The following sermon was given to the First Unitarian Church in response to Tom Goldsmith's sermon a few weeks earlier

Late last summer our family gathered for a reunion at an idyllic campground in Wyoming's Bridger-Teton Forest. On one of the camping nights I found myself awake about 3:00 AM. All was delightfully peaceful, a mountain stream was rippling nearby and in the distance a Great Horned Owl was calling its mournful cry--which some bird commentators have said sounds like, "Who's awake? Me too". As sometimes happens in such wakeful circumstances my mind was flitting from subject to subject and I began thinking about what I might discuss on this occasion. Tom, in his typical efficiency, had asked me earlier in the summer whether I would consider speaking on this fall date, and so I was ruminating that night on what was really meaningful to me and hopefully worthy of your time as well. My nocturnal conclusion was that I wanted to discuss humanism and my title would be, "Thankful for Humanism In Our Tradition", because I really am very thankful for the humanistic philosophy that has vitally enriched our Unitarian Universalist history down through the decades to the present. So after returning to the city and in the weeks that followed I began gathering my thoughts when the unexpected occurred. Lo and behold, in late October Tom chose to deliver a thoughtful sermon on humanism and what he deemed to be its limitations. At that point I decided to change my title slightly "to Still Thankful for Humanism In Our Tradition", and what I would like to share with you in our next few minutes together is a somewhat different perspective on humanism in our religious movement.

But first let's turn back the clock a bit, quite a ways back as a matter of fact to the spring of 1952. I was a freshman at Ohio University and a student in Dr. Horace Houff's Life's Meaning and Morals philosophy class. On one memorable occasion Dr. Houff invited into our classroom a guest speaker from Yellow Springs, Ohio, who was the Executive Director of the American Humanist Association. The gentleman in question proceeded to discuss the philosophy of humanism. He was quite emphatic that persons could live decidedly moral lives without believing in a personal God. I have to tell you I was aghast at such heresy. I regarded myself a committed Christian, I was very active in Wesley Foundation, the Methodist student group on campus, and I prayed daily and diligently about numerous matters large and small --probably including forthcoming tests. I was also embarked upon preparation for the Methodist ministry at a Methodist seminary after completion of my college work . Morality without God! How could it be conceived?

Just nine years after that humanist presentation at Ohio University, in the summer of 1961, I candidated in this church and was invited to become the minister of this religious community. I came with great enthusiasm as an ardent humanist, and I relished the fact that this church had an illustrious history of humanist ministers preceding me including Jacob Trapp, Ed Wilson, Raymond Cope, and Harold Scott. Clearly, then, some radical changes had taken place in my philosophy and religious life between 1952 and 1961.

To quickly summarize those catalytic years:

A liberal arts degree at Ohio University did what a liberal education is supposed to do. I was introduced to the world. Philosophy, psychology, history, science, world religions, my English major and even ROTC all opened up vast new intellectual horizons as the world came flooding into my psyche. And in that very same psyche were also subterranean doubts that had a disconcerting way of rising to the surface on occasion to trouble my Christian aspirations. I well remember a visit to campus by a Methodist bishop, and believe me, bishops in the Methodist tradition have considerably more power and august authority than bishops here in Zion --whether deserved or not. This particular bishop made himself available for counseling sessions and I responded to his offer and with him tried to sort out some troubling religious questions. I found his counsel similar to but no more helpful than my mother's response years earlier when as a young boy I asked her how one could go on living after death when one's brain died. Both she and the bishop essentially said, "Son, you have to have faith."

None the less, still enjoying Methodist associations and setting doubts aside, following college I went off to Garrett Biblical Institute in Evanston, Illinois, a graduate school decidedly more progressive than its fundamentalist sounding name would imply. There I thrived in pastoral psychology and counseling classes where for the first time I could delve into the provocative writings of such diverse personality theorists as Sigmund Freud and Carl Rogers. In Old and New Testament classes I was

introduced to more sophisticated methods of evaluating biblical writings, a process called "higher criticism". Philosophy of religion classes offered new intellectual tools to evaluate religious tenets and traditions. Sociology of religion classes brought an inspirational awareness of noted proponents of the Social Gospel, men like Walter Rauschenbusch and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. who insisted that the Christian Gospel must come to fruition in activities to promote social justice, world peace and the greater welfare of all the world's inhabitants. I was privileged to hear Dr.King address a large crowd when he visited the nearby Northwestern campus. I remember well his stirring call for freedom for all persons without regard for race, color or creed, a theme familiar to all of us now via his "I Have a Dream" speech delivered in Washington, D.C.

