FAITH LIKE A RIVER
A Tapestry of Faith Program for Adults
WORKSHOP 9: RISE IN THE SEA — UNITARIANISM
2011
BY JACKIE CLEMENT ALISON CORNISH
© Copyright 2011 Unitarian Universalist Association.
Published to the Web on 9/29/2014 11:00:39 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
Mindful of truth ever exceeding our knowledge and community ever exceeding our practice, reverently we covenant together, beginning with ourselves as we are... — Walter Royal Jones, Jr., chair of the commission that drafted the 1985 revision of the Unitarian Universalist Principles and Purposes
This workshop examines the character and contributions of the Unitarian thread of our tradition. It considers the history of Unitarianism as a theology, a movement, and an institution, and highlights important people and events before the consolidation with the Universalists.
Before you lead this workshop, review the Accessibility Guidelines for Workshop Presenters in the program Introduction and prepare to accommodate anyone who may be in the group.
GOALS
This workshop will:
LEARNING OBJECTIVES
Participants will:
WORKSHOP-AT-A-GLANCE
Activity | Minutes |
Welcoming and Entering | 0 |
Opening | 5 |
Activity 1: The Baltimore Sermon | 30 |
Activity 2: The Almighty Love | 15 |
Activity 3: From Antitrinitarian to Unitarian | 25 |
Activity 4: Remembering The Iowa Sisterhood | 30 |
Faith in Action: Exploring Your Congregation's History — Long-term Project | |
Closing | 5 |
Alternate Activity 1: Unitarian Summer — The Isles of Shoals | 30 |
Alternate Activity 2: The Dedham Case | 25 |
SPIRITUAL PREPARATION
Set aside time to consider:
You may wish to ask participants to engage in this same spiritual practice so that they, too, arrive at the workshop centered and ready to engage with the material and the group.
WORKSHOP PLAN
WELCOMING AND ENTERING
Materials for Activity
Preparation for Activity
Description of Activity
Welcome everyone to the workshop as they enter. Ask them to sign in, make (or pick up) name tags, and pick up the schedule and time line handouts from the welcome table. Point out the posted agenda for this workshop.
Including All Participants
Write the agenda in large, clear lettering and post it where it will be easily visible to all participants. Provide name tags large enough and markers bold enough so names will be easily visible.
OPENING (5 MINUTES)
Materials for Activity
Preparation for Activity
Description of Activity
Light the chalice and share these words of Rabindrinath Tagore, a Bengali (Indian) poet who received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1913:
Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high
Where knowledge is free
Where the world has not been broken up into fragments
By narrow domestic walls
Where words come out from the depth of truth
Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection
Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way
Into the dreary desert sand of dead habit
Where the mind is led forward by thee
Into ever-widening thought and action
Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake.
Tell participants that Rabindrinath Tagore was a member of India's Brahmo Samaj religious movement, which was influenced by Unitarianism in the 19th century and retains connections to the Unitarian Universalist Association today.
ACTIVITY 1: THE BALTIMORE SERMON (30 MINUTES)
Materials for Activity
Preparation for Activity
Description of Activity
Pass around or display the portrait of William Ellery Channing (Leader Resource 1).
Present the story "The Baltimore Sermon."
Invite brief comment and questions about the material. Explain that Channing's Baltimore Sermon is an "evolutionary document," that is, one which describes his theological journey away from some of his previous beliefs and assertions to new religious understandings. Say that Unitarianism, and Unitarian Universalism, have always encouraged personal exploration of this kind.
Invite participants to move into discussion groups of three. Post the three topics and three sentence prompts. Invite participants to select one or two of the topics, drawn from the major points of Channing's sermon, as a beginning point for conversation. Suggest they use the sentence prompts to help them reflect
Allow triads 15 minutes for sharing. Then invite participants to share comments with the large group.
ACTIVITY 2: THE ALMIGHTY LOVE (15 MINUTES)
Materials for Activity
Preparation for Activity
Description of Activity
Introduce the activity in these words or your own:
Both the Unitarian and Universalist traditions have a rich history of hymnody, the art of writing music for the church. Many Unitarian Universalists enjoy singing hymns, despite the old joke, "Why are UUs so bad at singing hymns? Because they're always reading ahead to see if they agree with the lyrics!" Historically, hymns have been signposts that show the evolution of our theology and our social justice concerns.
Distribute Handout 1 and lead participants to sing the hymn together or read the lyrics aloud together.
