Sermon
LIVING THE LIVING TRADITION:
St. John's Unitarian Universalsit Church, Cincinnati, OH
Frank Carpenter, D.Min.
March 4, 2007
SERMON:
When I saw my son recently, he was getting ready to move, setting up new living quarters AFTER graduating FROM COLLEGE. He was going through his room and had come across a number of things. He gave me one of them.
This is a puppet he made while in first or second grade. I had forgotten he had made it until he gave it to me but I am delighted to have it.
In the first grade, my son made this puppet of William Ellery Channing. I guess that tells you something about my interest in Channing, whom you have heard me mention from time to time. We were living in Newport Rhode Island, which was Channing's birth place and which he called a soft pillow. From there he went to Boston to become the principal founder of American Unitarianism. In 1819 he preached a sermon, saying that the Bible was a book written by human beings for human beings.
Channing was never comfortable with the label of Unitarian. He was most at home with the name of 'liberal.' What does that mean, 'liberal?' One of the most recent academic studies is Gary Dorrien's THE MAKING OF AMERICAN LIBERAL THEOLOGY. It is a history of what we often call mainstream religion in America, something that has been eclipsed, perhaps atrophied, by fundamentalism.
Dorrien opens with this sentence: "The idea of liberal theology is nearly three centuries old. In essence, it is the idea that Christian theology can be genuinely Christian without being based upon external authority." (Page xiii) One of the more fascinating aspects of his study - I speak with my puppet of Channing in my hand - is that Dorrien begins his history of American liberal theology with William Ellery Channing.
Liberal religion continues that revolt against authoritarian dogmatism and creedalism that came into flower during the Reformation and Enlightenment. After centuries of the Inquisition and religious intolerance, liberals in religion look to the end of intolerance. Perhaps that is why Michael Servetus, a Spanish Doctor and Bible Scholar, is one of our heroes. When the Protestant revolt against religious tyranny began, it was hoped that the new faiths, the Protestants, would not indulge in inquisitions. The Protestant ruler of Geneva, John Calvin, was the first Protestant to kill another in the name of faith, burning Servetus at the stake for his Unitarian writings.
So this is our tradition, this rejection of external authority in faith, this celebration of the individual search for truth and freedom.
We have come to call this tradition, our tradition, the living tradition. This living tradition has never been zealously defined. We can get some gleanings of what we as a covenanted association of seekers mean by turning to our hymnal. Indeed, the grey hymnal is entitled, SINGING THE LIVING TRADITION
Opening the hymnal, we can turn to just before the first hymn: (120)
For many, this appears a vague mix. For us, it is religious pluralism as it says. As we lift up in our St. John's mission statement, we celebrate freedom of belief. Yet, our living tradition seems beyond the pale for many. Evangelical author James Herrick has written THE MAKING OF THE NEW SPIRITUALITY: THE ECLIPSE OF THE WESTERN RELIGIOUS TRADITION. Consistent with fundamentalist views of the world, he divides American faiths into two neat boxes: the Revealed Word and the Other Spirituality." For Herrick and evangelicals, true spirituality is found in the supreme authority of the Christian scripture, the uniqueness of Jesus Christ and the once and final Last Judgment. His so-called Other Spirituality is, well, other: it's just a box for everything that doesn't fit his own box: pluralistic, mystical, Gnostic, evolutionary and nature loving. Everything from Ralph Waldo Emerson to UFO abductees, and of course Joseph Campbell
This pluralistic living tradition which calls to us, invites us into dialogue with one another, is in a real sense the anti-tradition tradition. Emerson tells us of the time when he was young, a mentor asked him what tradition might have to say about his thought. "What have I to do with tradition?" responded the youth. Emerson would speak from his holy depths. Perhaps his depths were not divine in origin, queried his mentor. So be it, returned Emerson.
We come from this untraditional tradition now if for no other reason that many generations have responded to its call, which asks: 'What have I to do with tradition." All too often this rejection of external authority, this individualism, this liberalism in religion has come under fire, not just from the preachers of hierarchy and authoritarianism, but also from within our own association. Individualism has its corruptions just as do most other ideas that have been around for a while. Freedom of belief as all too often meant license to believe whatever you want. Freedom has just degenerated into licentiousness. The critical spirit in religion, the spirit asking its questions of any and all, has become for some feel good narcissism, consumerism, and the celebration of ego which is at the roots of our celebrity culture.
But should we throw the baby out with the bath water? Should we reject freedom of belief, the questioning spirit because some have never learned what it is really about, have turned it into a defense of narcissism? I think not.
Today the religious pluralism which we celebrate in our UU Principles and Purposes is snickered and sneered at by too many. We need to affirm for ourselves this essential thread of our faith. We are each responsible for developing our own faith, for steering our own way by the stars in the heavens as we live our daily lives
Next Saturday, March 10, we will have our annual Partner Church dinner. It is a fund raising effort for our Partner Church, the Unitarian Church in NaradSzentLazslo, in Transylvania, Rumania. We plan to buy a van for them to take their children to school and to supply a loaf of bread a week to the elderly.
Throughout the year, there is a display on the wall in Krolfifer about our partner church and the history of Unitarianism in Transylvania. We particularly honor what is known as the Edict of Torda. The Edict of Torda was issued in 1568 by the Unitarian King of Transylvania, Johns Sigmund, at the urging of his Unitarian court preacher, Francis David. It was the first modern call for toleration of different faiths in modern Europe. It was read by John Locke, whose Letter Concerning Toleration was enormously influential. While today we speak of pluralism, and welcoming, the beginnings of our living tradition lie here in this openness to the faith of others, not being afraid of other religions.
