Taking Leave of One's ..... Religion

Sermon by Stephen D. Edington, January 29, 1995

Reading: from Lake Wobegon Days by Garrison Keillor

Taking Leave of One's ..... Religion

Among the things that seem to go with the territory of my profession and calling is that when people find themselves in the presence of a minister--in any kind of social setting--this need seems to come upon them to recount their religious history. ("Oh, you're a minister... well yes, I grew up Methodist and my wife was Presbyterian; she has a brother who's a Presbyterian minister out in Ohio, as a matter of fact...." and on and on like that.) I know that most of the time they're just trying to find a way to make polite conversation and I respond in kind. After all, I figure if I'd said I were a banker they'd probably set about telling me where they do their banking and how their IRAs are coming along. (Maybe I'll try that sometime.)

I got into one such conversation back between Christmas and New Year's, however, that got beyond such superficialities to the point of actually providing the impetus for this sermon. A man I've come to know in Lowell, Massachusetts was driving me to Manchester (New Hampshire) in order to get me connected with an organization up there called the American-Canadian Genealogical Society. It very generous offer on his part to help me out with this little hobby of a research project I'm doing about the extended family of You-Know-Who . (And if you don't, don't worry about it; its not important.) This man is around 60, a life-long citizen of Lowell, an English teacher, and a good Catholic of French-Canadian descent. So as we drove along to Manchester he began talking, of course, about his religion. But it wasn't quite the conversation I was prepared for. With my hardly saying a word, I got this litany from him about all the things--and I do mean all the things--that are wrong with the Catholic Church: The Pope is completely out of touch with what's happening in American Catholicism; we're really messed up when it comes to our teachings about birth control and human sexuality in general; we have to allow priests to marry or we're going to lose the priesthood altogether; we ought to be ordaining women, etc., etc. It sounded like some of the conversations I have in my office with prospective new members who have grown disaffected with their faith. Finally, for the sake of holding up my end of the conversation, if nothing else, I finally ventured a neutral enough question: "Do you see any of the changes you feel the Church needs coming any time soon?" His reply was right in character with everything else he'd been saying: "No; you see, the Church is a very reactionary organization. They usually react about 100 years or so after the fact to anything." Oh, I see. My next question was the one I didn't ask: So, why do you still remain an active and sincere member of your Church?

I'm glad I didn't ask him the question outright, because as it turned out I got my answer less than half an hour later when we arrived at the place where this Genealogical Society is housed, which is in a building that was once a parochial school in Manchester. Its a fascinating place, by the way. In bound volumes and on microfilms they have birth, marriage, and death records--some going back a couple of centuries--from Catholic parishes all over Quebec as well as parts of New England. Roger, my friend's name, introduced me to one of the staff there and got me all properly signed in, and then he and the staff member got into a conversation of their own. I wasn't able to follow all of it since they kept alternating between English and French, but what I did pick up went a long way in answering my unasked question. They talked about the various parishes they'd been a part of, or had had some contact with; who the priests had been at them and which ones they'd liked and which ones they hadn't especially cared for; which parishes had the best suppers; which churches their sons and daughters had been married in, and their grandchildren baptized in. The whole conversation had a tone of bemused affection about it and in a way served as a counterpoint to the one Roger and I had just had in the car. It was for me one of those moments where I have something pointed out to me that I've always known, but never quite fully, until then, really grasped. We Unitarian Universalists tend to think of religion in terms of what are the most right and reasonable beliefs, practices, behaviors, and the like. For the two gentlemen whose conversation I had privy to--and I'm sure for millions like them--religion is primarily a matter of personal and communal identity in a way that actually supersedes belief, practice, and behavior. It gives them a place to stand under the stars, it gives them a sense of personal history; it gives them a language (and I'm not talking about French or English now) for communicating with one another; it gives them connection with one another and to the world beyond them. For all of his difficulty and frustration, if not anger, with his Church, Roger would no more give up his membership in it than he would give up his own name. [Now that I've said that he'll probably show up here in a couple of weeks wanting to join! ..... But somehow I seriously doubt it.]

So while I went off to pursue a personal hobby for a few hours last December, I ended up coming away with an insight that I'm still trying to decipher the meaning of. What you're getting this morning is my attempt to see in that little incident something that may inform my ministry here and the ministry in which we share together.

