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This talk was delivered by Wesley V. Hromatko on October 1, 2000.
The little boy asked his father, ?Dad, where did we come from?? ?Oh, no!? thought his father. He braced himself, thought awhile, and then gave a talk on the birds and bees. His son listened patiently. Then he said, ?That?s very interesting Dad, but didn?t we come from Illinois??
When Unitarian Universalists meet for the first time we often tell how we heard about the religion. My grandmother heard a radio program from this church in the 1950?s. Our family joined the Church of the Larger Fellowship, the UU church by mail, and I grew up in their Sunday school. When I went to LRY summer camp one of the Brigham boys was there. After college when I went to seminary Jeremy Brigham and his cousin Bruce Marshall were there. During my last year I spoke at the Springfield Fellowship once a month. Clara Lily White, Anna Louise Brigham?s sister and her husband were in the fellowship. Each one of us has our own story. The church has its story too. We are going to find out where we came from.
To trace a family history you start with the earliest known ancestors and go back one generation at a time. When you go back to the beginning of this congregation we find Mary Safford, a leader of the Iowa Sisterhood, of pioneer Unitarian and Universalist women. We also find her associates Eleanor Gordon and Marie Jenney.[1] Mary learned from her father?s books that early American leaders thought as her father did. Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, and Thomas Paine believed in a rational religion. Their religion wasn?t frightening and you didn?t have to believe anything that was impossible. The universe was governed by natural laws. Mary learned about ministers like Channing, Emerson, and Parker. She learned that women could speak and lead in the church as well as men.[2] From Parker Mary learned about the pioneer sociologist, August Comte. He started a humanist religion. His definition of god was ? collective humanity.? With such ideas Mary?s father, a farmer and teacher, was often in trouble. He wanted to end slavery. He read and spoke about Charles Darwin.
Later, Mary and her friend Eleanor Gordon[3] who had a Unitarian uncle[4] started the Hawthorne Literary society.[5] One of their favorite speakers was the Unitarian minister from Keokuk, Oscar Klute. He spoke about Herbert Spencer and evolution.[6] Then he encouraged Mary and Eleanor to start a Unitarian society in Hamilton, Illinois where they lived. He introduced them to Jenkin Lloyd Jones, the Western Unitarian Secretary, and missionary.[7] Jones was architect Frank Lloyd Wright?s Uncle Jenkin.[8] Jenkin Lloyd Jones and his wife were true marriage partners. Since Unitarian men couldn?t be persuaded to take or start small churches, Jones thought it was just fine for women to be ministers.[9] When Mary was ordained a charge to the minister written by Universalist Olympia Brown was read.[10] Their church in Humboldt, Iowa had mottoes of the Western Conference, ?Freedom, Fellowship, Character in Religion,? and ?Truth for Authority not Authority for Truth.? [11]
Then the time came Mary and Eleanor to move west and start the First Unitarian Church in Sioux City.[12] Their associate until 1899 was Marie Jenney.[13] She wrote her thesis at Meadville our Chicago seminary about the settlement house movement.[14] Jane Addams of Chicago?s Hull House was a model of a ministry in the world for the women of the Iowa Sisterhood.[15] She was a close friend of Jones. While technically a Congregationalist,[16] she attended[17] and spoke at Jones church[18] and the Ethical Culture Society.[19] Marie Jenney was a friend of Wisconsin Sen. Lafollette family. He was a Progressive with Unitarian connections.[20] Later Marie Jenney?s husband was a friend to immigrants as New York Port Authority commissioner. He opposed deporting people without due process. Due to their support for immigrants During World War I she was arrested and questioned by the Secret Service.[21]
Mary Safford?s story contains a summary of the history of American Unitarianism including some of the best-known Unitarians. Unitarian Universalist ideas, of course, can be traced to biblical times. However, our story is more a history of ideas more than a string of ?begats.? The Bible has line after line telling family history by telling who begat whom. You may remember the teenager in Bible class who had to wade through page after page of begats. He wondered how could all that begetting be so dull. Behind the well-known names is the development of philosophy and science. Science was natural philosophy during much of this time. These developments cover the period from the seventeenth century until the present. They are an adventure of ideas in which Unitarian Universalists participated and in which we are still participating.
