ACT OF RELIGIOUS TOLERANCE AND FREEDOM OF CONSCIENCE
Diet at Torda, 1568
His majesty, our Lord, in what manner he - together with his realm - legislated in the matter of religion at the previous Diets, in the same matter now, in this Diet, reaffirms that in every place the preachers shall preach and explain the Gospel each according to his understanding of it, and if the congregation like it, well. If not, no one shall compel them for their souls would not be satisfied, but they shall be permitted to keep a preacher whose teaching they approve. Therefore none of the superintendents or others shall abuse the preachers, no one shall be reviled for his religion by anyone, according to the previous statutes, and it is not permitted that anyone should threaten anyone else by imprisonment or by removal from his post for his teaching. For faith is the gift of God and this comes from hearing, which hearings is by the word of God.
Sermon
Many years ago I was teaching a New UU class, and one of our new members, with the furrowed brow of someone thoroughly bemused asked “so are we Christian or what?” I answered that question by painting the picture of a family tree with Judeo-Christian tradition at its roots that began over time to reach out toward other faith traditions. We were, after all, part of the leadership that helped convene the first World Parliament of Religions in 1893.[i]
But Dr. Susan Ritchie, a UU Minister and historian, argues that “Unitarian identity in Europe emerged as a defense of the inherent kinship between Christianity, Islam and Judaism. Thus Unitarianism was multicultural and multi-religious from its beginning. [Children of the Same God p. xviii] That is to say, at a time when people were being persecuted for not being part of the “right” faith, many Christian leaders were trying to create clear boundaries between the faiths. But Unitarians noticed the similarities in their own theology with the Jewish and Muslim traditions, and tried to point out our common ground.
Unitarianism was born at the time of the reformation and the counter-reformation. It was a time of great religious intolerance, when rulers would choose the faith of their country, and capriciously expel all those who didn’t fall in line with that faith. And since Unitarianism was a heretical faith, the history of our movement in those early days is one of exile as Unitarians and Jews and others who fell outside the religion du jour, had to pull up stakes and find a new country more tolerant of their beliefs. So it was that Unitarianism traveled from Spain to Poland and Italy to Transylvania fleeing persecution, and in so doing spread the very teachings those in power were trying to stifle.
The border lands, the areas just past the grasp of persecution, have always been an incubator for radical ideas, Ritchie argues. Those exiles of the counter-reformation not only brought their diverse and heretical ideas to the border lands, but found themselves living side by side with neighbors of different faith traditions; they found themselves in a multi-religious community. So Multi-religiosity is not theoretical, but a way to describe the experience of actual people who live in multi-religious ways. It was my sister’s Mother-in-law who first introduced my husband to Matzo Ball soup one year when we celebrated Passover together- and I believe her soup was a transcendent life-changing experience for him. And even though I am not Catholic, and don’t know any Croatian, there is something special about going with my Mother-in-law to the Croatian Christmas mass. People today experience a kind of neighborly multi-religiosity just as folks did in the lands on the border of the Ottoman Empire 400 years ago.
UUs often tell the story we told this morning of King John Sigismund who issued the most sweeping edit of toleration Christendom had known. But Ritchie was the first to show conclusively the “direct demonstrable influence of Ottoman edicts” that is to say – we learned about edicts of tolerance from our Muslim neighbors in Turkey from their example. We know, for example that “Any monotheist willing to accept the political rule of the Ottomans was given protection and legal rights by the empire. [p. 25] Ritchie notes that in 1548 when the Catholic authorities in Tolna asked the Sultan’s representative to either kill or drive out the Hungarian Protestant pastor Imre Szigeti, the Chief Intendant of the pasha of Buda not only denied their request, but issued an edict of toleration saying that “preachers of the faith invented by Luther should be allowed to preach the Gospel everywhere to everybody, whoever wants to hear, freely and without fear, and that all Hungarians and Slavs (who indeed wish to do so) should be able to listen to and receive the word of God without any danger.” [p. 32]
But those early Unitarian congregations not only tolerated other faiths, in the 16th century “their more radical theologians are arguing that Christianity, Islam and Judaism have a familial relationship. These theologians [thought of Unitarianism] as a safe and conciliatory space for multi-religious relationship.” [p. xviii] That’s powerful- even 400 years ago Unitarians were felt to be “a safe and conciliatory space for multi-religious relationship.” So our reaching out to other faiths, our sense of connection to our religiously diverse neighbors is not something new, it is in our very DNA.
During my graduation ceremony from Seminary, each student was given 3 minutes to speak. Rev. Daniel Canter talked about growing up in a Jewish Family, practicing Buddhist meditation for years, and having found a home and now a profession in UU. He called himself a UU Jew Bu. We all laughed, but something about the messiness of that bothered me. Shouldn’t we just be one thing? In fact, the fancy name for this is “syncretism” -- the bringing together of disparate religious practices or ideas. It’s considered kind of an insult or heresy in some faiths[ii]. There is an idea that true faith needs to be kept pure.
