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Sermon by Leland Bond-Upson,
History Let us begin near the beginning, in the ferment of the revolutionary ideas let loose by the Reformation and its antecedents. You will recall that the New Learning of the Renaissance, combined with the corruption of the Catholic Church gave birth to the Protestant Reformation. Suddenly it was possible for ordinary people-not just theologians and scholars-to 'think outside the box.' One of the great themes of the Reformation was 'the priesthood of all believers.' That is, anyone, even a woman, had the ability to read and interpret Scripture for him or herself. The subversion contained in that idea was that one did not have to have a priest as intermediary. You, yourself, could have a direct relationship with the Almighty. Well you can imagine what happened. People started reading the Bible and thinking for themselves, and one of the things that kept coming up was that there was no scriptural basis for the idea of the Trinity, nor for a lot of other points of dogma and procedure that had grown up over the previous 1500 years. Once freed, opinion quickly splintered. In addition to the Reformation that created Lutherans and Presbyterians, and Puritans and Anglicans, you got a Radical Reformation creating Anabaptists and Hutterites and Monnonites and Socinians. These peoples came to be viewed as extreme and dangerous, and were condemned as heretics by conservative churchman and governments, Protestant and Catholic alike. The splinter group known as Socinianism on the European Continent, came to be known as Unitarianism in England and America. Socinianism takes its name from two early Italian Unitarians, Faustus and Laelius Socinus. Its name in English-Unitarian--conveys its differentiation from mainline Christianity: Unitarians believed that God is one, not one in three and also three in one. Unitarianism then, as opposed to Trinitarianism. For this heresy-it was formally condemned everywhere-our spiritual forbears were driven from their homes, tormented, and put to death, by both Catholics and Protestants. Our most famous martyr, Michael Servetus, was burned in Geneva by the Presbyterian, John Calvin. The last person executed for heresy in Britain, in 1697, was a Scottish student, Thomas Aikenhead, who was reported to the authorities by his classmates for denying the Trinity. We remember from such works as "The Crucible" that the 1690s saw the final convulsion of witch-burnings and hangings. The 18th century and the Enlightenment lay just ahead. In Europe, that is. Friday's Chronicle (Oct. 4, 2002) carried a report of the World Health Organization's study of violence worldwide, noting that 500 old women are put to death each year in Tanzania, as witches. When will the Enlightenment reach Tanzania? Theology The early Unitarians had an intuition, shared by many before and after, that, in the most encompassing sense, "it's all one." God is undivided, certainly, and perhaps everything is part of God. "Hear O Israel, the Lord thy God is One." Allah too, is One, and Mohamed is his prophet--not a god. The origins of the Trinity are a mix of ancient polytheism, Greek philosophy, and Roman religion. It did not come from Judaism or the Rabbi Jesus of Nazareth. The essence of modern Unitarianism I call myself a Unitarian partly because I agree with the idea implied by the name. I believe it is all One, and that the Unitarian intuition about unity is correct, and is being constantly affirmed by our science. What is the name Stephen Hawking and other astro-physicists have given to the Universe prior to the Big Bang? They call it a 'singularity.' I call myself a Unitarian partly because I believe the intuition of unity is theologically correct as well, and leads to a greater, more expansive and inclusive consciousness, which in turn leads to a kindlier attitude toward the rest of creation, even toward the sorriest excuses for human beings you can think of-many of whom seem attracted to elective office. But I call myself a Unitarian mostly because it provides a place to be religious but not be told what to think. You know the old joke about why Unitarians are such lousy hymn-singers is that we're looking ahead to see if we agree with the words that are coming next? We joined together in affirmation at the beginning of the service I don't know if any of you were reading ahead. Didn't seem like it. So-what was it we were affirming? 1. "Love is the doctrine of this church." This statement is both an affirmation of love, and a rejection of dogma and creeds. 2. "The quest for truth is its sacrament. . ." This line points to our reverence for truth, and to the de-emphasis on sacramental religion. The Catholics have 7 sacraments, most Protestants only two, and Unitarians only one, baptism, which we have renamed christening, or dedication. 3. ". . . and service is it's prayer." This part emphasizes our duty to others, while at the same time implying that we don't pray to God, Jesus, or the saints. 4. "To dwell together in peace." This line reminds us that we are one of the peace churches, like the Quakers and 7th Day Adventists. 5. "To seek knowledge in freedom." This is one of our central liberal values. 6. "To serve human need." Originally this line was "To serve Mankind in fellowship," but it had to be changed to inclusive language. I'm afraid some of the poetry and cadence was lost in translation. In any event, there's service to others again, to do what we can to reduce suffering and injustice. 