The Great Assurance

February 10, 1963
Rochester

Sermon Series: Our Judeo-Christian Heritage
20. The Great Assurance

Religion provides the great assurance of existence when one is willing to embrace a faith which grasps the entire life of man – his emotions, his reasons, his actions.

This assurance is not acquired easily or bought cheaply. The Christian book of Acts records the episode of Simon Magus, the Samarian sorcerer who tried to purchase Christian faith after being impressed by “signs and miracles” in Philip's company. When Peter and John came to Samaria from Jerusalem and conducted a service in which the “Holy Spirit” was received, Simon Magus was so impressed that he tried to buy the power of religion. The legend goes on that Peter scorned the offer, saying, “Your silver perish with you because you thought you could obtain the gift of God with money.” (Acts 8-9 ff.) Religious assurance is not obtained by trade or barter.

We have considered many aspects of our Judeo-Christian heritage:

Diversity and unity
Weakness and strength
Confusion and clarity
Organization and individuality
Ambivalence and single-mindedness
Creed and conscience
Selfishness and sacrifice
Injustice and justice
Hate and love

Most of us will not make the mistake of Simon Magus and try and buy our way to assurance. But there are other errors. An agricultural experiment reported by the “Unesco Courier” may help to illustrate. Scientists from the University of Arizona plan to experiment with a new method of sowing grass seed by airplane. Small pellets have been prepared composed of grass seed, clay, fertilizers and insect repellents. Just before the heavy seasonal rains begin, the pellets would be dropped – everything in one package – seed, fertilizer, insecticide.

The agricultural experiment may work, but religion is not like that for us, as we understand our heritage. There is no neat little package which contains the seed of faith, with the nurture of faith while at the same time providing resistance to forces which might weaken or destroy. An authoritarian religion provides this package; but most of us, for better or worse, know that the questions and answers come home to each one of us individually.

In Henry V (Act 1, Sc. 2), Canterbury, urging conflict with France, says to the king,

“As many arrows are loosed several ways
Come to one mark; as many ways meet in one town;
As many fresh streams meet on one salt sea;
As many lines close in the dial’s center -
So may a thousand actions, once afoot,
End in one purpose, and be all well borne
Without defeat.”

In accepting our heritage, many influences come to one mark for us, too, if we would have the great assurance of religion. If we were satisfied with creedal formula, that would be the mark. But we must look to the heritage in the light of our experience to find the individual faith which for us will be the dial’s center of a thousand actions,” and enable us to “end in one purpose.”

This inward assurance, for which we fumble by day and cry in the night, is grown more by what we are than by easy sayings which comfort our doubts. Spiritual security is a product of the moral life our convictions have inspired us to adopt. In judging the effect of a religion on our moral living, we are not left without guidance.

First, your religion deserves the right to measure your problems. One of our common failings is to measure our problems by what society may pronounce. When debating decisions or planning actions, our human radar records the compass points of the blips of public opinion, to used David Riesman’s well-known analogy. If the direction is contrary to individual conviction, then we may change in the direction of public opinion, stifling conscience. When we do, we shake the foundation of assurance.

In our world, a person faces a forest of problems, thickly entangled with an underbrush of difficult choices. Should I urge a person to buy an inferior product? Should I ignore trickery which I could expose? Should I jeopardize the economic welfare of my family for the sake of ethical principles I have been taught were of first importance? Anyone who professes that it is easy to choose the solitary way of opinions and actions that contemporary culture does not accept, just has not come up against the hostile face of disapproval and rejection.

In Britain in the first century, when the Roman Legions, led by Agricola, were preparing to invade Scotland, one of the Scots, a Caledonian general, taunted the Romans, “They create desolation and call it peace.” (THE GREAT INVASION, Leonard Cottrell, p. 195). The historic Roman peace was more prized by the Romans than by the countries they fought regularly and invaded frequently during the so-called “Pax Romana.” For a Caledonian enemy to fling the insult was far easier than for those soldiers in the Roman Legions who became Christian converts, discarded their weapons and refused to fight. They measured their problems by their religion and decided not to aid the creation of desolation, which the controlling military opinions called “peace.”

Both the Caledonian warrior-chief, who was not a pacifist, and the Christian ex-legionnaire who was, had this in common: they were measuring problems by the strong values they believed. Their individual destinies may have been difficult, even agonizing, but it was likely that they knew the great assurance that comes as surely as tides come to every ocean shore when the problems are measured by the religion one believes.

One of the greatest dramatists of Western Culture, Euripides of ancient Greece, was extremely unpopular in his lifetime. He was defamed and indicted while he lives; his popularity came only after his death. Rather than catering to current taste, Euripides stung the Athenians to “think, to see, to understand and question everything.” (Edith Hamilton).

He was measuring problems by his beliefs. This is a way to generate within oneself the assurance that life has meaning and that living is worthwhile.

Not all our problems are in the sphere of public affairs or convictions about controversial public questions. There are maneuverings in occupational life to be the one who will get foot on the next rung of the ladder leading upward. There are many who are disturbed by the methods by which the one with the foothold must tramp sometimes on someone else.

There are problems of selfishness and vanity in public affairs. There are feelings of injured pride and loss of face when one’s child fails to be out in front for marks and honors. There are times when it seems all-important to win a petty argument, even though something precious may fade a little forever. Sometimes the more wrong we are, the louder we shout and the more pain we inflict.

It is easy to measure situations on the erroneous scale of hot pride or bubbling anger. But surely as we do, just as surely, we are dissipating our own inner strength.

When the religion we believe measures our problems, when we see as a person, the public official we believe so wrong, we may make a more dispassionate appraisal of his position. This does not mean either escape from or vacillation with issues of grave importance. It does not mean that we will measure as we would be measured by. When we believe that the person is of supreme worth – that it is ideas or faulty facts that are wrong – we will be more inclined to attack problems, not persons. Then we will be giving religion its deserved right to measure our problems.

When we realize that our inner security is as dependent on our family attitudes as our public pronouncements, then we ought to concede religion the right to measure problems within the walls of home, too. The person who vents on family the bad feelings he hides in public has made a large deduction from his real inner resources. Even when brooding in frustration at one’s spouse, in fury at one’s child or envy at one’s neighbor, the religion one professes to believe has a prior claim for the right to measure the problem.

This goes beyond the harmonious situations that may be created by living what one professes to believe about good-will and kindness. When this religious priority is given its rightful place, an inevitable by-product is the increased assurance that adds new strength and joy to living and letting live.

Secondly, religion deserves the right to weigh your anxieties.

Again and again, no matter where you pick out the thread of religion from the fabric of human affairs, whether long ages ago or this very hour, you will find that thread tied to the struggle against personal anxieties. No person ever lived, who had any normal share or mind of emotion, free of anxiety. To be human is to be anxious.

We fret about our appearance. We worry about the consequences of mistakes we know we have made. Did I lock the door of the house, car, safe? Is the parking meter running out? Did I leave the gas burners on? Did I make the deposit before the check cleared? Will the new boss recognize my talents? How sick is my child? Can the plane land safely in such turbulence? Is the growth malignant? Will I die tonight? - We are anxious about many things.

In the verses included in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus said, “Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you shall eat or what you shall drink, nor about your body, what you shall put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? And which of you by being anxious can add one cubit to his span of life? And why be anxious about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin; yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is alive and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you, O men of little faith? Therefore do not be anxious, saying, ‘what shall we eat?’ or ‘what shall we drink?’ or ‘what shall we wear?’ For the Gentiles seek all these things; and your heavenly Father knows that you need them all. But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness and all these things shall be yours as well.”

This attitude stood up under stress. In the Garden of Gethsemane, the gospels indicate that Jesus was no blithe spirit as he confronted the cruel realities of the experience that he was to endure. He was anxious; prayed that the cup would pass from him. But he was willing to give his religion the right to weigh his anxieties, “My Father, if this cannot pass unless I drink it, thy will be done.”

Joan of Arc conquered her hears of a horrible death because the sound of her “voices” outweighed human anxieties about pain, death, and error.

John Bunyan in Bedford jail, wrote his allegorical masterpiece of the triumph of persisting faith, immortalized his own decision to weigh his anxieties against his fervent convictions – and great assurance came.

The pilgrim feeling the cold, biting spray of the wild North Atlantic in November 1620, needed to weigh his anxieties in the scale of faith or utter despair could have overcome him.

There are numerous instances where anxiety loses its heavy weight when placed on the scale with religious faith. We will not find that it is of any one variety of creed, scripture or prayer which identifies those who had the great experience of inner assurance in spite of anxieties. This is a spirit to which all may aspire – a conviction that overpowers fears that we shall cease to be. It is the spirit of Byron’s “Prisoner of Chillon,”

“Eternal Spirit of the Chainless Mind!
Brightest in dungeons, Liberty thou art
For there thy habitation is the heart.”

Third, great assurance can be ours if we give our religious faith the power to distribute the efforts of our lives.

There has been a famous lady visiting Washington, DaVinci’s creation, the “Mona Lisa.” Perhaps more desirable conditions may prevail in the New York showing, but in Washington the crowds were so great that each spectator had approximately eight seconds to view one of the artistic masterpieces of human history. How much can one learn of that smile and those hands in eight seconds?

