from Engaging our Theological Diversity by the UUA Commission on Appraisal For at least the past forty years, Unitarian Universalists have sometimes described themselves as “differently religious,” using the term of religious educator Dorothy Spoerl, but without making clear what the difference is and how it manifests itself. Too often descriptions have been couched in terms of what UUs are not—a somewhat antagonistic approach that has been neither satisfying in the long term nor helpful in the short term.

Questions of identity relate to both individuals and societies. It is critical that the Unitarian Universalist Association and congregations within the UUA know their identity. That identity cannot be, as some members suggest, a club, a social-action organization, or a surrogate family, although these functions may serve the needs of individual members at various times. There must be more.

The experience of the Universalists in the nineteenth century explains why: In the mid-1800s Universalists were one of the fastest growing denominations in the United States. Their distinctive message of the final harmony of all souls with God and of God as love was widely appealing, especially along the Eastern seaboard and in the Midwest. It distinguished them. When this message gained currency in the general population, however, Universalism lost its radical edge, its uniqueness, and it was drawn into a more general Protestant culture, at which point the denomination’s numbers began to dwindle.

What is the radical message of contemporary Unitarian Universalism? On what is it based, in what ways does it differ from the message of other organizations (especially religious ones), and how is it promulgated? The UUA leadership talks about “our message” and the need for it, but until and unless it can be stated in a clear, generally understood manner, using language that communicates beyond the UUA’s borders as well as within them, that message will not be heard…

For the past several decades, much attention has been paid to the ways in which Unitarian Universalists are different, both from one another and from the wider society. Robert Bellah, a sociologist of religion and an Episcopalian, addressed the latter kind of different when he reminded listeners at the 1998 UUA General Assembly that the United States is a country with a long history of dissent, historically composed of many immigrants who came here seeking freedom from political and religious oppression in their native lands. Unitarian Universalists tend to be strong dissenters, and therefore, said Bellah, are more a part of the mainstream in this culture than [we] might like to think.

SERMON

As most of you likely know, Unitarian Universalists make up a tiny, and shrinking, percentage of the population in the United States. We have just over a thousand churches with just over 200,000 adults who are members of those congregations. There are another 400,000 or so adults who self-identify as Unitarian Universalist but are not members of any of our congregations (which raises a whole other set of questions we don’t have time to look at this morning). The average size of our churches is a little under 200 members and our largest church is a little over 1,500.

The height of the popularity of Unitarianism likely came in the colonial era, when many of the established town churches in New England declared themselves to be Unitarian. The boom in Universalism came about a hundred years later. Some claim that in the second half of the nineteenth century, Universalism was actually the fifth or sixth largest denomination in the country.

We struggle with our small size in a variety of ways. Our limited numbers and resources mean we are often not able to have the impact on society that we would like. The majority of people in this country have probably never heard of us, and most of those who have likely don’t know much about who we really are. We take great pride in individuals from our tradition who have made a difference, as well as for the things we are known for—most especially our progressive social stance on a variety of issues; gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender rights being what we are probably best known for. But we lament our low numbers and how much slower our growth is than is the growth of the population.

At the same time, I believe there are ways that we take pride in our small size. As with many groups, with smallness comes some sense of specialness and exclusivity. My experience is that, in many ways, we enjoy what we perceive as our outsider status. It allows us to stand back and critique; to see ourselves as the gadfly pushing others to live up to our ideals; to claim, to some degree, that we are more highly evolved than more mainstream groups. Whatever intellectual, social, or religious elitism tempts us seems almost reinforced by how few people are in our churches.

I have long been aware of some of this within our faith tradition. Over the years, I have found myself wondering various things about this dynamic. Just how much on the outside are we? In what ways do we reflect the dominant culture and in what ways do we speak or work in contrast to it? What are the tensions at play as we look at our place within society?

Having asked myself questions along these lines for quite a while, I decided it was time to explore some of them with you. And so I have framed this morning’s sermon around one central question—is Unitarian Universalism mainstream or countercultural? The obvious follow-up question which I will also examine this morning is what does the answer to that question mean as we go about our life and work as a religious community and faith tradition? What challenges and opportunities do we have because of our place within the culture?

