Universalism is dead: long live Universalism?

October 5, 2008

First UU Church of Austin

4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756

www.austinuu.org

Listen to the sermon by clicking the play button.

Reading:

The author of the reading is Robert Bellah, the sociologist and author of Habits of the Heart. The reading is an excerpt from the speech he gave at the 1998 Unitarian Universalist General Assembly.

So, it is no accident, as they say, that the United States, with its high evaluation of the individual person, is nonetheless alone among North Atlantic societies in the percentage of our population who live in poverty and that we are dismantling what was already the weakest welfare state of any North Atlantic nation. Just when we are moving to an ever greater validation of the sacredness of the individual person, our capacity to imagine a social fabric that would hold individuals together is vanishing. And this is in no small part due to the fact that our religious individualism is linked to an economic individualism which, though it makes no distinctions between persons except monetary ones, ultimately knows nothing of the sacredness of the individual. If the only standard is money, then all other distinctions are undermined.

What economic individualism destroys and what our kind of religious individualism cannot restore, is solidarity, a sense of being members of the same body. In most other North Atlantic societies a tradition of an established church, however secularized, provides some notion that we are in this thing together, that we need each other, that our precious and unique selves aren’t going to make it all alone. That is a tradition singularly weak in our country, though Catholics and some high church Protestants have tried to provide it. Nor do we have a tradition of democratic socialism such as is common in Europe-again, I would argue, linked to an established church culture-a tradition that believes the state has some responsibility for the well-being of its citizens.

So, alas, perhaps Mark Lilla is right: the 1960’s cultural revolution and the 1980’s Reagan revolution are two sides of the same coin. Radical religio-cultural individualism opens the door to radical economic individualism. The former provides inadequate resources to moderate the latter. Here I return to the paradox from which I started, the contradiction between Unitarian Universalist’s social witness and your religious tradition: in your social witness we are dissenters; in your religious beliefs you are mainstream in a culture whose majority is dissenters. How can you possibly gain the religious and cultural leverage to overcome this contradiction?

Prayer:

When the uncertainty of life threatens to overwhelm us, may we find comfort.

When the grief for loss of loved ones feels too much, may we find strength.

When isolation in our lives seems impenetrable, may we find connection.

When our brokenness seems irreparable, may we find healing.

When we find happiness and hope, may we spread them to others.

May we find the meaning, inspiration and wholeness in our life.

May others join us in our work with toward the common good.

When we stumble may they support us, when we doubt may they reassure us, and when we stray may they guide us.

Life is too large and too precious to journey alone, may we find the solidarity of others when needed and may we be the strength needed by others.

Amen.

Sermon:

We seem to have been hearing for many years now that we live in a time of uncertainty. Recent events seem to be only increasing that uncertainty. The financial meltdown is the latest in a series of unpredictable events that we hear about not knowing the outcome or how they will affect us. The roller coaster of the Presidential election creates an uncertainty about our political futures, worries about our jobs or retirement creates uncertainty about our economic futures, the threat of unexpected illness and violence creates uncertainty about the lives of our friends and loved ones. Climate change raises questions about our very existence. We most certainly do live in a time of uncertainty. Yet I suspect people have always felt that way.

A common response for many people is to turn to religion at such times. Sometimes looking for answers, other times an explanation, and often just for comfort. The old saying goes that the only certainties in life are death and taxes. While a religious response on the subject of taxes sounds really interesting, I’ll leave that for another sermon – perhaps around April 15th. Religion has had a lot to say about death and in Christianity particularity life after death. While life on this earth was uncertain, life after death was about certainty. You were going to hell if you were bad and heaven if you were good. The threat of hell was the motivation to live a good life. Our Liberal religious tradition has moved away from such thinking. We are not concerned much with what happens beyond death and more interested in the responsible search for truth and meaning in this life. To ensure a responsible search for truth and meaning then it is best that we do this search in a community. At least that is the theory.

