Gannett Things Commonly Believed Among Us

From another reading, here I learned that this statement served in a way as a jumping off point for the humanist movement/debate.

For this one, I felt maybe it would be more coherent to comment on the "things" individually rather than collectively:


1.  "We believe that to love the Good and to live the Good is the supreme thing in religion;
No objection here.

2.  "We hold reason and conscience to be final authorities in matters of religious belief;
Well, reason and conscience can be overrated, but that notwithstanding, whether you try to create some sort of dogma, that will work for some people, for a while and it will create liars and transients out of many others.  So, given a choice between pretending to believe what you're told and opening up religion to true experience (scientific, mystical), you've got to go with the reason and conscience.

3.  "We honor the Bible and all inspiring scripture, old and new;
No argument here.  But this will rub some people the wrong way as the bible is often the weapon or excuse for what is being rejected in #2.

4.  "We revere Jesus, and all holy souls that have taught men truth and righteousness and love, as prophets of religion;
No objection here.  I think nowadays, some people might object to holding one prophet (Jesus) above others and with some of the pain that dogmatic churches have done, this might be a point that needs some desensitizing.

5.  "We believe in the growing nobility of Man; We trust the unfolding Universe as beautiful, beneficent, unchanging Order; to know this order is truth; to obey it is right and liberty and stronger life;
Hmmm.  Starts out fine but then gets into "obeying" the "unchanging order".  Not sure what that means, but in general if the order is unchanging and knowing it is truth, then how can you disobey it.  You can't disobey gravity even though there is a law and an order around it.

6.  "We believe that good and evil invariably carry their own recompense, no good thing being failure and no evil thing success; that heaven and hell are states of being; that no evil can befall the good man in either life or death; that all things work together for the victory of the Good;
Alright.  you lost me here.  Dualism. Right, wrong, cause effect, failure success.  We are too small to understand any of that and trying is most often a waste of resources.  Heaven and hell are states of being.  I'm OK with that.

To me this is really prickly and I think a remnant of Calvinism and the shadow of its rejection that has long since passed out of Unitarianism.  Maybe not.

7.  "We believe that we ought to join hands and work to make the good things better and the worst good, counting nothing good for self that is not good for all;
Awesome.  This is like merging principles 1, 2, 3, 4 & 6.  Why did we break them apart?????

8.  "We believe that this self-forgetting, loyal life awakes in man the sense of union here and now with things eternal - the sense of deathlessness; and this sense is to us an earnest of the life to come;
Very cool.  A theological reason for radical, primal covenanting.  Self-forgetting?  That might be a little strong.  Self-immersing maybe.  You're still you.

9.  "We worship One-in All -- that life whence suns and starts derive their orbits and the soul of man its Ought, -- that Light which lighteth every man that cometh into the world, giving us power to become the sons of God, -- that Love with which ours souls commune."
The interconnected web meets divinity.  I like it.   I'm not a big fan of the web motif, I don't think it paints the metaphor right, but this is very good.

All in all, this must have been seen as fairly progressive for its time because it's fairly progressive now, but I live in South Carolina, so I don't see many progressive things.