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The Distinctiveness of Ethical Culture

-- Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1838

The crying need was for a religious organization that should be above all else active in social, political, educational and moral reform. Thus the ethical movement had its genesis. Yet, mark you, it did not represent an attempt to find a substitute for religion in philanthropic activities and moral education. On the contrary, it started with the hope of finding a satisfying religion.

-- Alfred W. Martin, Ethical Leader, 1913

Mysticism, but let us have no words,
Angels, but let us have no fantasies,
Churches, but let us have no creeds,
And yet let us believe.

-- Conrad Aiken, from Time in the Rock

The religious life is the one in which there is a constant effort to link oneself, in joy and contribution, to the life-giving movements of one's world.

-- Harry Overstreet, The Mature Mind

PLATFORM TALK

There is a story about a renowned speaker who is asked to speak to a learned society. When they gathered for this speech, people were very eager and enthusiastic, waiting to hear what would be said. The speaker got up and began by saying, "I would like to see the hands of those who know what I am going to say." Nobody raised their hand. He said, "Well, if there is not some sense in which the essence of what I am going to talk about is already inside you, there is no need for me to try to tell you about it." And he sat down.

They decided to ask him back. I don't know whether they were liking the brevity of the talk that he gave -- but anyway they decided to ask him back. When he came back they were ready this time. He got up and said, "Before I begin I would like to know how many of you here know what I am going to say." Everybody raised their hand. He responded, "Well, if you already know, there's no need for me to say anything," and sat down.

Persistent group that they were, they invited him back for a third time. This time they had talked with each other and they were prepared. So he got up again and started with that same question. "I would like to have you raise your hand if you know what I'm going to say and don't raise your hand if you don't know." Well, they had arranged that half of them would raise their hand. They thought, "Now we've got him." He looked around and he said, "Well, it looks like about half the group knows and about half do not. So those of you who know tell those of you who don't." And he sat back down. They did not invite him again.

It is my assumption that in choosing to talk about the distinctiveness of Ethical Culture, I am talking about something that many of you know something about the essence of -- that it exists deep already within you. And at the same time it is my hope that this talk will clarity our identity.

I want to begin by going back to the opening reading from Alfred Martin saying that Ethical Culture is not a substitute for religion, but rather it is intended to be a means to a satisfying religion. I want to make it clear that by talking about the distinctiveness of Ethical Culture, I am not suggesting a superiority of Ethical Culture. People choose what is right for them. Nor is this a polemic against anybody else. Nor is it a talk of self-satisfaction about how great we are. I chose this topic because I think it is helpful for us to clarify who we are and to justify for ourselves why this Ethical Culture approach makes sense to us.

There are seven things I want to say that are for me the essence of Ethical Culture and its distinctiveness.

First of all Ethical Culture puts character above creed. It reverses the historic role of most religions, which have a creed and then put a deed to it. Our individual creeds, and even our joint common creeds, come out of moral experience. They have to do with how one best shapes character. They have to do with the essence first of all, with what we do, who we are, and then out of what seems to be for us the most reasonable, rational experienced approach. It's true that it comes in some sense out of Judaism. And that's not just an accident, because in Hebrew you have a great emphasis on verbs, on action. There are very few adjectives but lots of verbs in Hebrew. And in Judaism, one of the great words is the word davar, which is "word". But "word" in Hebrew (davar) means: "It is spoken but it is as good as done." There is no separation between a creed and a deed -- between a word spoken and what that person is and does. So in that sense, there is a way in which Ethical Culture is indebted to Judaism, I think more than any other traditional religion. So first of all, character comes above creed.

Secondly, Ethical Culture says that ethics is primary. It gives supremacy to the issue of moral ends and behavior. It is not subordinated to any other end. There is nothing else of the same importance as ethics in the life, the talk, the community, and the work of Ethical Culture.

I'm going to give an example that occurred in the paper Friday. I do it not to be negative about another group, but to show a distinction. Here I'm specifically referring to Catholicism, which I have a great deal of respect for in three particular ways.

One, it has never claimed too little territory -- and I mean that in a positive sense. It has never said, "Oh in those four areas, do whatever you want." I may not always agree with the stance that's pushed, but there is an understanding that there is no area of human life that Catholicism doesn't think relates to who it is, what it is, and what it has to say.

Secondly, it is a much more diverse body than most religious groups with a great many people who are poor and middle class as a part of it. It is not a church in which its membership is among the rich only, or even the comfortable.

And third, in the forty some years that I've been involved in social actions, I have always found when I have gathered on some barricade, there are Catholic priests, nuns, and members, who will be on that barricade line for social justice as often or more so than any other group.

So I'm not by using this example in any way trying to reflect negatively. I'm trying to show by this example how the emphasis on moral ends should be primary.

