a sermon preached by the Rev. Dr. Tim W. Jensen
at the First Religious Society in Carlisle Massachusetts
Sunday February 20th, 2005
I got to thinking the other day about just how much of our heritage as Americans we carry around with us in the form of spare change. From the American Revolution to the Second World War, from the Old Dominion to the New Deal -- I can give you a pretty interesting history lesson for just 41 cents, yet how many of us ever really think about the legacy represented by the handful of loose coins we set on the top of our dresser when we empty our pockets at night?
The largest of these coins, both in value and actual size, is generally the quarter. There are, of course, a couple of coins that are larger, but these seldom seen and even more seldomly spent oddities are not nearly so widely-circulated as the ubiquitous "two-bits" bearing the image of George Washington, First President of the United States and "Father" of our country, "first in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of his countrymen." Washington is perhaps the most iconic of all our Presidents: his image not only appears on the quarter, but also the dollar bill and in the most prominent place (naturally) Mount Rushmore. Our nation's Capital is named for him, as is Mount Washington (which I'm told is the highest peak in New England) and the State of Washington where I was born: the only state in the union to bear the name of any President. Washington was also the only American President ever to be elected unanimously by the Electoral College, and without even the fuss and bother of a General Election. And, of course, it's really his birthday ( February 22nd) that we celebrate as "President's Day" this weekend.
As kids we all heard the legendary story of Washington chopping down the cherry tree, and then taking responsibility for his action with the memorable declaration "I cannot tell a lie;" while as adults perhaps we have learned to draw inspiration from his leadership in times of great adversity -- keeping the Continental army together at Valley Forge, crossing a frozen Delaware River to attack the Hessians at Trenton on Christmas Eve (another iconic image), leading by the courage of his personal example at a moment in our history when mere survival was a triumphant victory, and the outcome of the matter was still very much in doubt. Yet I suspect that Washington is most appreciated by historians for what he DIDN'T do -- for his insistent refusal of more magnificent titles in preference for the simple "Mr President," and for his retirement from public life after serving two terms in that office -- a precedent which has only been broken once in the entire history of our nation.
Thomas Jefferson, whose portrait appears on the nickel, was perhaps both the most personally accomplished, and also the most complicated and enigmatic, of all our Presidents. He was also a Unitarian, as well as the President I personally admire most, despite his increasingly obvious flaws. Like Washington before him, Jefferson was a Virginian and a slave-holder, whose wealth and leisure (along with the liberty to enjoy them) were made possible by the forced labor of others. Jefferson was well aware of the evils of slavery, and also of his complicity in its preservation through his own participation in a society that was dependent on it. "I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just," he wrote. "His justice cannot sleep forever." Yet he was never able (or perhaps never willing) to win his own economic independence from a system of oppression he abhorred on moral and ethical grounds.
Like many enlightened Southerners of his day, Jefferson believed that slavery was already on the decline, and that the ban on the further importation of slaves from Africa which took effect during his Presidency would hasten its eventual extinction, never realizing that the acquisition of his Louisiana territory, together with the invention of the cotton gin, were already beginning to create an even more brutal and oppressive system of slavery than Jefferson ever knew at Montecello. The owners of northern textile mill like those in Lowell, many of them wealthy Boston Unitarians, implicitly colluded in this dehumanizing process of repression and commodification, and complained vocally when their own clergy dared to bring politics into the pulpit by speaking out in favor of abolition, or in condemnation of things like the Mexican War, or the "conspiracy of loom and lash" which dominated the American economy throughout the ante-bellum period.
The internal slave market which arose to supply the burgeoning demand for plantation labor in the deep South would within a generation see hundreds of thousands of African Americans sold "down the river" each year to the cotton producing states of Arkansas, Louisiana, Alabama and Mississippi. By the 1820's, young healthy males could be purchased for $500 in Virginia (or perhaps just across the Potomac river, in the nation's capital), and then sold for three times that amount in New Orleans; while the value of young women often depended upon their perceived potential as "breeders." The sanctity of marriage and family ties meant nothing on the auction block; children were routinely separated from their mothers, and husbands from their wives, and the entire dehumanizing system was grounded in an evolving ideology of racism which basically served to rationalize and justify certain members of a family owning (and selling) their own biological brothers and sisters as property. It's an especially ugly chapter in American history, involving kidnapping, rape, calculated exploitation and brutal oppression, and we are still living with its legacy today, despite the great strides this nation has made in the area of race relations in our own lifetimes.
