Dan Harper | Sermons

Category: Religion in society

  • Humanism for Such a Time as This

    Sermon copyright (c) 2023 Dan Harper. As delivered to First Parish in Cohasset. As usual, the sermon as delivered contained substantial improvisation.

    Readings

    The first reading is by Russell Moore, an evangelical Christian who forced out of the Southern Baptist Conference for speaking out against Donald Trump’s morals, calling out white nationalism as sinful, and demanding ethical accountability for clergy sexual misconduct. In an interview on NPR< Moore said:

    “…Multiple pastors tell me, essentially, the same story about quoting the Sermon on the Mount… in their preaching — ‘turn the other cheek’ — to have someone come up after to say, ‘Where did you get those liberal talking points?’ And what was alarming to me is that in most of these scenarios, when the pastor would say, ‘I’m literally quoting Jesus Christ,’ the response would not be, ‘I apologize.’ The response would be, ‘Yes, but that doesn’t work anymore. That’s weak.’ And when we get to the point where the teachings of Jesus himself are seen as subversive to us [evangelicals], then we’re in a crisis….”

    The second reading comes from: “Anybody There? Reflections on African American Humanism,” by Anthony B. Pinn, published in the UU Humanist Association Journal in 1997:

    I argue for the possibility of a humanist theology, a theology that holds community rather than God as the center of life-altering questions, accompanied by an understanding of religion and theology as centered on the problem of evil, or theodicy. Christian theology as done within African American communities is premised upon a sense of redemptive suffering as the best response to moral evil in the world. Furthermore, this theological stance is intimately tied to the Christian tradition, complete with a God who is concerned for and working on behalf of the oppressed. It continues to be my belief that, although important in many ways, this theological stance and its narrow perception of religion may not be the best means of achieving the social transformation or liberation sought by the African American community. I conclude that a theological stance on moral evil requires an alternate religious system — African American humanism. This is not meant to dismiss Christian approaches out of hand, rather, to broaden the possibilities, the religious terrain, and to foster conversation concerning liberating ways of addressing the problem of evil.

    Sermon — “Humanism for Such a Time as This”

    Since I want to talk with you this morning about humanism, perhaps I should begin be defining “humanism.” Like many terms that have to do with religious conviction, different individuals and different organizations are going to define “humanism” in different ways. Some conservative Christians, for example, probably lump humanism together with atheism; those conservative Christians would probably define humanism as just another name for the heresy of not believing in their God. And some fundamentalist atheists would no doubt define humanism as “atheism lite,” by analogy with lite beer — half the calories and half the flavor, and why not just drink the real thing.

    In contrast with these derogatory definitions, I choose to define humanism as a positive and valid religious outlook that does not include belief in God. I would call humanism a religious outlook, although I also understand that some followers of humanism would prefer not to be considered religious. After all, these days religion in American popular culture is often equated with narrow-minded conservative Christianity. Nevertheless, I’m going to say that humanism is religious.

    As its name implies, humanism puts human beings at the center of religion. The African American humanist theologian William R. Jones calls this “humano-centric” religion. Jones says this is quite different from traditional Christian religion, which — using his terminology — is “theo-centric.” That is to say, conservative Christianity puts God at the center of things, and therefore God has the primary responsibility to solve problems. Humano-centric religion tells us that we human beings are responsible for our own actions; humano-centric religion tells us that if we humans see something wrong with the world, it is up to us to try to repair it and make it better.

    Humanism is not unique in teaching us to take responsibility for our own actions. Liberal Christianity, liberal Judaism, engaged Buddhism, and similar groups are also humano-centric religions; that is, each of these groups teaches us humans to take primary responsibility for our own actions. But humanism is different because it says there’s nothing beyond human beings and this present world. Humanists say there is no God, except whatever human-made gods and goddesses we might choose to invent. Humanists teach that there is no supernatural world — no heaven, no nirvana, no karma, no holy beings or holy persons — there is just this world.

    I’m not a humanist myself — my current religious self-identity is Haven’t-figured-it-out-ism. However, in this current political and social moment, I find myself both inspired by and grateful to humanism. A certain kind of conservative Christianity has become very emboldened here in the United States. These conservative Christians are giving Christianity a bad reputation. No, more than that, these conservative Christians are giving all of religion a bad reputation. And this type of emboldened conservative Christians is epitomized for me in the story told by Russell Moore, which we heard in the first reading this morning. Let me remind you of this story.

