Not About God

What does it mean to be religious? This is a question that’s been asked for centuries, often with one particular answer: it means to be a member of a congregation that owes its allegiance to God. But in 1933, the answer to that question took on an entirely different meaning, one that changed the face of religion forever.

In some ways, 1933 was a “typical” year. The United States was in the midst of the Great Depression, when life was still hard, but with the lifting of Prohibition that year, at least people could drown their sorrows. President Roosevelt introduced the New Deal, his effort at kick-starting the economy into healthy growth. Hitler became Chancellor of Germany, but few (if any) knew how that simple step would change the face of history. Poised between the Great War and what was to come, no one really understood the revolution that a small band of people joining together to state a new religious platform were to create.

A Humanist Manifesto, they called it, those thirty-four individuals who signed the simple two page document. As you heard in the preamble Sally read, they were bold in their pronouncements: they called for “radical changes in religious beliefs,” and stated that they feared that religion would be have a “final . . . fatal identification . . . with doctrines and methods which have lost their significance and which are powerless to solve the problem of human living.” They saw what they did not as a move against religion, per se, but a chance to open religion up to a broader understanding.

Yet what they said was not entirely new. In fact, the arguments in the Manifesto have their origin in the Italian Renaissance of the 14th century. The Rev. John Weston, now the Transitions Director at the Unitarian Universalist Association, explains life in Europe at that time:

The professors themselves were known as humanisti, and their responsibility was to develop in their students something called humanitas. Humanitasi wasn’t just a liberal education, or even humanness. It was more like a virtue: on the one hand humanity—open-heartedness, mercy, and benevolence—and on the other hand nobility: commitment, courage, moral excellence in action. Love your neighbor like a Christian, deliberate like an Athenian, administer like a Roman, and fight like a Spartan. But the goal did not end with ever-more-virtuous individuals. Through them, humanitas would radiate into the culture at large. The overwhelming goal was the transformation of culture: out of the passive ignorance of the “dark” ages, as they saw it, and into a “new world order: reflecting the fullness of human potential.”

Humanism in the 14th century was about the whole person, and about those whole people making the right commitments and choices in life. It was not about an individual being perfected on her or his own, but working for the greater good of humanity. Humanism had a different slant than other religions of its day—it looked at the goodness of people, and sought the best for all people. This was in contrast to the then teachings of the church—and by church I mean the Roman Catholic Church, which was “The Church.” Rather, humanism existed outside of the church, something to augment and help interpret life, but not something against the church.

Over the years since the Italian Renaissance, the face of humanism expanded and changed. In addition to Renaissance humanism, six other humanisms arose. (1) Christian humanism intentionally moved humanism back into the church. Christian humanism emphasized the tolerance and benevolence of God, and taught that Jesus’ best gift to the world was his example of faithful and good living, not his sacrifice on the cross.

(2) Classical humanism, on the other hand, arose as an academic program. It was the main theoretical outlook of the founders of our nation. They saw themselves as drawing from this base of knowledge, and studied the ancient greats, much as they did during the 14th century.

(3) Cultural humanism is what was once assumed to be the core curriculum of a well-rounded university education. It is comprised of literature and poetry, philosophy and art, music and language, scientific method and theory. Although cultural humanism is now losing favor in many university settings, this well-rounded basis made sure that people knew the culture in which they lived, and where they came from. It emphasized the stories of others—from myths and religions—to knowing how people responded to life through the arts. Cultural humanism is all about putting people into historical context—knowing where they came from, and what forces shaped their realities.

(4) Humanistic psychology is an expansion of this latter idea. Psychologists such as Carl Rogers and Abraham Maslow moved away from seeing people through a behavioral or psychoanalytic lens, and instead emphasized the individual nature of each person and her or his awareness of self. Humanist psychology focuses on the experiential nature of our understanding of life. It is more interdisciplinary than statistical, more individual than formulaic, and looks at people’s lives from a more holistic posture.

