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“Unitarian Universalism: a Religion That Breaks the Rules”1
William Sasso
August 30, 2009

As a Unitarian Universalist minister, I am sometimes asked to explain what Unitarian Universalism is, and how it works as a religion. If the question is asked in general terms like these, I can respond fairly easily with what our former UUA President, Rev. Bill Sinkford, called the “elevator speech.” I hope that each one of us has a short, twenty-five words statement that expresses our understanding of UUism. My own “elevator speech” keeps changing, but right now it is something like this: “Unitarian Universalism begins with each individual’s unique religious integrity. Together, we form religious community by making promises to that honor freedom, reason, tolerance, and love.”

But sometimes, I have the frustrating experience of being asked to explain what Unitarian Universalism is in terms of conventional expectations that people have about religion, that is, in terms of the “rules of religion.” And what’s frustrating about that is that this faith tradition we call Unitarian Universalism – and this Fellowship – don’t operate according to many of these “rules of religion.” We seem to break a lot of rules about religion.

Now some of you may have a pretty good idea what I mean when I say “rules of religion,” but some of you may be wondering what in the world I think I am talking about. So let’s name some “rules of religion,” that is, things that people often think religions have to do:

Unitarian Universalism is about human experience, and how we find meaning in that human experience. We explore, consider, examine, and celebrate the full gamut of human experience, from birth to death, from joy to sorrow, from anger to love, from good to evil, from war to peace, and from individual experience to those aspects of human life shared by all of us on this globe (or in this universe). Our focus goes beyond the human, in terms of our concern for the larger environment, and its many beings, but we understand that larger “beyond the human” context through our human senses.

Unitarian Universalism is about meaning in human experience, and integrity and authenticity in human living, and about justice and compassion in human interaction. It calls each of us to understand both who we are today, and whom we might become tomorrow. It challenges us to face the choices that will change us and touch the lives of others, and to make those choices responsibly at the individual, group, community, and larger levels.

For some of us, these questions don’t relate to God in any way, while for others of us, God is at the heart of these questions.

That’s how it should be – an individual choice, a choice we give each other the freedom to make. And from that choice, other choices will follow in turn. For instance, if we find God at the center of the meaning of our lives, how do we understand God, and how do we relate to God? And alternatively, if the center of our lives’ meaning has nothing to do with God, what is there at the center? What is the cause and source of human meaning? Our experience and senses? Our capacity for logic and reason? Nature and the physical universe? Human interaction?

Rule 2: “Religion is about confirming a set of beliefs, a set of received truths, a set of sacred scriptures.”

Does Unitarian Universalism, as a movement, have a formally acknowledged set of sacred scriptures? If so, this is the first that I’ve heard about it!

James Luther Adams, one the great 20th century Unitarian theologians, put it in these words: “Revelation has not been sealed!” In other words, we recognize that the human community gains new knowledge and insight every day. We are committed to applying the best and most recent information we have to understand and improve ourselves and the world around us. Now I admit that this can be overwhelming sometimes, especially in these days of 24-hour news and internet access and twitter and other amazing forms of rapid communication. Sometimes it seems like it might be easier to interpret 21st century human experience based on a limited set of teachings from a few thousand years, teachings that some folks believe “tell us everything we need to know.”

We have the ability to use those resources, should we wish to do so, as well as others, but none of these are considered “sacred” or “special” by our community. We give each other the freedom to use different resources, distinct and sometimes contrasting expressions of human insight. We promise each other that freedom, for we gather around a shared set of promises – a covenant – rather than around a creed or a particular divine revelation.

So when someone asks me “What do Unitarian Universalists believe?” the best response I can make is to say “We don’t believe together; we promise together.” We don’t form religious community by affirming a theological creed, or by agreeing on a particular sacred scripture as the best and only way to understand human experience. We gather around the promises we make to each other. These are simple human promises, and if they ever touch the notion of sacredness, they do so because our lives have filled them with meaning.

Rule 3: “Religion is threatened by heresy, that is, by people making their own choices.”

If you’ve been listening at all to my comments on how UUism relates to the first two rules, you’ve heard me affirm one of our UU principles, one of the promises we share: our commitment to affirm and promote the free and responsible search for truth and meaning. This expresses our right to choose, or our right to be different. Conventional religion, especially in its most fundamentalist incarnations, tends to want to give people the “right answers.” We’re different; we want to give each other the “right questions!” We want to help each other figure out the answer that rings true for each one of us as individuals, and if those answers aren’t all the same, that’s usually fine. Sometimes, when we need to take some form of action as a Fellowship on a topic that we see differently, things get interesting. We use a democratic process, trying to hear each other deeply and to understand each other well, in order to figure out what those individual truths add up to for this Fellowship as a collective truth. Sometimes that can be a challenge, but we respect each other and learn from each other in the process.

