RESISTANCE AND TRANSFORMATION
A Tapestry of Faith Program for Adults
WORKSHOP 7: UTOPIANISM
BY BY REV. COLIN BOSSEN AND REV. JULIA HAMILTON
© Copyright 2011 Unitarian Universalist Association.
Published to the Web on 9/29/2014 11:18:32 PM PST.
This program and additional resources are available on the UUA.org web site at
www.uua.org/religiouseducation/curricula/tapestryfaith.
WORKSHOP OVERVIEW
INTRODUCTION
Those of us who are alive in these times have a clear and evident mission. We have a compelling moral purpose that can direct our lives and our energies: We are about saving the world. So what is our part? The place is to begin at home- that is, with ourselves. Notice what is life-denying and resist it. Live with the moral authority that comes from compassion and non-violence. Form communities of people who will sustain you in living as you wish to live, whether they are study groups or alternative living arrangements or socially responsible, sustainable businesses. Our congregations must be central gathering places for such community. — Marilyn Sewell, "Reclaiming the American Dream," in A People So Bold
Simply defined, "Utopianism" is the belief that a vision of righteousness can be actualized in time and space. One can describe as "utopian" a community in which usual social norms are annulled as a means to reach a higher standard for human life in community. Four well known utopian communities are part of our Unitarian and Universalist histories: Rakow, in 17th-century Poland, and Brook Farm, Fruitlands, and Hopedale in mid-19th century New England. None of these communities lasted more than a couple of decades; most collapsed within a short time. Despite their brief existence, these communities have had lasting impact on Unitarian Universalism. Prominent Unitarian and Universalist theologians, literary figures, and activists including Faustus Socinus, Margaret Fuller, Adin Ballou, and Nathaniel Hawthorne were inspired by and involved with them. This workshop explores how these utopian communities have shaped Unitarian Universalist tradition and examines the relationship between Unitarian Universalist theology and utopian thought.
The workshop defines utopianism and its opposite, apocalypticism, before offering a brief history of Brook Farm and its relationship to the Transcendentalist movement. As participants learn the history of Brook Farm, they consider whether or not utopianism is an effective strategy for building and sustaining social justice movements. The workshop closes with a reflection on the ongoing relationship between utopianism and Unitarian Universalism.
To ensure you can help adults of all ages, stages, and learning styles participate fully in this workshop, review these sections of the program Introduction: "Accessibility Guidelines for Workshop Presenters" in the Integrating All Participants section, and "Strategies for Effective Group Facilitation" and "Strategies for Brainstorming" in the Leader Guidelines section.
GOALS
This workshop will:
LEARNING OBJECTIVES
Participants will:
WORKSHOP-AT-A-GLANCE
Activity | Minutes |
Welcoming and Entering | 0 |
Opening | 15 |
Activity 1: Utopianism and Apocalypticism | 25 |
Activity 2: Brook Farm — A Utopian Experiment | 20 |
Activity 3: Utopianism, Apocalypticism, and Environmentalism | 20 |
Faith in Action: Contemporary Utopian Movements | |
Closing | 10 |
Alternate Activity 1: Your Utopian Community | 25 |
SPIRITUAL PREPARATION
After reading the workshop plan, consider any experiences you have had with a utopian community. Have you ever been part of a cooperative living arrangement (even a temporary one, such as a summer community, a dormitory experience, or a youth conference)? What was it like? Did it have a lasting impact on you?
Read the definitions of utopianism and apocalypticism offered in Activity 1. Have you ever before explored utopian or apocalyptic thought in religion, philosophy, sociology, or political science? Can you observe ways utopian or apocalyptic ideas have influenced your life choices, perhaps including your choice of a religious community? Do you find one perspective more attractive than the other? Why or why not? As you lead this workshop, continue reflecting on the ways in which utopian and apocalyptic thought have driven your choices and actions. Encourage participants to do the same.
Before you lead the workshop, take time to complete this sentence: "At the end of this workshop, I hope the participants leave feeling... "
WORKSHOP PLAN
WELCOMING AND ENTERING
Materials for Activity
Preparation for Activity
Description of Activity
As participants enter, invite them to sign in, put on name tags, and pick up handouts. Direct their attention to the agenda for this workshop.
