Sermons

January 7, 2007
Are Unitarian Universalists Christian? Yes and No.

Are Unitarian Universalists Christian? Yes and No.
A sermon by the Rev. Mark Worth

READINGS
1. From Theodore Parker, “The Transient and Permanent in Christianity,” 1841:
"While true religion is always the same thing, in each century and every land ... the Christianity of the Pulpit, which is the religion taught, has never been the same thing in any two centuries or lands, except only in name...
Any one, who traces the history of what is called Christianity, will see that nothing changes more from age to age than the doctrines taught as Christian, and insisted on as essential to Christianity and personal salvation. The heresy of one age is the orthodox belief and “only infallible rule” of the next... Men are burned for professing what men are burned for denying."

2. From A. Powell Davies (1902-1957) in Without Apology: Collected Meditations on Liberal Religion, edited by Forrest Church, Skinner House Books, Boston, 1998:
"I believe that 'by their fruits ye shall know them.' I believe that Jesus was one of the world’s great religious geniuses – so far as my own knowledge goes, the greatest – but that he would have been appalled at the notion of calling him God. And most of all I believe that Jesus intended no one to be imprisoned within one tradition, even though it were his own and precious to him. I cannot imagine him agreeing to a formula that excluded most of the forthright honest thinkers of his age – and at the same time shutting out by far the greatest part of the world’s population: those who are not now and never will be Christians.
For my part, therefore, if I must answer as to whether I am a Christian, I shall say that if the creeds define the question, I am excluded... Nor can I be a Christian if the two thousand years of Christian history must supply the definition. As much evil has been done in the name of Christianity as almost anything I ever heard about... When I look back over the story of Christendom, I am sometimes reminded of the shipwrecked sailor who landed on a lonely beach, and, when he observed a gallows, exclaimed, 'Thank God! I am in a Christian country!'
But it is not only a matter of theological definitions or traditions defined by history. Why should any of us be confined within a single area of religious culture? When I read Amos and Jeremiah, I say, 'Would to God I were a Jew.' When I read the Parable of the Good Samaritan, I say, 'Would I were a Galilean.' When I read the 13th chapter of 1st Corinthians, I wish with all my heart that I might be a Christian after the manner of the apostle Paul. When I think of Buddha and his Eight-Fold Path, I say, 'I, too, would be a Buddhist.' And when I remember the Trial of Socrates, I wish that I might be so brave a humanist. So at the end, there is nothing I can say but that, like Emerson and Channing, I want to live with the privilege of the illimitable mind."

THE SERMON
“Merry Christmas,” an Episcopalian friend of mine said to me a few weeks ago. And then, he added, “Or maybe I shouldn’t say that to a Unitarian.”
Well, I love Christmas. Mickey calls me “the Christmas boy.” So I said, “Merry Christmas! ‘Jingle Bells,’ ‘I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day,’ and ‘It Came Upon the Midnight Clear’ were all written by Unitarians. Charles Dickens, a Unitarian, wrote A Christmas Carol, giving us Tiny Tim and Ebenezer Scrooge. And Charles Follen, a Unitarian minister born in Germany, is often credited with introducing the Christmas tree to America. Sometimes we think we invented Christmas! A Merry Christmas to you!”
My friend said, “I must take notes for the next time I talk with So-And-So, who is adamant that he doesn’t celebrate Christmas because he is a Unitarian!”
Well, I saw myself falling into a trap. I was going to be quoted to someone in our congregation who doesn’t celebrate Christmas, does not like having Christmas thrust upon him for a full month or more every year, and is adamant that he is not a Christian. Feeling stuck by my own words, I said, “I respect his point of view. Christmas is not part of his religious background; it’s not his holy day. His inclinations are different from mine. We can be different and be in the same congregation. As UUs, we have that kind of freedom.”
We had a related discussion here last year when we decided to change our name from “church” to “congregation.” “Church” has more particular Christian connotations, while “congregation” describes a religious body but is less specific. We thought that “congregation,” then, might be more welcoming to seekers, welcoming to those who want a religious community or spiritual home but aren’t sure they want to attend a “church.”