Many times we lack the great assurance that meaning can provide because we take about eight seconds to distribute the fruits of our religion among the days of our lives. Now I am not speaking of the desirability of full-time professional religious vocation or service, for we face the same difficult qualifications as anybody else. I’m not speaking of reacting with pretended pious shock to colorful profanity or off-color stories. Neither do I refer to regular church attendance or affable acceptance of religious institutions and campaigns.

There is a spiritual dynamism generated when one allocates his powers in harmony with his inner beliefs. Jesus believed this was the secret of eternal life – see Luke 10, 25-37. For example if you belief that freedom is a religious quality, then you will put your weight on the side of freedom. You will not be deterred by easy avoidance of hard problems because of pressure from those who would yield freedom of speech, religion, press, assembly for reasons of expediency or power. But if you believe in freedom, and you are there, or your voice is heard when man’s freedom is threatened, then, as a by-product, you will find your assurance more firmly rooted.

If you believe in reason; state propositions sensibly; stand by reasonable conclusions, even when irrationality is poured on your like flood waters, then you will know yourself a stronger person inside.

If you believe in truth – not as any state announces the truth; not as any one religion proclaims the truth; not as any self-seeking institution might insist is the truth – but as you discover truth with the reason of your mind and the liberty of your soul – then you will stand by that truth as you know it; and will be moved only by new truth, not by principalities and powers. When you do, you will learn that your inner strength has grown to be equal to whatever storms may buffet you outwardly.

If you believe in human dignity as the inalienable right deserved by all people because of the nature of your belief about God or the universe, then your inner self is strengthened or weakened by your faithfulness in daily living to the principles you affirm. If you profess belief in human worth and then discredit that belief by denial of the dignity of any person, or withholding your support when your heart tells you to, then there will be a lessening of the inner assurance you need to live well in a confused and angry world.

When your religion has the power to distribute your life, you will find this is a glad or sorry experience depending on the warmth you feel inside for people in the causes you support. Early Thursday morning, the drizzling rain froze immediately on the windshield as I drove down the street. Vision was obscured for a few minutes until the warm air heated by the engine was directed by the defrosters to the glass, warming it. Then the wipers moved the ice; clear vision was re-established.

So it is with many obscure issues of life that cause collisions between people – even people who are trying to distribute their powers religiously. The warmth created within ourselves must be brought to bear on the ice of human misunderstanding so that we may see clearly and proceed safely.

If we would build the great inner assurance that life has meaning, that all our efforts are worthwhile, whether outwardly crowned with victory or tagged with defeat, we will permit religion the right to measure our problems, weigh our anxieties and distribute our lives.

One thing more – how live is your real enthusiasm for what you believe? Do not expect a full charge of inner vitality from what you believe casually and practice trivially.

The unknown visionary who composed the vivid images of the Christian New Testament book of Revelation had some blunt words to describe the half-hearted in religion: “I know your works: you are neither cold nor hot. Would that you were cold or hot! So because you are lukewarm, I will spew you out of my mouth.” We are more sophisticated and outwardly polite these days; we would not say that half-hearted religion is nauseating.

Nevertheless, when looking back on our heritage, we need to be most grateful to those who were not half-hearted or lukewarm. Their enthusiasm and commitment created and preserved the truest and most honorable traditions which can still guide and comfort those who seek religion in spirit and in truth.

None of us is given to know how this heritage will be amended and altered in our time and the ages to come. But of this we may be sure – great changes will be recorded and new heroes of mankind’s pilgrimage will contribute their lives and leadership. Of this we may be certain – we will be false neither to any man nor any faith if we live the words attributed to a Muslim who sought friendship and understanding with a Christian Crusader, seven hundred years ago, “It is certain, even if our beliefs are different, that we have the same Creator and Father, and that we must be brothers, not according to our confession, but as men.” (quoted by Heer, THE MEDIEVAL WORLD, p. 112).

Theology and Emotions: Humanism – Theism – Naturalism

February 3, 1963
Rochester

Sermon Series: Our Judeo-Christian Heritage
19. Theology and Emotions: Humanism – Theism – Naturalism

There was a time in the churches of our Universalist Unitarian denominations when considerable anxiety existed among Theists that Humanists were going to drain all the spiritual sustenance from religion; there was a parallel fear among Humanists that theistic attachment to traditional ways of believing was a great hindrance to the progress of our religions along lines of modern meaning and application. I believe that the anger generated by this encounter has been almost wholly dissipated by continuous discussion and re-statement. There has emerged a mode of understanding which encourages differences as opportunities where mutual growth is sure as long as good will prevails.

There are a series of recognitions to be made in discussing Humanist, Theist, and Naturalist, in order to make some allowance for many distinctions which could be made:

When discussing these terms in our religious context, one should concede that the qualification “so-called” might well precede Theist, Humanist, or Naturalist, for the differences are neither rigid nor crystal-clear.

Furthermore, in dealing with these subjects among [Unitarian Universalists], one admits in advance that no one definition will strike a chord of complete agreement with many – indeed, if with anyone.

Theological convictions are never produced in intellectual isolation. Our emotions exert huge influence in the final production of our total response to religion, as well as other attitudes born of experience. There is no need to hash over at length what I am sure every one of you knows – that with many among us, the response to theological discussion is one of straining for arguments to support our feelings. Our emotional reactions to these areas of theology are generally disclosed by antagonistic reactions to humanism, theism, or naturalism, as the case may be. Usually the hostile reactions are well-tamed by social control, but the feelings are unmistakable.

Therefore, when discussing theological attitudes included among us, recognition is necessary of the presence of influential emotions. The people in our gathered churches and fellowships represent a considerable variety of beliefs, and rightfully so. In the understanding of our heritage, it behooves us to recognize both the nature of our unity and the values of diversities among us. Under the power of wayward emotions, we can make the mistake of extreme defensiveness about our particular variation of theology. We are an open society in church government, but our fellowship would have a decayed center, if our guarded anxieties seriously handicapped inquiring minds and open hearts.

I. In such spirit, I would look at humanistic, theistic, and naturalistic trends of belief. Again, I am cautious, using the description, “trend of belief,” for humanists, theists, and naturalists cannot easily be sliced off and separated, as one could slice a cheese. If I seem more sympathetic to the naturalist trend, it is because this is where I stand today; although I give no assurance that this is where I will stand tomorrow.

What is religious humanism? The most lucid definitions are classical epigrams. In ancient Greece, Protagoras asserted, “Man is the measure of all things.” More than two thousand years later, Alexander Pope re-stated it, “The proper measure of mankind is man.”

Humanism posits that the only way of knowledge is human experience; that human experience is the only standards available for gauging human conduct and goals. The Humanist will usually interpret the enduring religious ideas of miracle, prayer, God, evil, immortality not as incontestable propositions, supernaturally revealed, but as human expressions and human evaluations of personal and group experiences. John Galsworthy once said, “Humanism is the creed of those who believe that within the circle of enwrapping mystery, men’s fates are in their own hands – a faith that is becoming for modern man the only possible faith.”

Most Humanists decline to use the God concept. This abstention is not usually because of militant atheism, but more often because they hold that God is a word of such wide range of meaning, from primitive notions to intellectual abstractions, that continued undefined usage only increases confusion. At times there will be asserted in an aggressive challenge to the universe. This spirit was worded splendidly by Goethe in the fragmentary poem, “Prometheus,” when the man chained on earth defies the gods on Olympus:

“Who gave me succour
Against the Titan’s over-mastering fate?
Who rescued me from death – from slavery?
Thou! - Thou, my soul burning with hallowed fire,

Hast not thyself alone accomplished all?
Yet didst thou, in thy young simplicity,
Glow with misguided thankfulness to him
That slumbers on unheeding there above!

I reverence thee?
Wherefore? Hast thou ever
Lighten’d the sorrows of the heavy-laden?
Hast thou ever stretched thy hand, to still the tears
Of the perplexed in spirit?
Was it not
Almighty Time, and ever-during Fate -
My lords and thine – that shaped and moulded me
Into the man I am?”

Other humanists have less Promethean attitudes, being content to believe that the ultimate mysteries of creation are beyond the capacity of human comprehension. The promise of supernatural salvation and the portent of supernatural, ever-lasting hellfire are just not live options for the Humanist. He needs neither such incentive nor threat. The Humanist asserts with Brutus (Julius Caesar, Act II, Sc. 1), “What need we any spur but our own best cause?”

Religious Humanists hold a candid common-sense religion, emphasizing the values of this world, the methods of science and profess full acceptance of human brotherhood.

Although Benjamin Franklin did not call himself a Humanist, an encounter he recorded in his AUTOBIOGRAPHY is apt summary of this point of view. Franklin offered accommodations to the famous George Whitefield, 18th century Wesleyan evangelist. Whitefield said that if Franklin had made the offer for Christ’s sake, he should not miss of a reward. Franklin replied, “Don’t let me be mistaken; it was not for Christ’s sake, but for yours.” Then Franklin noted “one of our common acquaintances jocosely remarked that knowing it to be the custom of saints, when they received any favor to shift the burden of the obligation off their own shoulders, and place it in Heaven, I had contrived to fix it on earth.” The humanistic spirit contrives to fix religion on earth.

The Humanist can be called [an] autonomous man who is emancipated from supernatural authority. In contrast would be the Theist - “Theonomous” man (to use the classification employed by Wilhelm Fauck, THE HERITAGE OF THE REFORMATION, p. 176-82).

