Dan Harper | Sermons

Tag: Universalism

  • Evil in Our Time

    Sermon copyright (c) 2023 Dan Harper. Delivered to First Parish in Cohasset. The sermon text may contain typographical errors. The sermon as preached included a significant amount of improvisation.

    Readings

    The first reading is from The Abuse of Evil: The Corruption of Politics and Religion Since 9/11, by Richard J. Bernstein:

    “This new fashionable popularity of the discourse of good and evil … represents an abuse of evil — a dangerous abuse. It is an abuse because, instead of inviting us to question and to think, this talk of evil is being used to stifle thinking. This is extremely dangerous in a complex and precarious world. The new discourse of good and evil lacks nuance, subtlety, and judicious discrimination. In the so-called ‘War on Terror,’ nuance and subtlety are (mis)taken as signs of wavering, weakness, and indecision. But if we think that politics requires judgment, artful diplomacy, and judicious discrimination, then this talk about absolute evil is profoundly anti-political. As Hannah Arendt noted, ‘The absolute … spells doom to everyone when it is introduced into the political realm.’”

    The second reading is from A Pocketful of Rye, a murder mystery by Agatha Christie. In this passage, Miss Marple and a police inspector are discussing who might have committed a murder:

    “[Inspector Neele] said, ‘Oh, there are other possibilities, other people who had a perfectly good motive.’

    “‘Mr. Dubois, of course,’ said Mis Marple sharply. ‘And that young Mr. Wright. I do so agree with you, Inspector. Wherever there is a question of gain, one has to be very suspicious. The great thing to avoid is having in any way a trustful mind.’

    “In spite of himself, Neele smiled. ‘Always think the worst, eh?’ he asked. It seemed a curious doctrine to be proceeding from this charming and fragile-looking old lady.

    “‘Oh yes,’ said Miss Marple fervently. ‘I always believe the worst. What is so sad is that one is usually justified in doing so.’”

    Sermon: “Evil in Our Time”

    I’ve noticed something recently. In our society today, we like to talk about evil in the abstract. We like to say that racism and sexism and homophobia are evil. We like to say that the other political party is evil — or that all politics is evil. We say that violence is evil. We like talking about evil in the abstract.

    But we’re less willing to talk about the specifics of evil. When we do talk about the specifics of evil, we choose a few small examples of a greater evil, and focus on that. So when we talk about the looming global ecological disaster, we talk about how people need to drive electric cars, but we don’t talk about how first world countries like the United States need to make major policy changes regarding both corporate and private energy use. Nor are we likely to talk about the other large major threats to earth’s life supporting systems, including toxication, the spread of invasive species, and land use change.

    I understand why we tend to focus on a few small examples of evil, rather than seeing the big picture; I understand why we see the trees but not the forest. When we reduce evil to abstractions, or to small specific actions, we don’t have to give serious consideration to the political and social change necessary to put an end to racism. It’s a way of keeping evil from feeling overwhelming.

    But when we reduce evil to an abstraction, we cause at least two problems. First, reducing evil to an abstraction tends to stop us from thinking any further about that evil. Second, by reducing evil to an abstraction, we ignore the individuality of human beings; to use the words of philosopher Richard J. Bernstein, we “transform [human beings] into creatures that are less than fully human.” We stop thinking, and we stop seeing individuals. I’ll give an example of what I mean.

    Prior to coming here to First Parish, a significant part of my career was spent serving congregations that needed help cleaning up after sexual misconduct by a minister or other staff person. (Just so you know, I’ve served in ten different congregations, many of which were entirely healthy. Although I’m going to give you an example based on sexual misconduct by a minister, I’ve changed details and fictionalized the story so innocent people can remain totally anonymous.)

    Once upon a time, there was a minister who had engaged in inappropriate behavior with someone who was barely 18 years old. I was hired to clean up the resultant mess. Because I’ve done a fair amount of work with teens, I was ready to demonize this particular minister, thinking to myself, “Legally this minister may be in the clear, but morally I’m going to call this person evil.” Because I thought of this minister as evil, I assumed anything they did was bad.

    But then I found out that this minister had helped someone else in the congregation escape from a domestic violence situation. This required extended effort on the part of that minister, extending over a period of several years. This minister whom I had thought of as evil helped the domestic violence survivor to get out of the abusive relationships, find safe housing, extricate the children from the control of the abusive spouse, and settle down to a new life of safety. I was very suspicious of this story — surely this evil minister must have done something inappropriate with the person whom they had helped, or engaged in some other evil act. But it slowly became clear that in this case, the minister had done nothing wrong, and by extricating that person from domestic violence, that minister’s actions were wholly good.

