Dan Harper | Sermons

  • When Our Actions Define Us, pt. 1

    Readings

    The first reading was from a short story titled “The Guest” by Albert Camus. The story is set in Algeria during the French colonial era. A French police officer has delivered an Arab prisoner to a French schoolteacher named Daru, and he has told Daru to deliver the Arab to prison. Here’s what Daru does:

    “Daru surveyed the two directions. There was nothing but the sky on the horizon. Not a man could be seen. He turned toward the Arab, who was looking at him blankly. Daru held out the package to him. ‘Take it,’ he said [in Arabic]. ‘There are dates, bread, and sugar. You can hold out for two days. Here are a thousand francs too.’ The Arab took the package and the money but kept his full hands at chest level as if he didn’t know what to do with what was being given him. ‘Now look,’ the schoolmaster said as he pointed in the direction of the east, ‘there’s the way to Tinguit. You have a two-hour walk. At Tinguit you’ll find the administration and the police. They are expecting you.’ The Arab looked toward the east, still holding the package and the money against his chest. Daru took his elbow and turned him rather roughly toward the south. At the foot of the height on which they stood could be seen a faint path. ‘That’s the trail across the plateau. In a day’s walk from here you’ll find pasturelands and the first nomads. They’ll take you in and shelter you according to their law.’ The Arab had now turned toward Daru and a sort of panic was visible in his expression. ‘Listen,’ he said. Daru shook his head: ‘No, be quiet. Now I’m leaving you.’ He turned his back on him, took two long steps in the direction of the school, looking hesitantly at the motionless Arab and started off again. For a few minutes he heard nothing but his own step resounding on the cold ground and did not turn his head. … He had already gone some distance when he again stopped and looked. There was no longer anyone on the hill.”

    The second reading was from the Unitarian Universalist theologian William R. Jones. Dr. Jones was best known for his 1973 book titled Is God a White Racist? but reading comes from his 1975 essay titled “Theism and Religious Humanism: The Chasm Narrows.”

    “Abraham’s situation, when he is commanded to slay Isaac, represents the human situation. Forced to decide whether he is addressed by God or Moloch and given the impossibility of demonstrating whose voice he hears, Abraham … must decide the source of the command…. If he concludes that the decree is from God, it is morally imperative. If, however, he decides that it is Moloch’s voice that he hears, the order must be rejected. But clearly, only Abraham can make this crucial decision.

    “Likewise with humankind: forced by virtue of our freedom and the existential situation of objective uncertainty, we cannot escape the necessity to be the measure of even that higher reality that created us. There is no way to escape this responsibility … for it is a factor of the freedom that is our essence.”

    Sermon

    In last week’s sermon, I gave a brief theological history of First Parish; this was in response to a question asked by one of you during last spring’s question box sermon. Last week, I said that one of the theological strands running through the three centuries of First Parish’s history is our firm conviction that human beings have a great deal of free will. And at the end of the sermon last week, I promised I would explore how free will — the human freedom to act in the world — continues to shape us religiously. And that’s what we’ll consider this week.

    Which brings us to the first reading, from a story titled “The Guest” by Albert Camus. I know some of you have read the story, but for those of you who haven’t, or who read it so long ago that you’ve forgotten it, here’s what happens:

    The story opens with Daru, a schoolteacher who is French but who has spent most of his life in Algeria. He alone in his mountain classroom; alone because a blizzard has just ended, forcing his students to stay home. This blizzard ended an eight month drought, a drought which had driven many of his students deeper into grinding poverty.

    Daru looks out the window, and sees two figures struggling through the snow up the steep rise to the school. These two turn out to be Balducci, a policeman from Corsica, now close to retirement, and Balducci’s prisoner, an Arab who killed his cousin. Balducci talks with Daru in French — the Arab doesn’t speak French — telling Daru that he must bring the Arab another 20 kilometers to the main police station. Balducci, for his part, has to get back to where he is based, since some of the native Algerians are planning to revolt against French rule. Daru says that he is not a policeman, and he won’t turn the Arab over to the main police station. Balducci leaves the Arab in the schoolhouse anyway, and returns from whence he came.

    When Balducci is gone, Daru treats the Arab as a guest; he does not tie him up, and indeed he hopes the Arab will escape. But the Arab stays; Daru feeds him; they sleep side by side that night; and in the morning, Daru walks with the Arab to a trail junction.

    There Daru gives the Arab enough food and money to allow escape into the interior of the country, shows him the two paths — one the escape route to the interior, one the path to police headquarters — and lets the Arab decide what to do. When Daru looks back a little later, he sees “with a heavy heart” that the Arab has chosen to take the path leading to police headquarters, where he will face certain execution. When Daru gets back to the schoolhouse, he find these words written in chalk upon the blackboard: “‘You handed over our brother. You will pay for this.’” And the final sentence of the story says: “In this vast landscape he had loved so much, he was alone.”

