Unitarian Universalist Church of Palo Alto

Confessions of a Theist Humanist

May 30, 2004
Palo Alto, CA
Reverend Amy Zucker

Millenia ago, the people of Greece believed that supernatural beings lived at the top of Mount Olympus. The Greek word for "god" was "theos," and for a long time, the term "theism" signified something quite specific: a belief in the Olympian Gods rather than any rival conceptions of deity that might have come along to take their place in Greek culture. Nowadays, and in the land of the Encylopedia Brittanica, the Greek gods have receded into myth, and so that encyclopedia confidently declares theism to be "the view that all limited or finite things are dependent in some way on one supreme or ultimate reality of which one may also speak in personal terms." Theism has been broadened considerably over the centuries, from meaning "belief in Athena and Zeus, Apollo and Aphrodite," to meaning "belief in one, ultimate being" - one who takes a human shape, an anthropomorphic God. And there, many people, including Unitarian Universalists have gotten stuck. But having moved the term all the way from the Greek pantheon to an assertion of monotheism--without apology--it does not seem a radical rewriting if we broaden it to encompass "belief in one ultimate power," rather than just belief in an ultimate being. Nor is the concept of God-as-power a new one. The ancient Hebrews spoke of the Shekhinah, the presence of God, which was a tremendous force without form.

That breadth of possibility to the word "theism" is what I think of when I'm asked, are you a humanist or a theist, and why I always want to say "both."

The old story goes that a young man in synagogue was seeking some solid answers and finding it a little frustrating. He said, "Rabbi, why do Jews always answer a question with a question?" And the rabbi replied, "Why do you say we always answer a question with a question?"

True to my Jewish upbringing, the question "Do you believe in God?" always evokes in me another question: "What do you mean by God?" Do you mean a man with a white beard and a throne in heaven, reaching out his hand to spark life into Adam? It's glorious in Michelangelo, but no, I don't believe such a figure created heaven and earth, galaxies and humans. Do you mean someone who planned out every detail of creation and controls its unfolding? No, I see no reason to believe in such a God, nor to give him praise if he in fact exists. Do you mean the God of some parts of the Bible, who anoints leaders and commands armies to destroy each other? No, that seems more a stand-in for particular human political factions than the source of morality and justice I would hope a God would be. Do you mean one of the Gods of myths and legends around the world, who walk in gardens, gamble, romance, and ? Those are all wonderful images for aspects of divinity, but no, they aren't my God either.

And incidentally, it isn't just wisecracking rabbis who recommend meeting the question of God with a question. Dan Lyon, who was minister here for many years, recommended that we take course of action when asked about God. As people of many different theological stripes have pointed out, the word God is so important, and simultaneously means so many different things, that the question really cannot be "do you believe in God?" but must be "what kind of God do you believe in, and what kind do you not believe in?"

Our movement is very diverse theologically, and so it is only natural for us sometimes to divide ourselves, at least in our minds, along theological lines: the neopagans and the liberal Christians, say, or the Christians and the humanists, or the humanists and the theists. These distinctions are real–we believe a wide variety of things about God–but they are also deceptive. They deceive because they suggest that the categories are clear and separate, which they are not.

Fortunately, it is also quintessentially Unitarian Universalist to blur the lines between supposedly distinct categories: to respond to an either/or choice by insisting on both/and. I've always been fond of the minister who, when asked by a search committee whether he was a humanist or a theist, said, "It depends. If you're humanists, I'm a theist. If you're theists, I'm a humanist." (History does not record whether he got the job.) For me the distinction makes little sense, and besides, I'm also contrary enough to enjoy challenging both the theists who think they can't be humanists, and the humanists who think they can't be theists. But before I launch into an explanation of why I put not only one foot into each camp, but both feet in both camps, I would like to call on the name of one of our cloud of witnesses, one of our spiritual forebears who blurred lines with a vengeance, and does so even more as we look back on him from today's vantage point: the man who wrote the responsive reading we shared, Kenneth Patton.

