Kris begins today with the inevitable question asked of Unitarians: "What do you stand for?" Christians or Post-Christians who subscribe to a Faith tradition that adheres to a Credo dictating what the faithful are to believe - are especially curious.
Kris suggests an appropriate rejoiner is: "This is a place where we Unitarians are free to explore what we stand for". And while Unitarians belong to a "non-credal" tradition, it's not that we are without beliefs and the consensus needed to define ourselves as Unitarians. Kris explores just what those beliefs are, how we came by them and how even those beliefs are capable of refinement as societal values and the stuctures that defined them, undergo change.
Today's service was blessed with choral music from Margaret Lambert and the Terrace Singers. Their choral contribution has been added to today's Expanding Horizons. To hear them, just continue playing the sound track of today's service.
Expanding Horizons
What we stand for!
Kris begins today with the inevitable question asked of Unitarians: "What do you stand for?" Christians or Post-Christians who subscribe to a Faith tradition that adheres to a Credo dictating what the faithful are to believe - are especially curious.Kris suggests an appropriate rejoiner is: "This is a place where we Unitarians are free to explore what we stand for". And while Unitarians belong to a "non-credal" tradition, it's not that we are without beliefs and the consensus needed to define ourselves as Unitarians. Kris explores just what those beliefs are, how we came by them and how even those beliefs are capable of refinement as societal values and the stuctures that defined them, undergo change.Today's service was blessed with choral music from Margaret Lambert and the Terrace Singers. Their choral contribution has been added to today's Expanding Horizons. To hear them, just continue playing the sound track of today's service.
- Duration:
- 41m
- Broadcast on:
- 11 Aug 2024
- Audio Format:
- mp3
[ Silence ] [ Singing ] [ Singing ] [ Singing ] [ Singing ] You're listening to Expanding Horizons, the podcast of the Unitarian Church of South Australia, a home of progressive spirituality and free religious thought and action since 1854. The views expressed in these podcasts are those of the speaker and are not intended to represent the position of the church itself or of the worldwide Unitarian Universalist movement. For more information visit UnitarianSA.org.au [ Singing ] Let us be sensitive to the suffering around us. We don't have to go far to find people hurting. Maybe family, maybe friends. Maybe the stranger that we see on the bus or in the shopping centre. Wherever we can, let us open our arms in our hearts to give love and support to those who need it. Let us be constantly aware of the dangers of addiction, the temptation of substances to take us away from our true selves. Because we are beings of light and love. And we are able to receive guidance from the spirit of love, from those around us. There is always help there. Let us live a life of love. So may it be. Now I'll invite Richard to come forward with a reading. We're going to be talking a bit today about the Unitarians, who the Unitarians are. Who better to hear from than the President of the American Unitarians? Living faithfully when the path forward is unknown, ask something of us that I don't fully know how to put into words. I know what it feels like. I hear it in the echoes of my beloved's voice. I feel it in the quietude of worship with you in our deepest expressions of the human spirit. And in our yearning for community and the world we imagine. And I know that movement is easier when we are moving together. Thank you for all that you do in service to this faith. May this faith in turn nourish you in a joy and a sense of purpose that can never be taken away. [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] Well today the question what do we stand for apart from just standing for the hymn? What do we stand for? Really the inspiration for these thoughts today comes from the question that I was asked last year by someone who had attended these services, these meetings a number of times. And it was a serious and profound criticism, he said what do you stand for? You don't even know what do you stand for? And the answer I gave was that actually it's a fair criticism because it may not be entirely clear what today Unitarian stand for, but it's maybe not the right question to ask. Because really this is a place where you explore what you stand for and that's really a sincere answer because we have people coming here from different backgrounds. Many ex-Christian church attending people, we have people who have never been inside a church, we have people who have explored Buddhism, we have people of Jewish faith, different people. And the point is that we explore different spiritual paths in the hope that we can get to what it's all about, which is becoming wiser, more loving people. That's really the point of it all. In theory we do have a shared understanding as Unitarians here and around the world, so I'll talk about the seven principles which we proclaim. Although our early Adelaide Unitarians and their theology were transported from Britain, the seven principles were imported from the USA, Australia's ally since the 1940s. When I say ally, I mean they give us reasons to get involved in other people's wars. Anyway, here are the seven principles. We value the inherent worth and dignity of every person. We value justice, equity and compassion in human relations. We accept one another and encourage spiritual growth in our congregations. We value a free and responsible search for truth and meaning. We value the right of conscience and the use of the democratic process within our congregations and in society at large. We value the goal of world community with