Prayer

April 29, 2001
Sarasota

July 29, 2001
Port Charlotte

The Meaning of Prayer in Human Experience, updated from March 20, 1960, Akron

The first stimulus to this presentation occurred when there popped up on my computer screen a story about a father teaching his daughter Caitlin the Lord’s Prayer. She pronounced each word carefully. Coming to the end, she prayed, “Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us some E-Mail.”

What is the meaning of prayer in human experience?

If you become irritated to hear such words as prayer, Lord, [or] God, it is OK to tune me out. I have been reliably informed that sometimes a better sermon is heard when one tunes out the pulpit – that is, what one preaches to oneself However, some Scotsman, I do not know if it was David Hume, Thomas Carlyle, or my old friend and mentor, Angus MacLean, who once said that in times of much trouble or peril, even the atheist is permitted one wee prayer.

The second stimulus to this talk was an article in the Sarasota Herald Tribune on January 2, 2001, indicating that many older Americans use prayer to ward off stress. “According to the study, prayer is used more often than exercise, heat, relaxation techniques, humor, or herbal remedies to maintain overall health.” Another sentence from the article, “Seniors who prayed or used other spiritual treatment were also found to use more positive and self-reliant coping strategies.” Is that what prayer is, a ritual or spiritual sedative, Prozac for the mind? A coping mechanism?

The followers of an obscure religious sect in the Far East pray as they stare at their own reflections in a mirror. Is that what prayer is? The contemplation of one's own image?

When Albert Schweitzer was making his third voyage to Africa in 1929, a violent storm occurred while he was busily writing the last chapter of his book on Paul the Apostle. Because the ship pitched too violently for him to write at the little desk in his cabin, Schweitzer kept himself steady while writing by kneeling down with his writing board on the bunk, his feet wedged against the bulkhead. The steward happened to come in, and seeing him in this position said at once, “Oh its not quite as bad as that yet, sir.” Is this what prayer is, assuming the posture and saying the words of prayer when dangerous events seem to threaten our lives and welfare?

Let me repeat an anecdote I told in the LEAP class a few weeks ago. John Greenleaf Whittier once asked Ralph Waldo Emerson what he prayed for. “When I first open my eyes upon the morning meadows, and look out at the beautiful world, I thank God I am alive and that I live so near Boston.” Is that what prayer is, thanks for being alive and gratitude for being in a particular geographical location?

Prayer means so many things in human experience that perhaps case studies of some famous prayers may enable some greater grasp of the meaning of prayer. These prayers are not reported on a chronologically progressive basis, but rather we will ado a little moving back and forth historically.

There is a “show me” prayer, variously attributed to Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Voltaire, Thomas Paine, and Rousseau:

“Oh God, if there be a God, save my soul, if I have a soul.”

St. Augustine in his earlier years could not control his erotic passions and could not live a celibate life. His notorious prayer: “Oh God, save me from sin, but not quite yet.”

Nearly two thousand years before that self-serving prayer, Moses experiencing depressing adversity, prayed in this wise, (Exodus 32/32):

“Alas this people has committed a great sin in that they have made a god of gold for themselves. But now, if thou wilt, forgive their sin; but if not, pray blot me out of thy book.”

About 80 years ago, the minister of the Universalist Church in Gloucester, Massachusetts, who, when requested to deliver the prayer at the inauguration ceremonies of the city government, spoke in so candid and unusual style that his prayer created a sensation state-wide, even nationwide. Dr. Levi Moore Powers, a minister of unusual courage, intellectual power and social passion prayed like this:

“We pray for the retiring mayor. He might have done better and he knows it and now we are sending him to the state house. Help him to be the representative he may be and ought to be.

“We pray for those who must guide our city in the coming year. There is Alderman Daniel Marshall. You know what a good fellow he is and how everybody likes him – the most popular man in town, though there are those who say he needs a stiffer backbone. If that is so, Lord, give him what he needs, and if it is a lie, help him to refute it.

“Then there is Alderman Johnson who needs thy help, Lord. This is a new job for him. But everybody speaks well of him and many who did not know him voted for him because those who know him best said he was all right. May he end this year with this good opinion confirmed and increased.

“Most of all we pray for him honored in being chosen mayor. But we have given him a hard job, Lord. You know very well that the laws of this city have not been well enforced. May he accept this responsibility and not only do his duty, but insist that all those responsible to him do their duty as well.

“Not alone for those we have chosen do we pray, Lord; we pray for ourselves. We confess, Lord, that we are a logy, grouchy set of citizens, most of us. We no sooner elect men to office than we find fault with them. Help us to see that good citizenship is an all-the-year job that cannot be delegated to others.

“We pray for the voters of this city; there are some too lazy to vote but not to lazy to grumble. Bless them. We pray for the citizens who want good streets, good schools, good fire and police protection and good health officers but who wish other people to pay their cost.

“We pray for the business men whose votes are always determined by the expectancy of special favors for themselves. Bless them, if you can. We pray for those who believe that all laws should be enforced except the laws which they do not like or which, if enforced would trouble them.

“We pray for the comfortable who do not care for anything so long as they are left at ease.

“We pray for the political managers who swap votes and sell out their friends and let bad candidates go unopposed.

“We pray for the ministers who say what it is pleasant to hear rather than what is true. We pray for all connected with the newspapers who openly advocate civic righteousness and secretly promote crooked politics.

“We pray for the lawyers who use their knowledge to help those who wish to evade the law and so enable themselves and others to get something for nothing.

“We wish, O God, that these people might be blessed, but perhaps we are asking too much. It may be that the only thing you can do is to let them go to hell.

“Increase our love and devotion to our city. May we be zealous of its good name and prosperity. May wealth, happiness, intelligence and character so increase that the proudest boast we can make shall be that we are men and women of this city. Amen.”

Father Joseph Manton, a Roman Catholic priest of the Redemptorist Order, was one of New England’s most skilled and eloquent preachers, with a radio program that not only his fellow Roman Catholics listened to, but also many others who admired his magnetic speaking skills. I listened whenever I was in the area.

About forty years ago on St. Patrick’s Day, Father Manton delivered the invocation at the breakfast honoring Robert Briscoe, then Lord Mayor of Dublin, Ireland. It was a rare occasion in Boston, when that city so strongly touched by Irish immigrants and even now, the country’s most typical Irish-American cultural area. The piquancy of that St. Patrick’s Day feast was increased by the wonderful fact that Lord Mayor Briscoe was Jewish.

Here are Father Manton's words at that St. Patrick’s festive occasion:

“Almighty God, our good and gracious Father, we find ourselves a bit bewildered this morning. You know that the first President of the Irish Republic was a Protestant; the present Lord Mayor of Dublin is a Jew; the news is going around that the Lakes of Killarney belong to a Yank; and historians keep whispering in our ears that St. Patrick was a Frenchman.

“Help us then this morning to hold high the brimming cup of hospitality to a good and great man and to greet him not as a stranger but as a treasured friend. And, dear God, stay the man up with monumental patience as he heroically endures a hundred toastmasters from here to the West Coast who will gaily imagine that the very fillings in their teeth are fragments of the Blarney Stone, as they ring all the obvious changes on a Jewish Mayor of Dublin. Help the poor man not to be banquet-weary of all these glib attempts to paint a green beard on Moses, or by the end he will be seeing little leprocohens.

“Deliver him, O Lord, this real Irishman who risked his life for the land he loved, from any professional Irishman (with an angle) – there are mercifully very few – but spare him even these; the sham shamrocks, the bogus bogtrotters, the synthetic Sinn Feiners, and especially the extravagant psycho-Patricks who love too loudly through a green haze an Ireland that never was.

“Finally, dear God, bless this man, our friends; and his meal, our food and today let the blessings come down generously even on the English muffins and the orange juice, so that, having broken our fast at the top of the mornin’ we may rise to thank You from the bottom of our hearts. Amen.”

From the indigenous tribes of this continent, whom the European invaders named, “Indians”, came this prayer, “Great Spirit, may I not judge my neighbor until I have walked a mile in his moccasins.”

Then there is a notable prayer uttered nearly 800 years ago by the man whom some have described as the only Christian since Christ, St. Francis of Assisi:

“O Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console; to be understood as to understand; to be loved as to love; for it is giving that we receive, it is in pardoning that we are pardoned and it is in dying that we are born to Eternal Life.”

