A few weeks ago it was my pleasure to spend about an hour with some students from the Kinkaid Private School. Every other year a high school class spends time visiting different faith communities. That Emerson church is always chosen is somewhat revealing as we are in a category in the students’ minds that includes Hindus, Sikhs and Muslims. It is not entirely unflattering to be included in such seemingly exotic company.

After leading the students into the sanctuary I had them all sit down on the pews. It was eleven o’clock in the morning and I could tell that for some of them the ratio of blood sugar to hormones was not in my favor. So I began by asking the class of fifteen which of them were African. There was one African American young woman and she very shyly raised her hand, revealing a little bit of awkwardness. But here she was trapped. I looked her in the eye as I paused but addressed the entire class saying, perhaps a little too forcefully, “You’re wrong!” I went on to say, “Everyone sitting in this room is descended from approximately 20,000 Africans, a little less than the population of Seguin Texas. 60,000 years ago some left Africa, some stayed. But we are all descended from those people. They are our people, our ancestors.” Well, I had their attention now. But what I liked best about that moment was the look in that young woman’s eyes. There was no mistaking the pride that rose up from her knowing just a little bit more about who she really was—and who her fellow students really were.

I appreciate the efforts on the part of the Kinkaid School to foster a little interfaith understanding. It does seem that we all could do with a good deal more interfaith understanding. But, sadly, the vectors in history do not seem to be moving in that direction right now. Our plea for a better degree of tolerance among the world’s faiths seems all the more pressing, not because it seems more possible, but because relations between the historic faiths are increasingly problematic. Suspicion, invective, and outright violence are all too common. Of course, the faithful in ages past have dipped their toes in the waters of suspicion, invective and violence. But it has occurred to us that the planet is shrinking and our contacts with people of other faiths are only going to increase. Are we really equipped to handle this increased heterogeneity? No.

Unitarian Universalists have a long tradition of religious toleration. The very first edict of religious toleration in European history was promulgated by a Unitarian King, John Sigismund of Transylvania in 1568. The Edict of Torda in part states that “no one shall be reviled for his religion by anyone.” Anyone could practice their faith, Catholicism, Protestantism, Judaism or Unitarian. But this blessed concord did not last long. After John Sigismund died in 1571 the Jesuits swept in, chased all the Unitarians out and burned their chapels to the ground. I can imagine them saying, “Hey, we’re Jesuits. That’s what we do!” One of my classmates in seminary was a very jovial member of the Jesuit order. I asked him after a history class what he thought about a grudge match, to which he gamely replied, “Get in line, get in line.”

But given our long history it would seem that we are a natural when it comes to interfaith affirmation. And while we certainly do want such affirmation to increase, this is a more complicated subject for Unitarian Universalists than it might seem at first glance. It is more complicated because our interfaith work is fundamentally different when compared to such work undertaken by other religious communities.

How?

Typically, improving interfaith relations means engaging in some dialogue, spending time getting to know people from other faith traditions. We get to learn in the process that people from other faith traditions are, well, people, not exactly at all different from ourselves in any fundamental fashion.

Of course, any given day at Emerson is an exercise in interfaith dialogue. I’m not suggesting that we do that dialogue all that well all the time, but that is clearly our aspiration. But we have in the congregation Christians, Atheists, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, Deists, Agnostics all of whom manage to create an interfaith community right here. But it is different for us in here than for those engaging in religious dialogue out there. In the wider community representatives of different faiths learn to respect each other but do not, and are not asked to, give up the sovereignty of their respective faith traditions. In fact, that dialogue cannot be conducted without a pledge to respect that sovereignty. In here, however, we are all asked to give up the sovereignty of our faith traditions. Yes, someone might certainly think of him or herself as a Jew—but not, from a religious point of view, exclusively as a Jew. The same holds true for any of the various spiritual outlooks or traditions from which any of us might draw strength. Here we are Agnostic—and something more, Christian—and something more, Muslim—and something more.

Ah yes, you might wonder—what then exactly is that something more? What is that something more?

