RESISTANCE AND TRANSFORMATION
A Tapestry of Faith Program for Adults
WORKSHOP 6: RELIGIOUS FREEDOM ON THE MARGINS OF EMPIRE
BY BY REV. COLIN BOSSEN AND REV. JULIA HAMILTON
© Copyright 2011 Unitarian Universalist Association.
Published to the Web on 9/29/2014 11:17:47 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
...though we are forced to dissent from them in matters of church discipline, yet our dissent is not taken up out of arrogance of spirit in ourselves, whom they see willingly condescend to learn of them, neither is it carrier with uncharitable censoriousness towards them, both which are the proper and essential characters of schism, but in meekness of wisdom... — from The Cambridge Platform
Unitarianism first appeared as an institutional movement in Poland and Transylvania, two countries some distance from Europe's centers of political and religious power. Far from authorities, dissenting religious communities were able to form pockets of resistance to dominant authority. Later, Congregationalism, which held to the idea that every congregation is its own ecclesiastical authority, flourished on the margins of the British Empire and would one day give rise to Unitarianism in America. How has our religious ancestors' relationship with power and authority shaped our religious identity as dissenters? How has it informed our understanding of social justice work?
This workshop explores how responses to political and religious power and authority have been integral to the development of our tradition. It offers a brief history of the Socinian movement in Poland, a theologically Unitarian movement that existed from 1565 to 1650. It explores the 1648 Cambridge Platform, a document foundational to our present day practice of congregational polity, which was developed as a response to the English Parliament's attempts to regulate churches during the English Civil War. The workshop also asks whether issues of religious freedom are social justice issues.
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 | 10 |
Activity 1: Power and Authority | 25 |
Activity 2: Challenging Religious Authority in 16th-century Poland | 15 |
Activity 3: The Cambridge Platform and Congregational Polity | 30 |
Faith in Action: Using Your Congregation's Power | |
Closing | 10 |
Alternate Activity 1: Are Freedom, Reason, and Tolerance Enough? | 20 |
SPIRITUAL PREPARATION
As Unitarian Universalists living in a religiously pluralistic society, we are quite used to being able to discern our own beliefs and to choose (or not choose) a faith tradition to follow. After you read the workshop plan, imagine yourself living in a time and place when you did not have the power to determine your own beliefs and choose your own faith tradition. How would your life be different?
How important to you is the freedom to follow the dictates of your own mind and heart? How do your imaginings help you empathize with and understand the situations our religious ancestors in Poland and New England? As you lead this workshop, continue to reflect on your own relationship to religious power and authority, and 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 (10 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 from Singing the Living Tradition: "We hallow this time together by kindling the lamp of our heritage."
Lead the group in singing the hymn you have chosen.
After the song, invite participants to silently recall times in their lives when they have been aware of their own power to discern their own religious understandings and to recall times when they did not believe themselves to have such power. Allow a few minutes for silent reflection, and then tell participants this workshop explores liberal religion's relationship to power and authority through the stories of the 1648 Cambridge Platform in New England and the 16th- and 17th-century Socinian movement in Poland.
ACTIVITY 1: POWER AND AUTHORITY (25 MINUTES)
Materials for Activity
Preparation for Activity
Description of Activity
Post blank newsprint and invite participants to brainstorm words, ideas, and concepts that come to mind in response to the word "power." Write responses on newsprint.
Post the definition of power. Ask participants whether or not they agree with this definition and invite them to suggest ways to make the definition better. Write comments and additions under the definition of power.
Post the definition of authority. Invite the group to reconsider their brainstorming list of words, ideas, and concepts that came to mind in response to the word "power" and decide if any of the words pertain more to authority than to power.
Invite participants to turn their attention to the roles of power and authority in matters of faith and religion. Ask them to bring to mind their reflections from the Opening, and identify a moment in their lives when they were aware of religious authority (either in their own lives or in the life of another) and remember how they responded to that awareness. Also, invite them to identify a time when they were aware of their own power, or agency, in discerning matters of their faith and belief. Ask participants to take a minute to think, and then to turn to a partner and share both stories.
Allow five minutes for pairs to share their stories, and then re-gather the large group.
