Dr. John Young 3/4/2007

Unitarian Universalist Church of Jacksonville

21^st Century Humanism

On the last Saturday of this month, Dr. Bill Murry, the pre-eminent author about 21^st century humanism is speaking in this chapel. Bill has just published Reason and Reverence: Religious Humanism for the 21^st Century. We are using his book as the text for our 9:30 a.m. discussions in the spiritual discussion group in the Fletcher Room on Sunday mornings in March. If you don’t get enough after today’s sermon, or want to prepare more thoroughly for Bill’s talk on Saturday, March 24, at 1 p.m., I urge you to buy the book and join us for the discussions.

            Bill Murry proposes that a viable religion for the 21^st century must have at least the following 5 characteristics: 1. To affirm that human beings are an integral part of nature, 2. To admit humankind’s responsibility to preserve and sustain the natural world, 3. To take seriously the implications for religion of the remarkable discoveries of the modern natural and human sciences, 4. To recognize the importance of both reason and reverence, and 5. To affirm those values that help to make our lives more fully human. [pp. 151-152]

His point in #1 and #2 is that we must go beyond both the Judeo-Christian and the early humanist assumptions that we can be apart from or are completely different from nature, and could therefore dominate or subdue nature. Instead we must realize that we are an integral part of nature, will never and should not completely dominate or subdue nature and instead must take responsibility for preserving and sustaining the natural world if we are to survive and flourish as a species of and within nature. His point in #3 is that a viable religion for the future will be scientific stories with mystic significance, exactly what Connie Barlow will be sharing with us about evolution the very next day, Sunday, March 25. Connie and her husband will also be doing a Monday evening workshop. They are the foremost presenters about this evangelical evolutionary spirituality. So, that week-end, March 24-26, at UUCJ will be the place to be in America for evangelical spiritual humanism.

Murry’s 4^th point, that 21^st century religion needs both reason and reverence, the title of his book, is that while reason has made science and technology possible, “it is only reverence, understood as feelings of respect and awe, which can save us from the hubris that would destroy all the good we have accomplished” with reason. Murry’s fifth point is, like most paradigms, a catch-all for everything yet uncovered by the rest of his paradigm. “Becoming more fully human involves the transformation of the mind and heart from self-centeredness to a sense of one’s self as a part of a larger sacred whole and to a deeper commitment to the human and natural worlds. It is about transformation from a shallow life of fear, greed, hedonism, and materialism to a meaningful life of love and caring, gratitude and generosity, fairness and equity, joy and hope, and a profound respect for others.” [151-152]

Bill Murry and I agree a great deal. He followed me as the UU minister in Bloomington, Indiana. He became the President of my seminary, Meadville/Lombard at the University of Chicago, and he persuaded me to fund enough of my fellowship for experienced ministers at Meadville so that I could enjoy its productivity now. I think Bill has done us a great service with his book, and I am sure that you will benefit significantly from hearing him on Saturday afternoon, March 24. Bill needs to deny a God concept and the possibility of an afterlife in order to preserve his personal sense about HIS humanism. He says little about traditional spiritual teachers, practices, or texts in his book. Like Bill Murry, I am also a naturalistic spiritual humanist. However, I take joy in embracing a naturalistic-humanistic sense of god which I call Creation. I leave room for the possibility of some sense of an existence after life, and I continue to embrace, learn from and build upon ancient scriptures, many prophets, and a variety of spiritual practices as well as the wonders of nature, the disciplines of reason and the results of science. From my perspective, I am more liberated from the philosophical battles of the 20^th century than Bill. I have less need to have an “either-or” faith, and I can thereby more fully embrace a “both-and” world. That confuses some of you who wish you could fit me more neatly into a single traditional religious category. Bill’s choices may make his thinking, thereby, more accessible to you. That’s good, because we grow faster when we can trust where we are going.

I share so much of what Bill writes about, and I believe he addresses many issues so wisely that I want to focus on a few of those from Reason and Reverence.

Bill is in awe of the magnificence and intricacy of nature empowered and ennobled by the wisdom of modern science. We agree that this is an appropriate focus for human reverence. I would add that our growing knowledge and experience about human individuals, cultures, and groups are also an appropriate focus for human respect and awe. Bill clearly implies this, but does not talk about it much in the book. What Bill deals with so well in the book, is that these positive feelings about nature and humanity, individual and collective, that are central to humanism need to be balanced, and through equanimity within us, made sustainable, by limiting and disciplining one by the other. Humanism divorced from naturalism is not true; it is not personally wise, and it is not socially sustainable. But naturalism by itself is also insufficient as the source of all religious meaning because nature is morally neutral. Its only value is creativity. Nature knows little about justice, love, kindness or generosity from a human perspective. So, we need not only the glorious evolving story of evolution, but we also need the empowering story of the evolution of human freedom, and I would add the ennobling evolving story of the intermittent growth of human responsibility.

We also agree that egotistic humanism is only marginally better than ideologically fundamentalism or traditional religious orthodoxy. All three are caught in us-and-them thinking that ends up spending too much of their time condemning most of the rest of the world, and blaming all the world’s problems on what they consider to be other peoples’ superstitions or flawed thinking. We agree that enlightened self-interest unbalanced by the need for empathy and concern for the needs of others leads to destructive and therefore evil behavior. A selfish humanist is still a selfish person and will become involved in evil just like a selfish Christian or Muslim or Jew. We agree that the orthodox have the barriers of orthodoxy and the blind alley of exclusive truth that gets in the way of their being truly altruistic and acting sustainably in their lives. But, the traditionally faithful at least have the models of divinity and prophesy that call them to live with love and justice. The secularist has shed the barriers and blind alley of the faithful orthodox, but if they are naked of any model but themselves and self-satisfied with pleasing themselves, they may as easily become narcissistic and may get even more full of hubris than their orthodox sisters and brothers, because some secular humanists have refused any other model but themselves. Bill begins to suggest what conceptually those models need to be. Much of my life has been built upon efforts to find living individual examples, social groups, and methods of action and practice that discover, express, empower and reinforce these models and behaviors. That is why we are both spiritual humanists, dedicated to nurturing individuals, congregations, and societies that use their reason with awe and respect, with reverence.

In summary, Unitarian Universalists are all humanists in that as Murry says: we affirm the worth and dignity of every person, are committed to human betterment, and see the necessity for human beings to take responsibility for themselves and their world. When Unitarians and Universalists united in 1961, religious humanism had replaced liberal theism as the ideological center of our movement. However, humanism, which had once championed freedom of belief became itself entrenched, parochial and illiberal. Humanism became an ossified orthodoxy, and this did our movement a great deal of harm. It idolized individualism; it lacked a needed emphasis on community; it seemed to assert a sort of stoic indifference about the tragedies of life; it emphasized reason to the extent of ignoring emotions, celebrated the mind while snubbing the heart. Humanism lacked a sense of openness to continuing mysteries and the wonders of the unknown. By embracing determinism, it seemed to deny free choice or to face everyone’s continuing capacities for evil.

Murry has taken many thoughtful and courageous steps toward correcting these imbalances and excesses of 20^th century humanism. The first is to argue that humanism needs to be paired with naturalism in order to make either of them adequate philosophical foundations. The second is to propose that reason needs to be bonded with reverence in order to make either of them satisfactory foundations for human living. Reason, science and technology have created and nurtured tremendous human progress, but only reverence [awe and respect, gratitude and altruistic compassion] can save us from the hubris that can destroy all the good which reason, science and technology have accomplished.