S11 #28 - Devotion, Reflection, and the Great Life–and a note about ‘Oakeshottian’ Conversation - a thought for the day

The full text of this podcast with all the links mentioned in it can be found in the transcript of this edition, or at the following link:

https://andrewjbrown.blogspot.com/2026/06/devotion-reflection-and-great-lifeand.html

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Opening Music, "New Heaven", written by Andrew J. Brown and played by Chris Ingham (piano), Paul Higgs (trumpet), Russ Morgan (drums) and Andrew J. Brown (double bass) 

Thanks for listening. Just a reminder that the texts of all these podcasts are available on my blog. You'll also find there a brief biography, info about my career as a musician, & some photography. Feel free to drop by & say hello. Email: caute.brown[at]gmail.com

Transcript

A short “thought for the day” offered to the Cambridge Unitarian Church as part of the Sunday Gathering of Mindful Meditation, Music & Conversation

During my 36-year involvement with the Unitarian tradition (26 of them as a minister), I have noticed that many people who join our communities turn out to be Philosophical Pragmatists of one sort or another.

At its simplest, Philosophical Pragmatism evaluates theories or beliefs by the success of their practical application. Consequently, ministers in our tradition can often be heard saying things like: ‘Don’t worry about whether certain religious practices and beliefs are objectively true; the point is whether they are pragmatically useful.’ Or: ‘Don’t worry about whether God actually commanded this or that action, because it has simply proven itself to be beneficial.’

This pragmatic attitude lies at the heart of ‘cultural Christianity’, of which the modern Unitarian movement has often been a classic expression. Unsurprisingly, this same Pragmatist approach is also found in forms of liberal Judaism, particularly the Reconstructionist movement founded by Mordecai Kaplan during the 1920s.

This train of thought brings to mind an illuminating story told by the philosopher Raymond Geuss during an interview about his Columbia University teacher, Sidney Morgenbesser – a brilliant, witty philosopher who was, for a time, a Reconstructionist rabbi. Geuss was asked whether Morgenbesser was himself a Pragmatist. To my surprise, Geuss immediately replied, ‘No!’ But as he elaborated, I experienced an ‘aha!’ moment, suddenly better understanding both Morgenbesser’s religious and philosophical position and my own.

It turns out that Morgenbesser rejected Pragmatism not because he thought it was false – in fact, he believed it was descriptively true that our faith and convictions are ultimately always-already pragmatic tools for navigating the world – but simply because he found it existentially false as a way of living. As Geuss explained, Morgenbesser thought it ‘psychologically and sociologically impossible for human beings ever to live in a way that suggests that that is what their deepest beliefs are. It’s true about them, but it’s absolutely impossible for us to live with that thought.’ Existentially speaking, Morgenbesser is saying that we simply cannot be thoroughgoing Pragmatists.

He first fully realised this as a young student rabbi at Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania. Deeply influenced by the Pragmatist philosopher John Dewey, Morgenbesser once described his Reconstructionist Judaism as ‘50% Dewey and 50% Moses’. Yet, as he taught this philosophically pragmatic Judaism, his own congregation steadily shrank. The more he emphasised the pragmatic utility of Jewish beliefs and practices over their literal truth, the less interested in them his community became.

In recent years, acutely highlighted for me by the pandemic and the climate emergency – and, it has to be said, reinforced by my time in hospital last week – it has become clear that, while almost all forms of religious community in the UK are rapidly dwindling today, a purely philosophically pragmatic tradition, like that espoused for so long in Unitarian circles, is uniquely ill-equipped to offer a liberal free-religious response to the current situation in which more and more people are seeking some kind of certainty. While we in this local congregation may continue to come together believing that all our religious practices and beliefs can be viewed pragmatically as tools for getting through the world, that is not how any of us will be able to live the fullest, most creative, liberative, and free life possible. As Morgenbesser realised, even as liberal, free-religionists, we need to live devotedly by certain deeply embedded practices and beliefs that we DO NOTconstantly subject to Pragmatist deconstruction.

So, today, in our local liberal, free-religious community, here is the dilemma we face together.

On the one hand, we must clearly recognise that we will only get what we seek from our faith if we engage deeply and devotedly in and with its practices and beliefs, not merely as pragmatic tools, but as vital necessities that we cannot do without. We must feel we can stand upon the truth of their basic message with a clean heart and full belief, and can do no other.

