Measuring The Past – Weighing The Future

January 2, 2000
Venice

(re-write of March 21, 1982, Lakeland)

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

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

That all humankind, without exception, was not condemned to everlasting Hell, but was to be saved, was a theological affirmation existing from earliest Christian times. In America, the early Universalist preachers were almost exclusively “Bible Universalists,” many of them self-taught. They rebutted the orthodox claims of Hell and damnation with proof texts from the Old and New Testaments which indicated clearly that many of the Old Testament prophets, and in the New Testament, Jesus, Paul, and others believed that the nature of God was love, and that eternal creating love, by its very nature, prohibited eternal damnation, even for one single human soul. Hosea Ballou, the pioneer Universalist preacher, was riding circuit, place to place, preaching Universalism. He stopped in homes overnight. Somewhere in New England he stopped overnight with a farmer who did not agree with him and they discussed Universalism. The farmer’s son was somewhat of a drunk and when he did not return from town, the farmer was worried. He was afraid his son would go to Hell. “All right,” said Ballou, “We’ll find a place on the path where your son will be coming home. We’ll build a big fire, grab him and throw him into it.” The farmer was shocked, “That’s my son, I love him, I can’t do that.”

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

It is fair to report that the orthodox opponents could find numerous biblical proof texts which seemed to buttress their position that a few souls would be saved by the grace of God. But most souls were destined for eternal punishment in Hell.

This demonstrates one can “prove” almost anything from scriptures. Those who advocate “scientific creationism” using the scriptures as laboratory proof that evolution is erroneous do not seem to recognize that by the same means, scripture, one can “prove” that the earth is flat. So it would seem consistent to me that a believer in “scientific creationism” should, logically, belong to the Flat Earth society.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The American Unitarian Association was formed in 1825. It was not a uniting of churches, but was an individual membership organization. The inspired preaching of William Ellery Charming and the Unitarian influence on the faculty of Harvard Divinity School were important in the founding of the AUA. Ralph Waldo Emerson and Theodore Parker, among others, strengthened the intellectual position and increasingly isolated the Unitarian movement from the prevailing orthodoxies.

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

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

[CJW note: Mainline religions stopped preaching hellfire & brimstone; reference to a cartoon which depicts a minister giving a sermon in which he declares, “No matter how badly you have sinned, you don’t have to worry about losing your coverage!”]

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

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

First, there is the basic theological/philosophical tradition of individual freedom, reason, character, optimism . This right of individual belief is maintained specifically in the purposes and objectives of the UUA: “To strengthen one another in a free and disciplined search for truth as the foundation of our religious fellowship.”

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

The parallel institutional right of congregational independence was a high value in both Unitarian and Universalist traditions and it has been preserved in the constitutional documents of the UUA.

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

What shall we dream and try to make real in the future? The future cannot be precisely determined by the conditions of the present. One of the mysterious, tantalizing, and hopeful features of this dynamic universe is that effects can never be exactly predicted from observable causes. Prediction of things to come is always a venture of chance. I do not happen to believe in crystal balls, tarot cards, or the daily astrological column.

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

We do need a theological framework which provides a reasonable enclosure for the revolutionary changes which are occurring in electronic communications, science, politics, economics and government. The UUA has a program, “Building your own theology” which I recommend, if you have not already used it.

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

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

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

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

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

The Abundant Life

October 25, 1992
Lakeland

July 7, 1996
Sarasota (re-written)

[Introductory Reading: Genesis 1/26 and ff. RSV

CJW Note: That paternalistic permission and recommendation to subdue and have dominion over everything else on earth, allegedly granted by God, represents some of the worst advice ever given to humankind.]

Sermon:

“The harvest is past, the summer is ended, and we are not saved.” So plain-speaking Jeremiah warned his people. (8/20) Jeremiah was no naive optimist; neither am I. There are shadows on the rosy hopes for human progress most of us once held. In speaking of the abundant life, I am an aging humanist curmudgeon, and speak not for your comfort.

In the Middle Ages a monk framed the Law of the Monastic Cycle: “Discipline begets abundance, and abundance, unless we take the utmost care, destroys discipline; and discipline in its fall pulls down abundance.” This Monastic Cycle applied to those monasteries and religious orders which had through a stern routine of work and prayer accumulated wealth, lands, and power. But yielding to the temptation to spend and enjoy the riches led to varieties of corruption, unseemly pomp and luxurious possessions, greed for more money and sumptuous living, violations of the oaths of chastity, with many monasteries deserving the name of brothel rather than sanctuary. (Roland Bainton, REFORMATION OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY, and other sources.) Henry VIII, by proclaiming himself Head of the Church in England, and by severing allegiance to the Pope, not only secured his divorce in order to marry Anne Boleyn, but also gave himself the power to seize the immense hoard of jewels, wealth, and large estates of the monastic orders. Which he forthwith did, giving much of these to his favorites; thereby altering irrevocably the distribution of land, wealth and power in Britain.

The “law of the monastic cycle” may not be a universal rule. But it merits thoughtfulness in any place and time. We live in a nation of much abundance. (How that abundance is distributed is a dilemma of values and economics that is not the subject today.) Has our abundance destroyed discipline, and consequently, will abundance become scarcity?

Our land has rewarded us abundantly. For two centuries discipline was required: dawn to dusk hard work to clear, plow, seed, tend, and reap the crops; hardship and determination to push ever more West, seeking the furs, gold, silver, lumber. The great rivers became channels of profitable commerce. Engineers and sweated labor built the railroads that created and transported abundance. The ancient forests provided lumber for houses, barns, masts, furniture, and other uses beyond counting. The rivers and streams irrigated the arid West, producing fruit, vegetables, wheat, beyond any visionary dreams. We became the richest nation that history records. The paternalistic promise of Genesis was being fulfilled – we had dominion.

