Ratcheting Up

A sermon offered at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Lafayette

October 13, 2001

By Rev. Hilary Landau Krivchenia

Readings

Words of Vaclav Havel

Our world, humanity, and our civilization find themselves at perhaps the most important crossroads of their history now; We have a greater chance than ever before in recent times to understand our situation and the ambivalence of the direction we are headed in, and to decide in favor of the way of reason, peace, and justice, not for the way that leads to our own destruction.

I am saying only this: to set out on the path of reason, peace, and justice means a lot of hard work, self-denial, patience, knowledge, a calm overview, a willingness to risk misunderstanding.  At the same time it means that everyone ought to be able to judge his or her own capacity and act accordingly, expecting that one’s strength will grow with the new tasks one set oneself or that it will run out.

In other words there is no more relying on fairy tales and fairy tale heroes.  There is no more relying on the accidents of history that lifts poets onto places where empires and military alliances are brought down. The warning voices of poets must be carefully listened to and taken very seriously perhaps even more seriously than the  voices of bankers or stock broke But at the same time, we cannot expect that the world -- in the hands poets -- will suddenly be transformed into a poem.

From President William Sinkford of the Unitarian Universalist Association
"These are frightening, difficult times, and though it would be understandable if we responded out of fear, we are called as religious people to think and speak out of our values and our love for one another. And we are called to ask questions and search for paths that can open the way for peace. These issues can be divisive: our country was deeply divided during the conflict in Vietnam, and such wrenching division can happen again.  We must be mindful of our past as we search for a way forward -- in our roles as Unitarian Universalists, as Americans, and as world citizens."

Sermon

Religion has never stood apart from political life.  It’s tripped into public affairs, so to speak, again and again.  I feel saturated by so-called religious voices and yet I feel emptiness where the prophetic voice ought to speak.  As the spirit called to the City.  Last Sunday, we went back in time to Chicago in mid September 1893, and stood with the Reverend Jenkin Lloyd Jones, Civil War soldier, Wisconsin farmer, and Unitarian minister.  We stood with him on the footbridge leading into the Columbian Exposition, as he loved the humanity entering the Fair.  “I saw the swaying thousands of human beings clothed in their right minds, warmed within with genial love.”

Since that time, there has been cause to doubt that genial love – or even the right minds of humanity.  Yet Jones had no illusions about the right minds of humanity.  He could feel all too keenly the selfishness, shortsightedness, dishonesty, and explosiveness of humanity – keenly – just as he felt and saw the beauty and redeeming wonder resting within us.  Jones wanted to demonstrate that all of our diverse ways were simply expressions of one common and yet strikingly various humanity.  Someone – who was it? – told me a joke last week about heaven being this place you arrive and see all these doors labeled Presbyterian, Methodist, Catholic, Baptist, Jewish, and so forth and all the people go traipsing off to their proper doors – some probably sheepishly for having not been to church for a while, some confused because their mother was Jewish and their father was agnostic, their dad was Shinto and their mom was Buddhist and they’re UCC – whatever.  Any way they head to these doors and, after speaking with the divine ticket taker – Peter or whomever else it might be – the door swings open, the person walks through and on the other side it is all one room.  The doors just help people who are so single door-minded to adjust to simple ideas first. 

Jones commitment to interfaith dialogue had been known for a while in Chicago.  The liberal Presbyterian David Swing had tried to organize a liberal Christian Ministers Association but Jones and his good friend – another Unitarian minister – the Rev. James Vila Blake – the man who wrote the covenant that we say together each week – stood apart from the project since the Jewish clergy were not included.  All this many years later we are not members of the National Council of Churches because we stand in that same tradition.  Sometimes we are excluded because we desire a wider inclusiveness.  Anyway – the idea arose that there should be a Christian Congress meeting at the Chicago Exposition.  It was Jones, in conversation with the Unitarian minister David Utter – who suggested that there should be a World Parliament, including every faith willing to share in a spirit of common learning and cooperation.  This larger idea moved many people with its scope -- it seemed worthy of a grand exposition.  A committee formed – of which Jones was the Secretary, and the work began.  It had been long awaited.

