We sang a song popularized and co-written by Harry Belafonte: Turn the World Around. "We come from the fire, living in the fire, go back to the fire, turn the world around. We come from the mountain, living in the mountain, go back to the mountain, turn the world around. . . . Do you know who I am? Do I know who you are? Do we see each other clearly? . . . " Do we? Do we know who we are? As people? As fellow congregants? As Unitarian Universalists? Today begins a series of sermons telling our story. Do we know who we are? Do we see each other clearly? Do we? Do we know that Unitarianism and Universalism began as separate entities and that only in 1961 did the two denominations merge, as the words of one of our hymns (As Tranquil Streams), commemorates: "As tranquil streams that meet and merge and flow as one to meet the sea, our kindred fellowships unite to build a church that shall be free. So let' s start with the early years of Unitarianism.
Can you tell me when we began, intellectually and theologically? Think back to the 3rd and 4th centuries of the common era. The times before the doctrines of Christianity were set, the times of questioning whether Jesus was the equal of God. Unitarianism per se emerged in the 16th century as the Renaissance spirit of inquiry and humanism applied reason and personal authenticity to religion. This Renaissance spirit challenged the biblical and philosophical base of Christian doctrine. In this vein, four characteristics of Unitarianism at the start are: freedom from creeds or statements of belief, tolerance for different beliefs, the use of reason in religion rather than exclusive reliance on tradition or authority, and an anti-trinitarian stance, which means that the nature of God was understood to be a unity rather than a trinity of father, son and holy spirit. In this understanding Jesus is subordinate to god and not the same as god. Can you recognize us from that beginning almost 500 years ago? We still describe ourselves in terms of freedom from creeds, diversity of beliefs, and the use of reason. Many believe in the unified nature of life. How cool is it to stand in this long, historical tradition and know ourselves then and now?
One of our earliest articulators was a Spaniard named Michael Servetus. In 1531, applying his mind and a personal authenticity to religion, he argues from scripture that Jesus was first a human and is god in a different sense than god is god. The holy spirit is a power of god working through humanity. There is one god who manifests in three dispositions. Just as there is H2O, water, which manifests as water, ice and steam, depending upon the conditions. (Judith Sargent Murray) Servetus modestly called his book Errors of the Trinity. If you think about it, and those of us who were raised in a Christian setting have probably thought about it, there is no completely rational way to explain the trinity: god in three persons. How can that be if there is only one god? How can the holy spirit and Jesus be equal to god and yet somehow distinct? You simply have to take it on faith and either believe or not believe in the trinity. Our Unitarian ancestors could not take it on faith and could not understand it with their minds so they rejected belief. Sound familiar? Servetus' other work, Christianismi Restitutio, asserted that god is everywhere and reveals godself in the creation, in Jesus, in the word. Let me stop a minute and ask you to ponder these issues. I do this to underscore our heritage of pondering and questioning. We cannot stop questioning, we cannot help but seek authenticity in our beliefs without losing our very identity as Unitarians. So, what is the nature of god, if god is a concept that speaks to you? How do we know god? Where is god? What is the nature of Jesus? Do you agree with Servetus? For his ideas Servetus was denounced by the Inquisition in 1553 and he fled to Geneva, Switzerland, a Protestant stronghold, where he was tried and burned at the stake by John Calvin. The death of Servetus brought the question of religious tolerance to the fore, as well it might have. Servetus died but the ideas in his books did not. In Italy, and then in Poland, Laelius and Faustus Socinus preached a Unitarian Christianity. The nature of god is one, not three; Jesus was a man as well as god's son; most important is the moral life of Christians, or deeds before creeds. (This is part of the Rachovian catechism.) The Socinian churches prospered in Poland until the mid-17th century when Socinians were banished, due to Catholic opposition. Some went to Transylvania, some went to Prussia, where they maintained their communities into the 19th century, and some went to Holland, the place of greatest religious toleration.