    Daru did what he thought was right — he treated the Arab as a guest, gave him food and money, and refused to turn him over to a French colonial system of justice for which he doesn’t appear to have much respect. Daru does the right thing, and yet the Arab’s brothers blame him, and promise to take revenge on him. In short, Daru does what he thinks is right, and everyone despises him for it — he offends Balducci, the policeman; he will probably die at the hands of the Arab’s brothers.

    There are two points to which I’d like to draw your attention. First, this story shows how our actions can define us. Daru defines himself by treating the Arab as a guest, by being a good host; the Arab prisoner defines himself by not choosing to escape when Daru gives him the opportunity. Second, the story shows that the consequences of our actions may be judged differently by different people. The Arab probably feels that Daru is a decent person — although we never learn exactly what the Arab feels, just as we never learn his name — but the policeman and the Arab’s brothers obviously judge Daru harshly.

    Once we accept these two points, then we are led to conclude that there are no universal standards of morality with which all persons agree. And if we accept these two points, we are also led to conclude that when it comes to moral decisions, no one of us ever sees the whole picture. Life forces us to make decisions all the time, yet all too often we cannot foresee all the consequences of our actions; indeed, sometimes the consequences of our actions may turn out to be completely unexpected, or the opposite of what we thought or hoped for. Yet we cannot stop making decisions, because life constantly forces us to choose between different courses of action.

    All this may seem a bit depressing. We might like to believe the good guys always win. We might like to believe life is like those old movies about mythical cowboys, where the good guys wear white hats, and the bad guys wear black hats, and the good guys always win in the end. But we know life is not like that. So maybe it’s less depressing to keep it real, and admit that many times it’s difficult to determine what to do.

    I think about precisely this issue whenever I teach the comprehensive sexuality education course first developed by the Unitarian Universalist Association for grades seven through nine back in 1968, and revised regularly since then. Originally called “About Your Sexuality,” and now called “Our Whole Lives,” this course is designed to give early adolescents the information they need to make informed decisions when they are confronted with sexual choices. Here I should say that the sexual choices that confront early adolescents are pretty wide-ranging. At one end of a range of behaviors, early adolescents can choose to engage in no sexual activity, or in very low risk sexual behavior like kissing; and we actually tell them that it is healthier for early adolescents to stay at this end of the range of behaviors. Then of course there is a wide range of behaviors beyond that. Not only do early adolescents have a wide range of behaviors they can choose from, they are also called upon to make frequent decisions about their sexuality.

    Nor is it possible for early adolescents to avoid making decisions about their sexuality, not least because our culture is awash in sexual imagery. Advertisers use sex and sexuality to sell their products. Movie and TV producers use sex to attract viewers. Songwriters include love and sex in most of the popular songs that we all listen to; even in a fairly benign song like Johnny Cash singing “Ring of Fire,” he’s not singing about wildfires in California, he’s singing about sexuality and love. Nor is it any wonder that sexuality so permeates our culture; reproduction and child rearing are essential to the survival or our species, which means that reproduction and child rearing are going to be a major concern for all human beings (even for child-free people like me). No wonder, then, that reproduction and child rearing permeate every aspect of human culture. Including religion and spirituality. Religion and spirituality are human activities, so of course religions and spiritualities are going to concern themselves with human sexuality. For some religions and some spiritualities, their concern with human sexuality is going to result in lots of rules and doctrines limiting the apparent choices that can be made by individuals.

    Our religion takes a somewhat different approach. We have seen that rules and doctrines are especially effective; rules and doctrines may work for some people, but they don’t work for other people. More importantly, rigid rules and doctrines require a harsh and rigid view of human nature, something like original sin. But we do not perceive the world in terms of binary, black-and-white choices — a right choice and a wrong choice and nothing in between — but rather we perceive the world in shifting shades of gray which can often make it difficult to determine which is the correct course of action to follow. In our view, the real world is more like the world depicted in the story of Daru the schoolteacher, where people can make what seem to be the right choices, but which turn out to have consequences no one could foresee. To put this another way, we believe that human beings have a radical freedom to act. Even though some recent findings of neuroscientists may indicate that we may not have all that much free will, we believe that we still have to live our lives as if we had radical freedom of action.

    No original sin. Radical freedom. A world where it can be difficult to determine what is right. Our religious worldview leads us to believe that we cannot, and should not, rely on strict rules and doctrines handed down from higher authorities. Instead, we have to figure out how to make choices — and how to live with the consequences of our choices when things don’t turn out quite the way we had expected.