Pose the question: Is individual freedom to discern matters of faith a social justice issue? Why or why not? Allow ten minutes for large group conversation.
ACTIVITY 2: CHALLENGING RELIGIOUS AUTHORITY IN 16TH CENTURY POLAND (15 MINUTES)
Materials for Activity
Preparation for Activity
Description of Activity
Explain to participants that they will explore the relationship early Polish Unitarians had with power and authority. Distribute Handout 1, Socinianism. Give the group time to read the handout silently or invite a volunteer to read it aloud.
Lead a discussion, using these questions:
ACTIVITY 3: THE CAMBRIDGE PLATFORM AND CONGREGATIONAL POLITY (30 MINUTES)
Materials for Activity
Preparation for Activity
Description of Activity
Invite participants to consider the question of religious authority in contemporary Unitarian Universalist congregations. Say:
While we may trace our tradition of locating the power to discern religious belief with the individual from the Socinians in Poland, we must turn our attention to 17th-century England and North America to discover the historic roots of our system of congregational governance and authority.
Distribute the story "The Cambridge Platform" and invite participants to read it silently or invite volunteers to read it aloud.
Invite participants to move into groups of four. Give each group blank newsprint and markers.
Post the questions you have prepared, and ask groups to respond and to write their responses on newsprint.
Allow ten minutes for groups to work. Then, invite participants to post their newsprint and rejoin the large group. Have each group share highlights of their group discussion. Affirm that participants have discovered and highlighted some of the complexities of congregational polity.
Read aloud these words from the 1997 Commission on Appraisal Report to the Unitarian Universalist Association:
It cannot be emphasized enough that Unitarian Universalism entails not only the right and responsibility to come to our own theological understanding—a freedom of belief—but that freedom of belief also calls us, demands us, to participate in social justice work... The "rightness" of our theological beliefs cannot be understood without our involvement in trying to make the world reflect the values we hold. For that reason, social justice, in particular collective social justice, are required for a full understanding of Unitarian Universalism.
Invite large group responses to the quote. Do they agree that collective social justice work is required for a full understanding of Unitarian Universalism? If the conversation stalls, you might ask:
If the congregation, and not just its individual members, must be involved in work that advances our values and ideals, does that mean a congregation can and should speak as a body on social justice matters, whether or not every member is in agreement?
As the conversation comes to a close, you may discover that some participants wish to explore the issues further and to examine congregational policies and practices in regard to acting and speaking collectively for social justice. Encourage them to do so! You might plan a time for volunteers to bring their findings back to the group.
CLOSING (10 MINUTES)
Materials for Activity
Preparation for Activity
Description of Activity
Invite participants to respond, in their journals or on writing paper, letting them know that they will be invited to share their response (briefly) with the group:
Have you ever been challenged or marginalized because of your religious faith? Or, have you ever felt out of step with your Unitarian Universalist congregation on a social justice issue? How did you handle the situation?
Allow five minutes for writing.
Now invite participants, each in turn, to offer a word, a phrase, or a brief sharing from their journaling that captures their thoughts or feelings as the workshop ends.
Have a volunteer 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 encourage participants to continue to write in their journals between workshops.
FAITH IN ACTION: USING YOUR CONGREGATIONS POWER
Materials for Activity
Description of Activity
Invite participants to consider power in their congregation, using these or similar words:
Remembering the definition of power—the ability to achieve purpose—make some notes in your journal about the way power is held and expressed in your congregation. You might use pictures, diagrams, paragraphs, poems—whatever facilitates your thinking. Consider concrete expressions of power, such as any building that your congregation owns, endowments or other legacies. Think about intangible assets that amplify power, such as the socio-economic or racial privilege of members, the educational background of members, the influence wielded through members' and staff's political affiliations or social networking opportunities, or the children who participate in the religious education program. What about the power of conviction? The role Unitarian Universalist faith plays in the lives of the members? Where and how does your congregation have power in your community?
Help the group outline some of these places of power in the congregation. Then, invite the group to think about how the congregation uses its power—its resources—to address issues of social justice in your community. Perhaps you are already involved in activities that transform your congregation's power into action. If so, name them. What additional ways could your congregation use its power to address social justice issues? For example, a congregation with a large building might work with local homeless services to offer shelter over the holidays. A congregation with a large endowment might create a nonprofit granting organization. A small congregation might use some of the educational resources of its members to organize a tutoring program. Encourage participants to list big dreams, or small steps, the congregation might take to use their power and resources for the transformation of our world. Decide together which ideas should be suggested to the congregation and its leadership, and make a plan to present the ideas.
