Unmasking Courage

Chris Jimmerson

October 31, 2010

Happy Halloween! One of Halloween’s main themes is fear. On this Halloween, what do Unitarian Universalists fear as a religious community and where do we find courage, one of our churches values, in the face of those fears?

I’ve been studying our earliest Unitarian predecessors and have found in their stories remarkable examples of courage – courage in a religious context, what we might call “spiritual courage”. So, I’ll ask you to indulge me for a bit, as we travel back to the 16th century, Reader’s Digest version.

Very frightening things are happening. The Gutenberg press has allowed for the wide scale printing of the bible, so people outside the Catholic Church hierarchy can actually read it! The protestant reformation has begun. The Renaissance in literature, arts and sciences has begun. Those scary Humanists have started studying things. Now, all of this is a great threat to the Catholic Church, so the Inquisition is in full force also.

It is a time when the power and wealth of governments and that of the Church are tightly intertwined, and biblical interpretation, doctrine, has been a major role of the Church in this power structure.

So, to protect their own influence (not to mention to avoid becoming victims of the inquisition themselves), the leaders of the larger reformation movements have expressed their differences with the church as points of practice, not essential doctrine.

Into this volatile situation, a book appears, On the Errors of the Trinity, by a Spanish Scholar in his early twenties named Michael Servetus, questioning one of the sacred creeds of the Church – God in Trinity; the Father, Son and Holy Ghost.

The year was 1531, and young Servetus had published his book hoping to convert the Reformers to his position that there was but one eternal God. His hopes were dashed. The Reformers quickly reaffirmed the Trinity. After trying and failing again with a second book, Servetus realized his books had put him in danger, changed his name and went into hiding in Lyons, France. He eventually become a medical doctor and is even mentioned in medical history texts for having elucidated the pulmonary circulatory system – like a good proto-Unitarian, he couldn’t be satisfied with only one field of excellence.

However, also like a good proto-Unitarian, Servetus had a little trouble letting go of things, and so, 15 years later, in 1546, he began another book AND, using his assumed name, struck up a correspondence debating theology with none other than John Calvin, the influential Protestant reformer who had established a powerbase in Geneva.

Calvin was courteous at first but quickly grew exasperated and sent Servetus his own views, as set out in Calvin’s, “Institutes of the Christian Religion”.

Upon receiving Calvin’s seminal book, Servetus responded with one of the first recorded instances of a long and beloved religious tradition still practiced in Unitarian Universalist churches across North America even today. He scribbled disparaging notes in the margins on where he thought Calvin was wrong and sent it back to him.

This may not have been wise.

An incensed Calvin, realizing he had actually been corresponding with Servetus, wrote to a friend that if Servetus should ever come to Geneva “I will not suffer him to get out alive”.

In 1553, Servetus published his new book, “The Restoration of Christianity”. By April 4 of 1553, the French Inquisition had arrested and jailed Michael Servetus for heresy, with evidence for the charge supplied by Calvin.

By April 7, 1553, Servetus had escaped from jail. After convincing the jailer to let him out so he could relieve himself in the jails walled garden, our proto-Unitarian ripped off his nightgown, and fully dressed underneath, scaled the wall and ran away. Inexplicably, he headed to Geneva. This most definitely was not wise.

In Geneva, he was recognized, arrested and convicted of spreading heresy, in a process largely manipulated by Calvin.

On October 27, 1553, Michael Servetus was burned at the stake. They used moist, green wood so that it would burn more slowly and prolong the suffering. They placed a crown sprinkled with gunpowder on his head.

And as the flames grew and the terror consumed him, as flesh was slowly turned to ash, Michael Servetus cried out in agony, but he never renounced his beliefs.

I wonder if today our religious beliefs could cost us our lives, could we summon that kind of courage? If facing that kind of terror, could I? Of course, I’m just speculating, because in modern America, such a situation seems to be a long ago and far away threat.

On September 21, 2005, the DuPage Unitarian Universalist Church received a bomb threat because of their support for marriage equality for gays and lesbians. It would be only one of many such threats against supporters of marriage equality.

