Religious Humanism – An Oxymoron?
Presented to the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Huntington
October 16, 2005
Rev. Paul Ratzlaff
Should we add the phrase “religious humanism” to the pile of oxymorons that includes “jumbo shrimp,” “accurate horoscope,” “a little pregnant,” “adult children” or “adult male”? That’s the question that Marty Lipnick has asked me to address. He outbid the rest at last year’s service auction to purchase the opportunity to “name a sermon.” He asked me to address the question, “Religious Humanism – an oxymoron?”
As in so many other things UU, the definitive answer (another oxymoron? A “definitive answer” in Unitarian Universalism?) is this: “It depends…” It depends on how you define the terms “humanism” and “religious.”
I would note that some of us get quite persnickety about our definitions. We presume our definition is the one and only definition, and scoff at anyone who uses the words differently. In spite of our self-proclaimed open-mindedness, some of us can be scathing if another uses a word in a way that we don’t approve of.
If we take our mission to pursue intellectual growth seriously, I suggest another approach to words. A colleague talked of her congregation’s use of words this way. She said, “here we use words as tools, not dogma.” Today in this exploration of “religious humanism,” I invite us to use our words as “tools, not dogma.”
Start with “humanism.” That word has been used in many different ways. In this Fellowship context, “humanism” is often presumed to oppose “theism,” that is, if you claim the label “humanist,” others assume that you do not believe in any kind of God, or, at best, are agnostic. However, in the larger world, humanism is much more encompassing. It includes leading thinkers who call themselves “Christian Humanists.” You may be tempted to huff and puff, “you can’t be a Christian and call yourself a humanist!” But all that response tells me, is that you haven’t begun to understand how the other person is using her or his words. Words are tools, not dogma.
Remember that historically humanism flourished with the Italian Renaissance and then spread throughout Europe. Several key themes typified the movement. The humanists emphasized freedom, not in the sense of standing outside of community, but in the human ability to shape and create community. In the medieval view, the world was given. To the humanist the world is still to be shaped and improved.
A second theme was naturalism in the sense that the human was understood as part of nature. Think of the Renaissance artists with their love of painting things as they appear, not by some theological symbolism.
A third theme was reason. Using one’s mind to investigate anything and everything was encouraged. Clearly these themes of freedom, reason and naturalism interrelate. Nothing human is alien to the mind’s curiousity. This contrasted with the earlier presumption that everything was revealed once and for all, and that one had to obey the church fathers, who had a more direct connection to the source. All of this laid the groundwork for the modern sciences, which based their knowledge on reasoned observation, rather than scripture or church teaching.
As I said, here at UUFH, people often use the word “humanism” in opposition to religion. But looking back into history, it’s more complicated. Listen to an early humanist, Leonardo Bruni: “Does St. Paul teach something more than Plato taught?” The implied answer is “no!” In a summary in the article on “Humanism” in the Encyclopedia of Philosophy, (Volume 4, 72) “Christianity simply brought to fulfillment the wisdom that ancient philosophy had elaborated, because reason, which had supported and guided this philosophy, is the same which became incarnate in the Word. These concepts were clearly expressed in Marsilio Ficino’s De Christiana Religione.”
A contemporary Christian Humanist argues that several themes within Christianity made possible a humanistic perspective. “Christianity’s concept of the Trinity posited from the beginning a tremendous abundance of activities inside God’s nature and a great variety of relations with the created world. …. [Human creativity] was in its turn trying to do the same: stake out a territory of freedom, openness, and creativity. Or, even better, it was trying to imitate on a finite scale the infinite creative and gratuitous freedom of God. A humanity created in God’s ‘image and likeness’ was following the God of Genesis: incessantly creating new possibilities for the universe in architecture, music, verse, and philosophy. The humanity of Christian humanism was trying to supplement in its modest way the majestic gestures of original Creation.” (Virgil Nemoianu, “Opinion: Teaching Christian Humanism,” 1996 First Things 63 May 1996, 16-22) This person goes on to argue that the Holy Spirit models the tension between stability and change, the inherited and the new, (roots hold me close/wings set me free) which characterizes humanistic creativity.
