Unitarian Universalism – Page 25 – Dan Harper

Salvation by Character

This sermon was preached by Rev. Dan Harper at First Unitarian Church in New Bedford. As usual, the sermon below is a reading text. The actual sermon as preached contained ad libs, interjections, and other improvisation. Sermon copyright (c) 2007 Daniel Harper.

Readings

The first reading comes the first chapter of Little Women, by the Unitarian author and abolitionist Louisa May Alcott. Little Women tells the story about three sisters, Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy, growing up together. In this scene, the four sisters are waiting for their mother to come home:

“…Jo immediately sat up, put her hands in her pockets, and began to whistle. ” ‘Don’t, Jo — it’s so boyish!’ [said Amy]

” ‘That’s why I do it,’ [said Jo]

” ‘I detest rude, unladylike girls!’

” ‘I hate affected, niminy-piminy chits!

” ‘ “Birds in their little nests agree,” ‘ sang Beth, the peacemaker, with such a funny face that both sharp voices softened to a laugh, and the ‘pecking’ ended for that time.

” ‘Really, girls, you are both to be blamed,’ said Meg, beginning to lecture in her elder-sister fashion. ‘You are old enough to leave off boyish tricks, and to behave better, Josephine. It didn’t matter so much when you were a little girl; but now you are so tall, and turn up your hair, you should remember that you are a young lady.’…

” ‘As for you, Amy,’ continued Meg, ‘you are altogether too particular and prim. Your airs are funny now, but you’ll grow up an affected little goose if you don’t take care. I like your nice manners and refined ways of speaking when you don’t try to be elegant, but your absurd words are as bad as Jo’s slang.’…

[A few pages later, the girls’ mother, Mrs. March, comes home. She reads them a letter from their father, a chaplain in the Civil War, who tells his daughters to do their duty faithfully.]

“Mrs. March broke the silence that followed… by saying in her cheery voice, ‘Do you remember how you used to play Pilgrim’s Progress when you were little things? Nothing delighted you more than to have me tie by piece bags on your backs for burdens, give you hats and sticks and rolls of paper, and let you travel up through the house from the cellar, which was the City of Destruction, up, up, to the housetop, where you had all the lovely things you could collect to make a Celestial City.’

” ‘What fun it was, especially going by the lions, fighting Apollyon, and passing through the valley where the hobgoblins were!’ said Jo.

” ‘I liked the place where the bundles fell off and tumbled downstairs,’ said Meg.

” ‘My favorite part was when we came out on the flat roof where our flowers and pretty things were, and all stood and sang for joy up there in the sunshine,’ said Beth.

” ‘I don’t remember much about it, except that I was afraid of the cellar and the dark entry, and always liked the cake and milk we had up at the top. If I wasn’t too old for such things, I’d rather like to play it over again,’ said Amy, who began to talk of renouncing childish things at the mature age of twelve.”…

…

The second reading by Dana McLean Greeley, president of the Unitarian Universalist Association from 1961 to 1969. Greeley wrote this piece in 1980.

“There are two categories of people — at least two — that I worry about in our American society today. The first is made up of those people who are concerned primarily that they shall be saved in the next world, who don’t believe in the open encounter, who think that faith is just for the other world, who have no interest in charity, or politics, or social reform.

“And the second category of people that I worry about are those who have no faith to begin with — no conviction, no commitment, no hope. They don’t believe in anything better than what they have known in the past. They are faithless and uninspired; and I look for no good works, no change in their lives, no change in society from them.

“Faith is supposed to produce good works. We must improve our community and our world, all the time, in every way possible. No city in this country, or anywhere else, is yet good enough or hopeless or beyond improvement. No church, no business, is good enough or beyond improvement. Even character is part of our good works. We are not saved by faith, and our civilization is not saved by faith, without character. Character is not achieved in a vacuum. It means human relationships, and daily duties, and honesty, and generosity, and sympathy and mercy. It means accepting our responsibility and doing our best, wherever we can. Faith without character… is dead.”

[Greeley, Forward through the Ages, p. 95.]

Sermon

Back in 1886, a Unitarian minister by the name of James Freeman Clarke came up with what he called “Five Points of a New Theology,” and in these five points he captured state-of-the-art Unitarian theology for the late 19th C. His five points were: the fatherhood of God, the brotherhood of man, the leadership of Jesus, salvation by character, and progress onwards and upwards forever. At some point in my years in a Unitarian Universalist Sunday school in the 1960’s, I must have learned these five points of theology, without meaning to do so — because when I ran into them twenty-some years later in theological school, I realized that I knew them more or less by heart.

Indeed, though we are now critical of Clarke’s gender-specific language, and though now some of us no longer need the idea of God, his five points have remained of interest up to the present day, a hundred and twenty-one years after he wrote them. We are unlikely to talk of the “fatherhood” of God these days, but we most certainly talk about that which nurtures and guides us, which some call God and some might call the highest and best in humankind. We certainly don’t talk about “the brotherhood of man,” but we most certainly do talk about the goal of world community with peace and justice and equal rights for all. We still talk about the spiritual leadership of Jesus, although we are likely to add other spiritual leaders who are also important to us, such as Gotama Buddha and Moses and others. The horrors of the mid-20th C. made us less certain about “progress onwards and upwards forever,” but we are still willing to talk about — and strive towards — making this world a better place, step by step, bit by bit, to the best of our abilities.