Charles Lyttle, in his important book on the Western Unitarian Conference, said that such a congress had been forecast by W.J. Potter – founding president of the Free Religious Association – in 1872.  The Free Religious Association came into being from the tension among Unitarians regarding the need for a Unitarian Creed.  Ralph Waldo Emerson was a founding member, too.  Emerson had been influenced by the religions of the far east, by the sciences, and by the history of the Unitarian church which has always been one of non-conformism.  The members of the Free Religious Association vowed that religion is best served, humanity is best served, that God – if a person should desire to use that label – is best served by lives consecrated to ethical faithfulness and goodness rather than to creeds.  Increased contact with people of other faiths seemed again and again to prove that Christianity had no corner on the market of goodness.  Indeed that its corner was, in fact, rather small.  Openness to other faiths opened minds and hearts to new ethical forms, new teachers, and the recognition that there was a common ground in the human heart beyond the architecture of church or temple.

Potter said:  “Some of us may live to see the day when there shall be a world’s convention of representatives of all the great religions of the globe, coming together in a spirit of mutual respect, confidence, and amity – not to make a common creed but emancipated from bondage to creed and sect, to join hands in a common effort to help humanity to higher truth and nobler living.”

Jones was the architect of the Parliament.  According to Lyttle, Jones orchestrated the committee structure, nominations, and tempered the tone for much of the event.  You can hear his voice in many documents.  In the weighty two volume record of the event published by the Parliament Press, the introduction actually mentions the dream of the Free Religious Association some twenty years before.  Lyttle called Jones the real feet of the parliament.  Having been engaged in such work it seems daunting.  A letter was drafted to invite religious leaders to the occasion.  It was then sent to around three hundred people to see if the wording was fitting.  Writing by committee – anyway – that is how it began.  After the letter was approved, it was sent to religious leaders around the world.  Thomas Graham’s words ring true -- "The Parliament was a kind of religious Rorschach test…denounced as a betrayal of Christ, praised as a forum to demonstrate Christian superiority, encouraged as a movement toward world peace, urged as an opportunity for the study of comparative religion, sneered at as an exercise in futility.  Liberals saw it as a death-blow to bigotry and a demonstration of the religious unity of mankind.”  The responses came in and were a global canvass of religious intention and vision. 

