The Spreading Light

December 19, 1965
Plainfield

also: Lakeland 1978, Port Charlotte 1978

The Spreading Light

As the human family moves in slow procession from superstition to science, from magic to understanding, and from the miraculous to the natural, the Christmas-Hanukkah message suggests differing levels of perception. Even as the spreading light of knowledge has given us wider vision of privilege and responsibility, so also may deepening comprehension of the poignant joy of the winter festival season increases our awareness of the ties that bind persons to each other and to the magnificent universe in which we live and of which we are a part.

Early, pre-literate people celebrated when they were released from fear of total darkness. The lessening light of Autumn and early Winter stirred the pangs of fear. When the sun lengthened its daily visit at the Winter solstice, men and women feasted, sang and danced. The world was not dying! Clothed in enduring green, the fir and spruce had resisted the colorful death of other foliage, thus the fragrant evergreens became living symbols of hope.

The strange gods of frost and fire were not entirely unpredictable and whimsical, but seemed to be dependable. Even the early folk began to sense that the world-process was orderly. The celebrations became regular as season after season repeated the sustaining rhythms of bud, blossom, fruit, harvest, sleep – and then bud again. Even as the late December days diffused longer periods of daytime, so the light of confidence in nature began to illuminate the darker fears of humankind. The stirrings of faith began to overgrow the tremblings of fear, even as the mistletoe festooned the oak tree.

After many centuries it came to pass that the Judeo-Christian era in our culture marked the spread of more light. In Jewish homes there is now being observed the “festival of lights” - Hanukkah. In this part of our tradition the spreading light celebrates religious freedom. When Judah Maccabeus and his brothers led a revolution against their Syrian and Roman overlords, they recaptured Jerusalem only to find that there was only enough oil to feed the lamp for a day. When the Temple was purified, the legend goes, enough oil was miraculously provided for eight days. And so the worship continued as a ceremony of light, but more vitally, it was a celebration of freedom.

Although the early Christians were children of their times and were prone to believe in magic and witchcraft, nevertheless, particularly in the writings of Paul, there is an increasing affirmation of the reliability of the God in whom they believed. This was an emphasis that light was needed in a different shadowed area of the self.

The spreading light of faith in an orderly Universe stimulated a growth of confidence that the power that underlies our Universe (name it God or what you will) is somehow tied in with the best of human experience. There is a basic liberating belief implicit in the facade of fantastic fervor which still pounds and chatters at us from authoritarian churches, pleading Pentecostals and irrepressible evangelicals. It is this: the human family is worth redeeming; the condition of men and women is not hopeless! Unitarians and Universalists resonate to that foundation of faith.

The religious primitives celebrated the Winter solstice because the gods once more saved them from darkness and death.

Then Judas Maccabeus and his followers transformed that tradition of light to an annual celebration of the anniversary of religious freedom. Then the Christian extended human hopes to much of the Greek, Roman, and North African world with the Gospel which affirmed that the Supreme Being was neither whimsical nor a-moral – God was a Power having moral relations with humanity. Even more daring, the early Christians proclaimed that God incarnated himself as a little baby to redeem mankind – and many in the ancient world responded to that dramatic and winsome theology. Little wonder that our roots in early Christian doctrine and culture lead us to respond warmly to the poetry, carols and beautiful legends and myths of Christmas. We respond even when we give neither obedience nor literal belief to the doctrines illustrated by art, music, and scripture.

Is the Christian faith the limit to which the light can spread. Many would so avow. But some of us believe that the light must spread wider and deeper still.

The early peoples joyously responded to the favors of gods who preserved or destroyed at their fancy.

The Maccabeeans demonstrated that the light of the world is cast by the lamp of freedom.

The Christian Gospel sings grateful praises to God for his redeeming power in the incarnation.

But there is a more splendid, a more daring and more audacious dream! Not only are all persons worth redeeming, but also men and women are the agents of redemption. Our faith [surmise] proclaims that it is within human power to extend the light of love and justice into the shadowed parts of our individual selves and that the same light can make social realities of the astounding ideal, “peace on earth, good will to men.” Aristotle wrote (NICOMACHEAN ETHICS), “It is the mark of an educated man to look for precision in each class of things just so far as the nature of our subject admits; it is evidently equally foolish to accept probable reasoning from a mathematician and to demand from a rhetorician scientific proofs.” John Dewey may have intended much the same point when he wrote, “ideas are effective not as bare ideas, but as they have imaginative content and emotional appeal.”

From Ferguson, SIGNS AND SYMBOLS IN CHRISTIAN ART: “Language of sign and symbol is the outward and visible form through which is revealed the inward and visible reality that moves and directs the soul....”

The matchless beauty of the story of the holy family is a part of the spreading light. But all families are holy. Furthermore, all wanted babies are precious gifts of life, who as they grow in wisdom and stature may become redeemers. The culture-bearing carols, stories and myths embody these traits with artistic and emotional expression, giving power and lift to our lives at this season of high holiday.

Talking effectively about the deeper meanings of Christmas is nearly impossible. Brahms once said that with all his talent he could not achieve the beauty of a German folk-dance melody which every child was able to sing.

From [primitive superstition], to freedom’s light, to gospel, to one human family. This I believe is the spreading light, to goal of the light-hearted. All the glory of song and story are hints of deep humanitarian meaning. Wise men and shepherds, innkeepers, a careworn father, a weary woman, great with child – all these meet in matchless story to remind us of the superiority of a society in which all persons are equal. The festive celebrations impinge upon us, and we should be stirred by that awareness [that, if we all ate at one table, no one would be allowed to grow hungry.]

The experiences of Christmas and Hanukkah carry the impact that life is sacred; that the humblest and the proudest have equal need to belong to each other; that carol, candle and crèche open us a window through which we can see what life should be. “Peace on earth, good-will to men [and women].” But can the poetry of peace be transformed to the reality of peace? That’s the bind. Did you see the item in Friday’s paper that reported that a large firm placed a Christmas window display, “peace on earth” at Madison and 57th Street? The display featured quotations on peace from Dag Hammarskjold, Adlai Stevenson, Pope Paul VI.

The designer who received the brunt of the complaints explained, “some people interpreted the presentation as some sort of demonstration about Vietnam. So the window display was revised to eliminate such quotations as “war is the negation of peace and humanity,” and Pope Paul’s call, “War never again” was “amplified and identified.”

Is this our time? We respond to ancient wonder stories about angels singing about peace 2000 years ago, but when the meaning of peace is grappled with today, people either back away or seek to quiet things down by lambasting those who speak peace.

Can we go beyond ancient words and lilting carols? There is an old legend from Eastern Europe which may fit the reality. “A pious Russian went to a holy man and asked him to find out from God if there was going to be a war. The holy man said he would try. When he had prayed, he said that God had given him the answer: ’There will be no war, but the struggle for peace will be so furious that not one stone will be left standing on another.’” (CHRISTIAN CENTURY)

Is this not our tragic dilemma in Vietnam?

There are many, like I, who will continue to urge unrelenting efforts for peaceful negotiation and who still believe that a halt in the bombing, a cessation of escalation may provide the impetus for such confrontation across the table rather than confrontation in rice fields and villages with innocent men, women and children caught in the deadly crossfire, fire and explosion.

Albert Schweitzer (PHILOSOPHY OF CIVILIZATION) wrote, “I would be a humble pioneer of the (new) Renaissance and throw the belief in a new humanity like a torch, into our dark age.”

May our deepest Christmas concern be that light will spread, like a torch hurled into darkness, so that “peace on earth, good will to all people,” will not be only matchless poetry, but some day, political and social reality.

The “Death of God” Theology

December 5, 1965
Plainfield

The “Death of God” Theology

My guess is that many persons have heard of the “Death of God” theology who ordinarily are not aware of the massive whirlings of words stirred by the windmills of theological debate. When theology not only receives the brief and teasing treatment of TIME magazine, but also is the subject of an extended three-part feature in THE NEW YORKER, one can surmise that something is happening which has wider appeal than most subjects discussed in “Angel Factories.” (Angel Factory – that was the totally inaccurate label attached to my theological school by students in the liberal arts college on the same campus.) Not only has the “death of God” warranted space in popular and sophisticated journals, but also there have been cries of alarm and the usual targets to the non-conformist. The “death of God” theology is my subject today; and the choice is beset with certain hazards: 1) the subject is not easily understood, and therefore I may not appraise it with sufficient lucidity. 2) it is more accurate to refer to “Death of God” theologies, because there is more than one variety, and 3) I may be quite wrong in guessing that radical revision is going to be a continuing feature of Christian theological thought. But I am taking such risks because one of the historic postures of both Unitarianism and Universalism has been that of being on the leading edge of theological revision; and if it is possible that we are being pre-empted on theological frontiers, then we should be aware of such displacement.

In less than thirty minutes, I can only sketch in broad strokes the following outline:

Why should this movement happen now?
How is it related to other modern philosophical and literary expressions?
Who are the advocates of the “Death of God” theology and how do they differ?
Is what they are saying significant?
Is there identity with the theologies represented among us? (theism, naturalism, humanism, etc.)
And lastly, is the authentic question being asked when one inquires, “Is God dead?”

1) Why should this movement gain momentum and gather interest at this particular time? There is nothing new about Bible criticism – for 100 years or more, the studies have accumulated, demonstrating that scripture is a complex weaving of many strands of time and place, cult and culture, literature and apologetic. Similarly there is nothing startling in the notion that different peoples have had differing ideas of God or no-god. This relativity has been observed since the time of the ancient Greeks. but WWII created considerable despair about man’s ability to save himself from self-destruction and subsequent events have not done much to restore self-confidence. Observers were disillusioned with professed values of human dignity and individual worth, which in practice were demonstrated to be values which did not apply to one’s enemies or even to unfortunate minorities within one’s own boundaries. As one writer (Fackenheim, COMMENTARY) put it, “the ancient belief that God is with us, loves and cares for us cannot be sustained in the light of undeserved catastrophe and tragedy.” The question of how God could be both good and all-powerful was inexplicable. Certain theologians tried to wrestle with these difficult questions. The name heard most often is Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a German theologian who was confined in a concentration camp by the Nazis who eventually strangled him. Although Bonhoeffer wrote relatively little, his writings have had considerable impact, particularly his LETTERS FROM PRISON. Bonhoeffer called for a “religionless Christianity;” and this paradoxical phrase has been repeated again and again.