After singing, ask:
ACTIVITY 3: FROM ANTITRINITARIAN TO UNITARIAN (25 MINUTES)
Materials for Activity
Preparation for Activity
Description of Activity
Explain that although Channing's and Parker's sermons were defining moments in American Unitarianism, Unitarian ideas date back nearly two thousand years. Distribute the handouts and tell participants they provide some milestones in Unitarian theological history. Present or read the leader resource, pausing where indicated for the volunteers to read the quotations.
Invite participant comments and questions.
Ask:
ACTIVITY 4: REMEMBERING THE IOWA SISTERHOOD (30 MINUTES)
Materials for Activity
Preparation for Activity
Description of Activity
Share the story of the Iowa Sisterhood. Ask if participants have heard of the Sisterhood before and invite them to offer any additional information. Distribute Handout 3, Remembering the Iowa Sisterhood.
Light the central candle. Implement the plan you devised for participants to say the names of the 21 women who were members of the Iowa Sisterhood and light a candle for each woman.
Close the remembrance ceremony by leading the group to say in unison the words of Mary Safford provided on Handout 3 or to sing the hymn "Great Over-Soul and Inter-Heart" together.
CLOSING (5 MINUTES)
Materials for Activity
Preparation for Activity
Description of Activity
Distribute Taking It Home and "The Baltimore Sermon." Announce the date, time, and place of the next workshop and any other "housekeeping" information. Request or remind volunteers if you want participants to read material aloud or perform other roles at the next meeting.
Invite participants to gather around the chalice.
Share Reading 687, by John W. Brigham, in Singing the Living Tradition. Extinguish the chalice.
FAITH IN ACTION: EXPLORING YOUR CONGREGATION'S HISTORY — LONG-TERM PROJECT
Preparation for Activity
Description of Activity
Search for the Unitarian, Universalist, or Unitarian Universalist origins of your congregation. All Unitarian Universalist congregations, regardless of their age, have a history. One aspect of that history is the original theological and institutional identity of the faith community—Unitarian, Universalist, or Unitarian Universalist. This initial identity may be well known and celebrated, or it may be obscured by many layers of changes, or lost in the fogs of time. Even if the founding religion appears to be well established, there is likely some story about the congregation's affiliation that is less well known.
Here are some places to seek clues to your congregation's history:
Divide tasks so all can take part in the reconnaissance. Then, come together to share your findings and discuss:
Offer your discoveries to the congregation through a newsletter column, a page on the website, a homily, or a dramatic skit at a special event.
LEADER REFLECTION AND PLANNING
After the workshop, co-leaders should talk together to evaluate this workshop and plan future workshops. Use these questions to guide your shared reflection and planning:
TAKING IT HOME
Mindful of truth ever exceeding our knowledge and community ever exceeding our practice, reverently we covenant together, beginning with ourselves as we are... — Walter Royal Jones, Jr., chair of the commission that drafted the 1985 revision of the Unitarian Universalist Principles and Purposes
Our early American Unitarian ancestors—and their detractors—wrestled mightily with labels. In the 17th and early 18th centuries, the epithet "Unitarian" labeled those who thought differently from mainstream Protestants. In 1819, Channing took the bold step to define and to claim "Unitarian" as a description of his own emerging theological understanding. In one stroke, Channing turned the tables on those who would use the term to deride others.
As individuals and as groups, we are labeled, and we apply labels to others. Often labels are thrust on us in ways that are deeply hurtful. But there are other moments, such as Channing's delivery of the Baltimore Sermon, which can inspire us to claim as a proud descriptor a term intended as an insult. Think, for example, of "queer," and its evolution from a negative label used by a homophobic culture, to the positive identity term claimed by many gays, lesbians, questioning youth, and allies.
In what ways have you been labeled by others? Have those labels been agreeable to you, or upsetting? Have you ever taken a negative label and turned it around for yourself?
ALTERNATE ACTIVITY 1: UNITARIAN SUMMER — THE ISLES OF SHOALS (30 MINUTES)
Materials for Activity
Preparation for Activity
Description of Activity
If you have the image, project or pass around Child Hassam's Poppies, Isles of Shoals, to set the scene. Introduce the story with these words, or words of your own:
Unitarian, Universalist, and Unitarian Universalist camps and conferences have been offering experiences to campers and conferees for well over a century. These settings and programs offer recreation and renewal, education and camaraderie. For many Unitarian Universalists, camps and conferences offer the only opportunity each year to live immersed in the values and principles of Unitarian Universalism surrounded by those of like mind and intention.
Each Unitarian Universalist camp, conference, and institute has its own illustrious and important history. In this activity, we'll consider the founding moment of one site that has hosted Unitarians, Universalists, and Unitarian Universalists for more than a century.
