World Religions: Are They All the Same?

Liturgical Materials for Sunday the 16^th of March, 2003

Mark Belletini, Minister, Minister
First Unitarian Universalist Church of Columbus, Ohio

Opening words [Next] [back to top]

We are here
on a day that teeters on the threshold of spring
to worship, to offer our praise and thanks,
and to ask the sort of questions of our hearts
which call from us courage and commitment.
We celebrate knowing this great truth
we are sisters and brothers to all human beings
who live upon this earth,
and kin to every bird, fish, reptile and deer.

And at celebration's end, may our reason and our passion keep us true to ourselves, true to each other, and true to those shared visions of what we can together become.

The Children's Story [Next] [back to top]

Rainbows by Carole Pruiksma

The rain is falling. Falling on the flowers, on the grass, and on the trees. Water trickles down the window panes into the puddles on the pavement below. The clouds are empty. The rain is stopping. Look up! There is a rainbow slung across the sky, soft, lovely. The sun is peeking from behind the clouds. It's beautiful!

But, did you know that once upon a long time ago there were no rainbows?

The colors lived apart, separate. They were of different places, had different responsibilities, and they looked different. They were not alike. They were not the same.

Yellow lived in the sunflowers and the Daisies. Yellow was happy and soft.

Red was bright and bold. Red lived in the roses, the strawberries, and in the apples hanging from the trees.

Blue was quiet in the lakes and in the ponds. Blue was calm and shimmering.

Purple was deep and exciting. Purple was in the Crocuses of Spring and the darkening sky of twilight.

They lived apart.

One day it began to rain. It rained, it rained, and it rained. The lakes were full, the flowers were drooping, and the tree's branches hung low.

Yellow shouted to the clouds, "STOP! Stop sending your water down." But, the rain continued.

Red yelled to the clouds. " Enough! Enough of your drips and drops." But, the rain continued.

Blue gurgled to the clouds," NO!. No more rain." But, the rain continued.

Purple cried to the clouds, "PLEASE! Please no more rain." But, the rain continued.

Yellow, red, blue , and purple lifted their voices again. Their voices joined. Together they pleaded to the clouds to stop the rain. Now, the clouds heard them and listened. The rain stopped and the sun shone its soft light. The colors thanked the clouds by reaching across the sky in an arc of quiet color. It was a rainbow, the first rainbow.

The next time it rains, and you see a rainbow, remember how it came to be, once upon a long time ago.

We are like the colors of a rainbow. We come from different places. We are of different colors. We are of different beliefs. Yet we come together, splashing across the sky, joining our voices to become something together that we were not when we were separate. We too, are a rainbow, the rainbow of life.

Prayer before the Silence [Next] [back to top]

It is six PM right now in Benin (Africa), where Mawula is telling her children the story of the creator spirit Da, symbolized by the circle of the rainbow. They are part of the Fon religion, and she is glad her family lives near the temple. Mawula has gone to school, but she has never heard the word Ohio in her whole life.

It is midnight right now in Kargil in Ladakh. A young boy named Jammu, whose family is of the Sikh religion, listens to his grandfather recite the scriptures about Guru Nanak who proclaimed the holiness of the Name of God, the Circle of being without end or beginning. Jammu is in school now, but he has never once heard the word Iraq in his whole life.

It is early morning right now in Okayama. A young girl named Aterasu is lying awake on the circular pillows of her futon thinking of how best to practice the teachings of her religion, Kurozumikyo, in her Monday classroom today. Maybe she will ask to lay her hands upon her teacher, who has a terrible cold, so that she might heal her, just as the founder was able to do with suffering people. She is not worrying about Korea this morning, like her parents always seem to do, only her teacher.

It is only an hour earlier in Columbia than it is here. Diego is speaking in the Chibcha language to his teacher, who sits in the center of the sacred circle. Diego is in his 17th year of training, studying how to be a priest in the Kogi religion. He is upset that his uncle in the United States still has not sent the letter he owes him. His mother tells him that there is trouble in the United States, but he does not know what kind.

It is the present moment here in Columbus. A man named Heath waits for the phone call that will whisk his lover, who is in the Reserves, off to the Middle East, half way round the circle of the earth. Heath doesn't go to Mass much anymore, but he lies in bed this morning thinking he would like to remember how to pray.

O Love, the circle of the world
is many circles.

