Dan Harper | Sermons

Tag: Edward Everett Hale

  • One Thing

    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 the poem “Global Warming Blues” by Mariahadessa Ekere Tallie. You can hear the poet reading this poem on Youtube.

    The second reading was the poem “look at the blackbird fall” by June Jordan. This poem is available in the anthology Black Nature: Four Centuries of African American Nature Poetry, edited by Camille T. Dungy (Univ. of Georgia Press, 2009), or in Directed by Desire: The Collected Poems of June Jordan (Copper Canyon Press, 2012).

    The third reading is usually attributed to Unitarian minister and novelist Edward Everett Hale.
    I am only one
    But still I am one.
    I cannot do everything,
    But still I can do something,
    And because I cannot do everything
    I will not refuse to do the something that I can do.

    Sermon

    Right at the beginning, I should tell you that this sermon got the wrong title. I called it “One Thing,” but as you will see, a better title would have been “Ten Times One Is Ten.” I should also tell you, right up front, that while it might seem a little depressing at the beginning, this will wind up being a positive sermon.

    For the past twenty years, one of my sidelines has been doing environmental education with children and adults. Not that I’m trained in environmental education or biology, but I’ve been fortunate enough to work with, and learn from, biologists and environmental educators. The reason I wound up doing environmental education even though I wasn’t trained in it, was because I could see that humanity faces numerous ecological challenges of our own making, challenges which have prompted spiritual questioning and even spiritual crises in quite a few people.

    Let me give an example of a spiritual crisis prompted by ecological challenges. Ten years ago, I was one of the people leading a week-long ecology day camp for grades 2 through 8. We gave kids lots of opportunities to play outdoors and explore the natural world, and we even did a little citizen science with them. We also talked openly about the environmental challenges that humanity faces; we didn’t emphasize them, but we were honest with kids that humanity faced some big problems. In fact, the kids were relieved that we adults were willing to talk openly about those big problems. Children and teens are quite aware of the world’s environmental problems, but sometimes adults don’t want to talk with kids about such serious and discouraging topics.

    Toward the end of the week-long camp, while we were out walking somewhere, one of the seventh graders said to me, with a little bit of fear in her voice, “Are we going to be all right?” There were a couple of levels of meaning contained in this seemingly simple question. At an abstract level, she wanted to know if humanity was going to survive the various ecological crises we’re facing. Then at a personal level, she also wanted to know what their life was going to be like, and over the course of their life how they navigate the problems raised by global climate change, toxics in the environment, and so on. And at a spiritual level, she was facing a crisis of meaning — would she survive?

    My reply to that seventh grader was pretty much what you’d expect. I said that humanity had faced big challenges in the past, and somehow managed to come out all right. I said that in spite of the big problems we faced, I felt humanity was capable of solving those problems. In short, I tried to tell her things that would give her hope for the future.

    This exchange helped me understand the roots of the spiritual crisis many kids — and many adults — experience as we contemplate ecological problems. When we contemplate ecological problems, we wind up confronting several spiritual questions. We wind up confronting the nature of humanity — Is there some evil in humanity, some basic flaw, that has prompted us to do so much damage to other living things? Is there enough good in us to overcome the bad, so that we can solve our ecological problems? Then we wind up confronting the purpose of existence — Is it true, as some conservative Christians tell us, that the only purpose of this life is to prepare us for an afterlife? Is there some deity, or some force in the universe, that will be angered by the damage we’re doing to other living beings? And we also wind up confronting some old stories that have been told in Western culture for thousands of years, stories about how there will be an end time filled with disasters. Are those old stories true? — and before the skeptics among us say, “No of course they’re not true” — I would remind you that old stories like that can shape your behavior at an unconscious level, even if you doubt them at a conscious level. And whether or not those old stories are true, are they maybe affecting our behavior in ways that we don’t like, and maybe we want to retell those old stories so that we behave in ways we do like?

    All these are spiritual questions. They are questions that cannot be answered scientifically or logically, because they are feeling questions. Ultimately, these spiritual questions boil down to whether we feel a sense of hope for the future.

    Getting back to that seventh grader — she was more or less satisfied with the answer I gave her, but I wasn’t. I knew I had only given her a scientific and logical answer to her spiritual question, which meant that I didn’t really address her spiritual concerns. How could we address those very real spiritual questions that those kids had? After talking it over with all the adults who were running that day camp, here’s what we came up with….

