Unitarian Universalism is a liberal religion, not because of our progressive politics but because of our commitment to the ideals of liberalism. Liberalism in the classic sense is not an ideology, but a method for resolving conflict, gaining knowledge, and advancing toward truth. Our liberal approach to religion and to all that concerns us as religious people is a precious inheritance. Abandoning the principles of liberalism would mean losing an essential part of who we are.

Watch the video of this sermon here preached at the Monte Vista Unitarian Universalist Congregation, October 18, 2020.

I’ve preached this sermon several times for different congregations and made small adjustments each time. Here is the latest version I preached for the Unitarian Universalist Multi-racial Unity Action Council on February 16, 2022.

This house “is a house of truth-seeking” says Ken Patton in the words of our Meditation. (#444, Singing the Living Tradition)

The fourth of our seven Unitarian Universalist principles is “A free and responsible search for truth and meaning.”

In the words of retired UU minister Christine Robinson we used for our Chalice Lighting, “We light this beacon of hope, sign of our quest for truth and meaning.” (#448, Singing the Living Tradition)

Truth is important in this house (whatever house you happen to be in this morning).  And equally important is the knowledge we derive from discovering the truth.  Unitarian Universalists don’t settle for hunches.  We don’t buy claims without evidence.  We don’t take it “on faith.”  Because “the Bible tells me so” is not good enough for us.  

We strive to be a reality-based religion.  Good or bad, happy or sad, our faith steps up to respond to the world as it really is.  We want the truth, as close as we can know it, even if it hurts.  What’s the truth of climate change?  What’s the truth of our national history?  What’s the truth of what happened on January 6, a year ago, and the events that led up to it?

Being “reality-based” means, when it comes to the internal, the psychological, the spiritual, we want to know what’s real in those realms, too, just as we want to know the reality of the material world.  What is the truth of freedom and free will?  What is the truth of our human nature?  What is true about God, and the afterlife, as much as we can know?

We are in all religious concerns, a reality-based religion.  We affirm and promote a free and responsible search for truth.  As Ken Patton says, we want to be “a house of truth-seeking, where scientists can encourage devotion to their quest, where mystics can abide in a community of searchers.”

            So to be a truth-seeking faith, a reality-based religion, we need a method to distinguish false from real.  We need a path to follow that leads toward truth.  We need a tool that sifts fact from fantasy, a method that is both “free and responsible” as we say in our fourth principle.

Fortunately, such a method exists, and Ken Patton gives us that, too.

            In this house, he says, “we offer a platform for the free voice, for declaring both in times of security and danger, the full and undivided conflict of opinion.”

            You know this is a house of truth-seekers because “we offer a platform for the free voice.”  You know our faith follows “a free and responsible search for truth and meaning,” because, “both in times of security and danger,” you will hear in our churches, “the full and undivided conflict of opinion.”

            That’s the method we use to distinguish false from real.  That’s the free and responsible path that leads to truth.

That’s also the method called “liberalism” and that liberal method:  our “platform for the free voice,” that supports “the full and undivided conflict of opinion” allows Unitarian Universalism to claim the name, “liberal religion.”

            You’ve probably heard that phrase “liberal religion” once or twice since you’ve been involved with Unitarian Universalism.  Perhaps you thought, as I did, when I first heard that phrase, that we are a liberal religion, because of our liberal politics.  On one side is the religious right.  And we are the religious left:  church-going, sermons and hymns, pass the collection baskets, candles and coffee hour, but politically liberal.  Liberal religion.

            But that isn’t what liberal religion means.  

            Liberal, in this sense, is cousin to words like liberty, or liberation.  “Liber” meaning “free.”  We are a liberal religion because we are a free religion.  In the words of the hymn, “From Tranquil Streams” which I sang earlier:  our liberal religion is “Free from the bonds that bind the mind to narrow thought and lifeless creed; free from a social code that fails to serve the cause of human need.”  Our liberal religion is free from many elements which bind other religious: free from constricting tradition (which is orthodoxy); free from authoritative scripture (as in fundamentalist religions); free from a dominating hierarchy (as in denominationalism).

            Our liberal approach to religion was born 500 years ago at the time of the Enlightenment when there was a general blossoming of the liberal spirit in all aspects of human life.

            In government, liberalism expressed itself in democratic movements, away from authoritarian governments like monarchies.

