First Parish Unitarian UniversalistIntegrity as a Way of Life: Clarence R. Skinner
A Sermon Preached by the Reverend Diane Teichert
First Parish Unitarian Universalist - Canton, MA
September 28, 2003
Opening Words
We come to this service to invoke the mood of reverence and worship: to lift our thoughts in aspiration toward all high and holy aims: to renew our loyalty to the good, the true, and the beautiful: and to consecrate ourselves again to common service to the common good. (from A Free Pulpit in Action by Clarence R. Skinner)
Sermon
I like to start out in September with a few sermons that provide something of an introduction to the living tradition that is Unitarian Universalism, for the benefit of our newcomers, because this is the most likely time of year for church-shopping. Oftentimes, people whose first time attending services here is in the winter or spring will, in one way or another, express to me some confusion, “what is this all about? I just don’t get it!” As I respond, I feel some regret that they missed my sermons back in September.
Of course, my challenge in being intentionally introductory is to do so in a way that does not completely bore those of you who have worshipped here for decades! At the risk of failing that challenge completely, by being too obvious, let me begin today by pointing out that the thematic thread for the three sermons ending with this one today is “integrity.”
In the first sermon, I began with the idea that all of us, at one time or another in our lives feel ourselves to be broken in spirit. Healing, becoming whole, I said, is usually a process rather than an event. But healing is possible and in various ways. I spoke of two ways: through solitary times when we are alone and experience ourselves to be one with nature, the universe or with our God (if by some name we worship), and through caring community such as we share here, beginning with our experience in worship together.
Interestingly, the word “integrity” means a state of wholeness, although we usually use it to mean a composite of virtues. Virtues such as generosity, meaning-making, authenticity, emotional maturity, spiritual depth, intellectual honesty, and living by ethical principles. We might say that, here at First Parish, we aspire to be and become persons of integrity.
Unitarian Universalism, I said two weeks ago, is much more concerned about living a virtuous life before death than aspiring to a life after death, more interested in the religion of Jesus than the religion about him, unwilling to suspend our reason or stifle our heart’s longings to conform to anyone’s ancient teachings, ready to see the truth in all religions and the meaning in any faith, even as we seek to know what is true in our own experience and plumb life for the depths—and reach for the heights—of meaning we know it holds.
And, I acknowledged, we fall short of these lofty ideals! It’s humbling to even speak of them. With all humility, it would be easier to just be saved!
Instead of having creeds by which to be saved, then, we make promises, that we call “covenants,” to each other, as in the Covenant we recite in each Sunday service, but also in our covenants between leaders and the congregation, between the minister and the congregation, and between Unitarian Universalist congregations.
If integrity as a way of life is about aspiring to virtues, having ideals, and living by principles as best (always imperfectly) as we can, then I thought it would help us in that challenging effort to look at the lives and thoughts of two historic exemplars of integrity. I selected one each from the two Protestant denominations that consolidated in 1961 to form the Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations, followed locally more than a decade later by the consolidation of the First Universalist Church of Canton and First Parish Unitarian in 1974.
First, I chose Ralph Waldo Emerson, a Unitarian and a Transcendentalist, because his 200th birthday is being celebrated this year. And for this week, Clarence R. Skinner, a Universalist and a social reformer, because I was this year’s recipient of a UUA sermon award named after him, and upon receiving it, realized sheepishly that I had barely a clue who it’s namesake was!
For both individuals, as for any of us, actually, I feel it is as important to know something about their biographies, as it is to know about their intellectual contributions to liberal religion. What good is it to have lofty ideals, however well they are articulated, if one’s life bears no resemblance to them?
As Emerson himself once famously wrote, “There is properly no history; only biography.” Or, as we heard in the first Reading this morning by Rabbi Lawrence Kushner of Temple Beth El in Sudbury, one of my favorite contemporary Jewish writers, “All theology is autobiography. “
In the case of Emerson, for example, what would we think of his belief in self-reliance and freedom if we learned that he had not lifted a finger or raised his voice for the abolition of nineteenth century slavery, which must be one of the clearest violations possible of self-reliance and freedom?
