A Brief History of Stardust:

An Overview of Religious Humanism

A sermon offered by Rev. Hilary Landau Krivchenia
Unitarian Universalist Church, Lafayette, Indiana, February 19, 2001

Readings

We stand in a mighty stream of light – made of the same substance of that light shining from our stars – but, gathering here in the stream of our history – as Unitarian Universalists – as free thinkers – as heirs and bearers of humanism and of a vision of  – as we will sing of in our closing hymn – a vision of the light expanding. 

I bring you words – letters heaped upon a page heaped into this place – certainly but poured from the union of my mind and heart and your minds and hearts and the cosmos into which we are forever woven.

Revelation used to mean the words of the books I am about to quote from – but even in these readings listen carefully – forever has the human ear listened for deeper truth – and forever has the human voice dared to recount as sacred that light that burns with us more brilliant – and closer -- than the light of galaxies. 

Ecclesiastes 4: 6-12

Better is a handful of quietness,

 Than both the hands full of labour and striving after wind.

4:7.  Then I returned and saw vanity under the sun.

4:8.  There is one that is alone, and he hath not a second; yea, he hath neither son nor brother; yet is there no end of all his labour, neither is his eye satisfied with riches: `for whom then do I labour, and bereave my soul of pleasure?'  This also is vanity, yea, it is a grievous business.

4:9.  Two are better than one; because they have a good reward for their labour.

4:10.  For if they fall, the one will lift up his fellow; but woe to him that is alone when he falleth, and hath not another to lift him up.

4:11.  Again, if two lie together, then they have warmth; but how can one be warm alone?

4:12.  And if a man prevail against him that is alone, two shall withstand him; and a threefold cord is not quickly broken.

From the Gospel of Mark

7:18.  And he saith unto them, Are ye so without understanding also? Do ye not perceive, that whatsoever thing from without entereth into the man, it cannot defile him;  7:20.  And he said, That which cometh out of the man, that defileth the man.

For there is nothing hid, which shall not be manifested; neither was any thing kept secret, but that it should come abroad.

4:23.  If any man have ears to hear, let him hear.

4:24.  And he said unto them, Take heed what ye hear: with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you: and unto you that hear shall more be given.

4:33.  And with many such parables spake he the word unto them, as they were able to hear it.

And from the Koran:

2:23.  And if ye are in doubt of what we have revealed unto our servant, then bring a chapter like it, and call your witnesses other than God if ye tell truth. 2:42.  Clothe not truth with vanity, nor hide the truth the while ye know.

2:43.  Be steadfast in prayer, give the alms, and bow down with those who bow.

2:44.  Will ye order men to do piety and forget yourselves? ye read the Book, do ye not then understand? 2:269.  he who is brought wisdom is brought much good; but none will remember save those endowed with minds. 

Sermon

Our thoughts freely flower... It reminds me of scenes from the Beatles’ Yellow Submarine – where flowers burst from the blue fur of the meanies and cover Pepperland again – well, that’s a topic for another day.  The history of human thought has not been of the free flowering but often of the repression of that flowering – the high cost of human freedom of thought.  I have spoken throughout the last months of the necessity of evolution.  And it is so in our own thinking. Beware the idols of belief for they may hold wisdom eternal or notions bound by time and need to evolve as we do.  And I don’t mean one religion building upon another until the right one is found – but the interplay of thoughts and experiences reaching back to ancient truths and forward to ones as yet undiscovered.  I don’t think that the Abrahamic religions improved on one another – that’s called supercessionism – don’t worry there’s no test. I think they grew in the wild garden of sacred human consciousness each carrying seeds and weeds.

