"GIVE THEM NOT HELL, BUT HOPE AND COURAGE"

A Sermon by the Rev. Bruce Clear

Sunday, February 8, 2004

All Souls Unitarian Church

Indianapolis, Indiana

Over the years, it seemed to me that the traditional Christian doctrine of Hell had been dying a slow death. In many churches, though that doctrine is given tacit acknowledgment in the spoken creeds, few people dwell on it.

Other traditional theological doctrines still seem to be alive and well: you can still find lively debates about what is meant by the divinity of Jesus, or how to interpret his teachings, or whether the Bible is the word of God. The existence or nature of God continues to be a source of on-going conversation. But rarely do you hear any useful exchange of opinion about the doctrine of eternal damnation. Most churches, while not explicitly denying the idea, seem to ignore it because it sounds so medieval in modern times. Those who do talk about it, who take the doctrine seriously, seem only to be talking to themselves.

It does seem to me that the doctrine of hell has fallen on hard times, and for good reason, I think. It doesn't make much sense any more, even theologically.

I confess there is some psychological satisfaction in the doctrine, a certain superficial pleasure that comes from expecting people to get their "just desserts." I confess to the feeling from time to time. If I read in the paper about a particularly heinous violent crime, I do feel a little better after muttering to myself, "You'll burn in Hell for that!" But the thought is therapeutic, not theological. On a larger scale, when I see political policies of various countries that create misery for many people through violence or oppression, something in me wishes silently for a hell, or at least some final accounting, for the leaders who inflict such damage on innocent people.

Such wishes for cosmic justice are illusory, I know. They do make it easy to see how the whole scheme of heaven-and-hell was devised in the first place. The fact that evil-doers may not finally be accountable for their actions is in itself some kind of hell, I suppose.

I divide Christianity in the United States into four roughly equal parts. First there is what is called the "mainline" churches - the historically traditional Protestant churches that had a monopoly on religious influence during most of the first two hundred years of our history: Methodists, Presbyterians, Lutherans, Episcopalians, Congregationalists, and so forth. Then there is what I might call Conservative Protestantism, which is made up of fundamentalist and evangelical churches. A third category is the growing group of what I think of as "feel good" churches. The "feel-good" churches are those who preach a gospel of success and happiness, and have only minimal concern for purity of doctrine. Robert Schuller is one of the best known examples. The "feel-good" churches account for many of the huge "mega" churches of two thousand members or more that are popping up across the country. The fourth category of Christianity, after the mainline, the fundamentalist-evangelical, and the "feel-good" churches, is the Roman Catholic church.

Of the four, only the fundamentalist-evangelicals still seem to give the devil his due and preach fervently about hell. The mainline churches generally ignore the subject, and are often uncomfortable when it is raised. The feel-good churches find the subject too negative and depressing. And as for the Catholics, though the doctrine of hell is still in place, the typical priest and the typical parishioner don't seem take the doctrine much more seriously than they do teachings on birth control.

So the doctrine of hell, as a religious doctrine, seems largely to have fallen by the wayside, with only a small, but quite vocal, minority of fundamentalists and evangelicals championing the cause of hell.

This is why it interests me that a book concerning the biblical doctrine of hell appears suddenly on the national best-seller list. The book is called If Grace is True, and it is co-written by two Hoosier Quaker ministers: Philip Gully and James Mulholland. The thesis of their book is simple to state. There is no such destiny as Hell because God gives up on no one. The traditional scheme about a place of everlasting torture is wrong. God's love is eternal and universal and forgiving, and everyone, without exception, will ultimately be reunited with God.

The book seems to have stirred things up a bit in the religious world. Local Christian bookstores - which have carried the authors' previous books, have refused to stock this one, but the main commercial bookstores, Borders and Barnes & Noble, have featured it prominently and strongly promoted it. Gully, who ministers at the Fairfield, Indiana Friends Meeting church, has been challenged from within the Quaker denomination, and some are calling for him to lose his credentials to be minister, a Quaker version of being "de-frocked." He has received hate mail and death threats, including death threats against his family. So far, the challenges have not been successful. He continues to receive strong support from his Meeting, his congregation. From the outside, we can only admire his courage and resolve. He and his co-author plan a follow-up book soon.

It is an intriguing experience for a Unitarian Universalist to read this book. The authors give the name of their philosophy as "universalism," with a small "u." Our movement includes the tradition of "Universalism" (with a capital "U" indicating an organized movement in history), and the position taken in this book is almost identical to the historic Universalist position. In seminary, I read the writings of the early American Universalists, who organized around the time of the revolution, and it is almost spooky how close their views were to the views of this controversial best-selling book today. It is almost amusing to observe the controversy this book raises, as if the arguments were new. To be sure, the book acknowledges the integrity of the Universalist movement that is our heritage, offering quotes from 18^th century Universalist leaders John Murray and Hosea Ballou.

Let me fill in some of the story of universalism. The universalist view actually extends back to the early church, the first centuries of Christianity. There were those who affirmed a God of love that would not allow for eternal damnation. Eventually, the established church ruled otherwise, and the universalist view was declared heretical.

