Past Sermons by Rev. George Smith, Retired

UU Principles

"Who Are We As UUs?"
May 6, 2001

There was a Methodist Minister, a Catholic Priest, and a Pentecostal Pastor who all died on the same day and arrived at the pearly gates about the same time. St. Peter for whatever reason decided they were not going to be admitted to heaven. They were relegated to that other place, below. Well, about a month and a half later, Satan calls up to St. Peter and asks, "would you please take these 3 guys up to heaven?" St. Peter was a bit hesitant, wondering why Satan was calling him. Satan never asks anything of you without some hitch. Further, Satan is always trying to gain converts instead of getting rid of them. Tentatively, St. Peter, asked, "why, do you want to get rid of them?" Satan responded "what with the Methodist Minister and his church dinners, the Catholic Priest and his bingo games, and the Pentecostal Pastor and his tithing, they have gotten enough money together to buy air conditioners.

This story turns on its stereotypes of the various denominations and ministers involved here. We have a stereotype sense of who we think we are. For instance if I asked you a series of questions to which you would answer yes or no. You could begin to understand what I am saying about our stereotypes. Are all UUs Democrats? Most would say yes. However, we know that this is not true. We are not all Democrats. Are all UUs pro choice? Most would say yes. But we do have UUs who are anti-abortion. Are UUs against the death penalty? Again most would say yes, because that is what we expect UUs to be like, but that is not true either. If we say all UUs are humanists or atheists, again, I would say that is not true. You see what we attempt to do is to create some sense of what we are out of the little bits and pieces that we hear about UUs and we all too often accept these bits and pieces what a UU is. Even we as minister's have our stereotypes that we believe about UUs. Recently I was talking with a UU minister friend and he was amazed that not all of his congregants were against the Death Penalty. It is too easy to see us as the radical wild eyed atheists that are the beacons on the hill for all sorts of social action programs. Who do and believe or not believe whatever they want. This is what people believe about us and even we are seduced by these ideas about ourselves. I want to challenge these ideas. We are a group with many different beliefs. What I would suggest is that we consider Uuism in a bit of a different light, than the stereotype that we are used to.

First of all Unitarian Universalism is more about process than content. I think this is a very important distinction. For instance if you were Roman catholic, you had a catechism to learn word for word. It is what you are to believe about your religion. My wife grew up a Catholic and even to this day, I believe she could recite that catechism for you, word for word. It is engrained in you for life. It is the content that counts. You need to know these words. They are to become a part of you. For instance the question may be, "Who is God?" And there is an answer that will follow which you will memorize. It is what you have to believe in, in order to be a Roman Catholic. Even current social concern issues are determined by the Roman Catholic Church as to what you re to believe.

We however are a process religion. We don't have a catechism, a set of beliefs to memorize, to believe in. That is why we can work together as people who may believe in capital punishment and those who don't. You don't have to believe one way or the other on this issue or on anyother such issue in order to be a regular UU. You are allowed to search your own soul about what you believe and then to believe it. You don't have to believe in God or you can. It is very important to understand this because we do not have a content that we rely upon. We rely upon a process. This is who and what we are. It is our principles that are a matter of process. They guide us to develop our own content for our own religious beliefs. For instance, principle one, we respect the worth and dignity of every human being. What does this mean? Have you really, deeply thought about this? What does it mean that you respect the worth and dignity of every human being? This is easy when you have a benign neighbor, but what does it mean to believe in the worth and dignity of a Hitler, a Stalin, or an Attilla the Hun or more recently, a Timothy McVeigh. Hopefully, you see what I am pointing out. This broad idea, that we respect the worth and dignity of every human being, is put to the test in the above instances. It is a principle that you need to resolve for yourself. As for my understanding of this principle I do not have to agree with or applaud what they did. They certainly did or would have deserved some sort of punishment for what they did to others. However, they are human beings and as human beings deserve to be treated as such and to considered as such. In my view they are not to be "put down". When I worked as a drug and alcohol counselor, I worked with people who were at the extremes of human behavior because they were struggling with an addiction and every part of their life was consumed by this addiction. It is too easy to consider these people as being different from our selves. Or at least this is what we want to think. But the amazing thing that I discovered as I worked with these individuals was that they are not much different from other human beings. Consider, they manipulate people to get what they want. I do the same. I try to be polite to people in order to get something from people. My manipulation is not as extreme as theirs, but it is there. To me they are not savages, or beasts, or "scum bags", but just human beings struggling with life and are not being successful. Quit frankly, you may not believe my assessment of this principle. You may have a totally different way of understanding this principle. This is why I call our religion a process religion. You are the one that develops your own understandings of these principles. They are yours and not mine.

This process orientation of ours leads us to an activism in respect to living. When I was a liberal Methodist minister most of the congregations I served were very conservative, it was hard to find anyone active in community outreach. Their main concerns were with keeping the church going and getting to heaven. When I joined the Auburn UU church back in the early 80's, I thought great, here was a church that was involved in community action. What amazed me though is that they did not have an active community action committee. Then I realized that the individuals of this church had their own pet projects in terms of community action such as environmental issues, racism, etc. Generally speaking we as UUs are a very activist group. This activism is reflective of our principles. It is not an activism based on content but on process. This is part of the reason that we as a church do not often take a stand as a group with regard to various social issues. We allow the individual to determine what is important to consider worthy of his or her attention.

What leads us to activism is our tremendous amount of hope. This is not to say that we do not get discouraged at times. But by and large we are a hopeful people. Our hope is a here and now hope and not one deferred for some time after death in a long distant future. It is a hope that says that I can make a difference now.

Because we are a process religion rooted in activism motivated by hope, it is very natural that we have very strong opinions. Sometimes these opposing views end in very difficult disagreements. We indeed are different from other religions in that we can have these strong differences. It is hard to have such differences and work together. Dealing with these differences is very important for the commonality of our community. In a content church it is easier to avoid some of these differences. Because were are not such a church we can end up with strong disagreements. It is important in our church to develop respect for each other and each other's points of view. In so doing our disagreements can turn into learning experiences and maybe even some compromises that help us to work together as a community.

We are not a church that says we have to believe this, or that. We are not a church looking for some far off heaven. We are not a church in despair about this world. We are a church with hope here and now that things will change by our action. Our principles help us to face this difficult world. This is what we are as Unitarian Universalists.