Hold on to Your Hats: All of Unitarian Universalist History in Just Under Two Thousand Words
BY JANE RZEPKA, SENIOR MINISTER, CHURCH OF THE LARGER FELLOWSHIP
Well folks, here we are, Unitarian Universalists who, on occasion, are called upon to explain ourselves. Our uncle asks about the new-fangled questionable religion we’ve stumbled into—he’s never heard of it before—and it sounds a little sketchy to him. The guy across the hall thinks we’ve joined a cult that someone dreamt up ten minutes ago. The mom of our child’s friend wants to be supportive—or maybe just tolerant—but not supportive enough to recognize a religion that has no grounding in history—that’s her impression, anyway.
Maybe this will help—notes about our history—which could, of course, be sliced and diced in any number of ways. Certainly I would like to have included more continents, more diversity, more nuance, indeed, more technical accuracy. I especially would like to have included information about those countless courageous founders whose names and contributions are lost to us. But still, the history that follows might help with that uncle of yours.
Our particular history features generations and generations of people who seem first to lose their religion, and then, by means of private struggle and personal risk, find new ways of being religious. Our founders were doubters, thinkers, people for whom integrity counted for something. Through processes of theological reinterpretation and revolution, they found ways to continue their religious lives.
Our first notable ancestor was an Alexandrian named Origen. It was the early Third Century, when Christians were persecuted. Origen, at age seventeen, his father imprisoned and then killed as a Christian, was willing to accept martyrdom himself for his religious faith. But his mother thwarted his plan of leaving home and risking his life by hiding all his clothes. Origen went on to become a dedicated scholar, devoting himself single-mindedly to the pursuit of Christian truth through the use of reason. The more he studied the Bible, the more he began to doubt the usual notion of the existence of heaven and hell. Origen believed that everyone, not just Christians, not just “good” people, would find redemption. It was the “ultimate reconciliation of all souls with God,” it was “universal salvation,” it was “universalism.” Origen’s writings were eventually condemned as heretical, but Universalism lived on as a thread in our liberal history.
Another Alexandrian, a century later, was the first to champion the simplicity of God and the humanity of Jesus: Arius. The creed recited in many Christian churches today affirming Trinitarian doctrine and Christology was created to counteract the teachings of Arius!
And then there was Pelagius, the Fourth Century English monk. At a time when Augustine insisted on the total depravity of human nature, Pelagius, bless him, courageously advocated moral free will and spiritual liberty. Pelagius was well-respected at the time, and while Augustine clearly had the upper hand, Pelagius posed a real threat to the Church’s doctrine of innate corruption. There is no doubt that Augustine won the debate. But again, a thread of faith has persisted: we have the ability to choose good over evil. We have Pelagius to thank for that theological position.
A big jump now to the Reformation, where our hero is a Spaniard named Michael Servetus. I have mixed feelings about Servetus. Here we have a nineteen-year-old kid who takes on both the Catholic and Protestant authorities. They believe in the Trinity; and Servetus says, and I quote, “Your Trinity is a product of subtlety and madness. The Gospel knows nothing of it.” He was brilliant and intemperate. He infuriated the Inquisitors as well as Calvin. They gave him chance after chance to moderate his views, but he insulted them repeatedly, until, finally, Calvin had Servetus burned at the stake. Personally, I wish Servetus had seen fit to proceed with a little more caution and save himself. He did clearly prove there is no Trinity taught in the Bible, and that was important for a new theology. But I wonder, had he lived, where his theology would have taken him—and us.
Now to Poland and Transylvania, the cradle of European Unitarianism. Sixteenth Century. Faustus Socinus. Socinus was the trusted theologian in a group of non-Trinitarian liberal congregations in Poland devoted to religious liberty, reason, and tolerance. The movement spread rapidly, attracting many of the most enlightened and gifted minds of that age. But they were persecuted—the “Socinian heresy” was stomped on, and Socinus himself was attacked in the streets of Krakow, his mouth filled with mud and his face smeared. Eventually, broken by the attacks, he died. Meanwhile, over in Transylvania, having adopted the Unitarian views of his court preacher, Ferenc Dávid (Francis David), the Unitarian king John Sigismund declared the first edict of religious toleration in 1568. You’ve heard the phrase, “We need not think alike to love alike”? That was Ferenc Dávid. In Transylvania, liberal congregations survived and continue to survive over 400 years later as Unitarian churches.
England. Eighteenth Century. Religious liberals here knew about Socinianism: they advocated Socinian tolerance of differences in belief, they applied the Socinian test of reason to religious doctrines, and preached the Socinian concept that Jesus was simply a man. Here we come upon Joseph Priestley, discoverer of oxygen, Unitarian minister, and espouser of a number of liberal and unpopular causes, including the French Revolution. Priestley gave intellectual brilliance to the development of Unitarian religion and stimulated a mushrooming of Unitarian institutions. But established church leaders became exasperated, and they inflamed a mob. Priestley’s home, laboratory, library, and Unitarian chapel were attacked and burned. He escaped by the skin of his teeth and, tempted by an invitation from his friend Thomas Jefferson, sailed to the United States in 1794, bringing his Unitarianism with him.
