The Unitarian Universalist Community Church of Santa Monica

"The Quest of Truth "

The covenant we read together this morning dates back to 1933, when Universalist minister L. Griswold Williams published it in a book of readings for "free worship."[1] We have been using this covenant - and editing it down from the original to a simpler version - almost as long. Our church history shows a copy of an order of service from 1936 with the original words; since then we have made various changes, shortening the sentences, adding gender-inclusive language, and deleting the references to God, the Divine, and Harmony.

What we have now is crisp and succinct, but it is still a revealing artifact of our faith tradition. Last Sunday, we looked at the first line, "Love is the doctrine of this church." Even this simple statement conveys various meanings. One is that we have no doctrine, other than love, choosing human experience over religious dogma. Another meaning is that our church exists to do the work of love in the world - to reach out in service, to provide a sanctuary from hatred and fear, and to make real our caring for each other. It is also a reference to our Universalist tradition, which taught that God was love; clearly L. Griswold Williams intended that as well.

When we say in the second line of our covenant, "the quest of truth is our sacrament," we are likewise digging deep into our history. Once again we are referring to a theological term - sacrament - and giving it new meaning. According to Christian tradition, a sacrament is a ritual that mediates between God and human beings. Unitarian Universalists have historically rejected an intermediary between ourselves and the sacred, preferring our own, immediate experience of the spiritual. Our sacrament, we could say, is life itself. The very notion of a "quest of truth" has a long philosophical tradition behind it, rejecting religious meddling of all kinds. So our covenant conveys a certain amount of irony, critiquing traditional religion and casting its lot with human life and experience instead.

"The quest of truth" has powerful associations for us. We are seekers by nature, always willing to learn something new in the hope that we may be able to apply it to our own lives. So it should come as no surprise that the "quest of truth" goes all the way back to Socrates. It may well go back much further. But our roots are in this Western philosophical tradition.

Socrates shocked and enlightened his contemporaries with the idea that dialogue - even debate between opposing sides - could lead to new truth. As he demonstrated in the public square, the search for truth was a dynamic process, not something revealed through the actions of those tempestuous and vain Greek gods. By engaging his followers in conversation, he demonstrated how a method of asking questions could lead everyone to a higher level of knowledge.

It is in this spirit that we take up the quest of truth, even in today’s Unitarian Universalist congregation. We learn from each other. By listening to different opinions, we may well change our own; our minds are open. Like Socrates, we would argue that truth comes from experience, not the gods. Like Pandora, however, we open a box of new problems when we do.

Religions that teach that truth comes from an authority outside ourselves - from God, or scripture, or the preacher on Sunday morning, do not have to account for different versions of the truth. There is one truth, as it has been revealed; all others are false. But if you teach, as liberal religions do, that truth can be an individual perception; and that more than one truth can be held at the same time; you are raising new questions altogether.

This is one reason why people from traditional religions have a hard time understanding what we believe. When conservative religious leaders rail against "moral relativism," they are talking about this problem. They would rather have one ordained, untested truth, than live with the uncertainty of searching and testing and changing their minds if proven wrong.

This debate goes back to the eighteenth century. Philosophers of the Enlightenment rejected religious doctrine and called for the use of reason in understanding reality. Truth was discovered through the power of the intellect, through observation and systematic doubt. The scientific method resulted from this approach. It influenced much more than laboratory research. It gave people hope in progress: the quest of truth improved lives.

Liberal religion as we know it today emerged directly out of the Enlightenment. Early American Unitarians quickly grasped the importance of reason and the scientific method in the quest not only of truth but of a better world, and found ways to express their enthusiasm from the pulpits of their day. In his famous sermon "The Transient and the Permanent in Christianity," Theodore Parker paved the way for liberal religious thought to evolve. While the teachings of Jesus may have lasting value, Parker argued, "what passes for Christianity," he said, "with popes and catechisms, with sects and churches, in the first century or the nineteenth century, prove[s] transient . . . ."[2] He concludes, "Truth is not holden. She speaks in a thousand tongues . . . ." At the time - 1841 - Parker’s views were radical, even for other Unitarians.[3] But we have inherited his conviction.

If the crucible of life is our sacrament, the quest of truth is our daily experience - of learning, of growing, and of engaging in the give and take that our relationship with each other requires of us. The quest of truth is science and discovery too, intellectual disciplines that offer us progress and the evolution of knowledge. But on a personal level, the quest of truth is how we change our lives.

Think about all the times you’ve learned something that helped you see yourself or the world in a different way. For better and for worse. When you realized you had an ear for languages or a mind for mathematics or hands for healing. When you examined the beliefs of your childhood faith and saw how you had discarded them all, one by one. When you just knew you had to stop drinking. Or stopped loving.

Some truths are painful. Some help us grow; others, like a bad diagnosis, offer nothing that we want. But most belong to the learning experience in which we place our trust that something good will come of it.

In a few minutes, we will be leaving this sanctuary, and walking over to the garden behind the blue house next door. There we will take a moment to celebrate the result of our long congregational quest of truth, the first step in a building program that has taken years and years to develop. Many people have dedicated hours to meetings, to creating designs, and to presenting our plans to each other, to the City of Santa Monica, and to the realities of time and money, only to have to go back and try again.

At times both the limitations and the possibilities have seemed overwhelming. Just when we thought we were on one path, we had to ask ourselves if we should change it, such as buying the house next door. Even though that meant we nearly had to start over. It has taken fortitude and spirit to stay on this quest. Sometimes the truth has hurt and caused us to look at ourselves, our impact on our neighbors, and our own willingness to change. We still have a lot to learn.

But the quest of truth is never ending. That is also our faith, isn’t it? What may have been true at one time must yield to new information and insight. What matters is the courage and honesty we find inside ourselves to take up that quest and live it, come what may.

The words of our covenant may echo our history, but they also speak of the struggle and the hope of this day. What gives dignity to that struggle and reason for hope is the honesty we bring to the quest: openness to the truth, and courage to live with what we have learned. So be it.

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[1] The Commission on Appraisal 2005 report "Engaging Our Theological Diversity" explores the use of this and other covenants in Unitarian Universalist churches today. www.uua.org

[2] Theodore Parker, "The Transient and Permanent in Christianity,'"1841.

[3] David Robinson, "The Unitarians and the Universalists" (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1985), p.302.