Sunday Service: We Gather in Memory
May 24: “We Gather In Memory” – led by Rev. Elizabeth Putnam
Archive for the 'Educational' Category
Sunday Service: Our Godless Roots
May 3: “Our Godless Roots” – led by Rev. Rosemary Bray McNatt
So, if you all know anything at all about me, you all know that I like God. This should not be a surprise announcement from any minister, but it can be a surprise if you are a Unitarian Universalist minister. I think that it’s too bad, the surprise part anyway, because we who are part of this liberal faith should live, I think, with an attitude of theological expectation. I know that is what I try to do. I’m a big fan of God, and a follower of Jesus, but it would never occur to me that everyone else in this congregation shared my enthusiasm. I expect that many of you have lots of different feelings about religion, and I expect that over time, we will acquire the tools, and the courage, to talk with each other about how we feel, to compare notes, to approach one another with a theological curiosity born of respect and openness.
But we can’t do that if we don’t have all the tools we need, and I want to thank one of our most faithful members, Jim Saslow, for talking with me about the toolkit I’ve been using, and helping me see the things I most need to add. What about those of us, said Jim, who don’t believe in God at all, who think there is no there there? The question came up in response, in part, to my often-repeated statement that we Unitarian Universalists have our roots in both the Jewish and the Christian traditions, and that we are heirs to the dissenting tradition of Christianity. These statements are true and honest ones, so far as they go. They are the reasons I take care to honor the High Holy Days as well as Christmas, and to preach about Passover as well as Easter. These statements are why we sing Silent Night, as well as Jesus Christ is Risen today. I want us never to forget that, though we are not doctrinaire about these holy days, though we no longer accept the literal meaning of these stories, that they are still our stories. They still belong to us, they still have meaning, and they still have lessons to teach us. I believe that.
What Jim’s thoughtful questions brought to my awareness, however, are the additional stories that I haven’t told, the stories of Unitarian Universalism’s response to an earlier wave of fundamentalist religion in America, our faith’s answer to the rising credibility and influence of the scientific method that occupied so much of the early part of the 20th century. The part of the toolkit I haven’t shown as much of is the humanist section, the section that has influenced an entire generation of Unitarians and Universalists. So I begin this sermon with a thank you to Jim, and to others of you who make appointments to have theological conversations with me, for those conversations enrich my life, they make me think, and they remind me that you really do listen when I speak, and there can be no higher complement for a preaching minister.
We know that this is a culture that is hostile to the idea of nonbelievers, especially in the late 20th century. Some of that hostility is based in the image of atheists as overly rational, overly scientific and possibly clueless. I offer as evidence this moment of biting humor:
During the Reign of Terror of the French Revolution, one morning’s executions began with three men: a rabbi, a Catholic priest, and a rationalist skeptic.
The rabbi was marched up onto the platform first. There, facing the guillotine, he was asked if he had any last words. And the rabbi cried out, “I believe in the one and only true God, and He shall save me.” The executioner then positioned the rabbi below the blade, set the block above his neck, and pulled the cord to set the terrible instrument in motion. The heavy cleaver plunged downward, searing the air. But then, abruptly, it stopped with a crack just a few inches above the would-be victim’s neck. To which the rabbi said, “I told you so.”
“It’s a miracle!” gasped the crowd. And the executioner had to agree, letting the rabbi go.
Next in line was the priest. Asked for his final words, he declared, “I believe in Jesus Christ the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost who will rescue me in my hour of need.” The executioner then positioned this man beneath the blade. And he pulled the cord. Again the blade flew downward thump! Creak! …stopping just short of its mark once more.
“Another miracle!” sighed the disappointed crowd. And the executioner for the second time had no choice but to let the condemned go free.
Now it was the skeptic’s turn. “What final words have you to say?” he was asked. But the skeptic didn’t hear. Staring intently at the ominous engine of death, he seemed lost. Not until the executioner poked him in the ribs and the question was asked again did he reply.
“Oh, I see your problem,” the skeptic said pointing. “You’ve got a blockage in the gear assembly, right there!”
Relying solely on what he could see, not what he believed, we can rightly imagine the skeptic’s fate. Yet the joke is unfair to the true legacy of skeptics and atheists in our religious movement, unfair to their heritage of honesty and clarity in matters of faith, even when faith is not language that they themselves would not use.