One of the most notable persons to decline the invitation was the Archbishop of Canterbury.  He said “The difficulties which I feel rest on the fact that the Christian religion is the one religion.  I do not understand how that religion can be regarded as a member of a Parliament without assuming the equality of the other intended members and the parity of their positions and claims.”  The Archbishop continued with other objections based on more detailed doctrine but you get the idea…he didn’t attend.  In fact, at that early Parliament, no one was asked to accept the religion of another as equal – only as deserving of respect and a hearing.  Rev. Herbert Stead wrote “no one will be expected to regard other faiths as equal to his own. But he also pointedly added that “the religion so big with its own authority that it cannot stoop to hear, understand, and welcome the worth of other human strivings after God seems but a sorry caricature.”  Still it seemed clear that there was a good bit of ground to cover before people might really span their differences and see the divine in one another.  The Sultan of Turkey declined the invitation.  Buddhists were wary to attend feared that efforts would be made to unbalance them on foreign soil and convert them.  Therefore, the Parliament declared that every religion would be free to speak in its confidence and that no arguments would be entertained over differences nor any effort be made toward conversions. When the Buddhists did arrive they reminded the assembled that the Buddhist king Asoka – more than 2400 years before had called a meeting of one thousand wise spiritual teachers of different schools and traditions to Buddh Gaya – the place where the Buddha had achieved enlightenment.  Asoka asked them to talk of their differences, learn from one another, and then travel far and wide and teach people the diversities of belief.  Thousands of years later this, too, would be a time for listening and learning.  Any minds changed would, doubtless, be changed for the best.  A missionary based in China wrote to say that he hoped the Parliament would inaugurate a new of missionary success.  The Rev. William Channing Gannett – friend of Jenkin Lloyd Jones, wrote to say that “Whoever cares for freedom, fellowship, and character in Religion must needs wish the beautiful hope success.”  To hear the subtext here I just want you to know that freedom, fellowship, and character in Religion was, in fact, the motto of the Western Unitarian Conference.  And different invitee wrote to say that he hoped in such a positive setting the best religion would come to the fore.  May the best religion win.  The Hindu teacher Vivekananda, came to ask that missionaries feed bodies before having the audacity to try to convert souls.  A Muslim leader hoped that the Parliament would make it possible for Westerners to see Islam in a kinder light.  There were speakers who spoke of the all but lost religions of Indigenous people.  Yet, above all, without knowing how, the Parliament hoped as a whole to honor the divinity that has manifested itself in countless ways throughout the world. There were great hopes – among them that this Parliament would end sectarianism and usher in a new era of peace.  One speaker said “when the religious faiths of the world recognize one another as brothers, children of one Father, whom all profess to love and serve then will the nations of the world yield to the spirit of concord and learn war no more.”  It would be hindsight to point out that in most of the world’s major religions – Judaism, Christianity, Islam, in the creation stories of almost all religions – there are siblings and they usually do away with one another.  Perhaps the struggles in which we find ourselves now would be alleviated if we could see them as the young squabbles of siblings and work as a planetary grown up to heal our family system.

In September of 1893 the hope was that these kin would find a quicker way toward peace and toward the world of art, progress, science, beauty, and justice that was portrayed in every structure of the Columbian Exhibition. 

And all of the talk was not about fellowship and brotherhood -- women were admitted as speakers and played a central role.  Not there just to talk about women’s issues – though they did that – Rev. Antoinette Brown Blackwell spoke on Woman and the Pulpit.  Women were also concerned with the souls of all and spoke as ministers, teachers, activists – and Unitarians and Universalists.  Elizabeth Cady Stanton, the religious radical, spoke of the religion of God in humanity.  Jane Adams, who revolutionized social activism, a good friend of Jenkin Lloyd Jones, also addressed the assembly.  Julia Ward Howe, Unitarian composer of the Star-Spangled Banner, came forward, amid cheering adulation, to share a poetic dream of the unity of humankind as a divine net.  The Rev. Ida C. Hultin – Unitarian minister spoke about the relationship of religion to crime.  The Rev. Olympia Brown spoke of the ability of religion to ease the heart and sharpen the conscience.  The women whom Jenkin had supported in the Iowa Sisterhood spoke to the religious leaders of the world.  It was a time of courage and vision and, to be honest, in the heart of it all were Unitarians and Universalists – quietly trying to change the world.  Quietly – but wordily.  Maybe not so quietly.

            Col. Thomas Wentworth Higginson spoke at the Parliament – once a Unitarian minister, soldier, publisher, and writer, and the one time ally of the ill-fated John Brown – Higginson spoke with frankness and called the gathered religions to do real work – close to the ground.  Where lofty ideas do the most good. 

Last week I didn’t mention the Ferris Wheel – beloved and related to a few members of this congregation.  It was invented and unveiled in honor of the Chicago Columbian Exposition.  A technical marvel.  When you go to Chicago there is still a Ferris Wheel in the Heart of Town – at Navy Pier like a glittering specter hovering around the old Fair Grounds – turning in memory of days of naïve promise.  Colonel Higginson likened the Parliament to a ride on a Ferris wheel.  The point in the ride in which we become aware of the grand view of things and revel in it – how lofty the height and then the recognition that there are others on the ride with us – on the one hand it’s reassuring – on the other it’s a challenge.  The people become part of the view, of the experience – as the ride turns back toward earth the others will come back to earth and walk about with us.  Higginson called the parliament back to earth – “Let us ask ourselves how well any of us have dealt with the actual problems of human life?  When it comes to that, after all, have any of us so very much to boast about?”

