This interview was broad in the religion-science newsletter, Convergence Vol. 2 No. 6

Jerome Stone discusses his research of a growing philosophical movement

Jerome Stone is not one to shy away from touchy subjects. His focus when it comes to religion has been a concept that is not often publicly discussed and sounds like a simpler idea than it really is. Religious naturalism or RN for short is something that takes more than a paragraph or two to explain and is the source of a dialogue in religion and science circles.

Not afraid of a challenge Stone has written the book on the topic of religious naturalism. His historical account of religious naturalism can be found next month in the new paperback edition of his book, “Religious Naturalism Today: The Rebirth of a Forgotten Alternative”, published by SUNY Press.

Stone is professor emeritus of philosophy at William Rainey Harper College in Palatine, IL and adjunct faculty at Meadville Lombard Theological School in Chicago. He is also the coeditor of both volumes of The Chicago School of Theology: Pioneers in Religious Inquiry, and the author of The Minimalist Vision of Transcendence: A Naturalist Philosophy of Religion. A minister in the Unitarian Universalist Association, Stone is also a member of both the Highlands Institute on American Religious and Philosophical Thought and Institute on Religion in an Age of Science (IRAS).

At this year’s annual IRAS conference, a number of presentations and discussions referred to Stone’s groundbreaking work in offering a new view of religious experience.

Jerry, what is meant by the term religious naturalism or “RN”?

“RN” is a philosophy which seeks to live a religious life without a Supreme Being that is superior in power and value to the natural world. It is the attempt to think about life and live a religious orientation without a God, soul or heaven. There is a slightly different use of the term which overlaps with this first one. In this second view RN is the attempt to find in the natural world (including culture and history) the world as scientifically understood inspiration and resources for their religious life. It does not involve the explicit attempt to get along without a Supreme Being, soul or heaven. Because I am trying to develop a viewpoint for those who can no longer believe in such a God, my research has been limited to RN in the first sense.

How did RN become part of the religion and science discussion?

In the 1940’s theologians at the University of Chicago used the words “religious naturalism” to describe what they were doing (although there was some variation in what they meant). Since about 1990 some of the scientists and other folk in the Institute on Religion in Age of Science (IRAS) started using the term. The biologist Ursula Goodenough and Michael Cavanaugh ran with the term. They and Willem Drees and I wrote articles for Zygon: Journal of Religion and Science about religious naturalism. A symposium on the topic appeared in 2003 in Zygon.

Who are the influential thinkers behind religious naturalism?

Ursula Goodenough is probably the best known today. Her “The Sacred Depths of Nature” was on the bestseller list. Karl Peters, theologian and author of “Dancing with the Sacred”, is active in IRAS along with Ursula. Gordon Kaufman, professor of theology emeritus at Harvard, wrote “In the beginning…Creativity”. (He prefers to call himself a “biohistorical naturalist.”) Henry Nelson Wieman at the University of Chicago wrote the very influential “The Source of Human Good”.

At University of Chicago, Bernard Loomer wrote the short, packed and rewarding book titled “The Size of God”. Albert Einstein was probably a religious naturalist. Many American philosophers have been called naturalists, including George Santayana, who wrote “Reason in Religion”, and John Dewey, who wrote “A Common Faith”.
If I had to make a judgment call, I would say that Dewey, Wieman, Kaufman, Peters and Goodenough are the five most influential writers. However, we cannot forget the Dutch philosopher Spinoza who used the phrase “God or nature” in “Book I” of his “Ethics”.

Is this idea embraced by specific religious groups or Christian denominations?

Connie Barlow and Michael Dowd have been traveling around the country giving talks, mostly in churches and synagogues of all varieties, on religious naturalism. They have been given enthusiastic receptions, according to what I hear.

Walter Bruggeman, a United Church of Christ Biblical scholar, has been showing the importance of land in Biblical writings and geologist George Fisher and Presbyterian minister Gretchen van Utt have been building on this with the concept of “emergence” in a way that could help bring some RN ideas into Christian churches. The founders of Reconstructionist Judaism Mordecai Kaplan, and also Rabbi Jack Cohen, Rabbi David Oler and philosopher Henry Levinson have been developing a Jewish version of religious naturalism.