The philosophy and religion of Franklin, Jefferson and Paine & others mentioned by Mary Safford depended on Sir Isaac Newton?s (1642-1727) new mathematical physics. It overturned Aristotle?s world. Its effect was like Einstein?s Theory of Relativity. The wonder of Newton?s system is that it worked until our own century and in fact is still valid.[22] Newton?s contemporaries accused him of being unorthodox. He was! His essay Two Notable Corruptions of Scripture questioned the doctrine of the Trinity.[23] What is remarkable is that Newton anticipated some recent scientific developments. The first is the idea that the solar system may collapse in a big crunch, which happens before another big bang. The second is the problem of whether or not the universe is a closed system which will become irregular and run down. Newton believed that God would take care of these two problems.[24] The Newtonian system is often compared to a watch. It is a marvelous smooth running, integrated system. Newton?s God was not only a watchmaker; he was a watch repairman. Newton could not imagine that the God that created such a beautiful machine would allow it to be great ruined.
Unfortunately, Newton?s great theory raised all sorts of questions. We see a colorful world instead of Newton?s world of invisible mathematical points. The twentieth century philosopher Alfred North Whitehead said, ?It seems extremely unfortunate that we should perceive a lot of things that are not there.?[25] Newton?s world made people wonder about what they experienced. In addition, people wondered what God did all day if the machine really worked as well as Newton thought.
John Locke, the chief British philosopher of his time, (1632-1704) worked out a response to problems raised by Newton?s philosophy in his Essay Concerning Human Understanding. It seemed to deal with the problems in a clear and adequate way.[26] Locke was suspected of being unorthodox although he remained within the Church of England. His library was filled with books of the Socinians[27] reformers who started Unitarian churches in Poland and Transylvania.[28] Finally, long after his death when Locke?s notebook was published in 1829 his Unitarianism was revealed.[29] Locke reasoned from the world, the effect, back to God the cause. He believed in tolerance except for atheists. [30] We still believe in tolerance for others and include everyone. Locke is famous for using the image that the mind is like a blank tablet. He believed that we do not have ideas until we have experiences.[31] The invisible colorless world of mathematical points produces the colorful world.[32] Today Unitarian Universalists strongly emphasize experience.
Early Unitarians in New England used Locke?s idea of experience to understand the Bible in a way that we may find surprising. They said that the miracles of the Bible proved its truth and God?s existence. The miracles were true because reliable witnesses had experienced them. John Locke said that we know by experience.[33] People are more likely to say today that if they haven?t experienced a miracle that miracles are unlikely. One problem was what happened to the conscience if there were no inborn ideas.[34] If the mind only reasons about what it receives how can it know what is right. Locke claimed that morality was known by reason like mathematics.[35]
In Virginia the Thomas Jefferson?s religious ideas were quite different. The Jefferson Bible, actually the Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth removed the element of the miraculous and ends the story with the shutting of the tomb.[36] Jefferson did make some use of Locke?s ideas. He changed Locke?s ?life, liberty, and property?[37] to ?life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.?[38]He Jefferson accepted the argument from design for the existence of God. However, he was a materialist[39] who derived his materialism at least in part from Joseph Priestley (1733-1804) and pioneer Universalist physician Benjamin Rush. Rush had Thomas Paine write his pamphlet in favor of American independence.[40] In England Paine, often characterized as Deist, attended the Unitarian Westgate Chapel, Lewes, Sussex, from 1768-1774.[41] Priestley was a Unitarian minister and discoverer of oxygen and other gases.[42] He first reported Franklin flying his kite in the storm to demonstrate that lightning and electricity were the same.[43] The greatest scientist of his time Franklin?s experiment confirmed the Newtonian universe.[44] Franklin was present at the organization of the Unitarian Essex Street chapel in 1774,[45] although he later attended a Presbyterian Church in the U.S. for a while, he believed in the humanity of Jesus and one God.[46] Priestley also inspired 19th century Unitarian Jeremy Bentham?s[47] idea of the greatest happiness for the greatest number.[48]Priestley believed that the material brain thought. In this respect he was similar to some modern philosophers and scientists.[49] Like a twentieth century behaviorist Priestley thought we learn from experiencing and associating pleasure and pain with our actions.[50]Priestley?s argument from scripture however wasn?t at all modern. After all, he said the bible taught resurrection of the material body.[51] Jefferson used Priestley?s ideas, but he did not totally agree with him.
