READING: communities and congregations

This quotation from a Christian sociologist of religion notes my central thesis this morning, that change, the expectation of change, and the freedom to change are primary values today. So self-evident is this view that she need not justify it. She quotes Unitarian scholar Jim Adams to relate this core value to another, even more fundamental one: freedom. This is a hymn to the freedom of congregations to change the world and themselves.

Let us enter into a period of quiet reflection and meditation.

Let us imagine ourselves among our deepest friends.

About us, almost palpable, is a feeling of warmth and trust

That supports us in the very core of our being.

The cares and demands of the world are stopped

By the strength of this caring, this affection, this inspiration.

In our hearts we find solace and in our heads we find inspiration.

There shines a dim but clear light drawing us onward

Toward we know not what, but we are not afraid.

It is as if life, the very life of life, beckons us to journey on.

Let us rest in the comfort of this brief stop along life’s journey.

When we gather in the protective company of one another,

We bask in the warm glow of friendship, not defensive, but confident.

We can face tomorrow, we can meet life’s challenges and tragedies,

Secure not in fortresses mighty but in love transcendent.

Let us pause for a few moments of this reflective inspiration. AMEN.
 
 

Last week thousands of people gathered to commemorate the battle of Antietam, just a few miles north of Rockville. One of the bloodiest battles in our civil war, it helped determine the core values of the new nation. Some Northerners fought to save the Union or to abolish slavery. Some Southerners thought they were protecting their freedom from long-distance authorities who had no since of local needs or conditions; they used the same language as in the Revolutionary War. Some on both sides were fighting to maintain a way of life and an economic system.

From one perspective the Civil War was a great internecine battle over the same issues as those that motivate the current terrorists. Shall we live in a new, modern world, or shall we resist the changes to culture and society wrought by the great revolutions in science and technology, in politics and society? The liberal modernists are evolutionists, while the conservative traditionalists protect the status quo. Is the world essentially static, including moral and spiritual values, unchanged since the great prophets of yesteryear? Or, is the world constantly changing, where all things static are eventually eroded, as the slow trickle of water erodes even the mightiest mountain?

Today’s terrorists are committed to bringing modern life to a halt, even if they have to use modern weapons to accomplish their aims. They understand better than many Americans how radical was the Industrial Revolution in technology and the American Revolution in politics. Nothing will be the same if the world allows these revolutions to continue. Do we trust ourselves to handle these changes, or must we try to put the "genie back in the bottle" and pretend it never escaped?

1. Moral foundations

All ethics and morality are affected by one’s views on this topic. For conservative traditionalists morality is simple (the Ten Commandments), decisions are straightforward (black or white), and punishment is strict (an eye for an eye). The rules are the same for all times and all places. I do not mean to say that such folks do not anguish over these decisions, nor do I deny that they are often attracted to modern ideas. However, their foundation is placed on ancient insights and the unchanging nature of the world.

Modernists are also conflicted because they, too, are attracted to ancient wisdom and its apparent clarity. Yet, modernists accommodate change, even value change and all its concomitants, from democracy to today’s modern gadgets. For modernists, then, there is no simple, straightforward, or strict moral code or social life. Modernists value one great result of change: their accessibility to many peoples, cultures, societies, alternatives of all kinds. We can no longer imagine a city without uncounted ethnic restaurants, international movies, goods, gadgets, inventions, and tchochkes from around the world. Rather than a static world with one choice, modernists embrace a dynamic world filled with competing choices, a pluralism of accessible answers, solutions, and possibilities.

For modern people, the virtues of the ancients (fidelity, honesty, generosity, courage, etc.) may not have changed significantly, but the process of applying these virtues most certainly differs from that of ancient times. Just as we have a pluralism of cultures, we now have a pluralism of ethics. The detractors of modern life refer to today’s "relativism" in ethics; I believe "pluralism" more accurately describes a dynamic, evolutionary ethics.
 
 

2. Examples

One example of the complexity of a contemporary discussion of virtues is the taking of a life. Some folks condemn the death penalty and support abortion, while others condemn abortion but support the death penalty. A great number, perhaps the majority, want some middle ground, where they support both the death penalty and abortion in some situations and condemn them in others. Trying to find the one unchanging principle that always applies (one of the Ten Commandments?) is simply impossible.

I chose this example because it focuses on life and death decisions. Medical ethics might be another, and we will look at that evolving issue later this year. Genetics gives humans a power (potential virtue) that we never had before. How are we to apply this power, determine whether we are using it for an excellent purpose, a virtue, or for other ends? There is also an equally subtle debate over the supply of this power: who gets medicines at a cost they can afford? This is a major issue in our country on more than one level: health insurance availability, drug costs, and medical care for the poor. Of course all these issues become even more dramatic at the international level.

