A Spiritual Center with a Civic Circumference¹ :
Meriting the Wind We Inherit²
Richard S. Gilbert
A Keynote Address on the Occasion of the
Sesquicentennial of the Unitarian Universalist Church of Muncie
January 31, 2009

I am a little leery speaking right after a meal. Unitarian minister-philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson said that "Men are conservatives when they are least vigorous, or when they are most luxurious. They are conservatives after dinner..."³ . Perhaps women too? Universalist theologian Clarence Skinner was somewhat more blunt: "A stuffed prophet sees no visions."⁴ What could he have meant? I'll try to negate these observations as I help you celebrate your sesquicentennial as a congregation.

It seems 1859 was a big year. The first steamboat sailed – on the Red River; the Arkansas legislature required free blacks to choose exile or slavery; Charles Dickens' A Tale of Two Cities was published; ground was broken for the Suez Canal; Charles Blondin was the first to cross Niagara Falls on a tightrope; the elevator was patented; the first Pullman sleeping car was put into service; John Brown led the Harper's ferry raid; Charles Darwin published On the Origin of Species; and the Unitarian Universalist Church of Muncie, Indiana, was founded – February 3, 1859 to be exact.

What a feast of images this historical mini-survey presents: sailing forth on unknown seas; it was the "best of times; it was the worst of times;" ground was broken for the building of a new church; congregations are always walking on tightropes across dangerous spaces; it is time for your "elevator speech" – how you would define Unitarian Universalism between the first and tenth floors; there is no time for sleeping cars today; humanity understands itself as a work in progress, evolving to what Ashley Montague said: "At last we have discovered the missing link between our anthropoid ancestors and truly civilized men (sic) - us."

The historical milieu into which this congregation came was a dramatic one. The struggle over slavery was in full force, preachers of both North and South both claimed they knew God's will and the other side be damned; the nation was on the brink of an industrial age; biblical scholarship revealed the Bible as a human book and Jesus as a spiritual teacher and moral reformer. Darwin challenged the supernaturalism of orthodox religion with a science that created a furor in religious circles. It was a heady time to be alive – a time marked by crisis - well described by the Chinese ideograph of two figures, one representing danger; the other opportunity.

Into this maelstrom marched the Universalists of Muncie. Universalism had its origins in the early history of Christianity - based on three powerful words from the Gospel of John, "God is love." In the third century of the Common Era (CE), Origin, an early church father, declared universal salvation from a merciful God. Punishment was a self-inflicted consequence of sin. That was radical stuff, and Origin found himself condemned as a heretic.

There is a myth from Bernard of Clairvaux in the Middle Ages about a woman seen in a vision. She was carrying a pitcher and a torch. Why these? With the pitcher she would quench the fires of hell, and with the torch she would burn the pleasures of heaven. After these were gone, people would be able to love God for God's sake. There is a similar story from Readings from the Mystics of Islam. The Universalist impulse is another way of promoting the importance of being good - for nothing.

18th century Universalism threw down the theological gauntlet to Calvinism, rejecting the Calvinist idea of pre-destination - that some at birth were destined for heaven, some for hell. It replaced a vengeful God of judgment with a merciful God of love. Or, in the words of the old cliché: one gets Universalist holy water by boiling the hell out of it.

Robert Ingersoll, the Great Agnostic, said, "I want to thank the Universalist Church . . . . They at least believe in a God who is a gentleman . . . they believe, at least, in a heavenly father who will leave the latch string out until the last child gets home." Or, as Ambrose Beirce put it in his Devil's Dictionary: "The Universalist is one who foregoes the advantage of hell for persons of another faith."

John Murray, a disillusioned Methodist preacher, brought this heresy from England to these shores in 1770. God's nature was love and forgiveness, he believed, not punishment and damnation. We can illustrate the theological tension of the day by noting that there were two John Murrays in Boston at the turn of the 19th Century, "Damnation Murray," and "Salvation Murray," to distinguish Calvinist from Universalist. The unpopularity of the latter, our John Murray, is evident in these words from his autobiography describing a Sunday morning sermon in Boston: "At length, a large rugged stone, weight about a pound and a half, was forcibly thrown in at the window behind my back; it missed me. Had it sped, as it was aimed, it must have killed me. Lifting it up, and waving it in the view of the people, I observed, 'This argument is solid, and weighty, but it is neither rational, nor convincing . Not all the stones in Boston, except they stop my breath, shall shut my mouth, or arrest my testimony."' These Universalists took their faith seriously.