Then there is the 17th century Nun’s Prayer, found in a religious house in Gloucestershire, England:

“Lord, Thou knowest better than I know myself, that I am growing older and will someday be old. Keep me from the fatal habit of thinking I must say something on every subject and on every occasion. Release me from craving to straighten out everybody’s affairs. Make me thoughtful but not moody; helpful but not bossy. With my vast store of wisdom, it seems a pity not to use it all, but Thou knowest Lord that I want a few friends at the end.

“Keep my mind free from the recital of endless details; give me wings to get to the point. Seal my lips on my aches and pains. They are increasing, and love of rehearsing them is becoming sweeter as the years go by. I dare not ask for grace enough to enjoy the tales of others’ pains, but help me to endure them with patience.

“I dare not ask for improved memory, but for a growing humility and a lessening cocksureness when my memory seems to clash with the memories of others. Teach me the glorious lesson that occasionally I may be mistaken.

“Keep me reasonably sweet; I do not want to be a Saint – some of them are so hard to live with – but a sour old person is one of the crowning works of the devil. Give me the ability to see good things in unexpected places, and talents in unexpected people. And, give me, O Lord, the grace to tell them so. Amen”

In dealing with these prayers of human experience, there is no analysis of the origin and evolution of prayer. Prayer began with attempts at cosmic bribery as well as cosmic communion. Primitive persons thought God or the gods could be cajoled, bribed or persuaded. Many people today still believe that.

But these prayer examples, as widely different in attitude as in historical placement, deal with some of the meanings of prayer that can touch the sensitivities of our personal experience. No one who has experienced shattering tragedy or terrifying injustice can blame Job’s wife for her prayer of condemnation, “Curse God and die.” There are times when under the overwhelming burdens of events that seem utterly unjust, our prayers are neither thankful, interceding nor adoring. They are protests of indignation. This experience of anger against the cosmos is one of the meanings of prayer, too. It is a vehicle which asserts that the human being has rights of protest.

The prayer of Moses is another aspect of the experience of prayer. Moses had tried to lead his people in ways he believed good; he had tried to persuade them to the worship of Yahveh and to abandon idol worship. When he encountered their falling away from the high ideals and good practices, Moses’ prayer faced facts. Moses felt responsibility for those he was leading. He did not say, “O God I have not made an image like these sinful people.” He prayed, “forgive their sin or blot me out of thy book.” In such self-honesty and sharing of responsibility prayer exalts even moments of sorrow and disillusion.

When Levi Powers shocked and astonished those gathered at the Gloucester inaugural, he illustrated vividly prayer as an experience of social power. He did not pray for the prophets of Israel, but for the politicians of Gloucester; he did not quote the children of Israel about their sins, but bluntly prayed that Gloucester men and women in the 20th century would face up to the conditions of good citizenship. Prayer can be a relevant experience. Unless it is relevant, it is probably idle exercise. Whether in the meditations of solitude or the eloquence of public invocation, prayer as a meaningful experience must be relevant to the condition of the individual and the well-being of all.

hi the third act of Hamlet, Claudius has a brief soliloquy while waiting for Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. Two lines of that soliloquy apply:

“My words fly up, my thoughts remain below
words without thoughts, never to heaven go.”

Father Manton’s prayer at the breakfast for the Lord Mayor is an appealing example of another aspect of the prayer experience – graciousness. Prayer can illuminate the quality of our experience with words and ways that might be embarrassing in direct dialogue. Prayer helps us build bridges between our differences so that our encounters in human affairs are gentle and appreciative with a proper leaven of laughter.

What can we learn of the Native American’s prayer to the Great Spirit? Be careful in judging other people before you know what they have had to deal with.

A religious columnist reminded his readers that the prayer of St. Francis to console rather than be consoled, to love rather than be loved, is a marvelous example of movement from the passive to the active, “We love, we serve, we give.” It occurred to me last night, thinking back to Don’s fine sermon series on the meaning of life, that those six words aren't too shabby a definition of life: We love, we serve, we give. The older I get, the Nun’s Prayer speaks to me more and more directly. I believe it speaks to everyone who, for example draws a social security check. For sure, I need to heed the precepts and advice of that prayer.

A few years back, I was in someone’s house who kept a shelf of National Geographies. Pulling one out at random, I found an article about which I took extensive notes.

In former years a fishing fleet sailed annually from Portugal to the Grand Banks. During the season, the fishermen fished from dories; then worked back on the vessel slitting and salting the catch. Danger was commonplace and hard work the daily routine. On one of these voyages, Antonio Rodrigues Chaloa, a good doryman from Oporto, was separated from the vessel by the closing in of fog. When a gale came up, Antonio was blown far from the vessel. When five days passed, the captain and shipmates gave him up for lost – one more good man who had gone down to the sea in ships, never to return. Then on the fifth day, Antonio’s dory came into view. So exhausted was he that he had to be lifted from the dory to the vessel. An observer on the voyage asked Antonio about the long, lonely days and nights of danger, storm-tossed and fog-bound. “What did you do?” Antonio replied, “I prayed. I did what I could. Then I prayed and thought of my wife and seven children back in Portugal. The compass was out – that’s why the fog got me. Then during the storm, I anchored and rode to the wind, using my oars to keep the dory headed into it. Often I had to bail for my life when the heavy seas broke over. I was afraid, for my anchor line was only a piece of rope. If it broke, I would be drifted off the banks and out in the open straits. Then I knew I’d be finished.

“But the anchor rope didn’t carry away. I had to row plenty, to keep the dory headed to sea. I made a bit of shelter with the sail. I ate raw cod and I drank the fog moisture wrung out of my woolen cap.” That was all he said after rowing five days and four nights against a gale in order to keep a fourteen-foot dory headed to windward in waters of the Arctic Circle.

He prayed, but he kept the dory headed into the wind. Prayer must include the will to struggle as well as be thankful.

William Inge, Dean of St. Paul’s Cathedral, London, England (I believe he died in 1954), once said, “Prayer gives a man the opportunity to know a gentleman he hardly ever meets. I do not mean his Maker, but himself.”

Whether called prayer, meditation, inward determination to focus mind/emotion/ethic, or coming to terms with oneself, or seeing ourselves as we are contrasted to what we could be, whether or not addressed to a particular god or gods, the experience can be one of illumination, communion with the highest we know, a confident step toward mysteries never to be fully revealed and a confrontation of our human condition in all its grandeur and all its misery. It does not matter whether the experience occurs in church, in solitude on one’s knees, striding a busy street, celebrating a public occasion or working at some needed service. The experience will sharpen our consciousness of essentials, recall us to those vital things of most value to living and touch us with both the knowledge and the mystery of the great tides of life in which we are all engulfed.

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 Queen Of Heaven And The Son Of Man

December 15, 1985
Lakeland

December 22, 1985
Port Charlotte

In this season of carols and candles, the stories of Jesus’ birth, Handel’s MESSIAH, holiday celebrations, and gifts, the subject is chosen in order to increase understanding of religions, not only as mental frameworks for theology, but also as vehicles for emotions we feel, even when the rational mind may question and rebel. The Virgin Mary is the Queen of Heaven; Jesus is the Son of Man.

First, Mary, the mother of Jesus. As theology and dogma acquired complexities in the early centuries of the Christian movement, she was given many titles: “Blessed Virgin Mary,” “Mother of God,” “Our Lady,” “Queen of Heaven.” If one accepted the theological assumption that the “sin” of Adam and Eve tainted all human descendants beyond their own power to redeem, and that death became inevitable because of that “sin,” there is an inner logic to Mary’s various promotions to divine eminence.

If all humans were tainted with “sin,” no one born of a human mother and father could be the savior. Obviously, then, Jesus had to be born free from that flaw that all others inherited from Adam and Eve. So, the story goes, that Mary, a virgin, although married to Joseph, was made pregnant by the Holy Spirit. However, there was a problem. Mary was human. Therefore, she, too, had to have inherited original sin. That logical difficulty was overcome by the dogma of the Immaculate Conception, which pronounced that by the special grace of God, Mary was kept free from all stain of original sin from the moment of her conception. This theological development took centuries to become official. There was much learned dispute in the Middle Ages. In 1476, the December 8th Feast of the Immaculate Conception was established. Finally, Pope Pius IX, in 1854, pronounced the dogma as The Immaculate Conception of Mary. (I have wondered if it occurred to the theologians that if Mary was the first to be free or original sin, she, not Jesus, could have been the Redeemer, and been crucified to save us. But then, theology and dogma were the province of men, and such would not have occurred to them. A woman as Messiah – not to be thought of!)

