Unitarian history – Dan Harper

A Revolutionary Religion

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

Reading

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sermon: A Revolutionary Religion

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Notes:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Three Hundred and One

Readings

The first reading is from the book Work Pray Code: When Work Becomes Religion in Silicon Valley, by sociologist Carolyn Chen (Princeton Univ. Press, 2022, p. 209). In this book, Chen shows how work has become religion in Silicon Valley, and she documents how destructive the worship of work can be. She then says:

“How do we break the theocracy of work? The late writer David Foster Wallace observed, ‘In the day-to-day trenches of adult life there is actually no such thing as atheism. Everybody worship. The only choice is what we get to worship.’ We can stop worshipping work, Wallace suggests, by choosing to worship something else. But we cannot do it alone, in the private sanctuary of our personal prayers and devotions. Since worshipping work is a social enterprise, choosing not to worship work must also be a collective endeavor. We can do this by intentionally building shared places of worship, fulfillment, and belonging that attract our time, energy, and devotion. These are our families, neighborhoods, clubs, and civic associations, as well as our faith communities. We need to recharge these ‘magnets’ that have grown weak. Contrary to what time management pundits tell us, we do this by letting these magnets attract more and not less of our time, energy, and passion. This is not a call to end work; it’s a call to energize non-workplaces. It’s an invitation to reflect on how we as a society expend out collective energy.”

The second reading comes from Rabbi Howard I Bogot, from his 1979 essay “Why Jewishness?” in the Journal of Jewish Communal Service (vol. 56, no. 1, 1979, p. 108).

“For many years I have carried with me an Emerson-like quote which reads as follows: ‘The gods will write their names on our faces, be sure of that; and man will worship something, have no doubt of that either. He may think that his tribute is paid in secret, in the deep recesses of his heart but it will out. That which dominates his imagination and his thought will determine his life and character. Therefore, it behooves us to be careful what we worship, for what we are worshipping we are becoming.’”

Sermon: “Three hundred and One”

On Tuesday, December 13, First Parish will celebrate its three hundred and first birthday. This past fall, I’ve given a few sermons looking back at the past three hundred years. So today, just before the end of our three hundredth birthday year, I thought I’d give a sermon about the future.

I am not, however, going to try to predict what the next three hundred years will hold for our congregation. I’m willing to try to look ahead for a dozen years, or at most for twenty years — in other words, look ahead for another generation. Think of the youngest child in our Sunday school, and think ahead to when that child heads off to college or to a job: what will First Parish look like then? I’m not willing to look ahead for the next three hundred years, but I’m willing to try one generation.

But even trying to look ahead one generation is difficult. We are in the midst of a major change in American religion. When I started out working in Unitarian Universalist congregations, back in 1994, we could feel pretty confident that in 2014 our congregations would look much like they did in 1994. During the teens, though, we started seeing an increasing number of people who had no religious affiliation at all. Sociologists began to call these people the “Nones,” as in when you asked them what their religion was, they’d respond, “None.”

In the past decade and a half, the number of Nones in America has just kept increasing. Many people assume this is a trend towards increasing secularization, but I don’t think that’s a good assumption. Surveys show that a large percentage of Americans continue to believe in God or in some higher power. (1) It’s not that religious belief is going away; rather, it’s a matter of people not affiliating with religious organizations.

This is partly due to another demographic trend. Since the 1960s, Americans have been disengaging with all forms of community and organizations. Political scientist Robert Putnam popularized this idea back in the year 2000 in his book Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community. (2) Putnam blamed much of the disengagement on individualized entertainment that was first delivered through television, and later through the internet. Think about it this way: on Sunday morning, it’s easier to stay home and look at NetFlix or TikTok than it is to drive to Cohasset center, find parking, and walk over to this Meeting House. Maybe the quality of interaction is better here in the Meeting House than what you’ll find on TikTok, but for many people the convenience and the ability to individualize one’s interaction makes up for the lower quality of interaction.

Interestingly, right after Donald Trump’s election in 2016, the authors Thomas E. Mann, Norm Ornstein and E. J. Dionne, pointed out that many people “rallied to [Donald Trump] out of a yearning for forms of community and solidarity that they sense have been lost.” (3) I think there’s a lot of truth to that. Whether you agree or disagree with Donald Trump’s politics, there is no doubt he was adept at bringing a crowd of his supporters together, making them feel a part of something larger than themselves. In fact, his rallies look to me more like religious revivals than political rallies. Nor is it only Republican candidates who create that feeling: recently, we’ve seen how Raphael Warnock uses that feeling of a religious revival to rally people to vote for him.

