Speaker 1: Hey there, everybody.
Speaker 2: We are so excited. We have another installation of our
Speaker 2: spiritual Sunday. We've yet to rename it. Is it sticking.
Speaker 3: Still? You know what, We're being lazy right now. We'll
Speaker 3: get on it. Every time you say it, I complain
Speaker 3: about it, but I haven't come up with another solution,
Speaker 3: so I should shut.
Speaker 2: Up, all right. So today we're very excited to have
Speaker 2: the Reverend doctor David Breden here with us. He is
Speaker 2: the senior Minister of the First Unitarian Society of Minneapolis.
Speaker 2: He is an author, he is a professor. He studies this,
Speaker 2: he lives this, and he preaches it, and so we're excited
Speaker 2: to have him here with us. And Reverend doctor David. First,
Speaker 2: I was actually googling this because I'm not and I
Speaker 2: don't think you were either exceptionally familiar with the Unitarian Church.
Speaker 2: Can you explain us, explain to us what it is
Speaker 2: to be a Unitarian and Universalist minister?
Speaker 4: Okay, Unitarian universalism and you can google it. It's a
Speaker 4: very very liberal religious tradition. It goes all the way
Speaker 4: back to the Puritans in Massachusetts, which feels odd, but
Speaker 4: it's actually true because you know, they also started Harvard,
Speaker 4: for example, So they got more and more liberal the
Speaker 4: longer they were here. And so at this point in time,
Speaker 4: there are still Christian Unitarian Universalists, but most of us
Speaker 4: have become some form of humanist slash Buddhist slash Hindu
Speaker 4: slash Taoists, etc. And my Congregation First Unitarian Society is
Speaker 4: where congregational humanism was invented. So congregational humanism means that
Speaker 4: we're humanists. Almost everybody is either an atheist or an
Speaker 4: agnostic or.
Speaker 1: Just don't know. And many people, you know, we have apatheists.
Speaker 4: Many people don't care, they don't think deeply about this
Speaker 4: stuff as I do. But that's the tradition that I'm in,
Speaker 4: and I identify as a humanist, and I fight for
Speaker 4: secular government, the separation or church and state, so that
Speaker 4: we who have edited the Christian round are still able
Speaker 4: to do what we do because you know, there's a
Speaker 4: lot of threats to what we're doing at the moment.
Speaker 1: So that's what that's what it is.
Speaker 3: Okay, where do you fall then, even if it's not Christianity,
Speaker 3: do you still consider it a religion?
Speaker 1: Yep, yes, absolutely, yes. Human is a.
Speaker 4: Is a religious slash spiritual worldview.
Speaker 3: How did you find it? How does one find it
Speaker 3: and get into it? How did you?
Speaker 1: Well? I found it a long time ago.
Speaker 4: But I was born of pentecostal I was raised Pentecostal,
Speaker 4: which is over time it has become more and more
Speaker 4: right wing, unfortunately. I love Pentecostalism. I love the history
Speaker 4: of Pentecostalism. I love the fact that Pentecostalism is the
Speaker 4: religion of the poorest of the poor in our world.
Speaker 1: Frankly, and my parents were illiterate, etc. I went to college.
Speaker 1: I was very lucky to go to college. And when
Speaker 1: I went to college.
Speaker 4: I began reading American literature where everyone was a Unitarian,
Speaker 4: because almost all East Coast nineteenth century authors were Unitarian.
Speaker 4: So I started saying, Oh, that's where, that's what those
Speaker 4: guys are, and they're still around, and I want to
Speaker 4: be one of those. And I did many years as
Speaker 4: a layperson, and then I went into ministry.
Speaker 2: All right, so you so you believe in a god,
Speaker 2: though correct, just to like make it like to believe
Speaker 2: in a god, you don't.
Speaker 1: Now, I I'm a Spinotzen.
Speaker 4: Spinoza said either nature or God, you can say either one.
Speaker 4: And so I say nature all right, because because I
Speaker 4: don't think that there's a god that does some things
Speaker 4: that people wish a god did. So I don't bother
Speaker 4: with the word because I don't want people to think
Speaker 4: that I think I have some corner on a god
Speaker 4: that can do something for them personally.
Speaker 3: How does it work for you? Because so many people
Speaker 3: turn to religion for for help, for guidance, how do
Speaker 3: you apply for a person who is religious Christian? How
Speaker 3: does your religion apply to your day to day life
Speaker 3: and your problem solving and your morals? How does it
Speaker 3: apply to your life the way Christians would apply their
Speaker 3: religion would apply to them.