Paul Tillich, the refugee from the Nazis who taught in the U.S. for many years and who died quite recently, may prove to be the most influential writer on religious themes in our century. His writings, particularly his three-volume SYSTEMATIC THEOLOGY, are ponderously phrased and difficult to understand, but of weighty importance in theological thought.

A couple years ago, John Robinson, the Anglican Bishop of Woolwich, England, drew worldwide attention with his little book, HONEST TO GOD, which presented in popular form some aspects of the difficulty involved in traditional ways of belief. In particular his skepticism about all historic ways of believing in God created as much consternation as any religious book within memory.

The “Death of God” theology is an intellectually serious grappling with the ideas that Bishop Robinson presented in oversimplified and under-developed forms in HONEST TO GOD.

As the “Death of God” theology is linked with our times, something should be said to relate it to current modes of thought in parallel studies.

We have seen the development of essential philosophy where those who hold to it see man as existing before he can be explained. “Existence precedes essence,” wrote Sartre. The existentialist confronts a universe where man can assume no eternal meanings, but rather man must carve for himself meanings out of the experience of existence and assume no more than that. Man cannot assume that the universe is rational, or even that man himself reasons in the light of the emotional sub-currents which produce rationalizations as well as rational thought. Simone Weil expressed some of the rather paradoxical nature of this attitude when she expressed the thought that the absence of God is the mode of the divine presence, “we have to belief in a God who is similar to the true God in everything but that he doesn’t exist.” (quoted by Alexander Czegledy, p. 1352, CHRISTIAN CENTURY) Existentialism sees only a void where more idealistic times saw meaning in the nature of the Universe. The existentialist holds that only “by facing the void that we may arrive at something positive, at authentic existence, at freedom, at responsibility, at the courage to make sense of the non-sense of being.” (Czegledy)

The second mode of thinking which relates directly to the “Death of God” theology is that linguistic philosophy generally known as relativism. Let me remind you that Positivism holds that knowledge is verified by experience and that if it cannot be verified by experience, it is not meaningful knowledge. Furthermore, that as testing has been found to be the way to validate physical science, humans have discovered a method that is a model of certainty and exactness (see Herbert Marcuse, ONE DIMENSIONAL MAN, p. 1-2).

Against these backgrounds of the disillusioning 20th century wars and troubles, together with the theologies of several Europeans, combined with considerable influence from existentialism and positivism, the names of three young American theologians are beginning to become well-known, or notorious, depending on the attitude one takes while reading their material: Van Buren, Altizer, Hamilton.

In this country they are identified with the “Death of God” theology, although their beliefs differ and they are not the only ones studying and writing on the theme.

Dr. Paul Van Buren teaches at Temple University, is an ordained Episcopal clergyman but chooses not to preach or administer the sacraments of that church. If I understand his point of view at all, he maintains that when using the measurement of positivism – that is, knowledge must be validated by experience in some functional way, nothing meaningful can be said about the word, “God,” that there is no exactness that can be assigned to it so that any discourse can be maintained which is tested discourse. The author of the New Yorker article quotes Van Buren as saying, “My own view is that God as an absolute has been dissolved. I don’t think God is on vacation or that the Bible God is relevant to anything.” Dr. Van Buren dispenses with God, but holds to Jesus. His basic linguistic measurement is shown in these words: “Jesus, son of God and what have you – my interest is in seeing how these terms function, what they accomplish, what difference it makes whether one denies these terms or subscribes to them. They are saying the most they could about a man.” (ibid)

When Van Buren was asked whether his is a Christian, he answered that he wouldn’t make an issue of it, “I am trying to raise a more important issue: whether or not Christianity is fundamentally about God or man.”

Thomas Altizer is an advocate of a different approach. He is not concerned with linguistic analysis to aid meaning in discourse, but he asserts that God was once alive and died. Dr. Altizer teaches at Emory University in Atlanta and acquired additional publicity when public attention to his “God is Dead” theology came at a time when Emory University was launching a capital funds drive. Some of the prospective givers of large gifts were somewhat agitated and were threatening not to sign pledge cards unless Dr. Altizer was dismissed from the faculty.

I happened to listen to a radio interview with Dr. Altizer and he did not seem disturbed at the threats, confident that academic freedom would continue to prevail at Emory; and I hope he is right.

In his theology, he insists he is not speaking figuratively or of ideas of God that have died, but that God was alive at one time in history, was the creator of the world, was a personal being, not a force or process, and He died. If I understand Dr. Altizer correctly, he said that God was in Christ and therefore God died on the cross when Jesus was crucified. This was an actual historical event, he maintains. Up to this point, I think I understand him, but I lose him, when like Van Buren he insists on holding to Jesus Christ, even though he contends that traditional Christian forms prevent an understanding of the “contemporary Jesus” (?) And I have to pass without comment when he writes, “Christian theology must proclaim the death of God if it is to witness the Word of faith...” and again, “If ours is truly a history in which God is no longer present, then we are called upon not simply to accept the death of God with stoic fortitude, but rather to will the death of God with the passion of faith.” (CHRISTIAN CENTURY, p. 1351-1415)

Dr. William Hamilton is on the faculty of Colgate Rochester Divinity School and his “Death of God” theology is one of passive rejection of old theological language. In his words, “atonement and redemption, regeneration, the Holy Ghost, the cross and resurrection, life in Christ and Christian discipleship, all these have become so problematic and so remote that we hardly dare speak of them ... our Christianity today will be confined to praying for and doing right by our fellow men. Christian thinking, speaking and organization must be reborn out of this praying and this action.” (quoted by Ilion Jones, CHRISTIANITY TODAY, 11/20/64)

Dr. Hamilton, like his colleagues holds to the necessity of holding to Jesus as an article of faith. But not as the Christ, not as a historical personality, but as the ethical model for those commitments in the human struggle to which we should be faithful and for which we should act. As he wrote, “we do not know, we do not adore, do not possess, do not believe in God ... We are not talking about the absence of the experience of God, but about the experience of the absence of God.” (quoted by J. Robert Nelson, CHRISTIAN CENTURY, p. 1414)

The New Yorker article mentions a rather irreverent jibe which may be include of what these three men hold in common: “There is no God and Jesus is His Son.”

That there should be this healthy radicalism in Christian thought is creating and encouraging, as far as I am concerned. I can see intellectual growth and new theological resolutions brewing in this ferment of God-talk. Some persons seem alarmed, however. Erwin Canham, editor of the Christian Science Monitor wrote that he had received a letter from a lady in California who was worried about the “Death of God” theologians, for she inquired, “Are they communists? Shouldn’t the F.B.I. do something about it?”

Some believe that the present upheaval in theology was more artistically expressed in Samuel Beckett’s play, “Waiting for Godot.” The two tramps, Estragon and Vladimir are waiting for Godot:

Estragon: Let’s go.
Vladimir: We can’t.
Estragon: Why not?
Vladimir: We’re waiting for Godot.
Estragon: Ah (pause despairingly) What’ll we do? What’ll we do?
Vladimir: There’s nothing we can do.
Estragon: But I can’t go on like this.

As far as I know, Samuel Beckett never identified Godot with God; and the play ended with the characters mired in their mournful waiting. But whether the playwright intended it or not, he identified with at least one of the moods in theological circles. The God of Genesis who molded man from common clay has been gone since the acceptance of the theory of evolution. The God who managed the three-story Universe and flung the stars into their places began to disappear with Copernicus and Einstein finished it off. There are many who believe that the “inner God,” the still small voice, the intuitive spark, was explained away by Freud and his successors. So people wait for some new and believable advent of God, but when all is said and done, the expectations are vague, depressed and uncertain as the the hopes of Vladimir and Estragon.

Just as an aside, one can raise the question, is an experience real because it is not subject to verification? The artist may not be able to express in functional statements the creative surge that produced paint on canvas in novel, visual form. The composer may not be able to state in words that can be verified what experience he was creating to be reproduced in intricate, intermeshings of multilevel tones and sounds. But can we state dogmatically that the experiences of the artist and composer have no validity – for them at least?

I’m sure I do not fully understand the “Death of God” theologians. Therefore it may be unfair to put it this way, but are they saying, “Old beliefs won’t do, but let’s keep all Christians together by keeping them under one large “Christian” umbrella which has such skillfully constructed ribs and artfully designed fabric that atheistic Christians and God-believing Christians can huddle together with not many aware of the astonishing differences in belief? The theologians who write for the journals that are read by other theologians and seminarians can conduct radical, even explosive discourse, while the people in the churches will have little awareness that what they believe literally or even symbolically, the theologians also using the words Jesus Christ, disbelieve literally and contend that the symbols no longer point to anything meaningful? Is this not like the nightmare concept that George Orwell made famous in his novel 1984 - “doublethink?” “Doublethink refers to the power of holding two contradictory beliefs simultaneously and accepting them both.” In Orwell’s novel, “doublethink” was a means of totalitarian political control. I’m certain that such technique is not the intention whatever of the “Death of God” theologians, but in a religious framework, that is the way it may work out.

It is at this point that one may inquire whether the “Death of God” theologies are taking over the frontier advance in religious thinking, which Unitarians and Universalists have maintained for a couple of hundred years. Is there identity between the “Death of God” theologies and the varieties of religious thought within our movements – liberal theism, naturalism, humanism, agnosticism?

