Interfaith Weekend

 

 I suppose it’s only fitting that while channel surfing the other day I happened to hear a man (didn’t catch his name, but he seemed to be affiliated with Oral Roberts) preaching about the need for purity of religion and how any Christian who allows for the possibility of the truth of any other religion has ceased to be a “productive” Christian.  He was preaching to a large and rapt audience.  No “mixing” allowed! he told them.  The only truth was to be found through Jesus.  All other religions are pagan.

 

This was the perfect “humility factor” … jut in case I was in danger of letting the next few days go to my head.  I’m heading up to Unitarian Fellowship in Bellingham, a beautiful city near the Washington/Canada border, to preach at this Sunday’s service about the both opportunity and the challenge that Interfaith presents Unitarian Universalism.  Then on Tuesday in the evening I’ll be speaking about the path of Interfaith at an Everett Bookstore/Coffee House called “A Gathering Grove.”

 

The sermon in Bellingham will look at and speak to a tension within much of the Unitarian movement.  There is an increasing clash between those who see themselves as Humanists (and for the most part define themselves as Atheists) and those who believe in God (however they might view God, even as they put distance between themselves and a doctrinaire and dogmatic religion).

 

I still recall an e-mail shortly after I started this website, from an Atheist who wanted to know how to approach Theists so that she could be heard.  My answer was, “With respect,” which clearly was not the answer she was looking for.

 

It remains fascinating to me that for all too many of us “dialogue” still means “we talk until you understand that I’m right.”

 

Still, the possibility of Interfaith taking root and blossoming within the UU movement remains invigorating and exciting.  If it chooses, Unitarian Universalism might well lead the way to a real and, I hope, lasting reconciliation in the 21^st century.  Humanity could certainly use it!

 

On Tuesday I’ll to be talking more about Interfaith itself: how it came about.  The fact that the word “interfaith” is barely fifty years old.  The truth of it is that “interfaith” and “Interfaith” are both new concepts, and we still have a lot of trouble coping with them.

 

For those who deal with the “My way or the highway” approach to religion, just the concept of Interfaith, let alone the practice of it, is seen as blasphemy and a transgression against God’s Word.  But “even” for those who intellectually embrace interfaith, if not Interfaith, there can be a huge gulf between head and heart.  We have been taught for so many thousands of years that there is only one truth out there.  So many who have rejected the traditional religions are still, often without realizing it, “seekers” of whatever that one truth may be, knowing only that they haven’t gotten there yet.

 

As a theologian, I must confess that I have never been happier with a scientific development than I am with quantum theory.  A wonderfully essential aspect of quantum mechanics is that there isn’t necessarily one and only one answer to every question.  Something may be a particle one moment and a wave the next.  Or it may be a particle or a wave depending on how we are oriented to viewing it.

 

Maybe as our children adjust to and learn to view the quantum world, the idea that there may be more than one “right” way to view God can really take root. 

 

In the meantime: Have Sermon, Will Travel.

Being Grateful

 

I have a Thanksgiving sermon to write for Sunday.  Lots of things running through my head.  Random stuff.  Some of it leans towards the absurd.  I’m reminded of the outsider feeling a vegetarian has on this annual day of carnivorous gluttony; or the joy of remembering Stan Freberg’s bitingly hilarious spoof of the first Thanksgiving.  But on the less absurd side, one thing that has had me pondering the past few days  is the relationship between gratitude and humility.  Specifically: the relationship between humility and a capacity for gratitude. 

 

The question swirls: Can a person who lacks humility be truly grateful for anything?  If I feel I deserve everything, if I feel I am owed everything, what cause do I have to be grateful?  If we are called to be grateful, are we not in fact being called to humility?  This has implications regarding race, and ethnicity, and religion.  How can we be grateful if we believe we are God’s preferred? 

 

Which leads us to the divine.  The choir will be singing a lovely piece on Sunday about thanking the Lord.  Which reminds me …

 

I was always puzzled as a child and youth when told that we should praise God.  God wants my  praise?  Why? I wondered.  I had noticed that the people around me who wanted and needed praise were usually the most insecure.  Did this mean God was insecure?  There were indications that this might be true.  Garden of Eden: are we kicked out because God’s worried if we eat of the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil we’ll be equals?  The tower of Babel is destroyed and we are given a multitude of languages because God is worried about the competition if humanity is ever again united?  An insecure God was not a particularly comforting thought.

 

But as I got older, I began to wonder if perhaps the point of thanking God, and praising God was not because God needed the praise and thanks, but rather to remind us to think beyond ourselves, to be mindful of things bigger than ourselves.  Thank God, not because God needs to hear it but because we need say it.

 

Thanksgiving, then, is perhaps a time to learn humility through gratitude.  A time to be reminded to think beyond ourselves. 

 

There is a saying in Judaism, “Do not be like those who honor their gods in prosperity, but curse them in adversity.  In good times and bad, give thanks.”  Grateful at all times, in all times.  And therefore humble? 

 

The thought that calls to me most deeply from Scripture has always been a passage in Micah.  What is it that God wants from us?  To act with justice, to love goodness, and to walk humbly with God (Micah 6:8).