Speaker 4: Well, we do have a tradition, and so Ralph Waldo
Speaker 4: Emerson had a lot of ideas and in many many writers, poets, etc.
Speaker 4: Have ideas about how to act in the world.
Speaker 1: I believe in nature. I believe in what I can see.
Speaker 4: I don't think there's anything supernatural out there, although I
Speaker 4: do think that there's a lot of stuff I don't
Speaker 4: know and that science can't figure out. So that's not
Speaker 4: a problem. As a matter of fact, I believe that
Speaker 4: it is egotistical of we humans to make speculation about
Speaker 4: any of the gods or God or whatever I.
Speaker 1: Believe in what I see.
Speaker 4: I'm a poet, and so I study the minute shy
Speaker 4: of nature and try to see the way the world
Speaker 4: actually works. And you know, Mother Nature is not kind,
Speaker 4: that's for sure, but we can count on nature to
Speaker 4: do certain things with us and for us.
Speaker 1: My belief is that all of.
Speaker 4: Us are very very small bits of the huge cosmos,
Speaker 4: and we're all connected to that cosmos. That connection implies
Speaker 4: a duty, I think, to help all other people and
Speaker 4: all of the living things, because you know, the grasshopper
Speaker 4: is my kin. Now, maybe I need to kill that
Speaker 4: grasshopper for various reasons, and we can think that through.
Speaker 4: But still yet we need to think about it for sure,
Speaker 4: and so the nature stops being this thing that we
Speaker 4: manipulate whenever we want to burn something down or make
Speaker 4: something or whatever. But nature is us and we need
Speaker 4: to take care of it. So that's the main moral point,
Speaker 4: is simply looking at everything closely to see what my
Speaker 4: moral obligation is to that so called thing.
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, and I'm curious, so you know, Look, obviously,
Speaker 2: religion has divided so many people since the beginning of time,
Speaker 2: But a lot of times when you look at Islam,
Speaker 2: when you look at Christianity, when you look at Judaism,
Speaker 2: the same principles applied. There are still there's still morality,
Speaker 2: there's still ethics. Does how do you how does the
Speaker 2: Unitarian I don't even know if you call it a faith,
Speaker 2: but the Unitarian religion, how is it like other religions?
Speaker 2: And how is it different other? Obviously the God thing
Speaker 2: I get is the big difference. But do you have,
Speaker 2: perhaps from that perspective, more in common than you have
Speaker 2: uncommon with religions around the world that we are more
Speaker 2: familiar with.
Speaker 1: Yes, well absolutely.
Speaker 4: The humanist position on that is that all religion is
Speaker 4: human made. We made it up, and we made it up,
Speaker 4: and it's pretty clear if you start looking around we
Speaker 4: made it up differently in different geographical locations. Christianity got
Speaker 4: moved over here by European settlers. It didn't belong here,
Speaker 4: the natives didn't like it, but here it is, and
Speaker 4: people felt obligated to spread that Christianity. But you know,
Speaker 4: for me anyway, it's all made up. It's all historical,
Speaker 4: as we would call it, that is, it was all
Speaker 4: invented within human historical principles, and so I respect them.
Speaker 4: All the again, the only thing that I see, well,
Speaker 4: you know the old Bob Dylan thing, don't hate anything
Speaker 4: but hatred. You know, it gets contradicted really quickly. But
Speaker 4: as long as religion is about human flourishing as I
Speaker 4: call it, and number one, human flourishing, so religion is
Speaker 4: good and so far as it helps us flourish.
Speaker 1: In this life.
Speaker 4: That's why I don't disagree with Pentecostalism, even though I
Speaker 4: don't believe it.
Speaker 1: A lot of people who have almost.
Speaker 4: No hope in our world, it gives them hope and
Speaker 4: it gives them an ability to get up in the.
Speaker 1: Morning and get on with life.
Speaker 4: Maybe they should be striking instead and insisting on you know,
Speaker 4: that wage theft and that sort of thing. But and
Speaker 4: because I do believe in social improvement and flourishing for
Speaker 4: humans as well. But any religion that is helping people
Speaker 4: make it through the day and not hurting others as
Speaker 4: a good religion.
Speaker 1: As far as I'm.
Speaker 3: Concerned, your religion helping you through the day as well.
Speaker 3: You mentioned hope. Where do you find hope as a
Speaker 3: universal Unitarian?
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm not speaking for unitarian universalism by
Speaker 4: the way, because we believe so many different things. But
Speaker 4: as a humanist, I find hope in that human beings
Speaker 4: make human problems, and we can unmake human problems. And
Speaker 4: a human problem is bad economics. We built that, We
Speaker 4: did that, we're responsible for that, and we can fix
Speaker 4: that if we have the and work on it.