Yet, curiously enough, of all the five points that James Freeman Clarke outlines, the one to which we seem to pay the least attention is “salvation by character.” That sounds so old-fashioned, doesn’t it? Since 1886, we seem to be less and less sure of personal salvation. These days, we rarely, if ever, talk about personal salvation in our Unitarian Universalist churches, so concerned are we with saving the world. Personal salvation is something we do on our own time, and we surely don’t call it “salvation” — we talk about personal growth, we say that we are improving our psychological well-being; we go see a psychologist, or we sign up for self-help workshops. We only seem to talk about how our church is going to save the world, and we seemingly have neglected or forgotten the possibility that our church might just possibly help us to save our own selves.

I think I would like to revive an emphasis on salvation by character. Partly, I want to do this because I know that my Unitarian Universalist faith saved me. When I was in my twenties and struggling with what I wanted to do with my life, my Unitarian Universalist church provided me with an ethical compass, and it gave me a community of people with whom I could talk about the big issues in life (and heaven knows that I didn’t have those kinds of conversations at my job). My membership in Unitarian Universalist churches has made me a better person, has improved my character; thus I am more than willing to talk about salvation by character, because I have experienced it. That’s my personal reason for wanting to talk about salvation by character.

But I have a larger reason for wanting to talk about salvation by character. My friend Greg Stewart, now the minister of the Unitarian Universalist church in downtown San Francisco, has said, “Our philosophy [as Unitarian Universalists] is: Be out in the world six days a week, and then come in here and tell us how that informs your faith.” Greg was talking about how we integrate our social justice work with our religious faith. A great majority of Unitarian Universalists seem to be heavily involved in good works — we work in social service jobs or in human services or in public service or in the non-profit world, and/or we are involved in volunteer activities in the community, and/or we are the kind of people to whom friends turn in times of need, and/or we are artists who make the world a more beautiful place, or whatever it is that we do to improve the world around us. This is what Greg Stewart is telling us: we are already doing all this good work six days a week out there in the world, and then we can come to church one day a week to try to make sense of what we are doing. And I’ll add this to what he said: when we come to church one day a week, we often find that we are tired, and hurting, and even overwhelmed by all that we do to save the world. The problems of the world are huge; it is easy for us to get worn down by the thought of all the work that needs to be done; it is easy for us to lose our way, to become discouraged, to lose our sense of direction. It is even possible to become bitter and disillusioned. So it is that at times we find that we need a little salvation for our own selves.

One of the ways that we find salvation here at church is that we tell stories to one another. Stories contain power that we should not dismiss lightly. The old story of salvation, that grand old story that is still told in many orthodox Christian churches, has great power. The old story of salvation has helped many people through hard times, by telling them that even if life is miserable and horrible here and now, some day you’ll go to heaven and all will be well, and God will wipe the tears from your eyes, and so on. Now we Unitarian Universalists discovered that that old story of salvation may have been comforting, but it has some horribly big problems. There’s the little problem that not everyone gets to go to heaven because some people burn in hell which makes many of us Unitarian Universalists not want to go to heaven in solidarity with the oppressed souls in hell (even if we were eligible to go to heaven, but we’re not because we’re heretics). There’s also the little problem that if people put all their efforts into making themselves good now so that you’ll get into heaven in the future, they have a tendency to ignore the fact that if we all worked at making the world a better place now, we could create a heaven here on earth. In the face of these pretty serious problems, we have rejected the old story of salvation.

I’d like to suggest that instead of the old story of salvation, we tell two new stories of salvation. One story we tell ourselves is that, if we work hard enough, we can create a kind of heaven here on earth, that we can save the world. That’s a story we tell ourselves over and over again. But there’s another story of salvation that we need to tell ourselves more often, and that is the story of personal salvation, the story of salvation by character.

The story of salvation by character lies at the core of our Unitarian identity. And as it happens, here in our church, we have a huge image that represents the story of salvation by character. Behind me is a gorgeous Tiffany glass mosaic, installed in this church in 1911. It is spectacular in its own right, for its artistry and for its sheer size. But the real interest for me is what the mosaic portrays.

Look up, and you can see a pilgrim ascending a rough and narrow path that has been cut into the side of a precipitously steep mountain path. No, he’s not Jesus, a common misconception — he’s simply an ordinary pilgrim, dressed in a sort of medieval hooded cloak, with a sturdy walking which he keeps in his right hand, presumably to help keep him from tumbling headlong into the deep ravine close beside him. You will notice that there is no handrail on this steep path. You will notice that our pilgrim is not attached to a climbing rope, and neither carrabiners nor pitons are hidden beneath his cloak. There aren’t even any convenient roots for him to cling to. He’s on his own. No wonder he steadfastly looks upwards — he’d surely get dizzy or ill if he looked down into the deep ravine at his right-hand side.

