Am I a Universalist?
(Note: I earlier posted a plug for THE UNIVERSALIST HERALD, the oldest continuously published liberal religious periodical in the U.S. and to which I contribute. The following article appeared in the January/February edition, Vol. 157, No. 1. For subscription information contact Doug Shaheen, 21 Cheverus Rd. Dorchester, MA 02124-2401.)
The other day I was taken aback when a member of my congregation introduced me to a newcomer as “our Universalist.” I have written on Universalist history. I once designed and taught a course in Unitarian and Universalist history in which the Universalists received equal time as the Unitarians and was told that was almost unheard of. I talked about it in a couple of lay sermons. But until that moment I never stopped to consider if I might, indeed, be a Universalist myself.
I entered the Unitarian Universalist orbit through the Unitarian door. It was thirty years after the consolidation of the two faiths when I finally knocked on the door of the Congregational Unitarian Church in Woodstock, Illinois. The writers and thinkers who brought me there after an adult lifetime of traditional radical contempt for religion were the great Unitarians who had so enriched American letters and culture. I literally had never heard of Universalism. When given the shorthand description in early orientation, I regarded it as a quaint vestige of superstitious Christianity on my new rational faith-the appendix of a modern body, useless but perhaps apt to infect and lethally explode at any moment.
In short, I was one of seekers who regularly found UU churches. I was a work in progress. My new found religious home gave me just the right combination of support while I tried to sort out belief systems and a platform from which to act on the social issues of day in an ethical way. With the help of my minister, my fellow congregants, classes and reading, my world view deepened and widened. It was my nature to try to understand things through their history. So I delved into this and that nook and cranny, this discovery taking me inevitably to another. Revelation was indeed not sealed. It was an ongoing process.
As I read and studied I came to have a deepening respect for the overlooked Universalist tradition. It resonated with me in important ways. I could look back at my own childhood and youth, raised in a lackadaisical Protestant household, exposed at different times to various Sunday Schools in the vague hope that I would eventually select one and settle into some respectable faith. I remembered the disconnect I felt when it turned out the Gentle Jesus surrounded by adoring children in gaudy prints, the one of whom we sang, “Jesus loves the little children, all the children of the world; red and yellow, black and white, they are precious in his sight, Jesus loves the little children of the world,” was also the judge who would cast sinners into unremitting hell. And he would condemn not only bad men like murderers, but little children who were Jews or Hindus who had never done a bad thing to any one. It made no sense to me then.
By my junior high years, I decided I would just as soon stay home on Sunday morning and mow the lawn as listen to any more of it. I walked away from religion without regret. By my twenties I was an anarchist, an anti-cleric who made a point of literally pissing on churches.
Looking back,I came to realize that my childhood reaction was the same one that struck the earliest Universalist preachers and compelled them to saddle up and harangue strangers in obscure hamlets.
But that didn’t make me a Universalist, I thought, because I wasn’t personally concerned with the fate of my soul after death. Like most UU’s it was not central to my faith. It is not that I disbelieved in an afterlife, or believed in one. It was that any condition after death was simply unknowable and open to only one avenue of discovery. The world provided an array of explanations from panoply of religions, none more certain than any other. It made no sense to lay my chips on red or black, odd or even, let alone on some specific number. The wheel will spin, the ball will drop where it will. So if Universalism’s main point was to promise me a happy eternity, it bore no greater truth than any other system.
The issue of God or no god was dicier. I was grounded in scientific rationalism, but I had experienced a few of those moments of personal epiphany (some of them not even assisted by the ingestion of psychedelics) described by Emerson. I had a sense of reverence for what I called The Greater. But this unknowable Force was not anthropomorphic, nor an omnipotent busy body. Its eye was not upon the sparrow nor was It attentive to the whining petitions for personal benefit constantly directed toward It by millions. Most importantly, The Greater could not be vain or jealous. I told a semi shocked congregation one morning that a god who needs his ass kissed is not a god worth worshiping. That did not seem to jibe with a Universalism which I still believed still clung to some form of old Sky God.
Years have passed. I have learned how Universalism grew and evolved in ways that seemed more congenial to my own conclusions. My understanding deepened. My respect grew. And yes, on alternate Thursdays I might be a Universalist. But on Friday I might be a Deist, Tuesday a Transcendentalist, Sunday a Humanist, and fifteen minutes every month or so maybe a pantheist. I learned and drew from them all and they grew in me. Hard questions sometimes had many answers or none at all. And the firm anchor of my conviction yesterday was apt to be swept a mile down stream today.
I have resisted any label other than Unitarian Universalist, which is a process rather than a credo and broad enough for both my convictions and confusions. Within that umbrella I have demurred from being lassoed into this or that ideological camp with the implicit necessity of defending my position while sniping at the incursions of others. I have no interest in feeling like a persecuted Christian or Humanist marginalized by “the language of reverence.” I want no part of the quarrel between neo-pagans and righteous monotheists.
So when my friend hung that label “Universalist” around my neck that coffee hour morning, I was tempted to take the Fifth. But something held me back. I took another slurp of Fair Trade Coffee. I could think of no better definition for the breadth and minutia of my belief. “Perhaps I am,” I said, “Perhaps I am.”