Speaker 3: You you sound like you want to fix the problem.
Speaker 3: You should go to Congress, not to your congregation.
Speaker 4: Well, you know, I find I find myself involved in
Speaker 4: politics more often than I would like, because, yes, politics
Speaker 4: is what drives you know, what people are doing on
Speaker 4: the street. But I don't have the.
Speaker 1: Patience to be a politician.
Speaker 3: But it does. It sounds like problem solving in a
Speaker 3: kind way. Well it's it really does. What you're describing.
Speaker 3: It sounds like what a lot of our leaders, elected
Speaker 3: leaders should be doing. Just nicer about it.
Speaker 2: Yes, exactly, being kind humans.
Speaker 1: That's their job.
Speaker 2: Well someone should tell them. Then, I'm curious, doctor Breden,
Speaker 2: where do you think we go after we die.
Speaker 4: Into the universe, into the great recycling? There's nothing inside it,
Speaker 4: there's nothing, there's nothing outside it, and everything is inside it.
Speaker 1: So when I go and.
Speaker 4: And am burned and my ashes scattered, Hey, that's just
Speaker 4: joining the universe again.
Speaker 3: But that has nothing to do again. That's being one
Speaker 3: with the earth, if you will. But as far as
Speaker 3: a soul and an afterlife and going to another place,
Speaker 3: that's not something that's that you subscribe to.
Speaker 1: No, it's not.
Speaker 4: I mean, when you start thinking about consciousness, and of
Speaker 4: course there's a pentecosta, we believe that, you know, you
Speaker 4: come back, you go to heaven and you look just
Speaker 4: like you do here or whatever, and oh, well does
Speaker 4: Grandma have to be eighty eight then, you know, or
Speaker 4: she will have a glorified body, you know, And there's
Speaker 4: all of this kind of you know, and well I
Speaker 4: still hate my cousin, you know, you know, and these
Speaker 4: these kinds of things. Uh. No, I don't believe that
Speaker 4: there's a conscious human consciousness after death. Now we can
Speaker 4: argue about that, because then you know, what is human consciousness?
Speaker 4: Is is it human? Or is it bigger than that? U?
Speaker 4: Do rocks have consciousness? You know? We can we can
Speaker 4: certainly discuss these things. But my consciousness, as far as
Speaker 4: I'm concerned, is part of my brain, my mind, and
Speaker 4: it goes away just like when I go to sleep,
Speaker 4: not there. When I get in an operation, it's not there.
Speaker 4: So yeah, it goes away. It's it's a nice electrical
Speaker 4: dream that we have and curish every moment of it,
Speaker 4: but it ends.
Speaker 2: Doctor Reid. And I'm curious, who finds themselves in your congregation?
Speaker 2: What types of folks do they come from? Christian bunds?
Speaker 2: Do they come from not having a belief system and
Speaker 2: wanting to find a place to belong people who think
Speaker 2: like them? Can you give us a sense of the
Speaker 2: types of people who find their way to your congregation.
Speaker 4: Most of them nowadays, they're still like me. They grew
Speaker 4: up in some kind of Christian tradition. They had the
Speaker 4: habit of going to church on Sunday morning, and so
Speaker 4: they do that. But they're looking for a place where
Speaker 4: they can be extremely questioning. And it's really according to
Speaker 4: how much you want to question. Some people only want
Speaker 4: to question so far as the end of liberal Christianity,
Speaker 4: and that's fine. There's a lot of brilliant thinking on
Speaker 4: the cutting edge of liberal Christianity, but most people have
Speaker 4: begun to see Christianity as one option out of many.
Speaker 4: So we have a lot of people coming in out
Speaker 4: of Judaism and Christianity slowly. And you know, you both
Speaker 4: read about how more and more Americans are not Christian
Speaker 4: and are leaving, and about thirty percent have left religion
Speaker 4: in general, and many of those people come to us.
Speaker 1: They come to us both in.
Speaker 4: Humanist congregations and through the American Humanists Association, which is
Speaker 4: totally secular. And for more and more people who were
Speaker 4: not raised in Christian tradition, you know, they don't have
Speaker 4: the baggage I do. Oh you know, I got hurt
Speaker 4: here or the minister said this crazy thing over here,
Speaker 4: or you know, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. More
Speaker 4: and more people don't have any connection. Now of course
Speaker 4: that that's also regional. I don't know where you are,
Speaker 4: but on the East Coast, most people, younger people don't
Speaker 4: have any religious baggage whatsoever.
