Dan Harper | Sermons

Category: Unitarian Universalism

  • Duncan Howlett, Quiet Revolutionary

    This sermon was preached by Rev. Dan Harper at First Unitarian Church in New Bedford. As usual, the sermon below is a reading text. The actual sermon as preached contained more than the usual number of ad libs, interjections, and other improvisation. In addition, minor factual errors have been corrected in this text. Sermon copyright (c) 2008 Daniel Harper.

    Readings

    The first reading is from an undated typescript by Duncan Howlett in the church archives. In this essay, Howlett the question of what Unitarians “believe”:

    “No really satisfying answer to the question, ‘What is Unitarianism?’, is possible because of the assumptions that are implicit in the question itself. Alfred North Whitehead used to say, and I’m quoting, ‘If you cannot agree with a man’s conclusions, but cannot find anything wrong with the argument by which he reaches them, look at his premises — spoken or unspoken — admitted or unadmitted — and there you will find the answer to your question.’ I believe the difficulties we encounter [in] describing Unitarianism are found in the assumptions that we bring to the question itself….

    “Our error lies in the fact that we, like the orthodox [Christians], have always taken the creed structure of Christendom for granted. We have tried to explain ourselves in terms of it and apparently it has never occurred to us to do otherwise…. [But] You don’t say anything really significant about a Unitarian when you give a summary of the theological opinions he happens to hold….”

    And, later in the typescript, Howlett continues:

    “Unitarians, rejecting fixed creeds and confessions of faith, hold that the task of religion is to state its first principles, constantly to test the validity of those principles in open encounter where every voice may be heard, and to be ready to restate them whenever clarity requires. The Unitarians believe that truth in religion, as in all things, lies at the end of the process of inquiring. Every possible facet of human experience must be brought to bear upon such an inquiry if any approximation of truth is to be achieved as a result of it. Unitarians believe that religious differences between men [sic] ought to be measured by their belief in this process or by their lack of it.”

    The second reading comes from a sermon delivered by Howlett in 1941. A little background is necessary: In 1940, Howlett addressed the annual meeting of this congregation, the first minister of this church to be allowed to address an annual meeting for perhaps a century. In that address, Howlett had told the members of the annual meeting that he expected them to attend church on a regular basis. This apparently caused an uproar, and a year later, in this sermon, Howlett was still trying to explain himself. Characteristically, although he softened his words, he continued to strongly affirm his basic points, as we will hear in this excerpt. Howlett wrote:

    “We are growing steadily in every phase of our activity. This includes the congregation. And eventually, our normal growth will carry us to the point where this church will be comfortably full. But most of us do not want to wait for that time to come. We want now to have a congregation in this church that will make possible natural growth without losses.

    “…people will go to the church whose members believe in it, because they want to belong to a church of which they can be proud.

    “Our church can be that church. The congregation we have here this morning is testimony to the potential power we possess. There is no reason why we should not be a great church. There is no reasons why we should not enjoy the steady growth to which we are entitled. If each of us will realize the part which he [sic] can play in the whole task, it can easily be done….

    “People gravitate naturally to the church in which the members themselves believe. They want to be part of a church that is alive and growing, and that is able to command the loyalty of its adherents. The impression this church makes, its impact upon the community, depends far more upon the people than the minister. Let us be true to the greatness of this church in the past; let us realize its growing power in the present, and let us carry it to even greater things in the days to come. And having done so, our church shall become one of the greatest churches in this city and one of the largest in the denomination.”

    Sermon

    This morning, I propose to tell you three stories about Duncan Howlett, who was the minister of our church from 1938 to 1946. There can be no doubt that Howlett was the greatest minister this church had in the 20th C. Under his leadership, this church saw higher sustained Sunday attendance than at any other time in the past hundred years for which we have accurate records. We can include the 21st C. as well: Duncan Howlett stands head and shoulders above any minister of this congregation for over a hundred years. However, great ministers do not exist without great churches. Any story about Duncan Howlett’s ministry here must also be a story about the greatness of this congregation, so when I say I’m going to speak about Duncan Howlett, I’m also going to speak about this church.

    I am calling Duncan Howlett a “quiet revolutionary.” When I call him “quiet,” I don’t mean he was quiet in the sense of being mousy, or having a soft voice, or being a shrinking violet. When I say “quiet revolutionary,” I mean he was not the sort of revolutionary who wanted a sharp break with the past, or who wanted to stir things up just for the sake of stirring things up. Howlett was a revolutionary who looked for continual ongoing change because of his deepest religious beliefs.

    Howlett studied with Alfred North Whitehead, the great process theologian, and from his studies with Whitehead he learned to believe that change is inevitable. As he wrote in the first reading this morning, he believed that “the task of religion is to state its first principles, constantly to test the validity of those principles in open encounter where every voice may be heard, and to be ready to restate them whenever clarity requires.” That is to say, the world is constantly in a state of flux, and therefore the purpose of a religious community is to continually move forward. This theology of process, of continual change, was the deep religious belief that drove Duncan Howlett to be a quiet revolutionary.

    I’m going to tell you three interlocking stories about Duncan Howlett, beginning with his tenure here in New Bedford, and ending with his retirement in Maine. But I had better start by giving you a brief overview of his early life:

    He was born in Newton, Massachusetts, in 1906; and was the son of a “well-to-do-painting contractor” [profile of Howlett in Washington Post, August 27, 1983]. After graduating from Newton North High School, he went to Harvard College, graduated in 1928, went on to Harvard Law School, was admitted to the Massachusetts Bar in 1931 and practiced law for two years. In 1933, he entered Harvard Divinity School, where he studied with Alfred North Whitehead, graduating in 1936 with honors. While in divinity school, he began serving as the minister of Second Unitarian Church in Salem. In 1935, he traveled around the world, crossing from Europe into India via the famed Khyber Pass. (1) Our own church lured him away from the Salem church in 1938, and it is in our own church that my first story about Howlett takes place.

