“A unitarian With a Small ‘u’” Reverend Roberta Finkelstein Sunday September 25th, 2005 Once upon a time, before the merger in 1962 of the American Unitarian Association and the Universalist Church of America, there were two distinct religions called Unitarian and Universalist. And before that, there were two streams of extremely heretical theology - unitarianism with a small u and universalism with a small u. Those ideas are the beginning of our history. An important part of personal faith development is to recognize where you have come from and what you wish to retain of your religious past. This is true for our communal faith development as well. To know where liberal religion came from helps us to understand where we are going. And to know where our religion came from is to feel a deep gratitude for the people that nurtured it through difficult times, so that it could emerge in its present form as a gift to us, another generation of seekers. Our history, as I said, starts with our name. Unitarian Universalism - two words that were originally pejoratives used against us by our detractors. Today we take up the first u – unitarianism. A unitarian with a small 'u' was a heretic (a word that means to choose out). The small u unitarians were, in the eyes of the powers that be, people too dense or pigheaded or possessed by evil to acknowledge and accept the doctrine of the trinity. Stubbornly insisting on the oneness of God, these small 'u' unitarians suffered for their adherence to radical monotheism. The doctrine of the trinity did not exist in the first centuries of the Christian movement. Those earliest Christians, outside of the established order and flushed with the excitement of being part of something new and radical, did not bother much with doctrine. They were content simply to tell the story of Jesus as it had been handed down to them, to talk about how that story affected their own lives. It wasn't until Christianity had grown large enough to be relieved of official persecution that the leaders of the movement began to ask questions. Questions like, "What was Jesus? If he was divine, then why did he suffer and die? If he was human then how did he accomplish such great feats?" Debate began about the nature of Jesus. Fully human? Fully divine? Something in between, some created creature with the attributes of divinity? The debates became lively, and then disruptive to the Jesus movement. When Constantine converted to Christianity and the Roman Empire became the Holy Roman Empire, all of that changed. Many say that event marked the end of Christianity, and the beginning of Christendom. According to the philosopher Alfred North Whitehead, “When the Western world accepted Christianity, Caesar conquered; and the received text of Western theology was edited by his lawyers . . . The Church gave unto God the attributes which belonged exclusively to Caesar.” A sad story, but that is for another day. When you are the official religion of the empire, you have certain responsibilities regarding the social order. No more lively debates and disruptive conclaves. Constantine ordered a church council and insisted that a doctrinal resolution emerge. The Council of Nicea in 324 was not a neat or polite affair. Although the creed that emerged has withstood two millennia of growth and change in the church, the men who crafted that creed were far from unified theologically. This was as much a political as a theological debate. The careers of church fathers rose and fell on which way the vote would go. One group that hoped to have sufficient weight to carry the day was the Arians. The supporters of Arias felt that it was blasphemous to suggest that Jesus was fully divine, made of the same stuff as God. These Arians, our theological forebears advocated for a Jesus who was somehow imbued with divinity, but was not fully co-creator, co-God. I will spare you the arcane details of the great Christological debates. But I will tell you that the Arians lost an extremely close election and the Supreme Court, oops, I mean the Council of Nicea, made the doctrine of the trinity the official creed of the church. All other positions were condemned as heresy. In the ensuing centuries those heresies were so thoroughly repressed, with the full weight of the empire behind that repression, that organized anti-trinitarianism didn't emerge for many, many centuries. We have to skip from 325 to the 1400's to find our next unitarian. Jan Hus was a Catholic priest in the city of Prague. Wishing to make religion more relevant to his congregation he took two radical steps: first, anticipating Martin Luther by a century, he began to celebrate the mass not in Latin, which by then was not understood by the masses, but in the language of the people. Second, he offered at Communion not just the wafer, but the chalice of wine. What is so radical about that? Well, the doctrine of transubstantiation says that in the Eucharist, the elements of bread and wine become the actual body and blood of Christ. The chalice was withheld from the common people lest a drop of Christ's real blood be spilled by some careless worshipper! Talk about trusting and empowering the people in the pews! Not surprisingly, Hus was condemned for heresy at the Council of Constance in 1415, and burned at the stake. His memory lives on in our most enduring symbol, the flaming chalice. In 1939 when Check artist Hans Deutsch was asked to design a symbol for the Unitarian Service Committee he combined the symbol of the flame with the symbol of the liberating chalice of Jan Hus. The flame of death became the flame of freedom that the Service Committee offers to people around the world today. The most well-known of the unitarian-with-a-small-u martyrs was Michael Servetus, the author of the ranting and raving book called “On the Errors of the Trinity”. I have read his work, and his zeal for correcting the mistakes of Christianity are not lost in translation. He really made people mad. In fact, he so outraged both the Catholics and the Reformers that he achieved the unique distinction of having been burned at the stake twice - once in effigy by the Catholic church and once for real by John Calvin's followers in Geneva. Less well know, but worthy of mention here is another early martyr, Katherine Vogel. In the 1520's Vogel lived in Krakow, Poland, and