Unitarian Universalist Congegation of Castine

The Sermon

Why do agnostics come to church? Is it because I announced this sermon title in the Castine Patriot? I suspect not, because we have agnostics who already attend here regularly.

Let’s start by discussing what we mean by “agnostic.” Thomas Henry Huxley, famous as “Darwin’s bulldog” – the defender of Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution in a debate with Bishop Wilberforce – coined the term in the 19th century. Huxley said, “Agnosticism is not a creed but a method, the essence of which lies in the rigorous application of a single principle... Do not pretend conclusions are certain that are not demonstrated or demonstrable.” So agnosticism is the view that the truth of certain claims – especially about the existence of a God or divine being – is unknown or unknowable.

The theist says, “Yes, God exists.” The atheist says flatly, “There is no God.”

The agnostic takes neither position, but says, “It is impossible to know for certain whether or not there is a God.”

And there are various kinds of agnostics. Strong agnostics would say, “We simply cannot know whether or not there is a God.” Perhaps you’ve seen the bumper sticker that proclaims, “Militant Agnostic: I don’t know and you don’t either.”

There are also so-called “weak agnostics” who would say something like, “We don’t know whether or not there is a God, but it may be possible to know some day.”

There are theistic agnostics, too. Really. The theistic agnostic says, “Although I believe in God, I acknowledge that there’s no actual proof one way or the other.”

And there’s something called ignosticism, which says that the concept of God is meaningless. This term was coined by a Jewish rabbi, Sherwin Wine (1928-2007). The ignostic says, “Before we could even discuss whether or not there’s a God, we would have to have a coherent definition of God. Since no one can define God, and even if you could define God you couldn’t prove or disprove the hypothesis, we can’t have a meaningful discussion about whether or not God exists.” Rabbi Wine, who established a humanistic Jewish congregation in Farmington Hills, a Detroit suburb, eliminated references to God in that synagogue’s liturgy. His synagogue is based on the Jewish heritage and Jewish ethics, not belief in a supernatural being. He said, “The message of the Holocaust is that there isn’t any magic power.” Wine told the Detroit News, “A good religion helps you find the power within yourself.” Yet, as Rabbi Wine’s synagogue demonstrates, even though agnostics admit that they really don’t know whether of not there is a divine being, many do attend churches or synagogues.

Why? There are, in fact, many reasons why a person who has doubts the existence of God would go to church.

Church-going agnostics ~

First of all, some agnostics hope to find holiness in our world, even though they admit that the concept can neither be proved nor disproved. Early in the twentieth century, Unitarian minister John Haynes Holmes said, “When I speak of God it is poetry and not theology.” The works of the theologians gathered dust on his shelves, he said, but the pages of the poets were stained with his fingers and blotted with his tears. He experienced the holy, or the presence of the divine, not in any doctrinal approach, but through his experience of nature, in encounters with his fellow humans, and in the presence of justice, peace, loving-kindness and compassion.

We are reminded of a story in the Gospel attributed to Mark that tells of a sick boy who was healed by Jesus. The boy’s father said to Jesus, “If you are able to do anything, have pity on us and help us!” Jesus told the man, “If I am able? – All things can be done for the one who believes.” The father’s reply to Jesus sounds like the plea of a theistic agnostic, “I do believe; help me to overcome my disbelief.” The man’s concern was legitimate, and his plea was honest. He was not certain that Jesus could heal his boy, but he was hopeful. He wanted to have faith.

So some agnostics come to church, not in any kind of certainty, but in the hope, or even the trust, that there will be something here that will nurture the spirit.

And then, as the Rev. Marlin Lavanhar of All Souls Unitarian Church in Tulsa, Oklahoma, points out, there are many practical people who attend church not so much for themselves – at least not at first – but for their children. They want their children to learn about Christianity and Judaism and other world religions, to be taught stories from the Bible so that they will not grow up as religious illiterates, and to be taught cooperation, kindness, and other ethical ideas. But they seek out a congregation such as ours because they want their children to gain this religious education in a place where their heads will not be filled with guilt, shame or fear, or taught a superior attitude about being “saved,” while others are “damned” for believing different things. They want their children educated in a place that does not discount or deny scientific truths, or stifle a child’s innate curiosity or questions.