Indeed, both the Republican party and the Democratic party have begun to resemble religions. Each party has doctrines and dogmas that they promote; and they are eager to denigrate the doctrines and dogmas of the other religion — sorry, of the other party. Each party has a mythological dimension, myths that they tell about heroic figures. There are rituals specific to each group, including things like chanting and pilgrimages. Adherents of each party can have strong emotional experiences, akin to traditional religious experiences like praying or worshipping in a church. There’s even material culture associated with each party, objects that take on almost religious significance, like MAGA hats or Barack Obama posters. All this looks a lot like religion to me. (4)

But it’s not just political parties that have taken on religious dimensions. Other forms of social interaction are also taking the place of traditional religious congregations. Think about sports events. The World Cup, with the special fan clothing, the fans making long pilgrimages to a distant land, the chanting and sense of identity — this all looks like religion. Or, closer to home, as someone who grew up in the Boston area, I can tell you that around here, baseball often feels like a religion. I found it difficult to explain to people in California how belonging to Red Sox nation was more like a religious affiliation than simply rooting for the home team. I’m told Red Sox fans are quite similar in this regard to Green Bay Packers fans. So you can see that for the true believers, sports looks like religion to outsiders, and from the inside, to true believers, sports feels like religion. (5)

And then there’s work. Over the past few years, sociologist Carolyn Chen of the University of California at Berkeley has focused her research on Silicon Valley workers. She finds that these workers “point to their jobs and careers” when they are asked “what brings meaning to their lives.” That’s the ultimate purpose of religion, isn’t it? — to help us bring meaning into our lives. Instead of turning to sports or politics, many Silicon Valley workers are finding the ultimate meaning and purpose of their lives through their work.

I could go on, and tell you about other social and cultural phenomena look a lot like religion — celebrity worship, humanistic psychology, network Christianity, yoga, and so on. But you get the point. Religion is taking on new forms. No longer is religion confined to local churches and synagogues. Religion can no longer be neatly categorized into denominations and world religions. American religion now includes sports, and politics, and work.

So where does that leave First Parish? How can we compete with a Raphael Warnock rally, or a Donald Trump rally? How can we compete with Red Sox baseball, or with downhill skiing? How can we compete with the jobs of knowledge workers? What we can do is we can offer an alternative.

For there’s a problem with sports, politics, or work as religion. Each of these things asks our devotion, not for our own sake, but for the sake of another. Donald Trump and Raphael Warnock ask us to participate in the religious rituals of their political rallies, not to make us better people, but so that they can win an election. There’s nothing wrong with supporting a political candidate, there’s nothing wrong with helping someone get elected. But when our support of them starts looking like religion — when we start getting our personal meaning and fulfillment out of it — then someone else is using our fulfillment to meet their own ends and goals.

Similarly, there’s nothing wrong with sports. I sometimes worship at the altar of the Red Sox, and will happily tell you about the time I got seats four rows back from the visitor’s dugout when the legendary knuckleballer Tim Wakefield was pitching against the New York Yankees. But we have to remember that professional sports is a business. If when I get my personal meaning and fulfillment in life by boosting someone else’s profit, I’m no longer an end in myself; someone else is using me as a means to their own ends.

Perhaps most troubling to me is when knowledge workers find their entire life’s meaning in their jobs. When you work for a corporation, you are a means to an end. You may get something out of your job, but the ultimate end of your job is to create profits for the company. As important as your work may be, you are more than your job. To be fully human is to be an end in yourself.

In the second reading this morning, Rabbi Howard Bogot talks about a quote he carried around with him for many years, a quote from an anonymous twentieth century source. That anonymous but wise person pointed out that those things which dominate our imaginations and our thoughts have a tendency to determine the course of our lives and our characters. Therefore, concludes this wise anonymous source, “it behooves us to be careful what we worship, for what we are worshipping we are becoming.”

This anonymous quote helps us understand the big change in American religion that’s going on right now. People are leaving the old religious organizations, the churches and the synagogues — leaving the traditional religious groups like denominations. But that doesn’t mean that religion is going away; religion is simply taking new forms.

