The Paradox of Liberal Religious Institutions
Hymns
#354 We Laugh, We Cry
#318 We Would Be One
#123 Spirit of Life
Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of the Emerald Coast Valparaiso, FL
December 27, 2009
Thank you for inviting me to come speak with you today.
As Shar mentioned, I am in seminary studying in the hope of becoming a UU minister someday soon. This past semester, I took a class on Unitarian Universalist history. It was a wonderful class, and I learned much. I was also able to explore in detail something about our faith that has been nagging me for a few years now, namely, Unitarian Universalist relationships to institutions, both in theory and in practice, in the past and the present. And so today, I would like to share with you some of what I learned…for as the song says…we believe that sharing is an answer. And…we come together here, to make sense of what we find. (Reference to #354 We Laugh, We Cry).
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A few years back the latest Pew Forum Study on Religion was released. (http://religions.pewforum.org/affiliations) From the data, it was clear that there were quite a few more people in the United States who self-identified as Unitarian Universalist than those we were actual members of Unitarian Universalist congregations.
This topic came up in my class this past semester, and my colleague Eric Banner did a more in depth analysis of the data, in that he compared it to data from other denominations, to see if any insights could be gained. What he found was significant.
So according to the latest Pew Study on Religion, roughly 0.3% of the population of the United States identified as Unitarian Universalists. (Basically we amount to a rounding error)! 0.3% of a total USA population of 308 million people equates to 924,000 Americans. (Slide 2
However, the UUA reports that only 160,000 on the membership rolls of our UU congregations. (http://www.uuworld.org/news/articles/142420.shtml)
This equates to a membership rate of 17%. Only 17% of self-proclaimed Unitarian Universalists are members of a UU congregation.
INTERPRETATION: What does that tell you? It tells you the vast majority, 83%, of Unitarian Universalists in the USA feel reasonable in claiming their Unitarian Universalist identity while NOT being associated with any congregation.
Now before we jump to any conclusions, let’s see what the story is for other denominations. Perhaps this is a common thing in a secular society.
(Summarize the data below)
Do UU’s self-identify at a rate significantly higher or lower than their congregational participation when compared to similar religious organizations?
UCC=1.14M/1.54M = 74% membership rate
Episcopal= 2.1M/3.08M = 68% membership rate
Methodists= 7.9M/15.7M = 50% membership rate
Southern Baptist= 16.2M/20.6M = 79% membership rate
ELCA= 4.7M/6.1M = 77% membership rate
(http://www.ncccusa.org/news/090130yearbook1.html)
UU=160,000/924,000 = 17% membership rate (Slide 3)
My colleague Eric Banner concludes “we have a much higher rate of self-identification relative to our reported membership that these other denominations.”
A few important footnotes to the data:
Membership is determined differently in the different denominations.
Some denominations are notorious for fudging their numbers upwards. Other denominations update their membership rolls quite infrequently. My understanding is that UUA congregations have an incentive to keep their reported membership numbers as small as possible, because more members = higher dues, dues are per member. (The largest UU congregations pay a percentage of their budget as their dues). So these comparison are more quick and dirty than apples to apples. However, the differences are so distinct, I strongly believe they tell a valid story.
So what is going on here? What are these Unitarian Universalists thinking? Who do they think they are? I have a few ideas, but before I share them, I want to share some more data.
In the 1956, the UUA Board of Trustees put together a Committee on Goals to study, among other things, the typical ‘Unitarian Universalist.’ The chair of the committee was Robert B. Tapp (Slide 4). The data collected was from 1965, the final report was published in 1973, but I would argue much of the analysis is still accurate today.
