Fast UU History
the Rev. Suzelle Lynch
Kitsap Unitarian Universalist Fellowship

I wonder how many of us, at one time or another in our lives, seriously disliked history. I know that I did. As a young person, history class was simply a nightmare of place names and dates to memorize - with little to persuade me that learning them was relevant to my life. Thus, I was surprised to find church history and especially Unitarian Universalist history so fascinating when I arrived at seminary. What had changed? Clearly I had more personal history under my own belt by then, and so perhaps I could place myself in the story - but even more than that, I think, I had the desire to do so. For that is the purpose of history - to locate ourselves, to understand who we are, to connect ourselves with the great procession of ancestors who have walked this way before us. And for those of us who make up a minority in some way - and, unfortunately, the Unitarian Universalist religious worldview is very much a minority -- knowing our history can also be very legitimating. Knowing that the religious ideas which we have inherited can be traced back to the early centuries of Christianity can be quite reassuring; and even if we were to look only at the past two hundred years of our history, and just that of the United States, I think we would find ourselves most gratified to be in the company of such great persons as Clara Barton, who founded the American Red Cross; John Adams, second president of the United States; writers and philosophers Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau, poet John Milton, entertainment pioneer P.T. Barnum, and architect Frank Lloyd Wright (among many others)! Unlike many Protestant faiths, we Unitarian Universalists do not attribute our beginnings to a single founder or point in history. The religious ideas we hold in common, and have traced back in time, are based in the principles of freedom, reason and tolerance. By freedom, we mean the right of each human being to make up his or her own mind and heart regarding religious questions and the meaning of life without being required to accept creeds, dogmas, confessions or the teaching of others. By reason, we mean that the human gift of thought and conscience is the most reliable guide - though not the only guide - to religious understanding and practice, especially in decisions involving two or more persons. By tolerance, we mean on the one hand, the practice of allowing others the expression and adherence to views different from our own, even when we disagree strongly with them; and on the other hand, we mean tolerance in the more positive sense in that there is something of value to be found in every person and every religious tradition. (adapted from Ken Phifer) Ironically, for a creed-dogma-and-doctrine free religion, our movement is named for two doctrines -- Unitarian, meaning "one god," and Universalist, which refers to "universal salvation;" that no one is destined to be consigned to eternal damnation. And until 1961, the two religious denominations "Unitarian" and "Universalist" were separate faiths, though they held in common many ideas and practices. So let us take a walk back in history, and learn the ways of our religious ancestors! I'd like to begin with the Unitarian side of our heritage, and go back briefly to early Christian times, with the understanding, of course that our modern history begins at the time of the Protestant Reformation. However, since much of our history is couched in terms of its dissent from orthodox religion, it is important to have at least a sense of how those orthodox doctrines were developed. Early Christianity was by no means a unified faith - there were, within a few centuries after the death of Jesus, many competing gospels and different understandings of who Jesus really was. The Biblical gospels were written between the years 70 and 100 CE, that is, one to two generations after the death of Jesus. There is no trace of the Trinity in the first three gospels, and Jesus as Messiah is viewed as a man, sent of God for a high purpose, endowed with superior powers, yet less than God, and dependent upon God by his own acknowledgment. This is very much in keeping with the Jewish faith of Jesus' time, which was about how to live, including the worship of a single, all-powerful God. When we look at the writings of Paul, which date to about the same time as the earliest of the gospels, we see that the human Jesus is fading into the distance for Paul and his followers, there is more of an emphasis on him as "Lord" and that he was sent from heaven where he existed with God before the creation of the world, etc. The gospel of John, written in about 125 CE, makes Christ even more exalted, calling him the Logos, subordinate to God, yet somehow sharing God's divinity. The Logos was a term introduced by Philo of Alexandria, a Jewish first century philospher, who found in the Hebrew scriptures references to a sort of personified Wisdom, or Logos, through which as an intermediate being God had created the world and communicated with humanity. (Psalm 33:6, 147:15; Isaiah 55:11; Jeremiah 23:29; Proverbs 8, 9.). There was a growing tendency to view Jesus and more and more divine, even though still less than God somehow. But there were two dangers in this, one was that the human character of Jesus would be lost, and the second was a fear that Christianity was beginning to worship two gods instead of one. In 318, Alexander, Bishop of Alexandria taught that Christ had never had a beginning any more than God had, that he had always been the Son of God, and was of the same essential being or nature as God the Father. Well, Arius, who was a priest in one of the Alexandrian churches, objected to this, for he taught that Christ was a being far above