Dan Harper | Sermons

Category: Unitarian Universalism

  • Alike, Unalike

    Sermon copyright (c) 2026 Dan Harper. As delivered to First Parish in Cohasset. The text below has not been proofread. The sermon as delivered contained substantial improvisation.

    Readings

    The first reading was from “Another View of Preston Bradley,” an online memoir by Judy Thornber, giving her memories of Rev. Dr. Preston Bradley, minister of the People’s Church in Chicago from 1912 to 1976. In the 1930s, People’s Church boasted weekly attendance of up to 4,000 people, and Bradley’s radio broadcasts reportedly reached 5 million more.

    “As a true admirer who heard Preston Bradley on the radio and in person at his church, I saw no sign of megachurch techniques. Bradley did not ‘orate.’ He spoke in a personal, conversational way, revealing his own feelings and thoughts and his high aspirations for what people could do. He acknowledged that times were difficult and many people had enormous problems. It was, after all, the Depression. He did his best to provide hope to his following, without mention of God or Jesus, and to engage in citywide social action with various civic organizations. This man was not an Elmer Gantry type egoist. He was passionate about empathy and support for those with troubles, but not in a ‘theatrical’ way. His true genius was that he simply talked directly to his congregation, both on the radio and in the church, as if they were intelligent people who wanted to lead good lives. He tried to encourage them and keep their hope alive.

    “Since few of today’s UU ministers can grow membership the way Bradley did, we should seriously study his sermons to understand why they spoke so clearly to people and were so well received by the public. When Bradley spoke, you felt he was speaking to you one on one. He shared himself. He did not pretend to have all the answers. He did preach that hope could be nurtured by persevering and by focusing on leading a good life according to our own best lights.”

    The second reading was from “What is Unitarianism?” by Alan Ruston, a 1973 pamphlet written for the British Unitarians, whose formal name is the General Assembly of Unitarian and Free Christian Churches.

    “What do we find in a local Unitarian church? We find — above all — independence. Each church is a sovereign entity, responsible for its own affairs. It calls its own ministers, and dismisses them if it wishes. It builds its own church structure, and pulls it down if it wishes. It even disbands itself if it considers its useful purpose has been achieved. The churches are loosely united in the General Assembly of Unitarian and Free Christian Churches, which helps with advice, money and ministerial recommendation, but has no control over the local congregation…. The Unitarian church is not the place for the person with the over-tidy mind, who may require a hierarchical church organization. Unitarian churches are inconsistent, going different ways, but as each sees the way forward in a slightly different manner, it cannot be otherwise.”

    Sermon

    During last year’s question box sermon, someone asked, “What about our service is most similar to other Unitarian Universalist congregations?” I’ve now worked in nine different Unitarian Universalist congregations, preached in another twelve, and attended services in another eight or nine. This may make it seem like I know a lot, but I don’t. If there are perhaps fourteen hundred UU congregations around the world, I only have direct knowledge of maybe 2 percent of them. This is not a large enough sample size to draw firm conclusions. Nor is there any hierarchy to force Unitarian Universalist congregations into some kind of conformity. As a result, I have no way to make any worthwhile generalizations.

    Instead, I thought what I’d do is to tell you about the specifics of Sunday services at several different Unitarian Universalist congregations, and then offer some opinions, which you may or may not agree with. I’ll start by telling you about two Unitarian Universalist congregations in detail, then touch briefly on some interesting points I’ve witnessed in other congregations.

    5954 S. Albany Ave, home of Church of the Open Door from 1996-2005

    We’ll begin in Chicago. In January, 2001, I took the Coming of Age class from First Parish in Lexington, eight teenagers in eight and ninth grade, to Chicago for a weekend field trip. On Sunday afternoon, we got in a van and drove to 5954 South Albany St. on the southwest side of Chicago. If you know Chicago, that’s a White-minority part of the city. This was were the Church of the Open Door met in a small church building they had obtained in the late 1990s. Led by founding pastors Alma Faith Crawford and Karen Hutt, the Church of the Open Door called themselves “a sacred assembly of Black lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgendered, and heterosexual sisters, bothers, lovers, friends, and allies gathering at the invitation of Christ….”

    The worship service began promptly at 4 o’clock everyone getting up on their feet and joining in call-and-response praise music. This was followed by a call for testimony: How had Jesus affected your life this week? While this might sound surprisingly Christian for a Unitarian Universalist congregation, in reality the actual testimonies were not unlike the candles of joy and concern we hear here at First Parish.

    Then came the processional, when teens from the congregation (and our Massachusetts teens got to participate) carried a cross, a Bible, an African American national flag, and a rainbow flag to the front of the sanctuary while the gospel choir sang. The pastors came in with the processional, and gave the opening words and a prayer. As is common in the Black church tradition, the organist provided accompaniment to these spoken words, while the congregation offered vocal responses as they were moved by the Spirit. After a hymn came the passing of the peace, which in Church of the Open Door involved full-body hugs.

    Pastor Karen gave a children’s message, there was another anthem by the gospel choir, and a lay leader read the lesson from the Bible. We were invited to stand and read along, using the Bibles in the pews.

    The sermon was delivered by the church’s student minister; it was her very first sermon. She spoke on the topic, “God will make a way out of no way.” Since it was her first sermon, the congregation offered low-key vocal encouragement to her as she began. When it became clear that she was going to speak with authority, the congregation gave themselves over to her teaching, and when she brought the sermon home, half the congregation was on their feet, carried by the emotion of her words.

    The offering came next, introduced by a lay leader who spoke about how important giving to the church was to her. Finally, there were brief announcements, a final hymn, and the benediction. The entire service lasted for about three hours, although about half the attendees only came for the last hour or so, to hear the sermon.

    Pastor Alma made time to talk with our group about how she and Pastor Karen structured the services. Pastor Alma told us they strove to create a service in which African Americans from many different Black Church traditions could feel comfortable. The worship style was Black Church all the way, from the preaching style, to the call-and-response singing, to the vocal responses made by the congregation throughout the service. Yet the theology was very non-dogmatic; because the church’s primary ministry was to African American LGBTQ folk who might not be welcomed in other Black churches, the theology had to be as open as possible.