It seems to me that while the scholarship of the “Death of God” theologians may be excellent, when they hold to Christian symbols, the Christian Christ, etc., they either demonstrate a lack of candor or an unwillingness to carry out the full implications of their radically revised beliefs. If God is dead, then to go on maintaining a Christology is a rather obscure way of announcing radical theological change. In Unitarian Universalist societies, the discussions we have had for a generation about Humanism vs. Theism have at least had some virtue in that “yes” has meant “yes” and our “no”[has meant “no”] as far as the traditional sayings and symbols are concerned. Permit me to cite two examples of the contrast between obscurity and candor. Paul Tillich was one of the trenchant and profound thinkers of modern time. But when he defined the word “God,” his definitions can mean all things to all people. For example, “The name of this infinite and inexhaustible ground of history is God. That is what the word means, and it is to that which the words ‘Kingdom of God’ and ‘Divine Providence’ point. And if these words do not have much meaning for you, translate them, and speak of the depth of history, of the ground and aim of our social life, and of what you take seriously without reservations in your moral and political activities. Perhaps you should call this depth hope, simply hope. For if you find hope in the ground of history, you are united with the great prophets who were able to look in the depths of their times, who tried escape it, because they could not stand the horror of their visions and yet who had the strength to look to an even deeper level and there to discover hope.” (quoted NEW YORKER, issue 11/13)

What I take seriously in my political and moral life may not be what you take seriously. Only confusion can result if each one of us says we both believe in God, because we may think there is identity in our beliefs when actually there is not.

Contrast the quote from Tillich with the words written long ago by courageous, wise Thomas Huxley (1825-1895) quoted p. 383 Selections from Philosophy:

“My only consolation lies in the reflection that however bad our posterity may become, so far as they are held by the plain rule of not pretending to believe what they have no reason to believe, because it may be to their advantage, they will not have reached the lowest depths of immorality.”

Many of us will follow the continuing theological discussion with great interest, but as long as obscurity prevails because of the reluctance to let go of the old concepts, even though no longer believable, we should not feel pre-empted. Rather we shall continue to advocate that religion can make sense; continue to hope that plain statements in the context of freedom will have enduring appeal for at least a minority of those persons who have given thought to this experience we call “religion.” We hope that we shall always be hospitable to innovations and creative re-thinking, or we would share Walter Lippmann’s opinion when he said, “Indeed though sometimes the evolution of ideas is rapid, and sometimes it is slower, we may say that the need and the ability to re-think and re-learn is the hallmark of a free society.”

One thing more – there is a parallel question implied in this radical theological approach which deserves more attention than the theological inquiry, “Is God dead?” These thinkers directly and by implication are asking, “Can man live?” I have commented earlier that one of the stimuli to this whole theological re-thinking was the catastrophic experiences of the 20th century – nuclear threat, over-population, the rightful rising expectations of persons in minority groups – these and many more critical problems trouble the conscience and threaten the very existence of the human family.

The “Death of God” theologians have not fashioned their reflections in an ivory tower; they have been wrestling with the real, obstinate, ambivalent nature of human society. Professor Rowlingson of Boston University observed, “Much of the Death of God thrust has actually been directed against the alleged failure of the church as an institution to live up to its ideals.”

Although I have difficulty following the thought of Dr. Altizer generally, he is quite clear when he writes, “To speak of the Death of God as a final and decisive event is to open oneself to the horizon of our history as the full avenue of faith.” (quoted THEOLOGY TODAY, p. 382)

We, too, should be convinced that effective religion is contemporaneous, finds its justification in the kind of persons we become because of its influence and the nature of the issues to which we give our attention. When Altizer speaks of “The concrete factuality of Time and Space as the locus of redemption” should we not say Amen to that?

Or take Dr. William Hamilton – although I don’t know him personally, I did know him by reputation as a person sensitive to ethical demands and responsive to moral issues. For example he wrote, (NEW YORKER, p. 142), “Jesus Christ is best understood not as either the object or ground of faith and not as a person or community but simply as a place to be, a standpoint. That place, of course, alongside the neighbor, being for him ... Today for example he is the Negro community in its struggle.”

William Hamilton not only said this, he behaves it. I recall that he was the CR faculty member who headed up a delegation of TS students who went to Mississippi after the three civil rights workers were murdered. Hamilton is asking the parallel question, “Will man live?” and attempting to be part of that answer.

Hamilton also wrote: “Radical theology is both describing and relating itself to a new feeling of hope and optimism in American life today, a conviction that substantive changes in the life of men can and will be made.” Again I have a recollection that he is not bashful in expressing what this implies in our lives today. I do not have the clipping but he created a minor furor when he stated plainly in print that northern cities, including the one he lived in specifically were too comfortable in their acceptance of discrimination, poverty and other conditions which limit the full lives of millions of people. He jarred the complacency of many who thought the South should mend its ways, but who had given little thought to conditions within their own cities in the North.

There are many of us who do not follow easily the theological convolutions of the “God is Dead” debate. But all of us, whatever our theism, atheism, or any variety of either, can speak to the question, “Will man live?”

We speak to that question by what we say about the human family in the world today. We speak to that question by what we do within our capacity in the world today. We speak to that question by the kind of persons we are in the world today.

An Actress and a Better World

November 25, 1965
Plainfield

An Actress and a Better World

Recently, actress Dorothy Malone recovered from illness so serious that her heart stopped beating two or three times during several hours of surgery necessary to remove massive blood clots from her lungs. For five days following the operation, she was unconscious; and death was more of a probability than life.

Her convalescence was painful and prolonged, but she commented recently, “All the colors of the world look bright to me now.”

Life is like that, isn’t it? Thirst creates the sweetest water. We rarely appreciate living when things go smoothly; when pain is absent and danger remote. But when we have survived a difficult ordeal of body or mind, then it is that we experience a renewed awareness of that for which we should be thankful:

The blue dark, green light sea
The fair sky and the storm cloud
The rhythm of sun and rain
The alternates of frost and thaw
The pulse of seedtime and harvest
The chatter of children and the murmur of the aged
The sense of achievement when there is strength to strive for goals
The contentment known when we can rest from the work of a hard, long and useful day.
The blessing of parents; the homecoming of children.

Even when we have not been closely brushed by the hand of death or the touch of disaster, may it be that we will be more aware of the priceless gift of life.

May there stir within us thankfulness for human love, creation, growth care.

For it is because the gift of life is so great – that sorrow is keen when we lose someone.

It is because of the potential of life is so productive that tragedy strikes deeply.

It is because the possibilities of life are so rare that disaster is hard and bitter.

Each of us would create our own variations on the theme of thanksgiving. But create in us a sense of life’s magic so that “the colors will look brighter” to us all.

In these annual moments of harvest home, moments with tentacles deep in primeval human culture and emotion, may the colors look brighter as we pause and give thanks for the life that is ours;

thanks for the world in which we live;

and beyond all the transient differences of philosophy and theology, thanks for this universe, our home – our home from which we can never be separated, whether as tissue, mineral, ashes, vapor or dust, for these are all part of us; and we part of them; and our kinship to totality is basic and beyond annihilation.

The Providential Seed Corn – and the Puzzle of Thankfulness

November 24, 1965
Plainfield

Also,
November 20, 1977
Lakeland

The Providential Seed Corn – and the Puzzle of Thankfulness

In November – December 1620, before deciding to settle Plymouth, the Pilgrims reconnoitered other parts of Cape Cod. In his unorthodox book of the Pilgrim adventure, SAINTS AND STRANGERS, George Willison has a fascinating chapter, “Babes in the Wilderness.” Monday, the 13th of November, 1620, was a day when the women went ashore to wash the heaps of clothes and bedding soiled in the long voyage. Sentries guarded them while excited children ran up and down the beach. Some men repaired the longboat; others dug clams on the tidal flats to make a succulent feast.

Two days later, sixteen men led by Captain Myles Standish, set off to explore the best possible place of settlement. Soon they glimpsed five or six Indians, whom the Pilgrims called “Savages,” but the Indians darted off into the woods. The Pilgrims pursued; and if the native Americans had hostile intentions, nothing could have been easier than an ambush. But there was no trap.

Near what is now Truro, on Cape Cod, Captain Standish and his company came on several clearings which the Indians had used as cornfields. They noticed sand piles covered with grass rugs, which although the first pile they investigated was a grave, others proved to be underground enclosures for corn stored in large baskets – three or four bushel capacity. This of course was the Indian seed corn being stored for next year’s crop. The Pilgrims simply helped themselves to other people’s property without permission and with no compensation. Willison writes, “This was just plain larceny of course, but the Pilgrims were inclined to regard it as another special providence of God. And in a sense it was, for without this seed corn the would have had no crops the next year and all would have starved to death. As it was, they just barely managed to squeeze through.” (p. 150)

When one thinks about it, this is a variation on a thanksgiving theme, is it not?

Can taking other people’s property, just because one needs it, be called the “providence of God?” The question may seem irreverent, because haloes have been shining over Pilgrim memories for quite a while, but supposed it happened to you today? Suppose some ragged invaders of a different skin color helped themselves to your stores of food at the beginning of Winter? And it was food you could not possibly replace? The Pilgrims were people of the Book – the Bible, we are told. What happened to the commandment “Thou shalt not steal?” Judgment at this distance of 345 years is unnecessary and futile.

But we might well think back with gratitude on the forbearance of the Americans to these invaders. Slaughtering the Pilgrim Company would not have been difficult. Continued harassment would have caused an utter failure of the Company, particularly that first dreadful Winter. Furthermore, the continued history of relations between colonizers, and later our nation with the Indians reflects little glory and much shame upon us for the broken treaties, the imposed degradation and nearly complete extinction of the American Indian cultures by the invaders from Europe.

So in moments such as these, we would feel some sense of repentance; we would not only admire the Pilgrim fathers, but also the Indian brothers, for without the forbearance and peaceful attitudes of these so-called “savages,” the Plimoth Plantation would have been no more enduring than that ill-fated colony of Englishmen on Roanoke Island in Virginia.

Such gratitude may be a variation on a theme, but an aspect we should recognize more than we do.

And so they survived.

