Roots…
Paul Sprecher
Second Parish in Hingham
April 23, 2006

You are probably familiar with the story of King John Sigismund of Transylvania, the only Unitarian king in history, whose greatest legacy was the Edict of Torda of 1568, the first declaration of religious tolerance in modern European history.  You may not be aware that Transylvania at the time was under the suzerainty—or protection—of the Islamic Ottoman Empire.  Twenty years earlier, in 1548, the Turkish ruler of the city of Buda was asked by the Roman Catholic authorities to suppress the teachings of a Lutheran and to kill the preacher or drive him from the city for heresy.  Not only was the request denied, the ruler, or Pasha “also issued an edict of toleration which states in part that ‘preachers of the faith invented by Luther should be allowed to preach the Gospel everywhere to everybody, whoever wants to hear, freely and without fear.  All Hungarians and Slavs who wish to should be able to listen to and receive the word of God without any danger. Because- he said- this is the true Christian faith and religion.’”   The Pasha knew that revelation is not sealed, James Luther Adams’ first smooth stone.  Truth can only be found by dialog.
Unitarianism survived some hard times in Transylvania, but it has remained a vital tradition to this day.  Many of the Transylvanian Unitarian congregations are partnered with churches here in the United States, and when floods destroyed homes and churches in several of the villages of our co-religionists just before Hurricane Katrina swept into New Orleans, the Unitarian Universalist Association quickly set up a fund drive to help in their recovery as well.
In one of your search committee’s “cottage meetings” early this year, one of your members upon hearing that among the sources we value are Jewish and Christian teachings spoke up to say “That should say Muslim too.”  The history of the founding of Unitarianism in Transylvania suggests that we may owe more of a debt to Islam for religious tolerance than we ever knew.  I consider it an honor to be a Unitarian Universalist at this time—part of a religious tradition whose forebears have been accused of being secret Muslims because of their commitment to a strict monotheism.  Like Unitarianism, Islam was founded in part on a strenuous insistence on the oneness of God and a rejection of the doctrine of the Trinity.  I believe that because of our shared history we Unitarian Universalists are in a unique position as a religious community to carry out a dialog with our Muslim brothers and sisters in an age when Muslims are accused of strident intolerance and when hard conversations are difficult to maintain.  This particular root of our living tradition is especially vital in the Twenty-First Century as we attempt to avoid a cataclysmic conflict of civilizations.  We Unitarian Universalists know how to stand in the breach.  We’ve been doing it for a very long time.
Of course, the history of Unitarianism and Universalism goes back much farther than the era of the Reformation.  I would argue that the key doctrines of these two faith traditions go back to the founding of Christianity.  Jesus himself would almost certainly have been shocked at the doctrine of the Trinity in which he would become a God like the one he called “Abba,” “Daddy.”  When called “good” by one of his followers, he replied "Why do you call me good? No one is good but God alone." (Luke 18:19)  It was only 300 years after his death that the Council of Nicaea in 325 articulated the doctrine of the Trinity.  It was the Emperor Constantine himself who coerced the acceptance of the language defining the divinity of Jesus—the first but hardly the last instance in which the state dictated the doctrinal content of Christianity.
Universalism—the belief that all human beings will ultimately be saved—was formulated as early as 200 CE by Origen, one of the early Church Fathers.  He thought that after successive trials there would be a final restoration of all creatures to an all-loving God.  While Origen had significant influence for several hundred years, his doctrines were condemned in 553 CE and his books were burned, the usual fate of heretical writings.  Origen supported an attitude of ultimate, cosmic optimism, another of our smooth stones.
These heresies bubbled below the surface during the era dominated by the Roman Catholic Church in Europe, exploding in occasional messianic movements.  With the dawn of the Reformation in the 1500’s, both doctrines again were taught and preached.  Our roots go deep into the soil of Christianity and of Western Civilization.
Here in the town of Hingham the First Parish was founded in 1635 by the earliest settlers of the area.  As in all of the towns of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, the meeting house was a center of community life and the minister a tax-paid public servant.  On June 22nd, 1742, the town having grown enough to the south onto the Great Plain that winter made the trip to the First Parish meeting house very trying, some of your sturdy forebears erected a meeting house for the use of South Hingham.  There was something nobly enterprising about these forebears of yours, because they didn’t actually have the authority to raise a meeting house for their own use, a point quickly made by the proprietors of First Parish.  It took four years of legal struggle before the commonwealth agreed that what is now Second Parish might use the taxes of their residents to pay for the meeting house and a minister.  They had finally created a social incarnation of their commitments, an institution to bring companions to their journeys.  The first minister, Daniel Shute, was installed on December 10th, 1746, some 260 years ago. 
