as preached March 2, 2025 at the First Unitarian Universalist Church of Houston
When I was in high school, my brother and I used to have a regular Sunday routine. We could get up, go to church, and then, when we got home, watch re-runs of Star Trek: The Next Generation.
We spent enough time watching it that I can, still, recite the opening lines from the credits: “Space, the final frontier, these are the voyages of the Starship Enterprise. Its continuing mission, to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no has gone before.”
To boldly go where no one has gone before, it does not feel coincidental that we used to watch Star Trek after church. Science fiction and religion have something in common. They each call upon us to imagine the future.
Science fiction does this by casting a vision of what might be in times to come. It paints a picture of how humans shall be in sometime beyond the present–be it in a couple of decades or some millennium from now.
Religion, meanwhile, is, as the Unitarian Universalist theologian Forrest Church described it, “our human response to the dual reality of being alive and having to die.” Religious narratives are always concerned with cosmic questions about where we come from and where we are going. “Before I formed you in the womb I chose you,” read the confident words of the prophet Jeremiah in the Hebrew Bible. “Does a person live after death or does … [she] not,” asks the mortal Nachiketa of Yama, the god of death, in the Upanishads.
Does a person live after death or does he not, I can offer you no definitive statements in response to such queries. But I do know that the views we have about both the future and life after death have tremendous consequences for how we live our lives.
Over the course of a year, in our “Future Visions, Future Selves” series, we have been exploring different aspects of the future–individual, societal, and planetary. Today, we are turning to one of the great future imaginings: the question of whether or not humanity has a future amongst the stars.
This inquiry is directly tied to the issue of life after death. It revolves around the query as to whether or not humanity is fatally connected to this terrestrial sphere. There is the possibility we might, collectively, transcend our earthly bonds and ascend to, who shall know where? The moon? Mars? To some distant planet beyond our solar boundary–past Neptune, farther than the poor demoted dwarf Pluto–out into the interstellar regions where our distant descendants shall escape the inevitable extinction of our earthly realm.
And there is the chance that this world of live oaks, ball moss, dancing squirrels, chittering birds, shimmering crustacean strewn oceans, iced mountains, and verdant plains, is all that our species shall ever know. When the Earth ends so shall we, if the mad men in power do not destroy us all first.
To boldly go where no one has gone before, religious narratives and science fiction stories tend to fall into two categories about our human futures. The first we might name the Mad Max version. The second we could call the Star Trek one.
Mad Max, Star Trek, I suspect you might be familiar with both franchises. The first is set on a dystopian Earth. In it, the titular hero navigates a world that has descended into each against all. Nation states have collapsed. Resources are scant. Pollution is rife. Food is hard to find. Gangs and warlords compete against each other for dominance. Only the toughest survive. Anyone who can make it makes it on their own. No one can be trusted. No place is safe. Whether or not I make it has little to do with whether or not you will make it.
The religious version of this narrative is the vision of individual salvation. Only some of us are going to get saved, it runs. God does not really love all of her creations, it claims. Some of are destined for Heaven. Others will be eternally troubled with Hell.
Our religious ancestors had a different vision. They believed in universal salvation. “[A]ll … must finally be saved,” preached the Universalist John Murray. “We are all bound up together in one great bundle of humanity,” claimed the Unitarian Frances Ellen Watkins Harper. In such narratives, either everyone gets to Heaven–we all get free together–or no one does.
This is the religious dream of Star Trek. If Mad Max conjures the specter of unmitigated disaster–“My name is Max, my world is fire and blood,” the protagonist declares in one opening scene–then Star Trek summons a different fantasy.
In it, humans have come to cooperate across first, the Earth, and then, eventually, the entire solar system. Racism, sexism, and homophobia are things of the past. War is rare. It mostly occurs when one species encounters another. Humanity has united for its own betterment and the continual pursuit of scientific progress not just across the planet but in a federation of interstellar intelligent species devoted to liberty, equality, and justice. Poverty has essentially been eliminated. Most people live in societies that could broadly be described as socialist. Free quality education, housing, food, and health care abound.
Fire and blood, space the final frontier, it appears that we seem to be stuck in more of a Mad Max version of the world. The President’s “America first” theory of international relations, if we can call it that, seems to be based on a rather shallow belief that every nation is best off by itself. This is a strange delusion that ignores the reality that humanity–and the economy–is more internationally integrated than ever before.
Elon Musk’s reckless chainsaw to the federal workforce probably does not come from altruistic motives. His so-called Department of Government Efficiency has specifically targeted federal agencies whose Inspectors General were investigating his companies prior to the President’s inauguration. The Inspector General of the Department of Labor was fired. He had 17 open investigations against Telsa and Space X. The Inspector Generals of the Department of Transportation and the Environmental Protection Agency were also investigating Telsa. He fired both of them. The Inspector General of the Department of Defense was looking into Musk’s illegal drug use and secret conversations with Vladimir Putin, he has been communicating with the Russian President since 2022. Musk had him dismissed as well.
