Autochthonic, revealed and rational religions

Pagan and indigenous religions are said to be "autochthonic" which literally means "earth-born" or self-generated from the Earth. They are traditional and indigenous practices and folk customs which people develop in order to facilitate their relationship with the land and nature. They are the kind of religions that deal with hunting, farming and fishing. Typically they regard the divine or deities and spirits as immanent in the land; they are either pantheistic or animist.

Revealed religions are those which are revealed by the deity or deities to humanity, and seem to come from a transcendent reality. Most of the religions of the so-called Axial Age (the age of great founder-figures like Buddha, Confucius, Socrates, Lao Tsu and Jesus) are revealed, and are characterised by having scriptures and a transcendent view of the divine.

Rational religion is a child of the Enlightenment, and refers to the idea that people should be able to work out for themselves that the divine exists, and apply their reason to scriptures and other revealed ideas. I am not sure if anthropologists and sociologists of religion actually use this category, but it seems to me that Unitarianism doesn't fit in either the revealed religion category or the autochthonous category. It grew out of a revealed religion but it was trying to get back to "natural religion" and often regards the divine as immanent rather than transcendent.

I am strongly drawn to the idea that the experience of divinity should be compatible with reason, and accessible to anyone. However I do not think that the experience of the divine is a rational experience - it is accessed through the subconscious and the collective unconscious, which are associated with dreams and visions, and therefore not rational. What we should do with these promptings from the subconscious is to test them using our reason to see if they are harmful or beneficial, however.

I also believe that when you get to the heart of the religious experience, whatever religious tradition you are in, it is the same experience, albeit with different cultural trappings. The mystics of all traditions have reported similar feelings and developed similar practices.

Golden heresies

Having said in the previous two posts that Unitarianism has its roots in Christianity, we must ask: in what kind of Christianity does it have roots?

It is the heir of Renaissance humanism; of Anabaptists, Socinians, Arians, Lollards, Universalists, Arminians, and other liberal and heretical schools of thought. And it is the child of Enlightenment Deism, and of Enlightenment thought generally.

In ancient Greece, a haeresis was a school of thought, and diversity of ideas was considered valuable; it was only in the Christian era that a definitive version of truth was thought desirable and so heresy became anathema.

The Renaissance humanists were the first to campaign for education in the humanities (grammar, rhetoric, history, poetry and moral philosophy), and to improve the understanding and translations of Biblical and early Christian texts, as well as translating classical pagan texts. Unitarianism has, for most of its history as a  movement, been keen on biblical criticism, and using one's reason to work out what the texts mean (not relying on external authority for an interpretation).

The Arian heresy, first propounded at the Council of Nicaea in 325 CE, is the view that Christ is not "very God of very God" - he is either God's son by adoption or by creation. The Arian concept of Christ is that the Son of God did not always exist, but was created by — and is therefore distinct from and inferior to — God the Father. This being so makes him no longer unique, and also has implications for other Christian doctrines.

The Socinians held an Arian view of Christ, and it is arguably they who discovered the principle of tolerance which is such an important part of Unitarian values. At one of their earliest church councils, they discovered that they could not agree on several theological points — so they agreed to differ, rather than create further schism. The Socinians emerged from among the Anabaptists of Northern Italy in the late 16th century; Fausto Sozzini, their founder, had read the works of Servetus on the errors of the Trinity. When they  arrived in Poland, the Socinians started a printing press at Rakow (which town was subsequently razed to the ground by the Catholics) and from Rakow, Socinian and Unitarian ideas spread to England and Transylvania — where, in due course, the Polish Socinians fled, as Poland was caught in the grip of the Counter-Reformation. In due course the Unitarians of Transylvania became a church which still survives today, and Unitarianism was founded in England by Joseph Priestley and Theophilus Lindsey.

The Lollards do not, as far as I know, have any direct connection with Unitarianism, but they are interesting as the first group to have translated the Bible into English, and to have looked outside the Catholic Church for the source of religious authority. Some of them were thought to have been non-trinitarians.

