Theology – Yet Another Unitarian Universalist

Noted without comment

From “The American Taboo on Socialism” by Robert N. Bellah in The Broken Covenant: American Civil Religion in Time of Trial, 2nd Edition (Chicago: Univ. Chicago Press, 1992), chapter 5, pp. 112-138:

“Inevitably when a dichotomy becomes magnified in such a way that both sides of it are distorted, one begins to suspect the presence of the psychological mechanism of projection. The ‘rugged individualist’ decrying every form of collectivism, above all atheistic communism, as the very embodiment of evil, may be projecting his own dependency needs and needs for community, ruthlessly repressed and denied in himself, onto his alleged enemies. Even granted the unspeakable crimes committed in the 20th century by Communist nations (a close inspection of the history of the century, however, would disclose that such societies have had no monopoly on unspeakable crimes) the morbid anti-Communism of the American right, and the tendency to assimilate every kind of socialist or even liberal position to that of Communism, indicates, I believe, some serious failure to come to terms with the balance between dependence and independence, solidarity and autonomy, that are part of any mature personality or society. This morbid obsession may be a symptom then, not of the genuine Americanism that it claims, but of its distortion and pathology.”

Another point of view

My friend Rabbi Michael is a member of the South Jersey Board of Rabbis and Cantors. They just issued a statement about the Trump administration’s proposal to turn Gaza into a luxury condo development. Not surprisingly, they oppose it on several reasonable grounds. But what I especially like is that they call out the Trump proposal as a kind of ethnic cleansing — something that they are adamantly opposed to. Here’s a PDF of their statement.

As politicians spin off into fantasy worlds, it’s nice to see how religious folk can help keep us grounded in reality. Theology has a bad name amongst the elite classes these days, but training in theology and philosophy includes both training in analyzing texts and discourse, and training in moral and ethical analysis. The latter training is especially important — and seems to be almost entirely lacking amongst the elite classes and the politicians these days.

Critiquing the concept of “White privilege”

I’ve long been uncomfortable with the concept of “White privilege,” mostly because I feel that the concept doesn’t really tell White people why they should give up their White privilege. I envision a conversation that goes something like this: “Hey, check your White privilege.” [reply spoken externally] “Oh, right, sorry!” … [reply spoken internally] ((Wow, I got White privilege? that sounds pretty good, I’m gonna hang on to it.))

That’s not a serious critique of the concept of White privilege. It’s just this feeling of discomfort that I have. Yet the feeling is strong enough that I find myself not wanting to use the phrase “White privilege,” due to some kind of nameless fear that it’s just going to reinforce the behavior in us White people that the phrase is supposed to put an end to.

In an essay titled “How ‘White Privilege’ Obscures Black Vulnerability,” Mukasa Mubirumusoke, a professor at Claremont McKenna College, provides a more serious critique of the shortcomings of the concept. Mubirumusoke ends his essay with this rhetorical question:

“In what ethical universe could the possibility afforded by whiteness to dominate another human being just because they are Black be considered a ‘privilege’? In the ethical universe of white America today, apparently.”

(Parenthetical note: The essay appears on the Public Seminar website, which I hadn’t seen before. Looks like a lot of good stuff there.)

But wait, there’s more. In a recent post on the American Philosophical Association blog, Lewis Gordon offers a constructive critique of Mubirumusoke’s critique. SCroll way down to find it, and (as I understand it) Gordon’s basic point is that Mubirumusoke’s critique is based on Afropessimism, an intellectual approach that Gordon finds unsatisfactory.

In the course of his longer discussion of Mubirumusoke, Gordon asks a question that may provide a better grounding for a critique of “White privilege”:

“[W]hy center so much of reality from white perspectives?… Fanon, after all, stated that the Black (‘Le Noir’) had no ontological resistance ‘in the eyes [that is from the perspective] of the [White].’ But he never claimed the White was correct. The White needs that lie. I can go on, but at this point, it should be clear that I’m concerned that Mubirumusoke gives too much credence to the problematic, almost Zeno-like forms of problematic argumentations of impossibility as well as the concomitant Stoicism of individual resignation — perhaps even ressentiment — that such arguments occasion….” (N.B.: in this quotation, the notes in brackets are Gordon’s.)

