Address: Many Paths: One Faith (an Intro to UU)©
The Rev.
Todd makes his living in
agriculture. He is the owner and general
manager of a company that propagates native plant species, growing several
million plants a year for use in environmental restoration. He also is a lifelong social activist who has
turned his passion for human rights into a remarkable record of service and
advocacy.
Lee lives in an apartment with my
two cats in a friendly, self-managed co-op in Sunset Park. She works at a child welfare agency in
Brooklyn, implementing and improving foster care and adoption policy and
practice. She is also engaged in
anti-racism work.
Jane is an estate lawyer. She lives in Salt Lake City with her partner
Tami, where the two of them support many efforts to improve the rights and
quality of life for gays and lesbians – and especially gay teens who are often isolated in the conservative climate in
Utah.
Bruce works at a highly secured
federal military facility. He also
maintains extensive gardens at his home, and enjoys spending time with his wife
at home and on frequent wilderness trips.
He is a thinking person -- a spiritual and philosophical explorer.
Todd, Lee, Jan, and Bruce come from
different religious backgrounds, have different interests, commitments and
ideas about life. What they all share is
their passion for Unitarian Universalism.
All have been active in their local congregations, and even beyond that
have served at the district level and beyond. These four people have found in this free
faith a place to bring their whole selves – their dreams, shortcomings,
questions and hopes – and experience a community that is united not by creed or
dogma, but by a shared commitment to living a life that grows ever greater in
generosity of spirit, that is open to spiritual and intellectual challenge, and
that holds a vision of justice for our world.
It may surprise some of you to learn
that in our earliest institutional form, UU’s were actually the inheritors of
the Puritan Order. Vision’s of
Hawthorne’s “Scarlet Letter” and his suffering Hester Prynne notwithstanding,
it is from the Puritans that we have our congregational polity, our acceptance
of reason in the interpretation of religious scripture, and the idea of social
responsibility as intrinsic to religious life.[1]
Many of our meetinghouses in
Massachusetts, including the oldest continually occupied church building in our
nation (“Old Ship” Church in Hingham, Massachusetts) were originally Puritan
congregations which became influenced in the early nineteenth century by
liberal religious ideas calling for more openness, more tolerance, and an
emphasis on free will and the potential goodness of humanity over the rather
more fatalistic and pessimistic view of humanity espoused by the more
conservative, Calvinist wing of Christianity.
It was the Reformer Calvin, you may
remember, who claimed the total depravity of humanity, and who inspired Great
Awakening of the 18th century
– the original revival movement in this country that whipped people into a
frenzy of despair, fainting and screaming over the images of hellfire and
damnation in sermons by Jonathon Edwards and others. Just to give you a tiny taste of this
experience, here is an excerpt from Edward’s most famous sermon, “Sinners in
the Hands of an Angry God:”
The God that holds you over the pit of
hell, much as one holds a spider, or some loathsome insect over the fire,
abhors you, and is dreadfully provoked: his wrath towards you burns like fire;
he looks upon you as worthy of nothing else, but to be cast into the fire; he
is of purer eyes than to bear to have you in his sight; you are ten thousand
times more abominable in his eyes, than the most hateful venomous serpent is in
ours.
It would be early
19th century Unitarian clergy such as William Ellery Channing who
would articulate a more affirming theology as regards humanity – lifting up the
best that human beings can strive for in the arts, in science, and in pursuit
of the common good. What was then known
as the “Boston Religion” became the dominate force in the political, commercial
and cultural leadership of this important city up until the Civil War, when so
much of the social landscape of our nation changed.
Alongside of the
Unitarian influence among the elite of Boston and the surrounding towns of
Eastern Massachusetts, were the Universalists – a separate sect of Christianity
that embraced the idea of universal salvation.
The Universalists presented a vision of a loving God who forgives all
sins. Like the Unitarians, they rejected
the idea of eternal hell, not because humans were so good, but because God was so loving. As the
famous 19th century Unitarian minister, The Rev. Thomas Starr King
once quipped: The only difference between
the Unitarians and the Universalists is this: The one thinks they are too good
to be damned and the other thinks God is too good to damn them!
[As an aside, the
statue of Thomas Starr King which once stood in the California State Assembly
was recently removed to make room for a statue of Ronald Reagan. The real Thomas Starr King might have put up
a good fight about that. When questioned
by his new congregation in San Francisco about his small stature and youthful
appearance, he said “I may weigh only 120 pounds, but when I’m mad I weigh a
ton!” This kind of zeal helped King to
convince the state of California not to secede during the Civil War, and later
raised over a million Civil War era dollars to help support the US Sanitation
Commission, the forerunner of the Red Cross in response to the humanitarian
crisis suffered by Union soldiers, who died far more often of disease than from
battle wounds inflicted by Confederate bullets.
King also worked on flood and drought relief, and for the rights of San
Francisco’s African-American and Chinese laborers. Meanwhile, he grew his own congregation
fivefold and brought the church out of near bankruptcy. All of this was accomplished in a mere four
years and it took a toll – unfortunately Thomas Starr King fell prey to diphtheria
and pneumonia and died at only 42 years of age.]
Starr King’s is
but one of many such heroic and outstanding tales of our Unitarian and
Universalist forbears, who include such notables as John & Abigail Adams,
Louisa May Alcott, PT Barnum, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, ee cummings, Charles
Dickens, Julia Ward Howe, Horace Mann, Maria Mitchell, Sylvia Plath, Beatrix
Potter, and more recently such eclectic personalities as Rod Serling, Christopher
Reeve, Ysaye Barnwell and Linus Pauling.
