We Do Not Stand; We Move.
In retrospect, the merger of the Universalist Church of America and the American Unitarian
Association was inevitable. However, when serious conversations began in the mid
1950's, the outcome was not a foregone conclusion. Major voices among the Unitarians, including A. Powell Davies of All Souls Church in Washington and former minister
of the Unitarian Church in Summit, expressed strong opposition to the proposal, fearing
that the Universalists were too conservative. Major voices among the Universalists expressed the fear that the Unitarians had departed too far from their Christian
roots to be compatible with the Universalist tradition, and besides, being so much
larger and wealthier the Unitarians would swallow up the smaller partner without
leaving a trace. (This fear was countered by others who insisted that the Unitarians would
find that Universalists were simply indigestible. Still others smiled and said,
"You are what you eat.")
When presented with a series of options local churches in both movements indicated
overwhelming support for the merger of the two groups. And so, in 1959, the Unitarians
and the Universalists met separately but concurrently in Syracuse to hammer out a
final program for merger. Almost at once a familiar center of contention emerged, as
the assemblies sought to frame a statement of purpose. The question, once more,
concerned the relationship of the proposed Association to the Christian tradition,
and what, if anything to say about Jesus.
In the end, the two bodies agreed on a statement of purpose in which Jesus was nowhere
mentioned. The statement made reference to the
Judeo-Christian tradition, rather than our
Judeo-Christian tradition. Christianity was classed as one among all the great traditions
of humanity. The vision of a one world community defined the nature of salvation.
The statement clearly reflected the triumph of Theodore Parker, the Ethical Religion vision of the Western Conference, the Universalist struggle for a new, emergent,
universalized religion. It was on the basis of this affirmation and identity that
the two bodies, by overwhelming vote of the local congregations, created the Unitarian
Universalist Association in 1961.
This is not to suggest that all things went smoothly from that moment. Barely had
the Association drawn breath before it found itself caught up in the turbulence of
a larger society fractured and fragmented over issues of civil rights and racism,
war and peace, generational conflict, women's rights and a host of other struggles. In the
midst of these times, the Association found itself challenged within and without.
Internally, Unitarian Universalists of African American ancestry and their supporters
challenged what they considered to be evidences of deep-rooted, peristent racism within
the largely white, suburban, middle-class movement--a challenge which would result
in a walkout of delegates from the General Assembly in 1969. Similarly, the Association's stance in opposition to the Vietnam War, and particularly its decision to publish
the Beacon Press edition of the Pentagon Papers resulted in controversy among Unitarian
Universalists and a confrontation with the Federal Government.
As if this were not enough, the Association soon found itself facing a severe financial
crisis resulting in reductions of staff at the Boston headquarters and at the destrict
level. The activities of the various departments of the UUA were cut back. The national periodical was transformed from a magazine format into a newsprint publication.
There was even a time when it appeared the UUA might have to sell Beacon Press,
though some of us were convinced that it would be better to sell the UUA and keep
the press.
Despite the optimism about growth which had constituted the common wisdom in the years
immediately following merger, the first dozen or so years witnessed a decline in
the adult membership of the Association and in the enrollment of children in religious
education programs. While this pattern was consistent with the experience of many
main-line churches during those years, it was especially alarming to an institution
which had gambled on growth and now had only very slender reserves on which to fall
back.
Given all this turmoil, it is not surprising that for two decades the Association
had neither the time or energy to return to the pre-merger Universalist agenda.
In 1981, prompted by the discomfort of many over the sexist language in the original
statement of purpose and at the urging of the the Unitarian Universalist Women's Federation,
the Association entered into a movement-wide discussion of the nature of our religious
community and the central assumptions around which we are gathered. The result was an amendment to the Constitution replacing the 1961 formulation with the Seven principles
which have become the frame-work for our thinking and acting in subsequent years.
That amendment read:
We, the member congregations of the Unitarian Universalist Association, covenant to
affirm and promote
The inherent worth and dignity of every person;
Justice, equity and compassion in human relations;
Acceptance of one another and encouragement to spiritual growth in our congregations;
A free and responsible search for truth and meaning;
The right of conscience and the use of the democratic process within our congregations
and in society at large;
The goal of world community with peace, liberty and justice for all;
Respect for the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part.
The living tradition which we share draws from many sources:
Direct experience of that transcending mystery and wonder, affirmed in all cultures,
which moves us to renewal of the spirit and an openness to the forces which create
and uphold life;
Words and deeds of prophetic women and men which challenge us to confront powers and
structures of evil with justice, compassion and the transforming power of love;
Wisdom from the world's religions which inspires us in our ethical and spiritual life;
Jewish and Christian teachings which call us to respond to God's love by loving our
neighbors as ourselves;
Humanist teachings which counsel us to heed the guidance of reason and the results
of science and warn us against idolatries of the mind and spirit.
