Find us, and ye shall seek

Unitarian Universalist Church
Cherry Hill, New Jersey
September 9, 2007

Time to get back to visiting places that are more foreign to my experience. I’ve never been to a Unitarian Universalist (UU) church; the closest I’ve been to Unitarianism was the class I took on Ralph Waldo Emerson. A dizzying experience it was, too. If modern Unitarians are as mysterious, allusive, elusive, and just generally confounding as Emerson, visiting a UU church will be a strange trip indeed.

I do a little Wikiwork to prepare. According to Wiki, Unitarian Universalists are not united by creed, but rather united in their “shared search for spiritual growth.” They do not consider themselves Christians, though they trace their history back to the 1961 merger of two traditionally Christian groups, the Universalist Church in America and the American Unitarian Association. (So I think this will be the youngest denomination so far in my visits, dating back to only 1961.)

Of course, some of the churches I’ve visited so far are called non-Christian by other Christian groups. Many people who consider themselves Christians would tell me that Mormons and Christian Scientists are not Christians, and you could find someone somewhere who would say that anyone not in his or her denomination is non Christian. But visiting the UUs will be the first time I’m visiting a church that does not claim the Christian label for themselves.

Universalism, the belief that everyone will eventually be saved, is a very old doctrine. People find it in the writings of the earliest theologians, including Origen (second century), and St. Gregory of Nyssa (4th century). In the US, the Universalist Church of America was established in 1793, so it seems to me that you could say that the idea that no one will go to hell is real American “old-time religion.”

Unitarianism, the rejection of the doctrine of the Trinity, has been around a long, long time also. That’s not really very surprising, since Christianity arose out of Judaism, and it’s harder to get more adamantly monotheistic than Judaism.

People still have a hard time reconciling monotheism and trinitarianism, and I can imagine it was even harder to explain in the first few centuries of Christianity, when the doctrine of the Trinity had not yet been developed. It’s not so easy today, either. Neil and I were talking to a Roman Catholic priest who teaches the doctrine of the trinity to seminarians, and he said that whenever he talks to seminarians, priests, or even bishops about this topic, within ten minutes most of them are unwittingly saying something heretical. It’s just such a hard doctrine to wrap your mind around. (This same priest also had a very funny question he uses to teach seminarians about the humanity of Christ. He asks them if Jesus ever farted. He says they are usually shocked, and don’t know how to answer. His response: “You’d better hope He farted, because if He didn’t, you are not saved.”)

Some of the most famous early Christian anti-trinitarians were the Arians, followers of a fourth-century Egyptian priest named Arius who taught that Jesus was not consubstantial or coeternal with God the Father. Arius was excommunicated, but controversies about the nature of God, and the exact situation with Jesus’ relationship to God the Father, were prevalent for hundreds of years. Arians were a huge part of the early church. It was Arian missionaries who carried Christianity to Europe, and the Germanic tribes they converted remained anti-trinitarian into the eighth century, long after trinitarian doctrine had become official orthodoxy in the Roman church.

Arianism was most famously rejected at the Council of Nicaea in 325, but forms of Unitarianism kept popping up again throughout the centuries. Michael Servetus, a 16th century Spanish physician and theologian, was burned at the stake in Geneva for his nontrinitarian Christology. And it wasn’t just the Protestants who wanted him dead - the French Inquisition had also found him guilty of heresy, and had condemned him. John Calvin led the Geneva Council that sentenced Servetus to death. Calvin tried to convince the council to be a little merciful – he argued for decapitation instead of burning, but that only got him thoroughly mocked for being an old softy when it came to heretics. (Calvin has a tremendous reputation as a hardhearted condemner of heretics, but Servetus’ death is the only one that can be laid to his account. One burnt heretic is a rather small number when you consider the times in which he lived and the numbers attributed to other people who were in the business of keeping the church pure.)

Servetus is sometimes hailed as the first Unitarian martyr, and modern Unitarian groups claim him as a spiritual ancestor. At least one Unitarian church has a stained glass window honoring him. He is widely honored in Spain, probably more for being the first European to describe pulmonary circulation than for his theology. According to Wikipedia, “In 1984, a Zaragoza public hospital changed its name from Jose Antonio to Miguel Servet. It is now a university hospital. Most Spanish cities also include at least a street, square, or park named after Servetus. The Geneva district Servette is also named after Servetus.”

So, being condemned by both the Catholics and the Protestants doesn’t necessarily mean that you won’t ever get any respect.

Both Arius and Servetus would probably be appalled, actually, to learn that Unitarian Universalists look to them in some way as spiritual forefathers. Contemporary UUs allows for lots more latitude in belief than either of these famous heretics would have allowed. Today a UU member could be an atheist, polytheist, pantheist, deist, humanist, Gnostic, neopagan, or an “earth-centered” believer. Some UUs are Wiccans, and some are Buddhists.

