What I Believe and Why
Hal Bertilson
February 1, 2004
I was asked by the Worship Committee to speak today on “What I believe and why.” What a formidable task.
Over these past 68 plus years, I have experienced and learned sooooooo much. These past several weeks I have been jotting down notes on this scrap of paper and that business card. I have pulled out old sermons and some of the books that have influenced me the most. I have remembered critical instances.
Our beliefs are affected by critical instances, aren’t they? I am intrigued by the renaissance of the study of critical instances in narrative psychology. It is scholarship based on studying whole persons in context and in time through the narratives of people’s experience. Such an approach feels real to me, consistent with my experience and what I believe. Narrative inquiry rests on the assumption of the storied nature of human experience. So it is with the aid of narrative inquiry that I will try to provide some tentative, but greatly incomplete, answers to question asked of me: “What I believe and why.”
But I must demur here. Even the process of writing a sermon about what I believe can be subversive. The reason it is subversive is that we don’t have access to all the reasons for our attitudes. So we list the reasons that are plausible and/or accessible. Tim Wilson and his colleagues have shown that the mere act of writing down plausible and accessible reasons has the effect of changing our attitudes. Changing our attitudes to emphasize the plausible and accessible at the cost of burying the inaccessible and implausible reasons, which, too, are real.
In this brief time I have with you this morning, I will touch on three beliefs which were accessible and plausible this past week. Even to state these, feels incomplete and inadequate, because much of what I believe is not accessible at the moment and may not even yet have had the benefits of words.
Among the my beliefs are the (a) my religious beliefs are dynamic and evolving, (b) social action is our responsibility, and (c) my religion is inclusive.
(a) My Religious Beliefs are Dynamic. When I accepted the job as a Dean at the University of Nebraska at Kearney, a fellow dean, Betty Becker-Thye, gave me an excellent piece of advice. She said that when someone comes to you with a problem, wait before doing anything about it because someone else will come to you with a different interpretation of the problem.
My religious beliefs are like that. They grow, become multi-faceted, multivariate, multitheological, and interwoven—just like the welcoming network we produced in this sanctuary and gave a place of honor on the wall above the piano.
Just as new learning and stimulating environments promote in our brain the production of new neurons, destroy old neurons, and increase synaptic complexity. New experiences strengthen old paths in my semantic theological space.
Like many of you, my religious beliefs have been formed by teaching children in religious education. We have learned and taught that our religious faith tradition has evolved from the opposition to creeds, such as the diety of Chirst, at the Council of Nicea in 325 of the Common Era. While there was no institutional continuity between Arius and his followers and early Unitarianism, beliefs and critical analysis survive over centries.
We taught about the many Unitarian martyrs. Michael Servitus, was only the most conspicuous martyr of the early Unitarians, who in the 16th century read the Bible at the age of 17, and became a martyr for his beliefs about the doctrine of the trinity. Most published sources assert that Servitus believed the doctrine of the trinity was terribly wrong and made up his mind to expose the errors of this doctrine. But my daughter’s reading of Servitus is that he believed the trinity was true, but because it wasn’t written in the Bible, it shouldn’t be used as a litmus test against Jews and Muslims. For that he died a horrible death of slow burning at the stake.
We taught of King John Sigismund of Transylvania, under the influence of Francis David, who issued the earliest edict of religious toleration in 1568.
I didn’t learn much about the Universalists in religious education in those years at Unitarian Churches. I learned more about Universalism, John Murray and the first Universalist congregation in America in 1779 by preparing a sermon for this congregation almost 10 years ago. While I learned a lot from that experience, Marree Seitz, the daughter of a Universalist minister, is the real expert on Universalism in our congregation.
In this idiosyncratic, highly selective tracing of Unitarian Universalist history as I’ve experienced it, Joseph Priestly and the First Unitarian Church of Philadelphia is salient. As a member of the Germantown, Pennsylvania Unitarian Church I had the opportunity to attend the annual meeting of the Joseph Preistly District at the historic First Church, with its cathedral design and colonial pastel colors.
In the 1960s I read and re-read Ralph Waldo Emerson’s 1838 Divinity School Address; as well as his other essays on work, scholarship, and being a reformer; when commuting on what was then the Burlington Northern trains from our suburban flat in Claridon Hills to Chicago’s loop.
My two daughters and I had the privilege of attending the 1984 Unitarian Universalist General Assembly in Vancouver where new Principles and Purposes were debated. These were an earlier version to the Principles and Purposes that appear now in our hymnal. Kathryn and I were delegates from Salt Lake City and Anna watched the floor debates from the balcony.
And then when Kathryn was in Unitarian Universalist seminary at the University of Chicago, I loved my visits and Sunday mornings when we would talk about what she was studying and learning.
