Rationality and Faith
Sermon by Steve Edington
November 1, 2009
Shortly after I got my book about Ric Masten out and published I got a note from a church in Carmel, California - Ric's life-long hometown - asking if they could purchase some copies to sell in their bookstore. They also offered to see to it that the book would get a review in their one of their church's publications. This was fine with me, of course; and it all happened because a couple of good friends of mine, who were also friend's of Ric's before he passed away, were very strongly involved in this Carmel church.
I'm not referring to the UU Church of Monterey and Carmel which hosted a wonderful book launch service for Ric and me nearly two years ago and a few months before Ric died. No, this "other church," as it were, calls itself the "Church of Religious Science."
The name intrigued me: The Church of Religious Science. It's not Scientology or Christian Science. It actually has a very New Age flavor to it; holding that God is not a person or being of any kind, but rather a Universal Presence or Power that is also present in all human beings who are willing to pursue it. A lot of its tenets and principles are ones that I, and probably a lot of UUs, would be simpatico with. But it does not come out of the same historical path and tradition that we do; rather it is an offshoot of some of the esoteric New Thought movements of mid-19th century America.
But, as I say, I was taken with the name: The Church of Religious Science. I recalled the name as I set out to prepare this sermon, since there's a genre of thought and writing gaining a fair amount attention right now that would hold that the terms "religion" and "science" do not rightfully belong in the same sentence - much less in the name of a religious organization. I've referred to his genre before using a phase I coined called "The Atheists Fight Back." The principal figures in this movement are a triumvirate of Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchins, and Sam Harris.
I've had my say about these gentlemen - especially Dr. Dawkins and his book The God Delusion - in other sermons and will not be dealing with them at any length today. But while I agree with much of their critiques of religion, both past and present; and agree as well with many of their critiques of the ways in which persons believe in God, I also find in much of their writing a smugness and an arrogance that rivals, if not surpasses, anything I ever witnessed in the Christian fundamentalism in which I was raised.
The best example of what I mean here is Christopher Hitchins' suggestion in his book God is Not Great that those enlightened persons - persons like him, of course - who have freed themselves from the shackles of any and all forms of religion, and any and all kinds of belief in God, should be referred to as "Brights." This designation, presumably, is to distinguish them - these "Brights" as they want to be called - from all of those unenlightened dim bulbs who are still mindlessly clinging to any kind of religion or any kind of belief in God.
The presumption behind this presumption is that one cannot be a rational-minded human being and a person of faith of any kind simultaneously; in the same fashion, as the laws of physics hold, that two physical objects cannot occupy the same space at the same time. When it comes to the laws of physics, that is a perfectly sound, rational, and entirely self-evident principle. I do not believe, however, that it can be transposed lock, stock, and barrel, to matters of belief and faith. And that's the thread I'll be pursuing for the rest of this sermon.
If I'm to do a sermon on faith and rationality then the most rational thing to do at the outset would be to roll out a definition of rational. So, let's do that. My trusty old Random House Webster's College Dictionary - which has helped me through countless New York Times crossword puzzles - is straightforward enough. Rational simply means, in this tome, "based on reason, as in a rational decision;" or "exercising reason, as in a rational negotiator."
OK, I would say using this definition most of us would consider ourselves rational persons. But let me pose a question for you that calls for some honest self-inventory. So honest, in fact, that I'm not going to ask for a show of hands as it might create some issues in your relationships with those closest to you. Now that I've got your attention, here's the question: For those of you who are in a marriage or some other ongoing and committed relationship, was falling in love a rational act or choice on your part? Perhaps you see why I'm not asking for a show of hands here? Those of you who are partnered in any manner can have your conversations later if you wish. What I'm saying is that human attractions, some of which can lead to committed relationships, usually occur on the basis of something other than the use of our purely rational faculties.
File that one. We'll come back to it later when we consider the point that there is more than one way of knowing; or more that one way of gaining reliable and trustworthy knowledge for ourselves.