Theologian Hosea Ballou defended the Universalist faith in his pivotal 1803 book, A Treatise on the Atonement, in which he argued that we are assured salvation, not by the death of Jesus on the cross which atoned for all humanity's sins, but by the example of Jesus' life with his belief in love to God and love to neighbor. Ballou linked the Universal Fatherhood of God with the Universal Brotherhood of man, in the language of the day. He said: "There is one inevitable criterion of judgment touching religious faith in doctrinal matters: Can you reduce it to practice? If not, have none of it."

Ballou, the pre-eminent 19th century preacher of universal salvation, was riding the circuit in the New Hampshire hills with a Baptist minister one day, arguing theology as they traveled. At one point, the Baptist looked over and said, "Brother Ballou, if I were a Universalist and feared not the fires of hell, I could hit you over the head, steal your horse and saddle, and ride away, and I'd still go to heaven." Ballou looked over at him and said, "If you were a Universalist, the idea would never occur to you."

The Universalist heresy escaped neither the notice nor the wrath of orthodox clergy.  One referred to the Universalist church as "the Fire Insurance Company" because "all its members were assured a place in hell." A letter to the editor at The Universalist Magazine, April 8, 1820, read: "My good Friend: Continue as you have done widely to disseminate your princely magazine, and be assured that you will shortly have one of the most exalted thrones among us. Yours with all the love of a fiend, Nick Lucifer." Another detractor called Universalism "a flesh-pleasing, conscience-soothing doctrine that will not only justify neglect of God and man, but gives fallen nature an unlimited license to serve the devil with greediness in any and every possible way that his degenerate fallen soul requires or desires."

Nevertheless, for its practitioners Universalism was a difficult gospel: to practice what one preaches - to take the love of God for humanity and to live it in the world by including all people in the human family. If we think of the theological - our relation to what is ultimate - as the vertical dimension of religion, and the ethical - our relation to our neighbors on earth - as the horizontal dimension of religion, then the vertical puts pressure on the horizontal. Our basic beliefs cry out for action. "There is no vacuum in the spiritual life, as there is no vacuum in nature," said theologian Paul Tillich. Universalism, originating in the vertical dimension of faith, now faced the daunting prospect of transforming it into the horizontal.

Universalists figured prominently in the history of social reform in America. Salvation John Murray, George Washington's chaplain during the Revolutionary War, had taken in Gloster Dalton, a slave, as a member of the first Universalist Church in America, Gloucester, Massachusetts, in 1779, and championed the separation of church and state. Benjamin Rush, signer of the Declaration of Independence, was father of American psychiatry, founder of the first anti-slavery society in America and promoter of a Department of Peace. Adin Ballou was a Christian pacifist who influenced Leo Tolstoy, Mohandas Gandhi and Martin Luther King. There was Clara Barton, founder of the American Red Cross, whose biography was called a "sketch of compulsion."

That reformist impulse was not lost upon the Universalists of Muncie. Universalism's appealing gospel spread rapidly westward. The town of Muncie was founded in 1823 by one Goldsmith Gilbert, "a man of irreproachable integrity . . . honored and beloved by all. In his religious views he was a Universalist." In 1855 Samuel Watson came to Muncie from Ohio determined to found a Universalist church. "He being a man that loved discussion and always ready to defend the oppressed and was quick and at all times ready to defend what he thought was right and truth, and as ready to condemn and expose error, (and consequently being a man of considerably knowledge, shrewdness, and outspoken, he was not liked by his opponents, and especially tricky politicians."

As was typical of the time, he brought in guest speakers to hold forth on Universalism in the courthouse and in people's homes. The first Universalist sermon in Muncie was preached in the home of India and Samuel Budd. Universalism was, as you might guess, quite controversial and many churches closed their doors to it. Therefore, in 1859 Muncie Universalists erected their own church with the tallest steeple in town at the corner of Madison and Jackson, the current location of Cintus Linens. It was dedicated September 9, 1860. Members declared their belief in "Jesus Christ as the Son of God," but stressed that "this Church accords to all persons the right of private judgment in matters of faith and opinion." They believed that "there is one God, whose nature is love . . . who will finally restore the whole family of mankind to holiness and happiness."

