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BEYOND THE DICHOTOMY
by John Crestwell, Jr.
For the UUA Ministerial Fellowship Committee
12/3/04

Good morning.  I stand before each of you today, so that you may gage whether or not I am worthy of being a part of a long history of intellectuals and liberal thinkers in what we call the “Free Church.”

I stand before such a distinguished panel, hoping to impress upon you my deep and earnest desire to follow the path of Emerson, Parker, Priestly, Davies, Eaton and King, among others; and it is the path of ministry.  It is a call, a “still small voice” inside, that has been pricking my consciousness for a long time.  I believe I am ready to be credentialed as a Unitarian Universalist Minister.  And if you will honor me with a “yes” I will honor our faith and the legacy of those who have gone before.  And I will work to move our ideal of promoting the worth and dignity of all humanity forward; and I will do it with all of my heart, soul, mind and strength.

But you know, there is something much bigger here than this moment of critical analysis.  If we look at our world, we are living in a very challenging and even frustrating time.  We are living in a very fractionalized and disjointed America due to war and the policies of our administration…   We are in this comfortable place, but in reality there are people dying in a very distant land everyday in a war that I am uncertain as to whether it is for a just cause.  I am saddened because there are children crying because they have lost their parents; there are people suffering from ideological clashes from Western and Eastern powers that are bent on making manifest their idea of what life should be.    Some call it a struggle between good and evil.  Some call it a “clash of civilizations”, or “modern tribalism” whatever you call it, it is infecting the whole world.   Somehow, we all need to raise our level of consciousness and move beyond the Black and White, beyond the dichotomy, beyond the good and evil, step out of this purgatorial cycle of name calling, racial bigotry, and basic primitive tribalism, so that we can find release or “moksha” and make manifest the new heavens and new earth reality where the beloved community is real not some utopian fancy.

I mentioned tribalism… Tribalism is defined as a strong loyalty to ones own tribe, party or group.  My thought is that the problem is when there is TOO-STRONG a loyalty to a party or group. And your loyalty is so obsessively strong that you sacrifice your human right to think and analyze and rationalize.  The herd mentality takes over. You get caught up in the dichotomy. You get caught up because you are afraid of being outside the tribe.  As Freud said, creating your own path could lead to a neurotic personality.  So, we stick with the tribe, sometimes obsessively, whether we are voting for a candidate or supporting a religion.  The pressure to belong and choose is always with us and happens all the time—in our families; it happens to kids in school; it happens in gangs.  It is a peer pressure that never goes away unless we become “the master of our fate and the captain of our soul!”   My thought is that we must never surrender our rational thinking to the passions of the tribe, and this is my first point today.  You see the passions of the tribe or group or party can cause you/us to sacrifice our humanity if we aren’t careful.   I have to ask myself all the time: “Can I see another’s woe and not be in sorrow too?  Can I see another’s grief and not seek for kind relief.  Can I see a falling tear, and not feel my sorrow’s share?  No, no never can it be—never, never can it be!” No… Somehow the voice of reason and the heart of love must take center-stage, so that we can move beyond the dichotomy that creates the “us against them mentality” instead of the “we are together reality.”   Dr. King said well we must seek to create a people oriented society not a thing oriented society. 

And you know, when I think of the Unitarian Universalist message, historically, I hear polyphony—many sounds through the years, but the message is quite the same---freedom.  Freedom from cramping dogmas, freedom from superstition, freedom to think, freedom to rise above the primitive passions, freedom to be free, freedom for all people no matter their race, sex or gender, freedom to LIVE!  Freedom to move beyond the dichotomy!  That is my second point.  We are free…

This was the essence of King John Sigismond’s edict, the “Diet of Torda” in 1568.  It made religious tolerance law but more than that, it said that freedom of conscience must be a priority in the religious experience. In early America after the Revolutionary War, our forbearers, the early Congregationalists, established religions that were without the pomp and circumstance of Rome.  For them, humans could have a direct relationship with God and Christ and did not need a pope or bishop to get them to the divine.  They too were calling for freedom.  And their call was a precursor to the Transcendentalist movement, where you hear the same call for freedom from the likes of Emerson and Channing and Parker who believed, not just in the need for biblical criticism and rational thinking, but ultimately that personal experience of the Divine which transcends the critical and dogmatic and moves us to what the Gnostics might call “gnosis” or a inner knowledge of the outer reality, this is at the heart of what religion really is.  The freedom though is found beyond the dichotomy.  This follows the teachings of the Asian philosophies quite closely.  These people were in touch with something, they where in touch with the spirit of freedom!     