Sometimes they overlap,
sometimes they do not.

Together they make a world, though,
billions of human hearts all beating

"I am. I am. I am."

Each heart counts its own life
as important as anyone in this room
counts his or her own life.

All know they are mortal.
All know many questions and few real answers.
All know fear, fragments of love, and wonder.

Before the grandeur of such reality,
of which we are part,
let us keep an honoring silence for a time.

(silence)

Knowing the circle of our own personal lives
to overlap with so many others,
we express our communion with our larger lives
by naming those to whom our lives are
joined by love, by worry, by challenge or
by remembrance. This we do aloud in this place, or in the echoing chambers of our inmost heart.

(naming)

Like a circle dance in the countryside celebrating spring,
like the circle of the stars that marks the seasons, like the circle of the human eye which opens onto the grandeur of the world,
may the circle of this community offer us some ground for joy even in these troubled times.

First Reading [Next] [back to top] is a poem by Deborah Godin called Origin. The Lucy she is talking about is the name given by anthropologists to the remains of an ancient human being, the oldest we had discovered in some time. Eve in this poem is not the Biblical Eve, but a set of bones found recently which show life even more ancient than Lucy.

Theologians have always pointed to the story
but it is the scientists who found her|
unexpectedly, hidden in the shows
of pre-history mother of generations
to the world they recognized her
she already had a name, she is
Eve, daughter of the apish Lucy
our eldest progenitrix mater Africana
she was waiting, so to speak
all these long ages wanting to be found
wishing to embrace both past and future
the great parentheses of life
she left her signature, love letter to
all her grand-daughters deep in their cells
each time-travelling mitochondrion
is her keepsake, passed down on the X
she has borne female offspring
in every generation for the last two hundred
thousand years she lives on
in every continent today
what this means is rather complex biologically
but simple in every other way
we are all related to her
we stem from her great trunk, the tree
of homo sapiens back in the days
before nationality, geography, race
before we diverged, multiplied
and peopled the earth it means this:

I am related to you, we are
all siblings in the eyes of
time scientists have just proven it
we are all children of the same
old story the theologians nod and smile

Second Reading [Next] [back to top] comes from a relatively recent book on Buddhism by David Brazier which offers us this insight:

Because longing for a better world is one of the deepest realities for human beings, visions are generated. Because visions are generated, humans are inspired to actualize them. Religions come into existence as a result of a mystical inspiration. Buddha getting enlightened; Muhammed, hearing the voice of Allah; and Jesus, during his forty nights in the wilderness, are all examples of this. What commonly goes wrong is that the religion is then appropriated and developed by people who do not have access to this vision. This is a bit like builders not having access to the plans. Something gets built, but it may only be a distant approximation to the original intention. True mysticism gives inspiration for action. Mysticism and action need each other. After his enlightenment, Buddha did not retire to a cave. He went forth and lived out his vision that had come to him. Religion in its true sense is precisely that---the living out of vision in the real world.

When people hear the word vision, they are often inclined to think that something escapist or fantastic is being described. The Buddha, however, had his feet on the ground. The guts of Buddha's message is this: the deepest experience of life is not escaping from concrete reality but entering more deeply into it.

Sermon: World Religions: Are They All the Same? [Next][back to top]

Before I did my internship in Rockford Illinois, back in 1977, I flew out and met with the minister and my internship committee. Right away they took me to see the church building, of which they were extremely proud. Designed by the late, great American architect, Pietro Belluschi, the huge concrete structure crowned a hill in town. It was brightly lit at night like the Parthenon in Athens, or the Nationwide Building in Columbus, Ohio. The details of the entrance garden were charming, the lines of the sanctuary were serene and cool, and the narthex, or vestibule, was spacious and very welcoming. The most striking thing that greeted you, when you entered this narthex, was a wood-framed, circular stained glass window hanging freely in front of a huge clear glass window. The colors in the glass were muted earth tones. At the center of the circle was a flaming chalice. Then, in circles around that inner circle, there were the symbols of the larger religions of the world…the cross of Christendom, the Mogen David or Six Pointed Star of Judaism, the word OM written in Sanskrit, etc. Symbols for Islam, Buddhism and Taoism completed the circle of six.