You may have noticed that, like Spinoza, I do not care to spend my time and energy denouncing evil, a tendency of way too many people on both Left and Right. I prefer to emphasize positive examples. Most of you have figured out what you value and what you do not value. My primary task is to help encourage (the word means "fill you with courage"), support, and nurture your virtues, not criticize them. Criticism has its place, but it is not first among our goals. My greatest tool for the ministerial task is the congregation itself — all of you assembled here.

3. Relational or pluralistic virtues

This morning I want to contrast the foundation of ancient virtues with that of modern virtues. Ancient virtues rested on a notion of God and creation that was remarkably similar across all cultures. Stability was the order of the day, and religions were based on efforts to control the chaos of life. From rain dances to human sacrifice, our ancestors sought ways to appease the powers that controlled their world. Despite their great sympathy for, and pragmatic knowledge of, nature, our ancestors had no understanding of nature’s laws and processes. Magic and psychology were their only tools to conquer the unknown, and they became masters of both.

We live in a different world. Our knowledge of nature’s laws grows daily, and we have mastered many tools to control our environment. Consequently, we have turned out restive minds elsewhere. Economic and political goals have replaced magic and brute power as the tools of human community. (Only psychology continues to fascinate us with its power.) Our first reader, professor at a Christian seminary, accepts without question that the dynamic nature of modern life has a positive value. Change, in itself, is not evil. In truth, even the ancients accommodated some change, but the pace of change in modern life has made a huge difference.

Pluralistic ethics, like pluralistic culture, recognizes that the pace of change, the amount of newly discovered knowledge, the range of human community and the conditions of life (climate, soil, culture) require of us a greater humility before the great moral decisions of life. No longer can we be so sure of ourselves and our gods. We ourselves have encountered so many new things, conditions, that we hesitate before the great moral issues we face.

4. Humility

Another way to describe the difference between the apparent concreteness of ancient moral attitudes and the apparent relativity of modern moral attitudes is to discuss humility. The ancient Greeks explored many new avenues of thought, as did the Jews in their very different circumstances -- and a remarkable number of ancient Indian and Chinese teachers. They sketched out remarkably similar moral treatises, with similar human virtues.

This should not surprise us, for humanity is, at heart, the same around the world. As the earlier reading noted, a virtue is an excellence of the human condition, what we do at our best. Over the centuries and across the cultures this has changed very little. How we apply these "excellencies" of human nature, however, has varied dramatically in every culture and across time. Within their particular, and highly static, culture, moral issues could be discussed at length and various alternatives explored — as in the Greek tragedies or the Jewish mishna. What had been written hundreds of years ago still applied because the situation for most folks had not changed.

Today we embrace change, and with change comes instability. The modern task is to manage change, to maintain values in a rapidly evolving context that bears little similarity to the past, although our goals as human beings remain roughly the same. We still want the opportunity to work and play, seek security, peace, and justice. How we apportion these goods among the world’s peoples is so much more complicated that ever before. We can no longer allow the unbridled use of power, nor can individuals be allowed to do almost anything they want. Indirect results, from pollution to fraud, haunt the modern world of individualism as did absolute power the old world.
 
 

By a pluralism of ethics, I do not mean that all choices are equal, nor do I mean to imply that we cannot confront those who make choices with which we disagree. There is no "slippery slope" of relativism that we must slide down once we deny even one of the received traditions in our culture. Ethics has never been so clear and precise that everyone came to the same conclusion. Today, it is even more the case that the great complexity of many moral issues, the vast scope of international problems crossing many cultural and ethnic lines, and the absolutely new conditions created by our scientific and technological world — all these combine to require of us humility.

By a pluralism of ethics we mean that we try to take into account a vast field of alternatives. By a pluralism of ethics we mean that face the almost incomprehensible complexity of modern ethical debate squarely. By a pluralism of ethics we mean that we listen to the voices of those we formerly ignored, like the poor, the weak, the enslaved. By a pluralism of ethics we mean that we consider the effects of our actions on the environment.

We Unitarian Universalists are not without opinions — you may have notices this yourselves — yet we, with the utmost difficulty it is true, admit that we do not have all the answers. We listen to others, and even if we do not agree, we take their opinions into consideration as we frame our decisions. In this way, and only in this way, can we make the create the world we desire for our children: a world where all people live together in peace, respect one another, help and care for one another.

This is the end of we desire: the utmost development of our human potential: a peaceful, just, and creative world community. We do not have to think alike to love alike — this is core value of a pluralist ethics.