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TRANSCENDENTAL TRILOGY
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.

Fortunately, there was a shift in the Unitarian mindset which pushed our forebears from the mere intellectual, from the theoretical and cognitive to the therapeutic and practical.  This shift would assist the American slave in years to come!

It happened in Boston (in the first quarter of the 1800's) where a few select, educated folk who began to have deeper spiritual insights emerged.  Ralph Waldo Emerson was the pioneer of this group and he began to see that there was something transcendent, something beyond the form and fashion of traditional literal Christianity and traditional literal Unitarian Christianity.   He had studied Eastern religion.  He had spent time with nature and concluded that truth was not found in dogma but found in the heart intuitively.  By intuitive, I mean with the senses.  You find your truth naturally; not with reason or biblical criticism, justifying this or that, rather you have a sort of immediate understanding that transcends reason.  It is a very idealistic concept and very close to Buddhism's idea of enlightenment or Taoism's explanation of the 'Way' or the pantheists concept of God in all.   Hear the words of Emerson:  "We will walk on our own feet; we will work with our own hands; we will speak our own minds...A nation of men will for the first time exist, because each believes himself inspired by the Divine Soul which also inspires all men."

Transcendentalism comes to life.  And there are others who impacted this movement, particularly, Theodore Parker who wrote the "Transient and Permanent in Christianity".  Here, he argues that that there are eternal, lasting truth's or 'permanents' in the faith, like the 'Golden Rule', but there are also transients or temporary things like creeds and affirmations of faith that pass away and must be discarded over time as they are not needed.  Parker, a transcendentalist, would say he knows this right because he KNOWS it is right.  And if it is right to him, in his world of created ideas, it is just because it came to him intuitively. This naturalism or romanticism was taking the north by storm and it was guided by the religious, political and social environment in America during the years after the Revolutionary War and leading up the Civil War in America.

So this Transcendentalism came in three parts and challenged early Bostonians and others in the north in three ways.  There were three stories being played out.  First, be free from the literal exegesis of scripture.  Second, be free as an American to express your individuality.  And third, we are free from England, we are free as Transcendentalists from the religious dogma, therefore we are now compelled by our freedom, to make all people free whether they are in mental or physical bondage.  This is what I call the transcendental trilogy.

Regarding the first point that we are free from the literalism, Emerson and Parker and Henry David Thoreau, William Ellery Channing (all graduates of Harvard Divinity) and there were others, who began to see that God was beyond 'The Book'.  God transcended the scriptures and was found within and in all things.  Jefferson had created the Jeffersonian Bible where he pulled out the miracles, the supernatural and looked at the works of Jesus only seeing him as the great ethical teacher and moral example for humanity.  The transcendentalists went even further: truth is beyond the literal!  This became a threat to established Unitarianism and Protestantism as you can probably tell, and is historically known as the Unitarian Controversy. 

Emerson's thoughts have prevailed today when we look at our faith which is a conglomeration of many religious traditions.  I would say that we are neo-transcendentalists today.  Nonetheless, this was the first story being played out in Unitarian circles in America.  So part one:  YOU ARE FREE FROM RELIGIOUS DOGMA AND LITERALISM. 

Part two is closely related and I have alluded to it.  If we find God and truth not through reason and critique but naturally, that is, the Oversoul, as Emerson would say, is over all and we are a part of it.  We are IT, in fact.  Therefore, to know truth and goodness we need only to look within ourselves.  This is a radical statement of individuality.  Hear the words of Emerson again:  "Let us learn the revelation of all nature and thought; that the Highest dwells within us; that the sources of nature are in our own minds.  Within us is the soul of the whole; the wise silence, the universal beauty, to which every part and particle is equally related and the eternal One."  And today the Kantian and Emersonian ideology follows what we call principle number four "A free and responsible search for truth and meaning." Part two says YOU ARE FREE TO BE AN INDIVIDUAL AND TO FIND TRUTH AND GOODNESS FOR YOURSELF.

Part three, you have raised your level of consciousness therefore the higher aims of serving humanity call you forth.  I talked about slavery a few minutes ago. Well, in the 18th and 19th century Unitarians worked tirelessly to free Blacks and women in America.  We know the stories of Theodore Parker who, although he had a negative view of the American slaves' mental faculties, was a strong proponent for their freedom.  Parker believed that free will was important and that a person, enslaved, a person in chains, in physical bondage, could not be free to choose their own way and find their truth. And morally, Parker felt that slavery, although protected by many laws, was immoral to his worldview.  He believed this with such conviction that he kept a gun in his office and home while harboring fugitive slaves.  Parker was also a part of the 'Secret Six' who financially supported John Brown's raid at Harpers Ferry, in West Virginia.  An idea that would lead to the eventual abolition of slavery!

This idea of self-reliance and self-development also moved many female Unitarian Transcendentalists like Julia Ward Howe, who wrote the 'Battle Hymn of the Republic' to be one of the leaders of the Women's Suffrage movement.   Margaret Fuller, Susan B. Anthony and others, worked tirelessly for the Rights of Women.  They showed many in that time how women had been oppressed historically and they advocated equal status for women in all facets of society.  Indeed, transcendentalism in that day, gave rise to this bold individuality in a women, in a very patriarchal time.  And so, part three of the trilogy is: WITH GREAT FREEDOM COMES GREAT RESPONSIBILITY.  

And so, there it is the, 'Transcendental Trilogy' which has its roots in Greece and Europe and early America.  One:   YOU ARE FREE FROM RELIGIOUS DOGMA.  Two:   YOU ARE FREE TO BE AN INDIVIDUAL AND TO FIND YOUR TRUTH.  Three:    WITH GREAT FREEDOM COMES GREAT RESPONSIBILITY.  

I know this has been a bit of a lecture and a lot of information, but if you haven't fallen asleep during my history lesson, you will see that we are in a good place here in this church.  The message learned from our history is a message to all of us.  That we are free to, as Walt Whitman says, "look through our own eyes" that's what our history reveals. It also tells us that we have a charge to keep.  We have a freedom to share.  We have a legacy to follow.  I don't know about you, but I am convicted by what I know.  I cannot sit idly by today and let religions make exclusive about morality or mortality without saying a word or two.  I cannot sit on the sideline when individual freedoms are jeopardized by public and private entities; I cannot be silent when there are still so many in our world who are not free to express their individuality.  And so this story is a call to you.  It is a call to action; a call to be cognizant of the sacrifice made by so many who came before us.  And it is a call to be thankful and responsible for the freedom we have as a Unitarian Universalists and as human beings, as children of the universe. John F. Kennedy said it well, "Freedom is indivisible, and when one person is enslaved, all are not free!"   But I think Viktor Frankel said it better as I close: 

"…everything can be taken from a person but one thing: the last of human freedoms - to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances -to choose one's own way." 

Might we have the right attitude and choose the path that our heart calls us to; the path that pushes us to work toward the religious, political and social freedom for all on earth. 

Thank you for you time this morning.

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