I always liked this design. I found it compelling and beautiful, tastefully designed, not too busy. Others in the church were not so sure about this window, which had been added some time after the building had been completed, and without Belluschi's OK. Some felt that it gave the wrong impression, suggesting that all these religions were basically the same. Others were upset that the flaming chalice, symbol of our own religious tradition, was in the center of the circle. "It's not as if we are the one true religion, or that all the other religions of world revolve around us," they would exclaim. I used to think they were reading too much into it, but who's to say, eh?

Certainly not me. After all, I was raised in a most confusing environment about this idea of "world religions." In my Catholic grade school I was taught that our religion was the only true religion on earth. Those poor Protestants couldn't get anything right. On the other hand, my beloved grandfather Umberto, who was an atheist and a socialist, didn't think "truth" and "religion" belonged in the same sentence. He told me that if he was forced to join a religion, he would become a Confucianist (I learned about the Chinese teacher very early indeed!) because with that non-supernatural religion, at least he wouldn't have to deal with all of that "God baloney." Lots of my grandfather's male Italian friends felt the same way.

My Baptist friends on the other side of the block didn't agree with the nuns in grade school. Oh, they thought that Catholicism was a religion all right, but one of the worst ones possible. In fact, my friend Gaither told me that their Baptist church didn't really belong to a "religion" at all. No, they had "the truth" not mere religion. "Religion," he would pronounce solemnly, "is humanity's vain search for God. In our religionless church, just the opposite is true. God has searched for us, and found us and chosen us. Religion is just no good."

Then in my high school sociology class, we were sent out to interview religious leaders from other traditions, having then to come back and report to the class. My team interviewed a local pastor of a certain Baptist denomination who told us, with a solemn smile that everything in the Book of Revelation was going to come true right before our eyes very soon. I'm ashamed to say that the three of us all snickered under our breath, because we had been taught by the priests that anyone who took the Book of Revelation seriously probably had something wrong with them. We wished instead we had gone with our friend Mike's team. They got to drive all the way over to the West Side and interview the rabbi over at Sha'ary Zedek, which turned out to be just one week before he was shot to death in his office by a local anti-Semite. Their electrifying report about the tragic event made Judaism seem very different than what we had been told it was in our religion classes… simply a preparation for Christianity.

On top of Catholicism, Protestantism, Judaism and Confucianism, I was acquainted with Hinduism a bit. That's right, I practiced yoga in High School. This was after reading a book about it from the library. I fasted, twisted myself into difficult shapes, meditated and otherwise upset my incredulous mother, who spent a great deal of her time rolling her eyes because of my unusual interests. But yoga wasn't just postures, it was a religious practice, and I meditated on the meanings of the Sanskrit words kundalini and samadhi in the same way as I meditated on the Latin words at church "Tantum Ergo Sacramentum." They were like magic spells that whisked me off to some other land, if for but a moment. In those days, the Detroit River flowed into the Ganges as I flirted with the practices associated with Hinduism.

As I grew older, I read more, and discovered that religions the world over all had fascinating forms and odd practices…odd at least to me. I read about the stories and legends, the rituals and fasts of these religions. I read about those who hated religion too, people a lot like my grandfather. I read the anarchist works of Bakunin and Emma Goldman, the criticism of religion offered by Engels and Marx and Feuerbach, and the psychological barbs of Freud and Jung.

By the time I was 21, I decided that my grandfather was right, and that all religion was bunk. Religion in Asia no less than religion in America. Highly ritualized religion no less than deeply meditative religion. And no one in those days was going on and on about "being spiritual but not religious." That was hardly an option. I just gave it all up, wiping my hands of the whole mess.

But as I went through my university, and afterward too, I read more and more about the religions of the world for various classes or just out of curiosity, and I ceased to be so sure about things. I began to see how religion and culture blended and changed each other. I began to see that, like most things worth studying, the religions of the world were complex, almost infinite in number, and very important for reasons other than their failures. By the time I was 22, my anti-religious fervor had abated enough that I could associate myself with a church again, in this case, the Universalist Unitarian Church of Farmington, Michigan.

There I delved more into the world religions. I discovered exactly what our second reading makes so clear…that the original mystical experiences of the so-called founders of many religions were not experienced by their students and followers. The visions of a better world, a world of peace and justice that seized the original thinkers behind so many religious movements, got lost in interpretations and scriptures which put out the initial flame that got it all started. Founders were worshipped, instead of their dreams being put into practice.