So I read to you from Hebrew, Christian, and Koranic texts and that used to be It.  Revelation with a capital R – the sum of the World and Word in which we were to live.  Yet, I chose passages that affirmed in some way the existence and use of human intelligence.  Today the word revelation – in the hands of humanists from our own tradition such as William Ellery Channing, Ralph Waldo Emerson, to Lester Mondale, Curtis Reese to David Bumbaugh – to other humanists -- revelation – has come to mean -- those ultimate meanings – world shaping, shaking, and sharing meanings that are discovered, expanding understanding.  Free from the fetters of dogma. In 1926 Etienne Gilson, Christian theologian, wrote, in Reason and Revelation in the Middle Ages: One of the medieval spiritual families was that made up of those theologians according to whom revelation had been given to men as a substitute for all other knowledge, including science, ethics, and metaphysics.  Ever since the very origins of Christianity up to our own days, there have always been extremists in theology.  Reduced to its essentials their position is very simple; since God has spoken to us, it is no longer necessary for us to think.  The only thing that matters is for every one of us to achieve his own salvation; all that we need to know is written there in the Holy Scriptures; therefore let us read the divine law, live according to its precepts and we shall stand in need of nothing else, not even of philosophy – particularly not of philosophy.”  He wrote of a period in history when individual questioning, scientific enquiry, and free thought could cost you your life.  It cost the life of many so-called heretics.  It has been the persistence of these rigid spiritual families that have made me want to talk about humanism in and of itself for a long time – oh, it’s always present in my sermons.  It would be a lifetime of sermons and explorations.  But I got pushed over the edge recently by all the humanism bashing in the newspapers – one article actually called it moral relativism and another negatively likened it to witchcraft – and both of those are other thoughtful sermons…

It is so easy to hang the flag from a cross and or the cross on a flag and emblazon “one nation under God” everywhere while people are knocked off kilter – oh, I did get pushed.  And this is no simple topic.  This isn’t about Unitarian Universalism versus all those other religions – many Unitarian Universalists embrace our roots as well as our new discoveries in Judaism, Protestant and Catholic Christianity, Earth-centered religion, Islam, Buddhism.  And in many – no -- actually in all of these traditions are differing threads of humanism.

And I am reminded that not everyone who comes to a Unitarian Universalist church today comes knowing what humanism is or seeking humanism – well, on the other hand, as Tevya the Milkman would say -- perhaps, we really do.  I mean – we seek the human in one another -- it is the glimmer of starlight in one another – the movement of stardust – the wisdom we find together, the hope we create, the values we discern—as humans searching together.

Simon Blackburn in the Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy, defines humanism as  “Most generally, any philosophy concerned to emphasize human welfare and dignity.  More particularly, the movement distinctive of the Renaissance and allied to the new study of Greek and Roman literature; a rediscovery of the unity of human beings and nature, and a renewed celebration of the pleasures of life.”  At  least that is a partial – very partial definition – more will come later.  It would be oxymoronic if the word humanism fit into one neat bracket or definition – it wouldn’t be the historical adventure or the diverse symphony of thought, awe, feeling, and challenge that we find together in humanism.  It’d be canned and dead – maybe even – post-human.  So – since the terrain is complex let us co-venant – walk together – toward understanding – after all it is our right as humanists…to explore the world through the lens of our own understanding.

There are many humanisms: secular humanism and religious humanism, philosophical, Jewish, cultural, and these close cousins -- naturalistic or scientific humanism; there is ethical and democratic humanism, literary humanism -- they make a mighty list and they’d all of them be missed.  What they have in common is the focus of the human eye – the human life, and the right, in fact, the imperative of the human to interpret reality.  Here we are religious humanists of every stripe – we gather because there is something to celebrate and explore – to be in awe of, to share in song and silence, art, words, solace and love.

The religious humanist has ancient Far Eastern ancestors – though that is not my primary concern here today.

Greek and Roman philosophy taught of the use of human reason to approach the truth.  Ancient Judaism has always had a humanist strain – first because every person felt entitled to question God and then because the Jewish God ultimately let Ecclesiastes deliver his final words – lean on one another turn to one another and then the rest is silence.

Early Christianity spoke through the Jew Jesus who invited everyone to see one another with human eyes, to enter the kingdom of God -- and to know him as the Son of Man.

            Before the rise of Muhammad, the Prophet, There was Waraqah, the prophet's cousin, and Zeid ibn `Amr, surnamed `the Enquirer.' They were known as `Hanifs, a word which originally meant `inclining one's steps towards anything,' and therefore signified a convert -- they were not a sect, but each for himself investigated the truth.

            Yet in every one of those faiths were those who caged the truth, held it for power, and insisted on fanatic codes, declarations of heresy, and the greater value of sealed revelation or the law of the church, mosque, or temple over human reason or insight.

            As early as the 9^th century Islamic scholars had been attempting to apply rationalism – to the Koran – thinkers like Ibn Rochd – Averroes, and before him Ibn Sina – Avicenna.

            And in the 15^th century with the rise of the new and often heretical sciences came the rise of a new humanism – a passionate application of reason to matters of faith.  In Italy, a Christian humanist movement was rising and influencing all of Europe – including birthing the first and only Unitarian Kingdom – in Poland and Transylvania.  And an edict of religious toleration that allowed Unitarian Churches to come into being in the 16^th century in Romania that survive to this day.  But this same rise of reason and humanism caused the church and even some of the reformers – like John Calvin to strengthen their power bases – to continue to value the ideal over the human – sealed revelation over fresh human insight. Heretics and martyrs abounded.

