A Universal Ethic in the Midst of a Pluralistic Society:
What Role Can Religions Play?
Part 1: Ethics in the Encounter
Part 2: The Anglican Communion
Part 3: Ethics in a Pluralistic World
The Spirituality of the Encounter
Martin Buber begins his seminal book "I and Thou" in a poetic form:
The attitude of man is twofold, in accordance with the twofold nature of the primary words which he speaks.
The primary words are not isolated words, but combined words.
The one primary word is the combination I-Thou.
The other primary word is the combination I-It; wherein, without a change in the primary word, one of the words He and She can replace It.
Hence the I of man is also twofold.
For the I of the primary word I-Thou is a different I from that of the primary word I-It.
What was unthinkable at that time in history and what is hardly recognized to this day is the fact that he reflected on the penultimate goal of being, the attainment of human life in perfect harmony with the Creator and with all of Creation including all other beings. I believe this extraordinary Jewish writer was trying to distill for us the difference between substance and style. He is asking us to focus only on substance and to accept the peripheral nature of style, acknowledging we may very well be unable to give it up.
The title of today’s Symposium says: "World Religion for the Future of Humankind". Religion is a construct of human society - that is of our own making. The sociologist Durkheim, in his seminal book ‘The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life,’ defined religion as a "unified system of beliefs and practices relative to sacred things". The same is not true about a life of faith nor the spiritual journey of the pilgrim, both of which are intimately personal, remain solitary, and can be expressed uniquely as we weave the fabric of our own stories.
The essential point here is that term "unified", implies organized and meaning a structure that is agreeable for all the members of that group. The trouble, of course, is that for humans to agree on most matters of faith is largely impossible. Religion is about our experiences of the ‘numinous’, the Holy, the Spiritual. Not only are these experiences personal, but to believe we can agree upon and organize many people under such an umbrella is naïve. So the key question remains, are there truly any universals?
So my FIRST POINT is - organized religion may be a true oxymoron. Yet, we accept the limitations and constraints of a canon of beliefs and the necessary structure to manage celebrating the bits we have in common on our journey. So we, therefore, attempt to ‘manage’ our spiritual lives in community, and we call that effort ‘Religion’, but we argue about which method and what ways are true and acceptable - and agreeable with our other needs and temperaments, hence we create paths or denominations.
The best modern analogy I have found for illustrating the difficulties of describing varieties of religions and denominations is that they are much like the various ‘platforms’ available today for computers. We began with primitive ‘languages’ like BASIC or COBAL - many incompatible with one another - and developed platforms based on specific needs and goals. One would think that over the 100 years we have been working with the concepts of computing we would come to a common interface. Yet we have virtual ‘religions’ that embrace, for instance, the PC or the Apple, or C+++ or Open Source, or any of another 100 languages or platforms the programmers tinker with, and they all claim their ‘truth’, their methodology, and their elegant solution toward their goal.
Is this, we must ask ourselves, what about this is similar to religions? Some are proprietary with only certain people allowed into the sacred sanctuaries or the inner circles, like Apple, for instance, while others are completely accessible or ‘Open Source’ to be shared by anyone who wished to contribute like LINUX. Some grow so big that when small splinter groups offer creative options, (they call them ‘apps’, short for applications but are they burnt sacrifices perhaps?), the corporate king or queen of the computer world just consumes them in a way that might remind us of mighty kingdoms, state religions, or Microsoft. If you see any similarity among these competitive activities and experiences of some control hungry church groups, I am sure you are not mistaken, for in religions we often dwell not only on the spiritual journey, but for the survival of the church we claim we must insist on orthodoxy, uniformity, success, and absolutes (as in THE TRUTH).
But life in the Spirit, on the other hand, is often messy, unpredictable, and hazy. While one, the organization, dwells on laws and traditions while the other, the journey, is amorphous and unpredictable, and focuses more on relationships and principles. While one is more comfortable with specificity and a clear hierarchy, the others are at home with ambiguity and processes. It is no mystery why so many growing up today avoid being identified with any "Religion" but often embrace life in the Spirit.
My second point then is, while accepting the limits of some grand truths by calling it a Religion, is there any way we can yet agree on anything that unifies all humankind ? Are there at least some ‘Universals’" I believe we can agree there are.
The Episcopal Church and the Anglican Communion:
A little history to provide a backdrop: Let us take a quick look at my specific tradition. The Episcopal Church is the United States branch of the Anglican Communion. The Anglican Communion is an international association of churches consisting of the Church of England and of national and regional Anglican churches in full communion with it and specifically with its principal primate, the Archbishop of Canterbury. There is no single "Anglican Church" with universal juridical authority as each national or regional church has full autonomy. In the United States, as in all large regions, authority for a Diocese lies, finally, with each Bishop.
