"The Church Universal"

by Reverend Robert Eddy

March 11, 1973 - A candidate sermon for First Universalist Church of Denver (before vote to call minister)

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NOTE: The views expressed by the Reverend Robert M. Eddy represent his perspective at the time he wrote them and may not represent his perspective later in his career.

© Copyright 1973, 2021 Robert M. Eddy

TRANSCRIPT - The Church Universal

Revised from sermon given March 11, 1973 by Rev. Robert M. Eddy

Last week, in answer to the question, “From the Ashes of Christianity, What?” I shared with you my religious odyssey in a discourse titled “Vitalism.”  In this discourse I’ll consider the question, “From the Ashes of the Christian Church, What?”

From the ashes of the Christian Church I believe will rise congregations of the Church Universal.  Now that’s really all you have to remember this morning because the whole talk is organized around three significant words in that phrase:  congregations, church, universal.  There’s hardly a thing I’ll say this morning that I haven’t said sometime during this candidating week.  I hope at this time to get it all together in a fairly systematic way, so you can vote “yea” or “nay” a littler later this morning as to whether this is what you want to pursue; at least whether you can stand my pursuing it with you.

First of all, a church; what do I mean by a church?  A few of you have had an opportunity to look through the whole series of Sunday morning programs which I delivered in Schenectady over the course of thirty-seven months.  You might have noted that the first of those talks was, “To Be, Or Not to Be, a Church.”  The last of those talks was, “To Be, Or Not to Be, a Church.”   The reason for that is that I did a couple flip-flop in the course of those three years.  The candidating sermon I delivered there was, “To Be, Or Not to Be, a Church—No.”  “We don’t want to be a church; we don’t want to be confused with those other edifices and congregations that call themselves churches.”  I spent a great deal of time explaining why we were different from the Christian Church, why we were not a Christian congregation.  A lot of those ideas are still valid, and I may share them with you sometime; but it’s sort of beating a dead horse, as far as I’m concerned.

I think, looking back now, that the real reason why I was reluctant to use the term, “church,” is that I had had a rather interesting experience back in Farmington.  I was the minister of a Universalist-Unitarian church at that time, and I got some notoriety because of my views on what is usually called trail marriage.  As a result quite a battle took place in the newspapers.  The last of it was a letter in the local newspaper by the township attorney, who suggested that maybe it was a mistake that they had removed the laws against tarring and feathering people and running them out of town on a rail.  He didn’t think I was much of a minister.  He expected ministers to call people to perfection, rather than to find excuses for the sins.  Well, that sort of thing didn’t bother me.  I was laughing all the way to the bank.

As a result of this and similar attacks, I had a radio talk show; each Sunday I could expect early in the program to get a caller asking, “You’re a minister?”  I’d say, “Yes, I’m a minister.”  “What kind of church would have you for a minister?”  I’d say, “The Universalist-Unitarian Church of Farmington would have me as a minister?”  They’d say, “What’s that?” and I’d explain.  They’d say, “You call that a church?”

After a while I got sick of fighting the battle, and I was willing to concede, “We are not a church.”  I’m not willing to concede that any more.  We are a church.  We are a congregation in the Church Universal.  Now, what’s a church?  A church is not just an audience.  A church is not a mutual admiration society (although I hope we like ourselves well enough).  A church is not just another social club.

Back in 1963 the Unitarian-Universalist Commission on the Church in a New Age said, “At its best, a church is a community in the process of forging values.”  A church community in the process of forging meanings.  Someone has said that ours is not an age of anxiety; it is an age of despair.  We seem infused with an existential despair of finding any meaning to life.  There is a large group of people who consider it fact that there is no meaning in life whatsoever.  They say people create whatever meaning there may be in life.  Whether there is some ultimate meaning or not I don’t know, but I do know that communities create meanings for themselves.  They create networks of relationship between ideas, and purposes, and values, which give a direction to their life as a community.