I learned on Wikipedia that the most common symbol of Unitarian Universalism is the flaming chalice. UU congregations have mostly abandoned baptism, communion, and confirmation, although they have come up with variations on these practices, such as dedication of children ceremonies, Water Communion, and Flower Communion.

UU folks have been extremely active in civil rights causes in the US, and UU martyrs in this area include UU minister James J. Reeb, as well as Viola Liuzzo, who was murdered by white supremacists for her participation in the march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama.

There doesn’t seem to be agreement on how many people in the US are members of a UU church. In 2001, though, one survey found more than half a million people self-identifying as UU.

Famous Unitarians include John Alden, Miles Standish, and the Pilgrim William Brewster, who was the first pastor of what is today First Parish Church, Unitarian Universalist, in Massachusetts. John and Abigail Adams, their son John Quincy Adams, Thomas Jefferson, Paul Revere, Louisa May Alcott, Susan B. Anthony, PT Barnum, William Howard Taft, Pete Seeger, Adlai Stevenson, Frank Lloyd Wright, and Kurt Vonnegut were all Unitarians. It’s a real red-white-and-blue kind of religion.
_________________________________


Because I am so unfamiliar with Unitarian Universalists, I somehow assume they must be a small group meeting in a small building – another one of my ridiculous unfounded presuppositions shattered! When I drive to the location indicated on Google maps, I find myself pulling into a large parking lot full of cars, in front of a large, attractive building. It doesn’t look like a traditional church building, but then lots of churches don’t look that way these days. The property sits on 17 acres of land and gardens.

I walk in, pick up a bulletin, and enter the sanctuary. (Do UUs call this space a sanctuary?) It’s a room with a central wooden pulpit, clear windows overhead through which we can see sky and clouds, and clear windows to the right, through which we can see trees. Rows of folding chairs have been set up; I estimate they could seat about 250 people, and already the room is about 4/5 full. I feel like the person who was so surprised when Reagan won the Presidential election in a landslide: “But nobody I know voted for him!” Inwardly I am exclaiming, “But how could there be this many active Unitarians? I’ve never met one!”

Glancing around, I amuse myself for a few seconds by trying to pick out the witches (Wiccans) in the crowd. This is amusing only until I suddenly realize that I could myself be mistaken for a witch by anyone using the same stereotypical criteria I’m using – older woman, grayish hair, not very stylish. (Plus I’m dressed in black.) Let’s face it, any woman above a certain age could be called a witch on any bad hair day – and some good hair days, too. I’d rather not pursue this suddenly not-so-funny thought any longer.

I peruse the bulletin, which looks like an ordinary church bulletin, except for a few spots where the wording is a bit unusual. The Order of Service begins with “The Gong Summons the Community to Worship” and then helpfully adds “Please follow the sound of the gong into silence.” (Meanwhile I am wondering, how can atheists and agnostics take part in a summons to worship? Wouldn’t that be against their principles?)

The gong is not very loud. I was hoping for something more impressive, as I don’t get to hear a lot of gongs in church. The pianist plays a prelude.

Next up are announcements, and then something called the Chalice Lighting. I’m watching this part, but either the flame is invisible from where I sit or the chalice didn’t actually light. This is an aspect of church services with which I’m fairly familiar – the tricky and unpredictable and sort of risky side of fooling around with candles and fire in public services.

A man stands for the Opening Words, which are “Good morning. I said, good morning! In this quiet hour may our spirits be renewed.” Next we sing the first hymn, I’ve Got Peace Like a River. They have a verse I’ve never seen before, “I’ve got pain like an arrow.”

Next is Water Communion. We do a responsive reading based on a Langston Hughes poem, “I’ve Known Rivers,” there is music, and the man who greeted us at the beginning talks about how he has kept his little bottle of water on his kitchen counter throughout the summer, waiting for this moment. I gradually understand that this ceremony must have begun last spring, when they had a service in which they came forward and individually scooped up a bottle or cup of water from a big bowl. Now they are bringing those containers of water back to pour into the bowl. There are also bottles of water up front for people who forgot to bring their water from home or weren’t here last spring. Because the room is so crowded, I can’t see the bowl, so I decide to get in line and walk forward with the others, just to see what is going on up front.

Lots of us haven’t brought our own water bottles. We pick up a little plastic bottle of water, pour it into the bowl, and go back to our seats.

I hope it’s OK for me to participate in this take-off on communion. After all, UUs are supposed to be very open and nondogmatic about stuff like this. Wouldn’t it be ironic if it turns out they have their own version of closed communion, and I’ve violated those rules? It seems unlikely that this would be the case, but anything’s possible.

