Anna Olsen and the Rev. Clark Olsen

February 24, 2008

Anna Olsen is a trustee of the UUA of Congregations from the Thomas Jefferson District and has been a UU for 32 years. Her husband is a retired UU minister and was minister-coordinator at the Berkeley Fellowship when he journeyed to Selma, Ala., in 1965 to take an active part in the civil rights movement. The Olsens have been members of the Asheville congregation for 20 years.

Anna Olsen:

          Unitarian Universalism saved my soul 32 yeas ago, and I was in such great need of saving I needed to marry the minister. I am very blessed. I live with a holy man and view that as a true blessing.

          We would like to do an activity that would involve 16 volunteers that Clark will be selecting. It’s part of the context for you to understand some of what we’re talking about.

          [The activity lasted 12 minutes, during which Clark Olsen chose one "volunteer" after another, ushering each to in front of the pulpit, at first selecting people in front, but progressively moving farther and farther back, accounting for the increasingly longer pauses in Anna Clark’s presentation. ]

          You represent the first generation of West African people who came to this world in slavery, coming in the year 1619 to Jamestown, Virginia.

          [Clark ushers the first "volunteer" roughly in front of the piano, facing the congregation. He positions the second beside the first, and so on, so at length there is a row of 16 people.]

          You represent the children of those people. You were born between 1625 and 1650 and you remained enslaved...

          You represent the children’s children of those Jamestown slaves. You were born between 1650 and 1675 and you remained enslaved.

          You represent the children’s children’s children of those Jamestown slaves, born between 1675 and 1700, and many of your generation remained enslaved . . .

          You represent the children’s children’s children’s children of those Jamestown slaves, born between 1700 and 1725. Many white people have come and taken land for their towns and cities, and cities and towns are doing well. You remained enslaved . . .

          You represent the children’s children’s children’s children’s children. You’re born between 1725 and 1750. The Indians who used to live in the area have been driven out to make way for the expanding number of cities and towns in these British colonies, but you still remain enslaved . . .

          You represent the children’s children’s children’s children’s children’s children. You are born between 1750 and 1775. These British colonies have begun a wave of independence, stating that all men are created equal. You remain enslaved . . .

          You represent the children’s children’s children’s children’s children’s children’s children, born between 1775 and 1800. These British colonies are now a country, the United States of America. Many native people have lost their lands as the United States has become bigger and bigger. The cotton gin has been invented, meaning that farmers can now grow lots more cotton and make lots of money. It takes lots of people to take care of cotton. Many white people choose to get the help they need with the cotton by buying more slaves. Thousands more West African people kidnapped from their homes arrive in chains. You remain enslaved . . .

          You represent the children’s children’s children’s children’s children’s children’s children’s children. You were born between 1800 and 1825. This country is twice as big as it was a few years ago. Many white people are going west looking for more places to build towns and cities. The cloth mills in the north are hungry for cotton, so farmers in the south grow more and more, needing more and more slaves. As more and more slaves arrive, you too remain enslaved . . .

          You represent the children’s children’s children’s children’s children’s children’s children’s children’s children born between 1825 and 1850. The Indian Removal Act of 1830 is pushing Indians from their land. Many Indians are dead, are slaughtered. In 1848 the United States takes a huge piece of Mexico and now rules over its Spanish-speaking citizens. There are now groups of people writing and speaking against slavery, but you still remain enslaved . . .

          You represent the children’s children’s children’s children’s children’s children’s children’s children’s children’s children of the Jamestown slaves, born between 1850 and 1875. The country has fought a civil war. The railroads have been built by Irish and Chinese workers. The Indian wars continue in the west as small groups of people are forced into lands called reservations. Slavery has been officially outlawed. You are no longer a slave, but people in power are working hard to limit your own rights. You have been given no property or compensation for all of the slave labor of all of your ancestors . . .

          You represent the children’s children’s children’s children’s children’s children’s children’s children’s children’s children’s children. You are born between 1875 and 1900. There are now laws limiting who may come into this country and who may not. The Supreme Court has declared that whites and people of color ought to be separated. You are no longer a slave but the laws say you have fewer rights and privileges than white people . . .

          You are the children’s children’s children’s children’s children’s children’s children’s children’s children’s children’s children’s children. You’re born between 1900 and 1925. A world war is fought in this time, and women are finally allowed to vote. You still live and work under laws that separate you from white people . . .

          You represent the children’s children’s children’s children’s children’s children’s children’s children’s children’s children’s children’s children’s children born between 1925 and 1950. The country suffers a great depression, and many people lose jobs, and then fight in a second world war. Just as in the rest of society, people of color in the Army are kept separated from white people. Whole towns full of new homes are built after the war for the returning soldiers. People of color are not allowed to live in those towns . . .

          You represent the children born between 1950 and 1975. This is the time of the Civil Rights movement and of Martin Luther King Jr. At long last, at long last, the children’s children’s children’s children’s children’s children’s children’s children’s children’s children’s children’s children’s children’s children of the Jamestown slaves have achieved equality under the law . . .

          You represent the generation of today. You are only the second to live in this country since slavery and segregation were outlawed. It is up to your generation to retell this story of the past, to understand the struggle, to have dreams about the future. [long pause]

          We cannot help but weep in sorrow for our past. Thank you very much.

          That piece was written by Gayle Forsyth-Vail, who is the director of religious education of the Unitarian Universalist congregation of the north parish of North Andover, Mass. We thank her for her writing.

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Clark Olsen:

          I would like to tell you briefly about one episode in that next-to-last generation—that is, the episode in Selma, Alabama, following "Bloody Sunday" on March 9, 1965. A fellow named Jimmie Lee Jackson had been killed by a state trooper just a month before in a voting rights drive near the town of Marion, Alabama, and there was such outrage that this killing took place by Governor George Wallace, the governor’s, state troopers. There was such outrage that they decided to have a symbolic march, in effect to carry Jimmie Lee’s body, or spirit, or memory, and lay it on the doorstep of Governor Wallace in Montgomery. Therefore, the Selma-to-Montgomery march was devised.

          And on that bloody Sunday, Martin Luther King was not there, but John Lewis and Hosea Williams and some others, most of them blacks, marched across the [Edmund Pettus] bridge. They were met by Sheriff [Jim] Clark’s deputies and state troopers, and they were beaten and tear-gassed and whipped, and horses ran over them, and John Lewis, for one, had his skull fractured in that beating. No one died, but there were many, many injured. The state troopers and deputies even followed people into their homes and continued their beatings.

          The television broadcasts brought my attention to it and that of millions of others. The next day Martin Luther King invited clergy to come from across the country, to come on Tuesday. I heard the invitation. I didn’t think I would go. Didn’t have enough money, had a church meeting or two, but a telephone call from a member of my congregation in Berkeley, Calif., said they would pay my way. So my excuse was taken away and I decided to leave, thinking that, of course, with clergy coming—nuns priests, rabbis, ministers—there would be no problem; certainly these deputies and state troopers would not attack.

          I arrived in town. The march by the clergy had already taken place by the time my plane, having been delayed, got there, and I gathered in front of the Brown AME chapel and heard Martin Luther King say, Go on off to dinner and come on back tonight at 7:30 and we’ll talk further about what we’re going to do. I looked around among the hundreds of clergy there. There were many UU ministerial colleagues. I happened to see Orloff Miller and Jim Reeb—I knew them both, Orloff a little more, and the three of us decided to go have dinner together. And we went to a café, which normally was black, but this day, with so many civil-rights people in town, was an integrated dinnertime.

          After dinner we left the restaurant. We had come from the right-hand side as you were going out of the restaurant. We had arrived there from that direction. We turned left to go back to the chapel, and it turned out that was the wrong turn. Halfway down the block we were confronted by three white men coming at us from across the street. We were all three white, but they came at us shouting, "Hey you (using the N-word)"and came at us. We kept walking, whispering to each other, "Just keep walking." And as they came up behind us, and as we were walking, I turned in time to see one of them swing a club and hit Jim Reeb…just above his ear on the left side of his skull, and Jim fell to the ground. Orloff fell to the ground too, in the protection position and was kicked and slugged. I, not having had those instructions on what to do, ran, ran to the corner. One of the fellows ran after me, kicked me, slugged me, knocked my glasses off, but essentially, I was okay. They disappeared quickly; I don’t know why. Maybe they thought the damage had been done. Nobody else was around on the street at that moment that we saw. I went back to Jim and Orloff. Orloff was able to get up, he was okay, but Jim was not. He was babbling and incoherent.

          We decided that the best thing to do was to try to get him up and walk him to an insurance agency that happened to be nearby that they knew about, the Boynton Insurance Agency, so we were able to get him up, he incoherent, babbling, with his arms around our shoulders. We walked him over to that insurance agency, where he lay down and was in great suffering. They called an ambulance and managed to get him to an infirmary, a black infirmary, and there a Dr. Denkins looked at him, saw how badly he was injured. There was no blood showing. It was all internal injuries. It turned out [to be] massive bleeding on the inside from his smashed skull. We called over to the AME chapel, which was the headquarters of the march and where by then Martin Luther King was speaking. We called there and told them what had happened, and the message was passed to King as he was speaking, announcing: "I’ve just been told that three Unitarian ministers have been hit and one possibly suffered a skull fracture, and they’re on their way to the University Hospital in Birmingham." Which we were. We got in the ambulance to go toward the hospital, and just outside of town the ambulance had a flat tire. And it was very frightening. We were on this rural road, no traffic going by, but just as we stopped, considering what we should do, a carful of white men came up behind us and stopped. We tried to radiotelephone—that that was before cell phones—for an ambulance, and it turned out that the radiotelephone didn’t work. And we had thoughts of conspiracy: Who’s behind this? What’s happened? Flat tire. No telephone. Car behind us. Rural road. Images came to our mind about what had happened just about four months before. If you remember ""Mississippi Burning," they found the bodies of Schwerner, Chaney, and Goodman in a ditch in Mississippi, just four months or so before, and I thought that night that I was going to be in a ditch somewhere. Everything in me said Run! Get out of this and run! But run where? And there were the guys right behind us. So the only solution we thought of was to turn around and drive back to the edge of town, which we did, on the rim of the wheel, but the five guys in the car behind us turned around also and followed us and parked right beside us in the parking lot of a radio station where our driver worked, and he knew he could make a phone call from there. He left the ambulance and went in to make the phone call. Orloff and I were in the back of the ambulance with Jim Reeb, unconscious by then. In the infirmary I had held Jim’s hand, and he had squeezed my hand tighter and tighter until he was in increasing pain until he went unconscious, so I was the last with Jim, as it were, before he went unconscious. An ambulance finally arrived, and meanwhile the white fellows who had followed us had gotten out of their car and walked around to our ambulance, and there was knocking on the windows, making unfriendly sounds . . . but they never attacked us, they never attacked us. But we were very, very afraid. The second ambulance came, and at that point I realized I had to get out of the ambulance and be with those white fellers...When I got out of the ambulance, one of the fellows came up to me and said, "Hey, whah happened?" And all I could bring myself to do was to say, "Please don’t." It was all I had in me to say at that point.

