Sermon Jan 30, 2005

Sermon January 30, 2005

“The Challenge of Fundamentalism”

Last week, those who braved the inclement weather, were treated to an eloquent sermon that treated, among other things, the importance of basing our religion not on ancient texts and ancient ideas, but on modern science and more developed ideas of sociology and psychology about what it means to be human.

That’s, at least, in part what I heard. It’s always a dangerous thing to summarize another’s sermon because we all hear something different as we listen to another speak. As someone once told me, “You say blue and everybody hears green.”

I say this because I want to talk today about a subject similar to what Andrea addressed last week; but I want to come at it from an entirely different angle. But I don’t want what I say today in any way viewed as contradicting Andrea’s sermon. It’s simply another perspective. The truth is I could not have agreed more with Andrea, but I’m also aware of the difficulty inherent in all communication; so I thought I should begin today with this caveat.

I want to talk about the challenge of fundamentalism. Or perhaps should I say, “challenges” of fundamentalism.

I say “challenges” because I think fundamentalism does challenge liberal religion on several different fronts.

The first challenge we face is to abandon our tendency to stereotype fundamentalists. As you may know I spent a number of years in what most would call a fundamentalist church. We were a bunch of born-again, tongue-speaking Christians with a strict moral code. Yet most of us were democrats; and I’m not certain anyone believed in a seven day creation. We may have had one or two closet creationists; but if we did, I never discovered them.

And although we did not believe in abortion; no one that I knew of thought abortion should be banned or that Roe v. Wade should be overturned. We believed that the government had no business legislating morality. And we regarded the anti-abortion activities of the religious right a distortion of Christianity, if not an outright perversion. We also spent a lot of time making fun of people like Jerry Farwell and Pat Robertson; and regarded them as little more than self-promoting buffoons. And this was a group of born-again, tongue-speaking fundamentalists.

Even earlier, when I attended a fundamentalist Bible School in a much more traditional and conservative Pentecostal Church, we wrestled with how to reconcile the fact of evolution, which we accepted, with how we interpreted of Genesis One. We decided it was poetry. We also had speakers who talked about issues of social justice. We had one speaker who explained how his church reached out to the gay community, welcomed them in, and how gays had become a significant part of his congregation. We had another speaker who believed in Universal salvation; and rejected the notion that a loving God would send anyone to such a place.

The biggest moral issue we wrestled with was not abortion or homosexuality, but what does it mean to be citizens of such a wealthy nation when so many in the world are poor and what was our responsibility to the poor. And this was at a conservative Pentecostal Bible School.

The truth is, we ran into very few people who fit the stereotype of fundamentalists that the media presents. And we considered most of them a little nuts and plenty stupid.

So why do we have the stereotype of fundamentalism we have? Why do people like Farwell and Robertson appear to speak for all born-again Christians? I believe its because stupid and outrageous make the news. Intelligent and balanced do not.

And I’m not saying that fundamentalism doesn’t really exist; just that it may not be the monolithic juggernaut the media portrays it to be.

The same, I think, holds true for Catholicism. I was part of the theology department in a Catholic University where ninety percent of the students and faculty were Catholic; and as I think back about the hundred or so students and faculty members I knew and talked with; I can only think of about five who actually agreed with the church’s teaching on sexual ethics. Perhaps coincidentally, only the same four or five believed in hell. And everyone, except the same small group, believed that women should be admitted to the priesthood.

Many questioned basic Christian doctrines like the bodily resurrection of Jesus; most believed the virgin birth was a metaphor, not literal, and no one, except the same elite group, accepted such bizarre doctrines as the bodily assumption of Mary or the Immaculate Conception.

Similarly, virtually all of my fellow students accepted that other religions were equally valid paths to God. In fact, most of students and faculty there would be quite comfortable here in our congregation.

The fact that some tottering old men in the Vatican are trying to halt the direction the Catholic church is moving doesn’t mean they represent Catholicism. That church is moving toward liberal religion, and their attempts to stop its progress are like trying to stop the Queen Mary by tying a rowboat to the back of the ship and rowing in the opposite direction. It just ain’t gonna work.

And simply because the media broadcasts stories about the two bishops who want to ban politicians who support abortion rights from taking communion, shouldn’t blind us to the fact that the other 348 bishops in America think that’s a crazy idea. Remember; stupid and outrageous is news. Intelligent and balanced are not.

We need to get beyond the stereotypes the media loves to create. We need to get beyond thinking that every bizarre manifestation of evangelical religion the media finds somewhere is representative of mainstream Christian thought or even mainstream evangelical thought. We need to do this because if we are ever going to be able to speak to these people, we need to see beyond these caricatures. We need to do this because many of these people are our allies in the battle for social justice and liberal religion.

The second challenge we face is not to fall for the myth that we are losing the war to the fundamentalists. Let’s get some perspective. Two hundred years ago, we still bought and sold people. A hundred and fifty years ago, Ku Klux Klansmen terrorized newly freed citizens all across this country with impunity. A hundred years ago children labored in factories twelve hours a day and women couldn’t vote. Fifty years ago you could still go to prison for gay sex and our schools were still segregated.

The truth is, we are winning the war for a just and liberal society and the squawking of the religious right is nothing more than the death-throes of a movement that sees its time is passing.

That’s not to say that they don’t win an occasional skirmish, but even their victories are hardly triumphs. In Missouri the constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage won by an overwhelming 71% of the vote. But can you imagine 30 years ago having 29% of the residents of a red state voting against a ban on gay marriage? Or even thinking there was such a thing as gay marriage?