Thomas Jefferson's personal biography helps illuminate this aspect of our national history as well . A potent combination of circumstantial, anecdotal, and (more recently) hard scientific evidence (in the form of DNA testing) has now convinced all but the most recalcitrant historians that Jefferson was indeed the father of the children of his slave Sally Hemings, who was both 30 years his junior and the half-sister of his deceased wife Martha. Nowadays I suspect that many would find the difference in their ages more scandalous than the difference in their races (notwithstanding the fact that Sally's own ancestry was only one-quarter African, and at least two of her own children were able to "pass" as "white"). But we also are beginning to understand that our ideas of "race" are simply socially constructed fictions which, nevertheless, continue to exercise surprising power over our lives and our daily interactions with one another, as well as the distribution of wealth, power, privilege and opportunity within our society itself. The descendants of Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings should remind us all that nothing in this life is truly black or white, and that the emphasis should rightfully be on "American" rather than "African" or "European" or any other descriptive adjective.
Of course, it was Abraham Lincoln who took the "self-evident" truths articulated by Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence, that "all men are created equal [and] ...endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights," and persuasively transformed them into a shared intellectual foundation for our liberal democracy -- a government "of the people, by the people, and for the people" -- as well as the rationale for putting an end to legal slavery in the United States once and for all, a mere "four score and seven years" after Jefferson first inspired Colonial Americans to seek their own independence from Great Britain. And a hundred years after Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation, Martin Luther King Jr. stood on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, and put in his two cents worth, demanding that America honor the promissory note written by Jefferson and Lincoln, rather than allowing it to come back marked "insufficient funds." King's dream that "the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood," and that his own children "will someday live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character" simply reflects the reality that often our differences are only skin-deep, while the table of brotherhood is more than just a metaphor. The real challenge is transforming the sweltering heat of injustice and oppression into an oasis of freedom and justice, by rising up and living out the true meaning of America's self-evident truth, that we are all created equal...
America has never really had an openly Gay President, although historians have long speculated about James Buchanan, a life-long bachelor whose wealthy fiancee Anne Coleman broke off their brief engagement when Buchanan was 28, and may even have taken her own life shortly afterwards. Buchanan's best friend and roommate for 23 years was William Rufus King; the two of them were virtually inseparable, and collectively known (at least in some private circles) as "Miss Nancy and Aunt Fancy." More recently, some historians have also grown interested in Lincoln's sexuality, pointing to his well-known lack of interest in women as a young man, his troubled and stormy marriage to Mary Todd, a four year relationship with a man named Joshua Speed (with whom Lincoln shared a bed when they were bachelor roommates in the late 1830's), and a fairly well documented incident in which President Lincoln again shared his bed with another man -- this time one of his bodyguards, a Captain David V. Derickson, possibly on more than one occasion, when Mrs. Lincoln was away from home. The evidence is hardly conclusive, but it is highly provocative, and like Jefferson's mid-life relationship with a teenaged slave needs to be better understood in the context of its own time. But I do think it's safe to say that had Captain Derickson been a woman, the obvious conclusion would seem far less ambiguous. Today's "Log Cabin" Republicans take their name from this speculation about the sexual orientation of our sixteenth President; and if it were to turn out to be true that Lincoln was bisexual, would he be any less of a great President because of it?
The humble penny may be the smallest denominated coin buried down in the deepest corner of our pockets, but what it lacks in monetary value it makes up for in durability. We've been minting Lincoln Cents since 1909 -- the 100th anniversary of Lincoln's birth; it is the longest issued coin in United States history, and has been struck and circulated in greater numbers than any other coin in the history of the world. The first Washington quarters were minted in 1932; the first Jefferson nickels six years later, in 1938. Lincoln, Washington, and Jefferson routinely occupy the top three spots on lists of America's most distinguished Presidents -- their faces each grace our currency as well as our coinage, and of course all three are carved on Mount Rushmore as well. The first Roosevelt dime was minted in 1946 -- just a year following his death, which occurred shortly after the beginning of his fourth term as President.