In the larger community of interfaith dialogue representatives of different traditions learn how to appreciate each other. Our internal interfaith dialogue, what happens in here among us, is conducted for a different purpose. What we seek here is the identifying and living out a vision of what is universal for all religions. The “something more” is that we are the people who live out of what we imagine is spiritually true for people no matter what spiritual discipline they happen to follow. We lift up and celebrate the universals. We lift up and celebrate a universal human spirituality.

That seems like a good idea, at least on the surface. But it is a difficult act to pull off. The recent history of expressing a universal human spirituality is quite problematic. Because our previous efforts to lift up a universal spiritual reality were seriously flawed, we have tended over the past decades to downplay the idea that a universal faith actually existed. Those previous efforts to lift up a universal spiritual reality were either too bland to be of use or were unerringly Eurocentric and certainly sexist. It was either a kind of ChristaBuddha-AgnostoJudislamism Esperanto version of world religions or a vision that left out the experience of women, gays, lesbians, Africans, and Asians. Those previous efforts at lifting up a universal spirituality also had a grave tendency towards making us intelligent about religions, yet was completely inept at helping us be religious.

But it is now time to take this dream back up. It has become clear to me that when we neglect this elemental core of our reality we become institutionally incoherent to ourselves. That is, if we are not pursuing the universal spiritual reality of humanity we don’t have much to do as a religious community that is specifically religious. If we are not pursuing the universal spiritual reality of humanity we do not really have anything to offer the wider community beyond the fact that we are sincere and are interested in justice. Sincerity and justice are necessary—but by themselves are not sufficient conditions for sustaining a faith community. If we are not pursuing the universal spiritual reality of humanity we become merely a debating club or a refuge for people who merely do not fit any place else. We have far more important work to do than engage in endless debates or to serve as a hiding place for unusual points of view. The world is going nuts, and we’ve got to do something about it. The something that we can do is explicate and celebrate this universal human spiritual reality. That’s our job. Nobody else is really doing it, except maybe the Dalai Lama—and he needs all the help he can get. So we had better get busy.

It is vital to understand that we, meaning human beings, are at a fork in the road, and not just a tiny little fork where going down one path or the other will not have large implications. Rather, we are at a major fork in the road. Down one path lies escalating violence between people who have no confidence in their ability to amicably resolve their disputes. Down that path lies lone gunmen, suicide bombers, premeditated invasions and virulent and scathing disrespect. Down that path lies an increasingly weakened ability to contain that violence. Down that path lies increasing scarcity of life’s necessities and an increasingly mad scramble to protect only one’s own.

Somebody has got to point out, with integrity, another road. Somebody has got to start traveling down that road so that it becomes clear that a universal spirituality is an entirely possible, and in fact, an amazingly excellent prospect. Somebody has got to clearly affirm that there is a positive way ahead for we fractious and occasionally unpleasant human beings. And that somebody is you and I.

was honored and not dismissed—and when it was dismissed you could just let it go. Only as we live this way will we find the humanity that endures beyond being black or brown or white or yellow, or gay or straight or bisexual, or if you came from Lithuania or Gambia, or if you were a Christian or a Muslim, a Jew or a Hindu. Imagine if we really knew that our job was to affirm each individual’s search for truth and meaning. Imagine if there were people dedicated to lifting a higher loyalty, a loyalty that commanded our attention and devotion beyond all the divisions that keep us apart. Imagine if there were people who knew there was a universal spiritual impulse that was the common religious language of all people.

Imagine that we are those people.

60,000 years ago small tribes of human beings in the African savannah reached their own fork in the road. They wondered, “What is beyond were we now live?” Some traveled south into the Congo, some traveled east into the Levant. What an amazing journey it has been. And it started because they could imagine, “There must be something better ahead for us.” And their sons and daughters must have asked, as sons and daughters have always asked, “Are we there yet?’‘ The parents replied, “No my little darlings, not yet.”

So too, we know we are not yet where we want to be. But the journey depends entirely upon our ability to imagine, “There just has to be something better ahead!” Let’s go.