Carpathian Orchids and Dandelions

Rev. Dr. Judith A. Walker-Riggs
The Unitarian Church in Summit
May 16, 1999

Would you raise your hands, please, those of you who know a lot about Andrew Wiszowaty. Something about Andrew Wiszowaty? Those who never heard of Andrew Wiszowaty until I asked these questions?

I'm with you all! I know something about Andrew Wiszowaty now, but time was I didn't. I'm a born-and-bred Unitarian, but I'd never heard of Andrew Wiszowaty 'til one hot summer day on a porch in New Hampshire as I struggled with some required reading for a UU history course.

Names like Przypkowski, Niemojewski, Wiszowaty swam in the sweat from my brow. Tiny print, 10-clause sentences of six-syllable words, yet still a story came through. A story of people, and struggle, and witness. A story of us, UUs, our foremothers and fathers, sisters and brothers.

Yet in all my years of being a UU, I'd never met those names. It's likely no one ever will again, for these books are no longer required reading for UU ministers. And what a loss that we so ignore these people.

Who was Andrew Wiszowaty? Well, let's go back across history 'til we find him. History? Strong, independent UUs sometimes find it hard to believe we have not just sprung up suddenly on the face of the Earth, sui generis, and actually do have a history.

There is an orchid in the Carpathian Mountains of Eastern Europe that lives high up in pine trees and nourishes itself on thin air. It has to. The Carpathian orchid has no roots in earth.

But we UUs are not Carpathian orchids. Our story is in reality a flower with enormous roots. We are less like Carpathian orchids and more like dandelions, erupting weedily, with long, powerful roots reaching far down into the soil of history. So let's start here, New Jersey, 1999, and go across water and time to England, 1662.

By 1662, there'd been printing for over a hundred years. People were finally reading the Bible for themselves. And they noticed a lot of stuff the church taught wasn't really in there: purgatory, indulgences, wine turning into blood at Communion. They began to talk with each other about what they'd discovered. Even average folk, underlings, women.

You'd never know that from reading most history books. The educated men who wrote those books collected what seemed important to them. Which didn't include stories of the poor, or women.

Lawyers, however, keep everything, so these stories remain in court records to this day. And what stories they were!

Every Mother's Day, I think of Elizabeth Thomas, in 1567, widowed mother of three:

Judge: Do you believe bread becomes the flesh of God at Communion?
Elizabeth: I don't know about that, Your Honor, but if you put it back in the box, in three weeks it will be moldy.
Judge: If you do not have this faith, you are damned.
Elizabeth: Can you give me this faith?
Judge: No, only God can do that.
Elizabeth: Well, he hasn't.

After several months of this, Elizabeth Thomas was released only because her neighbors complained her children were too much trouble to care for.

Elizabeth's childless neighbor, Anne Askew, was not so lucky. She was torn on the rack and then burned at the stake.

But burn whom they might, the authorities couldn't stop this new Protestant faith spreading through England.

It led to civil war and the king's beheading -- or, as my very British professor put it, "a bit of an upheaval." When a king was reinstated, it looked as if things were settling down.

But the hierarchy of the Established Church wanted revenge. In 1662 it won the Act of Uniformity. It was a frank attempt to knock all heretics out of the ring forever.

Anyone here ever been a religious professional? Raise your hands, please, and keep them up as we continue this exercise. Anyone ever been a teacher in state or private schools, colleges, day-care centers, training centers, etc.? Anyone ever been employed in any way by government -- state, city, town, federal, county -- or worked for any private corporation with government contracts?

By the terms of the English Act of Uniformity in 1662, every one of you who just now raised your hand -- if not you, then surely your neighbor -- every one with a raised hand would have had to:
(1) Affirm every word of the 39 Articles of Faith of the Established Church ... many of which Puritans had spent their lives denying.
(2) Swear it was unlawful to take up arms against the king or any official of the king's government (which is why our Constitution's writers later wrote in a "right to bear arms").
(3) Promise publicly -- catch the wording -- "never again to endeavor any change or alteration either in church or in state." NO change allowed.

All hand-raisers would have been required to affirm these three points in public every three months, or lose our jobs. Most conformed -- but not all. One-fifth of all English pastors, over 2,700 clergy, refused to conform.