But couldn’t you let a child’s religious education simply blossom on its own accord? There is a story (as I recall) about the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Someone, visiting Coleridge, expressed the notion that he did not believe in giving his children any religious education. He said, “I don’t want to impose anything on them. I prefer to let them develop in their own way.” Coleridge seemed to change the subject saying, “Would you like to see my garden?” His visitor agreed that, indeed, he would enjoy seeing the garden. When taken outside the visitor was unable to find anything resembling a garden. “This is simply a mess of weeds,” said the visitor. “Oh, I don’t want to impose anything on it. I prefer to let it develop in its own way,” replied Coleridge.

I contend that religion is like sex. If you don’t teach your children about it, they will learn about it from the other kids, and they are likely to learn all of the wrong lessons. And so here at UUCC, the focus of our Sunday school is to help spark our children’s curiosity about religious ideas. We want them to learn about the big questions, and teach them how people throughout time and in many cultures have answered these questions. We want them to gain basic decision-making skills so that they have a solid basis for answering the moral questions they will face as they grow older. In other words, our religious education program is not about indoctrination, but it is about exploration and growth.

So some parents go to church for their children, but end up staying for themselves. Because religion, as we practice it here, is inclusive, free, and we hope, intellectually honest. This is a church where you can bring your questions and your doubts, and not feel like a hypocrite, reciting doctrinal statements that no longer make sense.

Why might agnostics go to church? Because we all have questions of meaning that we wrestle with; because we all experience anxiety and encounter loss; because we all need forgiveness sometimes; because we all need to celebrate sometimes; because we all seek beauty, and long for community. We don’t expect doctrinal conformity in this congregation. We know that everyone’s experience is different, and everyone’s spiritual path is individual. We are individuals in community, encouraging one another on the journey. There are many paths up the mountain.

The fruit of the tree ~

Rev. Lavanhar, who I mentioned earlier, explains the Unitarian Universalist method by recalling the story of Adam and Eve. According to the book of Genesis, God said to Adam and Eve that they could eat the fruit from all the trees in the Garden of Eden except from “the tree of knowledge of good and evil.”

Even as a child in Methodist Sunday school I was disturbed that they weren’t allowed to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. It seemed to me, even when I was 12, that knowing the difference between good and evil would be a good thing. Today I understand the Garden of Eden as a myth or parable. That is, it is a classic story meant to convey a religious truth, and I believe the author never intended it to be taken literally. It was never a story about biology or astronomy or the geological age of the earth. And so, understanding that this is a parable with many possible meanings, I don’t see “the tree of knowledge” to be a threat.

Yet in our tradition, Rev. Lavanhar says that there is one tree that is forbidden, and here the name of that tree is “exclusion.” That is, if someone starts to believe that they know for certain who is good and who is evil, who is in and who is out, what doctrine is absolutely true or absolutely false, we have a problem. We can eat from the trees of knowledge and tradition and religion and spirituality and sociology and philosophy and science, but NOT from that tree which – once we eat from it – causes us to be self-righteous and believing that all the other trees are wrong or heretical or inferior. Because, Lavanhar says, eating the fruit of the tree of exclusion leads to death; death in the sense that exclusive beliefs kill community. The fruit of the tree of exclusion cuts us off from other people, other ideas and other truths.

The fruit of the tree of exclusion led to the Crusades, the Inquisition, and the Holocaust. The fruit of the tree of exclusion led to racial segregation, the Northern Irish troubles, the civil war in Lebanon, genocide in Rwanda, the gay-bashing murders of Charlie Howard and Matthew Shepard, and the 911 terrorist attacks.

The fruits of exclusivity are bitter. And sometimes exclusive truth claims cut us off from family and friends who may claim that we are going to hell because we do not believe what they believe. They have eaten from the tree of exclusivity and think they have found the one and only truth. Such beliefs harden the heart, and often lead to the death of relationships.