    …

    When Duncan Howlett arrived here in 1938, our church was not exactly thriving. Sunday attendance had been declining since before the Great Depression — this decline took place even though most of New Bedford’s Universalists joined this church when First Universalist Church on William St. closed its doors in the 1930s. So why was attendance declining?

    One problem was that this church had maintained the old pew rental system that most New England churches abolished in the early twentieth century. In the early 19th C., many people owned pews here (literally owned the pew, for there were deeds and taxes); later, families no longer owned the pews, they rented them from the church. By 1938, most pews were rented by specific families, yet some of those families never came to church. Some people rented pews here, but were members of other churches! On Sunday mornings, the ushers closed the doors to the pews that were owned by various families. If you were a newcomer, you’d walk into this church, be placed into one of the few open pew, and look around and see all these empty pews that no one sat in, and that no one was allowed to sit in. It must have been a kind of spooky experience — pews full of ghosts that you couldn’t see! — and needless to say, most newcomers never returned. (2)

    Another problem lay in another old, outmoded way of doing things:– the minister was absolutely barred from taking part in the financial and business affairs of this church. Indeed, the minister was not even allowed to say anything at the annual congregational meeting. Back in the 18th C., this congregation was established by the Massachusetts Bay Colony government, and according to law, Massachusetts Bay and the town government had authority over the financial and business affairs of the congregation. Back then, Massachusetts Bay congregations consisted of two separate organizations: the society, which governed the business affairs such as the building and the salary of the minister and so on; and the church, which governed the religious affairs such as communion (yes, they had communion in those days), the church covenant, and church membership. In old Massachusetts churches, the church was governed by the minister and the deacons, while the society was governed, initially by local government, and after 1833 by a separate corporation. What happened in our congregation is that in the late 19th C., Rev. William Potter stopped communion, let the old covenant die off, and basically let the church wither away entirely; while the society remained strong.

    But by the 1930s, all the other Unitarian churches that I know of had abolished or greatly restricted pew rentals and ownnership; and they combined the old functions of the church and the society, so that the business and religious aspects of the congregation were more or less integrated. But Duncan Howlett arrived at this church to find the church side of the congregation had withered away, and on top of that he wasn’t even allowed to speak in front of the annual meeting of the society.

    As I have said, Howlett was a quiet revolutionary. He knew that times had changed, and were continuing to change. He got permission to address the annual meeting, and by all accounts he let them have it with both barrels. He told the members of the annual meeting that this church was more than a business venture that oversaw a historic building. He told them that it wasn’t enough to pay for a pew, and show up once a year for annual meeting. He told them that he expected every man Jack and every woman Jill of them to show up at church on a regular basis, and he told them in no uncertain terms. If you read the text of the talk he gave that annual meeting, you can see that he brought the whole of his Harvard Law training, and his Harvard Divinity School training, to bear on making his case.

    Apparently, he caused quite a ruckus — I mean, a genteel sort of ruckus, for this was a genteel church back in those days. At least seventy of the lay leaders agreed with him, and they formed a “Committee of Seventy,” and they called on every one of the three hundred and fifty members of the church. These lay leaders asked people to give up their pews, and requested they come regularly to Sunday morning worship. Duncan Howlett pointed out the problem; and a group of strong, dedicated lay leaders worked with him to bring our church out of the 19th C. and into the 20th C.

    Then the Second World War intervened. Howlett was in the middle of that, too — in the summer of 1939, he went to Europe to help Martha and Waitstill Sharp with their relief efforts in central Europe, and in November of 1940, he welcomed Rev. Maja Capek to New Bedford after she escaped from the Nazis, and he and this church supported her in her efforts to revive North Unitarian Church in the North End of this city. The Second World War put a temporary halt to the effort to make this church grow. And then, in 1946, the then-prestigious First Church in Boston hired Howlett away from us. (3)

    So ends my first little story about Duncan Howlett. I will only remark that everything Howlett did while he was here was consistent with his theology of process, of moving continually forward in an ever-changing world.

    …

    Duncan Howlett stayed at First Church in Boston for a dozen years, and then All Souls Church in Washington D.C. called him. The famous A. Powell Davies had just retired as minister of All Souls. You probably haven’t heard of A. Powell Davies, but in those days he was well-known — the Washington newspapers held their Monday editions until they could get the manuscript of his Sunday sermon. All Souls was huge — something like 1500 members — and included several congressmen in its membership.

    Howlett stayed at All Souls for ten years. In that decade, he was active in fighting racism. He participated in Civil Rights marches in Alabama, Mississippi, and Washington. When James Reeb, the associate minister at All Souls, was beaten to death by racist white thugs in Selma, Alabama, in 1965, Howlett took a leave of absence to write Reeb’s biography — a book which is still in print more than forty years later. In 1968, he expressed sympathy for the Black Power movement. One Washington newspaper did a poll which indicated that Howlett was one of the five most-trusted white men among the African Americans of the city.

    Remember that Howlett’s religious faith was founded on his theology of process, on his belief that we must continually forward in an ever-changing world. Thus it was entirely consistent with Howlett’s religious faith when, in 1968, he resigned as minister of All Souls, saying he wanted to make way for an African American minister to take charge of that church. The Washington Post reported on Howlett’s resignation, and I’d like to read you an excerpt from the March 24, 1968, edition of that newspaper:

    “The Rev. Dr. Duncan Howlett, a civil-rights leader here and a national figure in the Unitarian Universalist denomination, resigned yesterday as minister of All Souls’ Church to make way for a Negro minister.