(5) Secular humanism addresses questions of ethics and morality, but finds that there is absolutely no need, reason, or sense for religion. For secular humanists, the scientific method is enough. There is no need for any trappings of religion, and for many secular humanism, there is much harm to be found in communities gathering together for “worship.”

(6) The last kind of humanism is religious humanism. Religious humanism finds that there is a deep yearning and need in people to look at questions of ethics and morality, to look at “religion,” while seeing no need for the supernatural. For religious humanists, the supernatural is superstitious and irrelevant. Rather, it is experience and human life that form the basis for answering questions of ethics and morality, yet within a religious context, with religion understood as the search for meaning in life and the binding together of core values and reasons.

It was from this form of humanism, religious humanism, that the Manifesto arose. Once Charles Darwin published his Origin of the Species in the mid-1850s, debate over the role and place of god was rampant. For some, Darwin’s theory of evolution meant that there was no god, while for others it was the process by which god created change in the world. This was also the time of the rise of historical critical analysis, a method by which sacred texts were looked at historically and as literature—they were taken apart and put back together as not necessarily being the direct word of god, but possibly the word of god shaped by the work of human hands. Modernism as a philosophical approach to life was in full swing, and the social gospel movement that proclaimed people should do good works was flourishing in the States. And by the 1920s and 1930s there was an increasing disillusionment arising out of the War to End All Wars and the failure of the League of Nations to live up to people’s wishes and dreams. Americans wanted normalcy, and they were looking for answers—new answers—to what went wrong before. Although 90% of Americans said they believed in God and that God was the answer to all questions, the way was open for discussion of other possible answers. Evolution, whether into different species or into a different understanding of life and religion, was at the center of the conversation. It is no surprise that in the wake of all this change, that the Unitarian Laymen’s League filed a brief in the Scopes “monkey trial.” And when Unitarian minister Charles Potter gave one of the trial’s morning prayers, he prayed for “the progress of mankind toward thy truth” and ended it “Thou to whom all pray and for Whom are many names.” The time was ripe for the Manifesto to be borne.

And so it was. The Humanist Manifesto was created. Only eight years after the Scopes trial, the Manifesto contained such then radical thoughts like these:

· The universe is self-existing and was not created.

· Humans are a part of nature and that we emerged as the result of a continuous process.

· Life is organic, and the traditional dualism of mind and body must be rejected.

· The nature of the universe depicted by modern science makes unacceptable any supernatural or cosmic guarantees of human values. There may be realities not yet discovered, but the existence and value of everything must be determined by intelligent inquiry. Religion must formulate its hopes and plans in the light of the scientific spirit and method.

· Religion consists of those actions, purposes, and experiences which are humanly significant. Nothing human is alien to the religious. This includes labor, art, science, philosophy, love, friendship, and recreation. The distinction between the sacred and the secular can no longer be maintained.

· In the place of the old attitude involved in worship and prayer the humanist finds his religious emotions expressed in a heightened sense of personal life and in a cooperative effort to promote social well-being.

The Manifesto ended with an assertion that the goal is a free and universal society in which people voluntarily cooperate for the common good. They sought to affirm life rather than deny it, elicit the possibilities of life rather than flee from them, and ensure that all had a “satisfactory” life.

The Manifesto caused quite a stir. The debate was not limited to proponents of religious humanism versus those who spoke for more traditional religion—though there was much debate between those parties. Traditional religionists could not image a tradition in which god was not the central figure. This was much like the debates in the 1800s about whether or not you could have a religion that didn’t believe in hell. The Universalists back then held staunchly to their views, and it’s surprising that these days there is much less talk about hell in mainline Protestantism. The Universalists won the point.

But in this situation, there was also debate within the humanist ranks. Religious humanism lives in a narrow space between traditional religion with an emphasis on the divine on one side, and philosophy that too often doesn’t deal with our human response to wonder and mystery on the other side. Because of this marginal place, there were many questions, debates, and discussions about how to be religious. Could one use this system of thought as an adjunct to theism, or was it required to discard god or any higher power, however defined? Could you use traditional religious language, or was that inappropriate?

