Understanding Without Acquiescence

May 30, 1988
Lakeland

Musings, 1990

President Reagan has just delivered a passionate speech to “Refuseniks” in Moscow. Surely few can condemn him for his candor in the call for the Soviets to widen the areas of free choice and permission to leave the USSR if that is the wish of many.

But there is room for historical understanding, much as we can fairly charge the Soviet government with tyranny over minorities. The Bolshevik Revolution successfully overthrew the Czarist regime seventy years ago. That imperial government allowed no liberties and cruelly oppressed the Russian people. The succeeding governments, led in turn by Kerensky, Lenin, Stalin and their successors, allowed few liberties but the people were better fed and housed than before. The USSR was a union of numerous ethnic and religious peoples. They loved Mother Russia enough to fight off Hitler's armies at human and national cost of which we are still insufficiently aware.

Can we consider the beam in our own eye as well as the mote in the Soviet? Seventy years after our Declaration of Independence there were hundreds of thousands of slaves. Women could not vote. We..fought an unjustified war against Mexico in order to seize the golden lands of the West. We were in the process of decades of treaty-breaking with the indigenous Americans, the Indians. We massacred most of them. Others we shipped to our “Gulags” – reservations. Many of the great American fortunes were amassed from the sweat of ill-paid labor and repression of workers’ rights.

One cannot change history. One cannot readily acquiesce that another century may elapse before the Soviet peoples achieve the human dignity and freedom of which we proudly boast.

Nevertheless a measure of humility would be appropriate if we concede that the first seventy years of the the Communist revolution have many parallels with the first seventy years of our American Revolution. The parallels are both heroic and ugly, both inspiring and shameful, both encouraging and depressing.

“Judge not that ye be not judged.”

The Heretic’s Bible

April 10, 1988
Lakeland

May 1988
Tarpon Springs

The plural form is the heresy. “Heresy” is from the Greek, “to choose for oneself.” In religion, heresy is being opposed to the dogmas and doctrines of the prevailing religious establishments. Fundamentalist and most orthodox Christian churches are provincial in attitudes toward their sacred scripture, the Bible. Many, if not most, Christians would accuse religious liberals of being negative, as well as heretical, because we do not teach that the Bible is uniquely revealed and sacred, as no other document is sacred. The reality is that Unitarian Universalists are positive in our plural teaching that the religious books of all people are to be respected and admired as the products of their hopes and fears as they have wrestled to interpret the experiences of living with satisfactory meaning.

The plural form is the heresy, because so many proponents of sectarian religious bodies insist that there is only one Bible, divinely revealed. The plain truth is that there are many bibles. Not only Christianity, but each of the world’s great religions treasures sacred writings. When Unitarian Universalists assert that the various religions have equal right to claim holiness for their respective scriptures, we are saying that no one scripture is uniquely the word of God or the only record of his/her will (if one holds that God is revealed that way). If a religious group stakes its claim for authority on the special and closed revelation of only one Bible, then, of course, the liberal religious attitude threatens that unique position. Consequently when we uphold all the world’s scriptures as a library of information, inspiration, reformation, and consolation, the reaction from Bible worshipers is usually hostile and self-righteous.

Orthodox Christians are not the only religious who believe they possess the revealed word of God. It is illuminating to note that not only do some historians (H. J. Muller, e.g.) think the Koran of Islam has had more influence on history than any other single book, including the Christian Bible, but also Moslems believe the Koran is much more literally the holy, revealed word of Allah than the Christian Bible or any other scripture. More than being inspired, the orthodox Moslem believes the Koran was a directly transmitted revelation from God to Mohammed, divine in every word. The religious liberal in our country is only somewhat handicapped if he/she is running for public office. In Moslem countries, it is political suicide to concede publicly that the Koran is Mohammed’s word rather than Allah’s.

While orthodox Christianity has seldom relented from a rigid, Bible-centered viewpoint, any study of the long centuries of Christian thought discloses that philosophers and theologians have relied as much on Plato and Aristotle as on the Old and New Testaments. Notwithstanding this reliance on pre-Christian Greek philosophy, the orthodox Christian would be affronted if he were asked to consider Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle as sources of the “word of God.” Nevertheless, the influence of Greek inquiry, logic, and wisdom helped shape the mold for the structure of Christian theology.