    First, we decided that we needed to be more explicit about the ecological problems facing humanity. By not being specific, we made it feel as though ecological problems were huge and amorphous and beyond the capability of any one person to tackle — and when you feel powerless to address something, that can prompt a spiritual crisis. I had heard a talk given by Dr. Stuart Weiss, a Stanford-trained biologist who ran an environmental remediation company. Weiss listed five major threats to earth’s life supporting systems:

    One: Global climate change. Two: Invasive organisms, non-native plants and animals that outcompete native organisms. Three: “Toxication,” or pollution from solid wastes like microplastics, to chemical wastes like PFAS. Four: Deforestation and other land use changes that now affect three quarters of the Earth’s land area. Five: Overpopulation by humans.

    I use the acronym DOGIT to remember these — Deforestation, Overpopulation, Global climate change, Invasive species, and Toxication. Other biologists have come up with similar lists with different acronyms. The biologist E. O. Wilson used the acronym HIPPO, which stands for Habitat loss, Invasive species, Pollution, human Population, and Overharvesting. Use whatever list or acronym you prefer — the point is to get more specific about the challenges facing us.

    At the day camp, we told the campers about Stuart Weiss’s list of five major environmental challenges. Then we told them that they do not have to solve all of these challenges. All they have to do is choose one of them on which they wanted to focus their efforts. We also gave them stories about role models, people whom they could emulate who had taken on one of these big environmental challenges. So, for example, we told them about Wangari Maathai, who won the Nobel Peace Prize for starting the Green Belt Movement to help reverse deforestation in Kenya. We told them about Rachel Carson, who brought public awareness to the damage that chemical pesticides were doing to the environment. As we talked about Wangari Maathai and Rachel Carson and others, we would make it clear how each one of these people focused their efforts into straightforward and achievable projects. Wangari Maathai didn’t try to solve land use problems everywhere the world, she focused on addressing deforestation in Kenya where she lived. Rachel Carson didn’t try to tackle every kind of pollution, she focused on what she knew best, pesticides like DDT. In addition, for each one of our role models, we made sure the kids understood that these people did not work alone, but rather they worked with others to bring about positive change.

    One of the ways we reinforced this was by reciting the following short poem:

    I am only one
    But still I am one.
    I cannot do everything,
    But still I can do something,
    And because I cannot do everything
    I will not refuse to do the something that I can do.

    When talking with kids, I usually attribute this poem to Unitarian minister and novelist Edward Everett Hale even though it probably wasn’t written by him. I like to attribute it to Hale because it captures the spirit of what he believed. One of Hale’s most famous novels was titled Ten Times One Is Ten. The novel begins just after the funeral of Harry Wadsworth. Ten people who had all known Wadsworth, but who had never met before, wind up telling each other stories of the good things Harry Wadsworth had done for each of them. For it turned out that Harry Wadsworth was one of those people who quietly went around doing good things for other people. Not that the good things he did were anything extraordinary — everything he did was something any one of us could have done — but he went ahead and did them, whereas all too often the rest of us don’t.

    As they sat around listening to each other’s stories of Harry Wadsworth’s good deeds, these ten people became inspired by his actions, and they wanted to continue his legacy. They wanted to form a club to carry on his legacy, but because they lived all across the country, they couldn’t have a conventional club with bylaws and meetings and so on. Instead, they decided that each of one of them would go out and do something good in the world; then they would report what they had done to the others. And, to better capture the spirit of Harry Wadsworth, they adopted the following mottos:

    “To look up and not down,
    To look forward and not back,
    To look out and not in,—
    and
    To lend a hand.”

    Since there were ten of them whose lives had been touched by Harry Wadsworth, they set themselves the goal of each touching the lives of ten more people. Now you begin to understand why the book is titled Ten Times One Is Ten. Each of those people did something good that touched the lives of ten more people, so that ten times ten becomes a hundred. Then those hundred people went on and did things to touch the lives of ten more people, until before long it ten times a million became ten million. And the good work spread from person to person, until at last the club realized that they had reached a thousand million people (ten times a hundred million is a thousand million) — which at the time the book was written, in the late nineteenth century, was the entire population of the world. As the narrator of the novel puts it: “When ten million people have determined that the right thing shall come to pass in this world, having good on their side, they will always be found to have their own way.”

