“FUNDAMENTALISM OR LIVING THE QUESTIONS”
A Sermon for West Seattle UU Fellowship
Rev. Peg Boyle Morgan
September 7, 2003
His name was Paul Hill. You probably heard that he was executed Tuesday for gunning down Dr. John Britton an abortion doctor in 1994, Pensacola Florida. He also killed Lt. James Barrett, who acted as Dr. Britton’s volunteer clinic protector. What you may not have known is that James Barrett got involved in supporting the abortion clinic and the women’s choice movement largely through his religious principles and involvement in the Pensacola UU Fellowship. Lt. Barrett died living his beliefs, beliefs in the worth and dignity of all people and in a woman’s “right to choose.” His wife June, was wounded. June would later say that Paul Hill had been friendly in the past, they knew who he was, which is why they let him come up close to their car. June Barrett is currently a member of the Cedar Lane UU Church in Bethesda, Maryland, where she is also active in Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays (PFLAG), having already grieved the loss of a son to AIDS.
Like June and James Barrett, Paul Hill acted from his beliefs also. His were quite different. He was a Presbyterian minister. He knew the bible inside and out. He was very clear about his beliefs. To him abortion is murder. To him, killing doctors and other staff of women’s clinics is “justifiable homicide.” His authority came from the call of God. In his own words, Mr. Hill said just before his death: “I would like people to remember me as someone who willingly died to save unborn children with the means necessary…My conscience affirms me for having taken this defensive action.” “I expect a great reward in heaven. I am looking forward to glory.” Paul Hill, called by his supporters a hero, a martyr. Called by others the Osama bin Laden of the abortion movement. Paul Hill was a fundamentalist.
But the word fundamentalist is often misunderstood. It was first used by American Protestants. Some wanted to distinguish themselves from the liberal Protestants, (who would in part be the Unitarians and Universalists) who were, in their opinion, distorting the Christian faith. So between 1910 and 1915 a series of pamphlets were published, entitled “The Fundamentals: A Testimony to the Truth.” These articles identified the five major principles of their American Christian faith including:
So at that time Fundamentalist referred to any Christian who believed in these principles.
What can we learn about fundamentalism from Paul Hill? He believed in the five fundamentals and more. In Paul Hill we see clear lines drawn between right and wrong. We see rhetoric that divides people into groups, that condemns to death people with whom he disagrees. We see authority coming from outside of himself—from his God and from his God’s word, the Bible. We see in him no room for debate, no room for varying opinions, no room for other viewpoints nor dialogue.
Karen Armstrong, a former nun turned academic theologian and author of some of the best books on religious history, has written a significant book on the history of fundamentalism, which she calls Battle for God. This book reminds me of the little boy who has a book report to give in school. He read a big book about penguins. He starts out his report “this is a book about penguins. This book has more about penguins than I care to know!”
Battle For God is indeed a thick book with dense information about fundamentalism, perhaps more about fundamentalism than you care to know… or maybe not. I do recommend it, and if you read it, when you resurface three days later, let’s talk!
In her book she reviews the development of fundamentalism in Christianity, Judaism and Islam. She sees in all three religions an extreme element that has been developing ever since the dawning of modernity. The modern area brought drastic change. Authority once given to the church and God was now given to humans as they pursued science. Rationalism reigned supreme and change was the law of life. The earth was no longer the center of the universe and humans were no longer the special creature, for humans evolved into being as did all other life forms. People who previously looked to the past for guidance now looked towards the future. This was a whole new mentality, the idea of anticipation of future changes and developments. The industrial revolution brought autonomy and freedom to people. Friedrich Nietzsche declared that God was Dead.
As would be predicted, some people were ok with these changes, even excited. Others a little nervous but adaptable. Then there were some people who were afraid of the changes, who saw the changes as offenses against their beliefs, against God, and as signs of the apocalyptic agenda. When the West belatedly brought modernity to the Arab nations, fundamentalism began there too. Filled with fear, some fundamentalists began to see a holy war or a cosmic battle of good verses evil, sacred against the profane, right against wrong, period… That was how Paul Hill saw his mission.
