Unitarianism 101
The Rev. Matthew Johnson-Doyle
August 16, 2009

Message: Unitarianism 101

Note: The sermon is an oral event. This manuscript may not reflect the exact spoken words. © Matthew Johnson-Doyle, 2009.

People get confused.
Unitarian Universalist is a lot of syllables.
And we are not, we must admit, that well known in the world.
People get confused.
Even we get confused –
I’ve heard us called the Universal Unitarian Church,
the Unitarian Universal Church (which is closer),
and all sorts of other things,
even by our own members.
And people get confused
in part because there are a lot of “U” religions to get confused by.

There is the Unity Movement,
headquartered just outside of Kansas City.
They’ve been around about 100 years.
They’ve got a church in Rockford, near Alpine and Harrison.
If you’ve ever heard of the Course In Miracles – that’s them.

They believe some of the same things many of us do,
about the unity of reality (that’s where they get there name),
the humanity of Jesus.
Nice folks.
They are a little more into “consciousness” and “positive thinking”
and a little less into social action than we are, generally.

There is the Universal Life Church –
that’s the one where you can go online and get ordained.
They, like us, embrace many faith traditions
and care more about how you live than what you believe.
But they are hardly what one would call an organized religion.

And there is the Unification Church –
the cult that believes that the Rev. Sun Moon is the messiah,
which is why they are known as Moonies.
We share with them a rejection of the trinity, but that’s about it.
If you can correct any misconception among your friends and co-workers,
it is that the Unitarian Universalists
are anything at all like the Unification Church.

No, we are part of the Unitarian Universalist Association,
the result of the merger, in 1961,
of the American Unitarian Association and the Universalist Church in America. The Unitarians and Universalists both have histories in the United States from the American Revolution,
and the Unitarians have a history in Europe
that goes back to the middle of the sixteenth century.

We’ll take the Unitarian part of ourselves today
and leave the Universalist for next week.
What does it mean to be a Unitarian?
Not 100 years ago, or 500 years ago, but today?
If you say, I’m a Unitarian, what does that mean?

Before I begin to answer those questions, a comment:
every time, for 200 years,
that Unitarians have put down on paper a statement of principles
or a covenant
or any official document,
they have always said at the end something to the effect of:
“because we are a free faith,
neither this nor any other statement
may be used as a creedal test among us.”
That’s important.
We have no creed.
We have no tests.
If you think I’m totally wrong about what it means to be a Unitarian,
that’s fine.
There is no test here, there is no creed.

But sometimes we get so caught up trying not to offend one another,
in trying to be open,
that we become shallow.
We forget that we have a rich history and a vital future,
that there are a few things that make us who we are,
that define our faith.
To say that you are a Unitarian means something.

All religious movements and traditions have an answer to three basic questions. What is the structure of reality?
How do we know what’s true, spiritually speaking?
And how are our lives made whole,
saved from despair,
given meaning and purpose?
Unitarianism, believe it or not, has answers to these three questions.

What is the structure of reality?

Unitarians believe in the unity of all that is.
We believe that everything is connected and part of the one.
Before Unitarians were called Unitarians,
they were called Anti-Trinitarians.
They said, this whole business of the trinity is not right.
There is one God, not three gods.
But we didn’t want to be Anti- something,
we wanted to be for something.
After all, an anti-Trinitarian could also believe in two gods,
or four, or fifty-eight.
We believe in one – or, as some say, one at most. 
Now, Unitarians do have a variety of ideas about God,
but we do still hold this notion, that all reality is one reality.

And, of course, science teaches us that unity is an accurate description of reality.
It is not just that we are all made of the dust of a singularity,
the big bang – although that’s true.
It’s that the very fabric of space-time is one garment,
that the particles and waves and forces of existence itself
are connected, responsive to each other,
dynamic and interdependent.

