COSMIC UNIVERSALISM

A sermon

delivered 18 Jan 2009

at

The Unitarian Universalist Church of Bay County

Panama City, FL

READING

From “Universalism: Beyond Christianity”

a sermon delivered at the Universalist General Assembly in (1949)

by Brainerd F. Gibbson, minister of the Universalist church in Wausau, Wisconsin.[1]

“Universalists today [1949] consider all religion, including Christianity, expressions of human spiritual aspirations, not God-founded institutions;

Universalists today [1949] consider] the Bible a marvelous work of man, not the miraculous handiwork of God;

Universalists today [1949] consider] Jesus a Spiritual Leader not a Divine Savior;

Universalists today [1949] consider] man’s fate in human hands, not superhuman clutches;

Universalists today [1949]  consider] faith the projection of known facts into the unknown, not blind creedal acceptance;

[Universalists today [1949] consider] the supernatural merely the natural beyond man’s present understanding, not a violation of nature’s laws.

…

However much Universalists may revere Jesus as a man and strive to follow in his footsteps, that alone does not make Universalists Christian.  At most, Universalists are nominal Christians, and that solely by virtue of their own definition – a definition not acceptable to the great body of Christianity.”

…

Rev. Braynard F. Gibson  (Later President and General Superintendent of The Universalist Church in America) in  The Larger Faith: Universalism in America:  A Documentary History of a Liberal Faith by Ernest Cascara.   Third revised edition. Boston, Skinner House Books ©1971, 1997

SERMON

Our Home Universalist Unitarian Church – near  Ellisville, Mississippi – is one of the few members of the Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations that puts Universalist first.  Most of our  congregations label themselves  Unitarian – Universalist.  In fact most members of our congregations drop the “Universalist” when referring to their congregation.   When they invited me to speak there, I made the modest proposal that they and all our congregations drop the word “Unitarian” and use only the word “Universalist”   Why?  Because the word universalist – small “u” brings to mind the core characteristic of “our way of being religious”

If  you were to walk down the main street in any American city and ask folks  randomly,   “What do you know about Unitarianism?”  I suspect 70% would answer “nothing.”   If you were to ask “What do you know about Universalism?” the percentage would be even higher.

The illusion that somehow UU congregations can capitalize on  the fact that many of our Presidents were willing to call themselves Unitarians is just that – an illusion.

THE WORD UNITARIAN MEANS NOTHING TO MOST AMERICANS.  However, if you Goggle universalism and exclude references to  Unitarianism, Unitarian, Religion, Bible, Biblical  you’ll still get  514,000 hits and you will find that “universalism” is often used as an adjective to mean “all embracing.”  I like embracing![2]

To me the essence of Universalism is found in a poem by Edwin Markham,  engraved on the front of the First Universalist Church of Denver, which I was privileged to serve back in the 70’s.

Most of you know it:

“He drew a circle to keep me out,

Heretic, Rebel, a THING to flout.

But love and I had the wit to win.

We drew a circle that took him in.”

Historically the word ‘Universalism,’ capitalized,  referred to the heretical Christian doctrine that all human souls would eventually get to heaven.  That kind of Universalism is not dead.  It is making inroads into many traditional churches.   Even Billy Graham has come around to the Universalist Christian position according to some Orthodox commentators.   They call it  “The Wider Mercy Doctrine.”  A short quote:

The Wider Mercy Doctrine is not particularly new, having been a part of the peripheral, heretical teachings of the Christian church almost since its inception. What makes its appearance unique, today, is the fact that it appears to be accepted and given doctrinal status by certain members of the historically orthodox faith.

“The “Wider Mercy Doctrine” is a belief that salvation can be obtained even when a person has not heard the gospel and does not know Jesus Christ. It is a belief that, somehow, God grants status to persons who are sincere in their religious beliefs, even if those beliefs are false. Therefore, a sincere Buddhist or Shintoist or any other religious adherent can obtain salvation, simply because they are sincere in their belief and desire to approach God. This doctrine, in a slightly revised form, has been the main creed of Universalist belief for centuries. Universalism teaches that all religions are the same and that all beliefs are ultimately pointed toward the one true Deity. It does not matter which religion is accepted or practiced, they are simply different roads that ultimately lead to the same destination.”

