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The Road to Unitarianism and Universalism: A Personal Journey
A Sermon Given by
Dr. Ernest Cassara,
Professor Emeritus of History,
George Mason University,
on June 23, 2002
at Cedar Lane Unitarian Universalist Church
Bethesda, Maryland
In the early years of my checkered career, after study at the
Leland Powers School of Theatre and Radio in Boston, I was
serving as an announcer at a radio station in Worcester,
Massachusetts. Among my many duties, each morning I would
introduce a local minister, rabbi, or priest, for a fifteen-minute
message of inspiration. One morning, the schedule indicated that
a Unitarian minister would be speaking. When I entered the
studio to greet him, I found a man dressed in a black suit, black
tie, and-I could not help but notice-black socks and shoes.
I asked the Reverend gentleman what a Unitarian was. He
answered that Unitarians got their name from the fact that they
believed that God was a unity, not a trinity. That Jesus was a
great teacher, but not divine, and certainly not part of a trinity.
Unitarians, he continued, insisted on the use of reason in
interpreting the Bible and religion generally, and had great faith
in the ability of humanity to confront the problems of life,
rejecting specifically the idea that human beings were tainted
by original sin.
Now, as a lapsed Roman Catholic, having left the church
exactly because I could not accept its unreasonable practices,
and as a convinced democrat appalled at the idea of papal
infallibility, what the Reverend Walter Donald Kring explained
to me that morning was a refreshing approach to religion.
Incidentally, in later years, when I had gained a certain amount
of attention among Unitarians and Universalists-I hasten to add,
because of my historical writings-I was told that Mr. Kring
made it a point of telling people that he had converted me! This
despite the fact that I never once set foot in his church. (But, he
was a dear man, and I certainly did not mind.)
Not that I had lost interest in religion. For instance, I read with
great interest Ernest Renan's Life of Jesus at the Worcester
Public Library, so radically different from what I had been
taught about Jesus. Yet it was not until a few more years had
passed that I sought to find out more about this reasonable
approach to religion. By then, I was working at a radio station
in Brockton, Massachusetts, where among other activities, I
found the most interesting to be the courting of a particular
colleague. Not many months later, while killing time in Boston,
waiting for a train to take us on a honeymoon trip to Vermont,
my wife and I strolled into King's Chapel, admired its lovely
interior, but, more importantly, picked up a number of
pamphlets which filled out the ideas that Mr. Kring had
introduced me to.
When we settled in Rockland, Massachusetts, on a stormy
morning we entered the Channing Unitarian Church and found
the folks warm and receptive (Despite the fact that we were
dripping water all over their carpeting!) Thus, we began our
lives as Unitarians.
Soon we were consumed by "church work," as we call it. I even
became enlisted by the minister to lead the church choir!
Up to this point, I had only heard the word "Universalist," and
knew nothing of what it stood for. It was when I finally became
dissatisfied with the superficiality of radio, that with an
introduction by our minister, who had attended Tufts College,
I enrolled to complete my higher education. It was there, in a
school that had been founded by Universalists, that I learned of
this second liberal approach to religion.
What I had found fascinating about Unitarianism was that its
early leaders-Channing, Emerson, Parker, and others-were
literate men. Some of them, particularly Emerson, had had a
profound effect on American thinking in the nineteenth century.
Now, at Tufts, I discovered that there had been a reform
movement in American religion that had particularly appealed
to less literate, or as we tend to say, "the common people."
And, when, a few years later, I was pondering what topic to
choose for a doctoral dissertation, Professor Alfred S. Cole
mentioned that no study had been made of the most influential
of the early Universalist thinkers, Hosea Ballou, for almost a
hundred years. So, it was through this conversation that I
delved into the career of Ballou and fell in love with
Universalism.
Unitarianism evolved in New England in the old Puritan
churches, called after their mode of organization
"Congregational." Under the influence of the Enlightenment,
the old Puritan Calvinistic orthodoxy had gradually given way
to more liberal ideas. Universalism, on the other hand, had
developed from the preaching of John Murray and others, who
withdrew from orthodox churches and established their own in
the late eighteenth century.
We look to William Ellery Channing as the great formulator of
Unitarianism, and Hosea Ballou as the great formulator of
Universalism. Two men could not have been more different views.