            There is so much I would like to talk about here – the details of the tensions between reason and revelation – between faith and experience – between investigation and institution are not only fascinating and illuminating of our human history – because they show us living from facet to facet these same tensions generation after generation.  With time and interest we can look into these details and marvel as we see ourselves in them.  It has been humanism that saw each person as an end and not as a means – that would rather welcome than destroy new ideas. For now it will suffice to say that often in history courses the re -- birth of humanism is often placed on the doorstep of Desiderius Erasmus.  Born in Rotterdam, Holland in 1466 Erasmus took priestly vows the same year that Columbus sailed the ocean blue.  He was faithful to his Christ Jesus and yet he rode rougher waters than Columbus ever did driven between the winds and waves of reason and revelation.  Erasmus insisted that each person bring the light of reason and insight to every aspect of religion – to revere no tradition without question – to test the liturgy for vitality.  He believed in the wide mercy of God like his predecessor of one thousand years before – the exiled Irish heretic Pelagius.  Erasmus’ words of mercy, reason, of living liturgy awoke many Christians  -- particularly as he believed that no human could stand in swift and clear judgment of another person’s beliefs about the nature of God or of the soul.  He believed that the life of Jesus was more important to the well being of the souls of humans than the dying blood of Christ.  He believed in the virtue of pagans.  He argued against the notion of a just holy war.  He taught that each one of us had the spark of the divine within us – he said that when we love one another we love the Jesus in one another.  All told it is remarkable as he finally argued against Luther – that he died, in 1536, peacefully among friends rather than on the greenwood pyre of a heretic.

And he believed in the perfectibility of every human – now, of course, this phrase has fallen out of favor – what with all of us trying to be just at least good enough – but perfectibility really did not mean perfect – just reaching for the god-like in each of us – the sacred – the good.

            If I were telling a story to a sleepy child I would say … a long time passed – but to you I must say -- revolutions came and went. The Enlightenment altered the world further, the West met the East more intimately – and any one of these chapters would be sufficient for a year of explorations so, instead, I ask you to put on your time travel gear and come forward – in some Huxleyian machine – pass over the ground of Monticello where Thomas Jefferson has rewritten the Bible and introduced a new religious skepticism – and find yourself three hundred years after Erasmus and settle yourself in the pews of the Unitarian Church of Providence Rhode Island in 1828.  There the father of modern Unitarianism – William Ellery Channing – is giving his sermon Likeness to God and in it are echoes of Erasmus – radically restated and unambiguous.

“True religion consists in proposing, as our great end, a growing likeness to the Supreme Being.  It has its foundation in the original and essential capacities of the mind. In proportion as these are unfolded by right and vigorous exertion, it is extended and brightened. In proportion as these lie dormant, it is obscured. It is indeed the lesson of daily experience. No attraction is so powerful as that which subsists between the truly wise and good;  Say not that man's business is to think of his sin, and not of his dignity;  The Infinite Light would be for ever hidden from us, did not kindred rays dawn and brighten within us. God is another name for human intelligence  extended to all possible truth.  We see the tendency of the soul to the infinite, in ordinary forms: the delight which we find in the vast scenes of nature, in the immensity of the heavens and the ocean, and especially in the rush and roar of mighty winds, waves, when, amidst our awe, a power within seems to respond to the power around us. The same principle is seen in works of fiction or of imaginative art, in which our own nature is set before us in beauty and power. In truth, the soul is always bursting its limits.  It thirsts continually for wider knowledge.”

Channing claimed back again – in response to the hell fires of the Great Awakening – a greater awakening – that of the sacredness of every human spirit.  And he set in motion an amazing chain of which we are forged a glittering link.  Like Erasmus Channing claimed an innate capacity for good in humanity and claimed the cultivation of that good to be the role of religion – a real humanism – based not on faith  -- unless it would be the faith that there is the possibility of true human goodness but on experience and reason.  Where the countryside was full of preachers teaching people the hopeless sinfulness of their condition here was a voice of reason, love, and hope.  That voice would clarify ten years later in the words of Ralph Waldo Emerson.   As Jo Davisson read at the close of council this Wednesday, these are among the foundations we stand upon and too often forget – ours is the richest of histories – and here I am only glossing through it.

