Walking Together

by Rev. Dr. Shirley Ranck 

    We live in a time when all the old walls and boundaries are crumbling. A little over a decade ago we watched the massive Soviet Union come apart and struggle to find new ways for the various republics to relate to each other. We watched again as thousands of people swarmed over the Berlin Wall and began to tear it down. It seemed as if a new day had dawned.

    Then old nationalisms resurfaced. Yugoslavia was torn apart by old hatreds, and in the old Soviet Union civil wars have been contained only with much difficulty and violence. More recently we ourselves have been viciously attacked and today we are immersed in a vast and seemingly global war against terrorism—Israel and Palestine, Somalia, Liberia, Afghanistan, Iraq—the list goes on. So the ancient question arises: Can two walk together except they be agreed?

    Some of you may remember when in our own country the Ohio National Guard fired upon the college students at Kent State as they were demonstrating against the Vietnam War. Several students were killed, others injured. A few days later a similar incident occurred at Jackson State in Mississippi. Whether we supported or opposed the war, many people across the nation were shocked. Those of us who were about to send our idealistic children off to college were deeply frightened.

    Can two walk together except they be agreed?

    One student who was injured at Kent State was interviewed on radio and TV on the 20th anniversary of the tragedy. He said that when the Tiananmen Square demonstrations took place in China, people came to him to say that when they saw the Chinese government forces firing upon the demonstrators they suddenly understood that the students at Kent State, 20 years earlier were simply exercising the very right that the students in China were demanding—the right to disagree and to express that dissent freely.

    Can two walk together except they be agreed?

    Answering yes to that question is not only the idealistic quirk of our small religious denomination. It is a cornerstone of the U.S. Constitution. A right guaranteed by the First Amendment. And it was the fervent hope of the post-World War II generation that the establishment of the United Nations would enable nations to walk together in peace, even when they disagreed. As terrorism escalates around the world our faith in that ideal is being sorely tested.

    Ideals, of course, are hard to live up to.

    We Unitarian Universalists are the religious group which has most clearly embraced diversity as an ideal, as a part of our covenant with each other. And yet we have had disputes and crises throughout our history which indicate that in the midst of controversy we often lose sight of our ideals. As Conrad Wright points out “…some of the most dramatic moments in our history have occurred when our tolerance for diversity wore very thin, and we were challenged to live up to the principles we proclaimed.” When Ralph Waldo Emerson delivered an address at Harvard Divinity School in 1838, Professor Andrews Norton called it “the latest form of infidelity” and “an insult to religion.”

    Why was he so incensed? The prevailing view among Unitarians at that time was that Christianity was a divinely revealed religion and that it was proved to be so by the New Testament miracles. Emerson and the young Theodore Parker declared that “religion is not a matter of proof from the evidence of historical events, but is grounded on an inner religious consciousness.” They insisted that Christianity was true only to the extent that it was an authentic expression of a universal religious impulse that all religious people share. Universal, going beyond even the boundaries of Christianity. Such views were regarded by most Unitarians of the day as undermining the claim of Christianity to be a divinely revealed religion. Most liberals believed in tolerance, but only within the bounds of Christianity. Many of Theodore Parker’s colleagues refused to exchange pulpits with him.

    In 1873 another controversy arose over the Year Book, an annual publication of the American Unitarian Association which listed ministers who were understood to be Unitarian. Conrad Wright gives this account of the controversy:
    “Octavius Brooks Frothingham of New York noticed that his name was included, even though his church had declared itself to be an independent one, and he himself was committed to Free Religion—that is to say to…the Free Religious Association, organized in 1867 in protest against mainline Unitarianism. Frothingham asked to have his name removed. The Assistant Secretary of the American Unitarian Association, a man named Fox, noting that other members of the Free Religious Association were also
listed in the Year Book, wrote to half a dozen of them, asking whether they were included ‘with their knowledge and consent.’
Among those to whom he wrote was the Rev. William J. Potter of New Bedford. He replied that his name was there was his knowledge and consent; that he did not agree with Frothingham that members of the Free Religious Association should ask to have their names withdrawn. But he added that the list had been compiled by the officers of the American Unitarian Association, using their own criteria for inclusion or exclusion; and it was for them to decide if his name was to be dropped. Fox was much relieved, and wrote back that he was glad to know that Potter could still be listed as ‘one who calls himself a Unitarian Christian.’
Potter then felt compelled to make it plain that Fox had misunderstood his position, and that he did not call himself a Unitarian Christian. ‘Unitarian of course I am with respect to the doctrine of the Trinity,’ he wrote back., ‘But Christian I do not now call myself, and have so said in public.’ Whereupon the bewildered assistant secretary reached the conclusion that Potter’s name should be omitted after all."

