Universalist Unitarian Church Santa Paula, California

The Free Mind and Its Enemies
by Reverend John Alexie Crane

In the year 1822, a young Unitarian minister, a graduate of Harvard, Jared Sparks, was appointed Chaplain to the US House of Representatives, confirmed by a vote of the House. After Sparks was voted on, a crusty old congressman, clearly of a more traditional religious persuasion, commented tartly that, "We have voted Christ out of the House."

The bitter feelings implied in this comment are typical of the attitudes of traditional believers toward Unitarians, especially during the period in the early 19th century when the controversy between the liberal and orthodox factions in the old Puritan churches of New England came to a climax.

The fact that Sparks was confirmed in spite of opposition, however, is an indication that the liberal orientation made sense to a substantial number of congresspeople. Indeed, that was no doubt the source of its appeal: it made sense, was rational and humane in its outlook. It invited people to think, to understand, rather than merely to believe, to have faith.

Still, we ought to be ready to confess that there was a substantial amount of truth in the congressman's assertion that Christ had been voted out of the House. Unitarians in 1822, while regarding Jesus as a special human being, a great teacher, did not regard Christ as humanity's savior, the Son of God, sent to earth to save us. In the years since that time, Unitarians have, in effect, voted Christ out of their religion. Not Jesus but the idea of the Christ: an idea conceived by people in the ancient world in response to what they heard about Jesus.

The strange, old idea of the Christ, cherished by the people of the Western world for centuries, faithfully believed in by millions, has long since been set aside by Unitarians and Universalists. It took courage to do that, required much study and thought and deep-seated conviction to take this step. It required commitment to something seen by UUs as far more important than even a central, long-hallowed conception lodged in the religious tradition of the Western world.

The commitment was (and is) to free and open inquiry in religion. It is to the free open, questing mind in search of what is real and really matters. It is a commitment to honest thought rather than to traditional belief. It is a commitment to a search for understanding rather than for faith or belief.

II. The Remarkable Pilgrims
There is a fact that says a lot about the history of our free religious movement. The oldest organization of any kind developed by the earliest European settlers in New England is today a Unitarian church. The first institution organized by the first European settlers in the area was the Unitarian Church of Plymouth, Massachusetts, established in 1620.

The Pilgrim Fathers, to be sure, were not Unitarians, but they were non-conformists like ourselves. In England, because of their convictions, they were not free to practice their religion. In the early 17th century, non-conforming religion was anathema. Its adherents were harrassed by religious and civil authorities alike.

The Pilgrims moved from England to Holland in search of freedom and tolerance; and life was better there. There was, however, still considerable tension between the Pilgrims and the more traditional religious groups that had also moved to Holland from England in order to escape persecution by the Established Anglican Church. The Pilgrims, in addition, were concerned that their young people were growing up to be more Dutch than English in their outlook.

So, a group of the Pilgrims decided to settle in America. They sailed on the Mayflower from Holland, and landed at Plymouth (a few miles south of where Boston would later be established). It was the year 1620.

In December the group held their first religious service on the slope of the hill where the Unitarian Church now stands. The present building is the fifth one built on that site in the more than three and a half centuries of the congregation's existence.

It is not too strong a statement to say that the Pilgrim tradition is the root out of which our democratic society grew. The Mayflower Compact drafted by the Pilgrims is a simple, direct statement of agreement among them to establish a just, equal, democratic social order, aimed at promoting the well-being of all. It set an example for the future.

The Pilgrims were democratic at a time when such political views were almost unknown in the world. They were also religious liberals: that is, they were aware that the truths they cherished were not the last word, were aware that, if they remained open, they would learn more, gain further insight into the nature of things.

Even so, though liberal, the Pilgrims' religion was a long way from Unitarianism. Their belief system was dominated by the conception of God as absolute Ruler of the Universe, infinite, all-powerful, stern. Human beings were seen as hopelessly depraved, corrupt, sinful, and subject to God's awful condemnation to the fires of hell.

Even tiny infants were viewed as evil because their little natures contained the blight of Original Sin. It followed logically from this that if infants did not have this blight removed by Baptism, they were condemned by God to burn eternally in hellfire.

Indeed, this would be the fate of most people anyway: God in his goodness would save only a few people, and all the rest of the species, no matter if they lived good lives, would suffer the torments of hell forever. It was through union with Christ by the action of the Holy Spirit that the few were to be saved.

Though this system of beliefs seems strange at this point in time, it was the dominant religion in New England during colonial times. However, in about the middle of the 18th Century a reaction set in against its bleak characteristics.

Some of the members of the Pilgrim and Puritan churches began to develop a new and more affirmative religious orientation, one that took a less dismal view of God and of human nature. People began to reach out beyond the traditional system in search of a more rational, more open, freer and more humane awareness of the nature of things.

This new form of religion continued to grow in people in New England over the course of some 75 years, between 1750 and 1825. Gradually, one by one, the churches began to change openly from the traditional to the new and freer orientation.

One of the first ideas in the tradition to be revised was the Calvinist conception of humanity as totally depraved. A school of thought developed which held that humans were born with the potential for both good and evil.

Another group of free religionists pressed for a more rational understanding of the Bible, as opposed to its blind acceptance as a book entirely without error. A third group moved to reject the concept of God as a Trinity, three persons and at the same time one person. These were the major points of difference between the new religion and the long-standing traditional form.

A turning point in the conflict between the two came in 1805 at Harvard, which graduated a great many of the ministers serving the New England churches. The Hollis Professorship fell vacant, and regulations called for its being filled by a person "of sound and orthodox belief;" but the mixed liberals and conservatives on the governing body of the school could not agree on a successor.