    A Christian pastor preaches a sermon based on Matthew 5:38-39. That’s where Jesus is preaching the so-called Sermon on the Mount. During the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus says, “You have heard that it was said, ‘Eye for eye, and tooth for tooth.’ But I tell you, do not resist an evil person. If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to them the other cheek also.” So this Christian pastor preaches on this classic text from the Christian scriptures, and after the sermon he is confronted by an angry parishioner who demands to know why the pastor is preaching those liberal talking points. The pastor informs the angry parishioner that, according to their Christian beliefs, those words were spoken by Jesus Christ, which is to say, those words were actually spoken by God himself. The angry parishioner says, “That doesn’t work any more”; in essence saying that the Word of God is outdated.

    Russell Moore, who tells this story, has impeccable conservative Christian credentials. He was a very powerful figure in the Southern Baptist Convention. He taught at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. He was the chairman of the board for an evangelical Christian nonprofit called the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood. In this latter role, he would have been diametrically opposed to our Unitarian Universalist notion of the full equality of men and women and other genders. We here in this room would find many areas of disagreement with Russell Moore.

    Yet there are several key issues where we would agree with Russell Moore. For example, in 2016 Moore condemned Donald Trump’s derogatory comments about women and his alleged sexual misconduct. But Moore was forced to recant by Southern Baptist leaders and say he had been unnecessarily harsh. At about that time, Moore made a public statement saying the Confederate flag was not compatible with Christianity. Once again, some influential Southern Baptists took him to task for standing up for the dignity of African Americans. Then a few years later, Moore began calling on his co-religionists to face up to the serious clergy sexual abuse crisis among Southern Baptist churches. Once again he faced bitter backlash from other Southern Baptists for taking a moral stance. He finally grew tired of being forced to apologize for taking moral stances that he felt were based in the Bible. In 2021, Moore left his post as president of the Southern Baptist Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, and left the Southern Baptist Convention entirely.

    Unfortunately, this is what American conservative Christianity has come to — Christians rejecting the teachings of Jesus, Christians ignoring sexual misconduct in politicians and in their own pastors, White Christians refusing to deal with racism. A growing number of people don’t want to be associated with the excesses of conservative American Christianity — the clergy sexual abuse crisis, the blatant introduction of partisan politics into religion, the Confederate flags in churches. And the reality is that American conservative Christianity has become the paradigm for all religion in the United States. As a result, a growing number of people don’t want to be involved with any kind of religion at all.

    And so it is that humanism has a lot to offer in this current moment of history. In a time when the conservative Christian God appears to be a deity which is sexist, racist, and homophobic, many people are ready to reject all religion. Humanism provide an alternative to conservative Christianity that can help Americans see new possibilities for religion.

    And we actually do want people to be part of organized religion. Sociological studies have shown that religion is good for people. This apparently has little to do with belief or lack of belief. After reading some of these sociological studies, and comparing them with my own observations, I would say religion is good for us in large part because we participate in a community of shared values. The shared values I’m talking about are not abstract theology like: do you believe in the Trinity or not; I’m talking about more basic shared values like: being kind to one another; helping one another; working with other people to make the world a better place.

    Humanism can help us see this truth about religion. It doesn’t much matter whether everyone believes in God. It does matter that we attempt to lead moral lives, that to the best of our ability we treat all human beings with respect. If someone becomes disillusioned with God, they may feel compelled to leave all organized religion behind, thus cutting them off from the benefits of a religious community. Humanism offers the opportunity of having a religious community without the perceived hypocrisy of today’s American religion.

    Humanism can also serve as a healthy challenge to those who may not be humanists, by insisting that we human beings are responsible for our own actions. Humanists teach us that when we see something wrong with the world, it’s up to us to repair it. By contrast, conservative Christianity promotes a kind of passivity — everything is up to God; it’s God’s will if you live or die; all you need to do is pray. As an example of this kind of thinking, some conservative Christian pastors right now are saying we should not strive for peace in Israel and Gaza, because they believe the war there is a sign of the End Times when Jesus comes back to earth. God has decreed this — so these conservative Christian pastors say — and so we should let the warring parties do whatever they want. If the war escalates, then so be it, that’s what God wants. Humanists help us understand why these conservative Christian pastors are so wrong. Humanists teach us that when human society goes wrong it’s up to us to fix it. Progressive Christians, progressive Jews, and progressive Muslims might word this a bit differently; they might say God has given humans freedom to act, or something similar. But it comes down to the same basic principle: the war in Gaza and Israel was started by humans, it is being fought by humans, and therefore it’s up to us humans to put an end to the fighting and violence.