A similar parallel could be drawn more obviously in the case of the Hebrew and Jewish scriptures. Christian theologians and dogmatists, with the petty proclamation that the great faith of the Children of Israel was only a forerunner to the only “true” religion, Christianity, ... appropriated and called their own the great Jewish library of law, prophecy, myth, legend, poetry, wisdom and fiction. Oversimplified, perhaps, that was, and is, theological plagiarism.

Thus, although the fundamentalist Moslem and the fundamentalist Christian may insist that there is only one scripture, the acceptance of idea of plural sculpture is the only persuasive stance when one considers not only the contradictory claims, but also the inevitable way the world’s scriptures have influenced and modified each other. The old scripture of the Hebrews was contributed to and influenced by pre-historic, Egyptian, Zoroastrian, Babylonian, Phoenician, and Greek religions, at least. The later Christian faith bore not only these marks, but also the imprint of Roman institutions and Greek and Asiatic mystery cults. The Koran was obviously and admittedly based on the patriarchal religion of the Hebrews.

This influence and inter-play between religions are literary, historical, and religious knowledge commonly shared by most scholars and many persons. It causes aggressive responses only from among those zealots who still harangue us on an alleged unique, supernatural revelation supposed to have occurred only in the little land of ancient Palestine. To concede any universality of sacred writing, no matter how apparent, might shake the unmoving platform on which the fundamentalist stands. Erasmus, the Reformation monk, who had few illusions about organized orthodoxy, commented once, “By identifying learning with heresy, you can make orthodoxy synonymous with ignorance.”

From my point of view, the grimy sexual escapades of a few scalawag evangelists, repulsive as they seem to be, are not as reprehensible as waving the Bible as a threat or lure in order to obtain vast sums of money to build dubious financial empires. As Jacques Maritain, the French philosopher (and a religious man) wrote, “If books were to be judged by the bad uses man can put them to, what book has been more misused than the Bible?”

Although most fundamentalists are Protestant, the true meaning of “Protestantism” is not synonymous with ignorance. Dr. Robert McAfee Brown, a professor at more than one seminary, wrote, “We have been told many times that the word “protestant” means not ‘being against something,’such as pope or parochial school; rather, ‘pro-testari’ means to testify on behalf of something, to assert positive convictions.” (PATTERNS OF FAITH IN AMERICA TODAY).

The positive teaching of Unitarian Universalism (our pro-testari) is that when people possess the art of writing, their religious aspirations are recorded, sifted, modified and edited over centuries of time. These bodies of religious writing, when they contain both the nitty-gritty of everyday experience and noble aspirations of a culture, deserve the description “sacred literature.”

Some early peoples have no sacred literature because they never developed a written language. Their religious lore was passed down by oral traditions, seasonal celebrations, and tribal living patterns. But when the power of communicating is strengthened by the art of writing, persons begin to create a continuous religious tradition of song, poem, ordinance, prophecy, history and letters between persons. The Aryans of ancient India, the Chinese of pre-Christian centuries, the followers of Buddha, the Zoroastrians, the Jews, the Moslems – all in their differing climes and times reacted to the procession of the seasons, knew the joys of human love, worried about the tensions of group living, experienced the comfort and security of the bountiful meal at harvest, wailed at death and shouted gleefully when celebrating marriage and birth. These experiences and emotions, common to all members of the human family, then and now, are the human basis for the world’s sacred scriptures. This is the universal record.

Jews and Christians respond most readily to their own scriptures – for them, matchless. The inspirational qualities were born in human experience. Somber, thoughtful Jeremiah saw the need of his people and the perils when they made foolish political choices. Isaiah had a powerful, personal religious experience, and it has been preserved. The Maccabees fought passionately for freedom and religious ideals, and their record stands. Paul not only kept the faith, he wrote it – and through him we can have some sense of the thrilling experiences of the primitive Christian movement. Other peoples have their religious literature, too, with similar impact on their succeeding generations.