Another 18th century thinker, David Hume, (1711-1776) who wasn?t Unitarian, raised some serious questions about the Newtonian world. These questions were a problem both for Thomas Jefferson and the New England Unitarians. He said that if you think about events one thing follows another. For instance one billiard ball hits another. We usually say one event causes another. However, what is the experience of ?cause.? Hard as we might try we cannot see feel or taste ?cause.? If we say that there must be a first cause, we have a problem. We have never yet experience cause. When we say cause we really just mean that two things happen at the same time. Also we do not experience our souls we merely experience a stream of events. For Hume we can?t even be sure that our experience of the external world is correct. Then there are miracles. We have been told about them but most people do not experience them. How can people believe in miracles? There wasn?t enough evidence for Hume. Hume extended Locke?s ideas about experience. There is no point in developing complicated theories. Ethics comes from how we feel. Reason can only tell us how to accomplish what we feel.[52] Today this position is called ?emotivism.?[53]
Both the early New England Unitarians and Thomas Jefferson[54] used the Scottish Common Sense philosophy[55] to answer Hume. This philosophy was really a remedy for problems with Locke?s philosophy. They thought in the following way. After all, the world is really out there.[56] There are faculties of perception, memory, and relation. We can know that there are causes. There is a soul not just one thing after another.[57] There is a moral faculty to distinguish right from wrong.[58] There were two different views of the moral faculty. The first held that ethics stem from our feelings for other people. Hume and Adam Smith were representatives of this school. The religious conservatives favored basing morality on feelings.[59] In contrast, Unitarians thought that reason could immediately intuitively see the difference between right and wrong. The Cambridge Platonists and the British Unitarian Richard Price were rational intuitionists.[60] Thomas Jefferson?s based his assertions in the Declaration of Independence such as ?all men are created equal? on rational intuition.[61] American Unitarian William Ellery Channing based some of his ideas on Price.[62] In the 20th century Common Sense Realist G.E. Moore in Principia Ethica claimed one could intuitively know what is right.[63]
In 1825 Just when everything seemed settled with Common Sense philosophy Ralph Waldo Emerson?s older brother William came back from studying theology in Germany. His faith had been undermined by what was later to be known as the higher criticism. The solid witnesses who testified to the miracles weren?t as solid as the New England Unitarians had thought. William gave up on the ministry.[64] The study of biblical manuscripts produced a result similar to the death of God movement in the 1960?s or the earlier Modernist Fundamentalist controversy. Ralph turned first to the certainty of the inner moral sense.[65] Morality had really always been more important to Unitarians than the doctrine. Channing had prepared the way for the inward turn in philosophy by his idea that God is different from us by degree not by kind. Early Unitarians believed that people could do wrong, however, original sin for them was merely the first sin. People had a conscience and a moral sense.[66] Channing was really an early proponent of what was called ?creation spirituality? some years ago. Humans in Genesis were created in the image and likeness of God. Probably the greatest example of Channing?s thinking and preaching was his ?Likeness to God.?[67] To understand Channing?s popularity when he was not addressing social issues we must think of someone like Robert Schuler or earlier Peale. Like Jesse Jackson Channing and then Emerson lifted people up. Emerson was to go farther than Channing. While Emerson and others were to study German philosophy and biblical criticism, much of Emerson?s understanding of the new philosophy in Germany came from William Taylor Coleridge,[68] (1772-1834) who most people know as a poet. Coleridge was briefly a Unitarian minister, [69] but later as a reaction to the horrors of the French revolution returned with Wordsworth to the Church of England and became conservative religiously and politically.[70] Emerson said directly that the German philosopher Immanuel Kant gave him the word ?Transcendental.? Unlike Locke Kant believed that the mind contributed to experience.[71] Emerson, however, went beyond Kant and his views resembled later German idealism.[72] Like members of the Society of Friends Emerson listen to the voice within as more certain than any book. Once again, Unitarians turned to experience but this time it was to the inner voice. Transcendentalism was the philosophy of the spirit.[73] When we think of a Unitarian spirituality we should think of Emerson and the other Transcendentalists. Channing referred to them as ?the spiritualists.?[74]
Even more than Emerson, however, the exponent of German Biblical criticism, theology, and philosophy was Theodore Parker the radical abolitionist.[75] Germany in those days was the Germany of poets and philosophers of dichter und denker. In 1848 there were uprisings against the old order in Europe and particularly in Germany. After the revolutions failed immigrants arrived in America bringing more philosophy and culture. The study of the philosophy continued particularly in the group called the St. Louis Hegelians[76] and in other study groups, including the Concord School of Philosophy with Emerson, Alcott, and company. In 1871 at one of these groups the Metaphysical Society, in Cambridge that Charles Pierce first propose the idea of pragmatism[77] which was to influence 20th century Unitarian and Universalist Humanists. Pierce took the word from Kant. Pragmatism very broadly deals with the practical consequences of ideas.[78] . The German idealist Schelling also influenced Peirce. It should not surprise us that Paul Tillich?s existentialist theology and philosophy had roots in Schelling as well[79] Tillich?s theology revealed a human Christ[80] that inspired Unitarian social ethicist and theologian James Luther Adams. Although Emerson died in 1882, the school only came to an end in death of Alcott.[81]