One place, among others, where I agree with the triumvirate I cited earlier of Dawkins, Hitchings, and Harris is their rejection of the notion that supernatural explanations can be invoked in trying to explain natural phenomenon. Or, to put it more simply, I agree that we do not need God to explain how (how mind you) stuff works. While we human beings on this planet have hardly unlocked all the secrets or explanations as to how our universe operates - and how life on this planet operates - we pursue these matters using the strength of our human reason as far as we can push it, and keep pushing it. We live in a scientific age, and I am quite willing, to do a variation on some words of Jesus, to render unto science and to reason and to rationality, all that rightfully belongs within that whole field of inquiry.
I'm perfectly content, for example, to rely upon the Theory or Principle of Evolution - knowing that it is still a work on progress - to explain why I have the physical make-up and human characteristics that I have; and how and why my body works in the way that it does; and beyond that, how we've come to have all the life forms that now exist on our earthy home here. I do not look for, and feel no need for, any faith based - in a supernatural sense I mean - explanations for any of that. When it comes to basically understanding data, that is to say, the only faith that is called for is faith in the process of reasoned and rational inquiry that gives us the answers we have, even if those answers are incomplete.
As a side-bar issue here I would point out that the ways in which we now treat or immunize against any number of infectious diseases - many of which were fatal at other times in human history - draw upon the theory of evolution. Evolutionary theory allows medical researchers better understand how germs and viruses operate in the human organism, which in turn allows for the diseases these germs and viruses cause to be treated or prevented. It all makes me wonder if those persons whose faith compels them to reject the theory of evolution are willing to be consistent enough in their faith to reject any use of medicine based on that theory. The most "rational" conclusion, I would think, for a strict creationist to make would be to reject any kind of medical intervention that is based on a theory that they reject. Why would they want to be treated on the basis of a "false" theory after all?
But let's move on. And the point I would move on now, is to suggest is that when it comes to how we actually live our lives, and how we make the kinds of choices that we do as to how we'll live our lives, we always dealing - consciously or not - with an inter-play between faith and reason. It may or may not be faith in God, however conceived, but it is faith nonetheless. The story that each one of us are telling with each of our lives is a story shaped by faith and reason. It was just this past week I listened to an amazing piece of one person's life story that I feel bears this point out.
The person telling the story was Liz Walker, a very dynamic and well spoken African-American woman. If you're one who pays attention to local newscasts you'll recognize her as a long-time broadcaster and commentator for Boston's WBZ-TV news. She spent 32 years as a television news journalist and 20 of those years as an anchorwoman at WBZ-TV. Then, in her mid-50s, she decided it was time for her life to go in another direction. She enrolled in the Harvard Divinity School, got her Master of Divinity degree, became an ordained minister in the African Methodist Episcopal Church and joined the ministerial staff of the Bethel AME Church in Jamaica Plain in Boston.
Part of the ministry in which Rev. Walker is now engaged involves helping to run a school for girls in The Sudan in Africa. This is a rather dangerous undertaking right now given that the country is now being governed (if you can call it that) by a fundamentalist Islamic government that frowns on women being "too educated," so to speak. It was a fact finding trip to the Sudan in 2001 by Ms. Walker, with her journalist hat on, that played a significant role in the turn her life has taken. She still keeps a hand in broadcasting with her Sunday with Liz program on Channel 4.
I heard Rev. Walker tell some of her story in an entirely secular setting in the Lowell Repertory Theater building last Tuesday at an event sponsored by the Greater Lowell Community Foundation to celebrate some of the outreach work which that organization does. But I can tell you, the setting didn't really matter; for even when it's not an "official" sermon that woman can still preach!