          In fact, we got Jim into the other ambulance and we drove on to Birmingham to the University Hospital, where immediately the doctors of course took Jim into the emergency room. And immediately also, the reporters, tuned in by Dr. King’s announcement at the meeting, were there to meet with us, and so was the FBI. Orloff and I were up till about 1 o’clock in the morning with the FBI and with the reporters. And then we went to the home of a couple in Birmingham who were active in the Unitarian church in social action. They were so active back then in the ’60s that they had a 24-hour armed guard at their home, and we felt somewhat safe going to their home that night when we learned that from the couple who had shown up at the hospital to offer us their hospitality. The hospital also offered us hospitality, but we had this couple and we went to their home.

          The next morning we came back to the hospital, and there were yellow roses there, yellow roses sent by President and Mrs. Johnson. And there were also again reporters. The president had also ordered a plane to bring Jim Reeb’s wife, Marie, and Jim Reeb’s father to the hospital in Birmingham. So President Johnson was paying a great deal of attention to this, right from the beginning. When Jimmie Lee Jackson died, there was no such attention, but here was a white minister who had died, or who was dying. And it took about 24 hours, 36 hours, before Jim finally died. And his death brought enormous public outcry across the country. Thousands of people gathered in various places – 10,000 people on Boston Common, in San Francisco, Washington, D.C., Chicago . . . But Jim Reeb’s death, it turned out, was an event. It had enormous import. And I was there.

          The import was this: Johnson had been urged by civil rights leaders, Dr. King and others, to pass a voting rights bill. At that time and in that generation blacks of course had the right to vote by the constitutional amendment back in the 1860s, but in much of the South that right to vote was cut off by a failure to register. The Southern states used the registration rules of paying poll taxes and passing literacy tests. The literacy tests could be—and often were—so ridiculous that the question might be "Recite the Constitution" or "How many jellybeans in this jar?" or "How many bubbles in this bar of soap?"—anything to prevent blacks from being registered. In the town of Selma, Ala., at that time there were only 200 [registered] out of 14,000 blacks, and as the mayor of Selma said in 1998—he was mayor in ’65; he was still mayor in 1998—some blacks were allowed to vote; they worked for somebody and they could control their vote, but a black professor in one of the black colleges wouldn’t be allowed to pass the registration test. This was said by the mayor of Selma, the white mayor in Selma, in 1998.

          At any rate, there were all these ruses that prevented blacks from registering to vote. So even though they had the constitutional right, they still were not voting at that time. So Johnson was being asked to pass the voting rights bill. But his reply was essentially, "We passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964." That outlawed segregation around the country in many ways, but voting rights was a different question. He said, "I don’t know if we can do that." But Bloody Sunday, the death of this white minister—that made it politically possible to pass the voting rights bill. Jim Reeb was attacked on Tuesday, he died on Wednesday, and the following Monday President Johnson addressed Congress, and in it he said there are times in history when "…history and fate meet at a single time in a single place to shape a turning point in man’s unending search for freedom. So it was at Lexington and Concord. So it was a century ago at Appomattox. So it was last week in Selma, Alabama…Their cause must be our cause, too. Because it is not just Negroes, but really it is all of us, who must overcome the crippling legacy of bigotry and injustice. And we shall overcome."

          And Johnson’s use of "we shall overcome" from the civil rights anthem was the signal, especially from a Southern president, that things had changed. And the voting rights bill was passed in August of that year.

          Martin Luther King sat in a home in Selma that evening, as Johnson gave his address. King had been invited by Johnson to be in Congress as he gave his speech, but King said, "No, I’m scheduled to give the eulogy for the Rev. James Reeb in Selma today, and so I won’t be in Congress." And John Lewis, whose skull was fractured in that Bloody Sunday event, was there in the living room with Martin Luther King, and when Johnson used the phrase "we shall overcome," tears came to Martin Luther King.

          It was, it turned out, a turning point in American history, with the right to vote now firmly ensconced in our way of life and by an incredible, incredible, amazing set of happenstances, I was there, I held Jim Reeb’s hand, and I was there at that turning point in American history, and if I have any great wisdom…my message to you from that is if there’s a time when you see something that’s wrong, when you see an injustice, when you hear people say words that are degrading to other people, step up, say something, do something. You never know what might happen. It my case, it was amazing. Thank you.

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Anna Olsen:

          This is a quote from Wayne Muller in his book How, Then, Shall We Live?: "We become what we love. Whatever you are giving your time and attention to day after day, that is the kind of person you will eventually become."

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          You cannot look at these sixteen generations of people with only the last two having had freedom to vote in this country and not feel an obligation to do something in this country. UU is a faith of action. We are not a faith of deep prayers and long hope for eternal life somewhere else. We are here today to put our feet into action for causes of justice—now. I call on you in whatever you are doing to do more. You stand in privilege in that all these generations have given you what you have today. I don’t care whether you grew up in the South or the North. The North had slavery for 200 years; the South had slavery for 300 years. But that last hundred years the North was raking in huge profits in factories making products of cotton and they were also bringing slaves to this country on ships. You have to be aware of your past, and you have to work to compensate for this horrendous past that we stand to benefit from. We didn’t ask for it; we didn’t create it; we didn’t make the decisions that our ancestors made, but we have benefited from it.

          The fire of commitment. The civil rights movement created a lot of fire in people, but that’s now two generations ago. That was 40 years ago. We need a fire today.

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         I am so proud to be a Unitarian Universalist. I have no problem in telling people what it means to be a Unitarian Universalist: I am a Unitarian, I believe in one God, and I believe that that God is inside each of us, and that God is asking us to do the right thing. And I am a Universalist: I believe in universal salvation. All of us are worthy of being saved. The dignity and worth of all of us is important to me. I don’t have to work on my elevator speech. It’s very short. Just tell people you go to the church that doesn’t believe in hell. We believe in here and now, and we believe in making it a better place. So we as individuals have to do our work, and we come together and we are a congregation and we can do more because we are a congregation.

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"Unitarian Universalist Abolitionists"

          Let us speak of "selective memory." The human memory is a selective thing. For the sake of our sanity, we have a tendency to elevate the good and minimize the bad. Our heroic moments are amplified, while our failures sink into the misty reservoir of repression. I remember that one time I hit a baseball all the way to the top of the fence more than the many times I struck out.

          When people search their family history, they are more likely to report the success story of the immigrant who did well than the ancestors who spent time in prison. We have a vested interest in considering ourselves worthy individuals. We like to think we are good people who come from good stock. And so it is when we consider our religious heritage.

          Christians prefer to remember the beautiful cathedrals more than the Crusades; atheists prefer to remember the many advances in science to memories of the Soviet Union. So, too, we Unitarian Universalists prefer to remember our ever-expanding quest for human liberty to our elitist complicity with the status quo.

          We like to remember that Thomas Jefferson said, "All men are created equal." We’d like to forget that he owned slaves. Our Regional District of Unitarian Universalist Congregations is named for Thomas Jefferson. It is good to name our district after the author of religious freedom. It is bad to name our district after a slaveholder. Our district has struggled and will continue to struggle with this unfortunate reality. The situation will be more closely examined in our upcoming anti-racism conference.

          It is but one example of a truism: We seldom find good and evil in their pure forms. They are often co-mingled. Our lives, our families, and our religious heritage are not pure. So, how to find the path to purification? There are two. The first is selective memory, whereby we profess the good and repress the bad. The second lies in confronting the bad so that we do not make the same mistakes again.

          Our history is a mixed one. In contrast to the Unitarian Thomas Jefferson’s complicity with slavery was his friend, the Universalist founder, Benjamin Rush, who wrote in 1773, "The plant of liberty is of so tender of a nature, that it cannot thrive long in the neighborhood of slavery. Slavery is a Hydra sin, and includes in it every violation of the precepts of the Law and the Gospel." (An address to the Inhabitants of the British Settlements in America, upon Slave-Keeping, 1773)

          Along with Benjamin Franklin, Rush formed the first antislavery organization in 1776, and wrote the abolition of slavery into the founding documents of the Universalist Church. In 1790 he wrote, "We therefore recommend a total refraining from the African trade, and the adoption of prudent measures for the gradual abolition of slavery of the Negroes in our country." (Articles of Faith, Universalist Convention, Philadelphia, 1790 [Edited by Rush])

          But he also differed from Jefferson in that he thought God should be acknowledged in the U.S. Constitution and that Bibles be distributed to every household at government expense.

          Perhaps the purest example of Unitarian abolitionist sentiment is Lydia Maria Child. She was the author of children’s books and homemaker guides. Her most famous poem is the one that begins, "Over the river and through the woods to grandfather’s house we go." In 1833 she wrote a book entitled An Appeal in Favor of That Class of Americans Called Africans. Here are some excerpts.

          "The personal liberty of one man can never be the property of another."

          "We first crush people to earth, and then claim the right of trampling on them forever, because they are prostrate."

          "They have stabbed themselves for freedom—jumped into the waves for freedom—starved for freedom—fought like very tigers for freedom! But they have been hung, and burned, and shot—and their tyrants have been their historians."

          As a northerner she was appalled at the peculiar institution of the South, but she also recognized the complicity of the North, noting, "While we bestow our earnest disapprobation on the system of slavery, let us nor flatter ourselves that we are in reality any better than our brethren of the South […] Our prejudice against colored people is even more inveterate than it is in the South."