But in the last century or so, something went wrong. We polluted the rivers and streams. Fish died. We dumped immeasurable tons of garbage into our ancient Mother, the sea. Forests were denuded and became barren, ravaged hills. Chemical pesticides poisoned not only insect life, but also farm workers, not to speak of the unknown but probable toxic effects on many people who consumed the produce. One could go on in book-lengths how we have harmed ourselves and our posterity because we believed the natural world was ours to use for unlimited abundance, rather than recognizing that, we, too, are the natural world and certain to be maimed by our own excesses. Shakespeare has Hector say to Troilus, “Nature craves all dues be rend’rd to their owners.”

“The land was ours before we were the lands’”. It may not have been Robert Frost’s poetic intention, but that opening sentence grabs me. The land was ours before we loved the land. We possessed the land; we used the land; but we did not love it. And scarcities loom on the horizon.

[Crossed out for 1996 version: You may recall that the last lines of Frost’s “For John F. Kennedy – His Inauguration”:

“It makes the prophet in us all presage
The glory of a next Augustan age
Of a power leading from its strength and pride,
Of young ambition eager to be tried,
Firm in our free beliefs without dismay,
In any game the nations want to play.
A golden age of poetry and power
of which this noonday’s the beginning hour.”

The legend has it that for one brief moment there was Camelot – a radiant aura of high hopes. But we did not experience the glory of a next Augustan age. There has been no golden age of poetry and power.]

Is the “Law of the Monastic Cycle” in effect? Will the breakdown in discipline lead to scarcity? Who knows the future? But there are ominous portents.

A culture of consumerism prevails. There are t-shirts and shopping bags with the motto, “shop till you drop.” Comedy or tragedy?

Last month there was a news story reporting that the shopping malls are now considered tourist sights. The story takes as an example the 225-store Potomac Mills discount mall, Maryland, where last year 17.2 million shoppers spent 358 million dollars. Of these shoppers, 4% million people were tourists – more tourists than visited nearby Arlington National Cemetery, Colonial Williamsburg or Mt. Vernon. There are other examples: in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee, where only 3,300 people live, an outlet mall drew 10 million visitors, a million more than visited nearby Great Smoky Mountains National Park.

There is much political noise about the goods we consume and where these goods were manufactured. My walking shoes were made in Taiwan, my typewriter in Korea, my little calculator in Thailand. Thumbing through some of my shirts, I see these countries of origin: India, Thailand, Philippines, Hong Kong, Dominican Republic, Panama.

Should I feel embarrassed or disconcerted when I see a bumper sticker, “Buy American?” In all the cases I mentioned, I’m sure the labor cost of shirt and shoe-making and assembly were far less than the minimum wage a worker would receive here – as low as one dollar an hour for skilled and semi-skilled work. In some poverty-stricken countries, a dollar a day is not unheard of.

My older son, who is considerably smarter than his old man put it this way, “those exploited workers are contributing to our affluence.” Those provided some of my abundance. If we paid U.S. skilled wages for shirts, shoes, calculators, typewriters, we could not afford them, or so many of them. Prices would soar, inflation run wild, sales plummet. Then jobs would vanish in the shopping malls for sales clerks, buyers, truckers, warehouse, and office people. There is an interdependent web.

How to solve this? I don’t know whether I should feel guilty or positive about the shirts I wear or the TV, VCR, and radio I use. I don’t have any economic suggestions. But it is increasingly evident that any proposed solution that fails to recognize that this is a world economy is ultimately unrealistic and unworkable. Another reality is that not in my lifetime or any of yours will there be any just balance in the world between the “haves” and “have-nots.” Not that we should give up on the principles we advocate or the hopes we hold – but Emerson said, “Things are in the saddle and ride mankind.”

In the May 20 issue of NEW YORKER, there was a review of the show, VENUS. John Lahr commented, “In this well-directed tale, evil is demonstrated as the inability to imagine the suffering of others....”

Now that definition would not be acceptable to most philosophers and theologians, but does it not have at least an element of truth? Emerson’s words still resonate.

[Deleted for 1996 version: Our national economy seems to rely on constantly accelerating consumer purchases, preferably, “big ticket.” An article in the business section not long ago pointed out that because only interest on home mortgages is now deductible on the Federal Income Tax return, buyers were paying up credit card debt because interest on that is no longer a deduction. A parallel consequence is that people are buying less in order to to limit debt interest, thus reducing sales. Such a mercantile and marketing worry is a reminder of Emerson’s judgment, “things are in the saddle and ride mankind.”]

“Discipline” is a much re-iterated word. Too often it is a scapegoat term – blaming school teachers for failing to enforce discipline when it is obvious, to this old feller at least, that discipline, like charity, begins at home. Discipline is a big word in the military services. Whether the concept prevails widely in our civilian culture is arguable. In one of Saki’s (H. H. Munro) inimitable short stories, set in the days of the British colonial empire, there is a cutting satire about discipline. An army regiment mutinied and killed its officers because the food was deplorable. “...(the) War minister saved the situation by his happy epigram, “Discipline, to be effective, must be optional.’” Ridiculous? Of course.

However, if there is not a strong motive of self-discipline, coerced discipline, in the long run, fails. The famous naturalist, John Muir (1838-1914), once said that he was richer than railroad multi-millionaire, E. J. Harriman. Said Muir, “I have all the money I want and he hasn’t.”

Now I am not so uninformed and dense to assert that everyone with abundance will be victims of the Law of the Monastic Cycle. I have known and know many many persons who have acquired abundance and maintained their self-discipline. They have found the balance between authentic needs and fleeting desires. They know the difference between a sales pitch and an answer to the issue at hand. They are less likely to strike out on a split-finger fastball or an illegal spitball. They have not fallen victim to the Monastic Cycle. May the numbers of these self-disciplinarians increase. Millions more are needed if if there is to be some grasp on susceptibility, waste, calculated appeals to self-interest, pollution, corruption. Individually and in our institutions we need the guts to to resist easy, pleasant (and wrong) answers to hard unpleasant problems. If a thousand loggers are scheduled to lose jobs to protect a forest, which candidate gets the votes, the one who says “we must protect and conserve the forest”, or the one who says, “jobs are more important than trees.” If a weapon of war is no longer needed or is obsolete, there are instances where it will continue to be produced because a Senator or Representative fears the votes of those in his home state who would otherwise lose their jobs. Taxes and deficits – those are big emotional words these days. There is much shouting and conniving about who shares pieces of that enormous Federal pie. Dim, almost unheard voices may be saying, “yes, but we must pay for what we get.” It is said that a politician once answered the problem by saying, “don’t tax me, don’t tax thee, tax that feller behind the tree.”