And, in the case of Clarence Skinner, what would we think about his proclamation of a new Universalism for the twentieth century and a new democracy for America if we learned that he led worship in the staid ways of the past and in no way acted to challenge the status quo even as he preached against it?
Ah, but I’m getting ahead of myself…perhaps you have barely a clue as to who he was yourselves!
Clarence R. Skinner was one of the most influential Universalist church leaders of the first half of the twentieth century. It is but a reflection of the decline and marginalization of both Unitarianism and Universalism during that time that the leaders of each in that period are hardly known among us today and completely unknown outside our ranks.
Clarence R. Skinner, who lived from 1881 to 1949, was the founder of the Community Church of Boston and Professor, then Dean (from 1933 to 1945) of Crane Theological School of Tufts University. He was married to Clara, who he met while they were both students at St. Lawrence University in Canton, NY, a Universalist college; they had no children, but were by all reports mutually dedicated to each other.
He was a parish minister first, at the Universalist Church of Mt. Vernon, NY, from 1906-11, during which time its membership doubled and a new building was constructed, and he was active in the settlement house movement in New York City. He also was elected to lead the Universalist church of America’s new Social Service Commission, which promulgated progressive social positions and encouraged men’s and women’s groups in local congregations to support social projects in their communities.
Then he was called to serve Grace Universalist Church in Lowell, MA. He led the church through a period of revitalization and also established a highly successful Sunday evening program, the Lowell Forum, which featured well-known and often times controversial outside speakers, and drew hundreds. In 1914 he accepted an appointment as Professor of Applied Christianity at the Crane Theological School of Tufts College, offered despite the fact that he did not have a seminary degree himself.
In 1920, Skinner founded the Community Church of Boston, building on the successful model of the Lowell Forum. For the next 15 years he filled essentially two full-time positions-as the church's "leader" (the term "minister" was not used) and as a faculty member at Crane.
The church was all-inclusive in its membership, and had no denominational ties. Its statement of purpose was simple, calling for "a free fellowship of men and women united for the study of universal religion, seeking to apply ethical ideals to individual life and the cooperative principle to all forms of social and economic life."
Its worship services were highly unusual for the times, and not overtly religious. For example, our Opening Words this morning were Skinner’s, written in 1931, at a time when most Universalists would have invoked the presence of God in a most traditional manner. In its inclusivity, his language heralded the spirituality first expressed in our congregations fifty or more years later.
Skinner wrote this about the Community Church’s choice of hymns, making reference to our Closing Hymn today,
The hymns avoid so far as possible the old ecclesiastical terminology… Wherever possible, new verses are sung to old music, as for instance the popular “Onward Christian Solders” is transformed into the modern and stirring words of “Forward Through the Ages.” (Howe, p.101)
A weekly sermon was offered at the Community Church, rarely by Skinner but by outside speakers, with an open forum for questions, comments, and discussion after. Services throughout Skinner's leadership were held in a series of rented halls, including Jordan Hall and Symphony Hall, with attendance reaching over 1,200. The church was deeply involved in many social causes, including the Sacco and Vanzetti case, the Scottsboro case, aid to the Republican government of Spain, and the right of Margaret Sanger to publicly advocate birth control.
Today, the Community Church of Boston is much the same, though smaller, with offices and a meeting space on Boylston Street. Our own Kevin is a frequent worshipper there. During the Hotel Workers strike last year, the current leader-minister and many members of the Community Church were active in supporting the strikers. A couple years ago, when Skinner’s successor, Donald Lothrop died and was to be buried in Canton, First Parish hosted the collation that followed the graveside ceremony. Not long after, the current leader-minister told me that some of his parishioners felt the collation had been a highlight of their church year because it was their first experience of inter-congregation UU collegiality.