As I mentioned earlier, FDR is the only American President to serve more than two terms in office. Elected for the first time at the height of the Great Depression in 1932, he proposed a series of government initiatives which collectively were known as the New Deal -- and resulted in things like the Tennessee Valley Authority and rural electrification, the Federal Deposit Insurance Commission, the Securities and Exchange Commission, the National Labor Relations Board, and of course the Social Security Administration. He later led our nation during the Second World War, only to die at the age of 63 with victory just over the horizon. Afflicted with polio, which would eventually confine him to a wheelchair, he kept the true extent of his disability a secret from the general public, while at the same time mastering the relatively new communications technology of radio in order to broadcast his message directly to the citizens in the form of his popular "fireside chats." And he was, of course, in his own day vigorously opposed by conservatives at every turn, who saw his government sponsored programs of regulation and relief as an absolutely un-American flirtation with Socialism.
In 1941 FDR also articulated his idea of the "Four Freedoms" which he felt were the universal rights of all humanity: Freedom of Expression, Freedom of Belief, Freedom from Want and Freedom from Fear. The first two are already quite familiar to us; the latter two comprise a positive mandate for peace and prosperity which in some ways goes beyond more traditional understandings of both Freedom and Liberty, but is likewise a natural and obvious extension of those same principles. Using the definitions I borrowed last week from historian David Hackett Fischer, Roosevelt not only believed in protecting the liberty of individuals to worship and express their opinions as they saw fit, he also recognized that the Freedom to belong and to participate fully in a free society required a certain degree of physical security...both with regard to economic sustenance and the protection from physical violence. A free market cannot be a fair market without some sort of regulation. Without honest rules and the power to enforce them, the rich simply get richer while the poor get poorer, as the strong take advantage of the weak.
Recently there's been talk in certain conservative circles about replacing Roosevelt's portrait on the dime with that of Ronald Reagan. The advocates of this are basically the same people who would also like to dismantle the rest of FDR's New Deal legacy...including Social Security...but I probably don't need to spell out how I feel about the idea. Franklin Roosevelt and the dime just somehow seem made for each other. In FDR's day, for example, you could still actually buy something for a dime... breakfast and a cup of coffee if you were lucky, or at the very least a couple of beers. "Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?" was an anthem of the Great Depression and the New Deal, while the "March of Dimes" campaign against polio also began during Roosevelt's Presidency, and eventually resulted in an effective vaccine against that crippling disease. A coin bearing Reagan's image should likewise reflect the achievements of his administration, as well as his own personal struggle with Alzheimer's Disease. I have a few ideas. But I'm sure you can think of plenty of ideas of your own.
If history teaches us anything, it is that appearances can be deceiving, and that sometimes the truth is not only more complicated than we know, it is more complicated than we CAN know. All history is "revisionist," in that historians look to the past with a different perspective than that of those who lived it. They ask different questions, they have a better knowledge of outcomes, they have less personal investment in the disagreements and controversies of times past. Yet the study of history is the study of humanity itself in all its variation and diversity -- interesting not only for what it can teach us about our ancestors, but also for what it can teach us about ourselves. And for that reason alone, it is worthy of our close attention.
*********
READING: "Brother Can You Spare a Dime?"
They used to tell me I was building a dream
And so I followed the mob.
When there was earth to plow or guns to bear,
I was always there, right on the job.
They used to tell me I was building a dream
With peace and glory ahead --
Why should I be standing in line, just waiting for bread?
Once I built a railroad, I made it run,
Made it race against time.
Once I built a railroad, now it's done --
Brother, can you spare a dime?
Once I built a tower, up to the sun,
brick and rivet and lime.
Once I built a tower, now it's done --
Brother, can you spare a dime?
Once in khaki suits, gee, we looked swell
Full of that Yankee Doodle-de-dum.
Half a million boots went slogging through hell,
And I was the kid with the drum.
Say, don't you remember they called me Al,
It was Al all the time.
Why don't you remember, I'm your pal --
Say, buddy, can you spare a dime?
Once in khaki suits, ah, gee, we looked swell
Full of that Yankee Doodle-de-dum.
Half a million boots went slogging through hell,
And I was the kid with the drum.
Say, don't you remember they called me Al,
It was Al all the time.
Why don't you remember, I'm your pal --
Buddy, can you spare a dime?
E. Y. Harburg and Jay Gourney, 1932 (as recorded by Bing Crosby)
Sunday, February 20, 2005
Sunday, February 13, 2005
A FAITH FOR THOUGHTFUL SOULS
a sermon preached by the Rev. Dr. Tim W. Jensen
at the First Religious Society in Carlisle, Massachusetts
Sunday February 13th, 2005
There was an op-ed piece in the New York Times a couple of weeks ago, written by David Hacket Fischer, who is a professor of history just down the road here at Brandeis University, that I found so interesting and thought-provoking that I thought I'd share a little of it here with you today. It's called "Freedom's Not Just Another Word." "There is no one true definition of liberty and freedom in the world, " Fischer writes, "though many people to the left and right believe that they have found it. And, yet, there is one great historical process in which liberty and freedom have developed, often in unexpected ways...."
