This sermon was given at Stevens Chapel on August 31, 2003 by Rev. Kim D. Wilson.

"The Death (and Rebirth?) of God"

Back in 1923, the American journalist Henry Louis Mencken held a memorial service for all the gods who had died. As he put it, these were all gods that had "gone down the chute." In this service, he included a list of gods and goddesses that covered two pages, all of which had once been held in high eminence by the people who worshiped them. They ranged from Sutekh, once the high God of the whole Nile Valley and the Roman and Egyptian gods and goddesses to those mentioned with fear and trembling in the Bible like El, Baal and Asherah. Where are they now? Mencken asked. "Men labored for generations to build vast temples to them…The business of interpreting their whims occupied thousands of priests, wizards, archdeacons, evangelists, haruspices, bishops, archbishops. To doubt them was to die, usually at the stake. Armies took to the field to defend them against infidels…They were gods of the highest standing and dignity ¾ gods of civilized peoples ¾ worshiped and believed in by millions. All were theoretically omnipotent, omniscient, and immortal. And all are dead."

As far as Mencken was concerned, the Judeo-Christian God was dead as well. In fact, he viewed belief in a higher being as a kind of crutch, referring to God as "the immemorial refuge of the incompetent, the helpless, the miserable." As you might know, Mencken wasn’t a guy to mince words.

Mencken of course, wasn’t alone in his disparagement of the idea of God and of those who believed in God. Friedrich Nietzsche was an even greater antagonist against God. Forty years earlier he had addressed Menchen’s question of what had happened to the gods. In his writings, Nietzsche described a madman who ran into the market square one morning shouting, "I seek God! I seek God!"

Nietzsche writes, "A number of those who have no faith were standing around, so great laughter erupted. ‘Is he lost, then?’ said one; ‘Has he lost his way, like a child?’ said another, ‘Or has he gone into hiding? Is he afraid of us? Has he gone on a journey? Taken up residence elsewhere?’ So they shouted and laughed. The madman sprang into their midst, and cut through them with the look he gave them. ‘Where has God gone to?’ he cried, ‘I will tell you: we have killed him ¾ you and I.’

Nietzsche declared that the death of God was a recent event. It’s true that in the late 19th century many people in Western societies did question God’s existence, a number of prominent Unitarians among them. But, as Mencken’s memorial service demonstrates, the death and rebirth of God have been going on for millennia. In fact, John Bowker, in God: A Brief History, says that questioning God’s existence and "the death of God that may follow from it, has occurred in every century, in most parts of the world."

Historically, one of the main reasons gods were laid to rest is that when a country or region was conquered, the native deities would usually be outlawed and only the god or gods of the conquerors would be acceptable objects of worship. And, as Mencken accurately pointed out, refusal to honor the new gods was often grounds for a painful death.

Other major social changes as well as developments in thought also contribute to the rise and fall of gods. For example, Nietzsche’s declaration that God was dead was probably influenced by the changing role of the church in daily life as well as by his application of rational thought to the question of God’s existence. From Nietzsche’s perspective, traditional religious belief in God no longer played an important part in human experience. Nor did a supernatural god hold up against his rational scrutiny. God, therefore, had become a useless concept in Nietzsche’s mind.

It’s a commentary, though, on our individual uniqueness that, given the same tools for examining concepts and ideas, different people will come to radically different conclusions. For some, like Nietzche, who had the company of other famous atheists like Ludwig Feuerbach, Sigmund Freud, and Karl Marx, God as they knew him (and in their case it was a "him") did not exist. For others, engaging in the same process of applying rational thought to their faith, it meant restating or refining existing ideas to give them new credence, in the way a sculptor might rework a piece of stone. And for a third group, looking at the concept of God as they understood God led to the death of that old idea of God, but it also inspired new understandings and new characterizations of God.