You well might ask, “Any suggestions, Old Timer?” I could refer you to the Book of Lamentations in the Hebrew scriptures. But although I am no naïve optimist, I am not as gloomy or sorrowful about our times as that author was over the destruction of Jerusalem and the desolation of of the Jewish people. Instead, I’ll use an extended metaphor about the Beetle Ring.

Thirty-four or so years ago, I conducted services at the Cobblestone Universalist Church on the shores of Lake Ontario. Both area population and membership had dwindled; there was just an Annual Service. This Universalist Church was built in 1834, using lake stones smoothed by aeons of wind, wave, freeze, thaw. The building is a gem of the stonemasons’ craftsmanship. The laying of cobblestones was much more difficult than brick. Bricks nest solidly together, but cobblestones do not. The layering of mortar so that precise uniformity of tiers could [be] achieved was a skill that the stonemasons kept to themselves. The cobblestones were uniform in size and the method of selection was not a secret.

The stonemasons used the Beetle Ring to sort the cobblestones. Nothing to do with John, Paul, George, and Ringo. Those Beetles would not be born until more than one hundred years later. The Beetle Ring, either iron or stone, was a slab in which a hole had been cut away. If a cobblestone could be passed through the Beetle Ring, it was not too large for use; too small cobblestones would be obvious.

If many of us would use a Beetle Ring in our handling of abundance, perhaps self-discipline would be less vulnerable. We have needs; we have wants. Many times our “wants” are disproportionate to our needs. With a Beetle Ring of the resources of our minds, emotions, and values, we might discern if our “wants” are too large for our Beetle Ring. Then we could decide not to put that “want” into the building of our lives. All of us have desires beyond our basic needs. That’s OK – reasonable self-indulgence is not a vice. I hope not, for I have many times of self-indulgence. Midas would have been happier if he had used a Beetle Ring. So could the so-called “jet set” of the “rich and famous” if there is truth in the stories of their extravagance, frantic relationships, and the lack of happiness. Every one of you could cite other examples.

There are many issues which need a Beetle Ring to emphasize that not only stonemasons of 1834 but also those of us now alive in 1996 need to make careful and discriminating choices. There are many causes of depletion of natural resources, starvation, and despair. Over-population is directly connected to all these ills. There are now more than 5½ billion people in the world, and this number increases by 95 million every year. Globally, almost one billion people suffer from malnutrition. In Mexico City, with a population of 22 million, the world’s largest city, 40% live in slums.

[Crossed out for 1996 version: But officially, the U.S. opposes planned parenthood and birth control methods. The current administration vetoed an appropriation for International Planned Parenthood. The combined power of the U.S. and the Vatican kept family planning off the official agenda in the recent Rio conference on global resources. Quoting an article in “Time”, “the Reagan-Bush administration agreed to alter its foreign aid program to comply with the Roman Catholic Church’s teaching on birth control.”

In 1970, Congressman James Scheur, (D-NY) co-sponsored “the first national program to fund family planning clinics. The co-sponsor (of all people) was a new congressman from Texas – George Bush. As George Bush changed his political mind about that, maybe he can be persuaded to change it again – although I have not the slightest expectation of that.]

The United Nations has made high and low projections of population increases by the year 2050. The high estimate is 28 billion – a figure completely unthinkable. One can predict with assurance that plague, famine, or war would kill billions before that total was reached. The low projection is a peak of 8 billion by 2050. That lower figure assumes family planning on a global scale and there are some hopeful beginnings: Taiwan, South Korea, Singapore, Hong Kong, Sri Lanka, Costa Rica, Trinidad. Our UUSC has been involved in some pilot projects.

If I may say so, I have been a supporter of Planned Parenthood for many years, have served on the Board of Central Florida Planned Parenthood. I resent the lies and slanders heaped on Planned Parenthood by so-called ‘pro-life’ groups.

Perhaps I am too pessimistic, but I am not confident that politics as played out in our country will make any substantive change in the wasting of our resources and the transfer of an ever-increasing deficit (now 4 trillion) to our children and grandchildren. The money, power, and control of voting blocs seem overwhelming countervailing forces, no matter who calls himself the next President. I do not discount the strong efforts of conservation groups of many kinds, but they are candles in the wind.

That’s my Jeremiah. My hope is that there will be a rising tide of national and world consciousness to the end that not a few thousands, but many millions, raise their voices and direct their votes, so that even the most greedy of special interests will of necessity change their ways.

Lest you think I am an incorrigible old gloom and doom curmudgeon, let me make an observation. One of the memorable opening sentences in a novel that I have remembered for many years was in Sabatini’s dashing story, SCARAMOUCHE: “He was born with the gift of laughter and a sense that the world was mad.” If you think enough about that line, you may come to believe, like I have, that living could be worse. If we can’t now and then chuckle and laugh at absurdities, even painful ones, we will miss ways we can cope with the strangeness of it all. Pogo said, “you’re lucky to be here in the first place.”

I’ll write no Book of Lamentations. No one of us is compelled to obey the Law of the Monastic Cycle. Each of us can create his/her own Beetle Ring. We need not assent tamely to institutions, government, corporate or religious, who mistakenly believe they are exempt from that law.

But essential to avoiding or conquering the Law of the Monastic Cycle is not only the efforts of small groups but also a growing national and world-wide conviction that that this Earth is our only home, and to continue despoiling it is not only to foul our own nest, but also to curse our posterity.

Closing Words (Ulysses – Tennyson)

“Come my friends,
’Tis not too late to seek a newer world.
Push off, and sitting well in order smite
The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
to sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
of all the western stars, until I die.
It may be that the gulfs will wash us down ...”