***
...Equally surprising are the origins of our English words liberty and, especially, freedom. They have very different roots. The Latin libertas and Greek eleutheria both indicated a condition of independence, unlike a slave.... Freedom, however, comes from the same root as friend, and Indo-European word that meant "dear" or "beloved." It meant a connection to other free people by bonds of kinship or affection, also unlike a slave. Liberty and freedom both meant "unlike a slave." But liberty meant privileges of independence; freedom referred to rights of belonging.
We English-speakers are possibly unique in having both "liberty" and "freedom" in our ordinary speech. The two words have blurred together in modern usage, but the old tension between them persists like a coiled spring in our culture. It has inspired an astonishing fertility of thought. Americans have invented many ideas of liberty and freedom. Some are close to independence, others to rights of belonging. Most are highly creative combinations. For most people they are not academic abstractions or political ideologies, but inherited ideas that we hold as what Tocqueville called "habits of the heart." They tend to be entire visions of a free society, and we seen them in our mind's eye through symbols and emblems....
The Civil War...was a conflict between visions of liberty, freedom, union and rights of belonging on one side; and ideas of states' rights, separation and liberty to keep a slave on the other. Many competing images of liberty and freedom appeared in the Progressive Era, and again in the 1930's when President Franklin D. Roosevelt's "broader definition of liberty" and "greater freedom, greater security" were fiercely opposed by the conservative Liberty League. It happened again in the 1950's and 60's, with the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s dream of freedom as rights of belonging, and Barry Goldwater's impassioned idea of liberty as independence from intrusive government. But perhaps the most fertile period of invention was the late 20th century. Through 16 generations, American ideas of liberty and freedom have grown larger, deeper, more diverse and yet more inclusive in these collisions of contested visions....
The catch, of course, is that people become more truly free only when the central ideas are respected: liberty as the rights of individual independence, freedom in the rights of collective belonging. Many on the right and left continue to call for one idea without the other, but the strongest ground is in the center, where they come together.... [New York Times, Feb 7, 2005]
***
Unitarian Universalism sometimes has a reputation of being kind of an "intellectual" religion -- perhaps because historically it has tended to attract a disproportionate number of highly-educated people, as well as numerous "free thinkers" and other independent spirits in general. But the faith itself is actually quite simple. I sometimes like to summarize it as "One God at most, and we're all in this together." These two historical confessions: that God is One, and All Souls belong to him (or her -- assuming God even has a gender) are the twin theological doctrines which gave "Unitarianism" and "Universalism" their names.
But what truly makes Unitarian Universalism a simple faith is the method by which we arrive at our beliefs. Most religions present the new believer with a complicated set of doctrines and creeds which comprise "the Faith" -- the Catechism of the Roman Catholic church, for example, is hundreds of pages long (not that too many actual Catholics actually think about that all that often). But for many religious denominations, Faith and Belief are considered one and the same. And if your beliefs deviate from "the one true faith" you are considered a heretic: someone who has rejected the faith (and with it the authority of the church) by choosing to believe a different way. But here at the First Religious Society (just like at every other UU church I know of) we are all basically heretics, because the basic premise of this religious tradition is that the authority for religious belief comes from within the individual rather than from some sort of external institution. Faith begins with our own human experience examined in the light of human reason, and thus we naturally expect our beliefs to change and evolve over time as we ourselves grow and mature in faith.
A few years ago now some clever advertising copywriter even put this idea in the form of a slogan: "Religion that puts its faith in you." I suppose there are a lot of other religions who can also summarize their core beliefs on a bumpersticker, but "Religion that puts its faith in you" has a very different feel to it than "God said it, I believe it, and that settles it." In the place of an authoritarian hierarchy, Unitarian Universalists look to personal authenticity and mutual accountability as the ultimate arbiters of religious truth. It's this believe in religious liberty that makes us religious liberals: not only do we live our faith, but our faith emerges from our own lives. Our experiences both shape our beliefs and inspire our actions, not because we are told we should believe a certain way, but because we have discovered for ourselves the truth of what we believe. Which is a lot different from having no beliefs, or being free to believe whatever we like. There are lots of things I would LIKE to believe, but I can't believe them because I know that wishful thinking doesn't make it so. If you remember nothing else about this morning's sermon, remember this. Unitarian Universalists are NOT people who are free to believe whatever we want. We are people who are COMPELLED to believe what our reason and our experience tell us to be true.