Another logical step became theologically necessary if Mary was conceived immaculately, free from original sin. She could not die, because death came into the world [when] Adam and Eve sinned. So there had to be the doctrine of The Assumption. “Mary was taken up into Heaven, body and soul.” So pronounced Pope Pius XII in 1950. It was an ancient doctrine (although never mentioned in the Bible), but did not become official dogma until thirty-five years ago. Mary was crowned Queen of Heaven after her assumption.

This salvation scheme is [logical] if the premise of original sin is accepted. But I do not accept the premise for many reasons that would take much time to elaborate.

But today, I’d like to mention that the idea of a Queen of Heaven is ages older than the time of Mary, Joseph, and Jesus.

In the Hebrew scripture of Jeremiah (7-17 ff) we read that the prophet became angry at the people of Jerusalem, “The children gather wood, the fathers kindle fire, and the women knead dough, to make cakes for the Queen of Heaven.” A biblical scholar says that the cakes were probably in the form of a star – Christmas cookies, you might say, 600 years before the birth of Jesus.

The Queen of Heaven in Jeremiah is a female deity older than history. She is Isis or Ishtar from the religious myths of the ancient Egyptians, who was given many other names as cultures affected one another. Ishtar, or Isis, Queen of Heaven, was goddess of the Crescent Moon. She was also Mistress of the Seas, and as Venus, goddess of love and fertility. One of the ancient myths has Isis overcoming the power of a great evil serpent. Here there may be a cultural connection with the evil snake who tempted Adam and Eve in the Garden.

Interesting, too, that a few years before the time of Jesus, Cleopatra, Queen of Egypt, pregnant by Marc Antony, claimed she was the reincarnation of Isis and that she was bearing the divine royal child. Cleopatra never claimed virginity, however. That would have been too much even for her most loyal or most naïve subjects.

If one leaps ahead of those times 1500 years to Queen Elizabeth I of England, there will be found paintings of her with the royal crown surrounded by stars – another virgin queen, not only of England, but of Heaven (not specifically stated, but the implication is clear).

Mary, the mother of Jesus, Queen of Heaven in the old story of salvation, has many parallels. Does this cultural, mythological commonality tell us anything about Christmas? We will see after we look at Mary’s child, the Son of Man.

What mattered most to those who put together the gospels not less than thirty-five years after the death of Jesus was that Jesus was the divine Messiah hoped for, prayed for, and anticipated in the Jewish scriptures.

But did Jesus believe he was the Messiah? That question has been debated for hundreds of years, and no provable position has emerged. Jesus called himself the “Son of Man.” But he was the only one who used the name in the New Testament, with one exception (Acts 7/56). The term “Son of Man” was used frequently in the Jewish sacred scriptures we call the Old Testament. The contexts in which the “Son of Man,” as used, indicates a human being – a man. The Son of Man designated not a messiah, not a divine savior, but a man. [The term] “Son of Man” will be found in Psalms, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and most frequently in Ezekiel. Except for one passage in the strange, apocalyptic book of Daniel, “Son of Man” means a human person, born as we all are – born of a human father and a human mother. Jesus, with his thorough knowledge of his heritage, could not have been ignorant of that. But it was how he described [himself].

Little wonder that the later founders of the early Christian ritual and doctrine did not use the term Jesus used to describe himself, “Son of Man.” Such a human term, describing human origins, would strike a contradictory note in the creeds of later dogmatists who constructed the elaborate theology – a theology that seems far removed from the itinerant, radical, compassionate Jesus, the Son of Man, ... seemed not at all concerned about “original sin,” but was passionately moved by the cares, troubles, needs of persons he encountered in his own time and place.

Consider this too: the mythological base of the Advent and birth stories which have been such a precious part of western civilization are just that – myths. Any basis of historical fact is as shaky as proving there is a real person, Santa Claus, after the kids have discovered the wrapped presents in the closet shelf 10 days before Christmas.

If the general Christian public had been present at my foregoing remarks, and perhaps some of you, the opinion would prevail that that I’m the “Grinch Who Stole Christmas,” that I have “Santa Claustrophobia,” or that I am a “Noel Coward.” So be it!

But the illustrations of the Queen of Heaven and the Son of Man demonstrate the power that myths have over our lives. Myth is more than an old story discredited by modern scholarship, the modern mind, or modern science. The myths of the mid-winter solstice have power and have had that power for millenia. Christmas was celebrated long before Christian times: the Roman Saturnalia, the Scandinavian Yule, the mistletoe of the Druids, the sacred tree of the Teutonic tribes – all bear witness to the awe, joy, and celebrations at the return of the Sun, the increasing light, and the promise that the fields will once again bear crops.

It is commonplace that all these ancient myths stir a response in us at levels deeper than our conscious minds. We all feel the deep tides, deny them as we may. Cultural myths are like individual dreams, in that realities surface that our logical minds cannot fully express or tolerate. The eminent scholar of myth, Joseph Campbell, writes, “Myth is an imaginative elaboration of fundamental problems and tensions in the form of speaking symbolically to the whole human condition.”

Carl Jung and his followers were persuaded of the theory of a collective unconscious which constantly pushes archetypes from the depths of the psyche to the surface of the mind. The Great Earth Mother, the Sky Father, the Wise Old Man, and many other archetypes (the Queen of Heaven, the Sacred Child, the Savior) are in the subconscious of us all – such is the explanation of Jungians.

I don’t know enough to speak with any assurance on such psychoanalysis. It could as well be that we have similar dreams rising from the individual depths as much as a collective unconscious. The myths and dreams of gods, goddesses, heavens, hells, demons, are a consequence of inner psychic forces. Our individual dreams are not rational. Dream images are frightening, puzzling, erotic, teasing, bizarre.

Dreams have always been powerful in any culture. Shamans, medicine men, priests, witches, storytellers, and psychoanalysts use dreams to interpret events, fears, and hangups in our individual and social lives.

For example how do we come to grips with human sacrifice? Always there have been those who paid a great price for the benefit of others. Knowledge came into the world because of Adam and Eve, the old myth tells us. They paid a price of pain, labor, and death. The Christ myth is of a suffering savior who died for all. The Prometheus myth tells how that savior suffers perpetual torment because he stole fire from the gods. There were unwilling victims of Aztec myth who were slaughtered to ensure that the Sun would rise each day. Why should one suffer for others? [CJW note: But it has always been part of the human condition.] That’s a mystery as old as both the conscious and depths of human awareness. Philosopher Ernst Cassirer once noted, “The world of myth is a dramatic world – a world of actions, of forces, of conflicting powers.”

Thus, my concern is not that myths are pervasive and powerful in all cultures. To deny that would be like denying the law of gravity – the apple would still fall from the tree. My objection is when myth is treated as fact – or facts on which to build dogmas and doctrines, unchanging rituals, and intolerance of different interpretations.

One thing more: theologies do not fully realize the deep impulses generated by the tides of nature, seasons, and the human condition.

The noted Robert Ingersoll once wrote, “I do not consider it a very important question whether Christ was the Son of God or not. If he never existed, we are under the same obligation to do what we believe is right, and believing he was the Son of God or disbelieving it is of no earthly importance. If we are ever judged at all, it will be by our actions, and not by our beliefs. If Christ was good enough to die for me, he certainly will not be bad enough to damn me for honestly failing to believe in his divinity.”

Dickens’ “A CHRISTMAS CAROL” is a developing myth. The constant dramatizing of this lovely story has become part of our folk-lore, even though it is fiction not much more than a century old. It strikes me whenever I read or see it how little Christian dogma or theology is essential to the story. The main themes are how a man, through his frightened dreams, is able to look at himself, where he has been, what he values, and what roads he can choose henceforth [to] walk. The other theme is compassion – compassion to others. Both these strands – who we are, what we must do – are continuing discoveries of human existence. The myths of all peoples, particularly the religious myths, grapple with these mysteries. The products of the struggle are fear, joy, awe, and hope, expressed in old stories, music which evokes both glee and tears, dramas which are metaphors for our human condition, and [which move us to] share our lives and our gifts.