I'll start on this note: There has been a lot of emphasis upon congregational growth in our UU Association over the past few years with special conferences being called on the subject and numerous growth workshops being held at our annual General Assemblies. I've attended some of these as have several other members of our congregation. These conferences and workshops have a great deal of value. We've taken back some of the suggestions from them and put them to good work here. I'm delighted with the work of our Membership Co-ordinator, Barbara Berrios, since she took on that position after our Executive Board created it last fall as a means of more purposefully welcoming and integrating new folk into our congregation. It would be a serious mistake to take anything I say this morning as disparaging or diminishing of any of that. But beyond all the techniques and mechanisms for growth and integration, what finally binds a person to a Unitarian Universalist, or to any other religious community, is the extent to which they internalize the faith of that community, and the way in which that faith provides an ongoing focus for their personal identity. What I saw in my friend Roger was someone who has his identity very much shaped by the tradition which he has internalized over a lifetime, while still retaining a very critical mind about some of the particular workings of that tradition.

I'll say more as I go along today as to what I mean by internalization and identification, for I believe that these are indeed the crucial components in determining whether or not one remains a UU after first being attracted to this liberal religion. Internalization and identification: these are special challenges to Unitarian Universalists because--with apologies to the birthright UUs in our congregation whom I know I'm largely overlooking today--we are in large part the religion for people who have taken leave of their religion. As I said in my Newsletter squib for this Sunday, taking leave of your religion is not the same as taking leave of your senses. In fact I've had more than one person tell me that they sought out a UU congregation after they came to their senses. (And that's enough in the way of pompous remarks by me today.)

I get a lot of enjoyment out of Garrison Keillor's stories about his childhood and adolescent religion and had been waiting for sometime to find a Sunday where I could work one of them in. Lake Wobegon may be a fictitious place but many of the stories that Mr. Keillor tells so masterfully are, in their own way, filled with truth. It is also a point of fact that Garrison Keillor really did grow up in a very small and pietistic Protestant sect primarily located in the upper Midwest known as the Sanctified Brethren. It strikes me that his account of how he unbolted the Bible verses from the license plate on his parents car, tossed them in the trunk, and then went rapidly driving out of town with nothing but an escape to freedom on his mind is not too bad of a metaphor for how some folks begin a journey that eventually takes them to a Unitarian Universalist community. But for those who have taken leave of their religion, and who are also looking for an alternative, the escape from religious oppression to freedom is really only the prelude to truly living out, and identifying with, that alternative. The real challenge for the escapee, and for the community to which he or she may come, is how does one move from the freedom of escape to the finding of a new religious and spiritual identity.

I get a focus for this idea in a passage from a book by Rev. Richard John Neuhaus called The Naked Public Square. Rev. Neuhaus was a Lutheran minister and theologian who somewhere along the way on his journey converted to Catholicism. He is part of the neoconservative movement in both theological and political circles which means I don't find much in what he has to say that I agree with. But I think he got it right with this particular passage in the book just cited when he wrote, "In religion, psychology, politics, and almost every other field of behavior, it (is) suggested that personal growth means moving from childlike dependence upon authority to adultlike independence and 'thinking for oneself. (But) instead of thinking only about the authoritarian and the autonomous, we should pay attention to yet another kind of personality, namely the kind of person who recognizes what is authoritative (in his or her life). If we are to describe this in terms of a line of growth or life projectory, the movement is from the authoritarian, through the autonomous, to the acknowledgment of the authoritative. As freedom from oppression, autonomy is a kind of liberation. But autonomy alone (can be) a new oppression. Beyond autonomy is the free acknowledgment of that by which we are bound ... We are bound to be free in the sense that our freedom is only actualized in the free acceptance of that which authoritatively claims our assent."

While his language is a little overbearing what Neuhaus is saying has a great deal of truth to it; and while he is a Lutheran turned Catholic he is saying something in this passage for Unitarian Universalists as well. What he's saying is that the route to having a true and well internalized identity of one's own--religious or otherwise--is from the authoritarian, through the autonomous, to the free acknowledgment of the authoritative. Just so we're clear on his language here, the authoritarian is what is unquestioningly handed on to you, and you're not given much choice when it comes to accepting it; you do it, or believe it, because someone or something says you're supposed to, i.e. this is what your parents say, what your church teaches, etc. The authoritative is that which you choose, the disciplines you take on, the chosen means by which you define, shape, and cultivate an identity of your own once you are no longer bound by the authoritarian. Personal autonomy and freedom are not really ends in themselves, but rather are the route from the authoritarian to the authoritative. Now I believe its possible to work one's way through that process while still remaining within the same religious tradition throughout one's life. My friend Roger, to make one last pass at him, is a good example of that. Being a Catholic is now for him a choice he can acknowledge because it gives him an identity he can affirm and celebrate, while also intellectually being a far more severe critic of his church on the inside than I would ever want or need to be of it from the outside. And I wouldn't want him to be anywhere other than where he is right now unless he himself should ever want to pick up and leave.