Not only are we a church forging values forging meaning; we are also celebrating meanings and values and realizing meaning and values.  It is this process of forging and celebrating and realizing (making real) that makes us a church.  Let me take each of these individually.

Forging values and meaning:  First of all, I must say that not only do I repent denying the appellation, “church,” I repent also of thinking that the most important thing about us is our delight in diversity.  Of course, we do delight in diversity.  At least, we tell ourselves we should delight in diversity.  But we always come up somewhere to that point were the diversity is a little too much, were the McGovern supporter runs into the Nixon support and says, “You’re a Unitarian?”  or vice versa.  We do delight in diversity, but that’s not all.  That’s not the reason for our existing.  That’s not one of our purposes.  That is a method, the method of discussion by which we think we can find our best approximations of the truth.

The same report that I quoted earlier of 1963 said,

Our congregations rest on the conviction that since man in finite and cannot know ultimate truth, his best hope for arriving at what is true about himself lies in the full and free exchange of insights.  Not trying to plumb the depths of some particular revelation, but sharing about ourselves our insights.

 There’s an old joke that you’ve probably heard a dozen times, but it really is appropriate here, so I’ll tell it again.  The story is about the Unitarian who died and found himself on the path to the pearly gates.  He got up close to the gates and found a signpost.  On the signpost one arrow said, “Heaven, This Way.”  The other arrow pointing in the opposite direction said, “To a Discussion about Heaven.”  You know which way the Unitarian went.

 Discussion is our method, not our purpose.  Our purpose is enlightenment.  This makes us different from a university, which uses the same method.  Enlightenment deals with meanings and values rather than with methods and means.  Yes, we will have adult education programs, and some classes will seem rather distant from the religious enterprise because we are a democratic organization and we decide as a group what we want.  But our basic purpose is not simply getting together to share ideas and the joy of being with one another.  Our basic purpose is enlightenment.

 There is a second thing we do as a church that no other institution does: celebrate meaning and values.  I don’t know if you’ve had it here in Denver, but everywhere else I’ve been we’ve had a problem of what to call our Sunday morning thing.  We come and do our own thing.  Do we call it a worship service?  That turns a lot of us off.  Do we call it a program?  That sounds like a burlesque.  Do we just call it a gathering, a meeting, the way the Quakers call it?  Well, it’s a little bit of all three.

 It is worship.  It is more than simply the presentation of ideas.  One of the great ministers of the Unitarian Church in Schenectady was a former Roman Catholic priest, William Lawrence Sullivan.  He left the Paulist Fathers in 1911.  He was one of the modernists.  He was, in thought, at Vatican II before the rest of the Roman Catholic Church had finished with Vatican I, so he became a Unitarian minister.  He always had a tremendous appreciation for his background.  He wrote:

 The Mass evoked in me a vague sense of subline destinies and magnificent deliverances.  The final word was there.  The ultimate safety, the highest excellence, all dim, as if looming through vast clouds and dark, but all profoundly stirring, too, as if a veil ever lifted to show us our hope fulfilled and our final joy bestowed.  However vaguely a child may take hold of such impressions, this was, I am sure, implicit in them.

 How often do we get that kind of feeling by doing our thing on Sunday morning?  Not very often, I fear.  One of the things I’d like to see us work toward is creating occasions, experiences, when once more we feel the awefulness and mystery of life.  We don’t do that very often; I can’t do it very often by just speaking.  Oh, somethings when I’m really turned on to something, yes; something communicates itself.  But we must use, I think, all of the resources of drama and music and the other media of communication to create for ourselves something that we could never get sitting in front of our television sets listening to a lecture.  Sunday morning must be an experience.

 Sullivan also says that he found in the Mass:

 … what is implicit in every mysterium, pagan or Christian, which dramatizes, instead of rationalizing upon and discoursing about man’s loftiest concern, which is the winning of help from the unseen, and man’s deepest hunger, which is for sublimity and ecstasy and awe.

Sublimity, ecstasy, and awe:  that’s what worship is about.  And that is one of the functions of our gathering together on Sunday morning.