OPENING (15 MINUTES)
Materials for Activity
Preparation for Activity
Description of Activity
Invite a participant to light the chalice while you lead a unison reading of Reading 449 in Singing the Living Tradition, "We hallow this time together by kindling the lamp of our heritage."
Lead the group in singing the social justice hymn you have chosen.
After the song, invite everyone to reflect quietly on a time in their lives when they felt part of a community that lived by their values and modeled those values for others. After a minute, invite them to form pairs and describe their community experience to their partner. Explain that each person will have five minutes to speak uninterrupted. Ring a bell after five minutes and request that partners change speakers. After another five minutes, ring the bell and re-gather the large group.
Share this quote from George Ripley, founder of the Brook Farm utopian community:
I can imagine no plan which is suited to carry into effect so many divine ideas as this. If wisely executed, it will be a light over this country and this age. If not the sunrise, it will be the morning star... I wish to see a society of educated friends, working, thinking, and living together, with no strife, except that of each to contribute the most to the benefit of all.
Explain that this workshop will explore the concept of utopianism in Unitarian Universalist history, through the story of Brook Farm.
ACTIVITY 1: UTOPIANISM AND APOCALYPTISM (25 MINUTES)
Materials for Activity
Preparation for Activity
Description of Activity
Distribute Handout 1, Utopianism and Apocalypticism. Allow participants a few minutes to read it silently. Then, invite comments, observations, and questions about the handout.
Have participants form small groups of three or four. Give each small group newsprint and markers and ask them to list examples of utopian and apocalyptic thought. Encourage them to consider contemporary examples, from both from within and outside Unitarian Universalism.
After about ten minutes, re-gather the large group.
Post a new sheet of newsprint, head two columns "utopian" and "apocalyptic," and invite each small group to post their newsprint and share. As each group presents, record their examples in the appropriate column. Ask if participants see any patterns. What major differences do they see between the examples of utopian and apocalyptic thought? Are there any similarities?
ACTIVITY 2: BROOK FARM — A UTOPIAN EXPERIMENT (20 MINUTES)
Materials for Activity
Preparation for Activity
Description of Activity
Have the volunteers read the story aloud.
Then, lead a discussion with these questions:
ACTIVITY 3: UTOPIANISM, APOCALYPTISM, AND ENVIRONMENTALISM (20 MINUTES)
Materials for Activity
Preparation for Activity
Description of Activity
Explain that this activity invites participants to explore how utopian and apocalyptic thought influence the contemporary environmental movement. Invite volunteers, one at a time, to read the quotes from Leader Resource 1, Environmentalism Quotes.
Lead a discussion using these questions:
CLOSING (10 MINUTES)
Materials for Activity
Preparation for Activity
Description of Activity
Invite participants to respond, in writing:
What changes have you made in your life to implement your vision of a better world? What role does the vision you hold play in sustaining your actions?
Allow five minutes for writing.
Then, read this quotation—the same one that opens this workshop—from Marilyn Sewell, in "Reclaiming the American Dream" in A People So Bold (Boston: Skinner House, 2009):
Those of us who are alive in these times have a clear and evident mission. We have a compelling moral purpose that can direct our lives and our energies: We are about saving the world. So what is our part? The place is to begin at home—that is, with ourselves. Notice what is life-denying and resist it. Live with the moral authority that comes from compassion and non-violence. Form communities of people who will sustain you in living as you wish to live, whether they are study groups or alternative living arrangements or socially responsible, sustainable businesses. Our congregations must be central gathering places for such community.
Invite a participant to come forward and extinguish the chalice as you say these words: "As we extinguish this chalice, may we let the light of our tradition kindle our hope for a better world."
Distribute Taking It Home and invite participants to continue to write in their journals between workshops.
FAITH IN ACTION: CONTEMPORARY UTOPIAN MOVEMENTS
Description of Activity
Home schooling is gaining popularity in some Unitarian Universalist communities. It could be argued that the home school movement is a type of utopian movement. Do you agree with this? If so, why? Do you home school? Does someone else in your congregation? Organize a conversation in your congregation about home schooling.
OR:
With your congregational social justice committee or another appropriate group, examine your congregation's work on environmental issues to discern apocalyptic thought and utopian thought. What rhetoric, imagery, and approaches to action have been most effective in calling your congregation to action on environmental issues? How might you increase the effectiveness of what already is working well and change what is not? How can using a utopian or apocalyptic approach help? Volunteer to contribute your insights and action to congregational efforts to preserve and protect the environment.
