- Building Community, Michael Glenn
- The Revelation of Encounter, Dan McKanan
- “We Hold These Truths ...”, David Concepción
- Writing as a Spiritual Practice, Susan Jhirad
- Sacred Pie, Jim Kennedy
- The Most Radical Place in America, Dan McKanan
- A Child’s Tale, Jim Kennedy
- On Common Ground: Roman Catholics and Unitarian Universalists, Dan McKanan
- Dickens the Unitarian, Susan Jhirad
- God as a Verb, David Concepción
- A Time to Steal : How Do We Respond When Law and Love Conflict?, Daryl Bridges
- Peace Minute by Minute, Jim Kennedy
- The Frailty of Privilege, Dan McKanan
- The Class Problem within Unitarian Universalism, David Concepción
One day, somewhere in the 1990s, I got a phone call from my cousin Marcia. I had not seen Marcia for thirty years, but I liked her, and now she had sought me out and found me. I remembered her as a short bouncy girl with lots of energy. I remembered her mother, too, my Aunt Lee – an attractive woman, who always put Marcia down. Lee treated Marcia like “the runt of the family” and it hurt her. As Marcia grew up, she broke away from her family; she became a vegetarian; worked as a cook for people in need; she volunteered in Bosnia to help refugee children, she lived in a commune. For several years she was a loyal friend to a man who was dying of cancer. Marcia was a good person. In fact, she was my favorite cousin. But – and here is where my sermon begins – as we caught each other up on our lives, I sensed something “evangelical” about her tone. And then she said, “Michael, I think this phone call is going to change your life.” My blood turned to ice. WHAT??!! Change my life!!?? “Not if I can help it,” I said to Sue the minute I hung up.
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For more than two centuries, people of faith have been at the forefront of movements for social transformation in the United States. Quakers, evangelicals, and Unitarians worked together to end slavery. Spiritualists joined those folks in the long struggle for women’s rights. Universalists, Freethinkers, Theosophists, Jews, and Christian social gospelers built the labor movement. The civil rights, anti-war, and feminist movements of the 1960s and 1970s blended the embodied spirituality of the black church, the ascetic disciplines of Gandhi, and the magic of Wicca as they overturned ancient hierarchies of power. In today’s faith-based community organizing projects, congregations that are black and Latino, Jewish and Muslim, Protestant and Catholic work together to bring justice to our cities and metropolitan areas. And the Occupy movement has been the site of Christian and UU worship services, of Buddhist meditation, and of pagan rituals.
Though this history is often neglected by a mainstream media preoccupied with the exploits of the religious right, it is not forgotten in the faith communities that are doing the hard work of prophetic change. Most of us know, at least dimly, that we stand on the shoulders of Martin Luther King, Jr., Dorothy Day, and the abolitionists. But we sometimes oversimplify the story of religious radicalism. If we have been inspired by the biblical prophets, we may imagine that anyone who takes the Bible seriously will think like us, failing to notice that many religious conservatives also take scripture seriously. We may focus on the “greatest hits” – on the heroic individuals and the moments of triumph, neglecting the cloud of witnesses who have kept the fire burning during less hopeful times. Or we may assume that the “religious left” has always been separate from its “secular” counterpart, neglecting the activists who have moved freely from the church to the labor union, from deep faith to radical skepticism, or vice versa.
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I will begin my talk on Martin Luther King, Jr. with the words of Thomas Jefferson:
“I advance it therefore as a suspicion only, that the blacks, whether originally a distinct race, or made distinct by time and circumstances, are inferior to the whites in the endowments both of body and mind. It is not against experience to suppose, that different species of the same genus, or varieties of the same species, may possess different qualifications.”
While these words from Thomas Jefferson are not as widely known, they still hold some of Jefferson’s beliefs. The chapter of his book “Notes on the State of Virginia” entitled “On Blacks” is still important to understand Jefferson and the thinking of society on black people at the time. That sentence ends the particular chapter which had other things to say about black people:
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As a long time writing teacher and sometimes writer, I have experienced the numerous ways writing can be used: As a form of therapy or personal expression, as a means of political advocacy for a cause or a set of ideas, as communication with friends or family or the world at large, as commerce – to sell one’s writing for financial gain and recognition.