The basic religious experiences are interpreted differently, not only within Western culture itself, but also within the the numerous denominations and sects. All the world over, varying conditions of culture and climate produce dissimilar emphases. Because India is a land of intense, prolonged heat, the higher religions of India are contemplative. In temperate zones where everything is hustling, religion, too, is active and energetic. Theological interpretations are partial captives, at least, of climate and culture. We will be kinder in our understanding when we recognize the many conditions which lead toward interpretations of the inner and social experience we call “religious.” It was said of a Christian missionary to the Eskimos that he had a little difficulty in communicating Christian theology because these people of the arctic zone had no word for “lamb.” How could he explain about the “Lamb of God?” He changed the term and preached about the “Baby Seal of God.”

Just because we are different does not mean we are better. Our scripture may be more precious to us than the Vedas, the Koran, the Analects, or the Tripitaka. On the same premise, the Vedas mean more to the Hindu, the Koran to the Moslem, the Analects to the Confucianist, and the Tripitaka to the Buddhist.

One of the ways to increase understanding is to recognize the universality of religious feeling, and to attempt at least a minimum recognition of the value and beauty of all the bibles of the world. In all cases, including the Jewish and Christian scriptures, one must wade through dull antiquities and irrelevant collections, such as Leviticus and part of Numbers, for example. But in every scripture there are treasures and essences of noble thought, lovely language, and uplifting examples for all persons in all times.

All the world needs the Jewish emphasis in Torah which provides men and women the goal of individual responsibility along with loyalty to a decent, fair method of human conduct for the group. All the world needs the gentle universality of Hindu scriptures. In the epic of Mahabharata, the charioteer who is the incarnation of Krishna, the god, says to the ranks drawn up in battle lines, “By whatever path you come to me, I shall welcome you, for all paths are mine.”

But in order to experience the mingling influences, we must read and appreciate. It is said that in the sixteenth century, when Francis I was persecuting Protestants in France, the noted Reformation scholar Beza of Geneva wrote a masterful letter to Francis, courteously but forcibly explaining why the monarch should not persist in the persecutions. Beza is said to have remarked sadly, the letter “could not have failed to win over Francis I, if only he had read it.” So with the bibles of the world, all of them, they will have no winning qualities if we fail to read them.

A reach for understanding does not mean that we will settle into a condition which leaves us with no convictions other than the book we happen to be reading at the moment. Sri Radhakrishnan, one-time Vice-President of India, expressed a more reasonable attitude, “I do not want my house be walled in on all sides and my windows stuffed. I want the culture of all lands to be blown about my house as freely as possible. But I refuse to be blown off my feet by any.” (EAST AND WEST, p. 45)

One thing more, for me, and for most Unitarian Universalists I have known, scripture is not and never will be a closed book. [CJW note: The scriptures are loose-leaf, not permanently bound]

I for one (and am one of a host) have found in poetry, novels, drama, and the arts, ... much stimulus to hard thinking, help in understanding my emotions when they are troubled, [and guidance] discover the “I” amid the innumerable “we” and the “we” that sustains the “I.” Even certain rare classic movies and television productions soon, if not now, are the scriptures of a people (The Grapes of Wrath, Casablanca, the original Stagecoach, etc.).

But for today let me testify to several literary examples which for me have wisdom, striking imagery, and insight into our strange and wonderful, glorious and terrible human condition....

One time or another you have all sung the round, row, row, your boat, gently down the stream; merrily, merrily, merrily, life is but a dream. Have you ever thought that life is but a dream? Prospero in THE TEMPEST said it superbly with the power and imagery of great poetry – scripture, if you will.

“Our revels now are ended. These our actors,
As I foretold you, were all spirits and
Are melted into air, into thin air:
And, like the baseless fabric of this vision,
The cloud-capp’d towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Ye all which it inherit, shall dissolve
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff
As dreams are made on, and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.”

All our days we make decisions, some important, many trivial. In times of difficult decision have you ever felt like a kite whipped around by cross-winds of uncertainty? Then the scripture of Brutus’ words before the battle of Philippi may confront one:

“There is a tide in the affairs of men,
Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune
Omitted, all the voyage of their life
Is bound in shallows and in miseries.
On such a full sea we are now afloat;
And we must take the current when it serves
Or lose our ventures.”

A noted Shakespearean critic (Coleridge) once wrote that Shakespeare “addresses us in words that enchain the mind.” A succinct definition, to me, of scripture that addresses the human condition.

