THE SOLILOQUY OF A BEHOLDING AND JUBILANT SOUL
Or, Why I Am a Humanist

A Sermon by James Ishmael Ford
22 September 2002

Humanism, at least as a term, certainly has fallen on hard times. It is denounced by the social right as the source of most of the ills of our times and by the social left as being out of touch with contemporary philosophical trends, at best an irrelevancy, at worst a perpetuator of Euro-centric materialistic scientism. I even found a Science Fiction story in which the "humanists" were an organization of human beings advocating the superiority of the human species over the galaxy’s other sentient beings. As I suggested, humanism has fallen on hard times.

However, while there have been no valid statistical studies of our denomination's range of faith stances for decades, looking at congregational surveys created for ministerial searches, it becomes apparent the majority of Unitarian Universalists’ today continue as they have for most of the twentieth century to self-designate as humanist. Even me.

In my oft-repeated assertion of my "anatomy of faith," made with a tip of the hat to my old hero Erasmus, I confess a Buddhist brain, a Christian heart and a humanist stomach. I really am convinced by what I see as the fundamental propositions of Buddhism. At the same time I live and breathe and find the content of my dreams within the Bible. My metaphorical reference points mostly arise from the spiritual stories of my childhood Baptist culture. However, and this is a very large however; everything I am and do and say is washed through a deeply humanist disposition.

So, what is this humanist disposition claimed by the majority of Unitarian Universalists? What is this humanist disposition I claim? Is it really about human superiority? Or, moral relativism? Or, Euro-centric scientific materialism? Today I will be suggesting otherwise.

In fact much of this humanist perspective coursing through my body as powerfully as air through my lungs arises from my deepest feelings of connection with the natural world. If love can be defined as that to which we give our attention, then humanism is about love for the world. I suggest Humanism, at its best, is a call to love the world. And if this is true, then it is worthy, and good.

So today I want to revisit humanism. I want to explore a little of what has been called humanism in the past, as well as some of its critiques. I then want to explore some of what humanism looks like today. And then I would like to speculate just a little on what humanism might be for us as religious liberals as we look forward into the third millennium of our Common Era.

There appear to be at least three historic usages for this word "humanism." Originally humanism and humanist stands for that movement in the Renaissance arising out of classical studies and which inspired the movement toward European modernity. In our times humanism is also a synonym for humanitarian, standing for the belief that people have an obligation to promote human welfare. And, most importantly for our purposes today, humanism is used to mean reasonable and this-worldly.

Now humanism itself seems devisable between a secular form and a religious one. Secular humanism is a passionate embrace of rationalism, together with a rejection of all supernaturalism. Advocates of secular humanism see themselves as offering a clear alternative to religion. Offering instead of superstition, rational perspectives on what might be a moral and fulfilling life.

Religious humanists, on the other hand, often embrace much of the language of religion, usually reinterpreting it in naturalistic ways. Most dramatically God, when used by contemporary religious humanists, rarely stands for an omnipotent divinity standing outside of the universe. Instead the divine is seen, at least in some significant way, as identical with the cosmos itself. Today the single largest group of people holding religious humanist positions, are members of our Unitarian Universalist Association.

It appears that the first Unitarians who called themselves humanists were John Dietrich, often called the father of religious humanism, and Curtis Reese. Both were parish ministers serving during the first decades of the twentieth century. Dietrich served our congregations in Spokane and Minneapolis. Reese served congregations in Alton and Des Moines.

In 1933 fifteen Unitarian ministers, including Dietrich and Reese, as well as a Universalist minister, Clinton Lee Scott, joined with John Dewey and seventeen other intellectuals to sign the "Humanist Manifesto." This was an important document.

The Manifesto declared with unbridled enthusiasm, how "The time has come for widespread recognition of the radical changes in religious beliefs throughout the modern world… Science and economic change have disrupted the old beliefs… In every field of human activity, the vital movement is now in the direction of a candid and explicit humanism…."

A tide had turned they believed, the term in the next few decades would be that a new paradigm had arisen. For the most part, Unitarians and Universalists embraced this vision. For the greater part of the twentieth century Unitarian Universalism has been deeply marked by humanist perspectives.

It has in fact only been in the last two decades that we’ve seen a new shift in emphasis. It should be remarked that those among us who are inclined to use the admittedly ambiguous term "spiritual" are now in ascendancy. Our greatest pulpits, even our denominational presidency has been held for a decade now by those in this "spiritual" camp. But, I suggest, while there definitely are new emphases among us, particularly the rise of a conscious reintegration of spiritual perspectives, we still are profoundly marked by humanist assumptions.

Frankly, I think for the most part this is a good thing. And so while there have been substantive shifts among us, if we wish to understand our movement, and our ways of engaging "that which is most important," it is essential for us to understand humanism. In order to do that, I suggest we consider at least one of the critiques in some depth.

The post-modernist critique presented most forcibly by Michel Foucault attempts to disassociate the conventional equations of reason, emancipation and progress. Foucault took what has come to be called an anti-Enlightenment position, one of several that argue this linkage particularly of reason and progress has instead of liberating people, simply created new ways to dominate. His assertion is that everything we believe we know; our attempts at reason and our social institutions themselves are simply contingent socio-historical constructs.

