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To this we must add the influence of Unitarian philosophers like
Martineau, or essayists like Emerson, or jurists like Oliver Wendell
Holmes. Or reformers like Julia Ward Howe and Susan B. Anthony. Or
educational reformers like Horace Mann. All this has had its
influence upon religion in America. So has the preaching of Channing
and Parker, and the statesmanship of Daniel Webster. It would be
possible to name so many names that Unitarians have often felt
considerable diffidence about referring to them. Yet there is
importance in this weight of testimony. For Unitarians are not very
numerous. Only one-tenth of one percent of the population of the
United States is Unitarian in actual church affiliation.
A schoolgirl who saw that I would be preaching on this subject said
to me last week, "Do tell the people some of the things Unitarians
have done. In school, we are such a small group and nobody seems to
know about us. They think we're queer. Build us up a bit." Something
like that, she said. And so I am building us up a bit! After all,
there are more important things than modesty, one of which is the
testimony of achievement to what a religion can do. Although we are
only one-tenth of one percent of the population of the United
States, one-third of the names in the American Hall of Fame are
names of Unitarians. If we hold to a "queer" religion, it
nonetheless has helped some men and women to do great service for
their country and the world. According to Dr. Ellsworth Huntington
of Yale University, writing in 1924, "the productivity of the
Unitarians in supplying leaders of the first rank has been 150 times
as great as that of the remainder of the population, while that of
the Unitarian ministers (I will say this in a very soft, apologetic
voice!) has been nearly 1,500 times as great." I hope the
schoolgirl, if present, will feel happier about her "queer"
religion!
But I hope that none of us will rest satisfied with testimony from
the past. Only what is done in the present can make it important. We
shall be judged, not by the history we inherit but by the history we
make. And the time has certainly come to carry a liberating religion
to the multitudes of the people. Indeed, it is long overdue.
And what is this religion? We have said that it begins with
individual freedom of belief. Not the mere liberty, however, to
believe just anything at all. The liberty to believe the truth: the
truth as it persuades the mind, no matter what the cost or
consequence; the truth as it assails the conscience, no matter what
the sacrifice.
There are those who think that Unitarianism is the license to hold
any kind of belief that may please the individual. This is not the
case. Only a dishonest Unitarian can hold a belief--or
disbelief--which does not represent his true conviction and his
honest thought. Only an unworthy Unitarian can use his freedom to
indulge a lazy mind or tamper with the claims of conscience.
No, it is freedom to accept the truth, freedom to follow truth in
its advance, freedom to seek it in all the difficult and painful
ways in which it may be sought. Truth is not to be rejected because
it is new, and neither may it be rejected because it is old.
Conviction of any kind is only rejected when it ceases to persuade
an honest mind. Unitarians, therefore, are disciples not of a person
or an institution, but of truth itself. Persons may be revered,
institutions may be sustained, yet neither of them for their own
sakes, but only for the sake of what they hold of truth and
righteousness. If Unitarians revere the prophets, or respond to the
teaching of Jesus of Nazareth, it is not because of supernatural
authority, or because of ancient sanctions, or because it is the
proper and expected thing to do. It is because the truth speaks
through such men as these, because the divinity of the soul shines
more brightly in their lives. This is a divinity which Unitarians
can recognize and thoroughly believe in. Far from denying it, they
affirm it: they affirm it as the highest influence in every human
life. But they test it, not by dogmas but by what it manifests of
righteousness and truth.
Another principle of Unitarian agreement is reliance upon democracy.
A Unitarian church is democratic, self-governed, free from
interference by a hierarchy. Its membership is open to all who share
its purposes and is achieved by signing its covenant or
constitution. But reliance upon democracy goes further than the
church itself. It is upheld in all human relationships. For
democracy is not merely a matter of method but a level of life. All
human beings are worthy of participation in the affairs of human
society, and all should be encouraged to accept its opportunities
and disciplines. In this way the individual achieves his fullest
possibilities and the social group is benefited by his services.
Democracy, in the last analysis, is brotherhood in action, the
devotion of each in the service of all. As all souls are equal, none
may be subjected; and this should be true both of church and state.
There can be difference in function, degrees of ability, varieties
of talent; there can also be leadership, elected and chosen; but
whether in church or state, there is only one quality of persons,
one equal justice, and one worth of souls.
