My Credo

I believe that faith is what unites us — to each other, to ourselves, and to the universe. Beliefs, like this very credo, are culturally defined expressions of faith that, once held strongly, can undermine and destroy faith. Beliefs often divide us and create obstacles in our journey to meaning and love.

I believe that we grow from naïve faith that enthusiastically identifies itself with new beliefs, to mature faith that doubts earlier beliefs, to wise faith that through critique of beliefs recognizes itself as a never-ending journey to faith.

I believe that the performance of art, the inquiry of science, and the action of social justice are acts of faith. Philosophy is a critique and ordering of beliefs, the expressions of meaning and value that arise in these acts of faith.

I believe that faith, hope, and love are one and the same conscious activity, faith is acceptance of our past, hope drives us to our future, and love is our relation to our present. As the prophet said, I have no faith or hope if I do not love. Here and now.

I believe that an act of faith thrusts into an unknown future, even as it asserts itself as a new entry in the present and transcends the past. Beliefs in their expressing enshrine, codify, and transmit the expressions of faith.

I believe that irreligious persons, including atheists, agnostics, and secular humanists, are often persons of strong faith and that religious persons, including evangelists, preachers, and church-goers, can be persons with shallow or no faith.

I believe that politics and its institutions, economy and its institutions, and culture and its institutions are three distinct dimensions of human knowing and being and that we confuse the corresponding public, private, and social realms at our peril.

I believe that all traditions, the noblest and the vilest, are my traditions. They have contributed to my place in and understanding of the world. Traditions are expressions of the human desire to know and deal with the world and to transcend the limits of human evolution. All traditions are united in the personal and communal act of faith.

I believe that meaning and value, transcending spirit, fulfillment of the human potential to imagine, the goal of the unrestricted desire to know and the drive to act in concert is the God beyond all the gods of religious traditions, the Truth beyond all the truths of philosophic traditions, the Good beyond all the goods of moral traditions, and is forever Future in our intentionality and omni-Present in our drive to know and to act, to create and to be in and of the universe.

Rollie 9/19/22