Grateful for the religious pluralism which enriches and ennobles our faith, we are
inspired to deepen our understanding and expand our vision. As free congregations
we enter into this covenant, promising to one another our mutual trust and support
For more than a decade, this statement seemed to define us adequately, affirming the
pluralism of our movement and the many sources which nourish that pluralism as well
as the central values which bind us together as a movement. Recently, however, there
is a growing sense that hidden within this statement are unresolved issues and challenges
which require that we reconsider questions of identity and purpose, that we redefine
who we are as we move toward the Twenty-first Century.
At the same time, we have found ourselves in a period of growth and revitalization--always
in our history a challenge to the status quo. Many of the people contributing to
that growth are coming to us not so much in reaction to previous religious experience, but out of a sense of the emptiness of secular life, bringing with them assumptions
about "religion in general" which dominate the secular culture. Their issues are
very different, and they are open in different ways. In the same period, the number
of women who have entered our ministry and assumed positions of leadership has increased
substantially--a factor which some believe is changing our sense of who we are and
what is central to our institutional life.
As a consequence, in recent years, we have seen the emergence within the Unitarian
Universalist Association of women and men who identify themselves with a resurgence
of Pagan teachings and traditions. People who have little experience with Christianity,
or Judaism, or Buddhism, but who are hungry for a vaguely defined spirituality, are
attempting to tap into those traditions in eclectic and sometimes uncritical ways.
There is a movement to embrace earth-centered religious traditions as a new spiritual
response to life and the challenges we confront--a thrust which forced an amendment
to the 1981 statement of Principles and Purposes affirming "earth-centered traditions"
as an additional source upon which we draw for spiritual strength. At the same time,
there is a growing sense of unease about the fact that despite our universalist aspirations,
we have remained a middle-class, Eurocentric movement. We find ourselves challenged
by the suggestion that our customary practices and behaviors and styles may serve to block the fulfillment of important goals we profess.
As might be expected, there is a great deal of experimentation going on in our movement
in response to these challenges. We are attempting to reinvent ourselves in response
to a new era. New elements are being introduced into worship services and old ones are being revived. Symbols--especially the flaming chalice--have assumed a new
importance. We are experimenting with new ways of organizing local congregations
so that all members of the church own the ministry of the church. The Commission
on Appraisal is urging us to rethink the nature of congregational polity as a form of governance.
The UUA's extension work has focused, with only very modest success, on creating
"intentionally diverse congregations." There is an initiative designed to identify
the more subtle forms of racism within our movement, and to make us more open to other
than the European traditions which dominated our thinking and worship in the past.
And in many local congregations there are efforts to generate more involvement and
greater responsiveness in worship and programming. Everything from healing services
to gospel choirs, revivals and solstice services to goddess worship are finding
expression among us.
This thrust toward greater diversity has not been without problems. Recent years
have seen a growing sense of unease which, in some areas, has generated conflict
within our congregtions. Some of this discomfort and unease may be generational.
People who entered the movement several decades ago as refugees from religious experiences they
found harmful and destructive have different needs and expectations than those now
entering the movement, fleeing a pervasive and corrosive secularism. The new members
often bring an undefined yearning for a spiritual dimension in their lives. As churches
and ministers seek to respond to that demand, long-time members often feel that they
are being dragged back into the constricting confines of the irrational religion
from which they had escaped, that their churches are being taken away from them, that
their religious services have become cluttered and confusing, in contrast to the
purer, simpler forms of an earlier time.
Often presented as a struggle between humanists and theists, this conflict is deeper
and often more complex than such a dichotomy would suggest. It becomes a struggle
for possession of the church and the movement, potentially resulting in division
and schism. We have talked with a number of retired ministers and listened as they have
described the pain they feel at the loss of their religious home--of how, after decades
of service, they now have no church in which they feel welcome, or how they drive
forty or fifty miles to find a church in which they can worship. Almost every time we
visit congregations as guest preachers, someone tells us of the disillusionment he
or she feels at the changes which have occurred within the congregation--little things
like lighting candles or inclusion of Joys and Concerns in the service, or the use of
prayers or strange hymns--little things which symbolize deeper losses. And we have
sat in meetings of ministers and listened as colleagues have reported the pain and
anger they feel toward "old humanists" who make life difficult for them as they attempt
to introduce elements into the life of the congregation that will meet the needs
of newer, younger members. And we have participated in denominational conferences
where speakers shrug all of this off and advise ministers that the future belongs to those who
can respond to the newcomers among us and the expectations they bring. There is
a great deal of pain and conflict bubbling in our churches these days--much of it
below the surface, some of it erupting into full view.
