All Souls | A Sermon by Forrest Church

Sometimes, family issues, even family disputes, have implications for society at large. This is true in our immediate families, where we try to balance individual freedom with mutual responsibility and in our extended families as well, from congregations to nation states. Such discussions turn on the philosophical question of the one and the many, posed first by the Greek philosopher Parmenides and memorably captured by the Apostle Paul in his first letter to Corinth, where he seeks to make peace between Jewish and gentile Christians by invoking the famous metaphor of the church as one body with many members, all of whom must be honored. Both the United States of America and Unitarian Universalism—a quintessential American faith—tackle the age-old balancing act of the one and the many by positing the idea of E pluribus unum (literally, "out of many, one"). Unfettered Pluribus leads to absolute relativism, even anarchy. Unum alone leads to tyranny, one part imposing its values on all others, sacrificing liberty on the altar of order.

To place our congregational debate over the Bond of Union in this larger frame, my touchstone is a sentence from the minister who inspired both the founding of our congregation and, later, our name. What William Ellery Channing said is this: "I am a living member of the great family of All Souls."

Let me begin, however, within the family. I owe you an apology. Had I suspected that our proposal to change the by-laws to make the criterion for membership more inclusive would be so alarming to some of you, I never would have dared to recommend it. Nor, I am sure, would the board. The moment we realized how this action was being interpreted—as watering down, or even eviscerating, our spiritual essence—most of us recognized that our proposal not only opened itself to, but almost demanded misinterpretation. I was out of town on family vacation two Sundays ago, therefore missing the congregational discussion following church. I'm told, by people of diverse opinion, that it was a wonderful discussion. Knowing by then how our proposal had been received by several people whose feelings I honor and whose opinion I deeply respect, had I been present at that meeting I might have been tempted to rise in passionate opposition to my own proposal.

Two more weeks have passed since that meeting. Trusting that it has become clear to most of you that the alarm signaling an intended change in our spiritual foundation was a false alarm, I'm beginning to look at the whole matter somewhat differently. Before explaining why, let me add to my apology a confession. As a rule, successful ministers—measuring success here in material, not spiritual terms—are rarely remembered as courageous leaders. Any minister who thrives for a quarter century in one pulpit, fortunate enough to oversee a period of general growth, amity, and prosperity, may be many fine things, but courageous is not likely to be one of them. Instinctively and successfully dedicated to not rocking the boat, yes; a great prophet, probably not. Fortunately, in a place like All Souls, with our long tradition of freedom of the pulpit, this inborn caution has not clipped my theological or public ministerial wings. As individual members, sometimes you have agreed with the public stands and theological positions I have taken in my sermons or my writings, sometimes not, but never have you turned this into a personal matter. The principle "We need not think alike to love alike" has always been honored in this church.

On matters of polity, however, by-laws matters and the like, I have heretofore, with one telling exception, scrupulously avoided roiling the waters, precisely to avoid the kind of controversy we now are experiencing. The single exception is when I seized almost two decades ago upon Bert Zippel's insistence that we degenderize the by-laws (itself a non-controversial matter) to, at the same time, degenderize the bond of union (changing the word, "man," to the word, "all."). I had wondered for several years how we might do this without creating a division in the congregation. Bert's expedient provided the perfect cover. One year at our annual meeting, with no reference to the Bond of Union whatsoever, we unanimously degenderized the by-laws (which almost no one had ever read). The following Sunday, with a revised Bond of Union in place, I asked those who preferred the old wording to be as gracious about the new as those who welcomed the new wording had always been gracious about the old! Apart from a little grumbling, this change was effected without any dread divisiveness.

Surely this experience clouded my thinking earlier this year, when, slipstreaming on the Board's admirable commitment to expanding the spirit of inclusiveness, I recommended that we seize this opportunity to revisit an anomaly in our by laws that compromises the guiding principle of theological openness implicit in our very name, All Souls. In the Service of the Right Hand of Fellowship, we invite each new member "henceforth to reject those things you hold to be false and embrace those you find to be true"—call it "freedom of the pews." Yet, at the same time, we ask them to subscribe, as a condition of membership, to a statement of faith. Even as we avow a commitment to "deeds not creeds," a quasi-creedal test is enshrined in our by-laws. Having for years asked people to overlook this anomaly, Galen and I thought we could solve the problem simply by replacing "the spirit of Jesus" with "the spirit of Love," and encompassing "the worship of God" under the broader rubric of "worship." We couldn't have been more wrong. Though the two of us would be among the last people to want to water down, much less eviscerate, the spiritual, especially the transcendent dimension of our life together, that is how some of you, quite understandably, interpreted our unexplained action. We completely failed to recognize, with the language of reverence—our very language in this church—returning to Unitarian Universalists churches across the land, that by "killing God and Jesus" as one of you put it, we might appear secretly to have enlisted in the secular devil's party.

