Unitarian universalists face a new age

Title

Creator

Gaebler, Max D.

Language

English

Source

Panorama Volume XXI (No. 4) April 1969

Year

1969

Rights

In Copyright - Educational Use Permitted

Abstract

This organization for religious freedom has a vital and meaningful message to people who are influenced by reason, scientific ideas, and humane sentiments

Fulltext

■ This organization for religious freedom has a vital and meaningful message to people who are in fluenced by reason, scientific ideas, and humane sentiments. UNITARIAN UNIVERSALISTS FACE A NEW AGE “The genius of the Unita rian movement has been its power to adapt the vocabu lary and practices of a reli gion whose roots are sunk deep into the past to new knowledge, new conditions, and new situations. .. There can be little doubt of the need in the modern world for some organized expres sion of the liberal spirit in religion. In a time when revolution and chaos are everywhere threatening, when ideals are again forming an alliahce with tyranny and dogmatism, when intellectual confusion and social discon tent are blindly trying to fight their way out of situa tions where only the prob lem-solving temper of mind can be of real help, when a fresh birth of the nationalis tic spirit is everywhere of fering its spurious comfort to tired and discouraged people — in a time like ours there is imperative need for a re ligious fellowship that will bring order and hope and confidence to men of the li beral tradition.” Now the surprising thing about this statement is that despite its contemporary ring — its reference to revolution and chaos, to intellectual confusion and resurgent na tionalism — despite all this, it was written more than thirty years ago. It comes from the introduction to the report of the Commission of Appraisal established by the American Unitarian Associa tion, a report which became the cornerstone of the whole new thrust of our religious fellowship in the past gene ration. Here are a few more lines from that report of the Commission of Appraisal published in 1936. “For April 1969 37 more than a hundred years,” ihe Commission said, ‘‘the liberal churches of America have stood and fought for religious freedom, by which they have meant chiefly the right of each individual to think out his own religious beliefs and the right of each congregation to choose its own forms of worship and church policy. The struggle has been largely against the authority of creeds and of ecclesiastical traditions, and the principal methods em ployed have been preaching and teaching, based upon faith in the power of hu man reason to work out all the problems of human life, provided it were liberated from ignorance, prejudice, and dogmatism. Today li beral churches find them selves facing a very different world, in which different conditions impose the neces sity for a new formulation of basic purposes, principles, and methods. What is need ed in the world of 1936 is an association of free church es that will stand and fight for the central philosophy and values of liberal reli gion, as set over against any philosophy that denies the spiritual nature of man, making him merely the pro duct and plaything of a ma terial universe in which on ly blind chance and ruthless force have sway.” This was written in 1936. The “different conditions” which the Commission be lieved required “a new for mulation of basic purposes, principles, and methods,” — these new conditions includ ed the rising menace of poli tical authoritarianism in fas cist Italy and Nazi Germany, both of which were at that very time engaged in helping another dictator — Francisco Franco — crush the incipient democracy in Spain. They included the great depres sion, in whose many Ameri cans succumbed to the blan dishments of Father Cough lin and Gerald L. K. Smith, who blamed all our troubles on the Jews or the Negroes or the people with fun ny foreign-sounding names. They included the tragic failure of traditional laissezfaire economic ideas to pre vent or to cure the depres sion itself and the evident need to find new ways of massive governmental inter vention in the economy, ways 38 Panorama that would relieve the in tolerable consequences of the depression while still embo dying the attitudes and pro cesses of democracy. The ba sic philosophic issue, the Commission asserted, was that “between those who affirm and those who deny the possibility of so adapting the traditional democratic processes as to make them effectively applicable to the problems confronting modern society . . . Many intelligent and thoughtful students of history,” the report goes on, “have come to the conclu sion that democracy carries within itself the seeds of its own inevitable corruption and death. The tide is to day strongly moving in the direction of arbitrary and absolute authority; and, if the democratic processes are to be saved from something very like obliteration, there must be prompt and vigorous action. It is high time for those who believe in demo cracy to take their stand and organize their forces aggres sively. In that struggle re ligion has a part to play that may well be decisive; for . . . religion can supply the basic ideas and the inex haustible driving - force of emotion and will that are necessary to meet on equal terms the forces now arrayed against democracy, provided it be religion that is itself consistent with the princi ples of liberalism.” That was the way things looked to a group of highly perceptive and committed Unitarians in 1936.. And I must say that as I read their words, I find myself com pelled to repeat over and over again the old French observation that the more things change, the more they remain the same. So much of what they said sounds directly applicable to our own situation today. Yet surely the circum stances which seemed so com pelling to the Commission in 1936 have changed even more dramatically in the generation since then than in the generation before. If “different conditions” re quired “a new formulation of basic purposes, principles, and methods” in 1936, how much more must that be true today. There is no dearth of voices these days compelling our attention to 60 April 1969 precisely this necessity for adaptation to changing cir cumstances if we wish our kind of churches to remain relevant — to use the favo rite and much overused term of the moment. Dr. and Mrs. Josiah