But because of the respect we have for freedom of conscience, and the high degree of latitude and tolerance we try to practice with regard to any particular individual's set of beliefs, people who are accustomed to more rigidly authoritarian religious traditions sometimes have a difficult time figuring out just where Unitarian Universalism belongs in the taxonomy of religious denominations. Is it a form of liberal Christianity, or some sort of post-Christian eclecticism, or perhaps even an entirely new religion altogether? Depending on who you're talking to, the answer to all of these questions is a qualified "Yes." From an historical perspective at least, both Universalism and Unitarianism are solidly rooted in the broad Judeo-Christian tradition. The original founders of this church and others like it were very much inspired by the teachings of Jesus and the Hebrew prophets, and the questions they asked about God and the Bible, about ethics and morality, were very much informed by the religious culture in which they lived.
But as that culture grew more theologically diverse, those early Unitarians and Universalists diversified right along with it...indeed, often leading the way. Because the only limitation on the freedom of belief is the integrity of one's own thoughts, 19th century Unitarians and Universalists were pioneers in both the academic study of World Religions, and ecumenical dialogue with non-Christian religious believers. Of course, more orthodox Christian missionaries also often attempted to learn everything they could about the cultures where they served in order to be able to more effectively convert "the natives" to Christianity, and often found themselves profoundly transformed by that process instead. But the Unitarian belief the God is One, and the Universalist belief that All Souls are equally loved by their Creator, made this sort of interest in mutual conversation rather than conversion especially appropriate.
The basic intellectual congeniality of both Unitarianism and Universalism to the notion of inter-faith dialogue was further reinforced by an idea know at the time as "Natural Religion," which essentially held that whatever is Ultimately True about Religion continues to be true whether anyone actually believes it or not, and that the various "religions" of the world simply represented humanity's historical attempts to understand and articulate this more universal "natural" religion in terms appropriate to a particular historical and cultural context. Scrape away these cultural overlays, and the "thoughtful soul" will discover the same basic set of beliefs...which are true simply because they are true, and not because they have been revealed to a particular group of people through some sort of miraculous, supernatural Act of God. Faithful Seekers of Truth should therefore feel completely uninhibited about taking inspiration wherever they may find it, realizing that ultimately all Religious Truth originates from the same Divine Source.
Of course, over time this practice of "sampling" from all the world's religious traditions led to two very obvious additional questions. First, how much non-Christian content can someone assimilate into their personal belief system and still call themselves a Christian? And second, is it really possible to "borrow" a particular religious belief or practice from another cultural faith tradition without unavoidably changing it (some would even say degrading it) into something entirely different? Put another way, can religious faith exist by itself, WITHOUT a cultural context? Or do we, as human beings, unavoidably live within specific "belief communities" which shape our worldviews in ways so pervasive they remain essentially invisible to us? Issues of cultural appropriation and cultural exchange take on a particular relevance in an era when economic globalization threatens the integrity of indigenous and non-Western cultures in ways unimaginable to 19th century Christian missionaries. And it has also led some to suggest that Unitarian Universalism's theological commitment to religious liberty, the free and responsible search for truth and meaning, and the inclusive use of the democratic process in congregational governance make it particularly well suited to emerge as a new, Universal religion for the Third Millennium.
And who knows? It may happen someday. But personally, I'm a lot more interested in what happens a lot closer to home. This congregation has been meeting Sunday mornings here on this hill in Carlisle for nearly 250 years now. Naturally, a lot of things have changed in all that time, but a lot of things have stayed pretty much the same as well. Our worship service, for example, continues to be the center of our life together -- a time when we set aside the more "worldly" concerns of day to day living in order to concentrate on the "spiritual" things that give life meaning. And it still consists of music, readings, prayers and a sermon...just as it has for generations. We continue to place a great deal of emphasis on religious education: not only for our children, but also for ourselves, teaching and learning from one another. We still enjoy fellowship with one another -- eating together, enjoying one another's company, taking an active interest in the lives of our fellow church members. We continue to care for one another pastorally, looking out for one another at times of illness or other kinds of personal crisis. And we continue to reach out into the larger community, both in the attempt to be of service to our neighbors and fellow creatures, and also to invite them to become our partners in our continuing efforts to do God's work in the world, so far as God has given us light to understand the meaning and intention of that work.
