by Ben Campbell
April 27, 2015
I want to begin by saying that you might not agree with everything I am about to say – and that’s OK. It’s OK in Unitarian Universalism far more than it is in any other faith I know of. If you look around on the HUU website, you’ll find a pamphlet titled 100 Questions That Non-Members Ask About Unitarian Universalism. One thing it says is “We do not believe that any religious precept or doctrine must be accepted as true simply because some religious organization, tradition or authority says it is. Neither do we believe that all UUs should have identical beliefs.” Regarding other, non-spiritual matters such as politics and social issues, it says, “Even though we make collective statements and urge specific action, it is the individual who must ultimately decide his or her position on every issue.”
Merle Wenger has approached me twice about giving a talk here. The first time, he asked me what about my spiritual journey and life led me here, to Unitarian Universalism. The second time, he had noticed my unease whenever political matters came up in our discussions here. Believe it or not, these two matters are related. After I shared my initial thoughts with him, he also asked if I would share some reflections on my time at HUU: what I think we do well, and what I think could be improved.
I’ll start with that last one by giving two compliments and one critique.
The first compliment is that in my time here, you have been exceedingly kind to me, offering words of encouragement about the goings-on in my life, inviting me into your homes, and sharing your food with me. As someone who grew up in fundamentalist Christianity, I was shocked that people could put together a potluck without the fear that being antisocial was a sin that would send them to hell. My second compliment is that here, I have had face-to-face encounters with walks of life very different from my own that I would not have otherwise. For the first time in my life, I have heard face-to-face the perspectives of undocumented immigrants and gay and lesbian adults. For the same reason, I also enjoy the Joys and Concerns portion of the service; when we hear from each other first-hand about what is happening to us personally, it provides a source of information that we can trust and verify in an age when the consumption of mass media is liable to drive you insane.
I’ll lead into the rest of the talk with that one critique. I must admit that I wince when Unitarian Universalists feel free to use terms like “God” and “resurrection” and “salvation” to mean things that are different from what they usually do. Language is like driving. It doesn’t inherently matter whether we drive on the left side or on the right side, but it definitely matters that we all agree to drive on the same side. It doesn’t matter what sounds we make to draw pictures in each other’s minds, but it does matter that we make the same sounds for the same pictures. At least, anyone who is going to be using common terms in a special way should take pains to define those terms clearly so that everyone can understand exactly what they mean. With that in mind, I’m going to define a couple of terms of my own. Hopefully you’ll understand my definitions, and hopefully they won’t be too far off from what they have meant to you so far.
When we use the words “Beliefs” and “Values”, often we speak as though they’re the same thing, in the same breath. But today, I’m going to make a point that they are different. They actually have very little to do with each other. “Beliefs” and “values”…
When I say “beliefs”, I’m referring to just what we see in the world. They have nothing to do with how we feel about it or whether we think it’s good or bad. If I believe it’s going to rain, I could think it’s terrible because I can’t go outside without getting my clothes soaked. Or maybe I think it’s a wonderful, refreshing break from the blazing summer heat. It could be either; the mere fact that I believe it doesn’t tell you which one.
Values, as I am using that term, refer to want we want in the world, our goals, our desires, and our feelings. Values are what we want to accomplish. They are our motivations, our hopes and dreams. Values are related to goals, desires, and feelings a lot more than they are to beliefs.
Some of you may have heard of the is-ought distinction. This corresponds, roughly, to the distinction I’m making between beliefs and values. Your beliefs are what you think the world is. Your values are what you think the world ought to be. Let me say that again: Beliefs are what we think the world is. Values are what we think the world ought to be.
Beliefs are central to some religions, particularly the ones that dominate our part of the world. Religions whose membership is defined by beliefs are called creedal religions because those required beliefs are called creeds. Creedal religions say you have to believe in order to belong. Before I came here, I attended a conservative, confessional presbyterian church. There, it was very clear what you had to believe to belong. Every Sunday, there was a portion of the service where the minister would call out, “What do we believe?” and we would all say, in unison:
I believe in God, the Father almighty,
creator of heaven and earth.
