Dan Harper | Sermons

  • A Secular Saint

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

    Readings

    The first reading was from a 2018 BBC interview with Claudette Colvin, who died last week. On March 2, 1955, when she was fifteen years old, Claudette Colvin refused to give up her seat on a Montgomery, Alabama, city bus. According to the BBC, “Colvin was the first person to be arrested for challenging Montgomery’s bus segregation policies….” It would be another nine months before Rosa Parks was arrested for refusing to give up her seat on a Montgomery city bus. In the 2018 interview, Colvin said:

    “We walked downtown and my friends and I saw the bus and decided to get on. It was right across the road from Dr Martin Luther King’s church. The white people were always seated at the front of the bus and the black people were seated at the back of the bus. The bus driver had the authority to assign the seats, so when more white passengers got on the bus, he asked for the seats. He wanted me to give up my seat for a white person and I would have done it for an elderly person but this was a young white woman. Three of the students had got up reluctantly and I remained sitting next to the window. Whenever people ask me: ‘Why didn’t you get up when the bus driver asked you?’ I say it felt as though Harriet Tubman’s hands were pushing me down on one shoulder and Sojourner Truth’s hands were pushing me down on the other shoulder. I felt inspired by these women because my teacher taught us about them in so much detail. I wasn’t frightened but disappointed and angry because I knew I was sitting in the right seat.”

    The second reading was the poem “Caged Bird” by Maya Angelou. The pome is not included here due to copyright.

    Sermon

    Tomorrow is the national holiday celebrating the birthday of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Today, fifty-eight years after he was murdered, Dr. King has become something of a larger-than-life figure in American culture. All these years later, we’ve finally reached something of a national consensus that King is an important figure in our national history. I’d even say he’s become something of a secular saint, though then we’d have to figure out what we mean by the phrase “secular saint.”

    There are religious groups — Roman Catholics and Eastern Orthodox and Anglicans and some Lutherans — who have fairly well-defined definitions of sainthood. The Benedictine Monks of St. Augustine’s Abbey in Ramsgate, England, offer a definition of sainthood in their 1921 book “The Book of Saints: A Dictionary of Servants of God Canonized by the Catholic Church” back in 1921 (London: A.C. Black). The monks begin by pointing out that their religion has a strict and rigorous process for determining who is a saint. This process begins after the proposed saint has died with a careful investigation into that person’s life. The monks summarize this long process thus:

    “It consists in the first place of a thorough investigation into all the particulars that can be ascertained of the life and death of the alleged Saint, all facts connected with whose career, both public and private, together with all his utterances and writings, are tested in every way. He must be shown to have been God-fearing, pious, just in his dealings, patient, self-denying, charitable, and so on, far above the average of ordinary good men….particular stress is put upon the popular verdict concerning the alleged Saint, that is, upon the repute in which he was held by those who may have had dealings with him or had opportunities of forming an opinion about him.”

    While this process is for Catholic saints, you can see that something similar applies to the process of determining who gets to be a secular saint. In Dr. King’s case, it wasn’t until the year 2000, 42 years after his death, that all 50 states recognized the federal holiday honoring him.

    The monks also point out that there is an exception to this lengthy process of determining sainthood, which would not apply to Dr. King:

    “The above official enquiry into the conduct in life and virtues of the deceased Christian for whom the supreme honor of [sainthood] is claimed is deemed unnecessary only in the case of a Martyr, that is, of one of the Faithful who has deliberately laid down his life rather than deny Christ. In his case, it has to be fully proved that he was put to death on account of his religion, and not because he was guilty of some political or other crime….”

    In American popular culture, martyrdom — the fact that someone gave their life for some great cause — may sometimes, but not always, be a part of secular sainthood. I’ll return to the question of martyrdom later on.

    Now, I have greatly shortened what the monks say about the criteria for sainthood, and they themselves say they are merely summarizing the complicated laws of sainthood in the Roman Catholic church. So we can see that some Christians have a lengthy process and strict criteria for determining who is a saint. For other Christians, however, sainthood doesn’t involve some complicated legal procedure; a saint is simply someone who leads a good Christian life. In these less strict Christian traditions, a saint is recognized as a saint when enough people agree that that person is a saint — this is sainthood by popular acclaim, rather than sainthood by formal church laws.

