First Parish Unitarian Universalist
Canton, Massachusetts

From Being “Predestined by God” to Being a “Likeness to God”

Rev. Cricket Potter
First Parish Unitarian Universalist - Canton
April 25, 2010

In a sermon I preached last month, I led us through a broad historical survey of our Unitarian Universalist roots.

Sweeping over 1500 years of religious history, we went from Jesus through the early Christian Church movement to the empire of the Roman Catholic Church and finally to the 16 th century Protestant Reformation and the lesser know Radical Reformation that held within it the beginnings of what would become Unitarianism and Universalism.

At the heart of this religious history was debate – or lack thereof – regarding essential doctrines about God, Jesus Christ, the Trinity, and human nature.

The major voice on the Protestant side was John Calvin.

In the simplest of terms, Calvinist theology proclaimed:

• humankind’s inherent state of sinfulness and depravity, as exemplified in Adam and Eve’s betrayal of God and eventual eviction from the Garden of Eden;
• the resulting wrath and judgment of God faced by humankind;
• a doctrine of predestination whereby God had chosen or predestined only certain individuals – “the elect” – for salvation;
• the unity of the Trinity with God existing in three persons - Father, Son, and Holy Spirit - yet in one being.

Sadly, those who proclaimed a more liberal or “heretical” view outside of Calvinism were persecuted and, worse yet, killed.

It was a very serious matter how one spoke of God or the Trinity and how one viewed the nature of humankind or our ultimate destiny as humans.

Our religious heritage as Unitarian Universalists comes from these early free thinkers who simply could not abide by the party line.

We are deeply indebted to them for their courage, conviction, and unwavering inquiry into what they believed was the deeper truth.

What they sought to uphold as a counter-argument to Calvinism was:

• the Unity of God as opposed to any notions of a Trinity;
• likewise, Jesus’ humanity and the role he served in showing us the divinely inspired life that was for us all to lead if we but honored his teachings and dwelled in the spirit of love;
• humankind’s ability to learn, grown, and gain insight through reason and experience as opposed to an eternal state of depravity;
• the need for tolerance of different views and for the freedom of religious expression.

I now want to bring us forward from those early reformers and liberal thinkers to those who spoke up in England and later in America as we look at the beginnings of the Unitarian movement.

Let’s start by going back to 17 th century England.

The ideas and writings shared by some of those early reformers, particularly by the group known as “Socinians” in Poland, made their way across the English Channel, and they brought with them an optimism about the capacities of humankind and human reasoning.

Three basic precepts this group upheld were:

1. freedom of religious thought
2. the use of reason
3. and, tolerance of differing views and practices.

Very Unitarian-sounding aren’t they?

So, as a succession of monarchs, beginning with King Henry VIII, established and built up the Church of England as part of England’s break from the powerful Catholic Church, there was an undercurrent of voices for further reform.

It took until 1774 for the first group to officially organize as avowedly Unitarian.

It was Theophilus Lindsey and his wife Hannah who organized this Essex Street Chapel – and it is still there today.

Lindsey was one of a growing number of disgruntled ministers within the Church of England who disagreed with church doctrine.

Yet, these ministers did so quietly because the times were still not safe for public dissenters.

Lindsey was the first to so publicly and courageously disavow the Church of England.

He set out to “gather a church of Unitarian Christians out(side) of the Established Church.” (For Faith and Freedom by Charles A. Howe)

He and his wife Hannah rented an auction hall, refurbished it as best they could as a chapel, and advertised through word of mouth among folks who were similarly unhappy with the Church of England.

On April 17, 1774, they held their first service.

Interestingly, our own Benjamin Franklin was among the 200 or so gathered to hear Rev. Lindsey on that day.

Franklin happened to be in England at the time to push for the cause of the American colonies.

Another person in Lindsey’s congregation that first Sunday was the English chemist and Presbyterian minister Joseph Priestley.

He is celebrated for being the one to discover oxygen.

As a scientist, a rationalist, and someone who never shrank from religious debate, Lindsey did not stay long within the Presbyterian fold.