Religion In The Ruins

October 20, 1985
Lakeland

November 24, 1985
Port Charlotte

May 20, 2000
Musings

The expressions of religion are a series of contrasts and contradictions. Visits to some of England’s famous cathedrals and churches strengthened that belief. Thomas Jefferson wrote after visiting the cathedral at Milan, Italy, “a worthy object of philosophical contemplation to be placed among the rarest instances of the misuse of money.” (Malone, Vol II, p. 123) When one visits the cathedrals with their Gothic arches or is grasped by the beauty of the spire of Salisbury Cathedral, thrusting 430 feet skyward above the impressive Gothic church, set amid the green beauty of the cathedral close, surely Jefferson was insensitive to the ways such beauty and architectural power can stir the deep dimensions of our wistful hopes.

Yet, these ancient religious centers of worship were built in times of human misery we can but dimly perceive in the world today. Beyond the kings, lords, dukes and their toadies and favorites, the mass of people’s lives were as someone wrote, “nasty, brutal, and short.” And, without hope of improving their lot in life.

Today these magnificent cathedrals and churches would be in ruins except for tourists. Nearly every cathedral I visited was in some process of expensive repair and maintenance. Scaffolding on towering spires, roped-off areas where a floor was being replaced, or shoring up crumbling pillars, etc.

Without exception, there was either an entrance fee or a voluntary collection box with signs indicating that £100,000 per year or £250,000 per year were necessary to maintain the cathedral or to prevent it from falling down. The busiest places were not the altars, but the postcard and gift shops. There, sales were brisk to visitors who, in Myles Kingston’s words, were “probably 90% agnostic in the nicest possible way.”

Therefore, in narrating some of contrasts and contradictions, my objective is not to be frivolous or demeaning to the religions of the people of the United Kingdom. Rather, the observations will lead to the question, what is essential in the experiences, rituals, and beliefs that gather under the large umbrella named “religion”?

One whimsical item I picked up ... reported “bats in the belfry, for generations, a hazardous peculiarity of church life in England, have brought work to an abrupt halt in Methodist chapel rafters in Ipplepen. The rare species of bat is protected by law. Pastor Kenneth Hext observed, ‘I had no idea we had bats up there. We have only seen one in the church before, and it was driven crazy by a group of children who were singing modern hymns.’” (RNS)

That English people participate very little in religious services has been known for a long time. Some observers thought that such lack of participation was a characteristic of life in the large urban centers, but that in the villages, people were still loyal to the parish church. However, a recent study suggests that Church of England in the countryside faces extinction. The report noted that “average church congregations numbered around 20, and in some cases a single individual joined the priest in worship. Only 6 services in the Deanery studied found more than 20 in the congregation, six had five or less; and nine had between six and ten .... 2/3 of the congregants were women, and almost 2/3rds over 60. There were no children or young people at 16 of 24 services visited by the surveyor.” (Christian Century, 10/2/85)

Another survey done by the Princeton Research Center (Gallup) produced an interesting divergence among Western nations. To the survey question, “Do you take some moments of prayer or meditation or contemplation or something like that,” the response in the United States was 86% yes, 14% no. Great Britain, 10th place, answered 50% yes, 50% no. (FREE INQUIRY, Fall 1985, p. 67).

To the question, “Do you find that you get comfort and strength from religion or not?”, the United States again was first, [with] 79% answering yes; 17% no, and 4% no opinion. Great Britain, 8th on the list, answered 46% yes, 49% no, and 5% don't know.

The simplest response is that the people of the United States are about twice as religious as the people of Great Britain. But as I shall attempt to develop later, the simplest answers can be wrong.

Three times I was present in churches when they were crowded with people – but the occasions were concerts, not religious services. Superb choirs and musicians rendered some of the great compositions of the English heritage – music inspired by the religious and music composed for royal occasions, such as coronations.

One might conclude that there is high interest in music and low interest in religion. But that's another conclusion that is both simple and wrong. For the corollary of such a conclusion is that music is religious only when it is an accessory to a mass, or prayers, or sermons. I, and many of you here, have been transported to realms beyond thought by Beethoven, or your favorite composer, without benefit of clergy or church. [CJW note: Beatles]

Attending Evensong in historic and impressive Salisbury Cathedral, a superior boy's choir provided a fine musical experience. Several Anglican priests intoned ritual sentences and read from the scriptures. But although thousands could have been comfortably seated in the nave, as there were only 25 or 30 people in addition to the choir and priests, all of us were seated in the choir. I'm sure too that most of the attendees were tourists like ourselves. I'm also sure that if at that time the boy's choir gave a concert without the Church of England ritual for Evensong, attendance would have [been] 10 times, even 20 times larger. Again, for the moment, no easy generalizations which could be quite wrong.

A few more impressions of contrasts and contradictions. After a stirring concert by the large, splendidly trained choral group of the Birmingham Symphony [CJW note: given in St. Mary's Church, Warwick], we wandered into the Memorial Chapel of the Dukes of Warwick. The sculpture and architecture were examples of ancient skill, devotion, and creativity. Central in the chapel was the tomb of Richard Beauchamp, his sculptured effigy on the tomb. His hands are folded gently; his carved face, tranquil.

Reflecting on this impressive monument, I would not help but think that this Richard Beauchamp, Duke of Warwick, was the commander of English forces during that period in the Hundred Years War with France, when Joan of Arc made her brief, blazing, and still mysterious impact on history. When the Burgundians captured Joan, Warwick bought her from the Burgundians. The church put her on trial, found her guilty of heresy, turned her over to Warwick, and the English burned her at the stake.

Another instance – one of the readings was from the prologue to Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. For hundreds of years after Thomas Becket, the Archbishop of Canterbury killed in the cathedral, pilgrims made their way to Canterbury to offer gifts at the shrine of Thomas Becket, many of them hoping for miraculous cures, alleged sometimes to happen at his shrine.

When Henry VIII split from the Church of Rome, he dismantled the shrine of Thomas Becket, appropriating the vast wealth of gold and jewels which had accumulated through centuries of hopeful, worshiping pilgrims. As I stood by the simple marble memorial in the floor which marks the spot where Becket died, another contradiction crossed my mind.

Henry II, King of England, has been tagged as the villain who ordered his knights to assassinate Becket. Becket is a sainted, historical martyr. Even in modern times, the pilgrims arrive. Archbishop Temple (1821 – 1902) stated, “it is the bounded duty of every English-speaking man and woman to visit Canterbury at least twice in their lives.”

Yet, in historical perspective, Henry II was correct in his stand on the bitter dispute with Becket. Henry II was one of the English monarchs who fostered advances in the legal system, a legal system which is the foundation of our own. Henry II promoted the Constitutions of Clarendon, which would weaken the power of church courts. Up to then, if one was connected with the church, he was exempt from trial in the civil courts for criminal acts. They could be tried only in the church courts. Prelates, priests, clerks, musicians, even thousands of students who could recite a little Latin were exempt from trial in the civil courts.

Henry II wanted to abolish this “benefit of clergy,” as it was called, and Becket was adamantly opposed. Becket's death delayed the provisions of the Constitutions of Clarendon, but eventually they became law. Becket had the benefit of poetry, martyrdom, sainthood, and myth, including T. S. Eliot's MURDER IN THE CATHEDRAL. However, historically we are all better off because all persons are equally responsible to civil and criminal courts. But there is no pilgrim's shrine for Henry II.

I have talked of contrasts and contradictions and could refer to more. Although the references have been to England, a visitor to the U.S. could compile a long list of contrasts and contradictions. How would a visitor to Lakeland appraise organized religion if he visited us and did not visit First Assembly with its 10,000 seats? Or visit Orlando's First Baptist numbering 8,000 members with a new $16 million plant and not know about Friends' Meeting or First Unitarian? Or visit no churches but turn on the TV in the hotel room and be exposed to Oral Roberts, Ernest Angley, Jerry Falwell or Jimmy Swaggart? What generalizations would be valid?

All the experiences I have had to point to religion as an inner condition, not an external display, however sanctified by dogma and traditions. I value the externals of our Unitarian Universalist Fellowship:

The joy of our gatherings in friendship
The stimulation of our free and uninhibited dialogues and discussions
Our shared responsibilities for management, policies, and directions
Our mutual contributions of talents, ideas, music, convictions, and dividing of necessary chores.