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
...though we are forced to dissent from them in matters of church discipline, yet our dissent is not taken up out of arrogance of spirit in ourselves, whom they see willingly condescend to learn of them, neither is it carrier with uncharitable censoriousness towards them, both which are the proper and essential characters of schism, but in meekness of wisdom... — from The Cambridge Platform
In this workshop, you have considered your personal relationship to power, based on the idea that everyone has some ability, position, and/or resources that empower them to act in the world. Start a conversation at home about this idea. Share your reflections on this issue and challenge friends or family members to reflect on their own power, where it comes from, and how they use it in the world.
Explore your congregation's practices and policies in regard to speaking or acting collectively for social justice; contact the minister or a lay leader to begin your research.
ALTERNATE ACTIVITY 1: ARE FREEDOM, REASON, AND TOLERANCE ENOUGH? (20 MINUTES)
Preparation for Activity
Description of Activity
Read aloud these words of the historian Earl Morse Wilbur, from A History of Unitarianism; Socinianism and its Antecedents (Boston: Beacon Press, 1945, 1972):
It is intended here, therefore, to present not so much the history of a particular sect or form of Christian doctrine, as to consider broadly the development of a movement fundamentally characterized instead by its steadfast and increasing devotion to these three leading principles: first, complete mental freedom in religion rather than bondage to creeds or confessions; second, the unrestricted use of reason in religion, rather than reliance upon external authority or past tradition; third, generous tolerance of differing religious views and usages rather than insistence upon uniformity in doctrine, worship or polity.
Explain that Wilbur held that the values of freedom, reason, and tolerance are the unifying values of the Unitarian tradition. Wilbur claimed that the adherence to these shared values placed both the American Unitarians and the Polish Socinians in the same movement. Lead a conversation using these questions:
RESISTANCE AND TRANSFORMATION: WORKSHOP 6:
STORY: THE CAMBRIDGE PLATFORM
Unitarian roots in North America stretch back to Puritan New England. Many of the original Puritan congregations, the oldest Protestant churches in the United States, are now Unitarian Universalist communities. Although Unitarian Universalists reject much of the theology of our Puritan ancestors, we continue to use their system of governance, called congregational polity. Congregational polity views each congregation as autonomous and its members bound to one another by voluntary agreement called covenant. Congregational polity was first articulated in the 1648 Cambridge Platform.
The Cambridge Platform was written in Cambridge, Massachusetts as a statement of religious freedom and a declaration of ecclesiastical independence from the Church of England. It was written during the English Civil War, a time of enormous social, economic, and political turmoil in Great Britain. Charles I had been executed and Oliver Cromwell and the English Parliament had replaced the English monarchy. As part of a movement to bring order and stability to England under the Puritan Cromwell regime, 109 "divines" and 24 Members of Parliament met in 1648 to determine the theology and system of governance of the Church of England, of which the Puritan churches in New England were members. The resulting Westminster Confession called for a presbyterian system of governance, whereby authority over the local congregation rests with a council made up of representatives drawn from all congregations. The New England Puritans disagreed strongly with the Westminster Confession. They believed each religious community should be self-governing and that religious authority lay with the members of the congregation, not an external body. The New England Puritans gathered in 1648 to reject the confession. When they articulated the principle of congregational polity in the Cambridge Platform, they effectively seceded from the English Church. The physical distance between the New England Puritans and the English Puritans was so great that the English government, with its limited resources, could do little to prevent the succession of the New England churches.
Though written in a time of turmoil, the Cambridge Platform has stood the test of time. In its particulars, the document no longer accurately describes either the governance or the theology of modern Unitarian Universalist communities, but the principle of congregational autonomy and self-governance it articulates and the movement for religious freedom it represents still profoundly influence on how we organize our congregations today.
