Measuring The Past – Weighing The Future

March 21, 1982
Lakeland

Twenty-one years ago the Universalist Church of America and the American Unitarian Association consolidated and the Unitarian Universalist Association became a new religious name on the American scene. Today I would like to review briefly the values that each brought from an historic past – values which should not be erased; and re-affirm proposals and principles which seem to me essential to justify an on-going religious enterprise which asks for loyalty and support. We are justified if we are useful in service to the human family, courageous and thoughtful in evaluating the conflicts and stresses in society, and aware of the need to provide situations where we celebrate life together – worship. No religious endeavor is worthy of the commitment it requires unless it serves persons in their needs, challenges society to create both larger liberties and stronger social cohesion, and deepens our human grasp of the enduring importance of the great ideas: the nature of this creating universe, our purpose and destiny on this earth, and the “source of human good.”

There were Universalists and Unitarians hundreds of years before the movements were organized on this continent. The denominations were structures erected to house ideas which had existed as heresies within other religious frameworks.

That all humankind, without exception, was not condemned to hell but was destined to be saved was a theological affirmation existing from earliest Christian times. In America, the early Universalist preachers were almost exclusively “Bible Universalists,” many of them self-taught. They rebutted the orthodox claims of Hell and damnation with proof-texts from the Old and New Testaments which indicated clearly that many of the Old Testament prophets, and in the New Testament, Jesus, Paul, and others believed that the nature of God was love and that eternal creating Love by its very nature prohibited eternal damnation even for one single human soul. It is fair to report that the orthodox opponents could find numerous Biblical proof texts which seemed to buttress their position that a few souls would be saved by the Grace of God, but most souls were destined for eternal punishment in Hell.

This demonstrates that one can “prove” almost anything from scriptures. I noted this week that a writer called attention to those who advocate ‘scientific creationism,” using the scripture as laboratory proof that evolution is erroneous. But by the same means, you can prove the earth is flat. So it would seem consistent to me that a believer in scientific creationism should, logically, belong to the Flat Earth Society.

In Christian beginnings, Universal Salvation was a doctrine defended by many of the early leaders of the Church. Even when Universal salvation became a heretical doctrine, some five hundred years after Jesus lived, there were frequent re-assertions of the doctrine of Universal salvation by courageous heretics.

In modern Universalism in America, there was Dr. George de Benneville. Influenced by the Universalism of some of the German pietists who were a small but influential wing of the Protestant Reformation, de Benneville was preaching Universalism in Pennsylvania in the 1740s. John Murray, disciple of James Relly, landed in America. After the remarkable experiences of the New Jersey landing, he found his way to New England. Much to his surprise, he found a Universalist group in Gloucester, Mass., in 1770 (we would call it a fellowship today). After a series of dramatic events, he became minister of the first organized society of Universalists in America, the Independent Christian Church.

The movement spread rapidly in New England and Pennsylvania, soon reaching out to gather societies in New York and Ohio. In 1805, Hosea Ballou’s famous TREATISE ON THE ATONEMENT was the theological proposal which made most Universalists unitarian in their theology, years before Unitarianism became an organized movement.

Unitarianism has roots as deep or deeper in the soil of human history. The Hebrew scriptures proclaimed a monotheism at least from the time of the ethical prophets, 800 years B.C.E. The New Testament offers no evidence of Trinitarian belief. Belief that God was three was a later development of Christian dogma.

Disbelief in the Trinity became heretical. While monotheism remained the foundation of Jewish and Moslem theology, the Christian church punished those who deviated from Trinitarian dogmas.

Nevertheless, Unitarian thought flared again and again. Servetus, most well-known of the anti-Trinitarians of the Reformation period, was burned at the stake by John Calvin in Geneva, but his influence was not destroyed thereby. In the same sixteenth century, the Socinian or Unitarian movement was organized in Transylvania by Francis David. David, later imprisoned, died in jail, but Unitarianism has persisted in Hungary for more than four hundred years.

Unitarianism in England pre-dated the movement in America by almost a century. Under the leadership of Theophilus Lindsey and Joseph Priestly, organization was made effective in the founding of Essex Hall Chapel in 1774.