peace, liberty and justice for all. And we respect the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part. Now arguably there are three possible sources of spiritual authority. Potentially God-given scripture, if one accepts that. Potentially there's a religious institution or teacher who tells you how it is. And the third option is the individual, each one of us. And for Unitarians it comes back to the individual which is not to say that you believe whatever suits your ego or whichever way your passions run. It means that we're committed to formulating our spiritual progress based on conscious searching, based on conscience, based on reason with a sense of the sacred. But no one's forcing us to accept these principles. It's just that those seven principles are so eminently decent and sensible that I think it's hard for a civilized person not to agree with them. Of course Unitarian beliefs have changed over time. It came out of a Christian heritage and we are a far cry from the English Unitarians of 400 years ago when Christians were secretly meeting in houses to discuss the proposition then declared a heresy that Jesus was an enlightened being rather than a God walking on the earth. For hundreds of years English Unitarians proclaimed belief in quote the fatherhood of God, the brotherhood of man, the leadership of Jesus, salvation through character and the progress of mankind onward and upward forever. So one has to make allowances from people hundreds of years ago with the sexist language and even the personification of God that you see in that. But the notion of salvation through character and the progress of humanity onward and upward forever. These things can give us some hope. The enlightenment and the philosophers had an impact on Unitarian beliefs. Taking a very general overview Unitarians have evolved toward a humanism while maintaining a sense of the sacred. Under that broad umbrella we have these people of diverse beliefs who come together and somehow it all holds together in our Unitarian practice. But the question remains was my contrary friend a year ago right that we've drifted so far from the shore of dogma that we're aimlessly tossed about on the sea of uncertainty. Here is a quote. The deeper malaise lies in our confusion as to what word we have to spread. The old watch words of liberalism, freedom, reason, tolerance, worthy, though they may be, are simply not catching the imagination of the contemporary world. They describe a process for approaching the religious depths but they testify to no intimate acquaintance with the depths themselves. If we are ever to speak to a new age we must supplement our seeking with some profound religious finds. And so said Reverend Eugene Pickett when he became president of the Unitarian Universalists in the United States in 1979. It's a question which might still be posed today. So for those who are relatively new I explain the term Unitarian Universalist which we don't use so much but we use a bit in Adelaide. In the USA there had been strong Unitarian traditions. Unitarian in the sense of understanding God as a single being of some kind and accepting the teachings of Jesus without accepting the doctrine of the Trinity. And Universalist as in the theological point that salvation will eventually come to all, in other words everyone will be all right in the end. So these two religious streams in the USA united, their organisations united in 1960. And Unitarian Universalist is such a mouthful, they commonly refer to themselves as you use. In Australia we're just Unitarians so I suppose we are just use. Which is actually very Australian. Like how I use today, I use having a good time. Good on use. Anyway the Unitarian Universalists after much discussion developed six principles as shared commitments. I've put them up on the screen there. Although they are filled with noble sentiments which later were retained in the later seven principles, they made special reference to the Judeo-Christian heritage and the old sexist language was still in place, the dignity of man etc. Well in the 1960s people started to notice the sexist language in the principles. I think probably women had been noticing them for centuries but even men started to recognise it. However it took until 1985 for the UUA, Unitarian Universalist Association, to render the principles into gender neutral language. In Unitarian discussions in the 1970s there was also a recognition of the insight that was available in all world religions and belief systems. The Judeo-Christian bit was valued as a historical legacy rather than the sole source of continuing inspiration. At the same time people discovered the environment that thing out there. I remember very clearly being taught about it in senior primary school but there was this thing called the environment that needed to be looked after. Yes the earth was not just a farmyard created by God for human beings to exploit. It is full of natural wonders and other beings to be respected and appreciated and we are not masters of it but part of it. At most we might consider ourselves stewards for the next generation, future generations and from such thinking the seventh principle was adopted in 1985 and since then we have the seven principles with which you are familiar. Now I'm not forgetting that we are geographically and perhaps culturally in between the two great Unitarian traditions in the British Isles and North America. The Unitarian body in the UK is officially the general assembly of Unitarian and free Christian churches. They are far from irrelevant to us as we have had previous ministers ordained in that tradition. From what I can see however the UK Unitarians have not developed a set of handy principles like the US branch of Unitarians. The best I can offer you is a statement from their constitution. I'll read it quickly. We the constituent