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Lifecraft: The Art of Meaning
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Lifecraft: The Art of Meaning
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Speaker: Rev. Forrest Church
Our Universalist Mission - Proclaiming a Theology for the 21st Century
Speaker: Rev. Forrest Church, Senior Minister at All Soul's in New York City, NY (http://www.allsoulsnyc.org/)
Complete Sermon Text (http://www.lifelinescenter.org/pg10_news/news0601.htm)
Rev. Forrest Church's topic, he says, is "as close to being a formal theological address as I know how to deliver." The audience responded with a standing ovation.
"Without a uniting passion of our own, how can we begin to answer the often-destructive passions of anti-Universalists?" asked Rev. Church. "Without a deep, articulate and lived appreciation for our own first principles, how can we persuasively challenge the validity of contesting principles that divide, not unite, the human family?"
One can be a Buddhist Universalist, a Pagan Universalist, a Humanist Universalist, a Christian Universalist. On the other hand, one cannot in any meaningful sense be a Universalist Universalist. Neither can one be, say, a Universalist Christian; when the modifier of one's faith becomes its nominative, primary allegiance is relegated to but one part of the whole that encompasses it.
"In the temple of Universalism, two great pillars - awe and humility - flank the doors. The doors themselves are birth and death," continued Rev. Church. If religion is our response to the dual reality of being alive and having to die, the purpose of life is to live in such a way that our lives will prove worth dying for.
Protestants are forever cutting themselves into pieces, like cells dividing in exponential fashion. Theologically, the Universalist principle is precisely the opposite: to unite the many into one. Being Protestant by heritage, we Unitarian Universalists are therefore forever tempted to betray our own first principle.
The surest way to find God (the Sacred or the Holy) is to decode our own experiences, not only of beauty ("heaven in a wildflower") but also in sacraments of pain by which we commune with one another. This represents a third pillar for Universalism. We all suffer. We are broken and in need of healing.
A 21st century theology based on the concept of one light (Unitarianism) and many windows (Universalism) offers to its adherents both breadth and focus. Honoring many different religious approaches, it excludes only the truth-claims of absolutists.
If our religion doesn't inspire in us a humble affection for one another and a profound sense of awe at the wonder of being, one of two things has happened. Either it has failed us or we have failed it. Either way, we must go back to the beginning and start all over again.
The principle challenge of theology today is to provide symbols and metaphors that will bring us, in all our glorious diversity, into closer and more celebratory kinship with one another as sons and daughters of life and death. "Good old-fashioned Universalism, that's all this is," says Rev. Church. "But it's worth every ounce of energy we can invest in it."
Rev. Church is the author of Lifecraft: The Art of Meaning in the Everyday, published by Beacon Press (http://www.beacon.org/) and available at the UUA Bookstore (http://www.uua.org/bookstore)Reported for the Web by Betty Skwarek
General Assembly 2001 · Program Grid
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