Is life worth living? Hamlet’s soliloquy is superb scripture because it matchlessly reveals the human dilemma of that interval between birth and death we call life:

“To be or not to be – that is the question:
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles
And, by opposing, end them. To die, to sleep -
No more – and by a sleep to say we end
The heartache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to – 'tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wished. To die, to sleep -
To sleep, perchance to dream. Ay, there's the rub,
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come,
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause. There’s the respect
That makes calamity of so long life.
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
Th’ oppressor's wrong, the proud man’s contumely,
The pangs of despised love, the law’s delay,
The insolence of office, and the spurns
That patient merit of th’ unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin? Who would fardels bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscovered country from whose bourn
No traveler returns, puzzles the will
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all,
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought,
And enterprises of great pitch and moment
With this regard their currents turn awry,
And lose the name of action.”

Like Shakespeare’s Hamlet, everyone of us has thought of death – our own death. Where are more profound and beautiful word pictures Emily Dickinson’s “Because I Could Not Stop For Death.”

“Because I could not stop for Death,
He kindly stopped for me;
The carriage held but just ourselves
And Immortality.

We slowly drove, he knew no haste,
And I had put away
My labor, and my leisure too,
For his civility.

We passed the school, where children strove
At recess, in the ring;
We passed the fields of gazing grain,
We passed the setting sun.

...

We paused before a house that seemed
A swelling of the ground;
The roof was scarcely visible,
The cornice but a mound.

Since then 'tis centuries, and yet each
Feels shorter than the day
I first surmised the horses’ heads
Were toward eternity.”

Scripture is old. Scripture is new. Scripture is provincial. Scripture is universal. The bibles of the world are the treasuries of human aspirations and human recognitions; ever accumulating, ever sifted as persons struggle, lose, or win in the changing worlds of each generation. James Russell Lowell sensed this with a poetic grasp of larger truths:

“Slowly the bible of the race is writ,
And not on paper leaves or leaves of stone;
Each age, each kindred adds a verse to it,
Texts of despair and hope, of joy or moan.

While swings the sea, while mists the mountains shroud,
While thunder surges burst on cliff of clouds,
Still at the prophets’ feet the nations sit.”

The winnowed expressions of human tragedy and human triumph are the Heretic’s Bible.

From Bankruptcy To Founding A Faith – John Murray

February 28, 1988
Lakeland

John Murray, who was bankrupt, came to America and became known as a founder of Universalist churches in America. To describe him as a founding father of Universalism is true, but incomplete and oversimplified. There were roots to Universalism, religious convictions [that were] underground and repressed during all the centuries of the Christian movement.

Consequently, before recounting the life and describing the influence of John Murray, the stage must be set with political and economic backdrops as well as religious scenery. Although I shall make brief reference to the ancient history of Universalism, a larger need is to understand the turmoil of 17th century England, when the lives of several English kings were tied to the carnage, bloodshed, and radical change of the Puritan Revolution of the 1640s, the beheading of King Charles I, the dictatorship of Oliver Cromwell, and the restoration of the monarchy in the person of King Charles II.

First, a definition which expresses the principle of Universalism as it was generally held in the 18th and 19th centuries: “Universalists are all those who accept the doctrine of the final salvation of all mankind .... The denomination reaches the conclusion of the final holiness and happiness of all from the teachings of scripture, corroborated by the deductions of reason” (HANSON’S POCKET ENCYCLOPEDIA). Universalists refused to believe that anyone would be punished eternally in hell; they believed that the nature of God’s love would prohibit the endless suffering of anyone.

Lest you think that such theological talk is of antiquarian interest only, a recent survey taken in this country reported 79% of those surveyed believed in Hell. Those who believe that undoubtedly hold widely differing notions of what and when Hell is. Some believe it refers to suffering, misery, and disaster occurring here in this life. Others believe Hell to be a psychological state wherein passions, fears, vanities, guilt, and repressions make a person’s life hell on earth, so to speak.

But many still believe Hell to be a place of endless punishment after death. Just eight days ago in our Lakeland Ledger a local minister wrote this in the “Saturday Sermon” column:

[Editor’s note: clipping from THE LEDGER, February 20, 1988, “The Lord gives man three crucial appointments”, by minister Danny Williamson of Christian Home Freewill Baptist Church. CJW quoted from a passage dealing with a literal and punitive hell.]

