Why a Duck?

The Marx Brothers’ famous bit, “Why a Duck?” puts the question of the “why?” of anything at the forefront. Why talk about something “religious” like “covenant” in relation to the heritage of liberal theology, a liberal religious faith legacy like Unitarian Universalism, and within the experience of spiritual community? I think one of the chief characteristics of our age is the way that moderns collapse religion into politics; that the line that marks the difference has become so obscured that religious declaration without political partisan position is unthinkable. In politics that is ideology, but in religion it is idolatry; that is, when one maintains one’s position (today it would have political connotations) as the will of the Almighty. In our particular culture’s “civil wars” it might be well to start with one of the remembered phrases from another time of divisive cultural disturbance: “The Almighty has his own ways.” (Lincoln’s Second Inaugural)

One of the origins of this idolatry amongst liberals is the inability and/or the unwillingness to see their perspectives within an historical tradition of theological thinking, as part of the ideas that form a life of faith, and the disciplines, customs, and practices that give shape to spiritual community. Liberalism is understood predominantly as a political “duck,” and a particular kind of political and ideological “duck” at that, “outside” of liberalism as well as “inside” it. In my 23 years of ministry within a liberal religious tradition, living in and working with congregations, this is the single most prevalent roadblock: the unwillingness and/or inability of liberals to roots themselves in a heritage of theological discourse and a legacy of religious ideas informing the life of faith. When it comes to using religious language to inform and shape experience liberals have largely adopted the disclaimer of Herman Melville’s 19th century character, Bartleby the Scrivener: “I’d prefer not to.”

Language is, of course, a vehicle for conveying meaning, and can be a “public” tether connecting us in relationship to others in our time, others of previous times, and to generations yet to be. Language seeks connections or severs them. Even though it is imprecise and leads to as much misunderstanding as illumination, language still can bind people together in fellowship as surely as does shared experiences. In conversation companionship and camaraderie can be created. In attempts to make religion and the religious “relevant” and “true” to the individual’s experience, though, liberals have tried creating new religious languages, ironically yielding an abdication of religious language. The evidence in my own faith tradition is the emphasis on developing a “language of reverence,” as if religious language can be conjured up immediately, “out of time,” and without ties to history as the accumulation of the interpretations of human experience. The evidence in the culture is the political strategy of the Democratic Party to begin “faith-talk” hoping to make in-roads in that political constituency of the religiously fluent. How cynical and ironic! By any measure these attempts cut off the very conversation that language is meant to continue. Liberals cannot talk to the culture about the varieties of religious experience. Hence, religious experience either is exclusive, or is not perceived in the individual’s life at all.

Liberals today are religiously liberal; that is, holding “religiously” to a liberal interpretation of politics and policies. But devoid of religious language, one is severed from the life of faith. There are few liberal religionists. There are few who seek the theological meanings of ideas of community which incarnate liberalis; that is, which are broad-minded, generous, and worthy of free persons. For community to evidence this, a fundamental connection needs be lifted up to which various individuals can give devotion. Liberals are severed from the legacy of faith that gave rise to, and ultimate meaning for, the fundamental connection that binds persons in free religious fellowship and union. One becomes an anomaly in seeking to live out an understanding of faith, religion, God, Jesus, and thus, human nature that is faithful to liberalis as the aim and meaning of community.

Language is a dialectical pursuit with actual experience. You can’t talk about the life of faith without living on the inside of it and the communities that help form and seek to embody it. This is as true of spiritual communities formed for liberalis as it is for those formed to maintain doctrinal purity. The woman who is by herself is not free. She is alone. And you can’t produce a religious language any more than you can share religious experiences without communicating them. The man who conceives of the spiritual life as the absence or severing of connections to family, friends, neighborhood, city, country, and world is rarely religious and doesn’t possess a spiritual identity. He exists without meaning and purpose.

Recovering a life of faith as a liberal Religionist begins with placing one’s life under "disciplines of the free spirit." And part of those disciplines includes conceiving and interpreting one’s life using the framework provided by religious language as it is language about liberalis. It can’t be language conjured out of nothing, nor just “faith-talk.” It is borne out of a continuous connection with the history and tradition where a spiritual relationship with God is sought through a liberating walk with others. To be shaped by the language of faith one needs live a life of faith. In the larger liberal theological tradition, and in the Unitarian Universalist faith tradition, “covenant” is one of those “connective” words that conveys religious meaning out of walking inside a religious community and a particular faith perspective. Thus, this particular “duck” and its “why.”

Dr. Brent A. Smith, Minister
All Souls Community Church (Unitarian Universalist)
Grand Rapids, Michigan