Patton's mark on our movement is deep. He set out to redefine Universalism, and his definition of Universalism as a tradition drawing on many traditions has stuck. His words have resonated through two hymnals, our current Singing the Living Tradition and the previous "blue hymnal," Hymns for the Celebration of Life.

Theologically, he was a humanist through and through, and, furthermore, as a colleague¹ recalls, "he often told people with his gruff voice that he was an 'atheist.'" (The colleague adds, "This, you may well observe, made him lots of fun at local Boston Interfaith meetings.") If you look at #303 in our hymnal, you will see that he set new words to Martin Luther's classic hymn, "A Mighty Fortress is Our God," turning the exaltation of God into an exultation at the sacredness of this earthly life and the potential of humanity:

We are the earth upright and proud . . . in us the earth is growing.

Our labor is our strength; our love will win at length.

Not a theist in the orthodox sense, and a declared atheist and leader of humanism within Unitarian Universalism. And yet he was very much at home with religious language and concepts, boldly calling himself a "religious, or even a mystical humanist."² Whatever has befallen Unitarian Universalist humanists to make so many of us shun words such as "religious" and "mystical" did not afflict Patton. Let's look at the passage we read earlier, his call to worship, number 437 in your hymnal. These nine sentences are laden with terms straight out of the religious lexicon: "mystery," "revelation," "spirits," and of course, many times, "worship."

I used to think that Patton was emitting one of the last gasps of a humanism that had long considered itself not the alternative to the holy, but a path to it. I imagined that humanism had reveled in words like "revelation" up until that time, and that it was only in recent decades that the rules became so rigid that many humanists protest if the building is referred to as a church. But perhaps he, like us, inherited a discomfort with even the idea of holiness, and all the language that claims holiness for the endeavors and experiences of humanity. That's the context that Rev. David Bumbaugh suggests when he writes of Patton, "It was he who taught a monotone rationalism how to sing; it was he who taught a stumble-footed humanism how to dance; it was he who cried 'Look!' and taught our eyes to see the glory in the ordinary."³

Patton himself was certainly sensitive to the unwanted resonances of religious language, and he picked and chose. He disliked the term church and called his congregation's abode the Meeting House; he preferred not to be called Reverend and wore plain suits in the pulpit. But he held tightly onto the baby when throwing out a lot of that dirty bathwater. With Patton as my patron saint, then, I too would like to dance a path where the secular and sacred meet overhead like bowing trees, their branches tangling until one cannot tell which branch comes from which root. With his notoriously cranky spirit as my guide, I hereby confess and insist to the world that I am a theist and a humanist.

"Theism" has been defined in many ways, which isn't surprising, since "God" has been defined in as many ways as there have been people to imagine him, her, or it. One troubling side-effect of creating a dichotomy of humanism and theism is that, in response to it, the definition of theism has calcified into a belief in a very particular kind of God. By this definition, one believes in God if, and only if, one believes in a being who transcends this world and yet created it, and is .

Well, I can think of quite a few divinities that don't meet that definition. For my part, I believe in a force that makes good happen in a human heart and in the world. I believe in it because I feel it working and see its effects, and I call it divine because it is the best thing I know. The human mind hungers for metaphors, because abstractions like "a force" are hard to digest. So if one looked for a metaphor by which to portray this force, then sure, one could envision some kind of human figure: sometimes its working is like the nurture of a father, the solidity of a mother, the strength of a hero, the grace of a dancer. But one could also portray it as the wind, which moves invisibly yet with an awesome power. One could portray it as grass that grows up through the cracks in cement, against all odds. I tend not to use the word God for it, myself, because in my mind (perhaps because of my upbringing) the term is so dominated by anthropomorphic images, images with human shapes. I lean towards vaguer words: the sacred, the divine, the holy, Spirit of Life–or move freely among different metaphors so as not to get stuck on the narrow human image.

