Freedom – The Sharpening Definitions

March 27, 1966
Plainfield

Freedom – The Sharpening Definitions

Anger can be directed toward that which is of lesser importance; indignation can erupt without prime consideration of what is essential. I would like to speak of the sharpening definitions of Freedom in the particular context of an issue which seems to have pierced our community and in the general context of what it means to be free and to possess equal opportunity in our nation, I have been reminded with some disapproval that "Brotherhood Week" came in February and that I neither made recognition of it nor made any reference to it. It is simply my present belief that brotherhood is a way of behaving 52 weeks a year, not celebrating once a year. Authentic brotherhood still awaits struggle for achievement and does not represent yet a victory about which anyone may feel complacent.

Since 1954 when the Supreme Court handed down its history-making decision affirming that segregated education in the public schools is unequal education, there has been struggle to define and establish other rights where discrimination and segregation have created appalling damage to persons in minority groups. There have been dramatic boycotts and demonstration and education to develop increasing awareness of critical needs still to be met. We have experienced the Civil Rights Acts of 1964 and 1965, wherein the right to vote and legal remedies against discrimination in employment and housing have been more clearly established and certain measures taken to provide that the practice of discrimination will be subject to legal penalty and that the right to vote and work and live can be enforced in the courts. Each successive year of federal legislation discloses additional loopholes that must be closed in order that civil rights may become the possession of everyone and equality of opportunity more specifically and realistically defined. It seems probable that there will be a Civil Rights Act of 1966, again for the purpose of closing up leaks where prejudice and discrimination still dilute the intent of prior legislation and Supreme Court decisions. I would hope that we all would be supportive of such legislation when it is introduced if it will strengthen the establishment of rights everyone should be able to practice.

There are those who say, "isn't that enough?" The successive civil rights acts, the Supreme Court rulings which have placed the seal of constitutionality upon such laws, the opportunities that are offered by the various provisions of the Office of Economic Opportunity and the anti-poverty legislation would seem to represent a quantity of remedies which should "satisfy" those who have been so cruelly and obviously deprived of equal rights and opportunities for so long. Isn't that progress enough? Anyone who is at all perceptive of the feelings and righteous aspirations of members of minority groups knows that it is not enough. The sharpening definitions of freedom insist that freedom requires an end to discrimination and segregation NOW, wherever and whenever these appear; that allegations of discrimination must be checked out whenever there is an area of public responsibility. Furthermore, public responsibility is not limited by specific boundaries of governmental jurisdiction, but applies to organizations and agencies, which by their nature are public in their organization, purpose and financing.

In the particular context of our community, there has been much displeasure voiced by the Press and individuals about the allegations by the NAACP that discrimination in fact has been the experience of Negro girls in participating in the Girl Scout activities in this community. How deep the division may be between individuals, some in this Society as well as the Community on this issue is a matter I am unable to estimate accurately. But I do know that there has been much concern and deep regrets on the part of some that this matter has become a public issue. If I can interpret at all accurately, the attitude of our local newspaper in its editorial and the views of a number of citizens whose letters have been published, there are feelings of anger bubbling toward the NAA[CP] because of its dramatic protest demonstration planned for the purpose of calling attention to the injustice done to little girls.

Members of the local NAACP picketed the home of the President of the Girl Scout Council on March 11. I have no doubt that there are those here, who, then and now, considered that action ill-advised and disruptive to the cause of a community increasingly intent on putting an end to unbrotherly attitudes and practices. Beyond doubt there are those here who then and now believe that unless issues are publicly dramatized in such legal and nonviolent demonstrations, then delay in decision will be prolonged and practices will not be markedly changed. I am on the side of those who believe in such demonstrations as a peaceful way to hasten decision and action. Although I did not picket, I find no fault in that demonstration, when I review the series of events. Some criticisms flow from an inadequate knowledge of the basis for deep concern of persons who see human rights as the pivotal moral issue of our nation and our community.

Complaints of segregation in troops were filed with the Plainfield Human Relations Commission in September 1965; I understand that charges data back three years. After first acknowledging there was basis to the charges, the Human Relations Commission has been dealing with the complaints through a sub-committee which has been attempting to bring the parties together. There were many, particularly those persons with deep commitment to the issues involving civil rights, who believe that the nature of the situation did not require that much time to decide whether there was substance to the complaints or not. Then in February there came a series of new charges of discrimination which occurred on an overnight camping trip. These complaints were brought to the Human Relations Commission in February. A month later, when still no decision had been rendered by the Human Relations Commission on both series of allegations, the NAACP decided to demonstrate publicly in order to "focus public attention" on the matter. Within a week, the Chairman of the Plainfield Human Relations Commission issued a statement which I quote exactly as it appeared in the Courier News:

"A profitable meeting was held between the Human Relations Commission and the executive committee of the Washington Rock Girl Scout Council relative to charges of discrimination arising in some of the Girl Scout troops in Plainfield.

"The complaints of troop segregation and of discrimination at a troop weekend were answered by the Girl Scout Council. The discussion disclosed some foundation for the complaints which arose from a variety of circumstances. The commission felt that the complaints have been and are being overcome by positive action on the part of Girl Scouts and their leadership.

"The Commission was advised that the Washington Rock Council is in process of organization of troops on a citywide basis. They are also attempting to secure neighborhood meeting places. The troop complained of, relative to the weekend in question, has been re-organized much to the credit of the girls themselves.

"The creed of Girl Scouting in and of itself is inconsistent with discrimination. There is evident need for better communication and understanding among all interested in the scouting program.

"The Human Relations Commission urges a more positive effort to remove any future repetition of past circumstances and will make further affirmative recommendations in the near future."

This statement from the Human Relations Commission seems to deal with the incidents connected with the February overnight at Camp, and I assume "further affirmative recommendations" will deal with the other allegations and offer suggested courses of action. I am assuming also that there will be recognition that solutions to the thorny problems will be found not only by waiting for the organization of new troops but also by completing rosters of existing troops.

As a resident of this community for but six months, my area of ignorance may be greater than most. Therefore I felt the need to find out just what were the powers and responsibilities of the Human Relations Commission. The ordinance provides, "The Human Relations Commission shall act in an advisory capacity to the Mayor and Common Council and shall attempt to foster through community efforts or otherwise good will, cooperation and conciliation among the groups and elements of the inhabitants of the community and make recommendations to the Mayor and Council for development of the policies and procedures in general and for programs of formal and informal education that will aid in eliminating all types of discrimination based on race, color, creed, national origin, ancestry or age, and to perform such other functions as are now set for in NJSA 18: 25-10."

I trust that the Human Relations Commission continues to maintain and develop a policy that public information as well as private reconciliation is a necessary part of the task. Facts available to the public are something like antiseptic procedures for a wound; when antiseptic is applied, there is pain and smarting, but the growth of bacteria which might cause infection to spread may be halted. Public leadership to aid integration is a community responsibility as well as private reconciliation between parties to a dispute.

Will there be more public protests when patterns of discrimination and segregation seem to be present and action on complaints seems unduly delayed? Yes. Will many of you resent such protests and believe divisions are widening and bitterness increasing in our community? Yes, many of you will feel hostile and that things are getting worse.

I have been speaking about a particular issue in our community; but my deepest concern is not so much what the niceties and inhibitions of middle class behavior may call for, but, what must I believe? What must I say publicly that will be a positive influence, however small, on the fact that unless we in this nation and this city can bring about an enlightened, integrated atmosphere where discrimination, segregation and prejudice for reasons of race are banished, then we have failed lamentably to make our great goals real. Therefore, although the subject thus far has been on a particular issue, there are generalities which need emphasizing. Everyone of you, who, like I, by virtue of the accident of birth, inherited a light enough skin pigmentation so that we have not had to live under injurious social handicap, needs to STOP, LOOK, LISTEN.

STOP: Consider Nathan's parable, an old story from our Judaic culture (2 Sam. Ch. 12). King David had stolen Uriah's wife and had arranged for Uriah to be killed in battle. Nathan went to King David and told a parable about a rich man and a poor man; and how the rich man did great injustice to the poor man. King David’s anger was greatly kindled"... and he told Nathan that the man responsible would surely die. Nathan said to David, "Thou art the man."

There is no health in cultivating a neurotic burden of guilt for the evils caused by prejudice, if you are of my pigmentation. Great damage can be caused by the guilt-ridden person to others and himself. But there is health in recognizing that "justice delayed is justice denied." We who are favored should stop and try to understand a different point of view before raising alarms and uttering regrets about public demands for justice and equal opportunities. As opportunities have widened a bit and the worst effects of prejudice restrained, more subtle ways of discrimination become apparent and cry for attention. One of the truths that can be inferred from the analogy of the Heisenberg scientific theory of indeterminacy is that in human affairs what is real and relevant may be comprehended differently when viewed from unlike perspectives. Is it possible for us who are favored to see from the point of view of those who are deprived?

Allan Temko, an architectural critic, in a interview published by the Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions ("The City," p. 26), answered a question about urban and architectural problems,

"If people can be educated and have decent places in which to live, and if we can prevent war, the greatest of all the destroyers of our cities, and if we can marshal all our resources in an orderly, intelligent way, think of the potential benefits to people as individuals. Today the steel industry of our country is working at less than 60% of capacity, and yet one out of ten dwelling units in the United States lacks either an outdoor toilet, hot running water, or a bath or shower. Not long ago, we had a fire in San Francisco in which one person died and sixteen were injured. Last year we had a fire in which seventeen people died. These things happen and they are going to happen again until we rebuild our cities. As long as people live under humiliating conditions, they are going to be bitter and brutal...."

Stop and think of the miserable captivity of slaves on our Continent for almost three hundred years. Scholars have pointed out that the form of slavery which existed here was more inhuman and brutal than other varieties of slavery in ancient or modern times. Stop and think, but also stop and consider that terrible as this period of slavery was, it is ducking the issues of our times to categorize all our tensions, bitterness and conflict as the result of three hundred years of slavery. We must know more about and remember that terrible history, but we must be equally aware that it is discrimination and segregation as these are practiced and condoned in OUR times that represent the most formidable barriers in the way of equal opportunity and blocking authentic achievement of good human relations between people in our age, nation, state and communities.

Stop and remember for how long, and in how many places the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights were sheer hypocrisy as far as persons with different pigmentation than mine. Stop and remember how many persons have died at the hands of murderers because they ventured to assert and tried to encourage the registration of voters and the integration of public schools: seventeen in 1965, fourteen in 1964, thirteen in 1963, just to cite three years.