Many of us today feel lonely or isolated as our sense of community subsides and we have less contact with our families or friends. Work absorbs much of our time and energy such that our community ties become frayed. In the reading we heard earlier, Robert Bellah was discussing the decline of community in the United States due to the emphasis on the individual. He says “our capacity to imagine a social fabric that would hold individuals together is vanishing?” He blames economic individualism in partnership with religious individualism as the culprit for destroying much of our sense of community. He said these words at the 1998 Unitarian Universalist General Assembly. He knew his audience. Our Unitarian ancestors in the 19th century put great emphasis on the individual religious experience and the individual’s use of reason to interpret those experiences. This emphasis on the individual continues to strongly influence our movement.

Many people come into our congregations because they feel our communities support their own individual values. I know I did. Yet the choosing of a community to support my values still has a focus on the individual. Having a community support my values is comforting but are we challenged to grow as people? Does having our values supported help us find greater truth and meaning? This focus on the individual within our Unitarian tradition is similar to many other mainstream Christian religions in the U.S. This is why Robert Bellah places the Unitarian Universalist movement as part of the religious mainstream. This conclusion may be surprising to many of us, it certainly was for me. He acknowledges that our social justice work is in the dissenting tradition often against the dominant thoughts of the time.

While I really value Bellah’s critique regarding religious individualism in relation to our movement I think he is only dealing with half of our tradition, the Unitarians. Like many he seems to have forgotten about the Universalist side of the movement. You know that part of our name where people’s eyes start to glaze over when you tell them what religion you are – “I’m a Unitarian Universa-whatever.” I noticed that it is around the second or third syllable of Universalist where people stop pretending to be interested. I believe Universalism is an important part of our tradition because, while the thinking is still liberal, the center is not grounded in religious individualism. This can help provide a balance to the individual emphasis of Unitarian thinking. Opinions regarding the importance of our Universalist belief varies widely. Some leaders in our movement would dismiss it as irrelevant and answering a question no-one has been asking for over a hundred years. This does not sound very promising. Other leaders in our movement see Universalism as a vibrant path forward for our movement in the 21st century. At the risk of appearing completely spineless on the matter, I agree with both perspectives. Let me try to explain.

Regarding why Universalism is answering a question that no-one has been asking for 100 years we actually have to go back 200 years. In the late 18th/early 19th century the dominant Christian view was that due to sin then all people were destined to hell in the afterlife and only because of the death of Jesus would a small elect few be saved and go to heaven. This is a difficult perspective for many of us to accept today but this thinking was the dominant religious view in the U.S. at the time. Universalism disagreed with this view and asserted that all people would be saved and no-one would suffer endless punishment in hell.

This idea is known as Universal Salvation. Hosea Ballou was one of the most profound thinkers and leaders of Universalism in the 19th century and is quite a character. He was from a farming background, had little formal education and is described as “rustic” in both dress and diction. I suspect “rustic” was not a compliment. In his early days Ballou was a circuit riding preacher who had no church of his own but rode around preaching in small towns and often debating other preachers. Ballou’s character, thinking and evangelism really defined the Universalist movement of the 19th century.

There is a story that shows the type of character Ballou was and his – shall we call them – persuasive tactics. He was riding the circuit when he stopped for the night at a New England farmhouse. The farmer was upset and confided to Ballou that his son was a terror who got drunk in the village every night causing lots of trouble. The farmer was afraid the son would go to hell. “All right,” said Ballou with a serious face. “We’ll find a place on the path where your son will be coming home drunk, and we’ll build a big fire, and when he comes home, we’ll grab him and throw him into it.” Remember this is one of the most influential thinkers in our history. The farmer was shocked: “That’s my son and I love him!” Ballou said, “If you, a human and imperfect father, love your son so much that you wouldn’t throw him in the fire, then how can you possibly believe that God, the perfect father, would do so!” I think Ballou would be a fun person to have over for dinner. Just don’t get close to the fire.