For others, however, working through that journey of leaving the authoritarian, escaping to the autonomous, and then choosing the authoritative does necessitate taking leave of one's religion and then reshaping an identity within another chosen religious community. For those for whom that community comes to be a Unitarian Universalist one let me offer a few thoughts as to what I believe that reshaping involves. The choice to become a UU is a choice to enter into a relationship even moreso than it is giving intellectual assent to the principles of religious liberalism, important as that also is. For it is in relationship that identities are shaped and internalized. I am going to suggest that it is a threefold relationship (just to keep this in Trinitarian terms) within which one chooses to be bound.

To be a UU is to acknowledge that you are bound by a tradition, by a community, and by a special relationship to yourself. I'll quickly touch on each. The phrase "bound by a tradition" may not be the best choice of words and may sound unduly threatening. "Informed by a tradition" says it better. You're not asked to believe all the same things that our Unitarian and Universalist forebears did, which would be pretty hard to do anyway since so many of them believed so many different things, but rather to be informed by their lives as you shape and define your own.

I'm not going to knock off the histories of Unitarianism and Universalism at this point but a couple of broad themes can be quickly discerned. We have always tried to strike a good balance between reason and intuition when it comes to the development of a mature faith and identity. We have Channing's emphasis upon religion as a reasoned process; that what one believes should have a basis in reason and rationality and not be taken on blind faith alone. But we also have Ralph Waldo Emerson, who, while hardly forsaking reason and rationality, claimed that it is intuitive knowledge--what sense, experience, and feel in your heart--that brings you closest to the truth. Our tradition is a story of trying to keep those two--reason and intuition--in balance, and to try to make of religion strictly an intellectual exercise or strictly a feeling matter is to strain that boundary. Ours is also a tradition that has always lived within, and has had to live out, the tension between the truth and the tentativeness of truth. Our forebears have been those who have stood for what they believed to be right and true, both in matter of belief and in matters of social justice, while also remaining open to and being challenged by the possibility of new truth to be revealed. To be defined by this aspect of our tradition is to refrain from a claim to have all the answers for all time, but is it also to live and act on what you can best discern to be right and true for you.

The second relationship one chooses in becoming a UU, and in shaping, or re-shaping, a religious and spiritual identity, is to be bound to a community. As UUs we affirm that the formation of that identity is best worked out in a liberal religious community where our belief and ideas are shared, tested, challenged, and refined--we hope in a loving and nurturing way by other members of that community. It is a community in which we give of ourselves and receive from others. The choice to be in such a relationship is also a choice and a call to support its life in whatever ways we can--with our time and with as many of the personal resources and talents we have that will enhance its life. And as you give of those resources and talents you'll be quite surprised at all that you do have.

I want to expand upon this second area just a bit more by sharing some of the personal responses from our new member orientation that began last Sunday afternoon and continues today. On a little questionnaire that each participant was asked to complete they were asked "What do you want to get from your participation in the church?" Nearly all the responses to that one had the word "community" in it somewhere or implied participation in one: "I want to see my own spirituality as a result of others who are on the same journey" ....."I would like to understand and communicate with possibly like-minded individuals and share in a mutual deepening of what causes us to become more than we are and serve more than we currently can" ..... "I would like to gain the time to reflect on my life and other lives; I hope to use this church as a source of strength and community. I would like to provide my children with a religious base upon which to build." These are only three of some 15 responses, but they are very reflective of all the ones we received.

I do not specifically know the authors of those statement as I only had copies of that single page passed onto me. Respecting privacy, I wouldn't name them anyway. But the value of community and the need and desire to commit to community came through quite strongly in those and other similar statements. They also demonstrate that taking leave of one's religion need not just mean escape. It can also mean re-attachment, re-commitment, and personal renewal. [I will parenthetically note here that this orientation does continue after the service today; and even if you were not able to attend last Sunday, but are a new or prospective member; you're welcome to attend beginning at noon today.]