Theoretically, there’s nothing wrong with religion taking on new forms. But there is problem with some of these new forms of religion: they have the capacity to tear our society apart. When politics becomes religion, it can take the relatively benign form of political rallies. In a more extreme, more toxic form, it can turn into something like Christian militias and Christian nationalism. And Christian nationalism has gotten to the point where one proponent is calling for the United States to be governed by a Christian Taliban. (6) Thus, in an extreme form, politics as religion can wind up being dangerous to democracy.

When work becomes religion, it can take the relatively benign form of someone absolutely loving their job, so much so that they’re willing to work more than 80 hours a week and sleep on a couch at their workplace. In an extreme form, as in Silicon Valley where workers are expected to spend most of their lives at work, sociologist Carolyn Chen has documented the the destructive side effects of excessive devotion to jobs: destruction of families, destruction of civic organizations, and disinvestment in public government. Thus, in its extreme form, work as religion can become dangerous to our society. (7)

As I gaze into my crystal ball and try to catch sight of what next ten or twenty years will look like here at First Parish, I spend a lot of time thinking about this big change in American religion. How should we here in First Parish respond to this drift away from organized religion?

First of all, our kind of religion is no longer the norm. We cannot automatically assume that when someone walks into our Meeting House, they will know what we’re doing, what’s going on here. We now have to explain what organized religion is like, what it does. We now have to explain that religious congregations like First Parish are civic organizations, places where we join together both to help ourselves and our families, and to make our communities stronger. Religious congregations like First Parish are cornerstones of democracy. Religious congregations like First Parish exist, not for the sake of the congregation, but for the sake of each person in the congregation. We come here, not to profit someone else, but to profit ourselves.

We used to spend a lot of time explaining to newcomers what we believed. We would tell people that we didn’t have a creed or a dogma, that we search together for truth and goodness. In the past, that was how we differentiated ourselves from other religious congregations. But now, I’ve been finding newcomers are more interested in learning what it is that we do. When I try to explain what it is that we do here at First Parish, a few things come immediately to mind.

First of all, each week in our worship services, we affirm our highest values. We recall ourselves to our deepest humanity. We strengthen ourselves for the week ahead.

Next, we are the leaders of our congregation. While we do have paid staff, leadership is shared among all who are part of our community. We all make the decisions together, we all staff the committees, we are the volunteers.

Next, we join together to make the world a better place. We support charitable causes, we volunteer together, we help bend the moral arc of the universe towards justice.

Perhaps most importantly, we raise the next generation to become moral, joyful, humane people. And this is yet another way in which we help bend the moral arc of the universe towards justice.

As you can see, what we do is quite different from what the new forms of religion do. Again, the new forms of religion — work and politics and sports and so on — are mostly done for someone else’s profit. No one is making a profit from what we do here in First Parish. What we do benefits each one of us, and all of us collectively. What we do benefits the wider community, and ultimately the whole world.

In addition to telling people what we believe and showing them what it is that we do, there’s another way we should be explaining ourselves to curious newcomers. We need to show people that we have a different way of being in the world. Our kind of being is not a selfish kind of being. Our kind of being is being-with-others. As an old prophet once put it, we strive to love our neighbors as we love our selves. (8) Sometimes I like to call this inter-being, or or sometime we might use the phrase “the interdependent web of all life.” When others sense within us this love for neighbor and love for self, they may find that they want to be a part of this community. They may want to feel part of the interdependent web of life.

When I look ahead to the next ten or twenty years at First Parish, this is what I hope we put at the center of our community: loving our neighbor as we love ourselves. Or if you prefer, living as if the interdependent web of life truly mattered. These are the permanent center of our religious community. And if we can keep these at our center, if we can show in our lives and in our being that these are of greatest importance to us, we will continue to be a force for good in the next ten years, in the next twenty years, indeed for the next three hundred years of our existence.

