Our Theological House:
Human Nature

A sermon written to be delivered at the Unitarian Universalist Congregation (Blacksburg, VA), October 15, 2006, by the Reverend Christine Brownlie. This sermon is the second in a series called “Our Theological House.” The metaphor of a theological house comes from a series of lectures by the Rev. Rebecca Parker, President of Starr King School for the Ministry in Berkeley California. (Starr King is one of our two Unitarian Universalist seminaries.) You will find a fuller description of Rev. Parker’s thoughts in the first sermon of the series, “Our Theological House: A Tour of the House,” which is on our congregational Web site at this URL.

Rev. Parker says that there were many rooms in our theological house, each representing a particular topic or concern of the field of thought called “theology.” Today we’re going to visit the room called human nature. Because religions often teach very different ideas about the worth of males and females, I’ll also touch briefly on the stance taken by Unitarians and Universalists on the place of women in society and in the church.

If I were asked to limit myself to a one-word description of the American Unitarian Universalist view of human nature, I’d choose “optimistic.” Our emphasis has always been on the human potential for goodness and kindness, and on the power of our capacity called reason to take on the problems of society and find solutions. Another notable hallmark of Unitarianism is the importance of concern for self, not as in selfish or self-absorbed — although our critics have accused us of these faults — but as in self-knowledge and self-improvement.

Let’s look at the religious landscape of the late 1700s, and early 1800s, when American Unitarianism and Universalism were fledgling religious movements. The predominant theology of that day, based on the teachings of John Calvin, held a very harsh view of human nature. Most people believed that humans were born tainted by original sin, and that all people were totally depraved and without any hope of altering on their own their wicked and sinful ways. Any impulse to do good was a sign of God’s grace — not of human discernment or moral character.

It’s impossible for us to realize how very radical and courageous the Rev William Ellery Channing was when he proclaimed a very different understanding of human nature. Channing was a Unitarian minister who held a pulpit in one of the largest churches in Boston Massachusetts in the early to mid 1800s. He taught that every person carried a seed of the divine within their conscience and that all humans bore a “likeness unto God,” not Satan.

Channing taught that the faculty of reason was the supreme human power and a gift from God and “an expression of His will.” He felt that the power of reason should be used in every area of human inquiry — especially religion. “The light in my own breast is His primary revelation,” Channing wrote, and a person’s reason, carefully trained and honed was more trustworthy that the Bible.

Despite his conviction in the reliability of reason and his faith in the human capacity for self-improvement, Channing was fully aware of human failings. He warned his parishioners to be wary of taking the concept of sin too lightly. He said that people who were sincere about character improvement would spend time scrutinizing their actions, words, habits, motives, looking for any taint of self-indulgence, laziness, or waste of time or money. And then they would focus on developing their character to reflect the highest values and aspirations.

Channing was a very influential preacher, and he had a strong influence on some of the leading reformers of his day. They took his message of the divine seed in every person to the poor houses, jails, factories, and to the abolitionist meetings of the day. But even as this heretical message was getting attention, new ideas about human nature were emerging.

One of these new thinkers was Ralph Waldo Emerson, who was trained as a Unitarian Minister. He was a close friend of Channing, and he espoused even more radical views of human nature. Emerson claimed that a person’s first duty was not to society, nor to what he called “dead religion.” One’s first duty was not even to family and friends. Our first duty was to discover our unique self and live our lives as an expression of that self.

In his essay titled “Self-Reliance” Emerson railed against the deadening path of conformity to the social, political, and religious norms of the day. He urged his readers to discover their own unique force and personality and to recognize that the power that dwells within each person is “new in nature.” He wrote that each person’s power represents a “divine idea,” and that each of us is called to express that idea as fully and fearlessly as possible — regardless of what other people might think of our actions and attitudes.

Emerson is sometimes called the “Father of Individualism,” and he has been criticized for an over-emphasis on the value and power of the individual. But Emerson also carried his concern for the development of self and the sanctity of the individual into the public arena. He added his voice to those of others who were opposed to the government’s polices. He spoke out for the rights of native tribal people and of slaves, and he was a strong advocate of women’s rights.

The Universalist understanding of human nature was not as sanguine as the Unitarian view, but it was much more positive than Calvinist doctrines. Universalists believed that every person is caught up in the snares of sin and is in need of redemption. Even so, human beings are not “depraved” or lacking in the strength and resources to choose the good alternative. Rev. John Murray and his colleagues taught that once a person truly recognizes and accepts God’s love and grace as seen in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, that person’s heart and mind will change to become more in tune with God’s desire for reconciliation with all of creation. As our hearts open to the reality of God’s love and mercy, our love for God will lead us to the path of goodness and love for our fellow humans who might be struggling with sin and fear.

Love for God and love for humankind pushed many Universalists to take on some of the social issues of the day such as slavery, women’s rights to education as well as legal protection in marriage and the vote, and free public education for all children. Like their Unitarian cohorts, these reformers were also motivated to convince society that all human being have value and the right to improve themselves and their lot in life.

The Universalists were ahead of their Unitarian friends when it came to the role of women in the Church. In 1863 a young woman named Olympia Brown applied to a Unitarian seminary for entrance into their program for ministers. She was turned down. The Universalists admitted her to St Lawrence Seminary. Although there was opposition from both professors and other students, Miss Brown graduated and was ordained. Other women followed, and both Universalist and Unitarian seminaries began to accept female students and to place them in congregations. These courageous women were generally sent to serve congregations that were in isolated communities in the West, but they were accepted and even admired by their parishioners. Their presence and position awakened other women to the possibility that they too could seek opportunities to better themselves.