    This service at the Church of the Open Door was clearly a Unitarian Universalist service, insofar as the focus was on this world, not the next world; and the core value running through the service was that all persons are equally worthy of love. But almost nothing in that service resembled what we do here in Cohasset; even the sermon was different in style and substance, firmly in the Black Church tradition, with the congregation vocally engaged with the preacher throughout. Sadly the Church of the Open Door had to shut down in 2005; I would have liked to have gone back for another of their services.

    From Chicago, let’s travel to Hingham, to Linden Ponds Senior Living, just a few miles from here. The Linden Ponds Unitarian Universalist Community meets just once a month, on Tuesday afternoons, because several of their members also belong to conventional Unitarian Universalist churches in the area. At first glance, the Linden Ponds service might seem to be closer to ours here at First Parish, but I feel their services actually more closely resemble the lay-led humanist fellowships common in the Midwest.

    The Linden Ponds UU Community meets in one of the common rooms at the Linden Ponds retirement development. Before the service, people gather outside the common room, and there’s a babble of conversation as people catch up with one another. All three times I’ve preached there (I’m going back next week for a fourth time), there have been fifty to sixty people present; which makes the Linden Ponds Community larger than some conventional Unitarian Universalist congregations in our area.

    The service begins with a welcome and announcements. They light a flaming chalice, and someone from the congregation leads them in saying together their covenant. The covenant is followed by joys and concerns, and then a hymn. This is followed by a prayer given by the guest speaker, and then a musical selection — they have a small choir, and they also have some fine individual musicians. There is always a responsive reading, which is projected on large screens at the front of the room. After the responsive reading, the guest speaker gives the sermon.

    So far, this doesn’t seem all that much different from what we do here at First Parish. But it gets significantly different after the sermon, when they have what they call a discussion, although to me it seems more like a question and answer and comment session: people in the congregation ask questions or offers comments, and the guest speaker is expected to respond to those questions and comments. Now I’ve seen this kind of thing in other congregations, and it can be really dreary. All too often, you only hear from a handful of people who love the sound of their own voices, and who dominate the discussion, often to the boredom of everyone else in the room.

    But the Linden Ponds Unitarian Universalist Community is very skilled at this kind of discussion. They ask thoughtful, interesting questions, usually representing a wide range of viewpoints. Sometimes in this kind of setting, questions and comments are wholly intellectual, allowing the person making the comment to show off their erudition; but the people at Linden Ponds ask questions and make comments which serve to deepen the spiritual exploration. They are always civil — a rare trait in today’s polarized world — and when one of them disagrees with the speaker, they do so in a courteous manner, speaking not to score points but to further the conversation for everyone.

    I’ve thought about why are they so good at posing questions and making comments. I can come up with two main reasons. First, they carefully develop volunteer leadership, and most people in their community are accustomed to taking on responsibility in all areas of community life, including leading worship. Second, they actively nurture a culture of civil discourse, which is challenging because that goes against the grain in today’s polarized world. An important aspect of this is that they are willing to make themselves vulnerable, to open themselves to spiritual matters; they worship with both head and heart.

    One of the lay leaders usually winds down the discussion after about ten minutes, often making the observation that if they want to get to dinner on time, it’s best to finish up. They then take an offering, which typically goes to the Hingham Food Pantry, and the guest speaker give closing words. About half of the congregation goes off to have dinner together in one of the Linden Ponds dining rooms; and each time I’ve preached there, there have been several people willing to be late to dinner because they wanted to continue the conversation.

    The services of these two congregations — the Linden Ponds Unitarian Universalist Community and the Church of the Open Door — may seem quite different at first glance. Yet both these congregations — indeed most Unitarian Universalist congregations — consider the sermon to be the culminating event in the service. In some congregations, it might no be called a sermon. Some staunch humanist congregations reject the term “sermon” as being too tied to Christianity, calling it an “address” or a “reflection” instead. But whatever it’s called, it’s ten to twenty-five minutes of spoken word. Often, but not always, the parts of the service that come before sermon are supposed to tie in to the sermon topic.

    Having the sermon as the centerpiece is the norm for Unitarian Universalist services, but the importance of the other parts of the service varies quite a bit. When Preston Bradley was the minister of People’s Church in Chicago, his sermons were by far the most important part of the service; indeed, for the five million people who listened to Bradley on the radio, the sermons were the only part of the service they heard. Here at First Parish, while the sermon remains important, we also place great importance on our music; and we’re fortunate to have such a talented music director, and so many talented musicians in the congregation.

    And of course many Unitarian Universalist congregations recognize that there’s more to Sunday services than just a sermon; and many of our congregations have special annual services, such as Music Sunday, the Flower Celebration, and Christmas Eve candlelight services, where the sermon is much less important. Some congregations, including ours, also have one-time services where something else takes the place of the sermon — so, for example, a couple of years ago the poet Everett Hoagland led the service here, and instead of a sermon, we got to hear him reading his poetry. To give another example, I still have vivid memories of a service in 1998 at First Parish in Lexington where a one-act play took the place of the sermon. Written by a member of the congregation, the play was a sort of existentialist take on the story of Noah and the ark, with three main characters: Noah, Noah’s wife, and God. (Before you say, “What a great idea, we should do that here,” let me tell you that the actors and director, all of whom had extensive theatre experience, took two months to rehearse the play, and when it was done, none of them was eager to repeat the experience.)

    I also have vivid memories of another unique worship service I got to experience at First Unitarian Church of Chicago. This has been a biracial congregation for many years, and one of the most distinguished Black members was Rev. Dr. Finley Campbell, then professor of African American Studies at the University of Wisconsin in Madison. In 2002, to commemorate the Emancipation Proclamation, Dr. Campbell created what he called the Emancipation Proclamation Pageant. I still remember the slow procession of actors dressed in Civil War uniforms up the main aisle of their big stone Gothic-style building. Dr. Campbell’s pageant lasted three hours, and I have to admit that I had a hard time sitting still through the whole thing — but it made enough of an impression on me that I still remember it, some twenty years later.

    While I’ve mostly been talking about the format of the service — hymns, readings, music, sermon, and so on — there are other things that seem to me just as important when talking about similarities and differences between the services of different Unitarian Universalist congregations.