Attached:
November 21, 1954
Bridgeport

The Religion of the Third Feast

When the settlers at Plymouth gathered the following year to give thanks, to feast and to enjoy the friendship of their Indian neighbors, an American tradition began. Because we are Americans, we are emotionally conditioned to think of Thanksgiving as a celebration born on the shores of Massachusetts Bay, [345] years ago. That’s a long time ago. The tradition of a government of free men under self-imposed laws that was born in the cabin of the Mayflower at the beginning of that great adventure was a heritage that grew and culminated in the American Revolution with goals of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness; was a tradition that then exerted a cleansing moral force on some of the infections of tyrannies that had hung on: slavery, voting franchise for everyone regardless of wealth or poverty or sex, free public education, and new in our time the legal removal by the Supreme Court of the stain of discrimination because of skin color. There are many ways that the Pilgrim tradition has enriched us, freed us, and put pressure on us to discipline ourselves.

But the Thanksgiving tradition is older than the Pilgrim’s feast in 1621. Thanksgiving is an ancient ceremony with roots in the very beginnings of our ancient Hebrew religious culture.

The reading from the old scripture of Leviticus (23/ 33/38) tells the story of the Feast of Tabernacles (or Booths). This scripture is the written record of ceremonies even more ancient. The Feast of Tabernacles, or Sukkat (Succoth) was the celebration of the final harvest home of the fruits and olives. It was a time of rejoicing. In early times the whole Israelite population lived for a week in the open, sheltered by temporary tents of palm branches. As time went on their descendants observed the ceremony in various ways. When the temple was built in Jerusalem, Sukkat became a time of pilgrimage to that most holy place where sacrifice was offered. In many Jewish homes, even to this day, the rooms are decorated to take on the appearance of booths. Our harvest feast of Thanksgiving is in one sense the Americanized version of the old Hebrew feast of Tabernacles.

This Feast was the third of the great religious festivals when Pilgrims marched to Jerusalem. Christianity has many parallels. The first feast, Passover, became Easter for Christians. The second, the Feast of Weeks, is somewhat less known in America, but in most Christian countries is observed as Pentecost, or Whitsunday.

Thus the meaning of Thanksgiving stirs our feelings because not only does it appeal to our patriotism, and to our pride in the faith, courage and resourcefulness of the Pilgrims, but also because Thanksgiving stirs our religious feelings at depth. (More than that one of the days when human affection is ...)

In addition, the intensity of our emotions is reinforced because this Autumn ceremony of thankfulness for harvest home is not alone the product of our Hebrew and Pilgrim heritage.

The Pilgrims may have been as much inspired by the Indians as their Hebrew heritage. A. Hyatt Verrill, explorer, scholar of Indian cultures, author of many books, who died in New Haven just a few days ago, made a very interesting claim in his book, THE REAL AMERICANS. Mr. Verrill noted that the “Indians’ seasonal dances and ceremonies (were) numerous and of many kinds ... in the Eastern states the Algonquin tribes such as Delawares, Shawnees, Iroquois, Mohicans, Massachusetts ... and others hold a great autumnal or crop ceremonial feast. (Hundreds of years before the Pilgrims landed) The Indians gathered to give thanks to the Great Spirit and lesser deities for abundant crops, good hunting and fishing. Dances were held ... Drums of a special form were thumped .. A new fire symbolic of a fresh start in life was kindled and there was a great feast with venison roasting ears, wild turkeys, squash pumpkins, pudding.” Mr. Verrill believed that it was from this great Indian ceremony that we derive our Thanksgiving.

One of the most shameful, as well as least known sections of American history has been our inhuman treatment of the Indian tribes who lived on the North American continent when the Europeans began colonization. When history is looked at with some objectivity – when we forget the way we have been conditioned by the “western” movies and the lurid books – we become aware that the Indians of this continent were friendly and hospitable to the newcomers. They were far more friendly to the Europeans than the third and fourth generation Americans were to later immigrants from across the sea. The causes of so-called Indian massacres can be found in broken treaties, in natural retaliation against the brutality, ignorance and greed of the white men who came across the sea. If the Indians had not been friendly it is obvious that there could have been no settlements established.

When the Pilgrims held their great feast of thanks to God they were under the influence of Indian culture as well as Hebrew culture – and the culture of the American Indians was far more advanced than we have ever realized or admitted. The Indian tribes were deeply religious. For the most part they lived in peace with other tribes. Their family life was wholesome and taught high values to the growing children.

One of their Thanksgiving prayers has been translated thus:

“We give thanks for the corn and beans and quashes that give us life;
We give thanks for the wind which moves the air and blows away diseases;
We give thanks for the sun which has looked on us with a kindly eye;
We give thanks for the moon and stars which give us light when the sun is gone;
We give thanks to the Great Spirit, who is all goodness, and who directs all things for the good of his children.”

Furthermore, the religion of the third feast has even deeper roots than already described. Nearly all peoples, all over the world, have had harvest ceremonies and feasts. The wonder of growing things that are nourishing and pleasant to the taste has always gripped the imagination of human beings. Persons survive because of growing things. The record of history, and the events of pre-history which we can assume from tribal memories, folk songs and remnants of ancient ritual – all these confirm the intensity with which seedtime, growth and harvest have always captured the religious feelings of persons of all-time, everywhere.

As far as can be learned, not all harvest festivals were the same everywhere. Variations occurred because of such factors as the most important food crop, the climate, and the relative state of cultural advancement. However, the essential rituals in primitive harvest ceremonies were: 1) propitiatory rites, 2) observances to secure fertility, 3) the offering of first-fruits.

Most of our beliefs are survivals, refined and enlightened, of these primitive expressions. The universal elements of Thanksgiving or harvest festival still basically express the same emotions. We are false to our human heritage if we discard or ignore these basic feelings. But w are also traitor to humanity if we ignore the advances and enlightenment won for us by human beings who refined the barbarisms by unselfish acts and by radiant influence, causing more light to shine on ancient symbols and sacrifices.

Thus the religious meaning of Thanksgiving can best be apprehended by looking at the ancient and primitive ways, and then taking them to our hearts with the refinements of the best of civilization.

First the people of the pre-historic past observe the ingathering of the crops with propitiatory rites. They believed that all things were occupied by spirits. There was the corn-spirit; the tree spirit; the spirit of every vegetable. The people believed that when these were taken for food, the spirits would be angered unless they were placated. So ceremonies grew around the harvest. The corn spirit had to receive some attention or it might be angry at the persons who harvested the golden ears. The vine and tree had to be placated when the grapes and fruit were taken for human use.

Out of this primitive fear of the spirits of growing things has grown, gradually, the spirit of thankfulness to the Power people call God. This world, our home, furnishes us with food, warmth and shelter. There is a spirit of mysterious growth. It does not matter too much, I suppose, if we call that spirit God, Yahweh, Allah, Manitou, or whatever. In the city, particularly, where we are too far from the soil, we have a particular need to remember to be grateful for life and for the harvest which sustains it. Thanksgiving is a time to be thankful for harvest home – for harvest home means life for us and all we love.

The second of the worship elements that the primitives observed was the ritual to insure that the fields would be fertile another year. The rites were primitive. Many peoples included the sacrifice of a human being, the ashes of the sacrificed one being scattered on the fields so that the following year a good crop would grow. As persons gradually became conscious of the value of human life, there was refinement in ritual until animals were sacrificed, and as time went on even that custom was abolished.

But even though the sacrifice of human life no longer would be tolerated, the basic obligation of conservation and restoration of the “holy earth” is ours nevertheless. More and more we must realize that the organic elements of the soil must be restored if abundant, nourishing crops are to be continued. We live in a world where the net population is increasing at a fearful rate. If ever our world is to see a relaxing of tensions between the “have” and the “have-not” peoples, there must be an adequate food supply. Conservation of the soil, forests, water supply, restoration of the mineral elements of the soil removed by crops, all measures which will increase food supplies must be taken in our world if human life is to continue.

(Constant struggle between competing interests)

The battle that Theodore Roosevelt fought and won for conservation in early 20th century America can be lost in our day if we forget the necessity of keeping forest reserves, game preserves, water supplies flood-control and power achievements beyond the power of greedy, short-sighted men.

[Editor’s note: the following is in the Bridgeport sermon, but apparently excised for Plainfield and Lakeland:

There are additional perils. The new noun in our language, “fall-out” refers to the fact that as a result of atomic and hydrogen experiments, many places in the world, even our own country, have experienced rainfalls of radioactive dust. So far, we are told, except for the unlucky Japanese fishing vessels, these “fall-outs” have not been [of] sufficient intensity to represent a danger to human life. A good many people, even the conservative and militant Winston Churchill, are greatly concerned that if these fission experiments continue, the fall-outs will be deadly enough to poison our soil, to make the fruit and all growing things, for which we are thankful, deadly for human beings.

We may have to make a different kind of sacrifice than the primitive peoples to [ensure] the fertility of the earth. We may have to take steps that will halt the rain of death; even if these steps mean that we may have to revise our accepted ideas about individual sovereignty and our notion that we have the right to tell the rest of the world to go hang.]

The third primitive ritual observed in the shadowy and ancient past was the offering of the first fruits to the god and gods. Not only were the fruit and vegetables brought to the altar; and the fatted calves burned in the altar flames; but in more fearsome days the very first child of a man and woman was consecrated to a fiery death in the gaping mouth of Moloch.

Early peoples felt these heartbreaking acts were necessary to appease the anger and desires of the gods they worshiped. No longer do we roast our first-born at the altar of religion. (Although the Mars still receives his tributes). We do not decorate our altars with fruit and vegetables. When churches did, of late years it was for the purpose of feeding those who were in need.

As men advanced in understanding they recognized that rather than destroying humans and vegetables on the altar as a thing pleasing to God, they increased their responsibility for the welfare of their fellow human beings. (Amos: “I hate, despise, but let, righteousness,” etc.)

Thus the Hebrews in their Feast of the Tabernacles refined and humanized the meaning of the festival. In addition to the more original elements of harvest ritual and thanks, the Feast of Tabernacles became the occasion when the Hebrews remembered with gratitude the wanderings of their ancestors who roamed the wilderness for many years, sheltered by tents. The booths (or tents) in houses or in the fields where the Israelites should dwell for 7 days in commemoration of the feast is a reminder to them that their ancestors thought enough of their unique religion and culture to want to be freed from the chains of slavery; to venture into unknown perils for the sake of freedom and for the chance to live their lives in the way they believed to be right. “Let my people go,” said Moses to Pharaoh. When Pharaoh hardened his heart, the people went anyway. They sought freedom. Their courage is one of the great parts of our heritage as well as the heritage of the Jewish people.

