Phil's Little Blog on the Prairie

Here's a sneak preview of my latest column for The Prairie Star, our district newsletter:

I’ve been thinking about what Unitarian Universalism might look like here in Prairie Star if we saw some of our fondest dreams come true. I’m thinking especially of the ends stated in our Vision 2010: healthy, vital congregations; strong related UU organizations; an interconnected web of Unitarian Universalists; and a world which lives by the UU principles.

Now Prairie Star is a district known for getting things done, and I’m sure we could see many of these dreams come true if we put our minds and hearts and hands to the task. But it’s going to take some hard work. It’s going to take what sociologist Christian Smith calls “religious vitality.” According to Smith, in order for a faith tradition to be considered strong, its members should:

faithfully adhere to [their] essential...religious beliefs;
consider their faith a highly salient aspect of their lives;
reflect great confidence and assurance in their religious beliefs;
participate regularly in a variety of church activities and programs;
be committed in both belief and action to accomplishing the mission of their church;
sustain high rates of membership retention.

Granted, there are a few words here that some Unitarian Universalists might find out-of-date, words like mission, faith, and belief. Old-fashioned words, perhaps, but important ones because they point to the kind of commitment a vital religious tradition asks of its members, especially if they dare to dream the kind of dreams we claim to.

You see, I believe that before we can truly have healthy, vital congregations, strong related UU organizations, an interconnected web of Unitarian Universalists, and—especially—a world which lives by the UU principles, we must be clear about who we are. And being clear about who we are means being clear about what we believe.

Of course UUs have a variety of beliefs—so do Christians, Jews, Muslims, and Buddhists. But there are some essential beliefs that individual Christians, Jews, Muslims, or Buddhists share as part of their religious identities: “I believe in God, the Father almighty...,” “Hear O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is One,” “There is no God but Allah!” or “I go to the Buddha as my refuge.”

So, just what are our essential religious beliefs? William Doherty, C. J. Peek and the Family Chalice group at First Universalist Church in Minneapolis “set out to create a vehicle to better explain Unitarian Universalism…to ourselves, our children, and other people in our lives.” Here’s part of what they came up with:

You are loved in this world (the simple message of Universalism) and
You are good (the simple message of Unitarianism).

These simple messages articulate the essence of both our traditions—historically and theologically. If our dream of a world which lives by the UU principles is going to come true, we will all—children, youth, and adults—need to “reflect great confidence and assurance in [our] religious beliefs.” Knowing that we are good and that we are loved in this world is the vital, liberal religious foundation on which that confidence and assurance rests.

I was pleased to see Don Browning mentioned in Bill Doherty's recent article in the UU World ("Time to Commit"). I studied with Prof. Browning at the University of Chicago, and I've found his thoughts on marriage and family to be an interesting place to start when thinking about our liberal religious commitment to families. Two of his articles in particular, "The Task of Religious Institutions in Strenghtening Families," and "The Family Debate: A Middle Way" (which was co-authored by UU minister Ian Evison), are worth reading to get a sense of the "'critical culture of marriage' in religious thought" Bill Doherty describes in his World article.

As Browning and Evison mention in "The Family Debate: A Middle Way," "The first obligation of the churches is to discern their own message, their own values, their own programs." In order for Unitarian Universalists to do this, I think we need a broad understanding of the range of perspectives about family and religion in contemporary American culture. For example, the authors have identified these "three pro-family strategies":

The first strategy, the most popular in many liberal churches and denominations,...simply...accept[s] the new pluralism of the family. According to this view, churches must accept openly and without prejudice the full range of single families, stepfamilies, cohabiting families and same-sex families that modern societies are evolving. This position believes that churches also should pressure the government to extend the range of economic and social supports so that these changing families and their children will not become poor. The church in this view should aim in its ministry to provide the psychological and communal supports that help families maintain their dignity and self-esteem.

The second pro-family strategy is that of the Christian Right. Some of the mainline churches [have] move[d] in this direction for want of a better strategy. They...resist family pluralism. In emphasizing the centrality of the intact two-parent family, the conservative reaction...continue[s] to emphasize traditional gender roles (even if gently) and to advocate aggressive antihomosexual policies. This approach regards the problems of families as primarily cultural, the result of a decline of values. This strategy distrusts most governmental and legal intrusions. It would cure the problems of families with a triumphalist spread of Christian values into the lives of Christians and non-Christians alike and into all corners of public policy.