    Humanists apply this principle to many other contemporary social problems. In the second reading this morning, Anthony Pinn, an African American humanist, argues that humanism offers the best hope for repairing the evils of racism. In his opinion, the Black churches have responded to racism based on “a sense of redemptive suffering as the best response to moral evil in the world.” Pinn rejects the notion of redemptive suffering — in Pinn’s view, suffering the evils of racism is not going to redeem anyone. Instead, Pinn argues that a religious outlook focused on the problem of evil, a religious outlook which relies on community rather than God to address the evil of racism, is what we need. No more redemptive suffering, let’s roll up our sleeves and get to work.

    Once again, I don’t think that humanism is all that different from progressive Christianity or engaged Buddhism or progressive Judaism. The main difference I can see is that humanism doesn’t have a central personage like Jesus or God or the Buddha. Yet all these religious outlooks are similar in placing a very high importance on community. God, or Jesus, or Buddha remains important, but human community is also critically important.

    And here is where we find the main distinction between religious humanism and organized atheism. Both atheists and humanists do not believe in God, or in any divinity. But the most important thing for organized atheists is their disbelief in God. By contrast, the most important thing for religious humanists is that they come together in community to try to solve the problems facing the world. Thus, the well-known atheist Richard Dawkins spends much of his time trying to convince others that God is a delusion. By contrast, humanist Anthony Pinn is mostly concerned with addressing society’s problems, and he brings up his disbelief in God only because he feels it can get in the way of fighting evil. Theoretical physicist Peter Higgs — who predicted the existence of the Higgs boson — once quipped in an interview that “Dawkins in a way is almost a fundamentalist himself, of another kind.” I think there’s some truth in that. Just as the conservative Christians feel they have to defend the purity of their belief, atheists like Dawkins feel they have to defend the purity of their disbelief. Whereas atheists like Anthony Pinn don’t spend much time on purity of belief or disbelief. Humanists believe that instead of spending so much time on purity of belief, we should be spending most of our time on ending racism, or on promoting world peace, or addressing any number of other social evils.

    I already told you that I’m not a humanist myself, that I’m what you might call a Haven’t-figured-it-out-ist. Yet as a stalwart proponent of Haven’t-figured-it-out-ism, I find myself inspired by humanism, and by humanists like Anthony Pinn. I admit that I really enjoy talking about abstract issues like the nature of God, the requirements of the Dharma, and the ways the rabbis have interpreted the Torah. (I have an undergraduate degree in philosophy and a graduate degree in theology, of course I like talking about such things!) But I feel Anthony Pinn is correct. It’s more important, as he says, “to foster conversation concerning liberating ways of addressing the problem of evil.”

    In other words, what I learn from humanist is that our top priority as a religious community should be ending racism, sexism, homophobia, war, and so on. What each of happens to believe or disbelieve about God, or Dharma, or Allah, or any of those abstract religious questions, deserves less of our energy at this particular historical moment. Let’s take care of racism first. Let’s end hunger and poverty first. Let’s solve the looming environmental crisis first. Let’s focus on the human problems that human beings can solve. Once we have those problems taken care of, then we can find the time to argue about the existence or non-existence of God.

  • Why I’m a Mystic (But Maybe You Shouldn’t Be)

    Sermon copyright (c) 2023 Dan Harper. As delivered to First Parish in Cohasset. As usual, the sermon as delivered contained substantial improvisation.

    Readings

    From the essay “Nature” by Ralph Waldo Emerson:

    Crossing a bare common, in snow puddles, at twilight, under a clouded sky, without having in my thoughts any occurrence of special good fortune, I have enjoyed a perfect exhilaration. I am glad to the brink of fear. In the woods too, a man casts off his years, as the snake his slough, and at what period soever of life, is always a child. In the woods, is perpetual youth. Within these plantations of God, a decorum and sanctity reign, a perennial festival is dressed, and the guest sees not how he should tire of them in a thousand years. In the woods, we return to reason and faith. There I feel that nothing can befall me in life, — no disgrace, no calamity, (leaving me my eyes,) which nature cannot repair. Standing on the bare ground, — my head bathed by the blithe air, and uplifted into infinite space, — all mean egotism vanishes. I become a transparent eye-ball; I am nothing; I see all; the currents of the Universal Being circulate through me; I am part or particle of God. The name of the nearest friend sounds then foreign and accidental: to be brothers, to be acquaintances, — master or servant, is then a trifle and a disturbance. I am the lover of uncontained and immortal beauty.

    From Louisa May Alcott’s satire on Transcendentalism, “Transcendental Wild Oats”:

    “Each member [of the community] is to perform the work for which experience, strength, and taste best fit him,” continued Dictator Lion. “Thus drudgery and disorder will be avoided and harmony prevail. We shall rise at dawn, begin the day by bathing, followed by music, and then a chaste repast of fruit and bread. Each one finds congenial occupation till the meridian meal; when some deep-searching conversation gives rest to the body and development to the mind. Healthful labor again engages us till the last meal, when we assemble in social communion, prolonged till sunset, when we retire to sweet repose, ready for the next day’s activity.”