LEADER REFLECTION AND PLANNING
Take a few moments right after the workshop to ask each other:
Review the next workshop. Are there any questions to research or logistics to arrange between workshops? Make a list of who is responsible for which preparations and materials.
TAKING IT HOME
Those of us who are alive in these times have a clear and evident mission. We have a compelling moral purpose that can direct our lives and our energies: We are about saving the world. So what is our part? The place is to begin at home—that is, with ourselves. Notice what is life-denying and resist it. Live with the moral authority that comes from compassion and non-violence. Form communities of people who will sustain you in living as you wish to live, whether they are study groups or alternative living arrangements or socially responsible, sustainable businesses. Our congregations must be central gathering places for such community. — Marilyn Sewell, "Reclaiming the American Dream," in A People So Bold
Pay attention to the formation of communities that sustain you in living as you wish to live. Are there such communities in your life? Would you like there to be? How might you go about forming or sustaining one? Invite members of your congregation and other friends to join you in paying special attention to the nurture of sustaining communities.
Nathaniel Hawthorne's novel The Blithedale Romance presents a fictionalized account of life at Brook Farm. Check it out from your local library and read it!
ALTERNATE ACTIVITY 1: YOUR UTOPIAN COMMUNITY (25 MINUTES)
Materials for Activity
Preparation for Activity
Description of Activity
Participants imagine what their own utopian community might look like.
Distribute paper and set out writing and drawing implements to share. Invite participants to take 15 minutes to write or draw a description of a utopian community they envision.
After 15 minutes, ask participants to move into pairs and have each partner take five minutes to describe the community they have imagined.
Sound the bell or chime after five minutes and invite the second partner to take their turn. Sound it again after another five minutes.
Re-gather the large group and lead a discussion:
RESISTANCE AND TRANSFORMATION: WORKSHOP 7:
STORY: BROOK FARM
Brook Farm is probably the best known of the three utopian communities started by Unitarians or Universalists in the mid 19th century. Instigated by the Unitarian minister and Transcendentalist George Ripley (1802-1880) and his wife Sophia (1803-1861), Brook Farm was an effort to, in Ripley's words, build a "city of God, anew."
The community lasted only six and a half years. During that time, it occupied an important place in various mid-19th century reform efforts, including associationism (an early form of socialism), abolition, women rights, and the Workingmen's Movement.
Brook Farm achieved fame because of its many prominent Transcendentalist and literary residents, supporters, visitors, and critics. Nathaniel Hawthorne was an early resident and penned his novel The Blithedale Romance as a satire of the community. Margaret Fuller, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Henry David Thoreau all visited Brook Farm.
In a letter to Emerson, George Ripley outlined his original vision for the community. He wrote:
Our objects, as you know, are to insure a more natural union between intellectual and manual labor than now exists; to combine the thinker and the worker...to guarantee the highest mental freedom, by providing all with labor, adapted to their tastes and talents...to do away the necessity of menial services, by opening the benefits of education and the profits of labor to all; and thus to prepare a society of liberal, intelligent, and cultivated persons, whose relations with each other would permit a more simple and wholesome life, than can be led amidst the pressure of our competitive institution.
The community was to include a farm and a school, which featured George Ripley and his friends as teachers.
Support for the new community was widespread but not universal. Emerson was invited to join Brook Farm but declined. Reflecting on his decision in his journal, he wrote, "I do not wish to remove from my present prison to a prison a little larger." Emerson suspected that communal living would not allow him to "find myself more than now" and that Brook Farm would be incapable of reforming or transforming its members. Such, transformation was, in his view, an individual project and he believed the individual's "solitude is more prevalent and beneficent than the concert of crowds."
Brook Farm launched on shaky financial ground. The Ripley's raised money by organizing the community as a joint-stock venture. To be a full member of the community, one had to purchase or pledge to purchase at least one 500 dollar share. Even though 24 shares were purchased or pledged, the money raised through the sale of stocks was insufficient to launch the enterprise—due, in part, to the fact that almost half the money pledged by stockholders was never paid. The balance of the money for start-up capital and the purchase of a dairy farm in West Roxbury, Massachusetts came as loans from the friends and neighbors of the Brook Farmers. The farm was immediately mortgaged to raise more funds.