The Universalists never formed a formal church in England (although the General Baptists, who were much influenced by Arminianism, did reject the Calvinist doctrine of predestination, and most General Baptist churches joined the Unitarian movement and retain a distinct identity within it). However, the idea of universal reconciliation was popular in England, and was held by many Unitarians, who also rejected vicarious atonement.

Many early Unitarians believed in "salvation by character" and so were interested in books like The Imitation of Christ. So it seems that they drew on mystical and contemplative forms of Christianity as well as the liberal and rational Protestant forms mentioned above. Many Unitarian churches started out as liberal Presbyterian; others were Independents.

But the most important aspect of Unitarianism for me is that it is reasonable, and tolerant, and honours diversity. The famous Unitarian values of freedom, reason and tolerance are said to have emerged because people wanted the freedom to reason about what the Bible meant; but then they found that different people came to different conclusions about what it meant, so then they had to tolerate each others' different opinions. Unitarians have never burnt anyone at the stake or killed them for their beliefs. On the contrary, Unitarians have frequently been killed or burnt for their beliefs.

Another massively important aspect of Unitarianism is its positive attitude to other faiths, which stems partly from the idea that Jesus is an exemplar and not a saviour — if he is not a saviour, there is no need to convert people of other faiths to Christianity; and because Unitarians  believe that the Divine reveals itself to different peoples in different ways, other religions are respected (though might be criticised for harmful practices).

The Unitarian insistence on building the Kingdom of Heaven on Earth also appeals to me. And of course the fact that it is inclusive of LGBT people, and has always campaigned for the education and emancipation of women, the abolition of slavery, and social justice generally, is really important.  And so is its positive attitude to science. Charles Darwin was the son of a Unitarian, and his wife Emma was a Unitarian as well. Unitarians were probably among the earliest to accept evolution — certainly Barbara Bodichon (Unitarian and Pre-Raphaelite) had accepted it, as she painted controversial geological views of cliffs.

Modern Unitarianism has also been profoundly influenced by Transcendentalism, which grew out of 19th century American Unitarianism, and also influenced the Pagan revival, and much of American and European life and literature. I have written elsewhere on how Ralph Waldo Emerson, and hence Transcendentalism, was influenced by the translation of the Upanishads into English by Rammohun Roy, founder of the Brahmo Samaj and campaigner for the education of women and the abolition of sati. The Transcendentalists believed (among other things) in an ideal spirituality that "transcends" the physical and empirical and is realized only through the individual's intuition, rather than through the doctrines of established religions.

So these are the kind of ideas of which Unitarianism is the heir — not the narrow and pessimistic doctrines of Calvinists, Evangelicals and scholasticism, but the broad and tolerant strains of the Reformation, which sought freedom and tolerance. The systems of thought which were the forerunners of Unitarianism were optimistic about human and divine nature. They were not world-denying, but world-affirming.

Empiricism

An address given to Golders Green Unitarians on 5 September 2010

Empiricism, according to Alister McGrath, is the idea that 'truth arises from reflection within the mind on what the human faculties experience through sense perception'.  So we experience something through our senses, then we reflect upon it, and from this, truth arises.

According to Karen Armstrong, in The Case for God (which should really be called the case for religion), belief and faith both originally meant loyalty to an evolving tradition; first you did the ritual, and then the teachings were revealed – and they only made sense in the context of the ritual. The ritual was experienced through the senses, and then its symbolism made sense.

In the eighteenth century, rationalists and empiricists sharply disagreed about the nature of truth.  For rationalists, the power to reason was an innate quality of the human mind.  But for empiricists, babies were born as a “blank slate” for experience to write upon – with no innate qualities or faculties.  The conflict continued well into the twentieth century, with the nature versus nurture debate in psychology, which was an argument about whether hereditary traits were more important in the development of the personality, or whether your environment could override your genetic inheritance.