But these I value because they cohere with the ongoing inner search for convictions that may make me both a better person than I am and a more useful citizen in the vast and complex world of which I am a part. In my better moments, I do not disparage those whose inner condition has different external expressions – the Mass, the creed, the evangelical convictions, the Torah. Expressions from the inner core radiate in different directions.

Similarly, if the organized expression of religion is dwindling in the U.K., – as all observations confirm – the English people are not going to pieces morally. There is politeness and cordiality to strangers; they are as much concerned about the lot of the poor and sick as we are, in some instances, more so. They, too, are aware of the perils of our divided world. Their art, music, and drama is creative and inspirational.

But as Emerson wrote, “If religion be the doing of all good, and for its sake the suffering of all evil, ... that divine secret has existed in England from the days of Alfred to those of Romilly, of Clarkson, and of Florence Nightingale, and in thousands who have no fame.”

The externals of religion are always interesting, many times fascinating. But the inner condition of our minds and emotions, the goals we seek, the love we express, are the better part even when externals may fall into ruins.

The new Coventry Cathedral, built after the older one was bombed out in WWII, is an overwhelming experience of art, modern architecture, and stained glass. One feels a universal spirit of triumph after disaster, of hope over despair.

If you can visit only one cathedral in England, my advice is: pass up the old ones and experience Coventry.

Among other aesthetic treasures in the nave is a modern metal sculpture, “The Plumb Line and City,” a gift from an American church and created by Clark Fitzgerald, an artist from Maine. The scriptural reference is to the ethical prophet, Amos, who has a vision of the Lord holding a plumb line. The plumb line tells the carpenter whether the work in progress is true and square.

When religion as an inner condition guides or pushes a person to be truer to self and square with others, other externals are much less important.

Living Is Limitation

October 6, 1985
Lakeland

October 27, 1985
Port Charlotte

The late Robert Day created memorable cartoons for the NEW YORKER. One rather famous cartoon he created launches our subject today. “A young father, kneeling on the muddy shoulder of a busy highway, is attempting to change a flat tire in a driving rainstorm. From inside the car, his two children stare at him in disbelief, ‘Don’t you understand?’ he asks them. ‘This is life, this is what is happening. We can’t switch to another channel.’” That observation represents both bad news and good news.

Living is limitation. We were born of particular parents at an unchangeable day and year. The length of our lives may be limited by the genes we inherit, the accidents that happen to us, and the social and environmental conditions which mould our lives. Like most of you, I have thought sadly about the recent disastrous earthquake in Mexico City. Almost 5,000 known dead, and at least 50,000 homeless because the earth shook, and buildings shattered because a great subterranean force killed and destroyed, causing suffering of which we can be only partially aware. We saw the news-clips, heard the commentators, but the immediacy of the pain, grief, and suffering was not ours to grasp fully. We were not there.

Living was limitation for the thousands of casualties because any understanding of the social, economic, political conditions of our neighbor country made it, if not impossible, at least highly unlikely for those who suffered the disaster to be anywhere else. Where in the world would one live and have complete security from earthquake, hurricane, flood, volcanic eruption, drought, and storm? In our own neighborhoods, the citrus growers and marketers have been limited by freezes, fruit flies, and canker. These disasters have happened, and no one can switch the past to another channel.

Beyond the inevitable natural catastrophes, we live with ... as individuals with limitations. This must be cartoon scripture day. “Small Society” - (9/22 Yates) – [a worried man, in a series of panels, notes,

“Nothing but problems in this world
There’s always something to worry about
If it’s not money or health
Or a job or the kids
Or the big bomb or politicians
Or pollution or inflation
Or energy or crime
Or a million and one other things -
There’s no end to it -
Hoo-Boy! The trouble with life is you never get a day off - ”]

We were born, and each succeeding hour we get older. We have a physical inheritance that may be strong or weak. We are vulnerable to various blows and misfortunes. How nice it would be if scientific medicine and technology had already found causes and cures for Alzheimer’s disease, AIDS, and cancers as Jonas Salk found the way to prevent polio. We live with the limitation of vulnerability to illnesses of body and mind not yet curable.

Bruce Southworth, minister of Community Church, New York City, tells a story which needs no additional commentary:

“There is a story, a true story I imagine, about a little boy who was helping his father serve the guests at the dinner table. He brought in a piece of pie. He set it in front of his mother who passed it on to one of the visitors. He returned to the kitchen and came back with another piece of pie which he placed again in front of his mother, who again passed it on to one of the visitors. After several such trips the little boy said, “It’s no use, Mom – they don’t get any bigger!”

We get older, and as an older one, I know that after a certain point, our powers wane. As Tennyson wrote in ULYSSES,

“Though much is taken,
much abides; and though
we are not now that strength
which in the old says moved
earth and heaven;
that which we are, we are....”

One Betsy Freiburger in the “Pepper and Salt” column of the Wall Street Journal had a couplet:

“Middle age shows a definitive sign
When one burns the midnight oil
at nine.”

Many times, however, the limitations of age are more in another person’s eyes than our own perceptions. Again, I was stimulated by another “Small Society” cartoon strip:

[Two old men meeting in a park.
Man 1: Nice day -
Man 2: Couldn’t be better -

Man 1: Do you come here often?
Man 2: Every day -

Man 2: Depending on the weather, of course. When it rains, I go to the library -

Man 2: I’m retired -

Man 1: I’m retired too -
Man 2: That’s nice -

Man 2: Who did YOU used to be?]

Living is limitation, particularly when we are prematurely mustered out of the march of time by the insensitive or uninformed.

The foregoing has been the bad news. But there’s good news, too. Living is limitation, but the limitation may be imagined or imposed rather than true and determining.

In dealing with life’s limitations, many times we cringe inwardly when we look back on the foolish, naïve, wrong, or unkind experiences we have inflicted on ourselves and others. We blame ourselves or alibi ourselves.

But one cannot win in the blame game or find a solution in alibis. Time may be relative in astro-physics, but in human experience it is absolute. If we have learned from our mistakes of omission or commission, great, but one cannot be transported back to a former time except in fantasy or fiction. [CJW note: seeking blame and alibi are formidable barriers to learning from experience.] ... the wise Moslem humanist Omar Khayyam wrote:

“The moving finger writes; and having writ,
Moves on: nor all thy piety nor wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a line,
Nor all thy tears wash out a word of it.”

Next, there is a recognition about limitations that is of central importance – do not assume that what others perceive your limits to be are truly the boundaries of your capabilities.

The parable of the talents has interpretations beyond numbering. ...I reject the theology, particularly about the fearful one who hid his talents under the mattress and was therefore called worthless and cast out into darkness. That is a cruel doctrine, indeed. If Jesus told this parable and meant it, he was hardly the loving, gentle Jesus who in another part of the gospel told persons they should forgive seventy times seven. The insights I find in this parable are out of context. More modern translations use thousand dollars for talent. Five talents – five thousand dollars, and so on. But I think of talents as our capacities, our abilities, the parable lesson being that many of us do not use all of our talents.

I remember years ago listening to a prominent Christian churchman restate the parable with a different twist. Twisting the scriptures is an ancient and modern preaching and literary device, sometimes to good effect.

Anyway, this Christian bishop told a revised parable of the talents. In his version the Lord gave five talents to a servant who really was a two talent person. The servant worked mightily and accumulated four talents more. When this servant made his accounting, he was crushed that he had not achieved [the] five talents goal and was quite miserable and ashamed.

The master looked at him and smiled, “You never were a five talent man; you were two talents, and by your extra effort you have achieved four. Thou good and faithful servant, enter into the joy of the Lord.”

[CJW note: Also I reject the economic scheme that what underachievers have is given to overachievers.]

As I said, I do not respond to the theology, but as a parable of human potential, I find it instructive, even inspirational. We may be selling our talents short when [we] fail to stretch, to make extra efforts in events of importance.

There is some verse that capsules the insight “Advice for My Daughter” - it applies equally to sons, fathers, and mothers, too.

Advice For My Daughter

“BE GOOD and let who will be clever,”
The poet urged, but daughter, never
Act upon what Victorians said:
Their pretty, curtseying world is dead.

Be clever, child! Loving, kind -
A Christian sort, but never blind
To all the miseries that hit
The merely good for want of wit.

“Be hard, get yours,” say men of late,
“The Golden Rule is out of date.”
And so they scheme, live subtle lies,
While simple joy within them dies.

Be hard – but on yourself alone,
In making certain skills your own;
Keep reaching for your special star,
And you’ll “get yours” - in what you are.