II. There has been and is an abundant measure of different varieties of theistic thought in our heritage. While many religious liberals found a great lift in casting off dogmatic chains of imposed beliefs, they discovered no warrant for casting aside their faith in God. One of Dr. Fosdick's delightful stories concerned the occasion when a young man burst into the study, exclaiming, “I don’t believe in God.” The minister asked, “What is this God you don’t believe in?” When the seeker explained his rejection of a revengeful, partisan God, who would inflict all sorts of cruel punishments and operate with an eccentric system of bizarre judgments and unpredictable grace, Dr. Fossil replied, “I don’t believe in that kind of God either. Let’s talk together and discuss what kind of God we can believe in.”

Thus it is with many among us. The progress of science, discovery of the orderly ways of the universe, the amazing regularity of cosmic movements and relationships supply persuasive evidence that “the hand that made us is divine, that through the ages one increasing purpose runs.”

Many Theists believe strongly that the freedom of man is rooted in obedience to the Creator. When man abuses his freedom, deprives others of what he seeks for himself, then judgment for his wrong-doing is eventually, but inevitably pronounced by the hand of God in history. This was the great prophetic tradition. “Thus saith the Lord,” were the stirring words that indicated that man’s freedom and happiness depended on his obedience to God, no matter how violently earthly foes might oppose that divine command.

The Theist does not deny the validity of the human experience; he asserts the right to interpret human experience on the assumption that the world and all that is therein are from the Creator; that men may seek to know more about the nature of that Creator and relate to it. The Theist also insists on the importance of ethical obligations to all persons. But he would emphasize that the brotherhood of man is rooted in, even conditional on, the Fatherhood of God.

Many Theists take a somewhat dis-enchanted view of Promethean Man who mocks the gods, as did Goethe’s hero. The point could be argued that whenever man deified himself, he was soon involved in corruption and disillusionment.

The Theist views God as creator of a rational order whose spirit energizes the processes of life, wherein man evolves a reasoning mind with the ability to entertain the idea of God as perfection beyond all imperfections; as complete love beyond all faulty human efforts to love; as the God who looked upon the world and saw that it was good. Sometimes the Theist sees a laboring God, struggling at the side of man to bring about growth in wisdom and morality, a God whose closest human image has been demonstrated by all the selfless saviors of man.

The late Teilhard de Chardin, in his remarkable book, THE PHENOMENON OF MAN, makes the theistic belief both poetic and persuasive, when he says (p. 292), “In the centre, so glaring as to be disconcerting, is the uncompromising affirmation of a personal God: God as providence, directing the universe with loving, watchful care; and God the revealer, communicating to man on the level of and through the ways of intelligence .... Such an attitude in the hearts of the faithful leave the door open to, and is easily allied to, everything that is great and healthy in the universe.”

III. Those of us who see truth and inspiration in the Naturalist position sometimes irritate both Humanists and Theists because we usually do not feel greatly disturbed in being tagged as either naturalistic humanists or naturalistic theists.

First, the natural contrasts with the supernatural. The God who is outside the universe either winding it up like a clock or suddenly breaking through into the natural order from the supernatural by incarnating himself as a man, stirs little response of faith from the naturalist. The God who intrudes in the affairs of the universe to perform a miracle, either because of a prayer properly said or unfathomable whim, is not consonant with man’s present understanding of the universe.

Secondly, the naturalist looks with some skepticism on humanist doctrines that tend to deify man or inflate man’s ego tot he size that induces exaggerated postures of defiance against the universe. If they myth of the supernatural god, creating the universe by successive commands in six days, is naïve, so also is the Promethean myth which describes man as establishing humanity in defiance of the wishes of God.

If the universe no longer seems to be the creation of a potter; similarly, it no longer seems a battleground where man must establish his humanity by struggling with the gods who would deny man the right to be human.

When we surmise what gigantic distances the universe encompasses; the complexity of organic life, the superb orderliness by which the universe functions, the process of creation, growth, change decay, which to our human experience now seems eternal – then our universe appears to be governed by principles of growth operating from within the universe itself.

When we use the words, “laws of the universe,” we are not making an analogy that some outside, supernatural legislative body or monarch codified the laws. “Laws of the universe” are a mythological reference of our time to indicate what seems to us to be marvelous order. Controlled forces indicate that there are great purposes toward whose realization these creative energies are proceeding.

God is immanent in this purposive order; God is resident within the universe.

Man is part of this natural order. What we call “evolution” has brought him to this age where we are conscious of ourselves as beings with feelings, with ability to direct our own evolution, at least to a degree, with responsibilities in this wondrous universe to discover ways of living better and more truly.

I make a venture of faith, too, that this process of organic growth, this human awareness of moral achievements and the human hopes of purposes achieved, which then point to greater purpose yet, is the very nature of this immanent God who is within, not beyond.

That this immanent God is personal, in the manner of the God who walked in the Garden of Eden in the cool of the evening was a personal man-like God, I find difficult to accept. God is much more a process of growth than a bearded patriarch.

The Naturalist finds it difficult to assume that man is the center of the universe or that God must be like man, personally aware of individual trials and hopes.

Yet man’s understanding is personal, his hopes are sensitive, his struggles are conscious, his griefs are real. These feelings are as much of the totality of experience as the pivoting constellations. If God is all in all, in somewhat the manner I have attempted to describe, then personality, too, is inextricably interwoven in this whole great process of creation we call life in the universe. Joseph Addison caught the nuance of this ineffable hope in his great hymn we sang today,

“And spangled heav’ns, a shining frame,
Their great original proclaim.
The un’wearied sun from day to day
Does his Creator’s power display,
And publishes to ever land
The work of an almighty hand.”

There can be no end to the river of our theological understanding. Always there will be not only cross-currents and tricky shallows, but also abundant life pouring in from new tributaries. To sum up for today, there seem to be no theological requirements among us except the obligation to be both intelligent and sympathetic. At this stage of our religious process, indicators are that there is some measure of the Humanist, Theist, and Naturalist in almost every one of us.

The Humanist may resist, disavow, even disdain most traditional theological words and practices. But as a writer in “The New Statesman and Nation” pointed out some-time ago, with a bit of satiric glee, that even humanists fall into the trap of heresies. For example, “One-Wee-Prayerism: the shocking heresy that, in moments of acute stress and danger, one wee prayer is permissible. This may be attributed later to behaviouristic reflex responses.” More seriously, the Humanist is more an honest searcher for language that indicates more accurate meanings, than he is a ruthless destroyer of beloved beliefs.

The Theist may strain for the privilege of placing current relevancy in older words, such as the Fatherhood of God, prayer, worship. But frequently this is not as vital as he may assert. Harry Emerson Fosdick once penned with dismal accuracy the ways of many,

“They’re praising God on Sunday,
They’ll be all right on Monday,
It’s just a little habit they’ve acquired.”

But in justice to the Theist, because he treasures the name of God, seeks to relate himself to God in corporate worship, it does not mean that he is naïve, ignorant, or reactionary. More often the Theist treasures the ongoing centrality of historic language as the proper vehicle for great ideas and hopes that all men understand.

For all the somewhat vague mystical acceptance by the Naturalist of all the universe and his experience of it as the nature of God, he is willing, or should be, to change things for the specific benefit of the human order. We may say with John Burroughs, the great naturalist, “We cannot lift ourselves over the fence by our own waistbands; no more can we by searching find God, because he is not an object that has place and form and limitations. He is the fact of the fact, the life of the life, the soul of the soul, the incomprehensible the sum of all contradictions, the unity of all diversity....”

But if we Naturalists in theology were perfectly consistent, we might be content to be at ease, for what is, is God; what is, is best. But we are eager for change, most of us, and willing to be among the change-makers. Although Robert Frost might not have classified himself among the theological naturalists, he expressed our feelings perfectly, and recorded our inconsistency accurately, when he wrote in “The Lesson for Today,”

“And were an epitaph my story
I would have a short one ready for my own.
I would have written of me on my stone;
I had a lover’s quarrel with the world.”

Theists, Humanists, Naturalists, or whatever, in the contrasting shades of our differences and inconsistencies, we would be well advised that “by our fruits we shall be known.” Albert Schweitzer, the great Bible scholar, philosopher, musician and the most famous mission doctor in all history, attended a conference of missionary workers in Africa. Schweitzer took little part in the theological discussions. He preached, briefly and simply as is his life-time habit. Following the service, when he was requested for an opinion of a theological matter, a native preacher condescendingly interrupted and “pointed out that the matter was outside the doctor’s province, ‘because he is not a theologian as we are.’”

We can similarly let our theological pretensions – which may not seem as incisive and profound to others as they do to ourselves – lead us into insignificance. We have not arrived, any of us, at the whole truth, finally revealed. Nor will all the tasks that persons are capable of doing await the Shangri-La when theologically, we will all be of one mind. In the meantime, we will be known more fully by the way our beliefs are reflected in the kind of persons we are and the tasks we try to do well.

This is the dimension which would enable us to chant the refrain known to the Negro slaves of the sea islands of Georgia, as they strained over the oars, rowing their boat to shore,

“When your dream is dead and gone,
Keep on movin;
Dream once more and travel on,
Keep on movin.”

