In the novel Cat’s Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut, Lionel Boyd Johnson is shipwrecked on the fictional Caribbean island of San Lorenzo. Not long thereafter, Johnson adopts the name Bokonon, disappears into the countryside, and creates a religion called Bokonism, hoping to provide a source of comfort and structure to the lives of the good people of San Lorenzo.

Creating a religion? That seems a bit far fetched— the kind of thing that could only happen in a novel. But I have run across websites in which the creators of the sites describe their personal “religion.” There was one, I believe it was by some guy named “Dave,” who composed aphorisms called “slackisms.” The main focus of his religion was the feeling that people simply needed to cut each other more slack. Well, okay. That’s one suggestion. Some of these sites appear to be serious, or at least sincere. Some of them are obvious parodies. But the fact of such websites raises an interesting question. If someone put you in charge of inventing a religion, what would yours look like? What would be the central theme, the most important thing that you felt had to be addressed? Or what would be the remedy or remedies for what ails us that you would propose?

We have begun our introduction to Unitarian Universalism with Kurt Vonnegut, who, by the way was a Unitarian Universalist, to meet head on the common misperception that Unitarian Universalism is the religion in which everyone gets to believe anything they want. It is an understandable error because Unitarian Universalism, unlike the majority of religions in the United States, is non-creedal. We do not have a statement of faith about God, Jesus, or Allah, for instance, to which any member of the congregation must subscribe. Lacking that requirement, Unitarian Universalism can at first blush seem easy, even kind of fun and unrestrained.

Well it can be fun, sometimes. But there are restraints. And when you hear about the restraints you might reasonably conclude, “H’mm, maybe I’ll stick with creedal religion.”

Restraint #1. We insist that people, above all else, strive for honesty both intellectually and emotionally.

Restraint #2. We insist that people strive for integrity between what they believe and how they act.

Restraint #3. We insist that beliefs must on some level make rational and emotional sense.

Restraint #4. We insist that beliefs cannot extend love only to some and not others, that beliefs cannot benefit some at the expense of others, and by that we mean, any others.

And restraint #5. We insist that beliefs be creative and loving—pointing the way toward a positive outcome for all humanity and the planet that is our home.

So you see, perhaps it is not such an easy and carefree religion after all. And you know, on some level we all, in fact, create—or perhaps the better word would be “adopt”—our own religion. No one can do your believing, your living, your thinking, your loving or your hoping for you. So we simply suggest that if we human beings are going to do these things, we should do them well. And what we do here as a religious community is help each other strive for a better expression of what we believe and how we live as guided by these long standing restraints. This congregation exists because we all need the practice. This congregation exists because none of this work can be pursued solely in isolation from other people. This congregation exists because we all need the presence of other people to encourage, challenge and comfort us as we each move through the many changing moments of our lives. The Emerson congregation is currently considering the adoption of a simple and concise statement about these traditional restraints with the phrase, “Our beloved community of faith, reason, and affection welcomes all to grow in mind and spirit as we build a better world.”

On one level it seems that these five things: honesty; integrity; making sense; justice; and affectionate hope are the sorts of things for which people in general ought to strive—no matter their religious affiliation or lack of affiliation. And none of us here would disagree with that. But it is also not uncommon to underestimate the difficulty of following all five—and at the same time. We know from being acquainted with our own Unitarian Universalist history just how difficult the pursuit of these five can be.

It almost always surprises people to learn that Unitarianism and Universalism, two very similar faith communities that merged in 1961 to form the current Unitarian Universalist Association, have existed as religious points of view in Western society for almost two thousand years. Universalism began as an insistence that God’s love was universal—and would not be confined by any boundary constructed by human beings. Unitarianism began as an insistence that there is only one God and that God cannot be divided. At times over the past two thousand years these views would achieve some prominence, but frankly, they have been never the majority view.

Both Unitarianism and Universalism began in the United States in the last decades of the 1700s. At first these views were held in private by individuals who entertained doubts about the doctrines about God and salvation they were told they must accept. But soon thereafter groups of Unitarians and Universalists found each other and began forming congregations in the early 1800s. People in both faith communities came to the conclusion that as far as they could determine the trinity didn’t make sense. And even though it would have been a lot easier to just go along with the prevailing view, they decided, because of their commitments to honesty, integrity and making sense, that they could not “just go along” with what most everyone told them was the normal belief. The same dedication to making sense led to the adoption of universalism in which people began to wonder why, if god was all powerful and all good, such a god would ever consign anyone to the torture of eternal damnation. To those early Universalists the notion of eternal damnation just didn’t add up—so they dropped it.

Throughout our history, when we discovered something that didn’t add up, our commitments to honesty, integrity, and making sense required us to alter our point of view. This has frequently been difficult. When Darwin’s views about evolution became prominent towards the end of the nineteenth century our two parent denominations struggled with the substantial change in world view which evolution suggested. But in the end, again, evolution made sense—so theories about evolution became widely adopted among Unitarians and Universalists.