It’s hard to imagine, in this enormous historic cathedral of Universalism, filled with theist iconography, that there is at least one forebearer, a Unitarian minister who once crossed over to Universalism to preach from this very pulpit, who called into question the nature, even the existence of God. But that is also part of our story, a part that was news even to me; one I discovered as I began my preparation for this sermon, and it dates back to the turn of the last century, and the 20th century iteration of what is known as religious humanism.
There are many people who played a role in the formation of this development in our living tradition, people who were determined to create a religion without God. But there were three men, all eventual Unitarian ministers who are widely regarded as the fathers of religious humanism in the 20th century: Curtis Reese, a former Southern Baptist, born in 1887 and died in 1961; John H. Dietrich, a former Dutch Reformed minister defrocked for questioning the divinity of Jesus, born 1878 and died 1957; and Charles Francis Potter, an evangelical Baptist turned Unitarian minister who eventually left the faith entirely, born 1885 and died 1962.
As Midwestern ministers, both Reese and Dietrich found themselves immersed in the evolving theology of the Western Unitarian Conference, which from its earliest days in the 1840s resisted the hidebound Christianity of traditional Unitarian faith as it was expressed in Boston and elsewhere on the East Coast. Young radicals like Jenkin Lloyd Jones went west and worked tirelessly to expand the boundaries of Unitarianism to meet the changing country, committing themselves to more intensive work for social justice, in keeping with the Social Gospel of the era. At a Western Unitarian Conference in 1917, the two ministers discovered they had a common understanding of religion that turned away from a divine entity and toward the primacy of human agency. Preaching this theological perspective in their respective congregations—Dietrich at First Unitarian in Minneapolis and Reese at First Unitarian in Des Moines, Iowa, the two men attracted more and more attention to themselves and their evolving beliefs. By 1919, when Dietrich published his famous essay on the Religion of Experience in the Christian Register (the Unitarian precursor to our own UU World magazine) he was clear that he wanted to draw a distinction between what he thought of as “supernatural religion” and a faith that, in his words, “looks for no help or consolation from without…but turns ones attention to a firm and confident reliance upon themselves, in whom lie the possibilities of all things.” In the following year, Reese wrote an article for the Register called, “The Content of Religious Liberalism,” in which he called on readers to retain an openness to scientific discoveries about God that might yet come, but also challenged them to build a faith that, in his words, “would not be shaken even if the old thought of God were outgrown.” Reese went on to explain that religious liberals had given up “the contemplation of cosmic events” in favor of “ regulated observation and experiment with cosmic processes.”
The arguments grew—were these men dismissing God, or simply forgoing the word God in favor of less archaic, more scientific language reflective of the new age? It depended on whom you asked. But remember the time in which these ideas were emerging—the progressive era and the gilded age were alive and well; the seemingly endless social progress occurring in the United States, fueled by the energy of the Social Gospel, gave many religious people an optimistic and powerful view of what mankind might accomplish. And I mean it when I say the word, mankind, for there was little directly expressed interest in expanding this consciousness to women at the time.
But the optimism of the 1920s gave way to the Great Depression of the 1930s. In spite of the great inroads made by religious humanists during the previous decades, the fear generated by the collapse of the economic order sparked a return for many people to a more traditional religious view. But not for everyone, for those same religious liberals who had begun their move away from an anthropomorphic Christianity saw all the more reason now to make the case that the perils of the current time deserved not a divine, but a human solution. Thus it was that 34 men—philosophers and scientists, theologians and activists, returned their signatures to a document that came to be known as The Humanist Manifesto, published in the May-June issue of the New Humanist magazine.
The manifesto contained 15 theses: among them, that the universe is self-existing and not created; that humanity is part of nature and the result of a continuous process (evolution); that the dualism of mind and body is false; that human religious culture is the product of development; that the nature of the universe as shown through modern science precludes any supernatural explanations, and insists on the scientific method; that the time had ended for theism, deism, and varieties of “new thought” movements such as religious science or Christian science; that there is no longer a distinction between the sacred and the secular; that a socialized and cooperative economic order must be established to allow for equitable distribution of the means of life—as they put it: humanists demand a shared life in a shared world.”