For those who reach an atheistic conclusion, they usually reject the idea of God on one or more of three bases. Rebuttals look at the claims made about God and argue that the claims are either illogical or false. For example, some have argued, how can a god be simultaneously all-loving and all-powerful? If he were all-powerful and were really all-loving, how could such a god allow human suffering, especially the suffering of innocent children? God must then be either not all-loving or not all-powerful.

Reduction arguments suggest that people believe in God out of their own needs and projections, rather than in response to a higher being that actually exists. For Mencken, God was something outside ourselves that humans created in order to fill our deepest needs. The third common basis for rejection of God is through refutation of arguments that attempt to "prove" God’s existence or at least to justify one characterization of God over another.

In our own Unitarian Universalist history, the Humanists of the early 20th century applied rational thinking and the scientific method to the question of God’s existence and concluded that claims about God were either false or at best, could not be proven. This led some early Humanists to claim an atheistic position, although most stopped one step short of denying the existence of God. For them, God wasn’t necessarily dead ¾ just irrelevant. The famous 1933 statement, "A Humanist Manifesto," characterizes the universe as "self-existing and not created" and it also defines religion as "those actions, purposes and experiences which are humanly significant." That pretty much leaves God out of it.

Earlier on, when Unitarian and Free Religionist Francis Ellingwood Abbott applied reason and scientific thought to theological questions in the 1860’s and ‘70’s, he felt strongly that he would be able to restate or refine existing ideas. He maintained a steadfast belief that science would not weaken religious faith, but would in fact confirm it. He was convinced that "the final answer of science will but deepen, fortify, and exalt our human faith in God…" Abbot came to the conclusion that the universe is infinitely intelligible; in other words, always open to the probing of the human mind. He saw it as a self-evolving, conscious entity, both scientifically "real" and "alive" as an organism is.

Going back in history a little further, the development of Unitarian Ralph Waldo Emerson’s theological ideas might serve as an example of the death of the old God and the re-birthing of the new. By the time Emerson published his first book, Nature, in 1836, he had come to deny the existence of the supernatural, father-like God of Christianity. With the death of this God, Emerson created a system that instead proposed that it was the ordinary course of nature that was endowed with divine significance. He saw nature and the human mind as reflections of the universal mind of God.

Emerson became the leader of a group of Unitarians who called themselves the Transcendentalists. A member of this group, Theodore Parker, preached a now famous sermon on the transient and the permanent in Christianity. For Parker, it was religion itself that was permanent; theology was transient. He believed that our ideas about the nature of God would naturally change over time. Many Unitarians were outraged by his statements about the dispensability of miracles and even the divinity of Christ. Parker’s views were considered so radical that he was ostracized by his peers until the end of his life.

Maybe his colleagues found his words too threatening to their own faith. But I believe Parker is right. Theology, our ideas about God, are transient, and that’s what gives Unitarian Universalism such vitality. And I say that despite the fact that throughout our history, there have been many conflicts and controversies over the nature of God as well as over the question of God’s existence. These differences in thought have often been painful and in some cases caused serious rifts and even splits within Unitarianism and Universalism.

But looking back from where we sit now, perhaps it’s easier from our position to see the positives within all the fomentation, and how theological ideas held by individuals or groups may have had an effect on the thought of those who came after ¾ a sort of theological evolution, if you will. It’s not all that hard to imagine how Parker’s questioning of the supernatural might have influenced Emerson in his rejection of a supernatural god and how that may have led to the development of the idea of nature and humanity being the mind of God. It’s quite likely that Abbot’s concept of a conscious universe was influenced by the Transcendentalists, and that he and his contemporaries, in turn, had an effect on the thinking of the early Humanists.

Just as beliefs in a society or in a religious denomination change with time and various influences, so our own individual faith evolves. Most of us here this morning can probably say that our own views of God have undergone some changes over the course of our lives. Some of those changes may have been difficult and painful, especially if you were in a church or family that didn’t support your changing ideas. For others who had more freedom and support, your journey may have felt exciting and joyful.

