Harrisonburg Unitarian Universalists Sunday service, Sept. 30, 2007
By Robin McNallie

Recently, we have seen a spate of books produced by what The Nation has dubbed “the New Atheists.” These include Richard Dawkins’ The God Delusion, Sam Harris’s The End of Faith and Letter to a Christian Nation, Daniel Dennett’s Breaking the Spell, and Christopher Hitchens’ God Is Not Great. We might also add to these Susan Jacoby’s Free Thinkers, written several years ago. I must confess that I have not given much close scrutiny to these books since I heard all the standard arguments against God long ago when I was taking philosophy courses in the 50’s at St. Lawrence University where the logical positivist school reigned over the metaphysicians. I got “the God doesn’t exist” argument from the old atheists, ranging from Voltaire to Bertrand Russell. The new ones don’t seem to have added much to the debate. Indeed, this present no-God vs. God face off seems to bring out the worst in both camps, with the no-Goders assuming a smarter-than-thou stance and the fundamentalist theists assuming a holier-than-thou one. I find it difficult to side with either the superciliousness of the one or the sanctimony of the other. I suspect that the New Atheists’ fight is not so much with God as it is with his, her, its acolytes, the abuses to which they have put religion itself-. Lamentably too much on display in these divided times -not only the 9/11 attacks but Shia and Sunni warfare in Iraq, Jewish and Palestinian violence, and here at home, mindless assaults on Darwinism, on gays, on reproductive choice, on stem cell research, on church-state separation. The list seems endless. [Read more…]

A sermon preached at Harrisonburg UUA, August 19, 2007
by Rev. John Irvine

A perched hawk can often be seen cocking its head and looking up at the sky with one eye.

It may be estimating the catchability of a bird that could serve as its lunch. More likely, it is cautiously watching another hawk flying over that might dive on it and make it lunch. When I have looked up to see what the hawk is watching, I have often been unable to spot anything up there. Yet the hawk keeps following it across the sky regardless, until the opportunity, or the danger, has passed.

That’s an obvious reminder that much goes on around me beyond my range of vision, that my eye does not have the capacity to see. With the cone cells in their retinas packed together far more thickly than ours, hawks can see about 3 times as far as we can. A bald eagle was once observed making an abrupt right turn, then gliding in a straight line for 3 miles to a lake, where it picked a large fish off the surface. Could you see anything even the size of a large fish at 3 miles? No wonder “eagle-eyed” is a compliment when ascribed to a human!

Physical vision is one thing, but “vision” is also a spiritual term. Spiritually speaking, does your vision’s reach embrace enough? Does mine? My attention was captured recently while reading a book by a theology professor, Douglas Ottati. (Douglas F. Ottati, Reforming Protestantism:Christian Commitment in Today’s World. Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 1995, p. 58.) Describing a person whose spiritual vision had been enlarged by developing a religious belief system and practices, he used the phrase “the capacious eye.” That unusual phrase struck me as a worthy subject for this sermon. [Read more…]

Presented by Lincoln Gray
July 8, 2007

This talk was presented as a part of Our Spiritual Journeys service.

I am proud to be the 12th great grandson of Roger Williams (claimed as a spiritual leader by the Unitarians). I knew my great-grandmother, a Williams who married a Gray, and heard the stories. Roger was a Puritan who came to the Massachusetts Bay colony in the 1600’s seeking religious freedom. He soon ran afoul of the local leaders because he believed in too much religious freedom. He was eventually banished for promulgating his signature principle of “separation of church and state”. The story goes that the banished criminals were thrown out the back of the English settlement on the coast to face their fate in the wilderness to the west. Roger knew of a penal colony, called Rouges Island, and set out trudging through the woods to find that minimal refuge of kindred spirits. Despite his belief in the separation of church and state, he was a devoutly religious man and felt that the Almighty directly assisted him in safely reaching the destination of that (spiritual) journey. While that story may not be true in all details, many followed, and his new settlement grew. History does record that he named that place “Providence” to honor the generosity of the Almighty, and the colony became Rhode Island. He was the first English leader of an American colony to pay the Native Americans for the usurped land. He was the first to allow Jews and Quakers in his colony. His grandson was granted 2000 acres in far northern Vermont in return for his service in General Washington’s Army. Roughly 100 acres have now come to me to preserve and protect, and hopefully to pass on to the next generation. As I walk that land, I often feel the ghost of my ancestors. I surely support religious freedom, the separation of church and state, and acceptance of those who have different religious views. I only hope that the stewardship of all I have inherited (both the intellectual traditions of religious tolerance and freedom, and that bit of land) will not falter on my watch. Toward that end I can only hope for such Providence as might come my way. (That said, I must admit I feel that the Spirit of Almighty Providence is more likely a mysterious internal force rather than an elderly, European-looking, man-in-the-sky who magically directs events on earth in response to our prayers – as Roger Williams undoubtedly prayed on his trek through the wilderness). [Read more…]