S011 #09 - The double movement dance of a free-religious faith - A thought for the day

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Opening Music, "New Heaven", written by Andrew J. Brown and played by Chris Ingham (piano), Paul Higgs (trumpet), Russ Morgan (drums) and Andrew J. Brown (double bass) 

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Transcript

A short “thought for the day” offered to the Cambridge Unitarian Church as part of the Sunday Service of Mindful Meditation

—o0o—

A couple of weeks ago, Marianna asked whether, this Sunday morning, we could sing the Hungarian — that is to say Transylvanian — Unitarian blessing with which we began our service. 

Hungarian (Transylvanian) Unitarian Blessing

Hol hit, ott szeretet;
hol szeretet, ott béke.
Hol béke, ott áldás;
hol áldás, ott Isten.
Hol Isten, ott szükség nincsen.

English translation

Where there is faith there is love;
where there is love there is peace.
Where there is peace there is blessing;
where there is blessing there is God.
Where there is God, there, there is no need.

Since its theme is “faith”, it seemed appropriate to look at that word more closely: first at how it is used in the Hungarian Unitarian context, and then at how I think we are using it in this free-religious context here in Cambridge.

The Hungarian word for faith, hit, has acquired, through long use within Hungarian Christianity, a strong theological sense: it implies much, much more than personal opinion or supposition; it carries the sense of a deeply committed belief in the truth of certain doctrines and in a particular denomination. In this Unitarian blessing it is important to realise that “faith” — hit — refers to a strong faith in the truth of Unitarian Christian doctrines as set out, in 136 points, in the Hungarian Unitarian Catechism under these headings: God, the child of God, Jesus, the Holy Spirit, the Unitarian Church, sin and repentance, eternal life and liturgical services. 

Now, I have great respect for the Hungarian Unitarian tradition. But I need to be clear that, although we in this free-religious gathering in Cambridge are genealogically related to them — the Unitarian movement began there and in Poland in the mid-sixteenth century — the “faith” spoken of in their blessing is not only a type of Unitarian Christian faith that most of us here in Cambridge will not share, it is also a type of faith we simply could not adopt in a free-religious setting, namely, a faith that can be precisely enumerated in a catechism.

So what, for us, might be the meaning of the word “faith” as we sing it? One thing is certain: it is not going to be as simple and, relatively speaking, as clear-cut as the answer that can be given in the Hungarian Unitarian context which, although genuinely a type of liberal religion, is not, by definition, a free-religion.

In a free-religious context, faith must be understood differently. To see that difference I want to use an example offered by my friend, the American philosopher Ed Mooney, that has been very helpful in understanding my own, still developing, free-religious life of faith.

In a paper on Kierkegaard (“Can faith avoid self-deception and fanaticism? The case of Abraham”), Ed asks, “What is faith?” and begins with a familiar modern suspicion. He imagines us overhearing a conversation about religious believers. Persons of faith are described as victims of massive self-deception. Faith offers beautiful beliefs — God is perfect goodness, God grants forgiveness and immortality — but these are dismissed as pipe-dreams. Believers, so the story goes, use such beliefs to shield themselves from the realities of cruelty, suffering and death. Faith, on this account, is simply a tool of manipulation and denial.

Whenever faith is understood like this, as part of a massive cover-up, it is no surprise that in a free-religious gathering, often populated with people who have come to think religious faith is like this, we get nervous about using the word. But there is another way to understand faith, and here’s a story that Ed uses to bring this out.

Imagine a moment in ice dancing when the male releases his partner into a leap and then watches as she lands. He has faith he will get her back. She spins and drifts back into her partner’s arms. Faith here is an openness to the contingency of that leap and a trust in enduring a momentary loss and separation. We await our dance partner’s return, confident we will receive them again. Faith is action and release, and receptivity to the gift of return.

Keeping this in mind and, following Kierkegaard, Ed points out that faith is a double movement, “of giving up and getting back”. For the dancer, it is the leap up — resigning the security of the floor, letting go — and the trust that a safe landing awaits, that they will get the security of the oak-floor back. The leap is taken with composure and courage; the landing with openness and trust. Trust refuses to let the possibility of disaster have the last word, and this understanding of faith is rich in flexible and improvisational ways of moving and being, of giving up and getting back.

A free-religious faith, I would argue, is one that is always shaped by this double movement. We see it, Ed suggests, when we look for love, unflappable assurance and steadiness of purpose, for courage, for vulnerability and humility, and when we notice the absence of self-righteousness, or of shouting truth from the rooftops. This kind of faith also relies upon what Ed calls “the modesty of Socratic ignorance”. That is to say, the recognition that wisdom begins with acknowledging one’s own lack of knowledge, the intellectual humility to see what we do not know, which is the key that opens the door to genuine lifelong learning, critical thinking and transformation. This is to enter what Imaoka Shin’ichirō memorably described as the free-religious University of Life from which there is no graduation [人生大学に卒業なし].

I hope it is clear that this type of free-religious faith simply cannot be enumerated in any detailed catechism containing specific doctrinal beliefs that must be held about the nature of God, the child of God, Jesus, the Holy Spirit, the Unitarian Church, sin and repentance, eternal life and liturgical services. I am not demeaning the faith of our Hungarian brothers and sisters laid out in this fashion, not at all. My experience is that many of them genuinely have faith in these things, and faith in this way of expressing them, and they remain very much part of the global family of liberal religions. At this point I think it is important to remember one of the mottos of our gathering, namely, that we know we do not need to think alike to love alike.

However, those of us who cannot have this kind of faith — for whatever reason — we can have faith in the general free-religious principles of living we advocate here. These principles help us develop a faith akin to that of the dancer who trusts the double movement “of giving up and getting back”. The free-religious person trusts that, as they leap up and out into the world in their daily lives, truly living by these non-dogmatic principles, they will, at the end of the day, regain an oak-floor kind of security, but it’s a grounding that’s always transformed in some fashion by the experience of the free-religious leap of faith they have taken.

Sure, on some occasions we will stumble and fall, but a genuine free-religious faith — which seems to me to be a species of true-entrusting [shinjin 信心] — refuses to let the possibility of disaster have the last word. It remains rich in transformational ways of moving and being, of letting go, giving up and getting back. And no catechism, nor any single, fixed religious practice or tradition, will ever be able to capture the fullness and richness of this kind of creative, inquiring, free and liberative religion [jiyū shūkyō 自由宗教].