3022 If Not God, What? A Humanist Elevator Speech

Rev. Kathleen Korb

One of the most interesting things to me about this task is my discovery that I am not at all sure that I can define humanism either in the length of time that it would take an elevator to traverse four floors or in the ten minutes that I have been given today. This is true even though when I took the beliefnet test it came out 100% secular humanist. (I don't care for that term anyway, thinking that it scarcely behooves us to allow Jerry Falwell's popularization of the term to name us, and besides if I am anything it is a religious humanist, but that's another issue.) I am not entirely alone in this problem. Some years ago there was an article in the UU World purporting to describe the sense of marginalization of the humanists at the Ministers' Association meeting in Hot Springs, AR. The article got all the feelings right and all the facts, except for the date and place of the meeting, wrong, but what was particularly interesting to me was that it used the word humanist to mean three entirely different things. The definitions were only discoverable from the context, since the author never defined the term at all, but the three meanings were materialist atheist, humanitarian, and anyone who uses reason and critical thinking in theological discourse.

The humanists did feel marginalized at that meeting as did several other groups including the rational Christians, but it shouldn't necessarily have surprised us. The position of humanism, despite its continued widespread use as self-identification among Unitarian Universalists has been declining steadily ever since the 1960s. It has even, in some circles, become a term of opprobrium. I remember a ministers meeting I attended in the Southwest District a while ago when one of my friends used the word rationalist humanist in the same tone as she might have used the word pedophile. When I pounded my fist, having finally lost it, and said, "Dammit, I'm a rationalist humanist!" she said, "Oh, but you're not like the ones I mean." "Oh, yes I am!" I said.

However, there has been a strain among us that I would call fundamentalist - and ours is the only religion in the world that could produce this kind of fundamentalism - that has known the only right way to believe, and have constituted themselves as monitors to make sure that religious words or rituals should never be used in our congregations. It is my conviction that this is a primary cause, though not the only one, of the decline of humanism in Unitarian Universalism. It is certainly not that we are less humanist. Humanism is in the very bones of our faith, from its beginning as rational Christianity which argued that human beings were the only possible interpreters of the teachings of the Christian church and were perfectly capable of discerning truth for themselves, down to the present day. Humanism is not really a theological position. Erasmus, the great humanist of the Renaissance, was certainly a Christian, for example, and there can be theist humanists, nontheist humanists and atheist humanists. In present day usage, however, it does imply a rejection of the supernatural and the idea of an intervening god, the acceptance of the scientific world-view, critical thinking, and the ability of human beings freely to choose the good and be, therefore, accountable for their choices.

It is sometimes argued that we only know what we don't believe rather than what we do. We reject the traditional beliefs of religion, but what do we put in its place? In fact, I'm not sure that's such a terrible thing, though I've had parishioners say that about themselves in some distress. However, when the society as a whole at least says that it believes certain things, that is the context within which we are required to define ourselves. It is very easy to hear a statement of faith and know immediately that you don't believe it. For example, the idea of a personal god who created the world and cares for every person in it, who can be petitioned and who will take care of things is easy to reject. As my mother used to say, "If God sees every sparrow fall, why doesn't he pick some of them up?" The evidence just isn't there for that kind of god. Deciding what you do believe, though, is a life-long process, and being willing to challenge the unbelievable is an important part of it, when the unbelievable is generally accepted.

The humanist source in the bylaws of our association says that we warn against idolatries of the mind and spirit. One of my antihumanist friends asked me skeptically if I thought that that was true, and I said that indeed, it is one of our first tasks. To believe in and worship idols, to turn the unknown into the supernatural, to believe not on evidence but from desire, is one of the deepest frailties of the human spirit. It takes great courage to face a universe that is indifferent to you, and yet that is what the humanist does. We will not worship idols, we will not believe that for which there is no evidence, we will and do face the world supported only by our faith in the possibilities of humankind, its ability to build and to create, and freely to choose what is good and beautiful.

We cannot and do not wish to deny that human beings can also do evil, from fear, from lack of knowledge, from self-absorption and greed or from a will to power, or even from a lack in their humanity, a failure of conscience. We are almost infinitely small in relation to the universe, too prone to error, unable to live up even to our own understanding of what is good and right. Nevertheless, we have created amazing structures of thought, marvellous works of engineering, symphonies and sculpture, poetry and prose. We are, so far as we know, the only sentient being on this earth struggling to understand what our purpose is, why we live and why we die, or how, in living, we can make our lives worthwhile. The humanist response is to look to humanity to discover greatness.

So what will I say when I enter the elevator on the first floor and someone says to me, "Just what is a humanist, anyway?" Well, at this time and place, here is my answer. A humanist accepts the scientific world-view, its explanations of the origins of the universe and the evolution of humankind as a natural part of that universe. We believe those things for which we have found evidence, reflected upon and refined by the use of reason and critical thought. That which we revere and find sacred is manifest in human freedom to choose the good, its quest for truth, its love of justice, its practice of compassion, and its creation and appreciation of beauty. We believe that it is through human will and human work that the ills in our lives can be overcome and the world can become a place of beauty, of peace, of justice and of love.

Web Design by Julie Albanese

• back to 3022 If Not God, What? A Humanist Elevator Speech

Unitarian Universalist Association
25 Beacon St. | Boston, MA 02108 | 617-742-2100