Unitarianism - uniting the vertical with the horizontal

INTRODUCTION: The story’s told that a Christian, husband-wife couple, decided one Sunday to visit the Unitarian church near their home. It was their first time ever to visit a liberal religious congregation, so they approached it with some trepidation. But once there, they listened and watched with great interest.

After the service as they were driving home the wife asks, "Well, honey, that was certainly different. What did you think of it?" The husband replies. "Well, you know what? I did enjoy it. The music was upbeat and I found the sermon quite stimulating intellectually. But as I think back, there was one thing that surprised me.”

His wife asks, "What was that, dear?" He says, "The only time I heard the name 'Jesus Christ' was when the sexton accidentally dropped one of the potted plants."

Humorous though that may be, it is very relevant to our topic today. Because, Unitarianism in its historical form, was first and foremost a response to the radical Jewish prophet, Jesus of Nazareth, or as the sexton said, “Jesus Christ,” which is short for “Jesus is the Christ.”

I spent the better part of a day trying to condense the almost 2000 year history of the so-called Unitarian controversy. I finally realized that if I did, I would be giving a history of theology lecture, rather than a sermon. Instead, suffice to say, that the original prefiguring of the debate was how Jews, who believed in only one God, could believe that Jesus was more than human. Or to put it another way, most of the early controversy over who Jesus was not only focused on believing in one God; it also included a contention that Jesus was so wonderful and his message so transforming, that he had to be more than merely human. In the Jewish arena, that meant he could be viewed as possibly the Messiah, but not divine; or later, when Christianity moved into the Gentile world, Jesus could be seen as the Son of God, but not God Himself.

But after the destruction of the Temple in 69 ACE, and Christianity’s transformation from being a sect of Judaism, to a religion all its own, the question of the nature of Jesus became center stage for more than 300 years. Then with the conversion of the Emperor, Constantine, the persecution of Christians ceased, and he called a church-wide Council at Nicea, to decide once and for all, who Jesus was. The result was the Nicene Creed, still used every Sunday in the Mass. It said Jesus was not merely special alongside God, but he was transparently, coequal with God. Or as the hymn some of us used to sing puts it; “God in three persons, blessed Trinity.”

Scroll forward 1,000 years, past the Protestant Reformation to the 18^th and 19^th centuries in Massachusetts, America where the issue again comes to the fore. Unitarians are not only rejecting the Trinity, but also denying the divine nature of Jesus. Rather, he was only a great teacher and prophet, but not God.

This controversy began erupting within Harvard and the Congregational Church, the established church of Massachusetts. When the divinity school at Harvard, which was the first college founded in America, went Unitarian in 1805, it caused such consternation that other theological schools were founded in protest. Local congregations got in the act and began dividing between Unitarians and Trinitarians. Because it affected who had claim to the church buildings and to the holy hardware, they all went to court, in this instance, to the supreme court of Massachusetts, who considered carefully all the issues and ruled 2 to 1 in favor of the Unitarians. It may have helped that two of the three judges were Unitarian. It also resulted in more than 100 Unitarian churches in Boston alone.

But the issue was different than in the early history of the Christian Church. There was no attempt to say Jesus was in someway divine. He may have been a great teacher, and a phenomenal prophet, who articulated an incredibly life-changing message. But he was not divine, and he had to be viewed on a par with other great preachers, prophets and teachers, who also proclaimed messages that were life changing. Moses, Muhammad, and the Buddha are three who immediately come to mind, as well as the host of great saints and sages of India. In other words, it was no longer a controversy within Christianity, but a much larger issue of the competing viability of world religions.

With the development of that phenomenon, came the first incorporation of atheism and humanism into a religious community with a primarily Christian background. Especially outside of New England, Unitarianism was unique in its openness to, and support of, atheism. It had gone from rejecting the notion of Jesus as God, to also denying existence of God. The cliché best embodying that belief was, “There is no God, and Jesus is his son.”

For purposes of clarification, let me make a personal allusion here: I was raised in a very devout Christian family. My father was a Pentecostal Holiness Church minister as was my mother. She was also the church pianist, which meant that before I was even born, as Mother played the piano, I had a “womb with a view.”

Prenatal studies show that music heard while in the womb, can have a psychic affect for the rest of one’s life. I know that to be true, for I still respond emotionally to Gospel music, and love to hear it.

Despite that psychic conditioning, when I rejected the church of my origin, I went to the opposite extreme. Not only did I not believe in God, but I reduced the matter to one where the only god anyone else could believe in was the god I didn’t believe in; namely, an old man with a beard sitting on a throne zapping and blessing as he chose. When I attended my first Unitarian church, where they were strongly anti-Christian and humanist, I thought I had died and gone to heaven. With the enthusiasm of a convert, I pushed the envelope.

One of my favorite illustrations from that period is of the little girl whose cat had kittens – eight to be exact. She wanted to find good homes for them, so she decided she would appeal to religious people. With her mother’s help, she wrote a sign and put it in the front yard that said:

It worked and she was able to place two of her kittens with two Jews who stopped. But she still had six to go. After a few days she changed the sign to say:

It worked too, because she placed two more kittens, which left only four. So she changed the sign to read:

It worked best, because all but one of the kittens was taken. She changed the sign once more; this time it read:

Now, the local Unitarian Universalist minister had been driving by and noticing the evolving drama. When he saw the latest advertisement, and that there was now only one kitten left, a Unitarian, he decided to stop and investigate. He said to the little girl, “I noticed your sign advertising free kittens. I have a question. Your kittens seemed to have changed religion every few days. Now you only have one left and you’re advertising it as a ‘Unitarian kitten.’ After all those other descriptions, how do I know this is really a Unitarian kitten?”