            In science, liberalism evolved a method to determine objective truth freeing science from the authority of religious myths.

            In economics, liberalism harnessed the power of the free-market to set prices for goods and services

            And in religion, liberalism birthed Unitarian Universalism:  a religion where individual conscience is free, subject neither to Pope, nor Priest, nor Prophet, nor Scripture.

            The principles of classical liberalism, whether in government, science, economics, religion, or elsewhere, rest in how we answer the questions, “How do we know what is real?  How do we seek the truth and feel confidant when we find it?  In short, how can we claim to know anything?

            Do we listen to an authority like a king or a pope?  Do we read the answer in a sacred book?  Do we defer to one group of people, like the elders in our community?  Do we try to identify the smartest, or the strongest among us and follow their lead unquestioningly?

            The liberal answer is that we discover the truth by hashing it out all together, every one of us, through, “a platform for the free voice” respecting, “the full and undivided conflict of opinion.”

You can think of liberalism as a kind of game.  The players enter the playing field with their differing opinions about the truth.  They play by engaging in debate.  They argue.  They offer evidence.  They publish their research in peer-reviewed journals.  They challenge.  They defend.  The goal is to identify a shared truth, the winner on the field.  Everybody goes home with more knowledge.

            The rules of the liberal game are two:

            Rule number one.  Everybody has to play.  If you want your opinion to be considered you have to put it on the field, debate it and defend it.  Nobody gets to stand to the side and say, “My opinion is beyond debate because I’m a special person with special access to the truth.”  Or “My truth is based on a holy scripture that cannot be questioned.”  Or, “My knowledge is based on a personal revelation that only I can experience.”  Appeals to special authority are out of bounds in the liberal game.  Every opinion wishing to be considered as possibly true has to get on the field and defend itself with evidence, reason, and debate.

            Rule number two.  No knowledge is final.  The game advances in rounds, but it never really ends.  No truth claim is ever beyond criticism.  Even long-settled knowledge that we think we know for sure, has to remain in play.  You can’t say, “My truth is grounded in a wisdom tradition, centuries-old and unchanging.”  The meaning of “knowledge” in the liberal game, is “when this idea is repeatedly tested, probed, and further explored it continues to prove itself on the field as the best description of reality.”

When John Milton says, “Our faith and knowledge thrive by exercise, as well as our limbs and complexion” he is describing the liberal game. (#671, Singing the Living Tradition)

When he says, “The light which we have gained was given us not to be ever staring on, but by it to discover onward things more remote from our knowledge” he is giving us the second rule of the liberal game.  No knowledge is final.  Every new knowledge we learn is a light that guides us further.  

And when Milton says, “here of necessity will be much arguing, much writing, many opinions,” it sounds like he’s giving us a play by play commentary of the action on the liberal playing field.

Milton wants to give the players the liberty, “to argue freely according to conscience, above all liberties.”  That’s the most important freedom we have, says Milton, to be able to argue freely!

            And yes, all that arguing sounds uncomfortable.  If you’re going to play the liberal game you have to be willing to let your ego take a hit.  You might get your feelings hurt when your theories get picked apart.  But debating ideas is also kind of exciting, like the fun of any competitive game.  Ken Patton’s “the full and undivided conflict of opinion” sounds like a sportscaster calling the Super Bowl, a super bowl of liberal truth-seeking. 

But what of the danger that with all that arguing, the truth we’re searching for will get buried beneath opinions that are offensive, repugnant, or just plain foolish?  Aren’t there some ideas that we should just banish from the field so we can get to the truth faster?  Milton says, no. 

“Though all the winds of doctrine were let loose to play upon the earth, so truth be in the field, we do injuriously to misdoubt her strength.  For who knows not that truth is strong, next to the Almighty; she needs no policies, no stratagems, to make her victorious.  Let her and falsehood grapple, whoever knew truth put to the worse in a free and open encounter.”

If we allow the game to play, in a “free and open encounter,” the truth will out.  When we set up policies and stratagems that bar some ideas from the field and force one idea to the top, we break the liberal rules.  That’s cheating.  And the truth suffers.  We’re no longer looking for “the truth;” we’re crowning, “my truth.”  And we’re stopping the game, which prevents our good ideas from getting even better.  As Milton says, we have allowed the stream of truth, “to sicken into a muddy pool of conformity and tradition.”

That’s not liberalism.