I began to realize that there were religions, and there were religions. It was silly, I realized, to talk of Christianity as if it were a single religion, when there were such differences between the ceremonies of Russian Orthodoxy and the non-ceremonial simplicity of the Society of Friends (the Quakers). Both of these religions came out of the Christian tradition, but both are as different from each other as blue is from red. It was even silly to say the word Baptist as if it implied anything universal…after all, Harvard's Harvey Cox is a Baptist, and he is as wildly progressive in his social thought as Baptist Jerry Falwell is harsh and retrograde. Which one of them is the "real" Baptist? Is the radical Daniel Berrigan the true Roman Catholic, or the more socially conservative Karol Wotyla, the present Bishop of Rome and Pope? Is Pema Chodron, with her broad psychological vision of Buddhism, the representative Buddhist, or is it Hakuin Yasutani, who considered the kamakaze suicides during the war as deeply religious expressions of the Dharma, and who openly proclaimed his hatred of Jews? I began to understand that you could interpret your own religion in a self-serving way, or in a world-serving way, in a cruel way or a loving way. I learned that the various religions of the world themselves were so roomy that they had plenty of space for both knaves and saints, both fools and exemplars. I began to realize that my youthful statement, "I hate all religion," made no real sense unless I qualified what I meant a thousand times. Did I hate Martin Luther King's teachings and actions of love? Did I hate Mother Waddle's centers for the homeless in Detroit? Did I hate Sr. Jean Prejean's work for Death Row prisoners? Did I hate the work of Habitat for Humanity? Did I hate the religious actions of Unitarian Universalists who have taken their children out of coveted schools which were unfortunately steered by leaders who have openly expressed bigoted and hurtful attitudes toward minorities?

Besides realizing that all the worlds religions share a mixture of the kind and the hateful, the glorious and tawdry, the brilliant and the stupid, I also began to realize that there were hundreds of religions in the world I had never even heard of. Some had no founders, some had no temples or scriptures, some barely resembled the religions I knew from that stained glass window. That round window in Rockford, lovely as it was on the eye, was only the beginning of the story. I realized how parochial my education about the world was, as a citizen of the United State. I realized how parochial almost everyone's education is, no matter where they are on earth, for the earth is large and we are smaller than ants. Sure there were people in the world who had never heard of Unitarian Universalism, or even the state of Ohio, for that matter. But, though I claimed a long history of education, I had never heard of hundreds of religions or cultures myself. Take the Kimbanguist Church of Zaire, for example, with ten times more members than the Unitarian Universalist Association. And I had never heard of Konko-kyo in Japan, the Harrist Church in Ivory Coast, the Radasoami, or Lingayat, or even the Loka-yata religious movements in India, whose adherents do not worship images of any sort, and totally deny reincarnation. Then there is the Lovedu religion of South Africa, the Mende religion in Liberia, the neo-Muslim Mirghani of the Sudan, or the Mapuche religion of Chile. I didn't even know there were over thirty kinds of Baptist Churches, ranging from the fundamentalist, like Thomas Road Church in Lynchburg Virginia, to the radically liberal like First Baptist in Charlotte, which is the chief rival of the Unitarian Universalists there.

Sometimes I hear folks telling me that all the world's religions are all basically alike, that they are all saying the same thing, if you really look carefully. I don't think that makes a lot of sense on the surface of things. To me, it's like saying that in the rainbow, green is really red, and red is really blue if you look carefully. No, they are different. Differences have to be respected, not imagined away. But these various religions do fit nicely together into a particular set of human practices, and they can be studied as a singular human phenomenon, somewhat, even if they have no founder or scripture or temple.

During my class on the world's religions earlier this year, I came to the following provisional conclusion. All the world's religions express some opinion about three things. They each speak of Ultimacy. They each speak of Authority. They each speak of Boundaries.

First, there is that sense of Ultimacy. Some use God language as ultimate, others do not. Some speak of Nature as ultimate, or many Gods, or even many Spirits as ultimate. Some speak of the Dharma (or Teaching) as ultimate, others talk more generically of "the Holy," or, like the Plains Indians, the Great Holy. Others are more doctrinally specific, preferring Goddess to God, or Trinity to Unity. But all of these, no matter what we think of them, are meditations on Ultimacy…what is Ultimate in our lives?