On July 27, 2008, Jim David Adkisson walked into the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church and opened fire with a shotgun, murdering two people and injuring several others because “he wanted to kill some liberals”. Not so long ago. Not so far away.

Perhaps the crazed acts of disturbed individuals. Perhaps the consequences of a growing rhetoric of violence over disagreement in “modern” America.

Michael Servetus left two legacies; 1. His execution led to a slow growth in religious tolerance and 2. His writings influenced many to reconsider some of Christianity’s most central doctrines, including the Unitarians in Poland and those in Transylvania.

The histories of both are fascinating and contain lessons in spiritual courage.

The Socinians, as the early Polish Unitarians came to be known, thrived for a while in the 16th century protected by the Polish minor nobility, even establishing their own township. However, it was not to last. The Catholic Counter Reformation, a series of invasions by surrounding peoples and shifts in economic and social influences led to growing persecution, until by 1660, the Socinians faced a choice – recant their beliefs, leave Poland or be but to death.

Many did recant. A few gave up all they owned and left, seeking the freedom to practice their beliefs elsewhere, some eventually joining the Unitarians in Transylvania. After only a little over a century, the Unitarian religious movement in Poland had all but perished.

Again, having to make such a choice – to have to summon the courage to migrate, destitute to a foreign land in order to remain true to our religious convictions – may seem like a distant and remote possibility to us now.

Any yet, thousands of people from throughout the world come to the U.S. every year seeking asylum, having fled religious persecution in their home countries, having made exactly that choice. We imprison most of them as soon as they arrive here and, since 9-11, fewer and fewer are seeing their asylum requests granted, especially those we consider to have the “wrong” religion.

Even closer to home, a group calling themselves “Repent Amarillo” has been attacking our Amarillo UU Fellowship, using techniques learned from the “New Apostolic Reformation”, an international organization that provides training on, quote, “taking communities though militant spiritual warfare techniques” — mapping whole geographic areas to identify where the sinners are located (such as in UU churches apparently) and either convert them or “drive the demons out”. Now in case you’re picturing me wearing a rather large tinfoil hat at this point, consider that, before his disgrace, the Rev. Ted Haggard in Colorado Springs adopted these same techniques to harass people he had decided were witches. Ten of his 15 targets sold their homes and moved away because of the harassment.

Last week, Reverend Brock spoke about America’s rising intolerance toward Muslims. Interesting then, that the Unitarianism that exists in Transylvania today was able to develop in the 16th Century because of the tolerance extended to them by the Sultan of the Islamic Ottoman State and because an intermixing of Islamic and Christian cultures bred an ethos of religious acceptance.

Their history is a long one, and religious tolerance toward the Unitarians in Transylvania has waxed and waned, as governments and societal influences have changed, yet they have persisted, providing us lessons in courage.

One such lesson is that spiritual courage requires standing up for religious tolerance. Our Amarillo Unitarian Universalist Fellowship knows this! You see, on September 11 of this year, the head of Repent Amarillo, part-time Reverend David Grisham, had planned to burn a Koran in a public park. The UU Fellowship organized a counter demonstration.

As the good Reverend doused his copy of the Koran with lighter fluid and held it over a barbeque pit preparing to set it on fire, the counter-protesters held their hands over the pit to stop him. Twenty three year old skateboarder, Jacob Isom, an avowed atheist, came up behind the Reverend, grabbed the book from his hands, said, “Dude, you have no Koran,” and ran away with it.

And so it came to pass that thanks largely to a bunch of Unitarian Universalists and a skateboarding atheist, no holy books were burned in Amarillo Texas that day.

A second lesson is that courage is not always one short act in time – that courage may be required over the long run, in the face of societal challenges and changes. We must practice a vigilant and a persistent courage. Only a few years ago, the Texas State Comptroller at the time, Carole Keeton Strayhorn, some of you may have heard of her, denied non-profit status to the UU church in Denison because they did not have one system of belief.

The Texas State Board of Education has been busily rewriting the rules for our childrens’ textbooks to, among other things, strengthen requirements for teaching the “Christian beliefs of the Founding Fathers” and to deemphasize Thomas Jefferson because he was a deist.

