The sermon below was preached by Rev. Dan Harper at First Unitarian Church in New Bedford as part of a special worship service anticipating the three hundredth anniversary of the establishment of the congregation. 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 was read by Honorable Scott Lang, Mayor of New Beddford.
The first reading is an act of the General Court of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts that is the first written record of the establishment of the congregation which became First Unitarian Church in New Bedford:
[1st SESS.] PROVINCE LAWS (Resolves, etc.). — 1708-9.
CHAPTER 8.
Legislative Records of the Council, viii., 360
Executive Records of the Council, iv., 566.
VOTE FOR PROVIDING A MINISTER FOR DARTMOUTH. £. 60, PER ANNUM, ALLOW’D AS A SALARY FOR MR SAMLL HUNT.
WHEREAS it has bin reported & represented to this Court, at a Session in the Year past, by her Majesties Justices of the Court of General Sessions of the Peace for the County of Bristol sitting in Court, That the Town of Dartmouth within the said County, having been several Times presented, & complained of for not Providing them selves of a Minister, as by Law is directed, And that the necessary Orders by them made thereupon, as by Law they are impower’d, not being duly observed, but eluded, and render’d ineffectual for Remedy thereof, They remaining destitute of such a Minister; And Mr Samuel Hunt Minister having been lately treated & prevailed with to go, & reside there, & serve them in the Work of the Ministry;
Resolved that the said Mr Hunt be sent to the said Town of Dartmouth to be their Minister, And that Provision be made by this Court as the Law directs, for his honourable Support & Maintenance.
And that the Sum of Sixty Pounds be allowed as a Salary for the said Minister for the Year ensuing, And in Case his Abode there shall be for less Time, in the same Proportion. [Passed June 8.
The second reading was read by Rev. Bette McClure, pastor of the First Congregational Church in Fairhaven.
The covenant of “The Second Church in New Bedford” (now Fairhaven Congregational Church) was written in 1794, doubtless under the influence Dr. Samuel West, when the Second Church amicably separated from the mother church in Acushnet. We no longer have the original church covenant, so this represents the earliest covenant still in existence.
“We whose names are hereunto subscribed, having been called to the Faith and Fellowship of the Gospel, do in the first place humbly acknowledge ourselves unworthy of so great a favor, and desire with all the heart to adore and admire that free rich grace of his, which triumphs over so great unworthiness: and we desire in an humble reliance on the grace of God promised in the Gospel to all those who sincerely trust in Him, thankfully to lay hold on his covenant and to choose the things that please Him.
“We declare our serious belief of the Christian religion, as contained in the sacred Scriptures, which we own as the only test and standard of Christian faith and practice. We heartily resolve and engage, by Divine assistance, to conform our lives to the rules of God’s holy word so long as we live in the world. We give ourselves up to the Lord Jehovah, and avouch Him this day to be our God and Father, through Jesus Christ, and receive Him as the everlasting portion of our souls. We give ourselves up to Jesus Christ, and receive him as the great head of the church, and rely on him as our Prophet, Priest, and King, and trust in his grace to bring us to eternal blessedness. We acknowledge the Holy Ghost as our comforter and guide. We acknowledge ourselves to be under the most sacred obligation to glorify God by a strict conformity to all his laws and ordinances, and particularly in the duties of a Church state and body of people associated for obedience to Him in all the ordinances of the gospel, depending on his gracious assistance for the faithful discharge of the duties thus incumbent on us. We do promise by the help of divine grace to walk together as a Church of the Lord Jesus Christ in the faith and order of the gospel, so far as the same shall be made known unto us; conscientiously attending the public worship of God, the ordinances of the Gospel, viz. Baptism and the Lord’s Supper, the discipline of the church, and all Christ’s holy institutions and ordinances in communion with one another, carefully avoiding sinful stumbling blocks and contentions as becomes Disciples of Christ, united in the bonds of Love and Fellowship. — We do also by baptism present our offspring with us unto the Lord.
“And this we do in a reliance on the atoning blood of Jesus Christ for the pardon of our sins, humbly praying that the great Shepherd of the the Sheep would prepare and strengthen us to every good work to do his will, working within us that which is well pleasing in his sight. To whom be glory for ever and ever, Amen.”
Sermon — “Forward through the Ages”
Three hundred years ago, Massachusetts Puritan congregations were governed by two distinct bodies. On the one hand, there was the church: the church was concerned with matters of the spirit, and had charge of the worship services and communion. On the other hand, the town government had control over such practical matters as paying the minister’s salary and maintaining the meetinghouse.