Read or tell the story, "Unitarian Summer — The Isles of Shoals." If you have volunteers to read the parts of Mr. Elliot and Mr. Marvin, take the narrator's role and read all the text that is not dialogue.
Invite participants to share experiences they have had at a Unitarian Universalist camp or conference center. In the words of Thomas Elliot, "given (so many people) of one mind and one purpose," did something "happen?"
Distribute paper and writing/drawing implements. Invite participants to let their imaginations create the perfect Unitarian Universalist camp or conference experience. Where would it be located? What would the site be like? What programs and activities would be offered? Who would attend? How long would a program run? What would be unique about the experience? Would it draw from or connect with other Unitarian Universalist experiences you have had?
Allow participants 15 minutes to write, draw, diagram, or otherwise put their dream on paper. Then, invite volunteers to share.
ALTERNATE ACTIVITY 2: THE DEDHAM CASE (25 MINUTES)
Materials for Activity
Preparation for Activity
Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it's the only thing that ever has. — Margaret Mead.
Description of Activity
Read or tell the story "The Dedham Case." Invite comment and questions. Ask participants to name what the Dedham case changed—ecclesiastically, politically, and legally.
Post or project the quote from Margaret Mead, and lead the group to read it in unison. Suggest that although the members of the parish in Dedham may not have set out to "change the world," in fact, their actions had an impact far beyond their own time and place in history.
Invite participants into a time of meditation and reflection. Suggest that they find a comfortable position, and, if they wish, to close their eyes. You might use a chime to begin and end this quiet time.
Once everyone is settled, read aloud Reading 567 in Singing the Living Tradition, by Marge Piercy. Then invite participants to imagine a time when they felt joined together with others to make some small difference in the human or the natural world. Ask them to return to that time and place, to picture themselves there and recall the sights, sounds, and feelings of the moment. Slowly, pausing between each question to allow time for contemplation, ask:
Slowly and gently return the group to the present, allowing a minute or two. Invite reflections on ways the actions of a small group can have a wider effect.
FAITH LIKE A RIVER: WORKSHOP 9:
STORY: THE BALTIMORE SERMON
William Ellery Channing was weary of having the epithet "Unitarian" flung at him in disdain. Ever since Henry Ware had been elected to the Hollis Professorship of Divinity at Harvard College, the temperature of public debate between orthodox and liberal factions of New England's Standing Order Churches had risen.
Many theological points were at issue. The turn to liberalism in New England churches had begun with the unitarian notion of the singular, or unitary, nature of God, antithetical to the trinitarian understanding of God as three: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. But soon the debate widened. Was God a benevolent and loving presence that wanted the best for all humanity, or, as in Calvinist orthodoxy, a wrathful and exacting God? That debate called into question the orthodox idea of the elect, the notion that some are saved and others damned. Soon the orthodox/liberal controversy encompassed not only the nature of God, but also the nature of Jesus; was Jesus fully divine, or fully human, or partly each? Religious people debated the question of human nature—were humans good, and capable of distinguishing right and wrong, as the liberals believed; or, as in the orthodox view, were humans depraved, and captive to sin? And reason—where did that fit in? The orthodox insisted that the Bible alone was the valid basis for religious knowledge, while liberals maintained that the use of God-given reason and conscience was needed along with revelation. With Ware's election in 1805 to head Harvard College, the liberals had taken control of the seminary which was the primary training ground of New England's ministers. This caused great dismay among those of more orthodox beliefs.
By 1812, the young William Ellery Channing became the de facto leader of the Boston liberals following the untimely death of leading liberal Joseph Buckminster. Channing preached about a benevolent, loving God who had endowed humanity with innate goodness, rationality, and the wisdom to discern between good and evil. In a sermon delivered at the ordination of Jared Sparks in 1819 at the new liberal church in Baltimore, Maryland, Channing decided to snatch the label of Unitarian from those who would degrade it and to claim it proudly as his own. His address, "Unitarian Christianity," stands as a hallmark of Unitarian history. As David Parke writes:
The "Baltimore sermon" gave the Unitarians a platform and a spokesman. It placed them for the first time on the offensive in relation to the orthodox. It was very probably the most important Unitarian sermon ever preached anywhere.
In the hour-and-a-half-long address, Channing took on two tasks. First, he established reason as valid and necessary for the interpretation of scripture—not as the only basis for religious belief, but as an aid to revelation, for reading and understanding the meaning of the Bible.
Our leading principle in interpreting Scripture is this, that the Bible is a book written for men, in the language of men, and that its meaning is to be sought in the same manner as that of other books... With these views of the Bible, we feel it our bounden duty to exercise our reason upon it perpetually; to compare, to infer, to look beyond the letter to the spirit...
