Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Rev. Meg Barnhouse
December 4, 2011
Why has Unitarianism always been such a shy denomination? Why do we define ourselves so easily with what we don’t believe rather than what we do? What does Harvard have to do with our history? Who is William Ellery Channing? What is the Baltimore Sermon?
The opening scene in the birth of American Unitarianism as an organized denomination took place in 1805 in the halls of Harvard University.
I love reading church history. We need a Donimick Dunne to write about it for Vanity Fair magazine. There is intrigue and the clash of personalities, vanity and ambition, integrity and the clear sense that what is obvious to one group seems dangerously misguided to another.
In 1803 the man who had been Hollis Professor of Divinity died, leaving the post open. Ministers were trained by the Divinity professor. There was no Divinity School before this. Ministers were trained during their college years. Many went on for further study in Germany. At Harvard, the Hollis Professor of Divinity had been a moderate Calvinist. If it strikes you that you aren’t completely clear any more about what Calvinism is, I’m about to remind you. John Calvin, in the 1550’s, revived theological ideas of Augustine of Hippo, who was an Ethiopian Bishop of the Christian church in the early 400’s.
“TULIP” is the mnemonic device by which students remember the Calvinist precepts:
Total depravity of human nature: the belief that humans are basically bent, and we choose to do destructive things more easily than we choose to do good. No amount of peace education will take the warring out of us, no amount of coddling or challenging in school or at home will take the crime and stupidity out. Mostly we are inclined to choose selfishly, and it is mainly the fear of punishment that keeps us between the lines. This has been the most difficult of my Presbyterian beliefs to give up. I find it a moderately cheerful and relaxing doctrine. If we’re bent to the extent that it’s easier to choose to do destructive things than creative and live-giving things, we’re pretty amazing whether or not we’ve built hospitals or cured cancer. We’re doing well to have gone this long without knocking over a gas station, we’re doing amazingly well to be pretty good people most of the time. Now I try to believe in the basic goodness of people, but it opens one up to more episodes of disappointment.
Unconditional election of the saints: God, for his glory, chose some from the beginning of time to be saved. It follows logically that there are some who are chosen to be damned to eternal punishment. This is the “double predestination” that they somewhat sheepishly teach in Calvinist seminaries. Predestination does NOT mean that everything is foreordained by God, fated, only that the end of things is foreordained. Free will can operate in-between. Your end is the only thing that is predestined. Over the centuries, many Christians shrank from the harshness of this doctrine. After Augustine proposed it in the 5th century, a church council met to declare it “anathema” which is Greek for really really icky and not true.
Limited atonement: Also following logically from the election of some to be saved: that Jesus died, then for those who are chosen to be saved, and NOT for those who weren’t chosen.
“Irresistible grace of God.” If God chooses you to be among the elect, the saved, you will be, bec ause God’s will is always done. If you get saved, it is because you were one of the ones chosen. Don’t worry that you are getting saved all for nought, acting right even though you are doomed to damnation. If you are saved, you are one of the elect. If you refuse to believe, if you don’t act right, if you don’t believe, it is because God’s grace isn’t reaching out to you. If it were reaching out to you, you would “get it.” Since you don’t get it, it’s because, sadly, God doesn’t care whether you get it or not.
Perseverance of the saints: Once you’re saved, you’re always saved. You may struggle, but God will not let you go.
That is traditional Calvinism. There were a hundred years in New England where that was the only brand of Christianity taught by the churches. That is what counted as orthodoxy, right belief. The society in New England was fairly homogeneous. All the Quakers were in PA. The Baptists were in RI. There were Catholics, some Quakers, some Baptists, but most of the citizens of MA were Congregational Calvinist.