    At the end of the story by Albert Camus, Daru the schoolteacher feels utterly alone, or as the story put it: “In this vast landscape he had loved so much, he was alone.” This is where I part ways with Camus. Our religious worldview would suggest that Daru does not need to be quite so alone. This is really the point of the Our Whole Lives comprehensive sexuality education program that we offer — we tell early adolescents that they do not need to be alone. Indeed, much of the course is designed to improve their communication skills, not only so that they can someday talk with future partners about sexual choice, but also so that they can talk better with their parents and guardians. We also want them to be able to talk openly with their friends and peers about sexual choices. One positive result of this is we hear back from teens who have completed the program that their friends and peers turn to them for trustworthy information about sexual choices and about human sexuality. Radical freedom of action does not mean you have to be lonely.

    The Our Whole Lives comprehensive sexuality education program is not just for early adolescents — there are Our Whole Lives courses for other age groups, including for adults. Next year, I hope we can offer the Our Whole Lives program for grades ten through twelve, that is for middle adolescents. My experience of teaching this program is that middle adolescents have become very aware that they are soon to go off to college or the military or full-time work, where they will be confronted with new sexual choices. As a result, not only do they want time to talk with their peers and with trusted adults about those impending sexual choices, they also feel a desire to improve their communication skills so they can talk more easily with others about human sexuality. In short, middle adolescents have begun to better understand that we are not as alone as Albert Camus would have us believe; we are not so completely alone as Camus wants us to believe, and we can reach out to others as we make decisions.

    This has been brought home to me in talking with late adolescents (that is, people who are roughly aged eighteen into their early twenties). Statistics show that a large percentage of people are sexually assaulted during the course of their lives. Figures vary, but the National Sexual Violence Resource center says perhaps one in five women and some significant number of men are raped or sexually assaulted over their lifetimes.(1) Other sources give higher numbers; one source says 27% of American women have been raped, and 54% have experienced some kind of sexual violence.(2) And most sexual assaults happen to people under the age of thirty. From talking with late adolescents, I’ve learned that many of them either know someone who has been sexually assaulted, or have been sexually assaulted themselves. While no one chooses to be sexually assaulted, people do have choices about how to recover from sexual assault. And reaching out to trusted people does seem to help with recovery from sexual assault. Here again, we do not need to be alone; we can reach out to others when we are confronted with difficult choices.

    And there are also Our Whole Lives sexuality education courses for young adults, middle adults, and older adults (that is, age fifty and up). At each of these ages, we can make life-changing choices — to have children, or to not have children; how we become emotionally intimate with another person; how we deal with the ethical implications of consent; and so on. I appreciate the fact that there is a course for older adults. As an older adult myself, I’ve found that our culture does not offer many places where people over fifty are encouraged to talk about human sexuality. Society tells older adults that we’re not sexual beings, yet we too are constantly making choices about emotional intimacy, about appropriate touch, and so on. Society also tells us adults, especially us older adults, that we’re supposed to figure things out by ourselves, without talking to other people. I don’t think this is the best way to make choices about important things. It’s easier for us human beings when we can talk things out with other people whom we trust, and we seem to make better decisions when we can talk things out.

    I think about this when I hear the second reading, the words by Rev. Dr. William R. Jones. Dr. Jones was a Unitarian Universalist who served as a religious educator, a minister, and then for most of his career a professor of religion and religious studies. Speaking of the necessity for making choices, Jones says, “There is no way to escape this responsibility … for it is a factor of the freedom that is our essence.” Thus, whether or not you happen to believe in God, we are still forced by our human freedom to constantly make choices; and we must make those choices even though it is impossible for any one human being to know with certainty what is true and right. Jones used to say that both liberal theism and religious humanism had this in common; and therefore theists and humanists have much more in common with each other than it may seem at first.

    Elsewhere in his writings, Jones spoke of “humanocentric” religion. By this he meant both religious theism and religious humanism where human beings are the focus. Some religious theists push off the responsibility for their actions onto a big Daddy God, and some religious atheists push off their responsibility for their actions onto a big Daddy DNA, or bid Daddy brain science. But Dr. Jones wanted us to see how human beings could be the measure of all things; and the implication here is that human community is an essential locus for our human decision-making.

    That is one of the main purposes of the Our Whole Lives sexuality education program — if we can come together and learn how to communicate better, if we can get some practice communicating with others, we won’t feel so alone when we have to make the choices that define us. This is also one of the main purposes of our Sunday mornings — although to get the full benefit, you really have to come across the street after the service, you have to come to social hour, because that’s where we have the time to talk with one another.

    We’re out of time, but there is still much more to say about the topic of human freedom to make choices. You can come back next week for more on this big topic, as I explore another big area where people have to make potentially life-altering choices. This week, I took a quick look at human sexuality as something that requires us to make life-changing choices. The other area of human activity that requires us to make difficult and potentially life-changing decisions is money. So I’ll continue this conversation about human freedom next week by considering how human freedom intersects with money.

