This seminar revisits a sermon series I gave in the 2002-2003 church year. Then, I spoke on world religions in tribute to this congregations’ 120 year interest in world religions that take us back to the radical Unity Men of the Western Unitarian Conference, a group instrumental in founding this Unitarian congregation in 1886 and in staging the epochal Parliament of World Religions in 1893. This adjunct to the World Fair known as the Columbian Exposition introduced America to religious traditions other than Judaism and Christianity. The high tide of world religions at UCH occurred in the 1950s and 1960s during Sunder Joshi’s ministry. Sunder was a professor of world religions before becoming UCH’s minister. The 6 great panels that once hung behind Sunder’s pulpit now fill the walls of Joshi Auditorium in the RE building.
I’m holding the seminar because of two recent trends, one quite positive and the other, melancholy and even disturbing. The first, reflecting the larger currents of what we call globalization, actively seeks a common ground through religion. A leading voice in this regard is Karen Armstrong, who’s become an activist for religious harmony. Armstrong actively promotes an outlook that there are many paths, one God.
The second trend disturbs me and I suspect disturbs you, too. Religious intolerance has re-emerged with vengeance in this decade. It plays a little in the debate around the so-called New Atheists. (A couple of years ago I gave a sermon about atheists being most despised group in America ; on the other hand traditionalists believe that atheists despise them and hate their faith.) Anti-Catholicism has surged in regards to the international scandal of pedophilia priests and an alleged hierarchical cover-up. (Catholics claim being singled out, especially by the NY Times.) Evangelical Christians frequently cry out that they are persecuted internationally, and also more subtly by secularized America. But the most egregious religious intolerance is evident in anti-Muslim sentiment. Most recently the proposed Koran burning in Florida and, even more, the proposed Muslim Center a few blocks from the site of NYC’s World Trade Center leveled on 9/11 has stirred intolerance—a deluge of anti-Muslim rhetoric.
I’m offering this seminar in 2010 to foster respect among world religions. Because of our heritage, we have an historic and continuing investment in broad and generous, yes, liberal religious tolerance.
Two Approaches For UNDERSTANDING WORLD Religions
There are two broad approaches to the discipline of comparative world religions.
One approach seeks similarities, answering the question, what do the various religions have in common? Generally, all religions have an explanation for the beginning of the world or a creation myth, holy books, founding figures, prophets and holy persons, rituals that mark rites of passage, worship, moral strictures, and so on. What crosses religious boundaries might even be astonishingly specific. The Golden Rule—to do on unto others as you would have done to yourself—has similar expressions in a diversity of world religions. This approach is something of a "melting pot" outlook. It is reductionist in the sense that it establishes a template to which the various religions conform. Similarities eclipse uniqueness.
Karen Armstrong, a former nun and popular writer on religion,--her book A History of God (1994) her best known book,--has become a strong voice in advocating what I’m calling the “melting pot” perspective. She has a large hand in a newly minted organization called the Charter for Compassion that maintains compassion “lies at the heart of all religious, ethical and spiritual traditions, calling us always to treat all others as we wish to be treated ourselves.” Seeking unity under compassion’s rubric, Armstrong sees compassion leading into an overarching religious and ethical notion of the Golden Rule. She self-identifies as a freelance monotheist. I’ve listened to her in a recent interview and she clearly supports the idea that there is one God and all religions somehow manifest that God. Such a view eminently suits her for soothing the conflicts of three Abrahamic faiths, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. These three faiths are a particular focus of her work.
A second approach to world religions resembles more of a "mosaic" outlook. Each particular religion is seen as unique and in that uniqueness contributes to a grander, collective vision of human religion. I follow this approach and here are reasons why:
1) Compared to the melting pot or reductionist approach, the mosaic approach is more respectful of the people/cultures that have kept their respective traditions through the millennia. It takes the various world religions separately and seriously.