Whatever the rhetoric around saving the public money and returning decision making to the taxpayers, it seems clear that Musk’s motivation stems from his desire to protect his private wealth. He might be trying to stay out of prison as well. Individual salvation, the Mad Max version of the future, rather than a commitment to the public good appears quite present in his mind.
Musk sometimes even seems like a villain out of science fiction story. The appearance is far from coincidental. His father named him Elon after a character in Wernher von Braun’s novel Project Mars. Braun was the Nazis’ leading rocket scientist. The novel depicts colonization of Mars as part of divine plan to create the Übermensch. Alternatively called the supermen, one of the Third Reich’s stated goals was craft these supposedly perfect humans. Defeated on Earth, Braun imagined Hitler’s followers reigning over the red planet. Their leader was titled the “Elon.” Musk’s father literally gave him a name that could be rendered chief space Nazi. It does not coincidental that the Afrikaner’s dreams include the human conquest of Mars.
I aspire for a better future amongst the stars. There are enough Nazis here on Earth. We do not need more inhabiting the celestial realm. Even the most distressing science fiction stories should be warnings. George Orwell’s 1984 is “not a how-to manual,” the journalist Daniel Kurtzman once observed.
Orwell’s novel famously ends with the snuffing out of any sense of agency or aspiration for freedom in the novel’s protagonist. Not all science fiction contains concludes with such an extinction of the human good. In my book group this month we are reading Octavia Butler’s novel the Parable of the Sower.
For those that don’t know, Butler was one of the first Afrocentric science fiction writers. In genre “dominated by old white men … [she] was a genuine revolutionary,” Star Trek actor and reading advocate Levar Burton notes.
Over the course of her career she won a MacArthur Fellowship, also known as a Genius Grant, and every major science fiction writing award. The Parable of the Sower and its sequel Parable of the Talents are probably her masterpieces. Written in the 1990s, they are set in our decade. They seem remarkably prescient and contain the contrasting possibilities found in Mad Max and Star Trek–individual salvation or collective liberation. The underlying premise of the series:
The Destiny of Earthseed
Is to take root among the stars.
Its overall message is simple. To survive humanity must share a collective vision for its betterment. We have to understand, to call back to Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, “society cannot trample on the weakest … of its members without receiving the curse on its own soul.” Such an understanding might be captured in the warning of Vladimir Zelensky to the President last week, “you have a nice ocean and don’t feel [the problems from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine right] now. But you will feel it in the future.” It also exists in Martin Luther King, Jr.’s great caution, “We must all learn to live together … or will all perish like fools.”
Perish like fools, the Parable of the Sower tells the story of Lauren Olamina during the collapse of this country. The fictional President Christopher Donnor bears a striking resemblance to the current President. He loosens labor laws to essentially reinstitute slavery. A global climate crisis has caused widespread breakdown. California burns. Technological breakthroughs and policy mismanagement have caused severe economic inequality. The middle-income working class–which we sometimes call the middle class–has all but disappeared. The wealthy have walled themselves off in prosperous enclaves. Police and firefighters protect only those who can afford their services. Everyone else is on their own.
The United States is divided between walled compounds and the desolation outside of them. Inside the walls life occasionally resembles something akin to the way things are now. Most people are poorer, most resources are scarcer, but there is still access to education, health care, and quality food of a kind. Outside the wall, well I think I can say that it took a little inspiration from Mad Max. Marauding drug fueled gangs terrorize everyone who does not have the resources to own a weapon. Life is “nasty, brutish, and short,” to invoke the philosopher, Thomas Hobbes.
The novels describe how Lauren Olamina is gradually transformed into the prophet of a new religion, Earthseed. When she finds herself outside of the bounds of compound in which she grew up she must learn how to survive. She develops a theology which helps the characters remain alive and which might offer us inspiration as seek to live through these times.
I want to lift up three lessons from it. First, the “only lasting truth / Is Change.” Second, the “Destiny of Earthseed / Is to take root among the stars.” Third, “It is to explore the vastness / Of ourselves.”
Change, the only lasting truth, “God / Is Change,” Olamina tells her followers. Resisting this truth–clinging to what was–does not offer a path to survival. It is only by embracing the reality that everything is changing all the time can we make it through. In the novel, the characters who survive are the ones who recognizing that the country that they have known is falling apart. The ones who die are those who cling to what has been. To survive, is to acknowledge that every social change contains within it unknown possibilities. Our task is to seize the possibilities of the moment rather than try to desperately hold onto what has been.