Where I did not thrive in my seminary education was in the theology classes. One professor in particular was enamored with neo-orthodox theologians such as Reinhold Niehbur and Karl Barth, and he relished quoting the early church father, Tertullian, who reportedly said, "I believe because it is absurd". Amazing! This learned professor also liked to quote other church fathers who declared reason to be the whore of religion leading believers down false paths. That's w-h-o-r-e, but I think he could just as easily have said, reason as the horror, h-o-r-r-o-r, of religion. I'm here to tell you that during some of those theology classes I found far greater satisfaction and inspiration outdoors exploring the nearby gardens and wooded areas along Lake Michigan with binoculars in hand, especially during spring migration when the air was filled with beautiful warblers and other avian migrants.

And then a pivotal event occurred in my graduate education at Garrett. In a religious education class we were given an assignment to compare the religious education curriculum of the Methodist Church with that of another denomination of our choosing. I picked the Unitarian curriculum for my comparison and eureka! In that assigned task I encountered for the first time the writings of Sophia Fahs, a central figure in creating Unitarian religious education materials of that day, and her delightful book, Today's Children and Yesterday's Heritage, as well as another volume, The Church Across the Street , which actually suggested that it was important to understand what other churches believed as well as one's own. As I read these books and other Unitarian curriculum items I realized that here were religious education materials I could wholeheartedly believe in and covet for my own children. I knew then that I had to find out more about the hitherto unfamiliar Unitarian tradition which I proceeded to do.

There was another concurrent and crucial process going on in my life during my seminary days. To work on some personal issues I entered into psychotherapy with a psychoanalyst in the community, and among the many benefits of that process I gained the courage to look resolutely at some of the religious doubts that had nagged at me throughout my earlier life. I gained an increased confidence in my own perceptions, thoughts and intuition and a concomitant decreasing certainty in my previous Christian beliefs.

And yet, upon graduation from seminary I resolved to try to function as a liberal Methodist minister since I had enjoyed many rich experiences and associations in that tradition as well as a first rate graduate education, theology classes not withstanding. But that noble experiment only lasted two years. Intellectual integrity and increasing frustration caught up with me and on Ash Wednesday of 1961, at the beginning of the Lenten season with its intensification of Christian thought and practice, I mailed my ministerial credentials to my Methodist bishop, relinquished my position as the associate minister in the large Methodist church which I had been serving, and as I have noted on other occasions, I gave up the Methodist Church for Lent... and thereafter. After five interesting, challenging and economically vulnerable months that followed I had the privilege of becoming the minister of this church.

I might add that during those two Methodist ministerial years I discovered Julian Huxley's very helpful book, Religion Without Revelation, which is still a classic presentation of humanist thought. I also had delightful conversations with David Pohl, then the Unitarian minister at Shaker Heights, Ohio, and Janet and I visited when we could the West Shore Unitarian church in Rocky River, Ohio, where Peter Sampson was a very effective minister. In addition I found welcome inspiration and enlightenment through the sermons of various Unitarian ministers distributed by the Church of the Larger Fellowship, then a correspondence church for Unitarians who were scattered around the globe.

With that prologue I would like now to offer some reactions to Tom's sermon on humanism which he delivered last October.

I was very pleased when Tom paid high tribute to Ed Wilson, the minister of this church from 1946 to 1949 and a very forceful and tireless promoter of humanism within Unitarianism and Universalism as well as outside of those traditions. When Ed left the ministry of this church he moved to Yellow Springs, Ohio, to become the Executive Director of the American Humanist Association, and yes, Ed was the one who thoroughly rattled my cage in that philosophy class at Ohio University in 1952. He and I had occasion to chuckle over that coincidence in later years. I was decidedly pleased when Ed invited me along with numerous others to be a signer of the Second Humanist Manifesto published in 1973. Ed was also a prime promoter and signer of the original Humanist Manifesto in 1933 and for many years he was the editor of The Humanist magazine including during the time of his ministry here in Salt Lake City. Lorille Miller and Stan Larson note in their history of this church that Ed received an honorary Doctor of Divinity degree from Meadville Theological School in 1949 "in recognition of his contributions to the humanist cause and his performance as a Unitarian minister". He helped create the Fellowship of Religious Humanists, primarily an association of Unitarian ministers, and established the journal, Religious Humanism. In 1978 he received the Unitarian Universalist award for distinguished service. And after returning to live in Salt Lake City in his later years Ed helped us to organize a Humanists of Utah chapter of the American Humanist Association, right here in Zion. Ed was 94 when he died. Can I make a case for saying humanism is good for ones health? In any event, I am most appreciative, despite my distressing first encounter with Ed, for his contribution to my life and to countless other humanists throughout his long and illustrious lifetime.

