I think I know a Unitarian Universalist saint in this church; an honest to goodness saint, one who embodies our religion in an exceptional way and in its wholeness. In fact I believe there are several such saints in this church. I’ll return to this saint in a little bit.

Because the Unitarian Universalist religious movement resists definition by creed and dogma, and because our centuries old principle of tolerance for everyone’s freedom of conscience has allowed numerous theologies, philosophies and world views to enter our tradition, our boundaries have been indistinct and we have been liable to frequent change-for better or worse.

When strangers learn that I am a Unitarian Universalist minister and ask me to tell them what that is, I usually mention the variety and then find myself making the comment, “We are so varied that I sometimes wonder what it is that holds us together.”

Gertrude Stein is reported to have remarked that her hometown, was it Oakland, or Burbank, California, had no there there. Since we Unitarian Universalists claim no theological geography and allow for individual construction and speculation on many ultimate issues, it could be said that Unitarian Universalists have no there there.

But when I think of my Unitarian Universalist saint, or saints, I know what it is that they exemplify and that is our Unitarian Universalist way of being religious. That way is a method and process rather than a set of conclusions to which all must adhere. We Unitarian Universalists don’t claim some theological geography, but we do claim a way to travel through all religious terrain. We have a way of being religious.

I want to tell you about this way of being religious, which I will call the way of the critical heart, and about our saints, but first consider that in lots of other ways we are not unique nor even distinctive. We share many things in common with other religious people.

We share with everyone attending church this Sunday, for example, the conviction that religion is an important feature of human life, and the full expression of religion in a person’s life is facilitated by acting through an organized institution in society, namely a church.

And, with other religious people, we stress all the fine and noble things that religious folk tend to talk about. We are all concerned with moral action, the welfare of people, just and loving inter-relationships with one another, and the necessity of pursuing ideals even if they seem to remain just out of reach no matter how hard we try. So you see, we don’t need a separate Unitarian Universalist movement for many of the things important to us as religious people-we could find another church for these.

So too with social action. In the 19th and early 20th centuries it is true that the Unitarians were leaders in the efforts of churches to make social reforms. But we are no longer at the forefront of such movements, though we can be proud of the several important projects that the Unitarian Universalist Association and the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee do with our financial support. Other churches use their vaster resources on similar projects; and often we find our churches working in cooperation with these other mainline denominations on social reform.

What makes Unitarian Universalism distinctive? Some would want to point to the fact that we do not have creeds, in fact we have rejected the creeds of Christian traditions of all sorts. Last week I spoke about that old “God” word and indicated that whereas in the first part of this century the majority of Unitarians & Universalists were theists, in the 20′s and 30′s agnostic and atheistic humanists entered the movement as a minority and were often not received warmly at all. But the humanist viewpoint became the majority viewpoint for many decades. There was a popular perception that the Unitarian Universalist churches were those odd churches where people did not believe in God. But that characterization was not true of all churches of our movement, and neglects that even in those days, just now changing, there were a minority in most churches who maintained a respectful use of the word “God.”

And, as I reported last Sunday, increasing numbers amongst us are using the word God openly as they are experimenting with metaphors for understanding this crazy world-and often use the word as poetic and exclamatory expression of the subjective rather than naming noun of an objective reality.

Non-adherence to belief in God or other parts of the Christian creeds isn’t exactly distinctive of us, I’m saying, and that is also partly true because non-adherence is more and more a pattern amongst self-identified Christians themselves. Fundamentalism, as the literal construal of Christian propositions, while on the rise, is not, nor has it ever been, the only rule in Christian history. I love the story Mary Zemach told some years back of challenging her relative, an aunt I believe, why she attended the Episcopal church where the Apostle’s creed was recited ritually each Sunday. Mary confronted her: “You don’t believe that creed do you?” The aunt replied, “I recite it as if I don’t believe it.” Such non-adherence to creeds and theological dogmas is frequent enough in other churches that it does not serve to identify our distinctiveness.

But non-adherence to creeds does come close to what I wish to say characterizes us. The saint, or saints, of whom I speak embody this characterization. Last Sunday I spoke of the woman in this church who despised the word “sacred,” because it carried for her the connotation that there was something which had to stand unquestioned, the sacred is unchallengable, sacrosanct. She simply says, “Nothing should be sacred. I always have questions.”

That is what characterizes the Unitarian Universalist way of being religious. Duncan Howlett has written a book about this called, “The Critical Way in Religion.” The point is not that other denominations, other religions don’t also have criticism, and internal critics. The point is that the heart of our way is critical and that ours is the critical heart.

