Who knows what Sunday it is in the Christian liturgical year? Yes, Pentecostal Sunday, which marks when the Holy Spirit descended upon the Apostles of Jesus, not long after Jesus had died. In celebration of that, I have a story to share from my childhood annals.
I was around 8 and remember our family attending a Pentecostal church where the sermon was always long and boring. The interesting stuff would come later when people were invited forward to receive the Holy Spirit, which in Pentecostal settings sometimes meant speaking in tongues.
In those days, young women wore super short dresses. One of the two clear memories I have from those experiences is having deep concern that,
while those women were laid out on the floor being filled with the Holy Spirit, things were going to show that should not be showing in a public setting, let alone a church. Someone would finally get around to placing a garment over their legs, but never soon enough for my liking.
My other memory is how badly I wanted to speak in tongues. When the preacher made the invitation to come up front to receive the Holy Spirit, I went every time.
Kneeling at the Holy Spirit-receiving bench, hands would be laid on me, prayers would be said, beseeching the Spirit to come into me.
When I wouldn’t end up speaking in tongues, I thought something was wrong with me, that I wasn’t open enough.
I wanted to experience this so much that on one occasion, I employed the fake-it-til-you-make-it strategy, fabricating speaking in tongues. That felt so disingenuous that I only did it once.
Alas, I never ended up speaking in tongues. Not to date, anyway. If it does happen, I’m sure you’ll hear about it in a reflection somewhere down the road.
While I don’t usually use the term ‘Holy Spirit,’ the concept is central in my spiritual life.
I’m recalling another Unitarian minister who said something similar. At a Q&A with Rev. David Pyle during our affiliation process, one of you asked, “As a Unitarian Universalist, how do you experience God?”
David’s answer mirrors my own. Since we don’t deify Jesus or personify God, that leaves us with the spiritual essence of the Divine.
Using our limited vernacular, many progressives would say that experiencing God is holy and spiritual. Holy and spiritual. Holy Spirit.
I’m thinking of the beautiful words of our NCC Belief Statement: We experience God as a presence at the center of our being and of all creation.
The story of my Pentecostal church-going experience is a page out of my history. Today we’ll explore the pages of the Unitarian Universalism history book.
Our journey will include a clever invention, burning at the stake, assassination attempts, and Transylvania.
No, Dracula does not figure into the story, but our nation’s founding fathers do, along with Ralph Waldo Emerson, two major wars, the Selma march, and the turbulent 60’s.
Intriguing, I know, so let’s get started!
As a prologue, we know that, in an effort to tether the Roman Empire to the new Christian movement, Emperor Constantine called church leaders together in the year 325 to establish a theological structure for the fledgling faith.
From this gathering doctrine of the Trinity and Jesus’ divinity, the virgin birth, and existence of hell were approved. (Some would say the Holy Spirit inspired these decisions).
That’s what was taught and believed for a long time. But the development of the printing press in 1439 altered that, because it allowed people the opportunity to read books such as the Bible.
From exposure to what the Bible actually said, questions emerged about traditionally accepted tenets.
A significant event came out of that, known as the Protestant Reformation, lead by Martin Luther in the early 1500’s.
Thus ends the prologue. Now we move into Chapter 1 of our UU history..
A contemporary of Luther’s was a Spaniard by the name of Michael Servetes.
He was a prodigy, able to read Latin, Hebrew, and Greek, which allowed him to not only read the Bible, but original texts of the Bible.
From his studies, he concluded that Jesus did not present himself as or come as God, but instead was a profound teacher.
Servetes believed that Jesus supported diversity of thought and the use of our God-given intellect to form spiritual understanding.
He also had the radical idea that perhaps God was a spirit of life that existed in all of us. He wrote a couple of books about such ideas.
You can guess how this went over with the 16th century religious establishment…
…just like for Jesus when church authorities did not tolerate a new message. His life became endangered, and for years he lived in hiding.
In his Sermon on the Mount, Jesus said blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, and who are persecuted because of righteousness.
Then he goes on to say, “You are the light of the world. A town built on a hill cannot be hidden.”
Perhaps Severtes had his own Pentecost experience, calling him to let his light shine. Coming out of hiding, he went to Geneva, where John Calvin was, with hopes of a discourse about their differing religious views.
This, despite Calvin’s previous threats that if Servetes ever went there, Calvin would ensure that he wouldn’t leave alive.
Keeping that promise, Servetes was immediately arrested, tried, convicted, and burned at the stake, along with all of his books that Calvin could collect.
By then, Servetes had a following, and they decided to move to from inhospitable western Europe to Transylvania (now Romania), which was known to be religiously tolerant. At that time, anyway.
Transylvania’s young King John Sigismund was the first monarch ever to support open and free religious discussion.