Alan Jenkins, from The Christian Century

One thing more, in the dangerous world in which we live, beware of limitations imposed by others, even when they are called “authorities.” It would be sad [CJW note: and fatal] if we accepted the inevitability of nuclear war, or a planet fully poisoned by pollution, or believed it impossible to eliminate increasing poverty and growing crime. Such fatalistic moods grasp me from time to time and I need the hope that lightens despair.

I clipped the ad of a large corporation, which is instructive, amusing, and a lighted candle for moments of gloom. The ad is entitled “The future isn’t what it used to be.” [editor’s note: the ad has pictures of and quotes from famous people.

“Everything that can be invented has been invented.” - Charles H. Duell, Director of U.S. Patent Office, 1899

“Who the hell wants to hear actors talk?” - Harry M. Warner, Warner Brothers Pictures, c. 1927

“Sensible and responsible women do not want to vote.” - Grover Cleveland, 1905

“There is no likelihood man can ever tap the power of the atom.” - Robert Millikan, Nobel Prize in Physics, 1923

“Heavier than air flying machines are impossible.” - Lord Kelvin, President, Royal Society, 1895

“Ruth made a big mistake when he gave up pitching.” - Tris Speaker, 1921

There is a tendency in individuals and societies to discourage doing anything the first time. This hesitancy or opposition limits opportunities. Authentic limitations are one thing; imposed limitations are quite another, and must be tested by innovation, invention, and courage, not only in the physical sciences but also in the more difficult areas of war and peace, political economies, and world-wide social problems.

Baseball managers are noted for their amusing misuse of expressions. Yogi Berra is famous for his sayings. For example, when asked, “Yogi, have you made up your mind yet?” Yogi responded, “Not that I know of.”

Danny Ozark, former manager, was asked about a rookie, “Danny, what about your outfielder, Mike Anderson?” Ozark replied, “His limitations are limitless.” I don’t know what Ozark was attempting to say, but living is limitation.

To summarize, living is limitation. Time, place, circumstance, inheritance [all] present limits for every one of us. We are what we are. Nevertheless, living is more fulfilling when we stay out of the games of blame and alibi. Our self grows when we assume that perception of our limits and that the measurements society defines as limits has usually been demonstrated, eventually, to be wrong.

Or as a great educator of another generation, William Heard Kilpatrick (PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION, p. 160), put before us, “Life is to be counted worth living on its own terms, that properly we may, and even should, seek to express and enjoy life as a positive good. A second characteristic is the belief that the quality of life can be improved by proper study and effort, and third, that the good life of each individual is inseparably bound up with a like, but not identical, good life for all others.”

Indomitable old Claude Pepper summed up all I have been trying to say for the last 20 minutes:

“Life is like riding a bicycle. You don’t fall off unless you stop pedaling.” (READER’S DIGEST)

Heritage And Holocaust

September 15, 1985
Lakeland

September 22, 1985
Port Charlotte

The heritage of the Jewish people is remarkable in its depth and persistence. The Holocaust was one of the most savage and cruel instances of man’s inhumanity to man. Although an outsider can never fully appreciate what the High Holy Days mean to the members of a Jewish congregation, we may try for a measure of understanding. Although an outsider can never perceive fully the pain, deaths, humiliation, and suffering of the extermination camps, one can speak plainly of the ancient and enduring evil of anti-Semitism and why cruel prejudice against the Jews has been a persisting pattern in Christian history.

Tomorrow, September 16, is Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, beginning 10 days of worship and remembrance, culminating in Yom Kippur, September 25. Rabbi Abraham Karp, a friend in Rochester days, speaks of Rosh Hashanah as the birthday of the world, to some orthodox this is literally true; for most it is a metaphorical allusion. It is Yahveh’s gift of a new page in the Book of Life. The sounding of the ram’s horn, the shofar, reminds the faithful to examine their lives and repent of their sins. Sin is not an ineradicable trait inherited as a result of Adam and Eve playing around in the Garden. Sin is “missing the mark.”

To me, one of the most appealing concepts is the belief that when one repents of sins against God, or Yahveh, Yahveh will forgive. But Yahveh cannot forgive sins against one’s fellow men and women. As Rabbi Karp wrote (p. 164), “for sins committed against fellow men, one must seek and obtain forgiveness from those sinned against and make restitution if possible. In consequence of this teaching, there arose the custom that during the week between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, a Jew would call upon his friends, neighbors, and associates and inquire if he had wronged them and beg forgiveness. And if one is asked to forgive, the law demands that he do so. When a congregation joins for prayer on the Day of Atonement, it is a company of friends who have made peace with each other and have thus earned the right to approach their father in Heaven for understanding and pardon.” I would add that a saying attributed to Jesus, a Jew, encompasses that requirement for reconciliation: “If a man cannot love his fellow-man whom he has seen, how can he love God, whom he has not seen.”

The climax of the High Holy Days, Yom Kippur, begins with the Kol Nidre, a haunting melody that touches emotional depths. Inevitably, it renews memories of two thousand years of persecutions and of the six million slain in the Holocaust. In the 20th century it recalls the brave men and women, living and dead, who fought against overwhelming odds to re-establish the state of Israel.

The rich heritage of Judaism – the superb literature of the Psalms, the ethical prophets, the neat myths, legends, and history of the Exodus, the 10 Commandments, the Maccabees, the Talmud – all deserve unlimited appreciation, particularly from Christian believers who appropriated this greatness and called it their own.

But instead of praise and honor, Judaism has been the victim of persecutions most vile for two thousand years. Anti-Semitism is “hatred and persecution of the Jews as a group; not the hatred of persons who happen to be Jews, but rather the hatred of persons BECAUSE they are Jews.”

It should be needless to state in detail the tragic consequences of anti-Semitism. A partial outline would include:

The Crusades: the crusaders attacked every Jewish community and burned synagogues on their bloody journey to the Holy Land. Many Christians who did not go on crusades stayed home and killed and persecuted Jews, particularly in the Rhineland.

From the Middle Ages to modern times, in many European cities, Jews were confined to ghettoes (Miller, p. 9). In the 13th, 14th, and 15th centuries, they were driven from England, France, and Spain. Throughout most/all Europe, Jews were prohibited from owning land and farming. Not until 1832 did Great Britain grant the franchise of the vote to Jewish people. Norway did not permit Jews to enter that country until 1860. Under Tsar Alexander III, Cossacks killed and plundered Jewish villages in bloody pogroms. There was no European nation free of the terrible plague of anti-Semitism – except Spain, when, during the period, Iberia was controlled by the Moslems, who at that time not only tolerated but encouraged the flowering of Jewish culture.

Anti-Semitism, subtly but unmistakably, was disclosed even among the so-called enlightened. Charles Dickens certainly was conscious of the terrible conditions that so many poor and underprivileged endured. However, in OLIVER TWIST he refers to the corrupt Fagin as “the Jew,” again and again. Villains in his other novels were not so identified. Uriah Heep is not “the Anglican” or “the Presbyterian” or “the Methodist.” Similarly, Steerforth in DAVID COPPERFIELD is not “the Puritan” or “the Roman Catholic.” Only open or latent anti-Semitism could produce such distinctions.

When I remember the 1930s, there is no doubt that anti-Semitism was widespread here in our “land of the free.” Fascist organizations were blatantly anti-Semitic [CJW note: and financed with highly “respectable” sources]. Jewish people were scapegoated for every bad social force. Father Coughlin, a radio preacher with a large listening radio audience of millions, berated Jewish people weekly. Anti-Semitic jokes were repeated interminably and enjoyed hugely. There was unchecked discrimination in housing, professions, schools, and employment.

Even when the horror of Hitler’s “final solution” began to be reported, consciousness was dull (see Koestler). Jewish refugees to Palestine on leaking, rusty ships could not land anywhere. Only relatively few were admitted to the U.S. or the U.K. Thousands lost their lives as the rust-buckets sank or Jewish refugees died at sea of want and sickness.

How ironic that the welcoming lines on the Statue of Liberty, “Give me your [tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free]” were composed by Emma Lazarus, a Jewish poet.

It could be comforting to think that anti-Semitism is a thing of the past, but I’m afraid that’s not so. I still hear persons say, “My doctor is Jewish, but....” I do not hear “my doctor is Episcopal (or Roman Catholic), but....” Or [consider], “I’m in trouble, I’ve got to get me a Jewish lawyer,” etc. I would surmise many of you have heard these too, if you have listened.