We take pride that our faith has its roots in toleration, in liberalism, in the call to openness, seeking: love..
One of the leading prophetic voices of our liberal faith in the twentieth century was James Luther Adams. Adams had been professor at Meadville, our seminary in Chicago, before becoming professor of ethics at Harvard Divinity School. Before going to Meadville, he spent some time in Germany during the rise of Hitler. He was in Germany in 1935 and 1936. He worked with the underground anti-Nazis church, known as the Confessing Church, with dissidents such as Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Adams knew what fascism was; he was arrested and interrogated by the Gestapo, he left Germany at their suggestion, using portraits of Hitler to cover his luggage which included movies of what was happening in Nazi Germany.
Some 25 years ago he told a student, Chris Hedges, that when his students were his age - Adams was then 80 - we would be fighting the "Christian Fascists."
Hedges continues in his AMERICAN FASCISTS:
The warning came at the moment Pat Robertson and other radio and televangelists began speaking about a new political religion that would direct its efforts at taking control of all institutions, including mainstream denominations and the government. Its stated goal was to use the Untied States to create a global Christian empire. It was hard, at the time, to take such fantastic rhetoric seriously, especially given the buffoonish quality of leaders in the Christian Right who expounded it. But Adams warned us against the blindness caused by intellectual snobbery. The Nazis, he said, were not going to return with swastikas and brown shirts. Their ideological inheritors in America had found a mask for fascism in patriotism and the pages of the bible (page 194)
This Christian dominionism rejects rational debate and toleration. How far has it gotten in its efforts? One reporter, Jeremy Scahill, is soon to publish a book on a subject he has been investigating for some time. The book is on the private military contractor, Blackwater. The head of Blackwater is Erik Prince. Recently on a news program, Scahill reported that
... what's really frightening is that you have a man in Erik Prince, who is a neo-crusader, a Christian supremacist, who has been given over a half a billion dollars in federal contracts, and that's not to mention his black contracts, his secret contracts, his contracts with foreign friendly governments like Jordan. This is a man who espouses Christian supremacy, and he has been given, essentially, allowed to create a private army to defend Christendom around the world against secularists and Muslims and others....
This intolerance of difference, of otherness which is a hallmark of fascism, has one of its clearest expressions in homophobia. In particular, James Adams at Harvard Divinity urged his students to closely watch what the Christian Right did to homosexuals. For it was within days of coming to power in 1933 that Hitler imposed a ban on all homosexual and lesbian organizations.
We of course would like to think, this cannot happen here. We need to be reminded: it has already happened here. Yesterday Jacquie and I went to the lecture at Kaldie's on Main Street in Over-the Rhine by Richard Schade, Germany's Honorary Consul and Professor at UC. We went to this event because it was followed by the tour of a number of the old German churches in Over-The-Rhine, including old St. John's at 12th and Elm. Schade in part talked about the hostility to Germans that developed during World War I. He talked about the streets that had names changed, how German microbreweries were closed and how the German language was forbidden. On the way home we stopped at Findlay Market. There we saw the historical marker commemorating the anti-German hysteria in Cincinnati. We here at St. John's were impacted by this hysteria, as the church changed its name, ended German language worship and joined the American Unitarian Association in 1924.
Can intolerance happen here? It has happened here.
Tolerance, openness, pluralism, the practice of our living tradition searching for our own truth, is essential. With Karl Popper, we need, however to raise the question, are their limits to our tolerance: will we tolerate intolerance? At times the question seems like one of the theological conundrums, such as can the goddess make a rock so heavy she can't lift it?
There is not abstract solution to the problem of tolerating intolerance. We cannot always define intolerance before we experience it. As John White Chadwick said in our reading this morning of spirituality, we know intolerance when we meet it, but may not always be able to define it.
With Popper, we recognize that rejection of rational argument and dialogue are signs of intolerance. Living our living tradition, we must draw on all its sources. The practice of non-violence as developed by Gandhi and Dr. King has roots in our liberal religious tradition, with Unitarian Henry David Thoreau and Universalsit Adin Ballou.
When we encounter intolerance, we need to call upon these deepest roots of our tradition of tolerance, our living tradition. We need to meet hate force with what Gandhi called 'soul force,' with love. We cannot allow the powers of negativity and intolerance to carry the day, to rule our lives.
But let us conclude on the note of why tolerance, openness is so important. Without openness to the future, to others, how can there be any hope? Religion, spirituality, faith is finally about revitalization. We turn to our faith to revitalize our sense of meaningful living. We turn to religion to revitalize our community. If we do not tolerate others, if we are not open, it all just becomes old and stale.
Late in life as Emerson's Transcendentalism was gaining recognition, William Ellery Channing was asked what he thought about this revitalization of Unitarianism. He responded:
Tolerance, openness to difference is the promise of continual renewal and revitalization. Calling upon ever deeper roots to practice tolerance, we live the living tradition.Old Unitarianism must undergo important modifications or developments... Its history is singular. It began as a protest against the rejection of reason, --against mental slavery. It pledged itself to progress as its life and end; but it has gradually grown stationary, and now we have a Unitarian Orthodoxy. Perhaps this is not to be wondered at or deplored, for all reforming bodies seem doomed to stop, in order to keep the ground, much or little, which they have gained. They become conservative and out of them must spring new reformers, to be persecuted generally by the old." (Stowe Persons, FREE RELIGION,12)