The study showed Unitarian Universalists to be overwhelmingly converts, or ‘come-outers’, from other faiths. Only 12.1% grew up Unitarian or Universalist. (That number is similar today). Robert Tapp’s analysis argued that the central element in the UU experience is the conversion experience, or as we shall see, the de-conversion experience. (Even this word, conversion, is problematic for UUs, as it seems to allude to the born-again conversion of Evangelical Protestantism. Rest assured, this is not was Tapp is talking about). Tapp explained it thus: The typical UU conversion experience is very slow, stretching often from childhood to adulthood, often based on the experience of a university education, he claimed.
Tapp said there were three stages,
1) De-conversion; dropping out of the older religious identification of childhood
2) Assimilation of new values, often due to education
3) “When, and if, for some reasons, these new identification-values become institutionally grounded,” that is, if they decide to join a UU congregation.
(Robinson, p.176)
Furthermore, many Unitarians Universalists came into the denomination to escape churches where power and authority seemed to be way too centralized.
Well, this process of de-conversion and conversion describes the experience of my father exactly. My father (Slide 5)found the Unitarian Society of Germantown in the early 1970’s, after graduating from college and growing up in a dogmatic faith tradition. And I am sure that describes the process that brought many, if not most, of you to this sacred space this winter morning.
So what does that mean? I view this as a symptom of the larger issue of institutionalism vs. anti-institutionalism in Unitarian Universalism. I propose that this 83% of self-identified Unitarian Universalists who are not members of congregations are ‘stuck’ or vacillating in between Tapp’s step two and step three. They got the values, but they are NOT institutionally grounded.
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Let me give a real live example of a famous Unitarian who is proud of being Unitarian, espouses Unitarian ideals at the highest levels of the public discourse, and still is not a member of a Unitarian Universalist congregation.
Ted Sorensen (Slide 6, the guy on right) was John F. Kennedy’s speechwriter. He grew up in a humanistic Unitarian church in Kansas, pre-merger. In the fall of 2008, he and his sister, Ruth Sorensen Singer, were interviewed by UU World magazine, at his apartment in Manhattan overlooking Central Park.
Interviewer: What are some of the Unitarian principles in Kennedy’s speeches?
My favorite of all of Kennedy’s speeches—and usually I try to minimize my role, but in this I did have a major role—was his commencement address at American University [in 1963]. In that speech, one of the lines is, “Our problems are man-made—therefore they can be solved by man.” Sounds like good Unitarianism to me.
In the inaugural address, he concludes saying, “With history the final judge of our deeds . . .” That’s not what other churches would say. That’s Unitarianism.
Interviewer: Why are you not a current member of a church?
Before I lost effective use of my eyes, every Sunday morning I would play tennis. And I justify this when people ask me by saying, “It’s OK because tennis goes back to the Bible.” When they challenge that, I say, “Of course. There’s a passage in the Bible: ‘Joseph served in Pharaoh’s court.’”
I thought that it was one of the basic tenets of Unitarianism that “the whole world is my church.” Look at the view out this window. What church could possibly be as beautiful as that?
[Ruth Sorensen Singer:] We didn’t have church over the summer because it was a small church, and the minister got time off. But when I was around 10 years old, someone asked me, “How come you don’t go to church in the summer?” And I said, “The minister needs time off.” And they asked, “Don’t you need God during the summer?” And I said, “I guess we don’t need God in the winter, either.”
Interviewer: Why do you not refer to yourself as a Unitarian Universalist?
I grew up a Unitarian, and I still am a Unitarian. I’m sure Universalists are equally wonderful.
(http://www.uuworld.org/life/articles/121068.shtml)
…And the interview continues.
So here we have a person who talks at length as to the importance of his Unitarian faith to him but he doesn’t feel the need to be an active member of a UU congregation.
So we have the pew survey, the come-outer experience of most Unitarian Universalists, and the real world example of Ted Sorensen all pointing to the fact that Religious Liberals seem to have a perpetual dissatisfaction of institutional congregational life.
At one level this makes perfect sense, right? After all, what is a liberal? To be a liberal is to believe things have to change. Wasn’t it institutions that got us into this mess in the first place? Institutions have power and power corrupts, right?