These were profoundly radical concepts in 1933, but it should not surprise you that they form key parts of our own theology today. No matter who we are as liberal religious people—whether we are theist or humanist Unitarian Universalists, whether we are Christian or Buddhist Unitarian Universalists, whether we are pagan or Jewish Unitarian Universalists, or whether Unitarian Universalism in its largest sense is our point of entry—all of us are humanist, influenced by the profound theological shift engendered by the humanist movement within our midst. In a 1979 survey of Unitarian Universalists, nearly 78 percent of women and men in our movement considered themselves humanist. If you were to take that survey today, 30 years later, the number would have fallen to about 35 percent, as Unitarian Universalists have shifted in the intervening years toward a different, more accepting posture toward the Holy.
For those of us who believe in a power greater than ourselves, our debt to the humanist movement is undiminished. For it is their insistence on the power of human agency, partnered with the theist view that we are made in the image of the divine, that results in the first principle of our faith on which we can all agree: the inherent worth and dignity of every person. Time and time again, religious humanism gives voice to what is most glorious about humanity, relying on the skills and talents, gifts and graces that are our common heritage. Those of us who are not believers in God find themselves nonetheless believers in the capacity of humanity to create Beloved Community; those of us who are believers find themselves embracing the process theology that places humanity and divinity in the dance of co-creation. No matter where we are on the theological continuum, we owe a debt of gratitude to our humanist forefathers, who challenged the old-world view of an all-powerful God with humanity at his mercy, and insisted, against all odds, on the primacy of human agency. No matter what our beliefs, may we live in ways that are worthy of their confidence. Amen.
Sunday Service: Easter Sunday
April 12: Easter Sunday: “What Mary Knew” – led by Rev. Rosemary Bray McNatt
Vagina Monologues at 4th U
ONLINE TICKET PURCHASE IS NO LONGER AVAILABLE. TICKETS WILL BE AVAILABLE AT THE DOOR, BEGINNING AT 7 PM. COME EARLY TO GET A GOOD SEAT AND ENJOY THE VAGINA FAIR!
On Saturday, April 4, 2009: “The Vagina Monologues” is coming to the Fourth Universalist Society!
That’s right, Eve Ensler’s powerful, award winning play-that-has-become-a-movement will be presented right here at 4th Universalist on April 4 at 8:00 p.m.
Organized by Deborah Roth, and directed by Nancy Robillard, we will join the hundreds of thousands of “Vagina Warriors” around the world who have launched productions in support of V-Day – a global movement to end violence against women and girls. In 2008, over 4000 V-Day benefit events took place produced by volunteer activists in the U.S. and around the world, educating millions of people about the reality of violence against women and girls.
To date, the V-Day movement has raised over $60 million and educated millions about the issue of violence against women and the efforts to end it, crafted international educational, media and Public Service Announcement campaigns, launched the Karama program in the Middle East, reopened shelters, and funded over 6000 community-based anti-violence programs and safe houses in Democratic Republic Of Congo, Haiti, Kenya, South Dakota, Egypt and Iraq.
We will be donating all profits from our event to our own local organizations – Day One and The NiteStar Program. Day One educates, advocates, and provides support services and leadership development to youth to end dating abuse and domestic violence. Funding has recently been cut to Day One’s peer leader program, and they are in great need of financial support. Also facing recent budget cuts, The NiteStar Program provides a positive and creative learning environment through their interactive performances. NiteStar’s productions are designed to diffuse myths, provide HIV/AIDS awareness, pregnancy, substance abuse and relationship violence prevention, help youth to make informed decisions, provide options for changing attitudes and prejudices, and create opportunities for behavioral change. Since we hope to donate as much money to these organizations as possible, we will need to cover the few expenses we will incur in staging such an event and still have money left over to give away. We hope that we can depend on you for financial support.
(Download the flier here so that you can help us to publicize the event.)
Women and men of all ages are invited to participate! Auditions are over, so we are no longer looking for actors, but if you would like to be involved, please download the application form here and submit it by e-mail to Deborah Roth at dsrothny@aol.com, or give her the hard copy at church. Questions? Call Deborah at 212-665-9660.
We’re looking forward to seeing you on Saturday, April 4th:
7:00pm — Come join us for our pre-performance VAGINA FAIR — a celebration of female anatomy that features music, games, and tables providing information on our local beneficiaries and sponsors. You’ll also be able to create or buy your very own V-Day bracelet and munch on fabulous V-goodies, including our hand-made, delectable chocolate Vagina-pops!
8:00pm — THE VAGINA MONOLOGUES!
Check out www.vday.org for more information about the V-Day movement, and the page about our production.
Sunday Service: World 2.0
January 25: New Member Sunday – “World 2.0″ – led by Rev. Rosemary Bray McNatt