    “What part of the work do you incline to yourself?” asked Sister Hope, with a humorous glimmer in her keen eyes.

    “I shall wait till it is made clear to me. Being in preference to doing is the great aim, and this comes to us rather by a resigned willingness than a wilful activity, which is a check to all divine growth,” responded Brother Timon.

    “I thought so.” And Mrs. Lamb sighed audibly, for during the year he had spent in her family Brother Timon had so faithfully carried out his idea of “being, not doing,” that she had found his “divine growth” both an expensive and unsatisfactory process.

    Sermon: “Why I’m a Mystic (But Maybe You Shouldn’t Be)”

    When I was 16, the summer camp I worked for sent me to a weekend workshop led by Steve van Matre, an environmental educator. Steve van Matre was an observant educator. After several years of working with kids, he noticed that conventional environmental education, with its emphasis on teaching identification skills and intellectual concepts, didn’t wind up producing environmentalists. So he, and the other environmental educators with whom he worked, began developing activities that would — to use his words — “turn people on to Nature.”

    One group of these new activities was called “solitude enhancing activities.” Van Matre felt that most of the time when we are supposedly in solitude, we are actually listening to a little internal voice that is constantly talking. Van Matre called this voice “the little reprobate in the attic of your mind,” and he said that it was a dangerous voice in some ways, because it keeps us from living in the present. (1)

    When he said this, for the first time I became aware of that little voice in my own head. And that little reprobate in the attic of my mind did in fact talk on and on with no respite. Once I noticed it, I couldn’t un-notice it: it was constantly talking, on and on and on, and saying (if I were to be honest with myself) little or nothing of interest.

    Van Matre outlined several activities that environmental educators could use to help quiet that “little reprobate in the attic of your mind.” I decided that I wanted to teach those activities to this children I worked with in the summer. Since I was brought up in a family of educators, I knew that if you’re going to teach something, it’s a good idea to try doing it yourself first. So I tried some of van Matre’s solitude enhancing activities.

    One of these activities, which called “Seton-Watching,” was to sit outdoors somewhere and do nothing but simply be aware. Van Matre had told us about a time when he did this: He went outdoors, and settled down to stay absolutely still for some lengthy period of time, perhaps half an hour. After sitting absolutely still and in silence for perhaps a quarter of an hour, a hummingbird came along to look at his red hat band. This prompted van Matre to look up, so he could see the hummingbird. The motion of his head startled the bird and it flew away before he could see it, and he concluded he would have been better off remaining motionless, instead of listening to the little voice in his head that told him to look up.

    I began trying this “Seton Watching” activity. One afternoon while sitting at the foot of a birch tree, the little reprobate in the attic of my mind finally stopped talking. In that moment, I suddenly became aware of — for want of a better way of describing it — the connectedness of the entire universe. It was quite a sensation. I then discovered that words were not adequate to describe this sensation — it was not in fact a sense of the connectedness of the universe, but something that couldn’t be put into words. Which makes sense, because this sensation only occurred when that little voice in my head stopped talking. Words are very powerful and very useful, but there are other kinds of knowing that have nothing to do with words; and trying to describe those other kinds of knowing with words must obviously be a pointless exercise.

    It turns out that experiences like this are fairly common. These experiences have been classed together under the title “mystical experiences.” When the psychologist William James studied mystical experiences, he argued they had two defining features. First, said James, the person who has a mystical experience “immediately says that it defies expression, that no adequate report of its contents can be given in words.” James goes on to add: “It follows from this that its quality must be directly experienced; it cannot be imparted or transferred to others.” Second, James said, mystical states are experienced by those who have them as a kind of knowing: “They are states of insight into depths of truth unplumbed by the discursive intellect.” James also pointed out that mystical experiences tend to be short-lived and transient, and they are generally passive. (2)

    Mystical experiences are fairly common — William James believed that as many as a quarter of all people have them. And that makes me wonder — what good are these experiences? I’m less interested in whether these experiences are useful, but instead I wonder whether these experiences tend to move you towards or away from truth and goodness. To use the language of the Unitarian minister and mystic Theodore Parker: the moral arc of the universe is long, and the question is whether these experiences help bend it towards justice, or not.

    I think mystical experiences can lead to justice, but they can also lead to injustice. In my observation, mystical experiences, when supported by the right kind of community, can strengthen individuals to help bend the moral arc of the universe towards justice. However, I’ve also seen how mystical experiences may twist an individual towards psychopathologies like narcissism and delusion, or embolden an individual to abuse their power and indulge their greed.