2) The mosaic approach is particularly useful in the formation of one's own spirituality, because you can take away something of substance from each great religious. In this series I will envision a harmony/beauty of diverse world religions that Unitarian Universalist minister Forrest Church compares to the transmuted sunlight a beautiful segmented, stained glass rose window casts into a cathedral: one Source/many panes/ a colorful symmetry of beguiling light.
3) This mosaic approach to world religions also promotes the notion that no one religious tradition is absolutely adequate all by itself—not in the larger scheme. In our emerging globalism such pluralism is of practical virtue. Such an approach demands respect from religion to religion and may even cultivate the virtue of institutional humility.
4) I bring another insight to the "mosaic" approach to world religions. The various core truths of the various world religions are themselves inadequate and may shape themselves into grotesques without the corrective of another or additional truths. My appreciation of the term “grotesque” is rooted in the prelude to Sherwood Anderson’s classic and innovative novel Winesburg, Ohio. As related in an opening chapter called the “Book of the Grotesque,” a character became a grotesque by grasping a single truth and trying to live her or his life by it. In the process, the truth and the individual were both corrupted.
What quickly come to mind are the core truths from Judaism—Justice—and from Buddhism—Compassion. Justice without Compassion is harsh and cold, sometimes resulting in self-serving, even evil, ends. And Compassion without Justice can be so naive on practical basis that it discourages personal responsibility. Furthermore, someone who lives a life by one spiritual truth only might be given to fanaticism and self-righteousness, becoming a spiritual grotesque.
In my estimation, the separates spiritual truths enlighten/enrich one another. Christian Love may certainly inform Judaism's Justice and Buddhism's Compassion, and vice versa, resulting in a wonderful synergy. Islam's Surrender has resonance with the Way of Taoism. Hinduism's Acceptance can be understood in relation to Judaism's Justice.
Our Unitarian Universalist liberal religious tradition has long been open to an expansive appreciation of the truths of the various world religious traditions. The Universalist heritage encourages us to see ourselves not in a provincial rather in a global, not in a narrowly tribal rather in a broadly human scheme. Our humanity makes us kindred with all people and all places. Nothing that is human is alien to us—religion most of all. Religion is a human instinct
A primary purpose in writing this book is to promote such a universal outlook that is passionate about the many rewards that result. The opposite outlook, perhaps described most simply as religious fundamentalism has obvious desultory consequences, no matter which faith tradition devolves into fundamentalism
Seven Great World Religions
I'll look at seven great religions. What I'll present as the core truths of each world religion is subjective. While I've chosen the core truths for the fit with one another and the synergy they create together, for the most part the core truths are obvious choice
I'll begin with the three Abrahamic that began in the Middle East: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. The Abrahamic religions all trace their history back to the patriarch Abraham and the covenant God formed with him. Judaism and Christianity are foundational faiths of Western Civilization. Islam, with a billion faithful, is second to Christianity in terms of adherents in the world.
1: Judaism and Justice. The essential truth of Judaism is Justice. Israel's historical relationships with God, as recorded in the sacred texts, is grounded—indeed mythologized—in a series of religious-legal sacred contracts known as covenants. For example, the relationship of Adam with God hinged a singular covenant stricture: not eating of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. When Adam and Eve broke this covenant, they were expelled from the Garden. As a result, suffering, pain, and death became the human lot. Being a Righteous God, God was always steadfast in keeping the covenant; but the other side of righteousness involved exacting a price (punishment) whenever Israel broke the covenant. The progress of the Jewish notion of Justice is embodied through three stages of the prophetic tradition that evolved over centuries. The first stage had little interest in ethics; the prophets were totally absorbed in religious ecstasy. But out of this God-absorbed stage emerged individual prophets who dared speak out against the egregious injustices of kings. In a third stage prophets spoke out against what we'd now call systemic evils—the corrupt social fabric
2: Christianity and Love. In understanding Christianity's essential truth of Love, we must first look at Judaism, because Jesus was a Jew. Jesus teachings and life magnified the Jewish conviction that God's love for Israel was constant. Jesus claimed that all the law and prophecy were related to Love: love of God, love of self, and love of others. Love is a power, not only in personal relationships, but also in social and political realms.
