The More Things Change
April 7, 2024
Rev. Dan Schatz

Come into this hour of transformation.
Come into this community that is never complete.
Come into this life that invites you to discovery.
Come in and be welcome.
Let us enter into worship together.

Reading: “I Call That Church Free,” by James Luther Adams, excerpted

I call that church free which enters into covenant with the ground of freedom, that sustaining…, transforming power not made with hands. It protests against the idolatry of any human claim to absolute truth or authority. This covenant is the charter and joy of worship in the beauty of holiness.

I call that church free which, in covenant with that divine community-forming power, brings the individual, even the unacceptable, into a caring, trusting fellowship that protects and nourishes integrity and spiritual freedom. Its goal is the prophethood and the priesthood of all believers – the one for the liberty of prophesying, the other for the ministry of healing….

I call that church free which liberates from bondage to the principalities and powers of the world, whether churchly or secular, and which promotes the continuing reformation of its own and other institutions. It protests against routine conformity or thoughtless nonconformity that lead to deformity of mind and heart and community….

I call that church free which in charity promotes freedom in fellowship, seeking unity in diversity….

I call that church free which responds in responsibility to the Spirit that bloweth where it listeth. The tide of the Spirit finds utterance ever and again through a minority. It invites and engenders liberation from repression and exploitation, whether of nation or economic system, of race or sex or class. It bursts through rigid, cramping inheritance, giving rise to new language, to new forms of cooperation, to new and broader fellowship. The church of the Spirit is a pilgrim church on adventure.

I call that church free which is not bound to the present, which cowers not before the vaunted spirit of the times. It earns and creates a tradition binding together past, present, and future in a living tether, in a continuing covenant and identity, bringing forth treasures both new and old…..

 

Sermon: The More Things Change 

In 1841, the Rev. Theodore Parker, famed abolitionist, activist, and Unitarian minister, preached a sermon on the “The Transient and the Permanent in Christianity.” In the sermon he said, “It must be confessed, though with sorrow, that transient things form a great part of what is commonly taught as Religion. An undue place has often been assigned to forms and doctrines, while too little stress has been laid on the divine life of the soul, love to God, and love to man. Religious forms may be useful and beautiful. They are so, whenever they speak to the soul, and answer a want thereof. In our present state some forms are perhaps necessary. But they are only the accident of Christianity; not its substance.” He went on to argue that “the difference between what is called Christianity by the Unitarians of our times, and that of some ages past,” is greater than the difference between Mohammed and Jesus.

To Parker, things like creeds, lists of beliefs, rituals, faith statements, even words themselves are transient, changing with the times. What is permanent, he said, “is the truth which springs up spontaneous in the holy heart… a divine life, doing the best thing, in the best way, from the highest motives.” “It does not demand all people to think alike, but think uprightly, and get as near as possible to truth…. it allows perfect freedom.”

Now, in the 1840s, this was radical even for Unitarians. Parker said he didn’t believe in miracles, and he saw contradictions in the Bible, and the entrenched leadership of the day reacted so badly that that he was forced to leave his pulpit, and thought he had to leave Unitarianism behind completely.

But the thing is, he was right. Unitarianism did need to change. It had grown stale. Religion has always changed with the times. And both Unitarianism and Universalism have always made such transformation a core part of our identity.

Four years later after his notorious sermon, a group of Unitarians in Boston came to Rev. Parker and asked if he would help them start a new congregation. He agreed reluctantly and within a year, the congregation had grown to over two thousand members. That’s 2% of the entire population of Boston at the time, and their number included people like Louisa May Alcott, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Julia Ward Howe.

The Unitarian Universalism we practice today doesn’t hold the same kinds of doctrines as it did two hundred years ago. We don’t all believe the same things Theodore Parker believed in either. We’re not all Christians any longer. We don’t all believe in God. But what is permanent in Unitarian Universalism has not changed and will not change. We still embrace freedom, reason, and the search for truth. We still place far more importance on how we live than on what we believe.

And because we are human, we still sometimes mistake what is transient in liberal religion with what is permanent.

Forty-five years after Parker’s famous sermon, another Unitarian minister, James Freeman Clark, outlined “five points” of Unitarianism – “the fatherhood of God, the brotherhood of man, the leadership of Jesus, salvation by character, and the progress of mankind, onward and upward forever and ever.”

It caught fire. Books were written about it, sermons preached, pamphlets printed, and before long, outside almost every Unitarian church, you could see a big sign: “We believe: the fatherhood of God, the brotherhood of man,” etc. There was a joke at the time that Unitarians believed in the fatherhood of God, the brotherhood of man, and the neighborhood of Boston.

The signs stood for decades, in some places they stood for over a century, but in most congregations, after about fifty or sixty years, people started asking whether it was a really a good idea to have signs saying “We believe” outside a church that wasn’t supposed to have a creed at all, and churches that had embraced the new Humanist movement began to question this whole “God” thing, and the signs just didn’t work for everybody anymore.

Mind you, they worked for plenty of folks. There were many among us who couldn’t imagine a Unitarian church without them. And there are a few congregations who still have their signs, but over time they’ve moved them inside, and then downstairs, and into the kitchen. This is actually true.

What Theodore Parker warned against, and what we’ve gotten ourselves into, over and over, because we are human, is what the current version of the Unitarian Universalist sources calls “idolatries of the mind and spirit.” That word “idolatry” keeps coming up. James Luther Adams talk about it, as did Theodore Parker. What he meant by idolatry was that the veneration of an ideal – love to humankind, love for the sacred – had been replaced with the veneration of the words used to describe and expound on that ideal. You see it all the time. You see it in public life when people hold up copies of the Constitution or the Bible, while working diligently to oppose the provisions of the Constitution and the teachings of Jesus. You see it in religion, when we get stuck on words, and forget that the words are meant to point to something larger.