    Here’s what I think causes someone to follow one or the other of these two possible paths. If someone has a mystical experience and they think it makes them special and somehow better than other people, that can prove to be the path to psychopathology or abusiveness. These people tend to have mystical experiences outside of a supportive and critical community. They are hyper-individualists, and the combination of mysticism and individualism can create a toxic brew. On the other hand, if someone has a mystical experience and is part of a community that holds them accountable for their actions, then a mystical experience can help that person bend the moral arc of the universe towards justice. A mystical experience can provide a vision for a better future where Earth shall be fair and all her people one.

    In the second reading this morning, the excerpt from “Transcendental Wild Oats,” Louisa May Alcott tells a story of how mysticism can be destructive. “Transcendental Wild Oats” is based on Alcott’s lived experience. When she was a girl, her father moved his family to Fruitlands, a utopian community in Harvard, Massachusetts. The men who started the Fruitlands community were mystics, and their mystical insights informed them — so they said — of how to run the perfect human community. But the Fruitlands community fell apart in seven short months. The male mystics in charge of the community were unable to grow the crops they were depending on, unable to do anything practical, while the women in the community did their best to keep the children safe and feed everyone. Louisa May Alcott’s story “Transcendental Wild Oats” is a thinly disguised satire of the Fruitlands community. Alcott lays bare the sexism and the ignorance of the men whose abuse of their mystical experiences made the lives of other people miserable.

    (I should note in passing that Louisa May Alcott was a Unitarian. But hers was not an individualistic religion; hers was a religion of community, connection, and mutual support.)

    In our first reading, another Unitarian, Ralph Waldo Emerson, described one of his own mystical experiences. In a now-famous image, Emerson wrote: “…All mean egotism vanishes. I become a transparent eye-ball; I am nothing; I see all; the currents of the Universal Being circulate through me; I am part or particle of God.” Christopher Cranch, a contemporary of Emerson’s and a fellow Unitarian minister, drew a cartoon making fun of Emerson’s transparent eye-ball: the cartoon shows an eyeball wearing a top hat atop a tiny body with long spindly legs. (3) I think what makes Emerson’s transparent eye-ball image so prone to mockery is the fact that it’s too individualistic. This is my criticism of Emerson’s mysticism: he is too self-centered. Emerson had the opportunity to go out and wander in the fields and become a transparent eye-ball in part because he left all the housework, all the management of their children, to his wife, Lidian. (4) This sounds too much like the mysticism that Louisa May Alcott satirized. If you become a transparent eye-ball while wandering the fields in leisure, that will be quite different from the mystical experiences you might have while caring for children, or mending clothes, or cooking dinner for your family.

    And this brings me to another well-known mystic, Henry David Thoreau. Thoreau was raised as a Unitarian, but left in his early twenties because the church in Concord, where he was a member, refused to offer wholehearted support to the abolition of slavery. Thoreau’s most famous descriptions of his own mystical experiences occur in this book Walden. Once again, Thoreau’s mysticism is open to mockery. Critics of Thoreau love to tell the story of how Thoreau didn’t actually lead the life of a mystical hermit at Walden Pond — he went home regularly so his mother could do his laundry and cook him dinner. It’s easy to be a mystic when your mom cooks you dinner.

    But I think Thoreau’s critics miss the point. While it is true that Thoreau didn’t break out of the strict gender roles of his time, at least he did much of his own cooking and cleaning while living at Walden. And Thoreau had to go home regularly to help his father run the family business of manufacturing pencils (an appropriate role for his gender in those times). Equally important for our purposes, Thoreau also went home to attend meetings of the anti-slavery group led by his mother. The Thoreau family was part of the Underground Railroad, and Thoreau wrote that his cabin at Walden Pond served as a place to harbor fugitive slaves. And while he lived at Walden Pond, Thoreau spent that famous night in jail because he refused to pay taxes that went to support an unjust war.

    We can rightly criticize Thoreau for his sexism, the unquestioned sexism of his time. And it’s easy to make fun of his mysticism. But unlike the mysticism of the organizers of Fruitlands, Thoreau’s mysticism didn’t keep him from successfully growing his own food, and building his own house. And while Emerson’s mysticism can come across as self-indulgent, Thoreau’s mysticism gave him the strength to take courageous action against slavery, and against unjust war.

    When I had my own first mystical experience, I lived in Concord, where Louisa May Alcott, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Henry David Thoreau had all lived. The Concord public schools gave us a heavy dose of the Concord authors, so at age sixteen I knew their stories. I had even started to read Thoreau’s Walden, and liked him the best of all the Concord authors. So when I had my own mystical experience, I had Thoreau’s example to show that mystical experiences could move one towards making the world a better place.