He soon added his voice to the call for reform and for liberty of religious expression.

He was brilliant, passionate, a prodigious writer, a moving preacher, and deeply committed to the search for truth both in and out of the laboratory.

As one historian writes, “Explosions which had been a reality in his laboratory passed into metaphors which erupted through his prose.” (J. H. Brooke, “A Sower Went Forth: Joseph Priestley and the Ministry of Reform” in Motion Toward Perfection: The Achievement of Joseph Priestley, A Truman Schwartz and John G. McEvoy, eds)

Returning to a careful study of Scripture and early church teaching, he countered Calvinist doctrine by proclaiming God’s benevolence and goodness as opposed to his judgment.

He insisted upon “the simple humanity of Christ” as opposed to his divinity.

And, he labeled the concept of the Trinity as an outright “corruption of pure Christianity.”

Priestley became the best known and most influential leaders of the early English Unitarian movement.

Not surprisingly, he also came under growing attack for his vocal stance supporting liberal religion and liberal politics.

Eventually he was accused of being a conspirator and traitor against the Church of England and the king.

In 1791, a mob of several thousand burned down the liberal church he had been serving in Birmingham, along with his house and laboratory.

This mob continued on to burn 100 or so other homes and churches associated with liberals.

Greatly discouraged and also fearful for his family, Priestley soon packed up and emigrated to Philadelphia where friends and other family had been beckoning for him.

Once there, he was back at his earlier form of preaching and writing as he continued to explore what he saw as the “corruptions of Christianity.”

In 1794, he organized the first congregation in the newly formed United States, in Northumberland Pennsylvania, to call itself Unitarian.

So, now we move across the Atlantic to the New World.

But before I get ahead of myself, let’s step back almost a century to the early 1700’s in the New England colonies.

We must remember that the English Puritans who left the Church of England for the New World - to set up a new, and hopefully purer, church model - were Calvinists.

They believed firmly in the depravity of humankind, in an all-powerful and judging God, and in the concept of the “elect.”.

The idea of free human will to learn and move past a life of sin and of a God who is loving was something only a quiet few began to consider in their own studies and reflection.

Over time, there was concern among the orthodox ministers that Puritan orthodoxy was slipping among their congregations.

In the early 1740’s, a group of revivalist ministers led an emotion-laden movement know as the Great Awakening.

I’m sure some of you have heard of the passionate and fiery minister Jonathon Edwards – a key figure during this time.

Here are a few choice words from his sermon entitled, “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God”:

O Sinner! Consider the fearful danger you are in: it is a great furnace of wrath…that you are held over in the hand of God….You hang by a slender thread, with the flames of divine wrath flashing about it, and ready every moment to singe it….There’s nothing you can do to save yourself, nothing to keep off the flames of wrath, nothing of your own, nothing you have ever done, nothing that you can do.

How long would I last in the pulpit here if I began to preach such harsh words?

Well, thank God for those who couldn’t abide by this disempowering theology and who turned to Scripture and their own reasoning for a different understanding that centered on belief in human potential and goodness and also in God’s benevolence.

Slowly, this liberal mindset spread to counter the fire-and-brimstone preaching of the Great Awakening such that by the end of the 18 th century, there was a strong voice and presence for the soon-to-be-named Unitarian way of thinking.

Boston, in particular, was a hotbed of theological debate as the liberals and conservatives argued vociferously with one another.

Things came to a head in 1819 when William Ellery Channing preached a sermon entitled “Unitarian Christianity.”

This sermon is considered by all as the founding document of American Unitarianism.

For the first time among the American religious liberals, the name Unitarian is officially claimed.

Until this time, the name had largely been considered derogatory, much as being called a heathen would have been a blight on one’s name.

I also have to add that despite all the heated arguments, amazingly, there had been little if any thought of breaking away from the established church up until this time.

Folks like Channing were actually trying hard to work within the religion they knew to bring it back to its roots.

For them, those roots were the truth as it was given in Scripture, to be studied carefully with all the recent tools of textual criticism and with the use of what they saw as God-given reason.

