"No Missionaries"

A Sermon by the Rev. Bruce Clear

Sunday, March 28, 2004

All Souls Unitarian Church

Indianapolis, Indiana

You may think I was a peculiar child, and maybe I was in some ways. I did not grow up with big dreams of being a policeman or fireman, football player or astronaut. For a while, as a child, I wanted to grow up to be a missionary.

The dream was an exciting one at the time. My family belonged to a traditional Christian church that had missionaries all over the world, and when we traveled as a family, we would often stay with those missionaries. That happened in Japan, Hong Kong, India, Egypt, and Mexico. My aunt and uncle were missionaries in Pakistan for many years, and their children, my cousins, grew up in Pakistan - and I was always excited when they came home to visit. When I was eight years old, I lived in Cuba for a summer while my father substituted for a missionary there.

Anyway, I had an extensive encounter with missionaries as a child, and the work looked exciting to me at the time. The missionaries we visited were all very good people doing good work, and they showed us interesting places and customs around the world. They genuinely cared for the people in the countries where they lived. I remember the missionary in Hong Kong was also a doctor and worked at a missionary hospital. One day we were driving in the mountains with him and we witnessed a serious automobile accident. We stopped so he could offer help to those injured while waiting for the ambulance.

So as a child, I dreamed of becoming a missionary. I sincerely wanted to help people around the world, and at the same time enjoy the experience of living in other countries. The typical dreams of becoming a professional athlete or policeman seemed far less exciting and certainly important.

There was only one problem. The underlying purpose of most missionaries is to convert people around the world away from the religion they practice and adopt the religion of the missionaries. I came to understand that most missionaries did good work in helping local people - often poor people desperately in need of food or medical care or education. We can only applaud the generous support they give around the world. But in many cases, perhaps most cases, the help that was being given was also intended to encourage people to change their religious beliefs.

This became a problem for me as I grew older. I had no interest in converting people in other countries toward my beliefs. Such an effort seemed to me disrespectful at its core. As my own beliefs evolved toward a more open and less creedal kind, I knew, by the time I left high school, that I had to give up on the dream of being a missionary.

Fast forward my life for about ten years or so, and during that time I discovered the Unitarian Universalists, eventually entered seminary, and became a UU minister. Somewhere along the line I discovered that our Unitarian Universalist movement was actively involved in international work in help of other people around the world. We supported the kind of good works done by the missionaries I witnessed, the only difference being that there was no motivation to convert people away from their own religious beliefs. On the contrary, the expectation was to encourage and support diversity and freedom of religion around the world.

This morning I want to examine and celebrate the various ways our UU movement is involved around the world - the work it does, the cooperative encouragement it gives to other religious groups. So much of what I describe contains all of the elements of the missionary work I witnessed and admired as child. Only with that one single piece omitted. We do not send missionaries with the intention of changing someone else's religion. To the extent that the purpose of church missionary work is to do that, Unitarian Universalism rejects the whole idea. To the extent that the word "missionary" involves religious conversion, that is "change" of conviction, you will find no UU missionaries.

What you will find, though, is about everything else that is important and of deep human and religious value. Those are the efforts I hope to describe. I have discovered many UUs know little about this work.

The center of UU service work around the world is the organization called the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee (UUSC), headquartered in Boston. It is important to keep in mind that the UU Service Committee is independent and autonomous from the official denominational organization, the Unitarian Universalist Association (UUA).

The Service Committee began in 1940 to offer refugee assistance in Europe to victims of Nazi terror. As early as 1933, the Unitarian General Assembly passed a resolution deploring the persecution of Jews in Hitler's Germany. When Hitler's advances threatened Czechoslovakia, Unitarians in America felt the impact because some of our churches had close ties to Czech Unitarian churches. The American Unitarian Association sent Waitstill Sharp, a Unitarian minister, and his wife Martha Sharp, to Prague to see what they could do. They arrived as Nazi troops invaded the city. Rev. Sharp and his wife separated and worked independently to create an underground railroad that would allow people to escape the Nazi occupation. Among those who were smuggled out were intellectuals and anti-Nazi political leaders and other refugees that were considered high risk people.

When the couple returned to the U.S. in 1940, the Unitarian Service Committee was formed to continue their efforts to support refugees fleeing from Nazi persecution. During the war, offices were established in Lisbon, Marseille, Geneva, and Paris. In 1941, the Service Committee adopted the symbol of a flaming chalice, designed by a refugee who had been a noted painter and musician. It was the first introduction of the flaming chalice symbol among Unitarians.