More blatant and dangerous activities are coming to light. I have begun to be a supporter in a small way of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, which calls attention to such neo-fascist, paramilitary groups in our country as the Aryan Nation (associated with the KKK). [In] April 1985, 23 were arrested and charged with the murder of Alan Berg of Denver, who happened to be a Jewish talk radio host and was an outspoken critic of racist, neo-fascist groups. Those arrested were also charged with the arson bombing of a Boise synagogue and other crimes. The Simon Wiesenthal Center came across one of the creedal statements of “The Aryan Nation” - I [will] read it to you, although it turns my stomach:

“We are the race of God; the Talmudic Jew is the chosen people of Satan. We are the front line of life and liberty, the Jew is the cauldron of death and enslavement. ... We do not want any other race to be present in our land at any time.”

Is Hitler dead? I wonder!

Years ago, I clipped these lines (author unknown):

SWASTIKA

What can erase
This thing from the scrawled
Walls of the mind; exterminate
This spider from the infested conscience? It hooks
Convulsively on the memory of man: the obscene
Insignia of hate. It mates and spawns
In every season and climate, crawls
On the faces of Nations. What
Can kill it but implacable
Wrath?

SEC

“What can erase this thing from the scrawled walls of the mind”

For one thing, I believe we must go deeper into the roots of Christian theology and appraise and recognize its central role in the sorry, bloody history of anti-Semitism.

Another source I am drawing [from] is the October 1984 issue of Theology Today, a publication of Princeton Theological Seminary, a graduate school for persons training for the Christian ministry. Also basic is Jules Isaac’s distinguished study, THE TEACHING OF CONTEMPT.

For almost 2000 years, the Christian church in most of its branches has explicitly or by implication taught that the 1st century Jewish people were “Christ Killers” - and because Christ was God, ... the Jewish people were [guilty of] deicide – killers of God! For this, the teaching proclaimed, they were punished by being dispersed to wander the earth forever. Ideas have consequences, particularly theological ideas imposed as “divine revelation.”

[Charging] the people of Israel [with deicide] has no historical validity. Not only do we have no original documents from Jesus’ followers, but we do know that the land was ruled by Roman officials who commanded the occupying force of Roman soldiers. Crucifixion was Roman-style execution. Pilate and a relatively few collaborators were responsible for executing a man they tagged as a dangerous rebel.

Then, too, in that time there were Jewish communities all over the Roman world. Such groups never heard of the Nazarene at the time. [CJW note: no TV, radio, newspapers] Similarly, one can reasonably surmise that most of the Jewish population in Palestine knew nothing about this wandering prophet. How under any standard of justice or common sense can both they and their religious descendants be held eternally responsible? Such ideas are nonsense, but for the Jewish people they have had a devastating effect through the centuries.

A. Roy Eckardt, a distinguished United Methodist clergyman and professor emeritus at Lehigh University, writes (THEOLOGY TODAY p. 301) “The late James Parkes, British historian ... always stressed that anti-Semitism has nothing to do with Jews and surely nothing to do with Jewish behavior. Anti-Semitism’s dwelling place is the minds and hearts of anti-Semites. Accordingly, Jewish behavior becomes “bad” not because it is humanly bad, but because it is Jewish. This means that it could be “good” but still would be as “bad” as ever. For the imputed guilt is one not of DOING but of BEING. To impute badness to being is a pathological act, or theologically put, a uniquely sinful act.”

In addition, the story that the Jews were dispersed to become wanderers because they were responsible for the death of Jesus-God is an historical falsehood. The Romans, under Titus, did conquer Jerusalem in 70 and destroyed the Temple. In 132, the rebellion of Bar Kochba was crushed by the Romans and thousands of Jews [were] sold into slavery.

But migration of Jewish communities had been in process for 500 years before the time of Jesus. There had been the Babylonian captivity. When return to Jerusalem was permitted by Cyrus, many Jews chose to remain in Babylon, where a Jewish community existed long after that. There, the synagogue was created for worship and teaching because there was no temple. There, the Babylonian Talmud was developed by the scholarly Rabbis.

When Alexander the Great conquered and built and named a great city in Egypt for himself ..., more than 300 years before Jesus, there, too, was a distinguished Jewish community of scholars, traders, and workers.

When Paul the Apostle went on his numerous preaching journeys, it is recorded that he spoke in synagogues – obviously there were Jewish communities established long before he got there.

And even in Palestine, Judaism survived. The rabbinical schools continued. The writings comprising the Jerusalem Talmud took form after the so-called “Dispersion.”

To claim that there was dispersion as punishment for killing God simply has no validity, but it HAS been a harmful historical lie.

Heritage and holocaust – who can help but admire the strength of the bonding of the followers of Judaism – to persist in their faith and to endure all the consequences of hate, discrimination, lies, death, humiliation. Perhaps it is the shared burdens of prejudice which has kept them united. Perhaps it is the power of their faith in the one God, Yahveh, and their obedience to the Torah, the Law. Perhaps it is the ancient thirst for knowledge, painstaking scholarship, perhaps it is the family structure of their religion and the Sabbath at home. All of these things – and much more – [are] beyond my comprehension.

Most of you know that a mezuzah is a parchment under cover placed on a door of a Jewish family indicating that the household follows the Law, the Torah. The story goes, “while being shown an apartment on West 86th Street in New York City, the prospective renters gave themselves away as recent arrivals with one question, ‘What’s that on the door?’ ‘That is a mezuzah,’ responded Evelyn Weiser, who represented Metropolitan properties. She went on: ‘It indicates that an observant Jewish family once lived here.’ One of the newcomers responded, ‘I thought it was part of the security system.’ Mrs. Weiser said, ‘Well, in a way, it is.’”

To summarize – hail to our friends and neighbors as they observe their most solemn holy days.

Then, recognize that anti-Semitism exists and speak up when you hear or see its manifestations, blatant or subtle.

Don’t be misled that historical fabrications can be either a true or humane foundation for anyone’s theology or salvation scheme.

And remember that as Rabbi Tarfon reminded in the Pirkei Avot 2/16 - “You are not required to finish the task, but neither are you free to desist from it.”

Roots of Unitarianism

May 5, 1985
Lakeland

May 26, 1985
Port Charlotte

The calendar is the context for today's subject, the roots of Unitarianism. If you have the Unitarian Universalist Calendar, you know that the various dates carry the names of persons and important events for our Unitarian Universalist tradition. May is a month filled with memorable dates. These dates are the stimuli for digging in Unitarian roots (on another occasion, the same device will be used to examine Universalist roots). The purpose of this look at the past is not only to increase consciousness of our particular religious past, but also because our past informs and guides are expectations of the future.

G.K. Chesterton once wrote, “Tradition may be defined as an extension of the franchise. Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead. Tradition refuses to submit to the small and arrogant oligarchy of those who merely happen to be walking about. All democrats object to their being disqualified by the accident of birth; tradition objects to their being disqualified by the accident of death.... We will have the dead at our councils.” (Quoted, CONTEXT, from Orthodoxy)

Guided by such recognition, let us consider May days:

May 4 (1819): William Ellery Channing delivered the historic “Baltimore Sermon” at the ordination of Jared Sparks. Channing, by that time a famous preacher, chose as his topic “Unitarian Christianity.” In Baltimore, First Independent Church was the new theology’s first church outside eastern Massachusetts.

Speaking with trenchant reason and fearless candor, Channing defined an approach to religion which, while antagonistic to existing dogmas and creeds, was delivered so persuasively that it was the catalytic sermon which, among other influences, six years later led to the formation of the AUA.

[Regarding the] Baltimore Sermon, published within a month, “it has been claimed that no pamphlet except Tom Paine's COMMON SENSE had ever been so widely circulated in the U.S.”

Also on May 4 (1796-1859) Horace Mann was born. If one grew up in a Massachusetts city, the chances are that there was a public school named for Horace Mann (from 1st to 6th grade, I was taught in the Horace Mann school in my city).

Born in poor circumstance and taught religiously of the terrors of orthodoxy, Horace Mann persisted and secured a law education. He also became a Unitarian because of the illumined, reasonable sermons of William Ellery Channing. Mann became a success in law and politics, was elected to the Massachusetts Legislature in 1827 and the Massachusetts Senate in 1833.

