This is the sermon I delievered on Sunday, February 7, 2016 at the Thomas Jefferson Memorial Church - Unitarian Universalist. As always, you can listen to the podcast.
This morning I want to talk about
“nones.” That’s right, “nones.” If you think about it, “nones” have a lot to
tell us about who we are as Unitarian Universalists. In fact, “nones” might be the ones to help us
see more clearly how it is that we are a “people of desire.”
If you’re here this morning without having
first read the description of the service in our monthly Bulletin or online,
you might think that I’ve been talking about “nuns,” when, actually, I’ve been
talking about “nones.” The first –
n-u-n-s – refers to women who have taken monastic vows, Catholic or Buddhist,
for instance. I’m not talking about
them. The group I am talking about – n-o-n-e-s – are those who in surveys identify as
atheists or agnostics or those who say that they are “spiritual but not
religious.” In other words, they’re the
group that when pollsters ask what religious affiliation they have, answer
“none.” [NOTE: this who section works better if you're hearing, rather than reading, the sermon!]
According to a recent Pew Research study
these nones make up roughly 23% of
the U.S. adult population. The last time
they did a similar study, in 2007, the nones
came in at only 16%. That means that in
about 7 years the number of people who choose “none” among all of the religious
choices out there has risen 7%.
(Interestingly, during that same period, the number of U.S. adults who
identify themselves as “Christian” has fallen
by just about 7%.) Nones are by far the fastest growing religious identity in our country.
There are those among our own flock,
Unitarian Universalists, who see in this “rise of the nones” an opportunity – after all, this growing number of
unaffiliated folk share many of our values:
- · they are not particularly interested in creeds and dogma;
- · they don’t believe that any one book or any one holy person has all the answers;
- · they think that there may very well be some truth in each of humanity’s various religions;
- · they like to think for themselves;
- · they don’t think that there is only one path;
- · they don’t think of themselves as “sinners in the hands of an angry God,” nor do they think that they are particularly in need of saving;
- · and they’re not all that interested in organized religion.
Sounds a lot like … well … us, doesn’t it? (Don’t forget – Unitarian Universalism has
sometimes been described as the religion for people who don’t like organized
religion.) And it’s because these nones are in so many ways free-thinkers
like ourselves, there are some who see an opportunity for growing our
congregations and our movement if only we could appeal to these folks and help
them to see that we might be what they’re looking for. After all, how many of us came to Unitarian
Universalism at some point in our lives having had no idea that there was a
faith like ours? How many of us wished
we’d heard about us sooner?
Many of our congregations are making a
concerted effort to reach out to these nones.
One of our congregations in Chicago, for instance, the Beverly Unitarian Church,
has a page on their website with the heading, “Do you feel as if you've lost
your faith but still yearn for a religious community where you will be accepted
as you are....?” Here’s what it says:
- Do you feel as if you’ve lost your faith?
- Can you no longer believe the religious doctrines you were taught to believe?
- Have you rejected the notion of a wrathful God, a God whom you should fear, a God who would punish you for your sins, or for not believing in him?
- Have you been taken to task for having “wrong” beliefs?
- Are you possibly seeking a religious community that embraces and celebrates diversity of many kinds, and where you will be accepted for who you are?
- Are you seeking a religious community in which you can follow the dictates of your own reason and conscience?
- Are you seeking a place where you can open your mind and heart to whatever is inspiring, sustaining, transforming and redeeming in life, without dogma and orthodoxy?
- Are you seeking a place where you can engage in a free and responsible search for religious truth, supported by others who are doing this as well?
- Are you seeking a religious community that takes the problems and possibilities of this world seriously, and tries actively to help heal and sustain it?
- If so, you may be one of us.
Sounds like a lot of us, doesn’t it? And sounds like could describe a lot of these
nones, doesn’t it? Yet here’s an interesting thing. When the folks at Pew asked, “Are you looking
for a religion that would be right for you?”
2% of nones said
that they didn’t know or simply refused to answer the question;
10% said that they
are looking;
88% said that they are not looking for a religion that would be right for them.