The Universalist Church of America, which was then an entirely separate denomination, experienced a similar story for they had ties to churches in Holland, which also fell to the Nazis. The Universalist Trustees established their own War Relief Committee to help refugees who fled from the Nazis. After the war, it would become the Universalist Service Committee. As early as 1945, the two Service Committees began working closely together in various projects. In 1963, the Unitarian and Universalist Service Committees merged into a single organization, though it wouldn't be until 1969 that the two denominations would also merge.

The UU Service Committee creates programs and supports existing programs to help people all over the world. They are sometimes seen as a "relief" agency, and in fact they do a great deal of that work, raising money to help people victimized by earthquakes and floods and other natural disasters around the world. From time to time here at All Souls we make a plea for donations to send to the Service Committee for such efforts. The "Guest at Your Table" program sponsored by our R.E. Department is one example.

But relief work is only a side element of their purpose. The central mission of the UU Service Committee is support for human rights around the world wherever they are threatened. Of particular concern to them are the rights of women and children who are marginalized by dictatorial governments or abused by a patriarchal culture.

The Service Committee is involved in the great Lakes region of Africa, where war has devastated many people. In 1994, the Rwandan government initiated a policy of genocide against the Tutsi people and more than half a million were killed. Among the groups supported by the Service Committee are HADEFE, an organization focusing on education and prevention of recruitment of child soldiers, and an organization called Promotion and Help for Women's Initiatives (PAIF) that educates women on their human rights through radio and television programs, theater, conferences, workshops and seminars.

In Northeast India, Hindus and Muslims have been virtually at war for many years. In 2002 religious riots killed over 2,000 people. The Dalits caste, the lowest caste in the Indian cultural hierarchy, have been oppressed and denied their basic human rights. The Service Committee supports the local Center for Development of Women and Children, giving educational and other support to the lower classes. They are also working with the exiled Tibetan community to support their human rights.

Mexico has the largest native population in the Americas, and most of them live in extreme poverty, and in certain areas experience systematic exploitation. UUSC works with the Human Rights Center in the state of Chiapas which monitors, documents, and publicizes human rights violations, as well as providing legal help to victims and conducting human rights training.

In Central America, UUSC has sponsored U.S. congressional fact-finding trips where American members of Congress can get a good idea of human rights violations or of local violence.

Long before September 11, the Service Committee was concerned about the treatment of women and children in Afghanistan under the Taliban regime, and worked with organizations trying to defend basic human rights. That work continues, giving support to local women's support organizations.

One of the on-going relief efforts of the UUSC has been to support humanitarian aid, including food and medicine, to the civilian population of Iraq.

The organization also sponsors work within the United States. Since 1996, they have created 25 Workcamps - short term projects for improving community life where volunteers gain a better inter-cultural understanding around issues of poverty, discrimination, and racism. A project in Lawrence, Massachusetts brings together suburban white teenagers with racially diverse inner-city youth to develop social justice projects. Other groups of teens were brought to Yakima, Washington to learn about migrant farm worker conditions. Another group went to Oakland, California to study the life of the homeless.

UUSC also sponsors public policy advocacy, mobilizing its membership to advocate for government policy changes in support of human rights.

Separate from the UU Service Committee is a program administered by the UUA in India known as the Holdeen Trust. Some years ago, the UUA was given a large amount of money with the express purpose of helping the most marginalized sectors of society in India. This program has been designed to support local groups that serve the human rights interests of the lowest castes, and also organizational support for groups that address poverty and discrimination against women and children.

These are not your typical missionary programs. They share the goal of most missionary programs in improving the lives of those in need around the world, but there is absolutely no interest in changing their religion. These are not missionaries as we have known them.

There is another category of international work that the average Unitarian Universalist doesn't know about: the International Association for Religious Freedom (IARF). In 1900, the Unitarians joined with several other liberal religious groups around the world to form an organization which promotes religious freedom. Today, the IARF has over 100 religious groups affiliated, coming from Christian, Buddhist, Hindu, Muslim, Jewish, and other traditions.

It turns out that nearly every religious tradition has a group whose primary tenet, like ours, is religious freedom. The IARF is committed to supporting those groups, and the Unitarian Universalist Association is actively involved in its work.