    Much controversy followed. The immediate upshot was that Fox’s decision was upheld by the Executive Committee of the American Unitarian Association, and approved by the members at their next annual meeting. Potter’s name was dropped from the Year Book. The radicals of the denomination excoriated it for its bigotry; the conservatives took satisfaction in a reinforcement of its Christian identity. But eventually, ten years later, Potter’s name was back in the Year Book—without arousing protest from anyone.”
It would seem from this piece of history that we have been inclusive of non-Christian views for over a hundred years, that we are committed instead to that universal religious impulse that can be found in many places.

    In the 20th century we were challenged again when large numbers of humanists joined our denomination, non-theists, people who did not believe in God, and in some instances would not even care to be called religious. The Civil Rights movement called upon us to acknowledge the racism deeply ingrained in many of our old assumptions. The women’s movement urged us to root out the sexism in our theologies, our language and our organizational structures. Gay and lesbian people, rejected by so many other traditions, came into our churches hoping we really meant the acceptance we proclaimed.

    We have continued to affirm that yes, we can walk together and respect not only a variety of views but a variety of persons. But it has never been easy and just a few years ago we were faced with a new challenge. A pagan group in the Chicago area became interested in Unitarian Universalism when one of its members decided to enter the UU ministry. The group gradually became excited about the idea of being part of our denomination. Finally they applied to be affiliated with the Unitarian Universalist Association as a regular congregation. They issued a statement describing how their own values were in keeping with the principles and purposes of the UUA. They assumed, rightly, that they and we could walk together. They were indeed accepted, but not without controversy. Forrest Church, minister of All Souls UU Church in New York City wrote a letter to many leaders in the denomination strenuously objecting to having a group of witches accepted as a congregation. The Board of Trustees which votes on such applications did not approve this one unanimously.

    It is easy enough for us to look back and deplore the ostracism of Theodore Parker by his colleagues, or the injustice done to William Potter in the Year Book issue and to see that the heresies of one generation have become the commonplaces of a later one. But Witches? That controversy was more difficult to see clearly because we were in the middle of it. But today there are pagans and pagan groups within many of our congregations. We come through, we stand by our principle of diversity, but not easily, not without some misgivings.

    The truth is, we seem to need our boundaries even if we are called upon to expand them from time to time. Conrad Wright suggests that perhaps the real issue is not one of boundaries. It is instead our struggle to define what it is that unites us, what we have in common. He points out that any community must have some common goals or purposes, a value system generally accepted, a consensus widely shared, in order to survive. We have our principles and purposes so we do in fact have some implied boundaries. The really important point is that those boundaries change. The consensus that unites us today is not the consensus that united us in the 19th century, nor the one that united us in the middle of the 20th century.

    We have expanded our boundaries in many directions. We have learned to walk with more and more diversity. Is this not the over-riding lesson we must learn from the slaughters, the holocausts of the 20th century? Once again in our time, all the old boundaries are in flux, political, religious and moral. We are haltingly and with difficulty learning to listen to each other. Bombs are still being made, troops are still massed along old borders, hatred and bigotry are still preached, violence still erupts in our schools and churches. Even our own armed forces cannot stop the waves of terrorism washing over our world. But the very earth now cries out that if we do not change we may not survive. Can we change?

    I would suggest to you that we can believe in freedom and diversity only if we believe in the positive as well as the negative potential of human nature. And that is precisely our heritage as Unitarian Universalists. It is because of that faith in our positive potential that we have chosen to walk together in diversity; to keep redefining and expanding our boundaries. We
have chosen again and again to be inclusive, to recognize and accept people of good will wherever they are found and whatever they may be called—even witches.

    What is it that unites us in our diversity?

    What lines, what new boundaries would you draw?

    Can two walk together except they be agreed?

    As we walk together this year, let us do so in the spirit of these words by Theodore Parker: “Be ours a religion which like sunshine goes everywhere; its temple, all space; its shrine, the good heart; its creed, all truth; its ritual, works of love; its profession of faith, divine living."

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Rev. Dr. Shirley Ranck came to Williamsburg Unitarian Universalists in September, 2004.