Dan Harper | Sermons

Tag: Patriots Day

  • Three Cohasset Patriots

    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 is from “A Narrative History of Cohasset,” written in 1898 by Victor Bigelow:

    The battle of Concord and Lexington on April 19, 1775, exploded the pent-up fury of a myriad of yeomen throughout the colonies.

    When the news reached Cohasset nearly every man in the town able to bear arms was ready to spring into battle. Thomas Lothrop, who had already served in the province wars with a lieutenant’s rank, hastened to the scene of bloodshed, where he was soon commissioned a major.

    Of others who seized this first opportunity for martial promotion was probably James Hall, who afterwards became an aide to General Washington.

    There were doubtless other young men who did not wait for the formation of a company to march, but started at once for the seat of war, because they had no family responsibilities to keep them at home.

    The whole town was trembling with excitement, and a town meeting was immediately called to convene on the twenty-eighth day of the month. They voted to lay in a stock of corn — five hundred bushels — because food might soon be sadly needed if the war should rage. They also voted to buy one hundredweight of gunpowder, and five hundred flints for the old flintlock guns which had been used by the militia of the town since the beginning.

    The men who swarmed about the church that day on the Common may be imagined from the muster roll of [fifty-six] men who enlisted within a few days.

    The second reading is from the poem “Concord Hymn,” written by Ralph Waldo Emerson in 1837 to commemorate the Battle of Concord.

    By the rude bridge that arched the flood,
    Their flag to April’s breeze unfurled,
    Here once the embattled farmers stood
    And fired the shot heard round the world.

    The foe long since in silence slept;
    Alike the conqueror silent sleeps;
    And Time the ruined bridge has swept
    Down the dark stream which seaward creeps.

    On this green bank, by this soft stream,
    We set today a votive stone;
    That memory may their deed redeem,
    When, like our sires, our sons are gone.

    Spirit, that made those heroes dare
    To die, and leave their children free,
    Bid Time and Nature gently spare
    The shaft we raise to them and thee.

    Sermon

    It’s Patriot’s Day, that obscure Massachusetts holiday when the Red Sox play a home game, the Boston Marathon is run, and sometimes we get an extra day to file our taxes. But of course the real purpose of Patriot’s Day is to allow us to commemorate the start of the American Revolution, right here in our state on April 19, 1775. In honor of Patriot’s Day, I’d like to tell you stories of three Revolutionary War heroes and heroines, all of whom were part of our congregation. These are stories of how ordinary people lived through unbelievably hard times: hostile war ships right off the coast of Cohasset; men going away to war and never being heard of again; food shortages and not enough people to work the fields. And one of the questions that I’ll ask, but won’t be able to fully answer, is how the people in those days found the resilience and courage to survive hard times.

    Persis Tower Lincoln Hall

    I’ll begin with Persis Tower, the daughter of Daniel Tower and Bethia Nichols. Her family was firmly aligned with the Patriot cause. When Persis was 14 years old, her older brother Abraham took part in the Boston Tea Party. She was 15 years old at the time of the Battle of Concord and Lexington, and seven months later, at age 16, she married 20-year-old Allen Lincoln, a seaman, who was soon to go off to battle.(1)

    Allen served at least three times with the Continental forces. He did at least one stint with the local militia, defending our coast. He served in the Continental Army for three months in 1777, serving in the New York and New Jersey area.(2) And he served as a sailor, perhaps aboard a privateer; indeed, he may have been at sea much of the time during the early years of the Revolution. Many men in Cohasset went away for military service during the war, leaving Cohasset women to take on their work. Persis’s mother Bethia had the nickname “Resolution” Tower, because she was “said to have carted water in barrels from Lily Pond to water the corn [on the farm on King Street.] during a drought while the men were away in the Revolutionary War.” For her part, Persis bravely sailed a small boat through the British blockade across Massachusetts Bay to get much-needed supplies. Because of this, we remember her as a heroine of the American Revolution.(3)

    In March, 1778, while Persis was pregnant their first child, Allen was one of several seamen imprisoned by the British in Rhode Island. Allen never came home again, and there appears no record of when or where he died. When Sally, Persis and Allen’s daughter, was christened in our meetinghouse on October 18, 1778, Persis wouldn’t have known where Allen was, or whether he was alive or dead. It wasn’t until 1782 that Persis could finally settle her husband’s estate.(4)

    Allen Lincoln’s story is a reminder what prisoners of war faced during the Revolution. The total death toll among prisoners of war held by the British may have been as high as 19,000 men.(5) Persis probably never knew the exact fate of her husband, and I find it difficult to imagine the uncertainty she had to live with — raising an infant child while not knowing where her husband was.

    In 1786, Persis married James Hall, who had been a captain in the Continental Army, even serving as an aide to General Washington. Persis and James lived in the house that his father had built on Cohasset Common using timbers of the old meetinghouse, which was taken down when our present meetinghouse was erected in 1747. Three of their children died in infancy, but they received a bigger shock when their oldest child, Henry, died at age sixteen; he had gone to sea and died of yellow fever in the West Indies. Persis and James hadn’t bothered christening four of Henry’s younger siblings, but within weeks of hearing of his death, they had those four siblings christened all on the same day.(6) After all Persis had been through — Allen’s disappearance, the loss of children in infancy, Henry’s death far from home — perhaps the religious ritual of christening served as a reminder that there was hope for the future.

    Briton Nichols

    The next Revolutionary War story I’d like to tell you is the story of Briton Nichols. I told his story in a previous sermon, but I got some facts wrong, and found out some new facts, so I thought I’d tell it again.(7)

    Briton Nichols first appears in the historical record when he was 17 years old, and listed as a slave in the 1757 will of Nathaniel Nichols, Sr. The next time he appears in the historical record is on March 16, 1776, when he was thirty-seven. This was the day before the British evacuated Boston; Cohasset and other coastal towns were securing their coastal defenses against the possibility of a British naval attack. Briton served for a few days with the Hingham town militia, one of many men from Cohasset, Hingham, and Hull who helped defend the coast.

    A year later, in 1777, Briton enlisted in the Continental Army. We can only speculate why he decided to enlist at age 37. Although enslaved men would join the military to earn their freedom, Nichols was probably free by this time. The economy was in a shambles due to the war, he probably had a wife, and he might have enlisted because he needed money. He also may have believed in the Patriot ideals of freedom and liberty. Whatever his reasons, he and a contingent of soldiers from Cohasset marched together to join the fighting in Saratoga, New York.

