To answer these questions,  I will distinguish four terms that we all too casually interchange:  religion, belief, faith, and spirituality. Each of these words has multiple definitions, some of which overlap. Today, I am focusing on what makes these words different.  No doubt you will say that you think of faith this way or spirituality that way, and I am not here to disagree with you. Words are just one way to represent ideas, and rather than focusing on how you might use these words differently than I am using them today, what I want you to be thinking about during this sermon is how you relate to the different ideas I am using these words to represent. 

This sermon is divided into two parts. First, I will talk about these four terms in more abstract terms and then I will discuss how they relate to Unitarian Universalism.

Religion, first and foremost, is communal. It often describes the historical tradition of a denomination. It may describe the rituals, creeds and organization of the denomination.  One of the elements that distinguishes Christians from Jews and Moslems, for example, is a belief shared by Christians about the nature of Jesus. Yet, to show how ritual may play a part in this, what separates many denominations within  Christianity is the presence or absence of the Eucharist or Communion. Whatever it is, religion is shared by a community.  That community may be defined many ways. In Unitarian-Universalism, each congregation is a community, and our denomination is a community of congregations. Catholicism, in addition to history and liturgy, is a community that shares the beliefs contained in the apostle’s creed. Judaism shares the characteristics of being both a community of faith and a community of shared traditions.

Religion also is a community that  concerns itself with the nature of the ultimate reality.  I use the phrase “nature of the ultimate reality” here as shorthand for the great questions that come unbidden to all humans, such as “What is the source of creation?” “Why am I here?” “What happens to us when we die?” and “How do I live in this world?”  The notion that religion somehow addresses these questions is what separates a religion from a cause or an ethical society. So, in short, religion describes a community that concerns itself with the nature of the ultimate reality.

The word “belief” has many uses. There is a big difference between saying “I believe George Bush is the President of the United States” and “I believe in George Bush.”  For today’s purposes, I am using belief to refer to the giving of one’s assent  or agreement to a proposition or statement.  Some examples include, “ I believe that humans are basically good” or  “I believe that humans are basically bad.”   Each of us has a set of beliefs, whether we call it that or not or put much thought into it.  Some of you may have taken the UU adult curriculum class, “Build Your Own Theology” which helps  people to better articulate their beliefs.

To distinguish belief and religion from faith, I turn to James Fowler’s work, “Stages of Faith.”  He writes, “faith involves an alignment of the will, a resting of the heart, in accordance with a vision of transcendent value and power, one’s ultimate concern.”  There’s a lot packed into that definition, so let me repeat it.  “Faith involves an alignment of the will, a resting of the heart, in accordance with a vision of transcendent value and power, one’s ultimate concern.” To use another phrase from Fowler, faith is “an orientation of the total person, giving purpose and goal to one’s hopes and strivings, thoughts, and actions.” 

In short, faith is how we live our lives.  In this context, faith is a neutral word. It may not be a positive and affirming faith.  Though most of us, I hope, want to think the best of everyone we meet, some people naturally think the worst and they live their life that way.  Some of them may go to church every week, take Communion and recite the Apostle’s Creed and others of them would never set foot in a church.  So, faith is something that may be expressed by statements of belief and practiced in a religious community but it is not limited to either of those things. It is, to repeat Fowler’s words, “an orientation of the total person.”

Spirituality is how individuals experience each of these three other things. Yet, it is more than that as well. Spirituality describes how we feel when we observe a chalice being light or take a walk in our favorite place. It is, for some, how they feel when reciting the apostle’s creed or their favorite poem. A healthy, positive spirituality evokes sensations of being loved, of belonging, of worthiness, or wholeness.  Likewise, an unhealthy spirituality evokes the opposite sensations: feeling disconnected or unworthy or broken. 

To put this together, religion is communal. Thus, you can’t have your own religion, at least by the definitions I am using today. You may or may not share a set of beliefs or a common faith with another person. Yet, because it is personal and experiential, no two people can share the same spirituality. Your spirituality is unique, just as you are unique.  You can have a spiritual experience at any time and at any place—within a worship service or without it. Everyone here is religious if only because your presence here today witnesses to your commitment to being in a community.

Set aside my choice of words for a moment. A sub context to this sermon is how imprecise language can be. Yet, it’s the best tool I have to work with. The only other ways I know to convey these concepts is by drawing you pictures or some form of liturgical dance.  Given those alternatives, I’m sure most of you are grateful that I have chosen to work with words today, however ambiguous they may be. What’s important is that we recognize that there are differences between what we experience within the community and outside of the community and between the many statements we may affirm and the one belief or set of beliefs that serve as our primary motivation in life. 

So, with that little aside, let’s get back to how religion, belief, faith, and spirituality relate to Unitarian-Universalism.

Is Unitarian-Universalism a religion? Absolutely. We are a community that concerns itself with the ultimate reality.  What makes us a community is our shared traditions, such as the lighting of the chalice and the use of our hymnal--two things with only a few exceptions that may be found in every UU church but in no other church. We claim a common heritage, embracing as examples of our faith  women and men such as Olympia Brown and Theodore Parker. We also concern ourselves with the ultimate reality because our worship—which includes music, readings, joys and sorrows, and sermons— attempts to respond in some way to the kinds of questions I posed earlier, such as “Where did we come from and why we are here?.”