Rule 4: “Religion has an ‘inside’ and an ‘outside,’ that is, a ‘group who is saved’ and another group who is ‘damned.’”

Well, we are Unitarian Universalists, and the basic idea of universalism was that “salvation is universal.” In other words, nobody is damned!

Today, since we ask each individual to figure out this afterlife stuff for herself or himself, it’s possible that some of us may believe in a “heaven and hell” type of afterlife.

But together, as a community, what we covenant (promise) to affirm and promote includes two things. First, we promise to respect the worth and dignity of every person. Second, we affirm respect for the interdependent web of which we are all a part. In other words, rather than offering a division – the saved and the unsaved – we affirm a network of connection which includes each and every human being. Within that web of relationship, we seek to affirm that which is best in each one of us, both accepting each other and encouraging our individual and collective spiritual growth.

Rule 5: “You can be religious (that is, institutional) or spiritual (that is, personally authentic), but not both.”

As a religious movement, we seek to honor and affirm personal spiritual integrity. We begin with the individual. We want you to come as you are – spiritual or not – but come in your own authenticity!

There is an image of religion as “regimented,” with everyone marching in step as they travel a well-marked sacred highway to a pre-chosen divine destination, a destination selected and a route mapped by the religious powers that be. That’s not who we are! After all, it was the Unitarian Henry David Thoreau who coined the phrase “marching to a different drummer.” And some of us don’t march: we dance!

We honor the solitary spirit, the aspect of human spirituality that is like a wild animal, the aspect that flees when it hears the drums and the marching approach, and draws near to the campsite only when all is quiet, and the campfires have died to embers.

We honor that spirit, and we challenge it, too. We counsel it to remember that those who see themselves as “spiritual but not religious” often do well to find a religious community that respects them, and offers them opportunities:

Rule 6: “You can be religious (that is, superstitious) or rational, but not both.”

In many religious communities, if one of the doctrines doesn’t make sense to you, you are supposed to believe it anyway, to “take it on faith.”

That’s not who we are. We regard the power of human reason as one of our greatest human gifts, and we encourage its use both here and elsewhere! For instance, consider the reading “Cherish Your Doubts” by Robert Terry Weston. 2 It counsels us to

Cherish your doubts, for doubt is the attendant of truth, . . . the key to the door of knowledge, . . . the servant of discovery.

A belief which may not be questioned binds us to error, for there is incompleteness and imperfection in every belief.

Let none fear for the truth, that doubt may consume it, for doubt is a testing of belief. . . . For truth, if it be truth, arises from each testing stronger, more secure.

Our task is not to suspend or disable the faculty of human reason, but to use it in our quest for truth about our individual lives and our shared human experience!

There are, of course, some religious rules that we don’t break. I hope that we don’t through the baby out with the bathwater, so to speak. We take some religious rules pretty seriously, such as the Golden Rule: “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” Perhaps we amend it a bit, trying to remember that not everyone else has exactly the same preferences as you do or I do, coming to a rule slightly more along the lines of “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you (if you were them).”

What are some of the other religious rules that we don’t break? One might be that “Faith without works is dead” [James 2, 17:20]. We “promise” to “walk our talk!”

So we, as UUs, break some, but not all, of the religious rules. And while this catalogue of rules is far from complete, I hope it helps explain who we are, here in this faith community and in our larger movement!

I close with a brief consideration of one more rule: “The work of the church is to save souls.”3My colleague and friend, Unitarian Universalist minister Mark Morrison-Reed, expresses the nature of the work we share beautifully in these words:

The central task of the religious community is to unveil the bonds that bind each to all. There is a connectedness, a relationship discovered among the particulars of our own lives and the lives of others. Once felt, it inspires us to act for justice.

It is the church that assures us that we are not struggling for justice on our own, but as members of a larger community. The religious community is essential, for alone our vision is too narrow to see all that must be seen, and our strength too limited to do all that must be done. Together, our vision widens, and our strength is renewed.

Indeed, this is the work that we share. Is there a better way to “save souls?”

1.This sermon is inspired by Rev. Jane Rzepka’s column “From Your Minister” in the June, 2005, issue of Quest, the newsletter of the Church of the Larger Fellowship. She presents a list of “religious rules” and discusses how Unitarian Universalism “breaks those rules.” Her rules and mine overlap conceptually, but I believe that the particular rules we state are in the main different, and our responses are similarly distinct.

2 . Reading #650 in Singing the Living Tradition, Unitarian Universalist Association, Boston: 1993.

3.Reading #580, “The Task of the Religious Community,” in Singing the Living Tradition, Unitarian Universalist Association, Boston: 1993.