Philo, the Alexandrian, one of the greatest Jewish philosophers who lived [around] 200 BC, said of this harvest festival of tabernacles, “it teaches equality, the first principle and beginning of justice ... (as well as) the witnessing of the perfection of all fruits of the year, and the giving of thanks to the being who has made them perfect.”

Thus the first-fruits in our day must be a recognition that life is given to us for moral uses: that God is best served by serving the needs of our fellow-men.

We are all tempted at times to be like the boy in the nursery rhyme (with a little poetic license)

“Little Jack Horner, sat in a corner,
Eating a (Thanksgiving) pie.
He put in his thumb and pulled out a plum,
And said, what a great boy am I.”

But that is not the best of our heritage. From the Jewish people, and from their moral growth that added justice and righteousness to the necessary components of the harvest festival came also the idea of the synagogue. This is a time in Jewish congregations when the institution of the synagogue receives special recognition. We would do well to be glad that the Jewish people evolved this institution for it was a fore-runner of real democracy. In the synagogue all men were equal in the sight of God; no priest, no person or privilege could claim special distinction; all souls were equal as they sought to learn more of what religion is and what religion does. The church fellowship has incorporated many of the best ideas of the synagogue; democracy in church policy; the value of every person; the necessity of learning the facts of religion as well as learning to respond emotionally to religion.

So amid next Thursday’s celebration of family, food and the spiritual fragrance of happiness together, may it be that we will experience a drive to real thanksgiving – be part of conserving a world of hope for all persons; a drive to be working members of a world synagogue dedicated to learning more so that all people may obtain justice and a satisfactory life in which everyone can rejoice and give thanks in freedom to the God who is the creator of all persons everywhere in the world.

Rediscovery of America

November 21, 1965
Plainfield

Rediscovery of America

[Editor’s Note: The most recent evidence strongly points to the Vinland Map being a forgery. Having said that, it is clear from other that Columbus was not the first to discover the New World; Viking settlements in Newfoundland predate Columbus’ journey by centuries.]

Adopting what seemed to many to be deplorable timing, Yale University on the day before Columbus Day, October 12, in this year of 1965 announced the publication of the “Vinland Map” which supposedly confirms the hypothesis that the Norsemen discovered the North American mainland somewhere around 1000. If so, Columbus did not discover America in 1492, but re-discovered it. I would like to place this controversy before you, not to settle historical debates, but rather to suggest that the contentiousness which this announcement provoked should remind us that religion should help us understand not only human foibles and human vanities, but also, religion should help us find for ourselves the positive and negative features of ancient discovery. We seek this understanding of historical human events not to debunk history and throw mud on honored names, but to establish directions for our ways and guidance in our moral problems of man and society.

No matter whether or not one accepts the new evidence which gives credit to the Norsemen for discovering North America, the impress of Columbus on our culture will not be eradicated easily or soon. Our cities are marked with Columbus Avenues, Columbus streets, and Columbus circles. Columbus, Indiana, Columbus, Georgia, and Columbus, Ohio are lettered on our maps. Our children sing, “Columbus the tem (sic?) of the ocean,” and our venerable statesmen meet in the District of Columbia. Columbia University is one of the great schools and the Columbia River is one of the mighty rivers of America. There would seem to be some awkwardness and much strangeness if we were to talk about Erickson Circle, Leif the Lucky, Ohio and if our judicial, legislative and executive branches of the government were to have their mail addressed to the District of Eric the Red.

In spite of natural Latin loyalties to Columbus and the voluminous press notices given the announcements and reactions, five weeks ago, most scholarly thought has agreed that there were voyages which reached the North American mainland as early as 1000 a.d. The famous historian, Samuel Eliot Morrison observed that this has been generally known since 1837. The scholarly studies have been in the direction of discovering if the Vikings had precursors in America. The Vinland Map, highly publicized by Yale, indicates that Leif Erickson had a partner, Bjarni Herjulfsson. One can speculate right away – maybe Bjarni’s real name was Barney, adding to the belief that the earliest discoverers of America were Irish monks. According to the legends of Brendan of Clonfert, son of Finnloger, they were in southerly parts of what is now the U.S. as early as 850. If one seeks to confuse the matter even more, there is some guessing that the Chinese had a colony in the Pacific Northwest as early as 449.

It is said that when Yale announced the Vinland Map, comedian Jimmy Durante, loyal to his background, remarked that “when Columbus arrived, he played only to Indians, there were no Norwegians in the audience.” This should be a reminder as Morrison wrote, “that the real discoverers of America were the Indians, who, tens of thousands of years before the Norsemen paid their brief visits had spread throughout the continent and established at least three great civilizations.”

So Columbus, Erik, Leif, Bjarni and all the others were re-discoverers of America.

But Columbus was the most important. His voyages are historically unquestioned. More than that, because his diaries are remarkable revelations of both greatness and meanness, what Columbus valued in the America he discovered can be of guidance to us in the America we are discovering.

Columbus has been honored as the brave, visionary explorer who sailed westward beyond the Gates of Hercules, left the Azores in the wake of his tiny fleet; and when he next hailed land, he carved his niche in history as the discoverer of America. He didn’t reach his objective, which had been China; and in the land he discovered, he passed over the real treasures and marked the islands of the Caribbean with the ugly scars of cruelty and the enslavement of human beings. This is said not in judgment of Columbus, for he was a product of his harsh times, not an enlightened humanitarian deeply convinced of the rights of all human beings. The voyages of Columbus although eventually ill-starred, were courageous adventures. When we reflect on the gold and lands he, his officers and sponsors were after and on the ways they behaved, we find encapsulated some of the great virtues and cruel evils that man exhibits.

When one reads the diary of Columbus and considers some of the deeds of this great Admiral, one cannot help but be struck by the grandeur and misery of man. The following lines from Columbus’ notes on his first voyage as his vessel was closely following the coastline of Cuba (Juana): “This island and all the others are very fertile to a limitless degree and this island is extremely so. In it there are many harbors on the coast of the sea beyond comparison with others which I know in Christendom, and many rivers, good and large, which is marvelous. Its lands are high, and there are in it many sierras and very lofty mountains, beyond comparison with the island of Tenerife. All are most beautiful, of a thousand shapes, and all are accessible and filled with trees of a thousand kinds and tall, and they seem to touch the sky. And I am told they never lose their foliage, as I can understand, for I saw them as green and lovely as they are in Spain in May, and some of them were flowering, some bearing fruit, and some in another stage, according to their nature. And the nightingale was singing and other birds of a thousand kinds in the month of November.”

Yet the great explorer who could respond with such poetic sensitivity to the great natural beauty of a new world, was the same man who began the West Indian Slave Trade, capturing natives and shipping them back to Spain. On June 24, 1495, 5 vessels crowded with slaves followed others who had previously carried their human cargoes of misery. The same man who rejoiced in nightingales in November tore men, women and children away from their lovely island homes. Weighted with irons and imprisoned in dark, cramped, airless holds, they were not even given a last look at the beautiful lands they were forced to leave forever.

All this becomes more pathetic, even inexplicable, when one considers the quality of the people Columbus enslaved. They were not savages who would have been better off as “Christians,” even though chained. Columbus himself testifies, (p. 197-8), to their character and hospitality, “It is true that after they have been reassured and have lost their fear, they are so guileless and so generous with all they possess that no one would believe it who has not seen it. They never refuse anything they possess if it be asked of them. On the contrary they invite anyone to share it, and display as much love as if they would give their hearts and whether the thing be of value or whether it be of small price, at once with whatever trifle of whatever kind it may be that is given them, with that they are content....

“... and they do not know any creed and are not idolaters, only they believe that power and good are in the heavens.

“... and this does not come because they are ignorant. On the contrary they are of acute intelligence, and are men who navigate all these seas, so it is amazing how good an account they give of everything.”

If only Columbus, instead of enslaving these bright, good people had tried to discover the secret of their generosity, the social origins of their good dispositions, the religious development of their faith in the power and good of the universe. Such findings would have taught us much, for America is emphatically being re-discovered in 1965 and all the recent years; and much more daring explorations are called for or we perish. If an explorer who knew nothing of us should put in at our harbors, would he find a consistent pattern of generosity, friendliness and a prevailing folk religion of simplicity and goodness?

True, our social services, charities, community enterprises, corporate organizations for production, banking, trade, our provisions for material security speak volumes for our national acceptance of responsibility for the welfare of the citizenry. We have considerable zeal for the education of all our people, along with confusion about the aims of education and the proper seat of responsibility for its accomplishment. A modern Columbus might be overwhelmed by the pile-up of wealth; and attracted by our passionate striving for recognition and status.

But other Americas are being discovered, too. We are discovering in these post-WW2 years that our national community is shadowed by fear of widespread development of nuclear weapons and increasing danger of their use by some nation.

On Sept. 17, 1492, Columbus recorded that the seamen began to murmur with fear. Nearly fifty days of sailing Westward without sighting land aggravated their fears of the unknown. These fears had been compounded by the strange deflections of the compass needle, by the startling streak of a large meteor and by the fearful experience of the Saragossa Sea, where the floating maze of sea-growth seemed almost like a supernatural barrier. But the Admiral kept sailing westward in spite of the community of fear aboard the little vessels.

We are re-discovering fear of the unknown in our day – fear of unknown events and impulsive fingers on atomic buttons. We are discovering we are a long day’s voyage from old and comfortable ways. The future is unknown and the compass needle of international prediction is fluctuating erratically. We are discovering to our chagrin that our country is looked upon by many others in the world as a threat to peace. Perhaps we ought to study the charts of living more closely. Bishop Robinson of Woolwich, England, famous for his “Honest to God” book wrote equally provocatively in CHRISTIAN MORALS TODAY, “... the unbreakable rules propounded by Christians always turn out to be about sex and not about war.”

