Maybe you noticed that my title this morning is a question - a question with several meanings. You have likely heard the story of the young mother whose young son came bursting into the house and breathlessly asked "Where do we come from?" Mom took a deep breath and launched into her first sex education lesson. When she paused, the little boy announced, "Well, Susie says her family comes from Omaha!" So what's my topic this morning? Well, it's not sex education or family stories or even metaphysics. I want to talk about our history, about the development of our living religious tradition.

Especially outside New England, it seems that most Americans are unfamiliar with Unitarian Universalism. Many have never even heard of it, so it's not surprising that some think it must be new - a recent development. When I first heard of the Unitarian Universalists, I thought they were dedicated to the idea of the kinship of all people, of all beings on this planet. We do honor that connection, but it's not what the name means and we aren't a recently established religious path. But even those of us who have been Unitarian Universalists for quite a long time - and this congregation does boast a few life-long UUs - even we can be pretty vague on our religious roots.

Now, as it happens, November 15th is Frances Dávid's birthday - well the anniversary of his birthday some 400 years ago. He was the founder of Transylvanian Unitarianism and our partner churches there celebrate on the Sunday closest to his birthday. When I learned that, I thought it would be good to honor their tradition by talking about our history on this day. Usually I pick some part of the history of Unitarianism or Universalism in Europe. We have some pretty amazing forebears there. In past years, I have talked about Frances Dávid himself, about Michael Servetus, Jan Hus, Norbert Capek and about the Polish Brethren and the beginnings of Universalism in England.

This year, though, I want to talk more generally. I've wondered if there's a need for some context for the separate stories that I've told over the past several years. I've been concerned that the individual chapters are floating freely, without much sense of how they fit together and what else is in the picture. A few of you have taken me to task for omitting some part of the story that you find especially meaningful and important. So this year, I'll try to give you a quick, hopefully not too dirty, review of the span of our story, our history.

Perhaps you'll be reminded of stories you've heard or read before. Maybe a particular time or person will pique your interest. Maybe you'll have a new sense of the depth and range of our roots. Whenever we talk about history, questions about its importance lurk in the wings. Why should we care? What difference does it make if we know these things?

Each person has their own view of history. Some of us love it and some could hardly care less. But beyond the idea that any of us may find a particular time or person fascinating, I think there's significance in the long line of people who bravely stood for the right to explore religious ideas and to question the authority of a single source or interpretation and who held that the nature of the Divine is fundamentally loving. It may be hard to articulate just what difference it makes to know our stories, but there's a weight to it; a sense of something that matters.

Where to begin? Well, beginnings of the ideas that became Unitarian and Universalist are found among the early Christians. After Jesus' death, his followers continued to gather people who found his teachings and life to be important. Stories of his activities and his death circulated widely in the Mediterranean world, and we've discovered that there were many more gospels and writings that those we find in today's Bibles. In the first few centuries of the Christian communities, lively arguments over the nature of Jesus and the character of God were pretty common. Two names are especially associated with the beliefs that we are following. Arius argued that Jesus was not a co- equal with God - so God is one, not a Trinity. Origen held that God is Love and that all things, including humans, would be brought into harmony - so salvation would be universal. In 325 CE, at the Council of Nicea, both these ideas were judged to be heretical and were suppressed. They would resurface again and again over the next thousand years, but were always put down.

So let's jump over that millennium, and pick up as the Renaissance began to change European thinking. When some Greek and Roman writings were obtained from the Arab world, forgotten ideas and explorations began to circulate among the educated. Printing meant that more people could examine sources for themselves - and write commentary and challenges. Erasmus used humanist principles to produce a new translation of the Bible, which challenged some long-accepted passages. When Martin Luther, who was a monk, posted his 95 theses on the church door in 1517, he thought he was calling for reform within the church. As it turned out, there was enough intellectual and theological ferment - and economic pressures- that his challenges resulted in the Protestant Reformation. Most of the challenges to the Roman church dealt with authority and practice rather than doctrine. (Predestination and the primacy of faith and Scripture are two exceptions.) But there was a wing of the Reformation that focused more on matters of theology. It is known as the Radical Reformation - and that's where our development becomes more clear and individual reformers more important.

I've already referred to Michael Servetus. He was a Spaniard and grew up during the Spanish Inquisition. The severity of the Inquisition prompted him to wonder why, if Christianity was pure and true, it had to be defended so aggressively. As an educated man - he was a surgeon - his reading and exploration led him to radical theological positions. He was eventually burned at the stake by John Calvin and his followers in Geneva. It was too late to help Servetus, but protest developed across Europe.

Italian thinkers were also raising challenges. Especially notable for our story are the uncle and nephew Laelius and Faustus Socinus. Laelius had trained as a lawyer, and was interested in relating human law to divine law. Eventually he came to believe that church teachings were not true to Scripture. He decided to devote himself entirely to religion and was among those to protest Servetus' execution. He died young, however - only 37 - and his books and papers came into the possession of his nephew Faustus. In reading them, the younger Socinus found challenges to the doctrine of the Trinity and also defenses of the importance, and right, of individuals to use reason and experience to interpret Scripture rather than being bound by Church teachings. He put together ideas we recognize, and was especially influential in the community of Rakow which was committed to his views, and also made efforts to take the teachings of Jesus seriously. Notably, they were non-violent and shared resources as a community. They also established a widely influential press.

