Dan Harper | Sermons – Page 52 – Online archive of nearly all my sermons

Glory Days, or, Hit by a Fish

On this Sunday, we recognized a Unitarian church which, like First Unitarian Church in New Bedford, is also celebrating its three hundredth birthday this year. Thus, the readings did not relate to the sermon, but instead celebrated the birthday of All Souls Unitarian Church in Belfast, Ireland. These readings are included here:

Greetings to All Souls Belfast

Whereas All Souls Church in Belfast, Ireland, affiliated with the Non-Subscribing Presbyterian Church of Ireland and with the General Assembly of Unitarian and Free Christian Churches, will celebrate the three hundredth anniversary of their founding this week;

Whereas First Unitarian Church in New Bedford, a member congregation of the Unitarian Universalist Association, was established three hundred years ago this year when Rev. Samuel Hunt was settled as minister in what was then called the town of Dartmouth;

Whereas both congregations are a part of the worldwide Unitarian fellowship, sharing in the values of liberal religion;

Whereas we feel a special connection with All Souls because Maggi Kerr Peirce has been a member of both congregations;

Therefore, we do extend our warmest greetings to the congregation of All Souls Church, wishing that their congregation may thrive and continue to uphold the values of liberal religion for at least another three centuries.

Given under our hands this fourteenth day of October in the two thousand and eighth year of the common era…

[Signed by members of the Board of Trustees of First Unitarian Church in New Bedford.]

A short history of All Souls Unitarian Church in Belfast, Ireland

Read by Maggi Kerr Peirce

John Abernethy, called “the father of non-subscription”, was a prominent Irish Presbyterian minister who led many ministers and congregations out of the Synod of Ulster into a separate liberal-minded denomination, known today as the Non-Subscribing Presbyterian Church of Ireland, and affiliated with the worldwide Unitarian movement.

In 1705 Abernethy founded a meeting, subsequently known as the Belfast Society, of ministers and lay people who gathered to discuss the Bible and recent theological scholarship. Members pooled their resources to buy new books and prepared papers on the latest publications. They trained themselves to engage in theological disputation and gradually began to challenge accepted religious notions of their day. A nineteenth-century Presbyterian historian described the Belfast Society as a “seed-plot of error”.

James Kirkpatrick, an Irish Presbyterian minister, was the first minister in Belfast to argue for the principles of non-subscription. He was a founding member of the Belfast Society. In common with Abernethy and others he adopted an increasingly critical attitude towards humanly formulated creeds, particularly the Westminster Confession of Faith.

In 1706 he accepted a call from the Belfast congregation as colleague to the Reverend John McBride. The Belfast congregation, which had grown rapidly, numbered more than three thousand members. At the time of Kirkpatrick’s call McBride had fled to Scotland to avoid arrest for refusing to take the oath abjuring the claims to the throne of James II’s son. McBride had suggested that the original Belfast congregation should be divided and a second meeting house built. Eventually, after complicated negotiations, the Belfast church did just that. A new meeting house was built immediately behind the first as the home of Kirkpatrick’s Second congregation. This was the beginning of unitarianism in Belfast.

[From material written by David Steers, minister of All Souls’ Non-Subscribing Presbyterian Church, Belfast from 1989 to 2000.]

Sermon was preached by Rev. Dan Harper at First Unitarian Church in New Bedford. About half the sermon as preached was extemporaneous, and the text below is a rough reconstruction of the actual sermon. Additionally, the text below has been slightly corrected based on further historical research. Sermon copyright (c) 2008 Daniel Harper.

Sermon — “Richard Huff, Quiet Revolutionary”

Years ago, I was watching some stupid television show, and I saw a comedy routine in which, much to his surprise, a man got slapped in the face with a fish. I said it was a “comedy routine,” although if you think about it, getting hit in the face with a fish is not really that funny. In fact, I don’t remember anything else about that comedy routine, so it couldn’t have been very funny. But I have retained this image of a very surprised man, and since then I’ve sometimes thought that that image of getting hit in the face with a fish is a good image for the way life can surprise us in very unpleasant ways.