    The justification for a mystical experience is to help bend the moral arc of the universe towards justice. This helps explain Martin Luther King’s fascination with Thoreau. I suspect King had his own mystical experiences, which he no doubt understood from within his progressive Christian worldview. King understood how his deeply-felt religious experiences could give him the strength he needed to confront injustice. Nor is he the only one whose mystical experiences helped them bend the moral arc of the universe towards justice. Hildegard de Bingen drew strength from her mysticism to enlarge the role of women within the confines of her medieval European society. Mahatma Gandhi drew on his mystical experiences to help him confront the evils of colonialism in India. And so on.

    Just remember that you don’t need to be a mystic in order to help bend the moral arc of the universe towards justice. Some people have mystical experiences, and some people don’t. Having a mystical experience doesn’t make you a better person; what makes you a better person is furthering the cause of truth and justice. But if you are one of those people who happens to have a mystical experience or two, may you use it to strengthen you to help make the world a better place.

    Notes

    (1) Van Matre’s approach is outlined in his books Acclimatizing, a Personal and Reflective Approach to a Natural Relationship (American Camping Assoc., 1974) and Acclimatization : A Sensory and Conceptual Approach to Ecological Involvement (American Camping Assoc., 1972). The quote comes from my notes of van Matre’s workshop on 6 May 1977.

    (2) William James, Varieties of Religious Experience, p. 381.

    (3) Here’s Cranch’s cartoon:

    A sketch of a transparent eyeball on long spindly legs.
    from Wikimedia Commons, public domain image

    (4) For an account of busy Lidian’s daily life, see the biography by her daughter, Ellen Tucker Emerson, The Life of Lidian Jackson Emerson, ed. by Delores Bird Carpenter (Boston: Twayne, 1981).

  • Is It Religion? (part 1) — Sports

    Sermon copyright (c) 2023 Dan Harper. As delivered to First Parish in Cohasset. As usual, the sermon as delivered contained substantial improvisation.

    Opening words

    The opening words were the poem “We’re Human Beings” by Jill McDonough.

    Readings

    The first reading this morning is from “The Cult of the Red Sox” by Mark Silk, (“Spiritual Politics,” Religion News Service, October 31, 2013):

    “Anyone who lives in New England knows that sports is religion. There are different denominations, albeit these are not (ecumenical souls that we are) mutually exclusive. You can be a devotee of the Patriots, Bruins, Celtics, and Huskies all at once.

    “Of course, the most exalted regional cult is the Red Sox, who have been playing in their Fenway Park shrine since 1912. This year’s bearded incarnation was a dead ringer for the barnstorming teams fielded in the early 20th century by the Israelite House of David, a Michigan commune dedicated to gathering in the 12 Tribes of Israel to await the imminent Millennium.

    “In the latter 20th century, the Red Sox sought the in-gathering of the six tribes of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut in anticipation of the Millennium that arrived in 2004, when they captured a world championship for the first time since Babe Ruth propelled them to one in 1918. Last night, Red Sox Nation celebrated its third championship in 10 years. Hosannah!

    “Once upon a time, baseball’s gods were indentured to their teams by the reserve clause. Like Athena in Athens or Apollo in Delphi, they were permanent fixtures of a city unless the owner decided to trade them away (as Harry Frazee traded Ruth to the Yankees in 1919). Now, thanks to free agency, the gods can shop around for their gigs. Moving from city to city, they are, perforce, less attached to any of them.

    “In Boston, this year, it was more like the old days. When the city was rocked by the Marathon bombing a few games into the season, the players, most of them newcomers, found themselves essential to civic recovery….”

    The second reading was the poem “Baseball and Classicism,” by Tom Clark.

    Sermon : “Is It Religion, Pt. 1: Sports”

    Is sports a religion? The answer is — yes. The answer is also — no.

    I guess I’ll have to explain what I mean. And to simplify things, I’ll begin by focusing on just one sport. The world of sports is large and complex, and it is composed of many denominations, sects, and cults. I suppose I should focus on the sport that is most widespread in the world, which is association football, known as soccer here in the United States. But we live close to Boston, where baseball reigned supreme for many years. With the coming of the prophet Tom Brady to the Patriots, some of baseball’s fair-weather fans became football fans, but now that the prophet Brady has gone back to San Mateo or wherever he came from, the faithful are slowly drifting back to the fold. So baseball it is.

