Samuel West, Eccentric Revolutionary

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) 2008 Daniel Harper.

Readings

The first reading this morning is taken from a sermon preached on May 29, 1776, by Samuel West, who was the minister of this church from 1761 to 1803. The sermon from which this reading is taken gives a moral and religious justification for the North American colonies to rebel against Great Britain. It was preached by Samuel West to the House of Representatives and Council of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. West said:

“Thus we see that both reason and revelation perfectly agree in pointing out the nature, end, and design of government, viz., that it is to promote the welfare and happiness of the community; and that subjects have a right to do everything that is good, praiseworthy, and consistent with the good of the community, and are only to be restrained when they do evil and are injurious either to individuals or the whole community; and that they ought to submit to every law that is beneficial to the community for conscience’ sake, although it may in some measure interfere with their private interest; for every good man will be ready to forego his private interest for the sake of being beneficial to the public. Reason and revelation, we see, do both teach us that our obedience to rulers is not unlimited, but that resistance is not only allowable, but an indispensable duty in the case of intolerable tyranny and oppression. From both reason and revelation we learn that, as the public safety is the supreme law of the state, — being the true standard and measure by which we are to judge whether any law or body of laws are just or not, — so legislators have aright to make, and require subjection to, any set of laws that have a tendency to promote the good of the community.”

[The complete sermon is online here.]

The second reading comes from a short biography of Dr. Samuel West, written by John Morison, who was co-minister of our church from 1838-1844. This short biography was later edited by Samuel Atkins Eliot in 1910 when he was president of the American Unitarian Association; Eliot, as it happened, was the grandson of Ephraim Peabody, who was co-minister of our church from 1838-1844; and Samuel Eliot preached from this very pulpit more than once. In any case, here is how John Morison described Samuel West’s theology:

“Dr. West’s sympathies with humanity were too quick to make him a good Calvinist. His sermons were largely of the old Biblical and textual type, but theologically they were Unitarian in thought and temper. He asserted free will for man in opposition to the Calvinistic doctrine of preordination and election, and he believed in man’s ability of moral choice in opposition to the doctrine of total depravity. In his election sermon of 1776 he said, ‘A revelation pretending to be from God that contradicts any part of natural laws ought immediately to be rejected as an imposture, for the Deity cannot make a law contrary to the law of nature without acting contrary to himself.’ In his Forefathers’ Day sermon [of 1777] he said: ‘Love and unity are the essential marks of a true Christian. Were we possessed of true Christian candor, by a fair and impartial comparison we should find that many differences in explaining matters of faith are only mere verbal differences, and entirely vanish when we come to define our terms.’ It was natural that under such a minister, broad and tolerant in spirit, robust in thought, fervid in patriotism, incisive in logic, inclusive in fellowship, that [West’s church] should pass without break or discussion into the liberal ranks.”

[Samuel Atkins Eliot, ed., Heralds of a Liberal Faith: Vol. 1, The Prophets (Boston: American Unitarian Association, 1914).]

Sermon

This is the three hundredth anniversary of the establishment of our church, and with that in mind, this fall I am going to continue a series of sermons begun last fall in which I talk about exceptional people from our church’s past. I suppose you could call this the “Three Hundredth Anniversary Sermon Series.” But in my own mind, I have come to call this series “Inspired and Inspiring Lives.” We Unitarian Universalists don’t have saints, but we do have people to whom we look when we need inspiration as we live out our own lives. We don’t have saints, but yet we do seek out moral exemplars, individuals who lived worthy lives, and whom we might emulate to good purpose. And it is good for us to talk about people from whom we can draw inspiration — being fully aware of their flaws and quirks of personality, but also being fully aware of what makes them good or even great human beings, and how we might emulate their goodness or greatness.

Last fall, I gave you sermons on three inspiring and inspired lives: — I spoke about Maja Capek, minister of North Unitarian Church, who escaped Czechoslovakia ahead of the Nazis, and wholed a church of immigrants here in New Bedford ; and I spoke about John Murray Spear, the first Universalist minister in New Bedford, who fought for abolition of slavery and who built a racially integrated church here in this city in the 1830s and 1840s. And beginning this morning, I’m returning to this topic.

This morning I would like to talk with you about a person from our past whom I have come to greatly admire: Rev. Dr. Samuel West, minister of this church from 1761 to 1803. In the readings this morning, I have tried to give you a sense of how Rev. Dr. Samuel West contributed to the American Revolution. In the first reading, we heard an excerpt from West’s Election Sermon of May 29, 1776, and how West helped the political leaders of his time to understand how to steer a carefully plotted course between submission to the tyrannies of the British government on the one hand, and anarchy on the other hand. In 1776, there were many great thinkers here in the British colonies who were trying to prove that, on the one hand, they must rebel against Britain, but that, on the other hand, rebelling against Britain did not mean doing away with all government altogether. And we all know that West was not the greatest of these thinkers, — he was not as great as Thomas Jefferson, or Thomas Paine, or John Adams. Yet his Election Day Sermon of 1776, which was widely distributed here in the Massachusetts Bay Colony, is noteworthy for its clarity; it is still readable today, and abridged versions of it are still widely available on the Internet.

Indeed, I think you could argue that West could have made a much bigger contribution to the American Revolution, except for the fact that he lived down here on the south coast of Massachusetts. Remember that in those days, this region was dominated by the Quakers, who were pacifists, and who therefore were unlikely to declare themselves as passionate revolutionaries. If Samuel West had gotten a church in Boston, it seems likely to me that he would have been right in the thick of the planning of the American Revolution; but in those days, New Bedford was a long way from Boston, a long ride on horseback over rough roads.