The Migration of Faiths – The Newer Frameworks of Universalism

January 27, 1963
Rochester

Sermon Series: Our Judeo-Christian Heritage
18. The Migration of Faiths – The Newer Frameworks of Universalism

Religious faiths migrate from culture to culture and from age to age. Ideas take on some of the coloration of different cultural settings. The intrusion of the new or different faith can alter the territory into which it moves. There are newer frameworks fit for our Unitarian Universalist faith if we have the imagination and courage to express a religious creation which will both challenge the critic and sustain those who are hungry for moral relevance.

Will you consider first the attractive possibilities and realistic limitations on Unitarian Universalism as a “world faith,” or as a “faith for one world.” Then, will you look at the new areas of discovery where our faith should be in the scene, clearly and forcefully.

Many among us have urged fuller recognition that our faith has grown beyond Christianity. Most of us believe that Christianity is one among many religions of the world. All the religions which man has served have attempted to comprehend the world of man’s experience; to express that meaning in scripture, sacrifice, meditation or prayer; and to list man’s ethical obligations which arise because of the nature of the faith. Recognizing the reality of different emphases and convictions, we have asserted the right of each man to seek his own expression of religious faith.

This recognition that neither Christianity nor any other singular religion has sole claim to truth or a unique right to the obedience of all men has led some to hope that it would lead one day to faith for one world. From the many, the best would be selected to create a faith gathered from all religious cultures, soliciting the allegiance of all who have dreamed of one faith in one world. The acceleration of the meeting and mixing of cultures has stimulated expectations among those who cherish this dream.

There are also those who reject flatly the hope of one faith in one world. They point out with considerable insight that a great religion cannot be created by selecting the dishes that appear most appetizing in a smörgåsbord of religions from all times and places. Religion may be one human experience, both individual and social, which cannot by synthesized.

There is much to be said for this dis-enchanted appraisal of one faith for one world. Every religion bears the scars of its origins in geography, climate, historical beginnings, and usually, the imprint of a great founding personality. To blend the best of all these into a faith both relevant and satisfying would be neither possible nor desirable. Furthermore, because tastes and needs differ, there could be no common consent as to the most desirable parts of Judaism, Christianity, Buddhism, Islam, Hinduism and the historic religions of China to make up the truest and best religion for one world.

But the formidable assignment of synthesizing a world religion need not prevent us from appreciating the best of all historic religions. In all honesty, the “best” is what appeals to the individual. Usually, but not always, this is the body of humanitarian wisdom and ethical urgency found in the great religions. Sometimes we are encouraged by an emphasis which seems universal – the Golden Rule, for example. Other times we are appreciative of religious expressions which lift up the spirits of others, even though we do not respond similarly. Then again, we may acquire affection and respect for the unlimited commitment of men and women of high dedication in any faith.

However, in all candor, this is not a newer framework for our faith. There are still persons living who remember the World Parliament of Religions in Chicago in 1893 and there have been similar subsequent meetings. Many of us have been taught all our lives not only the separate origins and practices, but also the great worth of the many religions.

The historian, Friedrich Heer (THE MEDIEVAL WORLD, p. 119-20) tells the remarkable story of religion at the court of Genghis Khan, ruler of the Mongol Empire, at the high water mark of its power in the 13th century. When European representatives journeyed to the court, they were astonished at the religious tolerance which prevailed. In a period when free discussion of religion was decidedly limited in Europe, the Mongols, most of whom were Shamanists, permitted Buddhists, Taoists, Confucianists, Manicheans, Jews, Nestorian Christians and others to exist [beside their own]. Genghis Khan was inclined to Taoists persuasion, but in the royal family were numbered in-laws who were Nestorian Christians.

Marco Polo, who remained in Mongol service for fifteen years (1261-75) “reported that Kublai Khan, Emperor of the Mongols at Peking honored Jesus, Mohammed, Moses and Buddha, and allowed himself to be censed on his birthday by the priests of all four religions.”

I have no doubt that we may seek to be appreciative of all the world’s religions, willing to be taught by their best, incorporating what we might adopt as our own; being warned by the worst of what we should disavow. There is great value for us in international relations with other religions, particularly with whom we hold many common beliefs, such as the International Association of Religious Freedom and Liberal Christianity. May the day come when such religious appreciation widens without becoming shallow.

But without diminishing the importance of the framework of world religions, I believe there is a larger framework more demanding of our talents and more needful of a deep-held faith. There is a framework of new realities and startling discoveries which badly needs the addition of a more creative faith than of any religion which I have knowledge, including our own. In the 17th century, Descartes wrote, “Traveling is almost like conversing with men of other centuries.” Sometimes I think worship is almost like conversing with men of other centuries. This is praiseworthy as long as we relate religion to our life today – the filling of today’s needs; the solution of today’s problems. Let me remind you of some of the pieces in that wider frame which a religion for today should be enhancing with meanings that will begin to measure up to the need.

Consider the biological sciences, the discoveries achieved in the lifetime of all of us and the constant possibility of break-through to amazing knowledge of the origin of life. The evolution debates which reached a peak of controversy in the Scopes trial less than forty years ago, seem almost antiquarian in light of the present standards of research.

To cite just one example of numerous ones constantly available to us, Dr. Solomon W. Golomb of the C.I.T. Jet Propulsion Laboratory spoke this week on the possibility of organic life in outer space. Explaining that he considers organic life “to be a systems concept, and that the particular components used to realize this concept may be quite different, planet to planet, ... Dr. Golumb explained that the replication of organic life on earth requires long molecules of nucleic acids, which he referred to as the punched tape that contains complete instructions for making all parts of an organism....” (Christian Science Monitor). How rudimentary, even primitive the old Ape-Man arguments seem in light of cosmic evolution. “What is man that Thou art mindful of him?”

Consider the macrocosm – the giantism of the universe whose enormity overwhelms the most extravagant imagination. Reviewing (S.R. 1/26/63) Sir Bernard Lovell’s book, THE EXPLORATION OF OUTER SPACE, scientist Ralph Lapp describes the range of the radio-telescope, “our own modest galaxy, a cartwheeling configuration of some 100 billion stars, is but a pinprick of light in the firmament of space. For every person on planet Earth, there are a billion galaxies beyond our Milky Way. Light waves (or radio waves) take eight minutes to reach us from the Sun. They take eight billion years to travel across the “abyss of time” to touch our galactic shore. The radio telescope looks backward in time seeing things as they were billions of years ago. It is possible, though by no means sure, that this backward look will decide between the conflicting theories about the evolution of the universe – whether it began as a big bang and since has been expanding and will sometime fade away, or whether it had no beginning and will have no end but is always in the process of continuous creation.” “Little lamb who made thee” amid these vast proportions?

Consider the microcosm – the elusive invisibility of uncountable billions of bacteria and virus made known by the electron microscope and intricate analysis. We no longer speculate about how many angels can find space on the head of a pin; we know that staggering numbers of invisible species exist there, everywhere else and always have, but never known to man when he pondered long ago theologies of creation and destiny.

Consider other parts of the framework – the insights about our strange, individual dispositions – our impulses springing from sub-conscious motives, our rationalizations, our turbulent emotions, many times aggravated in their effects by our strenuous efforts to conceal them. Hemingway (I think) wrote a short story about a kitchen helper who, holding a knife against himself, asserted that he had the courage to kill himself – this exhibition for the purpose of trying to impress the cook. When the cook scornfully called his bluff, the helper plunged the knife in a successful suicide. The tidal emotion in his ebbing life was a huge regret that pride was the cause, not the wish to die.

Not only are we realizing the necessity of dealing more ably with our destructive emotions, but also many perceptive observers see a great many people getting less and less real gratification from their work. Occupational boredom can be one of the most de-humanizing influences, because we need to feel that our work is creative; we need a zest for living and these are hard to come by for many who push one button, pull one lever or assemble one spring. Dr. George MacLeod, who reestablished the religious community on the island of Iona, frequently takes one of the least attractive tasks in the community – cleaning the latrines. He says, “So that I will not be tempted to preach irrelevant sermons about the dignity of labor.” (quoted by Robert McAfee Brown, THE SPIRIT OF PROTESTANTISM, p. 116).

Then there is the newer framework of our expanding urban metropolis. This is a commonplace assertion that Boston, Massachusetts to Washington, D.C. now comprises one vast urban complex and there are other continuous urban city areas. The suburbs in the opinion of some planners are doomed to become just as much an asphalt wasteland as many decaying inner cities. The “slurb” is a new term for the suburb interlaced with choked expressways, embellished with the neon glow of shopping plazas, characterized by weary mothers endlessly transporting children and fathers who leave when dawn breaks and re-appear when night falls, if they are not traveling out-of-town.

There is rootlessness and de-personalization. One of the most irritating volumes of correspondence I am currently pursuing is trying to straighten out a mix-up of oil company billings. The machines made an error. Another man and I have the same number on our credit cards. Our names are different, he lives in Yonkers and I in Rochester, but what seems agonizingly difficult to overcome is the fact that the same number appears on both our cards and the god of machines seems reluctant to grant his grace. The telephone companies warn us that soon we will no longer be able to dial Hamilton 6 or Chapel 4. A reporter inquired, would you have picked up the novel, Butterfield 8, if the title had been “288?” Somewhere in the news, there was an item, more pathetic than amusing about the lonely one in the city who would phone the automatic time recording, not to find out the hour or temperature, but just to hear the sound of a human voice.