John Murray. The late 1700s. Another Englishman, a Universalist. Murray’s life in England had begun to fall apart. His only child died, and then his wife, followed by his three sisters and his mother. He lost his job and landed in debtor’s prison. When he got out, he resolved to go to America to seek a new life. John Murray did just that, and wound up on a ship that was eventually grounded on a sandbar off the coast of New Jersey. While the ship’s crew waited for a fair wind and a high tide to move them along, Murray went ashore, where he met a farmer—Thomas Potter. It so happens that this Thomas Potter had built a chapel nearby, and was just waiting for a preacher who believed in universal salvation to appear on the scene. Potter became convinced that God had sent John Murray to preach in his chapel. Murray, however, was not at all convinced. Potter said, “The wind will never change, sir, until you preach for us.” And Murray’s ship remained stuck until Sunday, when Murray began his preaching career, bringing Universalism to the colonies.
It was a religion that praised God and preached a loving theology of inclusivity in heaven and also here on earth. Therefore, Universalists devoted themselves to prison reform, building schools, temperance, pacifism, and women’s rights (ordaining Olympia Brown to the Universalist ministry in 1863).We now have Unitarianism and Universalism on the American continent. It is the early Nineteenth Century, and Calvinist orthodoxy, straight from the Puritans, is the status quo. Universalists, with their universal salvation, offered relief from the Calvinist notion of damnation. Hosea Ballou became the Universalist’s greatest leader through his public speaking and publications, spreading the seeds that Murray had sown.
Unitarian-oriented clergy began more and more to sit up and take notice of Calvinistic pessimism about human nature. The prevailing theology in the culture forced religious liberals to come to grips with their own theologies of human free will, dignity, and rationality. William Ellery Channing confirmed the presence of the new theological movement, and rallied the liberals together as a theological group. By the third decade of the Nineteenth Century, many of the Puritan Congregational churches began to call themselves Unitarian.
Every generation of American Unitarians has questioned the religion they inherited. Almost as soon as American Unitarianism was established, a young generation of Transcendentalists—Ralph Waldo Emerson and Theodore Parker among them—changed the liberal religious orientation from one of empiricism and historicism to a religion of direct intuition. Unitarianism drifted away from belief in Biblical revelation and the sole inspiration of Jesus.
The Universalists did retain the Christian basis of their faith more completely. But they, too, changed over the years, and by the early decades of the Twentieth Century, Universalism emphasized the notion that evil is the result of “unjust social and economic conditions.” Universalism, according to reformer Clarence Skinner, was economic and social as well as spiritual.
The generations continued, and our religion continued to evolve. The rise of the Humanist movement among the Unitarians was an attempt to reformulate liberal theology on non-theistic grounds. Universalists moved from their longstanding emphasis on universal salvation to an understanding of Universalism as universal religion—“boundless in scope, as broad as humanity, as infinite as the universe.”
By mid-century, the leadership of both Unitarianism and Universalism recognized the advantages of combining efforts through consolidation. The proposed merger was controversial for both Unitarians and Universalists, each quite naturally fearing a loss of tradition and identity. But finally, in 1961, the plan was overwhelmingly ratified by the individual congregations and then by the American Unitarian Association Annual Meeting and the Universalist General Assembly.
Generation after generation, Unitarian Universalists continue to examine the religion, reshape it, persist in it, and find joy in it. Frederick May Eliot, president of the American Unitarian Association from 1937-1958, said, “one of the most interesting aspects of our history is the process by which the radicals of one generation have come to be regarded as ‘100% Unitarians’ by succeeding generations. The truth of the matter is that we are a church in which growth is not only permitted but encouraged—growth in thought, growth in sensitiveness to moral values, growth in courage to put religion to work in the world.”
My colleague Jack Mendelsohn offers us this benediction (adapted):
We have inherited quite a religion.
It is lived. It is not just a set of bromides and pietisms. It is a serious effort to conduct life according to principles and ideals.
It is emotional, heart-swelling. It
is even naive. In spite of uncertainty,
it does not rule out leaps of faith.
It is free, not bound by tradition, inheritance, geography, nor the
passing parade.
It is first-hand, a personal
experience.
It is responsible. It does not try
to escape the consequences of
decision.
It is growing. It never thinks of itself as perfected and final.
It embraces humility, recognizing that faith is not certainty where there is in fact mystery.
It is compassionate. It understands that religions universally wrap their essence in myth. It reaches to grasp and appreciate the truths bound up in the myths of other believers.
It is tough on its possessors, committing them to sacrifice, but it is tender toward those who disagree.
It is social, struggling to realize its own vision at community, national and world levels.
It is radiant, blessing its possessor with courage, serenity and zest.
This is our history, and also our hope.
What parts of our history offer special meaning to you? What needs highlighting that I didn’t even mention? What are your favorite UU history references? Let us know at clf@clfuu.org.
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