(R)Evolutions: Our “Long Strange Trip” and Where We’re Going

Facilitator Introduction

By Richard Wolf

I was one of the participants is our recent Adult Education Series called “Long, Strange Trip” which considers our Unitarian Universalist history and heritage. Today’s speakers, Chris Edwards, Robin McNallie, Judith Hollowood, and Linda Dove were also on that journey, along with a dozen or so members or friends. Over twelve sessions we watched and discussed the Long Strange Trip, a six-part film written and narrated by Ron Cordes. Some of us attended all the sessions and some just a few, but I think each of us found a surprising insight or wonderful enlightenment following from the experience.

If Unitarian Universalism is a “faith tradition”, then that “faith” may be in and from broader Source than an anthropomorphic godhead; and “tradition” is dynamic and moving rather than doctrinally set. We discover new applications via direct of experiences of revealed Wisdom, coming to us via cognitive insights, social actions toward justice and freedoms, spiritual enlightenments, and more.

So please consider the title of today’s service, along with our entire “faith tradition”, as a work-in-progress. (R)Evolutions could work, or not, on several levels: Are we talking about “revolutions”? If so, of planets, galaxies, or societies? Is it Re-Evolution – our on-going, conscious engagement with spiritual and special evolution? What Venn diagrams could be designed comparing and contrasting “evolution” and “revolution”? Alternate title options like “Toward Enlightened Reason” and “Wisdom Engaged” were also considered.

Our past has kept moving us forward via the lives of courageous change agents whom we continue to regard among our Sources. We are those same agents of change toward tomorrows of greater good.

Some Giants’ Shoulders

By Chris Edwards

Looking back at the last 2 millennia has inspired me. We “stand on the shoulders” of some amazing people – Unitarians, UU’s, and earlier figures we claim as spiritual ancestors. I suspect they didn’t worry much about how their words or deeds affected their approval ratings, congregational pledge drives, or stress-avoidance. They had bigger concerns. They put their careers, comfort and reputations on the line. Some put their lives on the line.

Arius – a 4^th Century priest, was one of many early Christians who did not believe in the Trinity. His viewpoint got labeled the “Arian heresy.” After the Council of Nicaea ordered all Christians to believe in the Trinity, Emperor Constantine excommunicated Arius, twice. Possession of his writings became a capital offense. On his way to meet with a bishop, hoping for a pardon, Arius became violently ill and died, some thought poisoned.

 

John Wycliffe was considered the first English heretic, for making the first translation of the Bible from Latin to English in 1382. After his death, Wycliffe was declared a heretic. His body was exhumed & destroyed, his works burned.

The first Unitarians, like Arius before them, were Christians who followed Jesus but denied the Trinity. They emerged by the 16^th Century, and were often persecuted.

Michael Servetus, a 16^th Century Spanish physician, is often considered an early Unitarian. He made discoveries about blood circulation, but his criticism of Trinity doctrine, infant baptism, and original sin got him pursued by the Spanish Inquisition. He fled to Geneva, where he had an old friend who used to debate theology with him … but this time, John Calvin turned his friend over to the Protestant Inquisition. Servetus was burned at the stake. According to an online biography, “Widespread aversion to Servetus’s death has been taken as signaling the birth in Europe of the idea of religious tolerance.”

Joseph Priestley is credited with discovering oxygen as well as being a founder of Unitarianism in England. Priestley’s theology supported science. He believed that understanding of nature would promote human progress. But he and his family had to flee after a disapproving mob burned down his home and church. The Priestleys settled in the United States, where Joseph led in founding the First Unitarian Church of Philadelphia.

 

For now we’ll fast-forward to the 20^th Century. We know about Norbert Capek, of Prague, from celebrating his Flower Communion. Capek said “Every person is an embodiment of God.” He embraced Unitarianism when his family lived briefly in the U.S. They returned to found a fast-growing Unitarian movement in Czechoslovakia. Capek and his daughter Zora were imprisoned by the Gestapo on charges of distributing foreign broadcasts, and “high treason.” In 1942, he was gassed in Dachau.

Back home — after the first civil rights march in Selma, Alabama, in 1965 — Dr. King asked for help from clergy of all denominations. About 500 Unitarian Universalists, including nearly one-fifth of all UU ministers, went to Selma. Three of those ministers were beaten by some men on the street. The Rev. James J. Reeb, age 38, who had been working in inner-city Boston, died from the attack. Our other fatality was Viola Gregg Liuzzo. Mrs. Liuzzo, one exception to the preponderance of dead white Christian men named even in UU history, belonged to First Unitarian Universalist Church of Detroit. Her family had hard times in the Depression but she’d learned from her friend Sarah Evans, a black woman, about the worse struggles for people of color. She was driving marchers between Selma and Montgomery when a car passed, filled with Klu Klux Klan members, who spotted a black man riding beside her. They shot and killed Mrs. Liuzzo, who was 39. Sarah Evans raised her 5 children.