Then the most vital part of the newer framework, the achievement of human harmony in a world where the perils of complete incineration are so obvious that they have become trite. This is our road to Jericho and the parable of the Good Samaritan is not easy to apply. One of the points of the parable that Jesus told was that the “good” one, the one who helped his neighbor was a Samaritan, despised by the audience that listened to Jesus. Nor do we have a follow-through wherein we are informed how the Jericho road may have been patrolled to prevent the re-occurrence of crime.

The newer framework of our lives confronts us with a most difficult paradox: how to we keep order on the world road and how, to quote a writer from the War/Peace report (Jan. 63), “how do we incorporate into our emotions and ethics a word, ‘multimegadeath war” - megadeath, the shorthand for one million dead?”

Thus we have a double framework for our times: (a) the emphasis on awareness that one’s religion is among many in the world, each with something to teach, each with a good deal to learn about wisdom, kindness and insight; (b) but more vital to achieving a mature faith is to confront the newer framework for human life which has been created by science, politics, economics, industry, social change and welfare possibilities so awful we shrink from candid appraisal, and peace hopes so potential with human advance that we dare not trust our visions.

If individual or group religion is to claim the name of universal, then it cannot retreat to any position that does not deal with this world of today:

The universe is immeasurably large beyond our most advanced probing instruments.

The universe is incredibly small; our most delicate microscopes but hint at ultimate components.

Energy and matter are varieties of one reality. To put it another way, the material and immaterial are different appearances of the same unity.

We face the depersonalizing agonies of occupational boredom in a “slurb” earmarked by exhaustive haste in trivial pursuits.

The Jericho road today is far more perilous; the Samaritan’s obligations [are] far more ambiguous than the situation of old which stimulated the wonderful parable of Jesus.

All these great potentials and ominous portents are our world. Unless our faith migrates into these areas with sustaining qualities which help man wrestle and master this strange world of his creation, then it is a religion of antiquarian interest, but little current relevance.

Most of us would agree that right living is more important than right belief. But it is also true that we are under the mandate of our predominant beliefs and ethical codes, as well as being pushed by our buried feelings. Furthermore, our hearts inquire for meanings beyond correct conduct. We are blessed with capacity to think and imagine, and thought and imagination seek meanings which transcend the profit of the hour or the loss of the day.

Let me pose three questions which seem perennial in the human adventure, but which deserve honest interpretation in these newer frameworks of Universalism:

First, in our experience, what is there that pulls us toward the idea that men have called God? For most of us, there is little excitement or fascination in fencing with the allegorical or symbolic interpretations of the creation story of Genesis. Long ages ago a myth took form to explain how the world and all there is in it came to be. It is an arresting myth in epic style. But it will not satisfy the hungers of reasoning man today.

In our experience, what idea of God is both comprehensive enough to include the vast reaches of stellar space, the incredible minuteness of chemical structures, and at some time sensitive [and] personal enough so that we will feel at home in this universe, our dwelling place?

It may have been a shepherd singer who was close to nature, morning and night, who first sang (Ps 104):

“O my Lord, thou art very great!
Thou art clothed with honor and majesty,
who coverest thyself with light as a garment,
who hast stretched out the heavens like a tent,
who has laid the beams of thy chambers on the waters,
who makest the clouds of thy chariots,
who rides on the wings of the wing,
who makest thy winds thy messengers,
fire and flame thy ministers
Thou didst set the earth on its foundations,
So that it should never be shaken.”

To us this is wonderful religious poetry; to the Psalmist, it was first-hand religious experience; there is an infinite distance between the two concepts. We cannot recapture his religious experience; we cannot accept his simplified view of God’s hand in Nature. We cannot dismiss our knowledge and language and go back to Judean hills and thrill to the overarching sky as we tend sheep.

Yet we will lose if we fail to embrace the world of our experience; come to terms with its creating power, its cosmic processes of growth and change, the thrill of deep space and the mystery of molecular structure.

Secondly, in our experience, how do we reconcile the problem of evil? In the Old Testament, Job is the superb biblical example of punishment without crime. God and the Devil wager that Job, the obedient servant of God, can be driven to repudiate his faith by the constant visitation of unmerited suffering. The wager is carried out. Job loses his wealth; his children die tragically; he is afflicted with a skin disease; his wife bids him, “curse God and die.” Job denies his personal guilt, but refuses to repudiate God. The dilemma in Biblical Job is left unsolved, but the effort is magnificent.

Today, the problem is no less, even though we cannot take as either real or humane the artificial device of God and the Devil wagering on man’s capacity to endure suffering. But, there is still unmerited suffering without measure in our world; every family experiences it; every one of you could cite dozens of examples: children incinerated in Hiroshima, girls strangled in Boston or killed violently in our suburbs, the dust of millions of innocent victims of the extermination camps clouds the brightness of civilization’s promise.

In Archibald McLeish’s modern rewrite of Job, “JB,” the answers are not adequate for everyone. J.B. and his wife, Sarah, find their consolation in none of the accepted ways of salvation – orthodox religion, psychoanalysis, or Marxism. They find meaning and dignity in human love. Sarah says,

“Blow on the coal of my heart.
The candles in the churches are out.
The lights have gone out in the sky.
Blow on the coal of the heart
And we’ll see, by and by.”

There is immeasurable potential of evil which could be unleashed on hundreds of millions of persons, who do not deserve this overflowing cup of suffering. Can such disaster be accepted while [we are] still striving mightily to re-assert human dignity and find goodness life?

In order to arrive at strong religion, to such ethical discourse we may address ourselves; to deal with such issues may bring us great riches of faith.

Thirdly, in our experience, how do we deal with the meaning of life, beyond whatever individual share of years, happiness and sorrow may be our individual lot?

The sixth chapter of Isaiah describes the overpowering religious experience of that young prophet. He knew the experience of God; he realized the purpose of life for him; he accepted the assignment that purpose implied. Such experience is personal; its impact and commitment cannot be assimilated secondhand.

Images of Biblical Heaven and Hell, doctrines of last things, when the world will be ended with a supernatural deluge of destruction, one final and irrevocable day of judgment – these archaic conclusions no longer have more than passing meaning for most of us. What in our lives stirs us to deal with the meaning of the universe of our experience, the purpose of life – its creation, growth, decay, death?

What is more empty than the life of a man studded with achievement, furnished by acquisitions and decorated with diversion, but who has never taken the time to wrestle with the meaning of life? But we know also that in every age, men and women have grasped their own experiences and derived from it meanings which enabled them to live life with gladness and die death with courage.

To such purposeful discourse we may address ourselves; to deal with such issues may bring great riches of faith.

These newer frameworks for faith have little room for a bland collectivity of inoffensive religion and inert ethics. There is little room for mindless comfort. We have a task to use the resources of civilized goodness in confronting the world of our experience to construct a faith offering enough serious options to gather loyalties from all segments of our diverse and pluralistic world. I would conclude with Tennyson’s forward-looking lines from Morte D’Arthur,

“The old order changeth, yielding place to new,
And God fulfills himself in many ways,
Lest one good custom should corrupt the world.”

Church and State – The Real Issues

January 20, 1963
Rochester

Sermon Series: Our Judeo-Christian Heritage
17. Church and State – The Real Issues

In our country, churches exist side by side in relative harmony, even though a world of differences may exist between their unlike assumptions as to the source of truth and their widely differing interpretations of religious experience. But one controversy seems fated for continuing acrimony: the serious cleavage of opinion about the “wall of separation between Church and State,” to use Jefferson’s immortal phrase.

That religious institutions should divide us so bitterly on the many facets of this central issue is regrettable, but the issues are serious, not trivial. In King Henry V (sc. 1, act iv.), Shakespeare has the king say just before battle,

“There is some soul of goodness in things evil,
would men observingly distill it out.”

Church-state controversies frequently are pitched on bitter exchanges of hostile argument, and that may be bad, but there is always the opportunity in such confrontations to distill out goodness or wisdom, to clarify one’s convictions and even dissolve prejudices if discourse can be kept on the level of mutual goodwill.

Church-state relationships represent a wide spectrum of differences, some routine, some dramatic. The use of the Bible as the sanction for court testimony, the saluting of the flag in public schools, the compulsory nature of school attendance, chaplains in the armed services and Congress – all these and many more touch lightly or heavily on the church-state controversy.

But in our country at least, the most far-reaching of present church-state issues involves the public schools. For this reason I would confine my sermon today to aspects of this significant struggle.

Although the matter of public aid to parochial schools seems the most crucial issue, there are many other practices in the public schools which are attacked by many of us as transgressions of the wall of separation and defended by many others as inseparable from our “American way of life.”

The issues are not only controversial, but also confusing. We are all aware that the New York State Regents’ Prayer was declared unconstitutional some months ago. However, should you be a public school teacher in Arkansas, Alabama, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Kentucky, Maine, Massachusetts, New Jersey, or Tennessee, you are required by statute to read the Bible in public school classes. But if you moved to Illinois, Louisiana, Nebraska, South Dakota, Washington, or Wisconsin, you would be informed that state courts had ruled in specific instances that Bible reading was unconstitutional. If your teaching location should be Arizona, California, New Mexico, Nevada, Oregon or Vermont, you would find no instances where state courts had declared Bible reading unconstitutional, but you would find that the Attorney General had issued the opinion that Bible reading might be found unconstitutional.

Here in New York, and Colorado, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio and Texas, you would discover that the state courts had upheld the constitutionality of Bible reading, even though no statute exists in these states to require the practice.

