Conscience is the Heart of Heaven
Catherine Senghas
February 17, 2008

Reading:
“If man simply follows his own ideas, even when they appear to be good ones, he is not fully protected against error and dishonesty. He needs to be able to listen to other, more inscrutable and more direct demands, issued at the very center of his personal existence and reaching into the depths of his own identity and freedom in such a way that he ‘knows’ they are directed for him personally by the ultimate Lord of life and death, Yahweh, the Nameless but wakeful and present One who is, in Augustine’s phrase, more intimate to us than we are to ourselves.”
--Thomas Merton

I would like to extend an invitation to you—an invitation you have perhaps already received if you truly listen to your heart—an invitation to obliterate the distinctions between your Unitarian Universalist identity and any other identities you may have, whether in your personal, professional, academic or community life. The amazing gift that we receive in our very liberal religious tradition is the freedom to search for truth and meaning as we find it. Yet with that gift comes the responsibility to use that freedom to continue our own development and to act on what we come to know about ourselves and the world. If ours is to be a true religion, or faith tradition, or movement—however you want to characterize it—we must follow our conscience in putting our faith into action in every moment of our lives.

One of our pioneering American Unitarian heretics was William Ellery Channing, a Christian humanist in the first half of the 19th century who scandalized the Christian churches of the day in 1819 when he preached his sermon “Unitarian Christianity” at the ordination of the Unitarian minister Jared Sparks in Baltimore (for which reason it is also called “The Baltimore Sermon”). Channing laid out very clearly his beliefs about the authority of the Bible, the use of reason, and disbelief about the Trinity and predestination. Ever after that event, the adjective Unitarian would describe certain Christian churches and distinguish them from others. Ralph Waldo Emerson referred to Channing as “a kind of public conscience” affirming Channing’s practice of speaking from his own conscience to probe that of the general public on social and economic matters as well as religious ones.

You may be familiar with the local Unitarian minister from West Roxbury a little later in that century, Theodore Parker. Parker was vehemently opposed to slavery and led Boston area opposition to the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, which was an attempt to mandate the return to their masters all slaves who had escaped to the free states. At that time, many preachers supported the status quo and some even argued that Scripture sanctioned catching fugitive slaves. Parker recognized slavery as being against Christian ideals and in his “Sermon of Conscience” preached in 1850, he openly called for the Fugitive Slave Act to be defied. Parker even served as a Minister-at-Large to fugitive slaves in Boston, marshalling all sorts of aid for them. When a fugitive in his own congregation, Ellen Craft, was about to be captured, he hid her in his own house until she could escape to Canada.

Who else comes to mind from our tradition of following one’s conscience? Henry David Thoreau of Concord is well known to us as a contrarian acting from the basis of his conscience. In a college essay he wrote “the fear of displeasing the world ought not, in the least, to influence my actions; were it otherwise, the principal avenue to reform would be closed.” Thoreau spent time in jail for refusing to pay taxes being raised at that time to fund US aggression into Mexico, and for this, he is introduced as an exemplar of civil disobedience to school children studying the history of the United States. We tend to claim Thoreau as one of our famous Unitarians, although in fact what he was famous for within our movement was his alignment with emerging American Transcendentalism, which was actually a protest against the type of intellectualism and doctrine that the Harvard Divinity School was promoting within Unitarianism at the time. The Transcendentalists believed that the ideal spiritual state could only be realized through intuition. So as you see, we have had heretics even within our own tradition.

What about today? Our fifth principle states that we, the member congregations of the Unitarian Universalist Association, covenant to affirm and promote the right of conscience and the use of democratic process within our congregations and in society at large. I’d like to talk about the “society at large” part of that affirmation this morning.