There is an article in the paper on Friday about a young girl by the name of Haley Waldman. She's an eight-year old girl from New Jersey, who suffers from the rare digestive disorder, in which she cannot eat wheat or anything that contains gluten. When she had her first holy communion, the wafer contained no wheat, and this communion was ruled invalid. She really, they said, didn't have communion because she didn't have wheat in the wafer. Now there's something wrong when it gets to the point where the ingredients in something are more important than the motivation of or sensitivity toward a human being. In Ethical Culture we can also fail in these ways by how we function. But it is at least the assumption that in ethics, sensitivity and compassion are the way one should function and this behavior is primary.

Third, Ethical Culture is non-theistic. Not anti-theistic, not pro-theistic, it is non-theistic. It takes a neutral stance. It specializes in morality apart from theology, and leaves the theology to the individual person, and therefore is neutral on metaphysical ideas. Moral obligation has precedence -- not any theology, not any doctrine -- and the independence of morality comes from a rich belief in human possibilities and progress.

Fourth, Ethical Culture is based on a community of freedom and responsibility, free of all non-essential requirements and committed only to that morality that all accept. Now, conflicts in ideals exist among our members -- and should -- because we are unique human beings and in fact diversity should be encouraged. Alfred Martin, when he gave a talk in 1913, referred to this diversity of opinion as "a chaos of ethical convictions." And if you're in a discussion in the Ethical Society very long, where people aren't intimidated in some way, you will soon find there are all kinds of varieties of opinions. If there are twelve in a room, there are probably at least thirteen ideas. So there is this diversity of thought and respect for differences, and there is a searching for common ground in spite of it.

I asked people who had gone to the summer school to share with me what they saw of the distinctiveness of Ethical Culture. Several of them responded. Ed Carty made a point of especially talking about this diversity of thought, this respect for differences, and the search for common ground. But he did so also with a recognition and a regret that sometimes there isn't enough of that here -- that sometimes there's a kind of attitude that you ought to be a part of one political party, or one philosophy, and that sometimes we make an assumption that ethics has to do with a particular political viewpoint. It doesn't.

Now I have my own opinions and I think there are issues about justice that I speak about and that others should as well, but a person can disagree with me politically with integrity and be a person of integrity. I expect them to do so honestly. I have to say sometimes I see that certainly wanting in the political realm, but I do believe that we need to honor the integrity of people who have a varying view from what the majority of our members might hold.

Fifth, Ethical Culture lays exceptional stress on moral education. This includes a recognition that we never finish the learning process, that learning is an imperative. It is the nature of who we ought to be as human beings, to be in the process of learning. We recognize we are always incomplete in our ideas. They need to be challenged. We can through dialogue actually change what we may think. This aids in ever expanding our knowledge. None of us has "arrived".

Moral education includes the principle of "shared inquiry". We're all in the process of learning. We all have something to teach each other. Because of this respect for human beings, this affirming of human worth, everybody has something to add to that discussion, when it is done with respect and dignity. Moral education is a task ongoing for life.

Sixth, we are a living tradition. We emphasize ongoing experience, and where we differ from most religions, is that they will talk about tradition, reason, experience, and revelation as the four tenants or underlying basis for the beliefs they have. Ethical Culture puts the emphasis on reason, on tradition, on experience, on intuition. There is no assumption of a final or external revelation.

Julian Huxley put it this way:

The essential of all this is that religion is an activity which suffers change like all other human activities; that it may change for the better or the worse; that if it stands still and refuses to change, when other human activities are changing, then the standing still is itself a change for the worse; that as it grows, it cannot avoid coming into contact both with intellectual and with moral or ethical problems and that with the development of human experience and tradition religion becomes inevitably preoccupied with the intellectual comprehension of our relation to the universe, and with the attainment of coherent and unified moral life, as well as with its more original quest for emotional satisfaction in the sphere of the holy.

When Brunelleschi, the famous Florentine architect, successfully competed for the construction of the dome of the cathedral in Florence, he closed his series of specifications for the structure with the following significant suggestion, "When the dome shall have reached the height of fifty-seven feet, that is just before the dome was to be closed in, let the master builders then in charge of the work determine what the next step is to be." For Brunelleschi said, "Practice teaches us what the next step to be taken shall be."

What Ethical religion can particularly hope to give, is a firm sense of direction in all human effort toward fuller realization of the spiritual nature. It can help people to better estimate themselves and thereby help counteract the pain that derives from the sense of human insignificance in this wide universe, and from the confusion of standards in the relation to society. It can point to the supreme experience of seeing the divine light in the face of another person, and having the light reflected upon our own faces. For to touch the spiritual quick in the life of others and to have the experience of its effect upon our own life, this then, is the supreme experience. The conviction of spiritual community that can grow out of this experience is sufficient to bring people serene peace amid their battles and torments.

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