Overview

America's New Battle of Faiths

HERBERT F. VETTER

 

Ban godless books from our libraries and schools.

Make the Bible the foundation of our government and laws.

Become the dominant power in the Congress, the courts, and the White House.

Help fund religious schools through government vouchers.

Oppose both contraception and abortion.

Write creationism into science textbooks.

Speak Out Against the New Right emerged from weekly events of the Cambridge Forum of the First Church in Cambridge, Harvard Square, which was founded in 1636. I am now its Minister at Large, Emeritus and a former Chaplain to Harvard University. In serving a church, a college, and a city whose life extends for more than three and a half centuries, I have become aware of how generations of Americans have fashioned working principles of socially responsible living. At our best we have cried, "Yes" to what enhances life and cried, "No" to all that thwarts movement toward the fullness of life. Now let us draw upon past wisdom enabling us to yoke our Yeas and our Nays to make evident some aspects of America’s enduring common faith. As we speak out against the New Right, we also declare:

What We Stand For

We stand for individual freedom of inquiry and belief as a vital center of creative and concerned community. Therefore, we stand opposed to every idol of infallibility: Idols of the Book, the Person, the Church, the State, the Tradition—idols meant to have immunity to criticism, idols which forever retard advancing truth by rigid requirements of conformity in faith and life.

We stand for unrestricted use of reason as a guiding, disciplining agent of faith that makes us free and whole, members one of another in an emerging world community of life. Therefore, we stand opposed to every wall of antirational devotion which cripples life: walls of nationalistic prejudice, religious exclusiveness, racial arrogance, and vindictive caste and class.

We stand for tolerance of differing religious views and practices within a context of commitment to the democratic process in church and state, school and industry and home. Therefore, we solemnly swear eternal hostility to every form of tyranny over the human mind and body, heart and soul.

We stand for religion as experience of what is real, yet waiting to be realized; what is ideal, yet the greatest of present facts; religion as adventure, a flight after the unattainable; religion as integrating encounter with life as it is and life as it can be. Therefore, we stand eternally opposed to the irreligious force of fragmentary purpose which disregards the religious vision; and, likewise, to every form of faith that surrenders creative zest to stifling uniformity.

We stand for fellowship which is truly ecumenical, embracing east and west and north and south; uniting women, men, and children of diversity of faith in sacred common quest for truth for the mind, good works for the hand, love for the heart, and for the soul that aspiring after perfection, that unfaltering faith in Life which, like lightning in the clouds, shines brightest when elsewhere it is most dark.

This online edition of Speak Out Against the New Right is an updated form of the book published in 1982 by the Beacon Press of the Unitarian Universalist Association, Boston, Massachusetts, USA. The Publishers Weekly review concluded: "Speak Out is not afraid to tackle the hard issues and document some of the best thinking to emerge from this decade so far." Unfortunately, the wisdom of this galaxy of thinkers is now needed even more than before.

The Cosponsors of Cambridge Forum are: The First Parish in Cambridge; The Lowell Institute, Boston; The United Ministry at Harvard and Radcliffe; and The MIT Chaplains.

        

| TABLE OF CONTENTS |