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By John T. Crestwell, Jr.
January 2, 2005
Good morning. This month, we
are using, as a theme, ABOLITION. Defined, abolition means to do
away with; to abolish; to get rid of. Abolition has to do with
freeing the mind and body. And in this sense, abolition, then, is
closely related to freedom— for me, physical and intellectual
freedom.
I would like to talk with you today about freedom. Freedom, as it
relates the Unitarian Universalist movement and the American dream.
Before I move forward, I would like to share with you a brief story…
When I was sixteen, my cousin and her mom came to my house once a
week, Bible in hand, religious tracts in their bag; they were ready
to free me spiritually and convert me to their faith. They were
Jehovah’s Witnesses. They told me that if I wanted to be in Paradise
or have eternal life I had to leave my church because what the
Methodist Church taught was unscriptural. The Trinity, the flag in
the church, the practice of Christmas and Easter, 'those pagan
holidays,' they would say; the teachings of Christ's divinity as
God, all of this was incorrect and unscriptural - not found in the
Bible. They said I was held in bondage, mental and spiritual
captivity by 'Babylon the Great' the empire of false religion and to
be free I had to leave my church. They backed it up with scripture
after scripture, what scholars call literalizing proof texts
exegesis; and the Witnesses also used their religious tracts to
support their claims. This was a first class sales job!
It was working. I began to question my very basic beliefs. I became
critical of my Methodist Church. The Witnesses told me that if I
followed their way I would have a good life, free from false
teachings, and would also be resurrected into a paradise. I felt my
freedom, now and in the afterlife, was at stake if I did not listen,
so I prayed more, read the Bible more, preached to as many of my
friends as I could. I lived with a lot of guilt but I was working
to save myself and others. I was working to free myself, so I
thought. That's all I knew then! You know it is quite amazing how
fear works. I mentioned that a few weeks ago… It is also amazing how
we will do almost anything if we believe our life or our freedom is
in jeopardy or at stake. But the truth is this type of freedom was
stifling. In fact, I thought I was working to free myself but really
I was enslaving myself even more - a strange paradox with religion
sometimes indeed! Ed Howe said once, "We are not free, it was not
intended we should be. A book of rules is placed in our cradle, and
we never get rid of it until we reach our graves. Then we are free,
only then!" I'm not quite as cynical as Mr. Howe, but the point this
morning, and perhaps my example is not that compelling, is the human
will do whatever it takes to save their freedom, or to have their
freedom. What is it in the human psyche that we value freedom so
much?
It was Immanuel Kant who believed we live out of the workings of our
mind and that the human mind cannot grasp the vastness of the
cosmos, and therefore he or she creates a world of ideas, a world
with a god or gods, a world of moral order, a world of justice; this
we do in order to make sense of it all. He also said that humans
have to be free mentally and physically to be creative and
expressive in shaping their reality. Kant placed freedom at the
center of his philosophy.
I’m not purposely picking on the Jehovah’s Witnesses this morning;
they are not the only religion that feels they have all the answers
and are the ultimate example that will free the human from their
mental or spiritual bondage. Every religion you will find works out
of a premise of freedom, of bringing people from the darkness to the
light. But it is not as much a religious idea as it is more a part
of the workings of the mind. Even during the time of the great
Socrates, there was an idea that humankind was wholly enslaved to
the Fates. The Fates were fixed religious laws in the universe that
had certain inevitabilities that could not be escaped - this was an
early example of Calvin's idea of predestination. A person was
destined for a specific fate, not by what they did, but by the facts
of their creation and they have no control over it. This idea
prevailed. Socrates came along and said that without knowledge
humankind was indeed destined to the Fates, but with proper
knowledge, humans could influence their destiny to some extent. In
fact, we find from Socrates some of the first inklings of this idea
of freedom of choice, a freedom that Socrates felt could dictate
one's future… Socrates' ideas have influenced the world. And so the
idea about freedom as the highest pursuit, they come to us all the
way from Greece thousands of years ago and let us not forget
Democritus' teachings about happiness which ties right into our
American history and the American Democratic ideal of life, liberty
and the pursuit of happiness. That goes right back to Democritus and
Greece! Freedom then is at the core of the mind of humankind and
has been for a long time. We have reasoned out of the world of
ideas, as Kant would say, the fact that to be moral is to work
toward peace liberty and justice for all; to work toward abolishing
all things that preclude us from being free! Yes, if you think
about it, we are all in one way or another, working toward freeing
ourselves from something, whether it's mental, physical, spiritual,
psychological, or physiological. So, this is my main point today,
that we all want to abolish that which hinders and restrains, so we
can find release or freedom. Freedom then is one of the highest
strivings or yearnings of the human soul.