Little Lamb Who Made Thee

May, 1993
Brooksville

September, 1995
Lakeland

Re-write from 1982

Opening Words:

I am aware that I am speaking to many of you who are at least two generations following mine; I have grandchildren younger than some.

My purpose today is not to proclaim certainties when there are many doubts.

My intention is not to disturb your convictions, for if you have convictions, you can respond.

That which sustains me is not a metaphysical absolute or a religious creed, but the human values and human civility without which we could not gather in peace.

Here we have freedom to inquire into any and all the major and minor ideas and issues of the human enterprise. My purpose is not to impress you with my beliefs or my doubts, but to stimulate you to ask yourself, “what sustains me?”and attempt an answer. If that occurs, my time will have been usefully spent.

William Blake
THE LAMB

Little Lamb, who made thee?
Dost thou know who made thee?
Gave thee life, and bid thee feed,
By the stream and o’er the mead;
Gave thee clothing of delight,
Softest clothing, woolly, bright;
Gave thee such a tender voice,
Making all the vales rejoice?
Little Lamb, who made thee?
Dost thou know who made thee?

Little Lamb, I’ll tell thee,
Little Lamb, I’ll tell thee.
He is called by thy name,
For He calls Himself a Lamb.
He is meek, and He is mild;
He became a little child.
I a child, and thou a lamb,
We are called by His name.
Little Lamb, God bless thee!
Little Lamb, God bless thee!

William Blake
THE TIGER

Tiger, tiger, burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

In what distant deeps or skies
Burnt the fire of thine eyes?
On what wings dare he aspire?
What the hand dare seize the fire?

And what shoulder and what art
Could twist the sinews of thy heart?
And when thy heart began to beat,
What dread hand and what dread feet?

What the hammer? what the chain?
In what furnace was thy brain?
What the anvil? What dread grasp
Dare its deadly terrors clasp?

When the stars threw down their spears,
And water’d heaven with their tears,
Did He smile His work to see?
Did He who made the lamb make thee?

Tiger, tiger, burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?

May Swenson
THE UNIVERSE
[not yet in public domain]

Phyllis McGinley
TIMES THREE
[not yet in public domain]

Sermon:

William Blake’s two questions, enclosed in his vivid, mystic images, emphasize the dilemma one finds when attempting to deal with the question of a Creator. Blake deals with the creator of the gentle lamb with the answer that the creator incarnated himself as a little child, God becomes child. But Blake with his image of the fearful, savage tiger, he does not answer – leaves only the question. The question: can a good creator who makes the gentle lamb also bring into being the fierce tiger? That poetic economy expresses the quandary, ever-present, when an effort is made to discover what God is, what God does, or even if God exists.

I trust my remarks will show a certain modesty. Although the libraries are abundantly shelved with books on the subject; and sermons from most pulpits, are replete with pronouncements pleadings and persuasions about God, talking about God reminds me of a sentence I once read defining “journalism”: “a profession whose business it is to explain to others what it personally does not understand.” The last line of Phyllis McGinley's poem applies, “God knows which God is the God God recognizes.”

[Crossed out: It is also a “given” in a Unitarian Universalist society that when the minister talks about God, there will be a mix of reactions – the bored (what's he talking about THAT dull stuff for?); the hurt (he’s attacking my cherished belief); the patriotic anger (“this country was founded on God, and he’s trying to shake the foundation”). It may or may not come as a surprise to you, but ministers receive many criticisms as well as some compliments. Which reminds me of a minister’s story about the time he was ordained: An old lady, a family friend, asked him, “Was it your own idea or were you poorly advised?”]

Let’s begin with definitions – “a good dictionary is one of the best lie detectors.”

An atheist denies the existence of any god or gods.

An agnostic holds that it is not possible to acquire with certainty knowledge of whether or not god(s) exist. As originally coined by Thomas Huxley, the word “agnostic” indicated a suspension of judgment about ultimate issues.

A Deist believes that there is a god who created the universe, analogically like a clockmaker who makes a clock, winds it up – and departs. Such a god is not the source of goodness, not a moral being, and has no communication with human beings. Many times referred to, as Jefferson did, the God of Nature.

A Theist usually believes that God is a personal both above and within the Universe and who has moral relations with persons.

A Humanist is even more difficult to define briefly. She/he may be theist, deist, agnostic, or atheist as far as the idea of God is concerned, but holds that the proper focus of religion should be fixed at human life on earth; life here and now. To repeat the familiar and classic definitions of humanism: “man is the measure of all things.” (Protagoras ) – “the proper study of mankind is man” (Pope). In another sense, the Humanist may believe that the only source of human knowledge is from human perception, individual and collective, natural only, never supernatural; that beliefs in god(s) are the product of human culture and heritage, individual and social; that religious beliefs are always relative, never absolute.

Usually, the questions about God can be roughly divided into those who have different answers to such questions, as, is God a human-like Creator dwelling in a supernatural realm? Or is God an impersonal force? Others answer in terms of verbal or artistic symbols which point to the mystery in growth, change, creation, destruction.

There seems to have been a history of change in the idea of God. Long before history was written, human worshiped the gods of the seasons. In autumn, vegetation and foliage withered, fruitfulness was ended. When spring came, the earth revived. The mysterious process of seedtime, growth, and harvest stirred deep religious feelings. The spirits of corn and wild were worshiped as gods, who, through will and whim, sustained humans. The Greeks called the mystery, Adonis; the Babylonians, Tammuz; the Celts and Scots, John Barleycorn – and such are only a few of the names of the dying-rising savior god of vegetation, who was a “hero with a thousand faces,” as Joseph Campbell described in his book of that name.

The belief that God created man in his image is a foundation of the Judeo-Christian religious tradition. Although most persons are relatively uninformed about the sacred writings of the Jewish and Christian traditions, nearly everyone would know that somewhere in the book of Genesis, there appears the statement that God made man in his (God’s) image. (1/26, “let us make man in our image after our likeness.”) The implications of the plural “our” seem not to bother believers, even though it is a contradiction of “one god.” I go along with those scholars who believe that ages ago, prehistoric, God was both male and female (androgynous); or that, in some cultures, two gods, one male, one female, shared the powers.