Selfishly, I am glad that West remained here in New Bedford. It is West more than any other minister, more than any other single person, who put his mark on this church; it is West who led this church away from its Calvinist beginnings into liberal religion; and there we have stayed ever since. That West served here has been the best possible thing for our church (in my selfish view); but I feel that West paid the price for our good fortune, for he was unable to participate in the Revolutionary cause as fully as he might have otherwise done.

West paid another price for living down here in old Dartmouth, and later in the brand new city of New Bedford. West was a gifted scholar and, by all accounts, a brilliant man. John Morison, in his short biography of West, tells us that: “Among his own society [West] found little intellectual sympathy. [The people of his church] were a plain, industrious, uneducated people.” On top of that, West was very poorly paid. When he arrived at this church in 1761, he was promised a salary of sixty-six pounds, thirteen shillings, and sixpence per year; in terms of today’s dollars, that would be roughly $20,000, a low salary for someone who had a degree from Harvard College. It is true that West also received additional compensation in the form of two cows and a horse that were to be maintained by the congregation for his use. But what it also true is that West never received the whole of his salary:– by 1788, 27 years after he started, the congregation owed him a total of 769 pounds, twelve shillings, and eleven pence; this was nearly two hundred thousand dollars in today’s money. Or put it this way: over a 27 year period, the congregation paid him less than half of what wasn’t a very good salary to begin with. Nor was there much that the congregation could do about the situation: this whole region was sparsely populated and predominantly Quaker, so there just weren’t that many people from whom to get the money to pay Dr. West.

Thus we can see that circumstances were against Samuel West being able to play any role in the great events of the American Revolution: — he was both poor, and he lived in a provincial backwater of Massachusetts. Yet West rose above these circumstances, and was an active participant in the Revolutionary cause.

The most prominent of West’s revolutionary activities have been recorded for history. After the Battle of Bunker Hill, West joined the American army as a chaplain. While in the army, he assisted General George Washington by deciphering a treasonous letter written in code by an American officer to a British officer. He was at the Provincial Convention in Watertown, after that revolutionary body had to evacuate Boston, and her preached a sermon for them which was later reprinted. He preached the Election Day sermon in May, 1776, before the House of Representatives. In December, 1777, he delivered a patriotic message for the anniversary sermon at Plymouth, to commemorate the landing of the Pilgrims.

In the winter and spring of 1779-1780, West was a member of the General Court which met together to prepare a constitution for what became known as the Commonwealth of Massachusetts; this document was finally ratified in June of 1780, and remains the oldest written constitution in effect today. In the winter of 1787-1788, West was part of the convention by means of which Massachusetts approved the United States constitution. There was real doubt as to whether Massachusetts would adopt the United States constitution, and it was Samuel West who played a key behind-the-scenes role. According to historian Francis Baylies, in a letter he wrote to John Clifford of New Bedford, this is what happened:

“The fate of the Constitution in the convention was doubtful, when Governor Hancock, without whose aid it certainly could not be adopted, was seized with his constitutional disorder, the gout, and, withdrawing from the chair, took to his bed. The friends of the Constitution were convinced of the necessity of getting him out. Dr. West (who was Hancock’s classmate at Harvard) was selected as the person most likely to influence him. He repaired to his house, and after a long condolence on the subject of his bodily complaints he expressed his deep regrets that this affliction should have come upon him at a moment when his presence in the Convention seemed almost indispensable. He enlarged upon his vast influence, his many acts of patriotism, his coming forth in former days, at critical periods, to give new energy to the slumbering patriotism of his countrymen, and on the prodigious effect of his name. Heaven, he said, had given him another glorious opportunity, by saving his country, to win imperishable honor to himself. The whole people would follow his footsteps with blessings. The governor, who knew that Dr. West had always been his sincere and disinterested friend, listened to his suggestions, and made up his mind to appear again in the Convention. Wrapped in his flannels, he took the chair, addressed the Convention, proposed the conciliatory plan suggested by his friend, and the result is known. There is little doubt that Hancock turned the scale in this State in favor of the Constitution, and in my mind there is little doubt that Dr. West induced him to do it.”

So you see, while Samuel West may have had to play a minor role in the American Revolution and the formation of the new United States of America, it was nevertheless a crucial role.

Now this is all very interesting, but I am more interested in learning about West as a human being. What comes down to us about Dr. West, above all other aspects of his personality, is that he was somewhat eccentric. The historian Francis Baylies has recorded how absent-minded Dr. West was, saying:

“During the session of the Convention Dr. West spent many of his evenings abroad. He generally returned with his pockets filled with fine handkerchiefs, silk stockings, silk gloves, small pieces of cambric, and many other articles which could, without attracting attention, be slipped into his pocket. His distress, on discovering them, was ludicrous; for, aware of his absence of mind, he supposed that he might have taken these articles unconsciously and without the consent of the owners, but his fellow-boarders generally contrived to convince him that they were designed as presents, — which was the truth.”

Many other examples of Dr. West’s absent-mindedness have been recorded. He was known to arrive at the church on horseback, and stop at the horse-block so that his wife could get down from the pillion behind him, only to find that his wife wasn’t there; he had forgotten to wait for her, and had left her at home.