I wish I could quote more. For an introduction to the debate go to:

http://www.ondoctrine.com/10widerm.htm

The Rev. Rick Warren, considered my many Billy Graham’s successor, the man who will be delivering the invocation at President Obama’s inauguration is also suspected of adhering to this Wider Mercy Doctrine.

And The most reverend Katherine Jeffers Schori, Presiding Bishop of the  Episcopal Church of the United States recently said,

“ There is room in this church for all who wish to be members of  it.”

Bishop Schori, Billy Graham and the Rev. Rick Warren seem to have become Universalist Christians!

Have you heard the quote from Thomas Starr King who held credentials within both denominations? King supposedly said, “The Universalists believe God is too good to damn them to hell.  The Unitarians believe they are too good to be so damned.”

During most of the lifespan of the Universalist Church of America most Universalists did believe in a life after death.   They believed that one would suffer consequences for sins committed in this life but only so long as was necessary to learn the lessons God was trying to teach.  This was called “Restorationism”  and it was different not only from Orthodoxy – you go either to heaven or to hell – but also different from “Ultra Universalists”  who said that upon death all souls were instantly united with God.

Today, when relatively few Unitarian Universalists believe in an any kind of personal afterlife the arguments may seem pointless but 200 years ago these matters were  passionately debated.

It’s an irony of history that neither of the entities that were consolidated  in 1962 required  creedal tests for membership – it’s ironic because both “unitarianism”  and “universalism”  were ancient Heresies.  By the time the American Unitarian Association (AUA) and the Universalist Church of America (UCA)  merged the whole universe of discourse to which their names referred was considered irrelevant.  The big issue in 1962 at the time of Merger – was between theists and non theists.  In both the Unitarian and Universalist communions non-theist ministers  had long been  tolerated and  by 1946 were on the way to becoming a majority of their respective ministerial associations.   They called themselves Humanists.

When I entered the UU ministry in 1963 I shared the then prevalent view among the younger Unitarian ministers that the  Universalists were reactionary, mostly Christians, and hardly up to the intellectual standards set by the great Unitarian ministers of the past.  We newly minted ministers believed that the   cutting edge of UUism was Kenneth Patton’s work in the Charles Street Meeting House Boston.  I had heard that it was in an “abandoned” Universalist Church.  What I didn’t know was that the whole project was started not  by Kenneth Patton but by the Universalist Superintendent for Massachusetts and Connecticut, Clinton Lee Scott.  Scott urged the Universalists of Massachusetts & Connecticut hire the young  minister of the Madison Wisconsin Unitarian Society , Kenneth Patton.[3]

Born in 1887 Scott  retired at the age of 80  because, it is reported,   he couldn’t hear well enough to  conduct sermon discussions.  Clinton Lee Scott is another of my heroes.  He was one of many Universalist Ministers who came from very humble circumstances and helped move Universalism from being a Protestant sect to being what Kenneth Patton called “A Religion for One World.” Have any of you read it?   It’s probably in your church library.  [4]

Kenneth Patton, Unitarian,  was a major force in the evolution of “our way of being religious” sometimes called UUism, but Clinton Lee Scott, Universalist, was decades ahead of him.

In  1964  when Hymns for the Celebration of Life was published by the UUA, the  Humanists constituted  a majority of the younger Unitarian and Universalist clergy.  Kenneth Patton’s hymn “Man Is the Earth, Upright and Proud“ (later degendered to “We Are the Earth, Upright and Proud)  – was set to the Luther’s tune for  “A Mighty Fortress is our God,”   It was sung in the 1960’s and 1970’  as often as “Spirit of Life” is today.    But by  the time the current Hymnal, Singing the Living Tradition was published in  1994  the tide had begun to turn. “God Language” was back in favor – even gods and goddesses.  Humanists and Theists of my generation were horrified that polytheists had been admitted to our ranks.  Now (in 2010)  an even newer hymnal is being assembled and the “Principles and Purposes” are up for revision.  Does it seem to you that we keep reinventing our selves?  Well, we do!

