"universalism With A Small 'u'" Rev. Roberta Finkelstein October 23, 2005 A big heart filled with love of God and neighbor, an awakened mind pushed beyond the boundaries of class, ethnicity and race, hands quickened to the work of justice by the deeply held conviction that every human being is created with inherent worth, and a face turned to a troubled world infused with hope - Universalism brings all of this to our liberal religious movement. Our opening words by Clinton Lee Scott tell the story of that broad and generous approach to life. Scott sought to arouse in people a spiritual humility that would lead to a broad and generous vision, an awareness that the sun does not rise and set merely on our little slice of the earth. He wrote of an awareness that laborers in the fields had as much need for blessing as the well educated white collar class that frequented the Unitarian churches; an acknowledgment that poverty and inequality and violence make a claim on our religious energy. But his final words are words of hope. The sun, having seen the world as it is, arrives unsullied, harbinger of a new day. Universalism, like Unitarianism, is both a modern movement and an ancient heresy. The underlying theological assumption that has always driven it is this: God's power and goodness salvage all souls. God is too good to create any creature and then condemn that creature to eternal damnation. Standing within the providence of that good God, the only response we can offer is to do likewise - to love our fellow humans, to work to eliminate the various hells on earth that we have created, and to accept with good grace our own salvation. The language of our first Principle - that beloved affirmation about the inherent worth and dignity of every person, came to us directly out of the historical creeds of the Universalist Church of America. But before we consider the contemporary expression of universalism, let’s go back in time to the earliest sources of this theology. The first universalist-with-a-small-u, by which I mean somebody whose theology was universalist, rather than anybody who belonged to a formal religious movement, was one of the early fathers of the Christian church. Known as Origen, he was born some time between 182 and 185 CE. Like the early anti-trinitarians, Origen was convinced that the truth of Christianity was found in the Gospels rather than the derivative teachings of the church ‘fathers’. Origen rejected a literal reading or factual interpretation of scripture; he rightly read the biblical texts as metaphor and rightly understood that the power of metaphor was that it could communicate that which was otherwise incomprehensible and ineffable. He developed a theory - that all souls were actually created at the beginning of time as spirits who were finite, rational and self-determining. Some of these souls fell away from God, becoming demons, angels, and humans. This happened because God respected the autonomy of these created creatures, and refused to impose salvation on them against their will. The world as we know it was created later, as an educational lab if you will, where these fallen souls could work out their fallenness and return to their original state of grace. Redemption, according to Origen, meant the restoration of all of these spirits to the original state of harmony and unity from which they had turned. As you can imagine, Origen was not popular with those who were pushing the Christian movement towards an idea of salvation based on accepting Jesus as Lord and Savior, with no other redemptive option. The power of those early church leaders came directly from their claim that they and they alone held the keys to salvation. The idea that anybody and everybody was already saved didn’t leave them anything to hold over their flocks. So this doctrine of universal salvation was roundly condemned. But in spite of that official condemnation, the idea of universal salvation continued to float around the edges of Christianity for several centuries. It was mostly expressed in underground movements, and repeatedly repressed. The final death blow to this heretical idea came at the Council of Constantinople in 381CE. Or at least that is what the powers-that-be thought. And they had good reason to conclude that they had totally banished universalism from the minds and hearts of Christians. So thoroughly was the notion repressed that you have to move forward more than a millennium before it again becomes part of the religious landscape in the West. We find it next expressed in 18th century England. I would like to impart the essence of that universalism-with-a-small-u through the experiences of two people: George DeBenneville and Thomas Potter. DeBenneville was born in England in 1702, to French Huguenot parents who had fled France to escape religious persecution. A sensitive child, he was tortured by visions, by dreams of burning in hell. You can probably well imagine the vividness of the preaching he was exposed to - preaching whose sole purpose was to convince people of their wickedness and degeneracy; an essential first step in convincing them to accept the salvation of Christ. But one day DeBenneville had another dream - a dream in which he saw Jesus leading him from the flames forever. This dream, for DeBenneville, turned Christianity on its head. He became convinced that human beings are not craven and sin-filled, but simply merely imperfect. We are what we are. God knows this, and God, in His infinite love and wisdom, has a plan for redeeming us. Our response to this reality should not be one of fear or self-loathing or other-loathing, but love in return. Love of self, love of neighbor, love of God. DeBenneville became a universalist-with-a-small-u, there being no established church that offered a conduit for these beliefs. He returned to France to preach this new and dangerous Gospel, and was arrested and condemned to death. He had already