All of that gets me to the third relationship one chooses in becoming a UU, which is to a special kind of responsibility to yourself. UUism is often characterized as an easy religion--or "religion lite"--because of its absence of doctrinal demands or strict codes of behavior. The opposite is closer to the truth, however. Taken seriously--as well as joyfully--ours is a very demanding faith. The individual freedom of belief which we espouse is also a call to individual responsibility for belief. We are called to respond to life--to the life we live and to the life that surges all around us--with all the personal resources and personal integrity that we have at our command. We are called to make this response in the absence of rote doctrine or second-hand creed. Among the various definitions of religion that I've come across the one that defines religion simply as our "response to life" is one of my favorites. So while we are indeed individuals in community, and individuals informed by a strong liberal religious tradition, we are also individuals each called to make our own response to life in way that resonates with the deepest and best aspects of the identity we possess and that is being continually shaped and refined.

I further believe that in order to Unitarian Universalism to become an integral part of a person's identity a conversion has to take place. I know "conversion" is another of those "problem words" for many UUs, but I believe we should take the term and the idea seriously. I'm not primarily talking about a "Paul on the Damascus Road" type of conversion where everything changes in a moment. But I do believe that over time a gradual deepening of experience in the three areas I've already mentioned does have to take place in order for one's religious identity to be internalized. I'm quite skeptical of the idea of producing "instant UUs". Rather, I believe we should be offering a community where over time an evolving conversion can take place.

This, now, in closing. Over the course of some 17 years in the UU ministry I've heard more stories about taking leave of one's religion than I could ever hope to recount or recall. Many of them, in one way or another, are a variation on Garrison Keillor's removing the evidence of a religion that has become oppressive and driving off. (Unlike the youthful Mr. Keillor, of course, my storytellers don't have to be back home at a certain time with the car returned and the verses replaced.) They are stories that, each in their own way, need to be told; and recognizing that, I'm pleased, if not honored, that the tellers choose to share them with me. But I'm aware that the reason I'm even hearing the stories to begin with is because driving off in an escape mode wasn't quite enough. I'm also aware that, consciously or not, theirs was also a drive towards home; not to a home in the past, but to one for the present and for the future. My hope for this, and for all of our UU congregations, is that we be not simply a place for taking leave of one's religion, but rather a place one identifies with as home; and where people can give thanks for who they are, and thanks for all that gives us life and breath.

Reading

We were Sanctified Brethern, a sect so tiny that nobody but us and God knew about it, so when kids asked what I was, I just said Protestant. It was too much to explain, like having six toes. You would rather keep your shoes on........
In Lake Wobegon, car ownership is a matter of faith. Lutherans drive Fords, bought from Bunsen Motors, the Lutheran car dealer, and Catholics drive Chevies from Main Garage, owned by the Kruegers, except for Hjalmar Ingqvist, who has a Lincoln......
The Brethern, being Protestant, also drove Fords, of course, but we distinguished ourselves from the Lutherans by carrying small steel Scripture plates bolted to the top of our license plates. The verses were written in tiny glass beads so they showed up well at night. We ordered these from the Grace & Truth Scripture Depot in Erie, Pennsylvania, and the favorites were "The wages of sin is death. Rom. 6:23" and "I am the way, the truth, and the life. Jn 10:6." The verse from John was made of white beads, (and) the (one from) Romans of lurid red, and if your car came up behind a Brethern car on the road at night, that rear verse jumped right out at you. It certainly jumped out at me the night I drove Karen Mueller back from Avon, where we had two whiskey sours apiece on her fake ID. I was going seventy on the old post road when we flew over a hill and there was a pair of taillights and what looked like a red stripe between them. I hit the brakes, we skidded at an angle so that for one split second, looking out the side window, I saw "The wages of sin is death" like a flashbulb exploding in my face, and then we were halfway in the ditch. I hit the gas, and we passed Brother Louie on the low side, and I got Karen home before eleven and nobody was the wiser but me. "You're a wonderful driver. You saved our lives," Karen said, but I knew the truth. Drinking whiskey sours with a Catholic girl and thinking lustful thoughts, I had earned death three times over, and God was reminding me of this at the same time as He took the wheel for those few seconds, probably because He had a purpose for Brother Louie's life.
Perhaps God has a purpose for mine, too, but he must have wondered why I showed so little curiosity about what it might be. My own purpose was escape, first in my dad's car (a Ford Fairlane station wagon) and then in the car he gave me (a 1956 Tudor sedan). Both of these cars had verses bolted to the plated, so a carried pliers with me and pulled over just outside of town and removed the evidence of our faith and put it in the trunk. Then I raced off and did what I could to debauch myself, and, on the way back, sometimes reeling from the effects of a couple of Grain Belts and half a pack of Pall Malls, I bolted the verses back on.

Unitarian Universalist Church of Nashua

Taking Leave of One's ..... Religion

Reading: from Lake Wobegon Days by Garrison Keillor