Rev. Nancy D. Dean

March 19, 2006

Our Seven Principles: The Ethics of Being UU

It was 1984. After several years of wrangling amongst our very independent Unitarian Universalist members about both the nature and content of the Seven Principles, at that 1984 General Assembly, that yearly gathering of UUs from across the continent and some from around the world, the delegates voted to accept the UU Principles and Purposes, a document now somewhat amended and generally reduced in our thinking to the abbreviated version you always see on the backs of our orders of service.

You should know, especially if you are new to our UU faith, that one of our deepest, most dearly held beliefs, is that no one person, no one religious body, can or should have a statement that is meant to encompass all truth and belief. That is what a doctrine does; that is what a creed does. And we want no truck with that. We believe, along with the great Sufi mystic, Rumi, that there is no single, capital T, Truth, but each of us must speak from an understanding of a truth; as in a piece of truth, a bit of understanding of truth.

Yet, for all that UUs believe in the value of our multi-dimensional understanding of truth and belief, we struggled then to talk about our faith. How to explain to others what was so valuable to us about this free faith that did not come across as either a list of negatives: UUs don’t believe in just one idea of God; UUs don’t believe you can tell others what is true; etc.; to that most loathsome of phrases for any UU minister: If you are a Unitarian, you can believe anything you want. This last is most egregious, for it always leaves the door open for those pedantic about how religion should look to say—and they always go for the worst case scenario—for example: “So, you can believe in pedaphilia and it’s okay?” Of course it’s not okay, it is even abhorrent to make such a statement, but that was the kind of quagmire many of our non-religiously trained UUs would get themselves into trying to explain this liberal religion to those who were ignorant about Unitarian Universalism (and, indeed, ignorant about most religion, even their own).

As a religious movement, we needed a way to put all that is so wonderful about this faith into a naturally positive framework which would give all our members something for a personal guide to spiritual growth, but also a guide for those who know little or nothing about us. This was the back ground then for the development of the Principles, the arduous process of resolutions at our General Assemblies, and their very rapid acceptance across our association.

Here is what I believe is the thrust of our UU Principles, in fact, it is the understanding of ethics that has guided me on some level from my earliest days before I knew how to articulate what I believed, which is: all religion is based on ethics and/or beliefs derived from ethical principles.

Ethics, our ethical or moral beliefs, are the guiding principles of all communities. Communal living requires us to have some set of practices everyone agrees upon. Law is built upon these ethical understandings. To be outside the law, to violate the law, is to violate the ethics of the community. We agree, for example, that to hurt another person willfully, with malice aforethought (in legalese), is wrong. Those who attack others, hurt others, kill others will be punished. This is generally the first ethic and first law of all communities.

Ethics and morals, these terms are generally used interchangeably, though some see ethics as arising from within, and morals imposed from without, but most people tend to see them as pretty much the same thing.

The phrase covenant to affirm and promote, is especially important, because it demonstrates both that we are as a community agreeing (that is what it means to covenant), and further we think these principles are important enough that as a religion we want to promote them, to teach, promulgate, live by, even die for them.

These then are not just principles; they are ethical principles, for which we stand, one faith, in association, for the good of our movement and all humankind. These seven Principles give us our guidelines for behavior that go well beyond just this church, this congregation, this time or place.

When I talk to new UUs in our introductory classes on the history and beliefs, I try to make this understanding of religion stand out, for it has some distinct differences from most other religions. For one thing, we do not teach that we believe this is the only valid religion. In fact, we believe that all religions have merit, all religions rest on some of the basic principles we hold dear. What I see as primarily different between religions is not so much the ethics but the authority issues. Who is right and wrong, the source of truth, ethics, etc. Gary Wills, a traditional conservative, and a self-described contrarian Catholic, has just published a new book, entitled, What Jesus Meant, in which he points out that the Church often is at odds with the teachings of Jesus. That what the Church wants to accomplish is more about issues of power, control, authority. I think this is really the heart of the debate between religions and religious people. Who is right? Why are they right? How did they get right?

For me, the issues around rightness, or righteousness, is first and foremost an issue of ethics. If we all agreed that it was alright to kill people, then no one would get upset over killing people, but we know that we do not all have the same ethics around killing people. While all communities say it is wrong to kill in “our” community, most make exceptions for killing others outside the community. Within the community, some people believe that abortion is wrong because it is killing people; and yet some of those same people think capital punishment, that is the state killing people for us, is right. We have wide differences of opinion and belief around this issue of killing.

Consider that ethics are the root of our debates about abortion certainly, but also animal rights, war, same-sex marriage, euthanasia, genetic engineering, cloning, designer babies, sports betting and doping. I have read or heard news reports related to each of these issues within the last three days.

So even within communities such as ours, we find that our broad ethics, as spelled out in the UU Principles, will still require further defining within smaller groups within our larger UU community. We have people on both sides of most of the issues I just named. We do not say, though, as some religions do, that if you do not agree with everyone in our group on abortion or genetic engineering, or same sex marriage, you are not welcome. Instead, we acknowledge that we have differences. We have a diversity of belief around many issues, but we UUs believe the greater ethic is to work together to support freedom of spiritual belief and practice, freedom to express one’s views respectfully, freedom to gather with other like-minded folk, and so forth.