Channing stemmed from a prominent Rhode Island legal
and mercantile family; his grandfather was a Signer of the
Declaration of Independence, and his father was attorney
general of the state. Young William was educated at Harvard,
and, not only established himself as a liberal theologian at the
Federal Street Church in Boston (the forerunner of the present
day Arlington Street Church), but also as an author whose
essays were read across the world. Ballou, on the other hand,
was a son of a poor, Baptist farmer-preacher, on the frontier of
southwestern New Hampshire. He learned his ABC's at his
father's knee, had just a few years at a local school, and a few
months at an academy. So, on the whole, he was self-educated.
As a youth, he rebelled against the Calvinistic faith of his father,
which taught that the greater number of human beings were
doomed to eternal flames in hell, adopting instead the radical
idea that all souls would be saved.
The contrast in the lives of Channing and Ballou provides us
insight in the difference between the two movements.
Hosea Ballou began his preaching career as an itinerant,
spreading the optimistic faith of Universalism as he traveled on
horseback or in a carriage along the roads of western
Massachusetts and Vermont. He became well-known for his
path-breaking book, A Treatise on Atonement, published in
1805. It was a book that stressed the use of reason in religion,
and rejected the trinity as unbiblical. The Treatise turned the
orthodox Christian idea of atonement on its head. Instead of a
wrathful God, who sent Christ to die for the sins of humanity,
Ballou insisted that God sent Jesus as a demonstration of His
eternal love. Orthodox Christians misunderstood the nature of
God, wrote Ballou, believing that He sought to punish human
beings for their mistakes, when it was just the opposite; He
loved his children and sought to win them to Himself.
Ballou's prose is pungent, and down-to-earth, and often very
humorous. For instance, he wrote that those who believe in the
trinity, believe in "infinity multiplied by three!"
It is significant that Hosea Ballou was a Unitarian in belief
many years before the Unitarian movement came into being
among the Congregationalists. Through his influence,
Unitarianism was accepted by most in the Universalist
movement.
Because of the impact of the Treatise on Atonement,
Ballou was invited to give up his itinerant preaching and settle down as
minister of the churches in Portsmouth, then Salem,
and finally of the Second Universalist Society, on School Street
in Boston, where he served from 1817 to his death in 1852.
So, it was in Boston in 1819 when Channing traveled to
Baltimore, to deliver "Unitarian Christianity," which is looked
back on as the charter of the Unitarian movement. For years, the
liberals in the Congregational churches had resisted the term
"Unitarian," preferring to be called "liberal Christians," or
even, "Catholic Christians." But, now at Baltimore, Channing
embraced the term, and gave a crystal clear exposition of what
it stood for.
It is remarkable how much time Channing devoted to the use of
reason in religion. One could not understand the Bible, or other
aspects of the religious life, without subjecting them to the
instrument that God had implanted in every human being. By
exercising reason, one did not accept blindly what orthodox
religious leaders taught. Therefore, one could not accept the
doctrine of the trinity, for it was clear, on a reasonable reading
of the New Testament, that the doctrine is not to be found there.
Worship was due to the Father of all life, and reverence was due
to the great teacher he sent among human beings.
Channing honestly admitted that there were differences among
the Unitarians as to what role Jesus Christ played in the process
of salvation.
1819 was the year that Ballou established his newspaper, the
Universalist Magazine, in time to reprint Channing's Baltimore
sermon. As one might expect, he praised Channing for the
sensitive, exalted prose of the sermon, and for the many
positions that they shared. However, there was one insuperable
difference between Channing and himself. Channing spoke of
"incorrigible sinners." Ballou could never accept the idea that
there were unrepentant sinners, for it was his faith that God,
whom he believed to be a being of eternal love, could never
allow the soul of even one of His creatures to be lost.
What motivated human beings to live a moral life? Channing
said it was "disinterested benevolence," that is, that in our moral
development we come to see that we should treat other human
beings ethically, with Jesus as a model. This was part of the
self-culture that Unitarians became noted for.
Ballou, on the other hand, was much more down to earth. We do
good because it gives us pleasure. In A Treatise on Atonement
he tells of a young American man traveling in Europe who
meets a beautiful young lady who is in obvious agony.