    The building where the services are held seems to me to be as important as what takes place in the service. First Unitarian of Chicago has a huge stone church in the English Perpendicular Gothic style; because it was built as a Unitarian church, instead of a cross it features an empty niche behind the altar to symbolize the ongoing Unitarian search for truth. It is a majestic building, perfect for music and pageantry. At the other end of the majesty scale, the simple and modest wood frame building of Starr King Unitarian Universalist Church in Hayward, California, is not at all majestic, but it does serve to place the emphasis on the people rather than on the building. University Unitarian Church in Seattle, Washington, has worship space built in the modernist style, with a huge wall of abstract stained glass on the left, and molded fiberglas seats that look like the midcentury modern Herman Miller chairs. Given my height, the comfort of the seating can have as big an impact on me as the sermon: I find University Unitarian’s molded fiberglas chairs are attractive but not particularly comfortable; by contrast, while the modest building of the Starr King Church might not be visually stunning, I found their chairs to be very comfortable. Different buildings also have different acoustics, and the acoustics in turn affect how I experience the Sunday service. First Unitarian in Chicago had great acoustics for music, but I always found it a bit too echo-y for spoken word. Starr King Church, on the other hand, was perfect for spoken word, but maybe not quite lively enough for music.

    I’ve been saving the most important thing for last. For me the most important question is: How friendly is the congregation? Are there friendly people to talk with you before the service starts? If, in the middle of the service, you have a coughing fit (or a fussy baby), do people smile at you understandingly, or maybe even give you a cough drop (or make funny faces at your baby to distract them)? After the service, do people talk with you in coffee hour? At one congregation where I was a guest preacher, no one spoke to me during coffee hour; but that was an exception. Most of the Unitarian Universalist congregations I’ve been to have been friendly. I may have found the seats of University Unitarian to be uncomfortable, but I found the people to be very friendly. By the time we got done talking with all the friendly people at coffee hour, forty-five minutes had gone by. And I found the Open Circle Unitarian Universalist Fellowship in Fond-du-lac, Wisconsin, to be even more friendly — their social hour lasted for an hour — which is actually much like the social hours we have here at First Parish.

    The real test of friendliness, though, is how a congregation treats people who are obviously different. To my mind, the biggest test of friendliness is what happens when someone who is homeless shows up. What I look for is whether that person is treated the same as any other newcomer — and mostly they are. Once I actually saw this happen here at First Parish, and we were just as welcoming to that person as we are to everyone else. Mind you, it’s important to have good boundaries; I remember one congregation that had to ask a homeless person not to come any more, because they kept showing up drunk; but you can have good boundaries and still be welcoming.

    When I visit a new Unitarian Universalist congregation, I can put up with a mediocre service and mediocre music, as long as I’m welcomed. The most important thing is not the service, but the community: is it friendly and welcoming and supportive? I’ve been part of a congregation where I wasn’t especially fond of the minister, but people in that congregation were supportive of me and of each other, and that was more important to me than the minister. And I feel most comfortable in congregations where people are welcomed for who they are. I want to be part of a congregation that welcomes a wide range of people: bus drivers and venture capitalists; people with non-binary and binary genders; people of all ages; and so on.

    This brings me back to the original question: “What about our service is most similar to other Unitarian Universalist congregations?” I’d answer: we are most similar to other congregations in the way we do our best to welcome a wide range of people. We’re not perfect at it, and it is true that sometimes we fall short of our ideals. But at our best, we are a warm and welcoming community; at our best, we really like it when others decided to share their spiritual journeys with us.

  • Jesus, the Solstice, Diwali, and Hanukkah

    Sermon copyright (c) 2025 Dan Harper. As delivered to First Parish in Cohasset. The text below has not been proofread. The sermon as delivered contained substantial improvisation.

    Readings

    The first reading was from the book God Is Not One by Stephen Prothero. Prothero is a professor of religious studies at Boston University.

    “Being honest [about religion] requires being true to the religious traditions themselves…. I repeatedly come across scholars of Hinduism and Buddhism referring to ‘sin’ and ‘salvation’ as if these were Hindu and Buddhist concept. But these are Christian ideas, so when writing about Hinduism and Buddhism, I do not use them. For similar reasons, I do not refer to the Muslim Paradise or Buddhist nirvana as ‘heaven.’ Similarly, I do not assume that scripture is as important to Hindus as it is to Protestants, or that it is used in a similar way. The Vedas are the Hindus’ most sacred scriptures, but hardly any Hindu gives a fig about their content; as almost any Hindu can tell you, what matters is their sounds, and the sacred power these sounds convey. Nor do I assume, as many Protestants do, that religions are about faith and belief. Religions cannot be reduced to ‘belief systems’ and more than they can be reduced to ‘ritual systems.’ Belief is a part of most religions, but only a part, and in most cases no the most important part. (You can be a Jew without believing in God, for example.) So while I do refer to Protestants as ‘believers’ and to their religion as a ‘faith,’ I do not refer to religious people in general as ‘believers’ or to their traditions as ‘faith-based.’” (slightly edited from the original to make an independent reading)

    The second reading was a poem titled “The Good God and the Evil God,” by Khalil Gibran.

    The Good God and the Evil God met on the mountain top.
    The Good God said, “Good day to you, brother.”
    The Evil God did not answer.
    And the Good God said, “You are in a bad humour today.”
    “Yes,” said the Evil God, “for of late I have been often mistaken for you, called by your name, and treated as if I were you, and it ill-pleases me.”
    And the Good God said, “But I too have been mistaken for you and called by your name.”
    The Evil God walked away cursing the stupidity of man.

    Sermon

    During last year’s question box sermon, someone in the congregation wrote about “The great truths of the teachings of Jesus that are common to all major religions in the world.” The question implied is asking to what extent this is true. Are there great truths that are shared by all major religions in the world? While this may seem like an academic question, I feel it is one of the deepest spiritual questions of our time. I’ll be saying more about the spiritual side, but let’s begin by looking into the question of whether all religions share in the same great truths.