Once again, religious openness wasn’t embraced by the existing religious bodies, not by the Muslims or the feuding Protestant and Catholic Christians.
During the 10 years that he ruled, John was the target of 9 assassination attempts.
He died at the age of 30 in a carriage accident.
When this place was deemed no longer friendly, the group migrated to England.
A couple of hundred years pass, and things stay quiet for this group that came to be known as the Unitarians (Uni = one, versus Trinitarians = 3).
It was in England that an American dignitary named Benjamin Franklin heard a Unitarian minister, Joseph Priestley, preach, and he was so moved that he convinced Priestley to bring his message to America.
In addition to establishing many churches in the northeast, Priestley preached to numerous founding fathers, including Jefferson and John Adams.
One sees the Unitarian influence of openness and tolerance in the Declaration of Independence, and half of our first 6 presidents were Unitarians.
A Unitarian service back then was very similar to a typical Protestant service, except for Jesus being God.
That was to change due to Ralph Waldo Emerson and friends such as Thoreau.
Emerson, a Unitarian minister, introduced Transcendentalism, which promoted religion as a deeply personal experience.
For transcendentalists, church structure, traditional doctrines and strict adherence to scripture – the ‘machines’ of religion – didn’t define one’s relationship with God as much as looking within yourself and Creation for spiritual truth.
This had a significant influence on the development of Unitarianism.
That was on the internal side. A big development was also about to occur on the external front. Enter a handful of feisty women during the Civil War.
Many of us know the names Julia Ward Howe, Dorothea Dix, and Clara Barton. Howe is known as a suffrage leader, Dix for mental health reform, and Barton for founding the Red Cross.
All Unitarians, they all pushed for women’s ordination (mostly non-existent then), resulting in the first woman – Antoinette Brown – being ordained in this country.
These trailblazers were deeply justice-minded, and through their influences, justice work became foundational in the faith.
So, in the 1800’s, you’ve got a blending of emphasis on an individual relationship with God (not molded by external institutions), and an emphasis on caring for each other, especially the marginalized.
Then something else arrived when the 1900’s rolled around.
Because of the atrocities of WWI, the likes of which had never been seen, some people started to think more collectively to ensure that another such conflict among humans would never occur again.
Humanism held that all people have value and are worthy of love, and therefore, we need to help each other.
Based on this, another progressive religious group known as Universalists (the 2nd U in UU) helped establish the NAACP and ACLU.
(Universalists got their name based on the belief that all people are divinely created and loved by God, and as such, the eternity of hell made no sense).
It was an interesting dichotomy… Unitarian transcendentalism was more about the importance of one’s internal journey, while Universalists’ humanism was about externally caring for our fellow humans.
Yin and yang, producing balance. God, me, and thee.
For 30 years these two progressive traditions considered a merger, and in 1961 it happened…the Unitarians (God is one) and the Universalists (God is love) formed the Unitarian Universalist Association.
Fast forward to 1965. Martin Luther King puts out a call to clergy around the country to join him for a march in Selma. Everyone knew the dangers.
Nonetheless, 200 UU ministers and thousands of UU lay people go.
Of the 4 killed at Selma, 2 were UUs, one being Rev. James Reeb,
The 60’s and 70’s were rife with social justice…women’s rights, racial empowerment, anti-war, and LGBTQ rights.
The UUs were part of it all, being the first denomination in U.S. history to call an openly gay minister and perform the first same-sex marriage.
These things seem commonplace now.
Women’s suffrage and ordination, compassion for mental health patients, finding divinity in natural settings….these things are givens these days..
But it wasn’t always that way. It was the mindset and heart-set of these people living their faith that paved the way for churches like ours.
People who, like Jesus – in courage and content – blazed new trails.
When Betty and our other founders endeavored to write the NCC Belief and Values statement, they might as well have had a UU handbook as a reference, so similar is the content.
And yet, for all that this faith tradition is and has been, there still exists some misunderstanding about it. Here’s an example…
A number of years ago, a neighbor, upon learning that I was in a UU seminary, said she’d never be UU because she’s not into worshipping grass.
Do you see the unfortunate translation…having a personal relationship with God that is deepened by connection to all of creation, getting boiled down to being grass worshippers.
Throughout these hundreds of years, the religious establishment and its followers can still disavow and consider suspect something that doesn’t mirror itself.
We all know this societal dynamic – misunderstanding leading to marginalization.
As newly minted UUs, we will know it not only as justice-seeking warriors, but now also as recipients.
Some of us have wondered if being misunderstood by some people will deter us and our aspirations to reach the community and grow.
And yet, we here at NCC are strong of spirit. We take to heart the words of our teacher when he said:
Blessed are the pure in heart, those who hunger and thirst for righteousness,
And blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness.
And so, we proceed, undeterred and empowered by our faith and our love.
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