First of all, we can’t exercise our conscience unless we have an expanded consciousness that informs our conscience. I personally need to live in a way that minimizes regret; regret over things I did and things I didn’t do, of course. But beyond that, I don’t want to hear myself say “if only I had known,” or to a friend, “I’m sorry, I had no idea....” No regrets—that would certainly be heaven on earth for me—true salvation. So if I want to get better at recognizing each decision moment and acting to avoid regret, I must continue to expand my consciousness. Some of that comes from staying abreast of current events, reading and studying, “head stuff.” But a significant aspect of consciousness is based on self-awareness. I haven’t always been Unitarian Universalist; in fact I grew up Roman Catholic, and I have been Unitarian Universalist for only twenty years—I came as a young adult, in fact, as one of the many who find Unitarian Universalism as a young parent. There is a spiritual practice I value and carry from the Roman Catholic tradition called “the examination of conscience.” I can still recite the preamble prayer—but I won’t, and I don’t, because some of it no longer resonates with me theologically. Unfortunately I don’t have the self-discipline to do it every single day, but it is a wonderful exercise in looking back across the whole day and revisiting what I did and said, how I spent my time, thinking about whether I squandered my life that day. I don’t do this practice to lay a guilt trip on myself. Time is short. I am simply asking myself, “How will I walk on the face of the earth tomorrow?” You may have practices that help you develop awareness—yoga, meditation, or writing in a journal are a few. These ways of developing consciousness, awareness, will help you “hear” your conscience. I hope you find one that works for you.

And maybe I need to back up and ask what we mean, anyway, by “conscience.” My dictionary defines conscience as “The awareness of a moral or ethical aspect to one's conduct together with the urge to prefer right over wrong.” The great Catholic theologian Thomas Merton from the last century spoke about finding the true self vs. the false self and we heard some of his thinking on this in our reading earlier when he said that a person “needs to be able to listen to other, more inscrutable and more direct demands, issued at the very center of his [or her] personal existence and reaching into the depths of his [or her] own identity and freedom in such a way that he [or she] ‘knows’ they are directed for him [or her] personally.” Merton’s understanding of conscience is not some external code of behavior, but a deeply spiritual and personalized ethic. Some of you might think of your conscience a little more lightly, in the way of the Saturday morning cartoons, with a little angel on one shoulder whispering into your ear and a little devil on the other; for me it’s less like a choice between listening to those two, and more like having an imp perched on my belt punching me in the stomach, because I feel my conscience as gut knowing.

So how do we integrate our higher consciousness, our ever-evolving conscience, and our Unitarian Universalist principles? What if we could always maintain a holistic approach to living—so that we experience every action as a religious action, part of our responsibility to contribute to the greater stream of good? What if we took very seriously our bystander responsibility when we see a wrong, even a very slight one, occurring in our presence? Or what if we imagined a new opportunity to do something positive and perhaps even inspiring others to act? I would suggest that these are not just invitations to engage, but that one’s conscience demands a response. This is our “call” every day; how can we ignore it and sleep at night?

We are in a very dynamic political period globally and nationally and we are witnessing attempts by religious movements to dictate a course for the future conforming to varying fundamentalist beliefs. Wherever we see religious fundamentalism at work trying to shape the societal norms, we see attempts to restrict our ability to speak and act from individual conscience. I have no desire to limit or shape the beliefs of others, but I will fight—with passion—attempts by others to restrict my right to follow my own conscience, and the similar rights of others. I view this as my religious responsibility, not merely my political preference. And one established avenue we have for that right now is the democratic process. Are you voting? Every time you can?

In a speech over forty years ago Hubert Humphrey said, “When people generally are aware of a problem, it can be said to have entered the public consciousness. When people get on their hind legs and holler, the problem has not only entered the public consciousness—it has also become a part of the public conscience. At that point, things in our democracy begin to hum.” It feels to me as if things are humming now. No matter what your politics, our liberal religion demands that we fight to maintain the right of conscience and the use of democratic process. Are you engaged? It’s a religious responsibility, and this is why Unitarian Universalism is not just a secular movement of informed social action. Sometimes we Unitarian Universalists are accused of being individualistic to the core. I know that many here at FUSN are deeply engaged in work for social justice, meaningful work to gather and allocate resources for people both locally and in places very far away from Newton. I see this as missionary work of the best kind, and I wish for you a new wave of colleagues to carry the work forward. And if you are someone who has not yet found a way to engage your own personal conscience at whatever level you are right now able to become involved, I invite you to think about it as religious work, “religious” as in “binding ourselves to one another.” Time is short. How will we walk together on the face of the earth tomorrow?

Amen.

i Thomas Merton, Opening the Bible, pp. 75-76. Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1970.cited in James Duban, “Conscience and Consciousness: The Liberal Christian Context of Thoreau's
ii Political Ethics” The New England Quarterly, Vol. 60, No. 2 (Jun., 1987), pp. 208-222
iii Hubert H. Humphrey (1911–1978), U.S. Democratic politician, vice president. speech, Oct. 11, 1966, Gannon College, Erie, Pennsylvania.

Catherine Senghas, copyright February 2008