Having set the stage for biblical interpretation, Channing's second task was to lay out four reason-based conclusions of Unitarian Christians. He began with the unity of God, as opposed to the doctrine of the Trinity. Next, he postulated Christ as fully human, as opposed to having two natures, human and divine. Then he spoke of the moral perfection of God, which negated such doctrines as Original Sin and the eternal suffering of some while others were elected to salvation.
Channing's fourth point was about the purpose of Jesus' mission on earth. He rejected the idea that Jesus' death atoned for human sin, allowing God to forgive humanity. Channing admitted Unitarians differed on Jesus' role in human salvation. Some, he said, saw Jesus' life as a moral example. Others understood Jesus' death leading humans to repentance and virtue. Yet, he said, Unitarians did not consider Christ and his death as a blood atonement for human sin. Channing's fifth and final point was that Christian virtue had its foundation in the moral nature or conscience of humans, defined by love of God, love of Christ, and moral living.
Far from settling the simmering arguments, Channing's Baltimore Sermon brought them to a full boil. The Unitarian Controversy raged over the next quarter century. New England's churches continued to split along theological lines, and, within two decades of Channing's fateful sermon, one-quarter of Massachusetts' Standing Order churches became openly Unitarian. Other Unitarian leaders added defining voices to the movement, but Channing's Baltimore Sermon remains a key turning point in Unitarian Universalist history.
FAITH LIKE A RIVER: WORKSHOP 9:
STORY: THE DEDHAM CASE
It wasn't the first of the Standing Order churches to split, but it sure made the biggest bang.
In Puritan New England, each town was organized around its church. The members of the church were those who made a confession of Christian faith, while members of the parish were those who lived in the town and paid the poll tax that supported the church, but hadn't had a religious experience of conversion in the church. Reflecting this two-tier arrangement, the minister was the spiritual leader of the church as well as the teacher of public morals to the townspeople. These were the Standing Order churches—church and parish in the same institution, with a religious leader and public preacher in the same person.
In Dedham, Massachusetts, a controversy about theology became an ecclesiastical, political, and legal battle—one of the first to challenge the Standing Order system. In 1818, the Dedham parish invited Alvin Lamson to be its candidate for the ministry. A majority of the church members, being orthodox, rejected Lamson's liberal views. They voted their refusal to have him as minister. By custom, the church members decided who the minister would be, but in Dedham, the parish—which was more liberal than the church membership—went ahead and called Lamson as the minister.
The church members weren't going to stand for that. So they left, taking the church records, the communion silver, and the financial assets with them. That's when Deacon Baker—of the liberal camp in the church membership—sued Deacon Fales—of the orthodox camp—for the return of all the church property. Fales and the church majority claimed that the assets were the property of the church, and since the majority of the church was leaving, the assets were theirs to take. Baker and the liberal church minority maintained that the assets belonged to the parish, and as the parish majority was staying put, they would like all their assets returned.
The liberal minority prevailed. A jury ruled that according to the law, the church was built and run at the parish's expense for the benefit of the whole parish, and the minister worked for the benefit of the whole parish. Therefore, the parish owned the assets, and what's more, the parish had the right to call the minister. Some cried "foul," noting that the presiding judge, Isaac Parker, was himself a Unitarian. But when all the appeals were finally over in 1821, the ruling stood.
The decision rocked the Standing Order churches, many of which had already started to come apart. In some towns, a liberal minority left to establish a new church. In others, an orthodox minority left to found a congregation of their own. The reverberations went on for decades, with a quarter of Massachusetts Standing Order Congregational churches becoming Unitarian within the next twenty years. Three of the churches chose to become neither Unitarian nor Congregational, but Universalist.
FAITH LIKE A RIVER: WORKSHOP 9:
STORY: THE IOWA SISTERHOOD
Some of the first women ordained in the United States were Universalist or Unitarian. At the turn of the 21st century, a majority of Unitarian Universalist ministers were women. However, the path for women ministers in our faith tradition has not been easy. Of those early women who achieved ordination, few were allowed to serve in full-time ministries. Others were relegated to small, struggling parishes or assistant positions alongside their clergy husbands.
Despite the lack of encouragement, at the end of the 19th century a group of extraordinary women claimed their role as ordained ministers. Following the Women's Ministerial Conference organized by Julia Ward Howe in 1875, 21 Unitarian women founded the Iowa Sisterhood to serve churches throughout the Great Plains. Life was hard in the Plains states, with little glory to be earned by bringing liberal religion to the settlers of the area. Few male scholars from the seminaries of the East were attracted to the life. But if the Plains were beyond the recognition of an Eastern religious hierarchy, they were also remote from that hierarchy's rules and control. It was a place where women were accepted for their willingness to step in and serve, for their tenacity in the face of hardship, and for their ministry.