Notes

(1) See e.g., Pew Research Center, “Nones on the Rise,” 9 October 2012, www.pewresearch.org/religion/2012/10/09/nones-on-the-rise/ accessed 10 December 2022.
(2) Robert D. Putnam, Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community, (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2000).
(3) E. J. Dionne Jr., Norman J. Ornstein, Thomas E. Mann, One Nation After Trump: A Guide for the Perplexed, the Disillusioned, the Desperate, and the Not-Yet Deported (St. Martin’s Publishing Group, 2018).
(4) To help define define religion, I’m using Ninian Smart’s seven dimensions of religion from his book Dimensions of the Sacred: An Anatomy of the World’s Beliefs (Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, 1998). Smart’s seven dimensions of religion are: Ritual; Narrative and Mythic; Experiential and emotional; Social and Institutional; Ethical and legal; Doctrinal and philosophical; Material (i.e., objects that symbolize the sacred). According to Smart, different religions emphasize different dimensions of the sacred.
(5) There is a great deal of scholarly writing about sport as religion. For just one example, the book From Season to Season: Sports as American Religion (Mercer University Press, 2001), ed. Joseph L. Price, contains a collection of essays on this topic, with titles like “The Final Four as Final Judgement,” “The Super Bowl as Religious Festival,” and “The Pitcher’s Mound as Cosmic Mountain.”
(6) Christian nationalist Nick Fuentes has called for this, according to “Who Is Trump’s Dinner Companion, Nick Fuentes?,” Religion News Service, 27 November 2022, religionnews.com/2022/11/27/who-is-trump-and-kanyes-dinner-companion-nick-fuentes/ accessed10 December 2022.
(7) For more about the destructive side effects of work as religion, see the final chapter of Chen’s book Work Pray Code: When Work Becomes Religion in Silicon Valley (Princeton Univ. Press, 2022).
(8) Jesus of Nazareth, as reported in the Gospel according to Mark, 12:31.

First Parish in Cohasset and its ministers, pt. 2

Read Part One (covering 1721-1845)

The photographs, all of ministers who served at least ten years, are from the First Parish archives.

Reading

This morning’s reading is a short humorous poem by Roscoe Trueblood, minister of First Parish from 1945 to 1968:

Congregational Polity

“The minister should lead,” she said,
This she chose to say
Thinking if and when he led
That he would go her way.

But later, when they differed wide,
On points she would not lose,
“The minister should wait,” she cried,
“And let the people choose.”

Sermon

Our congregation was formally organized on December 13, 1721, so we are in our three hundredth birthday year. This is one of a series or occasional sermons I’m preaching this year on the history of our congregation. This morning’s topic is the relationships between the congregation and its ministers from 1835 to the present day.

In 1835, after long-time minister Jacob Flint retired, our congregation called Harrison Gray Otis Phipps to be its next minister. He came to Cohasset directly from Harvard Divinity School, and served for six years until he took ill and died at age 30. Phipps was remembered for his kindness and his good relationships with children. (1)

Black and white portrait photograph shwoing the head and shoulders of an older white man with a full white beard. — Joseph Osgood, minister from 1842-1898

Next the congregation called Joseph Osgood, who began his ministry in 1842 at age twenty-six. He continued as the minister here for fifty-six years, until his death in 1898. This was the longest ministry we’ve ever had, or are ever likely to have. Osgood became intimately involved with the people in this congregation. He presided at nearly one thousand funerals. He officiated at nearly 500 weddings, in some cases performing weddings for two or three generations of the same family. During the first years of his ministry, there was no Catholic priest in town, so Osgood was also called upon to assist with funerals and baptisms among the growing Catholic population in town. (2)

Part of the reason First Parish called Osgood was because of his prior experience as a school teacher. As has been true of many Unitarian congregation, First Parish believed in public education, and they wanted a minister who could help them in that mission. In addition to serving as minister, Osgood devoted significant amounts of time to the Cohasset schools. He served on the Cohasset school committee for thirty years. He helped establish the first high school in town. He served as the superintendent of schools for twelve years; this was a duty of which he later said, “I felt that I had hardly strength to perform or bear.” (3) He served for fifty years on the Board of Trustees of Derby Academy in Hingham. Osgood’s enduring legacy in Cohasset is his work in the schools, and there is still an elementary school in town named after him.

Osgood was able to devote so much time to education, and to people of other religions, because First Parish was not as large as we might think. In the Norfolk County Manual and Yearbook for 1876, First Parish is reported as having just 50 members, with 68 children and teens in the Sunday school. (4) At this time, women were not allowed to vote on parish affairs, so if we include women there were probably about 100 members, roughly the same number of members we have today. Given the size of the congregation and the record of his activities, I’d guess that Osgood spent forty hours a week on his own congregation, and another forty hours a week on community activities. He later wrote that kept his health from breaking under the strain of overwork by working in his garden. (5) He also depended upon his wife, Ellen Sewall, to keep him fed and clothed and to raise their children.