In the limited time of a sermon, I can only give you a taste of the complexity of the words, “Christian Humanism.” I can imagine someone asserting, “Christian Humanism? Impossible!” I would urge you to be a little less certain. When my colleague Forrest Church hears someone declaim, “I don’t believe in God,” often he responds, “Tell me about the God you don’t believe in. Chances are I don’t believe in that God either.” Implicit is the possibility that the word “God” may be useful in another way as a tool pointing to an aspect of human experience that can only be named by inadequate metaphors.
By beginning an exploration into the encompassing meanings of the word “humanism,” I hope I’ve made you aware of a more nuanced and complex history to the word. I do this so that we make more skilled use of these precious tools, words, which will help us tease apart and appreciate the rich diversity of human experience.
Is “religious humanism” an oxymoron? I said “it depends” on how you use the words. I’ve explore “humanism” a little. Now I want to explore the word “religious.” I googled “religious” and found this Yahoo definition. It’s pretty typical, especially for an American dictionary.
- Having or showing belief in and reverence for God or a deity. (So what about Hinduism with many gods, or some forms of Buddhism in which the deities are not fully enlightened beings? In fact, only humans can become fully enlightened!)
- Of, concerned with, or teaching religion: a religious text.
- Extremely scrupulous or conscientious: religious devotion to duty.
If by definition you equate religion with a belief in God (definition # 1), then some humanists, those who are atheists for sure, and those who are agnostics, most likely, cannot be religious. But, for me and many others, that is too limited a way to use the word “religious.”
In the winter of 1932 -33, several Unitarian Humanists wanted to define a religion for our times, that is, a religion that would be consistent with the findings of science and rational inquiry. Many here are already familiar the Humanist Manifesto they wrote. In preparation for this sermon, I read it through again. What I had forgotten was that they framed it as Religious Humanism. They saw themselves as doing religion. Clearly not the conventional religion of the orthodox, but religion nonetheless! How did they understand the word “religious”? In the preamble the author wrote this: “Religions have always been means for realizing the highest values of life.” In my words, doing religion is attending to and living the ideals that fulfill life. (The Manifesto can be found in David Parke’s The Epic of Unitarianism, 1957, Beacon Press, Boston, 139-142.) In our mission statement, it is “striving for spiritual fulfillment, individually and in caring relationship with one another.” It is “celebrating joyfully and gratefully the gift of life.” It is “working toward justice, equity, compassion and beauty in the world.” It is not a particular theology – with or without an image of the divine – but a way of being in this world.
What characterizes religious people is this. They care about how they live and what kind of world they live in, and they want to live in most life-affirming way possible. The irreligious are the folks who don’t give a damn, who are totally preoccupied with themselves and narrow circle – the life-deniers, be they bigots, empire-builders, or tyrants.
I want to read an extended section of the Humanist Manifesto to remind you their project to define “Religious Humanism.” What of this speaks to you? (I’ve changed the language to make it gender inclusive.)
First: Religious Humanists (note their first words are the self-definition “Religious Humanists”) regard the universe as self-existing and not created. (Just to remind you how complicated all this is – there’s a whole school of “process theology” which conceives of God in a way consistent with this principle. For them “God” is not all-powerful, all-knowing, but inherent in the unfolding processes of the universe.)
Second: Humanism believes that humans are part of nature and that we have emerged as the result of a continuous process. (Yes to evolution!)
Third: Holding an organic view of life, humanists find that the traditional dualism of mind and body must be rejected.
Fourth: Humanism recognizes that religious culture and civilization, as clearly depicted by anthropology and history, are the product of a gradual development due to human interaction with our natural environment and with our social heritage. The individual born into a particular culture is largely molded by that culture.
Fifth: Humanism asserts that the nature of the universe depicted by modern science makes unacceptable any supernatural or cosmic guarantees of human values. Obviously humanism does not deny the possibility of realities as yet undiscovered, but it does insist that the way to determine the existence and value of any and all realities is by means of intelligent inquiry and by the assessment of their relations to human needs. Religion must formulate its hopes and plans in the light of the scientific spirit and method. (My daughter invited me to accompany her to a science club lecture on Black Holes at the Northport Library. The lecturer reminded us that we know nothing of what happens within black holes. All we know of physics doesn’t work in singularities. That’s humbling, among the many humbling aspects of astrophysics!)
Sixth: We are convinced that the time has passed for theism, deism, modernism, and the several varieties of “new thought.” (As I said earlier, there are theists who agree with the general project of humanism and find the name “God” meaningful.)