Hmmmm. Where is my narrative approach taking us? Certainly not an adequate history of Unitarian Universalism, but perhaps a hint at how our religious faith tradition has evolved and little bit about my experience with it.
As a freshman in college, I had the good fortune to take a Philosophy of World Religions course from a professor who was also a leader in the Pullman, Washington Unitarian congregation.
When Anna was 2 or 3 years of age and I was working as an industrial engineer at Boeing in Renton, Washington we joined the Eastshore Unitarian Church in Bellevue, Washington. Such a beautiful church. Behind the pulpit were windows that stretched almost 200 feet across. Each spring behind the windows could be seen rhododendrons and azaleas in bloom.
It was at this church that I experienced my first experience with the flower communion. Spring in Seattle begins with the crocus in February; tulips and jonquils in March; tulip trees, azaleas in April; Rhododendroms in May; and roses in June. So it is easy for all the congregants to bring flowers from their gardens and exchange them with each other in this ceremony.
The Flower Communion service was introduced by Norbert Fabiaán Çapek on June 24, 1923. Çapek was the founder of the Prague Congregation of Liberal Religious Fellowship, in Prague, Czechoslovakia. This celebration was held at the first anniversary of the founding of this Unitarian church.
Norbert Çapek spent the last fourteen months of his life in Dachau concentration camp for treason and for having listened to foreign radio. Frederick May Eliot, president of the American Unitarian Association, said of Capek, "another name is added to the list of heroic Unitarian martyrs, by whose death our freedom has been bought. Ours is now the responsibility to see to it that we stand fast in the liberty so gloriously won."
After six months in the Nashville, Tennessee Unitarian Church we moved to South Bend, Indiana and joined that Unitarian Church there. It was the mid to late 1960s at a time of protests over the Vietnam war and the unfulfilled promises of the civil rights movement.
I was affected, of course, by all these experiences. As social constructivists and feminists teach us, our beliefs depend upon the time and context. That means that our beliefs evolve.
In the 1960s and 1970s the Unitarianism I experienced in South Bend and Fargo was all head and little heart. An additional context for me was Graduate school where were taught that psychology was an objective science. Laboratory experiments, bereft of context, were dominant. In 1970 we were still recovering from Behaviorism.
Unitarian practice; psychology theory, research and pedagogy; and my beliefs were all part of the culture as it existed then. Our religious and personal beliefs depend upon the time and context.
So in those years I was taken by the Unitarian minister, Duncan Howlett and his book the Critical Way in Religion. I was also influenced by him because we had the opportunity to meet him at a lecture at the Salt Lake Unitarian Church. Howlett argued for a purely objective, scientific approach to religion. A cold, rather than warm, approach. His message was to be both skeptical and objective.
The Fargo Unitarian Fellowship in the 1970s was meeting in a store front church. That had special meaning to those wonderful elders of that congregation who understood their religion as objective analysis and debate. I remember sadly a biologist that was invited to speak about how he could be a scientist and a Christian. To my discomfort and alarm, he was verbally beaten up by several of those elders whose mission was to prove him wrong. And then, as Board President, I was instrumental in a program to soften that building and make it more inviting and spiritual. We clean and painted, built a sanctuary with a permanently mounted chalice, and installed a carpet. These changes answered the needs of many of the new members and made the building warm and appealing. I remember well one of the members, operating on the belief system of the time, calling me up crying that we had destroyed her store-front church.
We as a faith community have grown increasingly aware of the need for spirituality and community. The context has changed. Our culture has changed. Our religion has evolved. My beliefs have evolved. Personal narratives are informative. The first belief I have described is a meta-belief—that our beliefs are dynamic and evolve.
(b) A second belief is that Social Action is Our Responsibility. When I first joined the Eastshore Unitarian Church in Bellevue in the early 1960s, I found myself in study and action groups to end Racism in Seattle. Bonds were formed between white suburban and inner city black families. White and Black families would eat together and visit together.
Meadville-Lombard Unitarian-Universalist seminary, where my daughter graduated and where Karen has taken study leaves, holds a Winter Institute in Madison each year. In 1999 the topic was “Congregations as Theological School: Adult Religious Education for the 21st Century. The presidents of the two Unitarian-Universalist seminaries, Bill Murray at Meadville Lombard and Rebecca Ann Parker at Starr King, led the first plenary session and several other sessions.
At that Institute I learned about a social action program developed in 1980-85 at the Wallingford United Methodist Church, in Seattle, Washington by members of the congregation that has been an inspiration to me.
Methodist you say. How is that related to our Unitarian Universalist values? Rebecca Anna Parker is an ordained United Methodist minister in dual fellowship with the Unitarian Universalist Association and is president and professor of theology at Starr King School for the Ministry at the Graduate Theological Union.