For instance, I get my hair cut at Joe and Art’s. They are a gay couple who are respected and beloved members of the local business community. They talk openly about their relationship and about their adopted daughter. Can you imagine that happening thirty years ago?

No, history is moving on, and the religious right is fighting a losing battle. We shouldn’t let the media alarm us when they act like the occasional mugging the religious right gets away with is a real victory.

At the same time the number of conservative evangelicals in this country is growing, and the third challenge to liberal religion is to understand why it’s growing.

In my experience, most people turn to fundamentalism because of a crisis in their life. For some, it’s a crisis of meaning. I turned to fundamentalism because I couldn’t see the purpose in life, I couldn’t see any reason to be alive.

Fundamentalism answered that need. It told me that I was part of a great cosmic drama, the battle for human souls. And when I discovered my call to ministry, my place in that drama became even more specific. Suddenly I had purpose and meaning. We should not underestimate the power of helping people discover meaning.

Some turned to fundamentalism to get an explanation for why things happened to them or those they loved. And the answer fundamentalism gives is not what you may think, “This happened because you sinned.” That doesn’t come till later, after you join. The answer it gives the suffering is, “God let that happened because He wanted your attention, because He wanted you.”

Suddenly there is a reason for the things you suffer. It’s a little ego-centric, perhaps, to think that your child died or your business collapsed so you would finally turn to God; but when we’re hurting we want to be loved and when our world has collapsed, we desperately want someone to put it back together again. Don’t underestimate the power of this.

Some people are seeking security in an insecure world. My father-in-law got out of the army, went to work for Lever Brothers, worked there his whole life, made a good living, and retired very comfortably. That kind of security doesn’t exist for many people anymore.

Along comes fundamentalism and says if you believe what they say and follow their rules, God will watch over you; and suddenly you feel secure again. That too is powerful.

And some people are seeking moral structure in a world where the rules seem to keep changing, and where they no longer know what is right and what is wrong. I face that when I teach sexual ethics. Refraining from premarital sex worked fairly well when people reached puberty at fourteen and got married at sixteen. But what do we do when kids are sexually mature at twelve and don’t get married till they’re twenty-seven? What are the rules we teach our children?

The truth is, few people are comfortable living without some clear idea of what is right and wrong. Fundamentalism comes along and offers clear moral guidelines in a world where standards seem to be rapidly disappearing. That too is powerfully attractive.

The myth is that fundamentalists are just stupid; the truth is that some of them are scared, some want explanations, some want security, and some just want to do the right thing and need someone to tell them what that is. Fundamentalism is a powerful antidote to a world that seems increasingly out of control and where people have a hard time finding their way. If we are going to compete with fundamentalism, we better understand its attraction.

And that leads to the final challenge fundamentalism poses to liberal religion. Fundamentalism explains the world and it tells people how to live in it. Does liberal religion do the same? Do we offer people a coherent explanation for why life is the way it is? Do we help people see themselves as part of something larger? Do we teach people how to live?

This is really a variation of the question I posed several months ago: Do we have a theology? That is, do we have an explanation for the world? Or are we just telling people to think whatever they want to think? Do we help people to know how to live in the world, or do we just say, do whatever you think is right? That works for some, but most people want more than that from a religion.

And this is not just my shtick. All across the country UU churches are wrestling with the question, “What do we believe?” Is it enough to just be open or do we actually have to begin to give people what they need; something to believe in and direction for their life?

Andrea talked about not having an explanation of the world based on texts that are thousands of years old; and she’s correct. But she also talked about a bigger idea of God, an idea that takes into account the knowledge we now possess about the world. What I didn’t hear her say is that we don’t need an idea of God. Nor did I hear her say that any idea about God is just as valid as any other.

Of course this runs head on into our belief in openness. But is there anything wrong with just being a place where people of different faiths or no faith at all gather together? I don’t think so. But it’s not a question of being right or wrong, its a question of whether it’s enough to just be a place where people of different faiths or no faith gather, or whether we want something more.

This is a major question, one being faced by UU churches across the land. Have we been so intent on being open to the message of others that we have lost our own message? Do we risk becoming irrelevant, offering only a religious smorgasbord or disconnected series of poignant moments that really doesn’t help people find their place and way in the world?

If we are going to meet the challenge of fundamentalism we may need to do more than just be open. We may need to figure out what we believe.

I think we already have a lot of the elements of this theology, but I think that sometimes we are so skittish about doctrine, so worried about offending someone, so afraid of not being open, that we never connect the dots and see what we actually are saying.

So let me propose something radical, a kind of outline of what we may believe.

Can we say this? We believe in a Spirit who is loving, and calls us to love. We believe in a Spirit that accepts each and every person, and calls us to do likewise. We believe in a Spirit that desires justice, and calls us to act justly. We believe in a Spirit that doesn’t control the world, but calls us to make the world a better place. We believe in a Spirit makes possible the beauty of this world and calls us to preserve it. We believe in a Spirit that has made each of us unique and calls each of us to fully express that uniqueness. We belief in a Spirit that draws us to itself and ultimately brings us to itself. We believe in a Spirit that has spoken in many ways and in many places, but the message is always a message of love.

Can we say this? If we can, we have a theology. Not one that defines the Spirit, because the Spirit defies human comprehension. And not a theology that limits the Spirit to any one expression. But if we can say this, we may have said enough about the world and how to live in it to satisfy people’s needs.

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