Other states – Indiana, Kansas, North Dakota and Oklahoma do not require a teacher to read the Bible, but they permit him to do so. One state, Mississippi, has a constitutional prohibition forbidding the “exclusion of the Holy Bible.” (One wonders how loudly the Mississippians read Acts, 17/26, “And (God) hath made of one blood all nations of men to dwell upon all the face of the earth.”)

Other states have varieties of degrees of permissiveness for recital of the Lord’s Prayer and the Ten Commandments. (See SRL summary, 11/17/62, quoting the July 1962 issue of “SCHOOL LIFE.”)

There is common agreement that the disputed issue of permitting public assistance to parochial schools was one of considerable influence in preventing the passage of a Federal Aid to Education bill in the last Congress. The prevailing opinion is that this same condition will prevail in the present Congress. Congressional opinion is sufficiently divided so that either defenders or opponents of Federal aid to parochial schools can prevent legislation if their wishes are denied. There are of course other considerations in the passage or defeat of a Federal Aid to Education bill, but the emotional pitch generated by the possibility of including aid to parochial schools is the most intense.

There are fundamental issues underlying the whole structure of church-state disputes. The basic controversies can be divided as follows: constitutional, cultural, control.

First consider how frequently in the last few decades the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled on cases involving religion and the state.

The jurisdictional right of the U.S. Supreme Court in matters involving education is still disputed by some because education is the prerogative of the several states, not the federal government. But the First Amendment has been held to apply to state educational matters through the Fourteenth Amendment.

In 1925, a far-reaching decision was handed down in “Pierce vs. Society of Sisters.” Oregon had a state policy compelling all children to attend public schools. The U.S. Supreme Court decided unanimously that the Oregon law was unconstitutional. Mr. Justice McReynolds wrote the opinion, concluding, “The fundamental theory of liberty upon which all governments in this union repose excludes any general power of the state to standardize its children by forcing them to accept instruction from public teachers only. The child is not the mere creature of the state; those who nurture him and direct his destiny have the right, coupled with the high duty, to recognize and prepare him for additional obligations.”

The Everson case was the first of far-reaching decisions in recent years. This dispute involved reimbursement from public funds to parents for bus transportation of children to schools, including those whose children attended Catholic parochial schools. Mr. Justice Black delivered the majority opinion, concluding that the wall of separation between church and state was not breached by the township paying for such bus transportation.

The dissenting opinion of the minority in the decision was closely argued by Mr. Justice Rutledge, Justices Frankfurter, Jackson, and Burton agreeing.

The decision in the McCollum case in 1948 raised a storm. In Illinois, private religious groups had been permitted to come into the public schools during regular teaching hours and conduct religious classes. This practice was declared unconstitutional. Reverberations from this decision may still be heard.

A few years later (1952), the Zorach case recorded a majority of the Supreme Court Justices ruling that the released time for public school students was constitutional when the religious classes were held in locations removed from the school buildings and school grounds.

Mr, Justice Douglas in the majority opinion said in the next-to-last paragraph, “The (government) may not coerce anyone to attend church, to observe a religious holiday or to take religious instruction. But it can close its doors or suspend its operations as to those who want to repair to their religious sanctuary for worship and instruction, no more than that is undertaken here....”

In a strongly-worded dissent, Mr. Justice Black said in part, “Here the sole question is whether New York can use its compulsory education laws to help religious sects get attendants presumably too unenthusiastic to go unless moved to do so by the pressure of this state machinery.”

Last Summer, the Supreme Court ruled that the New York Regents’ Prayer was a violation of the First Amendment.

We are probably too close to these events to ascertain whether a consistent policy is being established by the different decisions. If the Supreme Court seemed to be erecting a higher wall in the McCollum and Regents’ Prayer decisions, so it might also be said they were weakening the wall of separation between church and state in the Everson and Zorach cases.

We may know more of the emerging pattern this year, for the U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to decide two cases of great significance. The Court will review a 4/3 decision by the Court of Appeals of Maryland which upheld Bible verses and the recitation of the Lord’s Prayer in the Baltimore Public Schools. In another case, state officers have appealed a federal court ruling in Pennsylvania that Bible reading exercise in public schools is unconstitutional.

I am one who believes that a strong wall is as necessary a bulwark between church and state as other provisions in the Bill of Rights insure other freedoms. Therefore, I devoutly trust that the Court will follow the McCollum and Regents’ Prayer precedents, rather than the Everson and Zorach precedents.

Secondly, when taking this position advocating the strictest possible separation between church and state, one must confront the argument from culture. This contention usually goes something like this, “This is a Christian nation; religion is part of our American way of life; to take it out of public schools is to rob us of an essential part of our heritage; the effect of such decisions as rendered in the McCollum and Regents’ Prayer cases is to make our culture secular where it was always the intent of our Founding Fathers that this nation should be a religious nation.”

This may seem a persuasive argument when stated in attractive generalizations, but serious flaws are revealed when the case is examined more closely.

Our heritage discloses that Christianity is not one religion, but many. There are religions of ecclesiastical authority and religions of individual intuition; there are religions of reason and religions of revelation; there are Christian religions pre-occupied with theology and Christian religions emphasizing liturgical traditions; there are Christian religions devoted to the sacraments and Christian religions where the preaching of the “word of God” is central.

When one narrows down to Protestantism, then there are four main divisions, each with sub-groups, Lutheranism, Anglicanism, Calvinism and the free churches of which there are at least 250 recognized denominations in our country today.

It is far more accurate to say we are a nation of many religions than a religious nation, for the former is the authentic cultural condition. Furthermore, the atheist or agnostic has no limitations on his citizenship or civil rights and has a right not to have a religion associated with his citizenship.

Jefferson and Madison were primary in the securing of religious freedom in the United States. Jefferson’s proposal to the Virginia [legislature] passed after seven years of opposition and consideration.

Madison was effective in two basic ways. In the Virginia Assembly of 1784-85, he presented his famous “Memorial and Remonstrance to the Religious Rights of Man.” This was an attack on a bill which would “establish a provision for teachers of the Christian religion.” Later on in the career of this great American, he was responsible for including the right of freedom of religion in the First Amendment of the Bill of Rights.

It is important to remember that these founders of religious freedom would not have pleased those persons who today exhort us to adhere to our heritage as a “Christian” or even monotheistic nation.

When Jefferson said “free,” he meant free, as attested by his “Notes on Virginia,” “The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others. But it does me no injury for my neighbors to say there are twenty gods or no God.” Jefferson asserted that to compel outward conformity to any religion would force neighbors to be hypocrites. (See CORNERSTONES OF RELIGIOUS FREEDOM IN AMERICA, Joseph L. Blau, Beacon Press, p. 72 ff.)

Many if not most of our Founding Fathers were immediately inspired by the Rationalists of the Enlightenment and by the humanitarian goals of the American and French revolutions. “My mind is my church,” said Thomas Paine. To find strong influences on the American Revolution immediately flowing from the organized churches of the time is no easy task. I see more influence from the Deists, Franklin, Washington, the Adamses, Jefferson, Madison, Paine, than the organized churches of the time.

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Supplementary Note: In a [post]-sermon conversation, a qualification or correction was made which I accept. By stating the case as I did, it could be implied that Colonial America comprised two groups: Christian orthodox and “unbelievers” or “Agnostics.” This was not true, for there were many who defended the position of religious freedom who did not fit either category.

The Jewish settlers would be a notable example. Their Hebrew scriptures were adopted or appropriated by the Christian orthodox as the “Old Testament.” Furthermore, Jewish immigrants, particularly in the New Amsterdam Colony, had achieved certain religious freedoms long before the Revolution.

The majority joined the Colonial movement, and their ideals and goals strengthened and assisted the Revolution by military service and financing and the establishment of the Republic.

I would certainly affirm the continuity of the “Judeo” portion of our Judeo-Christian heritage as well as later Christian developments.

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Church historian, Wilhelm Pauck, makes the point, “one of the great achievements of the democratic state is the establishment of religious tolerance, or the freedom of religion. This fact confronts the Church with an opportunity that it has not yet fully realized. It still has to perform important tasks in connection with religious liberty. This is due mainly to the fact that it was by political and not ecclesiastical action that the practice of tolerance was secured. To be sure, the fathers of American democracy were influenced by Christian ideas and movements when they provided for the freedom of religion, but these represented radical minorities within Christendom, and not the larger churches. Indeed, the major impetus toward tolerance came as a reaction against the practice of persecution of religious minorities by majorities, and it was inspired by a view of religion that was critical of the traditional religious and social reasons for intolerance.” (THE HERITAGE OF THE REFORMATION, The Free Press of Glencoe, p. 251).

If we are depriving our young people in the public school by not teaching religion, the mistake is in not teaching ABOUT religion. Our heritage is too diverse to attempt to teach A religion. when taught by public school teachers properly qualified, academically, I can envision considerable value in teaching young people the history of religions and the story of the religions of the world; instructing them not only about the contribution of Christian saints but also the debt we owe agnostic seers; not only the power of ecclesiastical authority but also of the strength of the free religious mind; not only what people world-wide have believed about prayer, but also pointing to the central core of ethical conviction found in all the world’s great religions.

I have no confidence that this proposal would be at all to the liking of those who want “religion” taught in the public schools, but I am sure such a broad and inquiring point of view is more in keeping with the spirit and actions of the Founding Fathers, who cherished reason, knowledge, and freedom.