The “Destiny of Earthseed / Is to take root among the stars,” Olamina believes that the only way humanity can better itself is if people embrace a vision that involves a struggle for collective betterment. She casts one in which humanity acknowledges that its purpose is to spread life amongst the stars. For her followers, this vision proves to be enough of a motive to make personal sacrifices and pursue the collective good.
“It is to explore the vastness / Of ourselves,” this second lesson is closely connected to the lesson. It is not all that different from Star Trek in which the crews of various starships cooperate together to build a thriving society while always questing after new knowledge. In the novel, it is only through cooperation that people can achieve any modicum of the good. Pursuing the philosophy of each against all they are left in walled compounds or suffering along the side of the road. Dreaming of life in the celestial sphere, well I better not give away the ending of the series.
Embrace change, cast a larger vision, commit to cooperation rather than competition, I suspect that can you think of a time in your life when you have benefited from such lessons. I would suggest that within our religious community we have tried to implement and, that in doing so, we have put our congregation on the path to collectively thrive.
Think about the recent history of First Unitarian Universalist. After the negotiated resignation of my predecessor congregational leadership recognized that First Unitarian Universalist needed to change. It was the second time that the congregation had had a negotiated resignation within the span of a decade. Rather than fight change–and try to keep the status quo–the Board at the time realized that it needed to revamp the way things functioned. They hired a consultant who helped them reconfigure governance. Instead of jumping immediately into a relationship with a new settled minister, I worked with them and with all of the members of the congregation to explore ways in which our community needed to change so that it could thrive into the future.
One of the things that was identified during these conversations was the lack of a larger vision. As a result, a committee did the hard work of developing a new congregational vision, mission, and covenant. We now say that we are devoted to widening love’s circle. We take love as the spirit of our congregation and service as our prayer. We aspire to be “a pillar congregation for Houstonians of many faiths” and have committed “to being a growing multicultural, multigenerational, and multiracial” religious community. These aspirations guide your Board and your staff as we make decisions.
Finally, we have tried to embrace the simple truth of congregational life. We are better when we work together than we compete against each other. As best as we can–and there is always room for improvement–the staff tries to work with members of the congregation to achieve our larger vision. I think that right now our stewardship efforts provide a great illustration of this. In place of leaving everything up to the annual pledge drive, the Stewardship Team and Margarita are working to create a culture of wholistic stewardship. Stewardship is about having fun together. So they, led by Sarah Brown Rankin, are launching a competitive art scavenger hunt–Art-Sca-Venture. Stewardship is about building intergenerational community. So, they held the congregation’s first family picnic in many years. I am told it was a beautiful event.
Embrace change, cast a larger vision, and cooperate, these three lessons might help us all move through the next difficult years. I do not want to live in a society ruled by Elons–either of the Afrikaner or the space Nazi variety. I want to live as part of world community where there is peace, justice, liberty, and prosperity for all. During this time of tumult religious communities like ours have the potential to tilt this country in that direction. There are numerous opportunities to do so in the coming weeks. Next Monday, March 10th, you can participate in the 11:00 a.m. March for Future Generations downtown. Throughout the month you can engage in any of our many community projects. And on March 17th you can join me and members of the Justice Coordinating Council as we travel to Austin to take in the Texas Unitarian Universalist Justice Ministry’s annual lobby day.
But I want to close with a particular action I think is worth lifting up. It is “a corporate fast,” or boycott, focusing on, at least initially, Target. Prior to the inauguration of the current President, Target had committed to invest $2 billion in Black businesses. Since his inauguration, the company has revoked its pledge. In response, Pastor Jamal Bryant, senior minister of the New Missionary Baptist Church outside of Atlanta, has called for Lenten–or forty day–boycott of the corporation. It has four specific, concrete, demands, all tied to building up the Black community. These are restoring the $2 billion pledge, depositing $250 million in Black owned banks, recommitting to diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts, and developing community centers at ten historical Black colleges or universities devoted to teaching retail business.
Already 100,000 people, including my family, have committed to take part in the 40-day boycott. I suspect that it has the potential to be successful because it is adapting to the changing cultural landscape by issuing specific, achievable, demands, casting a larger vision, and creating the possibility for cooperation. I encourage you to join me in participating in it.
Doing so is a way we can practice the lessons of embracing change, casting a larger vision, and pursuing cooperation contained within both Star Trek and Butler’s dreams for our human future. It is also a way we can continue to pursue those old Universalist hopes of collective liberation well expressed in the words of Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, we “are all bound up together in one great bundle of humanity.”
May, by casting our eyes towards the stars, such a vision grow within us today, tomorrow, and within all the hours of our lives. That it might be so, I invite the congregation to say Amen.