Gordon’s philosophically nuanced critique of Mubirumusoke takes the critique of “White privilege” to a whole other level. It’s a level above my pay grade, to be honest. But let’s be clear, Gordon is not some “anti-Woke” political conservative, like the ones who dominate U.S. politics these days. Trump and company cannot take comfort from this philosophical conversation. By the same token, political liberals who get uncomfortable when their White privilege is called out aren’t going to find much comfort in Gordon’s critique, either. Gordon even goes so far as to criticize that idol of liberalism, the individual:

“Added to all this is the larger history of Euromodern thought as emerging with the global expansion of enslavement while centering freedom in its discourse. The history of political theology and its role in racism and the advancement of capitalism offered rationalizations of a philosophical anthropology in which ‘the individual’ collapsed into stoic models of rationalization instead of understanding the fundamental incoherence of an individual, treated as real in and of itself like an Aristotelian substance, or, worse, a minor, or perhaps egologically inflated sense of self as, a god.” (N.B.: in this quotation, the emphasis is mine.)

Whoa. Take that, Ralph Waldo Emerson. Gordon is striking at the root of our theological commitment to “the individual.” Because — following Emerson — we Unitarian Universalists really do have this tendency to treat the self as a god. Which is idolatry. And we are fundamentally opposed to idolatry.

Well, as I say, all this is well above my pay grade. But I’d also say both these essays are worth reading. Every time I read Lewis Gordon, I find myself getting insight into problems that have been bothering me. And based on what Gordon says about Mubirumusoke, he might be another one of those thinkers….

Online resource for practical theology

Practical Theology Hub is a website that says it’s “a space for anyone with an interest in practical theology to share their reflections and explore new ideas.” It’s “not an academic website” but rather publishes short articles from partitioners, academics, students, and “retirees.”

Here are some of the titles of recent articles that caught my eye: “Growing closer to God through stained-glass windows: A dyslexic autistic perspective” (Christianity); “Neoliberalism, Social Inequality, and Christianity of Liberation” (Christian); “Food and interdependence: Responsibility in food donation” (Buddhist); “Avatar Discipleship – Who am I engaging with the avatar or the person?” (Christian); “My Friend, Siddhartha” (Indic religions); “Two Peoples Living in This Land” (Judaism); “Armed Resistance, Islam, and the Limits of Secular Approaches” (Islam).

Jacob Flint’s history sermons

Below you’ll find the text of two sermons (with some annotations) published in 1822 by Rev. Jacob Flint of Cohasset, Massachusetts. While these sermons might appear to be of little interest to anyone except students of Cohasset history, they also contain some interesting theological content for those interested in the battles between the Unitarians and Trinitarians in 1820s Massachusetts.

Two years after Flint gave these two sermons, in December of 1823, he preached two sermons stating in no uncertain terms that trinitarian beliefs were supported neither by the Bible nor by human reason. The 1823 sermons precipitated a split in the Cohasset congregation. In the present sermons, preached in December of 1821, Flint claims that a couple of his predecessors were Unitarians in thought if not in name; in addition, he makes it clear that he agrees with his allegedly Unitarian predecessors. Anyone who heard the 1821 sermons could not have been surprised by the 1823 sermons.

Interestingly, the second of the 1821 sermons includes a long footnote in which Flint carefully outlines how the Cohasset congregation had lived in unanimity for most of a century. He must have been aware of the trinitarian leanings of some of his congregants; was this his way of trying to keep them from splitting the congregation?

I also noticed the way Flint erases the Indians from his account of Cohasset history, confining any mention of them to a short section labelled “Curiosities.” He never mentions how there were Indians who were members of the church in the mid-18th century. As it happens, I’ve just been reading Jean O’Brien’s book Firsting and Lasting: Writing Indians out of Existence in New England (Univ. of Minnesota: 2010), which examines the ways in which the authors of local histories in New England created the myth of the “vanishing Indian.” Flint’s sermons are early examples of that myth.

So there’s more going on in these two sermons than just boring local history!

Notes on the text: OCR-generated text found online was checked against a physical copy of the sermons in the archives of First Parish of Cohasset, and a number of corrections were made. Footnotes in the original have been numbered consecutively, with numbers enclosed in square brackets, and moved to the end of each section (Discourse I, Discourse II, and Geographical Sketch). A few editorial notes have been added, enclosed in square brackets. Pages breaks in the original have been indicated by enclosing “page X” in square brackets. One or two long quotations have been placed in separate paragraphs.

