"Viva la Difference"

A sermon by Dave Weissbard

delivered at

The Unitarian Universalist Church

Rockford, Illinois

05/15/05

Wal-Mart recently opened big new superstores in Belvidere and on Riverside Drive in Rockford, and another is set to open on East State Street soon. Wal-Mart is where the retail action is – sort of. This week, the Associated Press reported:

Wal-Mart Stores Inc., struggling with higher gasoline prices and slippage in its leadership in the retail industry, reported lower-than-expected first-quarter earnings Thursday and offered a disappointing profit outlook.

But discount rival Target Corp., which keeps sharpening its appeal to a higher-income consumer, enjoyed first-quarter results that exceeded expectations. It offered an upbeat outlook. Shares of Wal-Mart fell close to 3 percent in early afternoon trading, while Target rose a little more than 2 percent.

It isn’t that Wal-Mart is doing badly. It’s that it isn’t doing as well as projected.

The religious equivalent of Wal-Mart in Rockford is the Heartland Community Church, a branch of the 30,000 member Willow Creek Church in suburban Chicago. Heartland held its first service in Rockford 7 years ago with an initial attendance just under ours. It recently announced its purchase of the Colonial Village Mall in order to accommodate its programs and the weekend attendance of 4,000 at its services, which is almost as many as watch us on Fusion. I equate Heartland with Wal-Mart because both have found success by skillful marketing to mass markets, and providing products and services that people want.

Some people view the coming of a Wal-Mart to a community as a guaranteed disaster for all the small businesses, and for major competitors. As the current reports reveal, that isn’t necessarily so. Those small businesses which have succeeded in the face of the Wal-Mart challenge have been particularly those which focused on what is called “niche marketing” – little stores that offer something special, and focus on quality and individual attention. Robert Perry, in his book, Find a Niche and Scratch It asks and answers what is unique and significant about these boutique operations.

They are focused on doing one thing, They do not expect to sell to everyone entering the mall. They have in mind the specific customer who has an interest in buying a watch or a tie or a bonsai tree on this trip to the store. . . . The specialty stores have a very clear sense of what they offer, who their customer is, and how to meet the customer for a quick transaction.

I have not seen any market research which has been done on the growth of Heartland, although I am sure they have it, but I will wager that its biggest impact has been on First Assembly and First Free, Rockford’s largest churches which also have theology most comparable to Heartland’s. I attended a Heartland service several years ago and I was impressed with the style and professionalism with which they do what they do. Heartland is growing because it has staked out a unique territory: conservative Christianity in a swinging contemporary setting. I’m sure you know its motto, “A Different Way to Do Church.” In truth, it is the same old theology in a new wrapper – a different way of doing the same old religion – but let me be clear, it is a theology that works for many, many people.

My citation of Perry’s Niche book omitted reference to the subtitle which is “Marketing Your Congregation.” It is Perry’s contention that the mega-churches like Heartland are not going to wipe out all the competition – that there is a place for niche churches, just as there is for niche shops.

Thomas Jefferson, in a letter to Dr. Benjamin Waterhouse of Cambridge, Massachusetts written on June 26, 1822, said:

I rejoice that in this blessed country of free inquiry and belief, which has surrendered its conscience to neither kings nor priests, the genuine doctrine of only one God is reviving, and I trust that there is not a young man now living in the United States who will not die a Unitarian.

Jefferson was, of course, not a prophet. Unitarianism and its cousin, Universalism, have never achieved the mass appeal that Jefferson predicted, and if we look at the religious trends in America today, it is not likely to in the lifetimes of today’s young people. Unitarian Universalism has a tradition of being, and I believe will continue to be, a niche religion. The principles, the values, the perspectives that make us who we are, do not appeal to a mass market. We not only have a different way of doing church, we have a different way of doing religion itself, and I say, “Viva la difference!”

People are not all the same. They do not all have the same hungers, they do not all have the same curiosities, they do not all have the same religious needs. Some religions believe all people should be brought into line with their beliefs; Unitarian Universalists affirm the validity, even the importance of there being differing approaches to religion.

Jefferson knew that many of the leaders of the American Revolution and the new nation were Unitarian or at least deistic in their religious orientation, and he took it for granted that perspective would spread through the population. Jefferson underestimated the continuing appeal of those traditional Christian beliefs which he used scissors to cut out of his edition of the Christian scriptures.

In his book, Moral Politics, Gorge Lakoff suggests there are two distinct models of Christianity: one is based on a belief in a God who is a strict father; the other is based on a God who is a nurturing parent. The “strict father” branch is composed of those Christians who stress humanity’s sinful nature which they believe puts us in danger of eternal damnation unless: we repent, are born again, accept Jesus as Lord and Savior, join his church, and strictly follow his teachings. “This would be hard,” Lakoff suggests. “It would require a character one did not have before being born again, a new moral essence – not being rotten to the core, but being rock solid.”

