This quote is from Clarence Russell Skinner, famed Universalist from the 20th century. I found it in the most recent issue of Quest, the Church of the Larger Fellowship's monthly publication. It's quoted by Rosemary Bray McNatt in a dialogic sermon she had with CLF minister Jane Rzepka at General Assembly in St. Louis. I was immediately struck by this quote because it provides an answer to a question I think that we, as Unitarian Universalists, should be asking ourselves: What is the nature of the God that remains at the foundation of our tradition (be it a solid foundation of belief in God, or the excavated foundation of a abandoned God)?

 

The reason I ask this question is because of another quote I've recently been gnawing on, this one by Dietrich Bonhoffer: "God would have us know that we must live as men who manage our lives without him. The God who is with us is the God who forsakes us.... Before God, and with God, we live without God." It seems to me that our tradition, which embraces both those who do believe in God and those who don't believe in God, could (should?) at least offer a clear sense to everyone--children, youth, adults, friends, members, visitors, fellow travelers--something about the nature of the God that informed our tradition.

 

Consider this exchange between Christopher Reeve and an interviewer for Reader's Digest:

RD [interviewer]: You went nearly 50 years without religion in your life. What made you recently join the Unitarian Church?

Reeve: It gives me a moral compass. I often refer to Abe Lincoln, who said, "When I do good, I feel good. When I do bad, I feel bad. And that is my religion." I think we all have a little voice inside us that will guide us. It may be God, I don't know. But I think that if we shut out all the noise and clutter from our lives and listen to that voice, it will tell us the right thing to do. The Unitarian believes that God is good, and believes that God believes that man is good. Inherently. The Unitarian God is not a God of vengeance. And that is something I can appreciate.

What I like about this is that Reeve wasn't afraid to speak in terms of God. Whether he personally believed in God doesn't matter--what does matter is that he was able to convey a sense of what Unitarian Universalism (specifically Unitarianism in this interview) is all about, using a language that the vast majority of American's can understand (folks likely to read Reader's Digest).

Whether we believe in God or not, I do think we must be able to tell others about the nature of the God that guided our forebears. Skinner offers us a God of unconditional love. Reeve gives us a God who is good and whose creation (including humans) is good. Even if we don't believe in God, this is the nature of the God before and with we live without.

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