Kenneth Clark in DARK GHETTO, (Harper and Row, p. 216-9) writes,

"...The natural reactions to injustice, oppression and humiliation are bitterness and resentment. The form which such bitterness takes need not be overtly violent, but the corrosion of the human spirit which is involved seems inevitable. It would appear, then, that any demand that a victim love his oppressor – in contrast with a mere tactical application of nonviolent, dignified resistance as a moral rebuke with concomitant power to arouse the conscience and effectiveness of others – imposes an additional and probably intolerable psychological burden.

"...An inescapable reality is the fact that the American Negro is inextricably American. In spite of the psychological appeals of identification with Africa, and the temporary props to a sagging ego which can be found in occasional discussions and seminars about 'our African heritage,' the American Negro is no more African than he is Danish or Irish or Indian. He is American. His destiny is one with the destiny of America. His culture is the culture of Americans. His vices and virtues are the vices and virtues of Americans. His dilemmas are essentially the dilemmas of Americans. He cannot escape this stark fact, in spite of the understandable attempts to evade the bitter reality that he has been treated, more often than not, as an alien in his own land. This bitterness has been compounded by the ridiculous, absurd fact that the darkest-skinned foreigner will be profusely apologized to if he is accidentally made a victim of American Racism, that is, if he is mistaken for an American Negro and treated as such anywhere in America. The implication of these repeated "embarrassments" is that it is all right to treat a dark-skinned American as if he were subhuman, but it is embarrassing to the nation, and a reflection on our sense of decency and courtesy, to treat a dark-skinned African or Asian in a similar manner."

Because, through no virtue of my own, I live in this skin pigmentation of the favored group, I must stop and think on these things.

LOOK: Look at yourself. Again let me put before you a most astringent paragraph by Kenneth Clark (p. 228)

"The delusion of the 'white liberal' is superiority of another kind – not of origin or of status, but of the spirit. He takes pride in the fact that he is free from prejudice. The fantasy of tolerance, which a decade ago was, for the liberal conscience, adequate support has been superseded by the fantasy of purity. The crowning insult which anyone can pay to an intelligent Northern white is to suggest that he might be motivated to some action, decision, or plan by racial considerations. He responds somewhat as follows: 'We do not keep racial records. We do not even know the color of Mary or Jim. He is just like one of us.' Northerners find it more difficult or or more painful than Southerners to face their prejudices. For the liberal it is a matter of self-respect to be considered free of bias. Yet when brought to the test by the stark and seemingly extreme demands of Negroes, this confidence often gives way to a resentment and anger at the Negro, an anger accompanied by guilt: 'These Negroes, whose friends we are, are now going too far; they are breaking the bounds of our tolerance.' The white liberal who thought he considered Negroes as 'we', may now address them as 'you people.' If he is sensitive, he may be shaken to discover in himself new feelings of alienation and even hostility."

Is it I? Is it you? Only I and only you know the answer that is deep in our minds and hearts. But let's look at ourselves. Is the anger we feel at some type of protest or demonstration disproportionate – a more intense anger than we have felt at the discrimination and segregation that gave birth and strength to the protest and demonstration? What makes us more angry – the effort to set things right or the social wrongs that causes people to act bravely and unfashionably? If this were ancient Egypt, would we be more angry at the slaves who planned and set out on the Exodus, or more angry at the conditions of servitude at which they rebelled? The answer is easy when looking back 3000 years. Many do not find the answer simple when it is our day, our town, our friends. But right is still right.

Let's look at ourselves and remember that if things are wrong today we cannot stop at blaming ante-bellum southern slave owners or northern slave traders, for such just explains the origins of inequality and do not represent the flimsiest reason to keep barriers up today.

Let's look at ourselves and the events which make us angry and the persons who cause annoyance to stir within us. If indignation is righteous, it is stirred by one’s sense of values – and among us, it should be the dignity and worth of every human person. I will look at myself and judge whether my anger is proportionate and properly directed. For me, the consequence of looking at myself, even allowing for human inertia and human reluctance, is that I am false to myself unless I stand for the elimination of all the old barriers of discrimination and segregation anywhere in our town and in our land. And there are many ways to try – legislation, persuasion, dramatic protest, embarrassing confrontation.

LISTEN: Listen to what persons are saying. Listen closely to what persons are saying who have borne the blows, deprivations, and hurts of discrimination and segregation. Listen and try to understand their anger. It seems to me that a good deal of our listening is defensive listening. We may seek the flaw in what others are saying or analyze an absence of logical precision in order to justify ourselves. Our ego, our fear for our own place in the status quo, may block us from hearing what is being said. I will not deny there is a great deal of comfort provided for the ego when with deft thrust or parry, we answer that part of the argument we wanted to hear. In a conversation or controversy, we do like to stick in our thumb, pull out the plum and say, "what a great boy am I." But in this crucial age when freedom is being re-defined and the points of the definition are sharp and getting sharper, we need to listen. Think of the last time you were thwarted in some effort, when frustration pushed the temperature of your anger threshold past your usual degree of tolerance – that business deal that fell through, that repairman who ruined your appliance, that honor you expected that somehow didn't arrive, that flight that didn't get off the ground. What if all your life there had been thwarting of legitimate aspirations, a frustration of goals which rightfully should have been yours? What if all your life you had been kept on the disenfranchised end of all the one-way Liberty Streets?

Listen to James Farmer’s experience in Plaquemine, La., not in 1750 or 1860 or even 1900, but in 1963. He writes that his experience is not unique but can be "told only with details altered, by thousands of civil rights workers in Selma, Bogalusa, in Meridian." James Farmer went to Plaquemine in the Summer of 1963 to aid in a voter-registration drive sponsored by CORE. A peaceful demonstration was interrupted by troopers, mounted and armed, who charged the crowd, flailing them with clubs and stabbing them with electric cattle prods. A church was destroyed, windows, benches, "laid waste everything they could reach and flooded the gutted building with high-pressure hoses until Bibles and hymnals floated in the aisles." It soon became apparent that the troopers were planning more than intimidating a civil-rights group and beating up demonstrators. They were after James Farmer in order to kill him. He writes how it feels to be hunted by men determined to lynch him. How faithful friends concealed James Farmer from that lynch mob is one of the more epic stories of courage in our times. One who listens can understand why James Farmer should introduce his book with this quotation:

"If we are not for ourselves,
who will be?

If we are only for ourselves,
of what worth are we?

If not now, when?"

Somewhere in my notes of other religions, there is a digest of remarks by an anthropologist who studied a pre-industrial religion in Polynesia (I think). Among the archaeological remains was a circle of images of the gods of that religion, or possibly they were the elders of the tribe. The person before the council was explaining his life or his acts; and all the elders or gods held a hand cupped behind an ear with head slightly inclined, as though to indicate that their basic approach was, "Go on, we are listening before judging." None of us are gods, although a few of us are beginning to qualify chronologically as elders. And we must listen to those who have labored under the heaviest burdens.

In conclusion, the sharpening definitions of freedom may cut deeply into an institution such as the free church. Kenneth Clark is of the opinion that the Church cannot be effective except by a course of action which will alienate its strongest supporters (p. l78). He may be right; time will tell, and perhaps not too long a time.

But it is of some relevance to observe that American business, which may be the strongest social force in this nation, is coming to hold a different view of conflict. At a conference of upper-level business executives wherein there was discussion of how people and problems should be handled, Robert Townsend, Chairman of Avis, Inc. commented, "a good company will have a considerable amount of open conflict. It would be horrifying if everyone in top management agreed on everything." The President of a large utility company said, "Conflict can be used as a tool to get things moving. And usually, if you resolve your conflict in the open, it produces a good answer."

It is just this creative use of conflict that can cleanse an issue of irrelevancies and side-issues. There are inequities in our land, in our community. If we stop, look and listen then we can emerge from conflicts, if not unbruised, at least somewhat wiser, and hopefully, more able to meet the piled-up demands that historical and social forces are requiring us to answer adequately in our time and in our place.

The Angle and the Source

March 6, 1966
Plainfield
The Angle and the Source (Canvass sermon)

The angle is this church building; the source is faithfulness of persons whose interest, time and support have created, maintained and strengthened the facilities and programs of the First Unitarian Society of Plainfield. Organized in 1889, the Church section was constructed first. Together with the later additions of the Parish Hall and the Educational Wing, the building complex is in the shape of a 90° angle after making certain allowances for the necessary design jog at the construction junction of the Church and Parish Hall.

Within the extensions of the angle the in-church activities of our Society occur. As we gather in worship here, the children and young people occupy the other extensions of the angle. Under the guidance of teachers, they search for understanding and the illumination provided by the light of other times and faiths. The religious education program is based on our belief that every person should have a faith of his own within the inclusive boundaries of a free faith. Furthermore, we believe that to have a faith that is authentically one’s own, the person must acquire understanding through instruction, experience and reflection in ways that will both encourage the mind in its solitariness and create mutuality through fellowship with others.

Within the angle last night, talented members of the Parish Players performed the last showing of production splendidly-staged and joyfully-received. In another part of the angle, an organization conducted its regular bi-weekly meeting, counting on the fellowship of common acceptance, suffering, and interdependence to generate the strength for difficult moments and harsh testing. Within the extensions of the angle the lights burn nearly every day and evening – music, conversation, study, organizational details, decisions and assignments, individual conferences and group growth.

This is the season when a large number of the members of the society devote thought, time and effort to make sure that members and friends of the Society know the needs of the angle and the source. This is the time of the Annual Canvass for pledges to sustain the Society for another year. The continuing needs of the angle – that is, the physical properties – are never-ending. These needs are obvious when one considers natural wear and unexpected repair. A roof leaks; a small amount of ground caves in, wiring deteriorates, paint becomes dull and never is plumbing infallible. No one in our age would seriously question the need for such maintenance or fail to recognize the rising costs of competent craftsmen. Detailed proposals will be made available to you so that you will know the needs of the angle and the source.

Just one proposal from our needs will illustrate how sharpened awareness creates a consciousness of new demands. We are a Unitarian society; and although there are no creedal requirements for membership, it is rather unlikely that convinced Trinitarian would choose to be a member. But as far as the heating system is concerned, we have a trinitarian arrangement, for there are three furnaces in different parts of the angle. The need has been recognized for an alarm system which will make a proper racket if the temperature rises beyond the safety degree in the vicinity of any of the three furnaces. Just like paper cups, chairs and the lighting bill, the alarm system is going to cost money. Therefore it is one of the needs that you should know about along with the many other good reasons for asking for your support.

The only substantial flow of funds come from the Source – the Society. The Society is the body of persons, members and friends, held together voluntarily by a common rule. We assemble to share convictions, to attempt mutual persuasion, to set directions for action. We see a fellow Unitarian not only as another person whose beliefs are not limited by an imposed creed, but also see him as a person whose convictions and hopes represent an interdependency as well as independence. A Society should know itself not only in the lateral profiles and the back-of-the-neck views of pew seating, but also and more vitally, in face-to-face mutual involvement.