But most of the people who lived in the old town of Dartmouth — remember that the old town of Dartmouth included what we now know as Westport, Dartmouth, New Bedford, Fairhaven, Acushnet, and parts of other towns — most of the people who lived here were not Puritans; they had little interest in having their town tax dollars support a church that they would not attend. And so, as we heard in the first reading, the Great and General Court of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts decided on June 8, 1708, to establish a government-sanctioned Puritan church in Dartmouth, by voting that an orthodox Puritan minister be settled here. This act of the state legislature represents the oldest extant written record of our congregation.
I’m sure you noticed this was not a voluntary matter for the town of Dartmouth: the Massachusetts state legislature was going to give them a minister whether they liked it or not. Nor did town residents have a choice in which minister they would get: Samuel Hunt having been prevailed upon to go and serve as minister in Dartmouth, the state legislature resolved that he should be sent here. The Massachusetts Puritans wanted their colony to be a shining example to the rest of the world of the integration of religion into civic life; and they were resolved that Dartmouth should shine as well, whether or not Dartmouth wanted to.
There was also a spiritual beginning for our church, about which we have no written record. In those days, New England Puritan congregations each had a covenant, a document that stated the conditions for admission to membership in the church. Such a covenant would be the written record of the beginning of spiritual side of our church, but that document has been lost; all we have is the oral tradition that a few Puritan families began meeting together as early as 1696. The second reading, written by the church members in 1794, represents the oldest extant covenant that we have.
And perhaps you noticed that the covenant was a voluntary agreement. It begins with this phrase: “We whose names are hereunto subscribed, having been called to the Faith and Fellowship of the Gospel,…” — which is to say, you decided whether or not you wished to sign the covenant. You did not have to sign it; you were perfectly welcome to attend worship services if you did not sign it; signing it was a voluntary act.
Religion has to do with the eternal and permanent, but looking back over three hundred years of our church history I am also aware of how much of our religion is evanescent and impermanent. I would not want to be a part of the old 18th century Puritan church;– I would not want to listen to three-hour sermons; I am not comfortable with the wording of the old covenant; I would not wish to be a part of a government-sanctioned church. But I am also aware that our congregation has kept coming back to certain eternal and permanent truths: the truth that we should organise around a voluntary agreement; the truth that we want to serve as a shining example to the world so that we may make the world a better place.
We have changed again and again. We have had to change; the world has changed around us. Our task is to sort through all the changes to find that which is permanent and eternal.
By the mid-19th century, First Unitarian Church (then known as First Congregational Society, Unitarian) was a wealthy church. The church grew in wealth and influence in the middle 1820’s, when a number of wealthy Quakers left New Bedford Friends Meeting to be a part of this congregation. By the time we built this building in 1838, the congregation paid cash for it, and had surplus cash left over when the builders were paid off. Following the Civil War, during the long tenure of William Potter as minister, the pews in this church were filled with wealthy and influential people through the early 20th century. Mr. Potter, being concerned with the health of this city, has been credited by some with convincing some of the wealthy men in this congregation to move their capital out of the whaling industry, and into textile mills. This admirable act of persuasion helped create new jobs that allowed New Bedford to remain prosperous even as the whaling industry collapsed. But this act of persuasion also shows how, at that moment in our history, we stood at the center of power, money, and influence in this city.
Contrast that with the experience of First Universalist Church, who were never at the center of power, money, and influence. In the 1830’s and 1840’s, the members of First Universalist and their minister, John Murray Spear, were ardent abolitionists. People like Nathan Johnson, who was active in the Underground Railroad, belonged to that church. They were so ardent in their abolitionism, that they upset some of the powerful men who ran the city (some of whom were Unitarians), and who favored a gradual end to slavery that wouldn’t upset the economy too much. But the Universalists were such ardent abolitionists that John Murray Spear was eventually chased out of town for being too much of an abolitionist. Though not at the center of power, the Universalists still worked for positive change.
During much of the 19th century, First Unitarian was filled with wealthy and influential people; First Unviersalist was not. This was only a quirk of fate, an evanescent and impermanent state of affairs. But both First Unitarian and First Universalist aimed to make the world a better place — the one by providing jobs and improving the economy; the other by ending the moral outrage of slavery — and that passion for positive change is what is permanent and enduring.
Let’s move forward in time three quarters of a century, to 1958, when we celebrated our 250th anniversary. The 1950’s in the United States were a strange time for churches. The historian Lawrence Cremin has called it the period of Civic Religion:– a time when everyone knew that a sort of generic Protestant Christianity was the civic religion of the land. The prayers that were said in schools were Protestant prayers; all our presidents were Protestants. My friend Mike Durrall tells the story of an American town in the 1950’s where the residents voted to decide who was the town’s best Christian; and the only Jew living in town won the vote.
