Something I'll present at the UU services this Sunday...
I was asked to say something about how Ethy and I think about giving to the Fellowship.
We grew up in northern Utah. We were both raised in the Mormon, or “LDS” church. I left the church in high school, because I couldn't believe in much of its doctrine, but I do still admire quite a few things about it. Starting from scratch 150 years ago, the LDS church built an empire, in a harsh environment (cold sagebrush desert). One key was that all members are expected to “tithe,” or to give ten percent of their income to The Church. Except those in greatest hardship, this included basically everyone: from teenagers, to adults in any income bracket.
Beyond the financial tithing, people in the LDS church are expected to give of their time. All of the positions in the local churches are unpaid, and they are lay-led. Each ward is led by a “bishop” and his two “counselors” from the congregation, and the teenage “young men” (called “priests”) administer the weekly sacrament. Others take the role of sunday-school teachers, or “visiting home teachers.” The 19-year old men (and some of the 21-year old women) serve two-year evangelical missions. Making that kind of sacrifice makes you feel invested.
In biological and sociological terms, the LDS church is very “fit:” it is highly effective at perpetuating and growing its population and spreading its belief system. Over its 150-year history, it has grown at a rate of between about 2 and 5 percent per year, to 14 million people now. That's eight-fold growth in the last 50 years. In contrast, UU membership has been essentially flat over the last 50 years, with U.S. membership now of under a quarter million.
Well, in any case, Ethy and I have at least retained the “tithing” part of our Mormon heritage. We try to give at least ten percent of our net income to charities or non-profits every year. The largest single proportion of that, or about three to four percent, goes to the UU Fellowship here. We certainly haven't always been able to do this, but now we feel very fortunate that we are in a position to do so now.
OK. Why would we give to the Fellowship, when there are so many other great needs in the world? For more than 20 years after I stopped attending the LDS church, I mostly attended no churches. I was (and remain) solidly and comfortably atheist. But about four years ago, as I started thinking harder about my beliefs, I had began to want to set aside some time each week to observe, with other people, what is significant beyond our day-to-day work lives.
Probably for the last hundred thousand or so years that Homo sapiens and our (now extinct) close cousin species have been on earth, we have had “religions” that use ceremony and art and special forms of speech and song to observe what is most meaningful. I think this capacity and need for awe and reverence are built into our biology, and into our circumstance of being sentient, self-aware beings on this beautiful planet.
Our embededness in the natural world, without the mediation of gods, is an important part of my personal religious framework.
"The wide universe is the ocean I travel / And the Earth is my blue boat home."
We shouldn't have to keep this kind of perception to ourselves. The impulse for shared religious expression shouldn't be the sole right of those who can believe in spirits and gods. And the religious Right shouldn’t be the only ones able to determine values in our society.
So I find myself somewhere that I wouldn't have predicted about 30 years ago, when I decided that I couldn't hold the foundational beliefs of the Mormon church. For a long-time non-churchgoer, I now find myself regularly attending church - in fact, usually a UU service here, at 9:15, and a Quaker service at 10:30. And maybe apropos of the topic of Charlotte's sermon, as an atheist, I even nevertheless find myself in what might be called extended states of prayer - or at least focused gratitude.
So I very much want to help build and encourage religious communities and institutions that are not strongly creedal. I suppose I could be a "spiritual atheist" quietly, all by myself - operating under kind of a "don't ask, don't tell" policy, and without any supportive institutions; but it actually matters to me that there be religious institutions and traditions that support what are valid and important beliefs and values and ways of being.
I see this as a matter of religious freedom. It’s a problem if liberal religions aren’t available. There were no UU or Quaker or Buddhist congregations in my community when I was growing up. These need to be nurtured and supported if we want them. Of course this is also for kids in this community, and for the next generations - through the religious education programs in the Fellowship.
So we contribute to the Fellowship because it is a place where we can recognize and celebrate, with others, what is truly amazing to us about being in this world, and because it is important to have viable liberal religions in this and other communities.