At the risk of making an out-of-context reference, I have been considerably interested by news stories about the Reverend William H. DuBay, a Roman Catholic priest who was suspended from functioning as a priest by Cardinal McIntyre, Archbishop of the RC diocese of Los Angeles. Father Dubay incurred the displeasure of the Archbishop because Dubay supported the idea of establishing a "labor union for Catholic priests and the establishment of collective bargaining procedures for relations between hierarchy and the parish clergy...." Refusing to submit to usual censorship procedures, Father DuBay’s book, THE HUMAN CHURCH, has been published without the imprimatur – without the approval of the hierarchy. One paragraph quoted by the New York Times is relevant for our theme, "The Church is not 100 percent human. But it should be. Whatever in it that is not human is not of God, The Church was founded to be a model of humanity for man." In our Society, then, the Source is no one fixed point of power and renewal like a single geyser in Yellowstone, but the Source is a changing stream fed by many tributaries. The people [are] the Source.

The persons in our Society who consider, decide, commit, and act represent no permanent line of portraits in an unchanging gallery. Thornton Wilder’s play, OUR TOWN superbly presented the temporary nature of individual lives and the permanence of the human family. Wilder captured the glory and the pathos in the lives of average persons, not much different from you and I. When we are at our best, we too sense the transience of the trivial and the persistence of that which is worthwhile.

The persons in our Society are like the people in OUR TOWN. A child is born; with gladness he is welcomed and the group counts one more. Man and woman choose to walk together henceforth; and the ceremony of marriage adds one more to the families in whose hands is such a major portion of our organization and program. A man dies in his bed, or far from home. We count one less and know the tug of sorrow. Our minds are anxious with unanswerable questions when tragedy strikes; our roster is lessened by an aching omission. A family moves – we live in an age of mobility – we are glad for their more important and rewarding assignment, but sorry that an interested, needed family has gone beyond the immediate circle of our Church life. A new family arrives – we are glad because we need talent, interest, support. We need the bracing, yeasty ferment of new ideas and fresh strength; and we need the added happiness created by new friends. But because we are human and hurried, we are sometimes tardy in our greetings or reserved in our welcome.

The Source: the persons in our Church are a moving, changing pageant, never the same today as yesterday; and no tomorrow will be just like today. We journey together on the road to an unknown future. Sooner or later everyone of us will drop out along the way. But if we have walked with good will, understanding and mutual help, we will have been stronger individuals and a happier company in our journey together.

But to maintain and improve the Angle and to elicit the best from the Source, we must keep organization effective. In the fine series of books, RIVERS OF AMERICA, Henry Beston described the geography and culture of the areas bordering the great St. Lawrence River. Beston wrote, "formlessness is a primordial quality or a part of death; it is the achievement of form which is life." Then writing of a unique quality of life in French Canada, he went on, "like an old room warmed by an open fire, the little society was warmed by that sense of human oneness and ultimate equality which the religious temper alone can give." (p.93, THE ST. LAWRENCE)

The campaign organization for our Annual Drive for funds is put together because both the Angle and the Source require business-like procedures. Now there are always those who feel some sensitivity when business affairs explicitly intrude on the so-called "spiritual" life of the Church. But there is nothing awry or gauche in an orderly, informed campaign to raise money for the Church. In the current musical hit on Broadway, ON A CLEAR DAY YOU CAN SEE FOREVER, one of the more amusing characters is a Greek multi-millionaire shipping magnate, who in the course of the unfolding of the plot, visits the clinic operated by the hero and his brother, both psychologists. The millionaire keeps referring to "who runs the business here? Who manages the business?" and so on. The psychologist, sensitive to his professional qualifications, keeps assuring the millionaire, "this is not a business; this is a psychological clinic." The shipping magnate stares and asks, "You take in money?" "Yes." "Well, its a business."

In that frame of reference, this Society is a business, too. Money is taken in because when a button is switched, you expect the bulbs to light; you expect to be warm inside and untouched by falling plaster or rain from a leaky roof. You have decided that persons who have been trained for the professions of the Church – the ministry, music and religious education, shall remain among you in order that their training, full time and personal resources may be of help to persons individually and the enterprise generally. The government still requires postage on mail and the secretary must be paid. For this and for much more your commitment is asked: support of programs designed by Committees and Boards.

Support of our Unitarian Universalist Association and its many services to the Society through the Metropolitan District and through specialized departments. Strength and support for our Unitarian Universalist Service Committee and its far-flung efforts to help people, undergirded by the belief that people, when properly started have the innate ability to help themselves eventually; support of the activities that you the people decide relevant to Unitarian Universalist faith and works, and important to the wider communities, near and far. For all this, money is received - it's a business!

But remember that in this "business" the members are the management. In the Annual Meeting of the Society the members make the binding choices for the allocation of money from the pledges of the members. You pick and choose. In this connection, stimulated [by] the wonderful evening as a member of the audience at THURBER CARNIVAL by the Parish Players, I was reminded of an anecdote from James Thurber's THURBER ALBUM, an anecdote not included in the CARNIVAL. Grandfather William Fisher was a successful merchant in Columbus, Ohio. Thurber wrote, "When Grandpa got to his office, he would put his hat on the desk - he usually wore a black derby – and keep it there all day, although there was a hat rack on the wall. It was a device of his to get away from bores or talkative friends. As the door opened, he would automatically reach for his derby, and if it was somebody he didn't want to see, he would rise and say, ‘I'm sorry, but I was just about to leave.’ He would then walk to the street with his visitor, find out which way the man was going, and set off in the opposite direction, walking around the block and entering the store by the back door."

Just as Grandfather Fisher had a way of deciding with whom he should spend his office time, so the members of this Society have ways of deciding by shared wisdom and corporate vote how the funds shall be spent. It's a business, but a democratic one, where the members individually abide by the will of the majority when all have had opportunity to plead a cause or discuss the issues.

But unless the Society and its individuals represent more than the matter of taking in and paying out funds, then the Angle and the Source will not be supported strongly or taken seriously. The Angle and the Source must have purpose. Again, assuming a certain amount of artistic stylization, the Angle is a 90 degree angle, a right angle. I hasten to add that the right angle is not a proper symbol when interpreted as right versus left, but it is a proper symbol when taken as right versus wrong. Our angle is on the square when we seek truth, beauty and goodness based on the foundation assumption that every person is a creature of innate worth and deserves the full dignity due humanity. I read that scientifically, "man can now be defined genetically as six feet of a particular molecular sequence of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen and phosphorous atoms." (National Science Foundation, quoted in NEWARK STAR LEDGER, 2/7/66)

Because we believe that that the person is more than molecular sequence, we covenant together to maintain the value of the person and to seek the ways, individually and together, to support the issues which will create increasing recognition of the surpassing need to labor for freedom, fellowship and human dignity. This is the purpose for which we gather as a united Source. We differ among us as to how we shall describe God or whether we shall even attach any meaning to the idea of God. We interpret the experience of religion variously. We seek to deepen our faith by openness to the conviction of others whose witness for faith may be based on differing intensities of experience and unlike interpretations. We may disagree on whether or not there is a future world of individual human consciousness, but generally we do share the conviction that whatever other worlds may or may not bring, this world is of first importance and our conduct and convictions in this world deserve our highest priority of commitment. I like the way the late George Santayana expressed the thought, "There is only one world, the natural world, and only one truth about it; but this world has a spiritual life in it, which looks not to another world but to the beauty and perfection that this world suggests, approaches and misses." (quoted by Huxley, ESSAYS OF A HUMANIST, p. 114). Together we would seek closer approaches to the highest values.

In efforts to work for the values of personal worth and human dignity, of course there will be criticisms and disagreements, particularly when we are known for our beliefs and act publicly for our goals. In Enid Bagnold's play, THE CHALK GARDEN, Maitland the Butler says to his employer, "You know I can't stand criticism. Every time a word's said against me a month's work is undone." Mrs. St. Maugham replies, "We all make mistakes, Maitland. But nothing should be said about them. Praise is the only thing that brings life to a man that's been destroyed."

In a faith such as ours, it is as difficult to follow Mrs. St. Maugham's advice as it is easy to develop Maitland's fear of being criticized. Yet if our purposes have merit and are worth our support; if man is more than a molecular sequence, then not only will there be support for our financial needs but also moral support for our congregational principles and decisions.

I hope this hasn't sounded overblown, for we would be impossibly vain and totally unrealistic if we presumed religious liberals in our Society were the only ones seeking intellectual honesty and pursuing a better, more meaningful life for all human beings. But also we would be considerably meaner than our heritage if we failed to ask ourselves, "If not us, whom?" Van Wyck Brooks wrote of William Ellery Channing that Channing was "Responsible for half the great dreams which stirred nineteenth century Boston." Should we not assume a portion of responsibility for some of the great dreams that will stir the last two-fifths of the twentieth century in Plainfield, N.J.?

In conclusion I would like to quote a paragraph from a book by an English writer. Although he writes of more ancient churches in different settings, the feeling he expresses is one to which we might well aspire (NURSLINGS OF IMMORTALITY, Rayner Johnson, p.151): "After twenty years abroad, I recently revisited England, wandered through her little hamlets and sat down at times to feel the quietness of many an old village church. There on Summer mornings, with no sound filtering through the deepset glass windows, except the occasional rustle of wind through the leaves, the church clock with its leisurely tick-tock reminded me of the tale of centuries. To this place, while thrones had tottered, dynasties fallen, country folk had trudged through winter snows and summer sunshine. Here had been brought the human burden, and here it had been lightened. The grey walls spoke the ancient tales of birth, marriages and deaths through immemorial years. Even though in that hour a little sentiment may have coloured the mind, who would not pray for such a place – that its years may not fail and its comforts may not cease?"

China – At Issue

February 27, 1966
Plainfield

China – At Issue

Does our foreign policy toward Mainland China need thorough re-appraisal and new direction? Under the compulsion of present trends, are China and the United States speeding on a collision course, the impact of which will be named World War III? (That is, if there are any survivors sufficiently free from radiation sickness or other effects of war to be able to write history.) There is some indication that our U.S. foreign policy-makers are sure that the current foreign policy is supported and justified at the grass-roots – by the people that is. Is there wide-spread support for the notion that the correct and safe policy is one of hostility toward Mainland China, friendship toward the Nationalist regime on Formosa, combined with the belief that the Communist government on the Mainland cannot endure and deserves no place in the parliament of the world, the United Nations?