Higginson reminded every one that at the time that the Constitution was adopted, in 1788, five thousand people walked through the streets of Philadelphia. He told of how a place was reserved in the procession for clergy and that in that place two Christian ministers and a Rabbi walked together -- symbol of our religious toleration.  Not a Christian Nation – but an inspirited, ethical nation.  By the turn of the nineteenth century, the constitution was stretched and tattered – certainly by the struggle over slavery.  The less sectarian spirit of the founding fathers was fading. Higginson said: “The greater religions of the world are but larger sects – our name for it is but an accident of birthplace.  Other nations must pass through their own doors and all will come at last upon the broad ground which bears no man’s name.”  The parliament ended in goodwill with all religions affirmed and hope abounding.  The Chair proclaimed, “the parliament has, indeed left its mark upon all subsequent generations.”  Indeed today -- our doors are flung open, we mingled and mix our faiths at times, we encounter one another and thousands are ready to see a holy light shine in one another eyes.

The broad ground which bears no one’s name – we grope toward it – losing the path daily. The world is sundered into conflicts made to seem the conflicts of religion.  Today the nation that longed for a democratic spirit – under no one God – but under a call to ethical consciousness for which God was the easiest word – is pressing toward single-doors, and simple minded solutions to complicated question.  The bridges between us waver.  The siblings crouch in separate corners and come out to scratch and struggle – over names, dress, habits, and language.  But humans will find grounds to fight until another path is taught and learned. 

So – did the parliament fail?  Did the miracle we hoped for fall from sight? Two further parliaments have been held – one in 1993 and the other in 1997.  You know in your own hearts that our lives have been transformed – the world has been transformed by our ability to know one another better – but this is not the easier path – remember the hermit who has achieved enlightenment thinks so because no one tests him – the path of community is the harder path.  And few really choose it.  But – and you know I have to go here – we choose it – Unitarian Universalists choose it.  It is our history and tradition -- whether you knew that when you walked in the door today or not.  In part you came because you would be free to believe as your conscience dictates – use the label of God or not, hold the Bible dear or not, cherish the world’s religious traditions as the gifts of human creativity or not.  You wanted freedom for yourself -- but the freedom you long for is dependent upon the freedom of every person in this room, in this city, around this world.  This is the heart of our reasoned faith – it cannot survive as one heart locked inside a single chest.  It was no accident that we were in the core of the World’s Parliament of religions -- that is our heritage – opening the doors of the mind, seeking the deeper truth, advocating the common and holy good.

This is not only our sanctuary – this is our workshop.  We celebrate freedom but more than that we are consecrated to move that spirit into the world – that is our mission – our vision and our tradition.  Jenkin Lloyd Jones said that the Parliament was "the spirits of men and women...out walking on the mountaintops of the human spirit."  I venture to say that we have greater love now than ever before, deeper understanding,  righter minds – but we are tested now for the courage – the strength of heart to serve our times.  

Our work is needed and when we show up here on a Sunday we’re like those who came to that Parliament – we’ve canvassed our hearts and chosen to serve a common good.  While the world turns like a Ferris Wheel and the voices of leaders decree our futures – we are not helpless – we have this tradition – our deeply American tradition – to stand upon – to find strength in and to speak for.  We can see the heart of the wheel – and the certain center.  Therefore, in this time – the times that is given us – and in this church – this temple that is built of your hearts and minds -- find strength here – and love.  And over the next weeks – months I ask you to canvass your hearts again and let us call ourselves off the mountaintops and be generous with our faith and generous with our world – every Parliaments fails without our daily work as every Sunday fails without the week that follows.  Olympia Brown – who spoke at the Parliament also said  Cherish and serve this faith – so do let us make every week in honor of this beloved and yearning community that gathers here – children and adults and let us dedicate every act and every to keep alive the greater Parliament – the Parliament of all Souls.