Much as such an attitude characterizes most of Unitarianism and Universalism and should characterize the forward thrust of our denomination, we are haunted by recurring questions: What is, or should be, our relationship as religious liberals to Christianity? Can we dismiss Christianity as just another imperfect formulation of truth in our search, or is this too abrupt for a faith that has been so much a part of our tradition and even, in some instances, of our earlier lives?
I think the answer lies in each of our hearts. If Christianity truly has no special meaning in your background, if you had minimal contact with it in youth and secular channels of truth or world religions have come to mean more to you, then we do not need to belabor the point, although we could always wonder whether one could help be raised in this culture with its literature and morals and Christmas, and not find that Christianity has a special meaning.
And if Christianity occupied a prominently unpleasant part of our background, I think we could view with suspicion the claim that now it doesn’t mean anything to us. It does—it means something to be forgotten, and what is good will be forgotten along with what was unpleasant, and this is not freedom. One of the poorest grounds for liberalism is an incomplete resolution of one’s orthodox past.
What I am suggesting is that there should also be room in this freedom of ours to come to terms with Christianity, and to be free to accept that which is good. For example, the idea of prayer can still have a meaning for liberals. In the words of a colleague, “Prayer doesn’t change things. Prayer changes people—and people change things.” So, too, can a sensitive, carefully prepared worship service have a place in speaking to our deepest needs. We all have feelings: we do not need to be ashamed of them; they are a part of life and truth; worship should be a place where our feelings as well as our ideas find expression.
Let me say a word about hymns. Many of us will pass up the words that are disagreeable; some will sit them out. There is a point here: we need to continually write new hymns that are an expression of a free faith. But I also think this tendency to be so intent upon the intellectual meaning that we cannot accept a hymn for what it is—an artistic unity that is not a statement of a creed but an expression of beauty—suggests that perhaps we have not completely worked our way through our relationship to Christianity.
As for Jesus, I find myself strangely warmed by this heroic figure. A man to be sure, but what a man. Would he be alive today few of us would waste a minute to rent him the city auditorium or invite him to our discussion group. The fact that he lived long ago, that so many people have muddled the issues since, should not render him any less potent. As a bold and loving leader of men, he has much to say to us today.
So also, can the prophets of the other world religions, although one could wonder whether we can identify ourselves culturally as well with them. Surely, we must learn to do this if we are to become one world, and there are some who do now.
Many of us consider ourselves agnostics and atheists. Certainly, we are atheist about the traditional God conceived as anthropomorphic mover and judge of history. I wonder how many of us can remain agnostic about life. Can life be lived without decision, commitment, not as to the imponderables, but as to the attitudes and assumptions necessary to live each day? Of course it can’t. We have all made assumptions about what is for us primary in being, about how we should live and why. It remains only to recognize what this basic reality is that works in our lives and try to enhance and nurture it. This is for us the equivalent of what other men have called God, and if we are free enough to see its parallels or even consider it a dimension of life special enough to be known as divine, we can learn a great deal from the insights of centuries past.
But we can also learn from every other source of human good today—from the sciences, the arts, the philosophies, the psychologies. For centuries will pass and Christianity will be forgotten, but our faith in the living truth will not. The cause of a free faith will never die. It is a faith that takes account of the grandeur of man; it is a faith fashioned to the character of truth.
And it is a faith, make no mistake about it. Not faith in what the many believe and in what now exists, but faith in what does not yet exist, in the unseen, in tomorrow.
1. Sermon delivered by the author at the Church of the Reconciliation Unitarian Universalist, Utica, New York on October 29, 1961.
2
Of Reason and Hope2
The attempt to cover the subject of “Unitarian Universalism—Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow,” even in a series of three sermons, makes me feel akin to an ant who was scampering down a jungle path. “See that black spot on the horizon?” the ant puffed breathlessly to a friend without slowing down. “That’s an elephant. The other day the big lug almost stepped on me. Ever since I’ve been chasing him. At night when he lies down, I catch up. Then I attack!”
Although I may be no more effective than the ant in the pursuit of his objective, I trust that I will be as persistent. If you will remember last week, we considered the classical Unitarian and Universalist positions as expressions chiefly of freedom. We spoke in detail of European and early American developments, mentioned the role of freedom in the Age of Enlightenment, and suggested how this characteristic is sustained today, notably in our relationship to Christianity, as an expression of a free faith.
You may recall also that when we touched upon the Age of Enlightenment our discussion became sketchy, and that was because I felt that a characteristic other than freedom best describes that period, and that characteristic is reason. Indeed, the Age of Enlightenment is known synonymously as the Age of Reason. It is our purpose this morning to consider the rise of reason and the attending attitude of hope, as an emphasis of Unitarianism and Universalism, that has come to occupy a prominent position in our church today.
We begin this second sermon with reason. Before the Age of Enlightenment reason was not totally absent, but neither was it dominant or it would have carried our forefathers beyond their supernaturalism. Since that time reason has become so basic that we have not always been free to deviate from its demands.
The spirit of the early 1800s was one that despaired of man and his destiny. Man was held to be totally depraved and eternally damned. Man was estranged from God not only because he himself was unworthy but because such a wrathful, vengeful God was one man would just as soon keep at a distance. There was little, if any, hope.
Then came a new spirit striding boldly across the century. With the dawning of the Age of Reason man was touched by a new sense of his capability. Everywhere man turned there was a new sense of hope—in the sciences and the doctrine of evolution which spoke not only of beginnings but of an onward process of development, in political science and Lockean thought, and in philosophy notably German idealism.
The spirit was contagious, and religion soon became infected through the person of William Ellery Channing, the father of American Unitarianism. Where Calvinism posited the alienation of man from God, we find in Channing the tendency to progressively reconcile and identify man with God.
Channing drew his insight directly from the English philosopher, John Locke. Channing preached of the goodness of God and the perfectibility of man; in Channing we find the first strains of social reform with his concern about slavery. With the need for hope in combatting Calvinism, it was no coincidence that the school of Unitarianism founded by Channing placed great emphasis upon the miracles of Jesus. Although there was still reliance upon a mediating figure and the Bible was still held to be divinely inspired, in Channing’s method we have an unprecedented reliance upon rational process.
With the transcendentalists, use of reason and the identification of man with God went a step further. The Bible was no longer necessary as the sole source of revelation, nor was emphasis placed on Jesus