 

Perhaps then, the great call of Thanksgiving is the call to remember our humility – to remember our community, our common humanity.  To remember that which is greater than ourselves.

 

Happy Thanksgiving.

Change I Could Believe In

 

Ok.  The elections are over.  And at least some amongst the party that lost (this time the Republicans) are asking the question “Where now?”  I have a suggestion…for all of us.

 

Some of us believe in the teachings of Christianity, which tell us that we must feed the hungry and care for the sick.  Some of us believe in the teachings of Judaism, which by odd coincidence also tell us that we must feed the hungry and care for the sick.  By further amazing coincidence, these are the teachings of Islam, Buddhism and of Humanism as well.  Sensing a pattern here?

 

Clearly, addressing poverty, feeding the hungry and caring for the sick, the orphan, the less fortunate will not come from waving a wand.  And it certainly hasn’t come from what our spiritual paths profess.  If it is to come, it must come from what we do, not merely what we profess.  And surely there any many possible actions that might be taken.

 

While few will admit it, the sad truth is that our political campaigns are fought over the issues others have made important.  Not only in these United States but around the world, what has been made important is protecting the power of the wealthy and, so it would seem at least in California, making sure that gays can’t marry.  We also appear willing to argue for days, weeks, years and more over when life begins.  But, leaving aside the issue of abortion just this once, what about the quality of the lives of those who are born?

 

What about the people who have nothing to eat, no roof over their heads?  What about those, here, in this country, who cannot afford both to eat and to take the medicine they need to stay alive?  What about those who have no work and cannot find it?

 

What I would love to see is a hard-fought argument between Democrats and Republicans on who can better feed the hungry.  I would love to see competing plans to make sure that all of us can get good medical care.  There was such competition in the Democratic primary. 

 

We talk of values, incessantly.  I would love to see these values reflected in both political parties.  The values of love, compassion, and reaching out to those in need.  The values all of our spiritual paths teach us.  Competing plans, from different political perspectives, on how to live those values.  Now that is a change I could really believe in.

 

In the meantime, a wonderful group led by Rev. Jim Wallis is trying to bring the issue to the forefront in a laudably bi-partisan fashion.  But I am saddened to note that, unlike the mobilization led by Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., it is NOT an interfaith movement.  While bi-partisan, it is specifically Christian.  It identifies itself as such.  I would urge Rev. Wallis to reach out beyond the walls of Christianity.  Indeed, I would hope he would help to break those walls down.

 

A post script.  I had originally intended to write about the passage of Proposition 8 in California.  But last Tuesday Keith Olbermann talked about it far more eloquently that I could have.  Needless to add, I agree with him.  If you click "launch" to hear and see Olbermann, I fear you will need to “suffer” through a commercial first.  It’s worth it. 

The “Fundamentals” of Religion

 

Lost, perhaps, in the heady triumph of hope over fear this past week, was a report that the Rabbinical High Court of Israel had ruled that some 40,000 people who had converted to Judaism weren’t really Jewish after all.

 

It’s not my purpose to enter into the rather arcane discussion of “what makes a Jew a Jew?”  Rather, for me this mind-boggling action by the Rabbinical High Court serves as a stern and sad reminder of the power of “fundamentalism” within any religion.  I am reminded of an acquaintance, whom I like very much, who attempted to continue as an Episcopal Priest having also embraced Islam.  She didn’t see her beliefs as an either or proposition.  Her Bishop disagreed.

 

There is a passage from one of my favorite plays, “Inherit the Wind” – a play that fictionally explores the Scopes trial, where a teacher is put on trial for teaching evolution.  “The Bible is a book,” says the defense attorney in the play.  “It is a good book.  But it is not the only book.”

 

And all of this swirls into the discussion I had with my spiritual director on Wednesday.  So many people, of so many religions, insist on placing themselves as mediators between the sacred (what many, including me, would call God) and the rest of humanity. 

 

Orthodoxy.  Right Belief.  “I know what God is.  I will tell you what God is.  And you must believe it or you’re out."  Ostracized at best, possibly stripped of your rights, and in some eras and circumstances even today murdered.  All in the name of God.

 

It remains fascinating to me that so many practitioners of the very religions that proclaim God a great “Mystery,” will then continue on explaining to you precisely and with page after page of detail who and what God is.

 

I once resigned from a job (as choir director) at a Temple because the Cantor there couldn’t stop deriding “them” (meaning Christians) because of what she perceived as their fundamentalism.  But fundamentalism knows no one religion.  The arrogance of “right belief” is, I fear, all but universal.  And for any of my fellow Jews who still think fundamentalism is just a problem for Muslims and Christians, then perhaps the actions of the Rabbinical High Court of Israel can provide a viable lesson.

 

As I continue work on my book on Interfaith, I realize more and more clearly that a basic  human right is to have no one stand between a man or woman and that which s/he holds holy. 

 

Orthopraxy is a concept I can rally around.  Right action.  What remains singularly beautiful and exciting to me is how similarly our religions urge us to act (with compassion, respect and oriented towards others), even as they diverge hugely regarding what we are to believe.  It is time to shed ourselves of right belief.