    To Be Continued…

  • A Brief Theological History of First Parish in Cohasset

    Introduction

    [Dan Harper] Last spring, during the “Question Box Service,” someone asked for a brief theological history of First Parish. This sermon is a partial answer to that question. I found four readings — one from 1770, one from 1823, one from 1960, and one from 1998 — each one written by a different First Parish minister, each one representing one theological position from the past three hundred years. After Holly reads each of these readings, I’ll give a brief commentary on it.

    Luckily, a number of First Parish ministers were quite good writers. Three of the four readings you’re about to hear came from published writings. I think you’ll enjoy hearing the distinctive voices of these four people.

    Facsimile of title page of Browne's printed sermon
    Title page of “A Discourse Delivered on the Day of the Annual Provincial Thanksgiving” by John Browne (1771)

    Reading

    [Read by Holly Harris] The first reading comes from a sermon preached by Rev. John Browne to our congregation here in Cohasset on December 6, 1770. The sermon was titled, “A Discourse Delivered on the Day of the Annual Provincial Thanksgiving.”

    “The consideration of God’s sitting at the helm of the Universe should ever dispose us to put our trust in him; and not greatly fear what man can do unto us. Never let it be said that the difficulties which we feel, or think we have reason to fear, cause us to be unmindful of our creator, preserver, and constant benefactor. It was once the expression of a very impious woman to her religious husband, when his property was invaded, his children destroyed, and his life endangered, ‘Curse GOD and die.’ But he replied in the greatness of his distress: ‘Thou speakest as one of the foolish women speaketh: What? Shall we receive good at the hand of God, and shall we not also receive evil?’ All that befalls the children of men is designed by their Maker to promote their happiness. The least glimmering of mercy amidst the greatest outward distress is sufficient to excite our gratitude, if we reflect properly on it.”

    Commentary

    [DH] Three decades before John Brown gave this sermon, Jonathan Edwards, a minister out in Northampton preached a very different kind of sermon. Jonathan Edwards titled his sermon “Sinner in the Hands of an Angry God,” and one sentence from that sermon will suffice to give you a sense of the whole:

    “The God that holds you over the pit of hell, much in the same way as one holds a spider, or some loathsome insect over the fire, abhors you, and is dreadfully provoked; his wrath towards you burns like fire; he looks upon you as worthy of nothing else but to be cast into the fire; … you are ten thousand times more abominable in his eyes than the most hateful venomous serpent is in ours.”

    John Brown believed in a very different kind of God. John Brown’s God was essentially good. John Brown’s God wants human beings to be happy. He admits that sometimes bad things happen to good people — sometimes God allows evil to befall us. But on the whole, John Brown’s God is trustworthy, merciful, and good. On the whole, John Brown’s God loves human beings.

    Jonathan Edwards and John Brown represent the two sides of a great theological battle that raged in New England in the middle of the eighteenth century. On the one hand, people like Jonathan Edwards said that human beings are evil, that God despises us, that all human beings must throw themselves on the mercy of a wrathful and hate-filled God, even as that God is about to cast them into hell. On the other hand, people like John Brown said that both God and human beings are basically good, and that God’s love is more powerful that sin and evil.

    There’s another important differences between these two theological positions. People like Jonathan Edwards believed that even before they were born, the majority of human beings were predestined by God to be sent to hell and eternal damnation. People like John Brown, on the other hand, believed that human beings had free will to choose goodness; in their view, God wanted to give humans every possible chance to show that they were worthy of God’s eternal love. This latter view was known as Arminianism, and nearly all Unitarian churches in New England come from this Arminian theology — this theology of humans having free will and being able to choose good.

    Sadly, this theological battle continues to rage here in the United States. There are many right-wing Christians who believe that most human beings are loathsome insects that God is dangling over a fire. From what I’ve seen, such beliefs warp the people who hold them, encouraging them to despise poor people, women, immigrants, people of a different skin color. I continue to side with those who believe that human beings have infinite capacity for goodness, and infinite capacity for love.

    Facsimile of title page of Flint's published sermon
    Title page of “A Discourse in Which the Doctrine of the Trinity Is Examined…” by Jacob Flint (1824)

    Reading

    [HH] The second reading is from a sermon preached by Rev. Jacob Flint in the afternoon of December 7, 1823. The sermon was titled, “A Discourse in Which the Doctrine of the Trinity Is Examined.”

    “The word ‘trinity’ cannot be found in the Old or New Testament; and there is not a word in any language among the tribes of men, which will express the existence of trinity in unity. The reason is, because such an existence is an impossibility in the nature of things. Professor Stuart is among the most able defenders of the trinitarian doctrine at the present day; and in his letters to Unitarians he states the question ‘How can three be one and one three.’ … ‘In no way,’ I necessarily and cheerfully reply. He still attempts to defend the doctrine. But he makes it only to be a distribution in the Godhead, and professes not to understand in what it consists. … In making Jesus, the Christ, [to be] God equal with the Father, we transgress the first of the ten commandments: ‘Thou shalt have no other God before, or beside me.’”