Such may be the prevailing belief, although how this is accurately established is not clear to me. But I do know that many dissenting voices question these assumptions. Last May in the General Assembly of the U.U.A., the delegates voted to recommend to the societies that the question of the admission of Communist China be the subject of study and discussion among the societies prior to the taking of a position by U.U.A. delegates, possibly at this year’s meeting.

The Adult Programs Committee of this Society, Lew Roebuck, Chairman, has made available the discussion guide, "At Issue". One thoroughly interesting discussion has been conducted under the competent leadership of Bernie Haggerty. Next Thursday evening, March 3 at 8 p.m., there will be another discussion meeting. Under the auspices of our U.U.A. U.N. office, there have been two well-planned seminars, one for ministers and envoys, attended by Mrs. Shea and me; and a seminar just concluded with several attending at least some of the sessions.

In an effort to support the continuing discussion about the merits and flaws of our U.S. foreign policy toward Mainland China, I have grouped my presentation around the points of a resolution which appears on the tentative agenda of the General Assembly of the Unitarian Universalist Association scheduled for May in Hollywood, Florida. Whether or not this resolution appears on the final agenda depends on the vote of those
societies which conduct a parish poll on these resolutions.

The proposed resolution reads as follows:

"China
Affirming that one of the major goals of international diplomacy should be the reduction of tension between the United States and the People’s Republic of China; and

Noting that the United States should initiate steps which may reduce that tension without sacrificing its own security,

The Unitarian Universalist Association urges the Government of the United States:

1: To support the seating of the People's Republic of China in the United Nations.

2: To establish normal cultural, economic and travel relations with the People’s Republic of China, culminating in full diplomatic relations.

3: To seek immediately the inclusion of the People’s Republic of China in world disarmament talks.

4: To propose an internationally-supervised plebiscite of the people of Taiwan to determine their status, including the creation of an independent nation if they choose.

The Unitarian Universalist Association also urges the Government of Canada to support the seating of the People's Republic of China in the United Nations and to widen its relation with the People’s Republic of China.”

However, some background must be filled in before these propositions can have a proper setting for support or disagreement.

Mainland China is a Communist nation with an intense bellicose attitude toward the United States. But China is also one of the most ancient of civilizations, possessing a continuity of sophisticated culture unmatched on the planet. Historically, China is intertwined with three of the world's great religions—Confucianism, Taoism and Buddhism. To discount the influence of these religions is to underestimate the tenacity of deep cultural roots. Years of study would fail to do full justice to the complexities and changes of Chinese religions and social forces, but no nation can be fully understood just by appraising where it is, because there is need to understand where it has been. The past is in the present, even as the future will never be disconnected from the present.

If we are to understand China, there is one reality to be accepted. While China records a continuous tradition for 4000 years; and for 2500 years maintained a most sophisticated civilization, this does not imply that these Asian peoples hold to all the values that we in the West may prize. Since the Enlightenment and the Age of Revolutions in the 18th century, we have emphasized freedom, individual rights, the civil liberties of the person. Freedom to us is represented by the right of the individual to dissent, to have his dissent made known, to vote for choices in secret ballot, and to be free from punishment or restraint by the State for unorthodox views about politics, economics, religion, education and moral values.

In order to understand why the orthodox, Maoist Communism in China is unlikely to breed internal revolt, there must be recognition that through thousands of years of Chinese culture, the subordination of the individual to the group has been accepted largely without protest. The family was always the core and basic unit of Chinese society. From earliest dynasties down to the Communist regime, the father was absolute ruler of the family. He even had power of life and death over his sons. The filial piety of children to the father has been the prime dimension of social life, the model for dynasties and regional governments.

Confucian scholars thought the state should be ruled like a great family. The emperor's power over his subject was like that of the father over the son: unlimited power of the father, unquestioning obedience by the son. Out of ancient ancestor worship, which Confucius incorporated in his code of ethics for social behavior, there developed a centralized government bureaucracy which represented the most complete blend of religion and the state in world history. When powerful dynasties ruled, the emperor had the power to change the gods who were to be worshiped. One scholar of Oriental philosophy wrote, "Confucius believed and taught that ‘the happiness of human beings and their right to peaceful existence was his lifelong concern – and he realized that this would be unattainable without the foundations of a State which would consecrate itself to the well-being of its subjects. Justice, discipline and benignity were the marks of a good government.’” (Grant – ORIENTAL PHILOSOPHY) Notice that in Confucius’ view, individual freedom was not the concern of a good government. We would insist that this was a prime value but if we are to understand China in Asia, we must recognize that other values emerged there.

The second volume of the UNESCO World History, p. l72: "From earliest times there was never any dualism between the religious and political powers. ...Chinese religious feeling went much less deep than Indian. But above all there was no state religion, only a state cult of a mainly civil nature like the Roman. ...the Son of Heaven is head of family, state and universe, unique as the sun is unique in the sky – a rigid monist conception which excludes the religious concerns of the individual...."

There seems to be general agreement among students of Chinese culture that the people of China have always been more prone to consider the meaning of life, rather than the meaning of individual lives. We may disagree emphatically, but we should recognize the differing point of view prevailing there.

In China, there is a striking feature of geography and climate which has always tended to emphasize group obedience and united effort, at the expense of individualism. From the earliest of times, China has been an agriculturally-dominated civilization, the principal necessity being a never-ending struggle against periodic and catastrophic inundations of the river systems. The Yellow River, particularly, is famous for the vast quantities of water which pour down in times of flood. In order to survive against the onslaughts of the inundating rivers, the most highly co-ordinated efforts were necessary. Canals had to be rebuilt quickly; fields reclaimed from flood and silt without delay. In order to maintain survival of the agricultural system, highly cooperative efforts and coercion were necessary to organize large numbers of peasants to fight the river and maintain the crops. So in China, the subordination of the individual to the group has roots in religion, government, climate and family.

This attitude of unquestioned allegiance to the authority is reflected in Chinese Scripture. In the "Li Ki" (Ballou, BIBLE OF THE WORLD, p. 381):

"Hence the ruler is he to whose brightness men look; he does not seek to brighten men. It is he whom men support; he does not seek to support men. It is he whom men serve, he does not seek to serve men. If the ruler were to seek to brighten men, he would fall into error. If he were to seek to nourish men, he would be unequal to his task. If he were to seek to serve men, he would be giving up his position. Therefore the people imitate the ruler and we have their self-government; they nourish the ruler, and they find their security in doing so; they serve the ruler and find their distinction in doing so...."

This ancient and continuous subordination of the individual is implicit also in the couplet from the works of the famed sage, Mencius, the most influential disciple of Confucius:

"May the rain come down upon our public fields,
And then upon our private field," (Ibid, p. 442)

Parenthetically, although Vietnam is not my subject today, it is relevant to note that as long ago as 141 B.C.E., the lands we now describe as North and South Vietnam, as well as parts of Korea, were annexed in Chinese imperial expansion. While there have been rebellions, long standing hostility towards China and ages of independence, it is useful to observe that for centuries these war-torn lands absorbed Chinese thought and Chinese culture.

One more observation on which historians seem to concur: while there were occasional contacts with the Western world, the visits of Marco Polo for example, China remained untouched by the radical changes which affected Western culture so deeply. While in the West the conflicts and progress of five centuries – the Renaissance, the Reformation, Industrial Revolution, and political revolutions were completely transforming the role of the individual in society, as well as drastically altering society itself, China remained almost unchanged for 2000 years. The two classes remained – the educated Confucian scholar-gentlemen, who were the landowners, and the poor, illiterate peasants.

Then in the middle and late 19th century, China was suddenly exposed to the dynamics of European revolutionary change, which had taken centuries to take hold in the West. Interestingly enough, the first carriers of revolutionary thought were essentially Conservatives – missionaries teaching a Europeanized gospel, and business men who were opening up Asian markets for industrial goods and seeking new sources of raw materials. Thus within the memory of many persons still living, China, "the sleeping giant," [as] Napoleon called it, has awakened and compressed in decades what in Europe took centuries. The Mandarin empire decayed and fell; The Sun Yat Sen revolution and republic was bravely motivated but ill-starred. There was a temporary and uncertain unity between the Chiang Nationalist forces and the Communist forces. When this relationship ruptured, there was the long march of the Communists, then the terrible bloodletting of the war with Japan, then the post World War II civil war; and the final triumph of the Communists. Most of this drastic change and terrible turbulence happened within the lifetime of all persons my age or older.

One little glimpse of the life of the Chinese Communist hero and leader, Mao Tse Tung, who is the Lenin of the Chinese Revolution: He began his adult career as a primary school teacher. Quite aside from Marxist theories, his hostility must have been intensified by two personal tragedies. His first wife was executed during the revolution; their son was killed in the Korean War.

One more note of background which is contained in a paragraph in a news dispatch from Hong Kong by Seymour Topping (NYT 2/17/66): "American bases of a seemingly permanent character are being built both in South Vietnam and Thailand, and the bulk of U.S. Naval striking power has been moved to Asian waters in what Peking describes as part of a shift from U.S. - Soviet to a U.S. - Chinese confrontation."

There have been abundant criticisms of the failures of the Chinese Communist government to organize effectively and produce in quantity. There have been failures; and I have no doubt that there have been many instances of the cruelties, expediencies and coercions which always characterize totalitarian states. But we would be deceiving only ourselves if we failed to recognize that in less than twenty years, the revolutionists have been the agents of enormous change, industrially and culturally. There have been efforts to alter the patterns of loyalty to the family structure. The degree to which such contrived and sweeping social change may have been effective cannot be known for decades, at least. Those who have been in a position to make some observations believe that the greatest progress has occurred in industrialization, even though much of the machinery for mass industry may be antiquated by our standards. Pressing problems seem to be the growing population combined with the failure of agricultural production to come up to expectations completely. But travelers report that there is no starvation in the cities. The people seem to have a minimum, although not an abundant, diet.

It is against such a backdrop of intricacies that the question of the seating of Mainland China in the United Nations must be decided. We are not required to support or admire the government of China anymore than we are required to support or admire the government of the Soviet Union or Spain or Egypt or Portugal or Albania or Cuba. But the cultural complexities mentioned and subtle political forces are part of the heritage of such an ancient nation and should be recognized. Past performance or present attitudes have not been a bar to membership in the United Nations except in the case of China. That is why I support the first point in the proposed resolution, urging "The United States government to support the seating of the People’s Republic of China."

