As we walk forward through our congregation's history this morning, listening closely to the heritage and tradition that calls and sustains us, we will begin by hearing three elevator speeches from three of our past ministers - these elevator speeches are compilations created from each minister's sermons and letters that answer the question, What do Unitarians believe? - and then later after the merger, What do Unitarian Universalists believe?
The Reverend William Channing Gannett, who served as minister to our congregation for 20 years, from 1889 to 1909, will begin our discussion this morning.
What is the purpose of the church?
Throughout his ministry, Rev. Gannett asked himself the central question, What is the purpose of the church? And in a letter to our congregation on October 1, 1908 he asked again,
What is a Church like ours in Rochester for? Is it not -
- To help those who belong to it to deeper trust and nobler living?
- To welcome the stranger to every good thing the Church offers to those who belong to it?
- To join hearts, heads and hands in service of various kinds to the community around us?
- To sow seed, - to spread the ideas and the ideals of the Liberal Faith, that other places may have a Church like our own - only better?
What do Unitarians believe?
Theological conflict raged amidst the American Unitarian Association and the Western Conference of Unitarians in the late 1800s. One group held firm to more orthodox Christian beliefs while the other found itself stirred by Transcendentalism and opening to the possibility of the divine in all. At the center of this controversy stood Rev. Gannett - a leader of the Western Conference of Unitarians. In an attempt at reconciliation, Rev. Gannett composed a unifying statement of principles titled - "The Things Most Commonly Believed To-Day Among Us" in 1887.
"The Things Most Commonly Believed To-Day Among Us"We believe that to love the good and live the good is the supreme thing in religion:
We hold reason and conscience to be final authorities in matters of religious belief:
We honor the Bible and all inspiring scripture, old or new:
We revere Jesus and all holy souls that have taught me truth and righteousness and love, as prophets of religion:
We believe in the growing nobility of Man:
We trust the unfolding Universe as beautiful, beneficent, unchanging Order; to know this Order is truth; to obey it is right, and liberty and stronger life:
We believe that good and evil inevitably carry their own recompense, no good thing being failure and no evil thing success; that heaven and hell are states of being; that no evil can befall the good man in either life or death; that all things work together for the victory of the Good:
We believe that we ought to join hands and work to make the good things better and the worst good, counting nothing good for self that is not good for all:
We believe that this self-forgetting, loyal life awakes in man the sense of union, here and now, with things eternal, - the sense of deathlessness; and this sense is to us an earnest of a life to come:
We worship One-in-All, - that Life whence suns and stars derive their orbits and the soul of man in Ought, - that Light which lighteth every man that cometh into the world, giving us power to become the sons of God, - that Love with whom our souls commune. This One we name, - the Eternal God, our Father.[1]
Our second elevator speech comes from The Reverend David Rhys Williams, minister of this church from 1928 to 1959. In his sermons he said:
Dark mysteries, like enveloping clouds, surround our life on this planet. Whence came we at birth? Whither do we go at death? Why are we here? What is the meaning of our striving and struggling? Has it any meaning at all? Is there some cosmic intelligence, some Universal Mind guiding and controlling the destiny of man and the world in which he lives? Where is the priest, or preacher, or rabbi, or theologian, or philosopher, or scientist who actually knows the answers to these questions? There are speculations, assumptions, theories and hypotheses but as far as my experience has gone, I have found no one who really knows.[2]
and yet...
You and I must live in the present, and the present calls for a working philosophy of life, the best that we can get. In other words, we must believe now, whether we want to or not, and we must believe in accordance with our whole spiritual and intellectual needs, as it were.[3]This is the general tendency of my faith today. If you press me for proof, if you call for the facts, I shall have to confess my utter lack of knowledge.[4]
Drive me into an intellectual corner on any...great questions...and I shall have to acknowledge my own agnosticism. I simply do not know the answer, and I know of no one else who does, - and what I do not know I refuse to preach and teach as if I did, for in this direction lies intellectual dishonesty and spiritual degradation.
There are some things, however, that I do know which are fraught with tremendous significance and about which none of us needs to be agnostic.
- I know from the experiences of others and some I have had myself, that those people are the happiest who are engaged in some form of creative labor - men who bring things to pass that never before existed - women who give birth to children or mold their minds and characters - youths who strive to make their dreams come true, that there are none so miserable as they who have so little to do that they find time hanging heavily on their hands.
- I know from the experiences of others, and some I have had myself, that the committal of one's loyalties and energies to some great cause outside of one's self, eventuates in a joy and satisfaction that can come in no other way.
- I know from the experiences of others, and some I have had myself, that words of forgiveness and acts of generosity bring spiritual blessings to ourselves as well as others.
- I know that self-respect, the good-will of friends, and the domestic affections are among the richest possessions that any one can strive for and acquire.
- I know that the blood which flows in the veins of all races is the same color, that black and white and brown and yellow, are brothers and sisters of one another, progeny of some common parentage, who owe to one another the sustained consideration becoming members of one family.
- I know that warfare and peonage and economic exploitation, retributive punishment, religious intolerance, and all forms of hatred are incompatible with this relationship.
- I know that if the spirit of brotherhood is some day to prevail over this earth, you and I must follow more closely in the footsteps of the world's Christs and begin here and now, in this city and in this church, to put more of their spirit into our own lives, and do all we can to discourage those agencies and factors that tend to foster an opposite spirit.