    Commentary

    [DH] By the early nineteenth century, the theological battle of the previous century had taken a somewhat different form. The Arminian camp — which included John Brown of Cohasset, and Ebeneezer Gay of Hingham, and Jacob Flint — the Arminians continued to believe that the universe was basically good, and that humans had the capacity to be good. Then their opponents, those in the Jonathan Edwards tradition, realized that the Arminians no longer believed in the Trinity; that is, they now refused to say that God was three persons in one. So the inheritors of Jonathan Edwards taunted them by calling them Unitarians. The Arminians decided that they liked that new term, and they began calling themselves Unitarians; even though the central element of their religious viewpoint was not the unity of God, but rather human freedom to choose goodness.

    By the early 1820s, the Trinitarian party looked for towns where their party was in the minority, and then they would send in outside funding to set up a second, trinitarian church. Flint must have worried that the trinitarians were going to try this here in Cohasset, for on December 7, 1823, he preached a sermon in which he told his congregants that the doctrine of the trinity was ridiculous, and that they should all consider themselves Unitarians. Within weeks, a small number of trinitarians angrily withdrew from Flint’s congregation; outside money poured in, allowing Cohasset’s trinitarians to build a new building and hire a trinitarian minister.

    When I read Jacob Flint’s 1823 sermons on Unitarianism, I agree with him on an intellectual level — I agree that the doctrine of the trinity doesn’t make intellectual sense. But I don’t feel the same need for intellectual purity that Flint seemed to feel. Day-to-day life can be difficult, and most of us have beliefs that maybe can’t be justified intellectually, but help us get through the days. When I compare Jacob Flint’s sermon to John Brown’s sermon, I find John Brown give me more help in getting through day-to-day life. When I’m confronted with the death of someone in my family, I don’t spend much time worrying about theological doctrines; but I find it comforting to be told that the universe is basically good, that even if I’m suffering evil now, on the whole things are going to be all right.

    Title page of “I Was Alive — and Glad” by Roscoe Trueblood (1971)

    Reading

    [HH] The third reading comes from a sermon by Rev. Roscoe Trueblood, preached to our congregation here in Cohasset circa 1960. The title of the sermon is “The Splinter in Your Brother’s Eye.”

    “’Judge not, that ye be not judged,’ began Jesus. And immediately some interpretation is necessary. We know that he was not telling people not to judge anybody. He himself often judged people. Therefore, for a long time — since the early days of New Testament criticism, it has been certain that Jesus was simply saying, … Be careful how you measure people, especially their faults, and be sure to do it as you would want it done to you….

    “And those who have read the Vedas of India or the writings of Zarathustra or the works of Mohammed, know that these and other scriptures come to the full support of Jesus on this point. Zoroaster urged that the common burdens and troubles shared by all human kind, ought to make destructive or vicious criticism impossible. Mohammed in his theory of the salt that dissolves in water and can be tasted at the surface, … or as deep as one can go, was saying that our common humanity ought to make us kind and to stir up a mutual sympathy. And, as you doubtless know, the Vedas many times over, present and describe this spirit of generous measurement and judgment, which this overflowing, ubiquitous spirit can present in the minds and hearts of all men. Why note the splinter in your brother’s eye — and consider NOT the plank that is in thine own?”

    Commentary

    [DH] Of all the ministers of this congregation whose sermons or other writings I have managed to get my hands on, I like Roscoe Trueblood the best. He was minister here from 1945 to 1949, and again from 1951 to 1968. To my mind, he represents the best of what I call Emersonian Unitarianism.

    Ralph Waldo Emerson had a profound influence on Unitarianism. Emerson believed that all human beings can have a direct connection to truth and goodness, a direct connection to the divine. Emerson also believed that every human being should be responsible for themselves; to use one of his terms, we should be self reliant. This means both that we should each take charge of our own ethical decisions, and that we should take charge of our own spiritual growth. These two things go together. If you have a direct connection to the divine, a direct connection to truth and goodness, then you don’t need someone else to tell you how to be a good person — you can rely on your inner sense of how to be good. And if you can know how to be good, then you must take responsibility for your actions. I see this Emersonian influence in Roscoe Trueblood’s interpretation of the saying, “Judge not, that ye be not judged.” It is up to each of us to take care of how we judge others; we have enough access to the divine, each one of us, that we can take care in how we measure other people.

    Emerson was profoundly influential in another way. Since he believed that all human beings had equal access to the divine, he felt that we can look at all religious traditions to find wisdom. It is thanks to Emerson that Roscoe Trueblood can say the wisdom we find in the Christian scriptures can also be found in the sacred writings of the Hindus, the Zoroastrians, the Muslims, in all great wisdom traditions.