And this is not because the nones are not “religious” or “spiritual”
in one way or another. According to the
Pew Research findings,
“two-thirds of
them say they believe in God (68%). More than half say they often feel a deep
connection with nature and the earth (58%), while more than a third classify
themselves as “spiritual” but not “religious” (37%), and one-in-five (21%) say
they pray every day. In addition, most religiously unaffiliated Americans think
that churches and other religious institutions benefit society by strengthening
community bonds and aiding the poor.”
And yet, nearly 90% of these nones – these people who say they have
no religious affiliation – also say that they are not looking for a religion
that would fit with their values and their lives. They are decidedly, determinedly uninterested
in organized religion of any kind, even one as dis-organized as ours.
And this is why I said that these folk
have something to show us about who we are as “a people of desire.” Let’s go
back to that webpage from the Beverly Unitarian Church: “Do you feel as if you've lost your faith but
still yearn for a religious community where you will be accepted as you
are....?” Did you hear that? “Do you yearn
for a religious community where you will be accepted as you are?” “Do you … yearn
…?” More than half of the nine questions
that follow begin with the phrase, “Are you seeking …?” Yearning.
Seeking. These are words about desire.
Do you, with all you believe and don’t believe about religion and
religious institutions, desire
something?
It was one of our Worship Weavers who
proposed this topic as a way of addressing our month’s theme – “What does it
mean to be a people of desire?” He said,
“Yes. In a lot of ways we’re just like
these nones … yet we are here. It must be because we desire something that we think we can find here.” And, I’d add based on so many conversations
over the years, something we think we can find only here.
This week I got into a discussion with a
number of colleagues across the country about just what it is that our movement
is all about. It was sparked by an encounter
I’d had with a UU in California, I think, on their minister’s Facebook
page. The depth of this person’s
anti-Christian bigotry was, to me, alarming, and so counter to what I take to
be our core Unitarian Universalist stance of endless curiosity. (And I've heard the same kind of religious bigotry -- I have no other words for it -- expressed toward atheists, and pagans, and other folks both within our community and in the wider world.) And such sentiments are so closed minded; so judgmental; so
condemning. And, honestly, it made me
despair a little.
When I brought this despair to a wider circle of colleagues someone said, essentially, that there are so
many people who have found our movement after being seriously wounded by some
other religious traditions that we are, in many ways, a spiritual hospital for
the healing of the spiritually wounded.
My response? (And remember, I was
at the time despairing of the future of our Grand Experiment.) My response was to say that I feel like a lot
of people come into our “spiritual hospitals” not for any kind of healing, but
because they want to buy a newspaper in our gift shop, or get something to eat
in the cafeteria, or just to get out of the rain. A lot of people in a lot of our congregations
have come to this movement as a way of avoiding
religion rather than engaging in it.
And yet, they’ve come. For whatever reason, you and I are here this
morning. Some may be trying to get out of the rain, some may be wanting their biases affirmed and left unchallenged, some may be wanting to salve the wounds that
the religious experiences of their past have caused them so that they can see
their spirits flourish, and some are here because they want to celebrate the
beauty of life and there is nowhere else where they can do it so
authentically. And as Jeanine's reading reminds us,
"Ours is very
definitely a different kind of church, which requires a different kind of
definition.
Yet, let there be no mistake about the fact that the Unitarian
Universalist fellowship is a purposeful, positive, organized relations
movement, dedicated to the spiritual, moral, and social fulfillment of the gift
of life.”
We come together day in and day out, week
after week, through the ongoing years, because we Unitarian Universalists
desire what we can find only in communities like this – and for us here this
morning, only in this particular and
specific community.
So what of that Hoopoe bird, and his
insistence that the flock travel that long and dangerous journey to discover
what he could have told them at the beginning – that “each of them had
something good and strong and special inside of them and that each [of them]
had gifts to bring to the community,” that “they were all that was needed to
keep the community strong,” and that the wisdom they needed, the belief that each of them was important
(no matter how big or small), the caring friendship they yearned for, and the
safety they sought was all in their own hands?
He, like we, know that it is only
community that can show us the power of community, and only community can guide
us, and support us, and encourage us on that journey from where we are now to
where we know we need (and sometimes even want!) to go. This is what we, as a people of desire,
desire: that guidance, that support,
that encouragement, and that companionship.
And so we are here. Hallelujah, we are here.
Pax tecum,
RevWik
