Sermon for 6 February 2005, 1st Unitarian Church of Alton,, Illinois

A FAITH FOR NOW AND THE FUTURE
Ronald J. Glossop

I. Introduction
A. The title for this sermon, "A Faith for Now and the Future" could also be "A Religion for Now and the Future" or even "A Denomination for Now and the Future."
B. Last week's service led by David Wiseman focused on "Our Church" in the sense of this particular congregation. This week I want to focus on "Our Church" in the sense of thelarger church, the denomination or religious association of which we are a part, namely, the Unitarian-Universalist Association."
C. This denomination was formed in 1961 as the result of a merger between the Unitarians and the Universalists, a very natural merger for two denominations that had been evolving in very similar ways even though they had different original emphases that resulted in their different names.
1. The Unitarians got their name as a result of questioning or rejecting the Christian belief in the Trinity, the belief that God has three forms or manifestations--God the Creator Father, God the Son (that is, Jesus), and God the Holy Spirit (at work in the Church and in Christians). It was especially the notion that Jesus was God that bothered the Unitarians. He had some good moral ideas that have inspired many people, but that is quite different from being God with a capital "G" or even a god.
2. The Universalists got their name as a result of questioning or rejecting the Christian belief in Hell, the notion that eternal damnation awaits those who don't accept Jesus as their Savior. The Universalists argued that a good God could not possibly be so vengeful as to condemn some people to eternal damnation.
3. But both the Unitarians and the Universalists came to see that the more fundamental issue was one of basing one's beliefs on one's own reasoning and experience rather than accepting without question some authority like the Bible or the Church or some prophet.
4. Both denominations realized that they had a common commitment to the idea of an evolving religion which just could not have rigid unchanging sacred doctrines that one had to accept in order to remain part of the religious community. In an age when new knowledge was becoming available from new scientific discoveries, it was ridiculous to hold that one's ideas in the area of religion could not be changed on the basis of this new knowledge.
5. They both saw that requiring people to accept certain beliefs in order to remain in the religious community would not only inhibit personal intellectual and spritual growth in individuals but also would require otherwise honest people to lie, to say they believed things that they did not believe

II. Mary Johnson got me thinking about this topic of the role of religion in human history when she sent me a column from THE CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR of December 2, page 9 titled "Religion's Eternal Life at Core of World Concerns." It was written by Jonathan Sacks, chief rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of Britain and the Commonwealth.
A. The gist of Sack's view comes through in the first and last paragraphs. In the first paragraph he asserts, "Religious divisions fuel ethnic conflicts around the world." In the last paragraph he says, "The real question is whether we can make space for difference, for the one who is not like us."
B. Between the beginning and the end Sacks discusses the experience of Europe as it went from the 300 years of religious war between Catholics and Protestants to the secularization of the Enlightenment, a society where "religious convictions [are left] at home." He notes that this experience has led Europeans to accept secularization as the way to deal with religion.

C. Sacks then shifts to the United States, noting how its policy of separation of church and state has encouraged competition among religious groups with a resulting vitality of religion virtually unknown in Europe.

D. In other parts of the world Sacks notes that there has been a third trajectory, seen most evidently in Muslim countries, "in which religion has emerged as a mass protest against failed secular nationalisms . . . . There religion functions as a critique of modernity: mass poverty, widespread unemployment, political corruption, and human rights abuse."
E. Then he comes to the point that gives rise to the title of the essay. He says, "In such environments, religion alone seems to speak the language of human dignity and hope . . . . Religion didn't die. It persists as humanity's oldest, noblest attempt to endow human life with meaning. Secularization turned out to be the exception, not the rule."
F. "So take that, you European secularists," we can imagine him saying. "You had better take religion more seriously than you do." In conclusion he assures us that the conflicts throughout the world are not between a decadent secularism and fanatical religions. "This [conflict] has nothing to do with the truth or falsity of religion."