And as a liberal religion, if we lose liberalism, we lose something essential to our faith.  If we lose liberalism, we lose who we are.  If we allow policies and stratagems to silence, “the full and undivided conflict of opinion” in our religious pursuits, then we may have earned a temporary respite from the noise, but we have thwarted our liberal truth-seeking in favor of an orthodoxy, a fundamentalism, a denominational conformity,.

We are a liberal faith.  But in our churches in the last several years, and in the larger society around us lately, we seem to be losing our faith in liberalism.  

I’m used to seeing challenges to liberalism from the political right: religious fundamentalism, strongman authoritarianism, policies that ignore science, leaders that argue from emotional rhetoric instead of evidence, white-racist nationalism, unhinged conspiracy theories.  Many on the political right recently seem to have abandoned the value of truth entirely.

But I’m also seeing attacks on liberalism from places I’m not accustomed to seeing it:  from the political left, and in our Unitarian Universalism, too.

Here is the danger I see.

I see attacks on the game of liberalism; who gets to play, and how play is conducted on the field.

I see sincere opinions prevented from being entered in debate.  Liberalism doesn’t require giving a forum to cranks.  But we should be careful who we call a crank.  A contrary opinion that is even one percent true can be helpful in advancing knowledge.

I see favored opinions being granted the right not to be questioned.  But good ideas require testing just as bad ideas do.  And even a mostly true idea can be made stronger when it responds to criticism.

I see players appealing to special knowledge in defending their opinions, knowledge that can’t be shared by all.  When a player says, “You can’t know this for yourself, you just have to believe me” they are substituting belief for knowledge.  Knowledge belongs to everyone. “Trust me,” is not an argument.  

I see players using claims of harm or hurt feelings as an excuse to withdraw from debate, yet still expecting respect for their ideas.  Attacks against persons are intolerable.  Criticism of ideas is how we advance toward the truth.  That’s how we play the liberal game.

And then there are the more serious attacks against the premises of liberalism itself.

Liberalism requires that we acknowledge an objective reality.  It is illiberal to consider reality a cultural construct and thus deny any possibility of a shared knowledge of that reality.

Liberalism employs truth-seeking tools that are neutral, available to everyone, and work the same for everyone.  It is illiberal to consider reason, debate, and the scientific method to be no less subjective than myth and intuition, thus placing shared truth beyond our reach.

Liberalism requires that we recognize, firstly, our shared humanity.  It is illiberal to consider a person’s status in a sub-group of humanity to be more fundamental to their identity than the humanity we all share together, thus walking away from the goal of “world community” that we seek in the sixth principle of our faith.

If we abandon liberal premises, we abandon the premises of our liberal religion. There is no shared truth to search for.  There is no objective reality to base our religion on.  There is no usefulness in debate because no shared understanding is possible.

Liberalism works. The advancements in human society over the last 500 years under the liberal method are undeniable: science, medicine, technology, human rights, and religion, too. Life under liberalism has gotten demonstrably better in the last 50 years for people of color, women, gays and lesbians, disabled persons.  

Yet liberalism’s progress is too slow, for some.  As lives improve gradually, some suffering continues. That’s hard to bear.  And the progress of liberalism rarely moves in a straight line forward. 

So liberalism is frustrating for those who have a more radical spirit and who are self-convinced of their vision for the future.  Some feel they can jump-start the change they seek by substituting disruption and dismantling for debate and persuasion.  Perhaps they feel in these dangerous circumstances we don’t have time, any more, for liberalism.

I understand the frustration, the impatience.  But liberalism is the best path to the truth, and to the world of liberty and justice we seek.

Liberalism requires the free exchange of ideas. Conflict is expected. And conflict is hard.  But liberalism is the proven answer “both in times of security and danger.”  If everybody plays, if everybody is allowed to play, if everybody understands the requirement to defend their opinion through evidence and reason, not appeals to special authority, and if we agree that no proposed truth is ever beyond question, then liberalism works.  We can move forward on our search for truth.  Propositions become knowledge, humanity gains a closer approximation of reality, erroneous beliefs are corrected and any laws or cultural norms based on those wrong beliefs can be overturned.  Suffering eases.  Society progresses.

If we lose liberalism, we lose the best tool humanity has had for overcoming injustice, easing suffering, and advancing human society.  Let us not now abandon the method that has been so effective for so many for so long.