    This little story was a useful reminder to me: individual human beings are neither wholly good nor wholly bad. A person whom I had considered wholly evil was not, in fact, wholly evil; was, in fact, capable of amazing goodness. I had been in the wrong: when I called that person evil, I stopped myself from seeing the good they had done; I transformed that person into someone who was less than fully human. Mind you, I still kept my distance from that minister, feeling it was safer to do so, but at last I could see them as more than a caricature, I could see them as a complex individual.

    We human beings are complex creatures. I would venture to say that no one is wholly evil — no, not even that politician that you’re thinking about right now. Even that politician whom you love to hate has redeeming qualities, though you may not be able to see them. We must always keep an open mind, and assume that every human being has the potential of doing good.

    By the same token, I’d have to say that no one is wholly good. This is point the fictional character Miss Marple makes in the second reading this morning. Even someone who is essentially good can carry out evil actions. I don’t quite agree with Miss Marple when she says, “I always believe the worst. What is so sad is that one is usually justified in doing so.” Unlike Miss Marple, I don’t go around always believing the worst of everyone. But I do live my life in the awareness that everyone is capable both of evil and of goodness. Every human being has the potential of doing evil, but also of doing good.

    If every human being is capable both of evil and capable of good, then you can see why we should not brand someone as wholly evil, or as wholly good for that matter. When we brand someone as wholly evil, that stops us from thinking about the evil that they caused. In that example of the minister that I just gave, when I branded that minister as wholly evil, I stopped thinking. When I started seeing them as a human being who was capable of both good and evil, I began to think more clearly, and I realized that there were external factors that led them into misconduct — external factors that were still at play, and that could lead to someone else engaging in misconduct. As I began to think more clearly, I was able to work with others to make that kind of behavior less likely in the future. It was only when I started thinking again that I was able to begin to work with others to try to prevent evil from happening again.

    From a pragmatic standpoint, then, it’s foolish to brand someone as wholly evil; but it’s also morally wrong to brand someone as wholly evil. When we do that, we remove their individuality; we turn them into something less than human. We deny their individuality and deny their freedom, their capacity to make free choices in the way they act. The philosopher Richard J. Bernstein points out that this is the way totalitarianism works: he writes, “totalitarianism seeks to make all human beings superfluous — perpetrators and victims.” When we brand other people as evil, we are doing exactly what totalitarian regimes do: branding opponents as evil, denying human individuality, stopping everyone from thinking. Totalitarianism thrives when people stop thinking.

    It is this tendency that troubles me about politics in the United States today. We brand our political opponents as being evil. Democrats say that Donald Trump is evil, and Kevin McCarthy is evil, and Marjorie Taylor Green is evil. Republicans say that Joe Biden is evil, and Nancy Pelosi is evil, and Barack Obama is evil. Even those who are independents — and here in Massachusetts, more people register as independent than either Republican or Democrat — even political independents play this game when they say all politicians are corrupt.

    This kind of thing stops people from thinking. When Democrats brand Donald Trump as wholly evil, not only are they denying his essential humanity, but they have started walking down the road to totalitarianism. When Republicans say that Nancy Pelosi is evil, they are denying her essential humanity, and they too are starting to walk the road towards totalitarianism. When political independents claim that all politicians are corrupt, they are denying the essential humanity of all politicians, and — you guessed it — they have started walking the road towards totalitarianism.

    Evil exists, but totalitarianism is not the solution for evil. Totalitarianism means that one person, or a small group of people, make all the decisions. But that one person, or that small group of people, can easily slip into doing evil themselves — and there will be no one to hold them accountable, to tell them to stop. This is what is happening in Russia right now: Russia has become a totalitarian state, so when Vladimir Putin decided to do evil by invading Ukraine, there was no one to stop him.

    We can only stop evil through communal action, through cooperating with as many people as possible. This is the principle behind democracy: by cooperating widely, we minimize the chance of totalitarianism. But it’s hard to cooperate with other people when you brand half of the population as evil — as happens when Democrats brand Republicans as evil, and Republicans brand Democrats as evil, and Independents brand everyone else as evil, or at least corrupt. Calling other people evil is not serving us well. We don’t want to sound like Vladimir Putin.

    There’s actually a religious point buried in all of this: Every single person has something of value in them. That something of value might be buried pretty deep, but it’s there. That’s what the Unitarian Universalist principles mean when they talk about the “inherent worth and dignity of every person.” That’s what the Universalist minister and theologian Albert Zeigler meant when he said, “every person and what they do and how they do it is of ultimate concern, of infinite significance.” When you brand a person as evil, you deny their inherent worth and dignity, you say that person somehow lacks infinite significance. We can say that a person has done something evil; we can say that we no longer trust that person, and that we don’t want to have anything to do with them if we can help it. But that does not mean the person is evil; some of their actions were evil, yes; but the person is not evil.

