Now, we ought to admit that, compared with some others, our religious movement is relatively new. In Eastern Europe, Unitarianism dates back as far as any of the Protestant traditions. But the tradition we inherit here in the states is only a couple of hundred years old, about as long as the United States has been a nation. An interesting thing here is that when we teach our UU history, we tend to do it with name-dropping, you know: "this or that famous person was a Unitarian or a Universalist." It sort of works, though, because so many of the people in our history were really big in American history as well. So name dropping, though a poor way to share with others who we are, is nonetheless a compelling UU activity.

For example, (now watch how I do this), John Adams and Thomas Jefferson were just two of the handful of United States presidents who were practicing Unitarians ⁽¹⁾. And they both knew and respected Joseph Priestley. Priestley was a real shaker and mover in American Unitarianism. He was read by Channing and scorned a generation later by Emerson ⁽²⁾. But before he came to America, he'd played a significant role in the development of Unitarianism in England.

Joseph Priestley was born in 1733 into a poor family in England. His father was a domestic cloth maker, and his mother died when he was six years old. He was brought up primarily by an aunt who was a strict Calvinist. He had a keen mind for languages and logic. He developed an early interest in ministry and received his degree for ministry as a young man. His career was comprised primarily of preaching and teaching. He wrote several books, and dabbled in chemistry and physics. History remembers him, however, as a scientist. Science was a side passion of his; something he did the way some men spend the weekend fishing or building little boats inside bottles. It was his hobby.

He was, however, truly influential in scientific circles. He had built a laboratory off the side of his home in which he conducted experiments. In one book I read that he was doing experiments in his kitchen until his wife complained about the fumes. He wrote about optics and was very interested in electricity. He discovered that carbon conducts electricity, and he was the first scientist to predict a relationship between electricity and chemistry. His primary scientific interest, however, was in gases. Priestley isolated and described many gases including: nitrous oxide, ammonia, hydrochloric acid, silicon, carbon dioxide, as well as a bunch more; and of course, the one he is most famous for: oxygen

Apparently there were two gentlemen working separately though simultaneously who discovered oxygen. Priestley published first, so he gets the credit. He didn't name the gas he found "oxygen." That name came later. ⁽³⁾ Priestley called it dephlogisticated air. Now, dephlogisticated air is air that absorbs phlogiston, the substance presumed to be in combustible materials that give them the ability to burn. It was actually Priestley's studies that gave another scientist the tip off that the phlogiston theory was wrong, and that it was really a chemical process involving oxygen. Priestley himself, however, never gave up the phlogiston theory.

To give you a sense of how he worked, I want to relate the intriguing way in which he studied what he called "mephitic air." It happened right after his visit to London where he met and befriended Benjamin Franklin. Priestley went to serve a small pastorate in Leeds, England. (Did you see there how effortlessly the name-dropping works?)

"Next door to his home (in Leeds) there was a brewery, and Priestley's scientific curiosity was aroused by the layer of heavy gas hovering over the huge fermentation vats. Priestley began experimenting with this gas, which we know today as carbon dioxide. Finding that the gas was heavier than air and that it could extinguish flames, Priestley realized he had isolated the same gas (a contemporary) had designated as fixed air. Conducting various experiments with this gas, he found that when dissolved in water, a bubbly drink was produced. Priestley had invented soda water, or seltzer." (World of Scientific Discovery, 2^nd ed. 1999)

Indeed, he somehow imagined that this soda water he had produced could prevent scurvy and he recommended it strongly to the navy. In one of the encyclopedia entries (Dictionary of American Biography) it characterized him thus: "As an investigator he worked rapidly and resourcefully, observing clearly and describing accurately the things he saw. He was able to generalize and to see the practical applications of many of his studies, but his faculties of correlation and interpretation were slender."

I think I have finished both the history and the science lesson. Onto the theology lesson. Joseph Priestley was primarily a preacher and religious thinker. It is really remarkable that he is remembered for his scientific work, and barely a mention comes through about his theology and religious convictions. As you can perhaps guess by the title of this sermon, he was an Arminian. Arminianism is the doctrinal position that denies election and original sin, and supports the doctrine of free will. It is basically anti-Calvinism, if you will. Jacob Arminius was a Dutch reformed theologian from the 1500's who said that people cold to respond to divine grace. He basically said everyone can be saved. John Calvin was saying, "No, only a select few could be saved, a pre-selected few in fact." My little dictionary of theological terms says "Many historians of doctrine see the significance of Arminianism to lie in its attempt to think through the relationship between God and humanity in personal terms."

One could characterize it this way: Calvinists believed that every human being was born in original sin. It is like saying you begin life on a train speeding toward hell totally depraved and unredeemable, and only a few have a chance of getting off. Arminianism says you start your life on the platform and can choose which train you get on, and perhaps you can even change trains during the trip. There is no limit to the number of folks who can get a ticket for the heaven bound train. Now, as an aside I'll mention Universalism would fit into this metaphor to say that everyone is automatically on a train speeding toward heaven and there is no hell bound train to switch to. Arminians believe anyone can get to heaven, whereas Universalists believe everyone will get to heaven. In this sense, Universalism is more like Calvinism taken to its most optimistic extreme.