    Ambrose Bates, one of Briton’s messmates, kept a diary during their military service. The Cohasset men reached Saratoga in early September and joined the fight against General Burgoyne. The Bates diary shows that much of their military service was filled with boredom. Several days were filled with monotonous marching back and forth from one place to another. Many days, Bates simply records, “Nothing new today.” Days of boredom were interspersed with days with more than enough excitement. On October 7 Bates recorded: “today we had a fight we were alarmed about noon and the fight begun, the sun two hours high at night and we drove them and took field pieces and took sum prisoners.” The British finally surrendered on October 16. All the Cohasset men then marched down to Tarrytown, where they saw little action. Their three month term of service ended on November 30. They marched home at a quick pace, averaging 27 miles a day, arriving in Cohasset on December 7.

    Next, in 1779 Briton Nichols enlisted for a month’s service in Rhode Island, and a month’s service in the Hudson River Valley. Then in 1780, now age forty, he enlisted for six months as part of a levy raised by the town of Cohasset. When the Cohasset men arrived in Springfield, New Jersey, the last major battle in New Jersey had already been fought, but they didn’t know that, and British troops were still active in the area. In October, he was stationed at a military base in New Jersey, part of a large force encamped on two heights above the Totowa River. Even though some of the soldiers’ clothes were in rags, and they sometimes didn’t get enough to eat, they were nevertheless an able fighting force. The British attempted only one attack on Camp Totowa, following a band of Americans who had been out on a foray; they were quickly driven back. We can imagine that perhaps Briton Nichols was sent out on one of the forays against the British, but there’s no way of knowing what service he actually saw.

    That was his last stint in the army. In traveling to and from military service, he walked the astounding distance of some 1500 miles, sometimes managing a punishing pace of 27 miles a day. After the war, Briton moved from Cohasset to Hingham, where he lived with his wife Phebe. Although Briton and Phebe never made much money, at least they kept their freedom and independence.

    I’m not sure that we today can fully understand what Briton Nichols lived through. He began life enslaved, then became free before he became a soldier. He served as a Revolutionary War soldier where he probably saw serious fighting. After the war, he lived to see slavery abolished in Massachusetts. While he never owned real estate, as other free Blacks in Cohasset and Hingham did, he at least managed to maintain his financial freedom.(8) I imagine he must have had a strong spiritual core to get through all that. Perhaps, as was true of many African Americans, he drew on both Christianity, traditional African spirituality, and the humanism that was later expressed in the blue. Whatever the source of his spiritual strength, I admire his resilience and courage.

    Noah Nichols

    The third and final person I’d like to tell you about is Noah Nichols Jr. Before I do, let me digress briefly to tell you how the lives of all three of the people whose stories I’m telling today are intertwined. Noah Jr.’s paternal grandfather, Nathaniel Nichols, was the enslaver of Briton Nichols, and Briton may have been living with one of Noah’s cousins as late as 1776.(9) Noah Nichols Jr. and Persis Tower Lincoln Hall were second cousins, sharing their great-grandfather Israel Winslow Nichols. And Persis’ first husband, Allen, was third cousin once removed to Noah’s wife Abigail. Now let’s get back to Noah.

    Noah Nichols was born on January 8, 1754, the third of thirteen children. His father, Noah Sr., had served in the French and Indian War.(10) And Noah Sr. was one of the wealthier landowners in Cohasset; in 1771, just before he died, he ranked 31 out of 123 property owners in Cohasset.(11)

    Noah Sr. died in 1771, when Noah Jr. was seventeen; leaving his wife Abigail pregnant and responsible for nine other children. By March of 1775, Noah was having sex with his girlfriend Abigail Lincoln. Their first child was born on December 15 of that year, though they remained unmarried. This may seem surprising to us today, but there was a rise in premarital sex in Massachusetts in the second half of the eighteenth century, and some 30 to 40% of all first births were conceived before marriage.(12)

    Noah and Abigail finally got married on February 28, 1776. By July, Noah was working as a wheelwright for the Continental Army at Ticonderoga.(13) As with Briton Nichols, we can’t know whether he was motivated by money or by ideals. He must have displayed leadership ability, though, for on November 9, 1776, he was commissioned as a captain in Col. Ebenezer Stevens’s artillery battalion.(14) The army had decided to create companies of skilled workmen whose trades they needed. These were called “artificer companies,” and a master artisan was placed in charge of the company, often with the rank of officer.(15)

    Now that he was in charge of an artificer company, Noah had to find skilled workers to fill the company. By January, 1777, he was back in Cohasset, and on February 2, four Cohasset men enlisted in Noah’s artificer company: his brother Bela, Jonathan Bates, Melzar Joy, and James Stoddard (James had been one of the Cohasset men who participated in the Boston Tea Party).(16)

    While in Cohasset, Noah also attended to some spiritual business. His daughter Susannah was now two years old, and hadn’t been christened yet. On February 15, Noah and Abigail presented their child to be christened here in this meetinghouse by Rev. John Brown, our Patriot minister. Noah and Abigail went further than that — they also “owned the covenant,” that is, became formal members of the church. The process of owning the covenant went like this: after a private meeting with the minister, a formal meeting of the church was convened during which the applicants for membership publicly confessed their sins. Noah and Abigail did this on February 15.(17) Owning the covenant was a serious and major commitment; many people waited until they were a good bit older to own the covenant, if they bothered doing it at all. We can thus sense a change in Noah from the young man who, before the war, didn’t bother marrying his girlfriend until after their first child was born. Perhaps some of the things Noah had seen during his military service had given him a sense of his mortality, a desire to deepen his spirituality.

    Noah was back with the army in March, 1777, marching with his company for Ticonderoga. They were stationed there when General Burgoyne’s forces attacked. In July, they retreated to Albany with the rest of the artillery brigade.(18) During the retreat, a private serving under Noah was taken prisoner by the British.(19) By mid-July, Noah was back in Cohasset for leave.(20) Then in September and October, his company was in the battles that eventually led to the defeat of the British, and was present at the surrender of General Burgoyne.(21)

    After leaving Albany, Noah was based in New Jersey and Pennsylvania for the remainder of his military service. It was probably during this time that he had a memorable encounter with General Washington. While on a forced march, General Washington ordered him to repair the wheel of a gun carriage. Captain Nichols requested permission to stop the carriage while he was doing the repairs, but the general abruptly refused. Noah had to do the repairs while the gun carriage was underway. Telling this story in later years, Noah added, “It was the hardest thing I ever did, but I did it.”(22)

    By 1779, when Noah had put in three years of military service, the pay of the artificers had depreciated badly, and because the artificer companies didn’t belong to a state unit, their officers didn’t receive the allowance given to regular officers.(23) And although Noah had received an officer’s commission, the other officers serving under him — including his brother Bela — never received their commissions, though they had been promised.(24) In early 1780, the artificer corps were reorganized under cost-saving measures.(25)

    I suspect this was the last straw for Noah. On March 26, 1780, Noah’s second child, Elizabeth, was christened, and presumably he was present for the ceremony.(26) Noah resigned his officer’s commission on April 3.(27) By 1781, all officers of the artificer corps were dismissed as a cost-saving measure.