I said that he’s on his own, but that’s not quite true. There’s an angel hovering behind him, on his outboard side. Now the authorities debate endlessly about angels. There is, for example, a debate about their physical existence: Do angels have an actual physical existence, or are they insubstantial, incorporeal? In the Western tradition, the theologians tell us that angels are invisible and that they have no gender, although they can take on human form. Artists in the West have traditionally portrayed the otherwise invisible angels as beings that look like humans, except with the addition of wings; and quite often, the artists have not given definite gender to angels. We can see all this here in our Tiffany mosaic. Frederick Wilson, the artist who created this image, portrays the angel in the classic Western manner, as a human-like being with wings, a being who is ambiguously gendered. I’ve climbed up on a tall stepladder to look at that angel; I’ve stood up in the balcony and stared at it through binoculars; and say what you will, that angel is ambiguously gendered, or maybe a transgender angel. And of course Frederick Wilson shows us the angel; he has to show us the angel; if he didn’t show us the angel, it would be easy to miss the point of the mosaic. But while we can see the angel, the pilgrim doesn’t seem to be able to see the angel at all; at least, he gives no evidence of seeing it.

Supposedly, the mosaic depicts a scene from an old hymn by the Unitarian hymnodist Eliza Scudder, although the connection seems somewhat tenuous to me. But to me, our mosaic fits right in with our Unitarian worldview. In the late 19th C., more than one Unitarian church had a picture of the “straight and narrow way” behind the pulpit. Many Unitarians of my grandparents’ generation saw life as a dangerous path, and what kept you out of danger was your good character. Remember that, in our Western culture, angels are messengers from God, and I suspect that back in 1911, when this mosaic first went up, the Unitarians in this congregation understood it that way. They did not believe that the angel was a physical being that could reach out and keep the pilgrim from bodily falling into the ravine. Rather, they would have understood this mosaic as a metaphor: the angel represents a whisper from God, or a whisper from your conscience — for after all, what is your conscience but the voice of that which is highest and best in you? — and it is that whisper of conscience that keeps us walking safely up the steep and dangerous path of life. We might say that our mosaic is an elaborate metaphor for the Unitarian concept of salvation by character.

We find this same old Unitarian idea in the popular children’s book Little Women by Louisa May Alcott. Alcott, who was an active Unitarian her whole life, believed strongly in the cultivation of one’s moral character. In the first reading this morning, we heard how the four girls who are the heroines of Little Women struggled with the burden of their personal imperfections; and how they understood their struggles to be like progress of a pilgrim struggling from the lowest depths up, up, up to the raptures of cake and milk in the Celestial City at the top, at the end of the journey. Little Women tells the story of how life is in some sense a struggle to overcome one’s personal imperfections, to achieve slavation through the force of good character. Louisa May Alcott also tells us that there is always a guiding hand to help us, which we may understand literally as the guiding hand of parents, or more figuratively, the guiding hand of God.

We still tell ourselves this story of salvation by character. Some would not talk about God, but would talk about the guidance of that which is highest and best inside us, or the moral compass of natural law and human community. Some of us would in fact talk about spirits or angels which guide us, and others would refer to the guidance of the Goddess. The details have changed, the story may no longer be as important as it once was, but we still tell ourselves this story of salvation by character.

In the early part of the 20th C., we Unitarians became more and more interested in saving the world, and less and less interested in saving ourselves. We are still concerned with personal improvement, but we are more concerned with world improvement. Now we are more likely to tell ourselves about salvation through social justice. We see ourselves as pilgrims down in the valley — the valley of racism, the valley of ecological crisis, the valley where there are too many homeless people, the valley where too many people can’t get the basics of life. We struggle upwards along a dangerous path, striving to make this world a better place. I know that’s how I look at the pilgrim, as someone who strives for justice in the world.

But I am mindful of what Dana McLean Greeley taught: that “We are not saved by faith, and our civilization is not saved by faith, without character.” In other words, it is not enough to serve soup at the soup kitchen; social justice work alone is not enough; we must also improve our human relationships with friends and loved ones and with those whom we would help. It is not enough to send a generous check to a good cause once in a while; we must also attend to our daily duties, we must attend to our good character. Good character and social justice work go hand in hand. Good character alone is not enough; and social justice work without character is dead.

So it is that we go out in the world six days a week, and we do what we can to make this old world a better place. Then once a week, we come in here, and we reflect on what it is that we are doing; we take the time to pause reflect on our own personal progress; we take time to reach out and seek the guidance of a helping hand, whether that helping hand comes in the form of God, and angel, or simply a supportive church community. So we come here each week, to find new strength, so that we may venture back out into the world, and make that world a better place for all.

Maja Capek and an Immigrants’ Church

Readings

The first reading comes from an unsigned manuscript in the church archives. This manuscript, titled “How our church began,” gives the history of North Unitarian Church. I should explain that when the author refers to a “Bohemian man,” she means someone who literally came from Bohemia, a part of Europe now part of Germany and the Czech Republic. Thus, the “Bohemian man” is a recent immigrant to the United States.

“In the year 1889 Mr. Paul Revere Frothingham came to New Bedford as assistant minister to Mr. Potter who was the minister of the Unitarian Church on Union and Eighth St. He had a very pleasing personality and was liked very much by young and old alike.

“In the year 1892 Mr. Potter tendered his resignation and Mr. Frothingham then became minister of the church.