I believe in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord,
who was conceived by the Holy Spirit
and born of the virgin Mary…
Those of you who grew up in liturgical churches can probably finish the rest for me.
Every Sunday, we would say this creed, or something to the same effect. Something that expressed all the essential doctrines of Christianity, what you had to believe in order to belong. It made sure everyone in the room knew who we were. If the church leadership came to believe you did not believe any one of those points, they wouldn’t serve you communion. While everyone else was filing forward to take the bread and wine, you’d be staying in your seat, visible to anyone who might notice and wonder what was going on with you. To be clear, such excommunication was exceedingly rare, so rare that I never actually witnessed it in my year of attending that church. But the fear was there. Creedal religions say you need to believe in order to belong.
Creedal religions have certain problems.
For one thing, because many people value community and find that community in religion, they may limit their search for truth to lines of evidence that only confirm the beliefs that religion requires, or else they risk losing their sense of community within their religion. If your religion requires you to believe in Young-Earth Creationism and reject the theory of evolution, you have to find ways to either ignore any evidence of evolution or explain it away. You can contemplate the idea, but you cannot entertain it. You can supposedly think outside the box, but you ultimately have to find your way back in. Creedal religions do two things at once: they form the basis for relationships between people, and they require those people to hold certain beliefs. If a person finds those beliefs to falter, then the relationship may falter as well.
That one is personal for me. Having grown up in a fundamentalist Christian sect, I was always taught that beliefs – beliefs in the Bible, in Creation, in the Resurrection, in the Divinity of Jesus – were essential to what it meant to be a Christian. If I wanted to advance any idea – be it critical race theory, man-made global warming, the existence of trans people, anything – someone could just shut me down by quoting a Bible verse. It didn’t matter how much human suffering was at stake or how apparent things were to my own eyes and ears. If I couldn’t find a way to make them consistent with Scripture, then my case was dismissed.
When I moved to this area, the first church I joined was that conservative Presbyterian church. At that point, I now realize, I was mostly just hedging my bets about Christianity. I thought that there may not be a God or a Hell, but on the off-chance there is, I want to be on the safe side. Now, I realize that hedging your bets isn’t belief. Taking your umbrella because there’s a 10% chance of showers isn’t the same as planting crops in the desert because you believe it’s going to rain. But as soon as I realized that I didn’t really believe, I had a problem. All the friends I had met at that church knew me only because I attended there – presumably because I was a Christian and shared their Christian beliefs. I began to wonder what would become of our relationship if I told them I didn’t hold those beliefs. I was afraid they would think I was a fool or a hedonist or some combination of the two. Thankfully, I have told some of those people, and my relationships have remained intact. But the experience made me wary of forming relationships based on beliefs. During that time, my church friends formed most of my social circle. They were the ones I hung out with on Friday nights. I went to quite a few barbecues and small-group Bible studies. If I went hiking and camping with anyone, it was with them. If I didn’t share their Christian beliefs, then, in their eyes, I thought, I would be a very different person from the one they met when I came that first Sunday. The only reason I ever met them in the first place was because, at least in their eyes, we shared certain beliefs. Losing those beliefs would downgrade our relationship from “brothers and sisters in Christ” to just “hiking buddies”. That sort of relationship downgrade is not one I take lightly, though many people no doubt get far worse. After that, I wanted to form relationships that were both deeply personal and also based on as few beliefs as possible. I wanted to stay in touch with reality, so I wanted to be open-minded and be able to test my own beliefs with as little undue resistance as possible. And that means not having my relationships founded on shared beliefs.
So, back to the problems of creedal religions: the most significant problem with creeds is simply that they can be false, and acting on false beliefs can cause significant harm. The procedure of lobotomy was believed to treat psychiatric illnesses. The early colonists in Salem, Massachusetts believed in witches. If people are not free to change their minds and speak their minds, then falsehoods can persist and continue to inflict harm. Even with good values, false beliefs can lead us to take bad actions. As the saying goes, the road to hell is paved with good intentions. We need to let loose our beliefs and be willing to change our minds in case those beliefs turn out to be false. The fourth UU principle, “a free and responsible search for truth and meaning” is not merely some personal spiritual quest. It’s a social ethical obligation.
