NEW DIMENSIONS OF UNITARIANISM
A sermon by
Rev. Dr. Robert Lee Zoerheide
Circa 1956
Delivered at the Installation of
Nathaniel Page Lauriat at
Also delivered at
May Memorial Unitarian Society
People are always asking us:
"What is a Unitarian?"
and very often those who ask are Unitarians who ought to know, or are new
friends who are about to become members of our church. They do not want to be
told that a Unitarian is one who no longer can accept the traditional teachings
of Judaism or of the various Christian churches, though this is true. Nor do
they want to hear a long list of doctrines, creeds and dogmas which have been
rejected by a newly liberated mind. They want to know what a Unitarian believes
in the many important areas of religious life.
In the first place, as one of
our published statements by A. Powell Davies points out, "A Unitarian is a
person who believes that in religion, as in everything else, each one of us
should be free to seek the truth without being hampered by official
requirements and traditional restrictions." But this freedom should be
regarded as a responsibility as well as a release, so that it will issue into a
lifetime search for new evidences and assurances of faith.
Unitarians have a deep trust
in goodness. We have been termed optimists because of our confidence in human
nature, its goodness rather than sinfulness, and because
of our hope for the future. I suppose we are optimists. There could be worse
labels -- there have been, too. But no one has called us
"pessimists;" we worry too much for that. Who ever saw a pessimist
worrying about tomorrow? He knows everything will turn out wrong!
A Unitarian believes that confidence in the innate goodness of human nature will prove to
be the best instrument for the establishment of that goodness, and that
realistic but unequivocal trust in the character building gift of human nature
can be an island of order and dependability in the disturbing and disordered
chaos of daily experience.
Our trust in the effective
goodness of human nature is well expressed by the president of our Unitarian,
Association, Frederick May Eliot:
"Unitarians believe that character is
the final test of any man's religion, the most important fruit of religious
experience and practice, the goal of all religious education. Unless religion
develops character in men and women it seems to us to be something less than
religion; and no matter what the other products and by-products of religion may
be, without character its primary purpose has been defeated and its chief value
lost. Character is the foundation-stone of all lasting human welfare."
There is also a deep trust
among us in oncoming virtue; Unitarianism is an assurance that in our religion
revelation is not sealed. The generous way our membership serves the community
and the nation illustrates a new and revealing dimension of our faith: It
overflows. The overflowing comes because of sureness about the vast potential
of each person.
The Revised Standard Version
of the Bible has changed the familiar line: "My cup runneth over"
(King James version) to "My cup overflows.”
The confidence we have in the abundance of resources for faith may need the emphasis of such a refinement.
The cup does not run over because its capacity is small, it over-flows because
its supply is superabundant. Unlike an ordinary vessel, the vessel of liberal
faith, the vessel of human nature, and the form of
nature increases supply by being used. "Overflow" expresses the
welling-up of faith which comes from religious kinship with all of life, with
all religions, from new truth ever found by science, and from the lives of
generations of good people. How can we catch a glimpse of the vast potential
within us and around us?
An English scientist tells a story about the untold number of molecules there are in
ordinary things: "Fill a cup with water," he says. "Suppose
you had some way of marking each water molecule so you could recognize it if
you saw it again. Now pour the water down the drain. Wait a long, long
time until this water has had a chance to mix with all the oceans of the earth.
Then go down to the seashore anywhere in the world and scoop up a cup full of
water. Do you suppose there is a chance that any of the original marked
molecules will be in it? The answer is that the cup will contain over a
thousand of them."
Sir James Jeans seems to have
made the transition of thought which follows such an illustration when he said:
"Man no longer sees nature as something distinct from himself." The cup of life in each one of us has a
potential more wondrous by far than a few ounces of water. Think of how it
could overflow!
Jesus told parables to make
the point. There was a time when scholars called such parables as the one of
leaven in the loaf and the mustard seed "Parables of growth," and
marveled at the process suggested. But they have no season in common, and you
do not have to be a farmer to know that. The yeast and the seed are not
comparable in terms of growth;
mustard seed and yeast are alike in their seeming insignificance. Though tiny,
their potential is tremendous. One of the smallest of seeds contains the end
possibility of a tree great enough for birds to roost in. How much smaller,
though more sensational in possibilities is the beginning of man from invisible
traits and fertility.