During the 1950’s, churches that seemed even vaguely Protestant filled up with people. You didn’t have to advertise your Protestant church; individuals and families voluntarily showed up and joined the church. In 1957, our church experienced its highest attendance since the Depression. We averaged over 140 adults in the main worship service every Sunday; and about 80 children and 10 adult teachers in Sunday school; for a total of some 230 people. Many United States churches recorded their highest attendance in the mid-1950’s.
By 1967, ten years later, the average attendance of First Unitarian was half what it had been in 1957. Our attendance has generally declined ever since. Nor are we alone: most American churches have declined in attendance ever since the 1950’s; indeed, we are doing better than the majority.
We can no longer assume that people will just show up at church; nor can we assume that once they find their way here they will know how to get involved, or even what to do once they come through the front door. That was merely an evanescent and impermanent social truth of the 1950’s, which has now dissolved. Yet we continue to adhere to the permanent and eternal truth that membership in our church must be voluntary; we refuse to coerce people into joining our church, even if that means a decline in attendance.
Now let us move forward in time to 2008, the year of our three hundredth anniversary. In this postmodern age, we are in the middle of another set of social changes that once again is forcing us to change the way we do church: forcing us to find new ways to embody the eternal and permanent.
Let me give you one small example of what I mean. Over the past two years, the Religious Services Committee and I have been experimenting with new ways of conducting worship services. In initiating these changes, I had been inspired by the innovations of the Emergent Church movement.
The Emergent Church movement started when a number of evangelical Christians realized that an entire generation of Americans, Generation X, was drifting away from church. The majority of Gen-Xers were steeped in a postmodern mindset that questioned authority; questioned absolutes and demanded multiple points of view; was more interested in aesthetics than ontology; and loved the feeling of ancient and medieval religious forms. And so the Emergent Church movement created worship services that questioned authority by bringing the preacher out of the unassailable pulpit and down on the floor among the congregation; included many voices in the worship service, not just the preacher’s voice, to present more than one point of view; emphasized the arts and new media rather than systematic theology; and brought the feel of ancient and medieval religion into their services. And because the Emergent Church movement knew that Gen-Xers did not grow up in churches, they explained every element of the worship service.
I had been inspired by this Emergent Church movement, and the Religious Services Committee and I started using some their ideas in our worship services. We brought the minister out of the pulpit for parts of the service. We began using worship associates, so you’d hear more than just one voice. We’re working on including more arts in worship: poetry, and fabric arts, and lighting up our Tiffany mosaic, and putting art on the cover of the order of service. Fortunately, we already have this neo-Gothic building, so we already have that medieval feeling. And we have begun explaining every element of the worship service.
None of this has changed the eternal and permanent truths of religion; indeed, all these changes in our worship service are evanescent and impermanent, and will be swept away by future changes. But in the mean time, we have begun to attract people in their 20’s and 30’s to our worship services; and our average attendance this past fall was up 20 percent.
We are in the middle of many changes right now. Change never ceases. It is easy to get lost in the changes. We look back over our three hundred year history, and witness all the changes:– the change from the old Calvinist theology to our current religious naturalism; the change from the three-hour Puritan sermons, to our current worship services filled with music and the arts; the change from being a church of the wealthy and elite, to our current diverse church with people from all economic strata and from different races and ethnicities — we witness all these changes, and wonder what remains constant.
At least two things have remained constant. First, we are organized around a voluntary agreement, a covenant. This lies at the core of who we are: religion must be voluntary, not coercive.
And secondly, like that old Puritan church, we too try to be an example to the rest of the world. We aim to make this world a better place, to make this world into a kind of heaven on earth.
In closing, let me mention two ways we aim to make this world a better place. First, we aim to fight the discrimination that continues to pervade our society. Following the example of old First Universalist Church, we aim to fight the ongoing racial and ethnic discrimination that is a legacy of slavery in the U.S., and model a truly multi-racial community here. We stand up for the equality of men and women, and we do this in a city which continues to be a very sexist place. We stand up for the rights of gay and lesbian persons, so that recently we were in the middle of the fight for equal marriage rights. All this we do as an expression of the eternal and permanent religious truth that all persons have equal dignity and worth. And as we build common bonds among diverse groups of people, we find ourselves to be well-placed to take on another huge moral problem facing our era:– and that is the devastation wrought by global climate change — both the ecological and economic devastation, a devastation that is already having a greater impact on the poor and on communities of color.
Bound together by our voluntary covenant, we can move forward through the ages:– we acknowledge and celebrate the past, but we can leave that which is evanescent and impermanent behind. Bound together by our voluntary covenant, we shall continue to take up new moral and ethical problems, as we engage the changes in the society around us, and try to bring about a heaven here on earth.