    This is an especially urgent question because we live in an increasingly multicultural society. We all know an increasing number of people who have very different worldviews from ours. We Unitarian Universalists like to think that we accept all worldviews equally, seeking to find value in everyone’s worldview. Many Unitarian Universalists have been inspired by Huston Smith, the renowned twentieth century scholar of religion. In his book “The World’s Religions: Our Great Wisdom Traditions,” Smith wrote: “It is possible to climb life’s mountain from any side, but when the top is reached the trails converge.”(1) Many Unitarian Universalists took this to heart — we’re following our own religious path, but we believe that eventually all religious trails end up on the same mountaintop. The belief that all religions have the same ultimate goal results in the laudable impulse to celebrate more than one holiday at this time of year — we celebrate Christmas, but we also want to acknowledge the other paths that lead to the mountaintop — the Jewish path which celebrates Hanukkah, the Hindu path which celebrates Diwali, the Pagan path which celebrates the winter solstice, the Buddhist path which celebrates Bodhi Day, and so on.(2)

    Yet we are also aware that there are other ways to understand what religion means in a multicultural society. There is, for example, the possibility of believing that not every religious path will lead you to an exalted place. We all know about the conservative Christians who would disagree strongly with Huston Smith, for they would argue that their brand of Christianity is the only path that will let you get to the mountaintop; or to use their phraseology, it is only through Christ that you can reach God. These conservative Christians would say that if anyone else claimed to get up to the mountaintop by a non-Christian path, they were being deceived by an Evil God.

    And there are still other possible ways to understand religion in a multicultural society. Some people doubt whether all trails wind up at the mountaintop. So, for example, those conservative Christians who believe women are inferior to men, and that LGBTQ people are filled with sin — I’m not sure I believe their religious path really leads to the mountaintop. That is, if all religious paths do in fact lead to the mountaintop, I sometimes wonder if getting to the mountaintop might not be as good as it’s supposed to be. Maybe both the Good God and the Evil God inhabit the mountaintop, which does not sound especially attractive. Or maybe there are many mountaintops, and the religions with whom I disagree climb to their own mountaintop, not my mountaintop. Or maybe I just can’t believe that every religious or spiritual journey winds up on a mountaintop — while at the same time acknowledging that other people look at Unitarian Universalism and claim that our spiritual journey will not wind up on the mountaintop.

    This in turn raises a host of questions. Do all religions share the same core teachings; is there a oneness to all of religion? Are the various religions different, while ultimately leading to the same final goal? Do the different religions have completely different goals that lead in different directions? Are there some religions which have goals I would disagree with? Are there religions that maybe don’t have a goal or a final destination in mind? Living in a multicultural society confront us with the possibility that we do not live in a straightforward religious landscape with a single mountain and a single path up that mountain; there is also the possibility that a multicultural religious landscape has more than one mountain, to say nothing of valleys and plains and a host of different trails that may lead somewhere or nowhere or everywhere.

    If the multicultural religious landscape does indeed have more than one mountain, this can be disorienting. Here in the United states, the militant atheists and the militant Christians avoid being disoriented by insisting the religious landscape is actually quite simple. The militant atheists insist that religion is mere illusion (a dictum they repeat with religious fervor), so there is no religious mountain to climb. For their part, the militant Christians insist that theirs is the only true religion, so there is only one religious mountain to climb with only one path up that mountain.

    At the other end of the scale, we Unitarian Universalists are, on the whole, more likely to embrace multicultural confusion and disorientation. We have neither doctrines nor dogmas, and we have long supported the notion that each person is in charge of their own spiritual journey. There are situations that test our tolerance, as for example when a Unitarian Universalist’s adult child decides to join a dogmatic or doctrinaire religious group. But on the whole, we’re willing to accept the chaos of a multicultural religious landscape — actually, many of us find it fascinating.

    Yet while we find it fascinating, we also have to acknowledge that the multicultural religious landscape can cause a certain amount of personal spiritual confusion, or even a personal spiritual crisis. I speak from experience; I myself have experienced a certain amount of personal spiritual confusion. I was raised in a Unitarian Universalist congregation, and my generation of Unitarian Universalists kids was taught to respect all religions equally because ultimately all religions led to the same goal. But when I got into my late teens and early twenties, I discovered that maybe all religious paths didn’t lead to places I wanted to go.

    I went to a Quaker college, and in my first year there some evangelical Quakers invited me to join their men’s Bible study group. I had become interested in the Bible, and I decided this was an opportunity to actually sit down and read it (being a Unitarian Universalist kid, I had read very little of the Bible, although I had read most of the Bhagavad Gita and parts of the Dao de jing). So I began attending this Bible study session, with a really nice group of guys. During one of the sessions, one of the other guys spoke about the power of prayer. As a Unitarian Universalist of my generation, I had absorbed the notion that while prayer could be a literary format, or a way to voice the concerns of a community, you couldn’t just pray for something and God would just give it to you, because the only way to get what you wanted was to work for it. But I realized that when this guy spoke to our Bible study group about the power of prayer, he literally believe that you could pray for something and God would give it to you.

    So, being pretty immature and also fairly clueless, I said, “Wait, you actually believe that God will answer your prayers? No one believes that!” Of course as soon as I said it, I looked around and realized that everyone else in that Bible study group did in fact believe that. Fortunately they were polite and courteous, and they kindly and gently explained to me that, yes, they did believe that. I give myself this much credit: at least I was embarrassed by my outburst.

    Because of interactions like this one, I began to question some of the religious and spiritual assumptions I had grown up with. I had always assumed that we Unitarian Universalists were pretty much like other religious groups; or if we were different in some ways, we were more or less all heading towards the same goal. But getting to know those kind and courteous evangelical Christians in that Bible study group helped me understand that, as nice as they were, they were on a very different spiritual path than I was. To my astonishment, they placed their highest priority on striving to get into their heaven through spiritual purity; and their striving not only involved a lot of rules and procedures which I didn’t fully understand, but it also involved an other-worldliness that I was not comfortable with. I stayed with them through my first year of college, but the next year I went to the meetings of the liberal Quaker student group instead (there being no Unitarian Universalist student group). The liberal Quakers were more like me: they didn’t worry much about getting into heaven after death, they worried about how they might make the world better here and now; and the way you made that happen was through hard work, not through spiritual purity. This I could understand, whereas I had a hard time understanding spiritual purity combined with petitionary prayer.