As President of the Senate he pushed through the historic bill which provided for a State Board of Education. Up to that time, school districts were completely independent, not responsible to any governing or supervising body. As a consequence, public schools were physically dilapidated, teachers both untrained and miserably underpaid. Standards were grossly uneven.

Abandoning his lucrative law practice and promising political career, Horace Mann became Secretary of the State Board of Education. His annual reports became educational classics. When I was doing some studies at Teachers College, Columbia, it was both taken for granted (and required) if one was heading for a graduate degree in education, that one study Mann's annual reports. They were models for improving public education, not only in Massachusetts, but in many other states. Mann is the most important person in the recognizing the need [and developing the value] of free public education in our nation.

He espoused other causes – state hospitals for the mentally disturbed, and restriction of lotteries and the liquor traffic. In his own words, he believed in the "unlimited improvability of the human race through education."

Mann became the first president of Antioch College. In his final commencement address, he summarized his highest value and life-long passion, “be ashamed to die until you have won some victory for humanity.”

On May 10, 1860, Theodore Parker died in Florence, Italy, and buried there in the American cemetery. More will be said about him when marking another May date.

On May 14, 1525, Laelius Socinus was born in Siena, the Venice territory of Italy. Born Lelio Sozzini, of a wealthy family, he was associated with the liberal part of the Reformation. He, with others, called into question the dogma of the Trinity. Forced to escape from Venice because of religious persecution along with others in the discussion group we might call a fellowship, he moved about Europe. He was influenced by Servetus. John Calvin warned Socinus about the consequences of asking too many questions about dogmas and creeds. The Inquisition seized his properties in Italy. He is less famous than his nephew Faustus Socinus, but Laelius was a guide and forerunner. Socinianism was the name for Unitarianism in much of Europe in those troubled, but world-changing times of the early Reformation.

On May 15, 1961, there was celebrated the consolidation of the AUA and UCA. After a hundred years of sometimes half-hearted, sometimes intense approaches and negotiations, these two liberal unique religious denominations became one, the Unitarian Universalist Association.

On May 16, 1804, Elizabeth Palmer Peabody (1804-1894) was born in Salem, Massachusetts. She was one of three remarkable sisters. Mary was the wife of Horace Mann; Sophia the wife of Nathaniel Hawthorne. At age 16, Elizabeth Peabody opened a private school in Lancaster, 2 years later, one in Boston. For 9 years she was secretary to William Ellery Channing. She was a key figure in assembling the famous religious and literary figures of the time, so well described in Van Wyck Brooks’ FLOWERING OF NEW ENGLAND. The planners of the utopian community, Brook Farm, met in the back room of a bookstore she opened in 1839, ([the] only one carrying foreign books). She set up a press and published 3 of Hawthorne’s [books] and the writings of Margaret Fuller as well.

After 1845, Elizabeth Peabody devoted herself to education. She was a member and lecturer at the then-famous Concord School of Philosophy. In 1860, she established the first kindergarten in the U.S. She lived [until] her 90th year and her life and memories contributed much to our understanding of an American age notable not only for its literary flowering, but also for the developments in Unitarian thought.

May 19, 1841 is one of the most distinctive dates in American religious history. On that Sunday, Theodore Parker delivered his sermon on “The Transient and Permanent in Christianity.”

Theodore Parker, grandson of Capt. William Parker, who commanded the Lexington militia on April 19, 1775, [was] born [in] 1810, ... the 11th and last child of John and Hannah Parker. Theodore Parker, as a Unitarian minister, was radical even in the eyes of his Unitarian colleagues. He questioned the authority of the Bible, he doubted that Jesus performed miracles. The Unitarian weekly (CHRISTIAN EXAMINER) complained, “Mr. Parker is not a Christian believer.... This young man must be silenced.” He was shunned by most Unitarian colleagues.

Parker was a social prophet and reformer. He participated in demonstrations against the Fugitive Slave Law. He was a scholar of prodigious learning.

It was [on] May 19 that he preached “The Transient and the Permanent in Christianity.” He criticized the reliance Christians had on the authority of Jesus. He argued for the validity of truth, not the authority of a savior, saying “If it could be proved Jesus never lived, still the truths of Christianity will stand firm. If all the Evangelists and Apostles were liars; if Jesus never lived and the New Testament a forgery from end to end, the doctrines of love to God and love to man are just the same absolute truth. They rest on their own authority.”

He believed the church to be in the social order, with responsibility for it. He said, uncompromisingly, “If there be a public sin in the land, if a lie invade the state, it is for the church to give the alarm: it is here that it may war on lies and sins; the more widely they are believed in and practiced, the more they are deadly, the more to be opposed. Here let no false action or false idea of the public go without exposure or rebuke. But let no noble heroism of the times, no noble man pass by without due honor.”

Such was Theodore Parker, “Yankee Crusader” - repudiated in his own time by his Unitarian brethren; today, a hero and exemplar.

On May 25, 1825, the AUA was organized as a member organization, not a denomination of churches. Its organizational beginnings and growth are a long and developing history. Up until the time of consolidation with the Universalists, the annual meetings of a Unitarians were always called “The May Meetings,” and without exception held in Boston in May.

By co-incidence, rather than specific planning, the British Unitarian Association was organized the following day, May 26, 1825.

Also, on May 25, but in 1803, Ralph Waldo Emerson was born. We have discussed him before. Many would agree that he is the greatest figure in American literature. Others recognize that his Transcendentalism – his belief that one could know God directly and no religious institutions were needed for such communication – has guided several American religions. His influence in bringing the insight of the Hindu scriptures to the American world, his stirring lectures, his masterful essays, all these make him a Unitarian hero, even though he found the ministry to stifling and insensitive. He influenced Parker, but also generations of Unitarians. Emerson believed in the universality of truth. He held that character is the test of a person’s worth. In one of his enduring adages, he wrote:

“Every man takes care that his neighbor does not cheat him. But a day comes when he begins to care that he does not cheat his neighbor. Then he has changed his market cart into a chariot of the sun.”

On May 27, 1819, Julia Ward Howe was born of a wealthy family. She is most famous as the author of the words to the Battle Hymn of the Republic. Visiting a campsite near Washington in the early days of the Civil War, she scribbled the words in a tent in the dark. But the years of her living contributed much more than that, even though largely unrecognized.

Rejecting the social life of the upper crust social elite of NYC, she went to Boston for education (debutantes were not educated). There she met and married Samuel Gridley Howe, 20 years her senior (he’s a valiant story in himself – courageous abolitionist and founder of the famous Perkins Institute for the Blind (and for 44 years director)).

Julia, too, was an abolitionist. With her husband she edited “The Commonwealth,” an anti-slavery paper. Their home was a gathering place for abolitionists. She wrote poems and prose in that cause.

Following the war years she became a leader in the women’s suffrage movement, President of the New England Women’s Suffrage movement..

She was also a brave and persistent advocate of world peace, and was one of the organizers and leaders of an international conference of women for peace and against war in 1820 (probably the first such international conference). She died in 1910 with no fulfillment of women’s suffrage or world peace, but she was one [of the] pioneers in both these causes.

Thus the memorable dates in May. Each month could provide similar stories of innovation in thought and deed, courage, and persistence in the upholding the human values of justice and kindness.

These men and women were the kinds of persons about which E.E. Cummings wrote in his line “Be Yourself”

to be nobody but yourself
in a world which is doing
its best night and day to
make you everybody else
means to fight the hardest
battle which any
human being can
fight and never
stop fighting.

These persons and their deeds have not been cited in order that we may gloat with vicarious virtue about famous Unitarians. That would be a bad mistake they never made. They were of their own time and wrestled with the problems of their times.

Our task is not to repeat their names just for historical denominational vanity, but rather to catch up with their expectations of the future – their vision of a world more just and kind, and a religion free, reasonable, and loving.

To be informed and guided by Cummings' reason and compassion.
To be emboldened by the social courage and prophetic radicalism of a Parker and Julia Ward Howe.
To be faithful to the educational ideals and dreams of Horace Mann and Elizabeth Peabody and apply them to our times.
To be grasped by a sense of the transcendent that Emerson held before us.
To recognize that religious movements survive by a combination of the free individual and a democratic organization – AUA, ... UUA.

Such principles applied to our issues of self and society represent the better way to be faithful to a tradition worth our loyalty.