          Lydia Maria Child’s minister was William Ellery Channing, the founder of Unitarianism. He led the most respected church in Boston; many of his parishioners were wealthy shipping magnates who profited from the slave trade. His was the liberal voice of the ruling class, the well-educated white people in America. Like UUs today, he lived the tension of being liberal and being part of the dominant power structure. It is important to note that while liberal in comparison to his peers, he was merely moderate when all classes of America were taken into consideration. Early in his career he accepted the state support of his congregation. He was reluctant to alienate a large portion of his parishioners. But at the urging of Lydia Maria Child, in 1835 he wrote a book entitled Slavery, and made the following statement: "Now does not every man feel that nothing, nothing, could induce him to consent to be a slave? […] Can he pretend, then, that in holding others in bondage, he does to his neighbor what he would that his neighbor should do to him. "

          His arguments were high minded and less radical than Child’s, but his impact was greater because of the status he held in society. Nevertheless, his elevated status prevented him from calling for true freedom. From the same book: "It may be asked, whether I intend that the slave should be immediately set free from all his present restraints. By no means. Nothing is farther from my thoughts. The slave cannot rightfully, and should not, be owned by the Individual. But, like every other citizen, he is subject to the community, and the community has a right and is bound to continue all such restraints, as its own safety and the well-being of the slave demand. It would be cruelty, not kindness, to the latter to give him a freedom, which he is unprepared to understand or enjoy. It would be cruelty to strike the fetters from a man, whose first steps would infallibly lead him to a precipice."

          In short, his argument was that slavery is evil, but it is impractical to end it. It should be maintained for the good of the slaves.

          He argued that there was a good reason for the maintenance of evil. He was concerned about the practical hardships that freedom would bring to former slaves. Social order was held as a greater good than freedom. Like his Unitarian Universalist descendants, Channing was more comfortable articulating the intellectual argument for freedom than in acting in ways that would bring about freedom.

          We UUs like to look back at our history, at the heroes that improved America. We even have t-shirts and websites that venerate famous UUs. But absent from all these lists is John C. Calhoun. There is no doubt that he was a Unitarian: He co founded All Souls Unitarian Church in Washington, DC, with his political rival John Quincy Adams. Also, there is no doubt that he is famous—when he died, there were only 33 states in the Union. And eleven of them, from Michigan to Florida, named counties after him. He was elected vice president under John Quincy Adams and then again under Andrew Jackson, but was best known as the pro-slavery Senator from South Carolina.

          Two years after Channing’s treatise on slavery, Calhoun spoke on the Senate floor in a speech entitled "Slavery as a Positive Good," in which he declaimed: "We of the South will not, cannot, surrender our institutions. To maintain the existing relations between the two races, inhabiting that section of the Union, is indispensable to the peace and happiness of both. But let me not be understood as admitting, even by implication, that the existing relations between the two races in the slaveholding states is an evil: far otherwise; I hold it to be a good, as it has thus far proved itself to be to both, and will continue to prove so if not disturbed by the fell spirit of abolition. I appeal to facts. Never before has the black race of Central Africa, from the dawn of history to the present day, attained a condition so civilized and so improved, not only physically, but morally and intellectually."

          Again, we have a Unitarian arguing that there were good reasons to maintain slavery. Calhoun contended that philosophical arguments against slavery were disproved by the facts (as he understood them).

          Calhoun’s greatest political opponent was Unitarian John Quincy Adams. They had a rocky relationship when Calhoun was Adams’s vice president, but an even rockier one when Adams became the only former president to become a congressman. The same year that Calhoun was defending slavery in the Senate, Adams was defending the slaves who revolted on the slave ship Amistad and killed their white captors.

          Calhoun opposed the admission of Texas as a slave state and resisted the admission of California as a free state. The admission of free and slave states threatened to split the nation. California was admitted but in order for this to happen, the Fugitive Slave Act had to be passed, which it did in 1850. This allowed Southerners to go into free states and recapture free slaves. This compromise preserved the Union for another ten years, even though it violated the states’ rights of the northern states, who wished to determine which of its citizens were free.

          The president who signed this law was Unitarian Millard Fillmore. The Fugitive Slave Act preserved slavery but it also preserved the Union for a time. The preservation of the Union was perceived to be a higher good. There are often good reasons for doing evil. Few people set out intentionally to do evil; they often focus on the good reasons for what they do while ignoring the unintended consequences.

          When we look at our ancestors we can defend their inaction in the face of evil by looking at the good reasons they had for their actions. Or we can venerate their good actions while forgetting the bad. Or we can realize that they are like us—a mixture of good and evil. We too are liable to focus on the good we believe and minimize the evil in our midst.

          We are located in the 27106 zip code, which is 23% black, yet our congregation is less than 3% black. Like Channing, we know the intellectual arguments against segregation. Yet we are not taking the actions that might end the segregation that we practice every Sunday when we gather. Like our forebears, we have good reasons for letting this evil continue.

          Eleven years ago we decided to build in a whiter neighborhood rather than downtown or in a more diverse neighborhood. There were good reasons: It was fiscally more responsible to buy cheaper land; a wooded lot is congruent with the environmental concerns of our faith. We could advertise in black newspapers and on black radio, but there are good reasons not to do so. Focusing on recruiting blacks feels contrived and artificial—a patronizing attempt to assuage white liberal guilt. WFDD and The Winston-Salem Journal reach a larger and more diverse population than The Chronicle or WSNC. We may reach a larger number of minority people through advertising in the largest media outlets.

          We sometimes offer good reasons why the segregation of our congregation is not our fault. Hispanics prefer Catholicism; blacks prefer gospel music. Well, it is also true that most whites in this area prefer to be Baptists. Our membership represents approximately .1% of the white people in this county. Yet we seldom use that as an excuse not to find those whites who are UUs but do not know it. We are convinced of our own goodness. It is hard to see the barriers that create a segregated congregation; we cannot see the white lies that we believe in.

          I do not believe we are segregated because of evil intentions. The many good things we do hide the evil of segregation in our midst. It is painful to look at and it may disturb our peaceful union. We did not choose the evil of segregation, yet we find ourselves worshipping in its midst. Our spirits long to be set free. Our minds can conceptualize the need for freedom. But are our bodies willing to act to bring about freedom? It is easier to fight segregation in the wider community. Are we willing to fight it amongst ourselves?

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Guided meditation for January 27, 2008

Out of the silence

Our hearts speak

They beat the drums of freedom

Through every joy and sorrow,

Persisting.

Let us listen.

Listen to the beating of our hearts.

Our hearts are in the right place.

They call us towards an ideal future.

Let us take heart.

Let us have courage to move our feet

To the drumbeat of freedom

Let us follow our hearts,

To the community of our hearts’ desire.

To a community of love.

Let us listen.

Listen to the beating of our hearts.

Let us unlock our hearts

To the possibility of universal love

Let us unchain our hearts

From the seduction of false comfort.

Let us open our hearts

To the stranger

To the seeker

To all who want to join us on the path of freedom.

In the name of all that is sacred.

Let us listen.

Listen to the beating of our hearts.

Let us bless and be blessed.

"Working Together"

A Sermon by the Rev. Daniel Charles Davis

For the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Winston-Salem

November 4, 2007

          Today the children told us the story of "Stone Soup," a story that tells us how you can make something out of nothing. Starting with just a stone and water, a delicious stew is brewed. All that was needed was to ask for and receive gifts from a variety of people.

          I know the soup that is being prepared for us after service will be delicious. But I am concerned about the metaphorical soup of our community. I have heard several stories and witnessed some events that suggest we are not welcoming everybody’s gift.

          Here, for example, is a story I heard. A member of this congregation saw a person who used to visit here. Our member asked why the visitor had not returned. The visitor responded that she had been told at a potluck that she had brought the wrong food. I do not know more details or who the people involved were. Just one question enters my mind.

          How does one bring something "wrong" to a potluck? Oh, occasionally our potlucks have themes; but we members know that is only a guideline. And whatever was said to the visitor was probably an offhand comment. It is hard to determine whether our member was insensitive, or if the visitor was overly sensitive.

          But this is the type of accident we might be able to avoid—and we avoid it by intentionally letting people know that they are welcome. Even if the person brings a liver and apricot stew, we should be able to find a way to honor the inherent worth and dignity of that person.

          It takes a lot to make good soup; all types of people are gathered in this theological crockpot that we call the UU Fellowship. This crockpot is not unaffected by outside influences. We live in a serious and troubling time. The war and the economy and political strife comprise a fire that may be too high for the soup we are trying to create. Some of us come to this soup pot to escape the fire, yet somehow drift down and get burned at the bottom of the pot. So it is my duty as minister to be a soup spoon and stir things up.

          I want us to think about how we treat each other. I want us to be better. One place to begin is with deciding what type of soup we are going to make. What is our main ingredient? In chicken soup, the main ingredient is chicken; in tomato soup the main ingredient is tomatoes. In this Unitarian Universalist fellowship our main ingredient is our mission statement: "We strive to be an inclusive, supportive community of spiritual freedom, evolving wisdom, and ethical action."

          The main ingredient is what all of the other ingredients gather around. Some of us are here for the community, some of us are here for the spirituality, some are here for the religious education, some for social action. The mission statement or some aspect of it is why we gather.

          So what are the ingredient of this Fellowship?

          Some of our members are salty. Their intensity brings out the flavor of this Fellowship. They push us to be better than we are; they are not satisfied with the status quo; they introduce conflict because they want us to do more, and they want us to do things right. They want to pull out the essence of our mission statement. But sometimes they are too salty. Instead of enhancing the flavor they overwhelm it. Sometimes they need to practice patience. Sometimes we have to wait for the flavor to emerge before adding more salt. Sometimes the salt needs to be blended with the milk of human kindness, and we create a cream of chicken soup. It is a little smoother and easier to swallow.

          Other members go with the flow. You cannot have soup without water; it is what helps all the ingredients to blend. These are the folks who are the connective tissue of the congregation. They are they process by which diversity blends into unity. Ingredients that might be in conflict become complementary when dissolved into the broth. Water is always asking, "Can’t we just get along?" But too much water is bad for the soup. Sometimes a congregation can be conflict-avoidant, and the mission of the Fellowship becomes diluted. The soup loses its savor. Because we are afraid to make waves, we do not challenge each other or the community. We try to stay calm no matter what. But water that gets too calm becomes stagnant. Where our salty members might bring too much conflict, our go-with-the-flow members sometimes do not face up to the challenges of life.

          We need to find a balance. We need each other to fulfill our mission.

          Some of our members are starchy. They support the mission of the Fellowship and are always noodling around in the background, making sure the building is maintained and cleaned, balancing the budget, running the canvass, developing policies, making sure our insurance is up to date. They are responsible; they try to whip us into shape. But most of us just shrug off fifty lashes with a wet noodle. And yet these members are vital to the Fellowship. They increase our welcoming capacity. They stretch the soup and allow us to feed more people. Their work is often unappreciated, so they need to be thanked and recognized. We sometimes say chicken noodle soup, but the noodle always gets second billing. Rarely do we say tomato soup with crackers, but I think it would be inedible without crackers.

          So we need to make all the ingredients of this Fellowship feel welcomed. Some of us add spice, and some add nutrition. Staff always welcomes additional celery, and some of us are pretty cheesy. But it is possible for us to blend together and make something wonderful.