Contrary to popular opinion, we do have beliefs. The seven principles are affirmations of propositions. They are not a creed if one understands a creed to be a proposition or set of statements that one must affirm to belong to a particular community. I want to make two important points about our beliefs.

First, freedom of belief is not the same as having no beliefs. This so important that it is in the UUA bylaws in two different places. One states that member congregations may have statements of faith, affirmations, and covenants so long as they do function as a creed, that is, as a requirement for membership. The bylaws also provide that no congregation may discriminate on the basis of religious belief.

Though the words have changed over time, for nearly 200 years Unitarians and Universalists have affirmed the inherent worth and dignity of human beings. If  you disagree with that statement of belief, you still are welcome to be a member of this congregation and you can even serve in the congregation’s leadership. If the congregation so desires, you can be on the Board.  That doesn’t mean, as a denomination, that Unitarian Universalists don’t stand for the inherent worth and dignity of every human being. It just means, in this example, that you don’t agree with everything that the UUA stands for, to which I say, “so what?”. 

Second, even though the seven principles and the seven sources don’t function as a creed, that doesn’t mean that they aren’t statements of belief.  They are stated in the affirmative because it is more important to state what we are for than simply to state what we are against.. Don’t let that mislead you into thinking, though, that our principles and sources are just feel-good phrases on which everyone can agree.  When we affirm the inherent worth and dignity of every person, we are saying “no” to the doctrine of original sin.  When we affirm the democratic process in our congregations and in society at large, we are saying “no” to the doctrines that hold that the truth is like some family keepsake to be kept in a theological lockbox to which only a few may be given the key.  And when we affirm the encouragement to spiritual growth, we are affirming that the conscience cannot be bound against its will, which is a more eloquent way of saying, you can’t make people believe things that they simply can not believe. That statement applies to all human beings, yet, most other religions try to make you feel guilty or marginalize you if you can’t embrace a particular church teaching.  On the contrary, we embrace our differences, and we think it makes our beliefs stronger. 

I often hear UUs say to newcomers that most UUs believe in this or that, but you don’t have to believe anything that you don’t want to.  That’s true, but it sounds very defensive. We do have beliefs, and we should stop apologizing for them. 

We also share a common faith. Recall that in this context, I am using faith to describe an overall orientation toward life.  There are at least two characteristics of our faith: an optimism about humankind and a commitment to improving ourselves and the human condition. Here’s a good example of how the words I’m using today can be overlapping but also distinct.  For the theist oriented toward service, faith will be characterized by good works--by living in right relations with others and the demonstration of equity, justice and compassion in one’s everyday activities.. On the other hand, a secularist motivated by the spirit of love may feel called by that spirit to do the same good works, live in right relationships and demonstrate love, justice and compassion as the theist oriented toward service.

The two people I just described illustrate how people can have differing beliefs—service to God in the one case and responding to the spirit of love in the other—yet have the same faith, faith being an outlook or general orientation towards life.  Of course, it’s an oversimplification to reduce all UUs to either theists or secular humanists.  We come from many places, but we are all going in the same direction, and that is in the service of humankind, which includes, in my humble opinion, service to the interconnected web of life that sustains us and the planet we share with all living things. 

Now, we’re down spirituality. Recall that I said one person can’t have a religion and that two people can’t share the same spirituality. That doesn’t mean, though, that you can’t have a religion of spirituality. 

Spirituality is not something you can create any more than you can sit down with the expectation of writing a great novel. Spirituality happens, sometimes when we least expect it. Yet, it happens more often to those who seek it and who are open to it, and that is what we try to do in our worship services. Many of you would say that the most memorable services you attended were those in which something in the message or the music or in our joys and sorrows somehow evoked the kinds of feelings that I associated with a positive, affirming spirituality, such as a sense of being loved, of belonging, of being worthy, or being whole.

Unitarian-Universalism may be the only denomination in which one of the purposes of worship is to create this kind of  personal spiritual experience.  We’re not here to teach doctrine or dogma.  My performance as a minister will not be judged by how many of my congregants can recite all seven of our principles.  What matters is that we raise to higher level your awareness of the truth that each of you is loved, that you belong to something greater than yourselves, and that you are worthy of that belonging.

In summary, what unites us is that we share membership in a religious community with its own history, tradition, and rituals.  We share common beliefs, one of which is the freedom to disagree with those beliefs. We share a common faith, a faith that calls us to serve humankind and the world we all share. And, we share a commitment in our worship to nurturing the spiritual well being of each individual. If I may add a critique here, most of the time congregations complain about the quality of their worship, it is for lack of spirituality, not for a lack of intellectual stimulation. Unitarian-Universalism often is described as a thinking person’s religion. There is some truth to that, but it misses what is most important. Ours is a religion of the heart.  May it always be so.

© 2004 Paul Britner