Perhaps one reason for the success of the Iowa Sisterhood was the non-academic, pastoral approach these women brought to their churches. They sought to make their churches extensions of the domestic hearth, thereby expanding the traditional role of women beyond the home and into the church. The Sisterhood brought family matters into the church not only on Sundays, but seven days a week, with social events and classes on domestic arts.
Although Jenkin Lloyd Jones, leader of the Western Conference, was a staunch ally of the Iowa Sisterhood, the grassroots Western success of these women and their churches did not translate into wider denominational acceptance. The women were seen as an embarrassment among the clergy back in Boston. By the turn of the 20th century, society in general experienced a reassertion of male authority. Unitarianism's leaders began a concerted return to a more manly ministry in order to revitalize the denomination. The move of rural populations to the cities further undermined the Sisterhood's efforts and congregations.
Most of the women ministers were rushed into retirement. Others left to pursue work in peace, suffrage, and social work movements. Yet they remained vocal to the end about the rights of women and the place of church in society. It was not a large movement, nor was it long-lasting. The Iowa Sisterhood did not radically alter the possibilities for women in Unitarian ministry. But in its time and place, it was a shining vision of women called to minister and men called to support their work.
FAITH LIKE A RIVER: WORKSHOP 9:
STORY: UNITARIAN SUMMER — THE ISLES OF SHOALS
Excerpted and adapted from Frederick T. McGill, Jr. and Virginia F. McGill, Something Like a Star (Boston: Star Island Corporation, 1989). Used with permission.
In July of 1896, Thomas H. Elliot of Lowell, Massachusetts, brought his wife to the Oceanic Hotel, on Star Island, one island in the Isles of Shoals located off the coast of New Hampshire. The Oceanic was a grand wooden summer resort hotel operated by Cedric and Oscar Laighton, but its operation was suffering from the changing recreational habits of their New England clientele who were increasingly opting for mainland resorts with more amenities and better access. This was the Elliots' first stay at the Shoals. They typically attended the North Middlesex Unitarian Conference meetings at the Weirs in New Hampshire. But Mrs. Elliot had been unwell, and hoped that the sea air would revitalize her. Many years after that first visit, Mr. Elliot recalled a conversation he had the day after arriving at Star Island with the hotel manager, Harry Marvin:
Mr. Marvin: How are you enjoying yourself, Mr. Elliot?
Mr. Elliot: Fine. This place suits me. It is after my own heart. There is only one thing that would improve it for me.
Mr. Marvin: What is that?
Mr. Elliot: There are some meetings going on at The Weirs that I value very much. If only we had them here, I should be as near heaven as possible.
Mr. Marvin: Meetings? What kind of meetings?
Mr. Elliot: Religious meetings.
Mr. Marvin: Well, why can't we have those meetings down here?
Mr. Elliot: (You see, he was looking for business, and was very hungry for it. We were paying 3-dollar a day apiece — a pretty good rate for those days.) In the first place, we could hardly pay your rates.
Mr. Marvin: What do you pay at The Weirs?
Mr. Elliot: We get a pretty comfortable fare for 10 dollars a week.
Mr. Marvin: I couldn't make any such rate as that. (After thinking a bit). Mr. Elliot, suppose we could make you a 10-dollar rate. Do you think you could bring those meetings down here?
Mr. Elliot: (I looked around and took in the beauty of the situation. It was marvelous.) Mr. Marvin, if you will make me a 10-dollar rate here for next year, at both the Oceanic and the Appledore, I will fill them to the ridgepoles. (And then, with more courage than was wise, as I think of it now, I added) I'll go further. I will come under bonds to fill both your hotels to the ridgepoles, if you will make me a rate of 10 dollars a week.
Mr. Marvin: I'll talk it over with the Laightons and see what I can do. I'll do the best I can, for I want you to come.
Another source records Harry Marvin's conversation with Oscar Laighton, co-owner of the hotels. Laighton is reported to have said, "I told him we must act with caution. What is a Unitarian? Are they good people? It won't do to introduce any rough element." Marvin apparently replied that he did not know just exactly what a Unitarian was, but, judging from the Elliots, he would say that they were very nice, harmless people.
Marvin and Elliot prevailed, and, perhaps because of the financial incentive, perhaps because of the Elliots' enthusiasm, or perhaps it was just the right time, 610 people registered for, as it was advertised, "Unitarian Summer Meetings at the Isles of Shoals, ten miles at sea—10 dollars per week," six times the usual attendance at the Weirs. In fact, "one or two late applicants had to be turned away because a couple of Appledore employees had already given up their rooms to guests and were sleeping on cots in bathrooms."
