"A person will worship something--have no doubt about that.... Therefore it behooves us to be careful what we worship, for what we are worshiping we are becoming." Those are the words of the most frequently quoted author in the English language, Ralph Waldo Emerson. These two statements by eminent Unitarian Universalists provide a text for my sermon this morning.

It is generally assumed among us, in this nation, that religion is a good thing. Study after study of our society reveals that of all the so-called developed, industrialized nations on the planet, the United States is the most self-consciously religious. More of our people belong to churches, attend churches with some regularity, say they believe in God and practice some form of regular prayer or devotion than in any other post-modern state.

Studies also suggest that Americans, while committed to the importance of religion, have very little knowledge or understanding of religious teachings. They believe in God, but are at a loss to define what that means; they revere the Bible, but know precious little about it or what it teaches or whence it ceriv es; they attend churches, but have little understanding of or commitment to the history and the specific teachings of those churches. Most Americans seem to agree with Dwight Eisenhower, who once said, "Our government makes no sense unless it is founded in a deeply felt religious faith--and I don't care what it is." Most Americans believe that religion is a good thing, even if they don't quite know what it is.

In this context, Unitarian Universalists represent a peculiar and a different people. For the most part, we have a strong ambivalence toward religion. All the surveys of our membership indicate that we are overwhelmingly a come-outer religion. While it is true that there are always some of us who are birth-right Unitarian Universalists, and while we sometimes find people who are third or fourth or even fifth generation Unitarian Universalists, such people are sufficiently rare that they always occasion mild surprise among us. The vast majority of us were reared in some other religious tradition, or in none, at some point found ourselves unable to remain in our communities of origin, and set out looking for a new religious home. Many of us have been disappointed, if not actually scarred in our encounters with religion. This means that we know that not all religions are the same. This means that we take religion seriously. We understand that religion is not just a benevolent social gathering, that it also has a dark and dangerous side. As a consequence we are concerned that what we say we believe be consistent with our experience of the world and reflective of the best that is in us. In short, we are convinced that it matters what we believe.

In recent years we have seen ample evidence of the demonic in religion. It was not very long ago that a charismatic religious leader named Jim Jones convinced his followers to leave their homes and their communities and to carve out a new Zion in the wilderness of Guyana. Jones had begun his career as a strong advocate for the poor and the despised and the oppressed in American society. The religious community He founded was acclaimed for its efforts to build inter-racial justice, to respond to the needs of the hungry and the homeless. He was lauded in the national press and served on governmental boards and agencies. He adopted a number of inter-racial and hard to place children. He seemed to embody the best of American religion. Unfortunately, his dream of a moral social was tainted by a religious system which allowed no effective challenge to his authority. By the time The People's Temple community had moved to Guyana, Jim Jones had evolved into the undisputed leader of a cult of men and women who had given over to him all their worldly possessions, and worse had ceded to him authority over their minds and bodies as well.

You remember the result. When rumors of abusive behavior and sexual irregularity, and charges that people were being held in the community against their will resulted in a move to investigate, Jim Jones ordered his entire community to commit collective suicide. And nearly 900 men and children and women died in Jonestown. A religious vision which began in the quest for a just and equitable society ended in madness and suicide and murder.

Just last year, we were all reading the headlines from Waco, Texas, where the federal government was involved in a stand-off with another bizarre religious community, the Branch Davidians. An off-shoot of the Seventh Day Adventists, the Branch Davidians was one of a number of apocalyptic sects seeking to cut themselves off from the sinful world in order to prepare themselves for the day of judgment which was imminent. Their beliefs were unorthodox enough that they had been denounced by other Seventh Day Adventists and most orthodox religious groups. But they seemed to pose no real threat to anyone--until a young man who would call himself David Koresh seized leadership of the group. His idiosyncratic reading of the book of Revelation, combined with what seems to have been a personal megalomania led the group in a new direction. Whatever happened within the closed community of the Branch Davidians, suddenly the relation to the outside world was more hostile and ominous. Weapons were purchased and stockpiled, and community members were being prepared for an inevitable confrontation, for a war of the righteous against a sinful world.

You know the end of this story as well. When the rumors of child abuse and sexual abuse and weapons violations began to circulate, the federal government raided the compound called Mount Carmel. The raid provoked a lethal gun-fight, followed by a lengthy siege. In the end, over eighty members of the Branch Davidians died with their leader in a fire which authorities said had been deliberately set. The Branch Davidians had surrendered to their leader their worldly goods, authority over their minds and their bodies, and in the end died at his command--at least so it would appear. It matters what we believe.

Unitarian Universalists have sought to craft a different religious response. Like Emerson, we are convinced that dangerous as religion may be, human beings are by nature religious animals, that we will worship something, and that the content of our religion, to a large degree, defines what we shall become. We should say, at the outset, that there are similarities between some of these cults and Unitarian Universalism. Like the early Jim Jones, we have a deep and abiding concern for social justice, and we believe that our religion is validated, to some degree, by how we interact with the world, how we respond to those in need. Like the Branch Davidians, we sometimes have a sense of being the saving remnant within the larger community, holders of a minority vision of what constitutes equity and justice and integrity. Like both sects, we have no over-arching authority structure to limit us or to protect us from our follies and fancies. No matter what we do, no Bishop, no denominational official has power over us. We are radically free to follow the truth as we are given to see the truth, wherever it may take us.

But there is a difference, an important difference. Within Unitarian Universalism one finds a very different attitude toward authority. For us authority is rooted not in the sacred writings of the past, interpreted by some singular voice, nor in the charismatic leaders of the present, nor even in the elected officials of the institutions. Throughout our history, we have encouraged and protected the voice of dissent among us. We have a congenital suspicion of any vision which claims to represent The Truth, rather than a truth. We have insisted that any leaders who are so sure of their vision that they shut off the dissenting or even the inquiring voice are not to be trusted.