Of course, it is not fair to characterize Ted Sorensen as an anti-institutionalist… although he was playing tennis on Sunday, Sorensen was living out his Unitarian values Monday-Friday in his life’s work, doing all he could to transform the world through the workings of a powerful government. Most assuredly, he took to heart what Liberal Religious preachers have been arguing for centuries, namely that what we do in the world, in terms of our life’s work, matters, and matters deeply.
(As a side note, I recognize I am using the word ‘Liberal’ a lot today. I know that in some circles today, Liberal is a dirty word. Often, the word progressive is used in its stead. Well, I don’t buy into that. I reclaim the word Liberal with gusto. But, after reading the local paper, and seeing the billboards, I recognize that is one area where ‘liberal’ probably is a dirty word! You must remember; I just flew in from Berkeley, CA, where liberal is also a dirty word, but for the opposite reason. Being liberal means you are not a radical! This liberal label is relative to the location you find yourself in. For example, James Luther Adams talks about ‘Liberal’ being a dirty word in his writings from the 1930s as well, so time and place matter, and it seems to cycle around).
I looked up Liberal in the dictionary; it had multiple definitions and usages, but for our purposes here today, the most relevant are: (Slide 7)
1. favorable to progress or reform,
2. favorable to or in accord with concepts of maximum individual freedom possible.
3. of or pertaining to representational forms of government rather than aristocracies and monarchies.
4. open-minded or tolerant, esp. free of or not bound by traditional or conventional ideas, values, etc.
But why, then, do the other denominations not have this identity-to-membership problem?
The UU Historian and my professor the Rev. Dr. Susan Ritchie (Slide 8), states it thus:
“Contemporary Unitarian Universalists are notorious for NOT have a strong theology of church–in other words, a strong sense of why it is important to gather in both worship and institution, that sense being defined by an understanding of the holy.”
To answer the question of why many UUs don’t find it important to gather in both worship and institution, as our examples have shown, I will turn our focus from the contemporary world to the past; to our liberal religious history.
Deep within our history, anti-institutionalism is at the core.
UU historian David Robinson writes “ the commitment to spiritual freedom, [a] hallmark of Liberalism, in one sense demands a certain skepticism towards organization and an ultimate reliance on the self.” (p160).
Enter Ralph Waldo Emerson (Slide 9).
Emerson, a Unitarian minister from 1826 to 1832, left the ministry, saying “The profession is antiquated. In an altered age, we worship in the dead forms of our forefathers.” Of course he is known today for his formulation of the philosophy of transcendentalism in his essay “Nature” (1836). As his philosophy grew, he came to believe that the only source of religious knowledge comes from the intuition of one’s soul.
My favorite anecdotal story of Ralph Waldo Emerson is after he left the ministry and became the Concord Sage, a well-known lecturer and essayist living and working in Concord, MA, the young students from the Harvard Divinity school would come out and visit him. He would walk and talk with them, frequently around Walden Pond. A legend has it that one day he picked up a leaf and said to the students, “See this leaf? You can learn more from this leaf than anything they can teach you at Harvard.”
Let me share a few pithy quotes by Emerson, to see where he stands in regards to individualism and institutions.
Emerson writes:
“Every man alone is sincere. At the entrance of a second person, hypocrisy begins.” from Friendship
He further argues:
“I am ashamed to think how easily we capitulate to badges and names, to large societies and dead institutions.” from Self-Reliance
And, further, he caused quite a stir and was accused of being an atheist and poisoning young minds in his Harvard Divinity School Address of 1838. (This puts Emerson in good company (Slide 10); with Socrates, at the very least!) In that address, Emerson discounted Biblical miracles and proclaimed that, while Jesus was a great man, he was not God. Furthermore, he called for a fresh religious inspiration: “Let me admonish you, first of all, to go alone; to refuse the good models, even those which are sacred in the imagination of men, and dare to love God without mediator or veil.”
