Reasons

I got an email question from a student about some of our discussion of the six themes I've chosen to focus on throughout the semester (Reason, Revelation, Authority, Freedom, Survival and Gender), and I thought it might be helpful to post my response here, since others may have similar questions. This student specifically asked about how I view or define "reason," and how my definition of reason relates to the ways in which we've been exploring reason as a class theme.

I do want to be somewhat open-ended in the approach to the six themes. This involves acknowledging that there may be different ways of defining Revelation, Reason, Authority, Freedom, Survival and Gender Roles. Liberal theists, for example, have generally looked to history itself and broad historical processes as a way by which God reveals godself. In discussing Native American history in class, I discussed two possible ways of understanding the problem of survival in looking at Native American history. From a European American viewpoint, what has been at stake in the course of American history has been the survival of a people or peoples -- Native Americans themselves. From a Native viewpoint, what has been at stake is the survival of the planet. These are examples of how the way any one of those six concepts is defined can depend on who we're asking to define it and what the context is.

At its most basic, I see reason as the faculty we use to create meaning, to arrange facts into meaningful narratives.

However, different cultures "allow" different fact sets into their reasoning exercises. So, for example, Western science has historically excluded huge, broad fact sets from reasoning activity: the subjective, the emotional, the spiritual. Western science has historically allowed observable, reproducible, physical/material facts only as part of the reasoning process, and has labeled everything else "irrational."

We've already seen a different approach to reason used by fundamentalists, called (in Marsden) "Scottish Common Sense Realism." Fundamentalists insisted on deductive reasoning alone -- generalizing from observable phenomena. They rejected inductive reasoning,which would allow hypothetical or speculative extrapolation from observable facts. (This was their basis for rejecting the Theory of Evolution, for instance.) On the other hand, they accepted scriptural accounts of miracles as eye witness accounts, and therefore allowable data. Marsden has pointed out that Fundamentalists did not reject reason per se, they rejected only a particular form of scientific rationalism.

The same principle applies when considering the role of reason in Native American culture. Traditional Native American spirituality has often been stereotyped or romanticized as "mystical" and "irrational." In our class discussion yesterday, one characterization that was offered was the Native American spiritual practices were designed to "transcend the rational mind." But that characterization, I think, assumes certain things about the nature of reason. And it also doesn't really square with my understanding of how Native Americans engage in spiritual practices.

For example, the vision quest was cited as an example of a practice that involves breaking out of or transcending reason through fasting, isolation, etc. But in Native American practice, once a person has experienced a vision as part of a vision quest, the process is not finished until that individual returns to the community and describes his or her vision to a spiritual leader, who then helps them properly interpret the vision and integrate the vision into the community's understanding of itself. That interpretive process is a reasoning/rational process. It's a use of the reasoning faculty to make sense of data -- in this case, the data being a vision or a dream. Native Americans are not, in this case, behaving "irrationally." Their experience with revelation is integrated using reason, and the two things, revelation and reason, are not seen as mutually exclusive phenomena.

Reason and revelation are seen as mutually exclusive in our culture only because the dominant view of reason in our culture has been defined by a scientific worldview that excludes certain sorts of data -- like visions or dreams -- from its accounting of reality.

What Is a Unitarian?

This Sunday, I and my family are heading south to participate in a service of the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Mankato. We have a Muslim foreign exchange student named Farzad living with us until June. Although church attendance is generally considered strictly voluntary in our household, I informed our student that this excursion was required. Why? Because I feel one of our duties as foreign exchange hosts is to give our exchange student some opportunities to learn about different cultures and also to learn something about American history. When we were visiting family in Iowa for Christmas, he was also required to come with us to a Christmas Eve service at the conservative Evangelical Church Göran's step-dad has been attending lately. I felt that the UU Fellowship would expose him to yet another unique religious perspective in America, and I also wanted to take him to see the Buffalo Monument, and educate him a little bit about Native American history as well.

Farzad was born in Afghanistan. His family spent a few years in Iran and they are currently living in Finland. So when Farzad asked me to explain exactly what a UU was, I found myself a bit at a loss. How do you answer that question for someone who has almost no context for understanding American religion? As it is, I've struggled to explain Mormonism to him in terms that might be meaningful to him. The temptation is always to tell too much, or to start with details that -- while significant to you personally -- have no meaning for someone who still has some pretty distorted notions of what Christianity is. And I had to do it in fairly simple English. This is harder than it sounds, folks!

My best stab at it was to ask him if he was familiar with the Christian concept of the Trinity. "No," he said, "What's that?"

"That's this notion that God, Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit are all Gods, and that they are one God," I explained.

"Oh, yeah, yeah," he said. I wasn't completely sure he had the faintest idea of what the Trinity was, but I didn't doubt that he'd at least heard of it.

"OK," I said. "Unitarians believe there is only one God who is above all things." (That was my best stab at including the notion of transcendence in my explanation of the Unitarian notion of God.)

His eyes lit up, and he nodded. "Oh, OK!" he said. I could tell that, as a believing Muslim, he approved.

"OK," I said, feeling I was getting somewhere. "The Unitarian Universalist Fellowship is also known for being a very liberal church."

"What does this mean, 'liberal'?" he asked.

I was surprised, but not surprised, at having to explain this to an Afghan Muslim 18-year-old! I really, honestly found myself at a loss having to explain this from scratch. Sometimes it's the most basic terms -- the ones we take for granted the most -- that we have the hardest time explaining. This was turning out to be a good exercise for me!

"They believe that free thought and free expression is very important. They also believe that the church should be about striving for social equality. They are against racism. They believe in equality for women and for gays and lesbians. There are lots of gay people who are members of this congregation. And they believe in helping the poor."

"Oh," said Farzad, "They are very good people then."

"Yes," I said, "They are very good people." I was satisfied that this was the take-away point.

I could tell he was anxious to play the FIFA World Cup Soccer video game we gave him for Christmas, so I figured the Unitarianism 101 lesson was over. He'll hopefully learn more when we actually go there on Sunday!

Did I do a good job? I don't know. How would you explain it?