          Our congregation has a mission statement; that is our main ingredient. But we have been trusting potluck to make the soup, and while it works most of the time, there have been times when our soup has been too thin or too salty. Some congregations deal with this by creating a recipe. They are intentional about how they blend with each other. They create something called a "behavior covenant." Is it time for us to remind ourselves how we want to behave?

          Here is an example of a behavior covenant created by the children of the Unitarian Society of Santa Barbara, California: "You can be any religion you like, as long as it doesn’t hurt anyone. Be kind to people. Don’t murder anybody. Be good." These are the promises they made to the congregation: "I promise to listen when somebody is talking. I promise to treat you like I want to be treated. I promise to be friendly." Here is what the children want the grownups to promise them: "I want everyone to treat me like a person, no matter how old I am. I want people to smile and be respectful to me." The children’s covenant: "We will be kind to each other treat people fairly and with respect. That’s how we want people to treat us, no matter how old we are."

          Children have a way of simplifying things that adults make complicated. But sometimes adults get more complicated to indicate precisely what they mean to say. For example: "We, the members of the Unitarian Church of Victoria, British Columbia, agree to treat ourselves and each other fairly and respectfully. We are committed to improving the quality of our lives by supporting one another’s self development, spiritual growth, and the use of our skills and talents in fulfilling and responsible ways." The congregation outlines eight ways to put this covenant into practice. I share with you some excerpts:

          Whew! They must have had some serious impoliteness and conflict up in Canada in order to have such a detailed policy. I imagine we need a covenant somewhere between a simple "Be nice" and the incredibly intricate document from Victoria, British Columbia.

          I open this conversation to you. What are some of the things we do well? Where can we improve?

A Sermon by the Rev. Daniel Charles Davis

For the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Winston-Salem

October 28, 2007

          This week, on November 2^nd, the Roman Catholic Church commemorates All Souls’ Day. It is a day to recognize the faithful departed and to pray for those whose souls are in Purgatory. The day before is All Saints’ Day, which remembers all saints known and unknown. The vigil the night before is known as All Hallows’ Evening, shortened to Halloween in our modern English.

          Europeans honored the dead at this time of year, before the advent of Christianity. It was believed that the veil between life and death was thinnest at this time of year. This is a mystic experience. A mystic experience is anytime that opposites merge: Life and death. Good and evil. Yourself and the universe. Past and future merge into the eternal now.

          Mystic experience arises out of the paradoxes we all experience. We know we are alive and we know we will die. We know we are individuals and we know we are connected to others.

          Most of the time we live in our rational mind, bouncing between polar opposites, pretending we won’t die or planning for our death. Logic is binary; it tells us that something is this or that, like a coin that is either heads or tails. But life does not always fit into neat categories. The mystic experience is when logic slips away, and we see both sides of the coin at once. On top of that, it is like being inside the coin and looking in both directions at once. Emerson once described himself as a transparent eyeball: The idea of seeing clearly and being clear. Some people experience such a state often, some never at all.

          The special music today was from Brahms’ German Requiem. He departed from the traditional liturgical form, which seeks to appease a judgmental god. Instead of Kyrie eleison or "Lord, have mercy," Brahms selects a different text: "How lovely is thy dwelling place, oh Lord." Instead of emphasizing the gulf that separates humans and God, he emphasized living with God, a merging of the human and the divine. He moves from an authoritarian to a more mystical approach.

          I had a similar transition when I was young, remembering myself at age 15 when my mother was dying. I lay in my bed praying and crying and unable to sleep, scared that my world was coming to an end. Then something happened. My Christian upbringing told me it was a hug from God. My degree in psychology would tell me it was a cathartic release. But either way, it was really beyond words—an overwhelming feeling that death was ok.

          The very worst thing in life was ok. I remember living on a different plane for about a month.

          My grandfather died three weeks after my mother. I remember visiting grandma the day he died. As she sat in the chair I saw her both as an old woman and the young girl she used to be. I remember people worrying about me because I was the youngest. I thought, "Don’t they realize that death is not terrible?"

          Grief and joy are commingled. You cannot miss someone when they are inside of you. I learned a truth that is hard to express to this day: The veil between life and death is very thin. One is not good and one is not bad. They both just are.

          The paradox and the mystical experience may be the source of religious expression across the world. But is it just human imagination or is it something more? Is it just a delusion that helps us cope with our fear of death?

          I bring to your attention a book entitled Why God Won’t Go Away: Brain Science and the Biology of Belief by Andrew Newberg, Eugene D’Aquili, and Vince Krause. The authors did brain scans on Buddhist monks and Franciscan nuns as they entered into mystical states. They found decreased blood flow to the posterior superior parietal lobe (which they dubbed the Orientation Association Area). In other words, the part of the brain that orients us to time and space decreases in function. Subjects reported a mystical experience where they merge with eternity and the universe.

          The mystic’s subjective experience corresponds with objective reality. In other words, the religious people throughout history haven’t just made this stuff up. The reports of Buddhist, Sufi, and Christian mystics come from experience. People really do experience being one with everything, or in Christian terms, "merging with the godhead." But are these experiences real or are they just an illusion?

          First we have to struggle with the definition of "real." The brain constructs reality. This helps us interpret the external world. Creating a concept of objectivity, we create descriptions that other individuals come to agreement on. We can come together and decide that the sky is blue. Each person aligns his experience with the social concept of Blueness. What we cannot know is if each person experiences blueness in the same way. In fact, we have evidence that we do not. Some people like blue and others do not. Our individual experience of so-called objective reality varies from person to person.

          Our ability to label things is a benefit to our species, because it facilitates communication and survival. But we must always remember that our labels are mental constructions and not the reality itself.

          Subjective reality is even fuzzier. Each of us perceives some level of self. We create a concept of our self that is separate from our brain. We have a concept of "mind," which is distinct from the mechanical operation of the grey matter. Any concept of self is dependent on neurological function, yet we still see our self as separate from our brain. We say things like "My mind is playing tricks on me" or "I lost myself in thought." These statements are a physiological impossibility. Any concept of "me" is contained in my mind; any concept of "myself" is contained in my thoughts. They are part of brain functioning. They are not separate objects that act on each other. Yet we perceive that they are real and true. We believe that our mind can play tricks on us and that we can get lost in our thoughts.

          So when these mystics say they are perceiving a higher plane of reality, are they perceiving something that actually exists, or is it just a mind trick? If the subjective self and objective reality are concepts constructed by the brain, they might be perceived as artificial. So the mystics who strip away artifice might be in touch with a deeper reality.

          The Sufi mystic Hallaj Husain ibn Mansur wrote, "I am he whom I love, and he whom I love is I: We are two separate spirits dwelling in one body. If thou seest me thou seest Him, and if thou seest Him, thou seest us both."

          Meister Eckhart the Christian mystic wrote, "How then am I to love the Godhead? Thou shalt not love him as he is: Not as God, not as a spirit, not as a person, not as an image, but as sheer pure One. And into this One we are to sink from nothing to nothing, so help us God."

          And Lao-Tzu in the Tao wrote, "Ordinary men hate solitude. But the master makes use of it, embracing his aloneness, realizing he is one with the whole universe."

          Black Elk of the Ogala Nation wrote, "Peace comes within the souls of men when they realize their oneness with the universe."

          Even Einstein sought a unitary theory. He wrote, "The individual feels the nothingness of human desires and aims, and the sublimity and marvelous order which reveal themselves both in nature and in the world of thought. He looks upon existence as some sort of prison and wants to experience the universe as a single significant whole."

          Ultimate unity is something humans have experienced across time and cultures. It is an intuitive longing that words cannot describe, which is one of the major problems with religion. Religions attempt to put into words that which cannot be expressed. All theologies are approximations of a reality beyond perception; everything gets lost in translation. Every description of the ultimate is imperfect. People are very good at pointing out the imperfections of other people’s religion while blissfully ignoring the imperfection of their own religion. This results in war and strife and disunity.

          One way that religion deals with the ineffable quality of religion is to use ritual that goes beyond words. We light a chalice and candles at joys and concerns, we share flowers, we sing. Even the atheists among us feel the transcendent glory of the Hallelujah Chorus. A mind may disregard the words "King of Kings" and "Lord of Lords." They are mere vehicles to take us to the transcendence of the music. Other traditions make use of incense, chanting, and body movements to take people beyond themselves.

          In our services I enjoy that brief moment after we have all joined hands and before we say our closing words. It is a silent physical representation of our unity. Sometimes when I enjoy that moment for three seconds or more, some other voice will begin the words. The interruption may jar me for a millisecond but then I get swept up in the sound of voices in unison and the subtle hand squeeze that is an exclamation point to our liturgy.

          Our brains are capable of experiencing unity beyond our normal objectivity. That is what the majority of humans label God. While the labels differ from culture to culture, perhaps there is a common humanity that is united with the universe. There is a unity that transcends our differences. One does not need to be a Christian to appreciate the Hallelujah Chorus; one does not need to be a scientist to be moved by images from the Hubble telescope; one does not need to be a pagan to sense the awe of nature; one does not need to be a Hindu to feel the benefits of yoga.

          Our biology is more than rational. It allows us to move beyond the polarities of us and them, of the observer and the observed. The veil between life and death disappears. What we know merges with the unknown. That is religion and it is part of the human condition. Religion cannot be reasoned away because religion is not reasonable. It may be biological. It affects us on a different level; our own mind contradicts itself. We cannot escape the paradox of being separate yet connected.

          Have you experienced a reality that transcends ordinary reality? Is it helpful to call it "God" Or is it something else?

Note: the quotes from the mystics mentioned are from the book Why God Won’t Go Away: Brain Science and the Biology of Belief by Andrew Newberg, Eugene D’Aquili, and Vince Krause (Ballantine Books, New York, 2001).

A Sermon by the Rev. Daniel Charles Davis

For the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Winston-Salem

April 20, 2008

          Myself. My family of origin. My family of choice. A location. Church. The planet.

          What does it mean to belong? One connotation is "ownership." My, this thing belongs to me. I can do whatever I want with it. Another connotation is mutuality. Two lovers belong to each other; there is magic in the mutuality. Once it becomes perceived as possession, envy and jealousy ensue; the couple tries to control each other. Instead of joining for a mutual purpose they head for mutual destruction.

          Another aspect of belonging is whether it is voluntary or involuntary. We are born with some memberships we did not choose: We do not choose what country we are born into. We do not choose our gender. We do not choose our race. We do not choose our class. We do not choose our parents. Those are involuntary memberships that foster a sense of belonging in some people. Some people feel at home with their own ethnic group—the food, the music, the shared experiences, all contribute to a sense of belonging. Some men like to hang out with the guys. Some people enjoy family reunions that build a sense of kinship and solidarity.