“It wasn’t long after Mr. Frothingham became minister that he began looking around to see what he would do to improve the community. With Mrs. Frothingham they started a club for girls, called ‘Girls Social Union’ they met in the chapel of the Unitarian Church. There were classes in sewing, millnery, & cooking, besides having fun playing all sorts of games. This was given free of charge to any girl who was interested in becoming a member.

“In 1894 It was decided to hire rooms in the North end of the city 1651 Purchase St. where the firls could meet and they would be nearer their homes as they all lived in the north end of the city. It was in the same rooms Mr. Frothingham established a free kindergarten and secured a trained teacher for the children. Later this kindergarten was taken over by the city and called the ‘North end Day Nursery.’

“The beginning of this movement is quite interesting, for at that time a Bohemian man living in the north end, having read of the day nursery and of a sermon by Mr. Frothingham translated was deeply impressed, and said this is what I believe, and would like my children to go to the Sunday school where Mr. Frothingham is the minister. The children went to Sunday school, soon other children joined, and this was the beginning of our Sunday school. Don’t know the exact year but think it might [be] 1896 or 1897.

“Sunday school was held in a house 1378 Acushnet Ave. just across from St. Anthony’s church…. The Sunday school became so large in attendance that we were over crowded, so Mr. Frothingham decided we should have a place of our own. So in 1901 Unity Home was built….”

The second reading, from another manuscript in our church archives, is by Audrey Steele and gives her memories of North Unitarian Church.

“I started to attend Unity Home Sunday School when I was four years old.

“I have many fond memories of the years I attended there as I was growing up.

“We were a happy, congenial family-oriented congregation made up of many nationalities. All the children were close friends…. The Sunday School teachers I remember most were Miss Hanford, Miss Seguin, and my favorite Esther Grundy Grew….

“In those days we learned a lot from the Bible and we were taught the Unitarian creed which was popular and believed by the congregation. I will always remembeer we were taught, the fatherhood of god, the brotherhood of man, the leadership of Jesus, the salvation of character and the progress of mankind onward and upwards forever. We had many fine ministers. Those I remember most are Mrs. Robert Cross who was the church director for many years, Mrs. Majda [sic] Capek for her interest in the young people. She planned many things to do at the church service as on mother’s day we would give each of the ladies attending church a plant or some flowers. She loved flowers. Before Mrs. Capek died I received a nice note from her saying she also had fond memories of Unity Home and especially of the young people.”

Sermon

This is the second in a series of occasional sermons about the history of our congregation. We are the direct institutional descendants of three congregations:– First Congregational Society (Unitarian) of New Bedford; First Universalist Church of New Bedford; and North Unitarian Church (Unitarian). 2008 will mark the three hundredth anniversary of the oldest of our three antecedent churches, First Congregational Society, later First Unitarian; in honor of that anniversary, this fall I plan to tell you about several unsung heroes and heroines from all three of our antecedent churches.

In the first sermon in this series, I told the story of John Murray Spear, and I said I consider him to be the most remarkable minister who was ever called to serve in one of these three churches. Well, he may be the most remarkable, but only if he is tied for first place with Maja Capek, minister at North Unitarian Church from 1940 to 1943.

Marie Veruna Oktavec Capek, known as Maja, was born in 1888 and grew up in the city of Chomutov, then in Western Bohemia, now in the Czech Republic. As a young woman, she rejected Catholicism — the religion that had been imposed on her land by an invading army centuries before — and became quite liberal in her religious outlook, though not a member of any specific church. She, with her sister and parents, emigrated to the United States in 1907, graduated from Columbia University’s School of Library Science, and began working in a branch of the New York Public Library. There she met another Czech emigre, Norbert Capek, and though he was 47 and eighteen years older than she, they fell in love and married in 1917. Capek was a Baptist minister at that time — or rather, he was barely a Baptist minister, since he was suspected of liberal tendencies and accused of heresy. As a married couple, he and Maja drifted further into religious liberalism, until at last Norbert left the Baptist ministry, and in 1920 he and Maja joined the Unitarian church in East Orange, New Jersey, where they were then living.

But all this while, Maja and Norbert considered themselves to be only in temporary exile from their true home, and when the new country of Czechoslovakia was formed in the aftermath of the First World War, they longed to return there and start a liberal church. They appealed to the American Unitarian Association, who provided money and moral support, and off they went, back to Prague.

In Prague, Norbert and Maja Capek organized a church that grew from nothing, to some three thousand two hundred full members in twenty short years — and another five thousand Czechs, while not officially members, considered themselves Unitarians. This was the congregation that ordained Maja Capek into the ministry in 1922 [?]. In the late 1930’s, the Prague church headed by the Capeks was the largest Unitarian church in the world.

But larger events would prevent the further growth of Unitarianism in Czechoslovakia. Nazi Germany invaded and occupied Czechoslovakia in 1938. In February, 1939, Maja and Norbert decided that Maja should go to the United States, to speak to Unitarian churches across the country and raise funds for relief work in Czechoslovakia. As they said good-bye, both Maja and Norbert knew it could be the final time they saw each other.

Maja went on her lecture tour, and soon it became clear that she would not be able to return to Czechoslovakia during the Nazi occupation. She settled in the north end of New Bedford, where there was a large population of Czechs, Bohemians, and other people who had come from central Europe. And she became a part of North Unitarian Church.