The third pro-family strategy, the one we advocate, is to try to reconstruct the church's ethics of families while advocating selected governmental and market supports for families. This approach recognizes that the family crisis is caused both by cultural changes and by social-systemic developments in areas of work, economics, child care and gender inequality. This view recognizes, along with the conservative voices, that unfettered individualism and its drive for adult fulfillment at the expense of children presents a real threat to the family. But this third strategy sees the drive toward individualism as partially good.

What's happening in our movement, I believe, is a critical rethinking of the first strategy, a rethinking that is moving us ever so slightly toward the middle ground Browning advocates. But a movement in this direction is not without peril. Some individuals, like Judith Stacey, author of In the Name of the Family: Rethinking Family Values in the Postmodern Age (a Beacon book, by the way), believe that "the marriage movement..., fosters economic, social and legal discrimination against all single adults as well as cohabiting couples and their children." Which is why it's a good idea to know about groups like The Council on Contemporary Families (CCF), who "seek to further a national understanding of how America's families are changing and what is known about the strengths and weaknesses of different family forms and various family interventions." See, for example, Maria Russo's "The Marriage Hoax", published in Salon.com. According to Russo,

The nation hasn't suffered a massive decline in moral fiber since the 1950s, and marriage isn't really any more fragile now than it was in the days of our grandparents and great-grandparents. The truth is that marriage has always been a shaky, contested, unreliable institution, and we're kidding ourselves that it was ever any other way.

With such a diversity of opinion about the state of families, marriage, and religion in the United States right now, the call for "churches...to discern their own message, their own values, their own programs" is all the more relevant. Where do you believe UUs should stand on these issues?

There's so much to say about "Time to Commit," Bill Doherty's new essay in the January/February 2005 issue of the UU World, that I hardly know where to begin. One place to start, I think, is with the similarity between our liberal religious attitude toward marriage and our attitude toward our faith. In both cases, I think we have tended to follow Robert Bellah's notion of expressive individualism, which Doherty describes as "distain[ing] the ethic of duty in favor of flexible choice based on personal satisfaction."

How can we expect the members (let alone the "friends") of our congregations to exhibit a serious commitment to our liberal religious movement when we don't expect them to make a serious commitment to their personal relationships? What Doherty says about our liberal religious attitude toward marriage is equally true of our attitude toward church membership. Both are built on "the right to get out when you chose, no questions asked."

"Yet," as Bonnie Myotai Treace, Sensei, says in a Dharma Talk entitled "Radical Commitment," "at all levels of our spiritual development we are dependent on our commitments." In that regard, when we don't require a commitment to one's personal relationships or a commitment to one's community of faith, we are diminishing the capacity for lifelong faith development. What we need, instead, are individuals who "accept that they are responsible for the stewardship and creative transformation of their religious heritage and community of faith," as well as individuals who "recognize the need for community, affirming the importance of families, relationships and connections between and among the generations," to use the words of the UUA's Lifespan Faith Development Vision Statement.

I think this emphasis on commitment is especially important given the way UUs are currently throwing the phrase "radical hospitality" around. There's a telling passage in the book Radical Hospitality: Benedict's Way of Love, by Father Daniel Homan and Lonni Collins Pratt, which speaks directly to this. After discussing the importance of simplifying our lives as a means to genuine hospitality, the authors move onto commitment:

Commitment can do for us what stability does for the monk. Commitment means we are going to show up tomorrow for work and will keep the same spouse we live with today. The more committed we are to our family, friends, and our convictions, the more free we become to be open to others. Commitment settles us down and makes room inside for another to enter. It resolves crucial decisions such as whom I will love and where I will live and what I will do with my life.

And to that I would add, "and what community of faith I will participate in."

Henry David Thoreau once said, "Our life is frittered away by detail.... Simplify, simplify." If we are going to fulfill the promise of our liberal religious faith, I would change Thoreau's words to this: "Our lives are overwhelmed by choices.... Commit, commit."