The last major idea that influenced Mary Safford was evolution, which she knew from her father. Even Darwin had Unitarian connections including his grandfather Erasmus, a contemporary of Jefferson who first remarked that Unitarianism was a ?feather-bed for falling Christians.?[82] He also proposed an early form of the theory of evolution, which was to be developed by his grandson.[83] Darwin?s mother was a Unitarian; he attended Unitarian chapel as a boy,[84]and he married his first cousin Emma Wedgewood.[85] His daughter Henrietta says her mother taught the Darwin children about Unitarianism although they were baptized and confirmed in the Church of England. Darwin didn?t share his wife?s religion early in their marriage.[86] Darwin?s father had destined him for holy orders in the Church of England before his famous voyage.[87] Later he attended but did not join a Unitarian church. The minister was James Martineau who had studied in Germany, the fount of transcendentalism.[88] In the Origin of Species Darwin wrote, ?There is a grandeur in this view of life with its several powers, having been originally breathed by the Creator into a few forms or into one; and?from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and wonderful are being evolved.?[89] Darwin grew more agnostic in his later years.[90] Thoreau?s final major reading project was historical and modern zoology.[91] He had read The Voyage of the Beagle and at the first opportunity he read Origin of Species.[92] Emerson?s transcendental friend Thoreau accepted Darwin?s theory of development.[93] Thoreau?s last scientific work on the Dispersion of Seeds shows the influence of Darwin.[94] Thoreau died in 1862[95] after a trip to Minnesota.[96] Darwin?s evolution fit well with Emerson?s scientific interests and his own ideas of development. Darwin did not scandalize him a bit. The way was well prepared for Herbert Spencer whose philosophy put evolution into a cosmic perspective.[97] Spencer? Social Darwinism, of course, is not something we can subscribe to today, but the debate continues in the work of E.O. Wilson and the controversy over Sociobiology. John Fiske, a member of the Cambridge Metaphysical society[98] popularized evolution. Radical Unitarian Francis Ellingwood Abbott was also a member of the Cambridge group. He was student of evolution anticipated modern process philosophy.[99] Charles Darwin read Abbot?s pamphlet, ?Truths of the Times,? which included the Fifty Affirmations of Free Religion and ?Modern Principles: A Synopsis of Free Religion.? He wrote Abbot that he was enthusiastic except for minor details that he did not mention.[100]
We can see modern parallels between Unitarian Universalist philosophical foundations and the present. 20th century philosopher Gilbert Ryle called the notion that there is a separate body and mind as the ?Ghost in the Machine.?[101] Priestley was a materialist and the mind merely the result of the body. How do we know right from wrong? Is it reason or emotion on which we should base our decisions or perhaps a combination of the two. The 20th century logical positivists believed that these ideas are emotional preferences. On the other hand G.E. Moore thought that we immediately know the good like the Unitarian common sense rationalists.[102] Should our guidance come from the inner voice of conscience or practical results. Channing?s ?Likeness to God? has its parallels in what flourished as creation spirituality. Biblical criticism once again shook people during the ?Death of God? movement in the 60?s and Jesus seminar still shakes people. Some found their answer in the existentialism of Paul Tillich and his human Christ and Tillich began with the type of idealistic philosophy that inspired Emerson. Is it the environment as in Locke that determines us or is it in the genes? Is it God or the natural order? Whatever the question Unitarian Universalists appealed to experience and reason for the answer.
When we learn about our religious family history we learn something about our church family today. Our own time has shown a renewed interest and recognition of women ministers. The Civil Rights movement was a mirror image of the abolitionists like Mary Safford?s father. Once again there are arguments about immigration policy. The controversy over evolution continues today. There are still arguments over the scientific method. Some postmodern philosophers challenge the method itself and say it is culture bound. Biblical criticism still shocks as it did Emerson?s brother William. Does the environment mainly determine us or do genes determine us? Is emotion or reason primary? We still have theists and humanists among us. History does not repeat itself perfectly but we can see family resemblances in the questions and the problems they address. Those who have gone before prepared the way. As we end today?s adventure in ideas let us remember Newton. He said that if he saw farther it was ?? by standing on the shoulders of Giants.? [103] We like Mary Safford stand on the shoulders of giants.
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