    Nor is it just Christians who recognize moral exemplars. Many other religious traditions venerate figures who are roughly equivalent to Christian saints. In Buddhism, a bodhisatva, someone who is striving towards Buddhahood, may be understood to be something like a saint. In Sikhism, the ten gurus who served from the founding of the religion until 1708 are considered to be roughly equivalent to saints. The Daoist immortals, people whose mastery of that religion have allowed them to overcome death, are somewhat saintlike.

    What about us Unitarian Universalists? We tend to be a skeptical group of people. We’re likely to be skeptical of the miracles attributed to the Christian saints. We’re likely to be skeptical that Daoist immortals really live forever. We may have doubts about the endless cycle of rebirth from which Buddhist bodhisattvas release themselves. We also get skeptical about sainthood because we see how the different religious traditions define sainthood differently: the Christian saints have a special connection to God; the Buddhist bodhisattvas achieve nirvana; the Daoist immortal works with alchemy; and so on.

    Indeed, our skepticism tends to push us towards doing away with saints altogether. However, I’d like to suggest that we probably don’t want to completely do away with saints. On the one hand, doing away with saints might cause us to view all moral exemplars with skepticism, which in turn can make it difficult to learn from anyone’s moral example. On the other hand, doing away with our skepticism might cause us to stop thinking critically about our moral exemplars. It’s good to have people we can look up to, and good to have people who serve as moral exemplars. It’s also good to remain aware that all persons, even saint-like people, have limitations. We Unitarian Universalists can steer a middle path between completely giving in to skepticism and doing away with saints on the one hand — and on the other hand, completely ignoring our skepticism about saints so that we can no longer think critically about them.

    This is how I got wondering whether Dr. King might be considered a saint: I wanted to keep him as a moral exemplar, but there were some things I wanted to think critically about. First, I wasn’t sure if he should be a religious saint. If he were a religious saint, he’d of course be a Christian saint. But then people who aren’t Christian might not find him especially inspiring, which would limit his reach as a moral exemplar. But even for Christians, since Dr. King was a Baptist I suppose he’d be a Baptist saint; except the Baptists don’t really spend much time venerating saints. So since Dr. King had become a saintlike moral exemplar, valued by Christians and non-Christians alike, that implies he had become a secular saint. As a secular saint, he wouldn’t be restricted to one Christian denomination; he could be claimed more widely by Christians, by people of other religions, and by people of no religion at all.

    This raises two questions for me. First, why have saints at all, even secular ones? Second, who gets to determine who becomes a secular saint?

    I’ve come to believe that it’s good to have secular saints. I spent twenty-five years working as a religious educator, and a big part of Unitarian Universalist religious education is moral education. We want to help each other to lead a good life. And when we do moral education, it works best to show what a moral life looks like, rather than decreeing that there are certain rules that you must live by. Thus, the best moral educators find people who can serve as moral examples, about whom they can say: This person did many good things in their life, and you might consider following their example.

    I think back to my own Unitarian Universalist upbringing, and remember how I was offered several examples of Unitarian Universalists who lived good lives, and whose example I might wish to follow. One of those Unitarian Universalist saint-like people was Louisa May Alcott, who not only wrote books about the importance of family, she also helped support her own family both financially and emotionally. Another of those Unitarian Universalist saint-like people was Henry Thoreau, who lived a life of simplicity, who was an anti-slavery activist, and who also helped to support his family financially.

    As I got older, I learned about other Unitarian Universalist saint-like people; people like James Reeb, a White minister who answered Martin Luther King’s plea for clergy to come to Selma, Alabama, in 1965 and march for voting rights. Reeb was murdered by White segregationists, and so became a kind of martyr. But he wasn’t a martyr in the formal Roman Catholic definition of the term: he did not die because of refusing to deny Christ, he died for a political cause. If we think of him as a secular saint, then we can say that he was a secular martyr, because he died for a higher purpose. Not that we think everyone should become a martyr to a higher purpose; we can retain enough of our skepticism to question when martyrdom is justified. Reeb didn’t seek out martyrdom; instead, he was simply following his highest principles.

