“Religion Is Neither Good Nor Bad, but Practice Makes It So Sermon”
Rev. Lilli Nye
September 17, 2006
When religious conflict flares up in the world, or closer to home, when I hear on the news how badly particular religious groups are behaving, slinging hateful words or bombs, I sometimes feel embarrassed to be a religious person.
When we see religious conviction at its worst, at its most divisive, destructive, oppressive, and irrational, one is tempted to think that the human religious instinct is a disastrous one:
Throughout history and as much today, religion has deepened human tribalism. It has justified the oppression of minorities and women and kept populations enslaved in ignorance. It has sanctioned monstrosities of domination and privilege, and fueled violence and terror.
In its less extreme though not less dangerous forms, religion enables whole societies to slumber in convention, quietly maintaining patterns of power and powerlessness by the unexamined status quo.
In my early 20’s, before I found my way to Unitarian Universalism, I would have been quick to say I was not a religions person, although I certainly felt I was on a spiritual quest. I imagined that religious people were pious, or irrational, or exclusive, or all three, and wanted to have nothing to do with it.
As meaning-making creatures, we have this instinct to construct ideologies, and then mistake our mental frameworks for reality. An ideology helps us navigate through life, but it is not life itself, just as the map is not the territory.
Yet, so hypnotized can we be by the elaborate constructs of our minds, that we stop seeing the raw presence of life before us. So certain can human beings become that we know the opinions and purposes of God that we no longer see the beauty and longing of God’s creation.
The more convinced we are that we know the truth and, as holy agents of that truth, must impress it upon others, the more likely we are to act like idiots, criminals, or tyrants.
So, there are times when I find myself feeling that religion is at the root of the some of the world’s most intractable problems, and that it serves what is most primitive and despicable in human beings.
But this is a warped and unnecessarily pessimistic perspective, because the exact opposite is also true—perhaps far more so: Religion also lends strength to what is best in human beings. It holds before us ideals, and inspires us to strive toward love and beauty.
Religious feeling has often been the well-spring of history’s most inspired and transforming movements. It has been the energy behind visionary social reform, as in the abolition and women’s suffrage movements.
It has given dignity and hope to oppressed peoples, and strengthened us to fight for a worthy future, as in the non-violent resistance movements of Gandhi and King, and the liberation communities of Latin America.
Religious vision has offered the hope that allows for torn societies to practice reconciliation and healing, as in post-Apartheid South Africa. There, Bishop Desmond Tutu preached that there would be no future for the people of South Africa without forgiveness, and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission was born as a pioneering international event.
Religion has light and shadow in it. It cannot be considered, de facto, a force for good or evil, as it has always been both, often at the same time. I once heard the phrase “the brighter the light, the darker the shadow”, meaning that anything that has great power in it can become a tool for creativity or destruction.
Religious scriptures are full of intensely powerful ideas and language, and have given enormous energy to both oppressive and liberating movements.
As African slaves were exposed to the Judeo-Christian bible, they found, right there in the book, a mirror of their experience, and they found the irrepressible idea of freedom. The stories of God’s concern for the slave and the suffering outcast, and the epic journey of the Israelites out from slavery, led through the wilderness by the Divine pillar of fire, became their flame of hope, and the metaphor for their own liberation.
As we now know, the slave spirituals, filled with the characters and images of the bible, were not just songs of worship. They were encoded with secret messages of how to get to freedom through the underground railroad.
And yet, has not the Bible been used just as effectively to justify the diminishment of human beings?
And I recall learning how a feminist movement was beginning to take hold, often secretly, in some Muslim societies.
Based on conventional interpretations of the Quran and sayings attributed to the Prophet Mohammed, Muslim women have often been denied their capacity for self-determination.
Yet as women learned to read the Qur’an for themselves, they discovered a new identity in God as fully dignified persons. They found there an affirmation of their spiritual worth, and a valuation of their innate, divinely-given gifts as women, that held them as equals to men in their essential being. Once they knew themselves in this knew light, they were awakened to possibilities for their lives that had been previously unimaginable.
Years ago I came across a book by UU and Feminist theologian Sharon Welch, entitled “Communities of Resistance and Solidarity.” And while there was much in this book that lit up my mind, one of her more startling assertions was this:
That the truth of a religion does not really exist in that religion’s abstract principles; the truth of a religion exists in its lived expression—in how it is lived out, by individuals, and much more importantly, by communities.
To give an example, Christianity doesn’t really exist as an abstraction. It has no reality except in how it has been, and is now, interpreted, preached and practiced by human beings. Whether it is an agent for hatred or for love cannot be found in its creed or its theology, but only in loving or hateful behaviors, in the liberating or oppressive speech and actions of its disciples.
At the time when I was hit by this idea, I had been a student of comparative religion for quite a while, and I had believed that I could discover the essence and meaning of a religion from academic study. So, this was a rather remarkable reframing for me.
I just recently learned a phrase for a sudden realization like this: Its called a BFO—a Blinding Flash of the Obvious. I had a BFO experience when I realized that she was right, that religious concepts only have potential life, not real life. They get real life when they are lived.
When I came across the story that Avi shared earlier, about the competition held by the court of Genghis Khan, I thought it provided some great illustrations of this point:
For example, what did it say about the religious values of Mongke Khan that the contestants in the debate were allowed only to speak respectfully to one another—under the threat of death if they didn’t?
And the Franciscan priest, William of Rubruck, was so pompous in proclaiming that his faith alone was the true light, yet when all he had to offer others was mere proclamations, he was utterly unconvincing. Had he declined to enter the competition, and instead gone about tending to the sick and feeding the poor in the name of Christ, he probably would have won some converts.
And the Muslims, who understand their holy book, the Qu’ran, to be literally, literally, dictated from the mouth of the Divine—when they tried to convince others of this truth by screaming the words of the Qur’an at their rivals, it fell on deaf and disinterested hears.
And, if the historical account of Jack Weatherford is correct, and the Mongol empire did, in fact,
It raises the question for me as to whether America, as a nation, is an oppressor or liberator—and the answer is really both. Just as we cannot determine the truth and spirit of a religion from its texts or its ideas, we cannot know the truth of America from its founding documents or the noble words of its founders. And it is utterly absurd to simply go about proclaiming “this great nation,” as if America by definition IS GREAT and GOOD.
“You will know them by their fruits” a wise rabbi said. Our true identity as a nation, our greatness and our failure to be great, lives in the fruits of what we create and destroy, by action or neglect. And those fruits have been, and continue to be varied and ambiguous: sometimes noble, visionary and life-giving, sometimes ignoble, unjust and vile.
And while we as citizens may often feel disenfranchised from the halls of power where policy is decided, we are not powerless to live out the most noble characteristics of our national identity in our local sphere. It is in our lives, that America lives.
Returning to religion, what about Unitarian Universalism? Are we liberator or oppressor? Or both?
It can be our habit to point to the statement of our principles and purposes to describe who we are, what we are. And we may feel proud of ourselves for being so enlightened as to belong to a religion that proclaims such principles.
It is easy to imagine that being a Unitarian Universalist means belonging to a Unitarian Universalist church--that membership in that club makes us good. I have seen many a UU blow the same kind of pompous hot air that did the Franciscan in our story, William Rubruck.
Yet Unitarian Universalism cannot be found in our principles. Those are just words, just ideas. They have no body. Nor can our religion be found in merely belonging.
Our faith, our religion, only frees and heals when we ourselves do. We give witness, by the fruits of our love and labor, to what we are. And so, returning to the values of our faith, here they are in more grounding terms:
By these practices, may we be known. By the garden we cultivate, by the fruits of our love and our labor, may our religion live.