Also at this time in 16th century Poland, Dr. Giorgio Biandrata, court physician to Queen Bona, was influenced by Servetus. Queen Bona's son, John Sigismund, became Prince of Transylvania and the Queen, Biandrata and he brought these early Unitarian ideas there. (Transylvania lies in the vicinity of modern day Romania and Hungary.) Under John Sigismund, a 1568 Edict of Religious Toleration was issued at Torda, which begins: "In every place the preachers shall preach and explain the Gospel, each according to his understanding of it, and if the congregation like it, well; if not, no one shall compel them, for their souls would not be satisfied, but they shall be permitted to keep a preacher whose teaching they approve. Therefore none of the Bishops or others shall annoy or abuse the preachers on account of their religion... or allow any to be imprisoned or punished by removal from his post on account of his teachings, for faith is the gift of God. This comes from hearing, and hearing by the word of God. (As found in a sermon (8/15/04) by Kay Saucier entitled "Early Unitarianism. Although she dates the quote to 1557, most attribute it to the Edict of Torda from 1568. She states that John Sigismund re-issued the Edict from a 1557 Decree of Religious Toleration. Perhaps the wording appears in both.) Remember that Michael Servetus was burned in 1553, so such tolerance was quite remarkable. The Edict specified four religions as the received ones in that area: Unitarianism, Catholicism, Lutheranism and Calvinism. However, the Edict also required each of the established religions to maintain the status quo and not introduce innovative teachings. You can see that the ever evolving, questioning, nature of Unitarianism would not easily maintain a status quo.
So far the main issues have been three: the unity of god, the humanity/divinity of Jesus, and the freedom of people to question, use their reason, and make their own religious decisions. Added to these now will be a fourth: the freedom to practice religion as one sees fit, including the introduction of innovations.
Kay Saucier, tells the story. "In John Sigismund's kingdom lived a Unitarian preacher of extraordinary talents . . .Francis David. This preacher had a remarkable spiritual journey. He was born a Roman Catholic and became a Catholic priest and director of a religious school. However, his doubts led him to become a Lutheran, and he eventually worked his way up to become the bishop of Transylvania. In his role as bishop, he sometimes debated rival Calvinists. He usually won the debates, but doubts crept into his mind, and he then converted to Calvinism. Debates between the Calvinists and Lutherans continued, and King John Sigismund wanted to work out some kind of common ground, so that the two faiths could live peacefully in Transylvania under the Edict of Tolerance. David worked with Giorgio Biandrata on this project, and the latter influenced David, who subsequently studied the doctrine of Trinity and finally embraced the Unitarian position. . . . He became the leader of the Unitarian faction in Transylvania.
Tensions arose among the Lutherans, Calvinists, and even Catholics now as this strong Unitarian faction arose in Transylvania. King John Sigismund wondered why religious issues couldn't be discussed without wars or inquisitions. He called for a great debate with representatives of each of these faiths, since he felt reasoned argument was the best way to arrive at the truth. The debate began on March 3, 1568, lasted for 10 days and began each morning at 5:00 am. Believe it or not, this was the equivalent of today's Super Bowl, and interest ran high. . . . In a debate based on reason, the Unitarian, Francis David carried the day, not only on the weight of argument but because he was also a talented, entertaining speaker. Plus, not only had he studied each of the religion's beliefs and principles, but he had been a clergyman of each of the religions during his life. The king and most of the audience declared the Unitarian David the winner. King John Sigismund converted to Unitarianism, and David became the court preacher for the remainder of the King's reign. . . "
David, in true Unitarian fashion, continued to question religious practice. In particular he questioned whether Jesus could or should be invoked in prayer and finally decided that he should not. (Today many Christian prayers end with the words "through Jesus Christ our Lord. ) Giorgio Biandrata, for his own reasons, did not support either David's position or his very questioning, and the Catholic king who succeeded John Sigismund, who died at an early age, had David arrested. Biandrata prosecuted David for "innovation." He was sentenced to life imprisonment and died in 1579. His death began two hundred years of doctrinal stagnation. Nevertheless, the Transylvanian Unitarian Church has survived continuously to this day, still asserting that god is one, that Jesus is a perfect human being and that reason must be applied to scripture. Unitarianism as the name of this brand of Christianity was first used in Transylvania in 1600. From there it spread to Holland and western Europe, where we too will now turn our attention.
