An American Religion
by Rev. Colin Bossen, April 5, 2009
It was Thomas Jefferson who wrote, "I rejoice that in this blessed country of free inquiry and belief, which has surrendered its conscience to neither kings or priests, the genuine doctrine of only one God is reviving, and I trust that there is not a young man now living in the United States who will not die a Unitarian."
Jefferson was wrong. Today Unitarian Universalism is not the faith of the majority. Instead we are a minority tradition. The membership of our congregations in North America is less than half the population of Cleveland. Worldwide the number of Unitarian Universalists, Unitarians and Universalists does not total the membership of the Catholic diocese of Cleveland.
The small size of our movement means that Unitarian Universalism lacks wide cultural currency. I imagine that, like me, many of you have have been accused of belonging to a cult or a new age movement. You are at a dinner party or visiting with a friend. Somehow the topic of religion comes up and you confess that you are a Unitarian Universalist. Your friend looks at you and says, "You're a what?" You try to explain. Your friend replies with a statement like "That's not a real religion." Or "that sounds pretty touchy feely."
I remember a teacher of mine in high school who, in jest, liked to conflate Unitarian Universalism with the Branch Davidians, who were in the news at the time. He was not trying be a jerk. It was a good hearted way to tease me while at the same time making light of the fact that before he met me he had never heard of Unitarian Universalism.
He should have. We have had an impact that measures far beyond our scant numbers. We can count five American President--Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, John Quincy Adams, Millard Fillmore and Howard Taft--as Unitarians. Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King, Jr. both borrowed rhetoric and philosophy from the Unitarian minister Theodore Parker. (Most notably for Lincoln it was the phrase "government of the people, by the people, for the people." Most famously for King, the dictum "the arc of the moral universe is long but it bends towards justice.") The ranks of Unitarian Universalists extend to education reformers like Horace Mann; abolitionists such as Parker, Adin Ballou and Lydia Maria Child; philosophers and poets including Ralph Waldo Emerson, e.e. cummings, Louisa May Alcott, Herman Melville, Charles Dickens, and Beatrix Potter; feminists and pioneering women's rights activists like Margaret Fuller, Susan B. Anthony, Charlotte Perkins Gilman and Mary Shelly; peace activists such as Emily Greene Balch, Florence Nightingale, Julia Ward Howe and Roger Baldwin; scientists like Linus Pauling, Joseph Priestley and Tim Berners-Lee; artists, actors and singers including Pete Seeger, Christopher Reeves, Frank Lloyd Wright and Ysaye Barnwell. The list goes on.
It has been argued that the roots of contemporary democratic culture and American political democracy can be found in our New England congregations. The congregational polity that we practice--with its emphasis on covenant, free thought, the right to dissent and rule of the congregational meeting--dates to the mid-17th century. It has served as both an inspiration and incubator for other forms of democratic life.
A. Powell Davies, a great Unitarian preacher of the last century, believed that the spirit of our liberal faith boiled down to a set of two simple propositions. These were, he wrote, in the limited language of his day, a belief in the "freedom of the mind and a widening brotherhood of equal men."
Davies argued that these beliefs form the religious basis for democracy. He stated that "democracy is the social and political expression of the religious principle that all men are brothers and mankind a family..." For Davies, democratic religion was neither a sectarian or a national affair. It transcended "nation, race, [and] creed."
In a book entitled "America's Real Religion" Davies unfolded a thesis that democracy has a "spiritual basis." That spiritual basis looked a lot like Unitarian Universalism. To support his thesis Davies argued that religion springs from two sources--fear and yearning. Fear inspired religion because many people were afraid of the world that surrounded them. Life could be filled with terror, the threat of sudden death or violence, and was fundamentally unpredictable. Reacting to fear meant creating supernatural entities that controlled the world and might be relied upon for assistance. It also meant turning one's freedom over to a sovereign in exchange for protection. By giving up independence to a more powerful neighbor one could be afforded security. As Davies wrote, "man enslaved his mind to superstition because he was afraid of the world about him...he subjected his person to tyranny because he feared his fellow-men."