On another occasion, Dr. West’s horse came running up to the house of another minister, one Dr. Sanger, in another town; the horse had on a saddle, but Dr. West was not on the horse. So Dr. Sanger and some boys living in his house went back to look for Dr. West, figuring that the horse must have thrown him. They found him sitting in the middle of the road, in deep thought, and asked him, “Is it you, Dr. West? How come you’re sitting in the middle of the road?” To which he is said to have replied, “Yes, I suppose it is I, and I suppose the beast has thrown me.” This particular anecdote was recorded by one Charles Lowell, who was one of the boys living with Dr. Sanger at the time.

People who met him remembered Dr. West’s “eccentricity and roughness,” and his “oddity of manners.” It is easy to remember such personal quirks, but I want to know more about who Dr. West was as a human being. And the historical record does give us a more rounded view of who he was as a human being. The following anecdote was recorded by John Morison:

“[Dr. West’s] metaphysical investigations must have colored all his thoughts. He usually preached without notes, and was always prepared. Once, when in Boston, during the latter part of his life, he was invited by Dr. Clarke, of the First Church, to preach for him. About an hour before the services were to commence, Father West requested his friend to give him a text. At this Dr. Clarke was alarmed, and asked if it were possible that he was going to preach without notes, and with no other preparation. ‘Come, come,’ said Father West, ‘it is my way, give me a text.’ Dr. Clarke selected Romans ix. 22: ‘What if God, willing to show his wrath, and to make his power known, endured with much long-suffering the vessels of wrath fitted to destruction.’ Dr. West looked over the Bible a few minutes, turning down leaves here and there, and then went into the church, where he preached a cogent, logical discourse, an hour and twenty minutes long, on that perplexing subject. The strong men of the congregation were intensely interested, and Dr. Clarke, on coming from the pulpit, exclaimed, ‘Why, Father West, it would have taken me three months to prepare such a discourse.’ ‘Ha, ha,’ was the reply, ‘and I have been studying it twenty years.’  ”

And here is another, very brief, anecdote recorded by John Morison. Dr. West “would sometimes follow the young men who were studying theology with him to their bedchamber, and remain discoursing to them nearly the whole night.”

These last two anecdotes imply that Dr. West must have been a man of uncommon intellect and ability. Perhaps he wished that he lived in a city where he would have had more intellectual stimulation; surely he must have wished that his church had paid him regularly and in full. Rather than bemoan the lack of intellectual stimulation, Dr. West had a rich life of the mind — rich enough that others thought he was absent-minded. And he found ways to remain in conversation with other intellects: — he traveled regularly to Boston, then the intellectual capital of New England if not of the United States, he trained theological students, presumably in his home.

We can piece together more of Dr. West’s personality from the historical record. We know he married and raised a family, and when his first wife died, he married again. We know that he was a trusting man — he was perhaps too trusting of others, being sometimes unable to know when he was being deceived. We have already learned that he gave much time and energy to public service, at the state and indeed at the national level. And it is also clear that he helped his little church grow and thrive, for in 1795 he moved the church from its old location up in what is now Acushnet down to the corner of Purchase and William Streets in the new and bustling city of New Bedford, so that it could grow and thrive even more — he may not have gotten his full salary, but he was able to convince the church to pay for a new building!

There is one last little tidbit that I find very interesting: the people of this church called Dr. West “Father West.” I am sure they meant this as a compliment, and as a testament to his character. I imagine the people of this church saw Dr. West as a kind of friendly father-figure: — a good man, an intelligent man, a leader who put his church’s welfare above his own.

It seems to me that, of all the ministers who have served this church, Dr. Samuel West stands out as the most impressive human being of any of them. Perhaps some of our other ministers surpassed his intellectual capacities, but Dr. West’s intellect was only a small part of who he was. Perhaps he was eccentric and absent-minded; but that appears to have come part-and-parcel with his great intellect, and his general lack of intellectual companionship close to home, and his eccentricities never descended into bizarreness. Perhaps he had odd and even rough manners; but he more than made up for that by his essential goodness and his deep and abiding faith in human nature. Perhaps he never had much money throughout his life here; but he proved that one does not need to be wealthy to be a useful member of society.

Dr. West combined a great intellect, an essential goodness and decency, and the energy and ability to serve the world around him in spite of adverse circumstances. He had a vision of how this might be a better world, and he worked towards that vision in spite of the obstacles in his way.

Dr. Samuel West was one person whom we might consider emulating. Not that we should emulate his eccentricity; not that we should try to emulate his poverty. Nor should we try to slavishly emulate every detail of his life. We should consider emulating the core of his life: — He lived in times that called for energetic service to a greater cause, and he served; this we can emulate. He pushed himself to use his intellect beyond what those around him could appreciate; this we can emulate. he lived a good and decent life; this we can emulate. He offered leadership to his church, based on thoughtful consideration of what would best serve the greater good of humanity. He was also able to be agood follower — he was not one of the primary leaders in the American Revolution, but he trhrew his best energies behind the efforts of those leaders — and so we can say that he offered good “followership” as well as good leadership.

It is in his religious views that we can especially emulate Dr. West. He transcended the narrow Calvinism in which he was brought up; he knew that human beings can and often will make sound moral choices, and so he refused to believe the utter depravity of humanity which many around him preached. And his religious convictions informed his political convictions : he knew that, on the whole, people do make good moral choices, and that, on the whole, individual people will transcend their narrow private interests for the greater good of human society; at the same time, he knew that our highest allegiance must be to our consciences, and from thence to that which is highest and best in humanity, which he called God.

