Sermon

A Theological Center of Gravity

The Rev. Jack D. Bryant

Hope Unitarian Church

September 25, 2005

First Reading: A portion of Chapter IV of the Cambridge Platform

Of The Form Of The Visible Church, And Of Church Covenant.

1. Saints by calling must have a visible political union among themselves, or else they are not yet a particular church, as those similitudes hold forth, which the Scripture makes use of to show the nature of particular churches; as a body, a building, house, hands, eyes, feet and other members, must be united, or else (remaining separate) are not a body. Stones, timber, though squared, hewn and polished, are not a house, until they are compacted and united; so saints or believers in judgment of charity, are not a church unless orderly knit together.

2. Particular churches cannot be distinguished one from another but by their forms. Ephesus is not Smyrna, nor Pergamos Thyatira; but each one a distinct society of itself, having officers of their own, which had not the charge of others; virtues of their own, for which others are not praised; corruptions of their own, for which others are not blamed.

3. This form is the visible covenant, agreement; or consent, whereby they give up themselves unto the Lord, to the observing of the ordinances of Christ together in the same society, which is usually called the "church covenant" for we see not otherwise how members can have church power over one another mutually. The comparing of each particular church to a city, and unto a spouse, seems to conclude not only a form, but that that form is by way of covenant. The covenant, as it was that which made the family of Abraham and children of Israel to be a church and people unto God, so is it that which now makes the several societies of Gentile believers to be churches in these days.

4. This voluntary agreement, consent or covenant--for all these are here taken for the same--although the more express and plain it is, the more fully it puts us in mind of our mutual duty; and stirs us up to it, and leaves less room for the questioning of the truth of the church estate of a company of professors, and the truth of membership of particular persons; yet we conceive the substance of it is kept where there is real agreement and consent of a company of faithful persons to meet constantly together in one congregation, for the public worship of God, and their mutual edification; which real agreement and consent they do express by their constant practice in coming together for the public worship of God and by their religious subjection unto the ordinances of God there: the rather, if we do consider how Scripture covenants have been entered into, not only expressly by Word of mouth, but by sacrifice, by handwriting and seal; and also sometimes by silent consent, without any writing or expression of words at all.

5. This form being by mutual covenant, it follows, it is not faith in the heart, nor the profession of that faith, nor cohabitation, nor baptism.

Sermon

Unitarians have a peculiar history. Our ancestors were the Pilgrims who arrived on the Mayflower. At first glance we don’t look much like them. But if you look just a little deeper you will find remarkable similarities. The Pilgrims, just before landing in 1620, entered into the Mayflower Compact, an agreement that provided the basis for civil government. Their church was one that did not accept a higher authority - except God, of course. They believed in the principle of local governance. In 1648, just twenty-eight years after they arrived, they joined with like minded churches and adopted the Cambridge Platform as the basis for describing individual churches and their relationship with each other. It is a document that emphasizes the church as association. It mentions God, but it is not about theology in a conventional way. It may be read as consistent with certain beliefs, but it denies creeds, beliefs or any particular form of ritual as the basis for unity. The basis for unity “is not faith in the heart, nor the profession of that faith, nor cohabitation, nor baptism.”