    “Unitarian Universalists, in the forefront of white liberalism, have yet to call a Negro to the pulpit of one of their churches….

    “With a membership of nearly 1500, a budget of $173,000 [that’s over one million in today’s dollars], and an endowment of $1.4 million [that’s 8.2 million in today’s dollars], All Souls is one of the more vigorous churches in the denomination. Dr. Howlett has been its minister since December, 1958, when he succeeded the Rev. Dr. A. Powell Davies.

    “ ‘One of the strongest motives in my stepping down,’ he said in his resignation sermon, ‘is the conviction that All Souls’ Church can and should take the lead in integrating the ministry of our Unitarian churches.’

    “All Souls’ doing this, he said, ‘would be one more breakthrough for the Negro into leadership in American culture.’

    “The first major church in Washington to have an integrated membership, All Souls has had a Negro director of its school of religion, and Negroes in other leadership capacities. The first integrated police boys’ club in Washington meets there.

    “Dr. Howlett did not suggest a particular Negro candidate to succeed him.” (4)

    Duncan Howlett saw that the world was changing, and he saw that white men like him who were in positions of leadership would have to step aside to make room for people of color to take on leadership roles. So he stepped aside. That was a quietly revolutionary act.

    All Souls Church in Washington did in fact call an African American minister. It remains a big, powerful city church, with a racially integrated membership — last time I was there, it looked to me that the church was about half white, half black, and half a mix of other skin colors and racial identities. So many urban churches have seen slipping membership in the past half century, but not All Souls Church in Washington.

    I like to imagine what would have happened had Howlett stayed here through the 1960s, and had resigned from this church in 1968 to make way for a person of color to become minister of this church. Would that have made an impact on the wider racial unrest that was happening in this city back then? Would this church have become even more racially integrated than it is now? I have no idea, but it’s fun to think about. (And I suspect someone else from this church has imagined the same thing, because why else would I find that Washington Post clipping about Howlett resigning upstairs in our church’s archives?)

    …

    Let me continue on with a third, very short story about Duncan Howlett. When he left All Souls, he retired and went on to a new project. He moved to Center Lovell, Maine, where he and his wife had purchased on old farm, and he proceeded to manage that farm as a forest. He was an early believer in the environmental movement, and he believed that a good way to maintain the natural environment was through sustainable management practices. He disapproved of the timber industry’s forestry practices, which tended to degrade the woodlands, rather than improve them; and he managed his own woodlands with sustainable management practices. Ever the organizer, in 1975 Howlett organized the Small Woodlot Owners Association of Maine, to further his goal of sustainable management of forests. (5)

    Moving from anti-racism to environmentalism might seem like a radical change of direction for Duncan Howlett, but I don’t see it that way. Remember that Howlett’s religious faith was founded on his theology of process, on his belief that we must continually forward in an ever-changing world. He saw that caring for the environment was going to be the next big issue that we had to face. Given his religious faith, it should be no surprise that he felt he had to address this newly emerging problem.

    …

    Duncan Howlett believed that the truth in religion lies in an ongoing process of inquiry. He continually tested the validity of his principles in an open process of inquiry. He saw that our church here in New Bedford had to abolish pew rentals, and he worked with lay leaders to make that happen. He saw that All Souls Church in Washington, D.C., should have an African American minister, and he provided leadership to make that happen. Then in retirement he saw that environmental problems had to be addressed, and he did what he could to promote sustainable land use practices.

    He was a quiet revolutionary, someone who continually challenged the validity of his and other people’s principles. He did not run away from change, but he embraced it. He was a visionary leader who made things happen, sometimes through unorthodox means. As a quiet revolutionary, he pushed others beyond what they felt comfortable doing. And his leadership got results:

    The Small Woodlot Owners Association of Maine continues to promote the combined goals of protecting Maine’s woodlands resources while encouraging optimal sustainable productivity through good forestry practices. SWOAM established a public land trust in 1990, and the first girt of land they received was 300 acres of Duncan Howlett’s forest. (6)

    All Souls Church remains a big, powerful, racially integrated urban church. They have continued to move forward, and they now have two ministers, one of whom is white, the other of whom is black.

    And our own church thrived after Howlett left. The lay leaders modernized the way this church operated. By the early 1950s, our Sunday attendance had skyrocketed, with two worship services and a huge Sunday school. The only thing that stopped our continued growth was a systemic problem called “the pastoral to program size transition” — but that’s another story, one which I will tell in another sermon later this fall.

    Even though we have not yet become a big church, we continue in the belief that we share with Duncan Howlett: that we must continually move forward in an ever-changing world. We are more racially integrated that most other Unitarian Universalist congregations — we still have a way to go before we’re fully integrated, but we are moving forward. Many of our members are involved in sustainability, and if you go to the Bioneers sustainability conference here in New Bedford October 24-26, you’ll see lots of our members there. And we have taken on issues that Howlett never dreamed of — for example, we were strong advocates for legalizing same sex marriage here in Massachusetts.

    May we continue to be influenced by Duncan Howlett’s theology of process. May we continue to move ever forward in an ever-changing world.

    Notes

    (1) Biographical information from a typescript written by Howlett in the First Unitarian archives.
    (2) Information from the second half of this paragraph from Howlett’s 1941 sermon.
    (3) Information in this paragraph from documents and newspaper clippings in the church archives.
    (4) “Pastor quits, opens way for Negro” by Kenneth Dole, Washington Post, 24 March, 1968, pp. A1 and A5.
    (5) From a 1983 clipping in the church archive from the Washington Post.
    (6) According to the SWOAM Web site, accessed 2 October 2008.