Did we not re-discover America in the news stories this week when it was disclosed that the Secretary General of the U.N. had secured approval from North Vietnam to sit down and talk peace, but that our State Department had flatly rejected the opportunity? The best that can be said about such national policy is that an astonishing lack of candor has been demonstrated. If the North Vietnamese can be called intransigent and stubborn, then we have earned a similar label in the eyes of much of the world.

When the Committee on Social Responsibility moved us so deeply with their service, were they not portraying an America whose rediscovery is laced with both optimism and pessimism?

Depending upon one’s sophistication, it is either shocking or ironic that when Southern Rhodesia declared its independence of the British Commonwealth in order to prevent the African majority from obtaining liberties, rights and the vote, their Southern Rhodesia Declaration of Independence copied the phrases from our Declaration of Independence. It may be painful to our pride, but perhaps the white Rhodesians, who will not give up power and special privilege, chose our Declaration of Independence because, although our Founding Fathers wrote of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, these were not for all Americans. Indians and Negroes, for example were excluded and the consequences in human suffering have been incalculable. In the one hundred eighty nine years since 1776, it has still not come home fully to us that unless human rights exist in actual practice for all persons, then to boast unseemly of our achievements of freedom for all is a snare and a delusion. We should be shocked to discover that Southern Rhodesia has modeled on our Declaration of Independence its national profession of constitutional freedoms but which actually are disenfranchisement. Perhaps if we are properly shocked, we may become more aware that each of us needs to discover in himself the courage and creativity to reduce the disproportion between the ideal and the actual in the dimension of equality of opportunity in employment, housing, education and justice.

U Thant, Secretary General of the U.N. is aware of the serious nature of the issue, writing in the April 65 issue of THE COURIER, “There is a clear prospect that racial conflict, if we cannot curb and finally eliminate it, will crow into a destructive monster compared to which the religious an ideological conflicts of the past and present will seem like family quarrels.”

There was another rediscovery of America in my experience this week. Like many persons, I have ... certain hunches and felt certain amounts of uneasiness about the engineered illusions of some varieties of advertising, but I was somewhat surprised to read excerpts from a speech made by Dean Robert O. Schultze last Wednesday to the annual meeting of National Advertisers. (See NY Times, 11/18/65). These comments really reveal more about us as consumers than they represent any indictment of advertising:

“We have long known that this (advertising) was no simple or straightforward venture.

“We need misinformation, we need illusion .... And much of contemporary advertising addresses itself to this need, to our need to be misled not only about products and services – how superior they are – but about ourselves – how successful, popular, handsome, beautiful, good we are or may become; and about life – how simple it is, how friendly, how full of pleasures and gustoes and rewards.”

Dr. Schultze said also that another function of advertising is that “it sensitizes us to the fact that our world is a highly manipulative one, and that getting along for many of us these days more and more involves the ability to manipulate, to sell, perhaps to con our children, our associates, our wives and husbands or subordinates and superordinates – and perhaps most of all – ourselves.”

But Dr. Schultze is not alarmed at all for he sees advertising “as a conservative element in society – one that provides a ballast, a stabilizing factor in a rapidly changing environment.”

Then the capstone of the quotes. “In this sense American advertising rather resembles the Baptist Church, the American Medical Association, the Republican Party, the American Legion and the Ivy League colleges.”

Are we now rediscovering an America where a major stabilizing force in our society is illusion and misinformation?

Just one more example: the other night, driving through the industrial complex on the way to NYC, the man with me asked, “where are the alabaster cities?” Of course we were thinking of Katherine Lee Bates’ great hymn – purple mountain majesties, the fruited plain, the shining and the gleaming alabaster cities. Perhaps we are a little late in discovering that the air is tainted, the waters polluted, the mountains scarified and the plains wasted.

Anyone can think of examples, A water engineer ... eloquent at an Adult Progress Committee describing our mismanagement of our most essential resource – clean water. But long ago I read that Lake Tahoe, one of the most beautiful bodies of water on our planet was rapidly becoming polluted because of excess commercial expansion and inadequate sewage regulations. Conservation and beautifying the landscape is now receiving considerable Federal attention, but some areas may be beyond reclamation.

Now this foregoing section on the rediscovery of America may have seemed like a Roman candle, popping off briefly about Vietnam, Southern Rhodesia, advertising, pollution and waste – popping off with a spark, then fading and falling into frustration and inertia – is that the way a sermon ends? Well, no one person can handle many of the problems of modern man unless he plunges only into the most shallow soundings of each. Few, if any of us can charge off in all directions and be any more effective than was Don Quixote. There is nothing more frustrating than to be engaged with all problems and [be] master of none.

Furthermore, I surmise that few experiences can be more irritating than to be among a captive audience and be expected to listen to a moralizing preacher embark on a Cook’s tour of people’s alleged faults and presumed failings, while he blithely entertains a completely unrealistic view of the interests, energies and moral convictions of most of the people.

Yet, what would you? Any look at any part of history discloses the plain reality that the higher values must be maintained with considerable labor by overworked and overstressed minorities in the midst of uncaring or overwhelmed majorities.

In Act 4, Sc. [4], Hamlet soliloquizes,

“What is a man
If is chief good and market of his time
Be but to sleep and feed?

Sure he that made us with such large discourse,
Looking before and after, gave us not
That capability and godlike reason
To fust in us unus’d.”

Recently I heard a story – somewhat silly – but making a point: an inexperienced officer was drilling a squad of soldiers in a field that ended abruptly at sheer cliffs that descended 1000 feet or more to the rocky shore of the English Channel. After a series of squads left and squads rights, etc., the inexperienced officer found he had the squad marching toward the cliff; and couldn’t think of the proper command which would turn them about and prevent disaster. As he stood, tongue-tied, the corporal spoke up, “For goodness sake, sir, say something, if only ’goodbye.’”

So it is with the numerous, painful problems and dilemmas in the re-discovered American – nuclear powered, urbanized, tense, increasingly automated in a social sea rising with a great tide of expectations from those who have never had their rightful opportunity for equal liberties, security and self-fulfillment. Those who are concerned ought to say something. If a person can not speak and be informed on many issues, he can on a few – or one. Every important issue needs the strength of more participation, if only one more. The higher values are maintained by minorities who work in the midst of apathetic or callous majorities.

We will rediscover America for ourselves as individuals when on one, or more vital issues. We make our knowledge adequate, our voice heard and our influence felt. The last verse of William De Witt Hyde’s hymn (311) compresses the meaning in four lines,

“Since what we choose is what we are,
And what we love, we yet shall be,
The goal may ever shine afar -
The will to win it makes us free.”

About the Creating Universe

October 17, 1965
Plainfield

Sermon Series: WHERE I NOW STAND
About the Creating Universe


Without cosmic dimensions, any faith is inadequate to fulfill the complete human personality. This I believe.

The earlier sections of this three-part sermon attempted to deal with the basic propositions that persons must deal with themselves and others in order to survive in any fashion that may be appropriately described as human. While I speak of the necessity to me of a cosmic dimension to religion, in all candor, many persons seem to do very well without any noticeable response. Wordsworth described this insensitivity:

"A primrose by the river's brim
A yellow primrose was to him
And nothing more."

The ancient Hebrew psalmist may have been overwhelmed with wonder, "When I consider they heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars which thou has ordained; what is man, that thou art mindful of him?"....

But others seem unresponsive to Arcturus, Orion, the Pleiades, Moon and tide, the ever-bountiful Earth and the life-giving Sun.

However, there are those, arid I am one, who still feel the magnetic power of Wordsworth's immortal lines:

"The World is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and Spending, we lay waste our powers;
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon,
The winds that will be howling at all hours
And are up-gather'd now like sleeping flowers,
For this, for everything we are out of tune;
It moves us not - Great God! I'd rather be
a Pagan suckled in a creed outworn, -
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;
Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea,
Or hear old Triton blow his wreath'd horn."

Wordsworth, the Romantic, may seem archaic or naive to some of you, but he caught the essence of my present convictions about this mysterious, abundant Universe in which we live and of which we are a part. Religion is not only a way of feeling about oneself and a way of acting toward fellow human beings, but also religion is an attitude merging feeling and thought about the Universe. Man has always tried to solve the mysteries of creation and destiny; man has tried to accommodate himself to natural forces he understood only through a glass darkly. We still confront cosmic mystery. Whether one calls himself atheist, agnostic, a theist or humanist, if one relates to the cosmic order in some significant blend of thought and feeling, one is seeking a relationship that can be a thrilling and fulfilling religious experience.

The case I would set before you divides this way - (1) Man has tried always to understand, appease and control cosmic forces. (2) That although man has achieved fantastic scientific knowledge and mastered marvelous technologies, and although man has applied reason and become intellectually sophisticated, he still needs to wonder at the manifold ways and forces resident in the living Universe in which he lives and from which he has been created.

1. Early man - primitive man, we call him - lived dangerously. He was by no means master of wild beasts. The storm and sea could bring quick disaster; droughts and famine were not conditions to be corrected but rather supernatural forces beyond the control of man's bare hands and crude tools.

Primitive man believed the ferocity of the beasts and the catastrophic force of fire and storm, the wondrous gifts of light and fertility to have lives of their own - supernatural powers. Man tried to placate these powers through worship because man did not understand their nature. Religion was practical in that man offered sacrifice, prayer in word, gesture and ritual dance in order to obtain certain favors from these powers that inhabited inanimate things. Inasmuch as then and now men have a tendency to count the hits and not the misses, sometimes the sacrifice seemed to make a difference or the prayers seemed to be answered. Thus accidental or spontaneous efforts to please the gods tended to become habitual, ritualized.

It is not oversimplifying to assert that few ideas have changed form more frequently than man's idea of God or the gods.

In addition to worshiping the powers of light, fire, storm, fertility, man worshiped totem animals and eventually personified the gods in his (man's) ideal image.

Freud in his seminal work, "The Future of an Illusion," proposed that worship of gods or god was an escape mechanism wherein man, who had deep-seated and unconscious conflicts, created the image of the Father God in a strange blend of wish fulfillment and guilt.