          But sometimes our sense of belonging is voluntary. Some people choose a partner and start a new family, while others bring their partner into the larger family.

          Even physical traits are not deterministic. I was born male but I have some choice of whether I associate myself with all the male trappings. Do I join the good ol' boy network or do I seek to form new nonhierarchical structures?

          Belonging can be judged along two axes. The first contrasts ownership with mutuality; the second contrasts a voluntary stance with an involuntary one. Thus in my way of understanding there are four ways to belong: Involuntary ownership, involuntary mutuality, voluntary ownership, and voluntary mutuality. Let me give examples of each type.

          Let us say that you belong to a family. Your family of origin is involuntary, because none of us asked to be born. (Teenagers will remind their parents of this from time to time.) Involuntary ownership is characterized by the parent who states, "I brought you into this world and I can take you out." The child is under the absolute control of the parent; children are seen as servants of the parent. They should be seen and not heard; they should keep their opinions to themselves. Obedience is the only rule. The family even chooses mates for the children. Recently a religious sect in Texas has been found forcing thirteen-year-old girls to be wed and bear children. It is still common in many American families to think they own the sexual life of their children. If an adult child chooses a partner of the "wrong" gender, the parent might say that the child no longer belongs to the family. Sometimes the adult child is prevented from leaving. (Crime families, at least in the movies, have complex ways of keeping people from leaving. As Al Pacino said in The Godfather, Part III: "Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in.")

          But one’s family of origin, though involuntary, can be mutual. Parents watch for the safety of children. Children contribute to the life of the family. They clean the house together. They decide which movies to go to. As the child matures the parent becomes less of a dictator and more of a facilitator. Children choose their own friends, select their own clothes. Parents and children respect each other as individuals. Creativity replaces conformity. As children grow, the sense of belonging becomes voluntary. Children come home for the holidays because they want to—not because they have to.

          A voluntary ownership model of belonging sometimes manifests itself in family. Sometimes parents turn their will completely toward pleasing the child. You see these children screaming in the grocery store as their parents try to bribe them. The kids come home from college only when they need the laundry done; the widowed parent cannot remarry because the children are too worried about the inheritance that they think belongs to them. These parents are owned by their children. Somewhere along the line they volunteered for this treatment.

          The voluntary mutual way of belonging to a family allows children to grow and form families of their own. Both sets of in-laws are extended family, and the kinship ties are not coerced by guilt. Rather, they are fostered by mutual understanding and compassion.

          So what does belonging mean when it comes to belonging to a church?

          Involuntary ownership occurs when a person is born into a country where only one religion is allowed. In some Islamic countries one can be jailed for converting to Christianity. In our own country, when you want to buy something with cash, it is inscribed with the motto " In God We Trust." If you want to belong to the "We," you are expected to trust in God. Every time atheists spend a dollar, they are told that they are not really American. Maybe they do not belong. Debit cards do not have the inscription and thus allow atheists to spend as freely as they choose.

          Theocratic states and officially atheistic states like the former Soviet Union create an ownership of people’s minds and hearts. The people are not allowed to speak what they really think; the state dictates proper religious expression.

          But involuntary ownership is not always enforced by law—sometimes it is enforced psychologically. Convince small children that they will burn in hell if they disagree, and they may enter into adulthood afraid to think for themselves. This internal enforcement can be so strong that no laws are necessary to keep a person in servitude. He is imprisoned by the fear of hell.

          Involuntary mutuality can occur when religion gets conflated with culture. A child born to secular Jews is still Jewish. He may never read the Torah, but he will still feel a sense of belonging to the religion. He may be called ugly names just because of the sound of his family name. There is a solidarity that is built by shared oppression. Believers and non-believers in the Jewish community stick up for each other. They belong to each other.

          A voluntary ownership sense of belonging occurs whenever people choose to submit to the doctrine of a given religion. They give up their free will and are owned by the religion. They pray, "Not my will but thy will be done, O Lord." The word "Islam" means to submit. Christians who join a church are confirmed, they are baptized and become converted, and they turn their lives over to Jesus. Then and only then do they belong to the church.

          Our consumer culture has created another version of voluntary ownership. Many people engage in church shopping. They decide to buy into the church that supports their views. The church is owned by the contributors. Pentecostal Preacher Carlton Pearson was trained in orthodoxy, and he preached it with fervor. His church grew. But when, through Bible study and prayer, he became a Universalist, he was kicked out of the very church he founded. His money was withdrawn. His consumers started shopping at a different church that sold the religion they wanted to buy. (Learn more about the Rev. Pearson at http://www.newdimensions.us/)

          Many churches are engaged in a struggle to decide who owns whom. The church hierarchy demands that parishioners tithe; the members threaten to withdraw if the leaders ordain gay people, or do not support war. The members say the church belongs to us; the leadership says, "No, the church belongs to us," and they take each other to court and fight over the property.

          This sad state can be relieved if they would embrace a different sense of belonging.

          Voluntary mutual belonging has people covenant to search for truth together. It allows for disagreement. For only by listening to one another can we become wise.

          The UU commission on appraisa,l in its book entitled Belonging (http://www25.uua.org/coa/reports_issued.html), noted:          

          We find our wholeness in relationship, in community with others, people both like and unlike ourselves. Individually we are changed, transformed by our relationship with others; at the same time the community as a whole is changed by the presence and participation of each individual. Both individually and collectively we are in a constant state of change, of transformation. Transformation is the fundamental purpose of and reason for a religion of seriousness and depth. What we have called the process of membership is such a process, leading from superficial levels of identity and affiliation to deeper levels of commitment, to true membership. (pp.103-104)

          Ask a typical member of a Unitarian Universalist congregation what particularly attracted him/her to this way of faith and sooner rather than later he/she will say the word freedom. "Freedom of conscience." "Freedom of belief." What he/she would mean is the non-creedal principle, which is indeed central to our tradition. But a church is more than a club for freethinkers, or ought to be. You don’t need a church to believe what you want, or to think for yourself. You need a church to be in relationship with others. (p. 29)

          People called to membership take that membership seriously. A church built on equality, unity, and mutuality will appeal to those who are looking for a repository for their particular gifts and talents, who are looking for a place to grow beyond their own particular perspectives. It is also a church that will appeal to people who are looking for a way to live out their faith in the larger community. It is a church that celebrates the whole that is so much more than the sum of the parts, that welcomes and encourages all comers to be part of an organic entity that stretches well beyond the vision or intent of any one individual leader. It is a church where "I can take care of myself" is replaced by "We can and will take care of each other." (p. 17)

          And that is why we have congregational meetings. When we ask for money it is not the leadership demanding members to pay their due, nor is it membership buying a social club to meet with like-minded friends. Rather we are challenging each other to be more than we thought we ever could be.

          To belong to a religion that is voluntary and mutual is a lot of work. We have to constantly listen to each other and reinvent ourselves. We have no golden tablets sent down from heaven; we only have each other. By belonging to each other we transform ourselves and the world.

A Sermon by Gregg Jamback

President of the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Winston-Salem

March 30, 2008

          Good morning. I’m Gregg Jamback. I’ve had the privilege of serving as this congregation’s president for the past three years. It’s been fun, but too much of a good thing, is too much. So both Jamie and I are looking forward to June when our terms are over.

          When Marjorie first asked me to do this talk she said it would be a good chance to sum up three years as president. My summary is this… When I agreed to be president, my whole vision, if you can call it that, was that we should fill the lobby with posters—to fill the building with activity. I told Charlie the other day that my job has been to say "yes" to the people who had an idea to do something. If no one had had any ideas, if Terri hadn’t wanted to start Earth Day; if Jamie hadn’t wanted to reorganize Social Action; if Andrea hadn’t wanted to do UU Café; and if so many other people hadn’t wanted to do other things—the summary of my presidency would have been a softball team that seems to only finish second.

          So because of all of you, I can say I am proud to have helped keep religious liberalism alive and well in Winston-Salem.

          Those of you who have been through the Membership Committee’s "Path to Membership" program know that we’ve come a long way since the Fellowship began in 1951. And we are a "Fellowship" because we were founded as part of the American Unitarian Association’s "Fellowship Movement."

          This is a quote from a review of the book The Fellowship Movement: A Growth Strategy and Its Legacy by Holley Ulbrich: "The lay-led fellowship movement began as a growth strategy in 1948. The movement gave birth to small, lay-led fellowships from Cape Cod to Honolulu. Today these comprise a third of our Unitarian Universalist congregations. The fellowship movement officially ended in 1967, but its influence lives on today—in a freer and more participatory style of worship, increased focus on shared and small group ministry and the way we found and nurture new congregations."

          Back in 1951 the AUA had a pretty simple advertising strategy. They put ads in local papers that asked, "Are you a Unitarian and don’t know it?" If you thought you were a Unitarian you responded directly to the Association, they collated the responses, and they found someone to organize a meeting. In our case, five people got together and the Fellowship was born.

          I’m not sure I can imagine the energy or the dedication of those first five people. How do you come to grips with all of the possibility that arises when you say, "Okay, I’m a Unitarian. Now what?" How do you narrow that question down?

          We were at a dinner party a couple of months ago with friends of ours who attend Mount Tabor Methodist up the street from this Fellowship. At the party was a Methodist minister. After the wine bottles were empty Jamie asked the minister what he was speaking about the next day. His answer actually surprised me—not because he was talking about a Biblical passage, but because, as he spoke, it became clear that he basically does the same thing every week: He talks about the Bible.

          I guess it’s kind of like extended divinity school.

          They may not be getting graded, and they have to find some way to make that passage meaningful to the congregation, but you know, for ministers in this context, the basic themes don’t really change.

          Hearing his story made me think that UUs and UU ministers have it tough. I mean, they have all of the world’s literature to draw from. How do you narrow that down to forty sermons a year? And on top of that, you are a pretty tough audience—I mean, there are advanced degrees all over this room. It kind of explains why everybody was so excited during Charlie’s sabbatical. Twenty-two different speakers, all here to give us their best stuff. We loved it! But…well, you couldn’t pay me enough money to be a minister. I can’t imagine doing this every week.

          To me the most challenging of our principles is the "free and responsible search for truth and meaning." Unlike Christian denominations, we UUs don’t have one book to study—we have millions. And then, because of the "free and responsible search for truth and meaning," once you think you have found the truth, you’ve got to keep looking.

          So imagine those first Unitarians in Winston-Salem.