    After returning to Cohasset, Noah resumed working as a cartwright and a housewright; when there wasn’t enough work in his chosen trade, he would take on other kinds of work like plowing.(28) In 1787, he finally received compensation from Massachusetts for the depreciation of wages he suffered from 1777 to 1780.(29) Noah and Abigail had five children in 1787, so no doubt the extra money was welcome.

    Noah was one of two highest ranking Revolutionary War veterans in Cohasset; the other being Captain James Hall. Late in life, Noah took pride in his military service, and he “was accustomed in his old age to shoulder his fire-lock, ‘And show how the fields were won.’”(30) Noah died in 1833, aged 79, still an active member of this parish.(31)

    Now that I’ve told you about these three people — Persis, Briton, and Noah — here’s what I take away from their stories. First of all, all three of them lived through very challenging times. Living in Cohasset during the Revolution meant the threat of British invasion. The war also caused economic hard times, with depreciation of currency and shortages of food and goods. With all the men away fighting, that meant more work for those who stayed home. Soldiers and sailors might wind up as prisoners of war or missing in action, leaving their families in dreadful uncertainty. Even the soldiers and sailors who returned might have seen horrors that would affect them for the rest of their lives. — And all this was on top of the normal difficulties of those times: the many children who died in infancy; the challenge of wresting a living from the rocky soil of New England, or from the often dangerous Atlantic Ocean.

    Looking back, we think of the Revolutionary generation as somehow more heroic than we are. But they weren’t. They were ordinary people just like us. Somehow, they managed to summon up the courage to get through the hard times. Some of them, like Noah Nichols, found extra strength through participating in this religious community. For others, like Briton Nichols, we’ll never know know for sure where they found the strength to get through those hard times.

    We face hard times today — if we’re honest, times today aren’t nearly as hard as they were then — but still, we face hard times. Looking back at that Revolutionary generation causes me to wonder about where I’m going to get the strength to get me through the hard times of today. The Revolutionary generation found strength in their spiritual practices, and they found strength in the connections of family and community. Perhaps those are the places we should be looking for our own strength.

    Notes

    (1) Records of First Parish in Cohasset; Mass. Vital Records.
    (2) Details of Allen’s military service may be found in Commonwealth of Massachusetts, Massachusetts Soldiers and Sailors of the Revolutionary War (Boston: Wright & Potter, State Printers, 1902), p. 798; “United States, Rosters of Revolutionary War Soldiers and Sailors, 1775-1966,” www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:Q5W9-9RDY , Entry for Allen Lincoln. Record of his imprisonment may be found in Commonwealth of Massachusetts, Massachusetts Soldiers and Sailors of the Revolutionary War (Boston: Wright & Potter, State Printers, 1902), p. 79; “United States, Rosters of Revolutionary War Soldiers and Sailors, 1775-1966,” www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:QG2M-NFW5 , Entry for Allyn Lyncoln [note the two different spellings of his name]: “Lyncoln, Allyn. List of prisoners delivered to Col. Gabriel Johonnot by Mr. Charles Waller, Commissary of Prisoners at Rhode Island, March 17, 1778; reported a Seaman.”
    (3) Victor Bigelow, Narrative History of Cohasset (1898), p. 306; p. 290.
    (4) Waldo Lincoln, History of the Lincoln Family (Worcester, Mass.: Commonwealth Press, 1923), pp. 185-186.: “August 9, 1782, Persis Lincoln of Cohasset, widow, was admitted administratrix on the estate of Allin Lincoln, late of Cohasset, deceased intestate. The inventory of his estate, dated Aug. 14, 1782, shows that he left: real estate, house and half an acre of land, £80; personal estate £26:10. (Suffolk County Probate Records, vol. lxxxi, pp. 379, 630.)”
    (5) See e.g. Edwin G. Burrows, Forgotten Patriots: The Untold Story of American Prisoners during the Revolutionary War (Basic Books, 2008), p. 317 n. 12.
    (6) First Parish records.
    (7) The story of Briton Nichols is a condensed version of a talk I gave for the Cohasset Historical Society on 28 Feb. 2026, revised 30 March based on comments by Paula Bagger and George Quintal, and further research. That talk has been deposited in the First Parish archives, and full footnotes may be found there.
    (8) His wife Phebe was not so fortunate. After Briton’s death, she sank into poverty, and died in the Hingham poorhouse.
    (9) Paula Bagger’s research (personal communication) indicates the following: In 1773, Nathaniel Sr.’s estate is finally settled on Nathaniel Jr.’s children; the land is divided up, but there is no mention of Britain Nichols. In Cohasset’s 1776 census, the household of Nathaniel Nichols 3rd (1749-1833) had one Black resident; this may or may not have been Briton, and it is not clear whether that person was enslaved or free.
    (10) Victor Bigelow, p. 279; History of the Town of Hingham, Massachusetts, vol. III [Cambridge: University Press, John Wilson and son, 1893], p.87-88.
    (11) Victor Bigelow, pp. 277-276.
    (12) Robert Gross, The Minutemen and Their World (New York: Hill, 1976), p. 217, concluded that 41% of all first births in Concord, Mass., between 1760 and 1774 were prenuptial conceptions. Karen A. Weyler, “The Fruit of Unlawful Embraces,” Sex and Sexuality in Early America, ed. Merril D. Smith (New York: New York University Press, 1998), p. 292, says that the “changing relationship between parents and children may have also contributed to the striking rise in the incidence of premarital sex during the last decades of the eighteenth century…. from 1761 to 1800, 33 percent of all first births to married women occurred before the ninth month of marriage.”
    (13) Letter dated July 11, 1776, reprinted in: Peter Force, American Archives, Fifth Series: A Documentary History of the United States of America [July 4, 1776 to Sept. 3, 1783], volume I (Washington, D.C.: M. St. Clair and Peter Force, 1848), p. 653.
    (14) Robert K. Wright, The Continental Army (Washington, D.C.: Center of Military History, U.S. Army), p. 329; also see: W. T. R. Saffell, Records of the Revolutionary War 3rd ed. (Baltimore: Charles C. Saffell, 1894), p. 160.
    (15) Erna Risch, Supplying Washington’s Army (Washington, D.C.: Center of Military History, US Army, 1981), p. 152.
    (16) Saffell, Records of the Revolutionary War, p. 160.
    (17) In the First Parish records, these events appear as follows: In records of church meetings, “1777. Feby 15. Noah Nichols, and wife Abigail”; this would have been the church meeting where they confessed their sins. In records of those who owned the covenant, “1777. Feby 15. Noah Nickols and his Abigail his wife.” Finally, Susannah’s baptism is listed on that date. Note that in the terminology of the day, “church” meant the religious organization; this was different from the business side of the congregation, which was managed by the proprietors.
    (18) Some of these details from the account of the military service of Edward Burril of Lynn, Mass., who served under Capt. Noah Nichols. See: Howard Kendall Sanderson, Lynn in the Revolution, Part II (Boston: W. B. Clarke Company, 1909), pp. 236-237.
    (19) Saffell, Records of the Revolutionary War, p. 160.
    (20) Deduced from the birth date of his daughter Elizabeth.
    (21) Sanderson, p. 237.
    (22) From the address given by Hon. Thomas Russell at the Centennial Anniversary of the town of Cohasset, May 7, 1870, reprinted in: Duane Hamilton Hurd, ed., History of Norfolk County, Massachusetts (Philadelphia: J. W. Lewis & Cop., 1884), Chapter XIX: Cohasset, pp. 219-220.
    (23) Erna Risch, Supplying Washington’s Army (Washington, D.C.: Center of Military History, US Army, 1981), p. 155.
    (24) Journals of the Continental Congress 1774-1789, vol. XV. 1779 (September 2-December 31) (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1909), p. 1388-1389.
    (25) Erna Risch, Supplying Washington’s Army (Washington, D.C.: Center of Military History, US Army, 1981), pp. 156-157.
    (26) First Parish records.
    (27) Francis B. “Alphabetical List of Officers of the Continental Army,” Historical Register of the Officers of the Continental Army during the War of the Revolution, April 1775 to December 1783 (Washington, DC, Rare Book Shop Publishing Co., Inc., 1914), p. 414.
    (28) The account book of Ambrose Nichols, covering dates from c. 1809 to c. 1830 provides these details; presumably the two brothers, pursuing the same trade, had similar experiences. See the finding aid: University of Massachusetts Amherst, Ambrose Nichols Account Book, 1809-1830, 1 volume (0.25 linear ft.) Call no.: MS 210, findingaids.library.umass.edu/ead/mums210.pdf
    (29) “Noah Nichols appears as a Captain on an account rendered against the United States by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts for amounts paid officers and men of Capt. Jeduthan Baldwin’s regt. on account of depreciation of their wages for the first three years’ service in the Continental Army from 1777 to 1780. Account exhibited by Committee on Claims in behalf of Mass. against U.S., Sept 21, 1787.” — Entry for Noah Nichols, 21 September 1787, “Massachusetts, Revolutionary War, Index Cards to Muster Rolls, 1775-1783,” https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:QGKC-WVCV
    (30) Thomas Russell, in Duane Hamilton Hurd (1884), p. 220.
    (31) First Parish records. Rev. Jacob Flint usually only recorded the name of the person who died, but in this case he noted: “June 23. Noah Nichols in his 79th year.”