In her introduction to Ritchie’s book, Rebecca Parker encourages us to “let go of fictions of purity” [xiii]– that’s a powerful phrase “fictions of purity” because it reminds us that religion evolves and grows, just as our very biology evolves. One could argue that to be religiously or ethnically pure we would all be living in the African birthplace of our species and practicing the earth-based religions of our first human ancestors. But everything grows and changes- it’s unavoidable. That’s why our hymnal calls it a “living tradition”
Professor Ibrahim Farajaje encourages us not to think of different religious as silos, as a series of Quaker Oats boxes, but to imagine dumping all those boxes out on the table. He assures us that the beautiful mixity of fruit loops and cheerios and granola and raisin bran spread out there on the kitchen counter is how religion really functions in the world. He reminds us that religious traditions do not have impermeable walls between them; most traditions arrived in their current forms by combining and flowing out of each other. Farajaje encourages us to honor multiple traditions with depth and seriousness. Depth and seriousness.
In this culture we have historically thought that only something “pure” could be serious. It was only 15 years ago that the US census made space for those of multiple ethnicities on the census form[iii]. Perhaps we thought when we became the member of a UU church we must give up all our previous practices and beliefs to be a “serious” UU. And I know that our UU movement had trouble being taken seriously sometimesbecause people just don’t have a place in their minds for, for example, a UU Jew Bu. But the reality of American families today is that about 45 percent of American couples married since the year 2000 are interfaith,[iv]
Susan Katz-Miller, who wrote this morning’s reading, comes from such an interfaith family. She writes:
“My husband was raised Episcopalian. He is the great-grandson of an Episcopal bishop. I was raised Reform Jewish by my Episcopalian mother and my Jewish father. I am a great-granddaughter of a New Orleans rabbi. Growing up, I experienced both the benefits and the drawbacks of being raised in one religion. Often, I felt marginalized as an interfaith child and had to fight to defend my claim to Judaism. For our son and daughter, now teenagers, my husband and I decided that we wanted them to feel that they could be at the center of an interfaith-families community, surrounded by other interfaith children, rather than trying to conform to a single religion in which they might, or might not, be accepted. And we wanted them to feel equally connected to both sides of their religious ancestry.”[v]If you are living in a multi-religious family, or a multi-religious context, then choosing one over another might not feel like it authentically represents the reality of your experience. Maybe this is part of our calling as a UU movement- to take a serious, deep look at multi-religiosity, in history and culture and in our everyday lives with one another.
Perhaps you are one of the many UUs whose life reflects this mixity. I know some of us in this room were raised Catholic. Some were raised Jewish. Some were raised Mormon or Episcopalian. It’s quite common among UUs. The question is, what do we do with all that history? All those years of Sunday School classes, family traditions of lighting a menorah, or decorating a Christmas Tree?
Truth be told, all of that is part of who we really are. For example, a number of UUs were raised Catholic. For some, there was a beauty to the Catholic rituals, and they have fond memories of their childhood church. For the person sitting next to them in the very same UU church, her relationship to her catholic upbringing may be quite different- perhaps she felt shamed for asking questions, or for her sexuality. But each of those very different experiences are part of our spiritual lives. And our spirits don’t thrive and grow when we put up walls between the parts of our selves. We know this. Somewhere inside ourselves the parts of our story that “don’t fit” with our current sense of ourselves itch for our attention, for integration. We long for wholeness, rather than fragmentation. All the pieces of ourselves, our UU pieces, our Jewish pieces or Catholic or Evangelical Christian pieces, we need all of them to make us whole.
When the president of the Athens Congregation blew the Shofar to celebrate the New Year with her congregation, it was because that tradition still had meaning and power for her as one who grew up Jewish. Priestess Eirlys Lady Hawk, president of the UU congregation in Towanda, led her congregation in an Imbolc ritual last winter. If we open our hearts and minds we find a richness of experience right here in our own beloved communities.
The seminary I went to (Star King School) was part of the Graduate Theological Union, an interfaith consortium of theological schools. I studied meditation at the Buddhist Center, Mysticism at the Institute for Jewish Studies, bible from the Jesuits and, and preaching from the Unitarians. The San Francisco Bay Area is a great crossroads of culture, where people from all over the world settle to work and study, and so as I studied there at the crossroads of the world, my faith became a crossroads faith.
This is the challenge of the Unitarian Universalist tradition you have chosen -- of composing these pieces large and small into a whole that is pleasing to the spirit, a whole that has integrity to itself and to the real life context in which it evolves: The family in today’s reading did not take the easy way- there are challenges in trying to be an authentically multi-faith family, but they are willing to do the hard thing because it has integrity with their family faith, and their relationships to one another.
At the crossroads of your heritage and today’s cultural reality, at the crossroads of your community and yourself. At the intersection of your spiritual life and this present moment, that is where you will find yourself. That is where you will find deep and complex relationships, and that is where, in the depth of that mysterious mixity, you may find the divine.
So I encourage you to metaphorically dump out the Quaker oats box where you store your “UU self” the one where you store your “Childhood religion” self and any others you have stored in your pantry and enjoy the beautiful mixity that we are.
[i] A 16-person General Committee was charged
with settling on a mission and program, inviting participants, and hosting the
event. Unitarian minister Jenkin Lloyd Jones served as the Committee's
Executive Secretary.
http://www.uua.org/re/tapestry/adults/river/workshop14/178841.shtml)
[ii] here is an example of such an
analysis http://www.gotquestions.org/syncretism-religious.html
[iii]
http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/nation/census/2010-03-02-census-multi-race_N.htm
[iv]
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/06/opinion/interfaith-marriages-a-mixed-blessing.html
