Pardon me if my Sunday Sermon rambles a bit this morning. I'm going to try and deviate from my usual format of pointing out what's wrong with religion, and try to give a fair treatment to both the right and wrong of religion and church. It would be too much work to neatly organize all of the relevant thinking on the matter, so please bear with the stream of consciousness presentation.

As you should be aware, if you have read this blog in the last few weeks, I have little use for religion, whether it wears the label proudly on its sleeve, or masquerades behind words like "personal relationship with..." or "being touched by...", or "service to..." Jesus or God or the Spirit or whatever else, including that which is done outside of my particular geographical area. Part of the reason is that, from the perspective of western religion, I am the ultimate heretic. I refuse to bow to demands of other humans that I must "choose to believe by faith" in their man-made religions. I have high standards for my religion, and one of those is that belief come from conviction through experience, not obedience to human will. But faith has other meanings and connotations, and there is one kind of faith that I will sometimes apply without grudge: as benefit of the doubt.

When I first drove myself to the Unitarian church, I had very low expectations about the experience. Yet, I knew of a group of people who organized themselves around some of the same ethical principles that I have, and who embrace people as part of their "religious" community who reject faith as an epistemic tool. It was on faith - or benefit of the doubt - that I agreed to see if this community and I could have a common purpose without the prop of a common creed.

Today was my fourth visit, and I'm pleased to say that the benefit of the doubt served me well in this case. Had the result been the opposite, I would have stayed home the fifth Sunday. The most important thing one must do with faith, from my view, is lose it. One cannot persist in the benefit of the doubt forever when the search is designed to turn up objective evidence, and to reveal it if the evidence is against the position. That is the difference between the command to faith and faith as a useful guide. The command to believe makes it impossible to honestly assess the evidence against the belief while maintaining obedience. Faith as a useful guide acknowledges what benefit may be had from the model, while exploring how that benefit may better be gotten without the model.

I picked up a tract today, entitled "Unitarian Universalist Views of God". Some of the views were closer to the anthropomorphic "personal God". Some were more metaphorical. The following view so closely mirrored my own, and so clearly displays the positive that can come from "religion" that I felt like I should include it here:

It has been years since I have used the word God to explain anything about the world in which we live. The issue of evil and suffering prevents me from finding any comfort in this term. This is especially true when I consider the history and current needs of my own community - the African American community. The idea of God has had a mixed roecrd at best with respect to the African American struggle for liberation. In my experience, it has often justfied suffering by seeing it as redemptive instead of encouraging a strong, consistent fight against injustice. I see no merit in this. I believe the tradition of African American humanism points to the human potential for progressive activity, without any need of God talk.

Mine is a firm atheism that avoids talk of transcendence. From my perspective, there is nothing behind the symbold God. In its place, I affirm the idea of community. It is in community that we are encouraged to develop our full human potential and overcome oppression. -Anthony B. Pinn

To the best of my experience, there is exclusively one thing right with religion: community. The mystical urge is more expediently met with art and outdoorsmanship than with fanciful, but empty, mystical imaginings mistaken for an objective reality. The prejudice and dogma of religion could be done without entirely. Fearand avoidance of reason and its fruits should be turned on its head. What remains is community: a coming together of people with a common cause: the betterment of all.

And, speaking of the betterment of all, I want to turn to the children's service. I have been witness to children's stories in numerous churches, and as a child I was among those who came to the front of the church to hear the coloring-book stories of Noah and the floating tetrapod Zoo. The unitarian church has a somewhat unique children's service. Yes, unfortunately, sometimes they are spoon-fed a new-agey reference for nature (as opposed to a real appreciation for the natural world, its working and delicacy, and humanity's place in it). But, sometimes they are asked not to internalize values, but to expand their minds. Today, Rev. Briere introduced the children to the Young Writer's Club. He asked one of the youngter's to read some of the members' best poetry (much better than many adults' I have read), and challenged them to learn the skill and art of writing on their own. This may seem a simple thing, and indeed it is. But, what stood out to me was the intention behind it (no matter whether the effort fully fulfilled the intention). The intention was to challenge the children to expand their minds, and to travel new intellectual roads. Contrast this with my own childhood experience in church, where I was encouraged to wear deeper and dustier paths in the same old theological roads that have been travelled for centuries; those that never bring pilgrims to any worthwhile destination, and lack even having the grace to provide a decent variety of scenery along the way.

That isn't to say that UU's don't revisit the tired old doctrines of the world's major religions. They do educate the children about the core beliefs of all of the most popular world religions, so that evangelists who prey on ignorance or gullibility will not be met by youngsters who still retain the full youthful compliment of both.

I imagine myself going out into the world in my particular corner of the Bible Belt's Buckle without some basic knowledge of science and the religions of the world. I am daily inundated with well-meaning but devastatingly misleading appeals to some sort of creationist or pseudo-historical argument. Had I led the apatheistic life that I believe is the humanist ideal, and had I no interest in the "evolution" debate (also, abiogenesis, planetary formation, stellar evolution, and big bang cosmology), I would likely not have possessed enough innate skepticism to discount each and every misleading or false claim presented to me. It certainly helps to have a handle on at least some of the facts ahead of time. As the UU church pamphlet says of religious education, it is not a matter of whether, but who. If we don't teach kids the diversity of beliefs and the critical thinking skills to make sense of them, they will succumb to the first slick Bible salesman that offers them a free ticket to heaven. So, mutual betterment includes educating the children and challenging them to broaden their intellectual horizons. The public school system serves a limited function in the education of children in secular matters, but churches have monopoly on community, including the religious education of children. And, too often, they teach them the same old coloring-book Noah that I was taught, along with the same old anthropomorphic fairy in the sky who lights on people when they pray, named God, or Jesus, or the Holy Ghost.

A community that seeks to better itself and better the larger society does not self-organize easily. Churches are good at it. Unfortunately, those whose doctrines are the most backward, and whose tools for manipulating human emotions ar most finely honed, are also the ones that draw the largest crowds. Secular humanists and free-thinkers need to find a way to distill the ability to organize a community from the groups who teach the old ways. We need a community that isn't fearful of stale doctrines and isn't in thrall to a vamped emotional experience, but one that manages to grow, nourish its members as individuals, and to promote without prejudice a life that strives for the highest values and virtues, and bring its fruits to society at large.