Unitarian Universalist Church at Washington Crossing

When I was in grade school and high school during the 1950’s and 60’s science was highly valued in our country. The Soviet Union successfully launched Sputnik, the first artificial space satellite on October 4, 1957. Then, on January 31, 1958, the United States successfully launched Explorer I.

I do not know about you, but I would have been given a failing grade in my little rural elementary school in northern Wisconsin, if I had believed what one-fifth of Americans believe today that the Sun orbits the Earth, instead of the other way around. I was further dismayed when I read that the only industrialized country with less popular support for evolution than the United States is Turkey.

Our opening words were from Albert Einstein who published his first paper on relativity more than a century ago. That publication in 1905 is a far more important milestone date in world history than 1066 for the Battle of Hastings and maybe even more important than 1776 for our Declaration of Independence. However, the scientific theory of relativity still eludes the consciousness of many people we would otherwise consider well educated.

I learned as a child to believe a doctrinal theology in my Sunday school and confirmation classes. Yet, I seemed to have built a wall between the natural world of science and the theological realm of the church. Within the natural world, I learned the value and authority of reason and the scientific method in understanding it. Within the supernatural realm of the church, I learned the value and authority of the church and its doctrines, my ministers and the Bible with all its myth and symbolism in making sense of religious feelings.

The fact is – I enjoyed then and continue to enjoy both the natural world and the realm of the church. In the realm of the church, I learned ethical lessons about the importance of compassion and sharing. I heard stories about Jesus telling the parable of the Good Samaritan, the parable of the Prodigal Son and many other stories that helped shape my ethical standards. I appreciate religious teachings about being our brother’s keeper, sharing what we have with others, to “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.” Moreover, to love others like we love ourselves. (Matthew 22:37 -New International Version)

I came to believe that it is not only correct, but also important that we love our neighbors as we love ourselves and that god or the holy is a benevolent factor in my life. The realm of the church helped me discover meaning and direction for my life and answer questions about the mystery of that which is holy as well as the purpose and significance of life.

At the same time, I felt a deep sense of relation to and connection with all biological life. I knew that I could understand a great deal about the natural world by dissecting it and studying its parts. Nevertheless, I also knew that I needed or wanted a way to explain my feelings of wonder and awe that the beauty and majesty in the world of nature evoked. I had a deep sense of reverence for nature, and religion gave me a framework for that which filled me with wonder, seemed sacred and conveyed blessings to my life.

As I grew and studied both science and theology in ever more depth, the wall I had built between religion and the natural world began to crumble. I began to realize that the realm of the church was talking about the same natural world in which I lived and breathed but that it insisted on doing so in ways that began to make less and less sense to me.

Eventually, I realized that I needed a religious community where my appreciation for science would be large enough and flexible enough for the rich diversity I was encountering daily within the natural world. I found such a religious community within Unitarian Universalism. I loved the way one small child in New Hampshire referred to our denomination. He called it the land of Unitaria. Our movement has allowed me and thousands of others the wonderful chance to have a religious perspective that unifies the religious realm with the natural world in which we live.

Long before I found Unitarian Universalism, during my early Lutheran seminary days I found myself attracted to thinkers who entertained early versions of Religious Naturalism. The ancient Stoic philosopher Zeno said, “All things are parts of one single system, which is called nature.” Benedictus de Spinoza, the Jewish philosopher, concluded that god was not the transcendent creator of the universe. He understood nature as a deterministic system of which we humans are a part. Henry Nelson Weiman developed the Chicago School of theology and understood God to be a natural process or entity and like Spinoza not supernatural. Weiman was ordained a Presbyterian minister in 1912 but became a member of the Unitarian Church in 1949. I also observed glimpses of such a religious naturalism and the importance of living in accordance with nature in things I read in Buddhism and Taoism.

To be honest, when I first embraced Unitarian Universalism, I did not have a theological category that I could comfortably claim as my own. After spending a sabbatical studying with people like Matthew Fox, Brian Swuim, M. C. Richards, Jeremy Tayler and Thomas Berry in California at the University of Culture and Creation Spirituality, I began refering to myself as a mystical humanist with neo-pagan and panentheistic leanings. I think what I liked best about that was the looks on the faces of others when I said that.

It was not until 1991 when Jerome A. Stone wrote The Minimalist Vision of Transcendence that there was finally a sketched out version of religious naturalism. Loyal Rue, professor at my old alma mater, Lutheran College, expanded the term Religious Naturalism. Rue’s conversations with Ursula Goodenough led her to use the term Religious Naturalism in her book The Sacred Depths of Nature, considered one of the founding texts of the Religious Naturalist movement.

Religious Naturalism emphasizes the importance of our subjective connection and deep relationship with the natural world. Religious Naturalism provides a context in which to use such words as sacred, holy, reverent and mysterious to describe very special items, places and relationships. It can give us a context in which to appreciate the imagery used in the song “River of Jordan” sung today.

We can glimpse how the mighty power of god filling the air might have it might have felt to some when John baptized Jesus in Jordan’s rushing waters, or the words of the scientific genius Albert Einstein, “One feels as if one is dissolved and merged into nature. Even more than usual, one feels the insignificance of the individual, and it makes one happy.”

At the same time, Religious Naturalism can approach the natural world with all possible objectivity and reason when trying to understand its many natural mysteries. Still, Religious Naturalism refuses to explain things that we do not yet understand with the use of supernaturalism.

Some Religious Naturalists are comfortable with or fond of the symbolism involved in traditional religious language and use the term god in referring to the universe, nature or ultimate reality. About contemplating the universe and the use of the word god, Chet Raymo wrote “from the teeming machinery of a single cell to the snowstorm of galaxies that fills visible space and time — without confronting the mystery of why there is anything at all and why what is is what it is. If you want to call that mystery God, then by all means do so. Yet, it seems part of our biologically evolved nature to long for certainty of belief and refuge in a greater meaning. If you want to call the thing longed for god, do so. If the unknown and unknowable source of the longing and the curiosity and the awe is god, then count me a theist. Unfortunately, the word is historically invested with an almost inerasable quality of personhood, human artifice, justice, love, all the trappings of anthropomorphism. We tend not to see through a glass darkly, but in a mirror brightly. If the reflection is what we mean by god, then count me an atheist.” Cleary, god for Raymo is the god hiding in the unknown.

We Religious Naturalists revere the richness, beauty and complexity of nature and understand the natural world to be the only realm in which we live out our lives. For us, spending time in nature has many recognizable benefits from reducing stress to improving our mood and our overall physical well-being. We recognize the evidence that hospital patients with a view of nature recover faster than those who do not.

We feel a natural attraction pulling us like the force of gravity toward the renewing and sacred powers of the earth. We feel better when connected to the natural world and religious naturalism allows us to adopt a spiritual attitude toward all of life and all that we feel and experience within the natural world. Doing so can generate within us a sense of benevolence toward life and a personal morality of some version of what we call The Golden Rule.