    Yet I couldn’t dismiss my evangelical Christian friends out of hand. For one thing, several of them were pacifists just like me; we may not have agreed on heaven, but we agreed on non-violence (remember, this was back in the last century before our society became so rigidly polarized, and before evangelicals started carrying handguns). But it wasn’t only that; I was having encounters with other religions as well. One of my Jewish friends invited me to his house for Pesach, for Passover. He and his family were Reform Jews, and so they were religious liberals like me; but they also had a significantly different religious worldview from mine. When they said “Next year in Israel!” at the end of the seder, I could tell they really meant it; whereas while I could understand the phrase at an intellectual level, I really didn’t understand it at an emotional level.

    When you begin encountering people from religious traditions unlike yours, you have several options. You can choose to double down and insist that yours is the only valid religious tradition. You can choose to doubt all religious traditions, on the theory that there’s no way to determine which is the correct religious tradition. You can assert that all religious traditions share in the same general truths, which may lead you to draw from the best of various religious traditions. You can leave behind your present religious tradition and find a new one that you feel more attuned to. Or you can choose to stay with your present religious tradition, while questioning its grounding assumptions. There is no single correct choice. As it happens, I chose to stay with Unitarian Universalism while questioning its grounding assumptions.

    One of the grounding assumptions of twentieth century Unitarian Universalism that I chose to question is embodied in that statement by Huston Smith: “It is possible to climb life’s mountain from any side, but when the top is reached the trails converge.” Or as Henry David Thoreau put it, “The oldest Egyptian or Hindoo philosopher raised a corner of the veil from the statue of the divinity; and still the trembling robe remains raised, and I gaze upon as fresh a glory as he did…” — implying that Hinduism, ancient Egyptian religion, and Thoreau’s own Transcendentalism all share the same great truths. I suspect that many Unitarian Universalists today — perhaps most Unitarian Universalists today — would still affirm that all spiritual paths wind up leading to the same mountaintop. We can still affirm our belief that the great truths taught by Jesus are shared by major religions around the world. We still see an essential oneness to all religions.

    However, not all Unitarian Universalists agree with these statements. I’m one of those Unitarian Universalists. I’m no longer convinced that all religions lead ultimately to the same goal. It was feminism, more than anything else, that prompted me to question whether all religions have the same goal. If I, as a Unitarian Universalist, believe that women and girls are just as good as men and boys, what am I to make of the Latter Day Saints, or Mormons, who don’t allow women to be ordained to their priesthood? What am I to make of verse 4:34 in the Qur’an, which says that women should be obedient to men, and if they’re not obedient, then men should beat them? What am I to make of the sexism built into Confucianism? Not that we Unitarian Universalists are entirely non-sexist — but at least as a non-creedal religion, we are not bound by sexist scriptures, and as a democratic religion we are not bound by sexist pronouncements issued by a hierarchy. Yet as a religion which strives for equality between the sexes, I feel that Unitarian Universalism is fundamentally different from the Latter Day Saints, or traditional Muslims, or conservative Christians. Because we Unitarian Universalists affirm that all genders are equal, I find it difficult to accept that our religion winds up on the same mountaintop as patriarchal religions which claim that men and boys are better than other genders. Nor can I accept that those other religions are simply deluded — because that merely echoes their argument that I’m deluded for believing that women and girls are just as good as men and boys. — All this leads me to wonder if there’s more than one religious mountain; to wonder if there are multiple religious truths, not all of which I want to share in. And this in turn leads me to the conclusion that Christmas is something entirely different from Hanukkah, Diwali, Bodhi Day, or the pagan solstice celebrations.

    I have found this to be spiritually freeing. Instead of thinking that Hanukkah is somehow similar to Christmas, I can accept what my friend the rabbi says — Hanukkah is actually a minor Jewish holiday that has nothing to do with Christmas. Instead of worrying about celebrating Hanukkah to counterbalance Christmas, I can instead honor the importance of the Jewish High Holy Days, Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. That is, instead of trying to elevate a minor Jewish holiday to importance just because it happens to fall at the same time as the major Christian holiday of Christmas, I can accept Judaism on its own terms. Or to give another example, while I can recognize that the Hindu holiday of Diwali prompts almost as much consumer spending among Hindus as Christmas does among Christians and nominal Christians, there are other Hindu holidays with as greater or greater religious significance, such as Durga Puja. Again, I can accept Hinduism on its own terms, rather than trying to fit it into Christmas. This also means I face less spiritual pressure at Christmas time; I can simply focus on Christmas instead of trying to integrate it with Hanukkah and the solstice and Diwali and Bodhi Day, and even Ramadan when it happens to fall in December.

    As I say, I have found this to be spiritually freeing. Instead of trying to stuff random holidays of non-Christian religions into a Christmas mold, I find myself more willing to appreciate those other religions for what they are, rather than for what I want them to be. It has been spiritually freeing in other ways too. Rather than struggling to make connections between the teachings of Jesus and the teachings of other major world religions, I can simply read Jesus for what he has to offer, appreciating his unique contributions without having to compare him to other teachings. Conversely, I can read the Dao de Jing without having to try to figure out how it pertains to the teachings of Jesus. As scholar of religion Stephen Prothero puts it, “Being honest [about religion] requires being true to the religious traditions themselves.” So while it is disorienting, I find it easier to be true to the religions themselves. And personally, I’ve found the world to be a more interesting place when I accept the essential differences between religions; when I don’t try to make belief central to every religion just because Christianity does; when I’m able to truly listen to what other religions have to say, instead of listening for what I want them to say.

    Not that I necessarily recommend this spiritual path to anyone else. It is a disorienting spiritual path. It’s less disorienting to have only one mountain on life’s map — just one peak upon which all trails converge — than it is to deal with a complex multicultural landscape with mountains and valleys and plains and rivers and probably oceans besides. And maybe it’s more fun to celebrate Christmas while at the same time playing dreidel in honor of Hanukkah. It’s certainly more poetic to say along with Thoreau that: “The oldest Egyptian or Hindoo philosopher raised a corner of the veil from the statue of the divinity; and still the trembling robe remains raised, and I gaze upon as fresh a glory as he did….” In the end, it’s your choice as to which spiritual path you prefer to follow.