As I sat down to write this sermon, I ran into an immediate problem. What would I describe as being the mainstream American culture? I had assumed I had an answer to this question, but the more I thought about it, the more complicated it seemed. I began to think about the history of our faith tradition as a way of trying to understand where we are today.

Both Unitarianism and Universalism began in this country in the last part of the eighteenth century. They began in different ways and had dramatically different relationships with the dominant culture.

Unitarianism arose out of the Congregational churches that were the churches in most New England towns. The ministers of these churches often also served as the superintendent of the town schools and most of the churches were supported by taxes paid by everyone. The churches were the central point in community life and were the seats of power for most communities. Many of these town churches became Unitarian, which put our religious ancestors in positions of power and influence in the early years of this country. It is no coincidence that many of the foundational values of our religious faith—valuing the individual, working toward freedom and equality for all, the right of individual conscience and religious freedom—are also foundational values in our country.

Universalism was much more an outsiders’ religion, growing in rural areas and fighting against the established churches. The message that all would be united with God after death was indeed a radical message, much more radical than the Unitarians were initially willing to adopt. Clergy were most often ordained from within the local congregation and rarely had any formal education. Universalists had little cultural or political power and were decidedly outside the mainstream.

Fifty years ago, just before and even just after the consolidation of Unitarianism and Universalism, the relationship between our religious tradition and the wider society was still relatively clear. The dominant culture then, I believe, was white, middle-class and increasingly suburban. Political and economic power lay primarily with white men and, for a brief time, there was the sense that families almost always consisted of a working father, a stay-at-home mother and two to three children.

Not everyone lived this way, of course, but the cultural message was that this was how we were supposed to live. And supposed to want to live.

People went to church on Sunday and most of the mainstream Protestant denominations, including Unitarianism, were growing. Though there were certainly Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, as well as those unaffiliated with any religious tradition, Protestantism was by far the dominant religion, as evidenced by the concern when John F. Kennedy, a Catholic, ran for President.

I wasn’t there, of course, and those of you who were may have a much more nuanced sense of how things were, but my understanding is that, in most ways, Unitarianism at least was quite mainstream in the mid part of the twentieth century. (Universalism’s relationship to culture, something I know less about, was probably a bit more complicated, but when the two traditions consolidated in 1961, the newly formed group seemed mainly to take on the Unitarian place in society.)

In any case, Unitarianism was most definitely a white, middle-class religion, with men in power and the mother-father-children family the core way people organized their lives. One of the key dynamics of that time throughout the country was the move to the suburbs. This has come to be known as “white flight” – the move of white families away from the cities, which then became dominated by people of color, and into the newly developed suburbs which, for many people, became the symbol of living the good life.

This pattern was dominant in the fifties in particular and, as the families went so went the religious communities. Many denominations, including ours, closed or moved many of their city churches in order to open churches in the suburbs. It is not hard to trace this move in our own history, and the focus on developing congregations in metro area suburbs remains.

The things that had put Unitarianism and Universalism outside the mainstream in their early years—doing away with a vision of hell waiting for unbelievers, an acceptance of reason and science as sources of authority including in relationship to religious questions, valuing of education for everyone, and a belief in the power and potential of humanity to shape themselves and the world in positive ways—these things had gradually become a part of the dominant cultural understanding. Other Protestant churches moved toward these ways of thinking and Unitarianism and Universalism became closer to the mainstream religiously, not because of changes within our tradition but because of changes within our society.

Yes, I am sure that Unitarian and Universalist theological openness to humanism and atheism set them somewhat apart from most Protestant churches. And yet, from my perspective now, it seems as if, for a decade or two, this country operated under the illusion that one cultural, one set of values and way of living life, should work for everyone and that our religious tradition was, for a time, relatively comfortable with that. Not that there weren’t Unitarian and Universalist voices of dissent and difference, voices which called people to values other than those driving society, but I believe that these were the exception rather than the rule.

For a variety of reasons, the picture today seems much more complicated. At least for me, it is much harder to define mainstream culture as it is now than it seems to do for these other times in our history. Some of that may simply be a matter of perspective. What feels complicated and fragmented by contemporary eyes may seem much clearer to those who look back on this time from the twenty-second century.