    The question of martyrdom brings us back to the question of who gets to determine who becomes a secular saint. Just because someone gets killed, they do not automatically become a secular saint. Malcolm X was assassinated at about the same time as Martin Luther King, but Malcolm X has not become a secular saint in the same way that Dr. King has. I have great admiration for Malcom X, particularly the last year of his life, after he went to Mecca and came to a deep understanding of how all humanity was closely interconnected. But I admire Dr. King more, because of his principled stand for nonviolence. I understand why Malcolm X felt it necessary to advise all Black families to own guns in case they had to defend themselves against White supremacists. But I admire Dr. King for being able to take a broader view when he said, “The old law of an eye for an eye leaves everybody blind.” Dr. King’s principle of nonviolence helps explain why he has become more widely recognized as a secular saint.

    Let us consider another pair, one of whom became a secular saint, and the other of whom did not. Rosa Parks has achieved secular sainthood through her act of refusing to give up her seat to a White person on a segregated city bus. Yet as we heard in the first reading this morning, Rosa Parks was not the first Black person to refuse to give up her seat on a city bus; Rosa parks was not even the first Black woman to go to jail for refusing to give up her seat. Claudette Colvin, who just died this past week, was one of several Black people who refused to give up their bus seats before Rosa Parks did. Claudette Colvin was fifteen years old when she was arrested, and it is astonishing to think that a high schooler had the courage to risk arrest as a protest against segregation laws. So why did Rosa Parks become a secular saint, but not Claudette Colvin? One answer to that question is that Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat as a part of a larger strategy to mount a legal challenge to the segregation laws. Although Claudette Colvin later became one of the plaintiffs in the legal challenge to segregated buses, her refusal was an individual decision made on the spur of the moment. Furthermore, when she was arrested, Colvin was pregnant, which by the standards of the time made her ineffective as a moral exemplar; she also had darker skin than Parks did, which in that place and time would have worked against her. Indeed, her mother reportedly advised her to stay out of the spotlight. None of this diminishes what Claudette Colvin did; but it does help us better understand what makes a secular saint. Both women helped create lasting change by participating in the law suit challenging segregated buses; both women were members of the NAACP, both were already participating in the struggle for civil rights; but because Rosa Parks would be more acceptable to more people, she was the one who became a secular saint.

    Can you see how I’m trying to think critically about secular sainthood? A healthy amount of skepticism allows us to sort through the strengths and weaknesses of our secular saints. By sorting through their strengths and weaknesses, we can make careful judgements about what they did best, and what they might have done better. We can judge that both Claudette Colvin and Rosa Parks did something amazing, while at the same time understanding why Rosa Parks got all the publicity. We can judge that both Malcolm X and Dr. King had admirable qualities, while at the same time acknowledging that Dr. King’s philosophy, with his broad vision for united humanity, would be valued by a wider segment of the population.

    We can also use our healthy skepticism to make judgements about individual secular saints. As skeptics, we are pretty sure that no individual human being is infallible — not even secular saints. And so we can acknowledge that it is important to use our judgement as we strive to follow the examples of secular saints. Dr. King allegedly had extra-martial affairs. As healthy skeptics, we can recognize his very real faults and imperfections, while also valuing the good things he did. We do not require uncritical acceptance of our saints; we accept them for who they really were, as complex and fallible human beings, recognizing their faults while valuing their moral accomplishments.

    And now we can consider why we might want to have secular saints at all. I’ve already said that I found secular saints were useful when doing moral education with children. But I think we adults also benefit from having secular saints. I’ll give myself as an example. I’ve already told you about one of the secular saints I was introduced to as a child, Henry Thoreau. As children, mostly what we knew about Thoreau was that he lived in a cabin out at Walden Pond, which seemed like fun; but we also got some small inkling of Thoreau’s principles of simplicity. Then in the summer after my senior year in high school, I actually sat down and read Walden. I found it slow going, but I learned something new: Thoreau was a mystic who found God everywhere, and his notions of simplicity were part and parcel of that vision of God. It wasn’t until I was a young adult that I finally realized that Thoreau’s cabin at Walden Pond was a station on the Underground Railroad; and it wasn’t until I was middle-aged that I learned how Thoreau was dedicated to his family. As my own moral capacity grew, I was better able to understand Thoreau as a complex moral exemplar.