However, it can also be a means of exploration of intellectual, emotional or spiritual themes, or even as a kind of meditative practice. Through the process of writing, we often are discovering what we think and feel. As one famous writer once said: “How do I know what I think until I write it?” Many writers have stated that their writing brings out their better selves. Marcel Proust, author of the masterwork À la Recherche du Temps Perdue (Remembrance of Things Past) said of himself that in life, he was a rather superficial person, a social climber, but in writing his book, he came upon his deeper and better self. In a way, although he was a secular Jew, he felt that writing helped him see God.
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When I find myself in times of trouble, I use a visualization that powerfully reorients me to my place in the universe, and mostly restores a sense of cosmic and karmic order: Seeing the tongues of flame on the corona of the sun dance in majestic energy, unrelenting in their fury and fire.
What makes this solar dance possible? The layers below the corona, the photosphere and the chromosphere. The photosphere is the deepest region of a luminous object. The Sun’s photosphere is composed of convection cells called granules—cells of gas each approximately 1000 kilometers in diameter with hot rising gas in the center and cooler gas falling in the narrow spaces between them. Each granule has a lifespan of only about eight minutes, resulting in a continually shifting "boiling" pattern. Grouping the typical granules are super granules up to 30,000 kilometers in diameter with lifespans of up to 24 hours. These details are too fine to see on other stars.
The Sun’s visible atmosphere has other layers above the photosphere: the 2,000 kilometer-deep chromosphere lies just between the photosphere and the much hotter but more tenuous corona. Other "surface features" on the photosphere are solar flares and sunspots.
In a certain sense, we can look at these 3 layers as the representations of individuals, community and society.
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As many of you know, I have spent most of the past three years writing a big book on religion and the left in U.S. history. The book will come out in November, and around that time I will begin speaking about it at various UU congregations. I have developed a couple of sermons which highlight different aspects of that history, and this morning I have chosen to give you a sneak preview of one of them. I will be talking about the history of radical congregations – all the ways that local faith communities have been bulwarks of social change. And one of the things that many of these congregations did was to challenge the unique authority of the person in the pulpit – in this case, me. Often their services featured sermon talk-back times – a chance for the congregation to respond to what they have just heard. So this morning, when I have finished talking, we will take 10 minutes for you to respond, right here, as part of the service.
For most of United States history, the most radical places in America have been local faith communities. Before there were “People’s Republics” – here or in China – there were “People’s Churches.” The People’s Churches in New Haven and Cedar Rapids, Cincinnati and Kalamazoo, empowered late-nineteenth-century radicals to work for racial and economic justice. Many declared that their only “article of faith” was the “brotherhood of man.” Alongside the People’s Churches there were “Community Churches” and “Free Synagogues.” There were Ethical Culture societies dedicated to ending child labor. There were socialist congregations that were more radical than the Socialist Party itself. Earlier, there were anti-slavery congregations, created because the big white denominations refused to declare slaveholding a sin. Before them there were the proudly black congregations of the African Methodist Episcopal and African Methodist Episcopal Zion traditions. Local congregations gave activists the devoted people, the inspiring words, and the spirit they needed to change the world.
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The Wikipedia article on Child Development starts with this comment: The optimal development of children is considered vital to society and so it is important to understand the social, cognitive, emotional, and educational development of children. This branch of thought can be directly traced to the French philospher Jean-Jacques Rousseau whose political philosphy heavily influenced the French Revolution, as well as the American Revolution and the overall development of modern political, sociological and educational thought. His novel, Émile: or, On Education, which he considered his most important work, is a seminal treatise on the education of the whole person for citizenship.