Ballou’s basic premise for Universal Salvation was that our human failings were finite therefore it is unjust for an infinite, all-powerful God to condemn us to eternal punishment. He actually holds God to a moral standard. He no longer views God as a punisher of human failings and believes people are trying to be in relationship with a loving God. For Ballou, God was about love not punishment. This salvation of all people was a radical idea because it destroyed the idea of only a few people being saved from God’s punishment and has a profoundly egalitarian emphasis. This gave all humanity a common destiny as opposed to the separation of a small elect to heaven and a majority damned to misery in hell. We all had equal worth in the eyes of God, not divided into the damned and the saved but one group: “The Beloved of God.”

To religious liberals like ourselves the notions of heaven and hell seem like obscure remnants from the past and have no significance for us today. Who cares about heaven and hell when we have the uncertainty and problems of this world to deal with? A reasonable question hence the earlier opinion that Universalism is answering a question that no one has been asking for 100 years. Certainly most religious liberals stopped asking that question over 100 years ago. Ballou’s insistence on a supernatural, otherworldly salvation is not the important part of Universalism for me but the consequences of his answer seem important and revolutionary.

For our religious ancestors notions of heaven and hell were part of their framework for making meaning in their lives and deaths. Through this framework the Universalists found a common human destiny therefore a belief in equality for all people. This message had great appeal especially to the less wealthy and less powerful. In the strict hierarchy of 19th century society, I would imagine that the religious elect were often seen as the elite in society. The Universalist message had a strong appeal to the non-elite, who flocked to the Universalist movement making it the six largest denomination in the country by 1840 with about 700,000 members. For comparison, today Unitarian Universalism has about 200,000 members.

The message of radical equality of all people gave the Universalist movement a strong religious motivation for social justice work in the 19th century. Universalists were at the forefront of movements to abolish slavery, promote equality of women, establishing public education, and working to change prisons from places of punishment to places for reforming criminals. Humanitarian concerns were foremost amongst Universalists such as Clara Barton who was the founder of the American Red Cross. Universalist members were primarily in rural communities and relatively poor financially. They rarely saw a conflict of interest between their religious principles of caring for others and their economic self-interest. This is in contrast to the Unitarians, who were primarily wealthy and amongst the elite of society. Some Unitarians took a strong abolitionist stance against slavery but many Unitarians accepted slavery because much of their money was made as a result of it. Their economic self-interests conflicted with their religious principles and guess which lost? While the 19th century Universalist movement was still Christian their uniqueness was the love for all humanity at the center of their beliefs. This was not an individualistic religion which put humanity at the center of religion, they put love of humanity at the center. An important difference.

While Ballou’s religious ideas had a profound impact on Universalism in the 19th century his personality also left an indelible mark on the character of the Universalist movement. While he often disagreed with others, he also tolerated a range of opinions. There is a wonderful example of this when Ballou was preaching at a church of another prominent Universalist leader. The wife of the church’s regular minister so strongly disagreed with Ballou’s sermon that she sent a message to the choir master expressing her displeasure. Ballou finished his sermon and was about to announce the hymn, the choir master arose and announced to the congregation: “I wish to give notice that the doctrine which has been preached here this afternoon is not the doctrine that is usually preached in this house.” Ballou listened attentively to the announcement and then said simply, “The audience will please to take notice of what our brother has said.” He then proceeded to the hymn.

So if any of you are unhappy with this sermon then please just let Brent our musical director know and he’ll announce it when I’m finished. I do not guarantee such a dignified response as Ballou’s. I feel this story is very telling about Ballou’s character. He was opinionated but he created a tolerance for differing opinions that influences our movement to this day. He exemplifies the phrase “We do not need to think alike to love alike.” Religion was about high ideals and not his own ego. He engaged in his own responsible search for truth in his Universalist community and I believe our movement is the better for it.