Many Unitarian Universalists like the idea of religious naturalism. They have an informal organization called UURN. Besides the IRAS and UU RN e-lists, there is a discussion at ReligiousNaturalism@yahoo.com. But many people do not identify with any religion. I like to think that people who say that they are “spiritual,” not religious, would find religious naturalism congenial. Much depends on how the word “God” is used.

What does RN say about God?

Given the definition of RN as being religious without a supreme being different from the world, it would seem as if there is no room for God in RN. But it is not that simple. There are many humanists—people who say there is no God or at least probably no God — who gravitate towards RN. William Murry, former President of Meadville Lombard Theological School, writes in Reason and Reverence that many of the newer humanists are deepening their outlook by embracing RN.

But besides people in RN who don’t affirm the reality of God, my research has shown that there are two other types of religious naturalists who do use the term God. One is a group of people like Spinoza, Einstein and Loomer for whom God and the universe are the same thing. Then there are others for whom God is the creative process within the world. Dewey, Wieman, Kaufman and Peters are included in this group. Of course you can still ask why use the term God, since it is so confusing and has such oppressive baggage. However, all of these writers address that term and insist that it is a powerful word that we cannot get along without, at least in Western culture. Thus there are both non-theists and people who could be called naturalistic theists within the big tent of RN, sometimes ignoring, sometimes gladly acknowledging each other. I believe that the future of RN within already established religious groups depends on this mutual recognition.

What can religious naturalism do for someone?

The religious aspect of a naturalistic outlook enables you to have a religious dimension to life without the traditional difficulties associated with theism. The religious dimension includes finding a meaning to life by seeing oneself as part of the on-going creative process of the universe, by aspiring to contribute to this process, by responding to it with awe and gratitude. Just as with traditional religion, religious naturalism can help one find celebration, courage, liberation from despair and a sense of being at home. It can provide ecstasy as well as a more sustained mood. Religious naturalists have to learn to live without a personal God to cling to who will love and save us. This is true even for those naturalists who use the traditional language of “God.”

Religious naturalism will not supply an ethics, although naturalism encourages the development of what insights can be derived from a study of animal behavior, especially from primatology. Ethics is a human responsibility and religious naturalists probably are as moral and as immoral as anyone else. What religious naturalism can help provide is motivation to live morally and a way to deal with the moral failure that comes to the best of us. Hopefully a naturalistic outlook grounded in religion or spirituality will give a strong sense of urgency in protecting, nurturing and renewing the natural systems of our planet Earth and will help foster openness to the world, human, domesticated, and wild.

From my own experience I can testify that this naturalistic outlook has given me the intellectual framework to live a satisfying religious-spiritual life, even in the midst of the tragedy and discouragement which comes to all of us.

Where do you see RN headed as a movement?

Right now RN is expanding its outreach in the academic community. It has a well established interest group within IRAS. The Highlands Institute for American Religious and Philosophical Thought and its American Journal of Theology and Philosophy have RN as one of their four main areas of interest. Articles appear frequently in that journal, Zygon, Religious Humanism and the Journal of Liberal Religion. There are three major electronic discussion groups.

The academic community is a great place to refine and develop ideas, but they must obviously find a place within the larger society. There is growing interest within the Unitarian Universalists, led by myself, the group of scholars called Collegium, the UURN e-group and above all by the traveling team of Barlow and Dowd. Her “Green Space, Green Time” and his “Thank God for Evolution” are both important reflections on how to relate science and religion.

At first I was turned off by the enthusiastic revivalist tone of Michael’s book, but I kept going and I was greatly rewarded. For example, he is very helpful on how to use our growing knowledge of the triune brain in relating to our emotions and in helping teenagers navigate their own growth. RN is also receiving attention in other religious circles, Christian, Jewish and Quaker. The broad tent approach to living religiously within a naturalistic outlook is helpful here. Beyond these present trends I cannot see.

This is an experimental universe. Our job is to create religious materials and let future generations find in them what is helpful.

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