The 1823 sermons: Earlier this year, I put Flint’s 1823 Unitarian sermons (the ones which precipitated the split with Second Congregational Church) on this blog: the first sermon — the second sermon.

Facsimile of the title page; full text appears below.

The sermon that split a congregation

Back in 1823, Rev. Jacob Flint was the minister of the one church that then existed in Cohasset, Mass. He had been ordained in Cohasset in 1798. He was fairly liberal to begin with, but over the quarter of a century he served the congregation he had become an outright Unitarian. So on December 7, Flint decided to preach a sermon on Unitarianism.

I can imagine the scene. He preached this sermon in the Meetinghouse that we still use today, but the old box pews were still in use in 1823. Wood stoves had been put in the Meetinghouse for the first time the previous year, in 1822, so at least people would have been relatively warm for the two lengthy sermons that were delivered each week. Flint would have climbed up into the high pulpit, suspended halfway between the main floor and the gallery. Sadly, he was not a good speaker — John Adams wrote that “his elocution is so languid and drawling that it does great injustice to his composition” (John Adams, Diary, 19 Sept. 1830).

Despite his poor elocution, at least some people in the congregation must have been paying close attention to this day-long Unitarian sermon. Within months the Trinitarians had left in a body to start building their own church just a hundred feet away across the town common. I can just imagine how angry the Trinitarians were after the morning service on December 7, 1823, and how little they looked forward to the second sermon in the afternoon when they would hear even more about how wrong the doctrine of the Trinity was. How they must have steamed and stewed as Flint preached, especially since his preaching seems specially designed to infuriate anyone with Trinitarian leanings.

But this was probably to be expected of Flint, who was an uncompromising man. Years later, Capt. Charles Tyng remembered a time from his boyhood when he had to live in Flint’s house:

“…I was then put under the charge of the Rev. Dr. Jacob Flint, the minister at Cohasset. I soon found that the change was from the frying pan to the fire. Doctor Flint was a large man with a forbidding countenance. He was morose & cross in his family, which consisted of his wife, three sons, and an infant daughter…. I dreaded Sunday, the Dr. was so very strict, made us boys sit in the house, reading our Bibles, or learning hymns…. Dr. Flint was a tyrannical man, and very severe, particularly with his own children. Hardly a day passed without his whipping them. Us Boston boys did not get it so often, although I often felt the effects of the rod. He probably was deterred from whipping those who boarded with him, as his disposition would have induced him, had he not thought our parents would take us away.” (Charles Tyng, Before the Wind: The Memoir of an American Sea Captain, 1808-1833, chapter 1.)

With that preface, here’s the first part of Flint’s divisive Unitarian sermon of December 7, 1823:

Connected to the whole

Brief excerpt from the opening paragraph of a sermon given by Rev. Jacob Flint here in Cohasset, Mass., on 19 October 1823:

“Nature has formed an infinite number of systems, which are parts only of the great whole, connected by a chain which can never be broken without injury to the parts and disorder to the whole…. Being connected, the parts are so constructed that … they are mutually dependent on each other for their support, general utility, beauty, and order. This is true of what is called the natural world, as well as of the moral.”

The text he chose for this sermon was Romans 12:5, “So we being many are one body in Christ, & every one members one of another.” Two months later, Flint precipitated a split in the Cohasset congregation by preaching a sermon in which he attacked the doctrine of the Trinity. I can’t help but wonder if he wrote the October sermon having already observed the beginnings of a split in the congregation, and hoping to persuade people that they were still part of a unity; then by December, he gave up preaching unity and went on attack.

Regardless of the historical background, I find the above passage to be still relevant. It is reminiscent of what 20th century theologian Bernard Loomer called the interdependent Web of Life.

Carlton Pearson is dead

Carlton Pearson, the evangelical Christian preacher who in midlife came to accept the happy teachings of universal salvation, died on Sunday. At his death, Pearson was probably the most widely known and most influential person affiliated with Unitarian Universalism.

When Pearson announced to his Tulsa, Oklahoma, congregation that he was a Universalist, many members of the congregation left. He eventually found a home for the remainder of his congregation — and for himself — at All Souls Unitarian Universalist Church in Tulsa.