• They had just discovered they were Unitarians.
• They had the entire universe of knowledge to draw from and they had to find meaning in it,
• They had to organize and prepare their own services.
• They had to take care of each other.
• If they wanted their group to survive they had to find more people like themselves,
• And while doing all of this, they had to figure out who Unitarians really were.

          So it’s no wonder it took a while for the Fellowship to grow. It took a long time for them to settle a minister. And it took an even longer time before they built themselves a home. But they did it. And here we are—all because five people answered an ad in the paper over fifty years ago.

          On some levels, I don’t think a lot has changed from those early years. I think we as a congregation are still trying to figure out who we are. We’re still searching for truth and meaning. Recently, I’ve learned to ask the question this way: "How will they know us?"

          For those of you who don’t read my monthly "President’s Letter" in our newsletter, I’ll give you a little background. Back in January, Geraldine Zurek, Patti Hubbard, Patty Ricono, and I attended the TJ District Transformational Stewardship Conference held in Savannah, Georgia. The keynote speaker was the Reverend Cecilia Kingman Miller. She gave us an assignment Friday night (something for us to think about while we waited for drinks at the bar). The assignment she gave us was to think about the question: "How will they know us?"

          At first, I thought that the "they" in her question meant all of those people out there who are UUs but don’t know it yet. It’s a membership question. I thought about what visitors will find when they walk in the door.

• Will they be warmly welcomed?
• If they have a red cup, will anyone go talk with them?
• Will their experience of us make them want to come back and share their life and energy with us?

Is that how they will know us?

          And then I thought about the "they" as the community around us. Not so much in the recruitment sense, but in the "let them know us by our deeds" sense.

• Will people notice that we have gay people on our softball team?
• Will they notice that we were a sponsor of the Habitat For Humanity Green Build?
• Do they know that we show our commitment to the environment by supporting the Earth Day Fair with our money, our grounds, and our volunteers?
• Do they know that we have intentionally been trying to have a positive impact on our region?

          Is that how they will know us? Then I wondered, what if the "they" refers to us, the members of the Fellowship?

• Are our programs engaging enough?
• Do we take care of each other well enough?
• Should we be more spiritual?
• Would we take better care of each other if we bought a bus?

          I said a minute ago that the congregation is still trying to figure out who we are. That’s not really accurate; I think we will, and should, always be trying to figure out who we really are.

          You know, over half of our membership is new since I joined in 2001. We as a congregation have different dreams and visions than the people who founded the Fellowship—and different dreams and visions than the people who built this building just over ten years ago. And different dreams from the people who, just six years ago, wrote a long-range plan that said we would do these things:

• Increase the number of opportunities for members to connect with each other in small groups.

• Foster a culture within our Fellowship of mutual respect and emotional nurturing.

• Fund our general operating budget with annual pledges.

• Expand religious education space and update the playground.

• Improve our parking situation within 12 months by adding parking, reconfiguring parking, paving the gravel lot, or exploring carpooling and other car-reducing strategies.

          We haven’t done everything on this list – but we’ve done a lot it. I think the reason we never moved forward, especially on the expansion, is because we missed the moment. When the time came to execute the long-range plan, other things were more important to the people who were actually here. In particular, at that time we thought it was more important to pay our staff than to expand our building.

          Things changed. And I am here today to proclaim that old long-range plan officially dead.

          I hope you know that the board, despite the fact that our collective opinion may change, really needs to know where we all want to go in order for it to take us there. And that’s why the Long Rangers will soon be surveying the members of the congregation. We need to know who you think we are right now and where you would like us to be in the future.

          But I have a request. I’d like you to take that survey with the question "How will they know us?" in mind—however you define the "they" in that question. But that’s not all. We have some immediate things we need to talk about as well.

          Those of you who read our newsletter, or our weekly email, know that we will be having a congregational meeting on April 20^th. This is not our Annual Meeting. We are holding this congregational meeting to talk about some "capital expenditures" the board would like us all to consider.

          A couple of months ago the Finance Committee approached the board with a plan to purchase the property next to us. The property is for sale for $139,000. We have made an offer to the owner for an option of purchasing the land for about $114,000. They have come down to $120,000. At this point the board has decided to stand firm.

          The second issue is the parking lot.

          Money is pretty cheap right now and it’s time for us to refinance our mortgage. It has to be refinanced by early May. As it works out we can add $100,000 to our mortgage—it’s about $360,000 now—and because of the lower interest rate we wouldn’t need to increase our monthly mortgage payment. The board is suggesting that we borrow that $100,000 to build the parking lot and to fix a couple of the other nagging problems we have.

          The third is our staff. Last week we found out we had been awarded a Chalice Lighters Grant that will help us hire a volunteer coordinator. What’s going to happen is this: For the next year the Chalice Lighters will pay us one half of the salary we need to pay for a part-time volunteer coordinator. We have to come up with the other half. Our plan is that this person would work 15 to 20 hours a week, and would be responsible for keeping track of our members’ interests and making sure committees and willing volunteers get together. We have the ability to get funding from the Chalice Lighters for two years after that, provided, of course, that we can prove we need it and we’ve used their money well.

          And there are other staff issues for us to consider: For the past four years we’ve been talking about hiring a Music Director (as opposed to the Choir Director position we have now). Charlie and I would both like to see a paid professional pianist sitting on that bench every week of the year. For the first time in years our office administrator has asked for more hours. And when Charlie came back from sabbatical, we challenged him pretty hard. We’ve asked him to take on more duties and responsibilities, we’ve asked him to give better sermons, we’ve asked him to communicate better. And he is working hard at all of these things and I believe is making good progress.

          We as a congregation need to talk about all of these things. And I hope as a congregation we decide to play big. I hope we as a congregation embrace all of the possibility before us.

          Last week, Charlie talked about creating. He pointed at the artwork that surrounds us now and said that each piece of artistic creation was the beginning of immortality. I’d like to suggest that by being here you, too, are participating in an act of creation.

          It’s not all that different from what those five people did when they first sat down together as newly discovered Unitarians. You may not have answered an ad but you are sitting in that chair today for some reason. Something about Unitarian Universalism made you come through those doors. Whether you have signed the book or not; whether you serve on a committee or not; whether you have a child in RE or not—you are a part of this creation.

          You know I said earlier that I’m looking forward to June. And I am. But I am also looking forward to the discussion that we all will have when we consider the question "How will they know us?" How will they know us when they sit in our Fellowship Hall and hear incredible music every week? How will they know us when they come to a service and they don’t have to park on the lawn? How will they know us when all of us show up at a county commissioners meeting asking for equal health care for all?

          Those first Winston-Salem Unitarians started this ball rolling. They somehow understood that this region needed a home for liberal religious thought. We, you and I, are that home. But we have some advantages those first Unitarians didn’t have. We have fifty plus years of experience. There are 289 of us. We know we can fill our lobby and our building with activity. We know that we can have an impact on the District. And we know we can have an impact on the community around us.

          As we face that boundless possibility that Unitarian Universalism provides, the question they began answering over fifty years ago is still the question that faces us today.

          We are Unitarian Universalists. How will they know us?

          Thank you.

End-of-Year Ruminations with Looks Forward and Back

By Three Contributors from the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Winston-Salem

December 31, 2006

“Looking Forward,” by Haley Dreis

Because the theme of our service today is "Looking Forward, Looking Back," I thought I would take a moment to look forward. Here is an excerpt from a book entitled Shifting Sands: A Guidebook for Crossing the Deserts of Change, by Steve Donahue. He traveled across the Sahara Desert and has compared his journey to life’s changes:

I feel that this excerpt fully applies to anyone and everyone. But I also feel it is especially pertinent to those of us who are young adults, growing up and changing: moving through high school, moving away, going to college, or starting careers as doctors, lawyers, artists, environmentalists, or owners of Starbucks drive-thrus, and beginning new points in our lives.

As the excerpt describes, we have mountains we will tackle by using focused and defined solutions – where we have a goal and we know where we’re going. For those of us going to college, we expect when we’re going to graduate and finish our education. But what we don’t realize is that we will continue learning all our lives; there is no end result and we can’t predict where we will end up with that. It is a journey – and like a desert, it is a scary one.

For some of us, we will be ready to leave our parents with the "empty nest" syndrome – and some parents will be celebrating our departure. And we are also expected to be on our own and become adults. But the truth is that we don’t have to do this on our own, and our new beginnings open doors for new and exciting things to come.

Donahue finishes the book with this:

Haley Dreis is a high school senior studying with violin professor Joseph Genualdi at the North Carolina School of the Arts. Her orchestral experience includes participation with the NCSA Symphony Orchestra, the Winston-Salem Youth Symphony, and the All-County and All-State Orchestras, and a role as Concertmaster of the Underground Symphony and UNC-G Summer Session Orchestras. She has attended summer festivals at the Brevard Music Center, NCSA, and UNC-G. She is also executive editor of the student newspaper and secretary of the Student Government Association. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

“Letter from the Past,” by Molly Spaugh

Hello, my name is Molly Spaugh. I have been coming to this UU Fellowship for about ten years now. That’s about two-thirds of my life, so I have many memories tied to this place.

About a month ago I received an email from Pam Lepley saying that the senior high group would be conducting the service on December 31st. Pam wrote to us asking for volunteers to write part of the sermon, and I jumped at the opportunity to share my thoughts with the congregation. But what to say?

Then, an answer to that question came in an email from Lianne Jackson. She suggested we write letters as if we were the past and the future. We decided who would write as which time. It was a fairly simple decision, and I think we each got what we wanted. Secretly, I wanted the past, perhaps because it is stable and unalterable. We are inspired by the past; our present and future are built upon it.

While my own personal past is young compared to some others, it has been full of surprises, both good and bad. Full of opportunities I never took. Full of things that make me look back and say, "I shouldn’t have done that." Or, "Why didn’t I do that?" Full of things that make me stop and hesitate when I should be moving forward. I spend a lot of time thinking about the past, so I know a few of its secrets. If the past could appear to us and speak, what it would say might go a little something like this:

Dear Friends,

By now, many of you know me very well. I have been with you for as longas you can remember, and longer. Your past makes up only an infinitesimally small part of me, less than a grain of sand in a vast and endless ocean of possibility. Your past is linked to the pasts of everyone who was there with you at certain moments. Considering the number of moments in a day, a week, a year, this means you are linked to millions of others. And each of those people is linked to millions more. By this reasoning, everyone on this planet is linked together, linked to you.