So I tell you this, and it occurs to me that it’s possible that when you go home, you’ll be sitting down to eat lunch and ask yourself, “Now what did Dan talk about today? Something about a fish?” — and that’s all you’ll remember about this sermon. If you remember nothing else about this sermon, please also remember this:– when life slaps you in the face with a fish, you don’t have to blame yourself. It can be tempting to blame yourself when life is hard — but please don’t. You don’t have to blame yourself when life is hard on you.

Because that’s what happens in real life sometimes. Even when everything is going astonishingly well, even when you’re doing everything right, suddenly the rules of the game can change on you. This is what has happened to many of us, financially speaking, over the past few weeks:– We thought we were doing everything right, when suddenly the stock market falls apart, retirement plans lose a third of their value, the state can’t borrow money so it makes major cuts, unemployment rises, and so on. We thought we were doing all right when this financial crisis slapped us in the face with a fish, metaphorically speaking.

As Unitarian Universalists, we already know that we have to be always ready to change and grow and transform. That’s why we don’t like creeds or doctrines:– the creed that we adopt today may strangulate growth tomorrow. Therefore, out of religious principle, we like to remain ready to change and grow and transform ourselves. And yet even with our openness to change, even with our willingness to transform ourselves to meet new realities, sometimes we too get surprised by events.

This morning, I’d like to tell you about one such event that happened here in our own church some fifty-three years ago. Back in 1954, our church seemed poised for explosive growth; but the very next year Sunday morning adult attendance began to decline rapidly, the Sunday school began to decline more slowly, and that decline continued pretty much right through the quarter century. So here’s the story:

…

Like every church, our church has always had ups and downs. In the 1920s there were years when this church had more than a hundred children and teenagers in the Sunday school each week, and more than a hundred adults sitting in the pews for the morning service, and even more adults at church for the Sunday evening vespers service (yes, we used to have a vespers service here). And there have always been times when we weren’t so successful. In the 1930s, adult attendance dropped, and the Sunday school shrank in size. Fortunately, during the 1930s, most of the membership of First Universalist Church transferred to First Unitarian, and those folks kept us from declining even further.

In 1938, when Duncan Howlett became our minister, our attendance shot up, and stayed high the entire time he was here. After Howlett left in 1946, on the surface it seemed as though our church declined in energy and numbers for a half a dozen years. But growth and change and transformation were happening underneath the surface: the old pew rental system finally disappeared; the minister was integrated back in to the governance of the church and was allowed to address the annual meeting without having to ask permission first; the Sunday school stayed strong and large; and many groups and organizations within the church remained strong and vibrant, including the Women’s Alliance, the Sewing Circle, the Murray Club organized by the old Universalists, and other groups. In the late 1940s and early 1950s, this church may have looked a little sleepy on the surface, but good healthy activity was taking place below the surface.

The society around the church was changing rapidly at this time. Even though New Bedford slowly continued to lose manufacturing jobs, the economy finally emerged from the Great Depression. After the Second World War, lots of young couples got married and had babies, and this was the beginning of the famous Baby Boom. There was a resurgence of civic engagement; that is, people were eager to become active in community groups; the 1950s were the high point of civic engagement in the twentieth century. With the rise in civic engagement, lots of people started going to church.

In the midst of all this societal growth and change and transformation, our church called a new minister, Richard Huff. He seemed exactly the right man to be minister at our church in that time. He was a former Navy chaplain, so he could relate to all the returning soldiers. After the war he became the minister at the Unitarian church in Stoneham; when he arrived there, they were a dying church, but when he left they were thriving and growing. He was a “kind man,” a man of “great charm” and a “good preacher” (here I’m quoting what people have said to me about him); he was just the right kind of personality to be the minister of this church. All these characteristics were evident when he arrived here in 1953. But I think he had another, less obvious, characteristic that perfectly suited him to be the minister of this church at that moment in time: he was the kind of man who knew that both people and churches have to constantly change and grow and transform themselves in order to continue to thrive.