I never decided what to call my presentation here: how to label these inspiring people? Of course, the words “martyr” and “sacrifice” have baggage. Should I call them “risk-takers”? That they were, but risk-taking in our culture more often means drugging, bungee jumping or the unlikely startup making billions. What we have here are people who truly gave everything in living their principles, speaking truth to power, and changing history.

Now we’ll hear about perhaps the two most famous ones:

Ralph Waldo Emerson and Theodore Parker

By Robin McNallie

It was Paul, in his Letter to the Corinthians, who enunciated the oft-cited maxim, “The letter killeth, the spirit liveth.” Ironically or not, the statement neatly encapsulates the basic message of Ralph Waldo Emerson’s 1838 Divinity School Address and Theodore Parker’s equally significant “The Transient and Permanent in Christianity,” delivered 3 years later, in 1841. Following their addresses, these men were seen by their Unitarian New England elders as heretics of the in-house variety. Today we see Emerson and Parker, and certainly I do, as members of a heroic line of UU’s, a procession we reviewed in our recently completed Adult Religious Education class with the aid of the film, “The Long Strange Trip.”

Emerson’s address, delivered to the graduates of Harvard’s Divinity School in the summer of 1838 at the students’ own request, attacked what Emerson views as a deadening orthodoxy among the established clergy, including a literal belief in biblical miracles and an orientation that represents “not a doctrine of the soul, but an exaggeration of the personal, the positive, the ritual.” This focus furthermore, states Emerson, has made a cult figure of Jesus. For such assertions Emerson, as I noted in my talk last month, was barred from official functions at Harvard for the next 30 years.

Theodore Parker, present at Emerson’s Harvard address and obviously inspired by it, delivered his “The Transient and Permanent in Christianity” at the ordination of Charles C. Shackford in the Hawes Place Church in Boston in the spring of 1841. Parker too was going to suffer significant ostracism from his fellow Unitarian clergy for his remarks. Parker, like Emerson, attacked the institutional church and its representatives for placing too much emphasis on “forms and doctrines while too little stress has been laid on the divine life of the soul, love to God and love to man.” In other words, he was designating as transient those forms, ceremonies, doctrines that are merely incidental and time-bound from those elements that are universal, eternal, lasting, i.e., things of the spirit apprehended by intuitive faculties. Such a distinction, to Parker’s more conservative colleagues, would challenge the miracles, the origin of the Bible itself, and indeed the very divinity of Christ. No wonder he was shunned by many of these colleagues.

Conrad Wright, a recent and prominent 20^th Century historian of American Unitarianism and editor of the book, Channing, Emerson, Parker: Three Prophets of Religious Liberalism (which includes W.E. Channing’s earlier address, “Unitarian Christianity”), said these works were influential “beyond the confines of the religious body which produced them.” Wright concludes that this fact alone justifies the special position they hold for us UU’s.

Henry Whitney Bellows: Unitarian Organizational Genius (1814-1882)

By Judith Hollowood

 

In our curriculum on Unitarian and Universalist history, a true flyover version of a complex story, Henry Whitney Bellows, a mid-nineteenth-century Unitarian clergyman, caught my imagination. I grew up upriver from Walpole, NH, and Bellows Falls, VT, where his family were prominent citizens. Probably that’s why his name stayed with me and I took the opportunity to read more about him.

His forebears may have been prosperous up country, but Henry Bellows grew up in Boston in a family that struggled for a financial foothold. He became financially comfortable only after being called to a substantial Unitarian church in New York City and marrying the daughter of a wealthy member of the congregation—a social strategy that would be frowned on today.

Comfortable at last and possessed of position in NYC society, he would be an easy figure to dismiss as a stuffed shirt if it were not for his genius for organization and the ways our denomination benefited from it.

Bellows was a key figure in organizing and financing the work of caring for wounded soldiers during the Civil War. His experiences during the war persuaded him that the country was ready for the message and teachings of Unitarian Christianity – but Unitarianism wasn’t ready to fill the need. The largest Unitarian organization at the time was an association of individual ministers that, with limited resources, concerned itself mostly with publishing educational materials.

Bellows took the lead in creating a new organization of Unitarian congregations and lassoing the resources of their wealthy and respectable members for the purpose of enlarging the denomination, particularly planting new churches.

Bellows considered the theological controversies of the time a drag on the true work of churches: inspiring ethical lives and serving humanity. He saw the Transcendentalist faction of the denomination as part of the problem, a divisive distraction. A man of his time, he wanted Unitarianism to take a place in the mainstream of American religious life. He said: “We want to describe a large enough circle to take in all who really belong with us.” He used the metaphor of a mechanical compass drawing that circle and said, “Provided […] the fixed leg of the compass is in the heart of Jesus Christ I care very little how wide and far the other [leg of the compass] wanders.”

