-- offer a community of faith, a community of friends, of mutual support, of laughter and love, warmth and acceptance, sharing the faith that life is good, that justice is attainable, that caring redeems us, and that joy is one another’s company. We worship: in the sense of acknowledgment of that which is of highest worth, worship, as the active process of renewing and strengthening our connection to that which is of highest worth; worship as the quiet centering of our selves wherein we find peace. We are not, after all, a secular humanist social club. We are a religion, with rituals and principles and a spiritual path that leads us toward greater and greater depth in our capacity for gratitude. These things are possible: Worship, religion, a community of faith. And you don’t have to give up your freedom to have them, you don’t have to turn over the authority of your individual conscience to the priest at the door, you don’t have to turn off your brain when the sermon starts, you don’t have to suppress the impulse to ask discomfiting questions, you don’t have to shut up and believe what you’re told. You can have your cake of freedom, and reason, and acceptance, and also eat of the cake of faith community, and worship, and religion. The dilemma of having to choose between church and conscience, between faith and freedom, is a false dilemma. It really is possible to have both revelation and reason. No one need feel forced to choose between salvation without tolerance and tolerance without salvation. We can have religion, worship, and the spiritual support a faith community affords without having to swallow the horsepill of dogma and accept the undemocratic rule of the clergy on matters of theology as well as church policy and practice. We can think and believe what our lived experience directs that we should believe without having to stay away from churches, and forego the worship services, forgo the loving fellowship, maybe even forego having religion at all. And more than that: as the Unitarian theologian Francis David said in the 16th century, We need not think alike to love alike. You can be in religious community with lots of people who have very different outlooks. Not only are you free to believe as your heart, mind, and conscience dictates, but the wonderful thing is, so are all the people sitting around you. Our gospel – our “good news” -- is the model that we embody of living together, enjoying the stimulation of diversity, the strength of diversity, the impetus to personal and institutional growth of diversity – and magnifying the advantages of diversity through our democratic commitments that allow those diverse voices to all be heard -- while at the same time living together in harmonious community. OK, so the harmony isnt perfect, but we do about as well as denominations with a lot less diversity of belief.
Posted on: Sat, 22 Nov 2014 02:01:12 +0000
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