Without batting an eyelash, the little girl said, “Oh, that’s easy. This kitten has its eyes open!”

That presumption was a significant component of my first understanding and ministry in Unitarianism, that we were opposed to other religions…that they had their eyes closed.

I even took the city in which I was a Unitarian Universalist minister all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, forcing them to take the Christian cross out of our city seal, resulting in bomb threats and ridicule which were devastating to our congregation’s growth and development.

Some of the statements I made to the media about that suit were very hurtful to lifelong friends, including family members. I regret that. They were unnecessary, though I do cherish a favorable 6-3 vote, in which Supreme Court Justices Scalia, Thomas and Renhquist voted against me.

I’ve since had spiritual awakening. I want nothing to do with attacking Christianity, or the bible. That’s a barren path that adds not a whit to surviving in the vortex of today’s world. For me, Unitarianism is much stronger, when it concentrates on what it has to offer, rather than what it’s against.

That’s a great gift to offer the world, because the issue still is the same that humankind has wrestled with during these many centuries and more than two millennia. Karl Jung, the great contemporary of Freud, said that he never encountered a person over 35 with a problem, who did not have a spiritual problem.

But if that be so, when we address our spiritual problems, what resources do we use? What religion? What faith? What understanding of reality? Is it Moses…is it Jesus…is it Muhammad…is it the Buddha…is it Joseph Smith…is it Mary Baker Eddy…is it Darwin…is it Einstein…is it Freud? To whom and how are we to understand what it means to be a person in the world today?

Put another way, is there only one spiritual understanding in life that truly sees to the core of human existence? Or are there many ancient prophets and teachers, as well as contemporary ones, who possess an uncanny grasp on what it means to live life?

Where many Unitarians of the past made their mistake, in my opinion, was to confuse the inner message of the great religions with the external cultural baggage in which they were carried. They penalized the Jews, the Christians, and the Muslims for not having a scientific worldview, when in fact, no one in their day did. Or they criticized them because not every thing they said was true, which is a totally unrealistic expectation of any discipline. Or even today, we criticize those who believe the Bible or the holy Qur’an is literally true, and then in theory or practice we reject the Bible or the Qur’an because not everything in them is true. We presume that the benefits of the Enlightenment negate the insights of the great faiths as to how to live and to get along.

But is that really the case? For millennia, much of the Western world viewed the Earth as the center of the Universe. Then Copernicus, Galileo and others declared that the earth moves around the sun, and that the sun is the center of the universe. Then we discovered that the sun is the center of an average solar system, and that we are part of an enormous galaxy of stars and planets and solar systems. Then in the 20^th century, we discovered that this galaxy is only one of a billion or more galaxies, some of which are super galaxies. The notion that the earth or its sun has unique significance among the billions upon billions of other celestial bodies in the Universe is a quaint and quite primitive little notion. In fact, it’s possible that there are even other universes.

It seems to me there’s room for a whole lot of humility, openness and understanding. To me, Unitarianism has the advantage of being able to say, let’s examine the great religions, and keep the benefits of the Enlightenment, of reason and experience. Let’s practice the insights of Christianity. Let’s try the lifestyle of the Muslims. Let’s learn to meditate like the Buddha. Let’s honor the high holy days of Judaism.

When we do, three things can happen: One, we can experience the benefits of community that come from pluralistic worship: we can sing religious songs, and pray particular prayers, and most certainly read their sacred scriptures. That’s living poetry. It taps in to who we are and why we’re here and what we should be doing with our lives.

Second, we can use the vocabulary of religion to explore the meaning of existence. God, faith, prayer, love, hope, trust are all handholds by which to climb a little higher and dig a litter deeper.

Third, we can become inclusive and accepting of others, even when we may differ with them. We don’t have to put up boundary lines, divisions, and emphasize differences.

We can bring the vertical and spiritual dimension of life into the everyday, the horizontal. And when we do, life can take on a glow, an optimism, and a joy.

CONCLUSION

As you know, Hope House is a place where children are placed after the police take them out of homes when their parents have been charged with abuse or neglect. They stay at Hope House until a foster home is found.

As a part of the Hopesters, John and Penny Miracle have designed several field trips for the children. They first went to the zoo in Naples, and most recently, they went to Ding Darling. Some 15 of our participants went along with about that many children, plus their staff. Charlotte Blitt even took two of her grandchildren. Later, they took the kids to McDonald’s. They reported a great time.

Then last Wednesday night, after the Buddhist meditation session, I was visiting with Brenda Wester, a Hopester, who’s relatively new to our congregation. By way of conversation, I asked her if she were meeting people and feeling involved. She answered very positively, and then she began to describe her Hope House experience.

She said the children were so responsive and courteous. But one thing had stuck with her. On one of their field trips, she said the children kept asking her this question, which I have not been able to forget. It was this: “Why are you doing this?”

They had no context for someone being nice to them because they are children, for someone caring, for someone being good to them. And when someone treated them special, their response was to ask, “Why? Why are you doing this?”

I don’t know about you, but to me the answer is what faith is about. It’s taking what we believe about God, about Jesus or Jesus Christ, about Allah and the Prophet Muhammad, about Buddhism, or humanism and then refracting that into where we live, but not only where we live, where those less fortunate live, whether at Hope House, or the AIDS and H.I.V. patients of McGregor Clinic, or mano a mano in Bolivia.

That’s faith. That’s translating religion in to living. That’s Unitarianism. Blessed be.

[1] Given on February 27, 2005, fourth in a series, at All Faiths Unitarian Congregation, meeting in the Foulds Theater at the Alliance for the Arts, 10091 McGregor Boulevard, Ft. Myers, FL, by the Rev. Dr. Wayne Robinson, minister.