Every town had a church whose minister was paid with tax money. This was called the Standing Order, and it had been in effect since the Puritans. Attacked now and then as unfair, it had gone through several versions. By 1805, ministers were paid with tax dollars only if their church didn’t make its budget, and if you were a Quaker, a Baptist or a Catholic, you didn’t have to pay the tax. The Congregational ministers, by this time, were varied in their theology. Some were strict Calvinists, others were more moderate Calvinists. Some had become Liberals. Liberals did not believe or preach the doctrines of Calvinism. Some of them did not believe that humans were born in Sin. They had begun to believe that God had created human beings basically good. They did not see God as demanding blood to forgive sins. Jesus was a savior who saves by his teachings, and by awakening the mind and heart, not by his death on the cross. William Ellery Channing, whose face is on the front of your bulletin, likened the doctrine of the crucifixion as to having a gallows at the center of the Universe, and that the spirit of such a god, “whose very acts of pardon were written in such blood, was terror, not love.
Enter the Bad Guy. There was a Calvinist named Jedediah Morse, who had moved to MA. He was amazed that the Liberal s and Calvinists got along together there so well. He did not approve of this ease, and felt that ministers should be asked to take a stand, to be counted and categorized by where they stood on the TULIP principles. Morse began hinting that the Liberals were tainted with the “Unitarianism that was being preached in England.” Those Unitarians, most notably Joseph Priestly, a scientist and minister whose most well-known discovery was Oxygen) were preaching that Jesus was just a man, possessing no divinity at all. Dr. Morse was troubled that the lack of controversy came from differences not being voiced or pointed out. People were being too nice, and it was getting in the way of knowing who was who. Who could be trusted to preach correct doctrine and who could not.
Before the controversy of 1805, most Liberal preachers doubting Calvinist doctrines did not preach these Liberal thoughts from the pulpit. To avoid controversy and keep peace in the congregations, they did what many Liberal preachers do today. They just preached around the Calvinist doctrines, choosing to preach instead about social responsibility, ethical behavior, and the loving kindness of God. The ministers in MA, as a rule, got along peacefully and well together. At the ministerial association meetings, they avoided speaking of their Liberal beliefs. No one really stood up to be categorized as strict, moderate or liberal. The ministers in the associ ation were in the habit of pulpit exchanges. A minister would be in his own pulpit about half the time. The other half he would preach at other churches. This provided relief to the congregations, who got to hear other voices and other points of view. It also provided relief to the ministers, who had to write fewer sermons, since they could repeat their better ones when they visited another pulpit. The Standing Order of tax-supported worship and the pulpit exchanges were what gave what happened at Harvard the importance it had.
The Hollis professor who died and left his Chair vacant was a moderate and well respected Calvinist. These things were written about him at the time: “In him, never were orthodoxy and charity more closely aligned. and “He was desirous of correcting his own errors, and was willing that others should enjoy their sentiments. “That is the kind of man who can get along with both liberals and conservatives. Those people are hard to find, like a treasure when you come across them.”
Here’s where academic politics come into the story. The President of Harvard procrastinated in suggesting a candidate because the most obvious candidate was a Liberal Boston minister named Henry Ware, and the President was a Calvinist. He didn’t want the controversy. The President just never brought up the subject of a replacement at meetings of the Harvard Corporation, and for two years the post was left vacant. By 1805, a candidate had to be found soon. The Boston papers were making trouble, even intimating that the money in the endowment for the Hollis fellowship was being used for purposes other than that for which it was given. Then that President exited the fray by dying.
A professor. named Eliphalet Pearson took over the acting Presidency, and was widely understood to want the permanent job very badly. In the writing of people who knew him at the time, he was characterized as an “ultra-Liberal before the President’s death, and a staunch Calvinist after. Hm. Why the switch? Some thought he was playing a part for political expediency. He was disliked by the students as a bully, and he tended to alienate even those who agreed with him.
EP and five other men made up the Corporation that governed the university. There was one other staunch Calvinist, two liberals, and two moderates. One of tho se was Judge Oliver Wendell, a liberal whose daughter was married to the conservative Calvinist Abel Holmes. (She was the mother of Oliver Wendell Holmes.) The selection process began with each man in the Corporation writing down two names. The two Calvinists each wrote down names of two Calvinist candidates, the two Liberals each wrote down the names of two Liberal candidates, and the two Moderates each wrote down the names of one Calvinist candidate and one Liberal candidate. Within a few weeks the choice was narrowed to two: Jesse Appleton (a moderate Calvinist) and Henry Ware. The meetings were sour due to the personality clash between EP and Dr. John Eliot, a Liberal minister. It was said that EP’s personal attacks on Eliot were school boyish and mean.