In contrast to fear the other source for religion was what Davies named yearning. This might be understood as the need for connection with other people and communities--the quest to be part of something larger than one's self. Alternatively, it could be named hope--the hope that fear was unnecessary, that the vacant heart might yet be filled with song or that individuals and communities are stronger when they unite in love rather than separate in fear.
To fear Davies traced political and religious movements that leaned towards totalitarianism and rigid hierarchy. To yearning he ascribed movements rich in democratic principles and generous in their embrace of freedom.
If we accept Davies dichotomy then our Unitarian Universalist faith certainly tilts towards yearning. When we dig underneath the Principles and Purposes and through our five hundred year history we find that our faith is rooted in the hope that love and reason can be the operative forces in human life. Love, our commitment to the vision of one human family where all are afforded equal rights and opportunities. Reason, a trust in the power of the free mind unfettered by creed or dogma, but guided by love to find and uphold truth.
The histories of our congregations are replete with the stories of how love and reason have shaped our religious tradition. Through them, and their members, we have often shaped the larger democratic landscape.
Take, for example, the First Church of Boston. The congregation was founded in 1630 by English colonists led by John Winthrop. Over the last almost 400 years the congregation has evolved from Puritan to Unitarian Universalist. Throughout all of that time the community has been united by its covenant. A covenant is an agreement that suggests how members of a community will live together. As Unitarian Universalists we uphold covenants over creeds. Instead of statements of belief we offer each other mutual pledges of love.
The core First Church's original covenant reads, in part, "we whose names are hereunder written, / being by...most wise and good Providence / brought together into this part of America / in the Bay of Massachusetts, / and desirous to unite our selves, / into one Congregation or Church... / do hereby, solemnly, and religiously... / Promise and being ourselves / to walk in all our ways according to the Rule of the Gospel, / ...and in mutual love, and respect / Each to other / So near as God shall give us grace."
The covenant is most importantly a statement about mutual love. It came from the understanding that, in the words of lifelong First Church member, Elliot Richardson, "The world is too small and our lives are too short for the closed mind and the pinched heart." Rather than exclude those who disagree, taking the covenant seriously requires room for a diversity of thought. At its very core the covenant is about making the community large enough to include all of those who wish "to walk...in mutual love, and respect." It is a pledge to live and work together despite arguments or individual and corporate imperfections. The pledge mirrored John Winthrop's own hope for the Massachusets colony, that its members would "knit together in...work as one" and "delight in each other, make others condition our own, rejoice, mourn together, labor and suffer together."
The motivation for doing so is, in the words of Alice Blair Wesley, to ensure that we have at least one place in our lives where we "examine together our deepest loves." In other words, covenants unite us in love so that we might seek to better understand both what it means to love and what we love.
The covenant of First Church has sustained it through good times and bad. It has nurtured the congregation's own democratic tradition which in turn supported the work of members like John Quincy Adams and Paul Revere.
Less than a mile away from First Church is the Arlington Street Church. While the four century history of First Church might be seen as a testament to power of covenant to sustain a community, the pulpit and pews of Arlington Street can be understood as a witness to the power of free thought and the unfettered mind. Unlike its elder cousin, the Arlington Street congregation does not date to the founding of the city of Boston. It was birthed almost one hundred after First Church by Scotch-Irish Presbyterians. Yet like First Church over the course of several decades it drifted from staunch Calvinism to liberal Unitarian Christianity.
Arlington Street Church is probably most notable for two things: its ministers and its long, and sometimes troubled, history of social engagement. This is probably due to the fact that the congregation was served by William Ellery Channing for 37 years.
Channing was an intellectual giant in his day. He mentored and inspired the Transcendentalist movement--whose numbers included Ralph Waldo Emerson, Margaret Fuller, Theodore Parker and Bronson Alcott. He was an early anti-war activist and encouraged his fellow Unitarian Noah Worcester to found the first peace society in the United States. He spoke against slavery and for the rights of working people. Perhaps most importantly he was a strong spokesperson for the early Unitarian movement. His sermon entitled "Unitarian Christianity," preached in 1819 at the ordination of Jared Sparks in Baltimore, defined what it meant to be a Unitarian at a time when conservatives attacked our movement for being unChristian.