Speaker 1: Here in the yeah, yeah, Here in the northern.
Speaker 4: Midwest pretty well, people have left Christianity and they don't
Speaker 4: have that baggage. Now. I met at Jehovah's Witness the
Speaker 4: other day, who was, you know, searching And we still
Speaker 4: have those news searchers out there. But more and more
Speaker 4: people don't have negative baggage about Christianity anymore as they
Speaker 4: did when I was young.
Speaker 3: When you love to hear a conversation between him and
Speaker 3: a Jehovah's witness. That would be very interesting. You know,
Speaker 3: what are your conversation What are your conversations like with believers?
Speaker 3: With Christians as they might be hearing what you're saying.
Speaker 3: It might even take offense because you did use the word.
Speaker 3: You haven't been offensive in my opinion, but you use
Speaker 3: the word. You think it's a little egomaniacal or egotistical
Speaker 3: of us to the way we view religion. What are
Speaker 3: your conversations like? But Christians come at you, are they
Speaker 3: upset with you?
Speaker 1: Well?
Speaker 4: I don't run into too many fundamentalist Christians in my
Speaker 4: life anymore. I know they are somewhere around Minnesota, but
Speaker 4: I don't tend to run into them. Most of the people. Well,
Speaker 4: I mean, we have a downtown senior clergy group in
Speaker 4: Minneapolis that includes rabbis and a mom's and Lutheran ministers
Speaker 4: and Presbyterian ministers, and I get a lot of respect
Speaker 4: from them. I'm a religious leader as they are. I
Speaker 4: believe differently than they do, but all of us have
Speaker 4: faced the fact that faith is easily questioned. And you know,
Speaker 4: how do you go on being a Lutheran minister when
Speaker 4: you say, oh, wait a minute, this Bible, when you
Speaker 4: start looking at it, it starts falling apart. Right, There's
Speaker 4: so many authors, there are so many time frames, you know,
Speaker 4: So why what does it mean? What does it mean
Speaker 4: when I under the truth and the light and no
Speaker 4: one goes to heaven but by me? You know, that's
Speaker 4: pretty definite. So you know, as a Christian you have
Speaker 4: to work with those as well. So, but we have
Speaker 4: great respect for each other because we've all worked on
Speaker 4: these problems really hard, whereas maybe, you know, some people
Speaker 4: just haven't thought about it that much. And I don't
Speaker 4: have a lot to say to those folks, and they
Speaker 4: don't have much to say to me.
Speaker 2: Frankly, doctor Reeden, I'm curious if most religions I was
Speaker 2: raised Catholic, so I can speak through that lens, but
Speaker 2: most religion the purpose is to there is an ethical
Speaker 2: boundary that you don't cross, because yes, you want to
Speaker 2: get to heaven. You want to have a good after life.
Speaker 2: And part of the meaning of this life is, yes,
Speaker 2: to learn, but also the hope of a promised after life.
Speaker 2: What is the meaning of life to a humanist? What's
Speaker 2: the purpose of life.
Speaker 4: The purpose of life is you have to find it.
Speaker 4: That's one of the differences between traditional religions and humanism
Speaker 4: is we don't believe there's a purpose because we believe
Speaker 4: in Darwin. We believe, you know, in the expanding universe.
Speaker 4: So what purpose would there be for something little like
Speaker 4: us in such a grand scheme of things? Are we
Speaker 4: going to go Jupiter office course? Or you know, no,
Speaker 4: we're not. There's almost nothing we can do again except
Speaker 4: destroy our own earth and hurt each other. These are
Speaker 4: the bad things, right, so let us not do those things.
Speaker 4: And that is a purpose to life.
Speaker 3: Something we often talk about. We've also asked all of
Speaker 3: our guests on this segment about people are looking for
Speaker 3: some kind of help or guidance and making it through
Speaker 3: very times. How do you through humanism through your church
Speaker 3: when a lot has happened, Yeah, even on the streets
Speaker 3: of Minneapolis, or we see wildfires happening, we see mass shootings,
Speaker 3: we see children being killed, We see these things, these
Speaker 3: horrible stories, day and day out. How do you, through
Speaker 3: your religion, help your congregation, help yourself cope with understanding
Speaker 3: why things happen?
