I hear the same sad story over and over. It is a story very similar to the one we heard in our chalice lighting this morning. It is a story of someone being driven from his or her religious home because he or she simply could no longer believe the teachings. In fact, this congregation, and our entire movement for that matter, is a kind of religious refugee center for doubters and heretics. I know this story well, for it is my story, too.
This story has a lot of variations. Some, like Carolee, could not accept an image of God that is brutal and tribal. Others are driven away by a fundamentalism that asks them to believe in creationism and miracles. Others cannot accept any of the common beliefs about God and find that there is no room for serious doubt, much less agnosticism or atheism.
Millions of Americans have been banished, driven out, rejected by the religious communities in which they were raised. When they were very young, the church was a kind of extended family. It was a place where they belonged, where they were accepted, where they felt safe. It was a place of fond memories: Christmas pageants, confirmation, Easter mornings, church picnics. However, there was a price of admission. We had to be able to say the words of a creed or accept teachings we doubted. When we couldn’t do it any longer, we left the church behind. And many of us left all religion behind. I wonder how millions of people there are in America who have left the church in which they were raised and have become bitter and anti-religious. In Europe hardly anyone goes to church anymore.
Increasingly, people who left the church have children whom they raise with no religious affiliation. So another story that I hear regularly, especially from people who are under 40, is the story of someone raised with little or no exposure to church. They come wondering if there is something more than a life spent pursuing secular success. They have no bad memories of indoctrination and rigidity. They do not come seeking refuge from orthodoxy. They come seeking community and a refuge from emptiness.
And yet there is one basic belief that almost all of us share with the most conservative, reactionary and fundamentalist religious extremists. It is an idea that we also share, ironically enough, with hard-core atheists who are opposed to all religion. Almost all of us have accepted the notion that religion is about what we believe. So the question becomes whether we believe in such things as miracles and the resurrection or whether we believe in evolution and the Big Bang.
Even for religious liberals like us, the situation is uncomfortable. When someone asks us what Unitarian Universalist believe, we tend to give answers that are long, vague, and tedious. We aren’t comfortable with the question. We squirm. We fidget. We struggle.
The trouble is that we treat the question, “What do you believe?” as a legitimate and natural question. After all, religion is about what we believe, isn’t it?
No! Religion is not about what you or I or Baptists or Catholics or Jews or Muslims or Hindus believe. I would even go a giant step further: belief is the enemy of religion. Let me repeat that: belief is the enemy of religion.
Perhaps I should explain.
Our problem here in America in the 21st century is that we are so immersed in a culture that sees religion as a matter of what people believe that we think this the way it has always been. It isn’t. All of this emphasis on what someone believes is actually very modern and very western.
I sometimes cite an extreme example to make this point. No one objects to calling Buddhism a religion. Yet Buddhism has no theology at all in the way we use the word. Buddhists don’t believe anything, at least not anything that is a set of propositions. Buddhism doesn’t even have a god in the usual sense.
But, of course, Buddhism might strike us as a bit esoteric and foreign. Well, let’s take a look at the religious culture out of which most of us came—the Christian and Jewish tradition.
Jews have never had anything like a creed, a statement of belief. Ironically, Jesus, about whom there are all sorts of creeds, probably never encountered a creed. The whole idea would have been foreign. Jews did have a definite sense of God, to be sure. But look at what this God of the Jews actually did. He created the world. (Actually, if we read Genesis carefully, we see that he created the world twice. Genesis compiles two very different and incompatible creation myths.) However, the key to the God of the Jews is that he gave the Hebrew people the law. Note that the Hebrew scriptures never show any interest in what the people believe. The scriptures show a lot of interest in what they do. They are supposed to love God and follow the commandments. The great prophets are concerned with justice, compassion and keeping the covenant with God.
The early Christian communities, while they did show more concern with what people believed, actually tolerated a lot of variety.
Islam, the next great religious movement, also has little theology. Its statement of faith is that there is no God but God and that Mohammed is his prophet. This is a way of insisting, as did the Jews, that there is only one God. This is not surprising in a movement that was familiar with Jewish and Christian monotheism. And again, the great emphasis in Islam was with what the the faithful are supposed to do, not what they are supposed to think.
All the emphasis on religion as belief does not come on the scene until much later. It started with the Catholic Church and its creeds, but it really got intense with the Reformation. The Protestants insisted that the Bible, not the Pope, was the ultimate religious authority. The problem was that the Bible is a collection of writings by different people over centuries that is open to lots and lots of interpretations. The main point here is that all of this emphasis on religion being about thinking the right things is really a modern aberration.
Even the whole idea of belief has gotten twisted. The word used to be used in a very different way. “Belief” once meant “what I give my heart to” or what I commit myself to. Belief was linked to action and to emotion. Belief did not mean agreeing, in a purely intellectual way, with a set of metaphysical or theological propositions.
Our reading this morning was taken from a recent book by James Carse, the former head of the religious studies program at New York University. The book’s title is The Religious Case Against Belief. Carse points out that while religious traditions give rise to beliefs, the religious traditions are greater and more enduring than any set of beliefs. No religious tradition can be reduced to a set of beliefs. For example, Christianity is a religious tradition that has endured any number of belief systems. Even the Catholic Church, that bastion of orthodoxy and stability, has changed its beliefs over time. It is no longer a heresy to believe that the sun is the center of the solar system. It was a heresy when Galileo taught it. Today it is not even a heresy for a Catholic to believe that we humans evolved from other forms of life over millions of years. The Pope accepts the reality of evolution. So one can be a Catholic today and believe what a Catholic would have been put to trial and punished for a few hundred years ago.