Universalism had a strong sense of human solidarity – people sharing a common purpose and responsibility. Solidarity is not a word you hear in religion very much but it is a good word. There seems to be a greater intimacy about being in solidarity with another rather than just supporting them. Solidarity has a sense of working together for the common good. Support has a sense that you are doing something as an individual that others agree with but are not engaged with themselves. For example, when you are in jail – for some non-violent protest of course – and someone comes to visit you, that is support. Solidarity is when the person is in jail with you. Perhaps this is not the best example of a common destiny.

A relationship of solidarity means a passionate and intimate concern for the welfare of another. Think in our own lives – which relationships do you have with others would you describe as relationships of solidarity? Which are relationships of support? Where do we as a religious community take a stand of solidarity with others? Our work on marriage equality? Our anti-racist work that is done in many of our congregations? These are important questions to consider.

The deep-rooted concern for others in Universalism comes from the sense of a universal love of others. I believe Universalism with its concern for others is a powerful corrective to the religious individualism of which we are often accused. Some people within the Unitarian Universalist movement say that Universalism leads with the heart and Unitarianism leads with the mind. I see this tension between the passion of our hearts and the reasoning of our minds as healthy. The passion of the heart can help us reach beyond our own self-interest and emotional detachment to engage passionately for the welfare of others. Reason can prevent our passion from being misplaced, naive, or ineffective. We should not see the choice of our Universalist or Unitarian heritages, as an either-or choice. We can and do engage both traditions – our hearts and our minds.

What brought the Unitarian and Universalist movements together were the causes we cared about, not shared religious doctrines. On many social justice issues the Unitarians and the Universalists found ourselves working together, on issues such as civil rights, public education, and women’s suffrage. It was our actions not our beliefs that brought us together. Robert Bellah acknowledges that it is in our social justice work where we have been dissenting from mainstream religion. As I look today the only area I see us showing religious leadership on social issues is on marriage equality for gays and lesbians. We do not seem be showing leadership in other areas such as environmental concerns, health care, economic justice, and immigrant rights. We are doing work in these areas but I do not believe we have a leadership role in them. I am not sure we even work in partnership with other religious denominations which are showing leadership in these areas. We are a small religion therefore working with others even those we disagree with on some issues, makes sense on many issues. Do we as a religious movement, play well with others? I wonder if our individualism has been institutionalized even in our social justice work. I am reminded of Denise Levertov’s earlier words “We have only begun to know, the power that is in us if we would join our solitudes in the communion of struggle.”

The common thrust of both the Unitarian and Universalist movements was in the changes they wished to see in society. For the Universalists, this work was driven by a radical view of human equality and the faith in a loving presence for all people in the universe which they call God. The idea that a loving presence cares for us, all of us, helps many to get through times of uncertainty. Sometimes that loving presence is family, other times a friend, often it is a religious community, and sometimes a presence that one can’t explain. Universalism placed that loving presence and love of humanity at the center of their theology. That was an act of faith and hope. It is also a challenge to us.

Can we rise up to that challenge by loving others, not just those who are easy to love, but also those where it is difficult? Loving those who disagree with us and loving those who show us no love in return. That is the Universalist notion of love so challenging. Perhaps to guide us we need to remember Francis David’s famous statement “We need not think alike, to love alike.” If we believe that and embrace its meaning then we might be able to care for each other a little better today than we did yesterday – and care for each other a little better tomorrow than we did today. This might be transformational for us, our religion, and even our world.

——————

The full speech can be found at http://www.robertbellah.com/lectures_7.htm

Bellah, Robert N. Unitarian Universalism in Societal Perspective Lecture given at the UUA General Assembly on June 27, 1998 http://www.robertbellah.com/lectures_7.htm (accessed September 30th, 2008)

Reich, David and Stowell, Linda. Of Sand Bars and Circuit Riders http://www.uuworld.org/ideas/articles/2745.shtml (accessed September 30th, 2008)

Bumbaugh, David E. Unitarian Universalism: a narrative history (Chicago, Il: Meadville Lombard Press, 2000) p.161

Sewell, Marilyn ed. Cries of the Spirit (Boston, Ma: Beacon Press, 1991) p.182