  • A Revolutionary Religion

    Sermon copyright (c) 2023 Dan Harper. As delivered to First Parish in Cohasset. The sermon text may contain typographical errors. The sermon was actually delivered by Bev Burgess, worship associate, because I was out of town on family leave.

    Reading

    The reading this morning is an excerpt from a biography of Rev. William Emerson, the grandfather of Ralph Waldo Emerson, and minister of First Parish in Concord, Massachusetts, in 1775. This biography was written by Rev. Dana McLean Greeley, minister of the Concord church in 1975, and published in his book Know These Concordians: 24 Minutes Biographies (1975). Although Greeley was a pacifist, he was also a patriot, and fully appreciative of William Emerson’s military service in the Revolutionary War.

    In 1765 William Emerson became the minister in Concord. He seems to have been as conscientious a pastor as he was studious as a scholar; and the indication is that he called constantly on his people, and likewise entertained both people and visitors at the Manse. He was friendly and warm, even if held somewhat in awe by many of his parishioners.

    Eight years rolled by before the spirit of rebellion against the oppressiveness of King George III began to come to a head. The Concord minister had been among the patriots who were early spokesmen for the cause of freedom. With Jonathan Mayhew in Boston and Jonas Clarke in Lexington, he had used his pulpit to point out the injustice of the British rule, and to stimulate the imaginations and undergird the moral courage of his listeners. He had plenty of company in the town in support of his views, but he did not fail to exercise a role of leadership. So when the First Provincial Congress met in Concord, having moved there from Salem, it was not strange that as John Hancock of Boston was elected president, and Benjamin Lincoln of Hingham as secretary, so the Reverend William Emerson was elected chaplain. It is said that in the following Spring he watched the battle at the North Bridge from his house (on the 19th of April) and properly recorded it in his diary afterward, although there is also the suggestion that he may have been closer to his men, and encouraging them in the battle, and not just a spectator….

    Before we speak of his departure to Ticonderoga, we must mention his going to Cambridge after the battle [at Concord], his constant service with the army, his breakfast and frequent meetings with George Washington, his preaching to the soldiers, and his participation at Bunker Hill. He himself did not distinguish between General Washington and the humblest soldiers. All men seemed to count equally in his sight….

    On August 16, 1776, he bade a brave farewell himself to his family and his town, and knew not that he would never return…. He was at Ticonderoga, and then contracted a fatal disease, typhoid or dysentery, and died in Rutland, Vermont…. He had expected his own death, and his letters home were very tender…

    The ‘Old Manse’ which he built for his bride, Phebe, and his family, is a continuing monument to him, but so is a bit of the independence of the United States of America.

    Sermon: A Revolutionary Religion

    We are rapidly approaching the United States of America semiquincentennial, or two hundred and fiftieth birthday. (There are, by the way, several words used for a two hundred and fiftieth birthday, but “semiquincentennial” is what the National Park Service calls it.) Most of the United States will be celebrating the nation’s semiquincentennial in 2026, but those of us who live here in Massachusetts know that the real semiquincentennial anniversary commemorates April 19, 1775, what we call Patriots’ Day.