Rev. Shute was good friends with Ebenezer Gay, minister of First Parish, "’the first Unitarian clergyman in New England,’" as one historian called him, and followed closely in his footsteps.”   Both were determined to avoid religious controversy; they also prevented the outbreak of emotional revivalism in their town.  When the breakdown of the Standing Order Churches of the Commonwealth in the struggle between liberals and conservatives became acute in the early 1800s, Daniel Shute and his successors managed to avoid any great controversy in their own churches.  When he died in 1802, Henry Ware, minister of First Parish, said this in his eulogy: “His character was known, and held in high estimation, not only by you, among whom he spent his days. He was extensively respected; and his society, always instructive and cheerful, was very highly valued.”   Such a tribute might be envied by any minister after a faithful career.
After William Ellery Channing delivered his 1819 address, “Unitarian Christianity,” and laid down the doctrines shared by the Liberal Christians, many of the churches were torn apart by the controversy, some engaging in bitter battles over ownership of their churches, their silver and their endowments.  Your neighbors in Dorchester, for example, appealed their controversy to the Massachusetts Supreme Court, where a (Unitarian) justice decided in favor of the Unitarian faction.  The conservatives—or orthodox—promptly built their own meeting house on the opposite side of the green, front door facing front door, whereupon the Unitarians raised their church on blocks and rotated it so that the back of their church now faced the front of their former comrades.  Anything to avoid having to see their opponents while entering their own sanctuary!
The Universalists, in the meantime, were beginning to establish themselves in the colonies, starting with the preaching of John Murray who arrived from England in September, 1770.  In one of the few documented Universalist miracles, Murray’s vessel, the “Hand in Hand,” was driven over the outer banks and grounded on a sand bar in Barnegat Bay, New Jersey.  Now, it happened that Thomas Potter, a nearby farmer, had formulated a doctrine of Universalism on his own and built a meeting house on his farm awaiting the day when a Universalist preacher would appear.  Murray was fleeing England precisely to avoid ever having to preach again!  Potter insisted that he stay until that Sunday to preach, however, and they agreed that God would decide:  If the vessel floated off the sand bar by that Sunday, Murray would continue on his way to New York; if not, he would stay and preach.  You will be astonished to learn that the winds didn’t shift and that Murray preached and became known as the founder of Universalism in America. 
One problem the Universalists posed was that they eroded the tax base for the Standing Order churches.  It was Murray’s congregation in Gloucester that carried a case to the Supreme Court of the commonwealth in 1786 which established that Universalism was a religion and its adherents exempt from taxation to support the Standing Order churches; many of the opponents of Universalism considered its adherents immoral—after all, if not for the fear of eternal damnation, whatever would keep people from robbing and murdering each other?
Here in Hingham, the Universalists arrived in 1823, yet another assault on the tax base which supported this parish.  Some hard times followed as the parish converted over time to supporting itself from the pledges of its congregants.  There were some years when it was difficult for the parish to retain a settled minister, and there were sometimes painful separations between minister and congregation.  One who left under pressure was John Lewis Russell, who served from 1842-1849.  It may be that he was not regarded as taking a strict enough hand in managing the services, as suggested by this anecdote told years later: 
"His congregation was largely composed of farmers and mechanics, some of whom, after the active duties of the week, were apt to sleep during the religious service.  This did not appear to trouble the minister in the least, but rather amused him.  One Sunday some boys in the gallery were making a disturbance.  The preacher stopped in the reading of his sermon and called to them in the most deprecating manner, 'Boys! Boys, I wouldn't make so much noise; you'll wake up your parents.'"
The bi-centennial of the raising of the meeting house in 1942 drew enthusiastic support from the community and members, but by 1944 there was doubt whether the parish would continue.  Of 388 families responding to a survey, only 145 wished the church would go on.  Of those, only 78 were willing to give money and only 40 were willing to attend.  Two years later, after World War II was over, the members were back and installed a new minister, Edmund Opitz.  Ironically, this renewed burst of financial solvency and support from members occurred in part as a result of the dissolution of the Universalist society whose assets were divided between Second Parish, First Parish, and New North Church.  The loss from the tax rolls was finally repaid, and at a crucial time.
Some of the past sixty years have been difficult, as were some of the 200 before, and some have been wonderful.  Sometimes the desire to avoid sectarian controversy has led to a weakening of identity.  Some of the issues that have arisen over these years probably require more extensive consideration; there are undoubtedly some hard feelings that are still not healed that will need hard conversations before they can become a source of new strength for the parish.  I believe that careful conversations about vision, mission and identity over the next year can be a valuable way of clarifying the way forward and using past wounds as a source of insight and new strength.  The covenant of Second Parish calls for such conversations to occur “With love for each other and with respect for each person’s search for truth.”  In this way we bend our efforts to the continual creation of a just and loving community, another of our smooth stones.