    There’s another religious point that goes along with this. When we recognize that each and every person is of infinite significance, we make a statement of great hope. Each person, each individual, has within them an infinite capacity for goodness; they may also have a capacity for evil, but evil is finite and good is infinite, so their capacity for evil can be overpowered by their capacity for goodness. Every person, even someone who has done something evil, can be redeemed. Remember the fictional minister I told you about: that minister did something horribly evil, but they also had within them the capacity for amazing goodness.

    In the end, the collective human capacity for goodness will win out over the collective human capacity for evil. This is what Martin Luther King Jr. meant when he said, “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.” Dr. King was actually paraphrasing a sermon from the great Unitarian minister Theodore Parker, who said: “I do not pretend to understand the moral universe. The arc is a long one. My eye reaches but little ways. I cannot calculate the curve and complete the figure by experience of sight. I can divine it by conscience. And from what I see, I am sure it bends toward justice.” So said Theodore Parker a century and a half ago.

    Today, we still have a long way to go before we overcome evil. I’m pretty sure we won’t overcome evil in my lifetime. I doubt we will overcome evil in the lifetime of anyone alive today. But I’m sure that the universe bends towards justice. Like Moses leading the ancient Israelites, or like Martin Luther King and the Civil Rights Movement, we know the Promised Land is somewhere ahead of us; we hope to catch a glimpse of it before we die; but we will not reach it ourselves. Yet we continue to strive towards justice.

    We continue to hope. We continue to see the good in others whenever we can: so that we may cooperate as much as we are able; so that one day, justice may one day roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.

  • The Disabled God for Unitarian Universalists

    Sermon copyright (c) 2022 Dan Harper. Delivered to First Parish in Cohasset. The sermon text may contain typographical errors. The sermon as preached included a significant amount of improvisation.

    Readings

    The first reading is from The Disabled God: Toward a Liberatory Theology of Disability by Nancy Eiseland.

    “For me, epiphanies come too infrequently to be shrugged off as unbelievable. … I had waited for a mighty revelation of God. But my epiphany bore little resemblance to the God I was expecting, or the God of my dreams. I saw God in a sip-puff wheelchair — that is, the chair used mostly by quadriplegics enabling them to maneuver by blowing and sucking on a straw-like device. Not an omnipotent, self-sufficient God, but neither a pitiable, suffering servant. In this moment, I beheld God as a survivor, unpitying and forthright. I recognized [God] in the image of those judged ‘not feasible,’ ‘unemployable,’ with ‘questionable quality of life.’ Here was God for me.”

    The second reading is from the 2022 book The Future Is Disabled by Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha.

    “It’s radical to imagine that the future is disabled. Not just tentatively allowed to exist, not just: ‘OK, I guess there’s one white guy with a wheelchair, cool — diversity.’ But a deeply disabled future, a future where disabled, Deaf, Mad, neurodivergent bodyminds are both accepted without question as part of the vast spectrum of human … ways of existing, [and] where our cultures, knowledge, and communities shape the world….

    “Some people have scoffed at me when I broached the idea of a majority disabled future — surely I don’t mean this literally? But I kind of do….

    “We are in the third year of a global mass disabling event — the COVID-19 pandemic — where, as I and many other disabled activists and people have noticed and stated, the world has been [disabled]. The entire world has been immersed in a disabled reality for the past two years. Masking, hand-washing, long-term isolation, awareness of viruses and immune vulnerability, the need for disabled skills of care … are just a few of the disabled ways of being that everyone, disabled and not, have been forced to reckon with.

    “The COVID-19 virus and the failure to create a just global public health and economic response to support people undergoing it is also creating a disabled world in that mass numbers of people are becoming newly or differently disabled because of getting COVID, long COVID, and/or long-term complex post-traumatic stress disorder and other mental disabilities from the grief, loss, and stress of the pandemic….”

    Sermon — The Disabled God for Unitarian Universalists

    Let’s start with some statistics. The statistics around disability in the United States are attention-grabbing numbers, and help us understand why disability is so important for us to talk about.

    The Center for Disease Control issued a report in August, 2018, with the imposing title, “Prevalence of Disabilities and Health Care Access by Disability Status and Type Among Adults — United States, 2016” [Catherine A. Okoro et al.]. Using data from 2016, the authors of the study determined that one in four adults in the United States, or an estimated 61.4 million adults, reported a disability.