humans, yet less than God, who was created before the creation of the world and was of a different nature than either God or human. Arius was popular in Alexandria, and there was a huge controversy over this matter that lasted for three years. Then, Emperor Constantine, a pagan who had converted to Christanity, and had chosen it as the official religion of the Roman Empire in the hopes of unifying the empire, got tired of all the fighting which was threatening his power, and called a General Council of the Church in 325 in Nicaea. At the Council of Nicaea, the debate was chiefly over the nature of Christ, and there were three differing views. The Arian view was that Christ's nature was different than God's. Another party, headed by Athanasius, stubbornly insisted that Christ's nature was the same as God's. And there was a third group, the majority, who held that Christ's nature was similar to God's. As it turned out, the emperor threw his weight behind the Athanasian party because while the other two parties were working out a compromise, it was clear that this party would never agree with it. The supporters of Athanasius presented a creed, and under pressure, everyone signed it except two Arians, who were exiled. This creed is known as the Nicene Creed, and it was the first hard-and-fast church doctrine, and by virtue of imperial authority, it had the force of law. But Arianism remained popular for about fifty more years until it was finally outlawed. The orthodox Christian doctrine was completed by two later councils, at Ephesus, in 431, in which Christ's two natures -- human and divine -- were declared not distinct but united, and the Council of Chalcedon in 451 which made these two natures united in one person, thus making Christ a God-Man. The Councils were not orderly, reasonable proceedings, but were marked by violence of language and use of force! The controversies struck deep into the hearts of the people, and caused tremendous unrest, which the emperors always wanted put down as quickly as possible. People's beliefs were passionately held, and some died for them. Small wonder, then, that when the orthodox doctrine was finally codified, that anyone who doubted or denied it was seen as such a heretical threat. Fast-forward, now to the 1500s. Christian thought had remained fairly stagnant through the Middle Ages; if heretics had dared raise objections, they were quickly put to silence. But when Constantinople, the capital of the Eastern Roman Empire fell to the Turks in 1453, things began to change. Christian scholars living there scattered over western Europe, bringing with them manuscripts of classical authors long forgotten during the Dark Ages in the West. The world's greatest literature was now made available to the educated, and the Renaissance began. Combined with the invention of printing in the mid-fifteenth century, which made it possible for new ideas to spread and for people to read the Bible for themselves for the first time, and an expanded sense of the world brought by the discovery of the New World and a new route to the Indies, people began to think for themselves -- including about religion. The Protestant Reformation began with the Catholic monk, Martin Luther, who posted his 95 theses against the corruptions of the church on the church door at Wittenburg, Germany. The desire was not to found a new religion, for Luther and other reformers like John Calvin held many doctrines in common with the Catholic Church - such as a belief in the Trinity -- but to purify the church from various abuses of power that had grown up over the centuries. However, once the reformers began opposing the church on political grounds, they also began to study its received doctrines, and some found these doctrines to be unscriptural. It was a young doctor named Michael Servetus who planted the Reformation roots of Unitarianism in the 16th century, with his treatise, "On the Errors of the Trinity." Servetus never actually denied the Trinity, however, he did re-interpret it. Not finding it anywhere in the Bible, he traced the Trinitarian concept to Greek philosophical thought, finally concluding that Jesus was divine only in the sense that he had been elevated to that state by God fully entering his human form. For his efforts, Servetus earned the enmity of Catholics, Lutherans and Calvinists alike, and was burned at the stake by John Calvin in 1553. Sebastian Castellio, another reformer, condemned this act by Calvin, and urged tolerance for varying religious views. The ideas of Servetus and Castellio took root in Poland and Transylvania, where, in the 16th century, Transylvanian King John Sigismund issued the Act of Toleration and Freedom of Conscience. King John's reign was not long, and with his death the power of Unitarianism waned, but it never died. And to this day, as we know, there are Unitarian churches in the Transylvanian regions of Hungary and Romania. At the same time, in Poland, there grew up the Socinian movement, which urged that reason be used in the reading of Scripture. Italian reformer Faustus Socinus, had settled in Poland where his work resulted in the establishment of hundreds of churches in the 16th century. One of the ironic stories about Socinus is that while he was the leader of a burgeoning religious movement, he was never allowed to join the church, because he did not believe in adult baptism. A separate Unitarian movement grew up in England in the 17th century with the help of John Robinson, John Biddle, Theophilus Lindsey and Joseph Priestley. The debate there was not only doctrinal, but also whether there ought to be a state religion. John Biddle's writings inspired folks like John Milton, who was a Unitarian, and fought for the use of conscience and reason in religion, and John Locke, who