Evolutionary spirituality, as I understand it, transcends previous forms of spirituality through two crucial insights that serve as its foundation. The first insight comes from an enhanced recognition of the spiritual nature and behavior of the intrinsic values of beauty, truth, and goodness. And the second insight involves what is coming to be known as the “spiritual teachings” of evolution itself.
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Properly interpreted, the evolutionary unfolding of nature and history, as well as the evolution of human consciousness itself, represents a kind of revelation that serves as a useful criterion for evaluation—a reliable standard of measurement—for practically all spiritual truth claims.
McIntosh, Steve. The Presence of the Infinite . Quest Books. p.6
Evolutionary spirituality rests on the idea that the universe is pursuing perfection. It is on a trajectory which Teilhard de Chardin called from “alpha to omega.”
Each of us, personally, is called to become our better selves. Every society and culture is called to become its better collective. The people on the earth, homo sapiens, are on the path of perfecting itself. This is based on faith and is a grand narrative.
Evolutionary spirituality believes in continuous quality improvement in the realm of the good, the true, and the beautiful. It is in this development that our hopes as individuals and as a species here on earth arise.
Unitarian Universalism is poised to be a facilitative factor for this spiritual evolution if it can clarify its mission to utilize activities to achieve this vision of universal enlightenment. What are the practices that nurture this kind of spiritual development? Implementation of our seven principles in our daily lives in the life of our church in the world is a good place to start.
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