III. Of course, there is that other conclusion which Sacks draws that I cited earlier, namely, that "the real question is whether we can make space for difference, for the one who is not like us." I rather like that observation, but it seems to me rather unrelated to his comments about secularism and the irrelevance of truth and falsity in religions. In fact, I am astounded that this discussion of religion and war and the Enlightenment and the social situation in the Muslim world contains not a word about scientific knowledge and the industrial revolution.
A. Let me approach this topic of the role of religion in history and society from a very different perspective, one that is not trying to defend religion from secularism but which is based on a comprehensive view of how individuals and societies develop. I hope that this alternative way of looking at human history will help everyone appreciate the crucial place of our own Unitarian-Universalist religion in this history.
B. Let me note here that many of the ideas I will be expressing in the next few minutes have been stimulated by one of the most insightful books I have ever read, namely, THE MEANING OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY by American economist Kenneth Boulding. For the record this book was published in 1964 by Harper and Rowe.
1. In this book Boulding focuses on the two great historical transitions in the way that humans live. The first great transition was the agricultural revolution when humanity shifted from hunting and gathering and living totally on what nature provided to a life style based on agriculture, on planting seeds and then harvesting the grain produced.
a. This transition marks the beginning of "civilization," of humans living in permanent settlements rather than roving around from place to place to find animals and fish for meat and nuts and wild fruits and vegetables. Connected with this shift was beginning of writing, the domestication of plants and animals, the accumulation of property beyond what one could carry from place to place, the formal hierarchical organizing of society we call government, and the struggle between organized societies for control of territory that we call war.
b. This transition did not take place everywhere at once. It seems to have taken place first about 10,000 years ago in Mesopotamia and Egypt where the crucial grains were wheat and barley. A little later it occurs in Vietnam and China where the crucial grain was rice. Still later the shift occurs in Central America where the crucial grain was corn.
c. The grains were crucial for this transition because they could provide a surplus food supply for decades as long as they were kept dry. In the absence of refrigeration, most other types of food would not last long, so an adequate food supply could not be assured.

d. Having an assured food supply meant that a few members of the society were free to pursue other activities rather than just producing food.

2. The second great transition, the one that is so important for understanding the 20th century, is the industrial revolution when humans begin to use scientific knowledge to design machines (such as steam engines) that use the forces of nature to do our work for us.
a. This transition marks the shift from "civilized (agricultural) society" to "post-civilized (industrialized) society" where humans manipulate nature to do our work for us.
b. The industrial revolution also does not begin everywhere at the same time. It starts in England and the shortly thereafter in New England in the last part of the 18th century. In the 19th century it spread to most of Europe, much of North America, & eventually to Japan. In the 20th century industrialization spreads to the whole world. Hence Boulding's title for his book THE MEANING OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY.
c. The first products of industrialization are textiles, but then machinery gets designed and produced for better transportation and to help increase agricultural production. Then machinery gets designed to make other machinery. Until the middle of the 20th century machines basically helped us to do our physical work, but now we see machines designed and produced to help us do our mental work. The computer revolution is but the 2nd phase of the industrial revolution.
d. The "developed world" refers to the areas that were industrialized at the end of World War II in 1945 while the "less developed countries" are those that did not begin to industrialize until after World War II. to be "developed" means to be "industrialized."
e. An important fact not mentioned by Sacks in his essay is that most of the violence and war in the world takes place in the less developed countries where there is, to quote him, "mass poverty, widespread unemployment, political corruption, and human rights abuse." These factors seem much more related to where the industrial revolution came late than to any conflict between religion and secularism.
f. Consequently, we now need to direct our attention to the historical significance of scientific knowledge and the industrial revolution dependent on it as well as its significance for the kind of religion our human society needs.

IV. Boulding distinguishes three kinds of human knowledge, each associated primarily with one of the stages of human society. These are (1) folk knowledge, (2) classical knowledge, and (3) scientific knowledge.
A. Folk knowledge refers the information we receive by word of mouth. Thus it must come from one's family or other persons who live close by. This knowledge is typical of pre-civilized people and usually does not extend beyond the tribe in which one lives. Although we refer to it as "folk knowledge," we need to realize that it can contain false ideas as well as true ideas and that the false ideas are almost as likely to be passed along as true ideas.
B. Classical knowledge refers to the information we get from written texts. It cannot exist until after the development of written language, as I already noted, something that comes with civilization. Written language means that communication can occur between people who are spatially and temporally separated from each other.
1. But this written language is not available to everyone in the society. It is very much a possession of the few at the top of the society, those who had political power or who faithfully served the rulers, such as the teachers of their children and the religious leaders. It is not until the 20th century that we have world where more than half of the people can read and write. For most of the civilized period it was about 2-3 percent of the population in any particular society who could read and write.
2. It is no accident that during the civilized period, an important theme in most religions was the need to obey those in charge. Think of the story of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. What was Adam's crime? He disobeyed. He had the gall to question authority., and as a result he had to pay the penalty of expulsion from paradise. If you didn't obey, the political leaders would use their monopoly on physical force to see that you got punished. Even if you thought that you might be able to escape detection by the agents of the government, you were taught by the religious leaders that you could not escape detection and consequent punishment from supernatural forces. The political authorities and their approved religious authorities worked together to keep everyone in line. This control of the society was also used to produce armies to fight wars against other communities. These absolute and unquestionable loyalties to the government and to the religious authorities found in civilized societies are not easily superceded as one moves through the second great transition to a post-civilized society.