And in this regard, the First Religious Society looks a lot like other churches, who also "believe" in Worship, Education, Fellowship, Pastoral Care, and Community Outreach. This is what churches do -- it's the reason they exist, their "mission" in the world and "Good News" for human kind. It's no great secret; it's not rocket science -- but it does require a certain amount of discipline, and commitment, and devotion to values and principles larger than ourselves. Jim Wallis says that "the left doesn't get it, and the right gets it wrong." But I like to think that there are still a few liberals left at least who do kinda "get it," at least most of the time, even if we don't always get it perfectly right on every occasion. Humility, repentance, accountability -- the willingness to listen as much as we talk, and to take a genuine interest in the lives of those different from ourselves, especially those less fortunate than ourselves, "the poor, the vulnerable, the left behind." Are these "liberal" values -- the progressive values of freedom and liberty -- or "conservative" values, which we seek to sustain and preserve from generation to generation, as time-tested vehicles of spiritual progress? And why can't it be both...since both are obviously important to human happiness, and meaningful lives in community?
I can't begin to tell you how much joy, and pride, I feel at being able to step into this pulpit Sunday after Sunday, here in this beautiful white-steepled New England meeting house, knowing that I am part of a living tradition that for more than two centuries has affirmed and defended both the liberties of individual conscience, AND the God-given right of All Souls to participate fully in a free society. And if at times I seem a little outspoken it's because I know, like Barry Goldwater knew, that "extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice" and "moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue." And I also know that "All Souls" means ALL Souls" -- no exceptions, no reservations, no excuses.... And while we may often fall short of those spiritual benchmarks -- we are, after all, only human -- that doesn't mean we should give up on them, or that our aspirations are somehow without merit. This church is not a sanctuary for perfect people. It's a place where we can come, just as we are, in order to encourage and support one another in our efforts to go out from this place better people than we were when we came in, knowing that the One God (at most) who gave us life loves each of us just as much as we love our own children, and that come what may, we are ALL in this together....
at the First Religious Society in Carlisle, Massachusetts
Sunday February 13th, 2005
There was an op-ed piece in the New York Times a couple of weeks ago, written by David Hacket Fischer, who is a professor of history just down the road here at Brandeis University, that I found so interesting and thought-provoking that I thought I'd share a little of it here with you today. It's called "Freedom's Not Just Another Word." "There is no one true definition of liberty and freedom in the world, " Fischer writes, "though many people to the left and right believe that they have found it. And, yet, there is one great historical process in which liberty and freedom have developed, often in unexpected ways...."
***
...Equally surprising are the origins of our English words liberty and, especially, freedom. They have very different roots. The Latin libertas and Greek eleutheria both indicated a condition of independence, unlike a slave.... Freedom, however, comes from the same root as friend, and Indo-European word that meant "dear" or "beloved." It meant a connection to other free people by bonds of kinship or affection, also unlike a slave. Liberty and freedom both meant "unlike a slave." But liberty meant privileges of independence; freedom referred to rights of belonging.
We English-speakers are possibly unique in having both "liberty" and "freedom" in our ordinary speech. The two words have blurred together in modern usage, but the old tension between them persists like a coiled spring in our culture. It has inspired an astonishing fertility of thought. Americans have invented many ideas of liberty and freedom. Some are close to independence, others to rights of belonging. Most are highly creative combinations. For most people they are not academic abstractions or political ideologies, but inherited ideas that we hold as what Tocqueville called "habits of the heart." They tend to be entire visions of a free society, and we seen them in our mind's eye through symbols and emblems....
The Civil War...was a conflict between visions of liberty, freedom, union and rights of belonging on one side; and ideas of states' rights, separation and liberty to keep a slave on the other. Many competing images of liberty and freedom appeared in the Progressive Era, and again in the 1930's when President Franklin D. Roosevelt's "broader definition of liberty" and "greater freedom, greater security" were fiercely opposed by the conservative Liberty League. It happened again in the 1950's and 60's, with the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s dream of freedom as rights of belonging, and Barry Goldwater's impassioned idea of liberty as independence from intrusive government. But perhaps the most fertile period of invention was the late 20th century. Through 16 generations, American ideas of liberty and freedom have grown larger, deeper, more diverse and yet more inclusive in these collisions of contested visions....