    It doesn’t matter that the Sox have finished three of the last four seasons in the cellar. This is not a Church of Baseball where salvation is measured by wins and losses. This is the peculiar cult known as Red Sox Nation. Regardless of whether the Sox are winning or losing, the faithful of Red Sox Nation make their annual pilgrimages to Fenway Park from all over New England east of the Connecticut River. The pilgrimage to Fenway is the religious dream of every member of Red Sox Nation:– to sit beside that holy ground, to watch the ritual battle of pitcher against batter, to drink the sacred warm beer (for which you paid eleven dollars), to join in the sacred ritual chants of “No batter, no batter,” “Let’s go Red Sox,” and “Hey ump, you couldn’t call a cab.” And for the pilgrims of Red Sox Nation, the ultimate religious experience is to be in Fenway for a game between the Sox and the hated Yankees. Because for the faithful of Red Sox Nation, baseball is more than a game, it is in its highest form a re-enactment of the universal Battle between Good and Evil.

    Have I convinced you yet that Red Sox Nation is a religion, or at least a religious cult?

    Even I have been converted to the cult of Red Sox Nation. Even I, who have approximately zero interest in sports. I’m one of those people whose only interest lies in outdoor sports — hiking, fishing, camping, canoeing — and outdoor sports don’t count as real sports. Yet fifteen years ago, before I moved out to California, I was a member of Red Sox Nation. I made my pilgrimages to Fenway. I read the box scores, back when newspapers carried box scores. I listened to Joe Castiglione give the sacred broadcasts. If the Red Sox can get someone like me to follow sports — then it must be more than sports, it must be religion.

    Yet of course baseball can’t be religion. Sports can’t be religion. We all know what religion is. Social scientists here in the United States even have specific measurements to determine someone’s religiosity — things like belief in a higher power, engagement in prayer or an equivalent spiritual practice, attendance at religious services, affiliation to a religious institution, and so on. We are likely to use much the same measures as social scientists. If someone goes to church or temple, if they believe in God, if they pray regularly, if they identify with some widely accepted religion — then we call them religious. We who are not social scientists might add a couple of additional criteria for what defines a religious person — you’re supposed to read a sacred text or texts, and you’re only supposed to have one religious affiliation at a time.

    By these measure, baseball is not a religion. But by these same measures, Unitarian Universalism is not a religion either. Many Unitarian Universalists do not believe in God. Many of us do not pray, nor even engage in any other widely accepted spiritual practice such as meditation. Many of us have multiple religious affiliations. A good number of us do not care much about sacred texts. Quite a few perfectly good Unitarian Universalists do not attend weekly services.

    The problem with the usual American definition of religion is that it is based on Western Protestant Christianity. In order to be a Protestant Christian, you do have to believe in God. You do have to pray. You do have to read your Bible. You do have to attend religious services regularly. And you can only belong to one religion at a time.

    We then apply these standards, which are based on Western Protestant Christianity, to all other religious traditions. It’s pretty straightforward to apply these criteria to Judaism and Islam. But we have to be more creative when applying these criteria to Buddhism: we have to include Buddhist meditation as a form of prayer, the sutras are like the Bible, and we get around the requirement of belief in God by saying that Buddhists believe in Buddha who is sort of like Jesus Christ.

    We manage to make our clumsy definition of religion work — sort of — by forcing non-Christian traditions into Christian categories. This can become awkward. Take, for example, Confucianism. (Which, by the way, is called Confucianism by people in the West because we like to think of Confucius as a sort of sacred founder figure like Jesus Christ, even though he’s not that at all.) When Christian missionaries went to China in the early Modern era, they said to Confucian scholars, “Confucianism is a religion, right?” To which the scholars said, “Hm. Maybe. Well… not really.” Or take Shintoism. When Westerners finally forced their way into Japan in the late nineteenth century, they told the Japanese that Shintoism was a religion. This led to a certain amount of confusion because there was no word for “religion” in Japanese at that time. It turns out that our Western category of religion is not a universal category at all.

    We can try to make religion into a more universal category by defining it something like this: Religion is that which brings meaning to our lives. To paraphrase the mid-twentieth century theologian Paul Tillich, religion is the ground of being. This definition fits better with Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam, Judaism, Shintoism, and Unitarian Universalism. This definition also fits sports. Sports brings meaning to the lives of many people. It can serve as the ground of our being.

    If sports really is a religion, that could lead to some interesting conclusions.