Some fundamentalist preachers might be disconcerted to learn, or embarrassed to admit, that eternal punishment was a doctrinal development, not an original position among the early Christians.

There is no substantive evidence that in the Judeo part of our Judeo-Christian heritage, among the laws, prophets, and poets in the literature we call the Old Testament, there is any belief in, or doctrine of, everlasting punishment. Sheol, the Hebrew equivalent of Hades, was not the location of a place of punishment for bad people, but the grave of all, the place of death. In Sheol there was no punishment, no joy; it was a place of shades.

In the early centuries of the Christian church such “Church Fathers” as Origen and Clement of Alexandria believed all souls would be saved, no one would be forced to endure everlasting torture. Not until Augustine developed his intricate theology would universal salvation be regarded as heresy. Not until the Church Council at Constantinople in 553 A.D. would universal salvation be officially condemned as heresy and anathematized. Nevertheless, many expressions of Universalism emerged during the centuries following, even though officially heretical and frequently punishable by death.

The more immediate historical context for beliefs in Universalism surfaced in England during the 17th century amid the turbulent times referred to as the Puritan Revolution, the Restoration, and the Glorious Revolution.

Puritans, [were] so-called because they were determined to purify the Anglican Church of what they called “Popery” - bishops, sacraments, rituals, pomp, all of which they saw as an effort by Roman Catholics to regain power. When James VI of Scotland became James I of England, Puritan hopes were high because James I was a Calvinist Presbyterian – he had to be, because Scotland was Presbyterian. However, James did not act on the grievances of Parliament, which was largely Presbyterian.

James’ son, Charles I was even more obstinate in such matters – leading to the Revolution, the beheading of Charles, and the dictatorship of Cromwell. Cromwell organized an effective military force, "The New Model Army", never lost a battle, and Puritanism prevailed over the Royalists, also called Cavaliers.

Important in this context is the economic situation of England. The various Parliaments in this revolutionary period were composed of men of wealth and a rising middle-class. They were country squires, lawyers, other professionals, [and] entrepreneurs in the rather new and growing system of Capitalism. Many Royalists, particularly Roman Catholics, had been dispossessed of property, beginning a century earlier in the time of Henry VIII.

In spite of, or perhaps because of this growing capitalistic wealth, the gap between rich and poor was wider than it ever had been. Unemployment was great, the poor were driven off the land as the country squires enclosed common lands formerly available to the poor. The country gentry and the business men who controlled Parliament and the Church did not care much, seemingly, about the grinding poverty, cruel suffering and desperate anguish of these dispossessed and oppressed people. [CJW note: one historian estimates to be 50% of the population.]

But their cries began to be heard for several reasons. The Bible, printed in English, had become widely circulated, and many who studied the scriptures came to conclusions different from the doctrines which had been imposed by the Church for centuries. A printing press could be assembled for relatively low cost. In the period 1640 to 1660, the years of the Puritan Revolution, there was more latitude for the distribution of tracts and pamphlets attacking the standing order – a standing order which combined doctrine, politics, and economics.

There were numerous movements and groups to which many historians seem to have paid little attention: Quakers, Lollards, Levellers, Diggers, Ranters, [and] Familists, all of which passionately attacked the status quo, not only with pamphlets and tracts, but also frequently [through] civil disobedience and riots.... Many of these radical groups advocated strange and weird ideas (to us). But in relation to Universalism as a denomination to emerge in America a century or so later, one man merits focus because he is one who was quoted and cited by later Universalists, Gerrard Winstanley.

Gerrard Winstanley, born in Wigan, England, came to London in the early 1640s, and after an apprenticeship in the clothing business, set up his own business, but soon lost [it]. He then herded cows and wrote religious pamphlets. He reported a vision in a trance, telling him to publish abroad that “the earth should be a common treasury of livelihood to whole mankind, without respect to persons.”

He attacked the Calvinistic doctrine of pre-destination theology, with heaven for the elect and hell for most persons. He condemned the prevailing notion of Puritanism that success and prosperity were signs that one was among the elect. Winstanley blasted the clergy, writing, e.g., “Priests lay claim to heaven after they are dead and yet grumble mightily against the people that will not give them a large temporal maintenance. And yet they tell the poor people they must be content with their lot and they shall have heaven hereafter.” (Hill, p. 113)

Winstanley was passionately convinced of Universalism – that all would be saved. He also wrote succinctly, “The rich are the enemies to true freedom.”