Despite the shattering years of the Civil War and the painful days of the years immediately after that war, Unitarians continued to emphasize their faith in human reason and the products of that reason. In the face of the suffering and destruction of the war years, many found a sense of hope as they contemplated the growing world of science and all those things that scientific innovations and knowledge could bring. The conviction that human reason and human industry — rather than the intervention of a divine — was the answer to human woes, led one Unitarian author to say that science was, “the world’s true Messiah.” The anticipation of untold progress spurred on by human reason seemed to make real the Biblical notion that humankind was just a little lower than angels. As one prominent Unitarian minister rejoiced, the direction of humanity was “Onward and upward forever!”

A new philosophy called Humanism was on the rise among intellectuals, and Unitarian ministers were some of the leading voices in that movement. Humanists denied that there was any supernatural source for human values. Unitarian minister Curtis Reese wrote that the self-development should be based on a deep commitment and loyalty to “worthful causes and goals” rather than the desire to please a supernatural being — because there was no such being. He and other Unitarian Humanist ministers stressed the “independent nature of human beings” and proclaimed that the coming world order would bring all people together as sisters and brothers: free, upright, and proud.

The bold rejection of the idea of any sort of supernatural power ignited a heated controversy within Unitarianism between those who disavowed the traditional image of God and those who held on to their faith in the Biblical deity. Those who held to a more traditional faith worried that a Unitarianism without God would make more traditional believers feel that something was missing from our way of the spirit. But that view did not prevail, and Humanism became the dominant view.

Some Universalist ministers saw traditional religions as yet another avenue for the goal of human unity and understanding. They saw that all religious faiths shared similarities in their teachings and aspirations — despite their different doctrines and rituals. The Rev. Kenneth Patton, a leading Universalist minister in the mid 1900s, taught that religion was a human activity and not a divine gift. This was not an original idea, but Patton’s writings and sermons kindled a hope that differences among the peoples of the earth might be resolved — or at least softened — as men and women began to explore the common experiences and dreams of humankind through an exploration of religions.

As appealing as this optimistic view of human nature faith might be, many recognized that optimism and faith in human progress is a partial view. The horrors of two World Wars, the Holocaust, the brutality of Stalin’s regime, and the suffering cause by the social problems of the era simple could not be glossed over by the glorification of human progress. Liberal religions came under heavy criticism for their inattention to the problem of evil.

This criticism is still one that we liberals face today. There is no official recognition of evil in our own Unitarian Universalist Principles and Purposes. The word “sin” is seldom used in sermons by UU ministers. We don’t use prayers of confession in our Sunday service. The words of our hymns seldom speak of human failing or weakness. But this rejection of old and outmoded ideas doesn’t let us off the hook when it comes to human behavior that is deliberately cruel, demeaning, and destructive.

I believe that evil is a reality with which we must grapple as we consider human nature. I am sure that every person in this room has, at some time, struggled with a powerful urge to do something that we knew was morally wrong and/or hurtful to another person. Some of us may have given in to that impulse and then experienced that painful human emotion called guilt. Somehow in our evolution as a religious movement, we dropped the ideas of sin and guilt as an expression of human nature that needs a religious and not just a psychological response. I will discuss this more deeply in a future sermon, but I will say that this omission is a lost opportunity for us as religious people in our struggle to understand fully our own true nature.

In the past two decades a shift has occurred within our UU movement. A growing number of us are talking about a longing for an important and indefinable “something more.” For some this is a sense that there is more to life than what we can see or touch or know through reason alone. While we still value reason and the way of science, many Unitarian Universalists are taking another look at what some would call the “spiritual side” of our humanity.

This reawakened interest is being expressed even among those who consider themselves to be practicing Humanists. Andy Reese, the author an intriguing book called Rational Spirituality writes,

“Most of us feel intuitively that scientific knowledge is not enough. We recognize that science and technology have been too successful to ignore, but we feel that there is more to life than we can explain rationally.”

You or I may not believe in a supernatural god, but our experience and intuition might lead us into new ways of knowing and understanding our human condition. We recognize that we are a part of a great mysterious system called the universe. And for some, this connection awakens strong feelings of awe, wonder and meaning — the foundational emotions of the human religious impulse.

In an essay written for the journal The Religious Humanist, the Rev. David Brumbaugh, writes of our relationship with the universe in poetic language that is startling.

“We are not encapsulated, separated, isolated beings. Whatever we are, the universe is. The reality inside of us and the reality outside of us are ultimately one reality. In us the universe dreams its dreams. In us the universe struggles for a moral vision. In us the universe hopes for new possibilities. In us the universe strives for self-understanding. In us the universe seeks the meaning of existence.”

These may be strange ideas to contemplate, but they resonate with many UUs who are interested in what is called “evolutionary spirituality.”¹

What is human nature? Perhaps the fact that we can ask that question and strive to answer it tells us a great deal about ourselves. We are meaning-makers, and we have developed an amazing assortment of tools to help ourselves in that work. I believe that this desire to make meaning of our own existence and the existence of all that exists is a defining trait of our species. As Unitarian Universalists, we do not settle for easy answers or statements of faith that come to us from other people and other times. We must struggle to find the answers for ourselves. It is this struggle that binds us together as a religious community of love and hope. Let us be good companions to one another, remembering always that we do not have to think or believe alike to love alike.

May it be so.

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