A little further on in Tom's sermon he quoted a 1925 statement by Eustace Haydon, then a humanist professor at the University of Chicago and later the leader of the Ethical Culture Society in Chicago. The Haydon item that Tom quoted as reported in William Schultz's book, Making the Manifesto, read thus:

"Through science man will become master of the earth and rise to undreamed heights. Science...will release the potentialities of every soul...In the new world the production of sick souls will no longer be possible...Purpose will be given to life. The old tragedies, the ancient evils will pass away."

Hayden clearly over reached in these dated sentiments which almost sound like a parody today such was his moment of excessive exuberance for the advance of science. However, there was a footnote in the back of Bill Schultz's book related to that quote which read:

In fairness to Haydon, he also called for stricter controls over the uses of science, saying, "The humanist recognizes that science in the hands of selfish men, allowed to create a civilization without the blessing or control of social idealism, has given us the modern age with its cruel maladjustments and its perversion of all human values"...

Bill Schultz also continued in that footnote:

He also disparaged uncritical visions [and again quoting Hayden] "Idealism is sobered by knowledge. Utopias are outmoded. There is no longer a search for panaceas...There will always be problems and new forms of evil."

The footnote stands in decided contrast to the original quote both Schultz and Tom cited and I would contend these latter sentiments still have relevance today.

If Tom wanted to quote from that era I might have preferred a short sentence of Walter Lippman's who wrote in his classic work, A Preface to Morals, in 1929: "When men can no longer be theists, they must, if they are civilized, become humanists."

Following Tom's quotation of Haydon's I was really startled to hear him say, "I have not heard humanism offer much different in the last 60 years". The obvious suggestion was that whatever original thinking might have been done by humanists had ceased 60 to 70 years ago and was now passe. My own experience has been so very different! As a minister and later teacher, psychologist and therapist both my life and professional practice have been greatly enriched through the years by humanistic psychologists such as Rollo May, Erich Fromm, Abraham Maslow, Carl Rogers, Albert Ellis, James Bugental, Alan Watts and Irvin Yalom. Within our Unitarian Universalist tradition I have been inspired not only by the early humanists writers, Curtis Reese, William Diedrich, Ed Wilson, and Lester Mondale but also in more recent years by Khoren Arisian, Mason Olds, William Schultz, and numerous other humanist ministers and writers whose work has been published in the UU World, in the journal of the Fellowship of Religious Humanists, and other similar publications. In the wider world of humanist thought I have found continuing intellectual stimulation and provocative insights in the writings of such persons as that feisty philosopher from England, Bertrand Russell; Harvard's scientist par excellence, twice Pulitzer prize winning author, and in the words of one commentator "towering figure in modern science," Edward O. Wilson; the Renaissance man and author of approximately 500 books (the exact number is in dispute), Isaac Asimov; the unforgettable astronomer, author and TV figure who knew a lot about pursuing mysteries of the universe, Carl Sagan; the tireless promoter of humanism and civil rights and the author of the classic Philosophy of Humanism, Corliss Lamont; and a host of other writers including Gerald Larue and Paul Kurtz whose writings have often been published in the pages of the American Humanists Association's magazine, The Humanist , as well as The Council for Secular Humanism's magazine, Free Inquiry. I have also been delving recently into the publications emanating from The North American Committee for Humanism and the Humanist Institute which grapple in a significant way with contemporary social and philosophical issues. Tom said he has set aside his American Humanists Association card. I think that by so doing he may have deprived himself of some vital and relevant material through the years that would have even further enriched his voluminous reading. Indeed, my problem has never been in exhausting enlightening humanist writings relevant to each successive decade but rather to find the time for all the reading I would like to do whether humanistically oriented or otherwise. I should have the T-shirt which reads, "So many books, so little time!"