We Unitarian Universalists don’t have saints, but we do have moral exemplars, people to whom we look when we need inspiration as we live out our own lives. Dr. West is one of the great, if not the greatest, moral exemplars in our church’s long history; may we draw inspiration from his life.

Working Hard, Hardly Working

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) 2008 Daniel Harper.

Readings

First reading — “What We Live For” read responsively.

Why should we live with such hurry and waste of life? We are determined to be starved before we are hungry

They say that a stitch in time saves nine, and so they take a thousand stitches today to save nine tomorrow.

As for work, we haven’t any of any consequence. We have the Saint Vitus’ dance, and cannot possibly keep our heads still.

If I should only give a few pulls at the parish bell-rope, as for a fire, that is, without setting the bell, there is hardly a man on his farm in the outskirts of town

–notwithstanding that press of engagements which was his excuse so many times this morning, nor a boy, nor a woman,– but would forsake their work and follow that sound.

I perceive that we inhabitants of New England live this mean life that we do because our vision does not penetrate the surface of things. We think that that is which appears to be.

[From Walden, H. D. Thoreau, adapted DH.]

The second reading is a historical reading. It comes from a sermon preached by Duncan Howlett from this very pulpit on March 4, 1945. At that time, the entire city of New Bedford was in an uproar because of an action by the War Manpower Commission, the government agency charged with mobilizing labor for the war effort during the Second World War. The War Manpower Commission tried to forcibly transfer workers from various textile mills, into other mills which were producing tire cord. Both mill owners and organized labor felt this was an unnecessary action, and Duncan Howlett articulated why in this sermon. He said in part:

“Down beneath a worker’s natural aversion to leave his present job, down beneath the usual aversion to carrying a heavier work load than necessary; there are motives far more fundamental, which are keeping the workers out of the night shift at the tire cord mills. Most of these men have workers have men very close to them facing the enemy overseas. Iwo Jima is not so far from New Bedford as some might think. Brothers, fathers, husbands, and sweethearts of New Bedford workers are there, and they are with Eisenhower and MacArthur too. The workers know what production means to the fighting man overseas.

“Consider the record of this city for patriotism: Almost complete freedom from strikes, Army and Navy Es flying everywhere…; War Bonds oversubscribed in each drive, and the Red Cross blood bank more than supplied on its quarterly visits. Why in view of all this, and with the rest of the nation calling in question its patriotism, has New Bedford failed even under duress to transfer workers to the tire cord mills?

“The real reasons are these: The workers are not reassured by the fact that labor disputes are now pending before the War Labor Board. Workers at these mills are not given company-provided insurance as they are at the other textile mills in the city.

“Most important of all the deep-seated complaints of the workers, however, is the fact that the transferees have no assurance they will not lose their seniority rights. Seniority means a great deal to the worker….

“But I do not believe even these factors whould dissuade New Bedford workers from manning the third shift at the tire cord mills if they believed that the lives of their loved ones depended upon it. They are not convinced that these forcible transfers are necessary, and for two reasons….”

[From a pamphlet edition of this sermon published by First Unitarian church in New Bedford.]

Sermon

That passage we just heard from the sermon by Duncan Howlett raises an interesting question for me. Howlett seems to assume that there is a sort of promise between the worker and the employer. It is true that the workers about which he speaks were members of a union, so whatever promises existed between workers and employer were enforced by a contract reached through collective bargaining. Nevertheless, Howlett does assume that workers would be treated according to certain standards. The whole point of his sermon is that some of these promises were going to be violated by the War Manpower Commission. He said, “The forced transfer of workers here is unnecessary and unfair and down underneath we sense we are resisting [the War Manpower Commission] for reasons beyond our own workers, and beyond our own needs. High principle is involved….”

And what is that high principle that is involved? At the end of the sermon, Howlett said: “Let us put human personality first always. Let us not forget the endowment of our Creator to each of us. Let us remember, in fine, that we do God’s will insofar as we care for his children, that is to say, insofar as we guard the rights of our fellowman. Remembering this, let us continue in the faith of our forefathers, faith rooted in the wisdom, power and majesty of almighty God, issuing in the rights of man.” And that is how Duncan Howlett summed up the moral underpinnings of the relationship between workers and employers back in 1945.

Here we are, sixty-odd years later. Whatever moral underpinnings to the relationship between worker and employer that may have existed back in 1945 are not so readily apparent today.

There was a time after the Second World War when a whole generation assumed there were promises made between workers and employers. One promise went something like this:– as long as you were a reasonably capable worker, there would be a job for you until you were ready to retire. (For many workers, that was actually an explicit promise enforced by a labor union, and in 1953 nearly a third of all workers were represented by a union.) We should also be clear that this promise was not extended to huge segments of that generation:– for example there was an assumption that women would stop working once they got married; and many persons of color certainly couldn’t count on having a job the same way white persons could. Nevertheless, many people in that post-War generation did assume that as long as you were a reasonably capable worker, you could be pretty sure of a job.

