Sermon for May 21, 2017, First Unitarian Church of Alton, Illinois

 

RELIGION EVOLVING:  PAST, PRESENT, FUTURE

Ronald Glossop

 

 I.  Introduction

A.  Today I am witnessing by giving my own particular Unitarian-Universalist view about how human religion got started, how Christianity has evolved since the time of Jesus, and how our Unitarian-Universalist religion should continue in the future.

B.  The evolution of religion is closely related in some ways to the idea of the evolution of the idea of God, but monotheism, the idea of only one god, comes rather late in the evolution of religion.  Furthermore, now a major question for religion is whether one should even talk about God and if so, how?  Is there any purpose or meaning in reality?  Or is it, as Macbeth says, "a tale told by an idiot signifying nothing"?

 

II.  How does religion in the sense of belief in supernatural beings get started?

A.  A widely accepted view is that humans attributed agency not only to other humans but also to animals that might attack them.  They came to view unexplained phenomena such as thunderstorms and volcanoes and eclipses of the sun as also caused by unseen agents or spirits.  Some conscious beings, perhaps invisible, made these events happen.  They didn't just happen.

B.  Pre-civilized people believed in this animism, in unseen spirits that controlled their world.  As far as we can tell, in pre-civilized societies religion was not institutionalized.

C.  We need to remember how limited the knowledge of early humans was.  They knew nothing about what causes various sicknesses or changes in the weather.  They didn't know about the size of the Earth or how long it had existed.  The only way they could get from place to place was to walk.  Much later some of them learned to ride on animals like donkeys or horses or elephants, but still the environment that they were able to know was quite limited.

D.   Humans probably did not begin to understand the role of sex in reproduction until they began to domesticate animals such as dogs about 12,000 BC.  Although debatable, it seems likely that in that early time of hunters and gatherers when animals were not yet domesticated all societies were matriarchal and/or matrilinear.  Stone statues of pregnant women suggest that these early humans worshipped fertility but did not understand why children were born.

E.   After the role of males in reproduction became known, things changed.  That is also reflected in ancient mythology which assumed the existence of many specific deities.  In myths a shift seems to have taken place from an emphasis on female goddesses connected with the Earth (Mother Nature) to a focus on male gods located on mountains or in the heavens.

F.  With the agricultural revolution based on the growing of food from seeds many other changes in human life followed such as urbanization and the beginning of written language.  A new development in religion was the practice of viewing kings and heroes as gods.

G.  The learning and use of written language by the political and religious leaders produced "scriptures" which prescribed what should be believed and the need to obey these leaders.  Most of our classical religions got started between 1500 and 500 BCE when only small groups of the political and religious elites were able to read and write.  The message was always that the leaders should be obeyed.  Consider the Biblical story of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden.  What  crime did they commit?  Disobedience.  They were trying to figure things out for themselves rather than merely doing as commanded by the political and religious leaders.

H.  The idea arose in places such as Egypt that there could be life after death.   Zoroastrians & some others developed the idea that after death the obedient would enjoy a wonderful life in Heaven & the disobedient would suffer in Hell, another way of controlling people's behavior.

 

III.   As time passed, the various organized religions evolved, each somewhat in its own way starting from its own unchanging and not-to-be-questioned written "scriptures," many of which are still viewed as "The Truth."  From here on I will focus only on the evolution of the Judaeo-Christian religious tradition which is of special interest to us in this religious community.

A.  "Henotheism" is the word used to describe the religious view of the Jews in the earliest written records we know.   That term means having faith in or commitment to one's own god while not denying the existence of other gods to which other groups might be committed.  For the early Jews Yahweh was their warrior-god who would aid them in their struggles against other peoples who had their own gods defending them.  Yahweh displayed his supernatural power by causing miracles which helped the Jews to escape from the Egyptians who were ruling over them and then to defeat their new enemies in Palestine like the Philistines.

B.   According to the Bible, in Exodus 20:3, the first commandment that Yahweh gives to Moses is, "You shall have no other gods besides me."  Other commandments were added about not killing, not committing adultery, not stealing, and not giving false testimony.  Tying these societal commandments to what Yahweh required made the Jewish religion uniquely moral.  All religions had their rituals designed to gain the favor of their gods and goddesses, but for the Jews what Yahweh required was moral behavior, especially toward other Jews.

C.   Their religion was also unique due to the idea of a covenant between Yahweh and the Jewish people.   Yahweh would be their protector, but they had to follow his commandments.  The Jewish prophets constantly warned the Jewish people to keep Yahweh's commandments.

D.   In the 8th and 7th centuries BCE when the Jews were conquered by the Assyrians and then the Babylonians, the Jewish prophets claimed that that had happened because the people were not keeping Yahweh's commandments.  When defeated, most ancient peoples would just start worshipping the gods of the conquerors, but the Jewish prophets preached a different message.  Yahweh had allowed the Jews to be conquered because they were not being faithful to him; but eventually when they had become faithful again, Yahweh would send them a new king or Messiah who would lead them to domination over the whole world.