In Tom's sermon I was also surprised to hear him extol "mystery," a concept he said was "frightening to humanists" but essential to our well being. And he offered an esoteric redefinition of the word. I find myself not frightened but decidedly mystified. What we are dealing with at this point is something called epistemology which is a branch of philosophy that deals with, in dictionary verbiage, "the study or a theory of the nature and grounds of knowledge especially with reference to its limits and validity". In other words, how do we really know what we think we know and how valid is our belief system? We routinely say, "I know..." something or other when deeper analysis often reveals that we are deluded, misinformed, misperceiving or misinterpreting information from our senses. Both unconscious drives and conscious biases muddy the waters and make our supposed knowledge decidedly questionable. Think of the widely divergent witness reports of accidents and faulty reports of crime scenes, the supposed white van sightings in the sniper shootings back East as a much publicized recent example. In the bird watching realm we often say facetiously, "I wouldn't have seen it if I hadn't believed it". Knowing anything with certainty is really very complex though we blithely take our assumptions for granted. In truth, or more appropriately, I think that all we believe and claim we know is based on an element of faith in the veracity of our senses and the validity of our thinking processes, not in spite of or contrary to reason, but based on assumptions that we can not ultimately prove with absolute certainty. In overly extolling reason in the past humanists as well as theists and others have forgotten the inherent faith assumptions upon which we live and move and carry out our everyday existence. That ought to keep everyone humble! We can not ultimately prove that love is better than hate, justice better than injustice, beauty better than ugliness, etc., however obvious such values may seem to us. We may have our preferences, beliefs and values that we are willing to pay a high price for even to the point of death. We may point to both history and the present day to show how we think some values promote human welfare better than others and yet ultimate truth and absolute proof forever elude us. This is what prompts some Post Modernists to claim that we can't really know anything. However, that stance seems ridiculous on its face. Such persons might better remain silent because from their point of view they don't really know what they are talking about and further, their listeners wouldn't really know what they were talking about either. In any event, in the existential living of our lives, we all have to make never ending decisions large and small to maintain, preserve and enrich our lives even if we often do so with fingers crossed. We humanists prefer to utilize reasonableness, experience and the scientific method to guide our thinking complemented by the less obviously reason oriented processes of intuition and aesthetic appreciation. At our best we are open to whatever wisdom is available coming down through the ages from the wisdom literature of the Old Testament, Hellenism, the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, the varying world religions and the multitudinous productions of countless thoughtful persons throughout the world, in every era down to the present.

So where does the notion of mystery fit into all of this? And how are we to be nurtured by the unknowable, by definition? We often stand in awe and wonder at marvels here on our little planet, and as we look outward into the boundless universe and seek to understand and appreciate more and more with an insatiable appetite. But "Mystery" with a capital M eludes me and doesn't strike a responsive chord as either a source of guidance or inspiration. Tom said that "it is mystery that nourishes the very center of our lives". For myself, rather, it is the love of my family and friends, the beauty of the earth, the resplendent arts, the ability to move and think and learn and create and dream, and the opportunity to love, to serve and interact with others that nourishes the very center of my life.

I'm going to over generalize and over simplify here for a few moments before concluding. My working assumption is that the geography we grow up in or spend a lot of time in quite naturally influences both our temperaments and our thinking. Tom has spent a significant portion of his life in New England which is rich in both history and intellectual ferment over the last two centuries including those famous proponents of transcendentalism such as Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Amos Bronson Alcott, William Ellery Channing, and others. Harvard Divinity School, which Tom attended, has for many years enjoyed a well deserved reputation for ministerial training and as a repository for fine scholarship including that of the well known transcendentalist authors. Perhaps here again a dictionary definition, in this case of transcendentalism, is a succinct and helpful contribution to our discussion:

1. A philosophy that emphasizes the a priori conditions of knowledge and experience or the unknowable character of ultimate reality or that emphasizes the transcendent as the fundamental reality.
2. A philosophy that asserts the primacy of the spiritual and transcendental over the material and empirical.

