Unitarian Universalism's Legacy for the USA

If we listened to the news 24/7 we would think we are going to hell in a hand-basket. Maybe we are! Is anyone contributing anything positive to the future of the United States of America? The newscasts spin everything and make us think not. However, Unitarian Universalists are and have been contributing positively for over 235 years. I look back at the contributions Unitarians and Universalists have made to the beginnings of this country—those men and women who saw great possibilities for this New World experiment—religious freedom, for one, and who saw to it that it became the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

When I look back I see at least one signer of the Declaration of Independence, the physician who is known to history as the father of American Psychiatry, Dr. Benjamin Rush of Pennsylvania. Dr. Rush was a major force in Universalism becoming an American denomination in 1790. The Rev. David E. Bumbaugh writes in his book Unitarian Universalism: A Narrative History, that Dr. Rush was the author of the first official statement of Universalist beliefs. In the process, he left an indelible mark on subsequent Universalist history. Rush insisted that Universalism and republic government were part of the same unfolding process, and that social action is an inescapable consequence of Universalist faith. In 1790, he laid out the program to which Universalists would return again and again—opposition to slavery, a commitment to temperance, a concern for prison reform, a passion for peace, and involvement with work with the poor which would foreshadow the social gospel movement two centuries later.

Signers of the U.S. Constitution who aligned themselves with Unitarianism and Universalism are more difficult to identify. Religion did not appear to be as important a public factor at the time of the signing, as it seems to be in today’s political climate.

When I look back I also see five presidents who we claim as Unitarians: John Adams, John Quincy Adams, Thomas Jefferson, Millard Fillmore and William Howard Taft. Thomas Jefferson didn't officially join any church; however, with the fact that he was aligned in principle with Unitarians we consider him a Unitarian. From the Dictionary of Unitarian Universalist Biography online which can be accessed through the UU Historical Society, on the UUA website, this quote is from his biography: Certain evangelicals, who were also his political opponents, tried very hard to make Jefferson’s religion a factor in elections. They filled the press with scurrilous attacks on his ‘deistical’ beliefs. He made it his steadfast policy never to respond to these attacks, or indeed, to make any public statement at all concerning his faith. Ironically, in spite of the attacks, evangelicals flocked to support Jefferson because they favored the end of tax support for established churches—which meant freedom for independent churches—as passionately as he did. Today religious conservatives portray Jefferson as a sympathetic figure, unaware of his religious beliefs, his understanding of religious freedom or his criticisms of evangelical religiosity.

Let’s move forward in the early-to-mid-1800’s to Horace Greeley, publisher and editor of the New York Tribune. Again, from the DUUB, no doubt you will recognize some names and perhaps agree with his views.

There were both Transcendentalist and anti-trinitarian elements in Greeley's Universalism. Among his friends were Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau. Greeley had a Transcendentalist belief that an Omniscient Beneficence presides over and directs the entire course of human affairs, leading ever onward and upward to universal purity and bliss, and all evil becomes phenomenal and preparative. Illustrative of Greeley's anti-trinitarianism is his assertion in his later years that, along with the great body of Universalists of our day (who herein differ from the earlier pioneers of our faith), I believe that 'our God is one Lord'… and I find the relation between the Father and the Saviour of mankind most clearly and fully set forth in that majestic first chapter of Hebrews, which I cannot see how any Trinitarian can ever intently read, without perceiving that its whole tenor and burden are directly at war with his conception of 'three persons in one God.' Having recorded his decided belief, he added tolerantly, I war not upon others' convictions, but rest satisfied with a simple statement of my own.

And we must not forget the women. That is what Abigail Adams said to her husband John Adams when he went off to participate in the framing of our Constitution. However, the men did forget the women, didn’t they? Besides the suffragette names of Susan B. Anthony, Mary Livermore, and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, here is one woman perhaps you will recognize: May Sarton. Her life spanned the last century—from 1912-1995. Again, the DUUB:

She left an impressive legacy of over fifty books, including novels, poetry, memoirs and journals. Her appeal lay in her ability to sacramentalize the ordinary by probing everyday subjects such as flowers, gardens, animals, changing sunlight and personal relationships in order to find deeper, universal truths. She examined such themes as the need for solitude, the role of the muse in the act of poetic creativity, and the role of the female artist in society.

At the age of ten May was introduced to the Unitarian church by her neighborhood friend Barbara Runkle, whose family attended the First Parish in Cambridge. May was impressed by the minister, Samuel McChord Crothers, whose sermons she thought full of quiet wisdom. One sermon in particular, she recalled in her memoir At Seventy, 1984, made a great impression on me—and really marked me for life. I can hear him saying, 'Go into the inner chamber of your soul—and shut the door.' The slight pause after 'soul' did it. A revelation to the child who heard it and who never has forgotten it.

As an adult Sarton did not become a member of any Unitarian church nor did she regularly attend religious services. She believed, however, that the Unitarian Universalists helped her get over the hump from small poetry audiences to larger engagements. In 1972 at the Unitarian Universalist Association General Assembly, Richard Henry, minister from Denver, presented a special service based on Sarton's work, Composing a Life, to an audience of five hundred. Following this event, other large audiences gathered at various Unitarian Universalist churches to hear Sarton speak. In 1976 Sarton was invited to lecture at the Unitarian Universalist Thomas Starr King School of Religious Leadership in Berkeley, California, from which she also received an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters. In 1982 she delivered the Ware Lecture, The Values We Have to Keep, to the Unitarian Universalist General Assembly. President Eugene Pickett introduced her as our poet. In addition, she received Ministry to Women Award from the Unitarian Universalist Women's Federation.

As I said earlier, there are any more Unitarians and Universalists who have contributed to the America we love. In the hall to my right is a large framed collage of photographs of many UUs. Please do take a moment to look at it.

I asked earlier, Is anyone contributing anything positive to the future of America? We need no reminder of the causes for which Unitarians and Universalists fought for—and died for—in the past 235 years. In 1961 these two great doctrines merged to form the Unitarian Universalist Association. It is their legacy we live.

Amen.

Copyright © 2011 JoAnn Macdonald. All Rights Reserved.