Three weeks now have past. By this time, most everyone who initially was alarmed that All Souls was about to abdicate its longstanding spiritual tradition recognizes, I hope, that this alarm, though completely understandable, was a false alarm. Those rightly concerned about a rush to judgment have further been assured by the board that we will take our time with this. Even those who lamented not the loss of God or Jesus but the loss of poetry in our bond of union need no longer worry. The chance that the substitute language that we proposed will be adopted is, I would wager, just about nil.

Herein, however, lies the irony, one I have been pondering all week. Had I known what the response would be to a proposed change in the by-laws respecting our Bond of Union—even had I suspected it would be 1/10^th as passionate as it was—in fact, even had I known in advance that any one of the wonderful people who have written to me that they were so hurt by the suggested change that they found themselves fighting back tears every time they thought about it—I certainly never would have dreamed suggesting such a change. Remember, successful long-standing parish ministers are cowards. We are successful precisely because we manage never unnecessarily to rock the institutional boat.

So had I known what would happen, I would never have dared provoke conflict by suggesting a by laws change. Yet, three weeks into this discussion, something wonderful is happening here at All Souls. A healthy, mature, even exciting discussion has commenced, the kind of discussion we should try to sustain long after the question of the Bond of Union has been resolved. We are asking ourselves, what makes this church special? And this faith? What binds us together? What do we pledge our hearts to, both individually and collectively. What unites us as Unitarian Universalists? And as members of All Souls? However unintentionally, inadvertently, and hamfistedly, I have stumbled into something actually approximating bold institutional leadership.

Finding myself in this unfamiliar position, and with nothing left to lose, let me share with you my hopes as to where this discussion might profitably lead from here. First, I hope it may lead to a collective recommitment to the explicitly spiritual foundation upon which our life together—here at All Souls and as a denomination—historically rests. To the extent that liberal religion is indistinguishable from liberal politics it loses both its promise and its soul. Never, in fact, has the liberal religious witness been more urgently called for. In a world riven by the demonic scourge of religious absolutism, the Universalist gospel offers saving hope. We affirm, consecrated by mystery and wonder, that many paths lead toward enlightenment. We reject dogma precisely because all dogmas codify absolute answers to unanswerable questions, doing so in such a way that peoples and faiths are, sometimes even fatally, estranged from one another.

Historically, Unitarian has claimed that there is one God, one Light, call it what you will. We are all children of the same sacred power. We share a single ground of being. The unaccountable gift of life and the mortar of mortality bind us fast to one another. Truly we are one, brothers and sisters, each a child of God.

God is not God's name. God is our name—one of our names—for that which is greater than all and yet present in each. That, theologically speaking, is Unitarianism.

Universalism proclaims that the One Light shines through the all windows of what I call the Cathedral of the World. We can't stare directly at this Light, even as we can't stare at the sun without going blind. The one Light, or God, call it what you will, is refracted through every window differently. Fundamentalists on the religious Right proclaim that the Light shines through their window only. Fundamentalists of the secular left, observing the bewildering variety of worshippers and windows, proclaim that there is no Light. But the windows aren't the Light, only where the Light shines through.

Unitarianism: one light. Universalism: many windows. Put the two together, and in this riven world, you get a saving faith. A faith that sees beyond all superficial differences to all that unites us. As for the age-old conundrum of the one and the many with which I began, Unitarianism emphasizes the one, Universalism, the many.

The most special thing about Unitarian Universalist congregations is that we model within them the same ideal that we must also work cultivate in the world at large, if we are not eventually to destroy one another on account of our differences. Each Unitarian Universalist congregation is a spiritual laboratory for e pluribus unum. That is why we do not impose doctrinal tests on our members. "Deeds not creeds" is our motto. As Thomas Jefferson said, "It is in our lives not our words that our religion must be read."

