Unitarian Universalist Church at Washington Crossing

“A physicist, a biologist and a mathematician walk into a bar. The Bartender asks, “Any of you believe in God?” Which of the three is most likely to say yes? Answer: the mathematician. Mathematicians believe in God at a rate of two and a half times that of biologists, a survey of members of the national Academy of Sciences a decade ago revealed. Admittedly, the rate is not very high in absolute terms. Only 14.6 percent of the mathematicians embraced the God hypothesis (verses 5.5 percent of the biologists).

I met Ralph Helverson, the author of the responsive reading, in 1981 when I became the minister of the Unitarian Universalist Church in Ellsworth, Maine. Ralph died this past April, at the age of ninety-five. About 50 years ago, he and 5-8 other Unitarian Universalist ministers, already respected elders in our ministry, summered in the area and offered to preach so they could listen to one another speak. In 1981, I first preached with five or six of them in the congregation, including one who taught homiletics (preaching) at Harvard. It was a great (if a bit intimidating) introduction to Unitarian Universalist preaching and ministerial perspectives, specifically the humanist perspective.

Now, I do not know for sure if Maslow’s concept of a “Hierarchy of Need’s” influenced Ralph Helverson when he wrote the opening words that Stephanie read this morning. I am sure he was aware of them because I know that Ralph wrestled with the religious questions: What is most important in the life we live? What is essential to us?

“Deep in ourselves resides the religious impulse.
Out of the passions of our clay it rises.”

We started from clay, the earth, and rose up out of it as we evolved as human beings. As Maslow stated, after we have satisfied some of our basic biological and physiological needs and our need for safety, we can focus on our needs for belonging and love, status and responsibility.

“We have religion,” wrote Ralph Helverson, “when we stop deluding ourselves that we are self-sufficient, self-sustaining, or self-derived. We have religion when we hold some hope beyond the present, some self-respect beyond our failures.”

When our cognitive needs are met and we gain a bit of knowledge about life, life’s meaning and a greater self-awareness, we can move on to our needs for beauty, balance and form. That is when Ralph Helverson says we have religion, “…when our hearts are capable of leaping up at beauty, when our nerves are edged by some dream in the heart.” That is when we move on to satisfy what Maslow identifies as our need for self-actualization. We move ultimately to the top of his pyramid when we meet our need to help others, transcending our personal sense of self. This is indeed when we have religion – “when we look beyond people to the grandeur in nature and to the purpose in our own heart. …when we have done all that we can, and then in confidence entrust ourselves to the life that is larger than ourselves.”

This is the kind of humanistic religion that makes sense to me. It addresses real life issues. This religion speaks to and responds to my needs and aspirations. Too often for me, religion focuses on the distant past when spiritual giants walked the land performing miracles, or on to some distant and heavenly future when life will be bliss. My need is for a religion that focuses on the present, that is life in the here and now.

That is exactly the stated intent of the first Humanist Manifesto written in 1933. The authors and the signers of the first Humanist Manifesto, many whom was Unitarian or Universalist ministers or professors, desired to create a new religion based on the new factual knowledge and experience of contemporary life.

The first conviction in the manifesto is that the universe is self-existing - not created; the next is that humanity is a part of nature and has emerged out of a continuous process we call evolution. The Manifesto states that human knowledge of the world comes from observation, experimentation, and rational analysis, not through any supernaturally revealed knowledge. The signers put their claims in the form of principles with the understanding that they would need future evaluation and improvement. They avoided the claim of any creed or doctrine that needed to be accepted yesterday, today and tomorrow as fact. In subsequent years, they created a second and third Humanist Manifesto with additional adaptations as Humanism and knowledge evolved and grew.

Like any human creation, even with periodic evaluations and rewrites there was the temptation or tendancy among some to emphasize the rational to the point of becoming rationalistic. Also, with an intense focus on the human there was among some the temptation to become anthropocentric in respect to the rest of the universe.

Ralph Helverson started serving his first Unitarian congregation a mere nine years after the first Humanist Manifesto was written. He knew and was a contemporary of many of its signers. He and other Unitarian Universalist ministers continued the challenge to create a religion focused on the present needs of people in the here and now. We have religion when our hearts are capable of leaping up at beauty, when our nerves are edged by some dream in the heart. We have religion when we have an abiding gratitude for all we have received.

Ironically, this is the “redeeming or saving grace” of Humanistic Religious Naturalism. The religious impulse comes not only from the head and the intellect, but also from the heart, feelings and a sense of mystery and awe. Humanistic Religious Naturalism is a direct outgrowth of early Humanism. This may not be the Humanism of our grandfathers. It is, however, an evolved expression of Humanism that, I am confident, will attract more and more people who slowly realize they are humanists, but they just never knew it.

Within Humanistic Religious Naturalism, as was the case in the Humanist Manifesto, supernaturalism is rejected. We start with a self-existing universe, not one created by a supernatural being. We recognize we are part of the natural world that has and continues to evolve. We gain knowledge from observation, experimentation, and rational analysis, rather than from supernaturally revealed knowledge. Humanistic Religious Naturalism encourages continued growth in knowledge and spiritual depth based on understanding that comes from the head and the heart, our intellect and our emotions.

Likewise, within Humanism, our ethical values evolve directly from our human needs, interests and the reality that we are social by nature so we find meaning in relationships. Thus, we find happiness and meaning through efforts that benefit others.

There comes a point, if we are fortunate enough, when we realize our mortality more than academically. We realize there is something larger than our personal interests and ourselves, but it need not be called God. Such points often come in the context of birth, love, illness, death or beauty and we sense the wonder and awe of being alive. We gain a deep sense of gratitude for the gift of being alive and aware of the wonder of the universe.

Bertrand Russell suggested that, “The good life is one guided by reason and motivated by love.” Humanistic Religious Naturalism stresses the importance of the development of and the use of our minds, and equally important, the development of and the use of our emotions and intuitions. So it is that we seek a religion: that affirms values that help make us more fully human, that encourages us to live an ethical life as intensely as possible here and now, that helps us cope with problems we face in our daily lives that challenge our role in the larger universe, but also in the mundane challenges of facing good and evil in our daily life

One short quote I like is from Philip Gulley, Porch Talk (Harper San Francisco) “I’m not sure who’ll invent the cure for cancer, discover a new energy source, or genetically engineer a plant that will end starvation, but I bet it will not be an anti-Darwinian Christian.” I may not be that blunt, but you get the idea.