    The study covered six categories of disability. Most prevalent was mobility problems, that is, serious difficulty walking or climbing stairs, with 13.7% of adults reporting this as a disability. Cognition disability, or serious difficulty concentrating, remembering, or making decisions, was reported by 10.8% of adults. Disability affecting independent living, that is, difficulty doing errands alone, was reported by 6.8% of adults. Serious difficulty hearing was reported by 5.9% of adults. Serious difficulty seeing was reported by 4.6% of adults. And finally, disability affecting self-care, that is, difficulty dressing or bathing, was reported by 3.7% of adults.

    Those figures are based on data gathered in 2016, data from before the pandemic. I would expect that the numbers of adults reporting cognitive disabilities would be somewhat higher today. We’re seeing an epidemic of mental illness that appears to be a direct result of the pandemic, including anxiety disorder, depression, and other ailments; this would tend to increase the numbers of adults reporting a cognitive disability. Then there’s long COVID, which can affect both cognition and independent living. As a result, I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that in today’s post-pandemic world, something more than one in four U.S. adults with some form of disability.

    When you listen to these statistics, you come to an obvious conclusion: disability is a normal part of life. Disability is normal, yet our society tends to think of disability as somehow abnormal. I remember hearing a disability rights activist say that those of us who consider themselves to be able-bodied should really be thinking of ourselves as temporarily able-bodied. Most of us will be disabled at some point in our lives. If we’re not disabled ourselves, someone close to us will be disabled and there’s a good chance we’ll wind up helping care for for that person. Disability is a normal part of life.

    Somehow we have to get ourselves to remember that disability is normal. Religion is a powerful tool for telling ourselves stories to make sense of life. So what stories might we, as a religious people, tell ourselves to remind ourselves that disability is normal?

    First of all, we have to let go of the old religious stories that say disability is always something to be cured, something to be gotten rid of. This is, unfortunately, a regular part of Western folk religion. While it is true that sometimes disability is something that can be cured, more often disability is simply a part of who we are. We are a certain gender, we are a certain race or ethnicity, we are a certain biological sex, we have a sexual orientation — these are all aspects of who we are.

    This is why what Nancy Eiesland says in the first reading is so profound. Eiesland asks: What if God is a quadriplegic? What if God is disabled? What if God is disabled in any one of the many ways human beings are disabled? A central part of the teachings of Western religion is that human beings are made in the image of God. The clearest statement of this comes in the Torah, the Hebrew Bible, in the book of Genesis, chapter 1 verse 27: “So God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.” Later on in Genesis, there’s another story of how God created male human beings first, then created female human beings from ribs of the male human beings. But this later passage gives us a story that is, not to put too fine a point on it, a little weird; I prefer the story in Genesis 1:27. In that first story, God creates humankind in God’s image, both male and female human beings, God creates in God’s image. (As an aside, this implies that God is actually, to use current jargon, non-binary gender; but that’s a sermon for another day.) So if all human beings are created in the image of God, then logically disabled human beings are also created in the image of God. This is Nancy Eiesland’s profound insight.

    Eiesland’s insight is extremely important to Western cultures, like our culture here in the United States. Even though not everyone here in the United States is Christian or Jewish, our Western culture contains has an unexamined assumption that this story of the creation of human beings is somehow true. The Declaration of Independence of the United States claims that all men (to use the gender-specific language of the late eighteenth century) are created equal, and endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights. We human beings are created equal by God. We human beings have human rights. And the justification for human rights in the West derives in large part from the Torah, from the book of Genesis, from this story that God created all human beings in God’s image. To be able to have human rights — this is a great gift we have received from the Bible, and it’s one of the reasons we religious liberals need to reclaim the Bible as our own.

    (Now at this point, those of you who are atheists, or heretics, or Buddhists, or nothing-in-particularists are saying to yourselves: This is all very fine and good, but I don’t believe in that old story. The God of the Israelites, the God of the Jews, the God of the Christians — that is not my god. But please remember we’re not talking about personal, individual beliefs here. We’re talking about the big widespread myths that underlie a shared Western culture in which we all participate, like it or not. So even if you don’t believe in this myth personally, this is a myth we want to claim for ourselves. This is one of the myths that gives us human rights in the West — surely, we can work with this, even if we personally don’t believe in it. So even for those of you for whom the Bible is not your bag, there are solid pragmatic reasons why we religious liberals want to retell this story as the shared inheritance of anyone living in our Western culture.)

    To return to Nancy Eiesland: If God created all human beings in God’s image, then clearly God also created disabled people in God’s image. In other words, God is disabled. In other words, disabled persons have human rights just as able-bodied people have human rights. We all have human rights.