  • Look Ma, No Creed

    This sermon was preached by Rev. Dan Harper at First Unitarian Church in New Bedford. As usual, the sermon below is a reading text. The actual sermon as preached contained more than the usual number of ad libs, interjections, and other improvisation. Sermon copyright (c) 2008 Daniel Harper.

    Readings

    The readings were extensive excerpts from a poem by Everett Hoagland titled “The Pilgrim.” This poem may be found in his book …Here…: New and Selected Poems, pp. 116-117.

    Sermon

    When I tell people that I belong to a Unitarian Universalist church, one of the first things they ask me is: “So what do Unitarian Universalists believe?” Every time someone says that to me, I’m not entirely sure what to say.

    You see, when someone asks a Unitarian Universalist, “What do you folks believe?” — well, it’s completely the wrong question to ask. We don’t have a creed, and therefore we don’t have a certain set of beliefs we are supposed to adhere to. But here we are in New Bedford, a city dominated by the Catholic Church on the one hand, and conservative Christianity on the other hand, and those good folks all have creeds. They know what they believe. Catholic kids have to memorize the catechism. Conservative Christian kids know that they are supposed to accept Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior (or whatever the exact phrasing is of their particular denomination). For most people in this area, religion equals belief.

    Our whole country is dominated by this religious idea that religion is defined as a set of beliefs. Our neighbors want to know what we believe. Our politicians, in order to be elected, have to tell people what they believe. Our scholars, the anthropologists, write books in which they define religion as a set of beliefs. But we who are Unitarian Universalists know that religion cannot be defined merely as a set of beliefs. We know that the scholars who write books defining religion as a set of beliefs haven’t been able to escape their own cultural and religious prejudices. We Unitarian Universalists know this, because our religion is not defined by a set of beliefs. We know this, but try telling a professor of cultural anthropology that he or she is wrong; you’re not going to get very far. Try telling a politician that we don’t really care what she or he believes, and that politician will reply, You might not care but everyone else does. And then your neighbor asks you, “So what is it that you Unitarian Universalists believe?” — you know you are going to have a hard time explaining that your religion doesn’t have a creed.

    Speaking from my own experience, when you try to tell your neighbor that we Unitarian Universalists don’t have a specific set of beliefs, there are five common responses that you get back. Your neighbor might tell you, “Why, that’s not a religion at all!” Your neighbor might ask you, with faint horror in their voice, “You mean you don’t believe in anything at all?” Your neighbor might ask you, again with faint horror in their voice, “You mean you can believe anything you want?” Your neighbor might say, “Well, I know you believe in something,” and then proceed to tell you exactly what it is that they think Unitarian Universalists believe in. Or — and this is the most common response in my experience — your neighbor just stares at you blankly, and then changes the subject.

    So when someone asks me, “So what do you Unitarian Universalists believe?” — I find it difficult to respond. But over the years I have come up with three possible responses we Unitarian Universalists might give to that impossible question, “So what do you believe in anyway?”

    (1) The first possible response you might give to that impossible question is to talk about the so-called “seven principles” excerpted from Article 2 of the bylaws of the Unitarian Universalist Association. We read those seven principles aloud together in the responsive reading. And they’re a pretty good statement of the values we Unitarian Universalists hold together. However, this can also confuse your questioner, who is liable to respond, “Well but those sound like a creed to me.” So you might have to explain to that person just what a creed is.

    A creed is a statement of belief or a profession of faith that is binding upon a group of people, and those seven principles do not meet at least two parts of the definition of creed. First of all, those seven principles are not binding on any individual: in Article 2 of the bylaws of the Unitarian Universalist Association, it is explicitly stated that they may not be used as any kind of creedal formula, because freedom of belief is a bedrock principle of Unitarian Universalism. Second of all, the seven principles are not a statement of belief: those seven principles don’t tell us that we have to believe certain specific things about God or the absence of God or about anything supernatural or natural : those seven principles don’t tell us to believe anything ; they ask us to affirm and promote certain values and ideals. So the seven principles are not a creed.

    Unfortunately, when a couple of respectable religious educators put the seven principles into the child-friendly language which we heard in the response to today’s responsive reading, they (in a moment of weakness) used the word “belief” which has greatly confused the matter, so that too many people now think those seven principles are some kind of creed.

    Even with all these explanations, if you are asked what Unitarian Universalists believe and you mention those seven principles, many people think you are telling them that we Unitarian Universalists have a creed. Therefore, when I am asked what I believe, I prefer to reduce confusion by not mentioning the seven principles right away.

    (2) A second possible response you might give to the question, “What do you Unitarian Universalists believe?” is to say something like this: We don’t have a creed or a statement of beliefs at all; instead what holds us together is our covenant.

    This is the most accurate answer you could possible give. But if you give that answer, you’re liable to get a response that sounds like something out of an old Bill Cosby comedy routine: “Rrrright…. What’s a ‘covenant’?” Which means you have to be prepared to be able to give a short and easy-to-understand definition of “covenant.” So what is a covenant?

    In our religious tradition, a covenant is a formal voluntary agreement, made by and voluntarily agreed upon by the members of a church, an agreement which constitutes those individuals into a formal religious organization. Typically, a covenant will outline how individual members of the congregation intend to treat each other, and it outline the relation they intend to have with something that is greater than themselves. Typically, a covenant is a written document, developed by the membership of the church along with the minister (if they have a minister), voted on by the entire congregation, and often actually signed by all church members.

    Now this is a wonderful answer to give when someone asks you what “you Unitarian Universalists believe anyway”: simply say that we don’t have set beliefs but we do have a covenant; then brief describe what a covenant is; and you will have given an answer that is both accurate and satisfactory.