Winstanley knew the Bible well, but treated it as mythology and allegory. He noted contradictions. He believed the Bible should be used to illustrate truths of which one was already convinced by reason. He used the story of early Christian communism found in Acts to support his belief that all of the riches of the earth should be equally shared. Many of these dissenting radical groups advocated that all property is community property. These were communist principles and theories two centuries before Marx and Engels.

(One of the subjects which interests me, although I have not studied it enough, is why there are numerous instances where radical theologies were integrated with radical economics in their beginnings, but decades, sometimes centuries later, the radical theology remained, but the radical economics had faded out. But that is a subject for another day, when I know more and have thought more about it.)

Winstanley, as well as other radical persons of his time, influenced dissenters in later decades. Most of the early radicals gave up or were totally defeated in their convictions that all wealth should be shared by all. But the theological idea that all would be saved had powerful influence on John Murray, born 10 December 1941 in Alton, England (50 miles southwest of London). His family was middle-class; his father was a stern Calvinist who warned his little son continuously about how terrible was the lot of the damned in hell.

As a young man, Murray experienced a different gospel as he heard and came to know George Whitfield, the famous evangelist and revivalist, and John Wesley, the pioneer of Methodism, who was a visitor in the Murray home.

John Murray went into business, although he was never successful. He married at the age of 18 to Eliza Neale. Because of his interest in religion and his self-educated but wide and deep knowledge of the Scriptures, he was in demand as a Methodist “lay preacher.”

Then a momentous event happened. Murray was asked by his Methodist congregation to check out a dissenting preacher, James Relly, who had a London congregation. When Murray visited, he found that he was unable to answer the biblically based and logically sound arguments that all mankind would be saved. Relly, a Welchman, found warrant for his beliefs not only in the Bible, in the arguments and challenges come down from Winstanley and others, but also in a book THE EVERLASTING GOSPEL, written in Germany by one Siegfolk (an alias), which was also influential in the colonies.

Murray, more and more taken by the universal gospel, eagerly attended Relly’s preaching, was soon named as an apostate and was voted out of his Methodist congregation.

But in the midst of his new religious enthusiasm, his world began to crumble. He had trouble paying his bills; his business failed; he was jailed briefly for debt. His little son, aged one year, died. His wife’s health began to fail. Murray was not well himself. When Eliza died, his debts increased, and his morale and hopes were sunk.

James Relly urged Murray to become a public preacher of Universalism. Although sustained in his sorrow and trouble by Relly's friendship, Murray did not respond to the urging. In his words, Murray preferred to “pass through life, unheard, unseen, unknown to all as though I had never been.” (Miller p. 10)

Someone talked with him about America, and he decided to come here and bury himself in the wilderness. Helped by his late wife’s brother, Willie Neale, he sailed July 21, 1770 on the vessel “Hand-In-Hand”. His possessions were few: a Bible, a bundle of his wife’s letters, clothing, and a few other papers.

Not far from New York, the Hand-In-Hand ran aground on a sandbar at Cranberry Inlet, Barnegat Bay, New Jersey. Murray, who was acting as super-cargo, went ashore at a point called Good Luck to buy provisions, and met a farmer named Thomas Potter. Potter was unlettered but deeply religious, believed in universal salvation, and had built a meeting house to invite preachers to speak. Potter had been influenced by the Ephrata Brethren from Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, who openly taught universal salvation (they did not persist as an organization because they also believed in celibacy).

As one historian (Miller, p. 12) puts it, “Potter became convinced that Murray had been heaven-sent to fill the pulpit and preach on Universalism.” Murray did speak. Somehow word spread, and when he had landed in New York City a short time later, he began to receive receive numerous invitations to speak at various cities along the Atlantic Seaboard. Between journeys, he lived for several years with Thomas Potter and helped on the farm.

Then came the astonishing sequence of events that led to the founding and organization of the first Universalist church in America. In 1770, Gloucester was a seaport in touch with the European world. In 1769, a man named Gregory, whether ship’s officer, sailor, or passenger (no one knows), had brought to the town a book written by James Relly. The book signaled the organized beginning of Universalism in America, three years before Murray arrived in Gloucester. The meetings were discussion groups, Bible study – and a forerunner of what we have called the Fellowship movement in the 20th century.

