The full wording of the Unitarian Universalist Principle which we're considering this morning is "acceptance of one another and encouragement to spiritual growth in our congregations." It's the third of our Principles; you can find them all in the hymn book, just before the first hymn. I spoke about the first (inherent worth and dignity) in September, and the second (justice, equity and compassion) in October.

I shall speak about the fourth Principle (a free and responsible search) in two weeks' time, on December 10. That's is just to set the context for this morning's talk, which is part of a series on the Principles and Purposes of our faith. It's especially appropriate, I think, at a time in our congregational life when we're writing new by-laws about who belongs here, exploring possibilities such as designating this a Welcoming Congregation and initiating "small group" ministry, and about to take a multitude of different philosophical stands in the federal election tomorrow.

For a long time I had difficulty seeing the connection between the two parts of this third Principle. It seemed to me to be two different things which had been pasted together for no very clear reason. I really couldn't see how acceptance of one another, certainly a great and uncontestable UU principle, went together with encouragement to spiritual growth in our congregations.

It's taken experiences of tension and conflict in another congregation, and awareness of deeply differing views in this one, to teach me the connection. (There's so much I've needed to learn about our Principles, and about ministry, and I'm still learning.) I've begun to see that we can only encourage the spiritual growth of each of our members if we accept each one's personality and chosen spiritual path as valid and worthwhile and beautiful and right. It's only as we accept one another that we can in any meaningful way encourage each other's spiritual growth; it's only as we accept each other as an essential part of our congregation that we can encourage each other to spiritual growth within our congregation.

Acceptance and encouragement go together; rejection and discouragement go together. In this, the third of our Principles, we commit ourselves never to reject anyone who wants to join with us, never to discourage anyone who wants to develop spiritually in our congregation -- because we're committed to offering a home here for all who want to grow.

A good many years ago, the Hamilton congregation, of which I was then a member, bought a new building, the one before the present one. Among the first questions that arose for us when we moved in was how to make it look like our place, like a Unitarian Universalist home. It had been the German Church of God before we moved in, and the symbol of the cross, which was quite prominent in the building, became symbolic in a new way for us. On the one hand we had members who felt that the cross was part of our religious heritage.

After all, the approved description of our own symbol, the flaming chalice, (in a UUA pamphlet) points out that its cross-like shape reflects our Christian roots. Not only that, but it also may help us relate to other churches and may even still have some intrinsic meaning for some of us. On the other hand, we had members who were extremely uncomfortable with an image that represented beliefs which they had rejected or never held, and who were concerned that if our building carried a cross we might be mistakenly identified as a Christian church, with all that implies.

That situation seems to me to embody quite vividly the problem of tolerance, which we all say we're committed to, and even more, of the acceptance which goes beyond it. Acceptance sounds at first like an easy thing. To be accepting is to be open to one another, welcoming, non-judgmental -- how pleasant. But I suggest that it's only the trivial things in life which are easy, and that truly accepting one another here is not trivial and not easy. It's a central principle of our Unitarian Universalist movement, but it may be the least understood of all our common beliefs.

We probably find it much easier to stand together in objecting to religious teachings and ideas of non-UUs -- the teaching that Jesus is the only way to salvation, for instance -- than to accept the very varied beliefs and ideas that we hold just within this congregation, let alone in the Unitarian Universalist movement as a whole. But if we can't accept one another, if we can't accept each of the people who've come here because they're drawn to a place of religious freedom, there's not much hope that we'll be able to go beyond a rather indifferent or apathetic tolerance towards the rest of the world who may not even be interested in religious freedom. As one of our members, Lyn McGinnis, said when he spoke on this topic in the Guelph congregation,

"Acceptance of one another is easy when the face is familiar -- when we feel comfortable and knowledgeable about who we are looking at. Acceptance of one another is difficult when the face in front of us makes us uncomfortable, confused, afraid or just nonplussed . . . Acceptance of one another involves peeling back the comfortable layers of abstract theorizing and looking closely at the inner discomfort, confusion and the inherited prejudice we all carry."