    April 19, 1775, marked the real beginning of the Revolutionary War. The momentous events of that day are sometimes called the Battle of Concord and Lexington, but to use that term ignores the fact that several other towns also saw armed conflict. In fact, the first colonist blood of the war was shed in the town of Lincoln, just after midnight, when one of His Majesty’s troops slashed Lincoln militiaman Josiah Nelson on the head with a sword. And some of the most heated fighting took place in Menotomy, which is now called Arlington. And dozens of towns sent militia men and Minute Men to the battle. But for the sake of convenience, I’ll call it the battle of Concord and Lexington. (1)

    As we approach America’s semiquincentennial, I would like us Unitarian Universalists to remember that our co-religionists were right in the thick of the Revolutionary War from the very beginning. Both Unitarians and Universalists were deeply involved in the American Revolution.

    The first major engagement on the morning of April 19, 1775, was in Lexington, where at sunrise several hundred Redcoats fired at a small interracial company of colonial militiamen, killing eight and wounding several more. This engagement took place on the town green, right next to the church. The congregation that met in that building is still in existence, and is now called First Parish in Lexington, and it later became a Unitarian Universalist church. The commander of the Lexington militia was a man named John Parker, who famously said, “Stand your ground. Don’t fire unless fired upon, but if they mean to have a war, let it begin here.” But John Parker should also be remembered because the small company he commanded included both Black and White militia men. (2)

    John Parker did not live long enough to hear the name “Unitarian” applied to his religion, though we usually consider him to have been a Unitarian on the basis of his church affiliation. But the succeeding generations of the Lexington Parkers were very definitely Unitarians. One of John Parker’s grandsons, Theodore Parker, was a Unitarian who inherited his grandfather’s revolutionary spirit, in more ways than one. Theodore grew up to become a Unitarian minister, a Transcendentalist, and an abolitionist. As an abolitionist, he sheltered people escaping from slavery in his own house, and later recalled that at times he had to keep a loaded pistol on the desk beside him as he wrote his sermons, in case the slave catchers came to his door. (3)

    To return to the events of April 19, 1775 — After marching through Lexington, His Majesty’s troops continued on to Concord, where their spies had informed them that the colonists were storing ammunition, cannon, and firearms. Realizing that they were greatly outnumbered, the colonial forces withdrew from Concord center. This was a strategic withdrawal, for they knew that the alarm was being spread throughout the countryside, and that soon militia companies and Minute Men from other towns would swell their numbers. At about ten o’clock in the morning, they marched down a hill and engaged a small unit of Redcoats guarding the North Bridge that lead back into Concord center. Right next to this bridge stood the house of Rev. William Emerson, the patriotic minister of the Concord church, about whom we heard in the reading this morning. William Emerson made sure his wife and family were safe in their house, then went on to join the colonial troops. (4)

    And here comes another Unitarian grandchild connection. One of William Emerson’s grandchildren was Ralph Waldo Emerson, who became a Unitarian minister, then left ministry to pursue a career as a public intellectual. Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote the famous “Concord Hymn” to commemorate the events of April 19, 1775:

    “By the rude bridge that arched the flood,
    Their flag to April’s breeze unfurled,
    Here once the embattled farmers stood
    And fired the shot heard ‘round the world.”

    Emerson fired his own shots heard round the world, with his electrifying essays on topics like self-reliance, and nature. He was not as physically combative as his contemporary Theodore Parker — he never kept a pistol on his desk, nor did he help fugitive slaves escape to Canada (though his wife might have) — but Emerson was intellectually combative. He made clear the crucial importance of each individual. When we talk about the radical concept of the inherent worth and dignity of every human personality, much of what we say comes straight from Emerson. And with his disciple Henry Thoreau, who also grew up a Unitarian, Emerson helped lay the foundations for the modern environmental movement, another revolutionary movement that carries on American ideals.

    The Emersons and the Parkers are just two examples of the connections between Unitarianism and the American Revolution. I could also mention Kings’ Chapel in Boston. King’s Chapel started out as part of the Church of England, but by 1775 they were a congregation of Patriots who felt compelled to sever their ties with anything British. And when they severed their ties to the Church of England, they found they also wanted to sever their ties to the doctrine of the Trinity. So in 1785 they became the first avowedly Unitarian congregation in the new United States of America.

    Now let me turn to the Universalist side of our heritage. I’ll begin with a brief mention of Benjamin Rush, one of those who signed the Declaration of Independence in 1776. While Rush never joined a Universalist church, he was a firm believer in the central message of Universalism, that all persons would be saved. Universalist historian Charles Howe writes, “Rush’s shift from Calvinism to universalism was profoundly influenced by the social changes of the Revolutionary era. He embraced republicanism as an essential part of” his religious outlook. (5) Thus, to embrace the political doctrine that all persons are created equal, lead Rush directly to the equivalent religious doctrine. We could only wish that today’s Christian nationalists would follow Benjamin Rush’s example.

    Another Universalists who was in the thick of the Revolution was Rev. John Murray, the first prominent Universalist minister in British North America. He converted to Universalism while a young man in England, then after the death of his wife came to the New World in 1770, where he began preaching the happy religion of Universalism. By 1774, his preaching had attracted the attention of a group of wealthy merchants in Gloucester, Massachusetts. They had become convinced Universalists and wanted to find a Universalist minister. Murray was as interested in them as they were in him, but the Revolutionary War intervened before he could go to Gloucester. In order to support the Patriots’ cause, John Murray entered military service as the chaplain to the Rhode Island Continental Army during the defense of Boston.

    By March, 1776, Murray was apparently part of the inner circle of the Continental Army. On March 10, James Bowdoin, a member of the Massachusetts Council, recorded that “Mr. [John] Murray, a clergyman, din’d with the General [George Washington] yesterday, and was present at the examination of a deserter, who upon oath says that 5 or 600 [British] troops embarked the night before without any order or regularity….” (6) There are two things of interest to us in this passage. First, John Murray was close enough to General Washington to dine with him. Second, John Murray was intimate enough with General George Washington that he was able to be present as they were finding out crucial military intelligence. Perhaps Murray’s military service included military intelligence work as well as chaplaincy.