    I chose this excerpt from one of Trueblood’s sermons because he addresses issues that are of interest today. We live in a polarized society, where it’s considered normal and OK to go on social media and mock the opposing political party, to hateful things about anyone with whom one disagrees. Both liberals and conservatives are doing this — and moderates too. In response, Roscoe Trueblood would tell us that “the common burdens and troubles shared by all human kind, ought to make destructive or vicious criticism impossible.” And Roscoe Trueblood also draws our attention to the “spirit of generous measurement and judgment, which this overflowing, ubiquitous spirit can present in the minds and hearts of all.” When he says this, Roscoe Trueblood reminds me of Rev. John Brown — not only is the universe basically good, but human beings can choose to rise to the high level of the goodness of the universe.

    Facsimile of cover of the book "Evening Tide"
    Cover of “Evening Tide” by Elizabeth Tarbox (1998)

    Reading

    [HH] The fourth reading is from a meditation by Rev. Elizabeth Tarbox, who was the minister of our congregation from 1997 to 1999. This is from her book “Evening Tide.”

    “Where the light catches the tears in another’s eyes, where hands are held and there are moments without words, let us be present then, and alive to the possibility of changing. Let us seek to make another’s well-being the object of our concern. Let us seek to be present to another’s pain, to bathe another’s wounds, hear another’s sadness, celebrate another’s success, and allow the other’s story to change our own…..

    “Let us not defend ourselves against the discomfort of unruly emotion, nor seek to close down our hearts for fear a new love will come to shake our foundations. Let us instead be open to discovering a new way of seeing an old problem, or appreciating the perfection of a seashell, or the possibility of friendship. For in giving ourselves to what we do not understand, we receive life’s blessings, and in taking care of another, we are cared for.”

    Commentary

    [DH] Elizabeth Tarbox is also in the Emersonian tradition. Like Emerson, she was a mystic who saw God in everything. Admittedly, it’s not clear to me how she conceived of God. I suspect she was a religious naturalist — that is, she did not spend much time worrying about supernatural things, but instead paid attention to her senses, and found the divine in what she found in this world. Curiously enough, this impulse towards religious naturalism extends back to the beginnings of our congregation. For the first half century of our existence, our congregation was under the influence of Rev. Dr. Ebeneezer Gay of Hingham, who once said that we do not need a Bible for there is another book which can always be studied: “The Heavens, the Earth and the Waters, are the Leaves of which it consists.”

    Elizabeth Tarbox was more willing to embrace the full range of human emotions than the other ministers we’ve heard from. She was a product of feminist theology, and feminist theology taught us that emotions were just as much a part of religion as intellectual theology. This is not to say that Roscoe Trueblood and Jacob Flint and John Brown were unfeeling — but feminist theology gave us greater permission to feel our religion, not just think it. A history of the Middleboro Unitarian Universalist congregation, where Elizabeth Tarbox was minister before coming to Cohasset, describes the emotional impact of her sermons: “Parishioners were frequently so moved, they sat in voluntary silence after the postlude, often with tears streaming down their faces.” This is a far cry from Jacob Flint’s heady intellectual treatment of the doctrine of the Trinity.

    Conclusion

    [DH] I’d like to point out two theological concepts that seem to run through the entire history of First Parish in Cohasset.

    First of all, we have long stood for religious liberty. I can find no evidence that we ever had a creed. We had a covenant; but it was entirely optional as to whether you signed the covenant or not. For much of our history, we have been tolerant of a fairly wide range of beliefs. The search for truth and goodness requires religious liberty.

    Secondly, we have long believed that human beings have the capacity to make this world a better place; or conversely, to turn this world into a kind of hell on earth. That is to say, we asset that human beings have free will. Instead of blaming evil on some original sin and an abusive father-figure of a God, we have seen that much of the evil in this world comes from human beings, while the rest comes from the random chance of unfortunate occurrences.

    Today, we also recognize that with great freedom comes both great power and great responsibility. We define ourselves by our actions. We do not believe that human beings have some pre-ordained essence: we do not have original sin, but nor are we essentially good; rather, we constantly define and redefine our own essence through our own actions. Personally, it is this religious problem I struggle with more than any other. It would be so much easier if I could just say — oh, I’m basically a good person — or even: oh, I’m basically sinful. Life becomes more difficult when we realize that it we who define who we are, by the way we act in the world. This is such important matter that I’m going to devote the next two sermons to it.

    However, I won’t keep you in suspense. It really all boils down to what Roscoe Trueblood said back in 1960: “our common humanity ought to make us kind and to stir up a mutual sympathy.” In the end, that’s all there is to it: kindness and the mutual sympathy of human connection.

    To Be Continued…

  • Why democracy matters

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

    Readings

    The first reading was from Cornel West’s book Democracy Matters:

    “In America, we have tended to underplay the crucial role of the foundational motivation of democracy. From the time of that first experiment in democracy in Athen in the fifth century BC to the birth of the American democratic experiment in the eighteenth century, the consolidation of elite power was the primary object of democratic revolt. This will to transform corrupted forms of elite rule into more democratic ways of life is an extraordinary force, though each new democratic result of the exercise of this will [always] falls short of democratic ideals. This is why all democracies are complete and unfinished, and this is why American democracy is a work in progress.”