So he was just speaking what I think of as good Unitarian theology. What’s the big deal, right?
Dan McKanan is the Ralph Waldo Emerson Unitarian Universalist Association Senior Lecturer in Divinity at Harvard Divinity School (Slide 11). He speaks much about the importance of liberal institutions.
He was interviewed last spring and talked about the irony in the name of his faculty title.
Dan states: “One of my spiritual disciplines has become an examination of the paradox embedded into my title, Ralph Waldo Emerson Unitarian Universalist Association Senior Lecturer in Divinity. The Unitarian Universalist Association is a religious institution with long roots. It is very connected with Harvard University, another institution. Ralph Waldo Emerson was perhaps more famously dismissive of institutions than any other person in the history of the United States. So what does it mean to have a chair that is accountable to Ralph Waldo Emerson, to the Unitarian Universalist Association, and to Harvard?”
Dan McKanan asks the question, How can we be deeply inspired by Emerson’s vision of free religion and by his critique of institutions, but also be committed to creating new and better institutions
‘Cultivating Liberal Institutions’: An Interview With Dan McKanan”
http://www.hds.harvard.edu/faculty/mckanan.cfm
Henry Whitney Bellows (Slide 12) and the Free Religious Association
If Emerson rocked the denomination in his Harvard Divinity School Address in 1838 with a call for radical individualism, another Unitarian shook things up 21 years later.
That Unitarian leader was Henry Whitney Bellows. He gave an address to Harvard Alumni in 1859. In it, he called for a renewal of commitment to institutionalism; a renewal to the church in a traditional sense; traditional, but not in a confining or conservative sense.
Henry Whitney Bellows was reacting to the Emersonian view of institutions. Bellows argued for the centrality of the church to the religious life. He called for a renewal of commitment to institutionalism, almost 180 degrees from Emerson, (Robinson, p.88).
Bellows felt that the religious crisis of his time could be discerned as part of a dialectical movement in history and thus a necessary stage in religious development. He saw the self-asserting and self-development and self-culture of Emerson and the transcendentalists as important and necessary, but what follows such a time must be an era of institutions, a period where the emphasis on self-development can translate into more permanent realities, such as the church.
Bellows powerfully argues, “[Institutions are] the only instruments, except literature and the blood, by which the riches of the ages, the experience and wisdom of humanity, are handed down.” (Robinson, p.89). I am not sure it is true, but I certainly find the statement striking.
Free Religious Association
At the Unitarian National Conference of 1866, in Syracuse, NY there were strong debates over creeds and non-creedalism, and sectarianism and non-sectarianism, as well as choosing a name that opened the door to being explicitly outside of the Christian fold. The dissidents in this debate lost, which led directly to the formation of the Free Religious Association. The direction of their thinking, away from supernaturalism toward science, away from theism towards Humanism, showed them to be ahead of their time, ahead of the religious thinking of mainstream Unitarianism. (Robinson, p.107-8). They were lead by the wonderfully named Octavius Brooks Frothingham (Slide 13). Frothingham rejected what he believed was the inherently conservative nature of institutions, which always carried with them the weight of the past. (Robinson, p.112). As is obvious, the shadow of Emerson is all over this. And Emerson, by this time, an old sage, addressed the first meeting of the Free Religious Association in 1867. In the end, institutionally, the Free Religious Association amounted to little. It sputtered out after a decade or two. But intellectually, it pointed the way in which the entire denomination eventually moved.
What we see here is a clear pattern. A pattern of leaving/breaking away/bad mouthing the institution à and then by the next generation, the institution embracing the ideals of those that had previously broken away, and it begins again, and again.
James Luther Adams (Slide 14), the great Unitarian ethicist of the 20th century states it much more eloquently that I.