We forget that white Protestants in America used to believe that slavery was God’s will. I don’t know of a Protestant denomination today who teaches that.
I could go on and on. I think you have the point. Even in the religion that cares the most about what people believe, beliefs change. Yet the religion goes on and on. So the religion cannot be what its followers believe.
Yet I want to make a more radical point. And it is a point being made by a number of writers, including James Carse and Karen Armstrong. Armstrong has written a number of scholarly books that are widely read, including A History of God and The Battle for God.
The point is that religious belief is actually the enemy of religion. That is, every major religious tradition seeks to impart a sense of wonder, of mystery, of awe, of humility, of openness to creation. Belief systems stop this cold. In fact, as Carse puts it, belief systems start where our thinking stops. Once we think we have explained it all, once we think we have all the answers, we cut ourselves off from new ideas and new experience.
Just look at what happens when a belief system takes hold. What follows is truly horrible. First, we define everyone who does not agree with us as either ignorant or evil. If we have the truth and are certain we have it, then our task in life becomes spreading this truth. Our task also becomes defending the truth from all of those who disagree. Suddenly we have enemies everywhere. The world becomes a battleground. This is the world of Muslim fundamentalists blowing up innocent people, of Christian crusaders attacking Muslim cities, of Nazis murdering millions of Jews, of Stalinists murdering millions of Russians and Maoists murdering untold Chinese and “re-educating” millions of others. This is the world of Calvin burning Michael Servetus alive for theological differences none of us even cares about today. This is the world of the Spanish Inquisition and the world of Pol Pot’s killing fields in Cambodia.
Once a religion, or a political perspective, becomes an all encompassing belief system, murder will surely follow. Believers are dangerous.
What we need instead is what Carse calls a “higher ignorance.” What a marvelous term, “higher ignorance.” He argues that at their core, all the great traditions open us up. They don’t close us down. They help us move to a place of higher ignorance, an awareness that we do not know everything, to a place of profound humility and curiosity.
So, if religion isn’t really about what we believe, then what is it about? Can we be religious without a belief system?
I am convinced that religion without belief is true religion. Religion that is focused on belief is a dangerous corruption of true religion.
Religion without belief is not phony religion. It isn’t fake religion or pretend religion or partial religion. I think this is what the famous theologian Paul Tillich was getting at when he suggested that atheists are closer to God than most believers. I have heard critics of liberal religion complain that ours is church where people can believe anything they want. Actually, that is not true. I cannot truly believe anything I want. I would love to believe that I will live to be 900 years old and will play professional baseball. What is important about liberal religion is that you and I don’t have to try to believe what we don’t believe. We don’t have to pretend. We don’t have to lie. But most importantly, we don’t get caught up in endless ridiculous debates about whose beliefs are correct.
Actually, the problem with asking what someone believes is that it is the wrong question.
True religion is about what we love, not about what we think. True religion is about being faithful to what we love. The key religious questions you and I must answer are these: What do we love so much that we are moved to tears? What gives us unspeakable joy? What gives us peace beyond understanding? What do we love so much that it calls us to action? What do we care about so deeply that we willingly, joyfully, devote our lives to it?
I suggest that when someone asks you what you believe, you tell them that you believe that is the wrong question. Beliefs change. If at age 50 you believe what you did at age 5, or at age 15, you are a case of arrested development.
On the other hand, asking what we truly love is the right question. That question goes to the core of our being and opens us to rich possibilities.
What does religion without belief look like? Let us imagine religion without belief. What might it be like?
First, when we focus on what we love, we don’t waste time arguing about things that are not essential. That does not make us anti-intellectual. I am not advocating willful ignorance. In fact, intellectual curiosity and openness are part of a religious life.
When we focus on what we truly love, we ask questions that are truly important. We ask questions like, “What are we going to do together? How do we want to be together?” When we focus on what we truly love, we find that we actually love the same things.
We discover that we want to be compassionate and gentle with one another. We realize that we need one another. We want to be there for each other during difficult times. We want to raise children who love the same things we do, things that make life rich and whole and worth living. We want to create a place where we can come to know one another more deeply. We want to create a place where we can cry together, laugh together, sing together, learn together, and act together. We want a place where we can come together to remind ourselves of what is truly worthwhile. That is what worship is—it is literally an affirmation of worth.
And we want to make a difference in the world. We are not content to be a club. We know there are hundreds, thousands, of neighbors who love what we love. And if they love what we love, they have the same religion we do. We open our hearts and our doors to them.
I opened this sermon reflecting on the sad story I have heard hundreds of times—a story of beliefs that drive people apart. This is religion at its worst. When we focus on what we think, we will always find disagreement. When we focus on what we believe, pain, division, hatred and violence always, always, follow.
When we focus on what we love, on our most cherished values, just the opposite happens. We find that we love the same things. We want to belong, we want to be loved, we want peace, joy, wisdom, wonder, compassion and justice to prevail in the world. When we focus on what we love, we immediately want to come together to create a religious community. We want, more than anything, to be faithful to what we love.
This is our challenge. We must know what we love. And then we must let that love guide us. This, my friends, is true religion. It is not really religion without belief. It is religion beyond belief. It is a religion to be lived.
May true religion, the religion of what we love, guide us today and always.
Amen.