First Parish Unitarian UniversalistOur Heritage, Part One: God’s Too Good
A sermon preached by the Reverend Diane Teichert
First Parish Unitarian Universalist - Canton, MA
September 18, 2005
I remember a Sunday School picnic from my childhood. The kids were divided into relay teams. Each team was given a bowl of AlphaBits cereal. The goal was to see which team could spell out “Presbyterian” on a place-mat thirty feet away from the bowl. The first team member had to find the P and race with it up to the mat, set it down and run back. Then the second child with the R, the third the E, then S and so on. I wonder now why I still remember that relay—either we didn’t know how to spell Presbyterian, or it took so darn long to find all the letters, we were all bored to death.
Imagine what such a relay race would be like for our kids—Unitarian Universalists! I can hear them now: Hey, it’s not fair, our bowl only had 3 I’s in it, and we needed 4!
This is, no doubt, why some of the adults here get lazy and refer to themselves as Unitarians, which is a pet peeve of mine. Even since 1961 when the Unitarians and the Universalists consolidated we’ve been both/and, not either/or. The merger was not an absorption of the Universalists into the Unitarians. There’s a bit of snobbery in that desire to drop the second word in our name, as it was generally true that the Unitarians thought of themselves as “higher class” and “better educated,” and in many towns, as in Canton, the new congregation took as its home the old Unitarian building, which was usually the larger of the two. So, if you’re in too big a hurry to say Unitarian Universalist, please, just say UU.
In their beliefs, though, the Unitarians and Universalists had much more in common than they had differences. This commonality is reflected in our chalice symbol, such as the one given by Queenie in memory of her husband Dewie that we light every Sunday morning and also the one you see on the front of your hymnal. At the center is the flaming chalice, with its own important meaning and heritage, but let me draw your attention to the two overlapping circles: one for each U in the UU. See how the space within the two nearly concentric circles is larger than the slivers on the edges? Each of the two faith traditions brought its own unique contributions, but the consolidation worked because they had so much in common.
In my sermon today on Universalism and the one next week on Unitarianism, I hope to offer glimpses of what was unique, what was held in common, and what we’ve gained and maybe lost in the more than forty years since the consolidation.
The joke from which I drew my titles for these two sermons gives one interpretation of the differences between the two denominations. "The Universalists think God is too good to damn them forever, while the Unitarians think they are too good to be damned forever."
The 19th century organizer, minister, and preacher Thomas Starr King, who told that joke, was uniquely positioned to know. He was the son of a successful New England Universalist minister and served in Charlestown as one himself. But, then his prophetic preaching caused him to be recruited away by the Unitarians, first to the Hollis Street Church in Boston for eleven years and then to San Francisco to be the first Unitarian minister in California. An abolitionist, King’s role in keeping that state in the Union during the Civil War is honored by statues in Golden Gate Park and in the United States Capitol. His embrace of a broad ecumenical religion included Unitarians without repudiation of his Universalism, though. According to King, the only reason that Unitarians and Universalists had not already joined together was that they were "too near of kin to be married." (The Dictionary of Unitarian and Universalist Biography of the Unitarian Universalist Historical Society, on-line at http://www.uua.org/uuhs/duub).
So, Universalism taught that God is too good to damn them forever? This is the doctrine of “Universal Salvation,” the doctrine that got rid of hell. Though it is another story for another time, I just want to mention here that universal salvation is not a product of the modern period; it is traced back at least to the writings of the second century theologian Origen of Alexandria and thrived enough that the Roman Church condemned it as heresy in 544 (A Chosen Faith, by J. Buehrens & F. Church, page 213).
It might help this morning to set this doctrine of Universal Salvation in its more recent historical context. Both Unitarianism and Universalism, at least in the U.S., arose as reactions to Calvinism. The theology of the 16th century European protestant John Calvin held that original sin left over from the fall of Adam and Eve meant that all people were inherently depraved and deserved to go to hell, and most of them would. Only certain people, the righteous elect, would be saved and go to heaven. And these elect had been chosen before they were even born; that’s what’s known as predestination.