But for all these words about how we associate together, almost all of them have faded away. Today, most people have never heard of the Mayflower Compact or the Cambridge Platform, even though both are an important part of American history and our civil evolution to constitutional government, not just that of our particular religious tradition. It may be argued that we have stayed true to the Cambridge Platform’s admonition not to base our unity on “faith in the heart, nor the profession of that faith, nor cohabitation, nor baptism,” by which today we mean our rejection of creeds. But my own view is that we have also eroded away how we organize and govern our churches. William Ellery Channing, that greatest of Unitarian ministers from the early eighteen hundreds, had much to say about human nature and God, but nothing of note to say about the body of the church, about how it should be organized. The long term result has been a too frequent vacuum both in theology and doctrine of the church. And nature abhors a vacuum, so it has not remained empty, but has sometimes been filled by passers by and fellow travelers. But that is not entirely true. There are some powerful positive voices that are embedded within our tradition and I believe our future lies in hearing them, in the realization we will best advance the good news we have to offer by working from that center of strength. And that center of strength - despite the two and-a-half century old protestation of the Cambridge Platform lies in a revitalized theology as well as a renewed doctrine of the church. I am not talking of a creed, but in recognizing a theological center of gravity that arises out of the best of our tradition and points us towards a future worthy of our past. I believe we have always had such a theological center of gravity - the difficulty has been that we have tried to pretend we don’t. I just want to be open and honest about it. It is not to be done by embracing anything that is novel or unknown, but by taking critical pieces of our theological past that we have insisted on expressing in negative terms and giving them a positive voice. In doing so I do not claim to speak for our movement as a whole. In the tradition of the free pulpit, I speak only for myself. And that is as it should be, for it is our tradition that theology arises from the experience of the individual that is then expressed and tested in community.

I believe the oldest and best known piece of our theological tradition is unitarianism with a little “u”. It has been traditionally understood as rejection of the Trinity - the doctrine that there is only one God and he is composed of three persons, Jesus, the Son; God the Father; and the Holy Spirit. I am no friend of the Trinity. Since the first day I thought about it, it has made no sense to me. But recently I have begun to rethink the Trinity - not as an idea I would accept, but to rethink what it means and how it relates to unitarianism. Historically, the Trinity was problematic for the early Christians. It caused those they called pagans to accuse them of polytheism - which surprises many who do not realize that the sophisticated pagans of that time were more like the Hindus of today. They spoke of many different gods, but understand them as manifestations of a single god. I believe the proto- Christians were heavily influenced by the polytheism of the less sophisticated pagans and the Trinity was an inelegant attempt to transform that polytheism into monotheism. In other words it was an attempt to affirm the unity of god. But the unitarian movement of two hundred years ago became fixated on what it was rejecting and in doing so lost sight of what the doctrine of the Trinity was trying to affirm - albeit inelegantly.

Imagine how different our movement might look today if instead of continuously rejecting the Trinity we had focused on affirming the unity of God? That doesn’t mean affirming an eighteenth century image of God, but affirming the unity of that idea as it has evolved over the last two hundred years. This, of course, brings up another instance of theological rejection.

Beginning in the seventeen hundreds people were openly questioning the traditional image of God as all powerful, all knowing and all loving. They also questioned the idea that God had gender. By the eighteen hundreds I believe it was evident that the classical image of God made no sense. An increasing knowledge of the world and common sense demonstrated that classical theism was insupportable. That idea was coupled with classical humanism, the belief that human beings could discover knowledge by themselves, they did not have to rely on divine revelation. Combined with the rejection of classical theism the two became Modern Humanism which, to my mind, is concerned mostly with rejecting classical theism in the name of atheism and a rejection of what humanism had historically represented. Modern Humanism dominated Unitarianism for many years. The problem was that it insisted on continuing to fight a battle against classical theism. You can turn on your television and read the newspaper and discover there are still proponents of classical theism. They include folks who think the zoo is a place for religion instead of animals. But many thoughtful theologians have abandoned classical theism for over a hundred years. In its place are images of God consistent with modern science and the natural world. But many people continue to fight the issue. It is like the myth of Sisyphus, the mortal condemned to continually role the stone up the hill. For a number of years I found myself in that position, but I finally grew tired of it. I decided it was time to move beyond the nineteenth century in my theological thinking.

What if the rejection of the Trinity and the rejection of classical theism were turned into something positive? What if we emphasized the unity of God and the ability of people to discover new knowledge for themselves and stopped obsessing about those who continue to believe in the Trinity and classical theism. Combined into a positive theological center of gravity I believe they would call for one to say something like this: There is a common subject of human experience. I call that common subject of experience God. But that is not what it is, it is what I call it. We human beings are united, are of a unity in that common experience. That unity is the unity of unitarianism.