    The second reading was from the long poem “Freedom’s Plow” by Langston Hughes:

    …America is a dream.
    The poet says it was promises.
    The people say it is promises — that will come true.
    The people do not always say things out loud,
    Nor write them down on paper.
    The people often hold
    Great thoughts in their deepest thoughts
    And sometimes only blunderingly express them,
    Haltingly and stumbling say them,
    And faultily put them into practice.
    The people do not always understand each other.
    But there is, somewhere there,
    Always the trying to understand,
    And the trying to say,
    “You are human. Together we are building our land.”

    America!
    Land created in common,
    Dream nourished in common,
    Keep your hand on the plow! Hold on!
    If the house is not finished,
    Don’t be discouraged, builder!
    If the fight is not yet won,
    Don’t be weary, soldier!…

    (Excerpt of this poem included under copyright fair use: fewer than 500 words, less than half the poem.)

    Sermon

    This morning, I’m going try to give a couple of small reasons why democracy matters. The title I gave this sermon — “Why Democracy Matters” — uses a phrase I stole from Democracy Matters, which was the title of a book by philosopher Cornel West. When I first read that book a couple of decades ago, two things stood out for me. First, West made it clear that part of his commitment to democracy stemmed from his liberal Christian faith. Second, West thought that Ralph Waldo Emerson was one of the people who was (to use West’s own words) “the life force behind the deeper individual and civic American commitment to democracy.”(1)

    Unfortunately, West isn’t an especially good writer, and he uses the book to settle personal grudges; so I don’t recommend it. But I appreciate the title of the book — “Democracy Matters.” Democracy does matter. And I appreciate the thought that those of us who are religious, yet neither fundamentalists nor evangelicals, have something important to contribute to American democracy.

    West tells us that a key contributor fo the American democratic tradition is Ralph Waldo Emerson. Emerson served as a Unitarian minister for eight years before he embarked on his more famous career as an essayist and a public lecturer. As a minister and as a writer, his ideas and his ideals were shaped by the deep Unitarian conviction in the power of the individual, and by the related Unitarian conviction that each and every person can have a direct connection with the divine. His Unitarian convictions led him to reject hierarchies, to reject blindly following authority; as Cornel West phrased it, Emerson “refused to accept the conventional wisdom of leaders.” After saying this, West quotes from Emerson’s essay “Self Reliance”:

    “Whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist. He who would gather immortal palms must not be hindered by the name of goodness, but must explore if it be goodness. Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind.”

    After quoting Emerson, West comments that “Emerson offered the empowering insight that to be a democratic individual is to be flexible and fluid, revisionary and reformational in your dealing with your fellow citizens and the world, not adhering to comfortable dogmas or rigid party lines.”(2)

    Emerson was a Unitarian, and West was a liberal Black Baptist. We tend to think those two religious traditions are very different, but in one crucial way, they’re very similar. Both those religious traditions agree that it’s up to the individual to know the truth; and both those religious traditions agree that individuals can have a direct experience of divinity, goodness, and truth.

    These two religious traditions share these important beliefs because they both come from the same ancient religious tradition. They both owe a great deal to the religious tradition extending back thousands of years to the earliest books of the Hebrew Bible, a tradition that believes in equality and justice for all persons. Martin Luther King was another liberal Black Baptist, who famously quoted the prophet Amos, “let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream” (3). Nor is it just Unitarians and Black Baptists who emphasize the religious tradition of justice for all persons — liberal and moderate Jews, liberal and moderate Christians of all denominations, and liberal Muslims also affirm that there must be justice for all persons.

    One of the founding documents of American democracy, the Declaration of Independence, draws on this same tradition when it says: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” The Declaration of Independence was written by Thomas Jefferson, who was a liberal Christian. In drafting the Declaration, Jefferson worked closely with John Adams, another liberal Christian (in fact, he was Unitarian). The Declaration of Independence was able to declare that all people are created equal, because it can draw from that long tradition of justice stretching back to the prophet Amos and beyond. We all know the limitations of the Declaration of Independence: it left out women, it ignored enslaved African Americans. But we are able to criticize the Declaration of Independence in this way precisely because we draw on the long tradition of justice originating in the Hebrew prophets.

    As a former Unitarian minister, Emerson knew this ancient tradition well. He knew it was not a dead, static tradition. The search for goodness and justice is not something that happens once, and then you’re done with it. Emerson said that when you think you’ve found goodness, you “must not be hindered by the name of goodness, but must explore if [what you’ve found actually] be goodness” or not. While Emerson never quite accepted that women were created equal to men, and although he never quite accepted that Black people were the equals of White people, even though he favored the abolition of slavery; nevertheless, he went further than many people of his day and age in saying that at least some justice might be extended to enslaved African Americans. Emerson’s disciple, Henry Thoreau, went further than Emerson did, and Martin Luther King took things further than either Emerson or Thoreau, advocating for complete equality of all Americans regardless of race.