    There’s only one problem: our church doesn’t have a covenant any more. That is to say, while we do have an implicit covenant, we no longer have an explicit written covenant. We haven’t had a written covenant since William Potter’s day, and William Potter was minister of this church from 1861 to 1893. Now I know Potter has a high reputation, and look, we even have a statue of him standing over in the corner of the sanctuary. But I’m not a fan of Potter, and my main criticism and complaint about him is that he did not seem to understand covenants, or why they are so important. Potter thought he was a very advanced thinker, and he got this church to leave the American Unitarian Association and join a new religious group he helped found, the Free Religious Association. The FRA was so free that it never amounted to much of anything — rather than an organization, it would be best to call it a disorganization, and it didn’t live past Potter’s generation. Fortunately, Potter’s successor, Paul Revere Frothingham, got us back into the American Unitarian Association. Unfortunately, we never got a new covenant.

    Yet although we no longer have a written covenant, over the past three years, I managed to piece together an implicit covenant. I started with the little cards that you have to sign when you become a church member; I added in a few bits from the church bylaws; then I started reading what I pieced together at the beginning of each Sunday morning worship service. When people came to me and suggested changes, I’d make the change, and start reading the changed version. It’s been a year now since anyone suggested changes, and this is what our implicit covenant now sounds like:

    Here at First Unitarian, we value our differences of age, gender, race, national origin, class, sexual orientation, physical and mental ability, and theology. We are bound together, not by some creed or dogma, but by our covenant: We come together in love to seek after truth and goodness, to find spiritual transformation in our lives; and in the spirit of love we care for one another and promote practical goodness in the world.

    However, this is not a real covenant: the members of this church have not voted on it, nor do we ask new members to sign it. So if you try to tell someone that we Unitarian Universalists don’t have set beliefs but we do have covenant, then you will have to try to explain that our church doesn’t really have a covenant but we sort of have something that might be a covenant…. by which point the person who asked you that question will be thoroughly confused.

    (3) So let me give you a third possible response to the question, “What do you Unitarian Universalists believe?” You might choose to give a poetic or metaphorical answer to that question. You might answer something like this: We are like a group of spiritual pilgrims who have banded together to become companions on our spiritual journeys to,– well, we don’t quite know where our spiritual journeys are headed.

    This is the answer that I am most likely to give these days. I like this answer because then I can show my questioner the image of the pilgrim in this huge mosaic here behind the pulpit. (Since this image is on a free postcard that you can pick up by the front door, and since this image is also on our church Web site, you don’t even have to be standing here in church to show this image of the pilgrim.) You can point to this image and say: — See, this is what our church is all about.

    Just to make this perfectly clear, let me describe and explain this image to you:

    We know that each one of us is a pilgrim on a spiritual path that is more or less difficult. While we each have to make that spiritual journey on our own, those of us who are here know that it is best if you have companions on your journey. That is what we see in this mosaic: A pilgrim walks up a steep and dangerous mountain path, a path so steep that one false step could send him plummeting into the gorge below. But behind the pilgrim we see a guardian angel, ready to extend a steadying hand if the pilgrim stumbles.

    To me, that guardian angel is the embodiment of our congregation, infused with that which is highest and best in the universe. We know that people in this church can extend a helping hand to us when we need it. We know that our congregation, this band of spiritual pilgrims, can exert a steadying influence on each one of us, keeping us from stumbling or falling. This is not the stuff of high drama and excitement: — the mosaic doesn’t show the pilgrim plummeting into the depths with the angel about to perform a heroic rescue. It may be that all we need is to show up here on Sunday morning and know that there are others like us.

    And at some point you reach a high point in your spiritual journey. When you reach one of those high points, those transcendent experiences that Emerson wrote about, you may get further insight into the nature of covenant and religious community; as we hear in Everett Hoagland’s poem about a pilgrim who has reached one of those high points:

    . . . From here
    on the mountain peak the lakes look
    like the great, rainfilled foot-

    prints of a god. I turn
    around and see The Other’s track
    merge with mine. . . .

    Sometimes we experience moments when we have this incredible sense of deep interconnectedness with other people. It doesn’t matter what those other people believe; it matters only that we are connected. This gets at the essence of who we are as religious people: we are a religious people who sometimes manage to turn around and see The Other’s footprints merge with our own. Then we know, in our deepest being, that connection between all beings.

    Everything else about our religious faith can follow from that. Once we experience that — once we turn around and see The Other’s footprint merge with our own footprint, then we must affirm the inherent worth and dignity of all persons. Once we know we’re all interconnected in this way, then we have a gut-level understanding of what a covenant can be. All our deepest values spring from this sense that we are connected with one another, and connected with something greater than ourselves, which some of us might call God and some of us might call the Web of Life; and others of us will have different names and different beliefs, but they all add up to being interconnected.

    In short, if someone asks you “what you Unitarian Universalists believe anyway,” you don’t even have to show that person this image of the pilgrim, you can read them Everett’s poem.

    We know that when we get hurt by life — when illness or accident strikes; when we get bitter and angry at the world; when someone hurts us deliberately; when life hands us one of its disappointments — we know that when we are hurt by life, there are others around us who can exert a steadying influence on us if we let them; there are those who will offer us a helping hand if we need it. Our church is a place that allows us to be supported and guided and comforted and healed by others. We don’t have to believe in a certain set of beliefs in order for this to be true. We don’t have to be healed by some supposedly holy priest or minister — we are healed and comforted simply by showing up on Sunday morning, and knowing that there are others in our religious community, a community which hovers behind us and which can help us, if we let it, when we need help.

    That’s why I am a Unitarian Universalist. That’s why I go to church. Not because I think I have to believe in something. But because every once in a while, when the going gets tough, I need to know that there is a sort of guardian angel in my life. As an independent New Englander, I probably won’t ask for help, and would refuse help if it were offered, but I do need to know that kind of help is available if I wanted it.