The Marxist might say that the priests and ruling classes invented the gods as the best way to control the working classes - "religion was the opiate of the people."

Many of these theories are discredited or substantially qualified in the light of increasing knowledge. But new knowledge seldom wipes the chalkboard clean of outmoded beliefs. To be human is to possess not only the ability to transmit culture which has been tested and reasoned, but also to pass on out-moded beliefs and worship practices.

The humanistic philosopher, Morris Raphael Cohen, observed, "religious truth is absolute and its possession makes everything else unimportant. Hence, religion never preaches the duty of critical thought, of searching or investigating supposed facts.

"From this point of view, it is interesting to read the testimony of Bishop Colenso as to what led him to write his book on the Pentateuch. When he tried to teach Biblical history to the South African natives, he was amazed at obvious contradictions which these simple savages discovered in the various accounts of the Patriarchs. Yet millions of astute and learned Christians had not noticed these discrepancies." (Quoted in Kaufmann, RELIGION FROM TOLSTOY TO CAMUS.)

In early September, (9/6/65) the "National Observer" printed a feature article (by Lee Dirks) discussing the ways in which some churches are facing the conflict, tension and uncertainties in our world. Two of his observations seem accurate to me because they illustrate that while there may be general belief that there has been an advance from primitive religious practices, the progress may be more apparent than real:

"The Church worships a god but too often it is the false god of the status quo – the Church as it is, the community as it is, the world as it is...

"Church members too often consider God the great psychiatrist, a helpful resource to call upon in times of need but a convenient absentee at other times. The residential church thus runs a spiritual ambulance service, treating suffering when it arises, but rarely trying to influence the 'power structure' that might have caused the suffering."

I am not going to belabor the fifty-seven varieties of rationalizations which pass for devout belief. Think for a moment of the book of Job, the most superb delineation of the problem of reconciling human suffering with the idea of an all-good, all-powerful God.

The introduction to the dramatic scenes uses the device of a challenging argument between the Lord and Satan. The Lord boasts about the man, Job, "blameless and upright who fears God, who turns away from evil."

Satan rejoins, "Does Job fear God for nought? Hast thou not put a hedge about him and his house and all that he has on every side? Thou hast blessed the work of his hand and his possessions have increased in the land." Then Satan goes on to argue that if the Lord removed the hedge of prosperity and well-being, Job will curse "thee, God, to thy face."

The enduring value of the drama of Job derives from the self-searching and the spiritual agony and final existential resolution achieved by Job when the hedge is gone.

Our task is that of Job's – how to reconcile religion with life when the hedge is gone. The hedge is gone, for unlike some ideas of Job's time, good-fortune does not inevitably follow good behavior. The prayers of the just are not always answered. Furthermore, we are aware, or should be, of the extent to which the gods are images made by the mind of man, rather than vice-versa.

Can we like Job, remain reverent while unconvinced by false, irrational or outmoded ideas of God?

2. I can only offer my own testimony that this Universe, the force that resides in it and the constant creativity that seems to be its dominant characteristic cannot be dismissed as trivial, merely because other persons may cherish naive or wrong-headed ideas about origin and destiny.

The human personality has evolved to a state where not only are we self-conscious and conscious of others, but also the human personality, by way of the process we call by the name of consciousness, labors valiantly to find meaning in the totality of experience. This totality of experience encompasses more than self-consciousness and more than consciousness of others and the social order. The totality of experience also includes sensitivity to the swing of the seasons, to the ordered journey of the galaxies and an awareness of the bounty of the good Earth on which we depend for all the elements which combine to create our human life.

In my view, it is unnecessary to possess a closely-argued case for the existence of a God with particular characteristics. At issue in the present stage of astronomical discussion seem to be two theories of the origin of the Universe.

One is the "steady state" theory (Fred Hoyle, Thomas Gold and others) which maintains that in the universe there are an infinite number of galaxies which have always existed. Theologically, this implies that the universe was never created, but has always existed.

The second theory is the "big bang" theory which asserts the universe was created when a primal atom exploded, its shattering parts creating the galaxies which began shooting outward at a pace of nearly the speed of light. According to this view, the stuff of the Universe is finite, rather than infinite, and theologically suggests an end as well as a beginning.

When dealing with religious consciousness, the point is not the correctness or truth of one of these theoretical cosmologies, but the reality, that as human beings we try to find meaning in the Universe. We seem to identify what we call "order" in the Universe. There are happenings regular enough in their repetitions that we call them natural laws. It seems to me irrelevant to argue that our human consciousness may be only harboring illusions of an orderly, lawful Universe. If it is an illusion, it is OUR illusion. As the eminent humanist, Sir Julian Huxley, wrote, "God is a hypothesis constructed by man to help him understand what existence is all about." (ESSAYS OF A HUMANIST, p. 221.)

So with hypothesis of "natural laws of the Universe," theologically, I classify myself as a "naturalist," because I believe man to be a natural, organic part of a natural order, a natural order which is larger and far more comprehensive than man. "Cosmic Humanist" might be a better phrase encompassing my beliefs, except it sounds pretentious and more positive than my feelings warrant. I shy away more and more from excessive and extensive use of the word "god" because too frequently when people speak of God it is either an immature fixation or a practical atheism which (quoting Rowlingson, Christian Century, 8/25/65, p. 35) "denies God's existence by ignoring Him except in meaningless lip service." Ralph Waldo Emerson perceived the difficulty when he wrote in his JOURNAL, (p. 73), "It is plain from all the noise that there is Atheism somewhere, the only question is now, which is the Atheist?"

Abraham Maslow in his little book of large impact (RELIGIOUS VALUES AND PEAK EXPERIENCES, p. 28 and 59) believes that "the essential core - religious experience may be embedded either in a theistic, supernatural context or in a nontheistic context."

Every one of us will do well to cultivate a natural reverence toward all that lives and all that touches our human experience, Many among us who believe in "one god at the most" agree with the late Nobel winner in literature, Albert Camus, when he wrote, "The difference as to whether a God exists involves our feelings more than most scientific disputes and in this respect is more like a difference as to whether there is beauty in a thing." (Quoted by Kaufmann, RELIGION FROM TOLSTOY TO CAMUS.)

But our feelings are as real as anything in our experience. While our evaluations of beauty may differ, beauty is one of the finer aspects of human experience. So it is with our experience of this marvelous universe. Knowledge has been acquired in fantastic quantities, but the magnificent mystery of creation deepens. The longer the radius, the greater the circumference and the longest radii of our knowledge draw but a small arc in the circumferential totality of the creating Universe.

There are recognitions which should generate both humility and reverence. The famous British astronomer, Sir Bernard Lovell, refers to a "close" star as one as "near" to the Earth as 4000 light years - we could travel to it in 4000 years if we were able to cross space at the rate of 186,000 miles per second.

Dr. David Goddard, a biologist, said that a single human sperm, weighing one billionth of a gram, contains more information coded into its microscopic size than all the information contained in all the libraries of all men in all times. (See THE URBAN CONDITION, Ian MacHarg, p. 55).

The late Norbert Wiener, prophet of cybernation, wrote in his little book, GOD AND GOLEM (p. 72), "any computer with powers comparable to the brain would have to occupy a fair-sized office building, if not a skyscraper."

In his new novel, LET ME COUNT THE WAYS, Peter DeVries has a character say, "the universe is like a safe to which there is a combination. But the combination is locked up in the safe."

We live in a universe of constant creativity. Greater marvel still – we are conscious of this cosmic creativity and cosmic mystery. As I see it, the essential reality question is not the usual one of deciding which variety of god operates and controls it, but rather recognizing that the Universe is not a chaotic void but an orderly cosmos. Huxley seized upon the core meaning: “Though gods and God in any meaningful sense seemed destined to disappear, the stuff of divinity out of which they have grown and developed remains. This religious raw material consists of those aspects of nature and experience
which are usually described as divine.... The term divine did not originally imply the existence of gods; on the contrary, gods were constructed to interpret man's experience of this quality." (p. 222 ESSAYS OP A HUMANIST.)

We are living beings who live because we are of the stuff of living Universe. The key word of it all is "life." The elements of the galaxies and this vital impulse we call life combine in rare harmony in us, granting us consciousness and physical growth. We are living beings who should be everlastingly grateful for the gift of life, while remaining confident that this gift of life must ever be valued as precious. Prom that basic value we infer other values which flow from it in harmonious procession. If man values friends, loves persons, and man permits his self-centeredness to be overmatched by outgoing sympathy, permits his neurotic vanity to become submerged by wide understanding of the human condition, and throughout it all embracing the regularities and mysteries of the totality of life experience, then no matter how he may state his faith in theological or nontheological jargon, he is close to the heart of things; and the unfolding of all experience will be for him the good life.

About Our Religious Society

October 10, 1965
Plainfield

Sermon Series: WHERE I NOW STAND
About Our Religious Society

All that I said about the integrity of individual belief would be deficient and ambiguous if I failed to come to grips with the reality that individuals encounter individuals and their honest convictions may collide rather than coincide. What then?

Last week I affirmed that the universe is dynamic, that man emerged through the process we call evolution because living organisms could adapt to ever-changing conditions. Today's part of this series is an attempt to deepen the meaning of individual integrity of belief by recognizing that no individual lives a solitary existence. We live in a social order – there is no other option except to extinguish life. How can individual integrity be retained and an effective social order maintained?

The institutions of society change much more slowly than an individual adjusts to new conditions. The necessity of "continued struggle to maintain a balance between change and order has been faced by all civilizations." (Moody Prior, PBK address.)

In an essay found in Leonard Duhl's THE URBAN CONDITION, (p. l4ff) John R. Seeley, then Chairman of the Department of Sociology of York University, believes two dominant themes have been major motifs characterizing Western history. "One theme virtually asserts that if each before his own door sweeps, the village will be clean; the other, that if the village institutes a proper sanitation service, each one will be clean – at least as far as his dooryard, and probably beyond. In dogmatic form these views are asserted not simply in terms of 'if, but in terms of 'if and only if' – i.e., a way becomes THE WAY. One formula runs roughly: good persons (or 'mature' or 'productive' or whatever new word for 'good' you want) make a good society, which inevitably makes a good physical ordering – or if not, it does not matter since virtue is its own sufficient reward. The other, obviously: a good physical ordering leads toward a great society, which produces (or educes) good persons – or if not, it does not matter since a good external order is a, perhaps, sufficient good in itself."