On the other hand, holding to a gentle pragmatist approach, we must also continue to find ways, now and then, to acknowledge that despite our existential commitment, every religious belief always remains a pragmatic construct. It always remains possible that, in different or new circumstances, we might come to cultivate a new practice or embrace a new paradigm that might prove equally efficacious for living. This will require us always to be open to new light and truth, and ready to revise our shared principles of living, just as the Japanese Unitarian and free-religionist, Imaoka Shin’ichirō-sensei, did every year until his death aged106.

I cannot stress strongly enough that we live most fully and authentically ONLY when we are existentially committed people, grounded in some minimal core beliefs and engaging devotedly and fully in some minimal core religious practices. 

In terms of core beliefs, that’s being fully grounded in the deep, ancient unitarian intuition – faith is perhaps better – that we and all other things are part of ‘the Great Life of free and unobstructed creative evolution’ [自由で無碍な創造的進化の大生命] and that we are always seeking to return-to-one (帰一 kiitsu) with this Great Life of the universe. 

And, in terms of core practices, here that is to be engaged in both some kind of meditation followed by a time of creative, open-hearted, and open-minded reflective thinking and conversation (of an Oakeshottian kind – see endnote).

It’s important to see – really see, I mean – that if we don’t DO this and try only to live as thoroughgoing Pragmatists – treating our meditations, reflective thinking, and conversation merely as utilitarian tools – we will quickly slip into nihilism. Like Morgenbesser’s congregation, we will all too easily find we simply cannot be bothered any more with our beliefs and practices.

It seems clear to me that, ultimately, a liberal free-religious community like our own in Cambridge will only thrive if it embraces a natural rhythm. 

In our shared words and moments of meditational practice, we must give ourselves fully over to the Great Life of the universe with deep devotion, a clean heart, and full belief. Yet, when we step back to reflect and reassess – our pragmatic aspect – we must bring that exact same level of devotion to our shared reflection and conversation, always asking whether our ways of living, thinking, and speaking still serve the task of returning-to-one with that Great Life.

One thing is certain – at least it seems certain to me – we will not survive by merely offering ourselves and others a wide variety of pragmatically useful spiritual tools, as if we were some religious hardware store – a sort of cosmic B&Q. I would really caution against trying that! 

—o0o—

‘Oakeshottian’ Conversation

When I speak of an ‘Oakeshottian’ conversation above I am drawing on Michael Oakeshott’s wonderful essay from 1959 called ‘The voice of poetry in the conversation of mankind’ (Rationalism in Politics, Liberty Fund, Carmel, 1991, pp. 489-490). You can read Oakeshott’s original essay at this link, but here, rewritten in my own voice, is a key passage from it:

An ‘Oakeshottian’ conversation is one in which we are not engaged in a debate or a rigid inquiry. We aren’t trying to hammer out a final, objective ‘truth’, to prove a proposition, or march towards a settled conclusion. We aren’t there to persuade or refute one another. In fact, because we aren’t trying to force everyone to speak in the exact same idiom, we can differ profoundly without ever actually disagreeing.

Naturally, there may be moments of robust argument, but cold reasoning isn’t the sovereign ruler of the room. Instead, in this kind of open-hearted conversation, our so-called ‘facts’ are gently dissolved back into the realm of open possibility. Our rigid ‘certainties’ catch fire – not because they are attacked by doubt or competing dogmas, but simply because they are brought into contact with entirely different ways of seeing the world.

Thoughts of different species take wing and play around one another, responding to each other’s movements and provoking us to fresh exertions. Nobody demands to know where these ideas came from, and nobody worries about what will become of them once they have played their part. There is no ultimate arbiter sitting at the head of the table, and no doorkeeper checking our intellectual credentials. Every idea is taken at face value, and everything that feeds the flow of our shared speculation is welcomed.

Crucially, the voices in this conversation form no hierarchy. We are not engaged in a contest with a prize to be won, nor are we trying to extract some utilitarian profit from the exchange. Rather, it is an unrehearsed intellectual adventure. Like a good wager, its profound significance lies not in winning or losing the argument, but simply in the willingness to take part.

Ultimately, this kind of free-religious exchange relies entirely on a diversity of voices. It is a rare and beautiful space where completely different universes of discourse can meet, acknowledge each other, and enjoy a relationship that never demands they be assimilated into a single, uniform worldview.