At the national Values Voters summit this year, attended by several of the nation’s most well-known politicians, the following statements were issued: that the U.S. should ban the construction of any new mosques anywhere in America; and that the 1st amendment to the constitution does not justify the separation of church and state.

Of the politicians attending, several of whom stand a chance of becoming our next President, not one of them disavowed these statements.

How are we to have courage in light of such challenges? How we do we avoid becoming discouraged in a culture filled with dogmatism and intolerance?

Well, research has found that practicing small acts of courage in our daily lives, such as reaching out to those with whom we have disagreed, builds confidence and prepares us to act with courage when confronting far greater risks.

Research has also found that discerning our values, and reflecting on them often, provides a higher purpose and the impetus for acting courageously. And this idea of finding courage in our values is why, this Halloween, I have resurrected our Unitarian ancestors; although, saying ancestors is a stretch. For the most part, Unitarianism in the U.S. developed independently of that in Europe. Still, each embraced a set of strikingly kindred core values, a shared religious DNA if you will, which UU historian Earl Wilbur identified as commitment to religious freedom, unrestricted use of reason and tolerance of differing views and practices.

This religious DNA is still a key element in the blueprint for Unitarian Universalism today, when we proclaim, “One religion, many beliefs”, or when we affirm our 4th principle, “a free and responsible search for truth and meaning”. This religious DNA drives our congregation’s support of individual spiritual practice and growth.

You see, this foundational core of our belief system requires that we not only work for religious tolerance in the outside world, but that we practice religious freedom within our very religion itself.

And that is good news. That is a saving message that people, whether secular or spiritual, need in our world today.

It demands that we proactively invite people into a place of spiritual exploration without creedal requirements. It compels us to evangelize. Now, I know this idea of UUs evangelizing is controversial. Nonetheless, I will risk being branded a heretic even among Unitarian Universalists by advocating for evangelizing!

Evangelizing is controversial because we’re afraid of it. We don’t even like the word. For many of us, rightly or wrongly, it carries connotations of an irrational, overly emotional form of religious worship; of fundamentalism and restrictive dogma; of conversion and coercion, promises of heaven and threats of eternal hell.

Those of you who are Star Trek nerds like me will understand when I say that the evangelism practiced by the small-town Baptist church I grew up in felt more like a “church of the Borg” – “Resistance is futile. Freedom is irrelevant. You will be assimilated.”

We are also afraid of evangelism, because if we bring to the world our good news (what evangelize means by the way), people might just join us, we might just grow, and growth means change and change can be scary. We are afraid of it because we are much better at talking about what we do not believe than what we do believe. But what we do not believe is not a saving message. Taking about what we do believe takes a lot more courage, but we might start practicing it with our UU principles or our churches’ values: “We find meaning in acceptance of one another, justice, equity, the right of conscience and the use of the democratic process.”

“We believe there is eternal beauty in transcendence, community, compassion, courage and transformation.”

“We find there is God in the inherent worth and dignity of every person; in the interdependent web of existence of which we are a part.”

Wherever your personal beliefs meet those of our shared religion, that is our faith. Our core values, our religious DNA, will not allow us to keep it to ourselves. As the President of our denomination Rev. Peter Morales so aptly demonstrated in a recent sermon, there is a tremendous need for a safe community within which to explore life’s deeper questions.

After I found this church, I realized that I have been a Unitarian Universalist all of my life and just had never known it. I’ll bet many of you had the same experience or have heard the same thought expressed. Sometimes, we seem almost proud of this, but I think it is heartbreaking. I wonder how many more people have never found community with us because they have never heard of us; never heard from us.

If we were to evangelize, if we were to radiate the light from that chalice out beyond these walls and into our community and our world with our saving message of religious freedom, hope, dignity, peace, love, justice, compassion — the sacred beauty of shared existence, well, we might just transform the world, reclaim this paradise we have been given. Here. And now.

And that is what terrifies us the most.

“How DARE we dream that?” we ask ourselves. We dare it because our most deeply held values compel us to do so. We have the spiritual courage. It is in our religious DNA.