But as far as I can see, it is not a case of either / or – it’s a case of both / and.  We need reason to work things out logically, and to ensure our ideas are consistent with reality.  But we also need experiment and experience.  We do not sit isolated in our ivory towers formulating an abstract theology or philosophy.  We derive our understandings of the world from our experience, the stimuli that come in through our senses: taste, touch, smell, hearing, sight and proprioception (the sense of your location in space, which is governed by your inner ear, and enables you to stay upright and balanced).  We can then compare our experiences with those of others, and reflect upon them.  And we learn new things by experimenting, hopefully in a safe space.  The first time you do a new thing is an experiment – you are testing an aspect of your environment.  And it is by experimenting that we gain experience.  Interestingly in the French language, the word for both experiment and experience is expérience.

Charles Darwin had a long-running experiment with worms, where he put a millstone in his lawn and then measured how much it settled into the earth because it was being undermined by earthworms burrowing underneath it.  I have seen the millstone set into his lawn at Down House in Kent; the experiment is still going on.  Thanks to Darwin’s curiosity and imagination, a tiny puzzle about the way the world works is being solved.

They say that curiosity killed the cat; but on the other hand, fortunately the cat has nine lives.  And in fact, curiosity is not generally fatal to cats.  Curiosity is a good thing, as long as it is balanced with discernment and compassion.  I am sure we can all think of scientific experiments that are not done with sufficient compassion; and of experiments that were not done with sufficient discernment (such as the development of atomic weapons or genetically modified crops).  So we cannot allow curiosity a completely free rein; it must be tempered with wisdom.  It’s not that any knowledge is forbidden to us by divine edict; knowledge must be tempered with wisdom. In Alain de Botton’s The Consolations of Philosophy, he explores the ideas of Montaigne, who decried education that imparted facts but did not teach people how to live well.  It is the great divorce of science and religion that has allowed this split in awareness to develop – the fact that fundamentalists continue to insist on literal interpretations which are contrary to reason and science, makes scientists dismiss the whole of religion as a waste of space.  But Unitarians steadfastly maintain, and many other religions affirm, that religion is not about beliefs, doctrines and dogmas – it is about values, and about experiencing the world with a sense of awe and wonder and gratitude.  It is about celebrating life, and experiencing it to the full; letting our imagination and creativity play over the vast panoply of nature.

Imagination is also an important quality; it enables us to imagine the world differently.  And this is what liberal religions do, too.  For my MA, I studied the relationship between Pagans and science, including their interest in science fiction. One of the reasons that Pagans like science fiction (and I wouldn’t be surprised if this was true of Unitarians too) is that it dreams of worlds with different societies, different ethical systems, and different ways of interacting with the planet than our own.  Science fiction is a thought experiment about how things might play out if you had a different set of starting conditions – for example, if people lived in caves with very little living space, how would that affect their sense of space?  They would be agoraphobic and have no sense of personal space.  And if there was another planet that was sparsely populated, they might be claustrophobic and get used to large amounts of personal space.  Now imagine the dramatic possibilities if you transplant the inhabitant of the sparsely populated planet to the cave planet, or vice versa, and how that would affect them.  This is the premise of Isaac Asimov’s The Caves of Steel.  The message of the novel is a hopeful one: that people can overcome the conditioning of their home environment – but they have to be willing to try.

It is the same with our spiritual life.  If we always do the same old stuff, we might get stuck in a rut; but if we try new things, we might gain new insights.  I don’t necessarily mean that the new thing has to be something scary or difficult – it could just be trying again at something you have failed at in the past.  I thought I was rubbish at meditation until I tried again in a morning meditation session at Great Hucklow Summer School, and something that was said – that you can begin again each moment, and that if thoughts arise, do not follow them – gave me the key to learning to relax and just do it.  Sometimes trying something with a different person in a different context can give a different perspective on it.