In the United States, although there were early Congregationalist preachers who were Unitarian in thought, specific organization was delayed.

King’s Chapel was the first Anglican (Episcopal) church in Boston. However, in 1785, the membership elected a liberal minister, James Freeman. Importantly enough, when the Bishop would not approve Freeman and refused to ordain him, the parish delegated its Senior Warden to ordain Freeman – a radical departure from a rejection of the Anglican/Episcopal practice of ordination by the Bishop through whose laying on of hands on the ordained maintained the doctrine of apostolic succession.

The American Unitarian Association was formed in 1825. [CJW note: not a denomination or association – individual membership] The inspired preaching of William Ellery Channing and the Unitarian influence of the faculty of Harvard Divinity School were important in the founding of the AUA. Ralph Waldo Emerson, Thoreau, and Theodore Parker, among others, strengthened the intellectual position and increasingly isolated the Unitarian movement from the prevailing orthodoxies.

For more than a hundred years, the Universalists and Unitarians maintained their denominational separateness, each accumulating heroes, heroines, traditions, trusts, and institutional habits which were difficult to alter or abandon. Recognizing, however, that their theology and social attitudes were developing along parallel lines, there were overtures toward merger as early as 1865.

Both denominations took pretty much in stride the revolutions in scientific ideas and adjusted theological positions to cohere with modern thought. Darwinian evolution, the higher criticism of the Bible and Freudian theories of our motives and inwardness all were accepted generally by both denominations and were positions which helped liberals toward better understanding of human nature in a world of natural and orderly processes.

In the 1950s, deliberations about merger intensified and in progressive steps, studies were undertaken, and various merger proposals voted, which led to the conclusive vote in 1960. The negotiations had been complicated and there was opposition but the consolidation was overwhelmingly approved by delegates. At the time, some of us remembered words of the prophet Amos (3/2), “Can two men walk together except they agree?” Unitarians and Universalists agreed that their religious association was one and to walk together henceforth.

It is important to remember the values of the old which have been preserved in the new.

First, there is the basic theological/philosophical tradition of individual freedom, reason, character, and optimism.

This right of individual belief is maintained specifically in the purposes and objectives of the UUA: “To strengthen one another in a free and disciplined search for truth as the foundation of our religious fellowship.”

Second is the great Reformation affirmation of the priesthood of all believers. We make no division between the clergy and laity that asserts or implies that the clergyman has a unique sacred calling. We ministers are trained to carry out the duties and responsibilities of the ordained minister, but we have no wisdom from on high that is denied the person in the chair or pew. The freedom and responsibility of both pulpit and pew have both historical precedent and continuing symbol in our traditions, in the ordination in King’s Chapel of James Freeman by the Senior Warden of King’s Chapel, a layman, and [in the] ordination of John Murray by the Gloucester Universalists – laypeople all.

The parallel institutional right of congregational independence has high value in both Unitarian and Universalists traditions and it has been preserved in the constitutional document of the UUA.

There are many traditions in our historical past which are points of referral and wise guidance, but the most vital are the freedom of the individual and the independence of the congregation.

What shall we dream and try to make real in the future? The future never can be exactly determined by the conditions of the present. One of the mysterious, tantalizing, and hopeful features of this dynamic universe is that effects can never be exactly predicted from observable causes. Prediction of things to come is always a venture of chance.

But it seems to me that one of our responsibilities is theological. When one looks back on the death and glory theological argument which badly split Universalists in the 19th century, when one considers the agitation and hot debates in the humanism/theism controversy of a few decades ago, as well as other issues on which there was division, one most surely recognizes that theological debate is seldom a placid encounter. As one historian has remarked, “there is no rancor like that between theological opponents who fight for the glory of God as if the very devil were in them.”

One of our Wednesday night series last year was “building your own theology” and my recollection is that there was considerable interested response. We do need a theological framework which provides a reasonable enclosure for the revolutionary changes which are occurring in science, communications, politics, economics, and government. We need the continued attention of our best minds to reckon with a faith which can accept the vast mystery of our universe, but also be satisfying for our human strivings to live by.