3. With regard to religion we should note that all the great world religions--Hinduism, Buddhism, Confucianism, Taoism, Judaism, Christianity, Islam--have their origin in written texts and reflect the views of an agrarian, pre-scientific, pre-industrialized life-style. For example, their rites and vocabulary are tied to the spring planting (when the dead seeds spring to life again displaying a kind of immortality) and the fall harvest (when the essential goodness of nature is displayed) and to the need to be loyal to the King or the Lord or the Pope or whatever the political and religious leaders in that society are called.
a. Despite the fact that all religions tend to preserve and conserve the past, we should recognize that in all these religious traditions there are some believers who are more liberal, that is, more ready to adopt new ideas from others and to be tolerant toward those with other views, and others who are more conservative or fundamentalist, that is, less willing to allow any modifications in beliefs or practices or to tolerate any different views. This difference is usually reflected in different views about how to interpret the old sacred written texts, that is, whether to be permissive with regard to new interpretations or to insist on the inviolability of the text. But even the more liberal believers face the problem of having sacred texts from 800 or from 8,000 years ago that put some kind of restriction on what beliefs can be accepted.
b. The notion that there are ancient sacred texts that in some sense authoritatively set out what is true and what is good constitutes a major distinction between other religions, even their liberal branches, and Unitarian-Universalism. Unitarian-Universalism makes it clear from the beginning that one can learn from the ancient texts of all these religions, but they carry no special authority that would require us to subordinate our own reasoning to what they say. Furthermore, we can learn equally well from non-religious writings. We can learn from philosophers and scientists and mathematicians and historians and poets and writers as well as from theologians and bishops and other religious leaders.
C. Scientific knowledge refers to knowledge based on experimentation to check on the reliability of hypotheses about what is true. Instead of relying on intuitions and arguments from what is already believed to be true, scientific knowledge requires the performing of experiments to determine whether hunches about a situation are true or false.
1. It is important to see that science progresses not by proving that certain ideas are true but by proving that certain hunches or widely held beliefs about what is true are in fact false. Scientists make their reputations by showing that previously held beliefs are false. The result is that in the case of scientific knowledge, much more than with folk knowledge or classical knowledge, false ideas get discarded. Instead of a tendency to stagnate, there is a tendency to progress away from false ideas and toward true ideas.
2. Scientists have shown that many of the ideas found in the ancient scriptures are false. Days and nights are caused by the rotation of the earth, not the movement of the sun around the Earth. The Earth has existed for about 4.6 billion years, not since 4004 BCE as Bishop Usher calculated on the basis of what the Bible says. Diseases are caused by bacteria and viruses and radiation and certain contaminants in our environment, not by supernatural forces punishing us for disobeying divine laws. Such discoveries should not be surprising because these ancient religious texts were written when human knowledge was very limited. What is surprising is that so many people believe that we should rely on the ancient texts rather than scientific knowledge in order to guide our beliefs about what is true and what is good.
3. Boulding notes that until the 20th century, the scientific knowledge impacting our beliefs came mainly from astronomy, physics, and chemistry. He predicted that in the 21st century the greatest impact will come from discoveries in the biological sciences (such as the nature of DNA) and the social sciences such as economics, psychology, sociology, and political science. For example, we are now in theprocess of finding out how to keep people from becoming violent criminals as well as discovering better ways of curing them from becoming repeat offenders.

4. Of course, we cannot neglect that fact that this country is on the leading edge of this wave of industrialization. Out of the two hundred countries in the world, there are only about twenty-five that can be considered developed countries. The Asian giants India and China are just beginning to move beyond that first stage of industrialization focused on producing textiles. This rapid change can produce huge conflicts between generations and between one part of a society and another. The pressure on traditional religions can be great, and the more conservative they are, the greater the tension as they fight back to preserve themselves. And as we all know the struggle between religious fundamentalism and science is very much alive in this country especially in the areas of education (such as the teaching of evolution) and medical research (such as stem-cell research).

V. Unitarianism-Universalism is the right faith for now and the future because it is a religion which has no restrictive creed based on the acceptance of some ancient scriptural authority reflecting a pre-scientific age. It says right up front that all people must think for themselves and that our ideas about what is true and good can and should change on the basis of new knowledge. In religion, as well as in other areas of our lives, we must keep growing.
A. As we look at the present situation of humanity, one could say that collectively we have grown from the babyhood of pre-civilized society where we lived basically as monkeys and chimpanzees to the childhood of civilized society where we began to be better able to take care of ourselves and understand the world in which we live to our present adolescent post-civilized state where we are becoming better able to control our own destiny. Of course, adolescence can be a difficult time as more possibilities are presented to us and more choices are required.
B. But who would want to go back to being a child, with regard to religion any more than with regard to other matters? We recognize our need for a faith for adults such as our religion of Unitarianism-Universalism. And we can hope and expect that others throughout the world also will eventually recognize its value as a faith for now and the future.