On Lay Sunday, the Board shared that wonderful description of this congregation at the time of its founding 185 years ago: "It requires no little zeal and skill to make the discordant elements of which our church is composed, mingle. Excepting one or two little knots in the church they are strangers here from inland and outland, English radicals & daughters of Erin, Germans and Hollanders, philosophic gentiles and unbelieving Jews. In this our association there is at least one of every sort. There are also those who have been seen ¥righteous in this generation,' a peculiar people zealous of good works." Some thirty years later, our greatest minister, Henry Whitney Bellows chose the right name for this church: All Souls. All Souls. Not All Saints. Not All Christians or All Humanists or All Theists. All Souls. Out of many, one.

The present Bond of Union was added to our by-laws in 1922. The church was tiny then. My guess is, as often happens in a dwindling and therefore probably somewhat fractious and mutually accusatory group, certain members got overly concerned about the heterodoxy of their neighbors' views. So the board imposed a doctrinal test, informing the congregation that everyone would be assumed to subscribe, then smoking out those who dissented by inviting them to express their dissent in writing. Four women dissented. Whether or not they left the church (or were forced from it) we do not know.

Which leads us to the juncture we find ourselves at today. As sure as I am that All Souls must, if anything, enhance, and certainly not mute, the language of reverence—in our worship, our witness, and our fellowship—I am equally convinced that there is no place here for anything that might be construed as a doctrinal test for membership. As it exists now in our bylaws, the Bond of Union is such a test. Words that most long standing members have a clear context for give many people new to this congregation, especially members from non-Christian backgrounds, reasonable grounds to feel that they would be forced to compromise their own religious freedom in order to join All Souls. All Souls.

These are not secularists who want to gut All Souls of all religious trappings. They are individuals drawn initially to this sanctuary by our worshipful and reverent services. They too seek a place to nourish their souls. For years when individuals have raised questions about the Bond of Union, I have done everything I could to explain that "the spirit of Jesus" is the spirit of love, that we celebrate the teachings of Jesus not the teachings about Jesus. And then they ask, "What about Moses? What about Buddha?" I have no ready answer. No answer but this. "Since it is in our lives and not our words that our religion must be read, don't get caught up in the words. To change the Bond of Union would unnecessarily divide the congregation. Besides, if we start arguing over what exactly the Bond of Union should say, everyone will have a different problem with it. So when the part you can't affirm comes up, simply cast it in your own words." (This, by the way, is precisely what I mean about successful long-term ministers not being courageous leaders.) Some accepted my logic. Others continued their religious search elsewhere. To them All Souls was Some Souls. Certainly it was not the church we claim it to be.

Where then does this leave us? First, I hope it leaves us with the reassurance that All Souls will continue to be a home for liberal religion in its deepest and most reverent expression. But also, I entertain the equal hope that All Souls will henceforth again truly live up to its name and be a home for liberal religion at its most generous, embracing All Souls from "philosophic gentile to unbelieving Jew." There will be plenty of opportunity for discussion between now and June and for you to send in your ideas. Believe me, the minister and Board are listening. My guess is that we will find, not a compromise so much as a wonderful, dynamic, reverent expression of how together, while being many, we are yet one. A reverent convenant, if not the present Bond of Union then something very like it, has a place in our worship and should be kept there.

This said, I personally believe now that the proposal we made three weeks ago was not radical enough. In my view, the Bond of Union, any Bond of Union, should be struck from the by-laws altogether. Whatever language we cast our covenant in for the purposes of our liturgy—whether the present Bond of Union or something new—it has no place, without mischief, in the legal code of our congregation as a limitation, howsoever benign, on the freedom of conscience of our members.

Obviously, this is not the sort of thing a successful, pusillanimous, long-term minister is wont to suggest. But having stumbled into a position of leadership, I might as well now lead. This is not my decision, however. It is yours. The decision of All Souls. Of one thing I am completely confident. The discussions we have on this subject, both leading up to a proposal and vote and throughout the months and years to follow, will vitalize and strengthen our church.

Amen. I love you. And may God bless us all.