Now I must back up a little bit, and tell you about North Unitarian Church. As we heard in the first reading this morning, Paul Revere Frothingham, the minister at First Unitarian during the 1890’s, and his wife decided to get their church involved in outreach in the greater New Bedford community. Since Unitarians have long been involved in education reform, it is not surprising that the Frothinghams started working with kids: first by creating a girls’ after-school program, then a Sunday school, and then a free kindergarten. They were so successful in their efforts at attracting children, particularly children from the central Europeans who lived in the North End of New Bedford, that it soon became necessary to have a dedicated space for all these children’s programs.

A father of one these children, a recent immigrant who may not have been fluent yet in English, was naturally curious about these programs, and the church that was sponsoring them. Someone had translated Mr. Frothingham’s sermons into his native language, and he said: But this is what I believe about religion! I am a Unitarian! What began as an outreach to children grew to become a liberal religious movement among their parents. And so the Frothinghams and First Unitarian founded Unity Home in rented rooms in the North End, as a religious outreach to religious liberals in the immigrant community there.

Unity Home seems to have begun with a Sunday school, but it was quickly followed in 1895 by a branch of the Women’s Alliance of Unitarian and Other Liberal Christian Women — the national organization that later became the Women’s Alliance, and still later the Unitarian Universalist Women’s Federation. Other activities for adults and children followed, and by 1901 First Unitarian built a building for Unity Home. This new building included a chapel, and by 1904 regular religious services were begun, led by a Mr. Brunton, and held under the auspices of First Unitarian. Music was supplied by a talented quartet of singers chosen from the ranks of the Sunday school. A succession of men and women were directors of Unity Home over the next few two decades, some of whom were ministers; at other times, it appears that the minister of First Unitarian led worship services in Unity Home. Finally, on May 8, 1920, the religious community at Unity Home incorporated as a separate congregation. First Unitarian continued to own the building called Unity Home, but the religious congregation which met in Unity Home was officially and legally called North Unitarian Church.

North Unitarian Church had its ups and downs. The church ordained a Mr. Pratt to the Unitarian ministry in 1924, but he soon left. Following his departure, there was a Sunday school but no worship services at North Unitarian from 1924 through 1938. Beginning in 1939, Duncan Howlett, minister here at First Unitarian and arguably the greatest minister at First Unitarian during the 20th C., began working with the people of North Unitarian Church to resume worship services. Howlett found a student minister named Robert Holden to lead services for a year. And then, out of the chaos of the Second World War, North Unitarian Church encountered some amazing good luck; a Unitarian minister named Maja Capek decided to settle in the North End of New Bedford.

Even though Maja Capek must have been worried sick about her husband Norbert, who had been taken into custody by the Gestapo, she managed to help revive North Unitarian Church. Her ministry at North Unitarian lasted from late 1940 through most of 1943. As we heard in the second reading, she did much work with the young people of the church. She introduced the annual Flower Service, an innovation of the Prague Unitarian church that we still observe each year; indeed, the Flower Service or Flower Communion has spread to nearly every Unitarian Universalist congregation in North America.

Maja Capek also re-vitalized North Unitarian as a church, as something more than a community center and a Sunday school, with the result that in 1941 a re-organized North Unitarian could once more affiliate with the American Unitarian Association — which proved to be important because it meant that North Unitarian could draw on the resources of the American Unitarian Association to find a new minister once Maja Capek left. By 1944, Maja Capek was working at the headquarters of the American Unitarian Association in Boston, doing work for the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Agency, helping to provide relief to Europeans ravaged by the Second World War.

I tell you these two interlocking stories — the story of Maja Capek, and the story of North Unitarian Church — because these stories have a great relevance to our church today. By 1971, the membership of North Unitarian Church had gotten so small that it ended its legal existence and merged back into First Unitarian. Sometimes we think of First Unitarian Church as an old New England Yankee church — and no doubt about it, we are an old New England Yankee church — but we also have this amazing history of welcoming recent immigrants into our liberal religious community. Of course, we all know that today, our church is still has some New England Yankees as members, and on any given Sunday morning there might be four or five of us out of forty people present in the worship service. Yet on any given Sunday morning, a fifth of the people present here might have been born in one of six or seven different countries. On any given Sunday, another fifth of the people present here might be the children of immigrants.

The stories of North Unitarian Church and of Maja Capek tell us that you can be a religious liberal regardless of where you were born. Our Unitarian Universalist faith includes people who are Native Americans, and people who immigrated to New England twelve or thirteen generations ago, and people who were born in another country but now live here. Our faith knows no national boundaries, our faith is not specific to a certain people, or a certain language. Fifty years ago, Unitarians promoted a religion founded on reason, a religion that affirmed “the fatherhood of god, the brotherhood of man, the leadership of Jesus of Nazareth, salvation by character, and progress onwards and upwards.” We still welcome anyone who craves a religion founded on reason, a religion that looks upon the universe with awe, that believes that all humanity must learn to work together, that acknowledges the great religious leaders of the past like Jesus, that finds salvation in the improvement of our personal characters, and believes in progress through the work of men and women of good will. Among everything else that we are, we are still a church of immigrants, just as we were in the days of Maja Capek’s ministry here in New Bedford.