    “Ten Times One Is Ten” became a bestselling novel in the late nineteenth century. The novel proved so popular that it spawned a real-world movement of “Lend-a-Hand” clubs across the United States, devoted to making the world a better place. (These nineteenth century clubs have mostly disappeared, although when I worked at the Unitarian church in Lexington twenty-five years ago they still had a Lend-a-Hand Club, and there is still a Lend-a-Hand organization in Boston.) And you can see how the Lend-a-Hand club concept sounds like that poem attributed to Edward Everett Hale:

    I am only one
    But still I am one.
    I cannot do everything,
    But still I can do something,
    And because I cannot do everything
    I will not refuse to do the something that I can do.

    So even if Edward Everett Hale didn’t actually write this little poem, the anonymous author captured one of Hale’s most important teachings in a memorable form. Furthermore, Edward Everett Hale would go on to say, though you may be only one — ten times one is ten.

    Regardless of who actually wrote that poem, we taught it to the kids in the day camp. I wish we had also thought to teach them the motto of the club in Hale’s novel:

    Look up and not down,
    Look forward and not back,
    Look out and not in, and
    Lend a hand.

    Yet even though we didn’t teach them those exact words, we taught them that sentiment. Look up for solutions rather than getting pulled down by the problems. Look forward to the future rather than always looking back at the past. Don’t get trapped inside yourself, but look outwards to other people, for there is where you’ll find hope. And finally, of course — Lend a hand where you can.

    This is not to say that we ignored the very real phenomenon of “eco-grief.” “Eco-grief” is a term that I learned from a professor of environmental biology; she uses that term to describe the feelings of her college freshmen students when they realized the true magnitude of the environmental problems we face today. Eco-grief is a real phenomenon; most of us have some feelings of eco-grief. We should not dismiss eco-grief, but if we get trapped in our inward feelings of eco-grief, then nothing will change for the better. Go ahead and look in on your feelings of eco-grief, but remember to then turn and look out, and lend a hand.

    I’m making this sound like while we were running that ecology day camp, we considered all these matters ahead of time, and then implemented a carefully constructed curriculum to help kids maintain a positive attitude, so that they weren’t overwhelmed by eco-grief, so they could go out and change the world. Actually, what happened is that we made it up as we went along. We watched how the campers responded (and, if I’m honest, we watched how we adults responded), and then made adjustments on the fly. This took us several years.

    We knew we had succeeded by watching the campers. We got to a point where they didn’t have to ask us if things were going to be OK, because they already knew how they could contribute to make things better; that is, they were looking forward, and not back. I’ll tell you about two of our very obvious successes. One girl, who started out as a camper and went on to become a junior counselor, told us one year that she could not return to camp again because she had gotten a summer internship in local government working on environmental issues. Another girl who had been a camper then a junior counselor and was about to enter her senior year of high school, announced that she was applying to college programs in environmental science. We had other successes that weren’t as obvious, although they were just as successful. There was the camper who planned to become a high school history teacher, and who wanted to teach his students some of the history of environmental problems. There were the many campers who learned to love and enjoy the outdoors, and we knew they would grow up to become voters for whom environmental protection would be a priority.

    Our successes with these kids grew out of the basic principle that you do not have to solve all the environmental problems by yourself. Do the one thing that you can do, no matter how small. When you do that, see if you can touch the lives of other people. When you touch the lives of others, perhaps you will inspire them in turn to do just one thing to address our environmental challenges.

    This basic principle works for kids, and it works equally well for adults. We can begin by reminding ourselves that it is not up to us to solve all the world’s problems as isolated, solitary individuals. One person can’t do everything. But each one of us can do one thing to make the environment a little bit better. We can focus our efforts even more, to make it seem less overwhelming. We can each pick just one of the five major environmental challenges. Remember the acronym DOGIT — Deforestation, Overpopulation, Global climate change, Invasive species, Toxication. You are only one person, so you only have to concern yourself with one environmental challenge at a time. And for the one challenge with which you choose to concern yourself, you only have to do your part. If you choose to address deforestation, you could support your local land trust to protect natural habitats. If you choose overpopulation, you could support Planned Parenthood in teaching people about contraceptive choices to help reduce unwanted births. If you choose global climate change, you could help local governments in supporting renewable energy infrastructure. If you choose toxication, you could pick up trash whenever you go for a walk. Or if you choose invasive species, you could help remove invasive garlic mustard plants.

