A MINISTER OF THE PEOPLE, BY THE PEOPLE, AND FOR THE PEOPLE

a sermon preached by the Rev. Dr. Tim W. Jensen
at the First Religious Society in Carlisle, Massachusetts
Sunday November 14th, 2004


[Extemporaneous Introduction: Veteran’s Day]

At the conclusion of my sermon last week, I talked a little bit about Abraham Lincoln, and quoted a small portion of his Gettysburg Address. In many ways, the 272 words of President Lincoln's "Dedicatory Remarks" at the consecration of the military cemetery there at that famous battlefield are as familiar to our ears as scripture -- indeed, in the case of many Unitarian Universalists, probably more familiar. "Conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal." "Testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure." "The last full measure of devotion." "A new birth of freedom." And most especially: "A government of the people, by the people, and for the people." These phrases are indelibly engraved in our national consciousness, a key component of our national identity. And contrary to his own prediction, the world has long remembered what Lincoln said at Gettysburg; indeed, without his speech the battle itself might easily have been all but forgotten now, like so many battles of that bitter and bloody conflict. On July the Fourth, 1863, as Robert E. Lee's shattered Army of Northern Virginia retreated from the site of its defeat, it was apparent that a great battle had been fought and lost, but the significance of the victory was still not clear. It fell to Lincoln to define with words the larger meaning of the battle that had been fought at Gettysburg, the enduring principles for which so much blood and so much treasure had been brutally sacrificed.

"We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." Exactly four score and seven years (to the day) prior to the Confederate retreat from the battlefield at Gettysburg, the Continental Congress meeting in Philadelphia voted to approve a revolutionary document drafted by a 33-year-old delegate from Virginia named Thomas Jefferson. As many noted even in his own era, Jefferson's Declaration of Independence announced an ideal of equality far beyond anything that actually existed in America at the time. Yet in composing the Declaration, Jefferson had intentionally written a blank check of freedom to future generations. And it was to this "unfinished work" that Lincoln wished to draw the attention of the nation at Gettysberg, and to which his words continue to draw our attention to this day.

As one might expect with respect to something which has proven so important to our national character, there is a great deal of mythology that has grown up around the Gettysburg Address. It is said, for example, that Lincoln wrote his speech on the back of an envelope while traveling on the train from Washington, DC. The brevity of his remarks is often contrasted with the two-hour oration delivered by the Unitarian minister Edward Everett on the same occasion, often with the not-so-subtle insinuation that Lincoln said more in two-and-a-half minutes than Everett could say in half the afternoon.

These "myths" obscure the very deliberate way in which Lincoln took advantage of the opportunity provided by Gettysburg to raise the stakes in the war between the States. It was no longer a struggle for the abolition of slavery, nor even for the preservation of the Union in preference to "states' rights." Rather, the important issue for Lincoln becomes the MEANING of that Union, and the values which it embodies that make the continuation of slavery inconceivable. Liberty and Slavery are intellectually irreconcilable. Lincoln's plea for "a new birth of freedom," rooted in Jefferson's self-evident truth that "all men are created equal," washes away three generations of political compromise, in which human beings were treated as the equivalent of chattel property and counted as three-fifths of a person for purposes of congressional representation.

In its place he substitutes an ideal, not of compromise, but of democracy: a government "of the people, by the people, and for the people" in which Jefferson's promise of political equality becomes a viable basis of political community. What is most interesting to me, however, is that Lincoln's famously memorable definition of democracy was actually written by another Unitarian minister, Theodore Parker, whose printed sermons provided a steady spiritual diet of Abolitionist Transcendentalism for Lincoln's Springfield law partner William Herndon. Herndon often shared Parker's pamphlets with his senior partner, and they evidently made some impact, since Parker’s phrase "government of all the people, by all the people, for all the people," is underlined in the printed copy of Parker's 1850 lecture on “The American Idea” which Herndon shared with his boss.

Theodore Parker was born in the village of Lexington, Massachusetts on August 24th, 1810, the eleventh child of John and Hannah Parker, who had long before run out of the Biblical names they preferred for their children, and thus named their new baby Theodore --"gift of God." (And yes, it’s true, my dog Parker is named after him). The Parker family were long-time inhabitants of Lexington; Theodore's grandfather, Captain John Parker, had commanded the Minutemen on Lexington Common in 1774, where the first shots were fired of the American Revolution, and is remembered by history as the man who uttered those immortal words you may still recall from our annual celebration of that battle: "If they mean to have a war, let it begin here." There was more than a little of the grandfather to be found in the fiery grandson, who throughout his adult life kept the old "Firelock" musket which Captain Parker had captured from the British that day hanging in his study; and on more than one occasion during the fugitive slave law controversy of the 1850's, Reverend Parker threatened to use it again himself in defense of those same principles of human liberty his grandfather had defended in the days of the American Revolution.