I'd like to give you a verbal snapshot of what I'm talking about so you see why it is important to do this. Let me describe a couple of religious groups you've probably never heard about, but serve in their culture very much the same role Unitarian Universalists serve in our own culture.

In India, there is a Hindu sect known as the Brahmo Samaj. This group was founded by Raja Ram Mohan Roy in Calcutta in 1828. He was a well educated Brahmin, and one of the few Hindus to travel around Europe. His ideas were influenced by Unitarianism there, as well as Islam and Christianity. He was impressed by the rational thinking in the West, but hoped to reform Hinduism from within. Brahmo Samaj is a monotheistic religion in a traditionally polytheistic Hinduism, but its focus has been on reform of social injustices, including the caste system. It honors all great religious leaders of the world, and looks for truth in all the world's scriptures.

In the early twentieth century, it sent the religious leader Swami Vivikananda to America as its own kind of "missionary" to help Americans understand Hinduism in a positive light. Vivikanada's temple continues to exist in Chicago. Perhaps the best known follower of the Brahmo Samaj was the Nobel Prize winning poet and writer Rabindranath Tagore.

At a recent conference of the Brahmo Samaj in London, a leader of the movement, Dr. Sumit Chanda, summarized the religion's approach with these words, which I think you'll see sound strikingly Unitarian:

"The key learning for modern Brahmos is to emulate the Testing, Questing, never Resting, with Open Mind and Open Heart ethos. Brahmoism is about not be restricted to past practices or customs alone. It is about taking decisions, having taking in consideration all sources of information as far as possible."

Brahmo Samaj was one of the founding members of the IARF.

I now turn to Japan for another look at an IARF member, a fascinating group known as Rissho Kosei-kai. It is a Buddhist religion, but they, too, embody our Unitarian values in the context of a different culture. One interesting fact about this group is that it may be the largest of all in the free religious movement. There are six million members of Rissho Kosei-kai, representing about five percent of the population of Japan. That compares with less than two hundred thousand Unitarian Universalists in America, or about one tenth of one percent of the U.S. population.

The religion was founded in 1938 by Nikkyo Niwano. Niwano came from a modest background in a northern Japanese village. He became a student specializing his study of the Lotus Sutra, one of the Buddhist scriptures tracing back to the Shakyamuni Buddha twenty-five hundred years ago. He believed the Lotus Sutra to be the greatest of all teachings, and built a new religious movement around them. Rissho Kossei-kai is structured around small groups who attend to helping each other in need. The heart of the doctrine is one of compassion and peace.

One story from the tradition tells of a student asking a great Buddhist Master to reveal the universal essence of religious living. The Master offered this simple answer, saying:

"Commit no evils. Do all that is good. Fill your mind with compassion and your heart with understanding. For this is the teaching of all the Buddhas."

The student was not impressed, and said to the Master, "But even a child of three or four could comprehend so simple a teaching!" And the Master replied, "Yes, a child can understand the words. But even a lifetime of 80 years may not be enough to put them into practice."

One Unitarian close to the Rissho Kossei-kai movement summarized their beliefs in these words:

"A belief in the inherent divinity of each person. A belief in sharing others' suffering as well as happiness. A belief in the need to overcome greed and desire, and in the continuing search for one's Buddha nature. A belief in the pricelessness of the natural world. A belief in the absolute necessity of preventing another world conflict. A belief that all religions come from the same source of wisdom, or dharma."

Any description of Rissho Kossei-kai should include the substantial efforts of this group toward world peace. In the early 1960s, along with UUA president Dana Greeley, Founder Niwano co-founded the World Conference on Religion and Peace, which works to resolve conflicts and provide humanitarian relief in areas where religion has been divisive. This organization went to Bosnia, for example, to create an interreligious council of Muslims, Roman Catholics, Serbian Orthodox Christians and Jews to work together to repair the damages of the bitter war there. In the Middle East, a joint Israeli-Palestinian elementary school was created. Dozens of similar projects have been established all over the world, from the Philippines to Guatemala.

Rissho Kossei-kai and the Brahmo Samaj represent just two of the hundred religious group members of the International Association for Religious Freedom. The UUA remains actively supportive of this organization who has its own mission. Rather than try to spread a particular sectarian religion in other cultures, the purpose is to strengthen those indigenous religions which affirm the values of freedom. Interfaith projects are promoted all over the world in dozens of ways. In Northeast India where Hindus and Muslims are fighting, and interfaith group of youth were sent to restore and rebuild a Muslim mosque and a Hindu temple.

