This sermon was given at Stevens Chapel on September 28, 2003 by Rev. Judith Campbell.

Who Needs Religion?

OK Everybody….here comes my favorite subject! And it is not because I am a minister, but it well may be one of the reasons why I became a minister. Ever since I was a kid, the subject of religion has been a major interest of mine. I even briefly…..very briefly flirted with the thought of entering the convent, but it was because I was fascinated by the mystery that surrounded convents, and of course, I liked the clothes. That little fantasy ended with my first date!

Religion is a fascinating subject. We two-legged animals have had some sort of religious practice since the beginning of human history. And we have created, and yes, I mean we have created, religious structures and hierarchies as a response to "the Big questions", most notably death, and the meaning of life. If death is the inevitable end to the gift and the challenge of living, then what are we here for, and why are we killing ourselves "getting ahead" when we are all going to die any way, and what happens after we take our leave? We are still asking those questions, and we are still trying to answer them, only now we have more sophisticated help in our religious and philosophical quest. We have religious historians, archeologists and anthropologists with huge computer data bases and banks, and with a broad knowledge of genetic engineering available, asking these same questions. And curiously enough, a broad scientific knowledge base or quest, does not cancel out the religious quest; it broadens it, and for some scientists, deepens the mystery and magnifies the wonder

In our not too distant past, we relied upon a hierarchy or panoply of whimsical, selfish and sometimes downright dangerous Gods and Goddesses and the priests and priestesses who we empowered to interpret their words to give us the answers. Have we simply created a different hierarchy, created a different series of gods and idols to worship, like the movement towards eco-spirituality, or movements like communism, or "Est, or Silva mind control…" remember those…or other systems or formulae that give us answers, so we don’t have to ask questions.

Sometimes I wonder how far we have come. Or, are we just spiraling in a continuing ascent to trying to understand life’s meaning, always returning to the same questions, only on higher and more critically informed/scientifically proven levels?…(that is until the next major scientific breakthrough begins the spiral ascent for yet another time/season/epoch)

Religion tries to answer life’s questions, often through the creation or establishment of an authority figure or figures and a structure or system of living and behaving vis-à-vis those figures and that structure in which the adherents of that religion will, if they live according to the canon, be safe in this life and secure and happy in the next. That simple statement has about as many permutations as there are religions.

Philosophy, on the other hand, does the much same thing, only without the hierarchy of the Gods and Goddesses. Philosophy, is defined in the dictionary as

1. The rational investigation of the truths and principles of being, knowledge, or conduct.
2. A system of philosophical doctrine, e.g. The philosophy of Spinoza, or Plato or Socrates,
3. The critical study of the basic principles and concepts of a particular branch of knowledge…the philosophy of science or of religion,
4. A system of principles for guidance in practical affairs

Religion, is defined as

1. a set of beliefs concerning the cause, nature, and purpose of the universe, especially when considered as the creation of a superhuman agency or agencies, usually involving devotional and ritual observances and often containing a moral code for the conduct of human affairs.
2. a specific fundamental set of beliefs and practices generally agreed upon by a number of persons, or sects, e.g. The Christian religion,
3. the body of persons adhering to a particular set of beliefs and practices, e.g. a world council of religions.

The MacMillan Compendium of World Religions says much the same, but takes three pages. It then sums it up for itself in one highlighted paragraph saying, "Religion is the organization of life around the depth dimensions of experience – varied in form, completeness and clarity in accordance with the environing culture."

The similarities are primarily a system or organization of beliefs and or practices around a central theme providing guidance in practical affairs, "a philosophy of life".

So what’s the big deal? Why have we humans fought each other so bitterly, and savagely over what for most is a so called "higher" principle? Power is certainly one answer. The need to be right or freedom from fear of being wrong or the unknown is another. Covering your bets is another.

What if, like medieval Christians, for all of your life you believed that Heaven was a specific location above the (flat) earth, and hell was located below the flat earth. Heaven was guaranteed if you lived a good life and did what was expected of you. Lifelong suffering, rampant disease, abject poverty, and hard and uncertain life and often early death was the price you paid for a blissful and well-fed afterlife in Heaven. It was guaranteed, and it made all of that misery worthwhile; it gave meaning to the earthly suffering. You were supposed to suffer in this life, to ensure a happy after life. The more miserable you were, the better chances you had for entry into heaven. Consider how the ruling classes might use that. Oppressing the poor was good for them. It was just what God ordered; they, the rich oppressors, were just helping out! And the divine right of Kings insured their place in heaven. Quite a system.

Hell was where you went if you didn’t obey the rules, and sinned against God the father, and where you suffered hideously for all eternity. That too was guaranteed, with lots of terrifying pictures on church walls to remind you of what happened to people who stepped out of line. Western European Medieval peasant Christians had pretty miserable lives, but the suffering made sense if you knew it would all come out OK in the end, and you would be safe and happy with the God as he has been constructed in the Judeo-Christian-Islamic ethos. The idea of earthly suffering as a ticket to a happy after life or next life is a common thread in those religions which promise a life of the spirit or the soul of a person after the earthly life.

