Spiritually Speaking: When Humanity Does Not Progress

It’s a common armchair philosophy question.   Perhaps you’ve heard it at some party or gathering.  “Is the world getting better?” someone will ask.   There are countless variations of this question.  What about women’s rights?  Are women really better off?  Do you think racial equality is better than twenty years ago? 

Countless statistics may be offered (many of which will be fabricated) and then often the conversation, if you are in my family, will end with a shoulder shrug.

Our Unitarian ancestors were made famous and infamous for their insistence on the progress of the world.   In the 19th Century, urged on by the industrial age, rapid progress in scientific advancement and popular debate on evolution, Unitarians even enshrined progress into one of their central documents.  An early precursor to the Principles and Purposes found in Unitarian Universalism today, the Unitarians developed a document entitled the “Five Points of Unitarian Belief.”  Authored largely by James Freeman Clarke the 5th point was “the continuity of human development in all worlds or the progress of mankind onward and upward forever.”

In seminary, my colleagues and I would often jokingly say “onward and upward” in response to some seemingly stupid behavior or decision.  We had, as the children of the 20th century, realized that human development was anything but continuous.  The chorus of “onward and upward” was viewed as a silly relic of our Unitarian past. 

You can imagine the crushing blow that the events of the 20th century had to the Unitarian sense of hope.  Believing progress had a direct relationship with time, they welcomed the inventions of the late 19th century and the new discoveries of science.   Yet soon after the onward and upward motto became pervasive belief in Unitarianism, the United States had been drawn into two world wars.  Scientific advancement had been used to create the atomic bomb.  The holocaust became the most devastating and incomprehensible evil in the history of the world.  And from the relative tranquility and prosperity of the 1940s and 1950s, came the culture-changing, world transforming 1960s. 

To say the least, onward and upward became a joke.  Behind the raucous humor was a deep theological void.  The emphasis on rationalism and empiricism added to a sort of depressed Unitarian body in the late 20th century- one that had no theological understanding of hope.  I once preached to a historically Unitarian congregation in 2003 about hope in the new century.  After I was done delivering a hopeful and somewhat overly optimistic sermon, a lifelong Unitarian approached me and simply said, “Hope is not rational.  Unitarianism does not rely on hope.  I can hope all day long, but it won’t change anything.”

Reticence to rely upon a sort of immobilizing hope is understandable- say one that says suffering in this life is to be endured and embraced for the hope of a reward in heaven.  An inability to hold to the “onward and upward” style of hope in the 21st century is rational and reasonable.  And yet, if we do not have some trust in the world, in other words some reason or cause to believe that things will yet be better, what would ever motivate us to progress when we do?

Put plainly, religion- particularly a religion with a strong social conscience must have hope within its theology. 

2014 was a year chock full of evidence that things are not getting better.  And it was full of beauty and promise. 

As we take our first few breaths in the air of 2015, the decision to hope may be more important than any resolution we could make.  Not a hope for a next life, not a hope that is head-in-the-sand, but a gritty, real hope that takes the to streets.  This is a hope that of the long arc.  It is a hope kindled in community by the people who push us beyond ourselves and pull us out of isolation and despair. 

Come walk with us into this new year with the absurdity, the wonder and the beauty of the hope that can be.  Yes onward and upward, well most definitely onward!

In faith,

Rev. Robin   

Spiritually Speaking: The Case for Hope

According to Emily Dickinson, it’s a thing with feathers. Nietzsche thought it “the worst of all evils,” while Martin Luther King believed it formed the foundation for a just world. 

Hope has a mixed history.  The story of the world can easily be told from a pessimistic or optimistic viewpoint.  Frankly, the evidence of history is in the eye of the beholder.  The details don’t tell the same story as the “moral arc of the universe” to quote Unitarian Theodore Parker (later quoted by Martin Luther King Jr.). 

In seminary it was a popular question, “Is the world getting better?” or put another way, “what is the case for hope?”  The problem of course is that the case for hope is not an evidential case.  No defense attorney could line up the alibi for the times when clearly the world has not moved toward the common good or hopeful vision.  Yet, no prosecutor could deny the fuel behind some of the world’s greatest visionaries.  Hope does not rest upon the world eventually being righted but rather in a vision for the world that compels action.

When Martin Luther King placed his life in the hands of hope, he did not wait for his dream to unfold.  Rather, hope was the vision before him that called him through the troubling nights and hot, fearful days.  If hope is a gift apart from our action, then it is magical thinking and impossible opiate.  But if hope is the substance that propels our lives toward the next and the next day and in so doing makes our lives count in ways we could never see in the daily details, then hope has a case.

This month we’ll consider the case for hope.  Is it an attitude?  Is it an act of will?  Are you born with hope, or do you learn to be hopeful?

Come join us for the first theme of the year as we begin our spiritual journeys together.  We hope (wink, wink) you will join us!

In faith and appreciation for the journey we share,

Rev. Robin