In this sermon, though, on “Unitarian Christianity,” Channing lays down the gauntlet.

He lays out very clearly the huge abyss between the doctrines of the established Congregational Church and those of the group that would soon officially go by the name Unitarian.

The doctrines of this new Unitarian group included:

1. Once again, the absolute Unity of God as opposed to the Trinity.
2. What Channing calls “the moral perfection of God” which really means God’s infinite goodness and mercy, “good (not just) to a few but to all” as opposed to the wrath and judgment so passionately espoused by the likes of Jonathon Edwards.
3. A newly articulated understanding regarding the “mediation of Christ”, or in laymen’s terms, “What was the purpose of Jesus’ death?”
   Those in the established church would have argued that he died for our sins to placate an angry God.
   Channing argued that Jesus’ divinely inspired mission was to “rescue men from sin and its consequences and to bring them to a state of everlasting purity and happiness” in part by his teachings and by his own “spotless example” and “the light which he has thrown on the path of duty.”
4. A justification of rationalism and an embracing of human potential to use our reasoning powers to a good end.

Concerning Calvinist pessimism about human nature, Channing countered with this argument:

The true inference from the almost endless errors which have darkened theology is not that we are to neglect and disparage our powers, but to exert them more patiently, circumspectly, uprightly….The most pernicious doctrines have been the growth of the darkest times...encouraged by bad men and enthusiasts to broach their… inventions and to stifle the faint remonstrances of reason…. Say what we may, God has given us a rational nature, and will call us to account for it…. Revelation is addressed to us as rational beings…. And it is the part of wisdom to take revelation as it is given to us and to interpret it by the help of the faculties which it… supposes and on which it is founded.

That is powerful stuff, even for us some two centuries later.

One can only imagine the salvo that this represented at the time.

And by all accounts, it was quite a salvo.

As one historian describes,

“Presses worked overtime to fill demands for Channing’s text and for the attacks made upon it.” (Channing, the Reluctant Radical by Jack Mendelsohn)

What I want to highlight is Channing’s central theme shared in this sermon and discussed in much greater length in other sermons entitled “Likeness to God,” “The Moral Argument Against Calvinism,” and “Spiritual Freedom.”

I think the titles alone say it all regarding the dignity of human nature and the potential for greatness that is at the heart of the human soul.

By all accounts, William Ellery Channing lived, preached, and breathed a resounding affirmation of life and a profound faith a loving God.

As he taught and tried to embody tirelessly,

“The divinity is stirring within the human breast, and demanding a culture and a liberty worthy of a child of God.” (from “Likeness to God”)

With the voices of Channing and others like Theodore Parker and Ralph Waldo Emerson, the era of “the Unitarian Controversy” was now in full swing.

By 1825, the Unitarian movement had its own association, the American Unitarian Association

The two groups of conservatives and liberals that had managed to coexist under the same church roof before now went their separate ways.

In churches all across New England, one group or the other pulled out and often moved across the town green or just down the street to form their own congregation.

Right here in Canton, what was then First Congregational Parish took a congregational vote and officially became First Parish Unitarian.

Those ten members on the losing side of the vote moved to what is now Neponset Street to form the Orthodox Congregational Church.

Over time and through the building of several different houses of worship, that congregation ended up right back across the street and is now the United Church of Christ.

From seeing humankind as predestined by an angry God to seeing ourselves as embraced and loved by God.

From believing that humans live in bondage to an inherently sinful nature to believing in human freedom and choice, in our power of reason, in our potential for goodness and growth, and in the likeness to God that shines within all our hearts.

As we shared in our responsive reading earlier, it does matter what we believe.

Some beliefs are like walled gardens that keep us contained or like clouds that darken the horizon and discourage our exploration.

I am so thankful that the faith we share here is like a gateway opening wide vistas for exploration.

That it nurtures self-confidence and enriches our feeling of self worth.

And that it is expansive, leading us toward wider and deeper sympathies for all people.

May we live out that faith with joy and conviction.

Amen.