A Perspective and A Vision

by
Alma Hatfield

© 9/11/05

It occurred to me last week that since I would be giving my talk on Sunday, Sept. 11, the anniversary of 9’11, that the title of my talk “A Perspective and A Vision”, may have led some to believe that this talk would be a reflection on that horrific event. That is not the case. One could say, however, that the events surrounding 9’11 illustrate the struggle to which my talk today alludes. In the days following that event, the president, and other government officials, used the term evildoers, repeatedly, to describe those who might threaten us. Evildoers: Those who do evil. New-agers would be quick to point out that the word LIVE spelled backward is EVIL.

In this world when we live, when we truly LIVE, embracing LIFE, it necessitates choice and change. Fundamentalisms of all sorts, religious and political, stand opposed to Life, by that definition, and in direct conflict with it on every front; local, national, international. It makes no difference if its Muslim Fundamentalism, Christian or Atheist Fundamentalism.

My talk today, however, is about Life. It’s about choice and change, and about roots and wings. Our UU History, our roots, provides the perspective. There’s the wonderful old story of how the devil and a friend of his were walking in the woods one morning, when they saw ahead of them a man stoop down and pick up something from the ground, look at it, and put it away in his pocket. The friend said to the devil, “What did that man pick up?” “He picked up a piece of Truth,” said the devil, looking very pleased. The friend said, “I wouldn’t think you’d be at all pleased about a man finding a piece of the truth. And the devil replied, “Oh, but you don’t understand. Now I’m going to help him organize it!”

As Mark W. Harris points out in Our Historic Faith: “Unitarians and Universalists have always been heretics. We are heretics because we want to choose our faith, not because we desire to be rebellious. ‘Heresy’ in Greek means ‘choice’. During the first three centuries of the Christian church, believers could choose from a variety of tenets about Jesus. Among these was a belief that Jesus was an entity sent by God on a divine mission. Thus the word “Unitarian” developed, meaning the oneness of God. Another religious choice in the first three centuries of the Common Era (CE) was universal salvation. This was the belief that no person would be condemned by God to eternal damnation in a fiery pit. Thus a Universalist believed that all people will be saved”.

“Christianity lost its element of choice in 325 CE when the Nicene Creed established the Trinity as dogma. For centuries thereafter, people who professed Unitarian or Universalist beliefs were persecuted. This was true until the sixteenth century when the Protestant Reformation took hold in the remote mountains of Transylvania in eastern Europe. Here the first edict of religious toleration in history was declared in 1568 during the reign of the first and only Unitarian king, John Sigismund. In sixteenth-century Transylvania, Unitarian congregations were established for the first time in history. These churches continue to preach the Unitarian message in present-day Rumania.”

Despite persecution from those who feared freedom and tolerance, Unitarian and Universalist philosophies have been around for over a thousand years and have existed in this country to one degree or another, for the entire history of this nation. Those with Unitarian and Universalist beliefs were active in the founding of our country. Many were leaders of the American revolution. Unitarians and Universalists were among the leaders of the fight against slavery. UU’s were in the forefront in the establishment of public schools, mental hospitals, of votes for women, of nursing, of settlement houses, and much, much more. Women's rights were fought for and won by Universalists like Clara Barton, founder of the American Red Cross, and by Unitarians including Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucy Stone. The Universalists were the first denomination in the United States to ordain women to the ministry, beginning in 1863 with Olympia Brown. Dorothea Dix pioneered prison reform and improved treatment for the mentally ill.

UU’s were in Selma with Martin Luther King Jr. One of those killed by segregationists during that time was James Reeb, a Unitarian minister. Adlai Stevenson was a Democrat and a Unitarian. William Cullen Bryant, another Unitarian, was one of the founders of the Republican Party. In the realm of literature, it is notable that Horatio Alger, Louisa May Alcott, and Walt Whitman were all Unitarians. Horace Greeley, the great journalist, was a Universalist. America's famous essayist, Ralph Waldo Emerson was a Unitarian minister.