    All you have to do is one thing. And it can be a small thing. But when you do that one thing, see if you can touch the lives of others. See if you can bring joy and happiness to other people, helping them feel better about the world. Just as in Edward Everett Hale’s novel, if your one effort inspires ten others, then ten times one is ten; ten times ten is a hundred; ten times a hundred is a thousand; and so on until we reach eight billion people.

    I know this sounds hopelessly idealistic. I know it sounds like pie in the sky. But from my experience with that ecology summer camp, I’ve seen how eminently practical it can be. It is practical because when we inspire each other, we give each other hope. And when we give each other hope, we free ourselves — and we free our children and grandchildren — to make the world a better place….

    Look up and not down,
    Look forward and not back,
    Look out and not in, and
    Lend a hand.

  • Is It Religion? — Pt. 5, Unitarian Universalism

    Sermon copyright (c) 2024 Dan Harper. As delivered to First Parish in Cohasset. As usual, the sermon as delivered contained substantial improvisation.

    Opening words

    They drew a circle that shut me out —
    Heretic, a rebel, a thing to flout.
    But Love and I had the wit to win:
    We drew a circle that took them in.

    by Universalist poet Edwin Markham

    Unison chalice lighting words

    I am only one,
    But still I am one.
    I cannot do everything,
    But still I can do something;
    And because I cannot do everything,
    I will not refuse to do the something that I can do.

    by Unitarian poet Edward Everett Hale

    Moment for All Ages: What do you say when someone asks what UUs believe?

    A tough question for Unitarian Universalist kids (and for Unitarian Universalist adults, for that matter) goes something like this: “So you’re a Unitarian Universalist. What do you Unitarian Universalists believe, anyway?”

    The thing is, we Unitarian Universalists can’t really answer this question. If you’re a member of a Christian church, usually you’re supposed to believe in God. But for us Unitarian Universalists, it’s different — some of us believe in God, some of us don’t believe in God, some of us worship the Goddess, and some of us don’t think much about gods or goddesses at all. Then if you’re a member of a Christian church, you’re usually supposed to spend time believe the Christian version of the Bible is a holy book. But for us Unitarian Universalists, it’s different — some of us do read the Christian version of the Bible, some of us prefer the Jewish version of the Bible, some of us read other sacred books like the Buddhist sutras, and some of us don’t believe in reading any sacred books.

    When someone asks us Unitarian Universalists what we believe, we can’t give them a simple answer. I recently had this happen to me. A Christian minister said to me, “So you’re a Unitarian Universalist. What do you Unitarian Universalists believe, anyway?” But when I started to say to give them a detailed answer, similar to what I said just now, I could see their eyes glaze over. They basically stopped listening.

    Honestly, when people ask us what we believe, they don’t want the real answer. They just want a sound bite. Over the years, I’ve come up with some sound bites you can use, and I thought I’d share some of these with you.

    When I get the question: “Do you Unitarian Universalists believe in Jesus?”… my sound bite answer is: “Yes, we believe Jesus was a radical rabble-rousing rabbi from Nazareth.”

    When I get the question: “What do you Unitarian Universalists believe?”… my sound bite answer is: “We believe that what you do is more important than what you believe.”

    When I get the question: “Do you Unitarian Universalists believe in God?”… my sound bite answer is: “We believe everyone has to figure out the truth for themselves.”

    And we really do believe that. This is what makes our congregation so interesting. We learn from other people. Together, we search for truth and goodness.

    Readings

    The first reading was a May 17, 2004, news story from the Fort-Worth Star Telegram. This story is no longer online, but read an extensive excerpt here. Seven days later, the state reversed its ruling, restoring tax exempt status to Red River Unitarian Universalist Church.

    The second very short reading is by Duncan Howlett, from a pamphlet titled “What Do Unitarian Universalists Believe?”

    “We reject all doctrines and creeds and theologies if they pretend to any finality. We think the fabrication of such systems valuable, but we do not believe one or another of them.”

