Saints and sinners

I’ll see your Saint Ralph and raise you a Victor Hugo

We Unitarian Universalists are sometimes characterized as believing anything we want to, which is unfair and simplistic, but it is certainly true that we have an eclectic set of beliefs, gathered from religions traditions throughout the world, science, nature, direct experience, and a couple more sources that you can look up if you care to at uua.org.  Ralph Waldo Emerson figures prominently in the American history of the movement, and we fondly call him St. Ralph.

In Viet Nam, I have been introduced to a new religion called Cao Dai, the Esperanto of world religion, founded in 1926, it has between 3 and 6 million followers (depends on who’s counting), virtually all of them in Viet Nam or in communities of Vietnamese immigrants.  Yesterday, I visited the CaoDai temple in Saigon and watched the noon service.

So far on this trip, I have been visited religious sites and services for Buddhists, Moslems, Christians, and now, Caodaists.  I find it interesting and unsettling in equal parts.   As we peer into a chamber reserved for believers, or take pictures of believers engaged in the practice of their religion, I feel acutely what it means to intrude on something holy.  Like so many other things, I view religious sites through the lens of my own experiences and beliefs.  I try to understand the place of the religious practice in the lives of these believers, but I’m largely unsuccessful in putting aside my own skepticism.  Still, it’s particularly interesting to chart the course of a new religion.

Cao Dai is often presented as a made-up religion, an amalgamation of Islam, Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, Daoism, and social progressive thought.  If everyone believed the same thing, there would be no more wars.  Its roots, however, are in divine revelation—this all appeared to the founder in a dream.  But the world is full of cults whose founders claim divine revelation.  Which Kool-Aid is safe to drink?  When does a cult become an established religion?  (In this case, 1997, when the government of Viet Nam allowed its practice.)

Fitting in all the beliefs is no easy task.  The symbol for Cao Dai is the left eye, which is the eye of God, seeing directly to the heart.  In the creation story, there is one god, who creates the Mother Buddha, who is (like the one god) male, but in charge of the female side.  This makes equality of the sexes difficult, and in fact, the sexes are side by side, but clearly separate, in the service.  Women cannot be Pope here, either. 

Yes, there is a Pope and a Holy See.  But no competition for Benedict’s successor, I think.  There is also genuflecting and crossing oneself three times, and kneeling with touching forehead to the floor, and repetitive prayer chants and gongs.  Music carries the prayers to Heaven, where God lives, and where you will eventually live, too.

The temple is a colorful place.  The worshippers were almost all dressed in white robes, but the number of shoes by the door suggests they are not monks who live and work in the compound.  We were told the ones with white headdresses are in mourning (mourning periods are long, explaining the large numbers of mourners). 

As we left, I saw this picture of the three saints,  Sun Yat Sen, Victor Hugo, and a poet laureate of Vietnam in the 16^th century, Nguyen Binh Khiem.  No matter how I parse it, that one seems arbitrary.  I heard today at breakfast that Thomas Jefferson is also revered (of COURSE he is) and Joan of Arc in an important figure.  So it must have been hard to pick just three.

I would like to be more open to this religion.  I like the idea of finding commonalities among religions, of unifying people, of working towards love, equality, justice.  I root for the underdog in many things.  But the choreography of yesterday’s service might as well have been the Hokey Pokey.

Which is, after all, what it’s all about.