    Nor was John Murray the only Universalist or Unitarian clergyman who helped with military intelligence. The Rev. Dr. Samuel West, minister of the Dartmouth church which later became First Unitarian of New Bedford, was also involved in military intelligence. After the Battle of Bunker Hill, West joined the American army as a chaplain. The details of his service as a chaplain have been lost, except for one incident. While in the army, he assisted General Washington by deciphering a letter written in code by Benjamin Church, an American officer who was suspected of being a spy. In the eighteenth century, it was not uncommon to encipher personal correspondence since there was no formal postal service, and letters were not secure; therefore, just because the letter was enciphered was not evidence that Church was a spy. Washington needed to have the cipher broken, and the brilliant Dr. West was one of only three men who were capable of doing so. West worked alone, the other two worked together, and then their deciphering was compared. Their versions agreed perfectly, and through the efforts of West and the two others, Church was revealed as a British spy. (7)

    So you can see that both Unitarians and Universalists were deeply involved in the Revolutionary War. In the United States today, the Christian nationalists claim that they are the only religious patriots. We Unitarian Universalists have a far better claim to being religious patriots, not just because of our historical connections (which the Christian nationalists lack), but because our religion upholds the Revolutionary ideals of democracy and equality of all persons (ideals which the Christian nationalists constantly subvert).

    I wish we Unitarian Universalists would reclaim our patriotic identity. But sometimes I feel that we Unitarian Universalists have lost sight of our Revolutionary connections. When we issued a new hymnal in 1993 — that gray hymnal which we still use — all the patriotic hymns got left out. I can understand leaving out “America the Beautiful,” because the whole rhyme scheme of the first verse depends on rhyming the word “brotherhood,” which goes against our Revolutionary ideals by excluding women. But I do think we could have left in “My Country ‘Tis of Thee,” if for no other reason than the last phrase of the first verse: “Let freedom ring.” Every time I hear that phrase, I can hear Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., using that phrase in his “I Have a Dream” speech. Martin Luther King, Jr., upheld the Revolutionary ideals of our country by calling for freedom for all persons, regardless of race. Thus when I sing “My Country ’Tis of Thee,” I hear King’s call for ongoing justice in America.

    If we were to bring patriotic hymns back to our hymnal, we might also consider “The New Patriot,” which we sung as our first hymn. This hymn was included in the 1977 hymnal that was published by First Unitarian Church of Los Angeles, and it captures some of the essence of today’s Unitarian Universalist patriotism. We Unitarian Universalists value our own democratic country, but we also value world community. We owe allegiance to the United States, upholding the high ideal that all persons are created equal — but we also want to extend that high ideal to all persons everywhere.

    This should be the broader vision of Unitarian Universalism. We should continue to uphold our patriotic support of the United States; at the same time, we should continue to hold the United States accountable when our country falls short of living up to its highest ideals. We should continue to uphold our country’s sovereign rights; at the same time, we should continue to work towards world community. And both here at home and abroad, we should continue to promote not just our democratic ideals and our ideals of equality, but also things like our ideals of environmental protection.

    Another way to say all of this: We should continue to be patriots. We should continue to display the American flag inside our Meeting House, upstairs in the gallery. And we should continue to hold our country accountable to our high ideals of equality for all persons, for example by flying the rainbow flag from our Meeting House. And we should also be the “New Patriots” spoken of in the final hymn, patriots “whose nation is all humanity.”

    As we approach the semiquincentennial of the beginning of America, perhaps we will also want to find other ways to show our Unitarian Universalist patriotism. I don’t know what that would look like for us here in Cohasset, but I’ll tell you a little story of how another Unitarian Universalist congregation showed its patriotism.

    When I worked at First Parish in Lexington, the church of John Parker and Theodore Parker, they still celebrated communion once a year, even though the majority of the congregation were atheists who had no interest in traditional Christian communion. But they had a different approach to communion. On the Sunday nearest April 19, they retrieved a few pieces of ancient communion silver from the local history museum. Some people would show up that Sunday dressed in 18th century garb (mind you, they left their muskets at the door of the church building, just as the Lexington militia did when they went to Sunday services back in 1775). Celebrating communion on Patriots’ Day was both a historical re-enactment, and also a public affirmation of the ideals of equality and democracy that are central both to Unitarian Universalism and to the United States.

    I don’t think we should start holding Patriots’ Day communion services in our congregation. Cohasset is not Lexington. (8) But I do think we should remember that our ancient Meeting House was the scene of stirring events during the American Revolution. The old church records show that some sort of hiding place was made somewhere in this building to hide firearms and ammunition during the Revolution. (9) And then, in 1776 Rev. John Brown, then the minister of our congregation, gave a stirring reading of the Declaration of Independence from this very pulpit.

    As we approach the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the birth of the United Sates of America, we owe it to ourselves — we owe it to the town of Cohasset — we owe it to our country to commemorate these stirring events, and to renew our commitment to the highest ideals of democracy. I’m looking forward to opening our Meeting House more often to visitors, with people from our congregation serving as docents to talk about our Revolutionary history. I’m looking forward to commemorating John Brown’s stirring reading of the Declaration of Independence this July, on the Sunday closest to Independence Day. And perhaps you will think of other ways we can celebrate our history, celebrate our patriotism, celebrate the semiquincentennial of the United States. So together we can keep alive the highest ideals of democracy, freedom, and equality.

    Notes:

    (1) The information about the Battle of Concord and Lexington comes from standard reference books, esp. Frank Warren Coburn, The Battle of April 19, 1775, in Lexington, Concord, Lincoln, Arlington, Cambridge, Somerville, and Charlestown, Massachusetts (Lexington, Mass.: privately printed, 1912), and Robert A. Gross, The Minutemen and Their World (New York: Hill and Wang, 1976).

    (2) For an excellent detailed account of one Black militia man, see: Alice Hinkle, Prince Estabrook: Slave and Soldier (Pleasant Mountain Press, 2001). My copy is signed by the man who for many years acted the part of Prince Estabrook during the annual re-enactment of the Lexington engagement.

    (3) For the story of the loaded pistol, see Albert Réville , The life and writings of Theodore Parker (London: Simpkin, Marshall, & Co., 1865), pp. 112-114; and Francis E. Cooke, The Story of Theodore Parker (London: Sunday School Association, 1890), pp. 100-101.

    (4) In his book Know These Concordians: 24 Minute Biographies (Concord, Mass.: privately printed, 1975), Dana Greeley gives the oral tradition sources which state that William Emerson joined the soldiers; I find Greeley’s argument convincing. William Emerson’s diaries are published in Amelia Forces Emerson, ed., Diaries and Letters of William Emerson, 1743-1776 (Boston: privately printed, 1972).

    (5) Charles Howe, “Benjamin Rush,” Unitarian Universalist Dictionary of Historical Biography, https://uudb.org/articles/benjaminrush.html

    (6) Quoted in J. Bell, “I hear that General How said…”, Boston in 1775, March 6, 2023 entry,
    https://boston1775.blogspot.com/2023/03/i-hear-that-general-how-said.html

    (7) This story is told in my book Liberal Pilgrims: Varieties of Liberal Religious Experience in New Bedford, Massachusetts (New Bedford, Mass.: privately printed, 2008).