congregations affiliated societies and individual members uniting in a spirit of mutual sympathy, cooperation, tolerance and respect and recognizing the worth and dignity of all people and their freedom to believe as their consciences dictate. And believing that truth is best served where the mind and conscience are free acknowledged that the object of the assembly is to promote a free and inquiring religion through the worship of God and the celebration of life the service of humanity and respect for all creation and the upholding of the liberal Christian tradition. So you see if I was their public relations advisor I'd say you got to make that a little bit more punchy. So it does sound like the language of 1928 doesn't it? But interestingly when you boil it down the seven principles developed in the US really are a distillation of that language. It must be recognized that in our group today many people are no longer comfortable with language such as the worship of God and the Christian tradition. And for many of us it might be more apt to say that we're a post-Christian group. I have to throw this one in that the first time I heard the description post-Christian was when about 12 or 13 years ago I was organizing interfaith conferences in Adelaide and on the registration form there was an optional line to put your faith or belief system. And one group of nuns ostensibly in the Catholic tradition had written post-Christian you might think that's very naughty or very wonderful both but that's when I first heard the term. Anyway getting back to the seven principles just as we were getting used to them the UUA has refreshed them again the changes in 1985 were brought about by a greater consciousness of sexism and the environment. This time the change in the US has been inspired by greater consciousness of the evils of racism. The US is quite possibly going through another stage in the history of Afro-Americans. They had slavery they had the emancipation in the 1850s they had the contentious civil rights movement in the 1950s and 1960s which resulted in a lot of legislative change. But we seem to be in an era in the US where society is as polarized as ever. On the one hand the Black Lives Matter campaign on the other hand there seems to be a rise in membership of right-wing extremist organisations. And I'm not just pointing a finger there at the USA because I'm just as aware of racism in our own society as a nation we are pretty good but we're not that good. Anyway since 2010 the USA Unitarians have been in the process of formulating some revised principles. So it only took 14 years this time and at their annual general meeting in June this year they approved a revised version and added an eighth principle. In true Unitarian fashion they did not insist that every congregation adopt the eighth principle. But here it is journeying toward spiritual wholeness by working to build a diverse multicultural beloved community by our actions that are countably dismantle racism and other oppressions in ourselves and in our institutions. Now that sounds like it was drafted by committee doesn't it? Nothing there I disagree with. The principles are embedded in a longer sequence of purposes, values, principles and promises. They use the word covenant a lot in the US. All with an emphasis on the guiding principle of love. And you can look this up on the UUA website. But the opening statement says love is the power that holds us together and is at the centre of our shared values. We are accountable to one another for doing the work of living our shared values through the spiritual discipline of love. And the UUA have come up with a nifty diagram to display the shared values of which they speak. And these six core values are interdependence, pluralism, justice, transformation, generosity and equity. And just to expand those points slightly and there is more as I say in the full documentation. Interdependence we honour the interdependent web of all existence. Pluralism we celebrate that we are all sacred. Diverse in culture, experience and theology. Justice we work to be diverse multicultural beloved communities that all thrive. Transformation we adapt to the changing world. Generosity we cultivate a spirit of gratitude and hope. Equity we declare that every person has the right to flourish with inherent dignity and worthiness. So it's an interesting question for us in Adelaide whether we wish to follow the changes made in the US. Maybe something for the AGM. But I begin with the question at the beginning today what do you stand for? That was asked of the church but I ask it of each of you today. What do you stand for? And in the progress of your spiritual development what are the elements that assist you? Maybe coming to Sunday mornings here is part of it. Maybe meditation is part of it. Maybe spending time with gentle loving people is part of it. Maybe practicing random acts of kindness is part of it. Maybe all of the above. And as a final charge to you could I suggest that if you have that bit of paper you have those values in front of you. Perhaps you could pick one to focus on in the week ahead and see it every day in the interactions around you. To dwell on it, to contemplate it and see what effect that has. So thank you everyone and again a special thanks to Margaret and the terrorist singers. Thank you. [Music] [Music] [Music] We hope you've enjoyed this expanding horizons podcast. These podcasts are the intellectual property of the presenter. They can be used only with the express permission and appropriate acknowledgement of the presenter. This permission can be obtained by emailing admin@unitariansa.org.au Please feel free to leave a comment or visit us on Facebook or Twitter by searching essay Unitarians or by visiting our website at unitariansa.org.au [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music]