was branded a heretic. Some think the label was attached to her because she associated with Jews, known, of course, to be radical monotheists. She confessed to believing in the unity of God and the humanity of Jesus. She was locked in a chapel and urged to recant, but she steadfastly refused. When I say steadfastly, I mean it. She lived in that chapel for ten years! Finally, in 1539, a white haired woman of 80, she was led out into the village square and burned at the stake. Her last words paraphrased Socrates: “Neither in this life or the next can anything evil befall the soul of one who stands loyal to the truth as one is given to know it.” In the year that Vogel died, Faustus Socinus, who would become the leader of the Polish unitarian movement known as Socinianism, was born. Influenced by the work of Servetus and his followers, Socinus came to believe not only in unitarian theology, but in nurturing a religious climate free of coercion that would allow each seeker to find their own truth. In Poland, his movement flourished, but for a brief time. In 1585 the Polish Brethren founded the Rakow Press, the first Unitarian publishing house, dedicated to making available materials that would assist in the establishment of freedom, reason, and tolerance in religion. In 1591 an angry mob destroyed the Socinian church in Krakow, and Faustus Socinus fled into exile where he died several years later. His followers scattered, and within a century the Polish Diet officially banned Socinianism, and the movement was completely eradicated from Polish society. During the Reformation period, the idea of anti-trinitarianism kept popping up in different places. As you can see from the fate of Michael Servetus, it was resisted as fiercely by the Protestant reformers as it was by the Catholic church. In spite of the ruthless persecution, in spite of the fact that in several places the movement appeared to have been completely wiped off the face of the earth, the idea just wouldn't die. Another hot bed of anti-trinitarian thinking was Transylvania. What happened there was the happy partnership between a far-thinking monarch and a passionate and fiery preacher. In 1568, King John Sigismund of Transylvania, the only Unitarian monarch in history, signed the Edict of Religious Toleration, the first in the Western world. Influenced by his court preacher, Unitarian Francis David, John enacted into law the revolutionary idea of religious choice. Four different religions were extended legal protection in the kingdom: Catholicism, Lutheranism, Calvinism, and Unitarianism. Now, this may seem limited by our standards, but in the days when the religion of the monarch was the religion of the people, allowing four alternate churches was a big step! Francis David taught first of all that God is one. Jesus was not God but an example of divinity to be followed, not idolized or even prayed to. The God that David preached was the author of creation, merciful and loving. He taught that freedom is granted by God to all humans, the moral development of the individual depends on each person living in a society that grants the freedom to explore, exchange information, debate, and grow. Faith is the gift of God; we must have the freedom to form it, to express it, and to live by it. His words, translated and paraphrased, were the words for our meditation this morning. Unfortunately this heady atmosphere did not last long. John Sigismund was not in good health. At his death, orthodoxy regained control. Eleven years after the Edict of Toleration, Francis David had been condemned as a heretic, and died in prison. The Transylvanian Unitarian churches still stand today. They have withstood every attempt to destroy them and repress their worship. Many of our American congregations have entered into partnership with these congregations, offering resources, encouragement, and gratitude for keeping liberal religion going during hard times. Reformation Europe was strewn with the charred remains of unitarians with a small u. Their radical monotheism became strongly linked with what historian Earl Morse Wilbur called the trinity of liberal religion - the use of reason, religious freedom, and tolerance. These linked ideas could not be wiped out with coercion, intimidation, or even death. They continued to cross Europe, next taking root in England, and eventually traveling to America, where the freedom of the New World gave birth to what we know of today as the Unitarian – with a capital U - church. Hus, Servetus, Vogel, Sigismund, David, so many unnamed others - neither prison nor flames could suppress the idea that they kept alive to hand on to us. The litany of martyrs to the trinity of liberal religion – reason, tolerance and freedom – continues right through the twentieth century. Just as Jan Hus is memorialized in the flaming chalice, another martyr to our movement is memorialized in the practice of flower communion. The Flower Communion service originated in 1923 with Nobert and Maja Capek, who, with the backing of the American Unitarian Association, founded a Unitarian church in Prague. In 1940, Maja returned to America to raise money for the Prague church. While she was in America, the Nazis took control of Prague. They judged the theology and philosophy of Dr. Capek to be, and I quote from the Nazi court records, "too dangerous for him to be allowed to live." He was sent to Dachau, where he was killed the next year as part of a "medical experiment." To know our history is to stand humbled by the courage and commitment of those who went before us. People died for what we too often take for granted: the right to gather for worship in voluntary association in the sanctuary of our choice. The best way I know of to honor their sacrifice is to treat this faith with the same courage and commitment that they did. At this time, in this nation, the stakes may not be as high as they were for the likes of Katherine Vogel. But our faith is still precious, and we still have a saving message for our world. In that spirit, let us give freely and generously for the work of this congregation. Our closing hymn, which the choir sang last week during the meditation, is a Transylvanian tune, and the words are translated from a Transylvanian text. True harmony, oneness, unity – that is the message of unitarianism with a small u.