The roots of this parish go down deep into the soil and history of this town and of Unitarian Universalism.  They are worthy to be honored and held high in celebration, in this 260th year of the founding of the parish.  An attitude of ultimate optimism is clearly warranted.
I would like to say a little about my own roots as well.  I was raised on a dairy farm just outside of Madison, Wisconsin, as a member of a deeply religious Pentecostal family.  In those days, Pentecostalism was regarded as far out of the mainstream of Protestantism; speaking in tongues, which I found spooky, had the whiff of heresy about it.  These days, Pentecostalism is far more respectable; the Assemblies of God are a rapidly growing denomination and Pentecostalism is the fastest growing form of Christianity world-wide.  As a child, I learned the Bible, of course, but my best memories of church are not about doctrine but about being good Christians—about caring for one another in need.  For me, that’s still a lot of what church is about.
My issue with the church was that I was a natural Universalist and the church was convinced that only those who believed just like we did would be saved from eternal damnation.  We sent missionaries around the world to convert people who’d never heard the Gospel.  Of course, it was acknowledged that God wouldn’t condemn people who’d never heard the Gospel at all; but once they’d heard and rejected the good news, they would burn in hell forever.  I was haunted by the image of a venerable Confucian gentleman walking through a village square in China and overhearing one of our missionaries declare that everyone must be washed in the blood of the lamb, mumbling to himself “Foolish Westerners!” and walking on—only now, having heard the Gospel, he would be condemned, whereas just moments before he could have been saved!  It didn’t seem like very Good News to me at all!  It seemed to me the world would be better if we kept our missionaries home.
When I was sixteen, I wrote a note to my parents and announced that I felt hypocritical going to church and needed some time to think through what I believed.  Nothing was said and I didn’t go back to church.  About two years later, I found a note on my pillow from my mother that said that they felt I’d had enough time to come to a conclusion and I should come back to church.  I didn’t have a conclusion yet, but I was pretty sure it wouldn’t be theirs.  Nothing was said but I didn’t go back to church.  When I went to college I was still deeply curious about religion, enough so that my senior thesis was about “The Notion of Salvation in the Works of C.G. Jung and Emil Brunner,” a Swiss theologian.  I was offered a scholarship to the theological seminary of my choice upon graduation, but in the absence of a church to belong to, I couldn’t imagine becoming a seminarian.  If I had just strolled across Massachusetts Avenue to First Parish Cambridge, I might have saved myself a good deal of trouble in my life.  But, come to think of it, trouble is what life is about and how we learn.
After I moved to New York to become a teacher, I got involved in a social circle which gradually turned into a high demand group with a messianic, apocalyptic doctrine about nuclear power, nuclear war, and why the members shouldn’t associate with anyone outside the group, including our own families.  When I left the group 20 years ago, I realized that I had joined an organization with an uncanny resemblance to a religion and I decided to enroll in a Ph.D. program at the New School for Social Research to study the sociology of religion and see what I was up against. 
When my wife Deedee and I moved to Ridgewood, NJ, 14 years ago, we decided to become part of a church to meet compatible people in a new town and to help with the religious education of our sons, then 6 and 9.  We were amazed at how the Unitarian Society of Ridgewood seemed like home to us, a religious community to which we could bring our skeptical selves and travel on a spiritual path with others of similar inclinations.  Gradually I came to feel called to the ministry and realized that I would be able to manage such a transition by taking early retirement from my career in business.  I went to New York Theological Seminary, a wonderful night school for mature adults which draws students from a variety of ethnic groups and walks of life.  It was a refreshing if sometimes difficult opportunity to hone my own theological understanding in dialog with more conventional Christian viewpoints.
These are some of my roots.  James Luther Adams’ Five Smooth Stones and our Unitarian Universalist Principles and Purposes provide us with a common religious language as we companion each other on the roads of our lives.  Over the next week, there will be an opportunity for you to share more of your own roots and those of this community.  So let the conversation begin.
As we share the stories of our roots, we will be able to understand better where we want might to go together–our branches, if you will.  May the sharing we will be doing this week enrich our lives and open our hearts and minds to possibilities which, separately, we could neither imagine nor achieve.
Amen

Benediction
May the words that we have shared today,
The music, the stories, the joys and sorrows, the silence,
All remain in our hearts as we enter into this week of discernment.
May we be swift to bless and slow to judge,
And may we be in harmony, one with another.
Amen