 

IV.   Christianity marks a new development in Western religion, one with a more universal moral view influenced by the teachings of Jesus such as the Parable of the Good Samaritan.  One early leader was Paul of Tarsus, called "The First Christian" by Unitarian minister A. Powell Davies in his book with that title.  Paul focused on converting the many Gentiles influenced by Greek culture who were attracted to the Jewish synagogues by their ethical teachings.  These early "Christians" wanted to change the ethical Jewish religion that they so admired into a different religion that did not require following the Jewish rules about diet & circumcision.  They provided the first believers for the new religion, even though Christianity was intensely persecuted by the leaders of the already existing religions of the Roman Empire.

A.  A crucial event for Christianity was the decision of the fourth century Roman Emperor Constantine to stop the persecution of Christians.   He allowed them to worship freely, probably because of his military victory in 312 CE that he attributed to his faith in the Christian Cross.

B.   In the following centuries Christianity went from being persecuted to becoming the official religion of the Roman Empire.  Not long after that, however, the power of the Roman Empire began to rapidly decline even as the power of the Roman Catholic Church in Europe continued until the 16th century.  Then the Protestant Revolution, aided considerably by the invention of the printing press which allowed many more people to read the Bible, provided new competition for Roman Catholic Christianity, especially in northern Europe.

 

V.    The evolution of Christianity in Europe was also much influenced by the development of modern science from the 16th-century Copernican Revolution which questioned the authority of the Bible by showing that the Earth was a rotating planet going around the sun like other planets to the 18th-century Newtonian Revolution that destroyed the notion of divine miracles by showing how everything happened according to the laws of nature to the 19th-cenury Darwinian theory of evolution that demonstrated scientifically that humans are but one species of evolving life on one planet.  In the 20th century Freud and psychoanalysis raised questions about the extent to which human behavior was caused by rational choices rather than unconscious motives.

A.   These developments in science undermined the view that the Bible or any "scriptures" could give us truth about the nature of reality.  Newton's physics made it difficult to believe in the possibility of supernatural miracles while Darwin's theory of biological evolution had important negative implications about the possibility of any kind of life after death for humans but not other animals.

B.   As a result of these scientific discoveries the main focus of religion shifted from what is true about nature to ethical teachings about what is good, about how humans should behave toward one another and other forms of life.

C.   Due to technological changes, the size of our human communities has changed from a rather small group to national communities to a single world community.  Also our view of the universe has greatly expanded to a much vaster universe that includes billions of galaxies.  The place of humans in nature has changed from viewing humans as masters of the Earth dominant over all other species to recognizing our dependence on Nature and other species.

 

VI.    Where will religion go from here?   Where should it go?

A.   First, we all should recognize that any " revelation" or "scripture" advanced by any organization, religious or political or otherwise, is not a reliable way of discovering what is true about the nature of reality.  We need to rely on science and its experimental method of discovering truth.

B.   Religion needs to focus not on what is true but rather on the issue of goodness and how we should act individually (ethics) and collectively (social philosophy).  Which values should we pursue and promote?  That is the question for all religions.

C.  I think that Unitarian-Universalists have found a good path forward with the Seven Principles that enunciate our values.

1.  The inherent worth & dignity of every person.

2.  Justice, equity, and compassion in human relations.

3.  Acceptance of one another & encouragement to spiritual growth in our congregations.

4.  A free and responsible search for truth and meaning.

5.  The right of conscience & the use of the democratic process within our congregations and in society at large.

6.  The goal of world community with peace, liberty, and justice for all.

7.  Respect for the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part.

D.   What about God?

1.  My view is that we should think of God as Love.  God should not be viewed as some kind of individual being, natural or supernatural; nor is God the amoral totality of being as panttheists believe.  I think that the term "God" should be used to mean "a moral force working for good, something that can also be called Love."

2.  Does God in this sense exist?  Obviously "yes."  We can observe that God as Love does exist at least at some times and to some extent in some humans.  Apparently even some other animals sometimes display Love.

3.  On the issue of whether there is a force beyond our planet Earth working for good I think that we need to be agnostic.  We don't know what will happen in the future, & we are ignorant of some of the causes which have brought us to where we are.  Biological evolution on Earth seems to be dependent on chance variation & natural selection rather than any kind of design as some theologians still argue.  But is there a reason or purpose in that intricate system of chance variation and natural selection, or is it just a happy accident that life and then higher consciousness have come to exist?  We just don't know.  There is much reason to be skeptical, but nevertheless it is still possible to hope that Love is not just an accidental part of ultimate reality that happens to have come into existence on our planet Earth.   Might Love not be a fundamental and continuing force fundamental to ultimate reality itself?  But whether that is the case or not, regardless of what is true, we can and should commit ourselves to our values.  That should be the focus of religion now and in the future.