    First of all, like organized religion, sports does more than just bring meaning to people’s lives. Like organized religion, sports can also help build character and develop leadership abilities. This mostly applies to actually playing sports, as opposed to just watching sports. When you play sports, you learn self-discipline — just as when you learn spiritual practices like meditation or prayer, you learn self-discipline. Playing sports teaches you how to work with others on a team — just like serving on a committee in our congregation teaches you how to work with others on a team. And playing sports teaches you both leadership skills and followership skills, because you have to learn when to lead and when to follow the leadership of others — not unlike organized religion where we are constantly learning and relearning how and when to lead and how and when to follow.

    But there is a fairly large difference between sports and religious traditions like Mainline Protestantism, Reform and Conservative Judaism, Unitarian Universalism, and other more progressive religious groups. These more progressive religious groups maintain the equality of men and women, recognize LGBTQIA+ rights, and rely on democratic process in running their congregations. By contrast, most sports teams are run as hierarchies, not as democracies. Most sports teams require a rigid separation of the sexes, and men’s sports are seen as more important. Most sports no room for non-binary or genderqueer people. Let’s take these one at a time.

    We may criticize organized religion for being patriarchal, but organized sports is far more patriarchal. While it is true that Title IX requires schools to spend equal amounts of money on boys’ and girls’ sports, in most schools the all-male football team reigns supreme at the top of the sports hierarchy, while women’s sports like field hockey and softball remain at the bottom. In pro sports, the most popular major league teams are always the men’s teams. And there is really no place for non-binary or genderqueer people in sports. The only team sport I could think of where all genders are allowed to play on one team is Ultimate Frisbee, a sport that is so low on the sports hierarchy that it’s below even women’s sports.

    Not only are most sports patriarchal, team sports are also hierarchal and non-democratic. A high school soccer team doesn’t get to vote on who their coach is going to be — the school administration hires the coach without any input from the students. (Compare that soccer team to this congregation, where you vote on whether to call your ministers; and think of the typical soccer coach who is far more authoritarian than you would ever allow me to be.) And then there are the referees, outside authorities who can wield great power over players and coaches. We are so accustomed to the hierarchy of coaches and referees that it’s almost impossible for us to imagine a democratically run team sport where the players referee themselves. Again, the only sport I could think of where players referee themselves is Ultimate Frisbee, which is barely even a sport.

    Now let me turn to another conclusion. If we think of sports as a religion, I suspect a significant part of the well-documented decline of organized religion is not about people becoming less religious — instead, I suspect that people are leaving traditional religions for sports and other cultural phenomena that help people give meaning to their lives. I’m willing to bet that many of the so-called “Nones,” the people who check off “None” when asked their religious affiliation, have simply substituted sports for religious affiliation.

    There’s nothing inherently wrong with this. If you feel you get more meaning from sports than from organized religion, who am I to tell you otherwise? Just remember that sports is not democratic, while by contrast progressive religious groups are bulwarks of democracy, training people in democratic skills and generally supporting democratic principles.

    Ours is one of those congregations that is a bulwark of democracy. If you participate in this congregation, you get to practice basic skills of democracy, things like participating in committee meetings, joining with like-minded people to influence policy-makers, learning how to do public speaking, and voting in our annual meeting. We also openly advocate for democracy. We remind each other to vote, we remind each other to contact our elected representatives, sometimes we gather with others to exercise our right of peaceful assembly. In this, we are like many more progressive religious groups that support democratic process. I was just talking with my friend the Reform Jewish rabbi, and his congregation is as big a supporter of democracy as is ours; like our congregation, his congregation advocates for democratic principles and uses democratic principles to run their congregation. The Sikh gurdwara that I got to know about while living in Silicon Valley was another congregation that serves as a bulwark of democracy. In fact, aside from the Christian nationalists and some fringe groups like the Scientologists, it seems to me that most of the religious groups in the United States support democracy more than organized sports does.

    So let’s return to the question with which I began: Is sports a religion? The answer is still — yes and no. No, sports is not a religion because the IRS doesn’t automatically grant tax exemptions to sports teams. No, sports is not a religion because you don’t have to believe in God or pray (but by those criteria, Therevada Buddhism isn’t a religion either.)

    But — yes, sports is a religion because it gives meaning and purpose to people’s lives. Sports is a religion for many people who no longer have a religious affiliation, where it fills a religion-shaped hole in their lives. And sports provides additional meaning and purpose in the lives of many people who are part of more typical religious groups like our congregation. We should honor all the things that sports brings to the lvies of many people.

    But even if you can’t accept sports as a religion, it seems pretty clear that while organized religion is in decline, sports continues to grow. And there’s a problem with these two trends. Sports does not provide major support for democracy in the way that many religious groups do. Yet we live in a time when democracy is under attack; democracy needs all the help and support it can get. We need as many institutions as we can possibly get to support democracy, and democratic principles. So religious traditions like ours remain critical bulwarks of democracy.