 Entertainment?  Well, I’ve said a lot of nasty things about people expecting the minister to be an entertainer; I won’t say them this morning.  Certainly, what happens here should be recreation (re-creation).  It should be fun; we should not be afraid to laugh and to enjoy.  It is not a somber thing; it is a connected with the Child within us, a delightful, unrestrained part of us that simply bubbles forth without effort.  In this sense, what we do together on Sunday mornings, or whenever we gather, should be a re-creation—even an entertainment, if you want to use that word.  But it should not be a diversion; it should not be something that we take like a drug to cut us off from the realities of the joy and the pain of life.

 Finally, yes, it is a gathering of the community; but not as a mutual admiration society, but to re-charge our batteries; a way in which we seek and find together some peace and power to cope with life in a more fulfilling way.

 What comes out of the ashes of Christianity?  A church.  A church which exists to realize meanings and values.  The community in the process of realizing meanings and values.  By realizing, I mean making real, and this means, for most people, social action.  Not one of the gatherings that I’ve attended this week has failed to produce the question, “What do you think about social action?”  This is probably the most divisive area that exists among us.  We must not have in the Unitarian-Universalist denomination a social creed to replace an abandoned theological creed.  The diversity of views that we have on the best way to solve the problems of society in which we are all embedded is a tremendous resource, and I wish to foster that diversity.  I hope there will never be any absolute ethical standard, much as I will preach at you from time to time on your failure to live up to my ethical standards.  There is only one social sin among Unitarian Universalists with which, I think, we’d all agree:  that sin is hyprocrisy.  We say we are interested not in creeds, but in deeds; not in what people say, but what they do.  And this is true not just on the individual level.  It is also true on the group level, the level of the church, the congregation.  And we must try to make real in the larger community—in our schools, in our cities, and in our nation, and in the whole brotherhood, the whole family of mankind—those values about which we do have consensus.

 But there are some criteria I would put upon attempts to realize our common values.  We must use our common resources constructively, creatively, and carefully.  By constructively, I mean we must be interested in the effect, the outcome, not simply in jumping on the latest bandwagon and standing for “the good, and the true, and the beautiful”, as loudly and as publicly as possible.  We must be interested in doing something, in getting results.

 When I say, “creatively,” I mean that we must do things that nobody else can do, things for which we are uniquely fitted.  I will oppose our doing the usual social service project, not because these don’t need doing, but because you can find Lutherans and Methodists and Catholics and others to do that sort of thing.  There are some things that only Unitarian-Universalists can do, and we should focus upon these things. 

 Finally, “and carefully.”  Almost all of us mouth rhetoric about being willing to give our lives for our cause.  Well, that’s stupid in most situations.  One must be very careful about the cause one chooses to give one’s life for.  One must be willing to say there is a point beyond which I will not compromise, but that point needs to be far, far out.  The person who is always coming up and saying, “but this is a matter of principle” is not the kind of person that I enjoy very much.  I say “carefully” because I think we waste a great deal of time in our congregations in trying to get consensus where there’s no possibility of getting consensus.  It will differ from congregation to congregation.  People have asked me specifically, “Do you think that we should make proclamations by the church?”  Possibly.  Sometimes.  If an issue is critical enough.  If we have the possibility of consensus, and if the price of laboring for consensus does not destroy our capacity to realize our values in the community.  I am sure that there will come a time when some of you will say, “You’re pussyfooting, Bob.  Why don’t you come out for this and get the congregation to back your position?”  I’d rather pussyfoot than destroy the pussycat—that’s not what I had meant to say.  Destroy the goose that laid the golden—no, that’s the wrong one, too.  Well, you get the point.