We UU’s keep moving on.  This is nothing new.   It should be clear to anyone who has been a UU for more than a few months that when some one asks a UU what we stand for, the proper response is,  “We don’t stand; we move!”   That “elevator speech” was coined way back in 1921 by Universalist Minister Lewis B. Fisher, dean of the Ryder Divinity School in Chicago who wrote,

“Universalists are often asked to tell where they stand.

The only true answer to give to this question is that we do not stand at all, we move”

Charles A. Howe, from whose book The Larger Faith, this quote is taken, adds

“The question was, ‘in what direction?”

That’s still the question:  In what direction are we moving?  In what direction  should we be moving?  I believe we should continue moving in the direction outlined in The Humanist Manifesto of 1933.   I didn’t get to sign it – I was only 2 when it was promulgated among Unitarian and Universalist clergy.  Clinton Lee Scott, mentioned earlier,  a Universalist minister did sign it and many years later in 1949 he wrote:

“’God’s laws’ are the ways of living found to be good for us. Truths are derived from the experiences of men and women living,

not apart from the world, but within it  … A religious person is one who fulfills his highest function as a human being in his relations with other persons.”

Clinton Lee Scott wasn’t afraid to use “God language” nor am I when it is understood that the referent is not “an old man in the sky.” The word ‘God’ is better seen as a word human beings have used for the mysterious and invisible source of what is visible to human beings;” God is a word for the “uncanny,” the mysterious.   It is in this sense that an increasing number of liberal congregations – many not carrying our brand – use the word “God.”  They are few down south but they are numerous  up north and out west. Most members of  “main line” churches outside the South are in fact now universalist and/or unitarian Christians  though they still recite the old Trinitarian and Calvinist creeds.

Please understand, when people ask me what my religion is, I answer “Humanist.”   When they ask me what Church I belong to I say, “Unitarian Universalist.”    When people ask me, “Do you believe in God?”  I reply, “Depends what you mean by God.

What do you mean when you say the word  ‘God?’

I think  mankind today  needs a “Cosmic” Universalism,  one that goes beyond the human sphere and includes at least planet earth and perhaps Universe – or Universes.   The best expression of that, which I’ve seen,  is the Eco-Theism of Michael Dowd as found in his book “Thank God for Evolution.”[5].

There  are many,  not only in Christianity but in other religious traditions as well, who see the teachings of traditional religion not destroyed but supplemented by the findings of modern science.  But too many contemporary books, like “Letter to a Christian Nation”[6] seem a rehash of  the arguments that prevailed 150 years ago.  We need to move on!

If your standard of truth is a book:  be it the bible  or the Koran or some other book  – then there’s no resolution.  But if you believe that the search for ever more consistent  explanations and ever better predictive formulations is the best human minds can do then there is plenty of room for civil discussion.

For myself there is no way to derive ethics from cosmology.  I call myself a Humanist because to me there is nothing more important than being humane;  refusing always to treat persons as things; trying always to be kinder and more effectively compassionate where you live.  Loving your neighbor – meeting the needs of the person left suffering in your path  – be he of your tribe or not.

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Wikipedia in distinguishing between the various uses of the word universalism says  “universalism refers to any concept or doctrine that applies to all persons and/or all things for all times and in all situations, and may mean different things depending on the field.”

[1] Ernest Classier comments , “His controversial sermon did not stand in the way of his election as president of the Universalist Church of America in 1851 and as [its] General Superintendent in 1853

[3] http://www25.uua.org/uuhs/duub/articles/clintonleescott.html

[4] www.harvardsquarelibrary.org/unitarians/patton.html

[5] www.thankgodforevolution.com/

[6] www.randomhouse.com/kvpa/harris/