    Notes

    (1) Huston Smith, The World’s Religions: Our Great Wisdom Traditions, New York: Harper San Francisco, 1991, p. 73. This is a revised version of Smith’s earlier 1958 book The Religions of Man, which is turn grew out of a 1955 lecture series for television.
    (2) Sometimes we even include Kwanzaa, although those who created Kwanzaa have explicitly said that it is not a religious holiday. See, e.g., Karenga Maulana, Kwanzaa, University of Sankore Press, 1997, p. 121: “Is Kwanzaa an alternative to Christmas? Kwanzaa was not created to give people an alternative to their own religion or religious holiday. And it is not an alternative to people’s religion or faith but a common ground of African culture….” Maulana goes on to emphasize that Kwanzaa is not religion, but a “cultural choice.”

  • What About the Afterlife?

    Sermon copyright (c) 2025 Dan Harper. As delivered to First Parish in Cohasset. The text below has not been proofread. The sermon as delivered contained substantial improvisation.

    Moment for All Ages

    The great philosopher Socrates, who lived two thousand five hundred years ago, once had a long conversation with another philosopher named Gorgias. During that long conversation, Socrates told a story about what happens to human beings after we die.

    “Listen, then (said Socrates), as story-tellers say, to a very pretty tale, which I dare say that you may be disposed to regard as a fable only. But I believe this is a true tale, for I mean to speak the truth.

    “Since the days when the god Cronos ruled the universe, there has been a law about what happens to human beings after death: human beings who have lived their whole lives in justice and holiness shall go to the Islands of the Blessed, to dwell in perfect happiness; while human beings who have lived unjust and irreverent lives go to Tartaros, the house of punishment.

    “In the time of Cronos, judgement was given on the very day on which people were to die. The judges were alive, and the people had not yet died. But the judgements were not well given. So Hades came from Tartaros, and the authorities from the Islands of the Blessed came to Zeus. They said some people were sent to the wrong places after they died.

    “Zeus came up with a plan. “First of all,’ he said, ‘we must put a stop to human beings knowing the time of their death.
    Next, human beings must be fully dead when they are judged — not alive as is currently true — and being dead, they will be stripped of their their bodies, and stripped of everything else that might bias the judge either for them or against them. Then the judges themselves must also be dead, so that the judge’s naked soul will be able to perceive the truth of the other naked souls.” Zeus said only in this way could the judgement of the dead be truly just.

    “Zeus then decreed that three of his own human children, who were already dead, should become the judges. These three were assigned to stay in the ‘meadow at the parting of the ways.’ Two roads left this meadow: one way went to the Islands of the Blessed, and the other to Tartaros. Rhadamanthus judged all the humans who died in Asia. Aeacus judged all the humans who died in Europe. And if these two had any doubt about a human being, Minos served as the final court of appeal.”

    So ends the story that the philosopher Socrates told about the afterlife. Although this story sounds a little bit like the story that some Christians tell about what happens to humans after we die, it is a very different story, and Socrates told his story hundreds of years before the Christian era.

    You probably noticed some problems with the story. For example, if Rhadamanthus judges those who died in Asia, and Aeacus judges those who died in Europe, who judges those who died in Africa? With such obvious problems with the story, why did Socrates tell Gorgias that he was speaking the truth? You must remember that Socrates spoke a different language from us, and his word for truth — aletheia — meant revealing and disclosing, it meant the opposite of forgetfulness. In other words, there is more than one way to define the word “truth.”

    Readings

    The first reading comes from Mark Twain’s book “Extract from Captain Stormfield’s Visit to Heaven.” In this passage, Captain Stormfield has arrived in heaven, received a robe and a harp, and sets off to enjoy himself:

    “When I found myself perched on a cloud, with a million other people, I never felt so good in my life. Says I, ‘Now this is according to the promises; I’ve been having my doubts, but now I am in heaven, sure enough.’ I gave my palm branch a wave or two, for luck, and then I tautened up my harp-strings and struck in. Well, Peters, you can’t imagine anything like the row we made. It was grand to listen to, and made a body thrill all over, but there was considerable many tunes going on at once, and that was a drawback to the harmony, you understand…. By and by I quit performing, and judged I’d take a rest. There was quite a nice mild old gentleman sitting next me, and I noticed he didn’t take a hand; I encouraged him, but he said he was naturally bashful, and was afraid to try before so many people. By and by the old gentleman said he never could seem to enjoy music somehow. The fact was, I was beginning to feel the same way; but I didn’t say anything. … After about sixteen or seventeen hours, during which I played and sung a little, now and then — always the same tune, because I didn’t know any other — I laid down my harp and begun to fan myself with my palm branch. … Finally, says he, “Don’t you know any tune but the one you’ve been pegging at all day?”

    “Not another blessed one,” says I.

    “Don’t you reckon you could learn another one?” says he.

    “Never,” says I; “I’ve tried to, but I couldn’t manage it.”

    “It’s a long time to hang to the one — eternity, you know.”

    “Don’t break my heart,” says I; “I’m getting low-spirited enough already.”

    After another long silence, says he — “Are you glad to be here?”

    Says I, “Old man, I’ll be frank with you. This ain’t just as near my idea of bliss as I thought it was going to be, when I used to go to church.”

    Says he, “What do you say to knocking off and calling it half a day?”

    “That’s me,” says I. “I never wanted to get off watch so bad in my life.”

    So we started. Millions were coming to the cloud-bank all the time, happy and hosannahing; millions were leaving it all the time, looking mighty quiet, I tell you. We laid for the new-comers, and pretty soon I’d got them to hold all my things a minute, and then I was a free man again and most outrageously happy.

    The second reading comes from a small book published by the Buddhist Church of America. The book is titled “The Heart of the Buddha-Dharma” and it is by one of the great leaders of the late 20th century in the Buddhist Church of America, Kenryu T. Tsuji.

    “In the Jodo Shinsshu school of Buddhism, the spiritual development of the person is completed with their birth in what is known as the Pure Land…. ‘Birth in the Pure Land’ means the perfect growth and fulfillment one’s personality, to achieve a state of perfect selflessness whereupon one is able to realize the oneness of the whole universe; to become a Buddha and achieve oneness with Amida Buddha. While the human weaknesses of greed, anger, and ignorance are still functioning, this perfection of the personality is an impossibility.