    And then, when I get to those high points of existence, I know I will turn around, and look back at the footprints I am making as I go on my spiritual journey, and once again see that the footprints of The Other have merged with my own.

  • Samuel West, Eccentric Revolutionary

    This sermon was preached by Rev. Dan Harper at First Unitarian Church in New Bedford. As usual, the sermon below is a reading text. The actual sermon as preached contained ad libs, interjections, and other improvisation. Sermon copyright (c) 2008 Daniel Harper.

    Readings

    The first reading this morning is taken from a sermon preached on May 29, 1776, by Samuel West, who was the minister of this church from 1761 to 1803. The sermon from which this reading is taken gives a moral and religious justification for the North American colonies to rebel against Great Britain. It was preached by Samuel West to the House of Representatives and Council of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. West said:

    “Thus we see that both reason and revelation perfectly agree in pointing out the nature, end, and design of government, viz., that it is to promote the welfare and happiness of the community; and that subjects have a right to do everything that is good, praiseworthy, and consistent with the good of the community, and are only to be restrained when they do evil and are injurious either to individuals or the whole community; and that they ought to submit to every law that is beneficial to the community for conscience’ sake, although it may in some measure interfere with their private interest; for every good man will be ready to forego his private interest for the sake of being beneficial to the public. Reason and revelation, we see, do both teach us that our obedience to rulers is not unlimited, but that resistance is not only allowable, but an indispensable duty in the case of intolerable tyranny and oppression. From both reason and revelation we learn that, as the public safety is the supreme law of the state, — being the true standard and measure by which we are to judge whether any law or body of laws are just or not, — so legislators have aright to make, and require subjection to, any set of laws that have a tendency to promote the good of the community.”

    [The complete sermon is online here.]

    The second reading comes from a short biography of Dr. Samuel West, written by John Morison, who was co-minister of our church from 1838-1844. This short biography was later edited by Samuel Atkins Eliot in 1910 when he was president of the American Unitarian Association; Eliot, as it happened, was the grandson of Ephraim Peabody, who was co-minister of our church from 1838-1844; and Samuel Eliot preached from this very pulpit more than once. In any case, here is how John Morison described Samuel West’s theology:

    “Dr. West’s sympathies with humanity were too quick to make him a good Calvinist. His sermons were largely of the old Biblical and textual type, but theologically they were Unitarian in thought and temper. He asserted free will for man in opposition to the Calvinistic doctrine of preordination and election, and he believed in man’s ability of moral choice in opposition to the doctrine of total depravity. In his election sermon of 1776 he said, ‘A revelation pretending to be from God that contradicts any part of natural laws ought immediately to be rejected as an imposture, for the Deity cannot make a law contrary to the law of nature without acting contrary to himself.’ In his Forefathers’ Day sermon [of 1777] he said: ‘Love and unity are the essential marks of a true Christian. Were we possessed of true Christian candor, by a fair and impartial comparison we should find that many differences in explaining matters of faith are only mere verbal differences, and entirely vanish when we come to define our terms.’ It was natural that under such a minister, broad and tolerant in spirit, robust in thought, fervid in patriotism, incisive in logic, inclusive in fellowship, that [West’s church] should pass without break or discussion into the liberal ranks.”

    [Samuel Atkins Eliot, ed., Heralds of a Liberal Faith: Vol. 1, The Prophets (Boston: American Unitarian Association, 1914).]

    Sermon

    This is the three hundredth anniversary of the establishment of our church, and with that in mind, this fall I am going to continue a series of sermons begun last fall in which I talk about exceptional people from our church’s past. I suppose you could call this the “Three Hundredth Anniversary Sermon Series.” But in my own mind, I have come to call this series “Inspired and Inspiring Lives.” We Unitarian Universalists don’t have saints, but we do have people to whom we look when we need inspiration as we live out our own lives. We don’t have saints, but yet we do seek out moral exemplars, individuals who lived worthy lives, and whom we might emulate to good purpose. And it is good for us to talk about people from whom we can draw inspiration — being fully aware of their flaws and quirks of personality, but also being fully aware of what makes them good or even great human beings, and how we might emulate their goodness or greatness.

    Last fall, I gave you sermons on three inspiring and inspired lives: — I spoke about Maja Capek, minister of North Unitarian Church, who escaped Czechoslovakia ahead of the Nazis, and wholed a church of immigrants here in New Bedford ; and I spoke about John Murray Spear, the first Universalist minister in New Bedford, who fought for abolition of slavery and who built a racially integrated church here in this city in the 1830s and 1840s. And beginning this morning, I’m returning to this topic.

    This morning I would like to talk with you about a person from our past whom I have come to greatly admire: Rev. Dr. Samuel West, minister of this church from 1761 to 1803. In the readings this morning, I have tried to give you a sense of how Rev. Dr. Samuel West contributed to the American Revolution. In the first reading, we heard an excerpt from West’s Election Sermon of May 29, 1776, and how West helped the political leaders of his time to understand how to steer a carefully plotted course between submission to the tyrannies of the British government on the one hand, and anarchy on the other hand. In 1776, there were many great thinkers here in the British colonies who were trying to prove that, on the one hand, they must rebel against Britain, but that, on the other hand, rebelling against Britain did not mean doing away with all government altogether. And we all know that West was not the greatest of these thinkers, — he was not as great as Thomas Jefferson, or Thomas Paine, or John Adams. Yet his Election Day Sermon of 1776, which was widely distributed here in the Massachusetts Bay Colony, is noteworthy for its clarity; it is still readable today, and abridged versions of it are still widely available on the Internet.