With a membership currently estimated at around 80 million members worldwide, the Anglican Communion is the third largest Christian communion in the world, after the Roman Catholic Church and the Eastern Orthodox Churches. The Archbishop of Canterbury, religious head of the Church of England, has no formal authority outside that jurisdiction, but is recognized as symbolic head of the worldwide communion.
So what does this have to do with the universal spirit of humankind? To focus, I want to bring up one piece of liturgy which I believe is key to addressing this question.
In the service Christian people traditionally call Baptism or Confirmation, that is a rite of inclusion and membership (not unlike almost all groups of importance), we exchange a few key questions which I would propose to you allude to fundamental core principles of the Christian Faith for all Christians throughout all time. In addition, I suggest to you these same principles are at the heart of the uniqueness and spirit of human nature, thus guiding us toward our universals.
In the midst of this ‘Confirmation’ service, or adult acceptance ceremony, we recite our ‘Baptismal Covenant’ - things we promise to be and to do. After an initial statement of faith called the creed, we answer several questions, the last of these are as follows:
Celebrant Will you seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving your neighbor as yourself?
People I will, with God's help.
Celebrant Will you strive for justice and peace among all people, and respect the dignity of every human being?
People I will, with God's help.
I propose these same principles, articulated in different ways in numerous cornerstone governmental and religious documents are all pointing toward the same conclusions. Whether from the Magna Carta, The Declaration of Independence, the United States Constitution, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the Torah, the Tao te Ching, The Book of Rumi, the Bhagavad-Gita, the Qur’an, or the Tibetan Book of the Dead, all point to core fundamental principles which both religions and democratic governments embrace as necessary to make it possible to "Strive for justice and peace among all people, and respect the dignity of every human being". While the process for instituting or realizing these ideals is not without conflict, confusion, or turmoil, these principles remain at the heart of the best humanity has to offer.
Perhaps some of you might recognize some early words of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights", everyone should know them:
We have lived among one another long enough to observe, study, reflect and conclude much about the essence of ‘human nature’. We are not so different from one another and we have studied ourselves so much, why have we learned so little? Scholars like William Maslow, Laurence Kohlberg, Carl Jung and Carol Gilligan have offered so much insight into the human psyche, we should be able to easily identify deeply held common (core) values shared throughout humanity.
I would suggest all people share these principles which are at the heart of our spiritual life and I would argue that we need to embrace and defend them not only for ourselves, but for all people everywhere:
First, we all desire to be autonomous, to be free to live and to make choices without coercion or constraint. To be sure this ‘right’ places profound obligations on the shoulders of others and equally on ourselves as such a life requires honesty, integrity, accessibility, and mutual respect.
Second, we have to be afforded the opportunity to seek our own truths and to allow others to seek and share the truths they find that might enhance our understanding and appreciation for the various experiences of all humankind.
Third, we all share an attitude of thankfulness and awe at the beauty and complexity of creation and the gifts we have been given in the warp and woof of time and place.
Fourth, we have the opportunity to engage in our work as co-creators of the future believing that we not only can change our world, but as such, we are obligated to contribute because we have been given a unique and rare role in shaping the future for our children and for their children after them.
Corollaries to these four principles underscore the fact that we have the right to choose a way to live without violating our conscience or imposing our choices on others. And we need to see the reciprocal and correlative obligations necessarily placed on us to support and maintain an environment in a global community that can and must support and defend such principles.
But all these explicit guidelines yet fall short of our important goal. When we reach spiritual maturity, there is little need for laws and rules. Finally, we need to understand and to accept that the penultimate achievement of all ethics is to be in the right relationship with one another and with our creator. All religions and all governments begin with principles, laws, rules and, occasionally, individual rights. What we learn finally is that these represent the baby steps of humankind in our learning about one another and about the nature of the universe. All structures we create will be unsuccessful unless they lead us to embrace one another, no matter how different we seem in our narrow understanding of life. For what we see now is finite, and we must open ourselves to be guided to see the infinite. I summarize with more of the insightful words of Martin Buber:
First, our life with nature....
Second, our life with men....
Third, our life with spiritual beings. There the relation is clouded, yet it discloses itself; it does not use speech, yet begets it. We perceive no Thou, but none the less we feel we are addressed and we answer- forming, thinking, acting. We speak the primary word with our being, though we cannot utter Thou with our lips. But with what right do we draw what lies outside speech into relation with the world of the primary word? In every sphere in its own way, through each process of becoming that is present to us we look out toward the fringe of the eternal Thou; in each we are aware of a breath from the eternal Thou; in each Thou we address the eternal Thou." (Buber, I and Thou, Pg.6)
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