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My friend Anne is a confirmed Atheist but she always shows remarkable tolerance of peoples’ religious beliefs. She has no interest in seeking a faith to follow, but she has a curiosity about what people believe and she is always respectful of those beliefs. Anne says that “Religions in their amazing diversity are one of humanities most creative achievements”. For Anne religion is a purely human construction; it is humanity’s way of seeking comfort when faced with the difficulties of living and ultimately by the stark reality of death. Anne’s beliefs are in marked contrast with the teachings of most religions. The great Monotheistic religions teach that God instigated a relationship with humanity. Beginning with Abraham, God established a contractual relationship with the human race. Over time other prophets have been sent by God to further reveal the will of God; Moses, David, Jesus and the Prophet Muhammad. The problem of course is that the while the Monotheistic religions are generally agreed as to who were Prophets they all disagree about the actual message or messages given by the prophets from God. It would be far more helpful if God was somewhat less ambiguous; a bit more clear, precise and definite. God’s messengers have presented us with contradicting messages. Needless to say all religions and the sects within the different religions believe that they know exactly what God said and more importantly exactly what God meant; and they are committed to preserving their version of “Religious Truth”. Arrogance about religious beliefs has caused untold misery in the history of human kind. One of the things that I am most proud of as a Unitarian is our acceptance that we do not have the answers. Most traditional religions regard our lack of a set creed as an indication that Unitarianism is not really a proper religion at all. This was demonstrated well in an episode of the Simpsons. At the Church fair the ice cream stall was selling different varieties of Ice cream, they were named after different religious traditions. e.g. Calvinist was a solid but a very plain ice cream, while the more jazzed up concoctions containing cream and chocolate where called Evangelical; Lisa asked for a Unitarian Ice Cream and she was given an empty bowl. A second thing that as a Unitarian I am proud of is that we can laugh at ourselves. This episode of the Simpsons did not result in Essex Hall issuing a Fatwa against the writers of the Simpsons. On a serious note in terms of religion should Unitarianism be regarded as just an empty bowl? Are we pretending to be a religious community? Does our lack of a creed mean that we are do not constitute a “genuine religion” Often in attempting to describe ourselves we speak of ourselves as being “Liberal Christians”. The mainstream Christian Churches have often disowned us. A few years ago our General Assembly was held in Chester as in the previous year it was planned to hold the Service in the Church of England Cathedral. The authorities in the Cathedral refused to allow the service to be held there because Unitarians do not accept the doctrine of the Trinity. The Anglicans were protecting/defending their orthodoxy; they knew that God would be find Unitarian prayers and hymn singing deeply offensive. Whether or not it is appropriate to label ourselves as Christian is open to debate what is certain is that our Unitarian roots are very firmly in the Christian tradition. In the two thousand years of its existence much effort has been expended by the Christian Churches to maintain official Church teaching. The cost of maintaining Orthodoxy has often caused an enormous amount of human suffering. The Establishment always takes precedence over individual human beings. When we think about the Vatican, Canterbury, the Orthodox Churches, Evangelical Protestantism, think of their Churches and vast libraries their hierarchies, it is all a very long way from the Jesus of the Gospels. Jesus the itinerant country preacher, who urged those who had two coats to give one away. Who told us that we must love our enemies, that if someone strikes us on the cheek that we must not retaliate but should offer them the other cheek. The Christian Churches base their teaching on the Bible in conjunction with their own tradition. The books of the New Testament make a fairly slim volume. They were written after the death of Jesus and these Canonical texts were selected from a larger store of texts at a much later date, and they were selected to uphold the official Church teaching. There is a wide variation in theology between the Christian Churches however a central tenet of all denominations is that Jesus was the son of God, that he was Crucified died and rose from the dead; by this sacrifice Christ has gained entrance to heaven for of humanity. In order to be saved i.e. go to heaven rather than hell when we die we must believe this. Stated baldly in this fashion, to have this belief requires a leap of faith. This blind faith is something that Unitarians find difficult if not impossible to achieve. There is no clear statement made by Jesus in the Gospels that this was his mission. Most Christian theology is based on the teaching of St. Paul. St. Paul and his teaching is such an integral part of Christianity that I think that many of us forget or maybe never realised that St. Paul was not one of the twelve disciples of Jesus. St. Paul never met Jesus. In