There have been many stories of how folk have fought for their
personal freedom and the freedom of others over the years, but what
is important for us today is our story as Unitarian Universalists
and how we have fought for the freedom for others and for ourselves.
Time will not permit me to go into much detail but if I could give
you a snapshot that will be sufficient I think!
Back in 1568, in the 16th century in Transylvania (No, I'm not going
to tell you a story about Dracula), King John Sigismund, a Unitarian
King (yes we had a king), issued a statement, a royal edict, called
the 'Diet of Torda'. The King wished to end religious persecution
and to allow freedom of conscience. It is the first Unitarian
concept of 'freedom of pulpit and pew.' The act cuts state control
out of the church and placed it in the parishioner's hands. It
removed the mediator between the individual and their god. This act
would allow the Transylvanian Unitarian Church to thrive and find a
home free from persecution.
And so, our early founders, the anti-Trinitarians, had a deep desire
to move toward religious freedom. This want for religious freedom
was also reflected in the early polity, or church governance of the
churches in Europe to move away from state domination toward local
congregational control, and the Diet of Torda was the first
statement by an authority that justified a longtime hope these
anti-Trinitarians had for religious freedom. And this was a big
thing back then because the Church and State were basically 'the way
the truth and light' and desiring to be independent and individual
and different religiously, was seen as heresy against Rome or heresy
against a growing Protestantism in Europe.
Later, in the 18th Century in America, (1770's) John Murray,
considered the founder of Universalism in America, begins calling
for religious freedom from Calvinism, bringing the idea to America
that all are saved by grace and there was no preset number for
heaven or hell, as Calvinism suggests. Later in 1796, Joseph
Priestly, British Unitarian minister and scientist, who is known as
the inventor of oxygen (someone explain to me later how you invent
oxygen J), brings Unitarianism to America in Philadelphia,
Pennsylvania, after his house and books were tragically burned and
he was run out of his country for his 'heretical' views. Now, the
American Unitarians were not as much interested in salvation as they
were with the proper teachings of the Bible. But it should be noted
that the American Unitarians were much like their European
colleagues - they were literalists Christians. The theology & polity
was quite similar to the Quakers and early Puritans. Theologically,
they believed in Christ but not in the Trinity (the Unitarians)
because it was not found in the Bible. They believed in
congregational control, and they also took an Arian view of Jesus'
divinity. That is, he was divine and godly but not God in the flesh.
This was heresy back then and still is today in many circles. The
point is, in Priestley's and Murray's day, many thought they could
bring the religion of Unitarianism or Universalism to America and
find a strong base of support among European dissenters, but what
they found is that those who came across the ocean brought their
religious traditions with them. Given this fact, both faiths
basically continued their antithetical cry in America for religious
tolerance and freedom of religion.
Now, in America, while there was this call for religious freedom,
there was also a cry for political freedom. Thomas Jefferson (a
closet Unitarian as is commonly held) had already written the
Declaration of Independence in 1776 and it set the tone for the new
century to come. It said:
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created
equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain
unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the
pursuit of Happiness. --That to secure these rights, Governments are
instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of
the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes
destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or
to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its
foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such
form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and
Happiness."
Of course Jefferson would also write the preamble to the
constitution which said that as Americans we "must secure the
blessings of liberty for ourselves and our posterity". This was
great work by Jefferson but we all know he was a product of his day.
Jefferson was a slave owner and while he said in public 'all were
equal' in private he would go home to several hundred slaves. His
spirit was willing but his flesh was weak.
Nonetheless, as we move from the late 18th century to the 19th
century, you find that a post Revolutionary war mentality has taken
hold across America. The cry for freedom extended from the religious
toward the political and social. England was sent packing and this
new America, this Jeffersonian America, was free to express her
ideals. Yet, as Jefferson was conflicted so was the country. The
American slave was still not free. Many slaves were allowed to fight
in the Revolutionary War, and then had to go back to being enslaved.
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