The Dangers And Hopes Of Universalism

February 22, 1998
Sarasota

I want to discuss this subject with you, but first you need to know my bias. I have been a Unitarian Universalist 37 years since consolidation of the two denominations. Before that I was a Unitarian for 4 years, two of which I was unaware, being an infant from birth to 2; and two years as a layman in a struggling little Unitarian church in Massachusetts. I was 45 years a Universalist, as a boy, as a layman, as a minister.

I’m particularly conscious of this today as we celebrate Helen Harwood’s 100th birthday, because her father was the teacher who was the strongest influence in my adult life. John Murray Atwood was Dean of the Universalist theological school at St. Lawrence University. I was fortunate enough to be one of his students.

He was a superb teacher. When I was there he taught theology, Greek, and parliamentary law; other years he taught Biblical languages and literature and sociology of religion. But more than his scholarship, he was generous, forgiving and wise. I will never forget how he accepted a student who had been expelled from Tufts; he believed in giving a second chance. That student was a friend of mine. We traveled together to Canton for the interview with the Dean. [CJW note: he accepted me – unpromising ... + so to speak here I am]

Helen, you know and I know that your father was one of the most admired and trusted leaders of Universalism in the 1st half of the Twentieth Century.

Thus, as some of you describe yourself as Unitarian, not Unitarian Universalist, so too, I am sometimes neglectful and identify myself as Universalist because Universalism has characterized so many years of my life and thought. Furthermore, Universalist is a much more accurate description of my personal religious philosophy.

First, I want to make a brief summary of Universalism as a theological position. Then, present instances where Universalism was a bad idea. Then outline its theological evolution in the 20th century which incorporates hope for our human venture in this world where so much intolerance, war, and misery have occurred.

Universalism was a simple theological foundation for belief, even though it was disturbing and heretical to the other religions. God was too good to damn any of his creatures to Hell forever. God must at least be as kind and loving as the worst parent; and what parent would consent and send a child to burn in hell forever? In other words all souls would be saved.

In prior years, after that brief explanation, I would be asked, “What do Universalists believe?” I would answer usually in this fashion: Universalists do not believe alike in many ways. We differ. The proper question is, “How do Universalists arrive at their beliefs?” From where I stood, and stand, one can assume that there is acceptance of tested truth accumulated and continuously refined and amended by the historian, the geologist, biologist, astronomer, physicist, social scientist, practitioners of other learned professions. The Universalist believes reason to be a guide and validates propositions through experience and experiment. All theologies are interpretations of experience, not
divine revelations. The worth and dignity of all persons as the highest values. The Universalist looks with hope, still, on the nature and destiny of the human venture in spite of calamitous and cruel events.

But there are dangers; and sometimes Universalism can be a bad idea. What is bad about Universalism? When it is coerced. In a recent book, THE CURSE OF CAIN by Regina Schwartz, the author states the case succinctly: “Universalism comes in different shapes, as an ideal of genuine tolerance, as an effort to protect universal rights and as a kind of imperialism that insists we are all one and that demands an obliteration of differences.”

Universalism is bad when it is an imperialism. The major religions of Western culture have such a history, and a bloody, cruel, and intolerant history it is. Catholic means universal. In many centuries the Catholic church was coercive – believe with us or be damned. There were the persecutions and tortures of the Inquisition, the hypocrisy and the bloodshed of the Crusades. Mass killings of heretics was praiseworthy.

Protestants were hardly more generous. Len Peck’s fine and scholarly sermon on Servetus was a pertinent reminder. In England under Henry VIII, Queen Mary and Queen Elizabeth I, the Protestants and Catholics took turns persecuting, torturing and killing each other.

Much of this found sanction in words attributed to Jesus, although most scholars say the verse was a late addition to the gospel by the early church (Matthew 28/19) “Go therefore and MAKE disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father [and] of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.”

In Islam’s early centuries, the followers of Mohammed forcibly converted the peoples where their militant warriors invaded.

Even the religion of the Hebrews came to a Universalism which was imperialistic. They invaded Canaan, not their land, killing and slaughtering.

Look at Deuteronomy 7/5: “...you must utterly destroy them; you shall make no covenant with them, and show no mercy to them. . . .you shall break down their altars and dash in pieces their pillars and burn their graven images.”