Questioning her, he learns that her father had been seriously ill,
was mostly cured, but because he could not pay his physician's
bill, had been thrown into debtor's prison. Now the young man,
overwhelmed with compassion, reaches for his wallet, presents
the young lady with the amount of money she needs to pay off
the doctor, and because he is so impressed with her love for her
father, he presents her with more than she really needs. Now,
Ballou asks, were the young man's actions due to disinterested
benevolence? On the contrary, he was very interested! It gave
him great pleasure to help. So, Ballou concludes, we do good
because we are happy when we do so. (I suggest we note our
own feelings the next time we write a check for a charity or the
next time we drop some coins into the cup held out by a person
on the street who is in obvious need.)
Just as he said we get pleasure from doing good, when we do
bad or evil things -- Ballou insisted -- we are miserable. Thus, he
equated misery with sin.
This is what spelled the difference between the two liberal
groups. You may have heard the quip of Thomas Starr King that
the Unitarians considered human beings too good to be
condemned by God, and the Universalists considered God too
good to condemn human beings!
The early Unitarians and Universalists were not only separated
by aspects of belief, but also by social class. Let me illustrate
this by one of the most interesting discoveries I made as I
studied the two movements for my book on Ballou. Toward the
end of their lives, Channing and Ballou both lived on Beacon
Hill in Boston. Channing's home was on the upper end of Mt.
Vernon Street, one of the most exclusive streets in the city. You
can see it for yourself, for the fence in front holds a brass plaque
indicating that the good doctor lived there.
Now, as I say, Ballou also lived on Beacon Hill, but on the
back, much less exclusive side, I estimate, as the crow flies,
about an eighth of a mile from Channing's home. His house on
Myrtle Street is no longer there; it long ago being replaced by
a string of row houses. Despite the fact that they
were neighbors, as far as we know, Ballou and Channing never
had a personal association.
As I got deeper into my studies, I learned that ill feeling
between Universalists and Unitarians was exacerbated by
Unitarian support for the union of church and state in
Massachusetts. Congregational churches -- and thus the Unitarian
churches, because they were congregational in organization
-- were supported by tax money. When the separation finally
occurred in 1833 and '34, it was due to the leadership in the
legislature of Thomas Whittemore, Universalist preacher and
editor, who went into politics to achieve such results.
Both the Unitarians and the Universalists had internal disputes
as well. When the Unitarian minister Ralph Waldo Emerson
was invited by the graduating class at the Divinity School at
Harvard to speak, he unsettled many people by rejecting
miracles, insisting that what was truly miraculous in life was
what we experience in our everyday lives, such things as the
falling rain and the blowing clover. Human beings should not
forever look to historical figures for religious guidance but
search for religion within themselves.
Professor Andrews Norton later attempted to put the young
whippersnapper in his place by denouncing him in a speech to
the alumni of the school, entitled "The Latest Form of
Infidelity."
Infidel or not, Emerson had a great impact on the Unitarian
movement. Among the young fellows who heard him that night
in 1838 was Theodore Parker, who was ministering in West
Roxbury. After hearing Emerson, he said he had walked back
home as if "on air." Parker was to add to the indigestion of
many Unitarians a few years later when, at an ordination
service, he delivered "The Transient and Permanent in
Christianity," a sermon in which, among other radical ideas, he
said that the teachings of Jesus would be true whether Jesus
preached them or not!
This movement among the Unitarians, called
"Transcendentalism," to a certain extent infected the
Universalists. Ballou harrumphed that this was due to fact that
the younger Universalist ministers wanted to ingratiate
themselves with the Unitarians. But, on the whole, the
Universalists rejected Transcendentalism, remaining true to their
biblical orientation.
On the other hand, Ballou himself was to cause a split in his
own denomination. Universalists had believed that sinners
would suffer for a period of time in the afterlife, after which
their purified souls would enter God's presence in eternity. But
Ballou, on further study of the Bible, decided that there was no
punishment at all in the afterlife. When one died, the impact of
God's love was so great that one's soul was transformed and
entered immediately into eternal bliss.
Needless to say, this caused consternation among Universalists,
and, although many accepted Ballou's formulation, some
denounced it as "death and glory." All one had to do to be
saved, they complained, was to die! Ballou's answer was that
since sin equaled misery, sinners were miserable and received
their punishment in this life. He cited many stories in the
Old Testament as proof. When the patriarchs sinned, Jahweh
punished them on earth; when they were good, He rewarded
them, as the Old Testament tells us, with many sheep, she asses,
and, lastly, a good wife!