Point one:  We must never surrender our rational mind and heart of love to the out of control passions of the tribe…  Point two:  We must see that freedom is at the core of what religion must profess and that it is found when we move beyond the dichotomy.

Lastly, our history compels us; it compels me to be a voice crying out in the wilderness.  We have a long legacy of prophets who would not sacrifice on the altar of principle the human right of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.  Now, I must say, as I move toward the end of this message, that when you look at America based on the Electoral College, you see a map of red and blue states and the media would have us believe that this means there is a clear dividing line in the country that is mostly north and south, with a few red Midwest and western states, as if we are living in the Civil War era again.  But I believe this is not true.  This is a constructed mediated reality.  And these spin masters with endless bank accounts tell us that the world is being run by Evangelical Fundamentalist Christians and one particular political party only, which is not true.  It is quite exaggerated and I think it is being done to keep everyday folk like us fighting with each other over the bits and pieces, while the rich get richer and the world continues to be separate and unequal.  Just look at the disparity in income and poverty level of those we call the First and Third World and that will tell you the story.  And many want us to believe that our President has a “mandate” or an authoritative order, because of the election, to continue war.  And we are also being fed the idea that one party is right and moral and the other one is wrong and immoral.  We are being forced in a way to “choose this day whom we shall serve”—America or the enemy.  This is wrong!  I want to say to you in the spirit of King, Fahs, Eaton, Davies, Jefferson, and Murray that I choose something above the tribal, above the societies and clubs and racial loyalties, and political parties and religious institutions, and governments.  I choose to edify the goodness and virtue of humanity and to work toward creating a world of love and peace.  I choose the universal brotherhood and sisterhood of all creation which calls me to listen to my conscience not my tribe if it compromises the universal truth of love and respect for all.  That is my measuring stick.  If something you ask of me does not promote a peaceful mutuality and the common good, I’m not for it!   If truth crushed to earth rises, as the Unitarian William Cullen Bryant said, then hate crushed to earth rises as well!  We’ve got to learn the lesson that Ghandi and King and so many others have tried to share with us.  Violence is not the answer.  Religious hate is not the answer; and racial superiority is not the answer.  

The solution is we must reinvest in building the spirit of humanity, not the spirit of hate.   Reinvest in people not in things.  Then we won’t be able to “study war no more”.  We won’t be so irrational but cognizant that we are all children of the universe.

We must create a new paradigm based upon the words of Emerson who wrote: “All violence, all that is dreary and repels, is not power, but the absence of power,” I add,the absence of humanity and the absence of love.  And Martin King said it well, “Hatred and bitterness can never cure the disease of fear; only love can do that.  Hatred paralyses life; love releases it.  Hatred confuses life; love harmonizes it.  Hatred darkens life; love illumines it.”  And of course the words attributed to Jesus, “Peter, put down your sword.”  Yet thousands of years later, as Joseph Campbell said once, “Peter has not stopped raising his sword.”  Unfortunately, to see this reality, we must look beyond the dual, beyond the dichotomy, that tends to make us quite judgmental, and look at the individual who is a child of God, a creation of that creative sustaining Force.

And so, I am here today asking you to let me be a part of our great tradition.  I have come here to receive the credentials that will allow me to represent our fine legacy.  I am not here to fill a quota, but here because I believe in our principles; and I am here to answer a call that is deep within me, and again, I can impress upon you my earnest desire to serve.

I close with the words of Paul L. Dunbar who, in his day, not long after the Emancipation of Blacks, saw religion and America as not living up to its highest ideals.  He wrote a most provocative poem titled Religion.  It reads:

“I AM NO PRIEST OF CROOKS NOR CREEDS.  FOR HUMAN WANTS AND HUMAN NEEDS
MEAN MORE TO ME THAN PROPHETS DEEDS. AND HUMAN TEARS AND HUMAN CARES
AFFECT ME MORE THAN HUMAN PRAYERS.  GO! CEASE YOUR WAIL LUGUBRIOUS SAINT.
YOU FRET HIGH HEAVEN WITH YOUR COMPLAINT. IS THIS THE CHRISTIANS JOY YOU PAINT?
IS THIS THE CHRISTIANS BOASTED BLISS?  AVAILS, YOUR FAITH NO MORE THAN THIS?

TAKE UP YOUR ARMS, COME OUT WITH ME.  LET HEAVEN ALONE, HUMANITY NEEDS MORE
AND HEAVEN LESS FROM THEE.  WITH PITY FOR MANKIND (Humankind) LOOK ROUND.
HELP THEM TO RISE AND HEAVEN IS FOUND!”

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