Speaker 4: People did every one of the things you named, there
Speaker 4: was a perpetrator, or usually a bunch of perpetrators for
Speaker 4: some reason, we bomb them. Because right Spain is burning
Speaker 4: because we screwed with the environment. So how can we
Speaker 4: unscrew the environment is a big human question. I hope
Speaker 4: that we humans can get ourselves together before the planet
Speaker 4: burns down. Some days I think we will and some
Speaker 4: days I think we won't. But you know that's we
Speaker 4: did it and we need to fix it in any.
Speaker 1: Way that we can.
Speaker 4: So, yes, I was out there on the frozen streets
Speaker 4: in January. And you know, we are still making deliveries
Speaker 4: to people who are afraid of ice. That's not over.
Speaker 4: We did a delivery yesterday. There are people still hiding
Speaker 4: in their houses here. Uh So yeah, we you know,
Speaker 4: we believe in getting out there and doing something. So
Speaker 4: when Alex Petty was killed, I put on my little
Speaker 4: priest caller because I am I'm into the religion industry.
Speaker 4: So so I put on my little priest caller and
Speaker 4: I went out to where he was killed the day
Speaker 4: after he was killed, and and joined in the in
Speaker 4: the celebration of life and in the morning process. And
Speaker 4: you know, some I'm sure Catholic kids said thanks for
Speaker 4: coming father, and I didn't correct him, right. It's because
Speaker 4: I was representing a way of thinking that we call religion.
Speaker 4: So that's what I did. I got out there and
Speaker 4: did something.
Speaker 2: I actually have one last question for you, Reverend doctor Breeden.
Speaker 2: You say that you think we return to the universe
Speaker 2: in whatever way, shape or form. With being a humanist
Speaker 2: and what your belief system is, I'm curious because you
Speaker 2: mentioned all the different types of ways you can describe
Speaker 2: your religion. Among them, you said Buddhists could be a
Speaker 2: part of your congregation. What are your thoughts on reincarnation.
Speaker 2: I'm just curious, given what you said, is that a
Speaker 2: possibility in your brain with your way of thinking.
Speaker 4: No, because it's about continued consciousness. All of us, mathematically,
Speaker 4: all of us have at least one molecule of Shakespeare
Speaker 4: in us. Scientifically speaking, we don't all have a molecule
Speaker 4: of Elvis yet because he was buried and you know,
Speaker 4: but you know, in another couple thousand years, all humans
Speaker 4: will have a molecule of Elvis in them. It's what
Speaker 4: you do with that molecule, you know, go buy yourself
Speaker 4: a guitar.
Speaker 2: You're talking to a Memphis guy here, so you nailed it.
Speaker 1: Memphis. I used to live down by Memphis. I love Memphis.
Speaker 4: Those guys, those guys on the street, they sound like
Speaker 4: they're playing three different guitars at the same time.
Speaker 3: That is funny. Of all things. You mentioned Memphis and
Speaker 3: you mentioned Elvis, who I will say, and we always say, hey,
Speaker 3: the universe is sending a signal. But you didn't know
Speaker 3: where I was from, and you mentioned Elvis. My due date.
Speaker 3: My mom's due date was August sixteenth, nineteen seventy seven,
Speaker 3: and that was the day that Elvis died. That was
Speaker 3: her do date with me. It's a weird thing. I
Speaker 3: always thought about that, that the day he died, I
Speaker 3: was supposed to be born. I ended up born three
Speaker 3: days later.
Speaker 2: But yes, Elvis's maybe you have some extra Elvis molecules
Speaker 2: in you because it dissipated right before you.
Speaker 3: Oh it was August.
Speaker 1: Nights, just chocking.
Speaker 4: I was just jockey at that time, and I had
Speaker 4: to dig up all the Elvis records to play.
Speaker 3: So yeah, well man, we can't think, Hey, well we
Speaker 3: just learned a lot. Yeah, I'm serious. We had other questions,
Speaker 3: but then we ended up getting so curious as you
Speaker 3: started talking that We just wanted to find out more,
Speaker 3: and I hope our listeners found something out and could
Speaker 3: check it out. Look, people are looking for something. If
Speaker 3: they don't want to go the traditional religious route and
Speaker 3: people are turned off by it, then maybe they heard
Speaker 3: something here and they're curious about it. So we appreciate it.
Speaker 3: Thank you so much for taking the time out and
Speaker 3: and thank you for answering our questions, as we were
Speaker 3: curious about a lot of stuff.
Speaker 4: All right, well, thanks a lot, and I enjoyed talking
Speaker 4: with you.
Speaker 1: And yep, holler again sometimes sure.
Speaker 3: Thank thank you so much to our listeners, thank you
Speaker 3: as well for spending some time with us. We'll talk
Speaker 3: to you'll soon.