Sailing Through the Great Night: A Meditation on Liberal Religion

A friend recently commented on how Unitarian Universalism is essentially humanistic. She was writing as one of our theist UUs. And as she has a bit of a snark streak she almost certainly shouldn’t even be held responsible for her inability to avoid a dash of that snark even while owning her own humanism. Her small not quite buried aside was how precious and foolish were those nontheistic humanist compatriots who think human agency is enough in this life. Sort of a tweak family members do to each other…

I’ve actually been thinking about this subject myself, not so much the question of human and divine agency, rather the large idea of what Unitarian Universalism is, as I have been working on edits for my next book (Field Notes From a Zen Life, due from Wisdom Publications in the Fall of 2012. Thanks for asking). The book is about, as the title says, my Zen life and practice. But there’s no way to address that without also addressing even if only in passing my Unitarian Universalism.

It is my opinion that Unitarian Universalism is the largest institutional expression of an emergent Western theological stance best described as “liberal religion.”

Turns out Wikipedia has a brief article, what they call a stub giving liberal religion a definition. The article reads:

“Liberal religion is a religious tradition which embraces the theological diversity of a congregation rather than a single creed, authority, or writing. Because it may draw resources from many traditions, it cannot normally be characterized as Christian, Jewish, or any particular religious faith.
Theologian James Luther Adams defined the “five smooth stones of liberalism” as:

1. Revelation and truth are not closed, but constantly revealed.
2. All relations between persons ought ideally to rest on mutual, free consent and not coercion.
3. Affirmation of the moral obligation to direct one’s effort toward the establishment of a just and loving community.
4. Denial of the immaculate conception of virtue and affirmation of the necessity of social incarnation. Good must be consciously given form and power within history.
5. The resources (divine and human) that are available for achievement of meaningful change justify an attitude of ultimate (but not necessarily immediate) optimism. There is hope in the ultimate abundance of the Universe.^[1]

A religious liberal has been defined as follows:

Good stuff. And, I adore James Luther Adams, arguably the last real theologian Unitarian Universalism has produced. But I would define liberal religion a bit differently.

I think liberal religion has two facets. The first is rationality. The second is humanism. And both terms need some unpacking.

First, rationality or reason.

I believe reason has two usages, both relevant to the matter of liberal religion. The first is the obvious one. This is a full embrace of the great tool of logic and taking a rational approach to matters as a religious principle. A signal mark of liberal religion is how it appreciates and so fully embraces the amazing power of rationality.

And reason has a larger meaning, as well. Or, can. I’d call this wisdom. It is not so much the technical ways of reasoning that we find in the former and enormously important use of reason. But rather it is the way one can rest easy in the larger seeing of things the way they are. It involves not turning away, and being open and generous.

Second, humanism. Now there is a narrow definition and a larger one. The more narrow view has to do with that human agency thing. One need not be a theist to see our scope of control is rather small. Rather, I think the use of humanism as it applies to liberal religion has less to do with etymology or that more narrow definition, although we certainly count among us those who have and currently hold such a view, but humanism today having more to do with a view that the matters of religion whether one believes in deities or not are best given focus within our lived lives.

Humanism, is in this sense, naturalism. The natural world is where we live and breath and die and where we find meaning and purpose.

In this sense liberal religion is quintessentially humanistic.

So, liberal religion is a rationalist and humanistic approach to religion. In its institutional expression as Unitarian Universalism it is open to theists and nontheists alike.

And what matters most to me is that it has opened its doors and hearts to the Western Buddhist community, giving us a place to raise our children and to manifest the fruits of our practice and faith.

All of us together on this blue boat home…