3: Islam and Surrender. Islam literally means surrender to Allah and leads to a perfect peace that comes from such surrender. This surrender is done freely—not out of resignation, rather of humility and respect for the Divine Order and that Order's Creator. Islam is perhaps the hardest world religion for Westerners and particularly Americans to understand. Our culture leads us toward radical individualism and the pursuit of self-actualization. We have a cultural antipathy against giving up oneself, even to something or someone Ultimate. How might we translate what may appear to be a fundamentalist sense of Surrender into a more liberal understanding of yielding?
4: Confucianism and Right Relationships. The exploration of the Great Eastern Religions begins with the ethical tradition of Confucianism and its essential truth of Right Relationships. We'll be able to reflect back on Judaism's spiritual truth of Justice and Islam's spiritual truth of Surrender, though Right Relationships has an older pedigree and different outlooks. The ethical dimension of Right Relationships has application in our contemporary situation—post-modernity, in which we founder and seek to establish a way to live together in mutual support and peace yet maintain our diversity. In our time we've gained new understanding of what right relations are. For example, in recent years we've discovered an inherent evil in sexual relationships that have an imbalance of power: teacher/student, counselor/counselee, minister/congregant, employer/employee. We've also established a more equitable relationship between the sexes across the various areas of society
5: Hinduism and Acceptance. More than any other Great Religion Hinduism is by nature diverse and complex. Hinduism's core spiritual truth is Acceptance. Hinduism gladly acknowledges that varying spiritual paths (yogas) may lead to the ultimate goal of enlightenment and escape from the wheel of cause and effect. Hinduism accepts that the various stages of life have their own tasks. Hinduism has even led the way in accepting that the various human religions are all valid paths. Perhaps Hinduism Acceptance relates to a practical appreciation of fate. I will relate a positive fatalism (not resignation) with benign Acceptance
6: Buddhism and Compassion. In the scheme of world religions, Buddhism naturally follows Hinduism. Compassion has a thoroughly humanistic source. It is visceral, because everyone experiences the consequences of pain, aging, and death. Compassion has a psychological basis and works through the deepest fellow feeling of empathy. Compassion respects not one group, class, category of people, but respects all persons. Indeed, compassion in its fullest application embraces all forms of life—to the seemingly most insignificant living thing. Buddhist Compassion resonates to Hinduism's Acceptance and Christianity's Love. It is a corrective for certain attitudes of Judaism's Justice.
7: Taoism and The Way. Taoism's name comes from the word Tao, which means the Way. Taoism is elusive and enigmatic. (When Buddhism met Taoism, Zen Buddhism resulted.) The Way bridges the merged concerns of safety and success. Curiously, almost paradoxically, enigmatic Taoism has the most practical advice of all world religions regarding how to conduct a human life. The Way of Taoism is particularly challenging to and a valuable corrective of the traditional Western outlook where might make right and a glut of material things marks success.
8: An Eclectic Outlook. As a conclusion to Essential Truths from the Seven Great World Religions, I'll appeal for personal eclecticism—an outlook that is diverse and moves easily among the various truths. Each truth by itself or with one or only a few other truths is still insufficient for each of us to fulfill our religious and ethical possibilities. The separate and various truths of these seven world religions converge in a harmony that creates a spiritual wholeness
We have and continue to promote a progressive way of being religious, not by one particular outlook, rather by an emergient eclecticism—a new Universalism where each religion is distinct and respected, making a mosaic of human aspiration and realization.
[listen to Stephen Prothero's similar thoughts about the differences of religion on a CBC tapestry podcast--from his new book God Is Not One.]