Whatever the assumptions may have been back in 1945, we certainly make no such assumptions today. I don’t know anyone today who has much expectation that we can count on having the same job all our lives. These days, companies routinely lay people off because of accounting decisions made in some far away office. Companies can and do reduce salaries or benefits or working for no apparent reason at all:– so, a year ago I was talking to someone who worked for a big company; this fellow was at a meeting where the company announced that they were cutting benefits substantially, and when someone asked the spokesman why the company was doing this, he replied, “Because we can, that’s why.” The old assumptions no longer hold; workers can’t count on much in the way of promises these days.

As a result, most workers today do not count on having a job for very long. The routine advice that career counselors now give us is that as soon as we take a new job, we should be looking for the next job. People in their twenties and thirties fully expect to change jobs every two or three years, and they expect to change careers several times during their working life. A couple of years ago, I was talking with someone who supervised a fairly large staff, and she talked about how this affects her as a supervisor. She said that young workers just out of school will quit their jobs if they don’t get what they want within a few months. She was frustrated by this tendency because she works for an employer which is actually respectful of workers; if those young workers would just be patient, she said, they’d get all they wanted. But workers no longer feel they have the option to be patient. No young worker now expects a company to make or to keep any promises, or do anything for workers. Young workers no longer have any patience for employers, because they have seen all too often that employers don’t have patience for them.

Speaking for myself, as someone who supervises employees in a church, I know that the rule of thumb for churches is that we should try to retain employees for at least seven years. It takes that long to break even, after you factor in the costs of hiring a new staff person and the costs of the inevitable inefficiency that comes with a new staff person. In churches, and in the non-profit sector in general, managers are constantly seeking out increased efficiency due to the rising cost of running a non-profit. And yet we face increased inefficiency because staff won’t stick around for long; we are paying the price of employers who show no loyalty to workers.

No one is happy with this situation. I am not an economist, nor a political scientist, so I will propose no solutions to this problem. But I am a minister, and I can ask this: As religious people, how can make sense of this problem?

To begin with, I believe we have to talk openly and honestly about this problem. Now historically, most churches have not been places where we talk about work. We might talk about our jobs when we are socializing with other church folks, but my experience in churches has been that most church people rarely talk about work itself. I guess that jobs are somehow understood as being non-spiritual.

I should add that our own church is somewhat of an exception to my general experience. I believe that we are more likely to talk about our work, and about work in general. Our members and friends get up during the candles of joy and concern, and talk about our jobs: talk about not having work, talk about changing jobs, and so on. The simple fact that we often mention our jobs in the course of a worship service is, I believe, a little unusual, in a good way.

We should talk about work at church. Our jobs take up a significant percentage of our time. Our church should be a safe place for us to talk about the moral and spiritual implications of this significant part of our lives. We should be able to talk about not having work, since unemployment can be very difficult. And then there’s retirement: for many people, retirement can lead to some intensive self-reassessment, so we should be able to talk about the moral and spiritual implications retirement.

Not only should our church be a place where we talk about our own experiences of work, I feel our church can also be a place where we can reach out to those who are younger and less experienced than are we. I’m specifically thinking about how we might reach out to high school and college students. From the very beginning of my time here, members and friends of this church have said we should extend some kind of outreach to the students at UMass Dartmouth and at Bristol Community College. There are many reasons why reach out to the religiously liberal college students in our area, but one of the most important reasons is that many or most college students find themselves in the middle of what amounts to a spiritual crisis: they are figuring out what work they can do that will earn them a living, while providing some kind of meaning and purpose in their own lives. This spiritual crisis can extend from a person’s teens right through their twenties. Our church can be a place where people of all ages can talk about the moral and spiritual implication of work, and where older workers can listen to and offer advice to younger people.

And we can go beyond the narrow bounds of our own personal lives. Religion is supposed to help us to contemplate the broader implications of personal matters. When someone we love dies, our religion not only helps us with that immediate death, but our religion can help us to contemplate the broader meaning of death. When we have a child, when we marry, our religion can help us to contemplate the broader meaning of new life, or of the creation of a new family. When it comes to work, religion can help us contemplate broader meanings.

All the great religious traditions of the world do, in fact, help us to contemplate the broader meaning of the work we do. I am most familiar with the Christian tradition, and the meaning of work is woven throughout the Christian scriptures. Jesus is best known for his religious pronouncements, but I’ve always found that Jesus often talks about work. I’d like to take just a moment on two of the things Jesus says about work.

First, Jesus tells us that we shouldn’t take our work too seriously. For example, he says: “No one can be a slave to two masters. No doubt that slave will either hate one and love the other, or be devoted to one and disdain the other. You can’t be enslaved to both God and a bank account! That’s why I tell you: Don’t fret about your life — what you’re going to eat or drink — or about your body — what you’re going to wear. There is more to living than food and clothing. ” That’s what Jesus says in the book known as the Gospel of Matthew, as translated by the Jesus Seminar. And what he says here sounds strikingly similar to what Henry David Thoreau tells us in the first reading we heard this morning, when he says, “Why should we live with such hurry and waste of life? We are determined to be starved before we are hungry.” Much of what Henry Thoreau said was, in fact, merely an elaboration of Jesus’ political and economic philosophy of giving higher priority to spiritual matters than to financial matters.

Secondly, Jesus also talks directly about the realities of work and workers, as in this long parable:

“Heaven’s imperial rule is like a proprietor who went out the first thing in the morning to hire workers for his vineyard. After agreeing with the workers for a silver coin a day he sent them into his vineyard.

“And coming out around 9 a.m. he saw others loitering in the marketplace and said to them, ‘You go into the vineyard too, and I’ll pay you whatever is fair.’ So they went.