    This is a surprisingly important conclusion. The Center for Disease Control tells us that one in four adults in the United States is disabled. If disabled people did not have full human rights — if, according to one of the founding myths of our Western culture, God did not create disabled people in God’s image — then one in four adults would not have full human rights. Clearly, we could not tolerate such a situation. Instead, we say: all people have human rights, regardless of ability.

    This conclusion is surprisingly well aligned with the Universalist tradition of which we are the inheritors. The old Universalists pointed out that if God is actually as good as everyone says, God is not going to condemn anyone to an eternity of damnation in hell. Instead, the old Universalists said that all human beings are equally worthy of God’s love. Now apply this old doctrine of universal salvation to people with disabilities: all persons are equally worthy of God’s love. This is an important corrective to an unfortunate strain of the Western Christian tradition that said people with mental illness were demon-possessed, or that people with physical disabilities were either sinners or somehow cursed by God. Nonsense, we Universalists would reply. That is ridiculous. All persons are worthy of God’s love. No demons are involved, no sin is involved, and no cursing is involved. If you believe that kind of stuff and nonsense, you’re the one who is sinning. Disabilities are not marks of disfavor from God, since everyone is loved equally by God. A disability is simply that: a disability. (This notion of universal love, by the way, is one of the chief reasons I’m proud to say I’m a Universalist, even if I don’t have quite the same conception of God as the old-time Universalists had.)

    All this might tend to have personal importance for the one in four among us today who happen to be disabled. But it’s also likely to be of personal importance to all of us at some point in our lives. Remember, there’s a very good chance that most of us, probably all of us, are going to be temporarily or permanently disabled at some point in our lives. I know people who have contracted long COVID, and who haven’t been able to work or to function normally for months; that would be considered a temporary disability. The pandemic has apparently caused an epidemic of mental illnesses, and some of these mental illnesses are serious enough to be considered disabilities. As I noted earlier, it seems likely that if the CDC researched the rate of disability in the United States today, more than one in four United States adults would report themselves as being disabled. This is what Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha means when they suggest that we might be headed towards a majority-disabled future.

    When I think about a majority-disabled future — or even a future where one in three adults in the United States are disabled — my big concern is how we’re going to care for one another. As a whole, our society provides inadequate support for persons with disabilities. Anyone among us who are caring for an aging partner, or an aging parent, has direct experience of this. Anyone among us who has had to fight for accommodations for a child with disabilities has had direct experience of this. Anyone among us who has had to explain to an employer why we are not able to work as much as usual because of long COVID or Lyme disease has had direct experience of this — actually, while I was recovering from a pulmonary embolism a few years ago, I had to explain to the congregation I was then serving why I could no longer work fifty hours a week, but had to drop back to working just forty hours a week.

    Since our society provides little support to persons with disabilities, we’re going to have to figure out how to care for one another. This is part of what Leah Piepzna-Samarasinha means when they say that disabled people’s “cultures, knowledge, and communities [can] shape the world.” People with disabilities have had to learn how to care for one another; they have had to learn skills of interdependence. We can learn skills of interdependence from the disabled community.

    Actually, here at First Parish we already work on our interdependence skills. We have the Caring Circle, where we help each other out when someone is ill or needs meals or other help. And we provide to each other not just physical care, we also give each other spiritual care. We talk to each other about our health problems or disabilities, we listen to one another, perhaps most importantly we are simply there for one another. We do that spiritual care for one another when we go to social hour after the service and talk with one another; or when we pick up the phone and call someone who can’t make it here on Sunday mornings; or when we send cards or texts or set up a videoconference call with someone who is stuck at home.

    Here at First Parish, we’ve already started caring for one another. Yet we can learn more about caring for one another from the disabled community. I’ll give you one example of how we can learn from the disabled community — and I almost hesitate to say this, because I know what a hot-button issue this is — but each of us might consider wearing masks more often. I know how annoying it is to wear a mask, but wearing a mask can serve as a form of mutual aid and caring that supports the health of other people, particularly people who are immune-compromised. This is one way we can support interdependence.

    And as a liberal religious people, there is another small task we can take on. We can reclaim that old story in Genesis where God creates all persons in God’s image. (Remember that this is a central myth in our Western culture; you may not believe in God yourself, but the majority of people in our society do.) If we happen to hear anything that sounds like someone is casting disabled people as less than human, we might gently challenge them. In the words of the Torah, “God created humankind in God’s image, in the image of God, God created them.” However you conceive of God — as a myth or metaphor, as a cultural inheritance, as a living presence in your life, as something else altogether — whatever your conception of God, we can think of God as disabled because God created all humankind in God’s image. Or to put it in more familiar language, we are all endowed with certain inalienable rights.