A native of
How foolish it would be to
feel that the story of religion had been written in one book and sealed by one
age, or that once and for all in one person the entire potential and range of
human nature has been revealed. The unfolding drama of new truth, rising above
the old, gives to our time a celestial dimension for every moment and every
person.
Unitarianism will go beyond its own boundaries to be realized! A vision of boundless human nature
flowing into all meaning and into all parts of the world will demand of us a
new kind of church. Can we provide it? To meet the needs of the people who are
seeking to remove the barriers which ancient ways have placed in our world, for
those who wish to universalize the sources of inspiration, of cooperation, and
of human service, it will be necessary to part company with the hallowed notion
of a church being religious on the condition that its religiousness can come
from but one person, one tradition, one scripture, or one locality.
Samuel Coleridge had a glimpse of the new dimensions for a church when he said:
"He, who begins by loving Christianity better than truth, will proceed by
loving his own sect or church better than Christianity, and end in loving
himself better than all."
There is some evidence of
each of these stages in present day Unitarianism. But the church of tomorrow,
arising among us, has passed beyond these limitations: all of them. It has
passed beyond the limitations of traditional Unitarianism into the vast future
of a new
The fear of world war helped
to make the U.N.O. a reality for the nations. What force will bring the
religions of the world together? Not fear! Perhaps example! Some group must
help to show the fiercely divided religious world its common ground of faith.
No one will be successful who tries it simply as the intellectual exercise of
searching world scriptures, though this must be done. It will come as an act of
faith, an embracing of people, as a way of life. The members of this church of
wider nourishment will help to work out their own beliefs, too. Their church
represents the supreme form of generosity, the generosity of openness. Such a church will be a cup of strength
overflowing into life; because, in its presence and by its inspiration,
each member will find it easiest to make full use of the past, his best self,
and of the group. What better function could a church have?
New ways toward justice and
equality, as well as new forms of the
arts and of music, will be overflowing in a church which is a receptacle of
all people and of all traditions, of spontaneity of group interaction, and of
free expression in freshly created forms. Its finest evidence will be that
learning in religion and contributing to religion has continued. Its people,
program, music, and worship will be trained in the high skills of discovery.
They will know where to find, and how to make, elements of faith. The wonder of
life, the unlimited potential of man, the miracle of the universe and the
divinity of all things will not be far from them, day to day.
The Harvard Report on Education describes the mark of a good education as the ability
to choose and to use great sources. We gladly accept this as a quality of
liberal faith, if it can mean looking toward the experiences of today as well
as those of yesterday. Faith, like education, should be helped rather than
hurt, by the new dimensions of experience.
Who is in the field today,
adding the religious insights from science, psychology, sociology, and
education -- from social change, from arts and crafts and music, and from
creative expressions of free faith? Who is catching-up and using the
revelations not sealed in the past or confined to sacred and closed books?
The trouble with the
religious world is that the
superstitious and the ignorant are cocksure, and the intelligent and the
free are full of doubt.
The religion of new
dimensions, like the art, music, education, and social change of new
dimensions, requires people who are not afraid of the past, are not afraid of
the present, and care not a whit to have their tenets of belief popular enough
to appear along with Faith Healing in the Sunday supplement. Let the peddlers
of religious tranquilizers fill the tabloid space. The only cheaper faith is
"The Lord's Prayer" printed on a coin, and it is yours in an
automatic dispensing machine for eleven cents.
Dylan Thomas
captured the feeling of our attitude toward religion in
This age has a special need
for us and for the church open to the sunlight of its own day. We will welcome
the displaced religious persons of our time: the refugees from mixed marriages,
the unwanted free-thinkers from orthodoxies, the harried ones who insist
against dogma that they must work out their own beliefs, just as the minority
of time honored religious leaders have always been privileged to do when founding
a new faith.
Again and again we will say
with Longfellow: "Light of ages and of Nations, Every race and every time
has received thine inspirations, glimpses of thy truth sublime... Revelation is
not sealed. Truth and right are still revealed.”
We will have a faith forever
shared and forever our own.
_________________________
Prepared for web page display
on