Rousseau’s philosophy of education is not concerned with particular techniques of imparting information and concepts, but rather with developing the pupil’s character and moral sense, so that he may learn to practice self-mastery and remain virtuous even in the unnatural and imperfect society in which he will have to live. The hypothetical boy, Émile, is to be raised in the countryside, which, Rousseau believes, is a more natural and healthy environment than the city, under the guardianship of a tutor who will guide him through various learning experiences arranged by the tutor. Today we would call this the disciplinary method of “natural consequences” since, like modern psychologists Rousseau felt that children learn right and wrong through experiencing the consequences of their acts rather than through physical punishment.
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Good morning. I’d like to begin with a disclaimer. My talk today on Unitarian Universalists and Roman Catholics is one I first prepared in Minnesota, and delivered at a couple of UU fellowships there. In Midwestern UUism, people don’t really expect a sermon. We had one guy in our fellowship who always sat in the back so he could escape if too much spirituality came his way. What people wanted was a lecture, with lots to chew on, and that’s what I tried to deliver. So that’s what I have today. I hope to preach here again sometime during the year, and I promise I’ll have a real sermon then.
My perspective on relations between Catholics and Unitarian Universalists is shaped by my personal experience over the past decade. Prior to taking my job at Harvard, I was – perhaps – the only Unitarian Universalist on the faculty of a Roman Catholic seminary anywhere. Granted, it wasn’t much of a seminary – typically we graduated one or two future priests each year, and a couple dozen lay people preparing for ministry in Catholic parishes. I also chaired the undergraduate department of theology at the College of Saint Benedict and Saint John’s University. For a while I thought I was the only UU to chair a Catholic theology department, but then I learned of a Catholic college in Detroit that had two UU theology chairs in a row. Go figure.
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I know you have all heard of Charles Dickens, author of The Christmas Carol, Oliver Twist, David Copperfield, Great Expectations, Bleak House, Little Dorritt, Hard Times and countless other great novels. In the past year I have been studying more about Dickens the social reformer, as well as the moral and spiritual Dickens, in the process discovering Dickens the Unitarian. In his strong dislike of the harsh, judgmental religion of his time, in 1840 he left the Anglican church in which he had been raised. After a visit to America where he met William Ellery Channing the famous Unitarian minister, Dickens began to attend the Unitarian church when he returned to England. Although he eventually gravitated back to Anglicanism when it became more liberal, he retained a life-long respect for Unitarianism and many of his closest friends both in England and America were Unitarians, like his oldest friend and biographer John Forster, and the novelists Harriet Martineau and Elisabeth Gaskell, contributors to Dickens’ crusading weekly magazine Household Words.
Back in England, he also became close friends with Edward Taggart, the minister of the Unitarian church he attended. He said of Taggart that “he had that religion which has sympathy for men of every creed and ventures to pass judgment on none.” Dickens wrote to his friend Cornelius Felton, a Professor at Harvard, “I have carried into effect an old idea of mine and joined the Unitarians, who would do something for human improvement if they could; and practice charity and toleration.” Later in life, on a second tour of the United States in 1865, he renewed ties with American Unitarians, such as the publisher James Fields, the abolitionist senator Charles Sumner and the Transcendentalist Ralph Waldo Emerson.