More than this, we have not sought to insulate our communities from contact with a world which does not always confirm our beliefs. Quite the contrary, we have insisted upon interaction with that world; we have sought to tear down the walls which divide, so that we be not isolated from the critical voice which may contain an unpleasant truth we would not otherwise confront.

Beyond this, we have always insisted that for us the democratic process was not just a mechanism of governance, but part of our understanding of how the religious community is called to be in the world. As a consequence, the authority we cede to others is always limited, and subject to challenge and subject to periodic renewal. For us, each person is ultimately responsible for and retains authority over his or her own life, and no one can cede that responsibility to anyone else. Each of us is charged to weigh the claims of truth and wisdom and morality in the light of our own experience and understanding. Each of us is charged to accept responsibility for the choices we make. And when we act in concert, it is the result of an open and democratic process, always subject to revision or reversal in the light of new evidence, new experience, new insight. We are a free people, not a people preparing for freedom, not a people seeking freedom, not a people waiting to be freed, but a free people, who, in fear and trembling must decide for ourselves what is right, and what is good and what is of value and how to respond to the challenges of the world in which we find ourselves.

This has made us a unique force within the religious community. Often we do not understand the position we hold within American religion. After all, we are a small group and sometimes feel marginalized by larger denominations. Sometimes we seem to be talking to ourselves, in a language no one else understands. But every now and then we are offered a glimpse of ourselves as others see us. In a recent book entitled ONE NATION UNDER GOD, Barry Kosmin and Seymour Lachman report the results of a massive study of religion in the United States. This is part of what they have to say about us:
Unitarian Universalism was once known as a haven for starchy humanists and well-heeled liberals. Universalists believed in the salvation by God for all people and Unitarians held to the unity of God. The two denominations merged in 1961, and their legacy has been one of the most theologically diverse and and socially active strains of religion in America. Today, its openness and outreach is changing to include homosexuals, Buddhists, neopagans, and other alternative-society seekers, through the sect's call for religious freedom, tolerance, social justice, spirituality, democracy, and world peace, and its assertion of the interdependence of all creation. This ideology represents the views of many well-educated cosmopolitan people on a range of life-styles--openness to different family forms, deep anti authoritarianism and egalitarian sex roles. It has a clear niche on the religious left.

That is how other people see us--an alternative to the authoritarianism of cult-religion, and an alternative to religious visions committed to the past rather than the future. We offer a different vision and a different method for those who know that by nature we are impelled to worship something and who are convinced that it matters what we believe. That alternative is embedded in the statement of purpose and the mission statement of this church. We seek to be an inclusive regional congregation, open to the world, respecting the authority and responsibility of each individual to undertake the religious quest and answer in satisfying and empowering ways the deepest questions of life.

The challenge to us has always been to demonstrate that respect for individual authority and the maintenance of the religious institution are not incompatible goals. Dean Kelley, in a book entitled WHY CONSERVATIVE CHURCHES ARE GROWING, insists that liberal churches like ours are doomed because they do not ask enough of their people. They do not demand adherence to a creed or dogma, they do not demand participation in a distinct liturgy, they do not demand regular attendance, they do not demand a significant financial commitment. They let people set their own terms of participation and in the process telegraph the message that religion is not important--that it is on a par with being a member of National Public Radio. Therefore, Kelly concludes, conservative churches will continue to grow, because they make demands and liberal churches will decline because they do not.

I do not believe that Dean Kelly rightly understands the demands we make on our people. I believe that the greatest demand that can be made on people is that they take responsibility for their own lives and that they act responsibly within the community they have chosen to enter. I believe that all the other things--attendance, involvement, financial support--follow the acceptance of that responsibility. Freedom and responsibility offer a demanding stance for any religion to assume; they constitute the only safe basis for religious community in this world.

And, my friends, we are about to embark on our annual test to determine whether freedom and individual responsibility and institutional viability can co-exist. We are on the brink of our annual fund drive, in which we ask you to pledge the amount of money we need to keep this congregation healthy and free and open. We have a good thing going here. We are a regional congregation, drawing people from all over the area. We are a congregation open to all who wish to be part of a free and responsible search for truth and insight. We are a congregation which does not erect barriers because of race, creed, social position, affectional orientation. We are a congregation which respects and encourages and supports the individual quest for spiritual growth and ethical living. Above all, we are a free congregation, a place where no truth is so sacred it cannot be questioned, where no authority is so deep rooted it cannot be challenged.

The truth is, however, that no good thing is cost-free. You cannot have a religion which is good, for nothing. Someone must pay for it. For this church to function effectively in our own lives and in the larger community, it must rely upon the financial commitment of its members and friends. We need, on the average, a pledge of $550 dollars from every adult member of this congregation if we are to keep this good thing going. Not all of us, of course, will be able to meet that need. Some of us can afford a much larger gift to the church. What you can give is, like all major decisions in this church, a matter of your own conscience and no one will tell you what your gift must be. But as the pledge drive gets underway, I hope you remember that you cannot have a religion that is good, for nothing and that you will join me in making as generous a pledge as you can to keep alive and growing this institution which seeks to empower individuals to live lives of moral and ethical and spiritual power in the less than perfect world which is our only home.

"We will worship something, " said Emerson. "It matters what we believe," said Fahs. Together we can sustain and build a religious community in which religious belief opens us to world and to greater possibilities, a community in which the focus of our worship enriches our common life. I urge you to join me in making generous commitment to that religious community.