At the same time, the Reformation had reached Transylvania, and Frances Dávid, already prominent in the area's theological changes, became familiar with Socinian ideas. He adopted them, converted the king (the only Unitarian king in history) and established the Unitarian Church in Transylvania, which survives to this day. He was an especially free thinker and refused to be restrained theologically - even with the pleas for moderation from Socinus himself. When the king died, his successor decided that the country had had quite enough innovation and declared that no further changes would be permitted. That landed Dávid in prison, where he eventually died. Transylvanian Unitarian churches remain close to his theology - very much Christian, but with commitments to freedom of conscience, the use of reason in religion and tolerance for diverse beliefs.

Meanwhile, the Counter-Reformation swept across Central Europe. The Socinian community at Rakow was destroyed. Its survivors went to Prussia, Holland, Transylvania and other pockets of toleration. Their identity as a religious community was lost, but their books and ideas survived in the new locations. These would become influential in other times.

England had its own tortured religious conflicts and controversies, and they are far too complicated to trace this morning. Let's be content to remember that Henry VIII had broken away from the Roman Catholics, and that over time Catholics were sometimes persecuted and sometimes dominant as monarchs changed. The Presbyterians and others also had major roles at different times. Eventually, the influence of the Wycliff Bible, the immigrant communities tolerated as the "Church of the Strangers" and increasing familiarity with Socinian books and tracts led to the development of the Unitarian Church in England. This was the late 1600s and early 1700s. One of their prominent figures was Joseph Priestly, known to us for his scientific work, but also a Unitarian minister. Universalism also had English adherents, among them John Murray, whose arrival in New Jersey gives us what may be our best UU story - the one I told the children this morning.

Other areas of learning and exploration could not be repressed as easily as religious communities, it seemed. The progress of science, math and medicine from the mid 1500s on produced great changes in European ideas and attitudes. We know the names of some whose discoveries challenged the status quo, starting with Galileo, Copernicus, Kepler. As time passed, the Enlightenment influenced our ways of reaching knowledge, making decisions and establishing authority. Ideas about the importance of the individual, of natural rights and natural law developed. All these play a part in our story and have major roles in our practices and institutions today.

Starting from the 17th century we can pick up Unitarian and Universalist stories in America. The Unitarians mostly developed from the Pilgrim and Puritan churches of New England. Another, rather more liberal branch of Unitarianism developed in the mid-Atlantic, aided by Joseph Priestly who had moved to Pennsylvania and was influential in the establishment of the Unitarian Church in Philadelphia. He was on friendly terms with Benjamin Franklin and both knew and influenced a number of our other founders. These congregations remained variations rather than organizing independently well into the 1800s. In 1825, the early New England churches separated into Congregationalists and Unitarians. Despite our sometimes rancorous divorce, the two denominations are often cooperative allies in today's religious scene.

The Universalists also developed in New England and the mid- Atlantic. They formed in opposition to the earlier churches and were quicker to organize their churches independently. Their founding documents were complete in the 1790s. John Murray and Elhanon Winchester were the prominent preachers and organizers in establishing Universalism, but the documents were written by Benjamin Rush, who was a physician and surgeon and a signer of the Declaration of Independence.

Many new UUs are surprised to learn of the prominent role that both Unitarians and Universalists played in the early days of the United States. Besides the Universalist Rush, several of our early presidents were Unitarians. Both John Adams and John Quincy Adams belonged to Unitarian churches. Thomas Jefferson is often claimed by UUs, but his association is more complex. He had a sort of personal Unitarianism, was influenced by Priestly and especially by Enlightenment ideas. He produced a version of the New Testament which eliminated all the miracles and other events he deemed un-natural. He predicted that every American man then living would become a Unitarian. He wasn't a good prophet, but clearly had a Unitarian bent. Officially, though, he belonged to an Episcopal church and even served as an elder, though his attendance was rare.

Unitarians and Universalists developed as separate denominations throughout the 1800s. In fact, the Universalists sued to overturn the establishment of the `Standing Order' churches in Massachusetts - some of which were Unitarian. Universalists spread widely into the Midwest and South, but also reached further west. The largest UU church in Denver today is First Universalist - now over 100 years old. Though not well known today, the Universalists had an extensive organization of state conferences and by some reports were the fourth largest denomination in the US at one time.

Following in the footsteps of Benjamin Rush, who was very community-oriented, the Universalists were devoted to social service, particularly opening schools and academies across the country, including the school that became Cal Tech. Nearly all were open to women, a rarity at the time. They were early in accepting women in the ministry, issuing preaching credentials to Maria Cook in 1810 and ordaining both Olympia Brown and Augusta Chapin in 1863. Clara Barton was a Universalist. They also involved themselves in prison reform and opposed capital punishment.