    Sermon: “Is It Religion, pt. 5 — Unitarian Universalism”

    For the past few months, I’ve been doing a series of sermons titled “Is It Religion?” In the first sermon I asked whether sports is a religion; in the second sermon, whether Christian nationalism is a religion; in the third, whether communism and capitalism are religions; in the fourth, whether Christmas was a religion, or at least religious. In each sermon, the answer boiled down to — yes and no. If you’ve heard one or more of these sermons, you’ll recall that part of the problem is that there is no generally accepted definition for religion. Today I’m going to have a look at Unitarian Universalism, and I’ll ask whether it’s a religion or not. And once again, the answer’s going to be — yes and no.

    In the first reading this morning, we heard how the Texas comptroller’s office denied tax exempt status to a Unitarian Universalist congregation, on the theory that it wasn’t a religion. The reality was a bit more complicated than what we heard in that news story. An entry on Harvard University’s Pluralism Project website gives a fuller story:

    “On May 30, 2004 the First Amendment Center reported, ‘It’s been a strange and scary week for religious liberty in the great state of Texas. In September 2003, the office of Comptroller Carole Keeton Strayhorn denied tax exemption to the Unitarian Universalist Church in Denison, Texas. This fact was not revealed until last week, when the Fort Worth Star-Telegram learned of the decision. After few days of bad press in the newspaper, Strayhorn’s office announced May 24 that she had reversed the decision and granted the church tax-exempt status. Nobody has paid much attention over the years as the comptroller turned down Wiccans, New Age groups and Freethinkers – not exactly popular groups down in Texas. But picking on Unitarian Universalists finally sparked some outrage.’”

    Even though this happened twenty years ago, this remains a fascinating story because it reveals some important truths about the way our society defines religion.

    First of all, one of the key ways our society defines religion is through tax exempt status. The ability to bestow or withhold tax exempt status gives government officials the power to define what is religion and what is not religion. This is an incredibly difficult task for those government officials, because there is no consensus on how to define what a religion is. When the Texas state comptroller’s office tried to establish clear and consistent criteria for defining what constituted a religion, they turned to a definition of religion that is widely held in our country — a religion must include “a belief in God, or gods, or a higher power.”

    That definition worked well for several months, allowing the comptroller’s office to deny religious status to Neo-Pagan groups and Freethinker groups. However, we Unitarian Universalists were willing and able to fight back, and we regained our tax exempt status. Which put the Texas state comptroller’s office back in the position of deciding what a religion is, in the absence of any objective criteria. So it is that our society defines religion in part by asking government officials with no expertise or training in religious studies to decide who gets tax exempt status and who doesn’t. And religion can also be redefined by anyone is capable of pushing back on government rulings.

    A second important truth about the way our society defines religion: our society defaults to defining religion as “a belief in God, or gods, or a higher power.” That’s the definition the Texas state comptroller’s office defaulted to when they were trying to establish objective criteria to define religion. Here in the United States, we generally accept this as normal: if you’re religious, you believe in God; if you believe in God, you’re religious.

    As we Unitarian Universalists know, there are several problems with defining religion in this way. Perhaps most obviously, there are people who consider themselves religious who don’t believe in God. More importantly, naming “God” in this definition shows that we consider Christianity to be the paradigm for all religion. That definition does not say, “a belief in Allah, or gods, or a higher power.” That definition does not say, “a belief in the Goddess, or gods, or a higher power.” “God” comes first, and by that most Americans mean the God of Christianity. To which most Americans would probably add the following qualifying statement: “The Jews worship the same god as the Christians, so it’s also the god of Judaism.” Which simply isn’t true, because most Christians venerate a triune god consisting of three divine persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The Jewish God most definitely does not include Jesus.

    Thus, when Americans assume that religion is the same thing as belief in God, we’re basically assuming that Christianity is our default religion. If it looks like Christianity, then it’s a religion. If it doesn’t look like Christianity, then it’s not a religion.

    From what I’ve seen, we Unitarian Universalists have mixed feeling about the Christian churches being the paradigm against which our religion is compared. On the one hand, we want to consider ourselves a religion. Obviously, we’d like to keep our tax exempt status. And many of us think of Unitarian Universalism as a religion — it’s something that offers us spiritual nourishment, and it enriches our lives in ways that religion is supposed to do.

    On the other hand, though, here in the U.S. many people now identify religion with a certain form of White evangelical Christianity. By this definition, to be religious means to oppose LGBTQ rights, to forbid women as clergy, to ban books, and so on. If that’s what it means to be religious, then we Unitarian Universalists do not want to be religious — we support LGBTQ rights, we welcome all genders as clergy, we are horrified by book bans, and so on.