This "Ultra Universalism" was too much for some, and a
number of ministers withdrew to form a society of
Restorationists, insisting on the position that souls would be
restored to God after being cleansed by a period of punishment.
It was, also, too much for Dr. Channing, who, in a sermon,
condemned this dangerous idea, which he said was spreading
"industriously" among Bostonians! Needless to say, Ballou was
much too argumentative to suffer this slight in silence. He
published a vigorous refutation. Ultimately, Universalists swung
back to the Restorationist position. I think that human beings
generally just want to believe that malefactors are
punished-preferably on earth, but, if not, in an afterlife.
* * *
Those of you who watched the splendid public television series
on Evolution will recall the final episode, which related the
struggle of evangelical Christians to ban the teaching of
evolution in the schools, or, at least to allow "Creationism" to
be taught alongside it. My disappointment was that the
producers did not include in the program the many Christians,
led by Unitarians and Universalists, who came to accept the idea
that the deity worked through eons of time, to bring life to the
earth in the process of evolution, rather than by instantaneous
creation, as related in the naive accounts in the book of Genesis.
(Charles Darwin, incidentally, had Unitarian roots on his
mother's side of the family.)
* * *
Allow me to close by mentioning that when I arrived at Tufts as
a student in the1950s, I discovered that Unitarians and
Universalists were suffering a certain amount of theological
indigestion, with a dispute between folks referred to as "theists"
and those referred to as "humanists." As I pondered the issue, it
occurred to me that those who called themselves theists were
humanists also, although they did not recognize it. Had you
asked theists if they believed their God intervened in human life,
performing, say, miracles of one kind or another, they would
have answered, "Of course not! What is accomplished on earth
is the result of human action." So, the argument was really over
whether one believed that a deity inspired us to live the good
life, and to do good works, or whether the human mind was
capable without such divine inspiration of coming up with a
code of ethical behavior.
When you come right down to it, every denomination "evolves,"
as repulsive a thought that may be to fundamentalists. All
denominations must adapt to changing times and conditions or
become irrelevant. In our own case, we accept the fact that we
all seek to live an ethical life, although we may disagree with
the next person in the pew as to how to achieve it. It occurred to
me recently, as I sat in my favorite pew at our church in
Harvard Square, that some Sundays I have to discount 20 to 50
percent of what I hear from the pulpit. (Please don't feel that
you have to mention this to my minister!) But, the wonderful
thing is that we are all there, free to think for ourselves, and
hoping to receive inspiration and strength to go on with our lives
in the coming week.
With my study of the Universalist and Unitarian movements,
and the Unitarian Universalist denomination since the merger in
1961, I have come to realize that, with all of our disputes and
changes over the years, there are two abiding strains in our
approach to the religious life: First, the use of reason in religion
and all areas of human life, an inheritance from both of our
traditions. And, secondly, the idea of universality, which we
inherited from our Universalist forebears: the belief that all
souls-all human beings-are equal. Although we may not stress
the idea of the salvation of all souls, as our forebears did, we
have come to recognize the need to understand all of the people
of the world. It is this process of understanding that will spell
the difference between the prospect of destruction or of
salvation of the human race. It is Universalism in this sense
which will make all of the difference.
***
Dr. Ernest Cassara is Professor Emeritus of History at George Mason University,
the state university in Northern Virginia, at Fairfax. He also has taught at Tufts
University, Goddard College (where he served as dean), Albert Schweitzer
College, Switzerland (where he served as interim director), and as Fulbright
Professor at the University of Munich. His books include The Enlightenment in
America; The History of the United States of America: A Guide to Information
Sources; and of a new edition of Abraham Lincoln by Carl Schurz, which he
edited, with notes and a biographical sketch of Schurz. His interest in Universalist
history is of long standing. His writings include the biography, Hosea Ballou: The
Challenge to Orthodoxy; Universalism in America: A Documentary History of a
Liberal Faith; and two mystery novels, which feature Hosea Ballou with many
fictional characters: Murder on Beacon Hill: A Father Ballou and His Dog Spot
Mystery and Murder on the Boston Common: A Father Ballou and His Dog Spot
Mystery. Prof. Cassara currently resides in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Office@CedarLane.org
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