The question ~
These two situations illustrate how difficult the subject of Christianity and the words and customs associated with Christianity can be for many Unitarian Universalists. And if it is difficult for us, think of how difficult it must be for our friends and relatives who have a hard time figuring out what kind of a “church” we might be. So let’s put the question in the most basic terms: Are Unitarian Universalists Christians?
The question has been asked many ways, in many times and places. And of course, the answer is: Yes and no.
Yes, some Unitarian Universalists are sure they are Christians. For some, a personal encounter with the spirit of Jesus the Christ is central to their faith. Some are classical Unitarian Christians who feel touched by Christ but will not be bound by dogmas and creeds. To be a Christian, they say, is to follow Jesus, not the creeds of the Church.
And some of us are ethical Christians because we are inspired by the life and teachings of Jesus, the rabbi and reformer who taught us to love our neighbors (and that everyone is our neighbor); who respected women and included women among his first followers; who said that God blesses the peacemakers, and that we should put down the sword; and who said that the poor are blessed by God but the rich have already had their fill.
No, we are not Christians if Christians must accept the creeds of the fourth and fifth centuries and later, creeds that demand a belief in the Trinity and the divinity of Jesus. No, we are not Christians if a Christian is one who takes the Bible literally. I take the Bible seriously, and for that reason I cannot take it literally. No, we are not Christians if a Christian is someone who believes the Pope is infallible. No, we are not Christians if Christians are those who belong to the one true Church, whether that church is Jehovah’s Witness, Mormon, Catholic, or some brand of fundamentalist.
Yes, we are Christians in the sense that Unitarians and Universalists are a part of Christian history. We were born in the Protestant Reformation in Europe in the 1500s. Going even further back, we believe that the first Christians took a view of God that is closer to the classical Unitarian point-of-view than it is to the Doctrine of the Trinity. Jesus and the Twelve Disciples were monotheistic Jews, not Trinitarian Christians. Jesus never met a Christian, he never claimed he was God, and he never even heard of the Doctrine of the Trinity. So we can be followers of Jesus without accepting his divinity or the Trinity.
No, most Unitarian Universalists are not Christian, and prefer not to be mistaken for Christians. Christian stories and symbols are not the basis of their faith. The largest number of UUs today would call themselves, not Christians, but humanists. Humanists try to follow the highest human ethics, the highest human aspirations, the things that bring humans together in peace and understanding and cooperation. Besides humanism, there are other theologies among us. Many of our members find their spiritual center in the grace and beauty of nature, and in their relationship with other people. Many of our members believe in God or higher power of some kind without calling themselves Christian. Many of our members are frankly agnostic. And yes, some of us are atheists.
Many of our members don’t want to be associated with the excesses of Christianity, from the Crusades and the Inquisition and the Thirty Years’ War down to the moralistic, militaristic, arrogant and intolerant agenda of much of the Religious Right today. Some of us were raised in Jewish or other non-Christian traditions, and have not had a positive experience of Christianity. Some were raised in fundamentalist Christian traditions that gave us a negative experience of Christianity. Some of us came out of moderate Christian families, but simply could not accept as fact biblical myths like the talking snake in Genesis, Baalam’s talking donkey, Samson’s supernatural strength being in his hair rather than his muscles, the virgin birth, or Jesus walking on water and turning water into wine.

