Theodore Parker was, of course, one of the greatest scholars our denomination has known, and he stressed intelligence as equal to any situation. The hope that Parker brought was largely social, however. Although Parker had a foot in the theological tradition of Emerson, he had another planted firmly in the social concern of his century. Parker summoned every resource of the heart and mind in his struggle not only against slavery, but every other injustice of his day—capital punishment, women’s rights, labor conditions, prison reform, and war.
With the popularization of Darwin’s theory of evolution by Huxley not only were all religions behooved to make accommodations, but within Unitarianism and Universalism a new school of liberalism was born called naturalism. This school, which is popular today, argued that all values are founded in natural process rather than historic tradition. God was brought even closer. For Emerson, he is revealed in nature of which we are conscious part. One of the leading proponents of this view was the minister of the Universalist Meeting House in Boston, Kenneth Patton.
The attitude of hope reached its fullest expression in the optimistic view prominent in the early 1900s of the progressive development of society—onward and upward forever. If a man did not yet approximate the ultimate, he soon would. Evil was not something to be lived with, but to be overcome. Thus followed the great pacifism of John Haynes Holmes and the social gospel which finds current expression in our Los Angeles Unitarian minister, Stephen Fritchman.
Finally, we have the most recent and influential expression of reason, humanism, led by John Dietrich and Curtis Reese. The “Humanist Manifesto” was signed in 1933, and this orientation represents a large segment of our denomination today, particularly among younger members in the Fellowship movement. In the perspective we have been considering of the identification of man with God, this view is the complete assimilation of anything we might have called divine into the character of man.
The best illustration of the effect of reason upon our denomination, is the transition in our view of the relationship between God and man. With Channing and earlier forerunners, man was quite apart from God, requiring Scripture for revelation and belief in an exemplary mediator. With Emerson and Parker God came closer, the importance of a mediator lessened. God spoke directly to man in nature and within his heart. And now, with the Humanists, all truth, goodness, and power previously attributed to the divine is seen as a part of man that through education and the right conditions can be realized.
A manifestation of this view of man has been an optimistic attitude towards society and life in general, namely the conviction of the progressive defeat of evil and establishment of the good life. Thus, we have great emphasis on social action, unparalleled in any other denomination except perhaps the Quakers. This emphasis began with Channing, reached classical expression in Parker and is perpetuated through the Social Gospel to the present day, where it occupies a dominant role in the approach of men such as Fritchman.
Confidence in man, optimism about society. In a word, hope. It was a new sense of hope, born out of the despair of New England Calvinism, upheld and given substance by reason. Our denomination has been said to promote “Salvation by character;” it could be more correctly characterized as “Salvation by reason.” This is the hope of our free faith.
It is this grand, bold spirit that we must never lose. Particularly the stress on social reform occupies a permanent and unique position in liberal religion. If we ever cease to be alive to social wrongs and active on their behalf, we are not truly liberals.
And yet, we cannot help but be uneasy about some of the conclusions that reason has led us to. Last Sunday we accepted the spirit of a free faith but qualified some of the results of that freedom. This morning while rejoicing in the spirit of hope, we should be critical of some of the findings of reason in this last century. Where the issues last week were of our relationship to Christianity, this week they are on the problem of evil and the relationship of man to God.
In the early 1900s liberals thought they has dispensed with the problem of evil. Our nation had consolidated after the Civil War; we had just passed through one of the greatest centuries known to man. The sciences were booming; the industrial revolution was upon us. All that was needed was education and social action, and we would go onward and upward forever.
Two world wars, a Great Depression, and prolonged international tension under the shadow of nuclear holocaust have change that view. For practical purposes, the problem of evil is with us; for the foreseeable future it will be one of the conditions of existence. Liberals seem as slow to adapt to the realities of today, however, as we accused the orthodox of being in relation to science a century ago. One of the weaknesses of our liberal faith has been the inability to deal with recurring problems of evil such as the meaning of pain, death, crime, and war. Not to be preoccupied with them, but to be able to cope with them in a way other than superficial optimism.
So, too, has our view of man changed through the insights of psychology and of existentialist philosophy. With the advent of Freud and his revelation of unconscious and almost uncontrollable emotions, the nineteenth century view of the glorified man of reason had to be modified. And the rise of existentialism with its emphasis upon the limitations of existence could not help but have an impact.
I am not suggesting that we be oppressed by these views, but illuminated by them. Many would argue from them that man has no right to claim that which is primary is within us, as some Humanists do. On the other hand, many Humanists argue that they really have no conception of God, or even of what is primary in being.
My own position would be somewhere in between. I believe that there is that which is absolute. The problem for me is not whether there is a God or not, but where it is and by what name it shall be called. Yet I am enough of a humanist to know that whatever its reality, it must be a part of what we already are. Many of us have an understanding about what this something is that for us is absolute. It functions as quite a natural part of our being.
But for others there is no such reality. I believe there must be, even in the context of the search for truth, something to which we are ultimately committed in the present. This is one of the shortcomings of internalizing what is primary in being. It is too easy to relegate it to the ordinary, to take it for granted, to forget that it places a special demand on us.
It is to this extent that I believe what is primary in being must be considered separate from man. My grounds are as much pragmatic as theological. There is surely no such reality aside from men, but I’m enough of a mystic to feel that the extent to which its assimilation reduces its sovereignty and diminishes its effectiveness is the extent to which we should formulate it as an entity in itself. This need not be because we think the less of man, but because we think the more of this reality.
I think there is a general observation we could make about reason, and that is although it has brought us hope, it has not always left us faith. Our religion has come to be one dominated by the intellect. Our church is been accused of not having warmth. We have a glorified reason almost to the point that the Old Testament prophets would call idolatry. Our religion must never do violence to our reason and it must always challenge our intelligence, but we should also draw from other resources of the human spirit.
So where are we to go beyond reason? Where are we to go to restore freedom? What is the absolute of which I speak? We have faith and hope. Now, what is the greatest of these? What will be the emphasis of Unitarianism and Universalism that I prophesy for tomorrow? That, my friends, is to be the subject of next week’s sermon.
2. Sermon delivered by the author at the Church of the Reconciliation Unitarian Universalist, Utica, New York on November 5, 1961.
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