    “Shinran Shonin and the teachers before him explained that the Pure Land was situated in the western corners of the universe, zillions of miles away. It was pictured as a very beautiful place, free of suffering, where everyone is happy. Philosophically speaking, however, the Pure Land does not refer to a specific location out there somewhere. Rather, the Pure Land is symbolic; it symbolizes the transcendence of relativity, of all limited qualities, of the finiteness of human life. In this transcendence, there is Compassion-Wisdom, an active moving, spiritual force. The Pure Land ideal is the culmination of the teaching of Wisdom and Compassion.”

    Sermon

    This is another in a series of sermons based on questions that were asked during last spring’s question-and-answer sermon: someone asked about the afterlife. I found this to be a difficult topic. My limited thinking about the afterlife is probably summed up in the following stupid Unitarian Universalist joke:

    Two Unitarian Universalists die, and next thing they know they find themselves standing in line in front of these large pearlescent gates. Somewhat to their surprise, they’re actually waiting in line to talk with St. Peter. When their turn finally comes, St. Pete asks them what religion they used to be, and they say, “Unitarian Universalists.”

    “Hmm. Unitarian Universalists,” replies St. Pete. “Well, even though you’re heretics, because you did so much good work on earth, you can go into heaven.”

    The two Unitarian Universalists look at each other, and one of them says, “You mean you actually send people to hell?”

    “Oh yes,” says St. Peter.

    On hearing that, they step out of line and start to picket the gates of heaven: one has a sign saying, “St. Peter Unfair to the Damned!” and the other’s sign says, “End Discrimination in Heaven!”

    This stupid joke represents about all the thinking I’ve done about the afterlife. Having the usual Unitarian Universalist preoccupation with the here-and-now, I tend to treat the afterlife as another social problem that needs fixing. Yet I’m also aware of how limited and narrow my thinking is, aware that much more can be said about the afterlife. Other people in our society do think about the afterlife, and some of them have come up with some pretty detailed descriptions of what it’s like. So let’s consider what the afterlife might be like. And I’d like to begin with the fable told by Socrates that we heard in the story for all ages this morning.

    According to Socrates’s fable, when Zeus took over from his father Cronos, he determined that admission to the afterlife was being poorly managed — some humans were being sent to the Islands of the Blessed after death when they really belonged in Tartaros. The humans were being judged before they had quite died, and their judges were also still alive, which meant that the judges could be impressed with the appearance or wealth of the people they were supposed to be judging impartially. So Zeus reformed the system, requiring that humans be judged after death, and also requiring that the judges themselves should be dead, which apparently removed the possibility of error or corruption from the whole process. This is a vivid description of what we might call the admissions process for the afterlife.

    Parts of this ancient Greek fable remind me of the story told by some Christians — the Christian story talks about heaven and hell rather than the Islands of the Blessed and Tartaros, and many Christians would say that it’s St. Peter who judges the dead, not Rhadamanthus — but in both cases, humans are judged after they die, and sent either to a good place or a bad place. Thus we can see that some people think of the afterlife as a place where humans will be judged based on our actions during our lifetimes; and furthermore, in the afterlife some humans will be condemned to punishment, while others will lead a delightful existence.

    And I’d like to consider a very specific story that was told about heaven and hell in the United States in the latter half of the nineteenth century. In these American stories, the Christian belief in heaven and hell takes on more details. If you went to heaven, so it was said, you’d receive a robe and a crown and a harp and wings, and you’d spend your days sitting on a cloud playing your harp. The American humorist Mark Twain decided to explore this nineteenth century American story more carefully, by telling about the adventures of one Captain Stormfield as he arrived in heaven; and as is so often the case with Mark Twain, underneath his humor lies some serious thinking and questioning.

    In the story, Captain Stormfield arrives in heaven and receives a robe and crown and wings and harp just as he expected. But he quickly finds out that it isn’t much fun sitting on a cloud and playing a harp — especially when you can only play but one song over and over again, and when everyone around you plays a different song, mostly with the same low level of skill that you have. After a time, the Captain sneaks away from his cloud, dumps his robe and crown and wings and his harp, and heads off to explore heaven.

    In the course of his explorations, Captain Stormfield meets up with his old friend Sam, who has been in heaven for a while. Sam fills the Captain in on the realities of heaven. To the Captain’s surprise, Sam tells him that pain and suffering exist in heaven. “You see,” Sam tells him, “happiness ain’t a thing in itself — it’s only a contrast with something that ain’t pleasant. That’s all it is.” In other words, in order for there to be happiness in heaven, there must also be pain and suffering, to serve as a contrast. The difference is that in heaven pain causes no lasting harm, and suffering cannot last.

    Mark Twain is not making fun of heaven in this story. Instead, he’s thinking carefully and logically about the afterlife by asking serious questions. He asks: what age will we be in heaven? If you die as a baby, will you have to remain as a baby throughout eternity? — in other words, can those in heaven continue to grow and change and gain more wisdom? Another question Twain asks is this: If heaven is a place where we’ll meet up with those who have died before us, how will that work, exactly? — will you still have something in common with someone who died twenty or thirty or forty years before you did? Twain also brings up a point that would have been very challenging for some white people in his time (and maybe equally challenging for some white people in our time): the majority of people in heaven would not be white, because white people have been a minority throughout human history. Those white people who are expecting an all-white heaven are going to be sadly disappointed.

    There’s more that could be said about American conceptions of heaven. But I’d like to consider some other ideas of the afterlife that are floating around in today’s popular culture. The other great proselytizing religion in the United States today is Buddhism, so it feels important to consider some Buddhist conceptions of the afterlife.

