THE RIGHT OF CONSCIENCE AND USE OF THE DEMOCRATIC PROCESS:
OWNING OUR FIFTH PRINCIPLE

The Rev. Mark Ward
Unitarian Universalist Church of Asheville

Asheville, NC

March 11, 2007

READING

From John Milton’s “Areopagitica”

Our faith and knowledge thrive by exercise, as well as our limbs and complexion. If the waters of truth flow not in a perpetual progression, they sicken into a muddy pool of conformity and tradition.

The light which we have gained was given us not to be ever staring on, but by it to discover onward things more remote from our knowledge.

Where there is much desire to learn, there of necessity will be much arguing, much writing, many opinions.

Give me liberty to know, to utter, and to argue freely according to conscience, above all liberties.

And though all the winds of doctrine were let loose to play upon the earth, so truth be in the field, we do injuriously to misdoubt her strength.

For who know not that truth is strong, next to the almighty; she needs no policies, no stratagems, to make her victories.

Let her and falsehood grapple, whoever knew truth put to the worse in a free and open encounter?

SERMON

So, here we are! In our yearlong jaunt through the seven Unitarian Universalist purposes and principles we are now over the hump: on to our 5th principle, in which we covenant with each other to affirm and promote the right of conscience and the use of the democratic process.

Before we dive into this challenging principle, though, I would like to take a moment to reflect on what we are doing and to issue an invitation, which ties into our topic today. I was prompted to organize this series of services by the announcement by the Commission on Appraisal, an elected body at our national association level, that it would be taking the next several years to review our purposes and principles with an eye to considering whether they still serve us well as a religious body.

The principles were adopted as part of the UUA bylaws in General Assembly in 1985, so it has been more than 20 years since they were reviewed. That’s not an especially long time, but for a religious movement that argues that truth is not fixed and that our understanding is ever evolving it’s enough time for us to reflect on whether these particular words still fit us and, if not, how we would change them.

I have to admit that I’ve found preparing this series a fascinating process. I’ve enjoyed wrestling with my own understanding of what these principles mean and imply for my own religious life, for my life in this Unitarian Universalist church and for me as a part of this liberal religious movement, and I hope it has been an occasion for you to do the same. After this series is complete, I am planning a concluding service on May 6, which I am entitling “Faith of the Free: Where Do We Go From Here?” My goal will be to consider how, if at all, the current principles should be changed. And here’s where the invitation comes in.

I’d like to invite any of you who care to, to join me in this process of assessment. Look over the principles – you will find them on the back of your order of service as well as in the front of our hymnal – and offer your reflections: What would you change, what would you keep, and why? If you would like to read over my earlier sermons on the subject, you can find printed copies in the foyer and on my page at our Web site: uuasheville.org. And, of course, there’s much more on this subject in books in our library and on the Web.

Then, email your thoughts to me – my address is on our Web site – or leave a note in my box, or write me a letter. Please try to get your comments to me by April 30. I’ll make reference to some of your reflections in that sermon, and we’ll post all of them on our Web site. Then, I’ll send the whole package of my sermons and your thoughts to the Commission on Appraisal as input for their consideration. A fitting action, it seems to me, for a religious movement that prizes democracy.

Now, having said that, as we focus in on that 5th principle, I should add that there are some who ask what a statement celebrating conscience and democracy is doing among a religious body’s organizing principles. Doesn’t that have to do with secular, political concerns? Well, yes. But we can lay claim to it, too.

The notion of democratic government, of course, goes back to the Greek polis, some 2,500 years ago. But the form of representative democracy with which we in this country are most familiar had its origins in the thinking of several important British thinkers of the Enlightenment, such as John Milton, who we heard from earlier, and especially John Locke. These were the writers who argued for inherent rights of humankind and that the fairest and most fitting form of government required the consent of the governed. This thinking influenced the founders of this country, including among them some prominent Unitarians and Universalists, such as John Adams, Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Rush.

It’s worth remembering that the political ideology of these writers was also grounded in religious faith. Theirs was an optimistic theology that viewed human beings as capable of using their faculties to discover religious truths, act in their own best interests and to choose the good. It’s a faith that we today as Unitarian Universalists still share.

They, and we, were also heavily influenced by the congregational polity of America’s first settlers. Remember that it was the quest for religious freedom that brought many of the earliest settlers from Britain to this continent. Long oppressed by the dictates of the king and church of England, they resolved in coming here to gather free churches of equal and independent souls accountable in their religious life to none but each other in shared covenant. And so it is today for us as well. The business of the church is the business of each and every member decided by vote in open, well advertised meetings. We, too, gather in covenant to support this church and each other.

These two strains, then, resound strongly with us today, and while democracy is certainly a political principle, it has for us both a religious grounding and religious consequences. This distinguishes us from religious traditions that confer decision-making authority on priests, bishops and the like. Under our tradition, I was brought to this church by a vote of this congregation. While I am here, this church grants me as your minister a free pulpit to preach on Sundays, but that is about all the formal power that I get. On all other matters, the authority of our church is vested in you, the congregation.

It should be no surprise, then, that democracy should find a place among the words we use to describe what we most fundamentally are about. Our religious culture is centered in a democratic vision of human nature, and though we, like any democratic body, struggle sometimes to live that democracy – getting good turnout at meetings and enough candidates to fill our slate of offices can be a challenge – we are committed to it in principle.