 All of this so far explicates just one point, the longest point of this sermon:  that we are a church, and our function as a church is to forge, celebrate, and to realize meanings and values.  We are not only a congregation of the Church Universal, we are a congregation of the Church Universal, and it is in this respect we differ most from other churches.  We don’t differ in the sense that we are more liberal, meaning, in many people’s idea, closer to the truth or father left on this or that theological or social issue.  The word, “liberal,” when it was first used by Channing and people of his period, the early nineteenth century, didn’t have the political connotations it has today.  It meant originally:  generous, inclusive, universal, as opposed to stingy and exclusive and sectarian.  The last thing in the world I want our congregation to become is sectarian, with as narrow a doctrine as the most fundamentalist Baptist, differing only in content and formality.  That is not the congregation of the Church Universal; that is just one more sect group among the millions that exist all over the world.

You know, we get trapped in our analogies.  Around here I’m tempted to use the analogy of mountain climbing, because I love mountain climbing and we’ve got a lot of mountains.  But if you use the analogy of mountain climbing the implication is always that the people who are on a different level than you are somehow inferior; they haven’t made it yet.  So I’ve been searching around for a better analogy.  The one that I think suits best what we’re about and how we differ from the other churches is the analogy of an odyssey:  We are sailors by choice.  We are seekers.  We are at home on the high seas with the wind in our sails and out of sight of land.  We will stop, each one of us, at this or that island.  It will meet our needs and provide some new delights, some new experiences, some new insights.  But we’ll not fear to go on and look for another island when what we found there no longer meets our needs.  And we will certainly not condemn the people who stay on an island which we have left.

Most Unitarian-Universalists in the last forty or fifty years have been come-outers.  Most Unitarian-Universalists in the coming decades will be come-inners.  If you look over the statistical surveys, you find the people coming in now are people who never had a church.  What we got away with for many, many years:  crowing about how superior we were because we didn’t believe in this or that or the other incredible theological doctrine—will no longer do.  If we are going to keep people who are sailors on the high seas of life, we are going to have to do so by offering something that meets their needs.

Finally, out of the ashes of Christianity I see rising congregations of the Church Universal.  We are one such congregation—I am candidating as minister on one such congregation.  There are other congregations of this Church Universal, and not all of them call themselves Unitarian Universalists.  There are some other congregations who call themselves Christian or Jewish but who have abandoned their slavish adherence to one tradition and who are willing to reach out and take from all these island in the great ocean of human experience.

Realities change much more rapidly than names.  A Unitarian of the eighteenth century could walk into a present-day Methodist church and be sure he was in a Unitarian church, because what is now called Methodism was then called Unitarianism.  And I suppose a Unitarian-Universalist of a century from now, walking in here, would be convinced he had walked into a Christian church.  We carry with us the cultural costume within which we were raised, all unawares.

We are but one congregation of the Church Universal among many such congregations, some of them bearing the name, Unitarian-Universalist, as we do.  These congregations of the Church Universal seek to serve their members, not to convert the unbeliever.  They are open to all who seek to identify with them.  And so it is with this congregation.  While we will be a social change agent in the larger community, we will not need to justify our existence in terms of our social impact, nor will we need to affirm ourselves by denying the worth of others.  We exist to serve our members.  Again, I don’t want to be chained by an analogy, but I think we can profitably compare ourselves to a preventive health service facility as contrasted with a hospital.  Or perhaps we should see ourselves as a hothouse, in contrast to a fertilizer store.  In any case, we are here primary for positive, not for negative reasons.

Finally, to the point at issue this morning:  What is the function of a minister in a congregation of the Church Universal?  Well, the root of the word, “minister,” is “servant;” but the clerical kind of service involves leadership.  The minister that you elect to be your minister services his congregation as a special kind of leader.  He is elected, he is not imposed.  Therefore, he must be a democratic leader.  If he tries to be a dictator, he will fail; he will also be in violation of the basic philosophy of the Church Universal.  So how will he lead?  As a catalyst, as a facilitator, as a swamp-drainer, as a priority-setter, as a fog-dispenser.  The purpose of all his leadership is to enable the institution to be a growth enhancer for all of its members.

The minister that you elect also has specialized functions.  He is a teacher, a rabbi in a sense, because he has rooted himself and steeped himself in the history of this movement and he shares this with you.  I want to spend a great deal of the time that I have in the pulpit sharing with you the magnificent people who were our predecessors; those who were Unitarians without knowing it, as we like to claim, and many of whom were a part of our traditions and truly belong to us.