Priestley's beliefs changed and evolved over time. At first he was a Calvinist because that is what his family was. He later became a believer in the doctrines of Arius ⁽⁴⁾ (from the 300's AD) before eventually becoming an Arminian, mostly. Priestley was an Arminian in terms of his beliefs of human nature and human potential, but not necessarily in connection with his beliefs about an afterlife. He denied Original sin and supported free will, but could not subscribe to a belief in an afterlife because he did not believe people had immortal souls. He maintained that the human being was one, that there was not a separate "soul" that would live on after death. This is not to say he did not believe that people had souls, he did. He simply believed that the soul was not something separate from the rest of the body. Statements such as this were quite shocking at the time. He was derided in public as 'no-soul Priestley.' Which was not quite accurate, and he was pleased when the Welsh poet David Davis wrote an epitaph for him which said:

Here lies at rest,  
In oaken chest,
Together packed most neatly,
The bones and brains,
Flesh, blood and veins,
And soul of Dr. Priestley. 

(Clark, John Ruskin. 1990. Joseph Priestley: A Comet In The System. San Diego: Torch Publications. p 121)

He did not see any reason to accept the dualities inherent in a concept of an afterlife. He applied the same logic to his belief about the God. He was a Socinian in terms of his beliefs about God and Christ. Socinianism is the belief that Jesus was merely human, not both God and Human or a little of each. And further, that God is one, not three in one or one of three. Priestley detested dualities. He came to his religious convictions through study of scripture and the application of reason. He saw Dualities such as Christ being both divine and human, and mortal people as having immortal souls, to be Hellenistic additions and corruptions of pure Christianity.

The real meat of why Priestley matters to us today is that he was both a scientist and a theologian. The methods he used in scientific inquiry were the methods he used in religious inquiry. He was a product of the Enlightenment. I found this wonderful quote in the John Ruskin Clark book which outlines the intellectual environment Priestley found himself in.

The Enlightenment emerged from the 17^th century Age of Reason when the burgeoning science of Galileo Galilei and Johann Kepler had demonstrated that the earth was not the center of the solar system; Isaac Newton in a triumph of mathematical reason explained the solar system as the operation of the universal law of gravity; Francis Bacon systematized science as a way of knowing, testing hypotheses by experiment and inductive reason; and John Locke maintained that the data of experience tested by reason were the only source of knowledge. The power of human reason to discover answers to questions was validated. The autonomy of human reason was hailed by some as the criterion of even religious truths. (Ibid, p 81)

Certainly this is the case with Priestley.

His opinion of the Protestant Reformation was that the great theologians of the time could should be emulated, not worshiped. To quote Priestley:

Those reformers are not to be blamed for not doing more, but to be commended for doing as much as they did. But surely those who came after them are to be blamed, those who shut their eyes, and have endeavored to shut yours too, from that time to the present day; as if Luther and his brethren had been men divinely inspired and exempt from all error, and as if all wisdom was born and died with them; whereas they only set an example, which those who came after them ought to have followed. (Ibid, p191-2)

Priestley felt it was the duty of a good Christian to continue to inquiry toward perfection, and he wrote that those who censure new ideas

are censuring the spirit and example of the very persons whose opinions they have adopted ... It is the spirit of inquiry, which, if error be established, necessarily leads to innovation. (Ibid, p192)

Innovation is considered quite dangerous to the orthodox. Indeed, in another history lesson, I would tell you that the founder of Unitarianism in Transylvania, Francis David was eventually thrown in jail for religious innovation. Priestley felt that in religion as in science, there should be room for improvement. And this is why I say that this sermon is about one of the fundamental values of historical Unitarianism and modern Unitarian Universalism. The freedom of religious inquiry modeled after the process of scientific inquiry is one of the core pieces of what our faith tradition is all about.

I remember a question that came up after a sermon Roger gave about a year ago. Roger had made some claim that Unitarian Universalism was connected with science in a way that most other religions are not. I don't recall now just what Roger had said as it was not the central statement in his talk, but he spoke the basic truism that most main line religions see themselves as being at odds with Science, but not us. We take seriously the new knowledge and understanding of our world which the sciences give us. And deeper than that, the scientific method of inquiry is at the root of our religious method of inquiry. And so it was with Priestley.

Hypotheses can be made. They can be tested by experience and reason. Truth need not be protected against doubt and change. Certainly tradition can hand down valuable wisdom, and faith still weighs heavily in the mix, but traditions and faith are not to be used to mask understanding and hold back fresh perspectives and innovative questions. New ideas and connections are seen as progress rather than heresy. May we be reminded today of the open search to which we are committed, and give thanks to those who went before us in this journey.

In a world without end,
May it be so.

1. There is occasional speculation as to whether or not Jefferson was really a Unitarian. The American Unitarian Association (AUA) was formed in 1825, six years after William Ellery Channing's landmark Baltimore Sermon entitled "Unitarian Christianity" in 1918. Prior to this time Unitarianism was a doctrine and perhaps a 'movement,' but not a denomination as such. Adams died in 1826 in Boston. He was a member of what is now First and Second Unitarian Church of Boston. Jefferson also died in 1826 in Virginia. He was in the wrong place and time to have found membership in a Unitarian Church.

2. Emerson was a Transcendentalist and at one time a Unitarian Minister. His great contribution to the Unitarian movement was his critique of its "cold and lifeless" theology. While Channing saw Priestley's work as enlightening, Emerson saw it as stifling. Emerson had a deep respect for Channing, but felt he had put too great an emphasis on rational thought and not enough on intuition.

3. Antoine Lavoisier replicated Priestley's experiments and named the new gas 'oxygen.'

4. Arius believed that since God the Father may be said to be eternal, unbegotten, and absolute, then the "only begotten son" in is some sense subordinate and inferior. Arius did not believe that Jesus was "merely human," rather he thought Jesus was not quite God or Human.

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