Rituals change. Words change. The issues that people cared about a hundred years ago, or two hundred, or just fifty years ago have changed. But we are still the religion of Theodore Parker, and Judith Sargent Murray, and Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Whitney Young, and James Luther Adams, and Sophia Lyon Fahs, and all the rest of them. Part of what makes us that same religion is that we are intentional about staying open to transformation. We have to be, because part of the point of us is that we know none of us has all the answers. Theodore Parker talked about getting as close to truth as possible, but acknowledged none of us could ever get all the way there. We learn new truths – from science and social science, from human interaction, from self-discernment, from listening to other people. We learn new truths that change how we see the world. If we were to close ourselves off from the possibility of transformation we would lose what is most precious about Unitarian Universalism.

Most of us know that there will be a vote at this year’s UU General Assembly on whether to change the part of the denomination’s bylaws that contains the current list of principles. I’m not pushing for or against these particular changes. I’ve preached on them this year because they’re good grist for the mill, and it gives us a chance to try them on for size, but I’m not pushing one way the other.

Honestly, I have mixed feelings about the way the proposed revision is written. Some of it I really like, some of it is a bit clunky. But of all of the material in there, the value that I resonate with the most, and which I think is least clunky, is “Transformation.” “We adapt to the changing world. We covenant to collectively transform and grow spiritually and ethically. Openness to change is fundamental to our Unitarian and Universalist heritages, never complete and never perfect.”

This is not about what we do or how we live as individuals, although I certainly hope our personal spiritually is transformative, or else what are we all here for? But that’s not what this is. This is a covenant among congregations. And when I read those words, and I think of Unitarian Universalism over time, this is the part that gives me chills. This is the part that points to the permanent in Unitarian Universalism – and that is that we are always open to change. I know. It’s ironic, and it’s probably nerdy that it moves me that much, but it does. And also ironically, that’s not new, either.

Twenty-seven years ago, when I was a student minister in Mankato, Minnesota, I preached a sermon called “What Are the Principles and Purposes?” Out of curiosity, last week I went back and looked up that old sermon. I found that I had talked about a few things – how a covenant is not at all the same as a creed, but is instead a working document that outlines how people, or in this case congregations, choose to be together. And I also said this:“Unitarian Universalism is a working document; it is a religion in process. Likewise, the Principles and Purposes are not the ultimate statement of who we are, but a vague statement that gives a general idea of some things many of us might value.”

“A truly free religion is a rare item in human history, and it is both exciting and frightening to be a part of it. We are only beginning to come into our own, I believe, and the potential for mistakes is vast. One mistake, I submit, would be to misuse our covenant, calling it belief or showing it as the definition of what we are. It is not, and it never can be either one. But if we continue to make this mistake, as we have often done in recent years, we will begin to view it as such, and then we will die from intellectual and spiritual malnutrition. It just isn’t enough.”

Huh. Get a load of the twenty-four year old intern. “Intellectual and spiritual malnutrition.”

But the thing is, I still believe it. I still believe that the ability to transform is at the heart of our religion. I still believe that no statement of principles and no list of values could ever adequately define what Unitarian Universalism is. As Theodore Parker would have said, they are the accident of Unitarian Universalism, not its substance.

I think we made a mistake when we began turning the UU principles into something like scripture, color coding them, making rituals out of them, even turning them into a holiday, as some people did. We started caring more about the words than the ideas they pointed to. We made a mistake when we started saying that “thus and such is a UU idea because it adheres to principles number three and five.” We made a mistake when we started answering questions about what UUs believe with the list of the principles instead of the more complex and truer answer, which begins, “It’s not really about belief. It’s how we live in community.”

The current principles are not and should not be carved in stone. Any new list of values is not and should not be carved in stone. Unitarian Universalism has to be able to change or we will not be Unitarian Universalists any longer, in any meaningful sense.

I want to be clear. If the proposed changes pass, I will not ask that anybody change their beliefs, or values, or the way you choose to express them, or that you follow some sort of one size fits all approach to Unitarian Universalism. That’s not how this works. You will never be any less a valued member of this congregation, or one bit less of a Unitarian Universalist if you do not embrace one particular set of changes. There are different valid opinions, and if we are true to ourselves as Unitarian Universalists, we should be able to hold different views, talk together honestly, and listen to each other in the spirit of understanding, compassion, and respect.

What I do ask is that we be kind in the conversations we hold, that we avoid impugning the motives of those with whom we may disagree, whether they are in the room or not, and most of all – that we remember these words are not what is most important. These words point to ideals that are important. I ask that we remember to live by the ideals that we value, and that we don’t become so attached to one way of putting things that we lose what is most unique and precious about our faith – our openness to new truth, new visions, new ideas, and new ways of being together.

What I ask is nothing less or more than that we be true to our selves – our best selves – as Unitarian Universalists, and if we can do that much, we will always be a transforming faith, whether it’s the changes of this moment or something else down the road. If we are true to ourselves, we will always be changed every time someone new comes in the door of any Unitarian Universalist congregation, anywhere, and begins to add their ideas, passions, insights, and experiences into our wonderful mix. If we are true to ourselves, we will always remain open to transformation, because we will listen to each other with care.

And the more the more things change – well, you know the rest of that saying. We will always be a free religious community. We will always embrace inquiry, spiritual growth, integrity, community, diversity, and love. We will always care about the society and planet in which we live, and we will always do our best to make this world better. We will always seek to live our values, and not just profess them.

Forever and for always, we will be made new.