Respect

[A  few years ago I devised a sermon, "Seven Effective Attitudes of Unitarian Universalists"   One of the seven attitudes I identified is respect.]


One of the important twentieth century historians of Unitarianism cited Individualism, Freedom of Belief and Conscience, and Toleration as the great markers of our tradition.

Toleration always struck me as condescending, a passive rather than active attitude.  Acceptance is only a little better.  (Remember Thomas Carlyle’s famous response to Margaret Fuller’s declaration, “I accept the Universe.”  He said, “Egad, she better!”)  I favor Respect, which contains Acceptance and Toleration and more.

We respect the many religions of the world, not as much for their beliefs as for their origins from the same human impulse to seek meaning and purpose, as well as for the role these religions play in family and community.  Such diversity is a fact of human culture.  And then the great world religions each bring a different, relatively unique emphasis to Universal Religion.  For example among the Abrahamic religions, Judaism brings Justice, Christianity brings Love, and Islam brings Surrender to God’s will.

Our attitude of respect relates to what we call our first principle: “the inherent worth and dignity of every person.”  Our reasoning begins with respect for self that logically extends to our fellowkind.  Two hundred years ago, our forebears emphasized that human kind was indeed formed in the image of God and that we had a natural divinity, too.  In a similar sense to the Buddhists bowing before one another to acknowledge the Buddha-spirit in one another, so we figuratively bow to the divinity of one another.  Some of us might be more comfortable with an Enlightenment recognition of egalitarianism and rights, but we nevertheless agree that what each of us recognizes in self extends empathetically to all.

In recent years our respect has expanded to include not only other forms of life, but also to include the whole of the earth.  This has been expressed in another principle that declares, “Respect for the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part.”

In my mind, Respect has an element of Reverence.  Indeed, Reverence is Respect written large.