In the Western world, our roots are mainly in Indo-European stock of peoples, even though the origins of Judaism, Islam, and Christianity are Semitic. Historically, God has been masculine, bearded, with European facial, skin, and hair characteristics, generally. That is what God is, because we are his image, or so it is widely believed. After all, that is the way Michelangelo painted God on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.

Would there be the same picture if we were African, Polynesian, or American Indian, untouched by Western Christian culture? Of course not. More than 2500 years ago, Xenophanes, poet and philosopher of ancient Greece (540-500 BCE) observed the religious scene of his day. He noted that the gods and goddesses of his land were Greeks of beautiful body, possessing the qualities of strength, courage, and intellect which were valued and admired by Greek people. As Xenophanes, long ago, came to know Africans, he discovered that their gods were black of skin. The gods of Asians were cast in Asian mold. So Xenophanes, long ago, came to the conclusion that man creates his gods in man’s image. If our culture had been maternal instead of paternal, woman would have Created God in woman’s image.

As best as we can understand pre-historic peoples, the pressure of survival shaped their gods. The storm threatened, the drought would starve, the flood would drown. But a balance of sunshine and rain provided people with enough food to survive. Little wonder that the powers of nature stirred fear. The gods of sun, rain, thunder, vegetation, water were ritually worshiped with awe and wonder – and sacrifice.

Gods came to be worshiped because of other beginnings. Perhaps one person gave great and heroic service. Within a few generations because of impact and memory, the tribe promoted the hero to god-ship.

When one considers the ancient Hebrew legends and myths, Yahveh may have been a mountain god, originally, perhaps an active volcano. This may be the origin of the reference in the old scripture that the children of Israel were led by a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night. This would describe with some accuracy an active volcano being used as a distant point of guidance.

Then, gradually, the image of God began to display new attitudes and concerns. From scanty evidence at first, we can trace the growth to an image of God concerned about the poor, the oppressed, the sinful. The ethical prophets, Amos, Hosea, Micah, Jeremiah Isaiah, proclaimed this image. The image becomes more and more inclusive and all peoples became included in God’s dominion. Everyone must answer for his conduct to this one eternal and universal Yahveh. One scholar (Welch – JEREMIAH) wrote, “the Old Testament prophets are terribly one-idea men. They all believe that Yahveh acts.” If the image of God in your mind is a uniting of creation and high morality, then you owe much of that image to the Jews. That image is their religion.

Centuries later, another Jew, Jesus, was emphatic in attributing additional form and qualities to the image. The image became like one’s father. Jesus lived in a social setting where the father of the family was the law-giver. But a good father was not only a firm ruler, he was also kind and just, who should be loved as well as obeyed. For Jesus the image became warm, strong, and affectionate, “Our Heavenly Father.” One wonders if Jesus had been reared in a maternal rather than a paternal culture he would have prayed to our “heavenly mother.”

Then the Christian church added to the image – rather, the theologians multiplied it. The Lord who was one became three, the Trinity. The person of Jesus as well as the Holy Ghost became part of a three-in-one image. In a cartoon strip which appeared in the Lakeland newspaper, a character referred to the Trinity as “three awesome dudes.”

Although most Christians still pray to the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost (or Spirit), the idea of God has changed. When tyrant kings were all-powerful, the image of God became that of the monarch. In the ferment of change when there were increasing constitutional liberties and in some countries increasing scientific knowledge of cosmology, biology and psychology, the image became the God “within”, the divine spark in the soul to which persons voluntarily could respond. God, for many, was no longer the arbitrary monarch, but rather, the pervasive Presence in all life.

Then in the late 19th century, theology was hit with a bombshell, with delayed fuses still igniting. Led by Freud and his successors, who analyzed human behavior, it was pointed out that we tend to make gods of our childish wishes that may have been unfulfilled and unforgotten, but repressed. The mixture of fear and love with which with which we reacted at depth to our fathers had been unconsciously projected onto the screen of religious faith – The “Fatherhood of God” strikes deeply within us and echoes those mixed feelings of fear, jealousy, love, and awe. The late Father Thomas Merton, the Cistercian monk who wrote such penetrating meditations, observed, “Our ideas about God tell us more about ourselves than they do about God.”

Then, too, the idea of a good loving God with concern for all his children has always been flush up against the wall of unmerited suffering. Not the evil that persons do to persons. The terrible tragedy in Waco cannot be blamed on any god – but on the madness some religions incite. But there is also the suffering that the forces of Nature inflict upon persons. Just recall the March 13th storm and less recent, but still fresh in our minds, Hurricane Andrew. [CJW note: Tornadoes annihilated 5000 Kobe, Japan, January; Okla. City] There are volcanic eruptions in the Philippines, recently, devastating green fertility to a dead, gray wasteland. How does one fit a good, caring God into such disasters which happen somewhere every month or so. One is reminded of Robert Ingersoll’s statement that if he had been God, he would have made health infectious instead of disease. Or as Shakespeare has Gloucester say to King Lear, “As flies to wanton boys are we to the gods; they kill us for their sport.”

“Tiger, tiger, burning bright
In the forests of the night –
What immortal hand or eye dare
frame thy fearful symmetry.”

Or, as poet May Swenson inquired,
“and what if the universe
is NOT ABOUT us?
Then what?”

[CJW note: Hume quote]

It must also be said, however, if the constant presence of disastrous evils creates a trackless wilderness when seeking a good God, one must also account for goodness – not only the gifts of Nature which have provided a world where we can live, eat, love, mate, and find shelter, but also a world where in spite of evil men and oppressive movements, there are good people, kind women and men, persons who give of themselves so that others may live and grow. Then, too, why are we conscious of anything at all, particularly loving and nurturing?

In recent decades, theologians, philosophers, scientists have been asking, is there a God beyond the god of fertile crops who must be appeased by sacrifice? Beyond the warrior gods? Beyond the gods of our wish projections? Beyond the father in heaven? Beyond the god who manipulated the three-story universe in the age before Copernicus? Is there a God beyond the gods of human thought and imagining? There are attempts: Tillich wrote of God as the “ground of Being” - not A being, but being itself (if you can under-that) – A Tao, a Way from which all beings and things emanate – which cannot be known – has no form or attributes – is unconditioned when all we know is conditioned – is infinite where all we know and can know is finite?