Among the many leaders were people whose names are now recognizable on street signs – Adam Wolfe, Thomas Kirby and Alfred Kilgore. The most notable parishioners were members of the Ball family of canning jar and Ball State University fame. Edmund B. Ball, father of Edmund F. Ball, married Bertha Crosley, the daughter of the Universalist minister, Marion Crosley. In 1899 the Ball family encouraged a Universalist woman minister, Rev Margaret Brennan, to come to Muncie. Though this was surprising to some, it was not to Universalists. Olympia Brown had been the first woman ordained by a denomination, the St. Lawrence Universalist Association in 1863; she was a graduate of my alma mater, St. Lawrence University Theological School, and an ardent suffragette who worked with Susan B. Anthony. Under Rev. Brennan's leadership, and with the financial support of the Ball family, the simple brick church was turned into a grand and elegant church with windows of American cathedral glass and antique oak woodwork.

In 1919, the Rev Harry Adams Hersey came to Muncie as minister of the Universalist Church. The early 1920's were the heyday of the Ku Klux Klan in Indiana. Rev. Hersey did not hesitate to denounce the Klan from the pulpit, one of only two white ministers in Muncie to do so. Sadly, "His outspokenness offended many and led to his resignation."

In 1961 Universalists joined with Unitarians to become the Unitarian Universalist Association of America. In 1968, the downtown church building here had badly deteriorated. A new church was built in a wooded setting in northwest Muncie, off Morrison Road. The new modern building reflected the values of a new generation and the evolving religious ideas of the new denomination.

And so Universalism evolved from a theological affirmation of a loving God who would embrace all people to a demanding faith which insisted on putting one's faith into action – after the Book of James, "Faith without works is dead." Clarence Skinner took issue with the popular Father Divine, who said: "Metaphysics don't tangibilitate." Skinner's theology of the divine indwelling surfaced in his social commitments. He tangibilitated them. Faith was "belief plus, " that "force which carries belief into action, " a form of human energy. God was the creative power at the center of things working toward peace and justice.

The Rev. Eli Powers had said at the turn of the century: "Universalism as an eschatology is a comforting faith for all who think of a future life. Universalism as a regulator of human life is the most exacting and difficult faith which calls (people) to its support. Universalism teaches us the race is so bound together that an injury to one member is an injury to all."

In more contemporary theological terms I like the simple affirmation of Paul Tillich who said, "Accept the fact you are accepted." Martin Luther King, Jr., must have had Universalism in mind when he spoke about the ultimate human need for a feeling of "somebodiness." Those sentiments are at the heart of a Universalist theology which insists that our mission is not to prepare people for a heavenly afterlife or to help them avoid the fires of hell, but to take the hells of here and now and create a heaven on earth – building what many, including Dr. King, have called the Beloved Community.

And don't we have enough "hells" here on earth? I think of a New Yorker cartoon - a minister preaching: "Having completed the formation of the earth, on the seventh day the Lord rested. Then, on the eighth day, the Lord said, 'Let there be problems.' And there were problems."⁵ I don't need to catalog them in detail: two tragic wars, a volatile Middle East, the pervasive threat of global warming, humanity's rape of the earth, racism, sexism, homophobia and an economic tsunami which erodes our wealth, while plunging the marginalized of the world into deeper despair.

The question emerging from my brief historical survey is this: Does this congregation merit the wind it has inherited? Let me explain. In the play Inherit the Wind, Brady, William Jennings Bryant in the 1925 Scopes Monkey Trial, invokes a verse from proverbs: "He who troubles his household will inherit the wind." Universalism has been troubling the household of faith from its beginning, and I believe it proper to inquire what kind of wind it is and whether or not we have merited what we have inherited.

Unitarian Universalists are a prosperous and privileged people living in a broken world. What is our distinctive mission in building a Beloved Community on this fragmented globe?

The church history you have inherited defines a spiritual center with a civic circumference. Since 1859 this congregation has been a vital presence in this community on the side of love and justice. It has been able to do so because of a theology of love – that all people are of inherent worth and dignity, and that it is our mission to work with them to build Beloved Community.

It provides a spiritual center in which you can consider your lives and their meaning; in which you can envision Beloved Community even as you survey its brokenness; in which you can discern what you can and will do to repair a broken world. In short, this congregation's mission has been and will continue to be – being a spiritual center with a civic circumference.