Reminiscing about that first conference thirty-five years later, Thomas Elliot said, "The enthusiasm of that first year has never, I think, been quite equaled... Given 610 people of one mind and one purpose, and something was bound to happen, and did happen. I cannot but think that life that season on that sublime island was more like heaven than any other similar experience on this broad earth."
FAITH LIKE A RIVER: WORKSHOP 9:
HANDOUT 1: THE ALMIGHTY LOVE
From Eugene B. Navias, Singing Our History (Boston: Unitarian Universalist Association, 1975).
The lyrics of "The Almighty Love" were written by Theodore Parker (1810-1860). In 1841, early in his ministry, Parker preached a controversial sermon, "The Transient and the Permanent in Christianity." Eugene Navias summarizes the sermon: Parker considered the transient elements of Christianity to be miracles, revelations, creeds and doctrines; and the permanent elements to be in the moral sense within the hearts of good persons. Any truths which are in the teachings of Jesus are there because they meet the practical tests of life, not because of the outward authority of Jesus, the Bible, the church, or creeds. Soon after controversy erupted over the sermon, Parker was invited to become the minister of the Twenty-eighth Congregational Society (Unitarian) in Boston, which came eventually to meet in Boston's Music Hall, where Parker spoke weekly to congregations of up to 3,000 people. The hymn "The Almighty Love," written in 1864, reveals Parker's understanding of the nature of God.
Lyrics: Theodore Parker, 1864
Music: Transylvania L.M., 16th Century Hungarian Melody, or Old Hundredth L.M. (commonly known as the Doxology)
In darker days, and nights of storm,
Men knew Thee but to fear Thy form,
And in the reddest lightnings saw
Thine arm avenge insulted law.
In brighter days we read Thy love
In flowers beneath, in stars above;
And, in the track of every storm,
Behold Thy beauty's rainbow form.
Even in the reddest lightning's path
We see no vestiges of wrath,
But always Wisdom, —perfect Love,
From flowers below to stars above.
See, from on high sweet influence rains
On palace, cottage, mountains, plains;
No hour of wrath shall mortals fear,
For the Almighty Love is here.
FAITH LIKE A RIVER: WORKSHOP 9:
HANDOUT 2: DEFINING MOMENTS
These readings accompany Leader Resource 2, From Antitrinitarian to Unitarian.
SECTION 1: Arius's Letter to Eusebius (319 C.E.)
But what is it that we say and believe, and that we have taught and teach? That the Son is not uncreated or any part of an uncreated being, or made of anything previously existent. He was brought into being by the will and counsel (of God), before time and before the ages, as unbegotten God in the fullest sense, and unalterable; and before he was begotten, created, determined or established, he did not exist. But we are persecuted because we have said, "The Son has a beginning, but God is without beginning" We are also persecuted because we have said, "He is made from nothing." But we have so said because he is not a part of God or made from any thing previously existent. It is for this reason we are persecuted; the rest you know.
SECTION 2: Faustus Socinus, the Racovian Catechism (1605)
What are the things relating to his Person, which I ought to know?
This one particular alone,—that by nature he was truly a man; a mortal man while he lived on earth, but now immortal.
SECTION 3: John Biddle, His Confession of Faith Touching the Holy Trinity (1648)
article iii. I believe, That Jesus Christ, to the intent that he might be our Brother, and have a Fellow-feeling of our Infirmaties, and so become the more ready to help us, (the consideration whereof, is the greatest Encouragement to Piety that can be imagined) hath no other than a Human Nature, and therefore in this very Nature is not only a Person (since none but a Human Person can be our Brother), but also our Lord, yea our God.
article iv. Whence, though he be our God, by reason of his Divine Sovereignty over us, and Worship due to such Sovereignty, yet he is not the most high God, the same with the Father, but subordinate to him.
SECTION 4: Jonathan Mayhew, Seven Sermons (1749)
Thus it appears that a regard to our own interest ought to put us upon examining and judging for ourselves religious concerns. The same thing might be argued for the faculty of reason itself, which is common to all. If we suppose an intelligent author of our nature, who had some design in giving us our present constitution, it is plain that his end in endowing us with faculties proper for the investigating of truth and right, was, that we should exercise them in this way.