Seventh: Religion consists of those actions, purposes, and experiences which are humanly significant. Nothing human is alien to the religious. It includes labor, art, science, philosophy, love, friendship, recreation – all that is in its degree expressive of intelligently satisfying human living. The distinction between the sacred and the secular can no longer be maintained. (I would argue that the word “sacred” can still be a useful tool.)
Eighth: Religious Humanism considers the complete realization of human personality to be the end of human life….
Ninth: In the place of the old attitudes involved in worship and prayer the humanist finds religious emotions expressed in a heightened sense of personal life and in a cooperative effort to promote social well-being.
There are more articles to the Manifesto. I’m giving you a taste. Clearly the co-signers saw no contradiction between the words “religious” and “humanism.” To reiterate, they saw themselves as describing a religion that was consonant with human reason, imagination and creativity.
To expand on the ninth article about “religious emotions,” I ask you to listen to the following experience, recorded by an English writer.
One day during my last term at school I walked out alone in the evening and heard the birds singing in that full chorus of song, which can only be heard at that time of the year at dawn or at sunset. I remember now the shock of surprise with which the sound broke on my ears. It seemed to me that I had never heard the birds singing before and I wondered whether they sang like this all the year round and I had never noticed it. As I walked on I came upon some hawthorn trees in full bloom and again I thought I had never seen such a sight or experienced such sweetness before. If I had been brought suddenly among the trees of the Garden of Paradise and heard a choir of angels singing I could not have been more surprised. I came then to where the sun was setting over the playing fields. A lark rose suddenly from the ground beside the tree, and then sank back still singing to rest. Everything then grew still as the sunset faded and the veil of dusk began to cover the earth. I remember now the feeling of awe which came over me. (Have you ever had such a glorious experience, be it in nature, listening to a piece of music, or some other experience that takes your breath away?) The writer continues: I felt inclined to kneel on the ground, as though I had been standing in the presence of an angel; and I hardly dared to look on the face of the sky, because it seemed as though it was but a veil before the face of God.
I suspect that until that last sentence, anyone – atheist, agnostic, pagan, Buddhist, Sufi – could have identified with that powerful human emotion. The writer interprets his experience in theistic terms, but it could be interpreted in many ways, theistic or not. No matter the interpretation, the feeling of awe is I would claim, a religious feeling. The writer continues.
I was suddenly made aware of another world of beauty and mystery such as I had never imagined to exist, except in poetry. It was as though I had begun to see and smell and hear for the first time. …. The sight of a wild rose growing on a hedge, the scent of lime – tree blossoms caught suddenly as I rode down a hill on a bicycle, came tome like visitations from another world. But it was not only my senses that were awakened. I experienced an overwhelming emotion in the presence of nature, especially at evening. It began to have a kind of sacramental character for me. I approached it with a sense of almost religious awe and, in a hush that comes before sunset, I felt again the presence of an almost unfathomable mystery. (Quoted in Andrew Harvey’s The Essential Mystics, 1996, HarperSanFrancisco, ix-x)
To me the writer exquisitely expresses a widely shared religious emotion. Another such emotion is the mystery of experiencing another being in their uniqueness. The Jewish Humanist, Martin Buber, you will remember, describes this as the “I-Thou” experience. In much of life, we experience others as objects to be used for our own ends. But at other times, we encounter another in their radical uniqueness, their mystery, their “thou-ness.” Such encounters move us as profoundly as a lark ascending. That’s why a couple of Sundays ago, I suggested that there is an awesome potential in this religious community, as in nature, to touch intimacy and ultimacy. Words can only point here. The words “sacred,” “holy,” “transcendent,” are tools we use to begin to express our profound religious experiences.
One more religious emotion that I would get out on the table is this: the passion for justice. Whatever the framework that interprets the passion – be it the inspiration of Jesus, the prophet Amos, or the “secular” prophet Marx – the passion that widens our identity so that another’s suffering is our own, I would argue, is also at the heart of religious emotion.
My time is running out. For me to continue, Marty will need to match his bid. Of course, others of you might bid for me to stop.
Religious Humanism – An Oxymoron? Only if you insist on the narrowest of definitions. Here we can be proud religious humanists – proud to foster and to celebrate our shared religious emotions and passions, even as we use different words to point to our experiences. |