For you see, I am everywhere, carried around by everyone. I am ten years ago, ten weeks ago, ten seconds ago. I am hundreds of trillions of memories, and bits and pieces of those memories are left as reminders of what was. A song playing on the radio reminds you of a certain car trip many summers ago. The scent of vanilla reminds you of a friend now long gone. Perhaps even the feel of cold water takes you back to a lake you frequented as a child.

Whatever the case, I know, because I am there. I am, and will always be, there. I cannot be stuck in the past, for I am the past.

Do not stay behind with me. Remember me, but do not let me keep you from moving forward. Take comfort from me, but also learn from mistakes I keep. I hold the key to the future, and I am thrusting it into your hands, screaming, “Use me; learn from me!” But few ever do. Some of you are so wrapped up in me that you can’t get on with your lives. You keep trying to live in the past, but all you are doing is missing the present; missing the people around you. The coming years are your future, but they will soon become your past. I do not have the good fortune to have a present, nor a future. I am done. I am the doors now closed, the opportunities missed.

Do not dwell on what could have been. Rather, leap forward and make something new. Do not try to stay with me, for what was in the past can sometimes never be again. And all you are doing is clutching at what seems to have never been there. Think of me too much, and you might be able to trick yourself into believing something that never was. You end up hurting yourself, and those around you. Who you were stays with me, but who you can be lies in the present, and the future. Your past may determine some of who you are now, for the past can never be entirely erased. But it’s only in the present that you can determine who you will be, what you will do.

Today, as the dying flame of this year gives birth to the flame of a new year, take a chance. Dive into the vast unknown of the future, and grab the opportunities as they come. Today is yesterday’s tomorrow, and I am yesterday.

Yours Truly,

The Past

“Letter from the Future,” by Lianne Jackson

As I sat at my computer, wondering what on earth I was going to say to you about the future or the past, it occurred to me that it might be interesting to let the future and past speak for themselves. So Molly and I decided to write letters, she doing the past (as you’ve heard) and I doing the future.

What would The Future say, I wondered. Would it mess with my head and tell me. "You’re going to regret that" after I’ve made a choice, and then say "just kidding!" and laugh? Would it warn me that I have a week to live? Would it warn me that I have a week to live and then say "just kidding!" and laugh? Is The Future a jerk? Or is The Future a nice guy? Is it depressed or content? Is it conceited?

Well, I have no idea. The Future never answered my emails. I guess it had plans. Anyway, here is the best guess of a humble human as to what The Future might say.

Dear People,

I am bigger than you. I am bodiless and boundless. I am vast, and yet one worries that I may drop off suddenly. And then where will you be, you wonder?

One thing you must understand is that you cannot live in me. I don’t exist yet. You must see that the only thing you have, without a doubt, is this moment, this breath, this heartbeat. I am always a step ahead. If you are chasing me, you won’t catch up. If you are constantly waiting for me to arrive, you will miss it when what you’ve been waiting for steps into the resent. Some people’s lives are sliding through their hands, but they don’t realize it because they are too farsighted to be able to look down.

Place neither all of your hope nor all of your despair in me. You don’t know what I am. Don’t pretend you do. Have hope, know despair, but never expect me to prolong your conditions forever. Nothing is forever. And that is why your life is precious.

I may be bright, and I may be dark. I may be surprising, disappointing, mediocre, or heavenly. Do what you can to mold me, but know that some things are out of your hands. Do not wait for me to happen, nor try to force me into being. I am always on the horizon, never here. Do not live like I do. Plant your feet firmly on the ground and look around at this earth. Do as Emily Webb said, in Our Town, and "look at one another."

I am not a promise. I am not a guarantee. I am a possibility. I am a potential. And so are you. But you cannot successfully live as something that will be, because inherently you are something that is.

I am bigger than you, but you are not helpless. You are creating, avoiding, choosing stepping-stones to walk on that will lead you in my various directions. You are taking the yarn that I hand you and spinning it as best you can, despite the obstacles I may offer. I am bigger, but not better. And I never win, because I never reach the end. You have a chance to accomplish something, if you can only look down at your hands once in a while and catch life as it slides through your fingers.

Sincerely,

The Future

p.s. You’re going to regret what you did last night. (Just kidding.)

A Sermon by the Rev. Daniel Charles Davis

For the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Winston-Salem

May 18, 2008

          Recently television and the Internet have been full of the images and sounds of a black minister saying, "God damn America! It is there in the Bible!" Many were shocked—or at least pretended to be shocked—by these words. How could this man blame America for the tragedy of the 9/11 attacks?

          It is quite simple, actually. He was speaking in the Old Testament tradition. Throughout the Hebrew scripture, when Israel strays from the law of God, a prophet arises to warn them, and calls them to repent. The prophet Jeremiah told the people of Israel: 7 Why should I forgive you? Your children have forsaken me and sworn by gods that are not gods. I supplied all their needs, yet they committed adultery and thronged to the houses of prostitutes. 8 They are well-fed, lusty stallions, each neighing for another man's wife. 9 Should I not punish them for this? declares the LORD. Should I not avenge myself on such a nation as this?

          A couple of white television preachers, Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson, followed this part of the prophetic tradition when they blamed 9/11 on what they perceived as America’s sexual sin. But there is another stream in the prophetic tradition: 27 Their houses are full of deceit; they have become rich and powerful 28 and have grown fat and sleek. Their evil deeds have no limit; they do not plead the case of the fatherless to win it, they do not defend the rights of the poor. 29 Should I not punish them for this? declares the LORD. Should I not avenge myself on such a nation as this?

          Jeremiah Wright was building on this part of the prophetic tradition when he said that America was being condemned for its lack of social justice. The prophetic tradition is often invoked as ministers try to use current events as a wake-up call, attempting to urge their followers to better behavior. White conservatives tend to focus on personal sinfulness; black liberals tend to focus on social sins of the wealthy and greedy.

          Now, the destruction of New Orleans by hurricane Katrina is problematic for both streams of the prophetic tradition. The wealthy Garden District and the hedonistic Bourbon Street were the neighborhoods that suffered the least damage. Perhaps the destruction had to do with being below or above sea level rather than the sinfulness of any particular neighborhood.

          Whites are more familiar with the personal piety form of the prophetic tradition—that is, the idea that sin has to do with whom you pray to and whom you sleep with. But the idea of punishing a nation for the sins of a few seems unfair to us. Many people disagreed that America was being punished for the sinfulness of a few individuals in the 9/11 attacks.

          Christianity, especially in the individualistic United States, generally lacks the sense of corporate responsibility. I am responsible for my own goodness and my own sin. The prophetic idea of God punishing the entire nation just does not make sense to people who are trying to work out their own personal salvation.

          ndividualism is a natural consequence of being in the dominant position. When one has social status one can escape from broad generalizations about one’s culture. If I a white man gets arrested it does not reflect poorly upon the white race. The guilt is strictly attached to an individual evildoer. But if the suspect is black or Hispanic or Muslim, the suspicion is spread out among the whole ethnic culture. Those with less social status are used to being lumped together; thus they tend to understand salvation as more than personal. Salvation included the transformation of an entire society.

          While dominant Christianity focused on personal piety, a different type of theology has emerged among the poor around the world. It is called Liberation Theology. In 1972 Gustavo Gutierrez wrote a book entitled A theology of Liberation in which he combined a Marxist interpretation of history with a Christian understanding that God is on the side of the poor. Jesuit Jon Sobrino added to this stream of thought with his 1978 book Christology at the Crossroads. Both argue for a just society here and now and not in the afterlife, as reflected in the song we heard earlier.

          Karl Marx wrote, in part, that religion is "the opiate of the masses." Gutierrez and Sobrino Christianized Marxism and transformed it into a catalyst for the people. This theology grew in popularity and led to revolutions in El Salvador, Nicaragua, and Guatemala. It was condemned by the Roman Catholic Church because it did not reject violence and was anti-authoritarian.

          In the United States, a parallel movement arose among African Americans. No longer willing to wait to be part of American society, they wanted to transform society. The first part of Martin Luther King’s ministry was about joining white America. He fought for inclusion against state-supported segregation. He wanted inclusion in white busses, white schools, and white voting booths. The main critique of white America was that it was not letting blacks in. Toward the end of his career, King realized that there was something fundamentally wrong with the capitalistic structure of the country. He was working within a system that kept the poor people poor. He was organizing a poor people’s march when he was assassinated.

          Theologian James Cone responded in 1970 by writing A Black Theology of Liberation. The influence of Martin Luther King kept black liberation theology less violent than its Latin American counterpart, but it was just as fierce in its critique of the structures of capitalism. It had an inherent distrust of white Christianity. After all, it was white Christians who started the slave trade. The use of Marxism in liberation theology is somewhat problematic for many—"Look at the Soviet Union! This is what it leads to!"

          In Prophesy Deliverance! Cornell West states that Soviet-style Marxism was as far from true Marxism as the Klux Klux Klan was from true Christianity. Both used the language but are very different in spirit. West argues that the proper application of Marxist analysis could liberate Christianity from the sins of racism and capitalism.

          In a recent interview on NPR with Terry Gross, Dr. Cone explained that liberation theology believes that God is for the poor. Black liberation theology is speaking from the perspective of black people, but it is not exclusive. Any person who is concerned about the gospel of Jesus will be concerned about the poor and thus the liberation of black people. "Justice for the poor is the very heart of what the Christian gospel is about," according to Cone. He criticizes the white church for not equating the gospel of Jesus with the liberation of black people, but he also criticizes the black church for focusing on the afterlife instead of the here and now. He notes that the gospel of Luke (4;14-19) has Jesus beginning his ministry by reading from the prophet Isaiah (61:1-2): 14 Jesus returned to Galilee in the power of the Spirit, and news about him spread through the whole countryside. 15 He taught in their synagogues, and everyone praised him. 16 He went to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, and on the Sabbath day he went into the synagogue, as was his custom. And he stood up to read. 17 The scroll of the prophet Isaiah was handed to him. Unrolling it, he found the place where it is written: 18 "The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to release the oppressed, 19 to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor."

          Black liberation theology is a challenge to what the Church was about. Privileged Christianity tends to spiritualize liberation: It says that faith liberates us from the bondage of sin. It does not ask the believer to look for any actual people who need to be liberated from bondage; it asks no questions about the structures of society; it does not ask why the U.S. has more people held in bondage in prison than any other country in the world.¹ And a disproportionate number of those prisoners are black and Hispanic.

          Liberation theology sets aside pie in the sky in the sweet by and by and asks for liberation now—liberation from a structure that systematically oppresses the poor and the sojourner in this land. This here-and-now emphasis of liberation theology is where it resonates with Unitarian Universalism.