Earlier this week, (see NYT, 2/23/66), the General Board of the National Council of Churches by a vote of 90 to 3 urged that our government support the seating of Communist China in the United Nations. A few days prior to that the World Council of Churches passed a similar resolution unanimously. Why does our government oppose the seating of Communist China? Marshall Green, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Far Eastern Affairs states the case in AT ISSUE, p.20-22:

"First are the (U.S.) policies directed toward strengthening the security of free world countries, especially those menaced by Communist China; and of promoting the stability and economic growth of these countries; and of promoting unity and cohesion to the extent we can among the countries comprising the free world. Then there are the policies that we pursue directly toward Communist China itself. In essence, these policies boil down to seeking to make clear to Communist China that its external adventures are risky and expensive, while at the same time doing what we can to make possible and attractive a process of change whereby Mainland China will come to adopt a less intolerant view of others.

"We avoid those actions which would tend to strengthen Communist China's position or contribute to the realization of its expansionist goals. Thus, we refuse to establish diplomatic relations with Communist China or to promote its seating in the United Nations. We [have] little to gain and much to lose through such action. As to trade with mainland China, we maintain a complete embargo on trade and financial dealings. We do not prevail on others not to trade with mainland China, but we try to hold the line against trade in strategic items and we have urged our friends not to extend trading terms that amount to aid to Communist China."

Why do so many of our fellow-members in the United Nations disagree with us and our official position? Why is this trend likely to continue? There seems to be some agreement among observers and commentators at the U.N. that the seating of Communist China is only a matter of time, irrespective of the unyielding opposition of the United States. There are two questions involved – first, whether such a vote to seat China requires a 2/3 vote; and then the actual vote on seating. When the question of the necessity of a 2/3 vote was balloted in 1961, the U.S. had a 27 vote margin in favor of this requirement. Last November, however, on the same question, the margin was only seven votes. Therefore, a switch of only four votes or eight abstentions, or some combination of these possibilities, would change the outcome when next the matter is voted, so that only a majority will be required to seat Mainland China.

As far as the vote to seat Communist China is concerned, the rollcall, Nov. 65, disclosed that 47 voted for seating, 47 against, with 20 abstentions. As the U.N. Staff Correspondent for the Christian Science Monitor wrote at the time, "Washington has many means of diplomatic persuasion left. But it is apparent here that some of those means now may have to be bent to finding new policies toward Peking, rather than simply preserving old frontiers."

Why are so many of our allies, as well as enemies, in disagreement with us on this issue? At the U.U.A. U.N. envoy meetings, Mr. Youde of the British delegation to the United Nations made several points which not only explain the position of his government, but to me at least, possess a logic that is formidable. The United Kingdom maintains a doctrine of recognition that operates on the principle that if a government is firmly established, exercises control over its area and tends to remain, the United Kingdom will usually recognize that government. The policy of that government is irrelevant, whether commendable or deplorable. Recognition of the government that is in fact the government is a political principle that does not imply any admiration.

On that basis, the United Kingdom recognized the government of Communist China in January 1950. The judgment was made then that the Communist government was established in China, likely to remain in power and increase in strength. This judgment seems to have been borne out.

Mr. Youde pointed out that the U.K, has not established an ambassador at Peking, but maintains a Charge'd'affaires to work out problems arising from the modest but important trade that the U.K. carries on with China; and and also while travel is restricted there is some amount of it, necessitating the ironing-out of individual difficulties. Furthermore, having an office in Peking is helpful to the all-important process of communication. Then, too, the British protectorate of Hong Kong is entirely dependent on fresh food from China.

When asked how the U.K. reconciles these policies with a vital relationship with the United States, Mr. Youde replied that the United Kingdom has a policy toward China, but also is unwavering in basic support of the United States. Thus, the United Kingdom votes for the requirement of a 2/3 majority before seating Communist China; but votes also for the seating of Communist China.

When queried about the provision in the UN Charter about membership for "peace-loving countries," he pointed out that the United Nations has not succeeded in defining aggression. Whether we like it or not, many member nations of the U.N. do not believe we are a "peace-loving" nation, claiming we have been involved in many more war activities beyond our borders than China has beyond its borders.

Mr. Roger Seydoux, French Ambassador, put forth points difficult to answer: "How can one maintain that it is in conformity with the aims and principles of the United Nations that the latter should be amputated of one of the world's leading powers, with a population equal to a fourth of the population of the globe, an immense territory and considerable actual and potential resources, whose geographical location places it close to regions among the most troubled today, and which furthermore is a nuclear power?" He believes the issues which cannot be effectively dealt with as long as Communist China is not a member of the U.N. include, "Those troubling Asia, disarmament, the effective functioning of the Security Council." (Christian Science Monitor, 11/12/65)

What seems to be a shared opinion among many diplomats at the U.N, is that universality of membership is a necessity for effective functioning. Pope Paul VI in his United Nations speech supported this principle.

On the foregoing and other considerations, I support the seating of Communist China at the U.N. We support and recognize a great many nations who maintain policies we do not approve. Such recognition is much more likely to be a way of co-existence short of war until such time as developments now unforeseen may suggest or compel less hostile confrontations.

So much time has been given to the first point about why I believe our government should re-appraise its policy with a view to supporting the seating of Communist China, or at least, not opposing it, that elaboration of the other provisions of the proposed resolution must be more succinctly stated.

Second, "to establish normal, cultural, economic and travel relations with the People's Republic of China, culminating in full diplomatic relations."

Herman Kahn, whose research institute is mainly supportive of our government's present policies and who is much more the hawk than the dove, wrote this in his book, THINKING THE UNTHINKABLE, "Reciprocal fear itself may make it rational, indeed almost imperative, to strike, even though the fear may be based on mutual misunderstanding."

Possible improvement of communications with Communist China does not imply approval of their regime or their totalitarian government. Such continuing efforts to establish communication would be a rational attempt to begin to provide safeguards against the possibility that mutual misunderstanding may destroy the world through fear. Lack of knowledge increases fear, burgeoning fears sustain and deepen hate.

There seems little doubt that Communist China maintains an unceasing campaign of hate and hostility against the United States. Travelers report that the propaganda is continuous, with the Chinese people barraged with exhortations that the 'Imperialistic U.S." is the savage enemy of the Chinese people and of all peoples striving for a place in the sun. There is some speculation that in order to keep the workers laboring with high nationalistic enthusiasm, the Chinese government needs a devil to keep patriotism high. But the present Chinese regime, much more Stalinist than, say, the present Soviet regime, may be completely persuaded that the U.S. is the imperialistic enemy who must be crushed, according to the rigid orthodoxy of Marxist-Leninist theories.

Under some circumstances, one could take comfort in the notion that Mao Tse Tung and his lesser leaders are aging rapidly and their inevitable replacements possibly may be more reasonable men. But this mutually bellicose stand-off and speak-not now possesses nuclear danger. News dispatches from Tokyo predict that Red China will explode a third atomic bomb within a few months, and test a hydrogen bomb by Fall at the earliest. Analysis of the products of the first atomic explosion disclosed that China possessed a more advanced stage of technology than had been thought possible for them.

In the first paragraph of his analytical conclusions about Red China, Edgar Snow wrote, "One consequence of cutting off communications between Americans and Chinese is that it is no longer necessary for us to think of each other as men and women subject to more or less the same limitations of human possibility."

Why should not our government open our borders to Chinese newspaper representatives, Chinese travelers? Even if Communist China refused to reciprocate for a while, why not take such action unilaterally? One could surmise that Communist China might not permit newspapermen and travelers to come here, but suppose this is a wrong surmise? If there were more first-hand experience being transmitted to the Mainland China, the distorted propaganda which paints us as rapacious, imperialistic war-mongers might not be so persuasive in Asia.

It follows from these suppositions that we should "seek immediately inclusion of the People's Republic of China" in world disarmament talks."

A British representative at the U.N. who had spent some years at the Charge D'Affaires office in Peking reported that the Chinese people are being prepared for a nuclear attack by the United States by constant repetition by the government. Furthermore, and this is more distressing, he believes that Mao Tse Tung and the leaders believe that there is an authentic possibility that the U.S. will strike Mainland China with nuclear bombs.

There are prevailing notions that China is a weak, stumbling, ineffective despotic society. It is totalitarian and its present ways can never be for us. But not to recognize that the Revolution has effected startling changes, including much industrial growth, as well as development of a nuclear device, is to be unseeing of realities. Sometimes the failures of the Chinese program, "the great leap forward," are ridiculed and pointed out as evidence of ineffectiveness and impotence. No doubt there were great mistakes and painful shortages of grain occurred in some years. They had to acquire millions of tons of grain abroad; but it is in point to note that they bought the grain.

No matter how fervently one may reject the Marxist revolutionary ideas which prevail in China, we are short-sighted indeed if we fail to seek ways to include that nation in any authentic attempts to discuss reduction of nuclear arms pointing toward eventual effective world disarmament.

The last point of the proposed resolution involves the most sticky of the issues of the entire complex problem of Chin: "to propose an internationally-supervised plebiscite of the people of Taiwan to determine their status, including the creation of an independent nation if they choose."

One of the most proposed and least likely proposals is the "Two-Chinas" solution. That is, Nationalist China, which took refuge in Taiwan (Formosa) after the triumph of the Chinese Communists, should retain its seat and Mainland or Communist China to be seated as an additional member. This is not a probable outcome, because both Mainland China and Taiwan China are firmly agreed that there is only one China. There is only about one other issue on which they are agreed – that the land in the India border dispute belongs to China.

This is a part of the total issue on which our government is not in the position of being a disinterested party, seeking only that international justice shall prevail. Since the Communists under Mao defeated Chiang and he fled to Formosa, the United States has provided the Chiang government with more than six billion dollars in aid, plus the intervention of the U.S. 7th Fleet to protect the straits between the Mainland and Taiwan. Nevertheless, this is an issue which must be faced, sooner or later. The Communist Chinese refuse to consider the "Two-Chinas" solution because they assert that theirs is the only government of China in fact. Therefore their credentials should be recognized and their delegation seated in both the Security Council and the General Assembly, Taiwan is part of the Republic of China, not a separate island nation is their assertion; and Chang Kai Shek agrees.

The Chiang Kai Shek government, of course, has maintained an opposite position—that they are the legitimate government of all China in exile, but the legitimate government, nevertheless. Therefore the present government in Taiwan is adamant in refusing to consider a "Two Chinas" answer to the problem.

In the first evening’s discussion about China, this aspect of the problem seemed to hold much interest because if our government should consider any re-appraisal of its foreign policy toward China, the problem of Taiwan cannot he sidetracked.

Taiwan was a Japanese colony from 1895, when it was taken from China, until 1945 when the Japanese defeat was final. At that time there was no doubt in anyone's mind that Taiwan was part of the sovereign territory of Mainland China; and immediate post-war diplomacy accepted this as factual. It was only when Chiang took refuge on the island that some UN diplomats conjured up the Two Chinas theory in order to find a way to achieve universality in the U.N. by making a place for Mainland China.