As an organized religious movement, Universalism began in the 18^th century, and was particularly strong in pockets of colonial America. The arguments it gave were almost identical, as I say, to the position taken in the recent popular book. I will take a few minutes to review those arguments, but I won't go into too much depth, particularly because within Unitarian Universalist circles today, not only were those ideas adopted long ago, but contemporary Universalism has moved far beyond its original position. The original position, in its original language, is no longer profoundly engaging to us.

One argument for Universalism was biblical. The Bible speaks of hell only metaphorically. The word used in the Bible, that was translated into English as "hell," was "Gehenna." Gehenna was a real place -- it was a dump outside of Jerusalem where trash was burned day and night. When people spoke of Gehenna, they pictured a real place in this world, not an imaginary place in the next world. That imagery was lost when the translators used the word "hell," instead of "Gehenna."

Furthermore, over against biblical references to hell, there are plenty of verses affirming the idea of universal salvation - that God saves everyone. The authors of If Grace Is True list in an appendix about 50 verses that affirm this universalism.

Another argument the early Universalists used is solid deductive logic. If you accept the premises, you must concede the conclusion. The simple argument goes like this:

1. God is all powerful, and therefore cannot fail.

2. God wants everyone to be saved.

3. If everyone isn't saved, then God doesn't succeed in getting what God wants.

4. In other words, if everyone isn't saved, God has failed.

5. Therefore, since God can't fail, everyone must, ultimately, be saved.

It is incontrovertible logic, if you accept the premise that God can't fail. The problem is that so much of Christianity at the time wasn't interested in logic. Many early Christians (particularly those who won the creedal decisions) were far more interested in doctrine than in logic.

But recognizing the doctrine of Hell as a philosophical and theological mistake is only the first step. The reasons for rejecting that doctrine lead us to embrace much more. The meaning of universalism extends far beyond the need to reject the ancient doctrine of Hell.

So I've saved the most important argument of the original Universalists for last. The Universalists did not know at the time how important this argument was, but all the other arguments they gave depended on it. This argument is the heart of the Universalist ethos, and the spirit of its meaning has continued through the centuries. This argument points to what is the broader meaning of Universalism. The argument is simply this:

God is love.

God is love. A heretical statement, if ever there was one, but there can be no more stunning counter to an insidious doctrine of eternal punishment than a simple belief in a loving God. Could a loving God devise a system whereby people are condemned to spend eternity in excruciating torment? Could a loving God, even without creating such a system, tolerate it? Would a loving God who, presumably, knows everything that is to happen to each of us, allow us to be born knowing, at the time of our birth, that our destiny is to undergo ceaseless and unrelenting anguish and suffering?

This is, to my mind, an irrefutable argument: "God is love." No God of love would tolerate such a diabolical and fiendish scheme. In fact, I would go so far as to say, that any God who would design or permit such a system is far from worthy of our worship, and is far more an adversary and enemy to human beings - a divine sadist, if you will - and ought to be opposed at every opportunity. It is not a God of love.

"God is love," is the simple insight that inspired Universalist thinking in the first place, two thousand years ago, as the Christian church was beginning, and two hundred years ago, as this country was being born. "God is love," is the starting point from which Universalism was born, but it did not, of course, end there.

Today in Unitarian Universalist circles, the question of the doctrine of hell and damnation is a settled question. But the principle that leads to that view takes us much further. Today we tend to use different language to describe it, and spend little effort quibbling about the nature of God. But the underlying principle of universalism is greater than that doctrine, and today's principle begins where they did, with a conviction about a divine universal love.

That principle is alive today. Love, whether divine or human or cosmic, has become the center point of contemporary Universalism, and it takes us far beyond the simple doctrine in question.

And this is what has happened within the Universalist tradition. To say that God loves all people is to say, simply, that all people are worthy of being loved. What is important for religion, then, is to teach the acceptance and caring of all people. It is here that Universalism really made its distinctive mark. If one accepts the universalist view, whether theologically or philosophically, the result is more than a negation of an old doctrine. It is an affirmation of something far more important. What began as a doctrine of universal salvation was broadened into a vision of universal love. It became a broader concept concerning universal human worth and dignity.

Here is one of the best known comments about Universalism from John Murray, the founder of the Universalist Church in America in the 1700s. He said:

"You may possess a small light, but uncover it, let it shine, use it in order to bring more light and understanding to the hearts and minds of men and women. Give them not hell, but hope and courage; preach the kindness and the everlasting love of God."

"Give them not hell," he said. That is the very beginning of the insight from the universalist philosophy. But he added, "Give them. . .hope and courage. . . Give them kindness and everlasting love," which is divine, which is universal.

The Universalist principle, seen in these terms, cannot just rest in the realm of religious or philosophical ideas. It can be translated into action. Let me offer a few examples.

From the birth of this country, Universalistswere adamantly opposedto slavery. This opposition to slavery arose directly out of the great doctrine of universal love -- that all people have inherent worth.