Twenty-five years into his ministry, Osgood wrote: “I have, time and again, felt so dissatisfied with my own work and with my own ministry, that I was ready to lay down the burden and relieve you of my presence; but your forbearance, your consideration, your willingness to overlook all my mistakes and blunders, and to take the will for the deed when I have said and done things which I should not perhaps have deliberately said and sone, have tended very much to preserve this connection.” (6) In spite of his extraordinary accomplishments, Osgood acknowledged his mistakes and remained modest about his own abilities. The congregation for its part was flexible in its expectations, and supported Osgood when he needed support. The relationship between congregation and minister was founded on mutual respect and trust .

Late in life, Osgood began to slow down. First Parish historian Gilbert Tower wrote, “In 1895 [First Parish] was in a weak condition. In his old age, Dr. Osgood had been unable put much life into it.” The congregation hired a young minister named William Roswell Cole to serve as assistant to Osgood. Cole arrived in 1896, and when Osgood died two years later, Cole became the sole minister. Gilbert Tower continues, “Mr. Cole succeeded in starting new projects and fresh ideas so that good health, at least, if not prosperity, was restored to the Parish.” (7)

Head and shoulders portrait of a white man with grey hair and a moustache. — William Roswell Cole, minister from 1896-1919

It is tempting to to agree with Gilbert Tower that William Cole was the one who revitalized the congregation. But I think the truth is more complicated than that. First, the Panic of 1893, a serious economic depression that lasted from 1893 to 1897, caused many Unitarian congregations to struggle. No doubt Cole deserves some credit for reviving First Parish, but the improved economic situation after 1897 also deserves credit. Second, Gilbert Tower credits Cole with starting lots of new programs. But in the period from 1890 to the First World War, most Unitarian congregations were adding new programs: local branches of the Women’s Alliance, the Laymen’s League, the Young People’s Religious Union, and so on. This new programmatic approach, a major change in the life of Unitarian congregations, was a widespread social trend, not the innovation of one minister.

Cole’s leadership style was a good match for the congregation. In Gilbert Tower’s words, Cole was a “quiet, unassuming man, friendly and easy in manner with everyone.” The minister’s unassuming leadership style, probably similar to Osgood’s leadership style, allowed Cole to work smoothly with strong lay leaders.

A white man with white hair and a moustache, standing outdoors in a garden. — Frederic John Gauld, minister from 1922-1937

Cole died very suddenly of a coronary embolism on August 21, 1919, at age 54. The congregation called a young minister named George Archibald Mark, who resigned after two years because “First Parish was not active enough for him.” (8) The congregation then called Frederic John Gauld, who served here from 1922 to 1937. First Parish historian Gilbert Tower accused Gauld of being lackluster minister: “Mr. Gauld was a wonderful man and he was very much loved. However he did not accomplish much in building up the parish membership which would have been a real index of success.” (9) But Tower’s assessment of Gauld is unfair. Most of Gauld’s ministry took place during the Great Depression. Perhaps one third of all Unitarian churches closed their doors during the Depression, including many churches in small towns like Cohasset. It’s not fair to blame Gauld for the effects of widespread social forces. Instead, we should credit Gauld and the lay leaders for managing to keep First Parish alive during the Depression.

Gauld retired in 1938, and was followed by Harry C. Meserve, a talented young minister. After four years, Meserve moved on to a larger, better-paying congregation. He was followed by Walter Pedersen, who within a year needed to take a part-time job at the Hingham shipyards to make ends meet. The congregation did not approve of this, and Pedersen resigned. Then the congregation called Roscoe Trueblood, who came to Cohasset in 1945. He was well-liked, but left after four years for a better-paying position in Seattle.

That made three ministers in eight years who left First Parish because of low pay. It turns out that Frederic Gauld’s wife had an independent income, so the congregation was able to get away with paying a small salary during the Depression. But the ministers who followed Gauld were neither willing nor able to accept low pay. Inadequate compensation had an adverse effect on the relationship between minister and congregation.

After Roscoe Trueblood left, First Parish called Gaston Marcel Carrier, a talented young minister from Montreal. When Carrier asked for a substantial raise in salary in his second year, the congregation refused. The congregation wanted Roscoe Trueblood to return, and took advantage of this request for a decent salary to get rid of Carrier. I imagine there was also prejudice against a French Canadian, a common bias in New England through the twentieth century. Carrier left First Parish and went on to a brilliant career as minister in Burlington, Vermont.