The only kind of community in which our way of thinking and being can survive and flourish is one which accepts as worthwhile many ways of being and thinking. So we have good reason to value acceptance for what it allows to us. But there's another reason, one which makes acceptance a much more active virtue. It was expressed by Walter Lippman, in an article which originally appeared in Atlantic Monthly in August 1939, a time when tolerance was a scarce commodity. He says (and I'm paraphrasing only very slightly to be gender-inclusive):

" . . . there is a much more compelling reason for cultivating the habits of free people . . . we must protect the right of our opponents to speak because we must hear what they have to say . . . If this were all there is to freedom of opinion, that we are too good-natured or too timid to do anything about our opponents and our critics except to let them talk, it would be difficult to say whether we are magnanimous or we are lazy, because we have strong principles or because we lack serious convictions, whether we have the hospitality of an inquiring mind or the indifference of an empty mind . . . But this is the creative principle of freedom of expression, not that it is a system for the tolerating of error, but that it is a system for finding the truth . . . For, while the right to talk may be the beginning of freedom, the necessity of listening is what makes the right important . . . the essence of freedom of opinion is not in mere toleration as such, but in the debate which toleration provides: it is not in the venting of opinion but in the confrontation of opinion . . . When we are brought face to face with our opponents, forced to listen and learn and mend our ideas, we . . . begin to live like civilized people. . . . any sensible human being always learns more from opponents than from fervent supporters."

We believe in accepting one another, if we agree with Lippman, not only because we need others to accept us and our sometimes outlandish ideas, but because we believe that acceptance of others' outlandish ideas will bring us nearer to the truth, to understanding the way things really are. No-one who claims to have respect for the worth and dignity of each human being can pretend to have a monopoly on truth and understanding; no Unitarian Universalist worthy of the name can unblushingly say, "My way of looking at things is the only right way."

At most we can say, "This is how it seems to me; tell me how it seems to you." Like the Quakers, the Society of Friends, insofar as we believe in a light within, we believe that there is something of that light in everyone, and we must therefore open ourselves to that inner light when it's brought out and expressed. It may lighten our darkness.

But it's one thing to agree that we will aim for acceptance in its active sense of valuing the ideas of others, and another to know how to accept one another. When we care deeply about a principle, it's hard to open our minds and our hearts and our congregational home to the thoughts of people with different, but equally deep, principles. When we have strong convictions about the kind of identity and image we want our congregation to have, it's hard to accept people who seem to contradict that identity or image. I want to interject here one of my favourite quotations, from the essay "On Liberty" by the nineteenth-century philosopher John Stuart Mill:

"The great writers to whom the world owes what religious liberty it possesses, have mostly asserted freedom of conscience as an indefeasible right . . . Yet so natural to mankind is intolerance in whatever they really care about, that religious freedom has hardly anywhere been practically realised, except where religious indifference . . . has added its weight to the scale. . . . One person will bear with dissent in matter of church government, but not of dogma; another can tolerate everybody short of a Papist or a Unitarian . . . In the minds of almost all religious persons . . . the duty of toleration is admitted with tacit reserves."

My experience suggests John Stuart Mill's observation is right: when we believe something intensely, we find it difficult to accept people with contrary beliefs. But I think Walter Lippman is also right when he suggests that it's when we encounter those contrary beliefs that we can learn most. What happens when our congregation or political party or association takes a stand which goes against our principles? It's not just a hypothetical question; it's actually happened to most of us, and will continue to happen.

The UUA or the CUC or our local congregation makes a statement on abortion or on tax cuts or on gay rights, and we feel that we want to dissociate ourselves, to say, "Please take notice: I am not one of these!" Or, looking at it from the other side, the side of the organization, we find that one of our members doesn't believe in one of our cherished principles, and we want to say, "She's not really a Unitarian Universalist; she doesn't belong; we don't want her." Walter Lippman suggests that we should use these occasions to get nearer to the truth, our own truth.

One example of the difficulties of actively accepting one another is political conviction, precisely because it's so emotion-laden. Of course we can be accepting of points of view which are different from our own but not very important to us, but politics matters to a large number of people. How can we be tolerant about things which deeply affect our country and our life as individuals within it?

How can those of us who believe quite passionately in, for instance, the responsibility of government to work for an equitable redistribution of wealth, be accepting of someone who believes, as some members of my own family do, that governments have no business interfering with the rewards of hard work, or luck, or intelligent business practice?