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The other day I was taken aback when a member of my congregation introduced me to a newcomer as “our Universalist.” I have written on Universalist history. I once designed and taught a course in Unitarian and Universalist history in which the Universalists received equal time as the Unitarians and was told that was almost unheard of. I talked about it in a couple of lay sermons. But until that moment I never stopped to consider if I might, indeed, be a Universalist myself.
I entered the Unitarian Universalist orbit through the Unitarian door. It was thirty years after the consolidation of the two faiths when I finally knocked on the door of the Congregational Unitarian Church in Woodstock, Illinois. The writers and thinkers who brought me there after an adult lifetime of traditional radical contempt for religion were the great Unitarians who had so enriched American letters and culture. I literally had never heard of Universalism. When given the shorthand description in early orientation, I regarded it as a quaint vestige of superstitious Christianity on my new rational faith-the appendix of a modern body, useless but perhaps apt to infect and lethally explode at any moment.
In short, I was one of seekers who regularly found UU churches. I was a work in progress. My new found religious home gave me just the right combination of support while I tried to sort out belief systems and a platform from which to act on the social issues of day in an ethical way. With the help of my minister, my fellow congregants, classes and reading, my world view deepened and widened. It was my nature to try to understand things through their history. So I delved into this and that nook and cranny, this discovery taking me inevitably to another. Revelation was indeed not sealed. It was an ongoing process.
As I read and studied I came to have a deepening respect for the overlooked Universalist tradition. It resonated with me in important ways. I could look back at my own childhood and youth, raised in a lackadaisical Protestant household, exposed at different times to various Sunday Schools in the vague hope that I would eventually select one and settle into some respectable faith. I remembered the disconnect I felt when it turned out the Gentle Jesus surrounded by adoring children in gaudy prints, the one of whom we sang, “Jesus loves the little children, all the children of the world; red and yellow, black and white, they are precious in his sight, Jesus loves the little children of the world,” was also the judge who would cast sinners into unremitting hell. And he would condemn not only bad men like murderers, but little children who were Jews or Hindus who had never done a bad thing to any one. It made no sense to me then.
By my junior high years, I decided I would just as soon stay home on Sunday morning and mow the lawn as listen to any more of it. I walked away from religion without regret. By my twenties I was an anarchist, an anti-cleric who made a point of literally pissing on churches.
Looking back,I came to realize that my childhood reaction was the same one that struck the earliest Universalist preachers and compelled them to saddle up and harangue strangers in obscure hamlets.
But that didn’t make me a Universalist, I thought, because I wasn’t personally concerned with the fate of my soul after death. Like most UU’s it was not central to my faith. It is not that I disbelieved in an afterlife, or believed in one. It was that any condition after death was simply unknowable and open to only one avenue of discovery. The world provided an array of explanations from panoply of religions, none more certain than any other. It made no sense to lay my chips on red or black, odd or even, let alone on some specific number. The wheel will spin, the ball will drop where it will. So if Universalism’s main point was to promise me a happy eternity, it bore no greater truth than any other system.
The issue of God or no god was dicier. I was grounded in scientific rationalism, but I had experienced a few of those moments of personal epiphany (some of them not even assisted by the ingestion of psychedelics) described by Emerson. I had a sense of reverence for what I called The Greater. But this unknowable Force was not anthropomorphic, nor an omnipotent busy body. Its eye was not upon the sparrow nor was It attentive to the whining petitions for personal benefit constantly directed toward It by millions. Most importantly, The Greater could not be vain or jealous. I told a semi shocked congregation one morning that a god who needs his ass kissed is not a god worth worshiping. That did not seem to jibe with a Universalism which I still believed still clung to some form of old Sky God.
Years have passed. I have learned how Universalism grew and evolved in ways that seemed more congenial to my own conclusions. My understanding deepened. My respect grew. And yes, on alternate Thursdays I might be a Universalist. But on Friday I might be a Deist, Tuesday a Transcendentalist, Sunday a Humanist, and fifteen minutes every month or so maybe a pantheist. I learned and drew from them all and they grew in me. Hard questions sometimes had many answers or none at all. And the firm anchor of my conviction yesterday was apt to be swept a mile down stream today.
I have resisted any label other than Unitarian Universalist, which is a process rather than a credo and broad enough for both my convictions and confusions. Within that umbrella I have demurred from being lassoed into this or that ideological camp with the implicit necessity of defending my position while sniping at the incursions of others. I have no interest in feeling like a persecuted Christian or Humanist marginalized by “the language of reverence.” I want no part of the quarrel between neo-pagans and righteous monotheists.
So when my friend hung that label “Universalist” around my neck that coffee hour morning, I was tempted to take the Fifth. But something held me back. I took another slurp of Fair Trade Coffee. I could think of no better definition for the breadth and minutia of my belief. “Perhaps I am,” I said, “Perhaps I am.”
Not a LiveJournal member? Comment by e-mail to pmurfin@sbcglobal.net