  • John Murray Spear, Universalist and Abolitionist

    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) 2007 Daniel Harper.

    Readings

    The first reading is rather long, and is from a sermon preached in 1774 by Elhanan Winchester, one of the earliest Universalist preachers in this country — he was preaching Universalism before John Murray arrived from England.

    “There is one abomination… that prevails in this country, that calls aloud not only for sighing and crying, but for a speedy reformation and turning therefrom, if we desire to prevent destruction from coming upon us; I mean, the SLAVE TRADE….

    “The very principle upon which it is founded, from which it springs, and by which it is carried on, is one of the most base and ignoble that ever disgraced the human species:

    “WHICH is, Avarice. This mean and unworthy passion certainly had has a principal hand in this disgraceful traffic; no one can pretend that benevolence ever had, or ever can have, a hand in such a most infamous commerce. Avarice tends to harden the heart, to render the mind callous to the feelings of humanity, indisposes the soul to every virtue, and renders it prey to every vice. Ought we not to be ashamed of such a commerce, that has it rise from no better principle than mere selfishness or covetousness?…

    “HAVING considered the principle from whence it originated, and to which its existence is owing, I pass to mention the horrible manner in which it is carried on. And here almost every vice that blackens and degrades human nature is employed; such as, deceiving, perfidy, decoying, stealing, lying, fomenting feuds and discords among the nations of Africa, robbery, plunder, burning, murder, cruelty of all kinds, and the most savage and unexampled barbarism.

    “BLUSH… to think that ye are the supporters of a commerce that employs these, and many other vices to carry it on! Could you but think seriously of the disgraceful and cruel manner in which slaves are obtained, methinks you could not attempt to justify the horrid practice. Numbers are stolen while going out on their lawful business, are never suffered to return home to take leave of their friends; but are gagged and bound, then carried on board the vessels which wait for them, never more to see their native land again, but to drag out a miserable existence in chains, hunger, thirst, cold, nakedness, hard labour, and perpetual slavery.

    “THINK, O ye tender mothers, how you would feel, if, when ye should send your little boys or girls to fetch a pitcher, or calabash of water from the spring, you should never see them return again! if some barbarous kidnapper should watch the opportunity, and seize upon your darlings, as the eagle upon its prey! should gag your sweet prattling babes, and force them away! how would your souls refuse to be comforted! such is the pain that many mothers feel in Africa, and God can cause it to come home to yourselves, who contribute to such an abomination as this.”

    [From Universalism in America: A Documentary History of a Liberal Faith, edited by Ernest Cassara. Capitalized words found in this edition.]

    ***

    The second reading is quite short, and it comes from an address which John Murray Spear gave to the Universalist Anti-Slavery Convention in 1840. After summarizing Elhanan Winchester’s anti-slavery sermon, Spear said, “[Universalists should] oppose all monopolies, despise all partiality, break down all unnatural distinctions, elevate the despised classes, and introduce a system of perfect equality.”

    [Quoted in Russell Miller, The Larger Hope: The First Century of the Universalist Church in America, 1770-1870, p. 594.]

    Sermon

    This is the first in a series of occasional sermons about the history of our congregation. We are the direct institutional descendants of three congregations:– First Congregational Society (Unitarian) of New Bedford; First Universalist Church of New Bedford; and North Unitarian Church (Unitarian). 2008 will mark the three hundredth anniversary of the oldest of our three antecedent churches, First Congregational Society, later First Unitarian; in honor of that anniversary, this fall I plan to tell you about several unsung heroes and heroines from all three of our antecedent churches.

    And I decided to start off with the most remarkable minister who ever was called to serve in one of those three churches. John Murray Spear was the first minister of First Universalist Church, when that congregation was formally incorporated in 1835. John Murray Spear was a remarkable man in many ways, both good and at times not-so-good. On the not-so-good side, later in his life he got so far into eccentric and far-out beliefs that he managed to alienate most of his old friends. But on the good side, he was a staunch Garrisonian abolitionist who advocated an immediate end to slavery as early as the 1830’s, when that was not a popular stance; he attracted African American members to First Universalist Church in a day when integrated churches were almost unimaginable, in a day when the Unitarian church in New Bedford kept a segregated pew for African Americans; and history indicates that he befriended and encouraged Frederick Douglass not long after Douglass escaped slavery and came to New Bedford, before Douglass become famous for his oratory.

    But let’s begin at the beginning, and our beginning is to understand a little bit about Universalism. As you probably know, or could figure out, Universalism originally was the belief that all souls get to go to heaven; it was the belief that a benevolent God would be too good to allow the existence of hell.