the reading from the Acts of the Apostles, we have a description of an experience St. Paul had on the road to Damascus, following the experience he was blind, he made his way to Damascus was cured of his blindness by the disciple Ananias, he was baptised and immediately began to preach that Jesus was the Messiah. It seems that overnight St. Paul’s experience made him an expert on Jesus; within a matter of days he was proclaiming Jesus in the Synagogues. In his own account of his conversion (Galations 1:11- 17) Paul assures us that his knowledge of Jesus did not come from the Disciples of Jesus “For I want you to know, brothers and sisters, that the gospel that was proclaimed by me is not of human origin; for I did not receive it from a human source, nor was I taught it, but I received it through, a revelation of Jesus Christ.”. Having received this revelation from Jesus Christ Paul says that he did not go to Jerusalem to join the apostles, but went to Arabia for three years and then returned to Damascus. These are two very contrasting accounts of a defining episode in the life of St. Paul. By one account within days he is a committed preacher of the Word; in the other he went to Arabia for three years. But do discrepancies like this matter? Paul did eventually make contact with the apostles in Jerusalem; and surely Paul and the Apostles all preached the same message? Well actually they didn’t Paul tell us that he – Paul- had quarrelled with Peter, chief of the apostles, and that Peter had it all wrong.!!!! The dispute concerned whether or not new followers of The Way needed to observe Jewish Dietary Laws and obviously Paul won the argument. The Christian teaching we have inherited is based largely on the teachings of St. Paul – Paul who never met Jesus. Paul himself tells us that what he preached was “revealed” to him from a non human source. Of course with the benefit of time we know that St. Paul was mistaken about part of his message. Paul expected Jesus to “return in glory” within a short period. Two thousand years later we are still waiting!!! Stated like this the evidence used to support Christian Theology is rather unconvincing to say the least and it certainly offers support to my friend Anne’s contention that all religions are of human construction. It is very easy to go through the Gospels picking out errors and inconsistencies; this is something we Unitarian are rather good at. However concentrating on negative messages is a miserable way to live life. The fact is that the early Christian Church did not have any elaborate Theology, there was no hierarchies, no positions that needed to be upheld. It consisted of individual groups who found the Christian message that we should love one another to be something really life enhancing. The early Christians met, they prayed and they did good works. People said of them “see how they love one another” When the Roman Emperor Constantine made Christianity the state religion, Christianity became part of Government and this is when the Christian Church began to lose its way. It became an institution, it gained power, it became wealthy, it had a position to maintain. The original message of Jesus was swamped in the new institution. The Church set out to define its version of the truth, and to impose it on its followers. The hijacking of spiritual authority by an elite minority is not confined to Christianity, it exists in other religions as well. When authority is confined to an elite we get to the point where it is acceptable to burn alive those who are regarded as heretics, to find it acceptable to order the death of a person because of a perceived insult to Allah. _______When we think about how religion has evolved, I hope that the Governement’s idea of bringing in a law of Blasphemy is just crazy. When we Unitarians reject all the dogma and creeds of the other Christian Churches are we Unitarians left rather pathetically holding on to our empty ice cream bowl? Well yes I think we are but I think that it is only empty on a temporary basis. We take on the responsibility for making our own selection of what we put in our bowl; we reserve the right to change our minds about what we have selected. Our decisions about what we put in will change as new discoveries are made and with our own spiritual development. Our bowl may contain a large helping of social action, political awareness and sprinkled over with huge amounts of discussion concerning religious matters. If when we fill our bowl we keep in mind the watch words of freedom, reason and tolerance our bowl will be something we can be proud of. I know that many times during our lifetime and particularly as we mature spiritually that the bowl will more and more often be left empty; deliberately so. This is as it should be, and when the bowl is empty; we can remind ourselves that we are in excellent company. In the Jewish Tradition, the most sacred place for Jews was the, Holy of Holies in the Temple in Jerusalem. For Jews it was so sacred that if a non Jewish person entered there the punishment was death. The Holy of Holies contains an empty space. It is empty because the Jews knew that attempts to show or describe God in any way is impossible. So even if we Unitarian are left with an empty bowl, we should be proud we are keeping good company. The opening words we used this morning are one statement of our faith. They are worth repeating:
Love is the doctrine of this church
Rev.Bridget Spain |