I listened not just to what Rev. Walker had to say about what's happening with her life these days, but to the passion in her voice as she spoke of the importance of heeding the call to service to a greater cause and greater calling beyond one's own life - whatever the nature of that cause and calling may be. I thought about what it is that drives a decision like the one she has made. In her very moving talk she said that hearing a call about where to take one's life involves seeing where your joy and your passion meets up with a need. I liked that.
As I said, since she was speaking in a secular setting she went very light on the God talk and on the religious language - while still not completely shunning it. But it was clear that the Reverend Liz Walker was being called and driven and directed by certain forces both within her and beyond her which, while hardly irrational or unreasonable, go a step beyond the rational and the reasonable. She would say that it wasn't just that she decided to take her life in a new direction, but that it some larger sense it was also being decided for her.
Among the many things I took from listening to Rev. Walker was yet another example - and a particularly stirring example - of what it means to be both a person of reason and a person of faith. I'm sure that the choice she made to give up her anchor post at WBZ and go to theological school and pursue the kind of ministerial career she now has called for a lot of reasoned, rational-minded thinking: Can I afford to do this? How much time will it take? Do I even know for sure where I'll be whenever I get to wherever it is I want to go? But behind all those reasoned and necessary questions was an act of faith, drawing upon a message she received - from who knows where or from whom - about the direction her life needed to take.
This is why I believe that the most life-changing or life-altering choices we make are acts of faith. I wasn't really trying to be cute or frivolous a few minutes ago when I asked if the decision you make about who your life mate would be - for those who have one - was a strictly rational one. I don't mean to say that such decisions as these are, generally speaking, irrational or unreasonable; but rather that they go beyond the rational. My colleague and, now, late friend in the UU ministry, Rev. Forrest Church coined a word for this phenomenon; he called it the "trans-rational." Another term I like for the same thing is "supra-rational." Beyond the rational, that is to say. It's another way of knowing; knowing about the leadings of our hearts as well as our minds. It's knowing about the lives we feel called to lead even if we cannot identify a Caller. It's knowing about some of the deepest affirmation we hold that are not measurable or quantifiable in only rational ways.
Consider our first Unitarian Universalist principle which says we covenant to affirm and promote "the inherent worth and dignity of every person." That's really a statement or affirmation of faith. There's no rational way in the scientific sense at any rate, to prove inherent worth and dignity. Instead it's something we choose to believe about people and about ourselves - even when the actual, demonstrable evidence might well run to the contrary. And yet it is this affirmation of faith that serves as the grounding for much of the social justice work that some many of us are engaged in. Again, it's not irrational to hold to such an affirmation; but it's one that takes us beyond the rational.
So it is as a community of faith that we are called to act on the principles that we have chosen to define us. To believe that "justice, equity, and compassion in human relations" is worth pursuing is an act of faith; as it pursing the "goal of world community with peace, liberty and justice for all"; as is seeking ways to best and most responsibly live in the interdependent web of life that enfolds us all. Speaking personally, another affirmation for me is that as I pursue such goals as these I do so with a life that is part of a Larger Reality, a Larger Whole, whose fullness I cannot know - but in which I participate nonetheless.
I'll close with this. One of the greatest affirmations of faith we can offer at times is believing we have something here in this beloved community that is greater than the sum of our individual parts; and that can sustain us in some of our most trying and painful moments. In these last few days we've lost one of our most beloved members, in a way that seems to defy any kind of reason. We can know the means by which Marie lost her life; but that does not tell us why in any greater sense.
But this is also when we have to reach for what it is we truly and most deeply know. What we know is that in some of life's most devastating moments we can still stand with, and for one another. We know we can find ways to love and care about one another. We know that we cannot "fix" another person's, and another family's, loss. We can choose to believe, however, that love is stronger than death; and that even the most painful loss can still strengthen those bonds of love. This is the faith we are called to maintain at this time. We are persons of mind and persons of spirit; and we are not whole people unless we have both. Let us hold one another in our minds, in our hearts, and in our spirits in the days ahead.
Stephen Edington
November 1, 2009