Most of this debate happened in the 1920s. Religious humanism never became a populist movement, and by the time the Manifesto was written and published in 1933, the “wave” of growth of religious humanism had already peaked, and the numbers were on the wane. Unlike a decade before when religious humanism was first being systematically articulated, little criticism or debate followed the publication of the Manifesto, much to the dismay of the authors. They hoped it would heighten their visibility and increase their numbers. Although there were at least a dozen books published about religious humanism before the Manifesto, there were few, if any, published after it. The language of the Manifesto made it clear that this was a movement only for the well educated, and as such, it did not appeal to a wide diversity of people. Religious humanism had, to a large extent, been invented and nurtured by Unitarian clergy, and for a while it seemed to expand a bit beyond these roots, but by the mid 1930’s, it fell primarily back within the Unitarian fold.

Yet all was not rosy for the eighteen Unitarian ministers and the one or two Universalist ministers who signed the Manifesto in 1933. Most of their colleagues were not pleased, and they faced great criticism. Questions arose. Could one remain either a Unitarian or Universalist minister while also promoting humanist views? Could one not believe in God and be a minister? Despite the prior history of openness in both Unitarianism and Universalism, the orthodoxy wasn’t sure if our religion could withstand this sort of dissonance and trouble.

It really wasn’t until the election of Frederick May Eliot, a supporter of religious humanism, to the presidency of the American Unitarian Association in 1936 that the way was eased for the humanists. That, plus an overall reduction of fear and skepticism, let religious humanism sweep through Unitarianism and Universalism. With no creed that needed to be followed, our religious ancestors paved the way for this new movement, even as it challenged the then basic assumption of belief in god. Humanism’s emphasis on the goodness of humankind, and its emphasis on people needing to make the world a better place, made it fit well within our religious consciousness. With this growing support, there was little reason for humanist leaning ministers to leave, and also little to leave the AUA for: religious humanism became, in effect, an adopted “orphan” in Unitarianism as the humanist movement in this country turned more toward secular humanism.

Humanism is such a stable part of our UU theological frame these days that many people don’t realize that its emergence is relatively so recent. Up until the 1940s and 1950s, our Unitarian and Universalist congregations were, by and large, unapologetically Christian. With the rise of humanism, especially in the Midwest and west, our movement opened itself up to new revelations that were revolutionary. The then Christians felt themselves to be taken over by the new movement, and their congregations became to them, unrecognizable to them. In much the same way, the current rise of a yearning for spirituality in our movement leads some humanists to wonder how long they will be able to recognize the congregations they love so dearly. Each group, as they have moved from obscurity to dominance to one among many possibilities has often felt the slipping away of their fragile truth, of their safe space.

It is often said, by me if by no one else, that the source of our greatest strength is also the source of our greatest weakness. The insistence upon, and the ability to live with, the creedless nature of Unitarian Universalism means that things change in ways we cannot control. Congregations that once were Christian become humanist. Congregations that have long been humanist now find themselves challenged by other ways of being religious, by the arrival of those seeking language of reverence, a way to fill their spiritual yearning. The challenge, I believe, is not to be one or the other. Rather, the challenge is to find the way to embrace them all, to make room for the humanist and theist, the spiritual seeker and the scientist. A place for “god talk” and “science talk” and “mystery talk” in a multiplicity of languages and images, a multiplicity of stories that inform how we live our lives. It is in that place that we can live our religious diversity.

And among that diversity will always be religious humanism. For it is that tradition that calls us to remember three very important things: that we have a fascination with the human, that we have a responsibility for our lives and for the world, and that we humans have all that we need to carry those responsibilities through. Religious humanism calls us, above all, to remember human beings as one source of hope, and as the purveyors of hope out into the world around. Not puppets, but actors. Not in the past or the present, but in the here and now. Not doomsayers of humanity, but proud carriers of truth and hope. May it always be so. Well, at least until we question it again, and find in life and religion something more.

Not About God by the Rev. Dr. Lisa Presley April 13, 2008

Not About God
by the Rev. Dr. Lisa Presley
April 13, 2008