Many people think they have the truth, but in fact they are worshiping a very small god. I had some missionaries come to my door once, two very earnest young men. After some conversation I noticed that they were always using male language to describe their god. I asked them if their god was exclusively male. They said that yes, it was important to their beliefs that god is male. To me, any god that can be locked in a male body, unable to get out, unable to transcend the categories of male and female, is a very weak and small god.

Too many people worship a small god, one that teaches that only their religion is right and good, and that everyone else is wrong and bad. Too many people worship a god that teaches male superiority, racial superiority, anti-gay prejudice, or the superiority of one narrow religious outlook. That, to me, is idolatry, worshiping a god that is limited and not ultimate.

But here’s the danger for Unitarian Universalists. Sometimes we can become self-righteous, too. Sometimes we get to that exclusive place, where we think that others are mired in mindless superstition.

I have great respect for agnosticism, the kind of open-mindedness that says, “I don’t think we can prove it one way or the other, but I’m willing to listen.” But I have trouble with a hard atheism that says, “I know the truth. There is no god. Those who believe in god are stupid and deluded.” Because when we get ourselves locked into that kind of position, we have become almost the same as the fundamentalists we abhor. There are fundamentalists of the right, and fundamentalists of the left, and they are the mirror image of one another. We must guard against our own exclusive tendencies, the fundamentalism of the left that sometimes creeps into our own thinking.

And so we have plenty of room for agnostics here. Many of us are already agnostics of one degree or another, open-minded and willing to live with ambiguity. But I am very cautious about the atheism advocated by popular authors such as Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens. Their books make a lot of good points, and offer some much-needed critiques of religion. But at the same time they often set up their own orthodoxy, making exclusive claims for their own ideas, while demeaning and diminishing the faith of other people. In so doing, they are sewing their own seeds of division.

The agnostic method ~

John Stuart Mill, in his famous little book On Liberty, arguing for freedom of speech, said (and I’m paraphrasing from long-ago memory) that it is unlikely that any idea is ever complete and perfectly true. Even if you are mostly right, you may be partly wrong. The other person may be mostly wrong, but could be partly right. And so when others have the freedom to express their ideas, you may learn something, some grain of truth, that you might otherwise have overlooked. And in the unlikely event that they are completely wrong, and you are completely right, you still will have refined your own ideas by listening to theirs. So open and free discussion is good for society.

I believe this principle applies, as well, to religion. Freedom is not an end in itself, but it is a means to an end. When we are willing to entertain uncertainty we are on the path to greater truth.

And so I appreciate what the Buddha once said. He said, “Do not be satisfied with hearsay or with tradition or with legendary lore or what has come down in scriptures... or with the thought, ‘the monk is our teacher.’” Don’t assume it is true because it is found in a “holy book,” or because some prophet or preacher says so. Instead, the Buddha said, you should look to the lives of those who are following the path, and see for yourselves if it is working for them. Better still, you should try it for yourself, and test the teaching in that way. If it works in your own life, if it leads to greater contentment and happiness, then the path is worthwhile.

I have benefitted tremendously from the Tuesday night Buddhist sangha (a meditation and discussion group in Ellsworth) that I participate in. At the same time, I have also benefitted from the path practiced by my parents, and taught by the rabbi Jesus of Nazareth – love your neighbor, be a peacemaker, feed the hungry, give drink to the thirsty, comfort the sick, welcome the stranger. Of course, Jesus cannot be divorced from his faith (his ultimate trust) in God. And I am still searching for a workable definition of God, an explanation that works for me. The “old man in the sky” seems like a god that is too small. I like Paul Tillich’s explanation that God is not a being, but is the Ground of Being. I like Charles Hartshorne’s suggestion that God is the Cosmic Creative Process, a process in which we also participate. And I like John Haynes Holmes’ statement that, when he says “God,” it is poetry and not theology.

Here at UUCC we agree that we do not all have to agree. Your path may be different from mine. But I hope you are on a spiritual path, that you are not just letting your garden “develop in its own way” without any mindfulness or intentionality at all. Here at UUCC we hope you will find the tools with which to cultivate your garden, and eat from all the delicious fruits that are available. The tree of the knowledge of good and evil is fine. Just watch out for the tree of exclusiveness.

Amen.

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