His faith might be summarized as belief that each human being contains within the possibility of goodness and perfection--the kernel of universal love--and that that possibility could be unlocked by the application of the free mind. "I call that mind free," he wrote, "which sets no bounds to its love, recognizes in all human beings the image of God, and offers itself up a willing victim to the cause of mankind."
Channing's congregation reveled in his intellect and the acclaim he achieved both at home and abroad. They were less quick to follow him in his social justice endeavors. He publicly feuded with some of the leading members of the church over his support of the abolitionist movement. The feud came to a head when the congregation's governing body refused to let Channing hold a funeral service for his abolitionist friend Charles Follen on the church's ground. In defiance Channing offered a eulogy for Follen during the regular Sunday service. This action almost cost him his pulpit and at his death he was estranged from Arlington Street's governing board.
Yet the seeds he planted eventually bore fruit. Not quickly--Channing's successor Ezra Stiles Gannett opposed the abolitionist movement--but over time. In the last hundred years Arlington Street Church has maintained, in the words of the congregation's current minister Kim Crawford Harvie, "an almost-utopian vision of the urban church: a sanctuary for worship in a free faith, yes, but above all...years of dedication to service, justice, and peace." Throughout the congregation's history it has opposed many wars, supported women's suffrage, civil rights, lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender rights and held out a vision for world peace.
In the curriculum I'm currently co-writing for the Unitarian Universalist Association on our movement's social justice history Arlington Street is one of the few congregation's to appear in multiple chapters. Researching Unitarian Universalist opposition to the Vietnam War my co-author and I have discovered Arlington Street's 1967 action "What If They Gave a War and Nobody Came?" The event was a mass draft card burning and turn-in where close to 350 young men either burned or turned-in their draft cards in and in front of the congregation's sanctuary. It led to the noted Dr. Spock case where the famous pediatrician, author of "Dr. Spock's Baby and Child Care." and several others were charged with conspiracy for aiding men in draft evasion.
Both Arlington Street and First Church are in Boston. There is a joke made at the expense of 19th century Unitarians that they believed in "in the Fatherhood of God, the Brotherhood of Man and the Neighborhood of Boston.” And while the roots of our movement run deep in Boston our influence and congregations have spread far beyond the Massachusets Bay.
Take, for instance, All Souls Church in New York City. During the Civil War the congregation and its minister Henry Bellows organized the Sanitary Commission to tend to wounded soldiers. In time this organization gave birth to the American Red Cross.
Then there's the First Unitarian Church of Dallas. The Women's Alliance there played a crucial role in the Rowe vs. Wade U.S. Supreme Court Decision that made abortion legal.
Or the First Unitarian Church of Berkeley whose minister Ray Cope helped organized the first public radio station in the early 1950s. That radio station, KPFA, spawned the public radio movement and the first public radio network, Pacifica Radio. For the last sixty years Pacifica has remained an important voice for peace and justice. Later this week, in a nice instance of history looping back upon itself, famed Pacifica reporter and co-host of the show Democracy Now! will grace our congregation.
And we cannot forget about the First Unitarian Church of Los Angeles. During the 1950s that congregation stood tall against the McCarthy witch hunts and its minister, Stephen Fritchman, upheld the right to free speech and a free pulpit by resisting the California Loyalty Oath law. That law demanded that all public officials, clergy included, take an oath of loyalty to the United States government. Fritchman refused, claiming that such an oath abridged the separation of church and state, and he and his congregation fought the oath all the way to the Supreme Court. They won.
These stories are not unique. Similar testaments can be found in the annuals of Unitarian Universalist congregations across the country. When we hear them we should be reminded of our own congregation's support of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender rights, opposition to the Mccarthyist House on UnAmerican Activities, work during the civil rights era, support for women's rights and consistent witness for peace.
More importantly, we should be reminded that what we do together matters. The celebration of our free faith each and every Sunday morning and the mutual love we bare witness to throughout the week are powerful. When we take ourselves and our tradition seriously we can and do change the world. We find that Davies war right, the democratic tradition does have a spiritual basis. And in that there is hope that, perhaps, someday, Jefferson will be at least partially right after all and our faith will spread like wildfire. Until then we can be beacons upon the hill, proclaiming the importance of love and reason to all who will listen.
May it be so. Amen.