Finally, a distinguished liberal minister, Henry Ware, of Hingham, Massachusetts was chosen,and, as a result, the religious liberals dominated Harvard for the next 60 or 70 years. The orthodox party saw this as the work of the Devil, and fought hard to reverse the appointment. This serious conflict further separated the free religionists from the traditionalists.

The controversy had gone on quietly until this time, with no thought of dividing the churches. But now it was out in the open. The distinction between orthodox and liberal religion was becoming clear, and the opposition of the orthodox to the new religion became increasingly hostile, harsh, and bitter. They seemed determined to compel the liberals either to confess their errors or to leave the church.

One of the leading liberal ministers in Boston during the first half of the 19th century was William Ellery Channing. In addition to serving as minister of Federal Street Church, he also taught at Harvard, and one of his students was that Jared Sparks who was later to be appointed Chaplain to the US House of Representatives.

After graduating from Harvard, Sparks was called in 1819 to the pulpit of the then new church in Baltimore, and he, in turn, asked Channing to speak at his ordination and installation as minster of the church. Leaders in the new rational religion at Harvard and in Boston, when they learned Channing was to speak in Baltimore, asked him to use the occasion to reply to the bitter criticism by the orthodox of Unitarian religion.

It proved to be an historic occasion. Channing's sermon was printed and reprinted in pamphlet form, and spread rapidly around the country. It was exciting and provocative to people because it clarified for the first time, the distinction between the new religion and the old.

Channing asserted, for example, that it is apparent to Unitarians that the Bible is not uniformly edifying, is not without error and misconception. It is a book of uneven value. As a result, its meanings must be searched out in the same way as that of any other book. It must be interpreted by the use of reason, and its teachings must be harmonized with the "obvious and acknowledged laws of nature."

The liberals, Channing said, see God and Christ as separate and distinct, see each as a unity, not a trinity. We reject the idea of God as a Trinity of compounded beings. Furthermore, he said, we believe that God is a moral being of infinite goodness, and that it is unthinkable that such a being would have created the human species totally depraved, that he would arbitrarily choose a few to be saved and damn the rest to eternal torture.

Channing closed with these words: "Our earnest prayer to God is... that the conspiracy of the ages against the liberty of Christians may be brought to an end; that the servile assent so long yielded to human creeds, may give place to honest and devout inquiry into the Scriptures, and that Christianity, thus purified from error, may put forth its almighty energy, and prove itself by its ennobling influence on the mind, to be indeed 'the power of God unto salvation'."

The sermon was titled by Channing, "Unitarian Christianity." It was given in 1819 in the Baltimore church, and had such an impact that it became the focus of the new, growing, free, rational religion. It was fiercely attacked by the orthodox.

By 1825, 120 of the historic old Puritan churches had become openly Unitarian. In 1800 the church of the Pilgrims at Plymouth had quietly called a Unitarian minister from Harvard to its pulpit. He remained there as minister for almost 60 years, until his death in 1859. The church is still Unitarian today.

So it went in many of the New England churches. In others the controversy was fierce and bitter, and often the orthodox members withdrew to form a new church, leaving the Unitarians with the original building. Occasionally the reverse. More than a third of the traditional churches became Unitarian. "In only three of the larger towns of eastern Massachusetts did the parish remain orthodox, and at Boston only the Old South [church]." [Earl Morse Wilbur, Our Unitarian Heritage, p 418]

That's how the Unitarian movement came to be. We emerged gradually out of the bleak, traditional religion of colonial New England, out of the congregational churches of the Pilgrims and Puritans, out of Harvard College; and, more gradually still, that bleak old religion itself changed, partly no doubt in response to the existence of the new, rational religion around it and within it.

The old Puritan religion, Calvinism, no longer exists in its stern, traditional form, though for more than 200 years, it was the dominant religion in New England.

III. Getting Organized
For 175 years the denomination has each year in May or June assembled delegates from our churches all over the country for an annual meeting called the General Assembly. This delegate body is the seat of power in the movement: not a bishop or a president. Policies are legislated by the delegates, and officers are elected to carry them out in the interval between meetings.

On the day before the annual meeting begins, UU ministers from all over the continent gather for an all day meeting, and an important event in it is the Berry Street Lecture. One minister is asked to prepare a major paper on an issue important to free religion, and this is read and discussed at some length, then later published.

The Berry Street Lecture grew out of a conference that was called together on May 30th, 1820 by William Ellery Channing. Channing assembled a group of liberal ministers at that time because he felt it important that they meet for mutual encouragement and support. The organization proved to be lasting. It will meet this coming June in its 174th year. In its fourth and fifth years, this Berry Street Conference played a major role in organizing the denomination of which our own church is now a part.

From 1820 onward, there was a growing feeling among the Unitarians that they needed to organize separately from the traditional churches; but there was also considerable opposition to taking such a step. Many preferred to remain inside the tradition, and alter it from within. However, as the opposition to Unitarians became increasingly hostile, more and more of them began to favor a separate organization.

In 1824, the issue was raised at the Berry Street Conference; and at the meeting on May 25th in 1825, three young ministers (James Walker, Henry Ware, Jr, and Ezra Stiles Gannett) presented a formal proposal for an association of the new Unitarian churches. The proposal was accepted and affirmed with enthusiasm. That was 175 years ago last May. The Universalists had a parallel line of development which I discussed here a few months ago.

This event in 1825 marked the formal beginning of the Unitarian denomination in North America. The movement has for more than a century and a half given itself over to the aim of creating a rational, as opposed to a merely traditional faith, pursuing this aim in a spirit of free and independent inquiry. It is a remarkable and life-affirming aim, and one that has had a substantial impact on the society out of which we emerged.

Dr Alexie Crane
2880 Exeter Place
Santa Barbara, CA 93105
(805) 682-3476

Lex1304@aol.com