It might be possible to speak in general terms about the contradiction implicit in these two ways of life pulsing in our Western culture, but the context today is our kind of religious society – governed by the members in congregational meeting, using constitutional by-laws as the basic instrument for proper procedures. I am not asserting that such a religious society can be a proper model for the infinitely larger and more complex institutions of government, but I am saying that from the experience of the democratic religious society clues will be present and some wisdom gained which should give us. some insight into the crucial matter of whether or not self-government is an authentic hope or cruel delusion.

Without qualifying a single word said about the integrity of individual religious belief, I believe this, too – freedom even in the most democratically organized society is limited. My individual rights are limited by your individual rights. If we walk together, talk together, act together, we must accept common rules or laws which do place limits on our individualities. If we do not accept such limitations, in one way or another, society will impose them. The alternatives are anarchy and violence. Anarchy and violence always have the consequence of immediate destruction of the values which define freedom.

Therefore, we need the ordered society, because to grow properly in wisdom and righteousness, we must talk together, walk together and act together. A religious society of persons who voluntarily have subscribed to a constitutional instrument is necessary for our growth in freedom, our corporate wisdom and our effective application of the truths we believe.

There are many ways of affirming the values of a religious society such as ours. Let me suggest today – setting, structure, body, quality.

1. I believe the religious society to be the orderly setting of free expression for the congregation. When one wishes to temper metal, one exposes it to heat and pressure. There is no better way to discover whether one's ideas and convictions have been sufficiently tested than by exposure to facts and opinions expressed by someone else who may appraise issues differently.

There are many ways our Unitarian Universalist religion represents for us what religion is and does, but one of the distinctions we should never disavow is a respect for the growing edge of ideas. In no better way can ideas mature than by refinement in the free market of "challenge and response."

Dr. Nelson Glueck, President of Hebrew Union College and eminent archeologist, has written DEITIES AND DOLPHINS: THE STORY OF THE NABATAEANS (Farrar, Strauss and Giroux). The Nabataean kingdom flourished commerically, artistically and agriculturally in the Near East, from about 200 B.C. to 200 A.D., and was a crossroad of Mediterranean culture. Today, were it not for the excavations of the archeologist, we would know almost nothing of this vigorous kingdom.

According to Dr. Glueck, the Nabataeans did not persist and failed to influence history significantly because "they lacked the indestructible ideas of Greek philosophy, Roman law and Hebrew religion." The worship of the Nabataeans "was almost entirely limited to supplication for food and fortune in this world and the hereafter. It carried with it even in the midst of a brilliant period of efflorescence the irresistible causes of disintegration and disappearance." (See Saturday Review, p. 22, 9/4/65.)

The lesson seems clear; without a free market in ideas, any organization is headed for despotism or oblivion, irrespective of other virtues and assets. The religious society is no exception.

Not only is the free pulpit a necessary plank in the platform, but also the free pew. In the coffee hour, in the pulpit when the minister vacates it, in the committee work and in the program meetings, our religious society must not falter in expressing ideas and convictions and must not build any walls, psychological or organizational, that will shut out the creative rhythm of differing opinions expressed openly and with affection. The most important setting is, of course, the society in official meeting, but without a prevailing climate of openness whenever we gather informally, then there will be difficulty maintaining free expression and good will amid the formalities of "Robert's Rules of Order."

2. I believe the democratic religious society to be a structure of discernment. When there is no discrimination between the important and the trivial, the enduring and the transient, all the traffic in ideas is like unto the chaff which the wind blows away.
The eminent historian, Henry Steele Commager, (in article "Historian Looks at Political Morality," Saturday Review, 7/10/65) noted, "The students of my college celebrate Lord Jeffrey Amherst on all ceremonial occasions, but few of them remember that Lord Amherst's solution to the Indian problem was to send them blankets infected with smallpox." One might call this celebration without discernment.

That was illustration, for I have no desire to single out one institution where values were not clearly perceived, for there are no exceptions to the rule that every society needs more acute perception as well as free expression.

What do persons value most? What issues deserve priority in attention and decision? Does the leadership, whether the professional leadership or the elected lay leadership, correctly interpret the members' convictions and their dominant feelings about change and the order of change?

Dr. Dexter Perkins, famous Rochesterian, historian, one-time Moderator of the A.U.A., in his brief historical study, THE NEW AGE OF FRANKLIN ROOSEVELT, (p. 110) wrote about the sense of peril Americans felt in the late 1930's about the collapse of the European democracies. There was increasing feeling in the U.S. that vigorous action was necessary, even at the risk of war. According to Dr. Perkins, William Allen White, long-time Republican, admonished President Roosevelt, "As an old friend, let me tell you that you may not be able to lead the American people unless you catch up with them."

There is a legend, probably unhistorical, but pertinent, about the agitated man in a revolution, anxiously asking spectators, "where did the crowd go? I am their leader."

Persons gathered in religious society, or any society, must perceive as well as express and must evaluate as well as expostulate. The method and consequence of such an appraising process is just as essential to the moral growth of a society as it is to an individual. I believe it our obligation to increase the ways we may perceive and evaluate the ideas and issues which stake a claim on our interest.

3. Next I believe that the effective range of our religious society reaches beyond expression and discernment. At its best the Unitarian Universalist religious society is a body of decision and a proper instrument of change.

In Sophocles' immortal drama, ANTIGONE, Creon, the dictator, says, "I guard the city's greatness." In our kind of society, the leadership we do not want is a dictator to guard any greatness we may have or to which we aspire. The body of decision is the members gathered. They must guard the tradition and innovate the necessary changes to keep purpose alive and action effective. The most difficult and responsible task of the membership is to maintain the balance between what has been and what should be.

In a famous line, the Rev. Mr. Thwackum in TOM JONES asserted, "When I mention religion, I mean the Christian religion; and not only the Christian religion, but the Protestant religion; and not only the Protestant religion, but the Church of England." Such narrow parochialism is not for us, but temptations facing us, while not as obvious, may be enticing. For example, John Haynes Holmes wrote in his autobiography, I SPEAK FOR MYSELF, an impression of his first pastorate, Third Unitarian Church of Dorchester, Massachusetts, that it was "exactly like its neighbors, adapted to traditions rather than prospects."

Last week I suggested to you that "each of us is a seeker of religious truth – we should feel committed to a perpetual process of searching out better expressions of faith which embody both deeper perception and a broader embrace of the new knowledge constantly flowing from the sciences and the humanities." This statement is just as relevant to our group ways as well as to our individual integrity. One of my colleagues (Wallace Fiske) once wrote, "some people fall out of church life for the same reason the little girl fell out of bed – she went to sleep too near the place she got in."

In professing to be a body of decision and the proper instrument of change, a vital virtue of our religious society is not only that it is the way of group religious life most consistent with a free faith, but also it is an immediate and practical test of the democratic ways we profess. At its best, our religious society is an integrated community whose members assert, listen, consult, strive for authentic concensus and then express the will of the members by vote.

Isaiah, most poetic of the Hebrew prophets of old, had appropriate words: "Behold, I create new heavens and a new earth: and the former things shall not be remembered, nor come to mind. But be ye glad and rejoice forever in that which I create...."

Note that Isaiah challenges persons to rejoice in the things which are created, not which have been created. The past can neither be ignored nor erased; but vital to a Unitarianism and a Universalism which will carry both the better sanctions of the past and a confrontation of the present in a continuous reconstruction by interweaving old wisdom with new experience.

4. One thing more is needed. I believe our religious society, when it is at its best, possesses a quality of fellowship which laces together freedom, discernment and decision in good will and affection. Eddie Dunn, the Rochester radioman, told a story which may illustrate. A teacher, disturbed about noise and chatter in class, said, "I want the persons to stand on their feet who are responsible for doing all the talking and preventing the students from learning." There was a long pause, then one student stood up. Teacher: "At least there's one honest student among you. I'd like to hear what you have to say." "Well, teacher, I didn't think you should be standing there alone:, so I decided to join you."

We join each other as well as joining a society. A character, a quality of feeling, creates our fellowship as well as a proper set of by-laws. Josiah Royce, Harvard philosopher, whose teaching life overlapped the 19th and 20th Centuries, developed a theory about early Christianity which may possess an insight for later times and different conditions. Royce believed that an unappreciated emphasis of Paul and the other early Christians was loyalty to a community. Royce wrote, (PROBLEM OF CHRISTIANITY, p. 158), "But apart from Paul's religious faith, the perfectly human truth remains that loyalty (which is the love of a community) loyalty – the devotion of self to the cause of community – is the only cure for the natural warfare of the collective and individual will."

The difficulties of differing convictions should never be ignored. (In our kind of society we could not ignore them if we would.) We reject with loathing the involuntary extinction of the individual for the sake of a cause, even a good cause. Without feeling for others a society becomes a cold collectivity. In THE PALL, Albert Camus has his central character say, "Your success and happiness are forgiven you only if you generally consent to share them."

How shall I sum up what I believe about the society which is the framework for free expression, discernment, decision and a precious quality of fellowship? An old African proverb suggests a summary in six words, "No hand can wash itself properly."

In the beginning I spoke of two dominant and contradictory ideas: On the one hand, that "if each before his own door sweeps, the village will be clean." On the other, "that if the village institutes a proper sanitation service, each one will be clean, at least as far as his own dooryard."

Neither position deserves to be cherished as an ultimate and unshakeable foundation for beliefs. Life is never so simple as to permit easy dogmatisms or glib generalities.

Whenever the integrity of individual belief requires it, one must check out of a society, but this is an option persons should be reluctant to choose. When persons congregate in an open society with a constitutional instrument, and are dedicated both to discernment and character, no matter what else may happen, the opportunity always remains to cherish human dignity by supporting it in freedom and fellowship.