RESISTANCE AND TRANSFORMATION: WORKSHOP 6:
HANDOUT 1: SOCINIANISM
Unitarianism first developed as an institutional movement during the Protestant Reformation in Europe. Transylvania and Poland, the countries where Unitarianism initially appeared, were far from the power centers of both the Catholic Church and the Magisterial, or mainstream, Reformation. It was precisely because of the distance from the power centers of Christian orthodoxy that early European Unitarianism was able to thrive. The fate of the Polish and Transylvanian Unitarian movements rose and fell with the relationship of those countries to the Catholic Church and the Magisterial Reformation.
The case of the Unitarian movement in Poland is particularly instructive in this regard. In 1565, the Reformed Church of Poland, a Calvinist body, split over doctrinal issues. The orthodox members of the Reformed Church held to a trinitarian understanding, believing that God the Father, the Holy Spirit, and Jesus Christ were all part of one divine being. The liberal members rejected trinitarian theology, in favor of a variety of different understandings of who Jesus was. Some liberals believed Jesus was fully human and not divine at all. Others argued that he was divine in some way but not equal to God the Father. All of the liberals agreed that the traditional Trinitarian views promoted by the orthodox lacked scriptural basis, and defied reason.
Despite these theological disagreements, the Polish liberals appealed for church unity. They argued that there should be room within the Reformed Church for a variety of viewpoints. The orthodox disagreed, and refused to affiliate with the liberals.
Once separated from the orthodox, the liberals quickly organized their own body, which they called the Minor Reformed Church of Poland. The church tolerated a wider divergence of views than many other churches of its day. Views of Jesus, for instance, ranged from those held by the minister Simon Bundy, who regarded Jesus to be fully human and as such did not invoke his name during worship, to others who affirmed Jesus' divinity but did not place him as an equal to God.
Members of the Minor Reformed Church sought a middle path between the social teachings of radical Anabaptists, who urged non-compliance with secular authorities and absolute pacifism, and those who argued that Christians must obey their government. Under the guidance of Faustus Socinus, the church's major theologian, the Minor Reformed Church developed a code of behavior that encouraged participation in the government as long as it was not in conflict with the teachings of Jesus or the individual's own conscience.
The Minor Reformed Church flourished from 1565 until 1660, at which time the power of the Catholic Church in Poland was again on the rise. The liberal Reformed community was suppressed by the Polish government and its members exiled.
During its brief existence, the Minor Reformed Church emphasized that living a Christian life was more important than adhering to a specific set of beliefs. The Minor Reformed Church's greatest accomplishments lie in the realm of education and theology. The founding members established the community of Rakow, near the Polish city of Krakow, as the unofficial headquarters of the Minor Reformed Church. In Rakow, they built a college and installed a printing press. The college became a center for liberal thinkers from across Europe; at its peak, about a third of its 1,000-member student body came from outside Poland. The printing press began to publish and disseminate the radical religious ideas of the movement. The Racovian Catechism (at www.uua.org/re/tapestry/adults/river/workshop2/workshopplan/handouts/175667.shtml), a document which outlined the basic teachings of the Minor Reformed Church, was translated into Latin, Dutch, English, and German within only a few years of its publication. As a result, the Polish catechism had an impact on religious thinkers throughout Europe, and helped influence the development of Unitarian thought in England.
FIND OUT MORE
For more information about Socinianism, read Faustus Socinus defined early Unitarianism (at www.uuworld.org/2004/06/lookingback.html) by Phillip Hewett, UU World November/December 2004.
The complete text of The Cambridge Platform (1648) can be found here (at books.google.com/books?id=aSkPAAAAIAAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=The+Cambridge+Platform,+1648&hl=en&ei=l4awTZ--IITEgQeTkYT5Cw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CCkQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q&f=false).
For a thorough, scholarly exploration of the challenges and opportunities of congregational polity, read The Lay and Liberal Doctrine of the Church: The Spirit and the Promise of Our Covenant (at minnslectures.org/archive/wesley/wesley.htm), 2000 Minns Lectures by Alice Blair Wesley.
Read an in-depth report that traces the history of congregational polity and explores contemporary challenges posed by this system of governance: Interdependence: Renewing Congregational Polity (at www.uua.org/governance/polity/index.shtml), the 1997 Commission on Appraisal Report to the Unitarian Universalist Association.