If we would understand what is happening to us as we end this century, it is important
for us to understand something of the history we have been exploring in this series
of sermons. Every retelling of history has a built-in bias. By now you have probably noticed that our bias leads us to support those who, in the struggle between institutional
stability and radical revisioning, have been prepared to risk everything-- their
careers, the good opinion of colleagues, their relation to the larger institution, even their lives, for larger, richer vision. We believe that our history has a
clear lesson to teach and a directive for us to follow. Central to our movement
has been an inchoate sense that religion is more about the journey than it is about
the destination--what is important is the quest; that answers to important questions are temporary
at best and always lead to new formulations of the questions. Francis David is the
iconic symbol of that abiding conviction. More than this, central to our movement has been an abiding affirmation of the worth of the individual and of the role of
the church as supporting the individual's search; for only individuals have the power
to dream the dreams which reshape institutions.
Because of these two axioms of our faith, from the beginning our journey has been
away from the cultural consensus about religion. In every crisis in our history
the struggle has been between those who thought safety was to be found by remaining
within the traditional definitions and those who sought to enlarge those definitions by challenging
and defying those traditions. Francis David, Emerson and Parker, Jenkin Lloyd Jones
and the Ethical Basis Men, the Humiliati and Kenneth Patton are representative of those who, in response to the directive in our history, have risked greatly so that
we might redefine ourselves in ways which would met the challenge of the moment without
denying what is central in our history. Frances David risked his very life; Theodore Parker risked the censure of his colleagues and co-religionists; Jenkin Lloyd
Jones gambled everything for a new understanding of religion; Kenneth Patton gave
himself to a new, global vision of a religion for one world. It is precisely that
kind of redefinition which underlies all the churning about which is going on among us at the
moment. Underlying the confusion and incipient conflict is the ancient question,
what shall be our stance in the new world into which we are moving.
Decades ago L. B. Fisher was asked where Universalism stood on a disputed theological
issue. Fisher stoutly proclaimed, "We do not stand; we move!" Henry Nelson Wieman,
perhaps the greatest Unitarian Universalist theologian of this century, made very
much the same point when he warned us that for human beings, "there is no prescribed
form or limited bounds within which (we) can live with contentment." Both of them
insisted that motion is central to our nature. However, we cannot believe that either
of them was speaking of random motion. They believed that there is a direction to our
motion and that direction is responsive to an imperative imbedded in our history.
And Henry Weiman suggested what that imperative might be. He defined the directive
in history as "the progressive creation of qualitative meaning beyond any known limit."
How this will come out, who will be the Emerson or the Parker, the Jones or the Patton
for this moment in our history is not yet clear. There are, however, some things
of which we are certain. Our path does not lie backward toward the Jewish/Christian
tradition out of which we emerged. Nor can we stay here content with the rationalist
formulations of the past fifty years. What we are called to do is to take the next
step toward the vision of an emergent Unitarian Universalism and set about to imagine
a religion which is adequate to one world--not a world-wide religion, but a faith which
sees the entire world as its arena of concern. This requires that we develop a critical
response to the major religious traditions--lest in our eagerness to embrace what seems to be right and good and common among them we also embrace the lethal viruses,
the demonic elements which so often have brought destruction and disaster to the
human race.
It is important for us to understand that we are neither Christian nor Jewish, neither
Humanist nor Pagan, neither Buddhist nor Taoist nor Moslem, though we do include
and embrace people for whom these are important identifiers. We are something else,
something implied in the the Universalists' emergent universalism, in Kenneth Patton's
dream of "A Religion for One World," something which is rooted in a deeply reverent,
profoundly mystical sense of being an integral part of a sacred and holy reality
which is the interdependent web of being. We are called to develop the language, the symbols,
the rituals which will give power to our words as we preach the gospel of a world
in which each is part of all, in which every one is sacred, and every place is holy
ground, in which all are children of the same great love, all embarked on the same
journey, all destined for the same end.
The sermon in a Unitarian Universalist setting is never the last word
on any subject, but rather an invitation to further dialog.
You may want to read other visitors'
comments on Beverly & David Bumbaugh's "We Do Not Stand; We Move.">
.
If you wish to add your own comments on this sermon, please
enter your name, e-mail address, city, state or province, country, and
of course your comments into the following form:
Send questions or comments about this form to
Bill Griffeth
Return to home page