Finally Judge Wendell proposed a compromise. How about Appleton for professor and Ware for President? No, they answered. HW was not suited for the position of President. How about Appleton for President and Ware for professor? NO from John Eliot, who was concerned that JA had an unpleasant and dissonant voice, unsuited to conducting public worship for the community, which as President he would have had to do. Appleton could have won in spite of Eliot’s no vote if EP, wanting the presidency for himself, had not voted against the compromise. Judge Wendell’s compromise failed. Finally, several months later, Henry Ware was elected by a margin of one vote. There was no candidate settled on for President.
The appointment then had to be okayed by the Board of Overseers of the Commonwealth of MA, made up of ministers and politicians. The Calvinists were understandably distressed that the professor of Divinity would not be orthodox. All the ministers that would come out of Harvard now would be taught by a a man they all thought of as a Unitarian.
The only point open for discussion was whether Ware fit the stipulations of the Hollis grant. Dr. Jedediah Morse, who was an ally of Eliphalet Pearson, saw this as an opportunity to show the people how sneaky and deceitful the Liberals were, not wanting to declare outright their position. Here was a chance to cross-examine and bring the Unitarianism to light. With 45 of the 47 members of the Board present, he attacked. What procedure had the Corporation followed to satisfy itself that Ware’s views were in accordance with the terms of Thomas Hollis’s gift. Hollis had written that the professor should be “a man of solid learning in divinity, of sound and orthodox principles. ORTHODOX, said Morse. SEE? This man doesn’t fit! He will not adhere to the Calvinist Westminster Confession. Hollis was not an Arminian (someone who believes that everyone can be saved) or a Unitarian, and he would NEVER have countenanced the election of a man who had departed from sound doctrine. The Liber als’ position was that Hollis, as a Baptist, had already departed from the Westminster Confession, whose doctrines the Baptists did not believe. Baptists believed in Jesus death being for everyone. Hollis himself had written that the only article of belief to be required of his professor should be that “the Bible was the only and most perfect rule for faith and practice, and that it should be interpreted “according to the best light that God shall give him. The election of Ware was no breach of trust, as Morse and Pearson were accusing, but was in keeping with Hollis’s intent. Ware was elected.
Within a matter of weeks, Morse had written and published a pamphlet complaining about the election of Ware. Then, months later, another Liberal was chosen for President. EP resigned and went to be head of Phillips Academy. Morse and Pearson founded Andover Theological Seminary, still turning out Calvinists today, and within three years, in response, Harvard Divinity School was founded.
The ministers in the Standing Order, at Morse’s urging, started organizing. Trinitarian orthodox congregations made their own associations, refusing to exchange pulpits with liberals, accusing them of “Unitarianism. Jedediah Morse in 1815, published a pamphlet called “American Unitarianism, accusing the Liberals of, well, believing what they actually did believe. The Standing Order broke down as the Congregational churches split into Orthodox Trinitarian and Liberal churches. The liberals increasingly felt pressure to defend themselves against charges of English Unitarianism, since they held a higher view of Jesus as savior than the English Unitarians. ” Unitarian did, however describe their view of the Oneness of God, and finally in 1819, in Baltimore, William Ellery Channing preached the sermon that was the manifesto of American Unitarianism. In it he asked why God would created us with free will and then punish us for using it. Why he, as a supposedly loving father, would choose some of his children to go to eternal damnation. Weren’t his listeners all better parents than that? Why should we be better parents than God?
Our task from the beginning has been to define ourselves other than as against Calvinism. We still struggle with that. Many UU’s are most comfortable saying what we DON’T believe. At the beginning of our movement, we were pushed into declaring ourselves, “outed” by the attacks of the opposition. We still have a legacy of hiding, not wanting to make a fuss, not wanting to be right out there with our faith.
Unitarian means we believe in the unity of God, that there is only one. Or, as some agnostic UU’s put it, “at MOST one God, and Universalist, meaning we believe everyone is saved. No one dies into eternal damnation. This, to me, is truly good news, and I would like to join William Ellery Channing in his passion to proclaim that truly good news.