Actually there are other Methodist, Unitarian Universalsts. Coincidentally, last Tuesday I heard from Jim Stillman from New York. Jim was serving as a campus minister at the University of Nebraska at Kearney when I first met him. We worked on several joint projects together at that time. He is a Methodist Minister who married Dodie and me. The first time I was in Jim’s home I was startled to see a large portrait of James Luther Adams. Many will say that Adams was the greatest Unitarian theologian of the 20th century. This Methodist minister and great Unitarian theologian were close friends. For a time Jim lived with Adams in one of the Meadville Lombard houses on Woodlawn. It was near the same flat that my daughter, son-in-law, and grandson lived in while she was in seminary. And Jim is presently working on a biography of James Luther Adams.
Hmmmm. This sermon is turning into a shaggy dog story. Where was I going with the Wallingford United Methodist Church and our social action values? Actually the discussion of Methodist Unitarian Universalists allowed me to speak of both my second and third beliefs. The second is that social action is our responsibility. The third is that we are inclusive. More on the third belief, later.
To return to the story I heard at Winter Institute. Two murders occurred in the neighborhood very near the Wallingford Methodist Church. Neighbors were afraid to go out. Discourse was constrained. Applying the practices of Paulo Feire’s pedagogy of the oppressed they developed a five-step action plan in coalition with other churches. Block meetings were organized on every block in a one-hundred block area. People on each block covenanted to assist one another. They helped each other make use of simple, low-cost, home security measures. People promised to help keep one another safe by getting to know one another and by watching out for one another.
“The congregation’s study and action led the neighborhood to create security rooted in relationship and care. Crime went down 50% within a year. At Wallingford the application of Feire’s principles enabled the congregation to overcome an individualistic approach to social action and demonstrates the power of social action.
With many of you I have held peace signs at the federal building in Duluth, the Lake Avenue and Superior Street Plaza, I have marched in the Roe v. Wade anniversary observance, the Take Back the Night march, Domestic Abuse Awareness events in Superior, a march to Representative Dave Obey’s office in support of the Palestinians. Dodie and I even participated in a peace vigil at the Michigan state house. We were driving to East Lansing when the War against Iraq began. That evening we attended a special peace serve at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Greater Lansing where my daughter is the minister. The next day we joined a regular Friday noon peace vigil at a key intersection outside the state house.
( c ) The third belief is that My Religion is Inclusive. When we recall past events, we, of course, do not retrieve photographic records of those events. We reconstruct them from imperfect cues that we have stored. Our memories are notoriously incomplete, embellished, and inaccurate. Nevertheless a memory, incomplete as it is, that has informed me over the years was a Christmas gift giving when I WAS in about the third grade in Marysville, Washington. I have no memory of what I gave someone. I have no memory of what I received. What I do remember, with affect, is a gift of Lifeboy soap given to a girl from the Tulalip Reservation. The native residents of this reservation were very poor and lived in squalor. With horror I realized that this gift was an awful boyish prank which said you are dirty and you smell.
Our denomination is inclusive in other ways. There is room to welcome my friend, Jim Stilman, who is a Methodist Minister, There is even room for Rebecca Ann Parker, an ordained Methodist Minister in dual fellowship with the Unitarian Universalist Association, to serve as president of one of our seminaries.
The Unitarian church my family and I belonged to in Hinsdale, Illinois had a stage behind the pulpit. On that stage were 8 feet high panels depicting the great religions of the world—Taoism, Hinduism, Buddism, Christianity, Judiasm, etc. And the Unitarian minister was of East Indian birth. We had study and action groups concerning discrimination and poverty in the Black communities of Chicago’s West Side and Cicero. I still remember seeing the West side of Chicago burning in the aftermath of the assassination of Martin Luther King.
One of the fun coincidences in Duluth is that a handful of us have been members of that Salt Lake City Unitarian Church at different times. Dick Henry, the minister in Salt Lake at the time, on more than one occasion had to remind congregants that our religion is inclusive.
Funny what our blind spots are. That Unitarian church, like many Unitarian Churches, provided space that served as the home for humanistic organizations that could not find space elsewhere. The Metropolitan Church, a Christian Church for Gays and Lesbians, met in our sanctuary. Planned Parenthood used our facilities until it could build its own facility. But Dick Henry, our minister, had to remind congregants on several occasions that it is a violation of our principles to speak ill of Republicans. We do not exclude those who have different political views from our beloved community.
I couldn’t give you a complete account of “what I believe and why.” Well. Maybe next time.
May our religious beliefs be informed by ever day’s experiences and so grow and evolve. May our social action be borne in our everyday actions. May our actions be as inclusive as our principles.
With me, would you say Amen.
Amen.
Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Duluth
Promoting the inherent worth and dignity of every person