A little bit later this morning we’ll be dedicating our new memorial garden to one of our local UU heroines, Lorraine Knepper. Lorraine was a social worker and member of this congregation who devoted her life to helping others.

So much for perspective....... What about our vision? Who are we, Unitarian Universalists today and why do others have so much difficulty understanding our faith?

We remain a non-Creedal church. As Rev. Ricky Hoyt writes in his sermon, UU Essentials, “Creedal-like statements continued to be proposed by various bodies of the churches for many decades as we struggled to understand what it meant to be a church gathered around a search for truth, rather than a defined truth.”

“The early Unitarians saw that the history of gathering around Creed statements had led to dissension, division and persecution.......... Creeds had stifled discussion, stifled reason, stifled spiritual growth, and had led to hundreds of Christianity's, each conflictingly believed by its adherents to be the truth against the truth of all others.”

“This rejection of a creed has been the defining element of Unitarian Universalism ever since. This avoidance of a creed is really about moving the focus of religious authority away from any central person or structure of the church and placing it on each individual member.”

“Like other religions we rely on resources of holy people, holy scriptures, and holy tradition before making our individual statements of belief. Our holy people are many instead of one. Our holy scriptures are voluminous instead of singular. Our holy tradition includes all cultures and histories. It is because we include all human experience and human thought in our statements of beliefs that we can claim validity for our principles, morals and values.”

Learning and interpreting the holy lives, words, and histories of the world and reflecting on them through the lens of our own lives and thoughts continues in our Sioux City church as in any other. But the sorting out work happens in each of us, and through the shared dialogue of our religious community, instead of in a central authority.

We often refer to our Unitarian Universalist Statement of Principles and Purposes because it's an excellent summary of those "things commonly held among us" at this point in our history. If we choose, our Statement of Principles and Purposes can serve as a moral touchstone. However, we must remember what it is not; a creed which all UUs are expected to accept and profess unquestioningly. It simply represents the current consensus among our congregations of where we stand as a religious association.

Today UUs are determined to continue to work for greater racial and cultural diversity both locally as well as globally. Social justice infuses almost all of the work of our National Association, the UUA, in some way, from the Commission on Social Witness, to the Green Sanctuary, to providing basic resources for Social Justice Action. We are striving, as an Association, as a Church, and as individuals to give wings to our vision. As individuals, our faith gives us the impetus to move out into the community on our own, or with the companionship of other’s, to sow seeds of peace, love, and acceptance. We are sustained and strengthened by our roots and the knowledge that our UU faith is here for us.

The First Unitarian Church of Sioux City, in 2000, sought and received official recognition from the UUA as a “Welcoming Congregation”. Among many other activities, our members volunteer at the Soup Kitchen, work for the Peace Movement, created and support the first PFLAG group in NW Iowa. This past summer members of our church worked together to create a beautiful Memorial Garden. A lovely, peaceful space, complete with benches on which to sit to meditate, pray, dream or just contemplate the beauty. Working together they’ve created a living reminder of the interdependent web of all existence.

This are just a small sampling of our collective and individual efforts which reflect our modern understanding of universal salvation. Our historical evolution, local and national, has carried us from liberal Christian views about Jesus and human nature to a rich pluralism that today includes theist and atheist, agnostic and humanist, pagan, Christian, Jew, and Buddhist.

As worship chair, my vision is to not just include all of the above, but to actually celebrate wisdom from each in our worship services during this church year. Wisdom to strengthen our wings so that both individually and collectively as a church we may find the courage to grow and soar in love. Because, as Dee Phillips read to the children earlier, what really matters is whether we stand up for the people who are getting picked on. What matters is if we say hello to the new people and make them feel welcome. What matters is whether we try to help and not to hurt other people and animals, too.

When we make mistakes, commit errors (or what other religions might call “sins”), either through omission or commission, or when our egos, individual or collective, get in the way of our being who we want to be, it matters that we forgive ourselves and each other and begin again in love. That is really what all of us, all of our lives, come to church to keep on learning. That is the Vision.

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