The doctrine further evolved: you could tell who had been elected because God would bestow upon them worldly success. So the rich were the ones that were going to heaven. This put a double whammy on the poor: not only did they have to suffer through poverty in this life; they were condemned to hell in the next.
(Maybe this has something to do with why the gap between rich and poor in our country has so dramatically widened in recent years-- they want to insure their salvation?)
Be that as it may… in 18 th century America, a response emerged to Calvinism, to be found among the predecessors of the Unitarian side of the family, the liberal Congregationalists. They disagreed that humans were inherently depraved. They thought people could be bad or good depending on their response to their environment. They believed in heaven and hell, but they thought their actions would determine to which they went.
But the Universalists said that the very existence of hell was incompatible with the notion of the loving God taught by Jesus. How could a loving God who is infinitely powerful and all knowing allow a system of eternal suffering and punishment? Would such a God infinitely punish people for their finite sins?
It was Hosea Ballou who first articulated a distinctive Universalist theology, in A Treatise on Atonement, which celebrates its 200 th birthday this year, from which I read this morning. In that book, he did an about-face with the traditional doctrine of atonement, which says that Jesus died for our sins.
The historian Ernest Cassarra explains, “Ballou argued that as finite creatures, human beings are incapable of offending an infinite God. Therefore, he rejected the orthodox argument that the death of Jesus Christ was designed to appease an angry God, and replaced it with the idea that God is a being of eternal love who seeks the happiness of his human children. It is not God who must be reconciled to human beings, but human beings who must be reconciled to God. Ballou was convinced that once people realized this, they would take pleasure in living a moral life and doing good works.” (The Dictionary of Unitarian and Universalist Biography of the Unitarian Universalist Historical Society)
Actually, the Unitarians believed this as well. They called it “salvation by character.” That’s why Thomas Starr King quipped that they believed they were too good to be damned forever. We’ll hear more about the Unitarians next week, but universal salvation is one of the many beliefs held by both sides of our family.
Does “universal salvation” have any meaning to us today? Many of us may not believe in heaven and hell. Some of us do not believe in God, or if we do, it may not be a God who rewards or punishes humankind, in this life or after it.
But I say “universal salvation” does connect with us today-- rather directly, actually-- for good and for ill, in the first of our Principles and Purposes.
If you look on the back of your order of service this week (and, usually, on alternate Sundays), you will find the Covenant adopted by the delegates of UU congregations to the 1984 and 1985 General Assemblies. On the left hand side are our seven principles and on the right a list of the sources of our faith. The principles are a set of intentions as to how we want to live. You might say they describe what we think is a “moral life.”
The first of those principles is that we will affirm and promote “the inherent worth and dignity of every person.” Or as the Quakers say, we acknowledge that there is “that of God” or “the light of love” in everyone. This is directly connected to the doctrine of Universal Salvation: If God is too good, too loving, to condemn anyone to eternal suffering, who are we to write someone off as beyond hope, unworthy of our love?
Our first principle is not a statement of fact; it’s a statement of faith. It doesn’t purport that every person acts as one with worth and dignity. It says that worth and dignity are inherent in every person.
For good, this principle coming from the doctrine of Universal Salvation is a reminder to UU’s not to condemn people for who they are. It leads us to be welcoming of all who can assent to our covenant, and to challenge prejudices and phobias, in ourselves and where institutionalized around us, against people because of who they are.
For ill, this principle coming from the doctrine of Universal Salvation may make us so open-hearted that we are sometimes too open-minded, and our brains fall out.
I got that line from my husband, a scientist. He likes to offer it in response to what he sees as magical thinking sometimes among UU’s. He grew up as a Unitarian, until the merger, when he was ten. Then, as a Unitarian Universalist teenager, he discovered that a really good thing happened because of the merger: his religion got some heart and he liked it!
Some say the Unitarians made a god of reason, but that’s a question for next week. The Universalist God was a God of love, too good to condemn anyone, no matter how bad, to hell forever. Thanks to that side of the family, we’ve got some heart. We’ve got some heart! To that let’s say Amen!
And to that we will now sing Alleluia! A jazzy version, from the new UU songbook, printed as an insert in your order of service, which the choir will now teach us.