The next part of the service is The Candles of Joy and Concern – people walk to the front and light votive candles on a small table. I’m surprised at how much UUs seem to be into ceremonies and rituals. They are really very churchy.

Next is the children’s sermon, which is called the Story for All Ages. It’s something about a horse, and the moral of the story is that the most important thing is to keep on going, even when you have problems. My attention wanders a bit during the story, so I may have missed something there. I happen to have sat next to a couple who have a boy about 6-8 years old. He must be adopted, as he is much darker-skinned than they are, and he has trouble sitting still – he seems to have some sort of neurological or developmental disorder. It’s not terribly distracting for me, but he certainly is sort of twitchy and wiggly and grunty. At one point the mother leans over and apologizes: “I’m sorry, my son has multiple difficulties.”


Actually, I’m impressed. Adopting a child is a good thing, and adopting one with multiple difficulties seems downright saintly. Score one for the UUs, I say.

Then comes the Meditation Reading, which is a passage about the days of the segregated American South, from Fred Craddock’s Craddock Stories. I know of Fred Craddock as the Disciples of Christ preacher who is famous for his theory of inductive preaching, preaching that utilizes the same forms as the Bible passages it explicates (ie, a sermon on Psalms should be poetic; a sermon on a parable should be in story form). Craddock was very much influenced by Kierkegaard, and is now director emeritus of a non-profit service center in rural Appalachia. If you want to learn more about Craddock, follow this link. http://craddockcenter.org/about.htm

After the reading, there is silent meditation. Now another hymn, “Hail the Glorious Golden City.” The lyrics were written by Felix Adler, founder of the Ethical Culture movement (I’ll be writing more about him when I post about the Sunday I attended the Philadelphia Humanist Society meeting).

Then baskets are passed for the offering. The bulletin tells us that all the cash and undesignated checks will be donated to a charity selected by the Social Justice Committee.

Next there is a musical number, and another reading, this time from the book Ten Things Your Minister Wants to Tell You (But Can’t Because He needs the Job), by Rev. Oliver Thomas, a Baptist minister who thinks that Christianity “is in danger of being hijacked by a militant minority of fundamentalists.”

The Rev. Walter Braman stands for the sermon. He’s wearing a very traditional black Geneva gown, with a colorful stole, and has a grey beard. He looks just like a Presbyterian minister!

The sermon is titled: “DTBC?” Rev. Braman brings up the popular question, “What would Jesus do?” which has turned into the initialism WWJD. He proposes a similar question for UUs: Does this build community? He tells us that building community is the purpose of religion.

He then gives us three examples of how traditional denominations fail to build community, but instead exclude people from their ranks. First, he tells the story of a village in Poland. After a war (I think this is post-World War II), a woman from the United States moved to the devastated village to help them rebuild. She was a nurse, and selflessly served the villagers in every way possible. After many years, she died. The villagers wanted to bury her in the local cemetery, which is Catholic, but the priest refused burial because she was not Catholic. So she was buried just outside the cemetery fence – but in the middle of the night, the villagers moved the fence, so as to include her.

The second example is about a church that refused to let non-church members park in its parking lot. The third is a story about a 13-year-old girl who became very involved in Goth culture. When she died suddenly, her parents refused to bury her. They wanted nothing more to do with her. Rev. Braman says that all the other ministers in town refused to step forward and conduct a service for the dead girl. Somehow he got involved, and he planned a Goth funeral service with the girl’s Goth friends.

The point of the three examples is that ordinary denominational churches are heartless and excluding, unlike UU churches.

Thinking about these three stories, I am somewhat skeptical. The woman who worked for the Polish villagers had years and years to join the Catholic church, and apparently was not interested. I know the villagers wanted to embrace her in death, but wouldn’t it have been a more pointed and lasting memorial to her life to leave her outside the fence? Her grave might have then caused people to think about inclusivity and exclusivity, and to wonder about the meaning of boundaries. They might even have begun to wonder if people outside the church go to heaven, which I think would be something the UUs might want to encourage. I personally get a little irritated by people who co-opt you into their religious beliefs when you can’t object, such as after death. But the main thing I object to in the story is the assumption that the Catholic church shouldn’t have rules and boundaries about things like who can be buried in their cemeteries.

The example about the parking lot seems unfair. The church probably has to keep people out of its parking lot for insurance reasons, as well as in order to preserve parking for members. Lots of groups, secular and religious, have exclusive parking lots. It doesn’t seem innately wrong to me.