Similarly with prayer: I didn’t really understand prayer until I read a book about it by a Russian Orthodox monk called Staretz Silouan.  I would never have come across this book unless I had tried Orthodoxy and been lent the book by an Orthodox nun called Mother Sarah.  So doing something outside one’s comfort zone can sometimes be beneficial.  Ultimately Orthodoxy wasn’t for me, but I learnt a lot while I was involved in it, especially about the differences between Eastern and Western Christian doctrine, which enabled me to read the Gospels in a very different way, and look at the Christian tradition differently.

As the Quakers say, “Be open to new light, wherever it may come from” – a very wise saying, I feel.

Another aspect of an empirical approach to religion and spirituality is its pragmatism.  We can try new things and persist with them for a while – but if they don’t work for us, we can stop doing them.  I can’t imagine Unitarians persisting in doing something unpleasant or detrimental just because it was the custom to do it, or because tradition demanded it.  (Come to think of it, this must be the case, because I can’t think of any Unitarian practices that are unpleasant.)

Of course human beings are always a bit reluctant to try new things – we like our safe comfortable ruts and grooves, our tried and tested ways of doing things.  But remember when your mum and dad got you to try that new vegetable on your plate, and you actually liked it?  Or when you first learnt to ride a bike, the feeling of exhilaration when you realised that your dad wasn’t holding on to the back of the bike any more? It can be pleasurable to experiment with new ways of doing things.

So let us approach the world with wonder and a willingness to experiment. Let’s be willing to try new things – even Brussels sprouts. 

The Enlightenment

A motion was proposed at the UK GA in defence of the Enlightenment. The author of the motion was sitting in front of me, and said that he just wanted to start a conversation about it. What a good idea, I said. So here goes.

The Enlightenment was a complex phenomenon with many strands. One of those strands was the origin of the Pagan revival. Another was the rise of rational religion in the form of Unitarianism, deism and humanism. A further strand was the rise of rationalism, which at the time was in opposition to the empiricism of Locke and others. The rationalists held that reason was a priori, God-given; the empiricists held that we are born with a blank slate (tabula rasa) and acquire reasoning skills by experience. It was only in the early 20th century that a synthesis of rationalism and empiricism was finally achieved. Another strand of the Enlightenment was the concept of the sublime - the experience of awe when confronted by natural phenomena such as mountains, waterfalls and wilderness. This represented a considerable shift in attitudes to nature, and it was out of this that Romanticism emerged. A further aspect of the Enlightenment was the rise of feminism, with the writings of Mary Wollstonecraft and others. There had been previous feminist writings, but Wollstonecraft represents the beginnings of a movement as opposed to a few isolated individuals. Remember also that evolution by natural selection had not yet been discovered; hardly anyone was aware of the great age of the Earth; science was still called natural philosophy; Oxford and Cambridge were Anglican-only universities and generally not very science-focussed; if you wanted to study science, the best place to go was a Dissenting Academy, like Joseph Priestley.

So the Enlightenment was a multi-faceted phenomenon, a mixture of sometimes complementary and sometimes contradictory discourses. It was an intellectual ferment, an explosion of interest in natural phenomena, history, and literature - an awakening.

The legacy of the Enlightenment is therefore also a mixed blessing. Pure rationalism has given rise to reductionism, logical positivism, behaviourism and other scientific dead-ends; but the idea that we should subject all impulses and beliefs to reason before acting on them seems to me an excellent idea. Empiricism - the primacy of experience and experiment - is also a good principle to work by. Always asking, "Yes but does it work? What are the consequences?" is a good test for most situations. And utilitarianism (another Enlightenment idea) is also useful if not carried to extremes. Seeking the greatest happiness of the greatest possible number of people is good, as long as the rights of the remaining few are not trampled.

Where the legacy of the Enlightenment has failed us is when we assume that science does not need to be tempered with other approaches. The worst excesses of industry, pollution, eugenics, behaviourist psychology and other extreme science should have been tempered with compassion and humanity.