SECTION 5: Willam Ellery Channing, Baltimore Sermon, 1819
We do, then, with all earnestness, though without reproaching our brethren, protest against the irrational and unscriptural doctrine of the Trinity... "To us," as to the Apostle and the primitive Christians, "there is one God, even the Father." With Jesus, we worship the Father, as the only living and true God. We are astonished, that any man can read the New Testament, and avoid the conviction, that the Father alone is God. We hear our Saviour continually appropriating this character to the Father. We find the Father continually distinguished from Jesus by this title... "God sent his Son." "God anointed Jesus." Now, how singular and inexplicable is this phraseology, which fills the New Testament, if this title belong equally to Jesus, and if a principal object of this book is to reveal him as God, as partaking equally with the Father in supreme divinity! We challenge our opponents to adduce one passage in the New Testament where the word God means three persons, where it is not limited to one person, and where, unless turned from its usual sense by the connexion, it does not mean the Father. Can stronger proof be given that the doctrine of three persons in the Godhead is not a fundamental doctrine of Christianity?
FAITH LIKE A RIVER: WORKSHOP 9:
HANDOUT 3: REMEMBERING THE IOWA SISTERHOOD
The words "Great Over-Soul and Inter-Heart" were written by Mary Safford (1895) and edited by Eugene B. Navias to be sung to the tune Duke Street L.M., Hymn 35 in Singing the Living Tradition.
Ministers of the Iowa Sisterhood
Mary Augusta Safford
Eleanor Gordon
Florence Buck
Mary Collson
Caroline Julia Bartlett Crane
Adele Fuchs
Marie Jenney Howe
Ida Hultin
Mary Leggett
Rowena Morse Mann
Mila Tupper Maynard
Amelia Murdock Wing
Marion Murdock
Anna Jane Norris
Margaret Titus Olmstead
Elizabeth Padgham
Gertrude Von Petzhold
Helen Grace Putnam
Eliza Tupper Wilkes
Helen Wilson
Celia Parker Woolley
Hymn: Great Over-Soul and Inter-Heart
Great Over-Soul and Inter-Heart,
Of whom we feel ourselves a part,
To whom all souls forever tend,
Our Father, Mother, nearest Friend.
This church with love to thee we bring,
And while our spirits inly* sing,
We pray that it may ever be
A Home for all who seek for thee.
The home of faith in all things true,
A faith that seeks the larger view,
The home of love that yearns to bless.
The home of truth and righteousness.
Long may it stand, the outward sign
Of that indwelling Life divine,
Which makes thy children truly free,
And draws them ever nearer thee.
*The word "inly" was in common usage in Mary Safford's day and means inwardly, intimately, thoroughly.
FAITH LIKE A RIVER: WORKSHOP 9:
LEADER RESOURCE 1: WILLIAM ELLERY CHANNING, PORTRAIT
From the Unitarian Universalist Association archives.
FAITH LIKE A RIVER: WORKSHOP 9:
LEADER RESOURCE 2: FROM ANTITRINITARIAN TO UNITARIAN
The five readings requested below are provided on Handout 2, Defining Moments. Distribute Handout 2, Defining Moments and invite volunteers to read quotes from the handout as indicated while you present this material.
Antitrinitarianism is the theological idea that God is one, whole and complete, a unity that rejects division into the three persons of the Trinity. The idea dates back to the first centuries of Christianity, but it became most dynamically present in the work of Arius (c. 250-336 CE), a priest from Alexandria, Egypt. In 325, the Council of Nicea declared Arius' view of a created Christ—, similar to, but not the same as, God the Father —to be a heresy.
(Leader: Ask a volunteer to read aloud Section 1 on the handout, Arius's letter to Eusebius.)
In the following centuries, isolated groups arose to challenge the doctrine and authority of the Christian Church. In 1517, when Martin Luther famously nailed his 95 Theses to the door of Wittenberg Cathedral, the Protestant Reformation was born. One of the most radical dissenters of the time was Michael Servetus (1511-1553), who set forth his antitrinitarian beliefs in his best known work, On the Errors of the Trinity, written at the age of 20. For this heresy, Servetus spent most of his adult years running from both the Catholic Inquisition and the Protestant Reformers. He was captured and put to death in 1553.
Arius and Servetus held similar antitrinitarian views—of a Christ less than God, yet still divine. A second stream of antitrinitarianism held that Christ was not of a lesser divinity than God, but fully human. This was the view of Faustus Socinus, who fled persecution in Italy and went on to inspire the founding of the Polish Brethren (the Minor Reform Church of Poland). Although Socinus did not seek to establish a new religious sect, the community of Socinians which formed around him represents one of the first instances when the theology became embodied in an institution. Before the Socinians were forced to flee Poland in 1660, the community of Polish Brethren included worshipping congregations, a school, and a publishing enterprise. Socinus wrote a number of works, but his Racovian Catechism is perhaps the best well-known.