Unitarians had barely established their independence when they found themselves faced with the rise of the Transcendentalists. We tend to revere names like Emerson, Thoreau and Fuller, who were all Unitarians, but in their day they were theological rebels. Emerson's Divinity School Address - that's Harvard Divinity School - was a direct challenge to the ministers of the day. In fact, Emerson was himself ordained, but left the active ministry and devoted himself to writing and lecturing in non-religious settings.

Theodore Parker, also a Transcendentalist, remained in our ministry but was a polarizing, albeit popular, figure. His preaching drew large audiences, but the other ministers refused to exchange pulpits with him. His theological ideas were more radical than they could tolerate. At the same time, he was an active abolitionist, not only opposing slavery from the pulpit but sheltering escaped slaves on their way to freedom. For a while, he wrote his sermons with a loaded pistol on the desk beside his papers.

Thomas Starr King left New England to serve our church in San Francisco, which had shut its doors. He not only revitalized the church, he traveled the state in support of the Union cause and raised most of the funds for the Sanitary Commission - now known as the Red Cross. He was also one of the first voices to preach the idea that the natural world reveals the nature of the Divine. It was radical stuff at the time.

Toward the end of the 1800s, both Unitarians and Universalists became especially interested in religions from other parts of the world. They helped to organize the first World Parliament of Religions, which was held in conjunction with a World's Fair in Chicago in 1893. For many Americans, this was a first introduction to religious ideas outside the Jewish & Christian traditions. The influence of world religions is clearly with us today and is listed as one of our six sources of inspiration and insight.

Especially from 1920 into the 1940s, religious humanism developed a place in our theologies. Led by Curtis Reese and John Dietrich, the humanists argued that the supremacy of reason, the primary worth of character and the right of access to spiritual sources were overridingly important - more so than Scripture or even the idea of God. They claimed that liberalism insisted on a natural character of religion. Ideas that had stood for ages had been challenged by experiences of modern warfare - first in the Civil War, with its devastating numbers of dead on both sides, and later the Russian Revolution and World War I. The Humanist Movement may have been one response. Whatever the explanations, controversy again erupted.

Despite activity in ideas, practices and concerns that we recognize and affirm today, both the Unitarians and the Universalists declined in numbers, especially after the turn of the 20th century. Lively discussions sometimes attempt to uncover the reasons, but there are so many strands! We may never find clear answers. Starting in the 1920s both denominations began to talk of merger. But who should merge? The Congregationalists? Unitarians? Universalists? Others? Should the churches form a liberal association rather than actually merging? These questions, interrupted by more wars, continued over nearly 40 years. In the end, the Congregationalists merged with others to form the UCC, and the Unitarians and Universalists joined in the UUA.

It was 1961. A lot has happened since and the merged denomination has adapted, changed in some ways, but endured. The Civil Rights Movement started before our merger, but continued well after it. We saw passionate controversy within the UUA about ways to address racial challenges. We'll talk about that in some detail tomorrow night when we gather to watch a documentary video called Wilderness Journey. The Women's Movement challenged our assumptions, organization and leadership and changed the composition of our ministry. We were among the first to affirm the worth and dignity of our gay, lesbian, transgender and bisexual members and friends. We have been voices for peace when that message has been unwelcome. We have struggled again and again - without achieving great strides - with America's legacy of racism. We continue, however imperfectly, to walk our religious journeys together, mindful of the seven Principles that guide us.

So there you have it - a basic review of our history. With this introduction - or reminder - of the ideas and commitments that have shaped us, we again consider their meaning. Clearly, we aren't a new invention. We are part of a tradition. What does that ask of us? We come from a long line of people who have asked questions and insisted on their right to follow their own combination of insight, interpretation and commitment. This has shaped our institutions, our ways of "doing religion." Will we honor this heritage? How? Like our forebears, we look at the practices of the past and strive to understand the mix of gold and dross. How careful are we in trying to discern what to keep and what to change? We have struggled with questions and social issues that have seen progress but not resolution. Will we continue the work? Our religious ancestors have been on both sides of conflicts, and some of their positions seem wrong- headed, even immoral to us today. Can we draw lessons from this - perhaps lessons about humility or forgiveness?

I cannot answer these questions for you. We must each wrestle with them ourselves. But I hope we will engage with our history, our stories, and not turn away from the questions raised by the centuries that led to this day, this church, this gathering. The freedom to choose our religious path was hard- won. Its price is measured in blood, treasure and determination. It's easy for us to forget that. But it's a mistake to do so. We pay our debts to the women and men who came before us by building and strengthening the path they established. It's up to us to find - and to choose - the ways to do that: up to us, both as individuals and in working together.

November 16, 2008

This is one of our Minister's Sermons. We also have a brief biography of Rev. Simons, and the latest edition of Grace Notes, a column she writes for our newsletter.
We have another sermon collection, from our Guests.