This belief has a lot of important implications.
It means, for example, that Unitarians place value on this world,
this earth, this life –
we do not accept, as some religions do,
that the everyday is irrelevant in the face of the ultimate,
indeed, we hold that everyday life is part of the ultimate.
Because Unitarians believe in the unity of all that is,
because we believe that there is one God (at most),
we cannot accept the logic of those who would kill the infidel,
imprison the heretic,
or shout down the opposition.
The wisdom of those who are different than us also has value and truth.
Because Unitarians believe in the unity of all that is,
we look for evidence of the holy
not just in traditionally religious documents or ideas,
but everywhere –
in the natural world,
in poetry and song,
in human community and human accomplishment,
in the quark and the quasar,
in laughter and in tears –
everywhere is a holy place,
every moment is a holy time,
every person is a holy teacher,
when we are open and ready to learn.

Because Unitarians believe in the unity of all that is,
there are also some things we cannot accept.
We cannot accept any notion of separate and isolated divinities –
God and Satan, for example,

but also those polytheistic systems of paganism,
Hinduism, and so on, unless
(as most pagans and Hindus, in fact, believe)
one holds that the different gods and spirits and powers
are all manifestations of one reality, one ultimate truth,
one divine power.
We cannot accept any idea that some are damned and some are saved,
that some is profane and some is sacred,
that some is holy and some is unholy –
all are saved, all is sacred, all is holy.

When I’m explaining Unitarianism to people,
and they seem to be having a bit of trouble understanding,
I sometimes remember to use a metaphor I’ve long loved,
which our story for all ages reminded me of: the mountain.
Some people believe there is one mountain and one path.
Some people believe there is no mountain, and no paths.
Some believe there are many mountains, each with its own path.
Unitarians believe there is one mountain, and many paths.

That said, there is, if you will,
a particular way of climbing that mountain,
regardless of which path you take,
that is distinctly Unitarian.
And there are ways of climbing which are not us.
This is about the second of the questions all religions must answer:
how do we approach the sacred,
how do we know what is true,
how do we go about answering religious questions.
Where, in other words, is religious authority?
It is on this count that we are the most united as a faith
and the most distinct from other traditions.

You see, if you are, for example, a Protestant fundamentalist,
religious authority will lie in the bible, and the bible alone.
If you are a fundamentalist of another stripe –
Christian or otherwise –
authority may lie in a particular teacher, church leader, or prophet.
What they say goes.

If you are a more moderate person of faith,
you probably will believe that religious authority lies
in your particular scripture or teachings,
but that teaching must be viewed in light of the current times,
your conscience, and your reason.

This is where Unitarians started out,
as the reading from William Ellery Channing reveals.
Channing says, in short, reason is a gift from God,
to fail to use that reason is an insult to God’s gift.
As Channing points out in another section of this sermon,
Unitarians are not the only ones who use reason, not by any means.
And, my friends, that is still true.
Please, please, let us discontinue forever the hubris
that we are the only reasonable faith.

A generation after Channing,
Ralph Waldo Emerson and Theodore Parker appeared on the scene.
They took the budding Unitarian movement to the next level,
they replaced, step by step, the authority of the Christian scriptures
with the authority of experience itself.
After all, they said, if we believe in the unity of all that is,
it does not matter if we are inspired by the Gospel of Mark
or by leaf in sunlight
or by a Vedic verse
or by a line of poetry from Whitman
or by anything at all –
so long as we feel alive and connected,
so long as we are moved to justice and mercy and love,
then it matters not to what we apply our reason.

Emerson said, addressing a new class of Unitarian ministers,
that good preaching is “life passed through the fire of thought” –
not, mind you, a particular scripture passed through the fire of thought,
but life.
This is not to say that the scriptures are unhelpful or unimportant –
indeed, many Unitarians,
myself included,
find in the Jewish and Christian scriptures wisdom and insight
that speaks with a gentle force to our times and our lives.

Emerson and Parker and their followers did not close the door on Christianity
so much as they opened the door to the whole world.
But as open as that door is,
the way to truth of Unitarians is always through reason.