“As liberals, we assume that liberalism like any other movement, can remain alive only through ‘coming to itself,’ through repentance and return. Only where there is a sincere recognition of incompleteness and failure, only where there is a recovery of depth, breadth, and length, only there is the authentic spirit of religious liberalism to be found. Hence, the liberal expects to hear over and over again: liberalism is dead; long live liberalism.” (Robinson, p.162).
Adams is arguing for a return to ultimate foundations to find renewed vigor.
Once the pattern is recognized and named, then there is choice about whether to repeat it; or possibly, transform it or rise above it. I believe this was accomplished with the institutional leadership of Frederick May Eliot in the 20th century.
Policies and Arguments of Frederick May Eliot (Slide 15) President of the American Unitarian Association 1937-1958 (Slide 16)
1936 saw the American Unitarian Association (AUA) at a low point; some said it was on the verge of collapse. The country was in the depths of the depression, and a general malaise was palpable throughout the denomination. A Commission on Appraisal was instigated by, among others, the aforementioned James Luther Adams. It was titled Unitarians Face a New Age. The chair of the commission was Frederick May Eliot, the minister of Unity Church, in St. Paul, Minnesota. Out of this, he was elected President of the AUA
Eliot was a genius for pragmatic organization, though, interestingly enough, known to be shy and introverted. The Association experienced great growth in membership and congregations under his leadership. Under his watch, religious education was reemphasized. The Unitarian Service Committee was formed (1940) to respond to the rise of fascism. The fellowship movement started in 1948 under his presidency, which is absolutely critical to our health as an Association today. But there are three aspects of his presidency I want to highlight for you here today.
The first is that early in his presidency, Eliot named our strengths. He argued that the Unitarians ability to unite those of very different views its “chief glory….One of the most interesting aspects of our history is the process by which the radicals of one generation have come to be regarded as ‘100% Unitarians’ by succeeding generations. The truth of the matter is that we are a church in which growth is not only permitted but encouraged-growth in thought, growth in sensitiveness to moral values, growth in courage to put religion to work in the world.” (Robinson, p.164).
Welcome Theological Diversity
The second was how he handed an issue which had the potential to tear the denomination apart. His election was contested by some for his perceived sympathy for Humanists! (Robinson, p.164). He not only sympathized with the Humanists, he welcomed and celebrated them! He wrote a series of sermons on Humanists and stressed their contribution to the ‘inner life’. He saw how sustaining Humanistic belief was to people by being an honest faith.
His hospitality to the Humanist movement was critical in the acceptance of their position in the denomination. He wrote, “The really important thing about [the Humanists] is that they care, and care tremendously, for human values. It is moral passion that provides the dynamic for their intellectual efforts and their homiletical endeavors.” Furthermore, he believed only a solid faith can provide the ground for human action and inner growth, which constitute the religious life. Therefore, it is better to have a more limited, yet sounder faith than one that reaches beyond its capacity to support itself honestly. (Robinson, p. 150). And yet Eliot was firm in his personal theistic convictions and argued for the continued use of the word ‘God.’ This equanimity is inspiring to me. I can’t even imagine the horror of the situation if the denomination split over the question of Humanism, it would have been pointless, because by the end of his Presidency, a majority of Unitarians identified as Humanist anyway, just as the pattern would predict! This is what is most striking to me about Frederick May Eliot. I believe that Eliot recognized the pattern and was able to transcend the old pattern of leaving/breaking away from the institution à and then by the next generation, the institution embracing the ideals of radicals.
Redefined Liberal
Frederick May Eliot redefined the liberal as one who (using the pronouns reflective of the time) “is resolved that in the realms of the mind and of the soul there shall be no compulsion, so far as he can prevent it; and he believes that the best way to promote this end is to create and maintain such institutions as can be made to serve human purposes in a wholly free spirit.” (Robinson, p. 165)
So we have Ralph Waldo Emerson à viewing institutions as a threat to liberty
& then we have Frederick May Eliot à viewing institutions as a protection of liberty
This is a serious re-conceptualization.