The minister is a rabbi; he’s also a pastor.  Now this is different from a psychotherapist, because a minister takes the initiative.  Furthermore, he is interested in facilitating growth, not in patching up problems.  He’s interested in providing good nutrition for the spirit, not in merely repairing damage that the life that a person has led has produced in that person.  I intend, if you elect me your minister, to do this basically in three ways.

One is as the facilitator of the institution.  A second way is as a counselor here in the pulpit.  This is one of the major functions.  You never know on a Sunday morning when you’re standing up here what’s happened to somebody out there.  You never know what tragedy they are trying to live with or want problem they are trying to cope with.  So, what is said from this pulpit must, in a sense, be counseling.  I also will operate through what I call “coping groups.”  These are not psychotherapy groups.  They are ways in which we can enhance our skills in communicating with one another and in living out that which is most deeply within us which, I believe, is good.  I disbelieve in original sin, vehemently. 

A minister is also a priest.  That’s a trigger word for a lot of you, I know.  But the basic function of a priest was to mediate power into individual lives.  The priesthood traditionally has done this trough ritualizing the great turning points in each life.  I would do this not only in the traditional ones, in the naming of children, in marrying and burying people, but in creating new rituals for the new turning points in the lives of people.  Perhaps we need a ritual for home-leaving for the young person who feels that he or she has come to the point where he wants to go out into the world, some kind of acknowledgement that this is accepted and to be celebrated.  Perhaps we need a ceremony for coupling, as opposed to one for parenthood.  The decision of two people to live together and create by their couplehood an environment in which each one of them can grow better and more than he or she can grow alone, is something which should be ritualized.  That is different from marriage as it is now celebrated.  The assumption of marriage today is a lifetime commitment.  I think we need a new ritual for couplehood that makes no such assumption.  We also need a ritual for parenthood, because there’s hardly one of us in this congregation who has had children who has not had them by choice.  (Thanks to the inadequacies of technology, there’s probably hardly one of us who hasn’t had one not by choice, too.)  But, more, and more, children are a matter of decision.  There are going to be fewer of them.  We need some kind of ceremony where two people can come before their community and say, “We wish to undertake to create a home, a nutritive environment, for the children that we will bring into the world, either through our bodies or through adoption.”

Perhaps we need a ritual for dying.  Not the ritual of the memorial service, which is really for the survivors, but some kind of a ceremony, some kind of a process by which people who are coming to the end of a full life and wish to die in the dignity and adulthood in which they lived, acknowledge before the congregation and before their friends and family that they are leaving—to say goodbye, to rejoice and to celebrate the life which they have led.  This is the function of the priest, and in this sense the minister you elect will be a priest.

The last thing in the world I will try to be—though I may sometimes be it in spite of my plans—is a prophet.  The function of the prophets, those incredible men of the deserts and of the mountains, who came down in Israel to tell them what they ought to do, is a great temptation to a person like me or for any person who wants to write his name in the book of history, who wants to call back the community, kicking and screaming, to its highest values.  I must confess that I would like that title, too.  But I know that is cannot be done by scolding.  It must be done by challenging and persuading each of you, individually, to live up to your highest values, and you, as a community, to live up to your highest values.

These are the roles of the minister:  to be a leader, to be a teacher, to be a pastor, to be a priest, to be a prophet.  But the minister you elect is only one of your ministers.  In congregations of the Church Universal, we are all ministers.  And so I ask you not to elect me as the minister, but I ask you to make me one of you, a minister in this congregation of the Church Universal.

“The Church Universal”

Revised from the candidating sermon of Reverend Robert M. Eddy delivered at the First Universalist Church of Denver, Colorado on March 11, 1973.

© Copyright 1973, 2021 Robert M. Eddy

Permission is granted by the author and estate to reprint this sermon if reprinted in in its entirety and properly credited.

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