“Around noon he went out again, and at 3 p.m., and repeated the process. About 5 p.m. he went out and found othes loitering about and says to them, ‘Why do you stand around here idle the whole day?’

“They reply, ‘Because no one hired us.’

“He tells them, ‘You go into the vineyard as well.’

“When evening came the owner of the vineyard tells his foreman: ‘Call the workers and pay them their wages staring with those hired last and ending with those hired first.’

“Those hired at 5 p.m. came up and received a silver coin each. Those hired first approached thinking they would receive more. But they also got a silver coin apiece. They took it and began to grumble against the proprietor: ‘These guys hired last worked only an hour but you have made them the equal to us who did most of the work during the heat of the day.’

“In response he said to one of them, ‘Look, pal, did I wrong you? you did agree with me for a silver coin, didn’t you? Take your wage and get out! I intend to treat the one hired last the same way I treat you. Is there some law forbidding me to do with my money as I please? Or is your eye filled with envy because I am generous?’ ” [Mt. 20.1-14]

In this parable about work, Jesus asks us to contemplate the idea of an employer who treats his workers better than we expect. This parable may seem absurd because most of us who have worked have experienced being stiffed by an employer. Not many of us have experienced being treated better than we expected to be treated. Jesus asks us to contemplate an absurd world, which he calls “heaven’s imperial rule,” in which employers are more moral than they need to be.

We live in an era when employers are becoming less moral rather than more moral. Big corporations no longer make any pretence of behaving morally towards their workers. Global capitalism has become amoral, that is, it has no morals at all. It used to be that the ideal was that people would go in business to provide something that the world needed, and would make a profit on the way there. But no longer. Now you’re simply supposed to find a business that will make you money.

Our religion, this church, can give us a place where we can ask: what does it mean to work for a living? Morally speaking, what does it mean to be in business, or what does it mean to work in a certain industry? What does it mean to receive fair wages, and what does it mean to try to offer fair wages to all workers? Morally speaking, what does it mean when we can no longer count on our jobs, when we can no longer count on our employees? Our church is one place where we can, and should, have conversations about the amorality of our current economic system.

And as we consider how our current economic system is amoral, we will want to think about whether it is possible to create a moral alternative. At the most immediate level, we might wish to talk about whether it’s even possible in the current business climate for employers to treat workers decently. Duncan Howlett’s sermon operated at this immediate level of fairness.

And then we will wish to get deeper into this topic. What would it look like if we had a truly moral and just economic system? Do we turn to Henry David Thoreau, with his thought that most of our work is nothing more than a sort of St. Vitus’s dance? Or do we go even further than that and try to find truth in the absurd parables of Jesus in which the whole world is turned topsy-turvy?

I don’t know that we will ever find answers to these questions. Nor do I think there will ever be simple answers to the moral and spiritual questions of work. But we can address those questions….

People Are Basically Good

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) 2008 Daniel Harper.

Reading

From Hosea Ballou’s “Treatise on Atonement,” 3rd. ed.

The origin of sin has, among Christians in general, been very easily accounted for; but in a way, I must confess, that never gave me any satisfaction, since I came to think for myself on subjects of this nature. A short chimerical story of the bard, Milton, has given perfect satisfaction to millions, representing the introduction of moral evil into the moral system which we occupy. The substance of the account is: Some time before the creation of man, the Almighty created multitudes of spiritual beings, called angels. Some of these creatures of God were much higher in dignity and authority than others, but all perfectly destitute of sin, or moral turpitude. One dignified above all the rest, stood Prime Minister of the Almighty, clothed with the highest missive power, and clad with garments of primeval light; obsequious to nothing but the high behest of his Creator, he discharged the functions of his office with promptitude and dignity, suited to the eminence of his station, and to the admiration of celestial millions. But when it pleased Jehovah to reveal the brightness of his glory and the image f the Godhead in humanity, he gave forth the command (see Psalm xcvii. 7), “Worship him, all ye gods.” And (Heb. i. 6) “and again, when he bringeth the first begotten into the world, he saith, and let all the angels of God worship him.” Lucifer, Son of the Morning (as Christians have called him), surprised at the idea of worshipping any being but God himself, looked on the Son with ineffable disdain, and in a moment grew indignant, brushed his strongest pinions, and waved his wings for the throne of God, challenged supremacy with the Almighty, and cast his eye to the sides of the north as a suitable place to establish his empire. Legions of spirits followed this chief in rebellion, and formed a dangerous party in the kingdom of the Almighty. The Son of God was invested with full power as Generalissimo of Heaven, to command the remaining forces, against the common enemy. And in short, after many grievous battles between armies of contending spirits, where life could not, in the least, be exposed, Lucifer and his party were driven out of Heaven, leaving it in peace, through in a great measure, depopulated!

God, having created the earth, and placed the first man and woman in a most happy situation of innocence and moral purity, without the smallest appetite for sin, or propensity to evil, the arch Apostate enviously looked from his fiery prison, to which he was consigned by a command of the Almighty, and beholding man placed in so happy a situation, and in a capacity to increase to infinite multitudes, by which the kingdom of Heaven would be enlarged, was determined to crop this tree in the bud. He, therefore, turns into a serpent, goes to the woman and beguiles her, gets her to eat of a fruit which god had forbidden, by which means he introduced sin into our system.

I have not been particular in this sketch, but it contains the essence of the common idea. I shall now put it under examination, looking diligently for the propriety of accounting for the origin of moral evil in this way….