    This is the way democracy works. It is not static. It is an evolving tradition. American democracy continues to evolve, continues to extend the basic principles of equality further than Jefferson or Adams were willing to take it. We have now extended equality to women, and to people who are not White. And it’s significant that many of the people who worked to extend equality have been able to draw on the ancient tradition of justice that extends back to the prophets of the Hebrew Bible.

    In the United States today, however, I am aware of at least two religious traditions that do not support equality, and that therefore act to undermine democracy.

    One religious tradition that seeks to restrict equality is conservative Christian nationalism. The Christian nationalists do not believe that women are equal; they believe that women should be subordinate to men; and while they may say that women should retain the right to vote, they also say that a wife should submit to her husband, perhaps to the point where she should vote the way he tells her to vote. Increasingly, the Christian nationalists also seem to be drifting into the belief that only White Christian nationalists deserve full equality, while non-White people are not as equal. Christian nationalism is a non-democratic religious tradition. While Emerson believed that people in a democracy must be flexible enough to seek out truth and goodness on their own, by contrast Christian nationalists want people to stick to comfortable dogmas and “rigid party lines.” Democracy requires that we think for our selves; Christian nationalists don’t want us to think for ourselves; they want to tell us what to think and what to do.

    The second religious tradition that seeks to restrict equality and to limit democracy is the religion of amoral capitalism. Capitalism has not always been a-moral. There was a time when the goal for businesspeople was to make a profit while providing things their community needed. My first full-time job was in a lumberyard, which made a tidy profit for the family that owned it, while at the same time supplying needed building materials, and providing much needed jobs to the community. The goal for business used to be stated like this: Do well by doing good. But a new religious belief emerged that has taken over the biggest businesses, a religious belief that the only goal is to maximize shareholder value. I consider this a religious belief because its believers cling to it with religious fervor. This religious belief even has a name: it’s called the Friedman Doctrine. The Friedman Doctrine shares Christian nationalism’s commitment to dogma and obedience to authority. Like Christian nationalism, the religion of the Friedman Doctrine is essentially hierarchical and non-democratic: there are no stakeholders except for CEOs and shareholders. The Friedman Doctrine stands in opposition to the long Biblical tradition of extending justice to all persons. Back in 2016, The Economist, a politically centrist periodical, pointed out that the moral result of the doctrine of maximizing shareholder value is “a license for bad conduct.”(4) Democracies must be rooted in a firm sense of justice; they depend for their existence on widely-shared morality that proclaims equality for all persons. Thus the Friedman Doctrine, with its license for bad conduct, is anti-democratic.

    How can we respond to these two anti-democratic religions? Recall that passage from Emerson’s essay on Self-Reliance: “Whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist. He who would gather immortal palms must not be hindered by the name of goodness, but must explore if it be goodness. Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind.” To paraphrase this in a more contemporary idiom: If you would be fully human, you must think for yourself. If you would be truly good, it is not enough to let someone else tell you how to be good; you must find goodness out for yourself. You must value your own personal integrity above all else.

    And here’s how this applies to democracy. In other forms of government, such as monarchies and autocracies, you simply accept that whatever the ruler of your country tells you is the right thing to do. Similarly, in a big impersonal business, the largest shareholders and the CEO determine what is right, and everyone else — both inside the business, and outside the business — simply has to accept what they are told to do.

    Why does democracy matter? Democracy matters because it does not dictate to us. In a democracy, we must think for ourselves. In a democracy, if we would strive for true goodness, it is not enough to let someone else tell us how to be good, we must find out goodness for ourselves. Above all, we must value our own personal integrity. In a democracy, we have to ask ourselves, “Have I been the best person I can possibly be?”

    Democracy matters because it continues the long tradition of justice going back to the Biblical prophet Amos, and beyond. We may not hold exactly the same notion of God that Amos does; we may be Buddhist or pagan or atheist or something else; but like Amos, we want justice to roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream. Thomas Jefferson surely had the Biblical prophets in mind when he wrote the Declaration of Independence; and for all his many faults — that he was sexist, that he was a slaveholder — Jefferson did the best he could to uphold that long tradition of justice; and he made so that we could extend justice beyond what he could have imagined.

    Democracy matters because all people are created equal, with certain inalienable rights; and may justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an everflowing stream.

    Notes

    (1) Cornel West, Democracy Matters (New York: Penguin Press, 2004), p. 68.
    (2) Ibid., p. 70.
    (3) Amos 5:24, KJV
    (4) “Analyse this,” The Economist, March 31, 2016.