    A good moral exemplar, someone truly worth emulating, is not going to be a simplistic goody two-shoes one-dimensional figure. Those simplistic figures don’t have to confront difficult moral choices, so there is little to learn from them. When Dr. King is portrayed merely as someone who advocated for Civil Rights for Black people, he is little better than a goody two-shoes. Then when you recall that gave his famous “I Have a Dream” speech in 1963 during a march for jobs, a march that included both Black and White organizers because the issue of jobs is an issue for all races — then Dr. King gains more complexity; then he becomes more worthy of our emulation. Finally, when you realize all his actions were rooted in his deep spiritual practices, he gains further complexity — and he challenges us to deepen our own spiritual practices, so that our own actions are rooted in our own spiritual practices.

    And so you see, finding out about secular saints is not just an intellectual exercise. We can (and should) maintain a healthy skepticism about secular saints. But we also long for people to serve as examples of how our own lives can be more spiritually grounded. Contemplating the lives of secular saints can help go deeper into our own spiritual centers.

    This, in fact, is how we learn to be human: we are taught to be human by the examples of other humans. And part of our moral growth is learning that every human being has flaws, even our moral examples; then if we’re honest with ourselves we admit that we too have flaws, and we can learn how a seep spiritual grounding can help us overcome our own flaws. And so it is that we learn how we can our best possible selves by considering the examples of the best possible humans we know. And this learning continues our whole live, helping our spirits grow ever stronger, and helping our selves to grow into ever greater goodness.

  • Alike, Unalike

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

    Readings

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

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

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

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

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

    Sermon

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  • Every Child

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

    Reading

    Every child comes with the message that God is not yet discouraged of man.

    —from Stray Birds (1916) by Rabindranath Tagore

    Christmas Homily

    I don’t know about you, but it feels like it’s easy to get discouraged these days. Wars in Ukraine, the Middle East, Sudan, and all around the world. Violence here at home, including a couple of high-profile shootings a couple of weeks ago in Rhode Island and Massachussetts. The Epstein files. Forever chemicals and micro-plastics in our brains. AI is going to take away all our jobs. If you’ve ever doom-scrolled through the news or social media, you know the feeling you can get that we are all in a big mess, and it’s only getting worse.

    Earlier this month, while I was having that feeling that we’re in a big old mess, I ran across the quote by Rabindranath Tagore: “Every child comes with the message that God is not yet discouraged of humanity.” Since I am by nature something of a cynic, I immediately began an argument in my head in which I contradicted what felt like an overly optimistic viewpoint. First, having spent twenty five years of my career working with children and teens, I could not help but think of the kids who were themselves discouraged and might have disagreed with Tagore. Second, if we’re going to say that God is sending a message, then I want to know how we’re defining God before I agree that God sends messages. Third, even if we assume that God is not discouraged, that doesn’t mean I have to agree with God’s assessment of the situation. Fourth… well, I’ll stop here. You don’t want to hear the rest of the argument I had in my head, partly because it was not uplifting, but mostly because I began to think that maybe Rabindranath Tagore was actually correct.

    Consider that Tagore was born in Calcutta in 1861, at a time when the British ruled India. His whole family was part of the Bengal Renaissance. The artists and social reformers of the Bengal Renaissance questioned British colonial rule, at the same time as they questioned many of the old Indian rituals and customs. They wanted to replace the old oppressive social systems with a modern liberal society that valued each person as an individual. The Bengal Renaissance was an integral part of the effort to transform India from a British colony into the world’s largest democracy.

    When he was just 16, Rabindranath Tagore published his first book of poetry, to widespread acclaim. His literary career grew from there, culminating in 1913 when he was awarded the Nobel Prize in literature; he was the first Asian ever to win a Nobel Prize. The British King recognized Tagore’s talent by conferring a knighthood on him in 1915.