    Indeed, I think you could argue that West could have made a much bigger contribution to the American Revolution, except for the fact that he lived down here on the south coast of Massachusetts. Remember that in those days, this region was dominated by the Quakers, who were pacifists, and who therefore were unlikely to declare themselves as passionate revolutionaries. If Samuel West had gotten a church in Boston, it seems likely to me that he would have been right in the thick of the planning of the American Revolution; but in those days, New Bedford was a long way from Boston, a long ride on horseback over rough roads.

    Selfishly, I am glad that West remained here in New Bedford. It is West more than any other minister, more than any other single person, who put his mark on this church; it is West who led this church away from its Calvinist beginnings into liberal religion; and there we have stayed ever since. That West served here has been the best possible thing for our church (in my selfish view); but I feel that West paid the price for our good fortune, for he was unable to participate in the Revolutionary cause as fully as he might have otherwise done.

    West paid another price for living down here in old Dartmouth, and later in the brand new city of New Bedford. West was a gifted scholar and, by all accounts, a brilliant man. John Morison, in his short biography of West, tells us that: “Among his own society [West] found little intellectual sympathy. [The people of his church] were a plain, industrious, uneducated people.” On top of that, West was very poorly paid. When he arrived at this church in 1761, he was promised a salary of sixty-six pounds, thirteen shillings, and sixpence per year; in terms of today’s dollars, that would be roughly $20,000, a low salary for someone who had a degree from Harvard College. It is true that West also received additional compensation in the form of two cows and a horse that were to be maintained by the congregation for his use. But what it also true is that West never received the whole of his salary:– by 1788, 27 years after he started, the congregation owed him a total of 769 pounds, twelve shillings, and eleven pence; this was nearly two hundred thousand dollars in today’s money. Or put it this way: over a 27 year period, the congregation paid him less than half of what wasn’t a very good salary to begin with. Nor was there much that the congregation could do about the situation: this whole region was sparsely populated and predominantly Quaker, so there just weren’t that many people from whom to get the money to pay Dr. West.

    Thus we can see that circumstances were against Samuel West being able to play any role in the great events of the American Revolution: — he was both poor, and he lived in a provincial backwater of Massachusetts. Yet West rose above these circumstances, and was an active participant in the Revolutionary cause.

    The most prominent of West’s revolutionary activities have been recorded for history. After the Battle of Bunker Hill, West joined the American army as a chaplain. While in the army, he assisted General George Washington by deciphering a treasonous letter written in code by an American officer to a British officer. He was at the Provincial Convention in Watertown, after that revolutionary body had to evacuate Boston, and her preached a sermon for them which was later reprinted. He preached the Election Day sermon in May, 1776, before the House of Representatives. In December, 1777, he delivered a patriotic message for the anniversary sermon at Plymouth, to commemorate the landing of the Pilgrims.

    In the winter and spring of 1779-1780, West was a member of the General Court which met together to prepare a constitution for what became known as the Commonwealth of Massachusetts; this document was finally ratified in June of 1780, and remains the oldest written constitution in effect today. In the winter of 1787-1788, West was part of the convention by means of which Massachusetts approved the United States constitution. There was real doubt as to whether Massachusetts would adopt the United States constitution, and it was Samuel West who played a key behind-the-scenes role. According to historian Francis Baylies, in a letter he wrote to John Clifford of New Bedford, this is what happened:

    “The fate of the Constitution in the convention was doubtful, when Governor Hancock, without whose aid it certainly could not be adopted, was seized with his constitutional disorder, the gout, and, withdrawing from the chair, took to his bed. The friends of the Constitution were convinced of the necessity of getting him out. Dr. West (who was Hancock’s classmate at Harvard) was selected as the person most likely to influence him. He repaired to his house, and after a long condolence on the subject of his bodily complaints he expressed his deep regrets that this affliction should have come upon him at a moment when his presence in the Convention seemed almost indispensable. He enlarged upon his vast influence, his many acts of patriotism, his coming forth in former days, at critical periods, to give new energy to the slumbering patriotism of his countrymen, and on the prodigious effect of his name. Heaven, he said, had given him another glorious opportunity, by saving his country, to win imperishable honor to himself. The whole people would follow his footsteps with blessings. The governor, who knew that Dr. West had always been his sincere and disinterested friend, listened to his suggestions, and made up his mind to appear again in the Convention. Wrapped in his flannels, he took the chair, addressed the Convention, proposed the conciliatory plan suggested by his friend, and the result is known. There is little doubt that Hancock turned the scale in this State in favor of the Constitution, and in my mind there is little doubt that Dr. West induced him to do it.”

    So you see, while Samuel West may have had to play a minor role in the American Revolution and the formation of the new United States of America, it was nevertheless a crucial role.

    Now this is all very interesting, but I am more interested in learning about West as a human being. What comes down to us about Dr. West, above all other aspects of his personality, is that he was somewhat eccentric. The historian Francis Baylies has recorded how absent-minded Dr. West was, saying:

    “During the session of the Convention Dr. West spent many of his evenings abroad. He generally returned with his pockets filled with fine handkerchiefs, silk stockings, silk gloves, small pieces of cambric, and many other articles which could, without attracting attention, be slipped into his pocket. His distress, on discovering them, was ludicrous; for, aware of his absence of mind, he supposed that he might have taken these articles unconsciously and without the consent of the owners, but his fellow-boarders generally contrived to convince him that they were designed as presents, — which was the truth.”

    Many other examples of Dr. West’s absent-mindedness have been recorded. He was known to arrive at the church on horseback, and stop at the horse-block so that his wife could get down from the pillion behind him, only to find that his wife wasn’t there; he had forgotten to wait for her, and had left her at home.