The contrasting Christian theme is that of being children of a nurturing parent. Lakoff paints that picture as being one in which the believer seeks to:

follow Christ’s example of how to act nurturantly to others. There are no strict rules; rather one must develop empathy and learn to act compassionately for the benefit of others.

Why would one chose one form of Christianity over the other? I think of the fundamental distinction that the psychiatrist, Erik Erikson, made between people who, as infants, develop basic trust in the world, in contrast to those whose fundamental orientation is one of distrust. Erikson’s placing of all the responsibility for those world views on mothers has been thoroughly rejected by modern psychiatry. Nonetheless, there is, I believe, validity in his description of the two types. We all know people who fundamentally distrust themselves and life itself and manifest insecurity and suspicion, and others who openly accept themselves and life and exude confidence and a sense of adventure. I would suggest that each type seeks a theology compatible with their basic stance to help them cope with the world as they experience it.

The name “Unitarian” places a stress on the unity of God as distinguished from the three-personed God of the trinity, but equally central to the perspective that came to be known as Unitarian was an emphasis on human worth and perfectability rather than sinfulness. Our ancestors stressed the use of individual reason, conscience, and judgement, rather than blind obedience to authorities and rules. Thus, we are descended from that “nurturance” strain, the “trusting” version of Christianity, rather than the “strict father” branch.

I say “descended” because Unitarian Universalism grew away from its Christian roots. One of the fundamental commitments of Unitarianism and Universalism was to religion free of creeds.

In his historic 1819 sermon on Unitarian Christianity, William Ellery Channing said:

We can hardly conceive of a plainer obligation on beings of our frail and fallible nature, who are instructed in the duty of candid judgement, than to abstain from condemning [others] of apparent conscientiousness and sincerity who are chargeable with no crime but that of differing from us in the interpretation of the Scriptures, and differing, too, on topics of great and acknowledged obscurity. We are astonished at the hardihood of those, who, with Christ’s warnings sounding in their ears, take on them the responsibility of making creeds for his church, and cast out professors of virtuous lives for imagined errors, for the guilt of thinking for themselves.

A hundred and fifty years ago, The Rev. Theodore Parker, free of restrictive creeds, distinguished between “the religion of Jesus and the religion about Jesus.” It was his contention that Christianity had become something that Jesus would never have recognized, and that Unitarian beliefs were closer to what Jesus taught than were the teaching of the so-called Christian churches. Many Unitarians began to look at the relationship of Christianity to the other religions of the world and to suggest that Christianity was not owed any special allegiance, that Hinduism and Buddhism and Islam were also sources of wisdom that should be honored. Some Unitarians and Universalists still continued to, and do today, acknowledge a special debt to Jesus, and claimed the title of liberal Christians while rejecting the supernatural attributes claimed for him by the creeds, and others did and do not make that claim. Some followed reason into a fundamental questioning of the existence of any supernatural powers in the universe, and staked out agnostic, atheistic, or humanistic positions for themselves within the Unitarian Universalist family.

The Texas poet, Karle Wilson Baker, expresses the Unitarian Universalist view on creeds (although I find no indication that she was a UU):

Many people cannot imagine the existence of a church which is not defined by a common creed to which all must subscribe. “Without a creed there must be chaos.” Well, maybe, but it can be a creative chaos. Because we have no authoritative statement of what it must mean to be a Unitarian Universalist, and because nature, we are told, abhors a vacuum, there are always some people who think they know what the bottom line of our church must be and are ready to provide it. Our rejection of creedalism is not just an historical peculiarity – it is a central part of our definition of ourselves. We cherish liberty, the freedom to follow reason and experience – the creeds which shelters others stifle us.

It would, however, disingenuous to suggest that there are no ideas that are widely shared among Unitarian Universalists. In the last half of the 19^th century, there was an attempt to draw limits around Unitarianism to keep it in the Christian family, and that resulted in a split which was not healed until the 1890's. That healing was promoted by The Rev. William Channing Gannett who developed a non-binding statement of “Things Commonly Believed Among Us.” He said:

We believe that to love the Good and to live the Good is the supreme thing in religion;

We hold reason and conscience to be final authorities in matters of religious belief;

We revere Jesus, and all holy souls that have taught [humanity] truth and righteousness and love, as prophets of religion;

We trust the unfolding Universe as beautiful, beneficent, unchanging Order; to know this order is truth; to obey it is right and liberty and stronger life;

We believe that good and evil invariably carry their own recompense, no good thing being failure and no evil thing success; that heaven and hell are states of being; that no evil can befall the good [person] in either life or death; that all things work together for the victory of Good;

We believe we ought to join hands and work to make the good things better and the worst good, counting nothing good for self that is not good for all;

We believe that this self-forgetting, loyal life, awakes in [people] the sense of union here and now with things eternal – the sense of deathlessness, and this sense is an earnest of the life to come.