And secondly, each religion meditates on the concept of Authority. Are the scriptures authoritative? A gospel, a sutra, the Granth of the Sikhs, or the Qur'an of the Muslims? Or is it the human self which has the final authority, as we Unitarian Universalists tend to say? How about tradition? Or a recording of multiple opinions, like the Jewish Talmud or Muslim Hadith? Or is it leaders, or personal gurus who pass down authoritative traditions? Or mystical rapture and first hand ecstatic experience? Or Spirit possession among the Siberian Shamans, or trance-Channeling among the suburban white people of Los Angeles or Seattle? All of these ideas are religious responses to the question of authority.

And thirdly, all religions I can think of express their teachings in the form of boundaries. There are all the thou shalt nots, and all the thou shalts. Boundaries. You have the kashrut or Kosher rules of the Jews, the no-pork law of the Muslims, the fasting and feasting paradigm of Christians, Sikhs and Buddhists. Boundaries. You have ceremonial dress, and special vestments, i.e. this is sacred time, this is secular time, depending on what you wear. Then there are the rules of mixture and purity…can a Christian marry a Jew? A Muslim marry a Jew? Can a Protestant marry a Catholic, a Buddhist take holy communion, a Lutheran meditate and practice yoga? Some will say "yes" to these questions as an expression of their religion, others will say "no." Still others, "maybe." Then there are the boundaries of holy days and holidays, the seasons of celebration and remembrance. These are found in every religion I can think of, even our own. And then there is the boundary separating life from death. One religion suggests that when you die, you die; another promises paradise, still another says you come back, and a fourth calls death a mystery beyond human ken. These are all reflections on boundaries, and all religions reflect about the world in this way. What is ultimate for you? What final authority do you accept? What boundaries do you draw in your life? These are all essentially religious questions.

So for me, all religions are not the same in form or content, any more than red is blue or blue is red. They are like a rainbow, however. They are similar in their parallels to the colors in that sacred arc, in terms of the human questions they field, questions of ultimacy, questions of authority and questions of boundary.

And this should not be surprising. Because, after all, we are children of a common ancestor, call her Lucy, call her Eve, call her mater africana, call her nothing at all. But as Deborah Godin, our poet this morning, reminds us, "Scientists have just proven it…I am related to you, and we are all siblings in the eyes of time. We are all children of the same old story," the story of life developing on earth over eons, the story of life rising out of the African mud to choose between love and hate, war or peace, life or death. And the theologians only smile, the poet says.

Today I wish they would do more than smile. Today I have a vision for something else they might do.

I find myself wishing these days that the religions of the earth might try and make a difference in this present situation. Why not have the Pope, the Dalai Lama, the well-loved Rabbi Kushner, a few significant and respected Imams from several nations, Bishop Tutu and the Archbishop of Canterbury, and, for all I care Billy Graham, all go over and have a conference in Bagdhad for a few days…or just camp there for a few months? It's probably not going to happen, but I wish it would, since we are indeed children of that same old story, children who have before us significant choices of spirit that determine our future. And, as the author of the Hebrew scripture Devarim (Deuteronomy), says wisely, simply and plainly, "Choose life, therefore, choose life, that you and your children might live."

Offeratory [Next][back to top]

Blest is our free religious tradition which asks nothing of the government, nothing of the state, nothing from anything outside of our circle, but which only asks that we might freely give of our selves on the model of the generosity of the spring.

Prayer [back to top]

O Light of Life, I am a child of the universe, a tiny circle within the great circle of this earth. I decry violence and hate, yet I know these things are in my heart too, that they step aside just for a moment, but can surface for small things.

(hymn #117 vs. 1)

Love, I am a human being, but that means I am sometimes wounded and always fallible. I need a vision of wholeness, of the greater circle of which I am a part. This is the beginning of my salvation. Let that be my vision. A world cared for and loved. People cared for and loved. The mystery of the world accepted with thanksgiving, not posturing.

(hymn #117 vs. 2)

Sorrow and joy, sorrow and joy. I cannot pry them apart. I have to live within their woven beauty, knowing that I cannot work outside the world, but only from within it. I long for wholeness of spirit. I long for peace within me as well as in the world. Come, saving love. Come.

(hymn #117 vs. 3)

Oh, may I remain faithful to my ideals, even in these hard days. May my strength not fail me, and may my hope neither flag nor fail. Amen.

(hymn #117 vs. 4)

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