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| What is a man, if his chief good and market of his time Be but to sleep and feed? a beast, no more. Sure, he that made us with such large discourse, Looking before and after, gave us not That capability and god-like reason To fust in us unused. Now, whether it be Bestial oblivion, or some craven scruple Of thinking too precisely on the event, A thought which, quarter’d, hath but one part wisdom And ever three parts coward, I do not know Why yet I live to say ’This thing’s to do;’ Sith I have cause and will and strength and means To do’t. Examples gross as earth exhort me: Witness this army of such mass and charge Led by a delicate and tender prince, Whose spirit with divine ambition puff’d Makes mouths at the invisible event, Even for an egg-shell. Rightly to be great |
Exposing what is mortal and unsure To all that fortune, death and danger dare, Is not to stir without great argument, But greatly to find quarrel in a straw When honour’s at the stake. How stand I then, That have a father kill’d, a mother stain’d, Excitements of my reason and my blood, And let all sleep? while, to my shame, I see The imminent death of twenty thousand men, That, for a fantasy and trick of fame, Go to their graves like beds, fight for a plot Whereon the numbers cannot try the cause, Which is not tomb enough and continent To hide the slain? O, from this time forth, My thoughts be bloody, or be nothing worth ~ William Shakespeare, Hamlet (Act 4, scene 4) |
In screenwriting circles, after the script is written a lot of thought no has to go into figuring out a number of pitches for the screenplay. Most coaches suggest you have a five minute, a two minute and a 30-second pitch for your script. Each pitch has its use in a different setting. The five minute is for pitch meetings, the two minute is for parties, and the 30-second one is what they call an elevator pitch. The idea is if you are in a situation where you are on an elevator with a director or producer that you are trying to get your script sold to and you have the ride up to their floor to sell your script idea to them. So many writers try to whittle down the essence of their 120 page script into 30-seconds or less of face time. The idea behind this is if you truly know your script you can distill it to its essence and explain it easily.
In Unitarian circles we have taken this elevator pitch concept adapted it to explaining our own faith. Technically it’s not about explaining our own faith quickly, per se, but explaining our own personal theologies to someone else easily. Our faith can be complex. We believe in religious tolerance and freedom and encourage everyone to discover what spirituality means for themselves. To that end ours is a varied faith that encompasses everyone from Christians to Buddhists to Atheists and almost everything in between. To explain what all of it means to someone can be daunting. As a screenwriter, I can tell you that pitches aren’t easy and as a UU I can tell you that explaining our faith quickly isn’t either. I have been a life-long UU and I really had no words to explain what I believed and define my faith up until a few years ago. In my opinion, it is a huge reason to why we as UUs don’t talk about our faith to others. However if we have a message for the modern society, as we often tell each other, we need to be able to tell people other than ourselves about our faith. So learning to craft your own elevator speech is helpful to understanding your faith and explaining it to others.
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Let me begin today with a story:
Once upon a time there lived a grand and wise Sheikh whose kingdom prospered greatly under his rule and he lived in a very fine palace. One day a stray cat jumped the walls into the garden and boldly climbed into the Sheikh’s lap as he was seeing to the affairs of state. Amused at the cat’s boldness and taking this as a blessing from Allah, for cats are sacred in Islam, the Sheikh took the cat as his own. The cat was beloved by the Sheikh and would sit on his lap while he oversaw the affairs of the state, purring soothingly, and would eat from the scraps of the Sheikh’s own table. So loved was the cat that the Sheikh even made for it little silk boots so it would not have to dirty its paws as it walked with him and many happy years past with no complaints between the two.
But one day the cat was sitting in the kitchen watching the Sheikh’s dinner being cooked; this was normal for the cat as she would be fed the scraps once the meal was finished but this day was different and when the cook turned away the cat stole a fish from the plate and fled with it. Enraged the cook chased the cat through the halls calling down curses on it, throwing things at it, and offering endless abuses until the cat leaped over the walls and escaped. The Sheikh, hearing the noise and shouts, came to the cook and asked what was wrong. The cook, furious, explained that the cat had stolen the Sheikh’s dinner despite the many years of charity and vowed to extract proper punishment.
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Several of us had the occasion Friday to sit at a table with students from the Fletcher School of Government. They came here to help us garden, coordinated by the Building and Grounds committee. As we ate anchovy pizza and discussed mulch, it occurred to me that we might be sitting in the presence of a future Nobel laureate for the Peace prize. Could one of them be as audacious to hope like Barack Obama? Was the sainthood of Mother Teresa in the making, drinking lemonade? The American Friends Service Committee? The international Committee of the Red Cross? Perhaps a future Henry Dunant, founder of the Red Cross, who shared the first Nobel Peace Prize in 1901 with Frédéric Passy, a leading international pacifist of the time.