When Richard Huff arrived in 1953, attendance skyrocketed. Our church had gotten up to an average attendance of 130 adults on Sundays when Duncan Howlett had been here, probably the highest attendance our church had seen for most of the twentieth century. After Howlett left, attendance dropped down to about a hundred adults, but when Richard Huff arrived attendance shot up to 167 — that is, attendance increased more than fifty percent in his first year here! And the next year, attendance remained just about as high.

The number of children in the Sunday school did not shoot up, however. On the surface, the reason appeared obvious: we didn’t have adequate space to accommodate all the children. On Sunday morning, I have been told that there were groups of children everywhere; one Sunday school class even had to meet in the balcony of the Tryworks Auditorium upstairs in the Parish House (if you’ve seen that space, it’s hard to imagine how you’d have a Sunday school class up there). So our church began to build additional Sunday school space: part of the basement was renovated in the early 1950s, and the lower basement was renovated a few years later.

But Richard Huff and a few other forward-thinking lay leaders in the church began to realize that it wouldn’t be enough to simply build more classrooms. They began to realize that if the church were going to be serious about the Sunday school, it was time to hire a paid director of religious education. However, these were the years when many Unitarian and Universalist churches were hiring their very first paid directors of religious education; many churches were looking for qualified people to fill those jobs, and there just weren’t enough qualified people to go around. Our church tried to hire one of those qualified people, but at the very last moment she decided she did not want to leave the place where she had been living. The lay leaders and the old Sunday school superintendent tried to keep things going, but Sunday school attendance slowly began to drop.

The number of adults on Sunday mornings dropped even faster. By 1958, when our church celebrated its 250th birthday, adult attendance had dropped down to just over 100 adults on a Sunday.

In the midst of all this, Richard Huff and his family were going through a serious and major family crisis, that apparently involved all of his immediate family. He resigned as minister, and apparently left the ministry for a number of years. Eventually, though, he returned to the Unitarian ministry, and wound up as the minister in Fitchburg, Massachusetts.

Our church’s attendance continued to decline after all this happened. The Baby Boom was slowing down, so there weren’t as many families bringing children to church. Then in the 1960s the social and economic situation in New Bedford grew more difficult, with urban riots and growing unemployment. And all across the nation, people just stopped going to church as much. The net result was that, like many Unitarian Universalist churches across the country, we kept shrinking right through the 1960s and 1970s.

…

So our church started shrinking around 1956. It would be easy for us to blame this on the changes in the society around us, the changes in New Bedford. But if it were the changes in the society around us which stopped our growth, I think the decline would have been more gradual, and I think it would have come five years later. Instead, we stopped growing so suddenly, it was as if someone smacked us in the face with a fish. I’d like to briefly explain to you what I think happened here in our church around 1956.

When Richard Huff arrived, the minister of this church was the central node through which all church communication passed. The minister was the only one who really knew everyone: the shut-ins, the staff, the people who never came to church, the children and the Sunday school teachers, as well as the people in the pews on Sunday morning. There’s even a name for this kind of church: it’s called a “pastoral-size church,” a name which tells us that the pastor, or minister, is the central communication node for the whole church. If you have a really good minister, you can take a pastoral-size church up to an average attendance of about two hundred men, women, and children; but if you get above that, one minister simply can’t manage all the communications that need to happen. Yet from 1953 through 1955, our church had an average of about two hundred and fifty people on Sunday morning: we went over that magic number of two hundred, and then we dropped right back down.

Over the past thirty years, church experts have done a lot of research on how to make the transition past an average attendance of two hundred — it can be done, but it requires a church to change the way they do just about everything. Indeed, this is the current crisis of the liberal churches. Most of our liberal churches, of whatever denomination, never get above that magic number of an average Sunday attendance of two hundred. Sometimes a really skilled minister will keep a church above that level for a few years or a couple of decades, but when that person leaves, attendance declines back down.

…

There’s a moral to this story. Of course, there’s a moral to this story, but it’s not the moral you expect. In fact, there are two morals to this story.

This first moral is very simple: If things don’t work out the way you expect, you don’t have to automatically blame yourself. Sometimes life slaps you in the face with a fish, and when that happens, it’s not your fault. When life is hard, please go easy on yourself.