Bellows believed in institutionalized religion. He doubted that most individuals would “do the work” of spiritual development and divinely inspired living without vital churches to engage them. He memorably said: “The Holy Spirit communicates with Humanity and not with private persons.”

Today we sometimes say with a laugh that Unitarian Universalism is dis-organized religion and that organizing UUs is like herding cats. Sometimes we fail to acknowledge how much organizational savvy and willingness to compromise contribute to a movement’s success. I think of how we hold up Rosa Parks as a lone heroine without much knowledge of the long, difficult and dangerous work of organizing the community that stood behind her and shook the pillars of Jim Crow society. Without that organized support and follow-through, hers would have been just another arrest for disorderly conduct.

People with Henry Whitney Bellows’ talent for energizing financial support and organizational commitment have always played a big part in building institutions that last, and Unitarian-Universalism has benefited from their contributions.

What will YOU do?

By Linda Dove

The last words of the Long Strange Trip ask us, “What will you do?” ThIs is the challenge to us, the UU generation of today.

I am convinced we need to firm up our UU theology and philosophy, just as our forebears did, so that Unitarian Universalism becomes an even more helpful resource—spiritual and ethical. In the future, our grandchildren will face difficult choices in the face of the vast, complex changes ahead for human societies and the planet. They will need a bright light to illuminate their path if they are to make sound decisions and do right.

Our Principles are beautiful, inclusive and flexible. But, in my view, amplifying our theology so that it lights up the future is the toughest challenge for our generation.

Today, I focus only on our UU Sources, (see after the Preface in Singing the Living Tradition). Notice how they draw on a variety of religions, philosophies and literature. In recent centuries, as secularism penetrated our cultures, UU leaders succeeded in showing us how fresh insights from emerging ideas—rationalism, transcendentalism, evolution, humanism, agnosticism, and so on—could make our faith shine again at times when it was dimming.

But the Sources now reflect the state of our religion as it was decades ago. I, for one, would welcome exploration and guidance on what specific aspects of our Sources, other than Christianity, can illuminate our movement for tomorrow. Perhaps this is something we at HUU could investigate in future Adult RE conversations?

Some questions.

How do we make sure our theological foundations are strong enough to meet the challenges already showing themselves in this century?

What emerging, modern sources does Unitarian-Universalism need to take on board?

In my view, UUs must, at a minimum, embrace two fast-changing areas where our theology needs to evolve intellectually.

• the implications of the revolutions in all the sciences, physical, social and psychological—the theoretical and the practical; and
• the heavy lessons to be learned from recent conflicts, and efforts in peace-building and social justice worldwide.

And, a refreshed theology must offer us emotional as well as intellectual support including:

• wonder at and awe for the universal mysteries that continue to reveal themselves;
• passion to promote peace and wellbeing for all humanity;
• imagination to grasp new strategies for extending love and care for all life;
• trust that we can shape the tools to nurture good will and the divine within each person;
• confidence that we can make a positive difference;
• optimism that human stewardship will lead to the planet’s resilience; and
• inspiration to bequeath a helpful UU legacy to our descendants and others who are are like-minded but don’t realize they are UUs yet.

Another question.

Where will the UU thought-leaders come from who have the vision and wisdom to make our Sources relevant for tomorrow?

 

For one thing, we need to start looking forward. The late Forrest Church was an exceptional pioneer who did this. Some scholarly UU leaders are excellent historians but we must not rely only on our past greats. My impression is that prominent leaders who do look forward are consumed by how to grow UU numbers. I say, cast new lights over our theology and, as dawns follow dusks, those yearning to see their way more clearly will be drawn together. I am pleased to find out that the UUA has recently given grants—albeit small—to the two UU Theological Seminaries (Meadville Lombard and Starr King) to work on our theology.

A final question. Who will become recognized by our grandchildren as the wise elders of of our generation?

Perhaps there are ministers, youth groups, scientists, public servants, educators, business people, writers, or community workers who already inspire you. They may be leading from behind; they may not be well-known. for now. And it is possible for us in the HUU congregation to contribute too.

In summary, just as for our ancestors, the trip remains long and strange for us. We must have courage, as they did, to take on the challenge of turning up the lights of Unitarian-Universalism. That way our heirs will have strong and steady beacons to follow and will be more ready to cope spiritually with whatever they find round the next bend of their long, strange trip.

Here’s my vision. I picture our descendants holding hands around the nation and the world. This is what I hear them affirm:

We are grateful to our grandparents for practicing what they preached, for making Unitarian-Universalism a powerful religion for good, and for promoting our own peaceful, prosperous, joyful lives on this beautiful, healthy planet-Earth. We thank them for what they did in their time. Let us follow their footsteps in our time.

May fellowship, hope and courage be with us all.