We worship One-in-All – that life whence suns and stars derive their orbits and the soul of [humanity] its Ought, – that Light which lighteth every [person] that cometh into the world, giving us power to become the [children] of God – that love with which our souls commune.

Now, that was a statement of “Things Commonly Believed Among Us” in 1887, a statement which itself declared that it was always open to restatement and was only to be regarded as the thought of the majority at the time.

The more modern version is that adopted by delegates to our General Assemblies two decades ago which states our covenant to affirm and promote:

Acceptance of one another and encouragement to spiritual growth in our congregations;

The right of conscience and the use of the democratic process within our congregations and in society at large;

There is talk today that that statement is no longer adequate for our times and that a major revision is needed. I worry somewhat about where that will take us because, like the rest of America, we have seen somewhat of a shift to the right, toward more traditional concepts and language in recent years – remembering that a shift to the right of where we have been is not necessarily conservative in anyone else’s eyes.

There is a tendency, confirmed time and again in experiments in social psychology, for people to want to have their beliefs found acceptable by others. Solomon Asch brought subjects, one at a time, into a room where a group of people was seated at a table. All the others were secretly confederates of the experimenter. The group was shown a card with a line on it, and then a second card with three lines, and each person was asked which of the three matched the first line. The right answer was obvious, but each of the people at the table gave the wrong answer before the subject was given an opportunity to respond. 34% of the time, the average subject conformed to the wrong answer, even though it was obviously wrong. 74% of the subjects gave the wrong answer at least once. This has been replicated many times.

People who hold uncommon religious beliefs are often in the same situation. They don’t particularly want to be labeled as oddballs, so there is always some internal pressure to be “more like the other guys.” The interesting thing about the experiments is that as soon as just one other person is permitted to give the right answer, the subject is far more inclined to do so too. We thrive on having support – if we feel less alone, we feel freer to be honest. That, I believe, is an important function for our churches – to support one another in following our consciences when they are at odds with the majority view. But there are always those who believe it would be better if we were just a little more like everyone else – “would it hurt so much to compromise just a little?”

There is one more dimension of this I should address. It is sometimes suggested that we are more creedal politically than we are religiously – that we can tolerate Christians and Pagans in Unitarian Universalist churches more easily than we do Republicans.

It is clear that there is no “one for one” correlation between religious liberalism and political liberalism. One of the most influential ministers in my religious development, for whom I have deep respect, is a Unitarian Universalist for whom George Bush may be too liberal. But it is not accurate to suggest that there is no correlation between religion and political perspective. It is not a coincidence that few members of the Heartland Church, or First Free or First Assembly are likely to have voted for John Kerry. The same needs, the same perspective which makes “strict father” religion appealing to a person, carries over into the political realm. Those who religiously believe that an eye for an eye is a good rule, that abortion is murder, that women should be subservient to men, that homosexuality is an abomination, and that our nation was chosen by God, are likely to want to see those views reinforced by governmental policies. Those whose religious values lead them to believe than an eye for an eye leaves us all blind, that abortion should be a choice, that women should be treated equally, that homosexual love is love and should be respected as such, and that other nations have an equal right to freedom, want to see a government which supports those views. One of my favorite statements by a Unitarian Universalist theologian was James Luther Adams insistence that “A purely spiritual religion is a purely spurious religion.”

Unitarians and Universalists were active in the abolition of slavery, the creation of public schools, women’s suffrage, prison reform, the founding of the ACLU and NAACP, and opposition to many, if not all, of America’s wars. It is also true that some Unitarians and Universalists took the opposite side in most of those causes. That conservative minister of my adolescence liked to point out that James C. Calhoun and Daniel Webster, who fought on the floor of the Senate during the day, worked together to organize the All Souls Unitarian Church in Washington, DC. One of the members of the church I served before coming here was the Secretary of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. We welcome all kinds.

One would have to wear blinders to deny that active participation in movements to make this a better world are a central part of Unitarian and Universalist history. It is also true, however, that it would no less a violation of our principles to create a political creed that would exclude those who do not agree, than it would to create a theological creed; we are enriched by a diversity of opinions. At the same time, we do not seek to create a safe haven where people can come with certainty that their beliefs will never be challenged. Neither our pulpits nor our pews are bound. It is ironic that ours is probably the only pulpit in Rockford from which Jesus’ ethic of non-violence, love of enemy, and respect for all, can be preached without fear of retaliation.

There are people who visit this church once and never return; some have realized what they are into and have left before the sermon. There are others who know from the first moment they set foot inside that this is the place for them. This is not a one-size-fits-all situation. I do not believe that this will ever be anything like a mega-church. I do, however, believe this church could and should be larger than it is, that we should have greater diversity than we do. I enthusiastically support those goals, as long as we don’t try to become more like everyone else in order to achieve them.

Ours is a niche church, serving a public untouched in Rockford by any other congregation. Let us serve that niche well, seeking ways to do so better than we have before. This church is different from the rest. Let us be unabashedly proud of our uniqueness. Viva la difference!