Unitarians and
Universalists had different constituencies and styles: the one dominated by
upper class intellectuals from New England, and the other representing a more
grass roots movement spreading its good news of Divine Love among farmers and
laborers in the tiny towns of the East and Midwest. What they had it common with us today is
this: they weren’t afraid to question
the dominant religious beliefs of their times, and they weren’t afraid to
change as their questions evolved.
Throughout the centuries, their circles of inclusion grew wider
and wider, and by 1961 for a variety of reasons it made sense for the two
denominations to merge. And so you have,
in the briefest form, the story that brings us to be called Unitarian
Universalists today.
“But want do the
Unitarian Universalists believe?!” wonders the bewildered visitor who may feel
like this is the right place, while not sure exactly why. A look through the upcoming activities in the
order of service doesn’t exactly help to shed light on the question. On Mondays the Zen group is meeting, while on
Tuesday there is a lecture on humanism and democracy. Wednesday is the adult pagan spirituality
class and Thursday is the Bible study class for skeptics. Friday there is an AA meeting in the back room
and a wine tasting in the front room.
Saturday is the vegan biker club, and a few Sundays from now there is a
service celebrating the Jewish High Holy Days.
Unitarian
Universalists are in sympathy with the George Burns version of the divine (if
we are in sympathy with any depiction
of the divine) in the movie “Oh God.” In
it, God is asked by John Denver whether Jesus was indeed his son. “Of course he was my son,” George answers,
taking a drag on his cigar, “So were Confucius, the Buddha, Mohammed…”
And, I would add Inanna, Athena, Hillel,
Martin Luther Kings Jr, Sojourner Truth, you, and
me.
As Unitarian
Universalists we believe that the “truth” has many sources, and is more a
process than a frozen system of belief captured in revelation by any one person
or scripture. Ours is a living faith –
one that invites us to be free and authentic with our doubts and our
certainties as we strive for greater understanding. The hardest part of being a Unitarian
Universalist is living in the tension of uncertainty about the nature of life
and death from time to time, as we remain open to being changed by our
experiences and by the wisdom of others.
The best part, as far as I’m concerned, is that each one of us is not only
given permission to ask hard questions, but to live those questions – life as
an adventure that unfolds rather than a rule book to be followed.
Unitarian
Universalism is a young faith by world religion standards, and we are
challenged sometimes by the very thing that gives us our strength – and that is
our diversity. We quibble over religious
language, and we sometimes reject the particularity of other’s ways of
expressing themselves even while proclaiming that we embrace all views. As my colleague John Buehrens stated when he
was the President of the UUA: “We are constantly being challenged to become
more inclusive, mature and enduring in our love.”
Looking ahead, it
remains to be seen whether we will be written into the annals of history as a
transformative religious movement that became a true force in a rapidly
changing 21st century world, or whether we withered away after being
a minor albeit feisty footnote in the history of religion.
Some of you are
aware that I recently was elected the Vice President of the UU Minister’s
Association, a job that looks to be substantial and worthy. My partner-in-crime in this work, the Rev.
We are a people of covenant and not
of creed, and so the way we are in community together is of crucial
importance.
It
is fair to say that Unitarian Universalism is a life-affirming faith that says
more about how one lives in this life than what we
might expect in a life to come. And yet;
to define what it means to covenant with one another in love and acceptance is
not adequate in terms of defining our purpose – Rob has it right there. You may wish to argue with his overtly
theistic language – indeed he intends to be provocative. Let me read his phrase again for you so you
can adequately argue with it – or embrace it!
“The church is in the world to engender the experience of the Holy in
order to awaken compassion and foster a life of loving service." Another way to say this might be that
Unitarian Universalism is in the world to be generative – to awaken us to the
glorious mystery that is life and inspire us to act for justice, in the service
of love.
I end today with a parable from the
Sufi tradition:
Mulla Nasrudin decided to start a flower garden. He prepared the soil and planted the seeds of
many beautiful flowers. But when they
came up, his garden was filled not just with his chosen flowers but also
overrun by dandelions. He sought out
advice from gardeners all over and tried every method to get rid of them but to
no avail. Finally he walked all the way
to the capital to speak to the royal gardener at the sheik’s palace. The wise old man had counseled many gardeners
before and suggested a variety of ways to expel the dandelions, but the Mullah
had tried them all. They sat together in
silence for some time and finally the gardener looked at Nasrudin and said, “Well,
then I suggest you learn to love them.”
In Unitarian
Universalism, we have traditionally embraced this affirmation of community in
many of our congregations: “Love is the
spirit of this society and service its law.
This is our great covenant: to dwell together in peace, to seek the
Truth in love, and to help one another.” May we continue to embrace this difficult but
rewarding path of embracing many beliefs while affirming one faith – a faith
that sustains and transforms each once of us, as we then work to sustain and
transform our world.
Welcome Todd,
Lee, Jane, Bruce, Maria, Pierre, Gunther and Ahmet. Welcome dandelions, welcome tulips and
wildflowers. Welcome to all who would
search for truth in love, and dwell together in peace.
Amen. May it be so.
[1] For
detailed information on the connections between Puritanism and Unitarianism see