And the interlocking stories of Maja Capek and North Unitarian Church have yet another layer of meaning. As a member congregation of the Unitarian Universalist Association, we have covenanted to affirm and promote the principles and purposes of the Association. One of those principles states that we shall affirm and promote “the goal of world community with peace, liberty, and justice for all.” Although the current wording of this principle only dates back to 1985, nevertheless Unitarians have actively supported world community for centuries. Maja Capek lived out this principle in her life: she was one of the ones who resisted the Nazi invasion of Czechoslovakia, that is, she resisted a military invasion that destabilized all of Europe, a military invasion that threatened to extinguish the flickering light of world community that had begun to shine in the early 20th century. North Unitarian Church also lived out an ideal of world community, right within the walls of the old Unity Home building that once stood on Tallman Street in the north end of New Bedford. No matter what your national origin, you were welcomed into North Unitarian Church.

We have inherited the legacy of North Unitarian Church, and we have inherited the legacy of Maja Capek. Here at First Unitarian Church, we affirm and promote the goal of world community with peace, liberty, and justice for all. We hold this goal because we know that all persons, all peoples, in the world have equal rights for peace, liberty, and justice. We stand up against tyrants because tyrants threaten our sacred principle of free inquiry. We stand up against tyrants because tyrants threaten our sacred value of love for all humankind. We remember the legacy of Maja Capek and North Unitarian Church by continuing to welcome all persons, regardless of nationality or citizenship status, into our congregation. We continue the legacy of Maja Capek and North Unitarian Church — and the legacy of both First Unitarian and First Univeersalist — by working in the world towards the goal of world community.

So it is that we continue to honor the memory of Maja Capek — a woman who built up a church here in New Bedford that welcomed immigrants, a woman who stood up against the tyranny of Nazism, an amazing woman who deserves to be remembered by future generations.

John Murray Spear, Universalist and Abolitionist

Readings

The first reading is rather long, and is from a sermon preached in 1774 by Elhanan Winchester, one of the earliest Universalist preachers in this country — he was preaching Universalism before John Murray arrived from England.

“There is one abomination… that prevails in this country, that calls aloud not only for sighing and crying, but for a speedy reformation and turning therefrom, if we desire to prevent destruction from coming upon us; I mean, the SLAVE TRADE….

“The very principle upon which it is founded, from which it springs, and by which it is carried on, is one of the most base and ignoble that ever disgraced the human species:

“WHICH is, Avarice. This mean and unworthy passion certainly had has a principal hand in this disgraceful traffic; no one can pretend that benevolence ever had, or ever can have, a hand in such a most infamous commerce. Avarice tends to harden the heart, to render the mind callous to the feelings of humanity, indisposes the soul to every virtue, and renders it prey to every vice. Ought we not to be ashamed of such a commerce, that has it rise from no better principle than mere selfishness or covetousness?…

“HAVING considered the principle from whence it originated, and to which its existence is owing, I pass to mention the horrible manner in which it is carried on. And here almost every vice that blackens and degrades human nature is employed; such as, deceiving, perfidy, decoying, stealing, lying, fomenting feuds and discords among the nations of Africa, robbery, plunder, burning, murder, cruelty of all kinds, and the most savage and unexampled barbarism.

“BLUSH… to think that ye are the supporters of a commerce that employs these, and many other vices to carry it on! Could you but think seriously of the disgraceful and cruel manner in which slaves are obtained, methinks you could not attempt to justify the horrid practice. Numbers are stolen while going out on their lawful business, are never suffered to return home to take leave of their friends; but are gagged and bound, then carried on board the vessels which wait for them, never more to see their native land again, but to drag out a miserable existence in chains, hunger, thirst, cold, nakedness, hard labour, and perpetual slavery.

“THINK, O ye tender mothers, how you would feel, if, when ye should send your little boys or girls to fetch a pitcher, or calabash of water from the spring, you should never see them return again! if some barbarous kidnapper should watch the opportunity, and seize upon your darlings, as the eagle upon its prey! should gag your sweet prattling babes, and force them away! how would your souls refuse to be comforted! such is the pain that many mothers feel in Africa, and God can cause it to come home to yourselves, who contribute to such an abomination as this.”

[From Universalism in America: A Documentary History of a Liberal Faith, edited by Ernest Cassara. Capitalized words found in this edition.]

***

The second reading is quite short, and it comes from an address which John Murray Spear gave to the Universalist Anti-Slavery Convention in 1840. After summarizing Elhanan Winchester’s anti-slavery sermon, Spear said, “[Universalists should] oppose all monopolies, despise all partiality, break down all unnatural distinctions, elevate the despised classes, and introduce a system of perfect equality.”

[Quoted in Russell Miller, The Larger Hope: The First Century of the Universalist Church in America, 1770-1870, p. 594.]

Sermon

This is the first in a series of occasional sermons about the history of our congregation. We are the direct institutional descendants of three congregations:– First Congregational Society (Unitarian) of New Bedford; First Universalist Church of New Bedford; and North Unitarian Church (Unitarian). 2008 will mark the three hundredth anniversary of the oldest of our three antecedent churches, First Congregational Society, later First Unitarian; in honor of that anniversary, this fall I plan to tell you about several unsung heroes and heroines from all three of our antecedent churches.