I think there is a familiar ring here in thinking of Tom's emphasis on "mystery" and other similar themes in his sermons.

I, on the other hand grew up in the Midwest which I would describe in short hand fashion as meat and potatoes country and I am a meat and potatoes sort of person...or actually semi-vegetarian these days. (It just goes to show that environment isn't all determinative.) But I might just as well have grown up in Missouri, the "Show Me State" that prides itself on pragmatism and evidence. Indeed, the midwestern segment of our country has reveled in pragmatism and decidedly less esoteric themes than New England. Thoreau could wax eloquently on Whippoorwills, butterflies and other flora and fauna while the poet of the Midwest, Carl Sandburg, later penned such spartan lines focused on such things as:

Chicago
Hog Butcher of the World,
Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat,
Player with Railroads and the Nation's Freight Handler;
Stormy, husky, brawling,
City of the Big Shoulders

Or his poem entitled, Happiness:

I asked professors who teach the meaning of life to tell me what is happiness.
And I went to famous executives who boss the work of thousands of men.
They all shook their heads and gave me a smile as though I was trying to fool with them.
And then one Sunday afternoon I wandered out along the Desplaines river
And I saw a crowd of Hungarians under the trees with their women and children and a keg of beer and an accordion.

One can easily think of many other examples of the pragmatic/liberal approach to life in the Midwest from the liberalism of such schools as the University of Wisconsin to the well known liberal politicians of both Wisconsin and Minnesota including Humphrey, Mondale, and Wellstone . There were the well known academics such as John Dewey, perhaps America's best known philosopher and educator, who in the naturalistic tradition developed his philosophy of Pragmatism at the University of Chicago. I think we could even cite NPR's broadcasts emanating from Minnesota featuring that delightful raconteur,Garrison Keillor and the fictitious inhabitants of Lake Woebegone . Meadville Theological School in Chicago was the spawning ground for many of the early humanist ministers in Unitarianism and thus was very influential in the spread of humanism throughout the Midwest. Again, as a generalization, as the Unitarian movement moved west across the country from its New England roots the more humanistic the tradition became. Many of you may not be aware that the original name of this church was The First Unitarian Society and continued with that name until 1962 when I, for better or worse, initiated the move to rename our organization The First Unitarian Church, a decision much lamented by some humanists in the congregation at the time. The vote at a congregational meeting was 53 in favor and 18 opposed to the name change which I must confess has been a very minor source of ambivalence for me in subsequent years. You see, we humanists are up front about getting rather twitchy about traditional religious terms such as "worship,'' "prayer", "spiritual" and the biggy, "God," in association with our religious community even as we try to remember our emphasis upon our prized diversity and "deeds, not creeds." The terms in question carry so much baggage and ambiguity for many of us that they have lost much of their luster and attraction. I took due note of a recent ad for a new Volkswagen Beetle convertible which spoke of its "spiritual" qualities. (That must be some automobile!) Many of us have worked with such diligence to evolve a philosophical position of integrity that we are undoubtedly over sensitive to the persistence of some words in our religious gatherings that have decidedly lost their appeal.

But to move this discussion to a close I would point out the obvious, that my generalizations about New England as contrasted with the Midwest and the thought forms therein are decidedly limited. I thoroughly enjoy reading Thoreau as one of my heroes and Emerson as well, and I imagine Tom could also say a few good words for the likes of Dewey and Sandburg. And I believe that Tom and I, whatever our philosophical differences might be in some particulars, are united on much common ground. I feel confident neither of us expects supernatural assistance in helping us with multitudinous and ever present human dilemmas. Both of us would agree that it is vitally important for each of us to develop a belief system that is satisfying, promotes ones well being, and is congruent with the best information available from whatever source. Both of us would agree that it is essential to keep both head and heart involved in our religious quest. Both of us would be in agreement that our religious beliefs, ethics and practices need to be borne out with diligence in the daily round and in unstinting efforts to create a better world for all of its inhabitants. As Ed Abbey once said, "passion without action is the ruin of the soul." There are so many challenges facing all of us, personally and collectively, locally and throughout the world, that we must continually renew our vision, tap into our courage, join with others in our efforts, and do what needs to be done as long as we are able. So let us take heart and proceed with high resolve as we pursue those challenges together. And thanks to Tom for offering me this opportunity to share a different point of view.