I was interested to find in looking at our principles that this language endorsing the use of the democratic method goes back at least as far as the merger of the Unitarian and Universalist churches in 1961. Yet, it is not until the latest version was adopted in 1985 that earlier part of the fifth principle, language affirming “the right of conscience,” was added.

For a religious body that affirms the inherent worth and dignity of every person, recognizing the right of conscience is in a sense the flip side of promoting the use of the democratic process. Democratic decision making may be the fairest way of measuring the will of the whole, but it can also result in important voices being squelched or oppressed, as our own institutional history can attest.

In the 1820s the Universalist minister Abner Kneeland was discontinued from fellowship and later convicted of blasphemy and served 60 days in jail for writing that the story of Jesus was a myth, that miracles didn’t happen and that there is no eternal life. In 1917 after the Unitarian General Assembly, led by former president Howard Taft, adopted a resolution in support of World War I, a demand was issued that all Unitarian congregations dismiss from their pulpits those ministers who did not speak out publicly in support of the war. Among those who resigned their fellowships as a result of that call was the popular Unitarian minister John Haynes Holmes of New York, an avowed pacifist.

If we take seriously our claim to being a home to free thought, then there is cause for holding up the right of conscience among our principles. In this congregation, I know, there are political conservatives and political liberals, Democrats and Republicans, pacifists and those proud of their military service, theists, atheists, mystics, pagans, humanists, Buddhists and many more perspectives. I take it as a matter of faith that there is room for all of us here, for what joins us is not common belief but a covenant of respect and love to walk together in the ever unfolding journey of religious discovery.

As John Milton wrote, “Where there is much desire to learn, there of necessity will by much arguing, much writing, many opinions. Give me liberty to know, to utter, and to argue freely according to conscience, above all liberties.”

Our churches ought to be places where such exploration and discussion goes on. In fact, I would argue that if our churches are doing their job right, they will help us hone those stirrings of conscience into something far greater, into coherent streams of thought and advocacy, into modes of action that will change our lives and change the world.

There is in fact a vehicle for doing just that at our General Assemblies. There issues are brought from our congregations for study, then after some years of discussion, research and evaluation they are adopted as Statements of Conscience. You have been hearing recently from our Social Justice Council about two of those proposals that are now being studied – on Peacemaking and Moral Values in a Pluralistic Society. The challenge of such a process, of course, is finding a way to move beyond the stirrings of conscience and the words that give voice to them to significant change in the world.

Some years ago the Unitarian theologian James Luther Adams was reflecting on this problem as he was framing his argument in favor of what he termed “a prophethood of all believers” in liberal churches. The idea came to him after reflecting on the long-standing Protestant image of a “priesthood of all believers,” the notion that each person has direct access to the holy, to religious truth, that we do not need the mediation of some religious authority.

Equally, Adams said, the liberal church is one in which we each are called to take part in the prophetic function: to discern and describe the evils and errors of our time and the potential for reform that is present as well. Each of these elements is important, he said: the telling critique of injustice that seeks to shake us out of our pride and demands ethical action, but also the vision for the future grounded in a new way of looking at the world.

To date, he suggested, we have proved better at the critique than the vision. Our analyses can be wonderfully articulate and downright erudite, yet we rarely move far beyond that place. And still, “in the prophetic liberal church,” he said, “all members share the common responsibility to attempt to foresee the consequences of human behavior with the intention of making history in place of merely being pushed around by it.”

As religious people we don’t want to be left in the position where we are merely shaking our heads at humankind’s latest folly or the latest travesty of injustice. We want to have a vision of our own that guides our work, a vision centered in how we understand the world and our place in it.

Later in his career, Adams suggested that the place we might look for such a vision is in the doctrine of covenant that has long guided our churches. We enter into covenants, he said, because we recognize that in the making of promises we become truly human. We not only negotiate arrangements that helps us fare better than we would on our own. We complete ourselves.

Also, covenants begin with the understanding that promises between and among people are grounded in something larger than themselves: a hope, an aspiration, a quality of being that is expansive and inclusive. Covenants direct us to respond to suffering and loss, to extend ourselves and embrace the other. They depend ultimately not on quid pro quos or carefully negotiated arrangements but on trustworthy, faithful love.

Underlying the doctrine of covenant is a faith not unlike that which underlies democracy: that we are each not only equal by worthy, worthy of consideration and care. As James sang it earlier from Sly and the Family Stone, the butcher, the banker, the drummer; the yellow one, the black one, the red one, the white one: We are all everyday people.

Promise making, of course, can be rocky. We mess up at times, but then we make amends, try again. Ultimately, we cannot escape our relatedness to each other, to the earth and all life. It is part of our make up. When we act to sever or deny our ties, we work against our own interests, the truth of our being. When we act to affirm and strengthen those ties, we realize, we make real in our lives who and how we truly are in the world. Much of what our lives is about is the work of repairing that net of relationships and working to make new ties.

Our challenge as religious people, then, is not only to assert the right of conscience, but also to put ours to work, to hold out a vision as compelling as our critique and to act on it in our time with each other, with our families, in our work places and in the wider world, with all whom we meet in our singular rooms and out over the branching streets.

The way of democracy by which we organize ourselves and run our affairs is chaotic at some times and slow moving at others, but it serves our ends. It also serves to remind us that we are accountable to each other, that each of our voices merits hearing, and that in serving each other, we serve ourselves and all life.

So be it.