The other moral of this story has to do with our church. It turns out that the evangelical Christians are having a similar problem, but in reverse. Brian McLaren, an evangelical Christian who has been working hard on church growth from the evangelical side of things, has said that the Christian “conservatives tend to be rigid theologically and promiscuous pragmatically and liberals tend to be rigid methodologically and a lot more free theologically.” In other words, the Christian conservatives stick rigidly to their doctrine and dogmas, but they’ll try all kinds of new organizational strategies; whereas us religious liberals are pretty free and open about what we believe, but we are pretty rigid when it comes to the way we do church. Then McLaren goes on to say: “Maybe we could trade.”

And that’s the other moral of the story. As religious liberals, we are already free in our thinking; we are already quiet revolutionaries in our religion. And perhaps we can now free up our organizational thinking so that we are just as free. Perhaps now we can become quiet revolutionaries in the way we do the business of the church, in the same way that we have long been quiet revolutionaries in the way we do theology.
The Global Financial Crisis

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

Readings

I was going to preach a nice historical sermon this morning, part of a serires on the 300th anniversary of this church. But with the crisis in the global financial markets over the past week, this morning I will instead be preaching on the economy.

The first reading this morning is from the Hebrew Bible, the Prophets, the Book of Isaiah, verses 16-18 and 21-26 of the first chapter:

Cease to do evil;
Learn to do good.
Devote yoruselves to justice;
Aid the wronged.
Uphold the rights of the orphan;
Defend the cause of the widow.
“Come, let us reach an understanding,”
— says the Lord…
The faithful city
That was filled with justice,
Where righteousness dwelt —
But now murderers [dwell].
Your silver has turned to dross;
Your wine is cut with water.
Your rulers are rogues
And cronies of thieves,
Every one avid for presents
And greedy for gifts;
They do not judge the case of the orphan,
And the widow’s cause never reaches them.

Assuredly, this is the declaration
Of the Sovereign, the Lord of Hosts,
The Mighty One of Israel:
“Ah, I will get satisfaction from My foes;
I will wreak vengeance on My enemies!
I will turn My hand against you,
And smelt out your dross in a crucible,
And remove all your slag:
I will restore your magistrates as of old,
And your counselors as of yore,
After that you shall be called
City of Righteousness, Faithful City.”

[New Jewish Publication Society translation]

The second reading is from “The Miracle of Mindfulness,” the 1975 book by Thich Nhat Hanh, who is a Vietnamese Buddhist monk. He writes:

“Thirty years ago, when I was still a novice at Tu Hieu Pagoda, washing the dishes was hardly a pleasant task. During the Season of Retreat when all the monks returned to the monastery, two novices had to do all the cooking and wash the dishes for sometimes well over one hundred monks. There was no soap. We had only ashes, rice husks, and coconut husks, and that was all. Cleaning such a high stack of bowls was a chore, especially during the winter when the water was freezing cold. Then you had to heat up a big pot of water before you could do any scrubbing. Nowadays one stands in a kitchen equipped with liquid soap, special scrubpads, and even running hot water which makes it all the more agreeable. It is easier to enjoy washing the dishes now. Anyone can wash them in a hurry, and sit down and enjoy a cup of tea afterwards. I can see a machine for washing clothes, although I wash my own things out by hand, but a dishwashing machine is going a little too far!

“While washing the dishes one should only be washing dishes, which means that while washing the dishes one should be completely aware of the fact that one is washing the dishes. At first glance, that might seem a little silly: why put so much stress on a simple thing? But that’s precisely the point. The fact that I am standing there and washing these bowls is a wondrous reality. I’m being completely myself, following my breath, conscious of my thoughts and actions. There’s no way I can be tossed about mindlessly like a bottle slapped here and there on the waves.” [pp. 3-4]

Sermon

Well, as I said earlier, this morning I had planned to preach on a nice safe historical topic. I was going to preach on the history of our covenant here in our church. We would have taken a nice historical trip back in time, and I would have told you wonderful things about the three hundred year history of our church.