    (8) So there is no confusion, I should say that I, like Ralph Waldo Emerson, would politely refuse to officiate at communion services, for much the same reasons that Emerson gave in his famous sermon, “The Lord’s Supper,” available online at https://emersoncentral.com/texts/uncollected-prose/the-lords-supper/

    (9) Eric Kluz, a retired architect and long-time member of First Parish, told me that during a 1980s renovation of the east wall of the Meeting House, a late 18th century firearm was found hidden in the south east corner in the wall, at about the level of the pew back. The town records show that a “closet” was built in the Meeting House to hide arms and ammunition; perhaps this closet was made behind the pews in the southeast corner of the building. That firearm was donated to the Cohasset Historical Society.

  • A New Revolution

    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 improvisation and extemporaneous remarks. Sermon copyright (c) 2009 Daniel Harper.

    Sermon — “A New Revolution”

    You know what today is, don’t you? It’s the nineteenth of April, and on this exact day back in 1775, the colonists of Massachusetts offered the first armed and organized resistance to the British Empire. The American Revolution began on this day. And so it seems like a good day to talk about a new, emerging revolution: the ecojustice revolution.

    The ecojustice revolution concerns one of the most important moral issues of our time: the environmental disasters being caused by global climate change. There is no longer any doubt that global climate change is real, that some of its effects are already irreversible, and that it is caused by human beings. I know, I know, the radio personality and entertainer Rush Limbaugh says that global climate change isn’t real and isn’t caused by humans; but we can balance him against Stephen Colbert, and since it is a well-known mathematical fact that two entertainers cancel each other out, leaving a null set, we can dismiss both of them without a pang. Global climate change is real, and it is happening now.

    To my mind, the most important thing about the ecojustice revolution is that is provides a way out of helplessness. I don’t know about you, but I feel pretty helpless in the face of global climate change. It seems like something that is pretty much beyond my control. I do what I can to reduce my personal environmental impact — so for example rather than flying, I’ll be taking the train to the annual denominational meeting at the end of June, because train travel puts out about half the carbon of jet travel. We turn our thermostat down to sixty degrees at home, and we replace conventional light bulbs with compact fluorescents. We do all those good things, yet I know that’s not nearly enough.

    Obviously, we can do more than change light bulbs. Some of us will get involved in political action. Those in the sciences can work on the science of global climate change. Artists and musicians and writers can create art and music and writing that helps people understand global climate change. And there is a very important task we can take on here in our church. Here in our church, we are concerned (among other things) with morality and ethics, and so one of our contributions can be to examine the moral and ethical questions that are entwined with global climate change. A serious examination of moral and ethical questions can lead us into a powerful sense of knowing what right action must be. And I’d like to do some of that this morning with you: I’d like to examine three moral and ethical questions pertaining to global climate change, so that we might begin to know what right action might be.

    …

    The first moral question that I’d like to ask is the most difficult question about exploitation. And to ask this question, I have to fill in some background information.

    To begin with, exploitation is not necessarily a bad thing. All organisms exploit their environment. In one of my favorite books, Some Adaptations of Marsh-Nesting Blackbirds (OK, it’s not really one of my favorite books), by the ornithologist Gordon H. Orians, I find this statement: “…a predator may exploit its prey or change the behavior of the prey so as to alter the encounter rates or capture probabilities.” Red-winged Blackbirds, those pretty little black birds with the bright red wing patches, are actually ruthless predators who exploit their immediate environment in order to ensure their own personal survival, and the survival of their babies. They seek out patches in the marsh with the densest concentrations of insects, so they can increase their odds of capturing enough insects to feed themselves, and feed their babies. Gordon Orian creates a mathematical formula for this, where the bird’s energy intake from the insects it eats is dependent on the time spent foraging and the time spent in traveling, as well as the energy expended in foraging. Red-winged Blackbirds have to exploit the insect resources of the marsh where they live so they take in more energy than they put out.

    That’s what all animals do. The woodchucks who eat everything in your garden are just trying to maximize their energy intake while minimizing the energy they spend in foraging — and your garden is so attractive because you lay out all those nice young succulent plants so the woodchuck doesn’t have to expend much energy to exploit the plant resources of your garden. Because the woodchuck can exploit your garden so efficiently, he or she gets big and fat and has lots of babies and generally thrives. This gets at another basic principle: the organisms that are most effective at exploiting the resources around them are the organisms that are going to survive and thrive and reproduce like mad.

    So when we say that human beings are exploiting the resources of earth, in a way it’s hard to criticize us human beings for doing so. Of course we exploit the resources around us as effectively as possible, and of course we do so to the maximum possible extent. Such exploitation is literally a part of our biological make-up. We are the product of thousands of generations of earlier human beings, each generation of which got a little better at exploiting the resources around us. Exploitation is bred into our bones.

    However, at a certain point exploitation moves out of the realm of biology and into the realm of morality and ethics. It’s one thing when a woodchuck exploits the world around it by eating your garden in order to enhance its reproductive success; it’s another thing altogether when a corporation exploits the world around it by dumping PCBs into New Bedford harbor in order to enhance its profits. The woodchuck eats your garden so that it can live; but the corporation destroys New Bedford harbor and endangers the health of all organisms in the vicinity, not so that it can live, but rather so that it can make far more money than it needs for survival, all at the expense of other living beings. We don’t call the woodchuck immoral for eating your garden; but we do call the corporation immoral when it dumps PCBs into the harbor.

    It is this second type of exploitation that we call immoral. And we call it immoral for at least two reasons.

    First of all, there’s the biological reason. Human beings are social, tribal animals: despite the American myth of individualism, human beings have always required other human beings in order to survive. Babies and children require the help of lots of adults — not just their parents — in order to survive to adulthood. And adult human beings are essentially cooperative animals who need a tribe in order to survive — we are not designed to fight off saber-toothed tigers on our own, no more than we can survive today without relying on farmers, software engineers, sewage treatment plant operators, and so on. So it is that when an individual, or a small group of individuals, exploits other human beings for personal gain, we can call that individual or that small group immoral. They are immoral because they are going against human biology, they are going against natural law.

    There’s a second reason why this kind of behavior is immoral. As a religious community, we uphold idealistic notions of what human society could be. Jesus of Nazareth taught us that if we would love our neighbors as ourselves, we could create a heaven here on earth. Gotama Buddha taught us that if we could get rid of greed and self-delusion, we could end human suffering. Confucius taught us that if we could maintain a well-ordered social structure where we live for the sake of others as much as we live for ourselves, we could create an ideal world. Whichever religious tradition we choose to learn from teaches us that moral behavior requires us to think of other human beings; requires us to transcend selfishness and self-interest. So it is that when an individual, or a small group of individuals, exploits other human beings for personal gain, we call that individual or that small group immoral. They are immoral because they are being selfish, they are going against religious law.