But we must be just as wary of establishing a creed as were our forebears. The fact that a religion may be appraised as modern is no warrant whatsoever for an attitude requiring conformity to it, or being arrogant about it. In the historical room of the lovely Universalist Church in Gloucester, Ma., there hangs a replica of the original Charter of Compact of that first organized Universalist church. If you ever visit there, read the whole charter, but particularly the 9th article, “whereas the privilege of choosing and professing one’s own religion is inestimable; and in order to maintain that privilege unimpaired, in case any person associating with us should suffer persecution from the undue exercise of power, we do agree and resolve to afford him all legal means of extricating himself from difficulty and enjoying that freedom which is held forth by the Constitution.” The language may be slightly archaic, but the ethic is as imperative today as then.

Consequently our efforts must be no less a defense than was made by those courageous Universalist pioneers.

Among us, universal salvation has become less a theological proposition for the after-life and more an article of faith for the people living in THIS world – to affirm, defend, promote the worth of every human personality and the use of the democratic method in human relationships. This is the additional meaning that has been transfused in to the grand old theology of the universal salvation of all humankind.

There is no blinking the requirement that our faith must not only be free, but also exacting, for the defense of all souls is not trivial or easy task. John Coleman Adams, one of the superior preachers of the 19th century, once said that “our forebears were too jealous of their liberties to cultivate their unities.”

The defense of the free mind requires a good deal of unity. We should be neither boastful of our knowledge nor extravagant in our claims of virtue. Even as a consolidated denomination, we are tiny compared with the millions that other churches can count. Nevertheless we need to exert our efforts, [CJW note: the ounces of our weighing], toward achieving a world which will consider all persons on earth worthy of salvation here on earth, which will define salvation in terms of enough to live on as well as freedom to choose a faith to live by.

One of the signers of the Charter of Compact of the Universalists who courageously organized in Gloucester was Gloster Dalton, a Black man. Upon the occasion of his church funeral April 11, 1813, the then minister “Father” Jones made this notation: “Gloster Dalton, an African. In this country from a youth. Supposed to be 90 years old. He was an honest, industrious man... belonged to the Independent Christian Society for many years. He was a native of Africa and brought away as a slave – so-called. For there are no slaves! All men are born free. T. Jones.”

In our times, we are the ones who will advance or yield the principles and spirit which made the old Universalism and the old Unitarianism worthy of devotion. We must demonstrate the merit of our religion in our time, in the service of our time, in the ways of our time, so that ‘twill be said of us too that we were known for speaking up for the right of persons everywhere to worship in freedom and live in peace.

Addenda

Here are a few written notes inserted between pages by Rev. Westman, but, uncharacteristically, without indication as to where they should be inserted into the main body of the sermon.

One could say Frank Oliver Hall was a naïve dreamer. 62 years have passed, but he proposed a dream which can become more real – and we are more conscious now, or should be, that the alternative to the dream is a nightmare. So I conclude with his admonition: “... our mission has not ended. It has only begun. We have our inspiring philosophy of life; we have a noble constituency of men and women who have been inspired by it; we have our message to preach; our works to do.”

***

We live in communities where there is a multiplicity of religions, denominations, associations, with differing theologies, symbols, sacraments, rituals, traditions. 100 years for us – what is most needed for the 21st century is not a unity of faith, as faith is commonly understood, but rather an urgent witness to stimulate and encourage all persons to live up to the ethical demands of their own religions. We do this best by living up to our own. In our own way and in cooperation with others whose faith symbols may differ widely, [we] can deal with issues of human dignity, rights, freedom, hunger, sickness, and the search for common ground.

These are human points of tangency for all religions with ethical goals and human standards.

***

Hosea Ballou – riding circuit in New England stopped at farm house. Farmer upset. Son a terror, a drunk, and fooled around with women. Afraid son would go to hell.

“All right,” said Ballou - “we’ll find a place on the path where your son will be coming home. We’ll build a big fire – grab him and throw him into it.”

Farmer, shocked: “That’s my son – I love him!”

Ballou: “If you, a human and imperfect father, love your son so much you wouldn’t throw him into the fire, how can you possibly believe that God, the perfect father, would do so?”