Finally, the funeral story. I’m not sure what the laws are about holding funerals for minors in the absence of parental consent – that’s an odd situation. I’m rather suspicious of Rev. Braman’s statement that “none of the pastors in town stepped forward to conduct her funeral.” Well, of course they didn’t. Pastors don’t step forward and offer to do funerals – they are not ambulance chasers, scanning the obituaries looking for work. They conduct funeral when they are asked by the family or the funeral director, and it looks to me as though the funeral director rather wisely asked the UU pastor to handle this one. If any of the other pastors in town had been asked to conduct this funeral and had declined due to the odd lack of family involvement and the fact that only teen-age Goths would be attending – well, that’s very sad, but it’s also pretty understandable. (Plus, if they were asked to do the funeral and declined, they were also very stupid, because a group of grieving teens is a great field for evangelism – most pastors are aware of this.)

The service ends soon after the sermon; there is another hymn and some closing words. Everyone is invited to go downstairs for refreshments and fellowship.

As I exit the sanctuary I notice that a table has been set up in the center of the main lobby, with pamphlets and a book where visitors can sign in. Perhaps it was there when I came in, but I didn’t notice it earlier. At any rate, I have to walk out into the middle of a large open area in order to sign the visitors’ book, and I am thinking all the while that this is actually a pretty good way to get church members to notice who is visiting. I feel somewhat conspicuous as I write down my name, address, and phone number, and pick up a few pamphlets.

However, no one says anything, so I just follow everyone else downstairs. There is a line for refreshments, and I make my normal weak attempts at small talk “”Wow – this looks good!” I pick up some cookies and a cup of coffee, and stand by myself along a wall, trying to look friendly. Other people have sorted themselves among the tables, and are chatting among themselves. No one talks to me; I am beginning to feel either invisible or – oh no! – could it be that these UUs have decided that I must be a visiting Wiccan, and are waiting for the other Wiccans to talk to me?

So I leave. You know, it’s not just the UUs. Very few people have spoken to me in any of the churches I’ve been visiting. It’s either something normal -- that people are naturally hesitant to talk to a stranger -- or else there is something unfriendly and off-putting about my appearance. Hmmm - I’ll go with the theory that most people find it hard to talk to strangers.

Later I look through the pamphlets I picked up. Like most of the other churches I’ve visited, this one has a slogan: “Come celebrate life with us!”” The brochure about their congregation and its beliefs contains what looks like bad history to me: “Universalism began in the Eighteenth Century as a reaction to Calvinist doctrines of predestination and salvation for a select few.” Sorry, folks, but universalism is a lot older than that. This particular congregation began in 1956 with just 27 charter members, and now has more than 400 members.

One of the pamphlets promotes the idea that UU membership is a good idea for mixed-religion couples, because neither partner would have to “give up the religious convictions of your heritage.” (Whaaaa? You don’t have to give up your religious convictions to join a non-Christian, non-Jewish, non-Muslim church? How does that make sense?)

Another pamphlet is about UU views on God. It’s a collection of quotations from various people; most focus on the idea that conceptions about God are necessarily individual, mystical, ineffable, and ultimately mysterious. Therefore no one can tell anyone else what God, or the divine, is like. One of the quotations is explicitly atheistic: “Mine is a firm atheism that avoids talk of transcendence. From my perspective, there is nothing behind the symbol God” (Anthony B. Pinn, Professor of Humanities and Religious Studies). Others employ more traditionally religious language. “My ideas about God have even evolved into something vaguely trinitarian” (Rev. Lisa Schwartz); “For twenty years I have followed the practice of Ignatian contemplative prayer while ministering in a variety of settings in inner-city communities” (Rev. Elizabeth K. Ellis). Most of the authors of the quotations in this pamphlet embrace uncertainty: “After much wrestling, I now believe in a personal God who is not a person, who is a Mystery beyond my ability to comprehend, yet no less real for my confusion” (Rev. Erik Walker Wilstrom).

My chief complaint with the UU philosophy of embracing everyone’s religious viewpoint, including the beliefs of atheists, deists, Muslims, Jews, Christians, etc. is that it seems, in the end, fundamentally dishonest. It’s fine to say that we can all learn something from each other, but how can you include them all in one pot without being essentially untrue to each of them individually? After all, reconciling atheism and pantheism is not as simple as reconciling the difference between tomato and to-mah-to.

This brings me back to the woman who lived in the Polish village, and gave her life for the good of the village, but never converted to their faith. I don’t like the idea of changing the boundaries of the cemetery (though I understand that the villagers meant well). I think the church has a perfect right to set boundaries – and that individuals have those same rights, and can say, “No thank you, I’m not joining your group.” Boundaries can be a good way of showing respect for both your opinions and those of others. And they make for sensible conversation.

Overall, though, I’m just amazed at how conventionally churchy the UU service was. I expected something different from a group of atheists, agnostics, pantheists, and deists. Robes, choir, pulpit, candles, children’s sermon, sermon, hymns, prayer, communion, fellowship hour – what the heck? They really do seem to like religion, they just don’t seem to like other churches.

Photo courtesy Flickruser Tim Green (Looking from the porch of the Unitarian Church in Todmorden)