Keep the Faith

As dissident Unitarian Universalists (UUs) seek to create sustainable liberal religious institutions, they should remember what led to the UUA’s mistakes. For many years and many UUs, liberal religion was understood as “anything goes”. This is unattractive and misunderstands liberalism.

As a result, UUism was vulnerable to replacing the “nothing” of “anything goes” with “something”. This “something” was the UUA’s turn to politics. This turn sometimes downplayed or violated liberal principles.

Liberalism does include a commitment to social justice for all, which remains in the UUA’s new Article II as a value. But liberalism is also committed to individual freedom, in thought, speech, scientific inquiry, way of life choice, and religious belief. Liberals believe that everyone is entitled to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness”.

As political philosopher Michael Walzer recently wrote, liberals “aspire to be open-minded, generous, and tolerant…We are not dogmatic, we are not fanatics.”

Similarly, as journalist  James Traub wrote, “All liberals start with the belief that individuals have an intrinsic right to have their personal choices respected….[Liberals] put their faith in debate and political conflict rather than in revelation and all-encompassing doctrines.”

There are Limits to Tolerance

The liberal ideal of open-mindedness was supported by the old UUA principles, now rescinded. For example, the old Fifth Principle had congregations agreeing to “affirm and promote” the “right of conscience”. The new UUA values de-emphasize the right of conscience, mentioning it late and only as “central to our Unitarian Universalist heritage.”, not as something UU churches or the UUA are affirming or promoting.

More importantly, the UUA has not acted to uphold open-mindedness, for example it has disciplined ministers for dissenting from UUA views.

Although the old UUA principles supported open-mindedness, this ideal was not always clearly and effectively promoted by UU churches. Viewed naively, “open-mindedness” can be confused with “anything goes”, but this is incorrect. “Open-mindedness” is incompatible with many beliefs and is based on a particular view of human history and human nature.

The one thing that tolerance cannot tolerate is intolerance. As political scientist Francis Fukuyama wrote, “Successful liberal societies… cannot be neutral with respect to the values that are necessary to sustain themselves as liberal societies. They need to prioritize public-spiritedness, tolerance, open-mindedness, and active engagement in public affairs if they are to cohere.”

Furthermore, “open-mindedness” assumes that human beings are equal enough that we can learn from each other. If human beings were radically unequal, then the truly wise philosopher kings should tell everyone else what best to believe about science, religion, and politics.

Honest Intellectual Humility

Liberals recognize, as Socrates did, that the truly wise individual knows their own ignorance. We can learn from others, as shown by human history. Witness the progress of science since the Renaissance, as science escaped restrictions of religious dogma. Witness the progress of culture and democracy since the Enlightenment, as society opened to new artistic creation and new political ideas. Witness the economic progress since the Industrial Revolution, as people became freer to introduce new technologies.

As philosopher John Stuart Mill argued in 1859 in  “On Liberty”, “The peculiar evil of silencing….an opinion is… that it is robbing the human race; …those who dissent from the opinion, still more than those who hold it. If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth: if wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception….of truth, produced by its collision with error…[Furthermore].there is a commoner case….when the conflicting doctrines, instead of being one true and the other false, share the truth between them; and the non – conforming opinion is needed to supply the remainder of the truth…”

Mutuality is at Heart of Liberalism

Most human societies have not believed in open-mindedness and equality. Even in “liberal societies”, for an individual to be truly open-minded to new ideas, each and every day, is a constant struggle. It is hard for us to view all our fellow human beings as our equals, to be treated with justice and respect. A church can help.

Philosopher Alexander Lefebvre has written a recent book, entitled “Liberalism as a Way of Life”. He argues that “liberalism can be the basis for a personal worldview [and] way of living…[But] a genuinely liberal way of life does not come automatically from living… in [a]  liberal democracy. It takes work and must be cultivated by the individual…That is why…this book…lay[s] out techniques (“spiritual exercises”) …to deepen and enrich a liberal way of life.”

Lefebvre’s work is one attempt to outline what daily exercises might help a person be better at listening to others and treating everyone justly.  Another attempt is by philosopher Karen Stohr, in her book on the philosopher Immanuel Kant (“Choosing Freedom: A Kantian Guide to Life”), where she outlines practices to help us follow Kant’s admonition of treating other individuals as ends in themselves rather than as means to our ends.

Leaving for future discussion the specific psychological exercises recommended by Lefebvre and Stohr, shouldn’t one of the main tasks of the liberal church be to explore what exercises work best to promote liberal principles? These liberal principles include social justice, but equally importantly include open-mindedness. Social justice and open discussion are not either/or; social justice without individual freedom is not true justice. Shouldn’t the church be frequently talking about these liberal principles in sermons, in adult religious education, and in discussion groups?

Wouldn’t such a church be attractive to persons who wish to live as a liberal who is committed to both social justice and open discussion, without sacrificing one for the other? Wouldn’t such an explicitly liberal church be less likely to be taken over by any ideology that is intolerant and dogmatic, whether on the left or right?

A successful liberal religious movement needs to promote liberal principles. This requires moving beyond an “anything goes” liberalism to doubling down on liberalism as a way of life.

Tim Bartik has been a UU since the 1960s

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