We say the religious life may require faith, but it is promoted and advanced as much by questions as by faith. We encourage skepticism in our youth and amongst ourselves because we know that all proclaimed truths have an unavoidable bias, including our own.

Ours is a religious way of probing and testing and checking-out. Nothing is sacred, i.e. untouchable. No Bible, Koran or Gita is unquestioned. No creed or theology is unquestioned. No value is merely assumed to be true. No person, guru or teacher; no institution, church, or political entity is unchallenged. No conversion experience, no overwhelming enlightenment, or unifying mystical experience, no inter-relational love experience escapes our critical examination. No revelation, not even an “Aha” insight, is to be accepted for what it claims to be. Nothing is untouchably sacred. Everything has its time and place to be probed with investigatory fingers.

For centuries our statements of self-identity have said that we must pursue truth. At the heart of our movement has been a passion for truth. “A free and responsible search for truth and meaning.” Our heart, I am saying, has been invested in the critical way.

As individuals, we may settle into some particular geography of philosophy or theology or ethics. We usually do find some truths we are content to live by-at least for the time. But by joining ourselves to the UU movement, we have joined ourselves to a tradition and a people who will challenge us, who will disrupt our apathy and self-assurance. We may decide to remain rooted where we are, but in this tradition we are constantly reminded to have humility in the midst of our certitudes. The critical way is a constant reminder that we humans, each and every one of us, is error-prone, self-deceived, and gullible. Indeed, it is these less than admirable but universal human characteristics which make the critical way in religion essential. The critical way not only leads on, hopefully, to more comprehensive and deep truths, but the critical way leads us away from error, confusion and deception.

A passion for truth marks the critical way; a probing, investigating, checking-out marks the heart of our tradition.

Ours is the religion of the critical heart.

The critical way itself takes differing historical forms; in other words, there is no sacred form of the critical way. Duncan Howlett points out that the critical way is not synonymous with rationalism, though rationality always has its role in the critical way. Neither is the critical way limited to empiricism or humanism or scientism or atheism or secularism, or any “-ism.”. These too are all to be challenged by the truly critical way. Myth, metaphor, poetry, imagination as well as literalism regarding data may have their place in the critical way.

Last week I spoke of some Unitarian Universalist trends toward change. Some old timers, including myself, are inclined to be critical of those changes, while those bringing change often cite good grounds for new ways critical of the old. This is all as it should be.

But let me describe, in closing, another change going on in the denomination and in this church as well.

In my intention, critical heart conveys an idea similar to passionate mind. We usually use the phrases: critical mind and passionate heart. By interchanging the adjectives I’ve tried to point to a distinctive feature of our UU tradition which combines both mind and heart.

We have gone through an era, a very fruitful one I believe, when an emphasis has been placed upon the mind’s gift of rationality, particularly a form of rationality centered upon empirical data and a labored coherence and consistency. This era is now being criticized, and probably rightly so, for having gotten out of balance. Some of the critics however are not trained in this sort of rationality or have found it either not easy or not natural. I think they often fail to see in this era a passion for truth in this “cold rationalism” and the passionate commitment to the uses of the critical mind for human benefit, particularly against the harms inherent in religions. I would criticize their criticism, while acknowledging some points in their complaint. In any case, in many Unitarian Universalist circles today, the passionate mind has been dominate, but is now under attack in favor of matters of the heart.

More and more Unitarian Universaliss are talking of the necessity of having heart, of developing better our people skills, our compassionate interrelating with one another. There is talk of those affairs of heart and spirit which the era of rationality neglected.

But if we are true to our tradition, ours will not be an emphasis upon personal relations and “transcendent” matters in a non-cirtical way. Any other church can do that. Our heart relations will manifest the critical heart, for ours is uniquely the critical way in religion.

My UU saints are tough as nails. They care immensely and pay attention to people. Many of us do not do that well. The saints in this church believe in taking other people’s problems seriously even when they disagree on basic matters. In fact, these saints are apt to be asking you difficult questions at the same time they are helping you solve some personal problem or deal with some particular pain or grief. We have, in this church, people who question, question, question; we all do that. When a few of these same people care immensely for their fellow UUs in particular ways and in particular circumstances, they are setting the pattern for our future. They are our saints from whom we must continually learn. From passionate minds to critical hearts, a change of emphasis only, but an important change!