Another international organization is important to mention. While UUs are only a minority in the IARF, there are, of course, Unitarian groups all over the world. In the 1980s, the British Unitarian churches proposed the establishment of an International Council of Unitarians and Universalists ICUU). This organization represents Unitarian Churches that exist in over twenty countries, including no just Romania and England, but Finland, Australia, India, Russia, and Nigeria. The ICUU sponsors meetings among UUs from around the world, sharing their vision and their ideas. Since its founding, there have been Unitarian Conferences held in Germany, India, Transylvania, Sri Lanka, and Oxford, England.

The most recent story in Unitarian Universalist international work is the one that inspires this Sunday, which we call our "Partner Church Sunday." The earliest Unitarian Churches were established in Eastern Europe in the 1500s, with the strongest Unitarian presence in the region known as Transylvania. It wasn't until the 1800s that Unitarians in the United States realized their theological connection, and a relationship developed. A "sister church" program was established in the early 1900s, and Unitarian congregations in America became linked to specific congregations in Easter Europe. But history imposed itself, and the story took a tragic turn. After the First World War, Transylvania was taken from Hungary and given to Romania, and the Hungarian Unitarians became an oppressed minority in a foreign land. During the Second World War, they came under Nazi rule, and from 1945 until 1989 they were captured behind the "iron curtain" of communism. Connections between American and Hungarian Unitarians came to a stop. Unitarian churches suffered more than most because they were an ethnic minority, too.

After the fall of communism, though, the communication opened up, and some leaders of the UUA traveled to Transylvania and saw how our religious cousins suffered. Efforts were created to give support to these churches, and eventually we created a group called the "Partner Church Council." The idea was that a specific congregation in the United States would be linked to a specific congregation in Eastern Europe, primarily to show support and offer help, especially financial help, as they begin to heal from the wounds of the twentieth century.

Today, more than 200 North American churches are partnered with Unitarian churches in poor parts of the world. The majority are in Transylvania, but other partnered churches include Hungary, the Czech Republic, Poland, the Philippines, and the Khasi Hills of India.

All Souls has a partner relationship with two different churches. Through Phil and Barbara Blumenthal, we have been connected for quite a few years with the Unitarian Church of York, England. This is a very warm group of people, and their minister has sent a number of kind notes to us. I will always remember her letter of sympathy sent following September 11.

For almost ten years now, All Souls has been a Partner Church to the Unitarian Church of Sepsi St. Georghe in Transylvania. The Partner Church committee here has organized a variety of events to raise money to assist the church and its people. Over the years at least seven of our members have visited there, including one of our youth. Nancy and I have gone twice, the first time at the wish of the congregation to attend the dedication of their new church building. Any of you who have spoken to us about our visits know that for us this was a life-changing experience. We felt so blessed by the warm hearts of the Unitarians in Sepsi St. Georghe.

As a child, I once wanted to be a missionary. I'm not sure what all the reasons for that were, but I suppose at some level I felt missionaries changed other people for the better. When I grew up and realized how disrespectful it can be to assume "the better" means believing like I do, my dream disappeared.

In surveying the various international relationships our Unitarian Universalist movement has, it demonstrates for me several things. First of all, it is possible to do the good work of missionaries and still affirm people in their own religion. Secondly, it shows to me a different kind of missionary model. One works for the improvement of human life on earth, not because it changes the other person, but because it changes me and makes me a better person.

I close with a statement from Jill McAllister, a recent President of the relatively new International Council of Unitarian Universalists.

"Something impressive is happening. . . . Unitarians and Unitarian Universalists in more than 20 countries around the world are getting to know each other, are becoming friends, are becoming true partners in the work of nurturing and growing our liberal religious movement. We are coming to know and understand at a much deeper level than ever before that we are not alone, that others share our ideals, that there is a much wider perspective on our faith, and that we are far richer in diversity, ideas, hopes, dreams and resources than any of us could have imagined on our own. We are learning to work together, as partners, across the diversity of our traditions, practices and political/economic environments.

"What could be more important for the world we live in today, than to be able to practice and model solidarity; to be able to work together, with our differences, for those goals we have in common? Knowing how close we are to the limits of the earth's carrying capacity, and knowing full well our human capacity for destruction, this experience of solidarity and this model of pluralism has never been more important, or more needed.