Thirdly, and most important of all the basic propositions I ask you to consider today, is the necessity that the citizenry control public education. Other religions operate private parochial schools, as well as the Roman Catholic Church, but the millions of children enrolled in Catholic schools, compared to the small numbers in all others, make the primary issue one involving the educational philosophy of the Roman Catholic Church. As Mr. Justice Jackson said in his dissent on the Everson case, the “whole historic conflict in temporal policy between the Catholic Church and non-Catholics comes to a focus in their respective school policies.” (THE SUPREME COURT AND EDUCATION, edited by David Fellman, Columbia University Press, p. 19).

Mark Twain once said, “I have been educated to enmity toward everything that is Catholic, and sometimes in consequence of this, I find it much easier to discover Catholic faults than Catholic virtues.” (ON THE DAMNED HUMAN RACE, p. 159). While I have not been educated to enmity toward everything Catholic, I have been taught a critical view of the historical basis for the numerous claims for the religious supremacy of the Roman Catholic Church. It is fair to assume that a person who believes in the right of free judgment in a democratic church organization will have difficulties fully appreciating the feelings of the convinced believer of the authoritarian church. Nevertheless, when a religious institution insistently seeks public benefits, sanction is created for a person to question the claims people or churches make for special favors from public institutions while at the same time asserting loyalty to private religious institutions, attitudes, and spirit.

If it were only the right of the family to send children to a religious parochial school, one could have no present question about the legality. The Supreme Court’s unanimous decision in the Oregon case clearly defines such right.

It is also true that any family which invests a significant portion of its income in educational expenditures and reserves can appreciate the heavy financial burden carried by the family which is taxed by the state for the public schools, but whose children attend private religious schools because the rules of the religion require this. The plea is made that this is either double taxation or taxation for which they receive no benefit.

But this freedom to withhold children from the public school carried no additional right to claim public assistance or exemption for private religious reasons. Nor in recognizing the right of a church to operate a parochial school does the state also provide the financial means to ensure the quality and instruction that the parents and parochial system would like to have.

The cost of maintaining an enlarged public school system would increase greatly were the parochial schools to disband. Of course there would have to be immediate, large-scale re-adjustments should such an unlikely event occur.

But the withdrawals to parochial school are voluntary. If there were a return to the public school system, the public would have to provide the facilities and program.

In most of America, the public school is the responsibility of local school boards, functioning under state law in accordance with rulings from time to time by the U.S. Supreme Court. School boards are elected by that portion of the public willing to vote. Budgets must be responsible and adequate fiscally, curriculum and instruction must measure up, or the public can vote out the school board, which is the public authority over school administration.

There is no indication whatsoever that the parochial school system is similarly accountable to the public. The educational administration and policies are directed by the clergy; the Bishop is head of the Diocese, including the parochial educational system. In a debate in Boston a few years ago, Methodist Bishop G. Bromley Oxnam phrased the issue cogently when he said, “Public responsibility for support of education implies public responsibility for policies that are supported.”

Pope Pius XI, in an encyclical dated January 16, 1930, is quoted as saying, “for a school to be acceptable it is necessary that the whole teaching and organization of the school – namely the teachers, the curriculum, and the books – be governed by the Christian spirit, under the maternal direction and vigilance of the Church.” (“Public Aid to Parochial Education,” Harvard Law School Forum, 1951).

I do not question the right of the Pope to so direct the communicants of his faith in their educational procedures. But I see no legal or other justification for supporting such a sectarian school system with public taxes, either by direct support, or special tax exemptions for parents of parochial school children. Public monies should mean public control, the right to apply public taxes; make public appropriations; the right of political recall of school boards; and the obligation of public accountability by administrators and teachers.

The basic issues of church and state are constitutionality, the cultural meaning of freedom of religion as it was intended in the Bill of Rights and as it has been clarified by court decisions and the right of public control of school systems supported by public monies.

The issues will remain with us for a long time. I have no hesitancy in supporting the wall of separation of church and state. Our colonies were never united in one religion. Religious pluralism has always existed here. Memories of persecution were fresh in the [minds] of many revolutionists. The wisdom of Jefferson and Madison was not constructed of phantoms, but on the premise of religious freedom in a land where men and women of fervent faiths and men and women of little religious faith had to work together, fight together, sacrifice together and pledge their lives and honor to a system which would achieve both abundance and justice. The goals have not been fully achieved, but we have come a long way.

In the Zorach case, Mr. Justice Jackson, in a dissent, said this – and his words might well be engraved near the top of the principles we hold dear - “My evangelistic brethren confuse an objection to compulsion with an objection to religion. It is possible to hold a faith with enough confidence to believe that what should be rendered to God does not need to be collected and decided by Caesar.”

The Disciplines of a Liberal

January 13, 1963
Rochester

Sermon Series: Our Judeo-Christian Heritage
16. The Disciplines of a Liberal

In this sermon series on our Judeo-Christian heritage, it has seemed to some of you that I have been working both sides of a street named “contradiction.” It has been correctly perceived that I have upheld two values as primary: (1) the sovereignty of individual conscience and (2) the supremacy of a community which has agreed on a covenant binding all members. I have praised such exemplars of independent conscience as Savonarola and such examples of community as the congregational system.

Guidance by individual conscience can create as well as solve problems. There is difficulty in being a free individual in an organization, which because it is a social structure, necessarily places certain limitations on its members.

The resolution of this seeming contradiction is found only in the disciplines which the liberal person is willing to impose upon himself. Therefore, I would have you consider freedom not only as a sovereign right, but also as a corporate restraint. The consequences of this two-sided definition provide us with temptations to resist and principles to follow.

Our religious traditions have brought us to the common affirmation that the authority for religious truth grows out of our personal convictions. Most of us believe, too, that all beliefs must be held tentatively. Truth ever moves on. Because of this tentative picture of conviction, we must recognize that a certain character of relationship with others must be maintained in order to keep a balance between authority of truth that is known and the authority of truth that is to be known. There is an old proverb from the Near East, “when thy purpose is effected, beginneth its decay.” The wisdom of this old saying is found in its positive implication that we need new goals and re-defined purposes to urge us forward constantly.

Everyone has a need to be free. The infant struggles against restraint; the child wants to explore beyond the limits set by parents; the adolescent rebels against the ideas of the preceding generation; the young person is eager to try out newer ways which may make life more abundant and exciting than it was for his parents or grandparents. When the Pharisees criticized the disciples of Jesus for harvesting grain on the Sabbath, Jesus reminded them that David had broken the ritual laws in order that his men might eat when hungry. When Jesus concluded, “the Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath,” he made a double emphasis that we have a right to change old rules and that this freedom is to be used to meet human need.

This right to be free is dramatically illustrated by the line of prophets who obeyed the “still, small voice,” even when that obedience required rebellion against an established order. Amos, Elijah, Judas Maccabeus, Jesus, Servetus, Joan of Arc – in these and many other instances, we see demonstrated the human need to be free, individually.

“This above all, to thine own self be true. Then it shall follow as night follows day, thou canst be false to any man.” When Polonius, pompous and self-righteous, gave this advice to his son, Laertes, he did not deal with the difficulty that while we may not be false to our fellow-man in being true to our own self, we may be in direct conflict with the self that our fellow-man feels to be his true self. This is the rub, for even as we have need for freedom, we need fellowship also. Few of us choose the life of the lone wolf or the recluse. Thoreau left town to go to his cabin on the shore of Walden Pond as an experiment in living alone, but the time came when he returned to Concord.

In the precarious balance between the necessities of both individual freedom and corporate fellowship, we should resist the temptation to remain quiet because of a false notion of tolerance when ideas or programs are advanced which violate our individual convictions.

In John Steinbeck’s novel, THE WINTER OF OUR DISCONTENT (p. 174), the hero, Ethan, listening to the jets whine overhead in the night muses, “it’s not the jets so much, but what their purpose is. When a condition or problem becomes too great, humans have the protection of not thinking about it. But as it goes inward and mixes up with a lot of things already there and what comes out is discontent and uneasiness, guilt and a compulsion to get something done – anything before it is all gone.”

Tolerance is a vice, not a virtue, when it is a gag, self-imposed on the excuse that harmony may thereby be maintained. As Steinbeck observed, such mistaken silence goes inward and creates anxiety and ill-conceived action. Freedom is not simply the right of choice, but the obligation to choose between important and distinctive alternatives, clarifying the decision by spirited argument.

If we cannot accept differences of opinion among us, then the foundation of our liberal faith is built upon sand and not upon the rock. Conformity and submission for the sake of a superficial harmony does no service either to the liberal church or a free America.

In this dilemma between freedom and covenant, the second temptation to resist is to be content with shallow thinking. Because we tolerate one another’s differences of opinion, we are tempted to deceive ourselves that it is not important what we believe. In our traditions, the church that submerges differences will sacrifice much of the freshness and value of the enterprise particularly if it stops thinking about subjects, fearful that deep thought may disclose profound differences. The value of the liberal institution to ourselves, to our children and to all who need faith and freedom in faith will be lost if our thinking is predominantly shallow.

Then there is the temptation to anarchy where everyone being true to his own self takes off in a different direction. When anarchy prevails, there will be no common core of purpose to stimulate the advance of the movement along the path that will provide continuing value to the world. The dilemma is possible that our thinking will be so different that nobody does anything. We will be like a modern Don Quixote, charging at various intellectual windmills or bizarre phantoms, with the result that no one will see or take an interest in the reality that there is a “power of men of good will and sacrificial spirit to overcome evil.”