    Meanwhile, British rule in India seemed to become more and more oppressive. Tagore was especially horrified by the Amritsar Massacre of 1919, when British troops fired upon unarmed civilians who were peacefully protesting, killing and injuring perhaps two thousand people.(1) In response, Tagore wrote to the British ruler of India and renounced his knighthood, saying: “The enormity of the measures taken by the Government in the Punjab for quelling some local disturbances has, with a rude shock, revealed to my mind the helplessness of our position as British subjects in India.”

    Rabindranath Tagore lived in a time of oppression and violence. He could easily have let himself be overwhelmed by the feeling he and all of India were in a big mess that was only going to get worse. But instead of engaging in the early twe3ntieth century equivalent of doomscrolling, Tagore refused to give in to despair. In 1916, he published the very short poem I read to you earlier: “Every child comes with the message that God is not yet discouraged of humanity.”

    When I came across this very short poem by Tagore just a couple of weeks before Christmas, I couldn’t help thinking of Jesus of Nazareth. Not that Tagore was thinking about Jesus when he wrote this; he was a part of Brahmo Samaj, a very liberal Hindu reform group. So Tagore was not thinking about Jesus, but he nevertheless expressed something that I sense in the story of Jesus’s birth. Jesus was born into a tiny powerless country ruled by the Roman empire, an empire that was mostly concerned with extracting maximum profit from its subordinate states. Jesus was born into a Jewish family, a minority group with none of the rights enjoyed by Roman citizens.

    If you were not a Roman citizen, life in the Roman Empire was nasty, brutish, and short. Joseph and Mary, the parents of Jesus, would have had every right to worry about the fate of their child. Yet instead, so the Christmas story tells us, they allowed themselves to be filled with the wonder and love that attends the birth of a child. Ultimately, Jesus did in fact turn out to be a truly exceptional person; yet at the same time, Mary and Joseph only felt what every parent feels at the birth of a child, indeed what all humanity feels at the birth of a new child: that we should not be discouraged with ourselves, for there is still hope. Every child comes with this message: God is not yet discouraged with us; there is hope for the future.

    This, by the way, is why this congregation is so glad to have babies show up at our services. The baby who giggles during a Sunday service? That’s a message that offers more hope than any sermon I can give. The baby who cries in the middle of a service? That’s a message of joy more poignant the the best soprano or tenor soloist.

    When I think of babies in the Christmas season, I can’t help but think of the baby Jesus. I can’t help but think of the stable with the friendly animals and the angels and the shepherds and the wise people from afar, all admiring a newborn baby. All this reminds me of the words Dr. Kate Sullivan spoke during our Christmas pageant two weeks ago: “Why would all these people stand around for such a long time to admire a tiny new baby? There’s only one reason I can think of: because the birth of a child always brings hope for the future.”

    And so it is that we value the babies among us. Maybe these babies are not as special as Jesus of Nazareth (although their parents might not quite agree with that). Children show that God is not discouraged with us; or for those of us who don’t believe in God, we can understand this metaphorically: children show us that we need not be discouraged. Each child represents hope for the future.

    So let’s cut back on our doomscrolling. Rather than staring hopelessly at our screens, let’s pay more attention to the children out there, each of whom represents hope for the future. And since we Unitarian Universalists are pragmatic people, always looking for something hands-on we can do, we can each figure out how we can support babies and children and their families. If you have babies or young children of your own, you’re already doing this work. To give another example, our congregation operates a preschool, our way of helping to support the growth and development of young children. Or if you have friends or family who have babies or young children, you can support them. Teachers and childcare workers and children’s librarian are already doing this work, something to remember if you’re looking for a career change. Or if you’re able to contribute to this evening’s offering, everything you give will go to Boston Healthcare for the Homeless, which means you’ll be supporting children, because families make up two thirds of the homeless population in Massachusetts. These are just a few examples of how we can support children. You’re probably already doing one or more of these things.

    Ane here’s one final suggestion. As we support the children here and now, in our own time, perhaps we can remember the tiny baby born in a stable two thousand years ago. That tiny baby went on to change the world for the better, with his philosophy that love is the most important force in the universe. Each child comes with that potential. Instead of doomscrolling, maybe we can stay focused on that life-giving thought: Every child comes with the message that God is not yet discouraged of humanity.

    Note

    (1) Also known as the Jallianwala Bagh massacre. Ohio State University offers this short account of the massacre.