(Leader: Ask a volunteer to read aloud Section 2, Faustus Socinus, The Racovian Catechism.)
From Poland and Transylvania, antitrinitarian thought spread west where it encountered similar movements in England and Holland. In the 17th and 18th centuries, leading voices for antitrinitarianism included people such as the teacher John Biddle (1615-1662), the poet John Milton (1608 -1674), the philosopher John Locke (1632-1704), ministers Thomas Emlyn (1663-1741) and Theophilus Lindsey (1723-1808), and the scientist Joseph Priestley (1733-1804).
(Leader: Ask a volunteer to read aloud Section 3, John Biddle, His Confession of Faith Touching the Holy Trinity (1648).)
The English and Irish Dissenters parted from the Church of England on both theological and organizational grounds. They included antitrinitarians, Baptists, Congregationalists, Presbyterians, and others. They sought not only freedom of belief, but freedom to organize their church societies as they saw fit. Groups of these Dissenters made their way to Holland and eventually to the New World where they became the genesis of New England churches.
Like the churches in Europe, over time the New England churches took on more liberal theological ideas about the nature of God, the nature of Christ and the nature of humanity. In reaction to this growing liberalism, the Great Awakening revival movement began in 1734, seeking to restore both orthodoxy and a religious passion its leaders saw waning. But liberal ministers were quick to respond, and we can see in their responses that liberal thought had widened beyond just antitrinitarianism to include other concepts that stood in direct opposition to Calvinist orthodoxy—free will, the ability to both discern and choose between good and evil, innate human goodness, and the use of reason in religion.
(Leader: Ask a volunteer to read aloud Section 4, Jonathan Mayhew, Seven Sermons (1749).)
But it was not only the Standing Order Puritan churches that felt the growth of liberalism. The First Episcopal Church in Boston (King's Chapel), unable to attract a minister from England, called James Freeman (1759-1835) to fill its pulpit in 1782. When Freeman could no longer reconcile the church's Trinitarian liturgy and Book of Common Prayer with his antitrinitarian beliefs, the congregation responded by removing all mention of the Trinity from their worship in 1785.
The same year that King's Chapel became avowedly antirinitarian, the First Parish Church in Worcester, Massachusetts, split over the candidacy of the liberal minister Aaron Bancroft. This started almost a century of schism as liberal and conservative New England churches parted ways over matters of theology. In 1819, William Ellery Channing preached his famous Baltimore sermon at the ordination of Jared Sparks, embracing the name "Unitarian" and laying out for the first time a comprehensive Unitarian theology.
(Leader: Ask a volunteer to read aloud Section 5, William Ellery Channing, Baltimore Sermon (1819).)
FIND OUT MORE
The History of Unitarianism
Howe, Charles A. For Faith and Freedom: A Short History of Unitarianism in Europe (at www.uuabookstore.org/productdetails.cfm?PC=600) (Boston: Skinner House, 1997)
Mendelsohn, Jack. Meet the Unitarian Universalists (at www.uuabookstore.org/productdetails.cfm?PC=507) (Boston: UUA, 1997).
Parke, David. The Epic of Unitarianism: Original Writings from the History of Liberal Religion (at www.uuabookstore.org/productdetails.cfm?PC=599) (Boston: Skinner House, 1985)
Wright, Conrad, ed. Three Prophets of Religious Liberalism: Channing, Emerson, Parker (at www.uuabookstore.org/productdetails.cfm?PC=647) (Boston: Skinner House, 1978); The Beginnings of Unitarianism in America (Boston: Beacon Press, 1955)
The Iowa Sisterhood
Tucker, Cynthia Grant. Prophetic Sisterhood (Boston: Beacon Press, 1990)
Star Island (the Isle of Shoals)
McGill, Frederick T., Jr. and Virginia F. McGill. Something Like a Star (Boston: Star Island Corporation, 1989)
Williams, Lois. Religion at the Isles of Shoals (Portsmouth, NH: Peter Randall Publisher, LLC, 2006)
The website of the Council of Unitarian Universalist Camps and Conferences (at www.cu2c2.org/)
On Researching and Presenting a Congregational History
Coeyman, Barbara. "Creating Congregational Histories (at www25.uua.org/uuhs/UUresources/creatingCongregationalHistories.html)," an article on the website of the Unitarian Universalist Historical Society
"Knowing Where You've Been: Maintaining Records and Archives (at www.uua.org/leaders/leaderslibrary/congregationalhandbook/34829.shtml)," an article in the Leaders' Library section of the Unitarian Universalist Association website