But then current events intruded. The stock market dropped 678.91 points on Friday. The Dow Jones Industrial Average has dropped 39.4% since October 10, 2007. The pundits in the news media are freely making comparisons with the great crash of 1929, when the Dow Jones dropped 89% from September, 1929, to July, 1932.

The financial situation in this country has gotten worrisome. The financial situation in the whole world has gotten worrisome! I’m worried, and I’ll bet most of you are worried too.

The financial situation in our church is worrisome, too. We have become overly dependent on our endowment, which provides more than half our operating budget. Our endowment is now dropping in value. That means the income from our endowment is dropping as well.

Forget the church, many of us are finding that our personal financial situations are worrisome! If you’re like me and much of your retirement money is invested in stocks, you have been watching your retirement savings dwindle. Hey, I still have an account in Washington Mutual — you know, that bank that almost went belly up a couple of weeks ago? — and I’m in the process of getting my money out. On top of what’s going wrong with stocks and the banks, the price of everything is going up. And for those of you who own your own home — well, we’re all expecting property values to drop.

OK. We all know what’s going on, and I don’t need to recap the news for you. What I’d like to do this morning is to talk with you about how we might respond to this crisis religiously, as Unitarian Universalists. Religion is supposed to help us make sense out of this crazy world we live in; as Unitarian Universalists, can we make sense out of the global financial crisis? Religion is also supposed to help us answer the question, “What ought I do?” — can we figure out what Unitarian Universalism is calling us to do in these times?

…

I’d like to begin with our prophetic response to this crisis. Now, by “prophetic,” I don’t mean that we can see the future. I mean “prophetic” in the sense of those old Biblical prophets who went around telling everyone what’s wrong with society — the kind of prophet we heard in the first reading this morning. As Unitarian Universalists, what is our prophetic response to this financial mess?

We know that greed is one of the primary causes of this financial crisis. Let me give you an example of how we know this is true. Earlier this week, Richard Fuld had to testify before Congress. Fuld was the president of Lehman Brothers, fourth largest investment bank in the United States until they filed for bankruptcy on September 15. Fuld testified to Congress that he took home three hundred million dollars in pay and bonuses over the past eight years — that’s an average of 37.5 million dollars a year. He was quoted as testifying to the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, quote “I don’t expect you to feel sorry for me.”

No, we don’t feel sorry for you, Mr. Fuld. You were greedy. Now you are sitting pretty in your designer suits while the rest of us schlumps have to deal with the mess you have left behind. It is hard to feel sorry for any of the investment bankers who made their millions before the stock market started to fall. We don’t feel sorry for them, we just call them greedy and selfish.

Greed has driven the stock market for quite some time now. But actually, greed has driven our whole society for some time now. We have been convinced that we can get something for nothing. We have all dreamed of buying a house that goes up and up in value so that when we sell it, we make out like bandits — houses have become an investment that will make us rich (we hope) rather than a place to live. Everything has become an investment. I’ve dreamed those dreams, and I’ll bet lots of you have, too. Alas, those dreams come down to greed: wanting something we don’t have, that we can obtain for no real effort.

Selfishness plays a part, too. How can someone like Richard Fuld take home three hundred million dollars and think he really deserves all that money? There’s an element of selfishness in such an attitude. Yet selfishness extends beyond the Richard Fulds of this country down to our economic level. I discovered recently that according to a recent study, less than half of all Americans give any money to charity. It gets worse — when you look at those of us who do give money to charity, most of us give very, very little money away. Indeed, most of the charitable giving in this country comes from a small minority of people who are very generous. Yet most Americans have substantial discretionary spending. Michael Durrall, a financial consultant to churches, tells us that most church members could double their charitable giving and not notice a change in their lifestyle. (Obviously, he is referring to the fifty percent of Americans who give any money at all to charity, because for the other half who give nothing, doubling zero is still zero and so obviously they would not see any change to their lifestyle if they doubled their charitable giving.)