The term fundamentalist is now used world-wide for those people or movements who hold specific beliefs for which there is no room for debate, beliefs around which people must reform society or suffer dyer consequences, even death. This is a much more far reaching definition of fundamentalism than just believing in five basic beliefs. This fundamentalist says that everyone must believe the way I believe for God’s will to be done.
There was a time in our country when it seemed that fundamentalism was losing momentum, but not anymore. If we are to address the problems for society that fundamentalism poses, problems that have to do with freedom of belief, freedom of the media, freedom of privacy and access to books, freedom of women and men to make reproductive choices, freedom of sexual preference and pride--all freedoms most of us in this room hold dear—we must try to understand the motivation and psychology of the fundamentalist.
First of all, much of fundamentalism comes from converting biblical stories that were myths intended to convey life’s meaning, converting these myths to literal facts. That’s why within Judaism the proposed establishment of Israel as the Promised Land became such a controversy within Judaism—it was converting what was a meaning making myth to a concrete earth bound fact—and the more mystical Jews felt a great loss in that. In fact, conflicts with fundamentalists are often felt first within their own faith traditions before the conflicts move into the wider society. Our own UU tradition came in part from such conflicts within churches in New England in the 1700’s and 1800’s when we separated from the more literal Calvinist believers.
Secondly, a core quality of fundamentalism is fear. Fear of God’s wrath. Fear of eternal punishment. And these fears are capitalized on by fundamentalist leaders to obtain obedience and power. Literalism and fear.
Now I want to say a couple more things about fundamentalism. One is that not all fundamentalists, those who believe in making their religious stories concrete and literal, those who want to transform culture to their beliefs—not all of these people are proponents of violence. In fact, only a small percentage of them promote violence.
Also, I believe that this is not just a conversation about fundamentalists--those folks out there, because we humans have more in common uniting us than we have differences dividing us. We all can slip into fundamentalist thinking. We all have a certain amount of literalism and fear motivating us. As one of my ministerial colleagues said recently (Thomas Anastasi) “Here is the confessional part of this sermon.” There is a big part of me that would like things to slow down, be clear and unchanging. There was a lot of comfort in my childhood catechism—allaying my fears. But my reasoning analytical mind won’t let me go back. But I still can think at times rigidly.
Perhaps we are fundamentalist anytime we are so sure that our beliefs are right that we move away from conversations with people who have differing beliefs. This can happen easily in a UU congregation, and does too often I observe in many congregations, between the humanists and the theists, or between mystics and scientific rationalists. It happens when a UU Christian doesn’t feel safe with UUs to say that Jesus is their primary spiritual guide. It also happens when someone tells me that they don’t want to hear the word God from this pulpit, or the words salvation or grace, before that person has asked me what I mean by those words—or before they hear from me what those words could convey, if we are willing to reclaim them from the fundamentalists, what those words might convey to us about underlying human needs and experience.
So the challenge for us modern day UUs is to remain in dialogue with each other, not in spite of differing beliefs, but because of differing beliefs, cherishing our differences, gaining from that dialogue an understanding of the other, and risking being influenced by the other, risking learning from one another
It seems to me that UU congregations are ideal places where we can find opportunities for human dialogue to understand each other, rather than to fear those who are different from us. It seems to me that here we can be together at the deeper level where the wider world so desperately needs to be. It seems to me that when we are talking to another person, and they say something we don’t understand or think we disagree with, that is the point where the potential is for a deepening human and I would say spiritual experience—if we don’t back away, if we instead become curious, not judgmental, and ask the person to talk more about their thoughts. Curiosity for the purpose of understanding, not judgment. This spiritual discipline takes consciousness, it takes relaxing into it, letting go of fear of difference, letting go of needing to have a right or wrong, a good or not so good. It takes a friendliness and a humility. But it is so rewarding, and it is what.. the ..world.. today.. needs.. so.. much.. more.. of.