Eliot saw the Unitarian Church as a “company of seekers, and the bond which holds them closely together is their common confession that what they seek is still beyond them.” (Robinson, p. 165-6).
Or, as the songs says…We search for truth, equality, and blessed peace of mind. And then, we come together here, to make sense of what we find.
Eliot broadened our view of this free faith…which brings us back to the present day.
Have we learned what history has gifted to us
The President of Starr King School for the Ministry is Rebecca Parker(Slide 17). Dr. Parker often speaks for the need in UUism to support institutions, and to overcome our historical anti-institutional bias. There are two UU affiliated seminaries, Meadville Lombard and Starr King. Recently, Meadville has announced they are in talks to merge with Andover Newton Theological school to stay an ongoing entity; furthermore, they are exploring selling their campus. My school, Starr King, must explore funding outside of the UU fold simply because the funding is not there. Dr. Parker talks about this as a systemic lack of support for liberal religious theological education, which has been the case for well over a century.
To put it simply, if you aspire to be a conservative religious leader, you are taken care of. Your education is more often than not well supported. If you want to be a liberal religious leader, more often than not you are on your own, and you will be taking on a lot of debt. Of course, there is more complexity to it, but in general, this is true.
Is it important for religious liberals to support the institutions that educate liberal religious leaders?
Well, friends, we are not going to solve the riddle of liberal religious institutions here today. But may we remember these issues are not unique only to us today; our ancestors have struggled with the same concerns for hundreds of years. May we remember Emerson and Henry Bellows and Frederick May Eliot.
In conclusion,
I Applaud those of you who are the builders and the doers, the shapers and the makers of this institution, the UU fellowship of the Emerald Coast. I applaud you who align yourselves with this living faith community that affirms rather than despairs, that thinks and acts rather than simply adjusting and succumbing. (adapted from Jack Mendelsohn).
I urge you to be mindful; mindful when you find yourself avoiding or badmouthing institutions. Is it a legitimate concern about the institution at hand, or are you just being reactive, just following ‘the pattern’? Can the issues be resolved within the institution? Is leaving truly necessary?
I urge you to recognize that institutions are important. This institution, the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of the Emerald Coast is important.
In Reinventing the Church, David and Beverly Bumbaugh (1997) write:
The church exists to proclaim the [good news] gospel that each human being is infinitely precious, that the meaning of our lives lies hidden in our interactions with each other. The challenge we confront is to be a church that does not bury that great truth beneath all our business, but which enables us to encounter each other with wonder, appreciation, and expectation, to call out of each other strength and wisdom and compassion we never knew we had.
Professor Dan MacKanan asks, “How can we tend to our institutions in a way that recognizes that the institutions themselves are not the ultimate value? How can we put our institutions to the service of our ideals?
I urge you to listen to the words of Ella Baker (Slide 18):
“I was never working for an organization: I have always tried to work for a cause. And the cause to me is bigger than any organization, bigger than any group of people. It is the cause of humanity…The drive of the human spirit for freedom.”
Ella Baker was an African American woman who worked tirelessly for civil and human rights. Over a long career she worked with the NAACP, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and SNCC the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. She was not a UU, but she has something worth hearing.
I urge you to listen to the words of songs we sang here together this morning.
The author of the song we sang together this morning #354 We Laugh, We Cry is Shelley Jackson Denham. (Slide 19) I know Shelley; I worked with her as part of the UU affiliated INSTITUTION the Mountain Retreat and Learning Center, in Western North Carolina. I worked at the Mountain one summer as a spiritual coordinator for the youth camp. How wonderful to have UU institutions working for liberal religious values!
We have our hearts to give, we have our thoughts to receive, and we believe that sharing is an answer.
May we come to respect, and work to strengthen, our institutions, not for their own sake, but in the service of our highest ideals.
May it be so. (Slide 20)