But let’s go back to the leaders of this country — and I mean the financial leaders of this country, who may or may not be our elected leaders. Our financial leaders have set a general example of greed and selfishness that is appalling; it is time that we stop letting them lead us into greed and selfishness. One way we make sense out of this financial crisis is through prophetic response to this appalling greed that has taken over our country:– we condemn the current culture of greed and selfishness, and call for new standards of ethical financial leadership.

…

We need to do that, but we also need to acknowledge our personal responses to this financial crisis. The financial situation is bad right now, and we have to make personal sense from this mess we’re in. Many of us — me included — are fearful, worried, even angry. I don’t know about you, but one of the things I’m dealing with right now is keeping my fear and worry under control. In order to keep fear and worry under control, I have been engaging in

First, I’ve been thinking in terms of living simply. “Simplify, simplify,” said Henry David Thoreau. The point of living simply is to focus on what’s of greatest importance. The latest electronic gadget is not of greatest importance. In the second reading this morning, Thich Nhat Hanh reminds me how much we take for granted. We have access to laundry machines! We have things like dish detergent, and running water! We have more than we usually remember that we have. When I can remember how much I already have, I face away from the greed that tells me that I need all the latest appliances. I don’t need those things — I suppose I could even learn to be like Thich Nhat Hanh, and wash out my clothing by hand. It might be a good way to be mindful of all I do have.

Of course, those of you who have children may have a hard time with this approach. Children have become very vulnerable to marketers, and when all their friends at school have a cell phone, or a certain video game, then they absolutely have to have one too. It is harder for people with children to practice simple living. At the same time, the real point for all of us is not to practice simple living the way Henry Thoreau did — we don’t have to go out and live by Walden Pond — rather, it will be enough to practice simpler living. We can simplify, but not to the point of giving everything up.

My second spiritual practice for these times that I am working on is the spiritual practice of giving money away. I am doing this because I know that those of us who do not risk getting put out on the street have a special responsibility to increase our charitable giving in order to support those who are more financially vulnerable than we are.

Now for some years, I have had a spiritual goal of giving away ten percent of my income (that’s pre-tax income) each year. I’ve been working on this for a while now, and in 2005 I was up to giving away eight percent of my income. That felt like a spiritual accomplishment, and it felt good. It was one of the best things I’ve done in my spiritual life — I felt more centered, and more focused on what’s truly important in life. Well, then my partner found herself with less and less work, and as our household income declined, and we kept cutting back, and one of the things I had to cut back temporarily was my charitable giving. Now I’m down to giving away five percent of my income.

But this financial crisis have strengthened my resolve to increase my charitable giving back up to eight percent, and then on to ten percent of my income. This will not be an easy goal to attain, and I’m not going to let myself feel guilty if I don’t make it to my goal as quickly as I’d like. This is not about guilt; rather, I’m suggesting that this kind of thing can be a spiritual goal for all of us. By giving away part of our income, we turn ourselves away from the predominant greed and selfishness of our society — and I will tell you from my own experience that this has the effect of reducing my own personal fear and worry.

So it is that part of my personal response to the financial crisis has been to calm my fears and worries by engaging in two personal spiritual practices that relate to the financial crisis: living more simply, and giving part of my income away. I don’t mean to imply that you need to take on either of these spiritual practices yourself. But I do want to say that each of us can find personal spiritual practices which can help to calm our fears and worries, and to strengthen the best part of our selves.

…

Now I’d like to talk just a little bit about what we can do here together as a church. What might this church’s spiritual response be to this financial crisis?

I’ve already hinted at one answer, when I said that those of us who can do so should think about those who are more vulnerable than we are. So it is that here in the church we can focus our energies on what we can do to help out the surrounding community. Indeed, we are already doing this. For example, Bill Bennett, Maryellen Kenney, and Ted Schade have taken over the operation of Universal Thrift because Lorial Laughery-Weincek, who was running the thrift store, is recovering from illness and will be unable to return to volunteering for quite a while. Fill, Maryellen, and Ted knew that in times like these, our community needs that thrift store, so they stepped in. Universal Thrift provides decent clothing and housewares at very affordable prices to people who can’t afford anything else. (In fact, the thrift store accepts vouchers from social service agencies for people who really have not money whatsoever.)

