
Derek McCullough - Auckland Unitarian Church Sunday 28th September 2003