Outside of Unitarian Universalist circles, Parker is best known to history as an uncompromising abolitionist, who frequently expressed his outrage at the moral hypocrisy of the existence of slavery in a so-called "free" society. In addition to his regular preaching, he lectured as often as a hundred times a year, generally on the topic of abolition; and his sermons and lectures were regularly printed for distribution to an even wider audience. Yet Parker did far more than merely talk about Abolition. He also believed that even for a Christian (and he considered himself such), violence was at times an appropriate means for opposing a great evil. Thus Parker was active in the Underground Railroad; and, in 1854, when runaway slave Anthony Burns was arrested in Boston under the new Fugitive Slave Act (which Parker habitually referred to as the "Government Kidnapping Act"), he helped to organize a riot in a failed attempt to break Burns out of jail. Parker was eventually indicted in connection with that riot, although later the charges were dismissed on a technicality, out of fear, some say, of the publicity Parker would have received from such a trial. Not long afterwards, he was at it again, this time raising money for the "free soil" forces in "Bleeding Kansas." Indeed, Parker has the dubious historical distinction of having been one of the six outsiders privy in advance to John Brown's plans to mount a guerilla raid on the Federal Arsenal at Harpers Ferry. For Theodore Parker, religion's "higher moral laws" were not just vague abstractions for another world. They were militant ethical imperatives for the here and now.

Yet Parker’s heroic genealogy and outspoken political views are only part of his story. Despite the prestige of his grandfather’s reputation as a patriot, during Theodore’s childhood the Parker family had fallen on hard times. Growing up with ten older brothers and sisters, some of whom were already adults by the time he was born, was not easy for a sensitive and intelligent little boy. There was never enough money to go around, and no one his own age to play with; the older children were all needed to help run the farm, a responsibly which Theodore also quickly had thrust upon him. His mother died when he was only 13. Yet his boundless curiosity drove him to read whatever he could get his hands on, and eventually he was able to pass the entrance examination for Harvard College and was accepted as a student there, even though he couldn't afford to pay the tuition. He completed the entire four-year curriculum in a single year, then took a job as a schoolmaster in Boston, where he hoped to earn enough money to pay his fees and be awarded his bachelors degree. As it turned out, Parker never did receive that diploma; instead, with the money he was able to save from teaching and the help of a supportive Unitarian clergyman from Watertown, Convers Francis, he chose to enroll at the Harvard Divinity School, where he graduated in 1836 (a year ahead of schedule) wearing a borrowed robe. That following spring, after a year of candidating at various churches throughout New England, he accepted a call to the pulpit in West Roxbury, where he and his new wife, the former Lydia Cabot, looked forward to sharing the challenging responsibility of ministering to this congregation of fifty-some souls.

West Roxbury in those days was a community in transition. Although it still retained much of its rural character, and was not yet served by the railroad, a daily commuter stage-coach connected it to "the Neighborhood of Boston," and thus it was also developing something of a suburban quality, particularly for the more affluent, who could afford the luxury of living in the country and working in the city. For a farm boy like Parker, accustomed to traveling by foot, it was also realistic simply to spend a day walking into the city, where he could enjoy the bookstores and the intellectual stimulation of visiting with older and more experienced ministerial colleagues like William Ellery Channing, before strolling back home in time for supper.

As the minister of the West Roxbury Church, Parker was even considered a member of the Boston Ministerial Association, a professional organization of Unitarian ministers who shared responsibility for delivering "the Great and Thursday Lecture" at the First Church in Boston. It was a good life for a young, intellectually-gifted minister like Parker, since it combined the professional visibility and intellectual stimulation of an urban environment with the slower, contemplative rhythms of a rural, village parish. In fact, these same characteristics eventually inspired George Ripley to select West Roxbury as the site for his own Transcendentalist Utopian experiment at Brook Farm. The Transcendentalist Controversy of the late 1830's and early 1840's dramatically transformed Theodore Parker's life and career. It is difficult to characterize Transcendentalism in a nutshell; I think the best definition I've ever seen is that the Transcendentalist movement consisted of the friends of Margaret Fuller, but unless you already know something about Margaret Fuller, that definition hardly tells you very much. On an intellectual level, Transcendentalism represented a more intuitive way of relating to the world, inspired at least in part by the Philosophical Idealism of German intellectuals like Kant and Goethe. As a religious movement, it reflected a desire for a more emotionally-satisfying, "spiritual" faith vis-a-vis the highly rational "old school" Unitarianism of the day. And as a sociological phenomenon, Transcendentalism was part of the much larger critique of industrial, urban society embodied in the Romantic movement, which idealized the wisdom of nature and the simple values of country living over and against the striving, competitive value system of the mercantile economy.