Regardless the famous references, these young people filled me with a quiet hope for the future as they bandied about their plans for the summer, the last minute details of the school year, preparing for graduation and the appearance of the parental and familial units, a de rigueur part of this particular rite of passage. After they left for the day, we remarked what a nice group of people they were. To a person, they thanked us for allowing them to come and garden, thanked us for lunch, and shared their last few days as students to beautify our church grounds.
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“I do and I must reverence human nature. Neither the sneers of a worldly skepticism, nor the groans of a gloomy theology, disturb my faith in its godlike powers and tendencies. I know how it is despised, how it has been oppressed, how civil and religious establishments have for ages conspired to crush it. I know its history. I shut my eyes on none of its weaknesses and crimes. I understand the proofs, by which despotism demonstrates, that man is a wild beast, in want of a master, and only safe in chains. But, injured, trampled on, and scorned as our nature is, I still turn to it with intense sympathy and strong hope. The signatures of its origin and its end are impressed too deeply to be ever wholly effaced. I bless it for its kind affections, for its strong and tender love. I honor it for its struggles against oppression, for its growth and progress under the weight of so many chains and prejudices, for its achievements in science and art, and still more for its examples of heroic and saintly virtue. These are marks of a divine origin and the pledges of a celestial inheritance; and I thank God that my own lot is bound up with that of the human race.” ~ William Ellery Channing
This afternoon Tammy, Oriana, and I are heading out to Pepperell for a family celebration in honor of my new niece Abigail, who was born on Tuesday and is being baptized as we speak. I am grateful to all of you, and particularly to [Reverend] Hank, for giving me a good excuse for not being present at a religious ritual that violates my own conviction that all people are born perfect and, indeed, divine. But I am glad that I will make it to the party, for the birth of this baby is the first bit of unmitigated good news my family of origin has experienced in quite a few years.
Indeed, my own experience of moving back to Massachusetts after twenty years in other states has involved persistent encounters with human frailty. Just a few weeks after I arrived on campus last year, I ran into a retired colleague who had been one of my professors when I was an undergraduate. In fact, he was my thesis advisor. I was always a little bit intimidated by him, so at first I hesitated to step up and re-introduce myself. But I finally got up the courage – and he didn’t remember me. Not at all. I said this or that to jog his memory – the years I was in school, the title of my thesis. Nothing. “I don’t remember much anymore,” he said sadly.
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The election of Barack Obama as president has been a watershed event for our time, if only for the election of the first black man to the U.S. presidency. Because of this however, many people have said that we have now moved into a “post-racial era.” While such a milestone is important to the dream of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s – which is arguably the measuring stick of such an event – it doesn’t mean that we have moved past racism, which the name implies. In fact, if we look at the recent events at a Pennsylvania swim club and with the controversy of the arrest of Professor Henry Gates, it’s obvious that racism still lives in very ugly forms. But however important it is to continue the dialog on racism and race relations, that’s not what I want to address. In my opinion, the election of President Obama hasn’t ended the conversation on racism but it has allowed for the conversation to segue into classism.
Classism isn’t a word you hear very often – my spell checker program has never heard of it – but it is out there. It is one of the biggest unspoken problems in our society. Without economic oppression, all other oppressions wouldn’t exist. In anti-oppression circles, we talk about how economic oppression is the umbrella from which all other oppressions hang. All oppression is about dominance, and keeping people down economically is a core component of this. The most obvious is the use of slave labor of an oppressed group to enhance the profits and benefits on the dominating group. But other more subtle forms of economic oppression exists. There is the process of “steering,” in which financial institution steer minority loan applicants (with or without their knowledge) towards riskier adjustable-rate loans with what is called an “exploding loan rate” that jumps to unaffordable levels. Same sex marriage proponents talk of all the economic discrepancies that need to be resolved simply by establishing marriage equality. But these economic oppressions are being dealt within the specific “ism” itself. Yet we hardly deal with the economic realities that affect each member of our society as whole. We hear about class issues like the gulf between the haves and have-nots or accusations of class warfare, but class is an issue that isn’t often discussed in depth. That changed with the financial meltdown this past fall and subsequent aftermath.
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