One of the earliest examples of this was Benjamin Rush, a physician in colonial America, who was a close friend of Thomas Jefferson. His name is remembered primarily today because he was a signer of the Declaration of Independence, and is often called the "father" of American medicine. But his career was much more profound than simply that. As early as 1770, Rush published pamphlets denouncing slavery. He organized the first anti-slavery society in America, saying this:

"We believe [slavery] to be inconsistent with...the obligations to mutual and universal love."

"Universal love." There, in 1770, is that phrase, "universal love." The words are at the center of his crusade against slavery. But that is the tip of his iceberg of universal love. Rush founded the first medical clinic for the poor in this country, the first school to educate poor children, and the first hospital for the mentally ill. When the U.S. Constitution was written and the government established a Secretary of War, Rush lobbied, unsuccessfully, it must be noted, also for a Secretary of Peace. His dedication to universal love flowed to all human concerns. When the Universalists in the new United States joined together in 1790 to plan the denomination known as the Universalist Church in America, Rush was the author of its statement of principles.

Rush is just one example, because from its formal inception in 1793 up to the Civil War, the Universalist Church was formally on record opposing slavery. Prominent lay members, such as the abolitionist newspaper publisher, Horace Greeley, were also active in ending this beastly practice.

The teaching of universal love extended to all disenfranchised people, and it is no surprise that Universalists were prominently in the forefront of the crusade for women's rights and women's suffrage: more active, in some ways, than Unitarians. The early women's movement was led by a number of Universalist women, such as Mary Livermore, and the Universalist church was the first denomination in the United States to recognize the ordination of a woman minister, Olympia Brown, who was ordained in 1863.

The Universalist seminary accepted Olympia Brown after the Unitarian seminary turned her down. After accepting a call to the Universalist Church in Bridgeport, Connecticut, she became nationally known as an advocate of women's rights and a close friend of Unitarian Susan B. Anthony.

On issues of slavery and women's rights, the Universalists were far ahead of every other denomination, including the Unitarians. The reason, it seems to me, is the central doctrine of universal love and acceptance of all people.

This is just the beginning of the list of activities which turned love into action for the Universalists. We all know, for example, of Clara Barton, the Universalist who founded the Red Cross as a means of healing the tragedy of the Civil War.

Throughout its history, Universalism has inspired those who seek to give voice to the disenfranchised - it has been active in reform movements to humanize treatment of prisoners, of the mentally ill, of the diseased. Universalists have championed the cause of education and of liberty.

In all of this they have been motivated with a vision of universal love. What began as a doctrinal dispute - a heretical movement - that denied the prevailing dogma about eternal damnation, with confidence in the ultimate redemption of all souls in the hereafter, evolved over the years into a broader and deeper vision about the dignity of all people in this world.

The Universalist spirit of universal human love remains central in our day. The issues we wrestle with these days tend to be issues far more of the heart. We struggle over what we call "inclusivity" issues: the respect and acceptance of all, whether male or female, black or white, Asian or European, homosexual or heterosexual, old or young.

One of the more visible and controversial struggles today, not only in our churches but in society, is over acceptance of homosexuals as full and equal members of the community. The Universalist spirit of universal love that led the crusade against slavery and for women's rights is now urging us toward the full acceptance of the human dignity of gays and lesbians in our church and society.

This is perhaps the point that impresses me the most about the book, If Grace Is True. The authors seem to get the most fundamental point. It is one thing to reject the ridiculous doctrine of hell. It is more important to do so in the context of universal love and acceptance. And they do this well from their perspective, and using their language and their frame of reference.

They are devout Christians who believe that God's love is the same for Muslims and Mormons and Hindus and Atheists as it is for Christians. Our job is to treat all with the same respect for their worth and dignity.

It matters little whether the principle of universal love is attributed to God or simply human ethics. The result is the same. It addresses every issue of controversy over how to treat a group of people who are different from you.

The best answer to this concern comes directly from the Universalist tradition. The answer of acceptance is always the way of universal love.

This look at the simple issue of the doctrine of hell reveals so much more than we might first suppose. It expands into a vast world view that affects our perspective on life itself. One of the great Universalist leaders of the twentieth century, Clarence Skinner, put it this way:

"The Universalist idea of God [has become] that of a universal, impartial, immanent spirit whose nature is love. It is the largest thought the world has ever known; it is the most revolutionary doctrine ever proclaimed; it is the most expansive hope ever dreamed....

"This is no tribal deity of ancient divisive civilization, this is no God of the nation or of a chosen people, but the democratic creator of the solid, indivisible world of rich and poor, black and white, good and bad, strong and weak, Jew and Gentile, bond and free....

"Religion is a sense of the vital, meaningful relationship between the self and the universe, the outreach of people to something beyond themselves. It affirms that we each touch infinity: our home is in immensity; we live, move, and have our being in an eternity.

"The essential core of religion is the seeking after and the finding of our relationship to the unities and the universals."