been led to the guillotine and was contemplating his eminent demise when a reprieve was rushed to the platform. This dramatic experience of deliverance only confirmed his sense of being in the hands of an active and loving providence. Eventually DeBenneville made his way to America, where he continued to preach his mystical, visionary brand of universalism, taking advantage of the radical freedom of the American frontier. In America, universalism-with-a-small-u became Universalism with a capital U. And one person we can thank for that is Thomas Potter. Potter was another man driven by mystic visions. A farmer in what we now call the pine flats of New Jersey, he had become convinced of the rightness of the doctrine of universal salvation. As he worked his land, he saw a vision - a vision of a little church, with a pulpit waiting to be filled by the right preacher - the preacher who could bring to life the convictions that Potter held in his heart. So he cleared one of his fields and built the chapel - anticipating by three hundred years Kevin Costner's act of faith. "If you build it they will come." One dark and stormy night a ship ran aground on a sandbar off the New Jersey shore. The passengers waded through the muck and mire and arrived at Potter's door, hungry and wet. He took them in, offered them hospitality, and around the dinner table that night, the talk turned to theology. Potter discovered that one of his guests, the Reverend John Murray, had fled England with an angry mob at his heels. Calling him a heretic and a traitor, they had forced him to leave his home, renounce his pulpit, and come to America to seek a new beginning - all because of his universalist beliefs. Potter then began to earnestly plead with Murray to preach from his waiting pulpit. Murray initially declined. He had sworn off the ministry as far too dangerous a profession. Perhaps some of his hesitatancy was caused by the glint of fanaticism in Potter's eye. After all, when you live and work in isolation in the New Jersey pine flats, trying to coax a living out of the mud, and you take it upon yourself to build a church in the middle of your field, you have to expect people to be a bit suspicious. "Do his eyebrows resemble Jack Nicholson's a little too closely?" Murray may have thought to himself. Finally Murray agreed to deliver a sermon. Potter gathered a small band of family and neighbors who had the privilege of hearing the first American sermon from the Father of American Universalism. John Murray was a fine preacher; his words live on even today. Some of them may be familiar to you. "Go out into the highways and byways of America, your new country. Give the people, blanketed with a decaying Calvinism, something of your new vision. You may have but a small light, uncover it, let it shine, use it bring more light and understanding to the hearts and minds of men and women. Give them not hell but hope and courage. Do not push them deeper into their theological despair, but preach the kindness and everlasting love of God." John Murray, eloquent and convinced of the rightness of his universalist theology, went on to found the first Universalist church in America, and to spawn many more churches across the new frontier. In fact, in the latter half of the nineteenth century, Universalism spread like wildfire across the new nation. The idea of salvation for all engaged the imagination and spirit of the pioneers. The picture of the regenerate sinner condemned to eternal damnation just didn't jibe with the sense of adventure, of ability and limitless possibility, of courage and optimism and hope, that the settlers of the American West possessed. A message of love and hope was welcomed, and at one point in the late 19th century, the Universalist Church of America claimed the 5th largest membership of any American denomination. That spirit of love and hope compelled the Universalists to arrive much earlier than their Unitarian counterparts at the front line of the abolition movement, the struggle for woman's suffrage, and other issues of the day that were driven by what came to be known as the Social Gospel. Knowing themselves to be loved and redeemed by a powerful and benign God, the only response our Universalist forebears could conceive of was to live one's life in gratitude for that love, and to attempt to bring that message of love to all of humanity. By the beginning of the twentieth century, Universalism had become a victim of it’s own success. The Calvinist doctrine of predestination had begun to soften, and the doctrine of universal salvation had crept into the mainline Protestant churches. Rarely did one have to sit through an interminable sermon about how bad one was - rarely did one have to wriggle in one's pew considering the flames of hell licking at one's feet. Unfortunately, the Universalists were better at starting churches than maintaining them over the long haul, and the Universalist church of America began to decline. But it survived as a small stream in the American religious thought and activism, and we are lucky to be its inheritors. In 1961 the Universalist Church of America merged with the American Unitarian Association. Universalism brought to the merger that steadfast conviction that God is good, that people are good, and that good people ought to be about the business of making themselves and the world a better place. You can find evidence of Universalist thinking in our Statement of Principles and Purposes - our affirmation of inherent worth, of the practice of justice, of a commitment to spiritual growth and inclusivity. Not hell, but hope. Not sin, but potential. Not despair, but possibility. We are Unitarian Universalists. Often we forget the second half of our name. But we are indebted to the Universalist side of our family for bequeathing to us the conviction that the sun arrives unsullied each morning, inviting us to engage the new day. Let us do so joyfully.