Sermon

One of the most basic propositions of Unitarian Universalism is the simple statement that people are basically good. We Unitarian Universalists know perfectly well that all of us human beings have our problems, and we know perfectly well that some human beings are worse than others. But we are firmly convinced that on the whole, and taken as an average, human beings are basically good.

This is a simple conviction to state: people are basically good. This simple conviction of ours comes out of a long history of theological reflection from both our Unitarian heritage and our Universalist heritage. Let me just briefly outline something of the history of our conviction that people are basically good.

From our Unitarian heritage, we inherit the concept that people have a certain freedom of choice; that we have some measure of free will that allows us to make moral choices. And with this concept of the freedom to make moral choices, we have also inherited the concept that, if we are given the option, we human beings tend to choose what is good over what is evil. As Unitarians, we feel that if given the option, human beings will make morally good choices.

From our Universalist heritage, we inherit the concept that all human beings will be redeemed in the end. Originally, this concept came from the Universalist understanding that God is essentially good, that God is so good that God will redeem each and every human being and allow each and every human being into heaven. Those old Universalists felt that ultimately it is God who is so good that God will redeem us human beings, but at the same time they were quite sure that every human being had enough goodness so as to be capable of being redeemed. As Universalists, we feel that all human beings have goodness as a part of our constitution.

Well, these old concepts have evolved and changed over the centuries. Today, as Unitarian Universalists, we might articulate these concepts somewhat differently. Today we would be more likely to speak of “the inherent worth and dignity of every person,” we would affirm and promote “justice, equity, and compassion in human relations,” and because we trust that people are basically good we would assert that everyone should participate in governance and would therefore affirm the “use of the democratic process in our congregations and in society at large.”

That is the briefest outline of the history of our conviction that people are basically good. But of course this conviction leads to certain complications in practice. I suspect most of you would in general go along with this notion that people are basically good, yet I also suspect that each one of us here might wish to qualify this statement in various ways. We might wish to expand upon what we mean when we say that we are convinced that people are basically good. Let us therefore take some time to expand upon this simple statement.

(1) Let us begin with the notion that we can all be redeemed. This is a fine proposition to state in the abstract, but it is a challenging moral standard to live out. I’ll give you an example of what I mean.

On Sunday, July 29, just four weeks ago today, James Adkisson of Powell, Tennessee, went into the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church in Knoxville, Tennessee, during their weekly worship service and he opened fire with a shotgun. The children of the church were about to begin a musical production in the worship service. Adkisson killed two people and wounded six others. He left a letter at his home that morning saying he hated the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church for its liberal views, and for its support for gays and lesbians. In addition, his ex-wife, who had a restraining order out against him because of his violence, was a former member of that church, so he apparently hated the church for that, too.

Now in this example, a self-professed hater of religious liberals enters a Unitarian Universalist church during a children’s play and kills and wounds eight people with a shotgun. If the members of the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church believed in original sin or if they believed in hell, they’d give up on that guy. They would have said: that Adkisson is going to straight to hell. They would have siad: See how hard it is to escape from the bonds of original sin? Adkisson is damned for all eternity. But that’s not what the poeple of the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church have said.

John Bohstedt, a member of the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church in Knoxville, took issue with some of the media coverage of the recent shootings at his church. Bohstedt, a retired history professor from the University of Tennessee, sent an email message to Michael Paulson, religion correspondent at the Boston Globe, giving his viewpoint about what really happened:

“An eyewitness who was protecting her children a few feet from the gunman said it was remarkable how everyone was doing exactly what they needed to do — subduing the gunman, calling 911, tending to the victims, and evacuating the sanctuary….

“The reason I am saying all this is — Media have done much to make us a fearful people — to emphasize the danger in the world. Real life is often NOT like that, and in this case — evil was overcome efficiently by LOVE.

“I have been studying the behavior of crowds for decades, in old documents and in our University of Tennessee football stadium, and more often than not there is METHOD in the ‘madness’ of crowds — the METHOD of our Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church is organized Love.”

So said a member of the church where this shooting took place.

We Unitarian Universalists do believe in the power of love. We may not all believe in God any more, but we are pretty sure that anyone can be redeemed — or more properly, we believe people can redeem themselves if they wish to. This is like the old Universalist belief that, while we surely don’t understand how it happens, God somehow manages to redeem even hate-filled destructive persons like the killer at the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church. We would say: James Adkisson is capable of redemption — with a lot of help, and acknowledging the very real possibility that we probably won’t want trust him in one of our Unitarian Universalist churches ever again.

Redemption remains mysterious to us. People whom we think are beyond redemption manage to redeem themselves; others who seem capable of redemption never manage to find redemption. But I’m pretty certain that redemption has to be something that we strive after actively. You can’t just wait passively for someone else to be redeemed, you can’t just wait passively for yourself to be redeemed. We have to encourage redemption in others, and when it is necessary we have to actively seek redemption for ourselves. The basic goodness of human beings is not a passive characteristic; it is an active process.

So you see, being convinced that people are basically good is not mere abstract belief:– this conviction forces us to seek after redemption for ourselves, and to encourage redemption in others.

(2) How else might we expand on the simple statement that people are basically good? One obvious way we do this is that we organize our church communities around our simple conviction that people are basically good. Thus our church communities are organized on the basis of trust: if people are basically good, we should be able to trust them, right? Well, it’s a little more complicated than that. I’ll give you an example of what I mean.

