Spirituality of Universalism

Richard Dawkins, renowned evolutionary biologist and atheist preacher, urged that skeptics, agnostics, atheists, and other religious non-believers need to have a support group or congregation like churches provide religious believers. In America, it is kinda lonely being a non-believer.

It takes faith to be a scientist--or artist, teacher, student, social worker, even shop keeper for that matter. It takes faith to be inquiring, skeptical, anti-supernatural, and pro-science-over-superstition people.  Faith in the future, in the human prospect, in open society politics, in liberal education and critical thinking, in democratic republican values, in the possibility of progress, truth through reason and collaboration.  Faith in others. It is not belief in any particular expression, doctrine, or institution. It is faith in the ongoing process of expressing, teaching, and building institutions that make a world and society free and open to keep inquiring, keep challenging, and keep renewing expressions, teachings, and institutions.

It is faith because we can find as much evidence to be cynical and credulous as we can find evidence to be inquiring and critical. I submit that faith is transcendence, the choice to transcend, to go beyond our beliefs. We have a fundamental option here. And as we choose and live out our choice of faith, it helps to be traveling the road to the future together.

It sure helps to have a soul-mate, a life partner to reinforce that need. Bernie and I, born and educated in Roman Catholicism, value our tradition of globalism, of Christian fellowship, of social justice, and of sacramentality. But we confront a great contradiction in the Roman Catholic institution that has fixed dogmas which exclude women from leadership and choice, deny use of technology for family planning, prohibit sexual orientation, govern by hierarchy, resist science when it contradicts orthodoxy, claim to be the only Way, and disseminate patently superstitious, even silly, beliefs. Most of all the Church enshrines a dogmatic and absolutist belief system that contradicts transcendence and faith.

Bernie and I have moved a lot. In all our new places, we searched out communities that were transcending, that were not stuck in dogma, that were willing to question all beliefs, inclusive of people of any culture, religion, life-style, sex, and orientation, and that were welcoming to all. We found such communities sometimes within a Catholic and sometimes within a Protestant or Jewish tradition and thrived in them. We didn’t find one when we moved to Fresno; and we explored the Unitarian-Universalist church. When we moved to DC, we found a UU Church that most met our desires and faith.

The UU church does not have a set doctrine or set of beliefs. UUs do share principles with strong values which are not expressed in concrete, but are rather guides to how we treat people in our local and global community.  The first being respect for the dignity of every human being. Out of this comes universal inclusion and social justice. The UU community is not Christian, Jewish, Protestant, Evangelical, Muslim, Hindu, or any religion. Though anyone can participate without rejecting their tradition. In other words, there are Catholic UUs like me, Jewish UUs, Protestant UUs, Muslim UUs, atheist UUs, and so forth.  

I usually stress the Universalist or inclusive metaphor. The Unitarian metaphor, like the One God metaphor, can be interpreted arrogantly as though there is one way to human fulfillment. But both metaphors are aspirational—stressing unity within and from diversity, e pluribus unum. This, in my parlance, is a political unity, not a cultural one. By “political” I mean, collective human choice and action based on mutual respect for the dignity of all. Solidarity, not assimilation, is our project.            

Therefore, Dr. Dawkins, there are places to which we can retreat even in private where we can discover personal support and even spirituality for those of us who have and celebrate diverse languages, cultures, and belief systems—even for those of us committed to faith and transcendence without gods, without supernatural beings, events, and places. Agnostics, atheists, nontheists, skeptics, and heretics. What motivates and unites us is not our certainty, but our willingness to doubt and seek for the good of each other in the public sphere. Beliefs diversify us; and that is good. But faith brings us together in solidarity beyond the diversity.  And that's even better.