Three hundred years later, during the McCarthy era, California UUs led the fight against state loyalty oaths. They never knew they acted in UU tradition.

In England in 1662, 2,700 outcast preachers, 8,000 family members and 60,000 parishioners refused the oath. Thousands died of starvation. Memories of their dire situations haunted the writers of our own Constitution as they prohibited laws favoring any one religion.

High church officials still thought these rotten nonconformists were doing too well. In 1664 they passed the Conventicle Act, forbidding any meeting of four or more people for any religious purpose except within the physical walls of the Established Church. They couldn't do more than that because of that inconvenient bit in the Bible, "Where two or three are gathered together in my name", but they could, and did, ban four or more. So the writers of our Constitution insisted on freedom of assembly.

And still the underground church continued, despite penalties of up to seven years in prison and stiff fines, of which the informer received half, as an "incentive."

In 1665, the church tried again with the Five-Mile Act. Those who would not swear a really humiliating oath were forbidden to come within five miles of any city, town or borough represented in Parliament, nor within five miles of any village or hamlet where they had ever previously preached. Many had nowhere left but the barren moors! Six months in gaol for the first offense, and half the fine, of course, to the informer.

More died. But some, banned from the towns themselves, used their time on the moors to train those who'd never preached before, and so weren't subject to the ban. Thus the Five-Mile Act inadvertently created hundreds of new heretic ministers!

In 1672, the reinstated king finally grew merciful and granted licensing for houses of worship outside the Established Church. Over 1,500 heretic congregations became licensed. The first church I ever served was in Warrington, England, and hanging in a frame over my desk was the very document, signed in 1672 by the king, that licensed that meetinghouse to exist.

You may wonder at this point what all this has to do with a Pole named Andrew Wiszowaty. At least you now know he's a Pole!

Well, some of our roots are in 1662 in England, but they're not the only important roots in our history. Another, much less remembered, but no less important root is in Poland. When our New England ancestors held town meetings in their churches, they were practicing a form of government initiated, preached and spread by our Unitarian forebears in Poland.

Oh, the Anglo-Saxonization of history! You may think Martin Luther began the Reformation. Bet you didn't know there were over 100 Protestant churches in Poland before Luther ever tacked his theses on the door! And many of those churches were Unitarian.

In 1550, a hundred years before the struggles of the British, 160 of these Polish churches had joined an organization much like our UUA. Even their form of service sounds familiar: hymns, readings, anthems, sermons -- though they had an extra, a quiz by the minister of the congregation at the end of the service. Hmmm.

Why Poland? At the time, it was the fourth principal state of Europe, population 20 million, and the king was even elected by landholders. Heretics fleeing persecution all over the rest of Europe found freedom in Poland.

But our Polish forebears became heretical in more than just theology. They became heretical in lifestyle. The Roman Catholic Church taught faith is faith -- you can hold it anywhere, under any form of government. Here is the creed. Doesn't matter if you live in a monarchy, dictatorship, feudalism, you can still say the creed.

Our forebears believed if your faith means anything, you have to live it: democratic faith, democratic society. They founded a city, Rakov, welcoming those of all faiths. Its businesses, colleges, libraries prospered.

The bigger the noble, the more he had to lose if this revolution spread. Catholics and Calvinists joined forces to fight the heretics. Later on the Catholics got rid of the Calvinists, too. But for now, confrontations were arranged, student gangs organized. Unitarian churches all over Poland were attacked, even razed. Unitarian leaders had their mouths stuffed with mud, or were thrown into rivers to drown.

Many outsiders were attacking Poland, too. When the Swedes invaded, many rejoiced. The Swedes seemed to offer protection and stability. Our Unitarian forebears welcomed the Swedes, hoping for peace.

Alas for our ancestors, and for those of us predisposed to like blond, clean-cut Nordic types, these particular Swedes, though clad in sheep's clothing, were wolves with a vengeance. They raped, pillaged, murdered, burned. It was worse than ever.

In 1656, the angry, injured Poles fought back. On his knees the Polish king swore an oath to remove all those Swede-loving, heretical and traitorous Unitarians from Poland if he won the war. He won. (Some days, I don't know what She's up to!)

The king made good on his promise and issued an edict. By July 10, 1660, all Unitarians would be required to hand over all personal belongings, and either recant or get out of Poland.