Those problems with creedal religions are why I’ve come to Unitarian Universalism. Unitarian Universalism is unusual in this part of the world in that it explicitly purports not to be a creedal religion. The UUA bylaws, in section C-2.5 of Article II, state, “Congregational freedom and the individual’s right of conscience are central to our Unitarian Universalist heritage. Congregations may establish statements of purpose, covenants, and bonds of union so long as they do not require that members adhere to a particular creed.” It seems like, in theory, this means that you could hold any set of beliefs and still be a Unitarian Universalist. At the very least, the religious connotation of the word “creed” means that you could believe any of the following:
- Jesus was God.
- Jesus was a prophet of God but was not God.
- Jesus was neither God nor a prophet of God.
While the religious history of the word “creed” seems to allow for all manner of spiritual beliefs, I think this freedom also should apply to political beliefs, such as regards the prevalence of voter fraud in the United States. It should extend to medical beliefs, such as those concerning the safety and efficacy of vaccines. And to scientific beliefs, such as regards the causes of climate change. Freedom of conscience should apply to all realms of thought, not just the spiritual. Given today’s proliferation of low-quality or even fake news, AI-generated images, and widespread distrust of legacy scientific, academic, and media institutions, I can certainly see how reasonable people might disagree vehemently on these topics. Many scientific, medical, and political beliefs are not testable through everyday experience. They rely on documents, wide-ranging field experiments and observational studies. They involve events that happened many miles away or many years before we were born. They require us to place our trust in at least one other person, often a great many people, most of whom we have never met. And different people with different lived experiences are going to have different levels of trust for certain people, institutions, and media outlets, even when they share the same values.
Back to Unitarian Universalism: if creedal religions say you need to believe to belong, then what does one need in order to belong to a Unitarian Universalism, if not belief? I want to take a moment to underscore the importance of this question. The way we answer this question literally defines who we are. What does one need in order to be a Unitarian Universalist?
The answer, as found in our bylaws, is our values. What we want in the world. Our goals, hopes, and dreams. Our values. What are our values? The HUU bylaws list 7 Principals:
- The inherent worth and dignity of every person;
- Justice, equity and compassion in human relations;
- Acceptance of one another and encouragement to spiritual growth in our congregations;
- A free and responsible search for truth and meaning;
- The right of conscience and the use of the democratic process within our congregations and in society at large;
- The goal of world community with peace, liberty, and justice for all;
- Respect for the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part;
This brings me back to my unease whenever hot-button issues are discussed here. It’s not because I think we shouldn’t be talking about them. Indeed, we absolutely must continue to speak openly and boldly about every issue that our society faces, no matter how controversial. My concern is rather with what isn’t being said. As I said at the beginning, you aren’t expected to agree with every belief expressed at this pulpit, and that’s a message that hasn’t been made clear as of late. We need to continually reiterate this principle of freedom of belief and conscience, lest unspoken assumptions be mistaken for unwritten rules.
In fact, I think we need to continually reiterate all of our core values. One thing I think we need to do more of in this congregation is have something to focus on. We talk about so many different things – travel, nature, veganism – it can be hard to see what’s most important. As much as I can criticize my old church, one thing is sure: they know damn well who. they. are. They recite it every week. Maybe we could do something similar – recite a statement that reminds us who we are. I’d like for us to try it. I have put the 7 Principles on the screen in a way that formulates them as a statement of who we are. HUU, what do we value?
We value the inherent worth and dignity of every person.
We value justice, equity, and compassion in human relations.
We accept one another and encourage spiritual growth in our congregations.
We value a free and responsible search for truth and meaning.
We value the right of conscience and the use of the democratic process within our congregations and in society at large.
We pursue the goal of world community with peace, liberty, and justice for all.
We show respect for the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part.
In these values, we are united. These are our motivations, our hopes and dreams. Harrisonburg Unitarian Universalists, this is who we are.