    Once the early Universalists in North America reached that conclusion, they quickly went a step further. They pronounced themselves egalitarians, that is, they asserted their belief in the essential equality of all humankind. This radical egalitarianism has stuck in Universalism, and in Universalists, down to the present day. Those of us who call ourselves Universalists today may or may not believe in God, but we most certainly believe in the infinite value of every human being.

    It comes as no surprise, then, that early Universalists became active in cause of liberty during the American Revolution. Caleb Rich, one of the earliest Universalist preachers, fought in the Battle of Bunker Hill. Benjamin Rush, one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence, became a prominent Universalist. In 1791, Benjamin Rush wrote, “A belief in God’s universal love to all his creatures… leads to truths upon all subjects, but especially upon the subject of government. It establishes the equality of mankind.” Historian Ann Lee Bressler tells us that Benjamin Rush’s Universalism was “a rational and ultimately cheerful faith well-suited to a free and democratic society.” [Bressler, p. 19] What was true of Benjamin Rush was no less true of other early Universalists.

    And those early Universalists were not afraid to apply their egalitarian principles to difficult subjects like slavery. As we heard in the first reading this morning, the Universalist preacher Elhanan Winchester spoke out against slavery in a strongly worded sermon as early as 1774. Along with John Murray, Winchester was one of the two towering figures of 18th C. Universalism; thus his sermon against slavery had a large influence. The sermon was widely distributed, influenced many of his contemporaries, and wound up influencing later generations as well.

    Between the late 1700’s and the 1830’s, however, Universalism lost some of its early egalitarianism. By the mid-1830’s, a fair number of Universalists actively supported slavery. Not surprisingly, many of them lived in the Southern states, but there were plenty of northern Universalists who distanced themselves from applying egalitarian principles to enslaved Africans and African Americans. Even among the Universalists who did oppose slavery, many refused to take the hard-line stance of the abolitionists, saying that they didn’t want to anger the southern Universalists, didn’t want to promote divisiveness in the country or in the denomination. Maybe we can better understand this attitude if we remember that through much of late 18th C. and even into the 19th C., Universalists were reviled by the orthodox Christians; to proclaim yourself a Universalist was to risk being ostracized by friends, community, even your own family; to preach Universalism meant risking bodily harm, for there were orthodox Christians who physically assaulted Universalists to prevent the Universalist doctrine of love from being preached. I don’t mean to excuse them, but by the 1830’s, Universalists had begun to achieve a measure of respectability, and so perhaps some Universalists of that time preferred to avoid controversial topics like abolitionism.

    Some Universalists may have preferred to avoid controversy, but not John Murray Spear. John Murray Spear was named after the great Universalist preacher John Murray. In fact, as a baby John Murray Spear was dedicated by no less a person than the great John Murray (remember that because of his Universalist beliefs, John Murray did not baptize children to cleanse them of original sin, instead he dedicated them to the highest purposes in life). The great John Murray was willing to take great risks to proclaim his Universalist faith; and perhaps some of that willingness rubbed off on the little baby John Murray Spear, because when that little baby grew up, he turned into a man who was willing to proclaim abolition of slavery at great risk to himself.

    (Since this is the first day of Sunday school, I might add here that those of you who are raising your children in this church should be aware that even today Unitarian Universalist kids wind up being staunch egalitarians, who do things like pass up high-paying jobs in favor of work that pays far less but creates justice for all, and spreads good in the world. Consider yourself duly warned. But I digress….)

    When John Murray Spear came to New Bedford in 1835, he discovered that New Bedford was notable for its racial tolerance. I will not say claim that it was a fully tolerant city; there was distinct legal and personal discrimination by white folks against people of color; but for its time, New Bedford was a remarkably tolerant place. People of color could earn a decent living in the whaling industry. People of color were accorded a higher level of freedom and respect by white people than in most other places in the United States. And fugitive slaves discovered that the city was a safe harbor for them, where they could blend in to a racially mixed populace, where they could find friendly help, and where they could find secure work.

    Spear was already an abolitionist when he came to New Bedford. But he went further than just being an abolitionist; he got to know prominent members of the African American community in New Bedford. For example, Spear got to know Nathan Johnson. Nathan Johnson was a prominent African American citizen of New Bedford who represented the city for a number of years at the annual convention for free people of color; and his house was a stop on the Underground Railroad. Indeed, Nathan Johnson is best known for his role in the Underground Railroad, because in 1838 he took in an escaped slave named Frederick Johnson, and it was Nathan Johnson who helped the now free man to decide to change his name to Frederick Douglass.