Community members hoped to support themselves through their farming efforts and Brook Farm's boarding school. The reputation of the school rose quickly. Its students included Margaret Fuller's younger brother, Theodore Parker's ward, Emerson's nephew, and the children or charges of other prominent New Englanders.
The population at Brook Farm increased, reaching over 70 within a year of the community's founding. However, the success of the school and the growing population of Brook Farm did little to improve the community's finances. Several new buildings had to be built to accommodate new members, and the money for these building efforts was almost entirely borrowed. By its second year, Brook Farm was more than 15,000 dollars in debt.
The community's financial situation led the Brook Farm leadership to cast about for new sources of support. They quickly settled on the Associationist, or Fourierist, movement, inspired by the French socialist Charles Fourier (1772-1837). The Fourierists advocated the creation of highly ordered cooperative communities called phalanxes. Each phalanx was to be organized around a phalanstere, a massive four-story building that included living quarters, community space, and workshops. Phalanxes were to combine industry and agriculture and eliminate the social tension due to poverty by ensuring that each person's basic needs were met. Fourier thought the unusual living arrangements he envisioned would liberate women from what he viewed as the oppression of traditional family life.
To transform into a Fourierist community, Brook Farm had to de-emphasize the community's agricultural work and focus on the development of industry. The community launched several efforts, including the manufacture of shoes and pewterware and the creation of a printing press. By 1844, the new direction of Brook Farm had led to the resignation of most of the remaining founding members of the community (Hawthorne and others had left Brook Farm within the first year). The ranks of Brook Farm, however, were replenished by craftspeople who joined the community inspired by the Fourierist vision.
The community's debts continued to mount as efforts were directed to the construction of a phalanx. To raise Brook Farm's profile in the Fourierist movement and to increase the community's revenues, Ripley started to publish The Harbinger, an official periodical of the Fourierist movement, in 1845. The journal brought in some income and its literary and cultural pages received attention, yet it did not significantly alleviate the community's financial situation.
Brook Farm began to collapse in late 1845 when a smallpox epidemic broke out in the community. Parents and guardians withdrew their children from the school, effectively eliminating Brook Farm's one significant source of income. In early 1846, the community decided to concentrate its remaining resources on finishing the phalanstere in the hopes that completing the massive structure would win Brook Farm the financial support of the larger Fourierist movement. These hopes were dashed when a fire destroyed the building shortly before its completion.
The phalanstere was without insurance and its loss brought financial ruin. Within a year, Brook Farm was disbanded and the community's property sold to pay some of its debts.
George and Sophia Ripley moved to New York City where George Ripley became a respected journalist. The community was memorialized in fiction by Hawthorne and has been the subject of widespread scholarly interest.
RESISTANCE AND TRANSFORMATION: WORKSHOP 7:
HANDOUT 1: UTOPIANISM AND APOCALYPTICISM
Whether implicitly or explicitly, much of radical political thought falls within established patterns of either utopian or apocalyptic thought. Utopian thinkers believe a better society can be created in a particular place and time. They sometimes put this theory to the test by retreating to utopian communities where they seek to develop their vision of a perfect society free from the constraints of the dominant culture. Apocalyptic thinkers, however, believe a better society will come after an event which reorders human social structures. Progressive thinkers—including many Unitarians, Universalists, and Unitarian Universalists—have been influenced by both of these ideas in greater and lesser ways.
Utopian thinkers believe social transformation can take place in the present moment when people change the way they relate to each other. Rather than waiting for a new society to be born as a result of events in some distant future, they seek to create a new society by acting as if the new world has already arrived. The thought of such utopian thinkers might be best summed up by the peace activist and pacifist A.J. Muste who proclaimed:
There is no way to peace. Peace is the way.
Some utopian thinkers, such as the Jewish theologian Martin Buber and the Sufi Hakim Bey, argue that the utopian experience is by its very nature temporary. The vision of society utopians seek to create can never be realized for all time. It can only be approached in the moment when people live and act in accordance with their highest ideals.