    It should be obvious by now that global climate change is caused by immoral violations of natural law and religious law. When a small group of human beings decides to dump PCBs into New Bedford harbor because they’ll make more money if they don’t have to clean up the toxic waste, that’s both a violation of natural law — by denying the reality that all human beings are interdependent — and it’s a violation of religious law — by allowing their selfishness to overwhelm the requirement to love their neighbors as themselves. Thus we call this kind of behavior “immoral exploitation.”

    Here we encounter an interesting point. From a moral viewpoint, this economic exploitation of the natural world looks exactly like the economic exploitation of persons based on race and racism. Racism in America started out as slavery, where people of African descent were enslaved by some people of European descent, so that the people of European descent could make lots of money without having to pay wages; morally, this is exactly parallel to corporations dumping PCBs into New Bedford harbor so they can make lots of money.

    Racial exploitation and the exploitation of the environment that has led to global climate change stem from the same kind of immoral exploitation: a violation of natural law through a denial of human cooperation; and a violation of religious law through a denial of loving our neighbors as ourselves. And you will not be surprised to learn that in fact persons of color are more likely to be adversely affected by environmental disasters — for example, persons of color are more likely than whites to live near toxic waste sites; in New Orleans, persons of color were more likely to live in the low-lying areas most likely to be flooded.

    Now here’s where it gets really interesting. If we want to understand the moral roots of global climate change — that is to say, if we want to understand the moral problem of exploitation — one of the best places to start is by engaging in conversations with people who have been fighting racism. I have gained some of my deepest understanding of how immoral exploitation works through reading African American writers like Frederick Douglass and Cornel West; and what I have learned from them, I have been able to apply directly to environmental work.

    As we try to solve the problem of global climate change, environmentalists will benefit from building alliances with people who are solving the problem of racism and racial exploitation, because both these problems stem from the same moral issue of exploitation. The fundamental moral point here is that resources should not be controlled by the greedy few. This is one of the key insights of the ecojustice revolution: that racism and environmentalism are inextricably intertwined; and therefore, those of us who are working to end racism are natural allies to those of us who are working to end global climate change.

    …

    I spent a great deal of time on the moral question of exploitation, because I believe it lies at the center of the ecojustice revolution. Now I’d like to turn for just a moment to the second moral question pertaining to global climate change: and that is the moral question of constant acceleration.

    Let me explain what I mean by constant acceleration. Our economic system requires constant economic growth. If America’s gross domestic product doesn’t rise every year, then we are in the soup. That’s what’s happening right now, in the current economic crisis: our economy is contracting, and that means that the unemployment rate is rising, and that means that people are out of work, and that means a rise in human misery and suffering.

    Of course I’m over-simplifying here. I’m no economist, and I’m aware that the roots of the economic crisis are more complicated than what I’ve just outlined. Nevertheless, we keep hearing over and over again that an increase in consumer confidence and spending is one of the things that will put an end to the economic crisis: the more we spend, the better off we are. And we all accept this as normal — it’s so much a part of the political and social landscape of America that we don’t even question it.

    From a moral point of view, this is simply crazy. From a moral point of view, increasing your consumer spending is not the main purpose in life. From a moral point of view, we are supposed to be living a good life; from a religious point of view, we are supposed to be doing our small parts in bringing about heaven here on earth. At best, consumer spending has little to do with morality, so that buying a new video game is an action with no moral component at all. At worst, however, excessive consumer spending is a moral nightmare because it puts energy and resources into useless things like pink lawn flamingos; energy and resources that could have been put towards solving the problem of global climate change, or improving the lives of the billions of people who are in poverty.

    Today, our society is driven by a sense that we need to keep on accelerating the pace of the economy. This ever-increasing acceleration of the economy and of everything uses more and more energy and releases more and more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. Sadly, we are seeing right now that when the acceleration stops, millions of human beings are plunged into misery. But this ever-increasing acceleration has no real moral purpose. It just reminds us that today’s American society seems to lack any moral purpose, because our only purpose is to accelerate the pace of the economy regardless of human misery.

    …

    This brings us finally to the third moral question pertaining to global climate change. And that is the moral question about how we can lessen human misery.

    That’s the true moral purpose of technology: to lessen human misery. If we develop efficient transportation networks, we can guard against famine; when there’s not enough rain in North Dakota to grow food, we can ship food in from California. If we improve public health through improved technologies like vaccinations and sewage treatment plants, we can reduce death from horrible diseases like smallpox and cholera. And if we improve access to information through the printed word and through the Internet, we can help create democratic societies in which all persons are treated as equal.

    That’s what technology was supposed to do for us. And in many ways, technology has succeeded; at least, it has succeeded in a few parts of the world, such as North America outside of the inner cities. The problem is that the goal of lessening human misery through technology got transmogrified into a goal of constant acceleration. Instead of working to lessen human misery, we somehow got sidetracked into believing that what we really needed was more pink lawn flamingos, more disposable plastic bags, and more smiley-faces. I have to tell you that as much as I enjoy pink lawn flamingoes, they really do nothing to lessen human misery.

    Once we realize this — once we realize that a critical goal of human society should be to lessen human misery — it can change everything for us. The ecojustice revolution takes this one step further: by putting a check on immoral exploitation, we can both lessen human misery, and (if you will) lessen the misery of other living beings and of the natural world in general.

    Once we have determined the moral goal towards which we strive, once we have a moral direction, a moral compass, we no longer have to feel quite so helpless in the face of environmental disaster. Global climate change will increase human misery, so our moral compass tells us that global climate change is morally wrong and must be curtailed. When we then realize that people who are already poor and oppressed and marginalized are going to bear the brunt of global climate change — for example, soon a huge amount of Bangladesh will be at risk of ocean flooding — our moral compass tells us that we must address this problem as one of our priorities. And by linking human misery to the misery of other living beings, by understanding that all immoral exploitation comes from the same root, we begin to understand that what we do to lessen human misery will have the effect of lessening the misery of other living beings — if we can keep the Arctic ice cap from melting, not only will we help Bangladeshis survive, we will also help polar bears survive.

    What lies at the root of all our efforts are simple religious truths: to lessen misery, to end exploitation, and to create heaven here on earth. To some this might sound hopelessly idealistic; but to us these are ideals that fill us with hope for the future.