7. "To the end that all souls may grow in harmony with the Divine." Here we have the Unitarian affirmation of inclusion (all souls) and the liberal idea of growth and betterment. 8. "Thus do we worship together." These are our reasons for congregating. In the 16th and 17th centuries, denying the Trinity could get you killed. Nowadays, most Christians are still nominally Trinitarians but don't think about it very much. Unitarians don't think about it much either. Unitarians, in their current incarnation as Unitarian Universalists, are characterized by their general liberality, their free-thinking, rather than by the doctrine of the unity of the god-head. If asked about U-Uism, we don't talk about denying the Trinity, but about inclusion and equality and justice and spiritual quest minus the supernatural. There are lots of Trinitarians who are progressive and liberal, and-when you think about it, there's nothing necessarily liberal about denying the Trinity, except perhaps in the unwillingness to believe nonsense. (It is nonsense, isn't it, to believe that something can be one and three at the same time?) It just happened that these Unitarians, growing liberal through independent thought, clustered together and were liberal and progressive and accomplished liberal and progressive changes. Unitarian exemplars Unitarianism's original theology is, I believe still true, but it takes a decidedly back seat to the actions of its adherents. This is its great tradition, its heritage, and its example for us. When I was a boy, attending the Community Unitarian Fellowship in Kennewick, WA in the 1950s, I was uncomfortable, as children are, to be different from the other kids. They went to the Lutheran Church or the Baptist Church or the Methodist Church, or the Catholic Church or the Mormon Church, and they believed the usual stuff, whereas I went to this little church that nobody had heard of, or worse, they did know, and frowned. I was buoyed up by a little pamphlet reprinted from Pageant magazine titled "Small Church, Big People." I read it many times, trying to remember all the names, putting them one by one like bullets into a gun belt, ready to be fired should there be another attack. Naturally I chose names that my friends would know and approve of. These are the names I memorized-and gave thanks for: Presidents And those angels of mercy at the battlefield hospital, and
bringers of science and common sense to medicine in general: Inventors and scientists: Writers and poets Public men: That was my list in grade school, Jr. High, and high school. Presidents Fillmore and Taft Writers and poets: Do-gooders: Influential Unitarian ministers and their friends Political agitators, activists, revolutionaries Scientists Unitarians, all. A hugely impressive list. Hugely disproportionate achievement compared to the size of the Unitarian Church. If you expand the criteria a tiny bit, and include the Deists, you get all the Unitarians above, plus a staggering list of remarkable people with Unitarian ideas and sympathies, but who didn't join the church: Copernicus, Montaigne, Bacon, Galileo, Hobbes, Descartes, Pascal, Boyle, Spinoza, Locke, Newton, Leibniz, Peter the Great, Walpole, J.S. Bach, Berkeley, Pope, Montesquieu, Voltaire, Pitt the elder, Hume, Frederick the Great, Rousseau, Diderot, Adam Smith, Kant, Catherine the Great, George Washington, John Hancock, Ethan Allen, Gibbon, Goethe, Madison, Mozart, Hamilton, Lafayette, Robespierre, Monroe, Wolfe Tone, Napoleon, Robert Emmet, Byron, Hugo, Lincoln, Tennyson, Browning, Kierkegaard, Whitman, Dumas the Younger, Twain/Clemens, Edison, Wilde, Gandhi, Crane, Einstein, Gibran, Joseph Campbell, Heinlien, Alan Watts, Carl Sagan, Vaclav Havel, and Hawking. Unitarianism is a thinking person's religion. The people we've just listed are smart and well-meaning, but are characterized less by their theology than by their accomplishments. Some were geniuses, most were simply ordinary people who knew what to do when the opportunity arose. What distinguishes them all was their impulse to try to make a difference for the better. May we each in our own way be able to say we did the same. Our Unitarian heritage is no longer characterized by the denial of the trinity. Our heritage is the tradition of religious freedom that allows us to work out our own salvation as best we are able, without restriction of doctrine, creed, or dogma. That and the lives of these people we've just named- their deeds and the examples they set for us. The reason we remember them is that they made a difference that left us better off and better people. If we wish to, we can gain strength from their lives, and each other here, in this place that honors freedom, to make our own lives a force for good, to become, from time to time, the grace of God in others' lives. Aside regarding trinity v. dualism-precedes "Essence of modern Unitarianism: (It's a puzzle to me why, if these people couldn't make the leap to monotheism, why they went with three instead of two. Why trinity instead of dualism? There are so many primal aspects to our life that divide into two: day and night, man and woman, life and death. The Buddhists are acutely aware of another dualism, one that causes tremendous suffering, and that is our desperate bid to hold on to the 'good' forever, and to try to block the 'bad.' The Buddhists, like the Stoics, advise us to accept that all things come and all things go, and the secret of happiness is accepting that this coming and going is in the nature of things. We may not like some things, but nothing's wrong, really. We will return to this subject in a service later this church year.)  |