Every once in a while,
I’ll get in a conversation with someone –
a friend or a relative or just a stranger I meet –
and we’ll get to talking about religion.
I’ll say what I believe – some of the things I’ve just mentioned –
and then they’ll start talking about what they believe.
And sometimes, not always, but sometimes,
I am listening and I’ll think, “what the?
This person’s thought doesn’t make any sense at all!”
And I’ve got to ask myself,
“does it just not make sense to me,
or does it really not make sense?”
And all too often, it just doesn’t make sense.
This is when I know I’m a Unitarian, through and through.
There are certain things that make me just think, “that’s silly.”
Capitalizing everyday words to give them special meaning
is a real pet peeve,
as are made-up words of any sort,
anything to do with extraterrestrials as characters in one’s spiritual journey,
and anything with complicated sets of numbers –
the seven aspects of the three thingy’s of the twelve cycles and so on –
all that stuff just makes me cringe.
And maybe that’s unfair of me,
maybe it’s even a bit elitist of me – I admit that.
But I think things should make sense.
I think the important religious truths are simple and accessible –
love your neighbor as yourself.
Be amazed at life.
Show mercy to yourself and others.
Open your heart to the holy.
That’s about it, really.
If your religion requires a thesaurus and a color-coded chart,
it’s not for me.
That’s how I know I’m a Unitarian.

It isn’t just how each religion answers the three questions which is important,
it is also which answer they think is most important.
Most religious traditions,
in the west in particular,
make the first question – what is the structure of reality – the most important. Not us.
For us, the most important question is the third,
how then shall we live.
Since Unitarians got started in Europe almost five hundred years ago,
they have maintained that living a good life is more important
that what creed you hold or ritual you practice,
that, indeed,
the creeds and the rituals are only important
to the extent that they help you live well.
One of the reasons that the early Unitarians insisted on the humanity of Jesus
is so that he could be an example,
not an idol.
This is still very important to us.

If Jesus is a god,
then no human being can really be expected to live as he lived,
to love as he loved,
to follow his teachings.
This is the easy way out – for living like Jesus is hard.
It’s hard to forgive others,
even when they would bring your life to an end.
It’s hard to welcome the outcasts to your table.
It’s hard to stand up to the authorities and principalities,
it’s hard to proclaim the worth of everyone,
even the poor and sick.

But if Jesus is a human being,
as Unitarians have always maintained,
then it is not his death and resurrection which leads to salvation,
but the following of his example and his teaching
which makes a life worth living, a life of wholeness.

This message, pioneered by Unitarians,
was very popular for a while.

The most famous preacher in America for a while was
Harry Emerson Fosdick, the author of our first hymn this morning,
and his theological liberalism was deeply informed by Unitarianism –
although he himself wasn’t one.
But lines like: “fill us with a living vision,
heal our wounds that we may be bound as one beyond division
in the struggle to be free”
that’s a sentiment that Unitarians have long endorsed.

Since their beginning in the United States,
Unitarians have used a particular phrase to explain our view on this question.
Where some, mostly Catholics,
believe in what is called “Salvation by Works” –
if you participate in the sacraments,
your life will be made whole –
and some, mostly Protestants, believe in “Salvation by Faith” –
if you believe, your life will be made whole –
Unitarians believe in what we have called “Salvation by Character.”
If you live rightly,
your life will be made whole.
In the words of the Hebrew prophet Micah,
“what does the Lord require of you,
except to love kindness, show mercy,
and walk humbly with your god?”
Or, as Unitarian minister David O. Rankin put it,
“We believe in the ethical application of religion.
Good works are the natural product of a good faith.”

I’d be the first to admit that sometimes
Unitarians take “ethical religion” too far,
that sometimes we forget that an open and vital spirituality,
a wonder at the holy,
a reasoned faith is important too,
that it can be awfully hard to live a good and generous life
without a spiritual foundation.
But at the end of the day,
I care much more about how you live than what you think.
I wanted to sing Spirit of Life this morning because
it is the most often sung hymn in Unitarian churches across the country.
But I also want you to think about the words:

Spirit of Life, come unto me.
Sing in my heart all the stirrings of compassion . . .
I know that when the spirit of life comes to me,
when I am amazed and lifted up by the presence of the holy,
whether that be singing with a congregation,
in prayer,
before nature,
reading a good line of prose,
whenever I feel closer to that transcending mystery and wonder,
to the unity of all that is,
I am moved to show more kindness to people,
to do a little good in the world, to be a better listener,
a better friend, a better person.

What does it mean to be a Unitarian today?
I suggest it means to believe in the unity of all that is,
to use your reason in the context of freedom,
and to hold a life of kindness and justice
as the most important religious quality.
Your opinion might be different –
and that, my friends, would make you an excellent Unitarian.