It has been said that Unitarian Universalism does not interfere with either your politics or your religion. I beg to differ. It "interferes" with both, and that is the way it ought to be. There is in Jewish tradition a concept – tikkun ha olam - "repair of the world." It strikes me that one of our missions as religious people is just that - to repair a broken world and heal its hurting people. We move from pulpit and pew into the public square. We understand peace and justice work as a spiritual practice.

Recently environmental activist Bill McKibben challenged Americans to save our planet. "So here's the plan," he wrote. "On Saturday, April 14, a coalition of environmental activists and organizations will be staging rallies around the country. Local rallies will all hoist the same banner: 'Congress: Stop Global Warming. Cut Carbon 80% by 2050.'" Where will this demonstration have the most impact? "Church steps," he says. "Why church steps? Because, to put it crudely, politicians pay attention to people on church steps."⁶

My thesis, then, is that the Unitarian Universalist church – this Unitarian Universalist church – is a spiritual center with a civic circumference. Its task is to help people grow their souls, to love and to be loved and to help repair this world of ours. As Ghandi said, "Be the change you would like to see in the world." The question, then, is this: are you, as individuals, as a congregation, the change you want to see in the world?

There is, of course, a slight problem – hinted at by Oscar Wilde: "The trouble with socialism is that it takes too many evenings." The same might be said of Unitarian Universalism or of democracy itself. It takes up too many evenings. The Election of 2008 and the inauguration of Barack Obama have given many of us new hope that this Beloved Community is just a bit closer, that even with the horrendous problems that beset us, there is hope we can take history by the forelock and create some history of our own.

Our response to this new situation will tell just how seriously we take our faith and our democracy. Our worst mistake would be to envision Barack Obama as the great national saviour and leave our future to him. Leadership at the top is a necessary, but not sufficient condition, for building Beloved Community. Theodore Parker once said, in words echoed by Martin Luther King, "The moral arc of the universe is long, but it bends toward justice. . . . Democracy is not what we have. It's what we do."⁷   That arc does not bend automatically; bending it toward justice is an act of the will – our will.

Martin Luther King said, "The church must be reminded that it is not the master or the servant of the state, but rather the conscience of the state. It must be the guide and critic of the state, and never its tool. If the church does not recapture its prophetic zeal, it will be come an irrelevant social club without moral or spiritual authority."

Our task is to connect our basic convictions – our religious faith – with the problems of Muncie, Indiana, and beyond – to translate our religious convictions into the common good. As we read in the prophet Nehemiah as he sought to rebuild Jerusalem: "I [Nehemiah] told them that the hand of my God had been gracious upon me, and also the words that the king had spoken to me. Then they said, 'Let us start building!' So they committed themselves to the common good" (Nehemiah 2:18—NRSV).

"Democracy," wrote E. B. White, "is the recurrent suspicion that more than half of the people are right more than half of the time. . . . Democracy is the score at the beginning of the ninth." The game is not over – it was not over November 4, 2008. Now the hard work begins.

This congregation has an enviable record of walking the talk. However, your great blessing is also your great challenge – not to rest on your laurels, but to merit the wind you have inherited. Repairing the world is always unfinished business.

The task seems overwhelming, but folk singer Peter Seeger, himself a Unitarian Universalist, aids our understanding. He once built a schooner called the Clearwater. He used it to take people on Hudson River excursions to enlist their support for cleaning up the river and its beaches. Although it was a small endeavor, Seeger likened it to a seesaw with one end anchored to the ground by a basket of rocks, while activists were at the other end using teaspoons to slowly fill a basket with sand. Some day the balance will tip and the rocks will be sent flying into the air. People will ask: "How did that happen so quickly?" It was because of "us and our damned little teaspoons."⁸ As you celebrate your sesquicentennial, I urge you to get out your teaspoons and get to work for the next 150 years!

1. The concept was created by James Luther Adams.
2. Taken from a sermon by Robert Shaw at the First Unitarian Church of Cleveland.
3. Ralph Waldo Emerson, The Harper Book of American Quotations, p. 441 # 187:43.
4.Clarence R. Skinner (source unknown).
5. The New Yorker October 18, 1993.
6. Bill McKibben, “Meltdown:  Running Out of Time on Global Warming.”  The Christian Century, 2/20/07, p. 24.
7. Theodore Parker
8. (interview in Studs Terkel’s Hope Dies Last as reported in Trinity Seminary Review, Fall, 2005, via Xn Century 11/15/05, p. 7