Is there any way out of the impasse? Neither Mainland China or Formosa China are likely to concede to the other. John K. Fairbank, director of East Asian Research Center at Harvard, writing in the "New Republic," makes observations worth notice, "The ambiguous status of Taiwan haunts American-Chinese relations, yet no major problem has been so continuously and carefully ignored in public."

Should not a developing and candid foreign policy come to grips with the fact that there is an indigenous population on Taiwan that is neither Chinese nor Japanese? Dr. Fairbank writes, "1) Taiwan is not ancient China but through Chinese migration was settled as recently as were the 13 colonies in America ...2) From 1895 to 1945 Taiwan was a Japanese colony ... 3) When the China Nationalists took power on Taiwan, a great protest by the peoples of Taiwan in 1947 was swiftly and brutally suppressed by the Chiang government."

In the long run, and the road ahead seems foggy at this point, the strongest position would seem to be to conduct a plebiscite on Taiwan, supervised by the United Nations to determine what is the choice of the people of Taiwan. This would provide Taiwan self-determination, an opportunity not given them by either Japanese or Nationalist Chinese, or likely to be given them by Communist China.

Whether Communist China would stand still for such process in return for recognition of credentials by the United Nations cannot be answered, but certainly such a possibility should not be ignored in the difficult but unavoidable appraisal of our foreign policy which must occur sooner or later. It will be sooner if our government knows that citizens are concerned, even though our views will differ as individuals or groups.

In conclusion it is important to observe that some United Nations diplomats believe that even as the League of Nations could not function properly without the United States, so the United Nations cannot function properly without China. China may seem an impossible representative at the U.N. based on present bellicose and doctrinaire attitudes. But perhaps you noted a paragraph of the testimony of George Kennan before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearings last week, "I think things will change in China, as they changed in Russia. They always do. A new generation of Chinese leaders will come. They could scarcely be worse in their attitudes toward us than the present ones, and as I look over the history of international affairs, it seems to me that the counsels of patience and restraint have been more effective as a general rule, than the counsels of violence and unleashing unlimited violence." (quoted Stone's Weekly, 2/21/66)

Confucius once wrote (Grant, ORIENTAL PHILOSOPHY, p. 121), "The superior man is consistent but not changeless, for only the wisest of the wise and the lowest of the low refuse to change." Such ancient wisdom is not irrelevant for modern nations and international affairs.

Theology – A Universalist Unitarian View

February 13, 1966
Somerville
(re-write from Alliance talk 1/66)

Theology – A Universalist Unitarian View

One of the more tricky snares in which the religious liberal is frequently trapped involves the conceit that theology is nothing but an antiquarian eccentricity occupying musty minds which live in the past. There are out-dated irrelevancies in theology, but there can be vital modern meaning too.

“God is Dead” theology in news – New Yorker – articles
Cartoon “closed because of the founder’s death, reopening soon under new management.”

I would like to speak to you about theology from the point of a Universalist Unitarian Minister, not overlooking the deficiencies or the rewards of theology; attempting to be candid about its limitations, urgent about its rewards.

Theology is exposition about the nature and will of God – words about God. In Christian thought, theology came to mean the systematic statements which explained and defended the great creeds of Christendom. The intent of systematic theology was both to help believers understand and to combat the claims of heretics.

But theology should include a wide range of thought. Whenever one talks about God, the inquiry inevitably widens to include all the experiences of religion – skepticism, heresy and rejection of the accepted forms and symbols of religion as well as belief, orthodoxy and the embracing of prayer, ritual, sacrament.

Should we bother with theology? Or are we above all that? “The consistent liberal is free from dogma only in the sense that he does not allow the patterns of his own theological thinking to be dictated by them. As a historian he will seek to find out what they meant to their authors; as a theologian, he will then ask whether they speak to his own condition.” (Adcock, “Hibbert Journal”, Aut.65).

Consequently, “theology” can be a murky subject when special pleaders are loud but confusing and debaters are not seeking mutually clear points of difference and disagreement.

In our day some of the intellectual and emotional disturbances about religion have some likeness to the loud cries of a few years ago in educational circles about whether or not “Johnny can read,” followed usually by the rhetorical question, “Why can’t Johnny read?”, followed by intense expositions on the subject of whether we should go back to McGuffey or forward to Esperanto. One of the points insufficiently understood in that controversy hinged on the lack of common ground of what is meant by “reading.” Is reading the process of identifying and pronouncing words? Is it the ability to secure meaning from a series of printed words? [There is a] parallel with theology – what do we mean?

Let me emphasize that by “theology,” I intend to include the whole field of religious thought, but with particular emphasis on its expression in words. Words expressing one’s most honest thinking are the most effective symbols of religious expression in our movement today. In our culture we are surrounded by the ancient faith symbols in art and architecture (crosses on church, plastic Jesus, crèche, bible oath). Certainly these signs help (or hinder) our total religious response. The greater need in our day is to comprehend religious truth in the light of modern thought and with an understanding of what is called the “unconscious.” Not that modern thought is ultimate, for it is not exempt from decay and change in the same way as all that has gone by and been discarded. But modern thought is our avenue to the interpretation of our experience. Thought and words are inseparable from the task of isolating and emphasizing the essential forces of human faith. “Theology must therefore be seen as a historical process of continual adaption and adaption of symbols and meanings taken from the dynamic movement of historical events, just as the New Testament may be seen as a series of attempts to interpret what was going on in the lives of Jesus and his followers and in the historical tendencies of the times.” (12/15/65, Max Stathouse, “Christian Century,” comment on THE SECULAR CITY, p. 1539)

I would have you think of theology then as the expression in words as plain and honest as possible about what God and religion mean to our lives now. To do this, we should confront equally the deficiencies and seek the rewards of the search for theological understanding.

The perennial theological deficiency is the temptation to confuse our personal convictions with eternal truth. In our culture, I suppose the most obvious example is the Roman Catholic assertion that God does not permit the Church to teach error on matters of faith and morals. But there are many instances of the deification of the power of a person or group. As individuals, we are sometimes prone to insist that what WE believe just has to be eternal truth and consequently a differing faith is mortal error. “Maybe this is what theologians are for – to tell us how we can be religious by doing what we would do anyway and believing what we would believe anyway.” (Paul Holmer, “Theology Today,” p. 360)

Robert McAfee Brown, a professor at Yale Divinity School, asserted that when theology suffers this deficiency, it becomes unimportant (THE SPIRIT OF PROTESTANTISM, p. 119-120). St. Paul made the same point in his day when in the second letter to the Corinthians, he commented (4-7) “But we have this treasure in earthen vessels.” That is, the most devoutly held faith is limited by our experience in our time in our world. Theology is contained in an earthen vessel.

RICHARD III, Act iv, sc. 2, after Buckingham balks at carrying out the order to kill the two young princes, King Richard turns to the page and asks,

“knowest thou not anyone whom corrupting gold
Will tempt unto a close exploit of death?

Page, “I know a discontented gentleman
Whose humble means match not his haughty spirit.
Gold were as good as twenty orators and will no doubt tempt him to anything.”

The practical test of theology is conduct. Whatever the discontented gentleman’s theology might have been, it did not stand the test of conduct. When conduct is a reproach, then there must be grave deficiency in the theology.

Two hundred years ago, Gotthold Lessing, German dramatist and critic was ahead of his times in recognizing this deficiency in theology. In his drama, “Nathan the Wise,” the dramatist created a parable dealing with the perennial question as to which of the three great religions of the Western World (Christianity, Judaism, Islam) is the true one.

A famous friend owned a special ring which had been handed down from generation to generation. Always the ring was given by the father to the son dearest to him. In the course of long generations, there came a time when three sons were equally dear to the father. To each he promised the ring; and had two exact copies made. On his deathbed, the father gave each son a ring. Then, each of the three brothers claimed that his was the genuine ring, the others, copies. There was a bitter dispute and finally a lawsuit. The judge listened and then refused to make a decision. He dismissed the three brothers with the advice that each one live so as to demonstrate that his was the authentic ring of the father, “The test is by our fruits, by them we will know.” Not to recognize that enduring wisdom as integral to worthy belief, is to make the mistake of the quarreling brothers.

Recognizing the deficiencies that attend theology, it is also true that there are rewards for the difficult, lonely disciplines of serious thought to matters theological. One reward of theological thought is that the powers of your mind illuminate the world of your experience. I have the feeling that in spite of the considerable popularity of religion in our land, that this is the gratification that is being neglected. Religion in general can be so vague and superficial that religiosity is a better description. If the theology we hold does not illuminate the world of our experience, then we are passing up a better part of religion.

This is the crucial insight of Jesus’ advice to put new wine into new wineskins. The world of our experience is not the world of A.D. 27 in a little country village on the edge of the Roman Empire. The principalities and powers we encounter are not like those Paul met.

We live in a world where every month or so astronauts rocket into space; where the Soviets have just accomplished the astounding achievement of a soft landing on the Moon and sending pictures back to earth. One of the first Soviet astronauts needed the Christian world when he remarked that all through the orbits he witnessed no God or angels. It is a reality of our experience that one will not experience the cosmic heaven of Persian origin and early Christian thought. The world of our experience is that heaven and hell are not locations in space or destinies in time, but states of being; and your mind should consider this theologically.

Our society is industrial, urban, and operated by collective consensus. Jesus told the parable of the Good Samaritan – the superb story of brotherhood applied on the road to Jericho. But what is the theology to preserve values where delinquency is collective, crime organized and the giantism of society prescribes social, legislative protection and redemption. The hospital care is financed not by the Samaritan’s coin but by Blue Cross and Medicare. The lost sheep is recovered, not by the devotion and sacrifice of one redeeming shepherd, but by the combined action of boys clubs, settlement houses, junior republic, psychiatric and social work, parole officers and innumerable agencies of group Samaritanism. The whole concept of the anti-poverty program (e.g., food stamps) is of a dimension completely removed from the old parable.

When we look at the social controls being legislated to compel decent housing, restrain discrimination, adjust prices, deter swindling and so on, we have been creating a theological point of view hardly contemplated in the older idea that redemption is accomplished by converting the sinner. We are acknowledging in our social controls (that is, legislation) that we can no longer wait for sinners to be converted. The laws cannot compel goodness, but they can restrain, prohibit and punish those who would do evil, knowingly or unknowingly to their fellowmen.

This was one of the most important contributions achieved by Walter Rauschenbusch of Col. Rochester fame. He was impressed by the obstacles to redemption in a society such as ours and sought not only to play an active role for social change, but also put the powers of his mind to a Christian thrust for social action which has been of enormous influence in organized religion, particularly in America. It has been known as the Social Gospel.