Perhaps it’s time for us expand this service to the community. Maybe we can mobilize more volunteers to go out and find good cheap clothing and housewares, get them ready for sale, and then sell them for very cheap prices to people who need them. Since we already have a thrift shop in place, right now, I would judge that this is the most spiritually important work that we can do. By doing something tangible for the community, we are also engaging in a communal spiritual practice — because when we do good in the world, we are helping to strengthen the best part of our selves.

(By the way, the thrift store also happens to make money for us, because many of the people who shop in the store are not destitute, but simply want good value. Thus our thrift store represents the new concept of social innovation, where charitable organizations can make money while doing good. The money we make through the thrift store goes directly into our operating budget, which means it helps pay for heat and building maintenance. It is now our biggest fundraiser.)

The thrift shop is just one example of what we can do to set up our church so that we transform the world around us into a better place, while at the same time transforming ourselves for the better. We also send a crew once a month to help serve at the soup kitchen. In another, more personal, example, we can each be sure to bring one canned good every week for the food pantry box, so that we can continue to support the Shepherd’s Staff food pantry.

These are very tangible thing we can do, but it is equally important for us to do something far less tangible, and that is to offer our liberal religious witness to the world. We know that some of the conservative religious folks will say that the way out of the financial crisis is to trust in some Daddy God who will fix everything for us. We know that the prosperity gospel folks will be out in full force telling people that you just have to believe in their God, and you will get rich. We know that some of the most conservative religious folks will even try to tell us that the financial crisis has been brought upon us as a judgment form God because we legalized same sex marriage and abortion and women’s rights and so on. We want this church to keep its doors open, and to grow ever bigger, so that we can counteract some of the problematic religious messages that are out there.

We need to be a big strong church so we can counteract these other religious messages. We need to be a big strong voice for liberal religion so that we can tell the world:– This happened because we were stupid and no Daddy God is going to clean up after us, so we’re responsible for cleaning up our own mess. We need to tell the world:– No one is going to get rich just because they believe in the right God, and in fact let’s get away from the greed that says we should be rich. We need to be sure to tell the world:– This financial crisis did not come about because we legalized same sex marriage or gave women the vote. That means that all of us who showed up here this morning are doing exactly the right thing:– by simply showing up here on Sunday morning, we are affirming our religious values. The more of us who show up here on Sunday morning, the better we can counteract all those negative religious messages that are out there.

Finally, let us remember that church is supposed to be fun. If this financial crisis continues, we’re all going to need to have some fun. If you volunteer down at the thrift shop, it’s supposed to be fun because you get to volunteer with like-minded people. If you volunteer in the Sunday school, passing on our religious values to our children in order to help the next generation move away from greed and selfishness,– well, teaching Sunday school is supposed to be fun, because you get to play with kids, and you get to meet the other Sunday school teachers. The same is true for volunteering with any program in this church. Or you can show up for the Independent Film Series tomorrow night, and watch a great movie, and then talk about it with other thoughtful intelligent people — and having thoughtful intelligent conversations is exactly what we need to be doing right now, so we can start to figure out a new moral and ethical direction for our society. All these things are fun, and all these things are free, and all these things have a positive influence on us and one the world.

We need some positive influences in our lives right now. We need to be able to make sense out of the financial mess that’s happening around us, and we need to feel that we can do something to deal with that mess. It would be easy to let fear and worry take over our lives right now. What I have suggested is that we don’t let fear and worry take over our lives. We can offer a prophetic response, and say that greed and selfishness have contributed to the financial mess that we’re in. We can take personal spiritual action, transforming our lives, strengthening our selves so that we can better face the financial crisis. We can band together in this church, so that together our liberal religious witness can transform the world around us. By doing these things, we strengthen that which is best in ourselves.
Duncan Howlett, Quiet Revolutionary

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

Readings

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

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

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

And, later in the typescript, Howlett continues:

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sermon

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

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

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

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

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

…

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

…

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

…

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

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

…

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Notes

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

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Duncan Howlett, Quiet Revolutionary