This entire problem inevitably comes to focus in the reconciliation of the free individual in the disciplined organization. Of the innumerable definitions of freedom, one given by Ralph Barton Perry is instructive here, “freedom is the exercise of enlightened choice.” In a free society, discourse in freedom is maintained by those, who by thought, voice and act make high principles operational.

A fable is illustrative. The famed Rabbi Akiba was a tower of strength for independence in the days when Palestine was ruled by Rome, in a time when religious congregation as well as instruction in the Law were forbidden. Rabbi Akiba gathered disciples clandestinely in a cave so that he might teach the precepts and heritage of Jewish law and prophecy. Another Rabbi, less courageous, sought to discourage Akiba. He advised the equivalent of “don’t stick your neck out, when the tyranny passes, we will start teaching our religion again.” Rabbi Akiba answered the safety-minded colleague with this fable:

A fox walking by a pond noticed that the waters were agitated. Seeing a fish moving to and fro as if in fear, the fox asked, “from whom are you fleeing?”

The fish answered, “I am seeking to evade the nets which are set out to capture us.”

The shrewd fox then said persuasively, “Come up here on dry land and you and I shall dwell in peace.”

But the fish was not deceived, “you who are famed to be the craftiest of all creatures are proving yourself stupid. If we fear for our lives in the water, which is our natural home, how much more should we dread the elements on the dry land, which are naturally so hostile to our existence?”

What water was to the fish in the fable, so is the environment of democracy to us in the free Church. If we leave our natural element seeking certainty, we shall find we have neither assurance nor freedom. Freedom is always established by struggle; maintained only be effort and co-operation. Even when struggling against totalitarian ideas and movements, we must not adopt the vices of tyranny. Our larger loyalties to our faith demand that we keep steadfast allegiance to the principles that justify our existence.

In the liberal church our task is to ensure that the need for freedom can be satisfied and the necessity for fellowship achieved, while avoiding organizational chaos on the one hand and authoritarianism on the other. Free individuals can find the fellowship and the social structure they need in the liberal churches – as long as four conditions are maintained.

First, the liberal church must remain a voluntary society. Some churches assert that a person baptized in infancy is a member for life, but this is not so with us. A person becomes a member of the liberal church by his free choice. He is not required to suppress any convictions he might have had about man or God. He need not remain mute about great convictions for the sake of superficial harmony, because membership does not depend on any particular interpretation of history or any one appraisal of personal experience.

There was a time in our country when financial support of the Church was compulsory. This practice still prevails in many countries, but we cannot approve the practice then or now. If we cannot exist through voluntary acts of membership and support, it would be better to close our doors until the time when a more vigorous generation shall re-assert individual conscience in the voluntary community.

The second principle which enables the liberal church to reconcile the voice of conscience with orderly organization is respect for the opinion of others. This may seem elementary, even trite, but when this condition does not prevail, the church is ruled either by a tyrant or a clique. As we all know, there is a great variety of opinions among us on matters political, economic and social as well as religious. There is no more difficult discipline of fellowship than to understand and accept a fellow-member who presents an opinion we loathe or fear. My convictions may be anathema to another, but unless he admits that I, too, have a right to conviction and accepts me in spite of disagreement, then there is no possibility of reconciling the free individual and the disciplined organization.

I might not regret that a fellow liberal believes God to be an elderly, bearded male who oversees an auditing system on the sins and follies of human beings, preparing due bills for the day of judgment. That person might feel exasperated with me because I do not identify God in personal terms, but rather as verbally, an inadequate symbol for the glory of creation, the mystery of growth and the wonder of sacrificial love. In order to fulfill this second condition of the free individual in the disciplined organization, each of us must not merely tolerate differences, we must respect the persons who differ from us.

Adolf Harnack (MISSION AND EXPANSION OF CHRISTIANITY, p. 147 ff) was persuaded that the “gist of Jesus’ teachings was to enforce brotherliness and ministering love.” After comments on the gospels, Harnack observes, “Brotherliness is love on a footing of equality.”

Fellowship in our particular inheritance from the great tradition is never an indication of required agreement, but the reality of a unity which surrounds and ennobles differences.

Nevertheless, irreconcilable differences would be impossible of healthy solution and would result in organizational disruption unless we maintained the third condition, the principle of majority rule. This principle is different between the law-abiding dissenter and the criminal.

The criminal tries to accomplish his desires by breaking the laws and rules that the majority have authorized, directly and indirectly, through legislative and judicial process. The dissenter, if he is in disagreement with some laws, wants to change them by persuasion, experiment, education; living with the majority until his minority can lawfully win a majority. In the liberal churches, we seldom find criminals breaking laws, but occasionally, we meet people who, though in the minority, feel injured if their wishes do not prevail. President John Quincy Adams was a large, heavy man. So frequently was he on the losing side when a congressman, that once when asked, “when will you ever be in the majority?” He replied, “when votes are weighed, not counted.”

We can throw our weight around on policy disagreements, but unless we abide by majority rule, then there is no possibility of organization which is both democratic and orderly. This is the application of humility to our corporate life together. Humility recognizes that there is a wider circle that circumscribes all our individual egos. We like to believe that when our candidate loses an election, or when our pet ideas do not prevail, “well, all the darn fools aren’t dead yet.” The fact is, however, that those who disagreed may possess just as generous a share of native intelligence, as broad an education and instructive experience as ourselves. The majority are not always right, but when the opportunity exists for the free communication of ideas, then the majority will make more wise decisions than foolish ones.

This principle is justified in history. Thomas Jefferson expressed it well when he said on one occasion, “the people of a country are the only safe guardians of their own rights, are the only instruments which can be uses for their own destruction.”

There is a pivotal qualification: in order to maintain the reality of the free individual in the disciplined organization where there is voluntary association, respect for differing opinions and reliance on majority rule, leadership must be entrusted to those who believe in these foregoing principles. Persons of any and all opinions should be welcome. We should be inclusive. But we would be undermining our liberal tradition if we chose leaders who did not subscribe to the conditions which make our organization possible. Thus a liberal congregation would be acting foolishly to elect a minister who disavowed the organizational rules of the free church government. Such a person should be welcome, but not given leadership. A liberal organization would strike serious blows to its own cause if it elected trustees who disbelieved in the principle of majority rule and sought consciously to circumvent it.

This is probably as much dogma as we can allow, but unless we are realistic enough to recognize this, then we will not survive as an organization that prizes individual conscience and values organizational self-discipline. Only free individuals working in the spirit of democracy, who while treasuring our liberal heritage of the past, will change it where it needs changing in our time; and pass living freedom and a respectable institutional heritage on to our children and theirs.

All these disciplines find their ultimate authority in our belief in the supreme worth of every human personality. The rough street of contradiction can be made smoother by building it on the primacy of people. Freedom, self-discipline, respect and self-respect, majority rule, responsible choices of leadership – all these are founded on this base which Harnack defined as “brotherliness is love on a footing of equality.”

Dr. Brock Chisholm, one time head of the World Health Organization, noted Canadian psychiatrist and religious liberal, told a charming anecdote which illuminates this basic assumption we share. When making some inspection tours in Pakistan for W.H.O, Dr. Chisholm was being shown through a large hospital. He noticed the doorway to one ward was screened off and that while at this point in the corridor his guide tried to divert his attention to another direction. Dr. Chisholm perceived that there was something they did not want him to see and as a good inspector, insisted on visiting the screened-off ward.

His guides were apologetic, saying they were a bit ashamed at the old methods used in the ward, a maternity wing; they hoped soon to get enough help from the W.H.O. to modernize.

Chisholm still insisted on inspection and entered what he describes as “the best maternity ward I have ever seen in any country – far better than I have seen in North America.” The ward was large. “The footposts of each bed were extended up three feet or so and slung beneath the footposts was a cradle.” If the baby cried once, the mother would rock the cradle with her toes. If the rocking did not immediately put the infant to sleep again, the mother would reach and take the baby into her arms, where Chisholm commented “a baby is supposed to be most of the time.”

The empathic point that Dr. Chisholm was making was that this ward was superior because it did the most for the child’s welfare. He further commented that the babies were healthier and less neurotic than some in settings of more advanced scientific equipment and modern furnishings. (see article, “Tomorrow’s Children,” Brock Chisholm, RECONSTRUCTION IN RELIGION, Alfred Kuenzli, Beacon Press, 1961).

Just as our patterns of hospital care should not be finally fixed on the efficiency of glass, incubators or isolated cribrooms, because the needs of the child may precipitate revisions, so the primacy of people generally requires democratic principles in the functioning of changed ways of serving human need. Where there is faithfulness to the principles suggested, I believe that there will be a surprising absence of violent contradictions between private judgment and group decision.

Of course we are wagering our existence that these methods of working together will bring out the best of our judgments and restrain the worst of our errors. But we are human; the only ways we each know our God, or highest value, are through human experience and interpretation. Our Judeo-Christian heritage again and again is a witness to the strength of people when they gather in brotherly love to sustain human values. Whatever strengths we can contribute to the human religious enterprise, may be summarized as faith in the creative relationship between the sanctity of private judgment and the sacredness of the brotherly community.