To Unitarians, also, the brotherhood of man is not restricted,
whether by nation, race or creed. This means that the world is one
community, whatever may be its several cultures and its many
provinces. No one is shut out from human brotherhood because of
color, nationality, or religion. Unitarians do not expect the entire
world to accept the Christian creed. They do not support
missionaries to try to bring about this mistaken and impossible
purpose. They look to the common underlying faith of all mankind to
draw the peoples of the earth together, not through conversion from
one faith to another, but through federating all traditions in a
common loyalty to what unites them, and in the building of a higher
truth through freedom of belief. Instead of missionaries Unitarians
support their Service Committee, operating wherever the means and
opportunity afford; and this Committee dispenses food, clothing,
medicine, relief and aid of every kind, irrespective of nation, race
or creed.
The goal of Unitarian effort is not to save the individual from hell
or enable him to find a place in heaven; whatever their beliefs
about life after death--and they vary greatly--Unitarians are
willing to take "one world at a time." This present world, so torn by countless miseries,
they desire to see made just and righteous, beautiful and happy; the
universal and beloved community. They join with all who share this
purpose in any venture which may lead towards it, and are less
concerned with piety than with the spread of useful righteousness.
These, then, are the areas of Unitarian agreement. Within them,
beliefs can vary greatly. In what they think about God, or
providence, or the Bible, or prayer, or any of a hundred other
questions, Unitarians may differ, and they do. What their church
requires of them is honest seeking and sincere conviction.
Unitarians, like other people, will be much concerned with these
questions. They want to learn as much as can be learned, and
whenever they learn better to revise their individual beliefs.
Nothing could be farther from the fact than to suppose that because
these matters are not put into a creed, Unitarians are not concerned
with them. The truth is that they are so deeply concerned that they
would not dare to put them in a creed. They want the living, growing
reality of religion. They want a religion that does not stand in the
way of honest faith, an affirmative religion that liberates them to
follow what the mind can know, to venture where the heart gives
courage, and to keep the soul forever in its pilgrimage towards the
future.
Meanwhile, they believe that faith means action, too. That it
manifests itself in character, and in ideals and purposes. There can
be no supernatural salvations, no moral miracles. Just as God must
think through human minds, so must the life of man be cleansed by
human effort and endeavor. This is not a merely individual thing,
but true devotion to sincere and actual purposes. On means and
methods, Unitarians will often differ, but they cannot differ on the
goals in view. That is to say, they cannot do so without falling
below the standards of their church. They are committed to the
purposes of human brotherhood. They are committed by the Unitarian
inheritance, consecrated by the multitude of Unitarian social
pioneers; they are committed by the very nature of their covenant,
which is universal in its brotherhood; they are committed by the
living conscience of the age in which they live, as Unitarians have
always been before them.
Let no one say, therefore, that it is difficult to know what
Unitarianism is, or that it contains no area of agreement. It is the
most affirmative of all religions, the boldest in its claim, and the
widest in its outreach and inclusiveness. Instead of creed, it
agrees to follow the living truth, and sets its people free to do
so. Instead of ritual pieties, it asks devotion to the deeds that
make the world more righteous and its people just. It separates
itself from no company of believers, whether Christian or otherwise,
except as they deny its claim for freedom. It asks no wide dominion
for its institutions; only a liberty of access for its faith. It
trusts that in the years before us, Unitarian freedom will be
claimed in all denominations, all communions; and meanwhile, it must
humbly do its best to lead the way.
In closing, there is one thing more to say. There are millions of
Unitarians in America today, but not in Unitarian churches. There
are millions of Unitarians who do not know that such a church
exists. They do not know its history. They do not know its basis.
They do not know its purposes. They do not know that they themselves
are Unitarians. If a true religion is to shape the world to peace
and freedom, these people must be joined together to advance its
cause.
Religions with worn-out creeds cannot do it. Irreligion cannot do
it. Confused religions cannot do it. If the strength of a free man's
faith is to be the undergirding of the world tomorrow, a world so
full of dangers, yet so rich in opportunities, and if the people of
America must rise to take their place within this venture, then
there must be hundreds of new churches, and multitudes of pioneers.
This will come about partly if Unitarians will preach their faith,
for there are many who are ready to hear it. But it will come about
most surely if Unitarians are willing to live their faith--live it
into aim and purpose, fearing nothing but the reproach of
conscience--for such a faith lived into actual life would be the
power of God himself, invincible.
Prayer: O God, our fathers gave us freedom for the truth; let it
lead us, let it live within us, let it speak when we speak and shine
in our deeds. Amen.
1. vide Graves, Charles, A History of Unitarianism, Beacon Press
2. The most recent and best: Earl Morse Wilbur, A History of
Unitarianism, Harvard University Press, 1945.
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