Back on a Sunday morning in February of 2001, the New Bedford Standard-Times ran a front-page article that included allegations that a recently retired minister of this church had engaged in [quote] “inappropriate sexual behavior towards ten women in his former congregation.” Now mind you, these were allegations, and the Standard-Times also published a statement by the recently retired minister that the allegations were not true. And so in such a situation, it may become difficult to know whom to trust — are the allegations true or false? Whom do you believe? In such a situation, it would be easy to give up on trust altogether, give up trusting the church community at all.

Let me give you a less serious violation of trust, from my own experience. A couple of decades ago, someone from the Unitarian Universalist church I was then attending called me up and asked me to volunteer for something. I asked her about it, and then said that I did not wish to volunteer. Why not? she asked. I said because I felt the program concerned involved cultural misappropriation; at which point, she raised her voice and told me in no uncertain terms that I should reconsider. She came pretty close to yelling at me. Let me tell you, it is not pleasant to have a church leader raise their voice at you, and question your integrity. It took me a year before I wanted to volunteer for anything at that church again. I mean, why stick around a church when someone treats you like that?

It is much easier to just run away from the church and stop trusting that church community. In fact, now that I think about it, it would be much easier to just accept that people are basically evil. If I could just accept that people are basically evil, then I could stop trusting anyone except a small circle of people I have decided are trustworthy. Of course, if one of those people I have decided to trust then violates that trust, then I’d really be in the soup, wouldn’t I? I wouldn’t be sure if I could trust anyone at all.

We build our church communities on trust in part because the alternative is so grim: if we’re not willing to trust our church community, then we’re left with a pretty small circle of people whom we can trust. At the same time, we are realistic about trust. We have to be realistic. Yes, people may be basically good, but people are never perfect. Anyone can do bad things to someone else. We are also quite clear that some of us are less likely to do evil things than others. Jim Adkisson, the man who shot people at the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church, has proven that he is more likely to do evil things than me. When we base our communities on trust, realistically we have to understand that there are some people we just cannot accept into our church communities. Thus we would say that when it comes to James Adkisson — no, he cannot come into this church!

This means we also expect certain behavioral standards of each other. If someone violates those standards, we may have to call them on it. When that woman raised her voice at me, I wish I had had the courage to say: “Hey, stop yelling at me, that’s not acceptable!” And of course, calling someone else on their behavior is not always possible: if you’re being physically or emotionally abused by someone, I’m here to tell you that you need to get away from that person; don’t waste time calling them on their behavior, just get out. Yet generally speaking, we should expect the people around us to live up to certain behavioral standards; and it is up to each one of us, and up to us as a community, to gently maintain a high level of trust in our church community.

It’s up to us to maintain a high level of trust in our church. Trust requires forgiveness. I guarantee you, nearly everyone whom you trust will violate your trust in some way, large or small. We may trust our parents, but most of us can give some example of how our parents violated our trust in some way, whether large or small. The same is true of spouses, relatives, friends,– and all of us here at church. Now again, if you’re in an abusive situation, you need to know that forgiveness need not be face-to-face;– sometimes trust has been so violated that forgiveness has to take place at a distance. But the general point here is that in order to trust anyone again, we have to forgive those who trespass on our trust. In order to continue trusting, we must reach forgiveness in the honesty of our own hearts.

So you see, being convinced that people are basically good is not mere abstract belief:– this conviction requires us to trust one another, and it requires forgiveness; and boy is it difficult to trust and to forgive!

(3) How else might we expand on the simple statement that people are basically good? Let me give you one example of how we live out this conviction of ours here in our church.

Because we are convinced that people are basically good, we are convinced that when we’re born, we are not somehow stained with evil. That’s why we do child dedications, not baptisms. (Explain how this works.)

I don’t mean to imply that children are like little angels — they’re not. They need firm guidance from us adults, and they need firm boundaries re: acceptable behavior. The opposite of goodness in human beings is often not evil, but chaos and lack of social structure. We are social animals who live within social constructs that we must maintain.

Thus, living out our belief that people are basically good requires that we train up the next generation in how to act so that we can teach them how to be good instead of chaotic. This is why I want to be in a church that has children in it: because while I am convinced that people are basically good, I know too that I have a moral responsibility to help move humanity towards increased goodness through raising children; and that responsibility is yours whether or not you have children of your own, whether or not.

Again we see that being convinced that people are basically good requires more than abstract belief: it requires the hard work of raising up the children and moving them away from chaos. This is hard work!

…

Well, when I started out, you may have thought that this was going to be one of those feel-good sermons. You may have expected me to talk about people’s essential goodness — and instead, here I mentioned mentioned murder, and clergy misconduct, and other difficult topics. On top of that, I have said that we have responsibilities:– we’re supposed to keep children from being so chaotic, and practice forgiveness, and base our church communities on trust, and encourage redemption.

After all that, original sin may start to sound very attractive! It almost seems easier to just accept that people are basically evil, tainted with something called original sin, that will prevent them from being good, dooming most people to an eternity of torment after death.

So, if you want to believe that people are basically evil, I for one will fully understand — it is the easier path — even though it involves a certain amount of self-loathing. But I’m going to remain convinced that people are basically good — even though it requires me to help move children away from being so chaotic, and practice forgiveness, and base our church in trust, and encourage redemption. Even though it requires work on my part, I’m going to stick with the proposition that people are basically good.