Utopian practice and thought can be found in the efforts of our Unitarian and Universalist forebears to create utopian communities, including Rakow in 17th-century Poland, and, Hopedale, Brook Farm and Fruitlands in mid 19th-century New England. Utopian thinking informed a number of social justice movements and religious thinkers in our history. Henry David Thoreau, who refused to pay taxes to support the United States government's war with Mexico, can be understood as a utopian thinker. In his essay "Civil Disobedience," he argued that ending slavery did not require the changing of any laws but simply a choice on the part of people to refuse to cooperate with the laws that upheld slavery. In his view, noncompliance with the laws—acting as if they did not exist—would render such laws irrelevant and produce the abolition of slavery.
By contrast, subscribers to an apocalyptic worldview believe a better society will only come into being after some event causes a fundamental reordering of social and economic relations. Both secular and religious movements have underpinnings in apocalyptic thought. Secular adherents to apocalypticism believe that a human-created event, such a revolution, can bring about a new era of human relations. Believers in a religious apocalypse think a divine event, such as the coming of the Messiah, for example, will transform both humanity and the natural world.
By its very nature, early Universalist thought was a form of religious apocalypticism. Early Universalists believed either after death or at the end of times, all people would be transformed, and united with God. Apocalyptic thought appeared in the abolition movement when people such as John Brown and his supporters, among them Unitarians Theodore Parker, Thomas Wentworth Higginson, and Samuel Gridley Howe, sought to spark a revolution that would destroy slavery. Unitarians, including William Howard Taft, who argued for fighting World War I because it was a "war to end all wars," held a kind of apocalyptic world view. They claimed that permanent peace would come after the war's conclusion. In 1861, Unitarian Julia Ward Howe offered an apocalyptic vision in the famous lyrics of "The Battle Hymn of the Republic:"
Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.
He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored.
He hath loosed the fateful lightening of his terrible swift sword.
His truth is marching on.
Though often presented as opposites, utopian and apocalyptic notions can sometimes be complementary. The contemporary environmental movement has both utopian and apocalyptic tendencies. Fears of catastrophic global warming, rising oceans, mass hunger, and extinction of species all have at least a tint of apocalypticism to them, offering a vision of environmental destruction as a way to spur a change in human behavior. Some of the proposals for delaying or avoiding these cataclysmic events are utopian in nature, asking people to live in a sustainable manner in the present moment, for example, decreasing behaviors that generate large amounts of carbon dioxide. Thus, a change of behavior in the present moment inspired by apocalyptic fears could alter, forestall or prevent a cataclysmic change in the environment, bringing humankind closer to living an environmentally utopian vision.
RESISTANCE AND TRANSFORMATION: WORKSHOP 7:
LEADER RESOURCE 1: ENVIRONMENTALISM QUOTES
(Humankind) ...has lost the capacity to foresee and to forestall... (and) ...will end by destroying the earth. — Albert Schweitzer
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We need to develop a sense of gratitude so deep that we are willing to consider our every action—large or small—every day—and make critical positive decisions for the health of our planet. We need to understand our direct dependence on Earth. If we continue on our current path, Descartes' words, "The unexamined life is not worth living," take on profound implications for our continued presence as a species on earth. — Judy Moors, Unitarian Universalist Church of Davis (California)
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A reduction in beef and other meat consumption is the most potent single act you can take to halt the destruction of our environment and preserve our natural resources. Our choices do matter. What's healthiest for each of us personally is also healthiest for the life support system of our precious, but wounded planet. — John Robbins, author of Diet for a New America
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All life is created in love, and thus in the depths of every human being lies a good heart. Some have lost their path from this love, so it up to us to show them the way. — Julia Butterfly Hill, environmental activist
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Every day is Earth Day. — author unknown
FIND OUT MORE
See the online Dictionary of Unitarian and Universalist Biography entries on Brook Farm (at www25.uua.org/uuhs/duub/articles/brookfarm.html) and George Ripley (at www25.uua.org/uuhs/duub/articles/georgeripley.html).
UU Ministry for Earth (at uumfe.org/about_uumfe) is an affiliate organization of the UUA whose purpose is to inspire, facilitate and support personal, congregational and denominational practices that honor and sustain the Earth and all beings.
Investigate ways to form and support sustaining communities, within and outside of your congregation:
Common Security Clubs (at commonsecurityclub.org/index.php) are secular communities whose purpose is to learn together, provide mutual aid, and engage in social action.
Small Group Ministry or Covenant Groups (at www.smallgroupministry.net/start/index.html) in congregations are intentional lay-led small groups whose purpose is to build strong relationships, engage with meaningful issues, develop leadership, and inspire action.