Imagine the situation! With heretics being hunted all over Europe, where could they go? But how to live with yourself if you stayed? And here's where Andrew Wiszowaty comes in. Well, he's been there all the time, but this is where we'll notice him.

Andrew Wiszowaty was educated and traveled, grandson of one of Poland's leading Unitarian families, and a Unitarian minister. He rebuilt churches after gangs leveled them, and rebuilt them again after destruction by invaders. He built one church in his own home after the Jesuits seized the other one he'd just finished building. He would not give up.

He tried to persuade the king to change his mind about the edict. One Catholic remarked: "If all the devils came out of hell they could not defend their religion more strongly than this one man." But the king was determined.

They promised Wiszowaty a big estate and a large annuity if he'd just stop. He wouldn't. Sometimes he hid over the border, coming back at night to organize the coming exile.

Put yourself in the place of those ancient Unitarians. Staying or going, they had to sell everything -- and for pathetic prices. Their neighbors knew they couldn't hang around for a better offer.

Imagine the congregational meetings! Recant or not? Stay or go? Families split: Husbands recanted, wives would not. So many foremothers resisted that the edict was revised specifically to apply to women, an unheard-of acknowledgment of female power in those days. If you were caught living with a Unitarian -- husband, wife or even servant -- all goods were confiscated, with half the proceeds to go to the informer. (I've heard that song before.)

Some elected to recant and remain as serfs on some noble estate. Many chose exile. Imagine that exile. It's not hard to imagine today -- with their cousins on the road in Kosovo.

One group of 300 Unitarians set out for Kolosvar in Transylvania (now Cluj in Romania). They'd heard other Unitarians there could help. They walked. Possessing nothing, everything left behind. Three hundred Unitarians, men, women and children. Walking 500 miles -- from here to Raleigh, N.C.

Just over the border, Hungarian mercenaries, hired by the Poles, attacked them to strip them of any money they'd managed to smuggle out. Many Unitarians were killed in that attack. The others gathered their strength and moved on.

Dysentery. Typhoid. More dead buried. When those who survived finally reached Kolosvar, so did the plague. Thirty Poles lived to found a Polish Unitarian church in Kolosvar -- 30 out of 300.

The Unitarian Church in Poland died. Secret house meetings didn't survive a generation. Still, 10 years ago, a UU friend visiting Poland was shown an old stone building with neatly trimmed bushes. Those showing him were Catholics, but they trimmed the bushes because they knew it had been a Unitarian church, and they knew that stood for freedom.

Other Polish Unitarian exiles in Germany and Holland went on talking and writing, and their persistent ideas spread through Europe like yeast in the bread of society. Thomas Jefferson and George Washington both had their books in their libraries.

What a shame we've forgotten this story. Every year as spring comes around again, my Jewish friends celebrate Passover: the story, historians tell us, of maybe 700 Jews escaping Egypt. That story is remembered and retold every year. And here we sit on top of these exiles of our own, and we have forgotten all about them.

Yet these people are a vital part of our root system. The freedom to think for ourselves in religion was not easily come by. We inherit it at great cost.

There was courage in the defiant women. There was courage in Andrew Wiszowaty. There was courage in those entering exile.

And there was courage in those who stayed behind -- don't forget them. Imagine the pain and courage even in recanting, in giving up your beliefs as well as your belongings. Oh, there was courage there, too.

Their dress wasn't our dress. Their ideas weren't our ideas. But in living the best they could in their own times, they left us gifts of great worth.

Today, when the church board is split, or different ideas are butting heads, or you need a new building, and you feel like, "I don't need this," remember: Without you, this ancient witness to freedom, reason and tolerance in religion will not exist in your community.

And it is important it continue to exist. Great ideas are not Carpathian orchids. They do not survive in thin air. Great ideas and truths must be housed in people's heads and protected in their hearts. They must be spoken and lived and witnessed.

I hope every time you see a dandelion -- or, worse, try to dig one up -- you will remember your long, incredible, regenerating roots, and take heart again as you go about continuing to create the history of this congregation and its witness in this community in these times.

The sermon in a Unitarian Universalist setting is never the last word on any subject, but rather an invitation to further dialog.

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