The catch, of course, is that people become more truly free only when the central ideas are respected: liberty as the rights of individual independence, freedom in the rights of collective belonging. Many on the right and left continue to call for one idea without the other, but the strongest ground is in the center, where they come together.... [New York Times, Feb 7, 2005]
***
Unitarian Universalism sometimes has a reputation of being kind of an "intellectual" religion -- perhaps because historically it has tended to attract a disproportionate number of highly-educated people, as well as numerous "free thinkers" and other independent spirits in general. But the faith itself is actually quite simple. I sometimes like to summarize it as "One God at most, and we're all in this together." These two historical confessions: that God is One, and All Souls belong to him (or her -- assuming God even has a gender) are the twin theological doctrines which gave "Unitarianism" and "Universalism" their names.
But what truly makes Unitarian Universalism a simple faith is the method by which we arrive at our beliefs. Most religions present the new believer with a complicated set of doctrines and creeds which comprise "the Faith" -- the Catechism of the Roman Catholic church, for example, is hundreds of pages long (not that too many actual Catholics actually think about that all that often). But for many religious denominations, Faith and Belief are considered one and the same. And if your beliefs deviate from "the one true faith" you are considered a heretic: someone who has rejected the faith (and with it the authority of the church) by choosing to believe a different way. But here at the First Religious Society (just like at every other UU church I know of) we are all basically heretics, because the basic premise of this religious tradition is that the authority for religious belief comes from within the individual rather than from some sort of external institution. Faith begins with our own human experience examined in the light of human reason, and thus we naturally expect our beliefs to change and evolve over time as we ourselves grow and mature in faith.
A few years ago now some clever advertising copywriter even put this idea in the form of a slogan: "Religion that puts its faith in you." I suppose there are a lot of other religions who can also summarize their core beliefs on a bumpersticker, but "Religion that puts its faith in you" has a very different feel to it than "God said it, I believe it, and that settles it." In the place of an authoritarian hierarchy, Unitarian Universalists look to personal authenticity and mutual accountability as the ultimate arbiters of religious truth. It's this believe in religious liberty that makes us religious liberals: not only do we live our faith, but our faith emerges from our own lives. Our experiences both shape our beliefs and inspire our actions, not because we are told we should believe a certain way, but because we have discovered for ourselves the truth of what we believe. Which is a lot different from having no beliefs, or being free to believe whatever we like. There are lots of things I would LIKE to believe, but I can't believe them because I know that wishful thinking doesn't make it so. If you remember nothing else about this morning's sermon, remember this. Unitarian Universalists are NOT people who are free to believe whatever we want. We are people who are COMPELLED to believe what our reason and our experience tell us to be true.
But because of the respect we have for freedom of conscience, and the high degree of latitude and tolerance we try to practice with regard to any particular individual's set of beliefs, people who are accustomed to more rigidly authoritarian religious traditions sometimes have a difficult time figuring out just where Unitarian Universalism belongs in the taxonomy of religious denominations. Is it a form of liberal Christianity, or some sort of post-Christian eclecticism, or perhaps even an entirely new religion altogether? Depending on who you're talking to, the answer to all of these questions is a qualified "Yes." From an historical perspective at least, both Universalism and Unitarianism are solidly rooted in the broad Judeo-Christian tradition. The original founders of this church and others like it were very much inspired by the teachings of Jesus and the Hebrew prophets, and the questions they asked about God and the Bible, about ethics and morality, were very much informed by the religious culture in which they lived.
But as that culture grew more theologically diverse, those early Unitarians and Universalists diversified right along with it...indeed, often leading the way. Because the only limitation on the freedom of belief is the integrity of one's own thoughts, 19th century Unitarians and Universalists were pioneers in both the academic study of World Religions, and ecumenical dialogue with non-Christian religious believers. Of course, more orthodox Christian missionaries also often attempted to learn everything they could about the cultures where they served in order to be able to more effectively convert "the natives" to Christianity, and often found themselves profoundly transformed by that process instead. But the Unitarian belief the God is One, and the Universalist belief that All Souls are equally loved by their Creator, made this sort of interest in mutual conversation rather than conversion especially appropriate.