Members of the group heard of John Murray’s itinerant preaching which had included Portsmouth, New Hampshire and Boston. Winthrop Sargent, a member of the Universalist group and one of Gloucester’s leading citizens, was requested to go to Boston and invite Murray to Gloucester. Responding to the invitation, Murray came and preached nine times on nine successive days. For the first time in his three years in America, he found a group of influential people, somewhat organized, and already in accord with his Universalist views.

From that time on for twenty years, with the exception of eight months when he was a chaplain in the Army of the Revolution, Gloucester was his home, although he did undertake occasional traveling preaching missions. His term in the Revolutionary Army also revealed another facet of his character. Although his chaplaincy service was very much limited because of a breakdown in health, when he returned to Gloucester he found a need to serve. Gloucester was in bad straits financially because the British blockade had effectively closed down the main industry – fishing, shipping, and port activities. Murray took it on himself to solicit aid from his former associates in the Revolutionary Army. His subscription list to help the distress in Gloucester was headed by a 10 pound donation from General George Washington.

At first Murray was given the use of the established parish church. Very soon after his coming, this privilege was denied him, and thereafter services were held in the homes of lay members, usually in the spacious parlors of Winthrop Sargent's hospitable mansion, which still stands and is preserved as an historic building. The congregation grew, converts increased in number, and opposition became more bitter and determined to shut Murray up. When his followers stopped attending the parish church, the storm broke – a mob assembled before the house of Winthrop Sargent, where Murray was living. He was called a British spy, among other slanders. They were set on riding Murray out of town. Being dissuaded, they continued to threaten violence if he remained. An effort was made to expel him as a vagrant, because anyone not a land-owner had no legal status at that time. This danger was averted when one of his supporters made him a gift of land.

Nevertheless, Murray was summoned before the committee of safety and ordered to leave town within five days. The town at its annual meeting, by a vote of 54 for and 8 against, approved the action of the committee of safety. But he refused to go. Curses followed Murray and stones were thrown at him as he walked the streets of the town. Through it all, Murray and his brave supporters stood firm and unwavering. In spite of this, or perhaps because of this, the number of Universalists steadily increased, and little by little the threats and dangers of physical violence diminished.

There is no time to spell out in detail the next and most formidable obstacle – the right of the Universalists not to pay taxes to the established church. They built a meeting house. In spite of the legal battle, the seizure of members' goods by the court, the jailing of at least one member, Epes Sargent, eventually the Universalists won the long, complicated, and landmark case in which some of the best legal counsel was employed on both sides. [CJW note: There is not time today to review that important legal case.]

In 1788, John Murray married Judith Sargent, the widowed daughter of Winthrop Sargent. She was an able, forthright, supportive spouse, liberated by the standards of the day, a poet and writer. When John Murray died in 1816, she moved to Louisiana to live with brother. There are no known descendants.

In focusing on John Murray as a founder of the organized religion of Universalism, I have attempted to point out that whenever a religious denomination begins, although one or a few names may seem all-important, always there are forces, prior conditions, opportunities, and pressure to produce change. The idea of theological salvation for every one may seem passé to some of you, but large numbers are still afraid of Hell and need to be liberated from that oppression.

Then, too, Universalism moved on to another logical conclusion. If God saves everyone, then everyone is worth saving. Thus, the first principle of today’s Unitarian Universalist Association is that “we affirm the inherent worth and dignity of every person.” Whether one holds anything like the theology of the 18th and 19th century Universalists, it is hard to dispute that the evolution of such a principle of human dignity and worth began with the fervent belief of our forefathers and foremothers that everyone would be saved.

That’s a big idea – even today, most people would gulp when asked to affirm the inherent worth and dignity of everyone – both Sandanistas and Contras, for example, or Castro Cubans and Miami Cubans both, Iranians and Iraqis, Palestinians and Israelis – the list could go on in our wounded and warring world still divided by hates and fears of clan, economic ideology, nation, race, and religion.

It’s a big idea, unrealized with innumerable difficulties unresolved, but it’s as great a goal as ever Winstanley, Relly, or Murray and other radicals dreamed in their idealistic visions – visions, which now, as then, are born of human need, human experience, and human hope.