    The historian John Buescher recently published a biography of John Murray Spear and his brother Charles, and Buescher tells us this about John Murray Spear’s time in New Bedford: “One of Spear’s church members in New Bedford was Nathan Johnson, the gentleman with whom Frederick Douglass lived when he settled in the city after his escape from slavery. In his church one day, Spear found Douglass debating with members of his congregation. They were arguing for universal salvation, and Douglass was arguing for the existence of eternal punishment. Spear was much impressed with Douglass’s abilities and encouraged him to become a public speaker.” [Buescher, p. 171]

    This short little anecdote tells us three very important things about this history of our own First Universalist Church. First, we have an important connection to Frederick Douglass, because John Murray Spear was one of those who very early on encouraged Douglass to become a public speaker. Second, Douglass actually came to our First Universalist Church, and although he was misguided enough to insist on the existence of eternal punishment, it is of some interest that he came at all. Third — and this is the most interesting bit of information — Nathan Johnson was at that time a member of First Universalist Church. I’m quite impressed that our own First Universalist Church welcomed African American members that early; to the best of my knowledge, that didn’t happen in First Unitarian until much later.

    All this tells us that those early New Bedford Universalists were people of whom we can be proud. They had a religious belief in egalitarianism, and they lived out that belief. Indeed, history tells us that they sometimes became frustrated with other Universalists. By autumn, 1841, the New Bedford church was one of only two Universalist churches in Massachusetts which had adopted official resolutions supporting the abolition of slavery. The New Bedford Universalists publicly expressed their frustration when the local association of Universalists refused to even consider the matter of abolition. And when the Universalist Anti-Slavery Convention, of which they were founding members, proceeded more slowly than they liked, they shrewdly invited Frederick Douglass to accompany them to a meeting of the convention in the fall of 1841. When the convention wavered at the thought of voting for a resolution aimed at the Southern Universalist congregations which supported slavery, Douglass spoke up, and the power of his oratory so convinced the delegates that the resolution passed unanimously.

    We can only imagine what it must have been like to be a part of that congregation. Universalists in those days were still fairly pugnacious, still willing to speak out loudly and publicly against the doctrine of eternal punishment; and Universalists in New Bedford made no bones about wanting to abolish slavery. And even though First Universalist had a white minister and a majority of white church members, it appears certain the congregation welcomed both black and white people into their church. I think I would have liked to have been a part of that congregation; they sound like my kind of people.

    Unfortunately, John Murray Spear was forced to leave New Bedford in 1841 as a direct result of his abolitionist activities. Sometime in the summer of 1841, a southern slave-holder traveled to New Bedford accompanied by an 18 year old slave named Lucy Faggins. Under an 1836 law, Lucy Faggins technically became free the moment she stepped onto Massachusetts soil. So Rev. Thomas James, minister of the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church, and some other members of the New Bedford Anti-Slavery Society went and attempted to tell her that she was free. Then James and John Murray Spear took out a writ of habeus corpus, with the claim that Lucy Faggins was being unlawfully restrained by her master. The case ended well for Faggins, who achieved her freedom; but it ended badly for John Murray Spear. Susan Taber, who lived in New Bedford at that time, wrote about how once Lucy Faggins had been freed, the pro-slavery faction in New Bedford became determined to ruin John Murray Spear — they threatened Spear with arrest and prosecution, and made his life so difficult that he had to resign his pulpit here and move to the Universalist church in Weymouth. So ended a glorious ministry for First Universalist Church in New Bedford.

    After he left New Bedford, Spear continued to work hard for the abolition of slavery. By 1844, Spear was sharing the lecture stage with Frederick Douglass in the “One Hundred Conventions” campaign of the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society. Spear also went on to work with his brother Charles for prison reform. His life embodied the Universalist principle of true egalitarianism.

    And so I will end this sermon about John Murray Spear with a quizzical observation: here is a minister from one of our antecedent congregations, a minister who embodied our highest values, and yet his name appears nowhere in this building. We have on our walls here the names of many lesser ministers, and even the names of one or two forgettable ministers. But I would suggest that the story of John Murray Spear as I have told it this morning offers us at least two splendid opportunities as we approach the celebration of the 300th anniversary of the founding of First Unitarian. We could think about how we might celebrate John Murray Spear and the other ministers of First Universalist Church. And we could think about how we might celebrate the fact that Nathan Johnson was an early African American member of First Universalist. I don’t quite know how we will make use of these opportunities. Will we try to get the names of First Universalist’s ministers on the walls of this sanctuary? Will we name one of our rooms after Nathan Johnson? I don’t know how to answer that, but I do know that this congregation is able to come up with amazingly creative ways to take advantage of opportunities like these.