argued for separation of church and state. The church-state debate moved to the shores of America, where different colonies were founded on differing principles. For example, Plymouth Colony was founded by Separatists from England whom we know as the Pilgrims. They began their colonial life on the basis of four principles: government by covenant, congregationalism, democracy, and the separation of civil and religious authorities. By contrast, the Massachusetts Bay Colony was a Puritan colony, which held that the church and state should be united in their powers. The 18th century brought the time of the Enlightenment, and the newly developing discipline of science. No longer did the theological view of the world reign supreme. New thinking about the earth and the Universe brought new thinking about religion - and a serious threat to Christianity. Unitarians at the turn of the 18th century were not united as a movement, but rather were dissenters within Congregationalism. What brought Unitarianism into existence as a separate denomination was a series of struggles between the liberal and conservative wings of the Congregational church, culminating in William Ellery Channing's Baltimore Sermon of 1819, which was titled "Unitarian Christianity." Channing had been the preacher at the prestigious Federal Street Church in Boston for some years when it became clear to him and others that the time had come to announce Unitarian principles clearly and openly. The occasion he chose was the ordination of Jared Sparks in the First Independent Church of Baltimore. At that time, to be called a "Unitarian" was an epithet - Unitarians referred to themselves as "liberal Christians." Channing laid claim to the "bad word" and showed its inner light. He spoke of the basic principal of Unitarian Scriptural interpretation, namely that the Bible is a book written for human beings in human not heavenly language and that its meaning is to be sought in the same manner as that of other books. He then laid out the doctrinal positions held by most Unitarians, including the unity of God, the moral perfection of God, and a call to refrain from condemning those who disagree on questions of interpretation of Scripture or doctrine. These basic ideas remain central to our faith even today. Within six years after Channing's sermon, enough churches had given up their Congregational name to allow for the formation of the American Unitarian Association in 1825. Nineteen years later, Ralph Waldo Emerson, in his address to the Harvard Divinity School in 1838, further advanced Unitarian thinking by protesting against formalism and institutionalization in religion. He argued for a direct intuition of the Divine available to every person, and argued against Christianity as the only avenue of Divine revelation. Theodore Parker followed this three years later with his sermon, "The Transient and the Permanent in Christianity," in which he said that the permanent is the morality taught by Jesus, the love of God and love of humanity. The transient is the forms and doctrines that develop out of a primary religious impulse, which will vary with time and place. In the mid-19th century, the Unitarians were involved in the dramatic social reform and rebuilding of our nation during and after the Civil War, including the anti-slavery movement. And thanks to pioneering work in the study of comparative religion by author Lydia Maria Child and minister James Freeman Clarke, they also began to open themselves to a sense of the universal human quest for religious truth - however, for the majority, Christianity was still held as the key to realizing this impulse. The 1800s also brought new and interesting developments such as the ideas of the "Liberal Radicals" headed up by the Rev. Jenkin Lloyd Jones. This group was pushing Unitarianism West along the frontier, and also pushing for a complete creedlessness -- requiring no affirmation of certain beliefs from members of churches, and asserting that ethics provided an adequate basis for religious affiliation. Women also were first ordained to the professional ministry during these years. The Transcendentalists, including Ralph Waldo Emerson, Theodore Parker and Henry David Thoreau promoted a radically individualistic and naturalistic theology; holding that the human soul had its counterpart in the Oversoul and that nature was the manifestation of this gracious spiritual energy illuminating the phenomenal world. More importantly, they pushed out beyond the realm of Christianity, claiming it to be only one manifestation of the universal religious spirit. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Unitarians began to devote their energies to strengthening the institution of the American Unitarian Association. When they began to think seriously again about theological questions, they did so under the influence of not only the industrialization of America, but also a devastating world war and profound new scientific theories and discoveries. In the first three decades of the 20th century, they found themselves drawn to the humanist position, which affirmed that human life has supreme worth, that human nature is an end in itself, and that human inquiry is best used in a scientific way to understand human experience. The trend was not only away from belief in God, but also away from theological speculation - energy was better used in the service of the worthful causes of humankind, especially during and after the second World War, when they were battling McCarthyism. Let us turn now, briefly, to the Universalists! In the 17th and 18th centuries, Universalism made its first appearance in England. It proclaimed the simple doctrine that to preach a God of Love requires that you also preach universal salvation, the conviction that no one would