I don’t have that kind of historical perspective and so I find it quite difficult to describe the defining elements of our society. I do believe that pieces of what was dominant fifty years ago remain today. The white, middle-class value system; the male breadwinner, stay-at-home mom image of family; the push for conformity and assimilation continue to be powerful notions in this country. As evidenced by the most recent issue of Newsweek magazine, cultural Christianity endures as a shaper of society, even as religious pluralism becomes more prevalent and more accepted. These values and ways of being persist not only in our culture but also within Unitarian Universalism.

There are significant ways in which the culture of our country has moved even closer to the values we have proclaimed, if not always lived out fully, for generations. The civil rights movement, the women’s movement, and the growing acceptance of gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people have all meant major changes for our society, changes which bring Unitarian Universalism even closer to the center of things.

There is a growing recognition of the interconnectedness and interdependence of the entire human community and the whole of the natural world as well. Though as a society, we still wage war and use natural resources carelessly, though we still demonize the “other” and neglect many within our own communities, there is a growing awareness of how this hurts not only others but ourselves as well. There are more and more voices of recognition that we must change how we live in this world if we want our descendents to be able to do so as well. I like to think that the work of Unitarian Universalists in recent generations and in the present have something to do with this.

Along with these changes, there has been, in our culture, a growing acceptance and appreciation of difference and diversity, of religious and cultural pluralism and a recognition that perhaps there will never again be a dominant culture the way there has been for much of the life of this country. Again this recent Newsweek magazine has something to offer. In the main article about the state of spirituality and religion in America as well as the accompanying stories of individuals and their religious understandings, it becomes clear that a great number of people, many of whom have probably never heard of Unitarian Universalism, have come to understand religion in much the way we do—as a search and a journey, with wisdom and insight available from a great variety of sources. Recent generations feel much less tied to their religious upbringings than did their parents and religious diversity has become a fact of life in America.

In these ways, again, Unitarian Universalism is closer to the mainstream than we might think and feel. Much of this is good. These values which have become more and more accepted by society as a whole are, I believe, good ones and I am deeply grateful for the ways our culture has moved to be more open, more just; the ways in which we have moved closer to the ideals both our country and our religious faith had at their origin. We still have a long way to go, of course, but I see and celebrate the progress we have made.

There is, as demonstrated by the Universalists of the late eighteenth century, a danger in this. The more the values that make us who we are become a part of mainstream culture, the more it becomes possible to celebrate and practice religious pluralism everywhere, the less we have a distinctive message and identity. I hope that, fundamentally, the power of our values in the world is more important to us than the survival of our particular denomination, and yet I do not want to see us simply swallowed up by society. Especially since I do believe there are things we still have to offer.

This belief comes from a few other things I see happening in our culture.

The first is the backlash against this growing openness and awareness of interdependence. This is much of what is behind the so-called culture wars. As we all know, there are loud and strong voices speaking against diversity and religious pluralism, against recognition and acceptance for those who do not fit in the male breadwinner, stay-at-home mom families, against a lived sense of interconnection with people around the world and with the earth itself.

I do not believe that these issues are particularly simple or clear, or that we can divide the country into blue staters and red staters and be done with it. I am not trying to say that one political party has it all right and the other all wrong, or that there is only one way to live out the values we profess. At the same time, I do believe that there is a fundamental issue at stake here, and there is fight going on to be able to claim being mainstream America.

There was a recent article in the Washington Post about Branson, Missouri—an incredibly fast growing tourist destination centered originally around country music and now a gathering place for those who want to reclaim the “traditional” American values of Christianity, nuclear families made up of mom, dad, and children, and who claim to be uninterested in the growing diversity and pluralism of our country. In the article, one man claimed that this is what America really looks like. This is the dominant culture.

From my perspective, I would much rather claim as mainstream the openness and acceptance of difference, the as yet imperfectly realized value of equality for all regardless of race, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, and religion. Which is truly dominant in the culture at this point? Perhaps neither.