Now if I understand this position correctly, it is a wholesale rejection of the idea of reason in favor of a multivalent subjectivity. Now there is a certain appeal to this radical relativism and its clarion call to "deconstruct" all positions. Here we find, at its best, the harsh light shining even on the light itself.

But the question really must be is this true? Is everything subjective? Well, while there is much about us that is subjective, much more than classic humanism would acknowledge, still in the last analysis there is a discernible and "objective" world. After all, the world we perceive through our senses and engage through logic and scientific method actually works. We do converse with each other in ways that allow us to work together and to make things that affect all of our lives. The proof of this pudding is every pudding we’ve ever made.

At the same time the practices of deconstruction have shown up many flaws in the assertions of objectivity. We have seen that our opinions about the world beyond our senses are indeed deeply colored by our prejudices and unexamined assumptions. So, as we’ve pulled back a bit, inspired at least in part by post-modernist perspectives many of us have seen that much of twentieth century humanism has in fact been caught up in a reductionism of the spirit, where what is felt, what is not reducible to an equation has not been seen, has often been flat-out denied.

Taking into account the challenges of postmodernism, as well as the perhaps even more profound insights of feminism and the insights of the ecological movement, William Murray, another parish minister and now President of our denominational seminary Meadville/Lombard, in Chicago has reflected on the humanism we’ve received.

Murray writes "This early religious humanism had several weaknesses: it was highly individualistic and thus lacked an emphasis on community and had no doctrine of the church. It lacked a sense of the tragic, of pain and suffering, loss and grief, death and dying.

"It was too optimistic, and seemed to take an attitude of indifference toward the harsh realities of human life. It placed too much emphasis on reason and ignored the emotional or feeling aspect of the self; it emphasized the mind and virtually ignored the heart.

"It lacked a sense of openness to mystery and the unknown. It was too optimistic in its view of human possibilities and its view of progress, and it showed no sense of the extent and depth of evil in the world, and finally, it often came across as too dogmatic and intolerant of other perspectives."

That said, the humanist movement has not been static. We in the liberal religious community have been mindful of intellectual and spiritual currents among us. We have taken the legitimate criticisms of postmodernism, of ecological concern and of feminism to heart. So, for instance the President of our other denominational seminary, Rebecca Parker invites us to consider a feminist re-visioning of humanism.

She tells us how we need to recall that we are bodies as well as minds. We need to be wary of any hard division of these two things, which at heart are almost certainly one. In practical terms Parker reminds us that we cannot avoid pain and anger and joy. Any new humanism must be feeling, fully open to human experience.

And also, we need to remember how we are not autonomous beings. Our lives, we are reminded by both feminist and ecological critiques of humanism are interdependent, interconnected. So, to live fully human is to live within relationship. And last, we must remember our vulnerability, our woundedness. We need to remember the pain that so often accompanies our lives.

So, what might a re-visioned humanism, one that takes into account these critiques, look like? Murray has given us eight points to consider for a new religious humanism. First he calls us to an affirmation of the worth and dignity of every human being. Second, he encourages an emphasis on the covenanted religious community. Third he calls us to a reaffirmation of reason, but now held within the context of also accepting intuitive and non-rational elements of our human experience.

Fourth, Murray invites us to take tragedy seriously. Fifth, he calls us to openness to wonder and mystery and transcendence within a naturalistic frame, held together with a certain tentativeness, humility about the limits of our knowing. Fifth, he holds us to our ancient traditions of tolerance. Sixth, he calls us to an appreciation of the aesthetic element of life. Seventh he holds up a commitment to the environment as essential. And eighth, he holds up as a new humanist principle, a commitment to liberation of oppressed peoples and a call for economic justice.

Of course each of these assertions is worth further reflection. But, for today, commenting on all this together, revealing how this new humanism might erupt within our lives, Murray quotes from The Sacred Depths of Nature by Ursula Goodenough, a cell biologist who identifies herself as a religious naturalist.

"Our story tells us of the sacredness of life, of the astonishing complexity of cells and organisms, of the vast lengths of time it took to generate their splendid diversity, of the enormous improbability that any of it happened at all.

"Reverence is the religious emotion elicited when we perceive the sacred. We are called to revere the whole enterprise of planetary existence, the whole and all of its myriad parts as they catalyze and secure and replicate and mutate and evolve."

She then continues, drawing upon our own Unitarian resources. "Ralph Waldo Emerson invites us to express our reverence in the form of prayer. ‘Prayer,’ (Emerson) writes, ‘is the contemplation of the facts of life from the highest point of view. It is the soliloquy of a beholding and jubilant soul.’"

I suggest this is the new humanism, a true light for our lives and the world itself. Within the vision of this new humanism there is no difference between the spiritual and the material. There is no dead universe, and no spiritual world beyond the natural. What you see is what you get. But, it is alive, it is animal. The universe is mysterious, constantly unfolding, but never completely revealing.

A religious or spiritual humanism accepts the wisdom of our bodies and respects the knowledge we can glean through our senses, as well as the wisdom that can arise within our open minds. Indeed, this spiritual humanism is an invitation to an examined life, to a life of discovery and engagement, to a life of love.

And, my friends, to what more should we be called?

Amen.