The idealistic young minister's embracing of the Transcendentalist manifesto soon served to isolate him from the support of many of his older, more conservative colleagues, who often served churches whose parishioners were shocked by these radical new ideas, especially since many of them had made their fortunes in the same slave-dependent cotton and textile-based commercial economy that Transcendentalism so eloquently condemned. Yet while many ministers with Transcendentalist leanings chose to leave the church in order to pursue other careers, Parker stubbornly remained a parish minister, much to the discomfort of the conservatives. At one point the Boston Association of Ministers even met with Parker and politely asked him to resign from their fellowship. Parker refused, leaving his colleagues with the uncomfortable choice between kicking him out, and admitting to themselves that there were indeed doctrinal limitations to the "free and disciplined search for truth and meaning." Fortunately for the future of pluralism within our movement, the Boston ministers chose freedom and fellowship over doctrinal conformity, and Parker remained a member of the Association. But few of his remaining colleagues were willing to allow him to preach in their churches, in the long-established tradition of pulpit exchange then common in our denomination. So in 1845 some friends of Parker's undertook to organize the 28th Congregational Society, for the sole purpose "That the Rev. Theodore Parker shall have a chance to be heard in Boston."

Parker's resignation from West Roxbury and subsequent move to Boston created a great many changes in his lifestyle. In its heyday, the parish register of the 28th Congregational Society contained over seven thousand names. It was without a doubt the largest church of any denomination in Boston at that time, and perhaps the second-largest congregation in the entire United States, trailing only that of fellow abolitionist Henry Ward Beecher’s Plymouth Congregational Church in Brooklyn. It met for Sunday worship in the Boston Music Hall, the only building in the city large enough to contain the huge number of people Parker's preaching could attract. Parker often found himself preaching to audiences of three thousand or more on a given Sunday, while during the week he was actively involved in the numerous movements for social reform which were likewise springing up in and around the Transcendentalist community. Parker was an early supporter of the Women's movement. The Boston area Peace Society was organized in his home. He was an advocate of judicial reform, an opponent of capital punishment, active in programs to aid the poor of Boston.

But above all, he was that uncompromising abolitionist I spoke of earlier,
whose moral outrage at the hypocrisy of the existence of slavery in a "free" society knew no rest, and whose opinions on that subject eventually found their way word for word into America’s most eloquent expression of the meaning of Democracy. And perhaps this is emblematic of Parker's true historical legacy, that when he speaks to us today it is through the mouth of someone else. Parker himself left almost nothing in the way of an institutional legacy, despite the fact his congregation was the largest of his time, and located at the very hub of the Unitarian universe. Thirty years after Parker's death the 28th Congregational Society was out of business — its membership had dwindled to next to nothing, and its meager assets distributed to the Benevolent Fraternity.

What happened? To make a long story short, nothing happened — and that was the problem. Parker never took the time to develop an institutional infrastructure to support the huge number of people he was capable of attracting through his preaching. Rather than sharing the burdens of his ministry with an associate, or even developing an effective network of permanent church workers who could assist him in creating programs like a Sunday School, Parker tended instead to draw upon his own prodigious energy and do it all himself, a habit which likewise tended to leave many things undone, and which many of his friends felt contributed to his early death. Rather than developing a strong and reliable base of financial support for the church, when funds got tight Parker typically "solved" the problem by volunteering to take a cut in pay -- something he could easily afford to do given the huge income he generated through his writing and lecturing. But the net effect of his supposed generosity was to cripple the long-term viability of the faith community he faithfully presumed to serve.

The bonds of community in a typical 19th-century small rural parish were dictated by geography. You belonged because you had no choice; everybody knew who you are, and there wasn’t really anywhere else to go anyway. But in a more sophisticated, pluralistic, and mobile environment, the bonds of community must likewise become more intentional: they have to be created, and supported, and maintained. Leadership is important, but "followership" is just as important. It's not enough just to see the goal or even to share the "vision;" it is also essential to pursue the goal: to plan, to organize, and to move forward to achieve it.

It can be tempting sometimes to overstate the “lessons of history.” No two times are identical, and drawing rigid analogies from historical periods other than our own is often just an exercise in finding whatever you’re looking for. Within Unitarian Universalism, Theodore Parker has traditionally been characterized as both a role-model and a saint. His influence on subsequent generations of UU ministers has been profound; Parker’s protégé Thomas Wentworth Higginson once described it by observing that in his day every young minister felt they needed to at least attempt what Theodore Parker had accomplished. Yet today Parker is also often an object of criticism, especially for his inability to compromise, and his failure to be more attentive to the institutional duties of a parish minister. Parker himself died while traveling in Florence, Italy in 1860, just in time to avoid witnessing the conflagration over States rights, slavery, and succession from the Union brought about by Lincoln's Inauguration, and the subsequent attack on Fort Sumter in 1861. Who knows how the founder of the Boston Peace Society would have responded to the unimaginable carnage and fratricide of the American Civil War? His literary legacy endures as an intrinsic part of what is perhaps America's most important and well-known piece of political oratory. Yet for good or ill, Parker's radical religious individualism, which in his mind was inseparable from the moral imperative to engage evil in the world wherever you may find it, whatever the sacrifice, whatever the consequences, is also now a permanent part of America's political landscape.