Different people interpret their experience of that common subject differently. It is much like the Hindu story of the elephant and the blind men. Some grasp the ear, others the tail and still others one of the legs. And some stand underneath the elephant, wave their arms, feel nothing and say there’s nothing there, say the elephant doesn’t exist, declare atheism. And that’s fine. That is how they interpret their experience. It is a theological center of gravity that says there is a common subject, a unity of experience, but our interpretations of that experience are human interpretations, human inventions. Some may continue to proclaim classical theism and the Trinity, others may see Tillich’s ground of being where Charles Hartshorne saw processes of the natural world and proclaimed them worthy of the name God and still others may interpret it as the voice of reason. The differences in interpretation are real and they are important, but because they are human creations they are lesser things that should not and must not separate us, because what is greater is the unity of experience, that common subject of experience that I choose, in my own limited and infallible way, to call God. And it is that unity of experience that unites us universally and is a basis for a new universalism.

The original universalism that is part of our religious heritage is the Christian doctrine of universal salvation, a doctrine founded on the belief that Jesus, whom some call the Christ, died for the sins of all. It is not an attractive idea to me. Christian universalism rests on the assumption that suffering is good, that suffering is redemptive and ideas of human blood sacrifice that render the doctrine of atonement into a story of cosmic child abuse. In addition, it is a triumphalist doctrine, one that says my religion is better than anyone else’s. All other religions become false. But if what begins as Christian universalism merges with a revitalized unitarianism, the result is a universalism grounded in the unity of God, the unity of the common subject of experience. It can acknowledge the legitimacy and reality of the different religious interpretations that separate us - and our own as well, but see them as the lesser things they are. This is a universalism without the hubris and triumphalism of the original Christian universalism.

And there is one more I would add to the list. That is Transcendentalism. Transcendentalism was both a literary and a religious movement. As a religious movement it called for a rejection of community and affirmation of the individual on a level that - to my ears - sounds idolatrous. As Emerson said, "Society everywhere is in conspiracy against the manhood of every one of its
members." But is that believable? It sounds of absolutism and orthodoxy to me. It sounds of the worst kind of conspiracy theory approach to life. Yes, sometimes they are out to get you, but not always. Transcendentalism, more than any other thread of our tradition, pushes too close to a theology not of theism, deism or atheism, but one of meism, of elevating the individual to the level of God and for the cutting off by the individual of relationships with the larger community. But there is a healthy interpretation of Transcendentalism. It is to affirm the individual not as the isolated, cut-off individual, but as the Child of God. But this is not the classical child of God, the child as subservient individual, the individual whose life is completely controlled and dictated by the abusive parent figure - a conception of individualism just as dysfunctional as that of Emerson. What if we affirmed the idea of the child of God or individual as the healthy person we want our own children to be? Why not proclaim that children should grow up to stand on their own and to be in healthy relationship with others, able to say, “Here I stand,” and at the same time support and be a part of community? This is an idea of the child of God that embraces metaphor. God, in this sense, is the metaphor for all that is other and to be a child of God is to be in a healthy relationship with others - neither controlled nor controlling.

I do not know where you stand on such matters. I do not know where our movement as a whole is going. But this is where I stand. This is where my theological wandering has led me. I no longer care to spend my time rejecting the Trinity. I no longer feel the need to fret and worry that others may believe an understanding of God that makes no sense to me. So be it. I choose to affirm the unity of God, the common subject of experience that binds together the world and all that is in the I-Thou relationship of which Martin Buber spoke. I have my interpretation of that experience. Yours may differ in important ways from mine, but I affirm that the common subject of experience - the unity of experience - connects us in a new universalism that is egalitarian. And I see us all as children of God. As people called to grow-up and to be responsible and to be partners - full and complete partners - in the ongoing creation of the world. I believe this is the basis for a religion worthy of our past and capable of leading us into the future. And it is where I stand.

Amen.