This is part of the fight that has been going on in recent years, the struggle to claim one or the other as mainstream America. It is clear where in this conversation Unitarian Universalism lies. Throughout our history, though we too have been far from perfect in living it out, we have always stood for the expansion of liberties and the definition of who deserves the protection of equality and civil rights. We have long been open to diversity and pluralism and have believed that there isn’t one right way to be a loving and healthy family. Whether we stand with the dominant culture or not depends on which side of these issues you believe is dominant.

There is one last area of mainstream culture which I believe may prove to be the biggest challenge for Unitarian Universalists. That is the arena of the interlocking issues of capitalism, consumerism, and corporate culture.

One of the basic tenets of Unitarian Universalism has always been a commitment to and appreciation of this world. In contrast to some strains of Christianity, we have understood that we belong here, in this life, on this earth. Perhaps there is something after we die; perhaps there is another life, another world. But we have long acknowledge our fundamental ignorance about this and so have focused our energies and our hopes in the here and now.

This has given us a strong foundation from which to address the ills of this world and a deep investment in working for justice and peace.

It has also brought us the challenge of understanding our relationship to wealth and possessions and made us as susceptible as anyone else to the temptations of ambition, material success, and conspicuous consumption as everyone else.

In a 1990 National Survey of Religious Identification, one of the elements looked at was social status, defined by measuring four “Protestant ethic” variables—employment, home ownership, education, and household income. Looking at these four elements together, Unitarian Universalists scored the highest over all of any religious denomination. This is, in many ways, a description of the still-powerful idea of the American dream. In this arena, we seem not only to be mainstream but perhaps the closest to fully achieving that ideal. Our place as a denomination on the ladder of social status makes clear that we have put a lot of time and energy into this kind of success.

Certainly there are, within Unitarian Universalism and within our own congregation, movements toward living simply and not falling into the trap of deriving too much gratification or too much of our identities and sense of self-worth from what we own. The words we say from our pulpit and within our congregations speak of values much higher than the cars we drive, the clothes we wear, and the gadgets we own.

And yet, in many of our congregations, and particularly our congregations in affluent suburbs like this one, we are, for the most part, very much a part of the mainstream consumer culture. We, along with the rest of the culture, struggle with the choices we face between time and money and, like many others, we, to the extent that we feel we have a choice, often choose money.

This is a very personal struggle for me and I hear it echoed in the lives of many in this congregation. This is also a place where I feel we are called to be countercultural. But to do so, we need to ask ourselves and each other some hard questions.

Just this week there was an article in the Post about the new standard in decorating college dorm rooms, and that the average amount of money spent by incoming freshmen is $4,000. $4,000 to decorate a college dorm room. I am sure I am not the only one who finds that appalling.

This is an area where our children and youth are particularly vulnerable and where we need to offer an alternative to the constant barrage of media and cultural messages that self-worth comes with owning the right things and wearing the right clothes. The pull of the latest gadget and the latest style is strong. I remember how much I wanted to fit in when I was in junior high school especially and how fitting in came from these visible material things. A lot of us, including me, never fully grow out of this and continue to be driven by measuring our own worth (and sometimes the worth of others) by our level of material success. To the extent that this is an issue for us, it will be even harder for our children.

I am not advocating we all quit our jobs and go live in the woods like Thoreau, or even that we give up all of the pleasures and luxuries of our lives. I do not believe that making and having money is inherently a bad thing, or that we ought to be ashamed of ourselves if we have been successful in this area of life. But I am calling our attention to the fact that this is not the only or even the most important area where success matters.

I think of these words from Unitarian minister William Henry Channing:

To live content with small means; to seek elegance rather than luxury, and refinement rather than fashion; to be worthy, not respectable, and wealthy, not rich; to study hard, think quietly, talk gently, act frankly; to listen to stars and birds, to babes and sages, with open heart; to bear all cheerfully, do all bravely, await occasions, hurry never. To let the spiritual, unbidden and unconscious, grow up through the common. This is to be my symphony.

This is a countercultural message. This could be our message, if we have the courage not only to say it but to live it as well. May we find a way to bring our highest values into being, challenging not only our culture but ourselves as well, working toward a society of the whole equal to our needs, in which we need not live beneath our moral capacity, and in which justice has a live of its own.

So may it be. Amen.