And it is also true that our commitments to justice, and hope for all people have also led us through some difficult moments. A quick glance through our history reveals a strong insistence on doing the right thing, and sticking to that course even when the wind was blowing strongly the other way. And we should point out that none of these commitments to creating what we call the beloved community for all people came easily, as if we collectively slapped our foreheads in grateful astonishment, “What were we thinking?” No, it has usually been a struggle, and involved hard work to see beyond conventional wisdom. But our deep unwillingness to go along with some point of view simply because it was popular or conventional led us, for instance, to insist on the ending of slavery. We have been insistent on equal rights for people of all races. We have been insistent upon equal rights for women. We have been on the forefront of humane treatment for those afflicted with mental illness or drug addiction. We have long been committed to the firm belief that compassion and understanding must displace censure and judgment.

So perhaps it will not surprise you to learn that the home of the essayist Ralph Waldo Emerson, prominent Unitarian of the mid eighteen hundreds, was part of the Underground Railroad. Or that Theodore Parker, prominent Unitarian of that same period, kept a loaded pistol in his pulpit because he was protecting runaway slaves. It should not surprise you to learn that the first woman minister in the United States was a Universalist in the mid 1800s.

To give you an idea of how this process works, and has almost always worked among us, a brief story. In the fall of 1979, 30 years ago to the month, I was approached by two men who wanted me to perform their wedding. Now I was a brand new minister and I had never encountered such a request before, had never even heard of such a thing. But being a good Unitarian Universalist, I did not dismiss the request but instead asked to meet with the two men. After an hour or so I told them that I could not see how their relationship differed from those of other couples whose weddings I had performed. So I would certainly perform their wedding. But, I said, the church was not my property and I could not make decisions for the entire congregation as to whether or not the wedding of two men would take place in the sanctuary. So I asked the Board President to call a special meeting and when all of us met I explained the situation to them. They, like me, were at first mostly just unaccustomed to the whole idea. Several of the people on the Board claimed that they didn’t have anything personal against the two men but were very uncomfortable with homosexuality. Several members of the Board thought the request was unfortunate because we were not in some large sophisticated city but a small conservative city. We, they said, are already viewed with suspicion by others—and now this? Well, they talked and they talked—for four hours—until one member of the Board said clearly and plainly, “We can hardly be who we claim to be unless we support this wedding.” He set the marker down—and everyone knew it was true. So the members of the Board of Trustees voted unanimously to support the wedding—and they bought the flowers for the altar. The little card said, To James and Tim—Best wishes, The Board of Trustees of the Unitarian Universalist Church of Berks County. It turns out I and my congregation were not alone in this. Unitarian Universalism rather quickly became a champion for the affirmation of LGBT folk in our society.

It has become apparent to Unitarian Universalists that if the beloved community, if that place in which we want to live, is to be created, it will not be created with conventional wisdom and the creation will not be easy. If conventional wisdom were all that was required it would have been done by now. If it were easy—it would have been done by now. And the truly sad thing is that the creation of that beloved community does not require great leaps of imagination or ingenuity. It truly is not rocket science. What retards the arrival of that community is not its utter complexity. No, we believe it is simply the case that people just need more practice at deep honesty, tough integrity, making sense, living with true justice and seeking hope, not just for some, but for all. You see, we believe these things are not impossible, they are just merely difficult. But with practice, we become more adept. And with practice you discover the great pleasures of living with honesty, integrity, making sense, justice and hope.

Sometimes people say, you Unitarian Universalists are pretty unusual. And I suppose we may seem a trifle exotic. Where else in Houston are you going to find worshiping together liberal Christians, Jews, Muslims, atheists, agnostics, humanists, pantheists, gay people, straight people, lovers of the free market, ardent socialists, green party, red party, blue party, people from Africa, people from Argentina and Mexico, people from Boston, Massachusetts and people from Tyler, Texas, people who sip champagne at River Oaks Country Club and people who hang out at Big John’s Icehouse? But you know what? This diversity is itself not exotic. This diversity has another name—“humanity” and this diversity is simply the real world within which we all must somehow learn to make a good life.

One last note, it has become increasingly apparent to us that this community we seek to build cannot be created in spite of the world which is our home. This beautiful place, the blue green hills, the oceans of water and air, the sandy deserts and the great plains, we need these to be well if we are to be well—not just physically but spiritually. Unitarian Universalists have come to see that we cannot have peace with each other unless we have peace with our earth. We have come to see that love and joy, affirmation and respect, all the good things for which we strive, cannot be obtained at the expense of—but because they take root in how we live on this earth—our home. We Unitarian Universalists believe we have paradise right here. It’s in the air we breathe, the ground upon which we walk. It turns out we weren’t kicked out of Eden, we left of our own free will. “Please, please don’t make me exploit our environment.” Sure. And we had the audacity to blame God for what we ourselves wanted to do. Well, it’s time to return home, to that Eden we left so long ago.