            Emerson took the humanist insights of Channing even further – and wrestled the Word out of any one scripture and into the heart and experiences of humanity. The miracles of the ancients were blasphemies compared with the blowing clover and the rain. – remember?

He wrote: “This game of life we play covers principles that astonish and in the game of human life, love, fear, justice, appetite, man, and God, interact. These laws refuse to be adequately stated. They will not be written out on paper.  Yet the oracles of this truth cease never. It is not instruction, but provocation, that I can receive from another soul. What he announces, I must find true in me, or reject his word, be he who he may.  The soul invites every man to expand to the full circle of the universe.  That is always best which gives me to myself.  Man is the wonderworker. He shall see the world to be the mirror of the soul; shall see the identity of the law of gravitation with purity of heart; and shall show that virtue, is one thing with Science, with Beauty, and with Joy.”

And, all the while the world of science was touching all aspects of life with new revelations. There was a faith in progress – the progress of science and the progress of the human spirit.  And, as the Civil War ended, people of vision – both men and women found that shackles had fallen everywhere and yet there was a world more work to do.  Emerson and others – like Felix Adler -- formed the Free Religious Association, to demand that no creed be asked of Unitarians – that no one would have to claim Jesus or any other prophet in order to join.  Unitarianism declared itself free of dogma and a non-creedal – non-theistic humanism began to thrive and grow within Unitarianism.  The FRA dissolved.  Many Universalists, also, had been growing as non-theistic humanists.  Adler went on to form the Ethical Culture Societies – which exist today in a strong spirit of secular humanism. 

In 1933 the Humanist Manifesto was written and signed by a group of passionate, rational humanists – non-theistic, highly committed to the revelations of experience and of science in particular.  It was signed by a large number of Unitarian and Universalist Clergy.  Corliss Lamont, Curtis Reese, John Dietrich, Lester Mondale, to name only a few.  This spirit infused many congregations – it was a religious experience – the freedom of thought was unprecedented. The commitment to reason and proven experience enhanced the glory of humanity.  It carried within it all the wonder and optimism of Channing with the vision of William James and the systematic thought of John Dewey.  It carried the fresh wind of social democracy and the hope of new foundations for justice.  It was often these humanists who looked at the overwhelming destructive power of ideologies in the 20^th century and called awareness back to the sacred worth of the individual.  We who gather here are the direct heirs of this manifesto and its offspring.  An unimaginable distance had been covered by human thought in only a few thousand years.  It is unacceptable when some liken this tradition – which was the very heir of mercy and wisdom – to a thing vacant of sacred values.  Well – we sit here in light of these sacred values – the bearers of them and responsible for their unfolding into action that can serve our world.  We speak every week of our hope and commitment to these values.  When humanism is attacked by supercreedalists ours must be, among others, a place that defends human wisdom and dignity that reminds the world that humanism has been the finest of every faith.  We still embrace the wisdoms of the ancients – we devotedly test those wisdoms against both reason and experience.  And we know that among us are all these enduring humanisms: rational, religious, philosophical, Christian, cultural, Jewish, Buddhist, and these close cousins if not twins -- naturalistic and scientific; ethical and democratic, literary and artistic -- they make a mighty list and in truth they’d all of them be missed.  When we wonder where the roots are of this faith we can remind one another that not only do they grow deep in a noble history but everyday in every one of our hearts. 

So this is our rich soil – but not our only soil.  It is our fine history but not our only history.  We have witnessed the basest in human being as well as the finest.  Sitting acknowledging humanism today is to also acknowledge recent history and new questions and new revelations.  We do bear a sacred and transforming fire.  By our social sciences we have enlarged the circle of the human.  By our own hand have we changed the very world in which we live and by our own science we have expanded our understanding of our human role in that world – the role of our feelings and the nature of our bodies and our health.  By our most sophisticated science we have relocated ourselves in our surprisingly expanding cosmos and on our surprisingly intimate planet.  We have reasoned things we cannot see, measured things we cannot yet and perhaps never know.  By our own acts of liberation we have raised new questions about the human and the earthly.  By science we have both exalted and humbled ourselves.  Through science we have asked -- where are we placed in this world?  On whose head is the crown of creation?  While we will have the time and opportunity to explore these questions together – and soon let it be that we go forth from this place today – certainly with our questions intact but also with our knowledge that our thoughts freely flower – creative and ever growing – blossoming in a light ever expanding.