White man in a black preaching gown standing in the pulpit of the First Parish Meeting House. — Roscoe Edward Trueblood, minister from 1945-1949 and 1951-1968

After Carrier’s departure, a handful of big donors pledged gave money to increase the minister’s salary sufficiently to lure Roscoe Trueblood back to Cohasset in 1951. Together, Trueblood and the congregation were able to reap the benefits of post-war demographics. The 1950s was the decade of church-going. It was also the decade of the Baby Boom. Unitarian churches across the United States grew substantially during this time, and First Parish was no exception. While neither the congregation nor Roscoe Trueblood can take credit for the demographic trends that led to growth, both minister and congregation made First Parish a healthy, happy, and welcoming place.

By all accounts, Roscoe Trueblood was quite a person: a good speaker, a good leader, and a good human being. The congregation was a good place to be during this era: friendly, welcoming to children, full of activity. (11) First Parish reached its highest membership level ever in 1969, the year Trueblood retired — 360 members. (10)

White man with a chin beard, wearing a formal business suit, sitting on a stool in front of the pulpit of the First Parish Meeting House, and playing a guitar. — Edward Trivett Atkinson, minister from 1969-1995

After Roscoe Trueblood’s retirement in 1968, the congregation called Ed Atkinson. Atkinson joined First Parish at a time when people stopped going to church, and congregations across the country began to shrink in size. Some Unitarian Universalist congregations lost three quarters of their members in the 1970s. But not First Parish: there was a decline in membership, but it was slow and gradual. Part of the credit for our success at navigating the troubled times of the 1970s must go to Ed Atkinson. He introduced some big changes. He climbed down out of the high pulpit, and began preaching from the floor. He led an effort to make this building accessible to wheelchairs. He connected with the younger generation by playing his guitar in services. During his tenure, we first began lighting a flaming chalice during Sunday services.

The congregation didn’t always agree with Atkinson’s innovations, but the relationships between congregation and minister remained one of mutual trust and respect. So his sudden death of a heart attack at age 60, on July 24, 1995, was a huge blow to the congregation. (12)

Ed Atkinson was followed by two talented interim ministers, Chuck Gaines and Jenny Rankin. This was the first time First Parish had had interim ministers. Interim ministry emerged as a specialty in the 1970s, to help congregations come to terms with the ending of one ministry, and prepare for a new minister to arrive. Jenny Rankin was the very first woman to serve as minister here, and she helped the congregation to believe that a woman could succeed as a minister here.

In 1997, First Parish called one of the most talented Unitarian Universalist ministers of the 1990s, Elizabeth Tarbox. She was well known in Unitarian Universalist circles for her haunting and compelling writing. But within a year she was diagnosed with cancer, decided not to seek treatment, and died in 1999, aged 55. This was a second huge blow to our congregation, following close upon the death of Ed Atkinson. (13)

During this troubled time, the congregation found a new minister, Jennifer Justice. A charismatic and colorful figure, Jennifer Justice had a background in theatre. Her ministry was not a success, and the congregation dismissed her within two years. First Parish was wise to dismiss her so quickly, but her unethical conduct was yet another blow to our congregation. A few years later, she was forced to resign from ministerial fellowship in the face of a denominational investigation into ethical violations relating to finances. (14)

After two years of interim ministry, the congregation called Jan Carlson-Bull, who served here from 2004 to 2010. Jan and First Parish had six reasonably productive years together. Of particular importance, Jan introduced the Circle Ministry program here, which continues to this day. But eventually tension arose between between minister and congregation. This should be no surprise. Think about what this congregation experienced in the ten years before Jan arrived: Ed Atkinson died suddenly; Elizabeth Tarbox died suddenly; Jennifer Justice had to be dismissed suddenly. Events like these strain the relationship of congregation and minister. It is to the credit of both Jan and First Parish that her ministry continued for six productive years. Jan left in 2010, and went on to a long and successful ministry in Connecticut. (15)

After a two year interim ministry with Anita Farber-Robertson, our congregation called Jill Cowie, a new minister just out of theological school. In many ways, Jill was just what this congregation needed: relatively young, with school-age children, dynamic. However, while Jill related well to some people in the congregation, there were others who did not relate well to her. This kind of divisiveness in a congregation is actually a fairly common pattern in congregations who have had unethical ministers in the past. It also appears that Jill had a different vision for her ministry than some in the congregation. She resigned in 2016, and went on to the Unitarian Universalist church in Harvard, Massachusetts. Recently she decided to leave ministry to become a social worker. (16)

In the twenty-one years from 1995 to 2016, First Parish was served by eleven ministers, two of whom died suddenly and one of whom had to be dismissed. Yet in spite of that run of bad luck, the congregation remained surprisingly healthy; for which I give credit to talented lay leaders who held kept things going in spite of frequent ministerial turnover.