Man's love for man, dim lantern that it still is - is after all the brightest light we have wherewith to beat back the darkness of the cosmic night that surrounds our planetary existence.[5]
Our final elevator speech comes from The Reverend Robert West, minister of our congregation from 1963 to 1970. He writes in his sermons:
The other day, as I was paying a bill in a local place of business, the cashier in handing me my change, even though others obviously were waiting, asked: 'What are Unitarians?' I know she expected an answer in one brief sentence...It is a favorite question asked by seat companions on airplanes. I have found it directed to me in supermarkets, on sailboats, at wiener roasts, and at formal dinners. Often, I am asked the question in my study where conditions are more amenable for an appropriate response, and that is the kind of answer I wish to share now, the type of answer I am inclined to give in my study to the question: 'What are Unitarians?'The first thing I usually say is that our approach to religion is based on four principles which can be traced down through the four centuries of our existence as an organized church institution - individual freedom of belief, the use of one's own reason in religion, tolerance of differing religious beliefs, and responsibility of each individual for living the best life he can. Freedom, reason, tolerance and responsibility - these mean that each person is free to use his own reason in arriving at religious truth, what seems to be true for him. Indeed, a Unitarian is encouraged to change his religious beliefs in light of new knowledge and experience and personal growth. He is encouraged to draw upon truth from whatever source or whatever particular religious tradition. Honesty in religious belief is extremely important to Unitarians. We join together in this approach to freedom in religion. We acknowledge the right of each individual to hold differing religious beliefs, and to change his beliefs. We would emphasize personal responsibility for each individual to endeavor to live the best life he can.[6]
As one might expect, there is a wide variety of belief within our congregations, ranging from one end of the spectrum to the other...Unitarians give their ministers what is known as freedom of the pulpit, the right to express the minister's honest opinion on any subject he chooses, and in return our members enjoy freedom of the pews - they are not expected to agree with a minister unless what he says has a resounding ring of truth to the hearer. Our members are expected to examine for themselves what issues from a pulpit, in light of their own experience and knowledge.[7]
Our way in religion might not be best for some and we would not endeavor to force it upon any person, but for many of us it is a wellspring of freedom and stimulation and fulfillment in our religious search. It is our source of a vital, personal religion as we, like other human beings, live this life of mind and feeling between the eternal mysteries of sunrise and darkness.[8]
As we review the history of our denomination in this country, the names of numerous Unitarians appear as leaders in government, literature, education, social and humanitarian causes, scholarship, the arts and science...But as we Unitarians today recall these facts, we would do well to heed John Milton's admonition that the light from our past is given us, not to be ever staring on, but by it to discover onward things...to make of our own life a worthy vessel. If the waters of the streaming fountain of Truth flow not in a perpetual progression, they sicken into a muddy pool of conformity and tradition. Unitarian religion today is us. We decide the nature of those waters of the streaming fountain.[9]
The real story of Unitarians is written in the hearts and lives of you as present members...the real story is what we do with our own lives - we, and those who would join us in this grand adventure of our free religious quest.[10]
The final words from our heritage this morning come with a focus on social justice. Our congregation holds a long and storied history of social activism - of involvement with our local community and with the larger world. Our ministers and our members extend their beliefs into their actions and into the community - As we listen to the inspiring words that our ministers have left behind, urging us to the work of social justice - may we open our hearts and minds to their call and to our own internal calling - that we might mingle the work of our minds and hearts with the work of our hands.
In the words of our previous minister the Reverend Richard Gilbert,
I grew up in the Bristol Universalist Church: a small country church nestled in the Bristol Hills. There I heard what Univeralist preacher Hosea Ballou once said of religious belief, 'If you can't reduce it to practice, have none of it.' Those words have never left me - they are the center of my religious faith. Faith works.[11]Not all of us are called to be heroes or heroines. Many of our decision to do good are clear - we know what we need to do. But on another level are actions we must take for which we will not be paid. We may be required by conscience to say and do that for which we may very well be punished. It is a hard truth, but one well worth pondering in an age of ethical weakness and easy morality. In a bottom-line world it is not easy to practice being good - for nothing. But that is what is required of us.[12]
1889 - The Reverend William Channing Gannett wrote to a friend upon his arrival in Rochester:
This Unitarian church has a very respectable looking people, many gray heads among them, and the church school was small and sleepy and not in good condition...the church was located in a not very good section of the city. So I told the congregation, have we not used this corner too much as our Sunday Club-House, feeling no responsibility whatever for its weekday betterment? That is not being a Church. Let us this next year try to be more a Church-a church right here. This should be a working church, or rather, a church that works to better this life for people instead of merely the other life. It means a seven-day instead of a one-day church....It even means a street-cleaning Church-a church doing duty as a citizen of this world.
In 1909, The Reverend Edwin Rumball began his 23-year ministry with our church. He believed that schools were "the Real Temple of the people" and he led the church into a new foray of social activism - during his ministry the congregation built a playground for School #12 and funded a year's salary for a school nurse. In his survey of the Fourth Ward, Rev. Rumball urged us all to "...bend cheerfully to the common toil of human service, patient in the knowledge that we cannot finish the task, that in the Fiftieth Century there will be something left to do. But what we leave undone will dynamite the souls of men, women and little children who are struggling for life by our side today."
And lastly, moving forward to the year 1967, we leave you with the words of the Reverend Bob West:
...when people deal in history they usually speak of leaders and causes and movements and buildings. But the real history of this congregation - its most valid and valuable aspect - is found in the lives of men and women and children who came to this church week after week, who brought troubles and joys, concerns and aspirations, as they came to this group where they could share them with one another, gain some sustenance for themselves and at the same time lend strength to another person or to a cause for people in this community and the world. No historian, no one, will ever know all that has been brought to this company by the individuals who compose it - nor will one ever know where the ripples cease, the good that has been done, by those same people-not the leaders but those who compose the body, the very lifeblood of our congregation.
May the ripples of our lives and of this congregation toward justice never cease - and may we bind up the gifts and the challenges of our shared heritage, that we too might turn our values into our actions and thereby make a difference in this community and in this world.
May it be so, and Amen.
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