First Parish Sermon

You may have heard the expression, we are a "choosing" people, not a "chosen" people. We  are drawn here not by some dogma or creed but because we a seekers. Seeking a liberal open community where we can become what we wish to be; where we can share our ideas with others, and learn from them, where we can question, where we can focus on the real issues of this world and not the promises of the next. And the reason we have this liberal religious community is our story.

We are a merger of two religions, the Unitarians and the Universalists. In a nutshell, the Unitarians rejected the doctrine of the trinity, claiming the oneness of God and the humanity of Jesus. The Universalists believed in universal salvation, rejecting the Calvinist doctrine of predestination, that all people were born in sin and only the elected would be saved. But behind these brief statements are the stories of how our theology has evolved over the years, and of the courageous people who dedicated their lives to their faith, often against considerable opposition. 

Our Unitarian heritage can be traced back to the 4th century, when Arius, a presbyter in the city of Alexandria taught that Jesus, while superior to all human beings was less than God. He had a large following, but in the year 325 the Council of Nicea condemned Arianism as heresy, and proclaimed the doctrine of the trinity. In 1531 in the turmoil of the Reformation, Michael Servetus, a Spanish theologian, believing that "God is one and Indivisible" wrote a book, On the Errors of the Trinity.  It was banned by both Catholic and Protestant officials and in 1553 he was imprisoned in Geneva by John Calvin, tried for heresy and burned at the stake. 

But the anti-Trinitarian movement continued to grow and many of the followers settled in Poland under the leadership of a scholar named Faustus Socinus. There was also a strong following in Transylvania led by the preaching of Francis David. And in 1568, King John Sigismund of Transylvania, our only Unitarian king, having been converted by David, issued an edict of religious tolerance, the first in history. The Unitarian movement has survived in that area and many of their churches are still standing despite centuries of opposition and oppression.

Universalism can be traced back to Pelagius, an English monk in the 4th century, who preached the freedom of moral choice, claiming that we do not inherit original sin but are free to choose between good and evil. From his teachings came the concept of the goodness of God and the Universal salvation of all humanity. Universalism was declared a heresy in the year 544. It’s understandable that we don’t fit in with the mainline religions. Both our religious roots were born in heresy. We should note that the word "heretic" comes from the Greek word meaning "able to choose." 

From the time of Henry VIII, the Church of England held special privileges under law and other religions were barely tolerated. Despite this oppression, John Biddle published an English catechism based on the writings of Socinus, was imprisoned and in 1654 was banished. In 1774, Theophilus Lindsey with the help of Joseph Priestley founded the first church in England to take the Unitarian name. 

Priestley, was a famous preacher of Unitarianism. He was also a scientist, and you may remember his name from school for his discovery of oxygen. (Incidentally, he also invented carbonated water, so the next time you drink a soda, you can thank a Unitarian). Priestley’s book, The History of the Corruptions of Christianity caused quite a stir, as you can imagine by the title. In it he challenged Trinitarian theories and claimed that Christians should follow the teachings of the man Jesus instead of worshipping him as a God. But the last straw came in 1791. After campaigning to abolish the laws giving special privileges to the Church of England, a mob set fire to his house and laboratory. Priestley and his family barely escaped, and at age 61, he sailed to Philadelphia. There he helped establish the First Unitarian Church of Philadelphia, the first religious society in America to take the Unitarian name. Throughout his life, he fought for the separation of church and state, stressed the ethical teachings of Jesus, and believed that reason should be used not only in science, but also in the discovery of religious truths. Certainly beliefs we are familiar with today.

Now back to England we go to follow the Universalist trail. In 1759, James Relly published a book on Universalist theology titled, Union, which taught that Jesus died to save all humanity, not just the elected. This book made many converts throughout Great Britain and in 1770 a copy of the book reached Gloucester, Massachusetts where a small group of people left the congregational church to form the first Universalist Church in America. And that congregation is still meeting today. 

In the 1780s, all Massachusetts citizens were taxed to support the Congregational church of the community where they lived. In Gloucester, these Universalists led by their minister John Murray refused to pay this tax. After much hardship and a long court battle, they finally won the right of freedom from this taxation. This was the first test case of this kind in America and established an important principle of religious freedom. 

John Murray is often called the founder of the Universalist Church in America because he was the first to organize them into a denomination. The Calvinists had for many years tried  to undermine the Universalist churches, and he saw the need to organize their scattered congregations. On Sept. 14 1785, delegates, both laity and ministers, came together from all over New England for a conference at Oxford, Massachusetts. Five years later, he also took a leading role when a General Universalist Convention met in Philadelphia. 

In attendance at the 2nd New England Convention of Universalists in 1791, also held at Oxford, was 20 year old farm boy from NH called Hosea Ballou. He became a powerful Universalist preacher, and in 1805 he brought together for the first time, the points of liberal religious theology of both the Universalists and the Unitarians in his book, A Treatise on Atonement. It presented arguments for using human reason in understanding the scriptures. There’s a quote of his that I like, "If we agree in brotherly love, there is no disagreement that can do us injury, but if we do not, no other agreement can do us any good."

It was only a few years later that the more conservative members of the clergy in Boston were calling on "all true Christians" to separate themselves from those with radical Unitarian and Universalist views. In 1819, William Ellery Channing, a Unitarian Minister and Harvard Divinity School graduate, preached a sermon at a colleague’s ordination in Baltimore. In it, he called the Calvinist doctrine an "insult to God and man" and called for a return to the teachings and example of Jesus. The "Baltimore Sermon" as it is now called, polarized the ministers and the congregations; and one after another, Congregational churches voted to become Unitarian. Of the 125 churches that took this action, 100 of them were in Massachusetts. 