    On another occasion, Dr. West’s horse came running up to the house of another minister, one Dr. Sanger, in another town; the horse had on a saddle, but Dr. West was not on the horse. So Dr. Sanger and some boys living in his house went back to look for Dr. West, figuring that the horse must have thrown him. They found him sitting in the middle of the road, in deep thought, and asked him, “Is it you, Dr. West? How come you’re sitting in the middle of the road?” To which he is said to have replied, “Yes, I suppose it is I, and I suppose the beast has thrown me.” This particular anecdote was recorded by one Charles Lowell, who was one of the boys living with Dr. Sanger at the time.

    People who met him remembered Dr. West’s “eccentricity and roughness,” and his “oddity of manners.” It is easy to remember such personal quirks, but I want to know more about who Dr. West was as a human being. And the historical record does give us a more rounded view of who he was as a human being. The following anecdote was recorded by John Morison:

    “[Dr. West’s] metaphysical investigations must have colored all his thoughts. He usually preached without notes, and was always prepared. Once, when in Boston, during the latter part of his life, he was invited by Dr. Clarke, of the First Church, to preach for him. About an hour before the services were to commence, Father West requested his friend to give him a text. At this Dr. Clarke was alarmed, and asked if it were possible that he was going to preach without notes, and with no other preparation. ‘Come, come,’ said Father West, ‘it is my way, give me a text.’ Dr. Clarke selected Romans ix. 22: ‘What if God, willing to show his wrath, and to make his power known, endured with much long-suffering the vessels of wrath fitted to destruction.’ Dr. West looked over the Bible a few minutes, turning down leaves here and there, and then went into the church, where he preached a cogent, logical discourse, an hour and twenty minutes long, on that perplexing subject. The strong men of the congregation were intensely interested, and Dr. Clarke, on coming from the pulpit, exclaimed, ‘Why, Father West, it would have taken me three months to prepare such a discourse.’ ‘Ha, ha,’ was the reply, ‘and I have been studying it twenty years.’  ”

    And here is another, very brief, anecdote recorded by John Morison. Dr. West “would sometimes follow the young men who were studying theology with him to their bedchamber, and remain discoursing to them nearly the whole night.”

    These last two anecdotes imply that Dr. West must have been a man of uncommon intellect and ability. Perhaps he wished that he lived in a city where he would have had more intellectual stimulation; surely he must have wished that his church had paid him regularly and in full. Rather than bemoan the lack of intellectual stimulation, Dr. West had a rich life of the mind — rich enough that others thought he was absent-minded. And he found ways to remain in conversation with other intellects: — he traveled regularly to Boston, then the intellectual capital of New England if not of the United States, he trained theological students, presumably in his home.

    We can piece together more of Dr. West’s personality from the historical record. We know he married and raised a family, and when his first wife died, he married again. We know that he was a trusting man — he was perhaps too trusting of others, being sometimes unable to know when he was being deceived. We have already learned that he gave much time and energy to public service, at the state and indeed at the national level. And it is also clear that he helped his little church grow and thrive, for in 1795 he moved the church from its old location up in what is now Acushnet down to the corner of Purchase and William Streets in the new and bustling city of New Bedford, so that it could grow and thrive even more — he may not have gotten his full salary, but he was able to convince the church to pay for a new building!

    There is one last little tidbit that I find very interesting: the people of this church called Dr. West “Father West.” I am sure they meant this as a compliment, and as a testament to his character. I imagine the people of this church saw Dr. West as a kind of friendly father-figure: — a good man, an intelligent man, a leader who put his church’s welfare above his own.

    It seems to me that, of all the ministers who have served this church, Dr. Samuel West stands out as the most impressive human being of any of them. Perhaps some of our other ministers surpassed his intellectual capacities, but Dr. West’s intellect was only a small part of who he was. Perhaps he was eccentric and absent-minded; but that appears to have come part-and-parcel with his great intellect, and his general lack of intellectual companionship close to home, and his eccentricities never descended into bizarreness. Perhaps he had odd and even rough manners; but he more than made up for that by his essential goodness and his deep and abiding faith in human nature. Perhaps he never had much money throughout his life here; but he proved that one does not need to be wealthy to be a useful member of society.

    Dr. West combined a great intellect, an essential goodness and decency, and the energy and ability to serve the world around him in spite of adverse circumstances. He had a vision of how this might be a better world, and he worked towards that vision in spite of the obstacles in his way.

    Dr. Samuel West was one person whom we might consider emulating. Not that we should emulate his eccentricity; not that we should try to emulate his poverty. Nor should we try to slavishly emulate every detail of his life. We should consider emulating the core of his life: — He lived in times that called for energetic service to a greater cause, and he served; this we can emulate. He pushed himself to use his intellect beyond what those around him could appreciate; this we can emulate. he lived a good and decent life; this we can emulate. He offered leadership to his church, based on thoughtful consideration of what would best serve the greater good of humanity. He was also able to be agood follower — he was not one of the primary leaders in the American Revolution, but he trhrew his best energies behind the efforts of those leaders — and so we can say that he offered good “followership” as well as good leadership.

    It is in his religious views that we can especially emulate Dr. West. He transcended the narrow Calvinism in which he was brought up; he knew that human beings can and often will make sound moral choices, and so he refused to believe the utter depravity of humanity which many around him preached. And his religious convictions informed his political convictions : he knew that, on the whole, people do make good moral choices, and that, on the whole, individual people will transcend their narrow private interests for the greater good of human society; at the same time, he knew that our highest allegiance must be to our consciences, and from thence to that which is highest and best in humanity, which he called God.

    We Unitarian Universalists don’t have saints, but we do have moral exemplars, people to whom we look when we need inspiration as we live out our own lives. Dr. West is one of the great, if not the greatest, moral exemplars in our church’s long history; may we draw inspiration from his life.