The basic intellectual congeniality of both Unitarianism and Universalism to the notion of inter-faith dialogue was further reinforced by an idea know at the time as "Natural Religion," which essentially held that whatever is Ultimately True about Religion continues to be true whether anyone actually believes it or not, and that the various "religions" of the world simply represented humanity's historical attempts to understand and articulate this more universal "natural" religion in terms appropriate to a particular historical and cultural context. Scrape away these cultural overlays, and the "thoughtful soul" will discover the same basic set of beliefs...which are true simply because they are true, and not because they have been revealed to a particular group of people through some sort of miraculous, supernatural Act of God. Faithful Seekers of Truth should therefore feel completely uninhibited about taking inspiration wherever they may find it, realizing that ultimately all Religious Truth originates from the same Divine Source.
Of course, over time this practice of "sampling" from all the world's religious traditions led to two very obvious additional questions. First, how much non-Christian content can someone assimilate into their personal belief system and still call themselves a Christian? And second, is it really possible to "borrow" a particular religious belief or practice from another cultural faith tradition without unavoidably changing it (some would even say degrading it) into something entirely different? Put another way, can religious faith exist by itself, WITHOUT a cultural context? Or do we, as human beings, unavoidably live within specific "belief communities" which shape our worldviews in ways so pervasive they remain essentially invisible to us? Issues of cultural appropriation and cultural exchange take on a particular relevance in an era when economic globalization threatens the integrity of indigenous and non-Western cultures in ways unimaginable to 19th century Christian missionaries. And it has also led some to suggest that Unitarian Universalism's theological commitment to religious liberty, the free and responsible search for truth and meaning, and the inclusive use of the democratic process in congregational governance make it particularly well suited to emerge as a new, Universal religion for the Third Millennium.
And who knows? It may happen someday. But personally, I'm a lot more interested in what happens a lot closer to home. This congregation has been meeting Sunday mornings here on this hill in Carlisle for nearly 250 years now. Naturally, a lot of things have changed in all that time, but a lot of things have stayed pretty much the same as well. Our worship service, for example, continues to be the center of our life together -- a time when we set aside the more "worldly" concerns of day to day living in order to concentrate on the "spiritual" things that give life meaning. And it still consists of music, readings, prayers and a sermon...just as it has for generations. We continue to place a great deal of emphasis on religious education: not only for our children, but also for ourselves, teaching and learning from one another. We still enjoy fellowship with one another -- eating together, enjoying one another's company, taking an active interest in the lives of our fellow church members. We continue to care for one another pastorally, looking out for one another at times of illness or other kinds of personal crisis. And we continue to reach out into the larger community, both in the attempt to be of service to our neighbors and fellow creatures, and also to invite them to become our partners in our continuing efforts to do God's work in the world, so far as God has given us light to understand the meaning and intention of that work.
And in this regard, the First Religious Society looks a lot like other churches, who also "believe" in Worship, Education, Fellowship, Pastoral Care, and Community Outreach. This is what churches do -- it's the reason they exist, their "mission" in the world and "Good News" for human kind. It's no great secret; it's not rocket science -- but it does require a certain amount of discipline, and commitment, and devotion to values and principles larger than ourselves. Jim Wallis says that "the left doesn't get it, and the right gets it wrong." But I like to think that there are still a few liberals left at least who do kinda "get it," at least most of the time, even if we don't always get it perfectly right on every occasion. Humility, repentance, accountability -- the willingness to listen as much as we talk, and to take a genuine interest in the lives of those different from ourselves, especially those less fortunate than ourselves, "the poor, the vulnerable, the left behind." Are these "liberal" values -- the progressive values of freedom and liberty -- or "conservative" values, which we seek to sustain and preserve from generation to generation, as time-tested vehicles of spiritual progress? And why can't it be both...since both are obviously important to human happiness, and meaningful lives in community?
I can't begin to tell you how much joy, and pride, I feel at being able to step into this pulpit Sunday after Sunday, here in this beautiful white-steepled New England meeting house, knowing that I am part of a living tradition that for more than two centuries has affirmed and defended both the liberties of individual conscience, AND the God-given right of All Souls to participate fully in a free society. And if at times I seem a little outspoken it's because I know, like Barry Goldwater knew, that "extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice" and "moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue." And I also know that "All Souls" means ALL Souls" -- no exceptions, no reservations, no excuses.... And while we may often fall short of those spiritual benchmarks -- we are, after all, only human -- that doesn't mean we should give up on them, or that our aspirations are somehow without merit. This church is not a sanctuary for perfect people. It's a place where we can come, just as we are, in order to encourage and support one another in our efforts to go out from this place better people than we were when we came in, knowing that the One God (at most) who gave us life loves each of us just as much as we love our own children, and that come what may, we are ALL in this together....
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
