Lately there’s been a wide discussion in UU blogs about what place the Bible should have in UUism. I’m jumping in kind of late here, so I’ll try to limit myself to some thoughts about sacred texts in general.

There are a bunch of thinkers (believe this would qualify as “postliberalism”) who toy with the idea of “the classic” as a good way to understand (or start understanding) what a sacred text is and does. In one sense, then, sacred texts could be understood to be the Shakespeares and Dantes of this or that religion.

Fair enough, but I think we can take it further still. Besides being “a classic,” a sacred text is where a religious tradition keeps its founding stories, metaphors, etc. Its the text that folks start with and the one they go back to. (And, yes, I’m purposely ignoring the whole literalism question.) This isn’t to say it’s the only place it keeps them, just that it’s the classic text where it keeps them. If we understand sacred text in this way, then, no, the Bible is not a sacred text for UUism (though it might be for individual UUs).

But as UUs we like to claim that we can have and use several sacred texts, do we not? How can we make sense of having multiple sacred texts?

Of course, most religious traditions have multiple sacred texts when you think about it. Even the Bible is a collection of several dozen different sacred texts. That we usually regard the Bible as one text and not a collection is a nod to it’s success as a collection of sacred texts, or in other words, as a “canon.” And all a canon is is the “official” collection of sacred texts.

Some religious traditions have canons and some do not. UUism is a tradition (so far) that does not have a canon. And for the foreseeable future, UUism won’t want one.

But that doesn’t mean anything goes, or that everything, or nothing, is sacred. You may find “The Giving Tree” or certain Ginsberg poems, for instance, very meaningful; in fact, they may have changed your life. But do you return to them time and time again? If a text’s metaphors and stories don’t deeply inform your entire orientation toward life, it’s probably not sacred to you.

And it doesn’t mean that every text a UU personally finds sacred should be considered sacred by all other UUs. T.S. Eliot’s “The Hollow Men” probably functions as a sacred text for me. So does Ecclesiastes. That means I want you to read them. And if you’re in relationship with me, you should probably want to know more about them too as a way of finding out more about me. But it doesn’t mean other UUs must read them, nor that they should also find them sacred. Yet it also means that when I tell another UU that Ecclesiastes is a sacred text for me that they shouldn’t dismiss it out of hand just because it’s in the Bible. At least not a “grown up” UU.

There are some texts that deserve at least a certain reverence from all UUs, whether or not individual UUs personally find them sacred. The Bible is certainly one of them, as is the Quran, the Tao te Ching, the Upanishads, etc. If someone demanded that her UU congregation not engage with the Tao te Ching because she’d had bad experiences with it, what would we think? So why should those of us who consider ourselves “recovering Christians” expect special treatment for (against?) the Bible?

That said, I challenge those UUs who do find the Bible personally to be a sacred text to ask themselves if they find the entire Bible sacred. Are there only certain passages? Certain books? Certain metaphors or teachings? Being able to name those specifically might go a long way toward disarming my fellow “recovering Christians.”