Back in 2009, I remember hearing Pearson speak at General Assembly. The GA Web Team wrote an excellent account of that event. I remember thinking he was a charismatic, riveting, and convincing speaker. The GA Web Team’s report quotes him as saying, “Jesus didn’t come to protect us from God, but to reconnect us to God.”

Even if Jesus and God aren’t at the center of your religion, this remains a powerful statement in our Western culture. It is a concise refutation of the widespread Western belief in retributive justice. When we drift away from the ultimate goodness of the universe, instead of retribution we need to be reconnected to that goodness.

I don’t recall that Carlton Pearson made much of an impact on General Assembly attendees in 2009. Marlin Lavanhar, senior minister at All Souls, was Pearson’s co-presenter at General Assembly, and Lavanhar talked about how difficult it was for a White upper middle class church to welcome in well over a hundred non-White Universalists, a welcome that included changes in the worship style of the congregation. The Web Team reported:

“Unitarian Universalist churches, Lavanhar said, ‘have a corner on a very small slice of the NPR listening audience.’ He worries that UUism might become so parochial that it dies out. But Tulsa’s second service [with Pearson’s followers] attracts a different, younger, more racially diverse set of people, who come both for the spirit of the service and the message of Unitarian Universalism.”

Pearson continued to espouse Universalist theology for the rest of his life. He remained an affiliated minister at All Souls in Tulsa, and went on to serve at other congregations as well. In the years after his presentation at General Assembly, the majority of Unitarian Universalists — many of whom are White NPR listeners — mostly ignored Pearson. Unitarian Universalists seem to have a difficult time connecting to, or respecting, Pearson’s message of universal love. This, despite Pearson using the theology of universal love to stand up for LGBTQ rights. This, despite (or perhaps because of) Pearson’s ability to reach beyond Unitarian Universalism’s core White upper middle class audience.

So it is that Carlton Pearson, whose spirit-filled happy teachings about universal Love have touched tens of thousands of people, has had little impact on Unitarian Universalism outside of Tulsa, Oklahoma.

But he had an impact on me, and I find I’m deeply saddened at his death.

Carlton Pearson quotes

Pearson, both as an author and a speaker, is eminently quotable. In his memory, here’s a brief selection of his words:

I don’t fear God and if I was going to fear anybody, I’d fear some of [God’s] so-called people because they can be some mean sons of biscuit eaters, as my brother used to say. — Quoted in The Guardian.

God is not angry with humanity. — Quoted in Christianity Today.

Belief compelled through fear is not belief, it is blind and forced obedience. — God Is Not a Christian, Nor a Jew, Muslim, Hindu (2010), p. 32.

I’m the heretic, and I enjoy that, wear that like a badge these days. … It’s like a tattoo that I can’t wash off. — Quoted in Christianity Today.

Fear of God creates more harm than good for the human race. God isn’t angry with [hu]mankind. But because of erroneous concepts of God, most human beings are secretly angry with God. — The Gospel of Inclusion (2009), p. 149.

We do not need to be saved from God; we need to be saved from religion. We need to be saved from perceptions of God that portray Him as an angry deity with a customized torture chamber called hell, managed by a malcontent called the devil, where we may be forever consigned because we didn’t believe, didn’t believe correctly, or didn’t obey. — The Gospel of Inclusion, p. 6.

Christianity (though not exclusively) has become a kind of survival-of-the-fittest ideology. Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution, particularly the hypothesis about the adaptation to the environment, in many ways reflects the dynamics of most religions. It is one thing to adapt to a hostile environment be developing webbed feet, as the Galapagos Islands lizards did; and another thing to resist the environment by attempting to change, confront, or retaliate against it. Religion does both. It attempts to adjust to the hostility it encounters (in this case, the perceived attacks of science or the refusal of more enlightened people to tolerate its sanctioning destructive acts) by changing its story (creationism becomes intelligent design, for example), and at the same time, it promotes a virulent theology in which we must placate not only an angry, violent God but also Her equally vicious and sinister devil. The result is predictable: intelligent, open-minded people of a spiritual disposition are driven away by blind extremism, and what remains are the cowed and the clueless, more terrorized and enslaved than ever. — God Is Not a Christian, Nor a Jew, Muslim, Hindu (2010)

That idea of a ubiquitous, angry God has created a lot of mental illness on Earth. If there’s one thing I wish I could expel from people’s consciousness, it’s the idea of an angry God, that he hates people, not just wants to punish, but as Genesis says, regrets that he made us. That’s a very human-concocted entity that has never existed for a moment. If there is a devil, it would be that God. — Quoted in UU World magazine.