In fact, as a generally unstated principle, most UUs believe we learn from experiencing our differences. I am not gay, but I learn from our gay members. I am not a vegetarian, but I learn from vegetarians. I am not young anymore, but I learn from the young. Difference does not frighten most UUs, but difference frightens many religions because it threatens their existence. Fundamentalism, about which we hear so much in this country and in the Middle East, is about feeling a way of life, especially a way of religious practice, is threatened. Threatened people tend not to be open to other ways of understanding religion or the world, instead they become more rigid and less willing to learn anything new or different.

Our seven UU Principles are a statement of our general ethics. I must say general, for not every single person who calls himself or herself a Unitarian Universalist believes or lives by all seven. Still, this is where we begin.

As related to the development of religions in the world, those of us who accept evolution (and I’ve yet to meet a UU who does not accept it) see in the anthropological record of human development that ethics came first. When we lived in small clans of a few people, we had to have some rules in order to get along. Those early rules were pretty simple, and came from the survival mode they lived in. But, as clans grew into tribes, then tribes (the Hebrew Bible tells the earliest people of the Bible lived in nomadic tribes) gathered to settle into villages and towns, the ethics of the community became ever more important. How do we live together, what is allowed and not allowed, etc.? From these basic ethical precepts came law. The Ten Commandments are the written record of the law of the Israelites. If you examine them, you will see that about half are really pretty much legal, in the sense of related to broader human ethics, and the other half related to what we understand as religion--I am your God, you shall worship God alone and no other gods or images of them, keep the Sabbath, honor your parents (that one fits both categories); the others are: no adultery, murder, stealing, lying, or coveting (which leads to the aforementioned).

Ethics come first. We must have accepted rules of conduct to live together. For us in this faith and for citizens of this country, democracy is a primary principle. Because we do not all agree on everything, we will vote on what we will do; our elections are important because they are about noting the will of the people on a whole range of issue. Here at Mill Creek, our Annual Meeting in May is when we do that work.

That means in no community or no UU congregation is everyone completely happy. Such an event would be a real miracle. Almost as miraculous though, if we look at most religions and most countries of the world is the system of democracy--that we acknowledge our human imperfections, and try to make the best of it so that most of us can live reasonably peacefully.

Not one of our Principles, not one of our nation’s laws, not one doctrine of any faith is totally free of disagreements. That is why there are hundreds of different religious groups. If God had made it absolutely clear what and how we were to be religious, this would not be the case. My favorite example is that no one can disagree about the human requirement, the human need, to breathe. God or Creation has made this absolutely, undeniably clear. There is no ethic of breathing. But there is an ethic of clean air. See the difference?

Our Principles are the reason I say we are an ethics-based religion. We are not a doctrinally-based religion like Islam or Christianity. We live by the belief that we will do our best to get along because of and despite our differences. We accept that our system is not perfect, but I believe as Winston Churchill said of democracy, it’s the worst form of government, but it is better than anything else in the world. For those who prefer stricter guidelines, there is a veritable wealth of choices out there in the world of religion and authoritarian regimes.

My personal belief is that whatever religion helps a person live the most ethical life is the religion that person should belong to, and for me and hundreds of thousands of us, this UU faith is the one that is right for us.

Spiritual practice, rites and rituals, are each religion’s way of lifting up what the believers see as most important. That is why prayer is the foundation of Islam, communion is for Christians, and lighting the Chalice is for UUs. How our ethics manifest in practice can be beautiful, but also quite different. And this is what most UUs mean when they say you can believe anything you want. For, if people go outside our rather broad principles, they are not likely to be welcomed in our midst. There are no neo-Nazis within our movement by way of obvious example. There are, though, wide differences in practices from our UU Christians, Hindus, Buddhists, Earth-based, theists, deists, atheists, humanists, agnostics, and multi-dimensional forms of belief and worship. I think this makes us not just a good religion, for most UUs are truly good people, but in my eyes it makes us a great religion. We struggle with our differences even as we struggle with our personal attempts to do what we believe is right.

This struggle is not easy; it’s always a challenge. In fact, I think UUs are the most religious people I have ever known precisely because we do not just accept whatever was handed to us at birth, or since, but have had to work out what we really believe is right and wrong. For many of us it meant leaving religions that were easy to explain, if not to live, for this religion that is often easier to live and harder to explain. With all the issues of right and wrong that challenge us daily, lifted up by all the wrongs lifted up daily in the news, we struggle.

I once read that the Victoria, B.C., daily Times instructed the carrier boys to interview people who quit the paper and send in the reason for their cancellation. One boy submitted this message: "The news upsets Mrs. Smardon."

The news certainly upsets most of us, much we see in religions also upsets, but rather than cancel our subscriptions to the paper or religion, we UUs remain committed to the idea that it is better to keep working at all this very stuff of life, than just check out or take an easy road. Which is why we are faithful to our Unitarian Universalist principles and values, and why we say: Unitarian Universalism is an ethic-based religion of seekers after a better way of life for all humanity. Our seven Principles are our guide.

So be it. Blessed be. Amen.