To understand Jesus properly ~
On the other hand, some of our members are comfortable with their Christian heritage and want to honor and uphold the better parts of the various Christian traditions.
The Rev. Stephen Kendrick, minister of First Church of Boston (established by the Puritans in 1630, and Unitarian for the past 200 years or more), writes, “Nothing has ever been simple about Jesus. He confounded and confused people in his own time, and so it is no wonder Unitarian Universalists today are still wrestling with him, his message, and the tradition that claims him as a God. Yet I believe that people who are attracted to a place of free faith, spiritual seeking, and non-dogmatic religion have much to gain by grappling with the legacy of this teacher whose power and charisma seem undimmed from two thousand years ago. If anything, we are only beginning to understand the radical nature of his message.”
Then he goes on to say something I might have written and said about myself: “I became a Unitarian Universalist because I would have made a very bad and quarrelsome Christian, but a pretty good religious liberal. This faith seems to claim the religious freedom that Jesus proclaimed and modeled... I became a UU precisely because I wanted to understand Jesus properly.”
The Bible gives us five or six different pictures of Jesus. Paul wrote about Jesus first, but his epistles tell us more about Paul’s own theology than they tell us about Jesus. The Gospels attributed to Mark, Matthew, Luke and John give us four more descriptions of Jesus, sometimes contradicting one another. John gives a point-of-view especially different from the other three. Finally, the Book of Revelation gives us another view, a dream-scape, an avenging Jesus in the nightmare of the Apocalypse.
None of the authors of the Bible ever met Jesus. All of their information is at least second or third hand. And Jesus himself never left us as much as a grocery list in his own hand.
One person who has helped me understand Jesus a bit better has been the 19th century Unitarian preacher Theodore Parker. A little while ago we quoted from his 1841 sermon, “The Transient and Permanent in Christianity.” He mentioned that Christianity has changed from place to place and from century to century. In one time and place Christians proclaim one thing, and in another time and place they proclaim the opposite. People were burned at the stake for affirming the same thing that others were burned for denying.
Here’s something else Parker said: Christianity does not rest on the authority of the New Testament, nor does it rest on the authority of Jesus himself. The churches have it backwards. They say that what Jesus said is true because Jesus said it. No, that’s not the case. He said what he said because it was true.
Consider Euclid, the founder of geometry. We never claim that the proofs of geometry are true because Euclid said them. No, they are true because they are internally consistent. They work. Euclid gave those axioms because they are true. They are not true just on the word of Euclid. They are true because they are true.
Parker said, “[Christianity] does not rest on the decision of Councils... Christianity does not rest on the infallible authority of the New Testament... I cannot see that it depends on the personal authority of Jesus... If Christianity were true, we should think it was so, not because its record was written by infallible pens; nor because it was lived out by an infallible teacher, – but that it is true, like the axioms of geometry, because it is true.”
Our book discussion group has been reading An Open Heart: Practicing Compassion in Everyday Life by the Dalai Lama. In that little book the Dalai Lama quotes the Buddha himself: “O monks and wise ones, do not accept my words simply out of reverence. You should subject them to critical analysis and accept them on the basis of your own understanding.” The Dalai Lama adds a bit more, saying, “It is clear that the Buddha is telling us that when we read a text, we should rely not merely on the fame of the author but rather on the content.”
I agree with this important Buddhist teaching. Don’t follow a path just because someone says that their book is without error, or because a bishop or Pope is said to be infallible, or because an angel gave someone a holy book on gold tablets, or because they claim that the person they follow was a god.
But examine the way of life they teach. If it is good, it is good. If it is true, it is true. See whether the teachings of that religious group help to make them better people, more compassionate, more fair and just, more generous in spirit, less prejudiced and judgmental. That is what a religious path should be about. And then whether you call it Christianity or Judaism or Islam or Buddhism or Hinduism or humanism doesn’t matter all that much. A worthwhile religious movement should be based on a way of life, not a theological opinion.
Therefore, this congregation should be united in a common purpose, not a creed or doctrine. And we can cooperate with other churches and faiths on that same basis – a common purpose to make the world more fair and just and compassionate.
As Jesus said, “By their fruits, you shall know them.” It is not true just because he said it. He said it because it is true.
Amen.