The late Eustace Haydon, who taught history of religions at the University of Chicago, commented, “Scientific philosophers and theologians who cannot still believe in the robust god of Christianity have in the last generation offered us substitutes for Him. They include the Impersonal Absolute, The World Soul, the grand Etre, The Spiritual Nisus of an Evolving Universe, the Unknowable, the Totality of Life, the Life Force, the Common Will, the Determiner of Destiny, a Growing God, a Cosmic Mathematician, the Principle of Concretion, the Utterly Other, the Imagined Synthesis of Ideal Ends, and many more.

But it seems to me that inventing a name, however intriguing, does not demonstrate there is an objective entity behind the name.

Now it may seem rude, but to me all these substitutes for the fading old gods are simply contrived name tags on that which cannot be named; putting labels on mystery which cannot be fathomed; asserting knowledge which cannot be verified and is, thus, speculation.

Where all this strikes you, I cannot guess. But the older I get, in matters metaphysical, the less help I get from theologians, scientists, philosophers. The poets, composers, artists, musicians, dramatists do not inform me of proper theological discourse (I’m glad of that), but I resonate to some of their creative imagery. I will never know all I am, but I feel that in me and in you, are the forces of what we call the Cosmos – gravity, atomic structures, electro-magnetism, positive and negative discharges of electricity, chemical synthesis and re-synthesis, growth, change, creation, destructions. But naming such processes do not fully explain who I am, who you are, who we are.

Sometimes I feel the mood which grasped Francis Thompson, poet-mystic, when he created the “Hound of Heaven.” Do you remember these lines from that poem:

“I dimly guess
what Time in mist confounds;
Yet ever and anon a trumpet sounds
From the hid battlements of Eternity;
Those shaken mists awhile unsettle, then
Round the half-glimpsed turrets slowly wash again.”

What the poet described as “the trumpet sounds,” Abraham Maslow called peak experiences. When this happens we have broken through the crust of Self. The interpretations we give these moments differ, not only because of unlike heritage and different experiences of each of us, but also, words are inadequate, for me at least, and I attach no deity-name to the experience. Alfred North Whitehead was more eloquent than most of us when he wrote (quoted by Margaret Isherwood, FAITH WITHOUT DOGMA), “this creative principle is everywhere, in animate and so-called inanimate matter, in the ether, water, earth, human hearts. But the creation is a continuing process, and the process itself is the actuality, since no sooner do you arrive than you start on a fresh journey.”

May I make a personal witness? I have pondered the great mystery for many years. Yes, I am an agnostic. I do not know the answer or even the proper questions. But in my ninth decade on this earth, I am more and more a SEEKING agnostic. It is not fear of death, even though I have lived at least 9/10ths of my life. I do not know that when I die I will meet a totally blank wall or a door opening to some uncharted surprise. Meanwhile, I try to travel with an open mind and a seeking heart. That is the “Triptik” for my journey till the day I die, reminding myself occasionally of the saying by the medieval woman mystic, Julian of Norwich, “all will be well; all will be well; all manner of things will be well.”

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.”

Introduction To Musings

I suppose if I were still somewhat active in the pulpit, some of these pieces might have been expanded for sermonic treatment. You will note the various dates. I have not attempted to re-write anything in light of subsequent events or developments. The pieces reflect my thought at the time of writing. The years accumulate – when you receive this, I will be in my eightieth year. So, primarily for family and a few close friends, I have put together (not “Mosses from an old Manse”) musings of an old man. If I offend objects of your reverence, too bad. Remember that I am I, just as You are You.

Carl J. Westman, 1990

P.S. - I decided to do these musings for you after Carl A. Westman gave me a Smith-Corona electronic typewriter. So thank (or blame) him too. Otherwise the pieces would have remained scrawled in little notebooks.

P.P.S. - The 1991 “batch” will be sent to those who make a request.

Sin, The Apple, And The Miss Of The Myth

March 12, 1989
Port Charlotte

March 19, 1989
Lakeland

Theology is hardly a prime-time favorite, and I am going to deal with differing theological proposals. (Incidentally, there is a saying current in seminaries, “One does theology” or “I do theology.” I find that a deplorable use of language. I don’t “do” a book, I read a book. I don’t “do” lunch, I eat lunch. But then many of you know how grumpy I am getting to be.)

I shall try to stimulate your theological thinking. Do not be unnecessarily alarmed. There was a 17th century literary figure who commented, “From time to time I try to be a philosopher, but cheerfulness keeps breaking in.” My paraphrase of that is, “from time to time I try to be a theologian, but cheerfulness keeps breaking in.”

My presentation divides this way:

1.The sin and the apple.
2.The miss of the myth – that is, a double use of “miss” - Eve is the Miss of the myth. But the miss of the myth is to blame Eve.
3.How recent scholarly research demonstrates the controversial debates of early Christian thinkers, and how as a political as well as theological consequence, the view prevailed that sex was sin.
4.There are tendencies in human urges, motives, and actions that might make us face up [to] the human enterprise with more stark realism and more unflinching appraisal. And that may be another level of the myth.

First, the sin and the apple. The Adam and Eve story is a myth. The story is not history with a moral, but a myth with a meaning. A myth is not history, but a story, usually with parallels in other religions, that attempts to explain why we are what we are, what “makes us tick.” Myths are “why” stories – why the serpent crawls on its belly, why women must give birth in pain and suffering, why men must toil and sweat to earn their bread, and why and how death came into the world.

“Original sin” is a keystone in the Christian architecture of salvation. Because Adam sinned, we have inherited depravity, and death came into the world. We are all sinners and cannot save ourselves. But God, in his mercy, incarnated himself as Jesus Christ, who atoned for the sins of humankind by his sacrificial death on the cross. Only Jesus could do this because he, and he alone, had no human father, and therefore did not inherit Adam’s sin.