    Because of the different ways in which Americans define religion, we Unitarian Universalists sometimes think of ourselves as religious, while at other times we feel that we’re not religious at all. It depends on how you define religion, and what the consequences are for either being a religion, or not being a religion.

    As you think about that, let’s quickly go back in time to India some two hundred years ago. As the British Empire started to take over more and more of the Indian subcontinent, the British decided that India had a dominant religion which they called Hinduism. Actually, there was no such thing as Hinduism before the British came along. There were several different traditions, including the people devoted to Vishnu, the people devoted to Shiva, the goddess-centric tradition devoted to Shakti, the Smarta tradition, and so on. But the British — perhaps out of bureaucratic convenience — lumped all these traditions together under the name Hinduism, basically meaning someone from the Indian subcontinent who was not a Jain, Sikh, Buddhist, Muslim, Christian, or other religion.

    Thus, “Hinduism” was originally a name imposed on India by outsiders. However, the people who got lumped together as “Hindus” quickly discovered that there were advantages to being classified as a religion, because the British Raj afforded certain legal rights to religions. It turned out to be very convenient to be categorized as “Hindu.” The people called “Hindus” by the British colonial government came to accept, and eventually to embrace the name.

    Obviously, our situation as Unitarian Universalists is very different from the Hindus under the British Raj. We Unitarian Universalists helped create the government of the United States; it’s not something that got imposed on us from the outside. But there is a rough analogy with our religious situation. Our society continues to be dominated by Christian assumptions and Christian definitions of religion. That definition of religion is imposed on us by others. Because we don’t fit neatly into the Christian definition of religion, we get misunderstood either as “a religion that doesn’t believe anything,” or, worse yet, “a religion where you can believe everything.” Yet even though we are misunderstood by the wider society, being classed as a religion provides certain benefits to us.

    Yet our biggest problem right now is the belief of an increasing number of young people that all religions are homophobic, transphobic, sexist, and anti-science. Even though we Unitarian Universalists are none of these things, there are many young people who don’t understand that.

    I’ve seen this play out in an unfortunate way when some Unitarian Universalist young people reach their middle teens. They get so disgusted by the excesses of White conservative Christians, they decide they don’t want to be part of any religion, not even Unitarian Universalism.

    I’ve also seen this play out in a less unfortunate way as some teenagers stick with Unitarian Universalism, but hide that fact from their peers. These teens understand that Unitarian Universalism is a force for good in our society, but they get so tired of explaining to their peers how Unitarian Universalism is not like conservative Christianity, that they finally give up and hide their religious affiliation.

    On a more positive note, I’ve seen quite a few Unitarian Universalist teens who are happy to be public about their Unitarian Universalism. I’ve known a couple of Unitarian Universalist teens who, when they turned 18, got a flaming chalice tattoo. That’s about as public as you can get with your Unitarian Universalism.

    Finally, on a very positive note, I’ve known a few teens who used their Unitarian Universalism as a force for change in the world. One case in particular stands out for me. An LGBTQ teen was an active member of, and leader in, their high school Gay Straight Alliance. During their freshman and sophomore years, they never talked about being a Unitarian Universalist at Gay Straight Alliance meetings. Then in their junior year, they made a conscious decision to go public with their religious affiliation. Some of their peers were aghast — how could an LGBTQ person be “religious”? To which this teen responded (in no uncertain terms) that Unitarian Universalism was a religion that very actively supported LGBTQ rights, and that kind of a religion was something they actively wanted to be a part of.

    Now we can return to the original question. Is Unitarian Universalism religion? No, because the paradigm for religion in our society is conservative Christianity, and Unitarian Universalism is most definitely not conservative Christianity.

    Is Unitarian Universalism religion? Yes, because we do the things that religions are supposed to do. We have high moral and ethical values that we live out in the real world, such valuing all persons equally regardless of their sexual orientation, gender, or race.

    Is Unitarian Universalism religion? Both yes and no at the same time, because we want to challenge the definition of religion that says all religion has to be like conservative Christianity.

    This brings to an end this series of sermons answering the question, “Is it religion?” Even if this sermon series is now a blur in your memory, I hope you will remember that there is no one generally accepted definition for religion. And if you get nothing else from this last sermon in the series, I hope you’ll remember that if someone asks you, “Are you religious?” you can reply, “It all depends on how you define religion.”