First and foremost, I think we can do it by assuming goodwill and intelligence wherever possible. My son-in-law in Calgary who's campaigning for a Canadian Alliance candidate does so out of a genuine sense that the policies of that party will be best for the country as a whole (not just for himself) rather than in a conspiracy to foist fundamentalist views on every Canadian. (He happens to be an atheist, by the way, and he spends much of his spare time working for homeless people; he's not a stereotype, but a person.) When we recognize that we have in common a wish for the betterment of life and want to find the best ways of bringing that about, our anger begins to dissipate and a dialogue can begin.

Social scientists who've looked at how people's attitudes can be changed have found that most lasting attitude changes take place in small stages in friendly, non-threatening situations. Not only do we gain in understanding by taking an accepting attitude towards those opposed to us, but we also have more chance of nudging them a little way towards our viewpoint!

Where do we draw the line? Should we live unprotestingly with whatever happens in our world, our country, our community, our congregation? Should we accept anyone at all, no matter what they believe? I don't think so, if someone isn't in sympathy with our leading principles, with the general spirit of our congregation. But when there are just some points of disagreement, then I firmly believe that both sides stand to gain by practising acceptance, which is very much like active listening. That's not just allowing someone to talk to you, but trying to understand what they say.

The illustration I used at the beginning of this talk was very close to home. I chose the symbol of the cross as an example of the difficulty we have when we find ourselves in company with something, or someone, on a different wavelength from our own. We don't believe for a moment, do we, that having crosses around us is going to do us or anyone else any harm, and yet we feel, some of us, uncomfortable in their presence. We don't want to be identified with them; they say something about us that we may not want said about us. The same applies, for some people, to the word "church", or to any number of names and symbols and labels which can produce conflict between those who use them and those who find them a barrier to belonging.

I once read a self-help book on human relationships which said: "From the simplest cell to the most elegant meshing of organisms, one rule is unvarying: where there is life, there is conflict. Where conflict is denied or barred, life withers." The main concept of the book was that conflict is productive of understanding and intimacy and growth, as long as it is open and honest.

So I think the problems of acceptance that we face (as a congregation, as families, as a province and a country) are opportunities to engage in some good, honest, open confrontation about what matters to us, such as what personal beliefs and behaviours very different from our own mean to us, how much we still cling to our own mind-set, how much other ways frighten or repel us, how much we distrust one another's judgment in these matters. With a bit of effort we may be able to listen to each other actively and begin to understand what the other person is saying and meaning -- or what we ourselves are saying and meaning.

As I talk with you about the things that matter deeply to you, I begin to understand a little more about why acceptance is so difficult for all of us. It requires us to recognize that we may not have everything all figured out yet and may even have to let go of some cherished beliefs, some comforting aspects of our self-image. But I believe that if we listen actively to each other, what we may have to give up will be far outweighed by what we'll gain.

We'll get to know each other better, our fears and delights, our passions and our memories. We may even be able to open ourselves up to the extent that we can actually encourage each other's spiritual growth. I'm now beginning to understand why this goes together with acceptance. It's only when we can accept one another as valuable members of the congregation, no matter what our disagreements on matters of belief, politics or congregational practice, that we can take the next step of trusting each other's potential for growth. That takes faith in each other's inherent worth and dignity, the faith that the more I can accept you and encourage your spiritual growth, the more I will benefit from your presence, your enlarging spirit and your very being.

Dave Keller, who told us this morning why he wants to be here, has given me permission to quote from a message he sent to members of the Welcoming Congregation Committee recently. Dave was regretting the fact that by concentrating on our disagreements, for a while he'd lost sight of what we have in common. He said,

"I have taken five steps back and a deep breath. What do I see? Well . . . a congregation that professes love, acceptance & understanding AND two groups which need just that. Our own GLBT minority group and our [other minority group of those with reservations]. Two groups looking for a place to kick off their shoes and feel like they're wanted and accepted. I say let's give it to both of them."

The encouragement we give to each other's spiritual growth in this congregation is self- encouragement as well. When we recognize that your growing convictions can add to my developing insights, we're living our third principle, acceptance of one another and encouragement to spiritual growth in our congregations. May we indeed accept one another here and encourage each other's spiritual growth in this, our beloved congregation.