The 7th principle of Unitarian Universalism affirms the truth that we as persons are part of the ecological community of all life and our flourishing as humans is dependent on the flourishing of the entire biotic community. To dig into the insights the 7th principle, I am going to share a little bit with you about two of my mentors from my graduate school days who I think exemplified adherence to the 7th principle in both thought and deed – Walter Muelder and Harold Oliver.

We have a strong tendency within our society to have an overly individualistic understanding of who we are as persons. We tend to focus a great deal on individual accomplishments and individual successes, and we often lift up as heroes or exemplars those individuals who have risen to the top in wealth and power and who have in some ways transcended their communities. The 7th principle of Unitarian Universalism, however, affirms what I have often referred to as an eco-communitarian personalism in which human persons are seen as persons-in-community rather that as simply products of rugged individualism.

Who and what we are is shaped by the relationships we have within community and by the values shared within our communities. And our community is more than just the human community. We are also part of the larger community of nature, such that it makes the most sense to view ourselves as persons-in-ecological community with moral responsibility for the health and well being of the ecological community.

One of my beloved mentors at Boston University during my doctoral studies there was the social ethicist Walter Muelder (1907-2004) and looking back on his teaching, writings, and activism; I see the 7th principle expressed clearly and compellingly in his views. Muelder emphasized the communitarian nature of the person. He described the person as a socius with a private center, affirming both the person’s relations to the community and the integrity of the person’s experience. The person-in-community does not exist outside of relations with the community, but the person is also not just the sum of his or her relations. According to Muelder, “Wholes have qualities which the parts (components) do not have.” (Muelder, “Person as Embodied and Embedded.” Presentation to the Personalist Discussion Group of the American Philosophical Association, Dec. 28, 1994).

Muelder also recognized the reality and value of non-human experients, which allowed him to expand his notion of community to include all of life. Thus, his position is a clear example of an eco-communitarian personalism that affirms the person-in-ecological-community. Muelder’s view of our intimate connection with nature and his view that non-human beings are also centers of value activity, led him to adopt Albert Schweitzer’s position that human persons should practice a “reverence for life.”

Muelder was so focused on personal relations within his community that he refused to get an ATM card in the later years of his life because he wanted to continue the personal relationships he had developed with the bank tellers and other bank customers over the years, and he was afraid that would be lost if he started using the ATMs. Even in such small ways, Muelder lived out his person-in-community vision.

It is important to note that Muelder’s communitarian personalism influenced Martin Luther King Jr.’s worldview and that Boston Personalism, of which Muelder was a leading proponent, helped to provide philosophical grounding for the great civil rights movements of the past century, and now eco-communitarian personalism provides a compelling philosophical grounding for thought and action in the fierce urgency of the make or break century in which we now live. The only sustainable way forward is for us to live as responsible persons within ecological community. Without a diverse and healthy ecological community, human flourishing will be impossible.

The dominant view of the self in Western culture has been that of the human person separated from the natural world, with the mind separated from the body, and whose value comes primarily from the ability to reason. Following the thought of the French philosopher, Rene Descartes, the self has been identified as mental substance whereas the rest of the world, including our bodies, has been seen as physical substance or matter. Typically, mental substance or mind is given the status of possessing intrinsic value or inherent worth, whereas matter or the material world (including animals) is given the status of only possessing instrumental value. In other words, the material world is viewed as mere stuff, the value of which is only related to how it may be used by rational human beings. The consumption and use of the “material” world without regard for how our human actions affect it is justified by a worldview that sees the world as only providing instrumental value for us. Such an understanding of self and such an attitude concerning the natural world have fueled an economic culture that sees nature more as a commodity rather than as a world of experience and beauty that is worthy of respect and possessing its own worth and dignity.

The dominant individualistic understanding of the self has focused on using and consuming nature and treating nature as a commodity rather than as a community, and it is consequently destroying the fabric of our ecological community. The fierce urgency of now calls for us to break away from this individualistic vision and to embrace a communitarian and relational understanding of the self.

A philosophical vision of “the relational self” was advanced by Harold Oliver (1930-2011) who was another one of my beloved mentors at Boston University. Harry Oliver was one of the most kind and smartest persons I have ever known. Coming originally out of the Southern Baptist tradition, Oliver was trained as a New Testament scholar. Before coming to teach at Boston University, he taught New Testament at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary in North Carolina, but he was influenced by the theology of the New Testament scholar Rudolf Bultmann and came to reject literalistic interpretations of scripture. That was too much for the Southern Baptists, and Oliver was fired.

By the time I met Oliver during my doctoral studies at Boston University, he had been working in the area of philosophical theology for many years, he had taken a sabbatical to study cosmology and theoretical astronomy at Cambridge University, he had spent a number of years studying Japanese Buddhism, and he would frequently work through complex calculus problems to keep his mind sharp – and all the that is just the tip of the iceberg in relation to his intellectual prowess.

Oliver’s view of the relational self rejects all idealistic and materialistic conceptions of the person, and Oliver also rejects the notion of self as substance. He argues, “The adjective ‘relational’ assigns to the notion of ‘person’ the only justifiable content it may have” (Harold Oliver, “Relational Personalism.” The Personalist Forum 5, no. 1, Spring 1989, p. 38). Oliver notes that a relational view of the person “is commensurate with notions of the selfhood in cultures where the privatized Western notion of the self has not been determinative” (Ibid., 39). Who we are is not simply the physical stuff we are made of, nor is it some mental ghost in the machine, rather who we are is ultimately our relations.

Oliver’s rejection of a substantial self enables him to deny any material or idealistic barriers between human persons and the rest of the world. If relations provide the only justifiable content to the notion of personhood, there is nothing that separates human persons from the world around them. Here we see a complete rejection of Cartesian dualism and its affirmation of mental and physical substance. For Oliver, it is just as true to say that the world is in persons as it is to say that persons are in the world. All is relating. Consequently, the value of our persons is directly related to the value of our relations with the world around us, for we participate fully in the world as it participates fully in us. Such an awareness of our relations with the world provides a more appropriate grounding for ecologically responsible action.

The relational self provides a model for self understanding that values relations with each other and relations with all life rather than simply seeing nature as stuff that we are to use and consume. Relational selves find their meaning and value in their relationships in ecological community rather than primarily through an individualistic and consumeristic culture. The relational self understands that the value of relations will always be greater and more meaningful than the values of consumption and the kind of economic activity that diminishes the quality of relations. The relational self provides hope for such a time as this.

We lost the physical presence of Walter Meulder in 2004 and Harold Oliver in 2011, but I am thankful for the many ways they both exemplified the wisdom of the 7th Principle: Respect for the Interdependent Web of All Existence of Which We Are a Part. And given that who we are is really our relations with each other in community, I feel that in this interdependent web of all existence, both Harry Oliver and Walter Muelder continue to relate to us through the wisdom and good actions of their lives.