And I decided to start off with the most remarkable minister who ever was called to serve in one of those three churches. John Murray Spear was the first minister of First Universalist Church, when that congregation was formally incorporated in 1835. John Murray Spear was a remarkable man in many ways, both good and at times not-so-good. On the not-so-good side, later in his life he got so far into eccentric and far-out beliefs that he managed to alienate most of his old friends. But on the good side, he was a staunch Garrisonian abolitionist who advocated an immediate end to slavery as early as the 1830’s, when that was not a popular stance; he attracted African American members to First Universalist Church in a day when integrated churches were almost unimaginable, in a day when the Unitarian church in New Bedford kept a segregated pew for African Americans; and history indicates that he befriended and encouraged Frederick Douglass not long after Douglass escaped slavery and came to New Bedford, before Douglass become famous for his oratory.

But let’s begin at the beginning, and our beginning is to understand a little bit about Universalism. As you probably know, or could figure out, Universalism originally was the belief that all souls get to go to heaven; it was the belief that a benevolent God would be too good to allow the existence of hell.

Once the early Universalists in North America reached that conclusion, they quickly went a step further. They pronounced themselves egalitarians, that is, they asserted their belief in the essential equality of all humankind. This radical egalitarianism has stuck in Universalism, and in Universalists, down to the present day. Those of us who call ourselves Universalists today may or may not believe in God, but we most certainly believe in the infinite value of every human being.

It comes as no surprise, then, that early Universalists became active in cause of liberty during the American Revolution. Caleb Rich, one of the earliest Universalist preachers, fought in the Battle of Bunker Hill. Benjamin Rush, one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence, became a prominent Universalist. In 1791, Benjamin Rush wrote, “A belief in God’s universal love to all his creatures… leads to truths upon all subjects, but especially upon the subject of government. It establishes the equality of mankind.” Historian Ann Lee Bressler tells us that Benjamin Rush’s Universalism was “a rational and ultimately cheerful faith well-suited to a free and democratic society.” [Bressler, p. 19] What was true of Benjamin Rush was no less true of other early Universalists.

And those early Universalists were not afraid to apply their egalitarian principles to difficult subjects like slavery. As we heard in the first reading this morning, the Universalist preacher Elhanan Winchester spoke out against slavery in a strongly worded sermon as early as 1774. Along with John Murray, Winchester was one of the two towering figures of 18th C. Universalism; thus his sermon against slavery had a large influence. The sermon was widely distributed, influenced many of his contemporaries, and wound up influencing later generations as well.

Between the late 1700’s and the 1830’s, however, Universalism lost some of its early egalitarianism. By the mid-1830’s, a fair number of Universalists actively supported slavery. Not surprisingly, many of them lived in the Southern states, but there were plenty of northern Universalists who distanced themselves from applying egalitarian principles to enslaved Africans and African Americans. Even among the Universalists who did oppose slavery, many refused to take the hard-line stance of the abolitionists, saying that they didn’t want to anger the southern Universalists, didn’t want to promote divisiveness in the country or in the denomination. Maybe we can better understand this attitude if we remember that through much of late 18th C. and even into the 19th C., Universalists were reviled by the orthodox Christians; to proclaim yourself a Universalist was to risk being ostracized by friends, community, even your own family; to preach Universalism meant risking bodily harm, for there were orthodox Christians who physically assaulted Universalists to prevent the Universalist doctrine of love from being preached. I don’t mean to excuse them, but by the 1830’s, Universalists had begun to achieve a measure of respectability, and so perhaps some Universalists of that time preferred to avoid controversial topics like abolitionism.

Some Universalists may have preferred to avoid controversy, but not John Murray Spear. John Murray Spear was named after the great Universalist preacher John Murray. In fact, as a baby John Murray Spear was dedicated by no less a person than the great John Murray (remember that because of his Universalist beliefs, John Murray did not baptize children to cleanse them of original sin, instead he dedicated them to the highest purposes in life). The great John Murray was willing to take great risks to proclaim his Universalist faith; and perhaps some of that willingness rubbed off on the little baby John Murray Spear, because when that little baby grew up, he turned into a man who was willing to proclaim abolition of slavery at great risk to himself.

(Since this is the first day of Sunday school, I might add here that those of you who are raising your children in this church should be aware that even today Unitarian Universalist kids wind up being staunch egalitarians, who do things like pass up high-paying jobs in favor of work that pays far less but creates justice for all, and spreads good in the world. Consider yourself duly warned. But I digress….)

When John Murray Spear came to New Bedford in 1835, he discovered that New Bedford was notable for its racial tolerance. I will not say claim that it was a fully tolerant city; there was distinct legal and personal discrimination by white folks against people of color; but for its time, New Bedford was a remarkably tolerant place. People of color could earn a decent living in the whaling industry. People of color were accorded a higher level of freedom and respect by white people than in most other places in the United States. And fugitive slaves discovered that the city was a safe harbor for them, where they could blend in to a racially mixed populace, where they could find friendly help, and where they could find secure work.