As Unitarian Universalists we are in a prime position to take this path, because ours is a faith that has for centuries been willing to “Live the Questions.” We have evolved as a religious faith to honor the questions, and to live with some considerable ambiguity about so many of the big questions of life—what does indeed happen to us when we die, what is my purpose here on earth, what questions should I myself be pondering to address the mystery of life—not someone else’s questions, not someone else’s answers, but mine?
Rainier Maria Rilke, an outstanding German poet of the early 1900’s, was mentoring a younger poet when he wrote Letters to a Young Poet. Actually Rilke was himself just in his twenties at the time. But filled with the longevity of those twenty some years he wrote to his anxious aspiring protégé:
“I am touched by your beautiful anxiety. I feel there is no one anywhere who can answer for you those questions and feelings which, in their depths, have a life of their own; for even the most articulate people are unable to help, since what words point to is so very delicate, is almost unsayable.. I would like to beg you, dear Sir, as well as I can, to have patience with everything that is unresolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves as if they were unlocked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don’t search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.”
In contrast to fundamentalism, our UU faith at its best expects our world to continually change, and in the change we know that there will be ambiguity and mystery. Our response, as our principles suggest, is to honor the authority found within each of us to live the questions, living our way into our own answers through reflection on our own life experience and through the pooling of wisdom found throughout history, throughout the many cultures of the world. Ours is a faith of convergence not division. Our ideal response is to not fear the mystery and ambiguity, but to find within our congregational community a place where we can be supported in the challenges of our day-to-day life, and supported in our reflection and reasoning on the questions that seem most important to our place in life. We will never be out of struggles in our lives, and we will never know everything. This community is a place to be real with our lives and real with our uncertainties.
And our ideal response to ambiguity is to provide a place for our children to explore their questions too, and to companion them when they experience moments of awe and wonder—the awakening of their spiritual selves. One of the most precious involvements we can have here in this fellowship is to help as a children’s teacher sharing our own beliefs and our uncertainties, and our own awareness that some things we can’t be sure about, or at least we aren’t just now, and in either case, that’s okay. And aren’t the questions interesting? (see the openings on the RE table downstairs.)
And amidst the questions there are beliefs commonly held amongst us as Unitarian Universalists--
The inherent worth of all people, and the potential for good and for evil within each of us
The interdependent web of all life, and our obligation for protect life here on earth
And we believe in and work for democracy, justice and compassion and turning more to act than to word to declare these values,
We believe that truth is not sealed, and that community can be a safe place to search for it.
Yes, there is much we believe—even amidst our differences
Ours is a faith, that at its best, allows science and reason to join with reverence and awe and wonder and passion—allowing us to fully be human. “We don’t check our brains at the door. We are not afraid of science, we rely on it, and we are willing to adjust our beliefs whenever science washes away our outmoded knowledge, whenever reason dictates it—especially when we hear that dark chocolate is good for our hearts!
May Sarton, Unitarian poet of the twentieth century, wrote of reason in this poem entitled Dialogue:
The teacher of logic said, “Reason.”
The poet said, “Passion.”
“Without logic, we muddle and fail, said the teacher of reason.
The poet said, “Fiddle! What about Nature?”
“Has Nature no plan,
You poor fuddled creature?
You’re a rational man,
Not an ape or an angel.”
The poet said, “Nonsense! I’m an angel, an ape,
And a creature of sense,
Not a brain in a box
[That a mere jackanapes
With logic unlocks.]
I’m total. I’m human.
It’s you who are not.”
“You sound like a woman.”
The poet said, “Rot!
You’re just a machine.
You can’t write a poem.
You can’t make a dream.”
But the logical man Said,
“I’ll stick to my reason.”
(He said it with passion.)
In a world where fundamentalism seeks to restrict our lives, may we celebrate and protect our right for this religious community to exist, where each person may decide whether they will lead with their sense of reason or their sense of passion, or both, where we can join together to protect our nation’s civil rights, and where we can celebrate being human—with all that means, sharing our marvelous life journeys, supporting each other to have patience with all that is unresolved in our hearts, so that we might continue loving and living the questions.