A supporting theology for modern man must wrestle with this world of experience, apply reason, confront and deal with chaotic experience in our world – which is not a world of dying-rising savior gods, but a world of astonishing technology and irresistible political change, occurring amid the vast struggle of political and economic ideologies in a setting where “have not” peoples are determined to become ....

The difficult task for the deeply concerned is to hew out a theology which will illuminate meaning in this world of our experience. There is a great deal of bluff and bluster in our world which feebly disguises the wide-spread fear that life has no important and enduring meaning. If to use Paul Tillich’s phrase, “theology is what concerns us ultimately,” then it is theology, as each of us may achieve it, which will lighten the difficult ways with a faith to live by. Not all of you find a place for God in your thinking, yet this for many is the superb expression of that which is of greatest value and comprehends purposes which make it all worthwhile. However that may be for you, you will find great reward in setting your course by a theological star, some illuminating purpose which brings all things into focus in depth. And as the old scripture says (1st Peter 3/15) “being ready always to give an answer to every man that asketh you a reason concerning the hope that is in you.”

Such a quest for meaning has additional reward to the patient and persistent mind by providing a uniting principle which puts your world together. Julian Huxley once defined religion as an “organized system of ideas and emotions which relate man to his destiny.”

Much of the political growth of our country provides an example. Many of the bitterest controversies, civil rights, political franchise and religious freedom are settled by referral to the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. Although the interpretations of these basic constitutional documents are not fixed and eternal, but flexible and responsive to needed change, nevertheless, they are an undergirding, a point of referral whereby acts are measured, controversies decided. So the unifying principle of a thought-out theology will be a point of referral and measurement for the events and experiences which comprise our hectic world.

I have the notion that a lack of this unifying, reasonable theological foundation is the reason why so many persons find worship a tepid routine in which participation has a low priority when competing with other Sunday morning attractions. For many, there is no inner script which reacts in agreement or counterpoints of contradiction to the worship patterns of words and music in the gathered group.

Do you know the story about the man who handed his little boy a jig saw map of the world, fondly convinced that putting the puzzle together would take more than enough time for Dad to read the newspaper. He had hardly reached the editorial page before the boy announced gleefully that the puzzle was completed. Knowing that the boy was too young for any wide grasp of world geography, the father asked him, “How did you do it so quickly?”

“Well,” said the boy, “there was a man on the other side. When I put the man together, the world came out all right.”

A uniting principle, a “dimension of depth” can put the man together. For one of the great rewards of individual theological conviction is the freedom to embrace it in all its difficulties because it represents a central standard of value. With such theological conviction we can participate exuberantly in the wide range of ideas in a free religious society and a free country without yearning for the imposed authority of a creed pronounced by others. Achieving theological depth, we can endure the cruelties and enigmas of human social experience, falling victim to neither the evasion of pious platitudes or the easy way of ....

[editor’s note: end page(s) of sermon missing]

Unitarian Universalist Worship: Motives and Expression

February 6, 1966
Plainfield

Unitarian Universalist Worship: Motives and Expression

“Returning to Nicosia we soon found that East and West meet in Cyprus, sometimes violently. The first day there our taxi, weaving through narrow crowded streets, rounded a corner and sideswiped a bicycle. The cyclist careened into a farmer who fell against a plodding donkey loaded with melons. The frightened beast leaped onto a sidewalk and the basket on his back smashed a shop window, scattering the melons amid a display of plastic dishware. Driver, cyclist and pedestrian and donkey-herder waved their arms and shouted in furious argument.

“‘There,’ said Jean, ‘you have 2000 years of progress compressed into one accident.’” (Article on “Cyprus,” National Geographic, May 1952, p. 632).

There are those who believe our usual order of service to be but 2000 years of accident – a diluted version of a Methodist or Baptist service, which in turn was ritual modified from earlier Reformation churches, which in turn had found inspiration for worship by protestantizing the Catholic Mass, which in turn had its origins in even more ancient, diverse, and cultic practices.

On the other hand, there are those among us who are unresponsive to innovation and experiment, withholding approval of that which is new and untried. Such persons find meaning for worship in services that have acquired some tradition.

On the one hand the Unitarian Church must confront continuously the dynamic novelty of new ideas in order to decide tentatively what deserves honor, recognition and a place of dignity in the group worship and programs. On the other hand, although ongoing discoveries of truth call for “new occasions” and “new duties.” many Unitarians feel the tug of traditional ways. Thus, while religion for the so-called modern mind might be acceptable only with currently popular language and advanced ideas, modern man – that is, the total man with his alternating emotions as well as his modern mind – wonders wistfully at times if the words and music worshiping our father’s God, Secure and Ancient, are not sorely needed in these anxious, dangerous days.

Roger Hall started me on this sermon last Sunday, for he reminded me that religion is not alone a series of intellectual propositions with which we agree or disagree on premises, conclusions, or both. Religion is not alone such a reasoning process, although to ignore the validity of the rational processes of the mind is to dispense with a vital part of our reason for being. Roger also reminded me emphatically that the religious experience is not restricted to historical continuities or innovative experiment, although we could hardly deserve the name of rational or relevant if we ignored history or creativity. Let me quote something Roger said that lighted up my inner instrument panel, “We tend to push to the background the fact that in ever person there are strong emotional associations. We shun the shouter; we only flirt with Freud.”

I would speak to you of worship not only because of the way worship provokes discussion, bewilderment, mis-understanding, even tension, but also because the experience of group adult worship is still the strongest bond among us. I hope I shall neither soft-pedal the difficulties of worship in the liberal church nor under-rate the potential power I believe is waiting for us when we experience the mental stimulation and emotional thrill that can be ours when we encounter intelligent, stirring, artistic worship.

Consider the initial difficulty caused by the unavoidable, stubborn fact that we are different persons. We register no automatic group response like wound-up identical tin soldiers from an assembly line. Furthermore, each of us responds differently at different times. What may move us deeply on January 9 or 30 may be an utter bore [on] December 12 or February 6.

The following ancient verses from the sixth [chapter of] Isaiah are a verbal account of the prophet’s shattering religious experience. He became conscious of his own inadequacies; then that his sins were forgiven; then that he had received a profound commission to prophecy to the people. But how many of us can say truthfully we have experienced worship with such emotional deeps and peaks? Any “great aha” we have known seems pallid when compared to Isaiah’s overwhelming experience. Furthermore, this glimpse of Isaiah’s religious call should not overlook the solitary nature of his experience. Isaiah was alone. The words and music of liberal worship present difficulties because we are not alone. We are together seeking a group worship experience which could touch us all with some measure of truth, goodness and beauty.

In the prologue to Henry VIII, Shakespeare, warming the audience that the play was serious, not comic, has words that apply somewhat to the diversified Sunday congregation:

“Those that can pity here
May, if they think it well, let fall a tear;
The subject will deserve it. Such as give
Their money out of home they may believe
May here find truth too. Those that come to see
Only a show or two, and so agree
The play may pass, if they be still and willing,
I’ll undertake what may see away their shilling
Richly in two short hours.”

Not only are we different personalities, but also as individuals we have a wide range of expectations as we attend worship in this Unitarian Church.

Many Unitarians decided to leave orthodox religions because they no longer believed the doctrines of old-time religion. They have become Unitarians and Universalists because of the basic non-creedal position of the Church; because they listened to affirmations that the Unitarian faith was a religion of common-sense and because the Unitarian Church did not expect them to leave the discoveries of modern science, literary and historical scholarship outside the door to worship.

Thus, frequently the Unitarian who became so because of such religious convictions is sometimes puzzled or annoyed when our worship service seemingly venerates, through a hymn, anthem or reading an out-moded idea of God, Jesus, sin, or what have. The person who has thought his way to the Unitarian Church because he no longer holds with these ideas, asks himself, “Why should this be in Unitarian worship?”

Many Unitarians find new knowledge more helpful and more inspiring than old traditions and liturgical language. Many prefer Freud to Moses, Overstreet to Ecclesiastes, Walter Lippman to Amos, Sidney Harris to Jeremiah.

Unitarian Universalist societies, like all institutions, are changing constantly. Old ideas are always being refined in the filtering process of human experience. But because we are all different, with unlike expectations, we feel variously happy or irritated at regularities, or omissions or additions to our worship service.

For example, there is a perennial difficulty with hymns and anthems. Any Unitarian Universalist minister will testify that many of the best hymns in the “Hymns of the Spirit,” from the standpoint of the meaning of the words, are the very ones the choir and congregation will tell him are the most unsingable. Somewhere I clipped this little rhyme:

“In unison, we rise and stand
And wish that we were sitting.
We listen to the music start,
And wish that it were quitting.
We pass our hymnal to a guest,
Or fake a smoker’s cough;
We drop our pencils, lose our gloves,
Or take our glasses off.
We move our lips to keep in style,
Emitting awkward bleats,
And when the last Amen is sung,
Sink gladly in our seats.
Oh Lord, who hearest every prayer
And saves us from our foes,
Deliver now thy little flock
From hymns nobody knows.” (anonymous)

Such common attitudes tempt many of us now and then to chop up the old words of the gospel hymns (people say they love the tunes), render the words intellectually vague or theologically innocuous, and see if the congregation would then sing out boldly.

One of the reasons why long studies and efforts on the part of our UUA have produced the new hymnal, “Hymns for the Celebration of Life,” is because we are faced with a rather meager supply of hymns and anthems which are both musically good and theologically relevant to the beliefs of most of us.

Others will be on the side of using the grand traditions and superb music of the Christian Church, not from theological nostalgia alone, but more importantly, from a commendable appreciation of the cultural tradition of grand chorales, oratorios and masses, without which our aesthetic and emotional resources would be greatly impoverished. We would have much less difficulty if the words could be sung always in German or Latin, even though this device might be the object of biting criticism.

Still others would find worship a deeper experience if there were no music or instruments, but rather a Quaker silence, except for (perhaps) the sermon.

Those of you who have read the life of Theodore Barker know of the remarkable Sunday service of this prophetic Unitarian preacher (who was excluded from Unitarian circles in his own day, but now is one of our heroes). The religious society he served, 28th Congregational Society of Boston, which met in the Music Hall more than a century ago, was one of the largest congregations in the country, numbering three thousand or so. There was no music. The early arrivals who wanted good seats sometimes had to kick away the litter of the Saturday night show crowd. Many of the worshipers read the Sunday newspaper until the 11 o’clock service time.

Then Theodore Parker walked to the rostrum, the worshipers folded their newspapers and the sermon began forthwith. There were no hymns, anthems, chorales or responses. The sermon was the worship, and the large congregation was eminently satisfied because they were captivated and inspired by the sermons – which were radical and startling for the day.