be sentenced to eternal damnation. This was in radical contrast to the Calvinistic thought of the day, which posited that only some were the "elect," and would find their heavenly reward, while the others could do nothing to change their fate. In 1759 James Relly published a work titled "Union," which furthered Universalist ideas. A follower of Relly, John Murray, (whom we heard about earlier, in our children's story) occupied the pulpit of the Independent Christian Church of Gloucester, Massachusetts in 1779, which became the first organized Universalist church in America. Twenty-six years later, Hosea Ballou articulated and expanded Universalist doctrine in his work, "A Treatise on Atonement," in which he declared that Jesus, by his example - not by his sacrificial death - had shown humanity that sin and misery can be overcome by love. In 1805, this was radical stuff, indeed! Throughout a long and energetic ministry, Hosea Ballou was hailed as the noblest interpreter of the idea of Universalism. Murray and Ballou helped build Universalism into one of the strongest influences on American religious life in the 19th century. Indeed, before the century was out, universalist theology was adopted by most Protestant denominations. The Universalists also have the distinction of being the first religious denomination to ordain a woman to the professional ministry - the Rev. Olympia Brown, in 1863. By the middle of the 20th century, Universalists could best be described as Christian humanists - engaged in the same kinds of work and beliefs as the Unitarians. The Unitarians and Universalists first began to talk about joining together as one religious body in the mid-19th century, for they had much in common - essentially the same theology, the same ideas about social justice, religious education, and tolerance. However, there were differences in social, economic and educational backgrounds that made any union difficult. The Unitarians tended to be city folk, well-educated, well-off and more than a bit snobbish about their status. The Universalists tended to be country people who had little formal education, were poor, and were very egalitarian. Attempts to join together were many over the near-century that followed - but the union was not achieved until May of 1961, when the Unitarian Universalist Association came into existence. This union made explicit the close similarities between the two movements: devotion to religious freedom -- in thought and practice; the use of reason as a fundamental tool in religious discernment, the absence of assent to a creed as a requirement for membership, a loving concern for the wider world, and the conviction that our understanding of the truth is ever-widening. In the 1960s and 70s our humanism moved us away from spirituality and toward social justice work. Unitarian Universalists were deeply involved in the Civil Rights Movement begun by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., indeed, more than 100 of our ministers went to the march on Selma, and one of them, James Reeb, was killed there, and several others were badly beaten. CNN aired a documentary about this just last Sunday. It's also true that Dr. King first heard about the non-violent, passive resistance methods he advocated in a Unitarian Church - not at one of our services, however, but at a meeting of the interreligious Fellowship House movement. Many Unitarian Universalists were also committed protesters against the war in Vietnam - which caused a great deal of unrest, and sometimes divisions, in our congregations. We were deeply involved in the 70s ecology movement, and the women's movement also had a profound effect on us, with developments in feminist theology opening our minds to new ways of knowing and the entry of more women into our ministry. The "me generation" 80s saw a decline in our churches, mirroring the decline of church attendance in all denominations across the United States. Today, we are growing again, thanks, in large part it seems to the baby boom generation's returning interest in spirituality. These days we are a movement of more than 150,000 adults and 50,000 children gathered in more than a thousand congregations across the North American continent and scattered around the world. Current trends in our movement have to do with spirituality, the need to focus on intuition and mystery along with the use of reason in our religion. As I said earlier, our interest in the world's religious traditions has its roots in the 1800s; today, however, Unitarian Universalists are interested not only in learning about these traditions, but pursuing some of their spirr the civil rights of gay and lesbian people, fighting racism and bigotry, standing up for religious freedom and ensuring the separation of church and state, working on environmental concerns, and humanitarian concerns like feeding the hungry and housing the homeless. I have had to leave out huge chunks of our heritage in this sermon - for time never permits a full retelling of our story. But I hope I have given you at least a sense of why Unitarian Universalism is such a proud faith. And though I doubt we will ever live up to the reputation of our forebears for keeping alive the spirit of freedom, reason and tolerance in religion, we can be proud to be spending our lives as a part of the movement they created. Amen. (A postscript from Suzelle: Retelling Unitarian Universalist history is challenging, and I do it only with lots of support and inspiration from the work of my colleagues. Large chunks of this sermon originated in an essay by the Rev. Ken Phifer, minister of our church in Ann Arbor, Michigan; and among my other sources are: The Unitarians and the Universalists, a book by David Robinson; and Our Unitarian Heritage, a book by Earl Morse Wilbur.)