Bob McKetchnie arrived as minister in 2016. Bob’s skills and personality proved to be a good match for the congregation, and the congregation started to bounce back. In March of 2020, the congregation was about to begin a major push for new members. Then the COVID pandemic hit. Yet even though the pandemic was another piece of bad luck, because of good relationships between the minister and the congregation, First Parish weathered the pandemic in remarkably good shape.

As we reflect on the relationships between minister and congregation in the past two centuries, this morning’s reading, the poem by Roscoe Trueblood:

“The minister should lead,” she said,
This she chose to say
Thinking if and when he led
That he would go her way.
But later, when they differed wide,
On points she would not lose,
“The minister should wait,” she cried,
“And let the people choose.” (17)

The relationship between minister and congregation requires constant negotiation. We cannot say definitively that the minister should lead, and the congregation follow. Nor can we say definitively that the congregation should lead, and the minister follow. Sometimes the minister is the leader, and sometimes people in the congregation are the leaders. Because this relationship requires constant negotiation, it helps when the minister and individuals in the congregation are — to borrow from Gilbert Tower’s description of William Cole — quiet and unassuming, friendly and easy in manner with everyone.

It also helps if both the minister and the congregation have a shared vision for what they want to do together. When minister and congregation share a vision, then the words of Joseph Osgood apply: there will be forbearance and consideration, there will be a willingness by all concerned to overlook any mistakes and blunders, and “to take the will for the deed” when we have said and done things which we should not perhaps have deliberately said and done. As with any human relationship, a shared vision allows people to live and work together peaceably in spite of our human failings; and a shared vision contributes to strengthening the connection between people so that we may together strive towards goodness and truth.

Notes

General information is taken from the following histories:
Cole, William R. “One Hundred Fifty Years of the Old Meeting House in Cohasset, Mass., 1747-1847.” Boston George Ellis, 1897.
Osgood, Joseph. “A Discourse Delivered in Cohasset … on the 25th Anniversary of His Ordination as Pastor.” Boston: Alfred Mudge & Son, 1884.
Tower, Gilbert. Unpublished manuscript, 1956.

(1) E. Q. S., “Notice of the Late Rev. H. G. O. Phipps,” Monthly Miscellany of Religion and Letters (Boston: William Crosby and Company, 1842), Feb., 1842, Vol. VI No. 7, p. 92 ff.
(2) “Address of Rev. Joseph Osgood,” Celebration of the Fiftieth Anniversary of the Ordination of Rev. Jospeh Osgood, D.D. (Cohasset: privately printed, 1892).
(3) Joseph Osgood, “Discourse.”
(4) “Twenty-fifth Anniversary of the Wedding of Rev. and Mrs. Joseph Osgood, Cohasset, Thursday, May 20, 1869” (Boston: Alfred Mudge & Son, Printers, 1869), p. 14.
(4) Henry O. Hildreth, compiler, Norfolk County Manual and Year Book for 1876 (Dedham, Mass., 1877), p. 54.
(5) Tower manuscript
(6) Joseph Osgood, “Discourse.”
(7) Tower manuscript, p. 101.
(8) Tower manuscript, p. 118.
(9) Tower manuscript, p. 122.
(10) Membership as recorded in the annual Directories of the Unitarian Universalist Association.
(11) Information about Roscoe Trueblood from First Parish archives, and reminiscences of First Parish members.
(12) Information about Ed Atkinson from First Parish archives, and reminiscences of First Parish members.
(13) Information about Elizabeth Tarbox and interim ministers from First Parish archives, and reminiscences of First Parish members.
(14) Ministerial Fellowship Committee of the Unitarian Universalist Association, “UUA Clergy Removed or Resigned from Fellowship with Completed or Pending Misconduct Investigations,” www.uua.org/uuagovernance/committees/mfc/clergy-misconduct-investigations accessed November 21, 2022.
(15) Information about Jan Carlson-Bull and interim ministers from First Parish archives, and reminiscences of First Parish members.
(16) Information about Jill Cowie from First Parish archives, reminiscences of First Parish members, and other sources.
(17) Roscoe E. Trueblood, I Was Alive and Glad (Cohasset, Mass.: First Parish, 1969).