    Traditional Buddhism holds that after we die, we get reborn as something else. The goal is to get off the endless cycle of rebirth. Ordinarily, we don’t remember our previous lives, so one of the remarkable things about Gotama Buddha was that after he became enlightened he could remember his previous lives, and told his disciples more than five hundred stories about those previous lives. These stories became the Kataka tales, which are now part of the Buddhist scriptures, and in these stories Buddha remembers previous lives in which he took on human forms, animal forms, even the form of a tree. According to traditional Buddhism, we’ve all had hundreds of previous lives. Our actions in this life determine in what form we shall be reborn in our next life. Furthermore, in many Mahayana Buddhist traditions, there is a place called naraka into which you can be reborn if you were extremely bad in your previous life. Naraka is roughly equivalent to the Christian hell, though you don’t arrive through by being judged by someone else; furthermore, and you don’t stay there for all eternity, but rather only for as long as it takes to work out your karma so that you can be reborn again into a higher world.

    Just as naraka is not the same as the Christian hell, Buddhists don’t have an exact equivalent for the Christian heaven. The goal is to break the endless cycle of rebirth, which you do by achieving nirvana; as I understand it, the word nirvana means in a literal sense something like extinction or nothingness. Gotama Buddha was able to achieve enlightenment, to reach nirvana, and what made him truly great was that he was then able to turn back from nirvana so that he could tell others how to be freed from the endless cycle of rebirth.

    You can see that traditional Buddhism doesn’t think about the afterlife in the same way as the ancient Greeks did, nor as nineteenth century American Christians did. Yet each of these three different religious traditions argues that if you live your life in the right way, you can be rewarded after death with something good. Interestingly, we find this same basic notion in some atheist traditions — or to speak more precisely, in the tradition of religious naturalism, a tradition that rejects any kind of supernaturalism in religion. Religious naturalists argue that the only way we can live on is in the thoughts and memories and actions of the people who survive us. If during your lifetime, you treat other people with kindness and compassion, then after you die you can live on in them whenever they act with whatever kindness and compassion they may have learned from you. So this is yet another kind of afterlife — and it’s not just a metaphorical afterlife, because your memory can have a very real and literal impact on the world. While there is no heaven or hell, no nirvana or endless rebirth, nevertheless your actions during you life affect what happens to you after death.

    These are just a few of the more common ideas of the afterlife that are floating around in our culture today. But I find I don’t fully agree with any of these ideas of the afterlife. I’m a Universalist, as the result of which I demand an egalitarian afterlife. Universalism began as the Christian heresy of universal salvation: if God is indeed omnibenevolent or all good, then God would not damn anyone to eternal punishment; so everyone gets to go to heaven. By now, I think I’ve heard all the standard rebuttals of Universalism — from people who want to make sure their political opponents go to hell; from people who want to make sure someone they especially dislike, like an ex-spouse, doesn’t join them in heaven; from people who rebel at the idea that evil-doers get to go to heaven; and so on. But I remain a Universalist because I figure if there is an afterlife (a question I remain neutral on), then universal salvation is my only chance of getting to heaven. I’m a fallible human being, and like every other fallible human being, I’ve done plenty of things that were — to use Mark Twain’s phrase — “ornery and low down and mean.” If there really are pearly gates, and if I get there, St. Peter is going to open up his big book and remind me of the time when I was four years old and I bit my older sister — and that would be only the beginning of a very long list of low-down, mean, ornery things I’ve done.

    In my opinion, the problem with all these schemes of an afterlife is how exclusive they are. You have to be a far better human being than I’ll ever be to make it into the afterlife. Not only would I not be allowed into heaven, I’m no good as a Buddhist, either. I meditated for fifteen years, and finally gave it up because it was making me miserable; which means I have no doubt I’m accumulating all kinds of karma that will keep me on the endless cycle of rebirth forever. Nor am I comforted by the religious naturalists who tell me that I’ll live on in the memories of those who knew me: partly because that’s a pretty short afterlife, lasting maybe sixty or seventy years; and partly because (as is true of all of us) there are plenty of people who don’t like me, and honestly I don’t want to live on in their memories.

    If there’s going to be an afterlife, I want it to be an egalitarian afterlife — I want everyone to get in. If I were a Buddhist, I’d be a Pure Land Buddhist. As I understand it, the Pure Land Buddhists teach that anyone can gain access to the Pure Land after you die; you don’t have to go into seclusion, you don’t have to engage in difficult esoteric practices like mindfulness, you don’t have to achieve some higher spiritual state. Really, all you have to do is to chant, “I take refuge in Buddha.” There, I just did it — now I get to go to the Pure Land. That’s why I want everyone to get in — because if everyone can get in, then I know I can get in, too.

    And there are many other notions of the afterlife that are more or less current in our society today. We can see traces of traditional African cultures in which someone who’s dead remains with us as long as there’s someone who knew them when they were alive, and who can pour libations for them; after everyone who knew them is dead, then they merge into a broad group of the dead, a sort of collective unconscious. In traditional Navajo religion, once you die you’re supposed to fade into oblivion, but if there’s something to keep you tied to the world of the living, then you persist as a troubled ghost; this is not the kind of afterlife any of us would hope for. Among some religious naturalists, the afterlife is nothing but a metaphor, and we heard an echo of that in the second reading this morning: “The Pure Land is symbolic; it symbolizes the transcendence of relativity, of all limited qualities, of the finiteness of human life.” And to return to Socrates — Plato tells us that when Socrates was on his deathbed, he gave two possibilities for what happens to us after we die: either we all go to the Elysian fields, enjoying there a blessed existence for all eternity; or we slip into oblivion, which he describes as having the most perfect sleep possible, without the disturbance of dreams or nightmares. This last idea of the afterlife retains currency for some people in our society today.

    These are but a few of the possibilities for the afterlife. All these different possibilities remind me of another stupid joke, which goes like this:

    A Unitarian Universalist dies and, somewhat to her surprise, finds herself standing in a long line of people waiting along the road to heaven. Way up ahead, she catches sight of a fork in the road. When she gets up to the fork in the road, she sees there’s a signpost. One sign, which points to the right, say “This Way to Heaven.” The other sign, which points to the left, says “This Way to a Discussion about Heaven.” She takes the left-hand path, going to the discussion about heaven.

    It’s just a stupid joke, but I think it reveals something that’s true for me. If the afterlife is going to be a place of exquisite perfection, I’d be exquisitely bored — and I don’t want to be bored for all eternity. If I were confronted with the situation in the joke, I guess I too would go to the discussion about heaven. At least it wouldn’t be boring, and there’d always be the possibility of making some kind of progress.