Clarence Skinner was a mystic, an outspoken pacifist during both World Wars, the foremost Universalist proponent of the Social Gospel movement in American Protestantism, and a leading Universalist theologian and teacher. Calling himself a Christian socialist (with a lower case “s”) and understanding Jesus as teaching "the active and socially effective virtues of love, cooperation and brotherhood as the true redemptive forces," his theology was centered on the mystical "creative power at the center of the whole universe evolving law and order on a majestic scale," a power which could lead men and women to "transform this old earth into the Kingdom of Heaven."
For Skinner, as we heard in the second Reading a few moments ago, “the Universalist idea of God is that of a universal, impartial, immanent spirit whose nature is love. It is the largest thought the world has ever known; it is the most revolutionary doctrine ever proclaimed; it is the most expansive hope ever dreamed. This is the God of the modern man, and the God who is in modern man. This is no tribal deity of ancient divisive civilization, this is no God of the nation or of a chosen people, but the democratic creator of the solid, indivisible world of rich and poor, black and white, good and bad, strong and weak, Jew and Gentile, bond and free; such a faith is as much a victory for the common people as was the passage of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution. It carries with it a guarantee of spiritual liberties which are precedent to outward forms of governmental action.” (Howe, p. 120).
In this quotation from his first book, a collection of essays, we see a few things worth noting. Skinner is given to big notions. His God is a universal God, not associated with or acting on behalf of just one people or place. His God is immanent, meaning within humans, and known as love.
We can also hear his preaching style here. In fact, much of his writing reads to me as a sermon, as exhortation, with little explication, and sometimes unclear. For example, what does he mean by “governmental action” in the last sentence of that quotation when he says this faith “carries with it a guarantee of spiritual liberties which are precedent to outward forms of governmental action”? Did he mean that our spiritual liberties prepare and guide us to participate as democratic citizens, as might be suggested by the fact that the title of the essay in which this quotation appears is “God and Democracy.” Or does he mean the actions of the government should take spiritual principles as their example? If he means that spiritual liberties precede civil liberties, I would argue that sometimes it’s the other way around: exercising civil liberties wins greater religious liberties. Whatever, the sentence remains unclear to me.}
One commentator (James D. Hunt) complains that Skinner’s “sentences ring with earnestness and the power of his personality, and his intense idealism vibrates through them, but at the points where one most wishes Skinner to provide concrete guidance, it often seems that he has not done his homework…One striking example from [his book] A Religion for Greatness is, ‘Poverty must be abolished…If we don’t do it one way, we shall do it another.’ It would be very difficult to build a poverty program on such advice.” (Howe, p. 78).]
Yet, a student of Skinner’s at Crane Theological School, Carl Seaburg, wrote, “in his courses, I had my first serious exposure to the social problems of our contemporary society. Skinner went into them in great detail. And year by year, this knowledge was imparted to the students who took his courses, and [thus it] reached…our congregations…” (Howe, p. 107).
In closing, let me return to the fact that Clarence Skinner was a Universalist. Though an educated man, with numerous honorary degrees, his strengths were passion and commitment more than intellect. His radical vision of social justice, which he called the Kingdom of Heaven on Earth, and his vision of the church whose commitment could bring it about, were fed by his personal experience of a “universal, impartial, immanent spirit whose nature is love” that he called God.
If it is at all true, as some quip, that the Universalists brought the heart and the Unitarians the mind when the two consolidated in 1961, it’s fair to say that the contribution of Clarence Skinner was to show that the heart speaks to and for a much larger reality than the individual’s emotions. It speaks, and with a passion, to and for the achievement of peace and justice in our world.
Amen.
Sources
Clarence R. Skinner: Prophet of a New Universalism. Charles A. Howe, Editor. (Boston: Skinner House Books, 1999).
The Larger Hope: The Second Century of the Universalist Church in America, 1870-1970. Russell E. Miller ( Boston: UUA, 1985).
Universalism in America: A Documentary History of a Liberal Faith, Ernest Cassara, Editor. (Boston: Skinner House, 1971).
The Unitarians and the Universalists. David Robinson. (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1985).