Some encyclopedias are as stuck on that image themselves. But God bless Wikipedia, an online encyclopedia that says: "['God'] can also be used to refer to . . . concepts such as an energy or consciousness that pervade the universe, and whose existence makes the universe possible; the source of all existence . . . ; the best and highest good within all sentient beings; or even that which is beyond all understanding or definition."

People focus on different possible definitions of divinity based on what they most need to acknowledge in the world. For some it is mystery, and so they might lean toward that last definition of God, that which is beyond all understanding. For some it is creative power, and whatever it is that creates the universe and life, they name God. What I needed was a divinity that I could worship–something I could wholeheartedly praise and thank–and so what I call God, on the rare occasions I do call it that, is goodness and the source of goodness. At least, that's the snapshot right now. It has changed over time, and in a few years I'm likely to say something different.

One thing that is not likely to change is this contrarian desire to blur the lines between any given categories. Years ago, I was invited to talk about humanism and spirituality at a multi-district UU assembly in Rhode Island. The original idea was to invite an old humanist and a young humanist and explore whether humanism had changed over the years. There was a lot of attention in the UU press about a rise of interest in spirituality, and we were going to see what sense we could make of this tension between "humanism" and "spirituality." Well, as it worked out, my co-presenter had a family crisis, I was the only presenter, and so if I was to present two alternatives, they had to both come out of one person. That proved to be easy, because I saw a tension, to be sure, but no ultimate conflict, between humanism and spirituality. We began with candles and the reading we shared this morning--"Let us worship" (and I made sure to tell them, as I told you, that it came from a thoroughgoing humanist)--and we went on to a very simple exercise. We listed all our associations with the word "humanism" on one big piece of paper and all our associations with the word "spirituality" on another, and then we looked for commonalities and for any words on one list that were incompatible with words on the other.

Some things appeared on just one list: "candles" and "incense" were two associations with spirituality that didn't appear on the humanism paper. But "social justice," "passion," "love," "community" - all the big things - appeared on both. And there were no items that actually contradicted things on the other list.

Around the same time, I had a diehard humanist colleague, one who was very uncomfortable with the move toward spirituality, which he saw as a vague kind of superstition. I asked him what humanism was. He said it was the belief that the sacred and the secular were inseparable: that this world matters, that this life is of the utmost importance.

That sounds like a very good voicing of the humanist heart, and one that encompasses theism as well. For one can phrase it two ways:

Humanism believes that *this world and this life* are sacred.

Theism believes that this world and this life, are *sacred.*

When I list what theism means to me, and what humanism means to me, I get nearly identical lists, just as the people in the workshop got the same lists for spirituality and humanism. A reverent gratitude for the beauty of the earth . . . a belief that human relationships connect us to the very best in ourselves . . . a belief that nurturing the best in us is the purpose of religion, whatever its specifics . . . all of these fit neatly into two supposedly mutually exclusive categories.

But then, we're Unitarian Universalists, and one of our religious tasks and favorite hobbies is to blur those lines--to jump on phrases like "mutually exclusive" and say "why? Are they really?" When given definitions, we query whether they are true reflections of reality. And every question implicitly imposes a definition, an assumption about what the world looks like and how it divides up. So I urge you, when asked a question, to answer with a question:

"Are you a humanist or a theist?" "Who says I have to be one or the other?"

"Are you a Christian?" "What do you mean by Christian?"

"Do you talk about God at your church?" "Which God do you mean?"

To question is not the answer, but asking questions, and most of all questioning the questions, leads to new, wider answers. We are above all else a religion of free exploration. Let's not let anyone chain our minds.

Footnotes:

1. Mark Belletini, in "The G Word," sermon given February 11, 2001 at the First Unitarian Universalist Church of Columbus, Ohion, http://www.firstuucolumbus.org/sermons/mb20010211.htm
2. Ibid.
3.In "Kenneth Leo Patton," Dictionary of Unitarian Universalist Biography, http://www.uua.org/uuhs/duub/articles/kennethpatton.html