In the foregoing observations reside some of the problems the minister encounters if he seriously tries to make worship an experience of impact and depth. In the shaking down of the realities of the divergent views of the people who weekly seek confrontation, knowledge, beauty, rhythm, reverence, inspiration, comfort, how can the service be all these to everyone?

Basically, although we gather as a group, worship is individual – and Isaiah’s experience is a powerful example. The minister can produce a service or sermon which are his creations or his adaptations of worship custom. Although he can guide, suggest, proclaim, he cannot be creative for you. In Thackeray’s great novel, VANITY FAIR (p. 20), there is an incident which may point to this. Rebecca Sharp is the guest of her classmate, Amelia Sedley. Amelia is showing her family some drawings which she had sent home from school, when Rebecca bursts into tears and runs from the room. Amelia says, “You know her father was our drawing master at Chiswick and used to do the best parts of our drawings,” Amelia’s mother answers, “My love, I’m sure I always heard Miss Pinkerton say that he did not touch them – he only mounted them.” Amelia answers, “It was called mounting, Mama – Rebecca remembers the drawing and her father working on it.”

The drawings may have pleased the parent. But it was a deceit because the parent’s pride was primarily stirred because of the belief that the drawing was the child’s creation.

Remembering the wide differences in the Unitarian Universalist idea of what is proper and intelligent for group worship – and more than that, admitting that the force which ignites the spark of creativity in worship, painting or anything else is within you – let us look at what worship is and how we may participate with some reverence both in individual experience and group fellowship.

What is “the great aha?” What makes the Geiger counter click? Worship is not defined easily. In the long history of religion it has evolved from tribal rites, tabus and sacrifice, human as well as animal, prior to the emergence of less savage rituals. Worship includes crude mythology as well as abstract philosophy. Worship can be passionate for a cause or sternly analytical in the search for truth.

You have heard of snake worshipers, devil worshipers and worshipers of the Almighty Dollar. Worship is all of these expressions, and more. What is worship for one is an experience another may spurn. The history of worship is a record of differences as well as similarities. There was a newspaper dispatch (UPI) which illustrates the difference in attitude, although it doesn’t refer specifically to worship:

“Plymouth England ... two separate church notices here have left the reader in a quandary.

“Said one: ‘Strong drink is your worst enemy.’
“The other: ‘Make your worst enemy your best friend.’”

But the worship for which we may reach must be the holding high of the light of the highest we know – the celebration of our most precious values.

Many of us when we gather in worship feel much more comfortable when the words and music do not reprove our vices and vanities and insensitivities. We may make the error of mistaking worship with the feeling of being at ease. But when there is no judgment on the ways we have missed the mark of our obligation, then worship may be pallid and dilute. But when worship is penetrating, it should make us uncomfortable frequently so that we may become aware that we have done those things we ought not to have done and we have not done those things we ought to have done. This is not because the pulpit denounces the pew, but rather because our own insufficiently-recognized sense of what is vital is calling us to be our best.

The act of worship is to re-discover a confidence even though we entered with anxiety; to find new directions when our moral purposes seem to be heading toward dead end; to recognize and venerate the Divine that penetrates human experience – however that spirit may be named or defined. Through the words and music, the sight and sound of symbols we may be helped to experience effectively the highest of our goals – our God – and to renew our allegiance to it and to strengthen our determination to work at the tasks of our day in our time.

“Worship is the celebration of life,” to quote the famous capsule description of Unitarian Von Ogden Vogt. We gather in worship to celebrate the impact on our human experience of the great festival days of humankind, the profound experiences of human living – birth, growth, adolescence, marriage, death; and weekly, the renewing of our heritage of freedom and fellowship in variety as well as sameness of form.

We celebrate with words, music, light, shadow, group participation. [excised from copy: Irvin Cobb wrote a short story which has become a case study in] social psychology, “Words and Music.” The perceptive writer caught effectively the great power that words and music combine to stir man to a new awareness of that which he considers highest. In the story, the jury and judge were reminded of their battles, their dead – through reminisces and the sound of the marching song of the troopers, which “had in it the one sure call to the emotions and sentiments of the people.”

Such a blend of words and music, of intellect and emotion are the goals of a free person’s worship. To achieve this in a free, non-creedal church, such as ours, is both a formidable task and a stimulatory opportunity. For the celebration of life is always old and ever new. A new baby does not come spontaneously from under a rose bush but as the product of two people, old enough to reproduce their kind, and the new life is always individually distinct from both parents. The Winter festivals and the Spring festivals are always old and always new; and so with all the great days we celebrate.

Worship is something else, too. “Worship is a consideration of things of worth,” to quote famous liberal educator, Sophia Fahs. In order to consider things of worth, worship must be eternal contemporaneous. We all should be in a state of agonized conscience about the threats that brood over our world. Each day seems to add to crisis and complicate the baffling problems which threaten our existence. If worship is a consideration of things of wroth, surely worship should lead us to think and proclaim what our moral convictions are. G.K. Chesterton is alleged to have said something like this, “Such are the advances of science that the Church could pick up a single microphone and address the entire world. But now the Church has nothing to say...” Well, certain bodies have recently had something to say: The National Council of Churches, the Pope, a National Committee of Concerned Clergy, area committees and others, but the polls on which the President [relies] apparently indicates that the official voices of religious councils and clergy are but a minority and the majority supported the resumption of bombing and continued escalation of war.

A religious society such as ours meets enormous obstacles in the way of speaking with one voice. Yet consideration of things of worth should lead us to speak with many voices, when we cannot speak with one. If worship overlooks the world we are living in now, with its hopes, fears, ignorance, prejudice, of whatever use is it to concentrate on the bygone worlds of the Old and New Testaments, or even the heroic and charming ages of Channing, Emerson, and Parker?

Do you know the fable of the woodcutter and the lion who struck up friendship between them and who were always engaging in contests to test which was the stronger? Small animals in the underbrush watched the contests with glee. One day the lion came with the thigh bone of an ox in his mouth. “You’ll have to admit,” he said to the woodcutter, “that a lion’s mouth is more powerful than a man’s.” And he cracked the bone with one movement of his powerful jaw.

The woodcutter looked at the large ledge of rock and asked the lion, “can you smash that with your jaws?”

“No,” said the lion, “and neither can you.”

The woodcutter looked down the road to where a group of people were walking. [He shouted] to them, “I’ve made a discovery – the inside of that rock is gold.” Instantly the people swarmed up. In a few moments the ledge of rock lay at the lion’s feet, cracked not once, but in a dozen places.

The animals [of the] underbrush chattered, “The lion can crack the thick thigh bones of an ox, but a man’s mouth is so strong that he can crack rocks with it.” (99 Fables, William March, University of Alabama Press, p. 92).

So it is with consideration of things of worth. They are contemporaneous; and it is the power of words which shows more strength than we usually appreciate. There is a gulf between the way things are and the way they should be. There should be voices in church speaking. If worship brings peace of mind, it cannot avoid speaking of the peace needed among nations and speaking of the follies for which there no longer is room.

In the practice of worship where there will be celebration of life and consideration of things of worth, there will be variety in our ways of worship and changes in the symbols. We encourage frequent change and interrupt the usual with the experimental and unusual (as has happened several times). We seek change not merely to placate all manner of opinion in the Church, but rather in order to seek out honestly the creative ways that words, music, and other art-forms can become effective in the celebration of life and the considerations of things of worth.

Not all tradition is worth rehearsing and no tradition should become a fetish or an obsession. The justification for our usual type service (“diluted Methodist” as it has been called), is that there is a value in historical continuities and habitual ways. We need the novel, the new, but also we need that which is expected, for sometimes we need to be liberated from an attitude which is defensive toward possible surprise. Such defensiveness may prevent us from being open toward that word, or that musical note, or that feeling which may help us resolve some of our consciously-felt troubled feelings, help us acquire more self-honesty, help us gain new hope. Because we do have these troubled feelings; because we do need more self-honesty; because we must have hope, there is a place for continuity and the expected.

But also we need the innovative, the creative, the experimental. Here in this church we have relied, and not in vain, on the imagination and competence of some of our lay members to provide us with drama, art, song. Then, too, last week Roger Hall wrestled with the nature of the religious experience which grabs us suddenly, “the great aha!”

One thing more: one of the more obvious gaps in the worship of our societies, at least for the many years I have known them, is the absence of much authentic confrontation of the troubled feelings and secret wishes that lie below the level of consciousness. Our usual order of service with touches of continuity from our long Judeo-Christian heritage or our shorter Unitarian Universalist heritage, may speak to our religion of inquiring minds, but may do very little for that covered-up morass of feelings that disturb us with disconnected apprehensions and vague feelings of guilt. When we feel buried, but troublesome emotions, we can understand how the orthodox might pray to a Trinitarian God who has established a Way of Salvation that will reclaim the troubled soul and wash it clean. Sometimes we get a slight yen for that intensely personal cleansing, but always we come back to the stubborn reality that the power of such a faith is limited to believers only – and we are not such believers.

We have made strong efforts to achieve greater rationality and historical reality in the facts of religion. Therefore we cannot return to the orthodox way, just in order to achieve some purge of our delinquent feelings.

To relate ourselves to these feelings is one of the needed [and] incomplete tasks in Unitarian Universalist faith. To come to grips with these feelings, without a trip back to orthodox Christian symbols and creeds, is valid motivation to dramatize, to respond to the painter, poet, dramatist, musician, or sculptor who has the skill and power to transform some of this subterranean energy of feeling into a product that is visible, audible, or registers on senses of sight, touch, or smell.

For some of us, at least, “the great aha” - the feeling, “I have worshiped,” is not confined to the usual, but now and again is experienced through the impact of the unusual creation on canvas, of clay or metal, by the actor, by the musical performer. Many of us who see validity in frequent change from the rigidity of routine and the sameness of unchanging form, are seeking the experience of group worship in the creative expressions, exploring and exposing ourselves to many arts, seeking the experience that may be unexplainable in the end, but when the experience occurs to each of us, find it to be a trembling excitement which a sense of immediacy that makes mind, emotion and body an electrified unity that, temporarily or permanently, sets new and brighter goals for our lives.

However we may value the usual vis-a-vis the habitual, we should seek the highest we know, neither ignoring the past nor avoiding the present. When we apply ourselves to such goals, with a minimum of pretense, there will be moments when word, art, music, gesture will weld us together in high aspiration, human love, or intuitive comprehension. If we persist, perhaps we ill discover the continuing courage necessary to be a prophetic body and retain the compassion to be a ministering community.