One of the things we UU’s value most about our religion is that our churches and societies are places where we’re encouraged to engage in a search for truth, to explore ideas about God, ultimate reality, what is meaningful in this life. Since each of us has the freedom to explore his or her own path, this makes us remarkably theologically diverse as a denomination. Our diversity can cause tensions, but ultimately, I believe it enriches us. Personally, I cherish the fact that I can be a part of a religion that honors and embraces this diversity.

Some of us hold to an atheistic view of the universe; others believe that the existence of God is possible, but without rational or empirical evidence, call ourselves agnostics. Others may use the term "God" to describe a wide range of ideas, such as the creative power of the cosmos, the force of life, the power of love, or simply the ultimate mystery within which we all live. Some believe in something larger than themselves, but choose not to call it "God."

Few of us think of God as a being with supernatural powers, but many of us understand ourselves to be in some sort of personal relationship with God, whether it’s the idea of being part of an interconnected web or a more one-on-one relationship, with God as a metaphor for an ultimate friend or higher self. As the theologian Paul Tillich said, one can think of God "as if God were a being…," an idea that I found very helpful. Many of us who resonate with God language also use a variety of images, including feminine images, of the divine.

So, are there dead gods in your personal deity graveyard? Gods that have "gone down the chute?" Or, has God, for you, been given new life in a different form? Perhaps your ideas about God are still in flux. Actually, if we’re growing spiritually, our beliefs ¾ including our understandings of what God is and isn’t ¾ will probably continue to evolve to some extent. Writer John McAfee notes that in forming our beliefs, "we judge, choose, and reach conclusions, and from these conclusions we create concepts and images. We vest these…with the illusion of reality: …they… allow us to think that we know." But here McAfee cautions us. "Knowing," he says, "…is fixed… Knowledge is not reality. It is an image that we create of reality, a dead thing."

Those could be harsh words to someone with hard-won and deeply-cherished beliefs. Personally, I like my understanding of God. I worked hard to get there ¾ and I have a 45-page credo paper to prove it! I entered seminary uncomfortable with God language, but I decided to see if there was a way that I could use the word God and have it be meaningful to me.

So, for me, it’s not so much that my beliefs changed as that the words I used to describe them changed. I came to understand God as the force of life, love and creativity, a force that is immanent in the universe, meaning that there is an element of divinity in everything. God for me is also a source of guidance, unconditional love and comfort.

But McAfee reminds me to be open to new thoughts and new experiences that could alter my understandings. Maybe the work of examining the question of God’s existence and the nature of God isn’t done. Maybe the conclusions I’ve drawn, that you’ve drawn, could be looked at again.

It seems to me that once I start clutching onto my beliefs, thinking that I have it all worked out, that I’m in danger of limiting my perceptions, of trying to bend the universe to fit my understanding of it. But if I’m open to having my perceptions widened and maybe even altered, I’m more likely to ask myself at any given moment, "Is there more truth, or maybe some other truth, that I might see right now? Is there a sacred dimension to this experience that I haven’t previously recognized?"

If history is any indication, it’s the concretization of God that has led to God’s death over the millennia. Throughout time, I believe that people have tried to describe something they all experienced and named as God. But eventually, the words, the rituals, the laws and the institutions that developed about God came to stand for their experience of God. Knowledge became a substitute for reality. And because all of these things are about God, and not God itself, as Bowker said, "the death of the characterizations of God is inevitable."

But from ends come beginnings. Through the death of what has become inadequate, we often move into a new understanding of Ultimate Truth and a new vision of the universe and our place in it ¾ however one may perceive these things and whatever one chooses to name them, God or otherwise.

Where our beliefs and our thoughts serve us well, may we hold onto them, but not too tightly. Where we have outgrown our beliefs and thoughts, may we let them die a quiet death, to be replaced by a faith that is meaningful to us. And may we in this community share with each other our ideas about God, about Life and about the universe, so that we may all be the richer for it.