          James Cone is the author of the first article in a book entitled Soul Work, which was published by our UU publisher, Skinner House. The book reflects a discussion between Cone and various leaders of our church discussing how we as UUs can become an anti- racist denomination. (Included in this group discussion was Leon Spencer, who will be preaching here on the 8^th of June.)

          Cone asks: "What would an anti-racist theology look like? It would be, first, a theology that grows out of an anti-racist political struggle. Talk is cheap if there is no action to back it up. We must do something concrete about dismantling white supremacy. I know this task is not easy but a very difficult endeavor. Yet do not be discouraged. Despair only supports the enemy. Working together with each other and with the Great Spirit of the universe we can accomplish more than we have ever dreamed." (p. 14)

          What I found interesting in reading this book is that some Unitarians were arguing for the need for "more God talk" to make African Americans feel welcome. In contrast, Cone emphasized our common humanity: "We have to always remember that we share a common humanity despite our cultural, racial, and gender differences and all the kinds of differences we have, and that common humanity is more important than all the other things even though the other things are important." (p.18)  He goes on to say, "You can’t find our common humanity until you search for it in ‘the other’ … I know that you really believe in the common humanity when your theology reflects engagement and wrestling with issues and people beyond the particularity of your own history and culture." (p. 19)

          The liberation theology term for this work is "praxis." It is the discovery of the holy through social action. Gustavo Gutierrez said, "To be followers of Jesus requires that [we] walk with and be committed to the poor; when [we] do, [we] experience an encounter with the Lord who is simultaneously revealed and hidden in the faces of the poor."

          This concept of living like Jesus instead of merely worshiping him is where liberation theology intersects with the traditional Unitarian idea of deeds, not creeds. Putting words into action is not always comfortable. Working with others may challenge our assumptions. Whites are often surprised at black anger; we prefer civil, intellectual discussions. But we cannot always expect people to sugarcoat their pain so that we can swallow it.

          Cone writes, "Blacks invoking the race card also makes whites uncomfortable. I must admit that blacks sometimes play the race card at inappropriate times and places. It is a quick conversation stopper. But whites would do well to remember that blacks have the race card to play because America dealt it to them. It is not a card that we wanted."

          The first principle of Unitarian Universalism is the inherent worth and dignity of every person. Every person deserves liberation. Black liberation, gay liberation, women’s liberation, liberation from poverty. Even white, straight, middle-class males like me need liberation. Each of us needs to be liberated from our own narrow definition of what it means to be human.

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(1) World Prison Population List, 7th edition, by Roy Walmsley. International Centre for Prison Studies. School of Law, King’s College, London, 2007.

Cone, James H. A Black Theology of Liberation, 1970 (ISBN 0-88344-685-5).

Cone, James H. For My People: Black Theology and the Black Church (Where Have We Been and Where Are We Going?), 1984 (ISBN 0-88344-106-3).

Cone, James H. "Fresh Air" radio program interview from WHYY, with Terri Gross, March 31, 2008.

Gutierrez, Gustavo. A Theology of Liberation: History, Politics, and Salvation, 1972 (revised edition 1988, ISBN 978-0883445426).

Gutierrez, Gustavo. We Drink From Our Own Wells. Maryknoll/Melbourne: Orbis Books/Dove Communications, 1984.

Sobrino, Jon. Christology at the Crossroads. Eugene: Wipf & Stock Publishers, 2002 (ISBN 1-59244-095-9 978).

West, Cornell. Prophesy Deliverance! An Afro-American Revolutionary Christianity. Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 1982.

Bowens-Wheatley, Marjorie and Jones, Nancy Palmer, eds. Soul Work: Anti-Racist Theologies in Dialogue. Skinner House, 2003 (ISBN 9781558964457).

A Sermon by the Rev. Daniel Charles Davis

For the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Winston-Salem

April 27, 2008

          In this year’s canvas survey, several people said that they wanted our service to be more spiritual. It is hard to know what that means within the context of Unitarian Universalism. It could mean more Christianity. It could mean more paganism. It could mean a more formally reverent service. It could mean a more lively, emotional service.

          So my sermon today is basically a question: What does spirituality mean to you? I will be discussing some of the answers I’ve come up with—but I know that they are only a few among many. So, let us explore the idea of spirit and spirituality.

          The English word "spirit" comes from the Latin spiritus, which means breath. Related to this, also in English, is the word "respiration." Breathing in is called inspiration; breathing out is called expiration.

          But inspiration also has a different and other meaning besides its biological meaning. It is about receiving Ideas and passions from a source outside oneself. Some of my sermons, for example, are inspired. Some weeks an Idea comes to me and I write; it is almost like recording the ideas that are floating in the air. The words come to me almost as a gift. Let me assure you: This does not happen every week. Perhaps you’ve noticed. Some weeks sermons are like slogging through mud. I spend 15 minutes just searching for the right word, and the source outside of myself is merely the thesaurus function on my computer.

          Sometimes when there is a lack of ideas, I rely on rhetorical techniques. I think I’ll add a little subtle internal alliteration, or I’ll create a litany. Yes, it’s true. I will build a paragraph around a repeated phrase.

          Yes, it’s true. The repetition brings a comforting predictability to the sermon.

          Yes, it’s true. At times I will insert longer sentences between the repeated phrase in order to create a tension that cries out for resolution.

          Yes, it’s true. Soon the listeners will know by the tone of my voice when I am about to say…

          Yes, it’s true. Soon some will say it with me…

          Yes, it’s true. Some will feel inspired.

          Yes, it’s true. Some will feel silly.

          Yes, it’s true.

          Yes, it is true that rhetoric is a tool with the potential to lift people to new heights. But it’s also true that it can be empty. Where is the truth that we are looking for? Conversely I could deliberate precisely about truth, and footnote my references. For example, according to the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, by Bradley Dowden of California State University, Sacramento (dowden@csus.edu) and Norman Swartz of Simon Fraser University, British Columbia, VSA (swartz@sfu.ca; http://www.sfu.ca/philosophy/swartz.htm):

         Historically, the most popular theory of truth was the Correspondence Theory. First proposed in a vague form by Plato and by Aristotle in his Metaphysics, this realist theory says truth is what propositions have by corresponding to a way the world is. The theory says that a proposition is true provided there exists a fact corresponding to it. In other words, for any proposition p, p is true if and only if p corresponds to a fact. And what are facts? The notion of a fact as some sort of ontological entity was first stated explicitly in the second half of the nineteenth century. The Correspondence Theory does permit facts to be mind-dependent entities. McTaggart, and perhaps Kant, held such Correspondence Theories. The Correspondence Theories of Russell, Wittgenstein, and Austin all consider facts to be mind-independent.

          I believe this is countered by Søren Kierkegaard, who in 1844 published a book entitled Concluding Unscientific Postscript to the Philosophical Fragments. This tome contains the phrase "Truth is subjectivity," which suggests to me that Truth is the subjective meaning we attach to facts.

          Which type of sermon is more spiritual? One where I try to carry the emotions to an ecstasy of revealed truth, or one where I challenge the mind to explore the historical ramifications of different postulations of truth? Should my sermons be uplifted with the spirit of evangelism, or should I deepen them with the spirit of scholarship? Spirituality, if it is true, needs to be something more than just a style. It must be a manner of being, not just a manner of speaking.

          Perhaps by "spiritual," people mean I should include more religious content—say the word "goddess" a bit more, make more references to Buddha, Jesus, or Vishnu. Name dropping is not sufficient, though. Because I have heard lectures on many religious topics, and although they were informative, they were not inspirational.

          The content of the religion does not necessarily make it spiritual. The Humanist Manifesto III claims that no supernatural power exists, yet it contains this statement (which I consider spiritual):

Humanist Manifesto III

(Copyright 2003 American Humanists Association)

          Spirituality is a an attitude towards a belief rather than the belief itself. The various religions and philosophies contradict each other, yet each has a potential for spirituality. Some people say, "I am spiritual but not religious." I think they are trying to capture a sense of awe and wonder without committing to a specific doctrine. On the other hand, nobody claims to be religious but not spiritual, but we have all seen it: Those people who learn all the supposed rules and then try to inflict them upon others.

          In his letter to the Romans, Paul writes: "But now, by dying to what once bound us, we have been released from the law so that we serve in the new way of the Spirit, and not in the old way of the written code." (Romans 7:6)

          Jesus confronts these people in Matthew 23: 23-26: "Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You give a tenth of your spices—mint, dill and cumin. But you have neglected the more important matters of the law—justice, mercy and faithfulness. You should have practiced the latter, without neglecting the former. You blind guides! You strain out a gnat but swallow a camel.  Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You clean the outside of the cup and dish, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence. Blind Pharisee! First clean the inside of the cup and dish, and then the outside also will be clean."

          Jesus and Paul are calling people to a religion that calls us beyond just following the rule. Rules and doctrine are external things; they may help us create the appearance of goodness. Religion cleans the outside of the cup; spirituality cleans the inside of the cup. If we meditate on love, justice, and peace, we will be transformed from the inside out. Justice, mercy, and faithfulness are too big to be contained in a rulebook. The rulebook is an inanimate object that can only approximate Justice.

          After the civil rights sit-ins, the law changed and lunch counters were integrated. The law changed the outward behavior, but it did not change the inner hatred of the business owners. To this day political groups try to unseat so-called activist judges who enforce the equal protection clause of the Constitution. But some saw the changing law as an opportunity for spiritual transformation. A person committed to the ideals of equality will not segregate. Not because some law forbids it, but because the ideal of equality makes it unthinkable.

          Spirituality is about relationships. Spirituality is the breath of life. Religion is the dead letter of the law. Jewish theologian Martin Buber talked about relationships being central to spirituality in his book I and Thou. He describes one type of relationship as I-It. A person uses religion to keep himself out of trouble. If one follows the rule one is less likely to suffer the unpleasantness of being arrested. In religion one obeys doctrine to avoid punishment. Another type of relationship is the I-Thou relationship. In this the motivation is to understand and relate to the other. It involves dialogue, questioning, responding. In an I-Thou relationship the Spirit comes alive. In religion it is conceived as a personal relationship with God; in practice it can apply to any aspect of life.

          Buber writes, "In every sphere in its own way, through each process of becoming that is present to us we look out toward the fringe of the eternal Thou. In each we are aware of a breath from the eternal Thou; in each Thou we address the eternal Thou…One who truly meets the world goes out also to God…" (Martin Buber, I and Thou, 1923)

          I believe spirituality is what breathes life into facts and transforms them into truths. One can observe the fact of a tree; spirituality looks for the truth of a tree. The ritual of communion or a Passover meal is a fact. The truth one experiences when participat