As a side note of interest, those religions which do not offer heaven or hell in the afterlife, but do believe in reincarnation, tell us that each level of reincarnation of the spirit into an earthly life and body, each turn of the never ending circle, is dependent upon the life that has just been lived, and the lessons learned in that life. So if you are rotten in one life, you will be born into another rotten miserable existence, but with each incarnation there are opportunities to learn and improve, in order to be born into a better existence the next time around. I’ll speak more about this when I do my sermons on Eastern religions.

But today, I am trying to address those significant threads and themes common to all religions. They are, broadly speaking, the "Big" questions: "why were we born", "how shall we live", "what happens after death", "how do I make meaning of my life". Or, the fatalist approach, if everything is already in the hands of God, "should I even try?"

A recent editorial in the Boston Globe gives a biological and evolutionary explanation to why we humans keep creating religions. Like bees and ants, we are social animals, and, as such, we need community to thrive. We are biologically programmed to seek community. This starts with the nuclear community of the family, and extends into the surrounds of the neighborhood or the village. Religion, and the obvious politics and political structures embedded in religious structures, is one way humans create a structure for living in community, and explaining why retaining that establishment is in the best interests of all concerned. Gangs and their equivalent in terrorist and guerilla groups are another kind of community with just as rigid rules of membership and behavior and allegiance, and penalties for disobedience. And, trust me, among the more oppressed and marginalized of us, religion and gangs have about equal appeal to humans who need to belong, who need a structure and who need protection. And that is one reason why the fundamentalist movement in many of the major religions of the world is so popular with marginalized and oppressed people, and even those who are not marginalized or oppressed, but who feel the way of life that is safe for them is slipping away in the wake of accelerating technology and the establishment of the idea of a world community. It’s just too big and too fast for some people to get around, and so, broadly speaking, they move back, and in some cases re-create the familiar, re-create an orthodoxy that is more rigid than the original. It comes from a very basic need to belong, and for many to belong is to conform. Think about old order Amish: a person who doesn’t conform is shunned, cast outside the community and ignored. An Orthodox Jew who marries outside of the faith is declared dead to the family and the community. A practicing Christian who does not confess his or her sins and beg forgiveness may be denied the sacrament of Holy Communion. Communion, communicate and community. The worst punishment that can be imposed is to deny the offender the safety and comfort of community. And carrying that a little further, in religious traditions which promise an after life, deviants will be denied the community of saints and the presence of God in heaven. Even in death we can deny community to sinners when we refuse to let suicides or heretics be buried in sacred ground.

I have not just painted a very pretty picture. If this is religion, I ask the title of this sermon: "Who needs it". And that is precisely why so many people who have been born into a specific religion or religious practice have either left entirely, or who, like Martin Luther (and Jesus), saw the need to reform a practice which had lost sight of its original charter and left the love of God or the practice of the philosophy for the politics of power. It is not a new story.

So, who needs religion? We do. Despite what keeps happening in the name of religion, we humans biologically and emotionally and spiritually need a community, we need a structure to our living, and we need something to give our life meaning. Religion fills all of those needs, except it keeps getting corrupted by power politics. And if you think for one cotton pickin minute, we here are any different…..(silence) we are not. Power politics is also part of our human-ness. But, if we know that, and we intentionally work at keeping our focus on the higher vision of making a difference in the larger world, we will still have political spats and infighting, but we can still make a difference. So what do we do with God? Have I just described a utopian community and talked myself out of a job? We know what happens with utopian communities; they get corrupted by power politics.

The one BIG question that political or social structures do not address, and can not address - the x factor - in our human experience, is the very real experience of the transcendent or the mystical in our lives. For some people, there is no need to understand a wonderful or mystical moment; it just happened, it may or may not be life altering, but it happened and there is no further need to understand it, or place it in context. But I believe, that for many more of us, there is a need to understand that, as Rudolph Otto calls it, "the Holy other, the mysterious presence, the blessed one of all creation, or even "creation" itself, with a Big "C". Here is where religion offers a structure and a roadmap for our understanding. And even if you are a humanist who does not accept a divinity in the greater understanding of life, those mystical moments are being part of being a fully realized human, and therefore, in Unitarian Universalism at least, offer a place for all of us with our differing understandings to come together in the search, in the journey.

So who needs religion? Clearly not everybody, but it seems that a lot of us do. Our particular religion does not issue directions, but it does offer roadmaps showing any number of routes we can choose from, and it offers some pretty interesting rest stops along the way. Our religion, like others, does provide a framework for looking at the big questions, and through any number of venues we are told where we might look for answers; and answers is almost always is written in the plural. Our religion offers community: companions along the way in the search for the light of truth, to argue with and to turn to in times of need. And within this community, we are offered connected and concerted opportunities to make meaning in our own lives and make a difference in the lives of those less fortunate, because two is always more effective than one.

For those of us who need a sense of divine presence, or the experience of the sacred, we will experience it how and where we need to. For those of us who believe that we humans contain within us everything we need for the full realization of this life, take the hand of the person next to you. The call is to all of us however we answer it: to make meaning, to make a difference, to be in community, to celebrate life and to be grateful.

Blessed be.