What is “sin?” If one checks out various theological interpretations, one encounters increasing ambiguity rather than greater clarity. A theological word book of the Bible uses three or four column pages discussing the meanings and cultural contexts of the word “sin” when used in Jewish scripture.

Jewish theology has held that sin is disobedience to God (Yahveh), rather than limiting sin to Adam and Eve’s discovery and practice of sexual intercourse. Yehezkel Kaufmann, an eminent Jewish scholar, described the Adam and Eve story as an ancient myth from a non-Israeli source, a myth from older cultures.

Kaufmann and many others recognized the problem of reconciling the origin of evil when one worships an all-powerful creator – one God, monotheism. Was Yahveh then the creator of evil? How [can we] reconcile the problem of evil with a just, merciful Creator? (Theodicy)

The Judaic solution hinged on human freedom. Men and women had to recognize that theirs was the choice between good and evil. Freedom has no meaning if persons do not have choices within the power and range of human effort and experience. B. D. Napier wrote eloquently,

“... Lord, it is our nature
(you ought to know who mixed the hot ingredients)
to spurn the docile role of subjugation;
to be not merely creature but creator;
to stand alone: to cherish in ourselves
all requisite resources for renewal;
to mount with wings as eagles
to run and not be weary
to walk and not faint.”

My own view is that in the biological transition, whether you call it evolution or some other name, humans developed mental capacities of reflection, hope, guilt, and acute awareness that we live and we die. In what we call animal instinct, there seems to be no division between external perceptions and internal feelings and judgments. Humans have principles, goals, and rules. When we miss the mark (another definition of “sin”), when we fail, we are conscious of it. We are not congenitively depraved; but by nature and nurture we are humanly sensitive.

What of the apple? Why not an orange, lemon, pear, or tomato? If the apple was such an embodiment of the act of sinning, why have I heard from childhood that “an apple a day keeps the doctor away”? True, there has been a scare this week about apples sprayed with “Alar”. Although the case may not be fully resolved, the weight of opinion seems to be that the danger, if any, was exaggerated when the news first broke. There is a citation I tried to find, unsuccessfully, but I have a memory of a lecturer pointing out that the Hebrew word translated “apple” can also translate “evil” with minor change in vowel and context.

The apple persisted as the fruit which caused sin. There is a story about Angelo Cardinal Roncalli, who later became Pope John XXIII, “good Pope John”. When he was Papal Legate in Paris, he attended a fashionable dinner and was seated opposite a lady whose gown was low-cut in front. When dessert was served, the Cardinal offered a shiny apple to the lady. She declined, but he persisted and finally she asked him, “why?” He answered, “It wasn’t until Eve ate the apple that she realized how little she had on.”

This leads to the second point, “the Miss of the myth.” Eve is the Miss of the myth because the Genesis account does not report any clergy or Justice of the Peace on hand to perform a legal wedding service. Eve has been blamed for tempting Adam. Blame the woman! French detective stories had a cliché, “cherchez la femme” - find the woman. Recall all the put-downs of Eliza by Professor Higgins in “My Fair Lady.” Consider all the roving husbands whose “pass” was prefaced by “my wife doesn’t understand me.” Remember all the years of strife and pain women had to endure in our own country to acquire the right to vote. Any woman among you could extend the list on and on. Remember Adam’s alibi, “the woman Thou gavest me, SHE gave me of the fruit of the tree and I ate it.”

The causes of ages of discrimination are complex. That, too, is the miss of the myth – miss in the order of meaning: error, mistake, shortcoming. The ancient and frequently prehistoric myths and stories were altered and eventually written down by men. God was a father-god. The older dominance of religion by female gods was suppressed, written out by patriarchal religion, particularly in the monotheistic religions – Judaism, Islam, and Christianity.

But ancient undercurrents still flowed, although many times obscured. The elementary, prehistoric female gods had many names in the lands we call the near-East: Ishtar in Mesopotamia, Ashtoreth in Syria and Palestine, Astarte in Babylon, Isis in Egypt and Rome. She was often worshiped as the “Queen of Heaven.”

Jeremiah, that stern Hebrew patriarchal prophet (44/2) complained that Hebrew women were baking cakes for the Queen of Heaven. Is it coincidence, or the undercurrent surfacing again and again, that Mary, the mother of Jesus, is dearly beloved by Roman Catholics, and she, too, is sometimes prayed to as the Queen of Heaven? And as the Mother of God?

This brings the third point: how recent scholarly research demonstrates that in the early Christian centuries, there was much controversy before the authoritarian church proclaimed that sexual intercourse was the sin of Adam and Eve.

ADAM, EVE, AND THE SERPENT, by Elaine Pagels (Random House, 1988) is a most illuminating study illustrating how the nature of original sin was controversial for nearly 400 years in Christian church history. Dr. Elaine Pagels is a faculty member at Princeton University Seminary, a theological school in the Presbyterian tradition. Her book of a few years ago, THE GNOSTIC GOSPELS, attracted much praise and respect for her scholarship. Some of you may have recently seen her on Bill Moyers’ PBS interview program.

As she writes in the introduction, “If any of us could come to our own culture as a foreign anthropologist and observe traditional Christian attitudes toward sexuality and gender and how we view human nature in relation to politics, philosophy, and psychology, we might well be astonished at the attitudes we take for granted. Augustine, one of the greatest teachers of Western Christianity, derived many of these attitudes from the story of Adam and Eve: that sexual desire is sinful; that infants are infected from the moment of conception with the disease of original sin; and that Adam’s sin corrupted the whole of nature itself. Even those who think of Genesis as literature, and those who are not Christian, live in a culture indelibly shaped by such interpretations as these.” (XIX)

The early centuries of Christian history were marked by struggle, internal conflicts, making converts, persecuted at times by the Roman Empire (although times of persecution were more scattered than popularly believed). Eventually, under Emperor Constantine, Christianity became the official state religion.