Spear was already an abolitionist when he came to New Bedford. But he went further than just being an abolitionist; he got to know prominent members of the African American community in New Bedford. For example, Spear got to know Nathan Johnson. Nathan Johnson was a prominent African American citizen of New Bedford who represented the city for a number of years at the annual convention for free people of color; and his house was a stop on the Underground Railroad. Indeed, Nathan Johnson is best known for his role in the Underground Railroad, because in 1838 he took in an escaped slave named Frederick Johnson, and it was Nathan Johnson who helped the now free man to decide to change his name to Frederick Douglass.

The historian John Buescher recently published a biography of John Murray Spear and his brother Charles, and Buescher tells us this about John Murray Spear’s time in New Bedford: “One of Spear’s church members in New Bedford was Nathan Johnson, the gentleman with whom Frederick Douglass lived when he settled in the city after his escape from slavery. In his church one day, Spear found Douglass debating with members of his congregation. They were arguing for universal salvation, and Douglass was arguing for the existence of eternal punishment. Spear was much impressed with Douglass’s abilities and encouraged him to become a public speaker.” [Buescher, p. 171]

This short little anecdote tells us three very important things about this history of our own First Universalist Church. First, we have an important connection to Frederick Douglass, because John Murray Spear was one of those who very early on encouraged Douglass to become a public speaker. Second, Douglass actually came to our First Universalist Church, and although he was misguided enough to insist on the existence of eternal punishment, it is of some interest that he came at all. Third — and this is the most interesting bit of information — Nathan Johnson was at that time a member of First Universalist Church. I’m quite impressed that our own First Universalist Church welcomed African American members that early; to the best of my knowledge, that didn’t happen in First Unitarian until much later.

All this tells us that those early New Bedford Universalists were people of whom we can be proud. They had a religious belief in egalitarianism, and they lived out that belief. Indeed, history tells us that they sometimes became frustrated with other Universalists. By autumn, 1841, the New Bedford church was one of only two Universalist churches in Massachusetts which had adopted official resolutions supporting the abolition of slavery. The New Bedford Universalists publicly expressed their frustration when the local association of Universalists refused to even consider the matter of abolition. And when the Universalist Anti-Slavery Convention, of which they were founding members, proceeded more slowly than they liked, they shrewdly invited Frederick Douglass to accompany them to a meeting of the convention in the fall of 1841. When the convention wavered at the thought of voting for a resolution aimed at the Southern Universalist congregations which supported slavery, Douglass spoke up, and the power of his oratory so convinced the delegates that the resolution passed unanimously.

We can only imagine what it must have been like to be a part of that congregation. Universalists in those days were still fairly pugnacious, still willing to speak out loudly and publicly against the doctrine of eternal punishment; and Universalists in New Bedford made no bones about wanting to abolish slavery. And even though First Universalist had a white minister and a majority of white church members, it appears certain the congregation welcomed both black and white people into their church. I think I would have liked to have been a part of that congregation; they sound like my kind of people.

Unfortunately, John Murray Spear was forced to leave New Bedford in 1841 as a direct result of his abolitionist activities. Sometime in the summer of 1841, a southern slave-holder traveled to New Bedford accompanied by an 18 year old slave named Lucy Faggins. Under an 1836 law, Lucy Faggins technically became free the moment she stepped onto Massachusetts soil. So Rev. Thomas James, minister of the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church, and some other members of the New Bedford Anti-Slavery Society went and attempted to tell her that she was free. Then James and John Murray Spear took out a writ of habeus corpus, with the claim that Lucy Faggins was being unlawfully restrained by her master. The case ended well for Faggins, who achieved her freedom; but it ended badly for John Murray Spear. Susan Taber, who lived in New Bedford at that time, wrote about how once Lucy Faggins had been freed, the pro-slavery faction in New Bedford became determined to ruin John Murray Spear — they threatened Spear with arrest and prosecution, and made his life so difficult that he had to resign his pulpit here and move to the Universalist church in Weymouth. So ended a glorious ministry for First Universalist Church in New Bedford.

After he left New Bedford, Spear continued to work hard for the abolition of slavery. By 1844, Spear was sharing the lecture stage with Frederick Douglass in the “One Hundred Conventions” campaign of the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society. Spear also went on to work with his brother Charles for prison reform. His life embodied the Universalist principle of true egalitarianism.

And so I will end this sermon about John Murray Spear with a quizzical observation: here is a minister from one of our antecedent congregations, a minister who embodied our highest values, and yet his name appears nowhere in this building. We have on our walls here the names of many lesser ministers, and even the names of one or two forgettable ministers. But I would suggest that the story of John Murray Spear as I have told it this morning offers us at least two splendid opportunities as we approach the celebration of the 300th anniversary of the founding of First Unitarian. We could think about how we might celebrate John Murray Spear and the other ministers of First Universalist Church. And we could think about how we might celebrate the fact that Nathan Johnson was an early African American member of First Universalist. I don’t quite know how we will make use of these opportunities. Will we try to get the names of First Universalist’s ministers on the walls of this sanctuary? Will we name one of our rooms after Nathan Johnson? I don’t know how to answer that, but I do know that this congregation is able to come up with amazingly creative ways to take advantage of opportunities like these.