We grew up in northern Utah. We were both raised in the Mormon, or “LDS” church. I left the church in high school, because I couldn't believe in much of its doctrine, but I do still admire quite a few things about it. Starting from scratch 150 years ago, the LDS church built an empire, in a harsh environment (cold sagebrush desert). One key was that all members are expected to “tithe,” or to give ten percent of their income to The Church. Except those in greatest hardship, this included basically everyone: from teenagers, to adults in any income bracket.
Beyond the financial tithing, people in the LDS church are expected to give of their time. All of the positions in the local churches are unpaid, and they are lay-led. Each ward is led by a “bishop” and his two “counselors” from the congregation, and the teenage “young men” (called “priests”) administer the weekly sacrament. Others take the role of sunday-school teachers, or “visiting home teachers.” The 19-year old men (and some of the 21-year old women) serve two-year evangelical missions. Making that kind of sacrifice makes you feel invested.
In biological and sociological terms, the LDS church is very “fit:” it is highly effective at perpetuating and growing its population and spreading its belief system. Over its 150-year history, it has grown at a rate of between about 2 and 5 percent per year, to 14 million people now. That's eight-fold growth in the last 50 years. In contrast, UU membership has been essentially flat over the last 50 years, with U.S. membership now of under a quarter million.
Well, in any case, Ethy and I have at least retained the “tithing” part of our Mormon heritage. We try to give at least ten percent of our net income to charities or non-profits every year. The largest single proportion of that, or about three to four percent, goes to the UU Fellowship here. We certainly haven't always been able to do this, but now we feel very fortunate that we are in a position to do so now.
OK. Why would we give to the Fellowship, when there are so many other great needs in the world? For more than 20 years after I stopped attending the LDS church, I mostly attended no churches. I was (and remain) solidly and comfortably atheist. But about four years ago, as I started thinking harder about my beliefs, I had began to want to set aside some time each week to observe, with other people, what is significant beyond our day-to-day work lives.
Probably for the last hundred thousand or so years that Homo sapiens and our (now extinct) close cousin species have been on earth, we have had “religions” that use ceremony and art and special forms of speech and song to observe what is most meaningful. I think this capacity and need for awe and reverence are built into our biology, and into our circumstance of being sentient, self-aware beings on this beautiful planet.
Our embededness in the natural world, without the mediation of gods, is an important part of my personal religious framework.
"The wide universe is the ocean I travel / And the Earth is my blue boat home."
We shouldn't have to keep this kind of perception to ourselves. The impulse for shared religious expression shouldn't be the sole right of those who can believe in spirits and gods. And the religious Right shouldn’t be the only ones able to determine values in our society.
So I find myself somewhere that I wouldn't have predicted about 30 years ago, when I decided that I couldn't hold the foundational beliefs of the Mormon church. For a long-time non-churchgoer, I now find myself regularly attending church - in fact, usually a UU service here, at 9:15, and a Quaker service at 10:30. And maybe apropos of the topic of Charlotte's sermon, as an atheist, I even nevertheless find myself in what might be called extended states of prayer - or at least focused gratitude.
So I very much want to help build and encourage religious communities and institutions that are not strongly creedal. I suppose I could be a "spiritual atheist" quietly, all by myself - operating under kind of a "don't ask, don't tell" policy, and without any supportive institutions; but it actually matters to me that there be religious institutions and traditions that support what are valid and important beliefs and values and ways of being.
I see this as a matter of religious freedom. It’s a problem if liberal religions aren’t available. There were no UU or Quaker or Buddhist congregations in my community when I was growing up. These need to be nurtured and supported if we want them. Of course this is also for kids in this community, and for the next generations - through the religious education programs in the Fellowship.
So we contribute to the Fellowship because it is a place where we can recognize and celebrate, with others, what is truly amazing to us about being in this world, and because it is important to have viable liberal religions in this and other communities.