If I say everybody’s going to heaven, then I can’t raise money from you to get me to keep people out of hell. — Quoted by ABC News.

Jesus didn’t come to protect us from God, but to reconnect us to God. — Quoted by the GA Web Team, 2009.

Says it right in the Bible

Conservative Christians in the U.S. are lining up to tell us that the Israel Hamas war is a harbinger of the End Times. A number of Bible-based preachers are telling their followers to get ready for the Apocalypse.

Robert Jefress of First Baptist Church, Dallas, Tex., recently said: “We are on the verge of the beginning of the End Times…. Things are falling into place for this great world battle, fought by the super powers of the world, as the Bible said. They will be armed with nuclear weapons….”

Actually, nuclear weapons are not mentioned in the Bible….

Greg Laurie of Harvest Riverside Fellowship, Calif., recently said: “The Bible predicted hundreds of thousands of years ago that a large force from the North of Israel will attack her after [Israel] was regathered and one of the allies with modern Russia, or Magog, will be Iran or Persia.”

Well, actually, Russia is not mentioned in the Bible….

John Hagee of Hagee’s Cornerstone Church, San Antonio, Tex., recently said: “Israel is God’s prophetic clock; when the Jewish people are in Israel, the clock is running. When the Jewish people are out of Israel, the clock stops.”

Um, actually, the Bible says nothing about Israel being a clock….

Each of these three people claims belief in the literal truth of the Bible. I assume each one of them also honestly believes what he preaches. While I respect their belief that they are doing a literal reading of the Bible, looking at what they say from the outside I don’t see that any one of these three people shows evidence of a literal belief in the Bible. From my perspective, they are each engaged in substantial reinterpretation of the Bible. Their interpretations veer farther from the Bible’s text than any of the progressive Christians I know. So I think I would argue that they have actually started a New Religious Movement. While this New Religious Movement was originally based on Christianity, it now includes a large proportion of anachronistic beliefs that have little to do with Christianity.

Pure Land

I got interested in the Buddhist Churches of America (BCA) after reading Jeff Wilson’s book Dixie Dharma: Inside a Buddhist Temple in the American South. Ekoji Temple, the one Wilson writes about in this book, was founded by Rev. Takashi Kenryu Tsuji in the 1980s. Tsuji had retired as a bishop of BCA, and Ekoji Temple was one of his retirement projects. In his book, Jeff Wilson quotes Tsuji extensively, and I found I resonated with what Tsuji had to say. As in this passage from Tsuji’s book The Heart of the Buddha-Dharma: Following the Jodo-Shinshu Path:

“Shinran Shonin and the teachers before him explained that the Pure Land was situated in the western corners of the universe, zillions of miles away. It was pictured as a very beautiful place, free of suffering, where everyone is happy. Philosophically speaking, however, the Pure Land does not refer to a specific location out there somewhere. Rather, the Pure Land is symbolic; it symbolizes the transcendence of relativity, of all limited qualities, of the finiteness of human life. In this transcendence, there is Compassion-Wisdom, an active moving, spiritual force. The Pure Land ideal is the culmination of the teaching of Wisdom and Compassion.”

First of all, Tsuji makes Pure Land Buddhism sound a little like Universalism. The old Universalists, coming out of the Christian tradition, said that everyone gets to go to heaven. Similarly, Pure Land Buddhists said that everyone can can enter Buddha’s Pure land, that is, everyone can achieve Buddhahood. We Unitarian Universalists translated the old Universalist ideas into modern terms, and that’s what Tsuji does for Pure Land Buddhism in this passage: “The Pure Land ideal is the culmination of the teaching of Wisdom and Compassion.”

What I like is that both groups have not only translated their religious traditions into Modernity, both groups say that all persons are radically equal. Maybe this is because I know I’m not good enough to be one of those Christians who gets into heaven, and I lack the self-discipline to become one of those Buddhists who reaches Enlightenment. Whatever the reason, I prefer the radically egalitarian religious groups.