Remember that when the Polish Socinians were banished some of them went west, to Holland and England, where Unitarian ideas were taking root, and some people were already familiar with the work of Socinus. In the 17th century John Biddle, like Servetus before him, read scripture and questioned the trinity. The Trinitarian Controversy, "as this is commonly called, was started in 1687 by the publication of the Brief History of the Unitarians or Socinians . . . . This tract gave an account of the Unitarians and their beliefs from the early Church down, and refuted the proof texts usually quoted by the Trinitarians in support of their doctrine, ending with the conclusion that those holding Unitarian views of the Trinity ought not to be prosecuted for them, but should be received in the Church as brethren. . . . This controversy was carried on in print by published tracts, sermons, or books. Any publication on one side was promptly answered by one or several on the other. The Unitarian contributions to it kept coming out every month or so for some ten years or more. The most important of them were written by a clergyman of the Church of England, the Rev. Stephen Nye. Although the controversy died down and many Unitarians came to feel a modicum of ease in the Church of England, "in 1698 there was passed the Blasphemy Act, providing among other things that any Christian convicted of denying the Trinity, etc., should be disqualified from holding any public office, and upon a second offence should lose all civil rights forever, and be imprisoned for three years. This section of the act was not repealed until 1813. (Unitarianism Spreads in the Church of England: the Trinitarian Controversy, 1690-1750. (www.sullivan-county.com/deism/uni_engchurch.htm) The so-called Unitarian Relief Act.
"In other words, toleration in England in the late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth centuries was neither equal nor total. In the face of this fact, Unitarians, not a separate denomination until the nineteenth century but rather an increasingly cohesive group with common theological assumptions, became more and more united in protest against religious mistreatment generally, and English foreign policy particularly. . . . the French Revolution and the British declaration of war on France. (Donald Duhadaway in a review of Stuart Andrews' Unitarian Radicalism: Political Rhetoric 1770-1814.) Some Unitarians saw Napoleon as a model for religious tolerance.
By the latter half of the 1700's some Unitarians could no longer stay in the church, while others were actively kicked out. A theologian, Theophilus Lindsay "had begun to entertain anti-Trinitarian views, and to be troubled in conscience about their inconsistency with the Anglican belief; . . . and in 1771 he united with (others) . . . in preparing a petition to Parliament with the prayer that clergymen of the church and graduates of the universities might be . . . "restored to their undoubted rights as Protestants of interpreting Scripture for themselves." Two hundred and fifty signatures were obtained, but in February 1772 the House of Commons declined even to receive the petition by a majority of 217 to 71; the adverse vote was repeated in the following year, and in the end of 1773, seeing no prospect of obtaining within the church the relief which his conscience demanded, Lindsey resigned his vicarage. (Wikipedia, _http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theophilus_Lindsey_ (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theophilus_Lindsey) . The article contains information from the Encyclopedia Britannica, Eleventh Edition, now in the public domain.) In 1774 Theophilus Lindsay gathered a group of people together for Unitarian worship. Benjamin Franklin was among those in attendance at that first Unitarian service. (Lindsey published a book in 1783 called An Historical View of the State of the Unitarian Doctrine and Worship from the Reformation to our own Times.)
While Unitarianism gained ground in England, that country remained not completely hospitable to beliefs not orthodoxly Christian. Joseph Priestley, Unitarian and the scientist credited with "discovering oxygen and inventing the pencil eraser so that one could always start over, saw his lab burned down by an angry mob and himself virtually run out of the country as an enemy of the state. (Perhaps it was his unwise advocation of gunpowder to eradicate superstition.) It was Priestley who established in Philadelphia in 1796, the first church in the United States to be called Unitarian. Even the Anglican Church itself in the United States was changed by Unitarianism. James Freeman, the American born minister, first to call himself Unitarian, led the Anglican King's Chapel in Boston to affirm the Unitarian position and delete references to the trinity in their Book of Common Prayer. At the close of the service we will sing one such Anglican hymn, with language changed by Unitarians. We find, then, the same issues that concerned people in Eastern Europe: the nature of god and of Jesus, the use of reason in religion, and the practice of worship, also concerned people in England. The established churches ultimately did not find a way to keep Unitarianism within the Christian fold. Thus many Unitarians from England emigrated to the United States, bringing their beliefs with them. In the next installment we will look at what happened to Unitarianism when it arrived on our shores.
Our history is a long one and our tradition seeks authenticity. Be proud of it. Do we know who we are? These words by 19th century Unitarian Minot Judson Savage from one of our hymns: "O star of truth, down-shining through clouds of doubt and fear, I ask beneath they guidance my pathway may appear: however long the journey, however hard it be, though I be lone and weary, lead on, I follow thee. I know thy blessed radiance can never lead astray, though ancient creed and custom may point another way; or through the untrod desert, or over trackless sea, though I be lone and weary, lead on, I follow thee. May it be so.
(Sources for Unitarian history are Wilbur, A History of Unitarianism and notes from a course taught by the Reverend Robert Hemstreet.)