Even the splendid and poetic Universalism found in Micah and Isaiah has the aroma of imperialism, “Come to the house of Jacob’s God; and he may instruct us in his ways....” Y’all come, but you MUST worship OUR God.

When the Puritans came to this country and seized land and got rid of the Indians, the natives, they justified it by the biblical example of the Hebrews seizing Canaan, showing no mercy to the people who lived there.

A Universalism that is THEM against US is bad. An imperialistic Universalism of any variety will never create a world that is free and fair.

Why, then, did some of us become Universalist ministers? In the 20th century, much of it within my personal memory and experience, theological Universalism had lost much of its power. Most of the mainline Christian churches had quit preaching Hell and brimstone. (The revival of fundamentalism, particularly in the Southern states, in recent decades would hardly have been predictable in the first half of this century.)

There was not much agitation among us over the growth of scientific thought, including evolution theories. The higher criticism of the Bible made both Unitarians and Universalists aware that scripture was not the inerrant word of God, but rather the religious literature of Judaism and Christianity. Heaven and Hell become referred to more as allegory or metaphor than reality. When we experienced frustration or problems, we would say, “That’s the Hell of it.” Right? Years ago, a Christian minister defined Hell this way, “the self-defeating nature of the egocentric life.” That’s a long way from burning in hell forever or Dante’s vivid images.

In my experience, Universalism went through many of the same conflicts and controversies as Unitarian in the first half of this century. We experienced the same conflict between theism and humanism as did the Unitarians. We each debated whether or not we were a Christian denomination. Fortunately, tolerance and acceptance prevailed. Helen’s father, defending the freedom clause in Universalist principles, wrote “Not that a man may do as he pleases, but that he may be true to the vision HE has gained on the Sinai HE has climbed.”

So some of us became Universalist ministers in the 30s and 40s, not because of the “No Hell” Universalism, although some felt the old beliefs still relevant. Rather, it seemed to some of that Universalism was the BIG IDEA; the worth and dignity of every person had become the main plank in our religious platform. Not that we expected that millions of Christians, Jews, Moslems, Buddhists would become Universalists. Rather, respect for the rights of others demanded that we acknowledge, advocate and protect the right of all persons to choose the faith that would sustain them. That was the Big Idea. Imperialism of any kind was the Bad Idea.

Before I close, a word of explanation: Some may have heard of Billy Sunday. 80 or more years ago, he was a popular, evangelistic preacher, the Jerry Falwell or Jimmy Swaggart of his day. When 100,000 dollars is referred to, it would probably be a million today.

Dr. Levi Moore Powers, from 1913 to 1919, was minister of our Gloucester Universalist Church and one of the noted preachers of his day – courageous and unafraid to criticize establishment forces. 80 or more years ago he was preaching on the need for a national health insurance plan; he defended the right of workers to organize and strike, he was an advocate of the League of Nations. In a sermon preached about 1919, he said, “The only adequate faith is that which will make the world brotherly, and that is a genuine belief that we are brothers, all children of a Father who has no favorites. Billy Sunday says that belief in the Universal Brotherhood of Man is ‘bosh’ and ‘tommyrot’ and those who live by the faith that Billy Sunday preaches reward their faithful servant by giving him fifty or one hundred thousand dollars a year for proclaiming his ungodly gospel.

“But we have not so learned Christ. There is an Eastern proverb which says, ‘I met a hundred men on the road to Delhi and they were all my brothers.’ That old heathen was more of a Christian than Billy Sunday. Universalism teaches that every man we meet on our journey from the cradle to the stars is our brother, and when we are big enough to understand our own faith, and great enough to live it, the future will be ours.”

I am not a Christian theist as was Levi Powers. Today we use more gender-free language. After all, he spoke those words more than 78 years ago. Yet, if we too sensed more deeply and proclaimed more fearlessly that every man, woman, and child we meet on our journey from the cradle to the stars is our brother or sister, and when we are big enough to understand our own faith and great enough to live it, the future may not be ours, but it will be the way, and perhaps the only way, as we join millions of others of whatever faith who share the dream, that this pained, conflicted world may be saved from destroying itself in a Hell of human making.