Bartlett, for ex ample, in the title of their new book, insist that Uni tarian Universalism now faces its “Moment of Truth,” in which the full implications of our traditional commit ment to freedom, to innova tion, and to individual dig nity must at last be re cognized and confronted. Through a plethora of study commissions, special commit tees and individual pro nouncements we have been struggling for some time to catch the elusive qualities which make our new situa tion different and to adjust our programs to meet these new conditions. We are re vising our religious education program for children, our worship materials, our deno minational structure, our theological education — al most any aspect of our com mon life of which one might think. And the cry is always the same: the old structures will not do, the old ways of doing things are no longer relevant, what was pioneer ing in the 1940’s is “old hat” on the eve of the seventies. I’m not so sure that any of the things we have come up with as bold new approaches are really any better — or in some cases even as good as what they propose to replace; but at least there is an enormous restiveness in our religious household these days — a restiveness pa rallel to that in society at large — in the search for new and more satisfying forms and structures, for a “new formulation of basic purposes, principles, and methods. Some there are who think that we are so stuck in the morass of inherited attitudes and methods that nothing short of a complete overhaul will suffice. These are the same people who are likely to see our social institutions at large as hopelessly trapped in guarding the status quo and in need of revolutionary change if the promise of the new age just over the hori zon is to be fulfilled. Now I happen to stand in point of age almost ex actly half way between the 40 Panorama young man who insists on “an unequivocal commitment to revolutionary transforma tion oi our society’’ and the older minister who is “more concerned with the inner weather than with the outer circumstances of man.” It would be very easy to say that it’s all a matter of age, that it’s characteristic for the young to be impetuous and for their elders to be more cautious. It would, I say, be easy to offer this explana tion; yet I believe that in this instance it would be ab solutely mistaken. For the real issue, it seems to me, has nothing to do with age; rather, it is the question of whether one affirms or de nies “the possibility of so adapting the traditional de mocratic processes as to make them effectively appli cable to the problems con fronting modern society.” It is a question of how ser iously one takes “the liberal spirit in religion.” Even to put it in these terms at once suggests that “the liberal spirit” is more a matter of attitudes than of program, more related to man’s inner weather than to his outer circumstances. And so I come down myself on the side of the man whose primary concern lies in this direction. I admire the moral enthu siasm of the other, his zeal for good works; but I fear his revolutionary fervor. For like many revolutionaries he has large blind spots, so that he sees the injustices and evils of our society writ large, yet sees not at all the ways in which that society functions to protect indivi dual freedom and to en hance the cause of social jus tice. And I fear that he does not take seriously en ough the logic by which the revolution that began with “liberty, equality, and frater nity” ended with the guillo tine. I am afraid of revolution aries, I say, who see every thing far more clearly than the facts warrant, who have ready solutions to the ills that plague us. I fear the radicals of the Right who think they can cure social disorder by single-minded commitment to what they call “law and order.” And I fear equally those radicals of the left who think they APRIL 1969 41 can overcome the alienation of so many people through what they call “participatory democracy.” And I fear es pecially all those who would assume what the older min ister called total responsibi lity for the world. For however lofty the motivation that inspires it, such assump tion of total responsibility cloaks a drive for power which is all the more dan gerous when it is unrecog nized. Moreover — and this is very important — concentra tion on alleged total solu tions is apt to lead one to overlook the little things near at hand which really could make things better, steps that could produce no ticeable improvement even though they would surely not solve the whole problem. Npw all this is surely not to say that we live in the best of all possible societies, that everything is progressing as well as it possibly can, and the course of wisdom and morality alike is there fore to sit back and let na ture take its course. Not this at all. If we are to be true to “the liberal spirit in religion,’’ we must be always open to the need for change, for continuing adaptation to new circumstances, new con ditions. We often speak of our new age as revolutionary, but I think that if we are careful with the use of words it is not revolutionary at all! rather, it is a wholly new situation which is the product of revolutions but is not itself a revolution. It is, one writer suggest, “a situation that is characterized by a hitherto unknown acce leration in the course of events and by a growing es trangement from the tradi tional patterns of life and thought. Historical changes are taking place today with a speed that only a short time ago would have seemed incredible. These changes and developments are, how ever, not a revolution in the course of history, but an acceleration of historical events.” This writer, in fact, invented a new word to des cribe this phenomenon: he calls it “rapidation.” Now this, it seems to me, is what the liberal spirit means: not unswerving loyal ty to old and inherited forms, nor yet an overturn ing of the old every few 42 Panorama years as evidence of our abi lity to "hang loose,” but ra ther the ability "to adapt the vocabulary and practices of a religion whose roots are sunk deep into the past to new knowledge, new con ditions, and new situations." — by Rev. Max D. Gaebler, S. T. D. in the CLF letter. SILENCE Silence is the most impregnable defense and the most subtle form of attack. — Cornelio T. Villareal 48

pages

37+

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