In 1825, the American Unitarian Association was formed to support the local churches and promote the cause of Unitarianism. During Channing’s 39 year ministry in Boston he preached against slavery, and attached himself to the most important controversial issues of the day. He was also the inspiration for many Unitarian reformers like educator Horace Mann, abolitionist Julia Ward Howe, and prison reformer Dorothea Dix. (Incidentally, First Parish Bridgewater is a member church of the Ballou-Channing District of the UUA, named after these two great ministers, Hosea Ballou and William Ellery Channing).

But even the radical Unitarians and Universalists were not immune to controversy from within. In Boston, Abner Kneeland, a Universalist minister a century ahead of his time, was tried and jailed for heresy in 1838. He taught that the Scriptures contained valuable lessons, but they came out of human experience and not by divine revelation. This was heresy even to the Unitarians and Universalists of his day, but certainly not to us today. 

And also Ralph Waldo Emerson, finding many valuable teachings in what he called the "Oriental Scriptures" discovered that not all religious truths are found in Christianity. His departure from the Unitarian views of his day aroused much resentment, but we see him now as one who brought fresh insights to liberal religion. 

Unitarians and Universalists at this time found themselves at the forefront of social reform. 

The Universalists were the first denomination to denounce slavery in 1790. Theodore Parker, the great Unitarian minister preached against slavery, war, and capital punishment, and worked tirelessly for prison reform, temperance, and greater freedom for women. He saw the church as an institution of worth only as it ministers to the needs of humanity. He believed slavery was a religious issue, not a political one, and he was threatened with a jail sentence for his work with the "underground railroad." And there was Dorothea Dix, who spent much of her life ministering to the insane and those in prison, and during the Civil War was Superintendent of Army Nurses. And Henry Whitney Bellows, a Unitarian Minister founded the Sanitation Commission to improve hospital conditions during the Civil War. Clara Barton, "the angel of the battlefield" took wagons full of supplies to the front lines despite the grave dangers, and in 1881 became the founder and 1st president of the American Red Cross. Susan B. Anthony, encouraged by her Unitarian minister in Rochester, began working with abolition and temperance groups before spending the rest of her life working tirelessly for woman’s suffrage. And the list goes on and on.

This was also a time when women were appearing in the pulpit. Olympia Brown had to petition every theological institution before she was finally, reluctantly accepted at Canton Theological School in New York State. She was ordained as a Universalist minister on June 25, 1863, the first American woman ordained by full denominational authority. She served churches in Weymouth, Mass., Bridgeport, Ct., and Racine, Wisc., before she resigned to concentrate on woman’s suffrage and equal rights for African-Americans. Her sermons were well received and shorter than the norm. Her belief was, as she stated, that "no soul was saved after the first twenty minutes."  The 2nd woman ordained by the Universalists was Phoebe Coffin Hanaford from Nantucket who was ordained at the Universalist church in Hingham, Mass.  Celia Burleigh was the first woman ordained by the Unitarians in 1871 in Brooklyn, Ct.  Antoinette Brown Blackwell was ordained in 1853 by a local Congregational church, but not by the full denomination. Later questioning the Calvinist doctrine, she was accepted into full fellowship as a Unitarian minister in 1878. By the end of the 19th century, there were as many as 70 women Universalist ministers and about half that many Unitarians. 

 Further dissention came from within the ranks of the Unitarians in 1886. Up to that time, the Boston Unitarians still insisted that a creedal test be imposed on all ministers. To them the bible was still the source of truth. There was great controversy in the Western Unitarian Conference as many argued for freedom of belief and an open mind with respect to the historical view of the Bible, non-Christian religions, evolution, and the application of religious principles to social reform. Under the leadership of Jenkin Lloyd Jones, the Western Unitarian Conference became the most liberal wing of Unitarian religion. 

Although both denominations had their earliest churches in Pennsylvania and their largest early growth in New England, their beginnings were much different in character. Many  Universalist ministers had little formal education, and traveled the mid-west circuit by horseback or wagon preaching to simple rural folk. Their churches were often built from scratch. Unitarians on the other hand started on a high intellectual and cultural level. Their ministers had the advantage of university training, their members had social standing, and many of their churches were long established in the Congregational faith. But in time the differences in theological opinions between the two denominations were no greater than the differences found within either group. Both had the same wide range of religious views.

The progressive edge of both denominations’ had been moving toward the use of reason, and the reliance on scientific methods in the discovery of truths. And in the 1930s much controversy arose over the question of whether one who embraced humanistic convictions could honestly remain in either denomination.

Off and on since 1865, the two denominations had considered merger, but there were far more words than actions. But in 1938 they joined together to create a hymnal and in 1954 their religious education programs joined together under the name, Liberal Religious Youth  (LRY for those who grew up in a UU church). In 1955, a commission was established to prepare one or more plans for merger. Interestingly, since both denominations had what is called congregational polity, there would be no change of governance at the local level. Congregational polity simply means that the seat of authority is in the local church. Finally in 1961, the two denominations merged to become the Unitarian Universalist Association (UUA). A lot has happened since the merger, but that’s another sermon.

And so there it is, not the response you’d want to give anyone at a cocktail party when they ask what’s a Unitarian Universalist, but a very brief summary of how we got to be who we are today. And perhaps, the next time you read our Purposes and Principals, you’ll have some idea of where they originated and how they evolved over the years. Our roots are in Christianity, but the journey has been one of questioning, of challenges both physical and spiritual, of courage and great leaps of faith; always searching for the greater truths. We may not have a simple answer for a stranger, but we can be proud of our rich heritage and proud to say, "I’m a Unitarian Universalist."