Up to that time, the Garden of Eden story had not been interpreted as the sin of sexual desire and sexual intercourse. As Pagels writes, “Christians regarded freedom as the primary message of Genesis 1-3 – freedom in its many forms, including free will, freedom from demonic powers, freedom from tyrannical government and from fate, and self-mastery as the source of such freedom.” (XXV) There were many sources for such an appraisal but, because of time limitations, we must leap forward to Augustine and his principal opponents, Pelagius and Julian of Eclanum.

Pelagius, a pious monk from Britain, argued that death did not come to the human race as a consequence of Adam’s fall, but that death was in the nature of things. As against Augustine’s position, Pelagius asserted that “ ‘our will cannot affect the course of nature. Christians are free to make moral choices and moral decisions.’ ... God being just would not have punished anyone but Adam for what Adam had done; certainly he would not condemn the whole race for one man’s transgression.” (Pagels, pp. 129, 131)

Julian of Eclanum, bishop of a small town in southern Italy, pursued similar arguments, e.g., “As for original sin, the merit of one single person is not such that it would change the structure of the universe itself.” (Pagels, p. 133)

Augustine’s arguments seem both unsound and awkward. He denies any human capacity for free will. Not only that, Augustine had neurotic sexual hangups, in my opinion (read his CONFESSIONS). He had only contempt for those who regarded sexual desire as natural energy, calling it “diabolical excitement of the genitals.” (Pagels, p. 140) Today, some of his arguments are astonishing, to say the least. “... male semen itself already shackled by the bond of death transmits the damage incurred by sin.” (Pagels, p. 109) Hence, Augustine concludes every human being ever conceived though male semen is already contaminated with sin.

I do not want to sell-short the power of sexuality, particularly in our time when sexuality is erotically flamboyant in TV, girlie magazines, underwear ads, just for a short list. A poll in 1958 revealed that Patrick Henry’s “give me liberty or give me death” had become the second-best known quote in American history. Only Mae West’s “come up and see me sometime” was more famous (see AMERICAN AGE, Walter LaFeber, p. 54).

Why did Augustine prevail? Why did his arguments on original sin become official doctrine? Both the church (by this time authoritarian) and the imperial Empire were linked. Both wanted obedient citizens. If the people were taught officially they were pre-destined sinners, that they did not possess the capacity for choice, religious or political, they were not apt to be rebellious. The doctrine of original sin made persons more accepting, less questioning, of church authority or state authority. Thus, Augustine prevailed, the church prevailed, the state prevailed. Freedom of choice, the right to make moral choices, was squashed for centuries.

Why was it easy for such a hopeless doctrine to prevail? Pagels offers a proposition that should interest psychologists and analysts, “people would rather feel guilty than helpless.” (p. 146) How many times in the face of accident, disaster, or misfortune, have you heard a person say, or perhaps said this yourself, “What did I ever do to deserve this?” Searching for a reason to feel guilty rather than powerless? “Why me?” To the sufferer, Augustine said, you personally are not to blame for what has come upon you; the blame goes back to our father, Adam, and our mother, Eve. Nevertheless you are guilty of their sin because you inherited their depravity. How about it, professionals in the field, would we rather feel guilty or powerless?

There has been a vast volume of Christian literature on original sin. In our Unitarian and Universalist traditions, it was revolt against this Augustinian doctrine of sin-diseased humanity that largely created our movements. Our positions were that human nature was basically good, or had the power to do good. All souls were of worth, not depraved, and would be saved.

Psychoanalysts and psychologists have interpreted the myth of Eden in their own disciplines according to varying appraisals of human nature. Freud, Theodore Reik, Karl Abraham, Roheim, Rank, and others have explored the myth. I have little competence and no time to study and appraise their assumptions and conclusions. But the important point is that so many have felt this myth of Eden to be of substantial importance in our understanding of ourselves.

But in the time I have left, I want to look at the old myth as confronting us with the disasters created by power gone awry.

[Editor’s note: At this point, page 9 (of 11) is missing. In its place is a second copy of page 10]

... political power never seem to quote:

“The care of the public must oversway ALL private respects.”

“We should be willing to abridge ourselves of superfluities for the supply of others’ necessities.”

Now I trust I am not hopelessly naïve. Any candidate who ran on a platform of [John] Winthrop’s last two proposals couldn’t be elected dog-catcher, as they say. Would you vote for him/her? Would I? All groups want some variety of dominion; a myth not of “original” sin, but persisting sin. Much more than individuals usually, groups in power will not only resist yielding power but also will hunger and plea for more and more power.

A medieval monk, shocked by the corruption of many monasteries, formulated his “law of the monastic cycle”: “Discipline begets abundance; and abundance, unless we take the utmost care, destroys discipline; and discipline in its fall pulls down abundance.” That is a process that extends beyond monastic cycles. It is the process by which nations, empires, and economic systems rise, become corrupted, and fall. To quote Henry Adams, “power is poison.”

“Salvation by character” was a Unitarian principle in the 19th and early 20th centuries. To put it another way, you were saved by the kind of person you were, the principles to which you were faithful, the way you behaved toward others. With the huge size of governments, communications media, corporations and their economic systems, the constantly growing world population, individual salvation by character, however fulfilling for an individual, cannot suffice to mitigate the centralities of corrupt power.

To quote Niebuhr from another of his books (THE CHILDREN OF LIGHT AND THE CHILDREN OF DARKNESS), “Man’s capacity for justice makes democracy possible; but man’s inclination to injustice makes democracy necessary.”

The philosopher Karl Jaspers and a Swiss jurist were discussing democracy. Both agreed that it was beyond doubt the best form of government. The jurist commented, “thus we must worship the state.” Jaspers rejoined, “What! Must I worship the monster, too?” Institutions, particularly governments and all their extensions of grasping power, are not idols to be worshiped, but agreements to be audited, checked, monitored, and constantly reformed. Otherwise, history instructs us that there will be revolution. Revolutions for the most part just change the names and faces of those in power who hold and abuse excess power with a different set of slogans.

I have much over-used my time. You may ask, am I completely overwhelmed by the poor prospect of most humankind? I take hope in a sentence by religious writer and teacher, Martin Marty, “We do not know enough about the future to be absolutely pessimistic.”

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.