“ROOTS AND BRANCHES OF RELIGIOUS LIBERTY”

A Sermon by the Rev. Bruce Clear

Sunday, May 3, 2009

All Souls Unitarian Church

Indianapolis, Indiana

If there were genes for human values, the Unitarian gene would carry the value of freedom more than any other value.

From our earliest history, freedom has been central to the Unitarian story. I speak of freedom in two senses: civil freedom (the right to practice one’s religion without interference from government) and individual freedom (personal respect for each person’s right to find his or her own religious path).

This morning I hope to keep us connected to our roots in religious liberty. If that should ever fall by the wayside in the Unitarian or Universalist story, we will have lost the heart of who we are. I will do this by reviewing the dramatic story of religious liberty through history. I will also take some time to focus on how that story affects us today.

I have told the story several times of the establishment of the first general law for religious freedom in western history. It happened in 1568 in Transylvania during the Protestant Reformation. It is fundamentally a Unitarian story.

In general, the Reformation in Europe was not about freedom. Nor was it fundamentally about theology. It was far more about power. Luther and Calvin disagreed with the established Roman Catholic theology – that is true. But their true heresy was resisting the authority of the church. Not doing what they were told. So they set up their own authority in their own spheres of influence. They took authority for themselves and established their own churches. Sometimes, even often, this was done violently and coercively. The key was to convert the ruling prince, and the prince would declare which church to support. Where these Reformation movements established their own churches, other faiths were either repressed or banished. This Reformation really had little to do with religious freedom, and a whole lot to do with power.

While this was going on in Western Europe, on the Eastern end of Europe, in the Transylvanian region of the Hungarian empire, a group of Unitarians was gaining influence. When the ruling king listened to the various churches debate, he chose the Unitarians as the winner. But the Unitarians were clearly not after power. They told the king that instead of establishing Unitarianism as the favored church, and banishing all the others, that he declare religious freedom for all religions.

Thus was born the first law protecting religious liberty, in the year 1568. That it came from the Unitarians was in keeping with their values. Central to the Unitarian religious view was the dignity of each person, and such dignity demands that each person’s right to their opinion be respected.

But freedom is always fragile, and this law didn’t last very long. After the king died in an accident, a power struggle among the churches ensued. When the Catholics eventually gained political power, religious freedom came to an end, and the Unitarian leader was thrown into a dungeon, where he would die.

At about the same time, another Unitarian group was being established in a different part of Eastern Europe. This group was led by Faustus Socinus, and his writing became so influential that for the next 200 years, Unitarians would be known to the rest of Europe as “Socinians.” This group founded their own city in Rakow, Poland, and there they declared religious toleration for all. Most historians of that era conclude that the modern idea of religious toleration was first established by the Socinians. Again, this was as radical a view as could be imagined. It was just assumed, by rulers as well as those under their rule, that a person’s religion is decided by the state.

But the Unitarian experiment with religious liberty in Poland would also not last long. They were targeted by both the Catholics and the major Protestant sects. In this case, the Catholics again gained power, and eventually destroyed all the Unitarian businesses and buildings in the town of Rakow, including a university and a publishing company, and banished all of them to leave Poland altogether.

Many of them went to Holland, which was about the only place left in Europe that tolerated minority religions. There they become allied to a group of Arminian dissenters, those who were connected to the Pilgrims who set sail on the Mayflower from Holland. Those Pilgrims, who shouldn’t be confused with the colonial Puritans, did in fact honor a tradition of religious liberty. Their descendents, at the Church of the Pilgrims in Plymouth, Massachusetts, would later declare themselves to be Unitarians.

Nevertheless, in the American colonies, the voice for religious liberty came to be led by the Baptist Roger Williams, a fairly strict preacher in Salem, Massachusetts, who complained that the colonists remained too tied to the Anglican state religion of England. Williams was, indeed, a trouble-maker. (Much like the Unitarian Michael Servetus was a century before in Europe). In theology, Roger Williams was what we today would call a “fundamentalist.” But he cherished one quality that was all too rare those days. He demanded not only religious liberty, but complete separation of church from the state. He came to this view largely because of his contempt for the English government and its established church. He distrusted political power.

Williams’ voice became so irritating to the ruling Puritans that he was run out of his church. He fled south, where he established a new colony called Rhode Island. Here he declared for the first time in the American colonies complete religious freedom for all. He wrote eloquently about the issue, and his writings continue today as inspiration to those who cherish religious freedom. Here is how the issue was addressed in the Charter of Rhode Island, issued in the year 1663:

Our royal will and pleasure is that no person within the said colony, at any time hereafter, shall be in any way molested, punished, disquieted, or called in question, for differences in opinion in matters of religion . . . but that all and every person and persons may, from time to time, and at all times hereafter, freely and fully have and enjoy his and their own judgements and consciences in matters of religious concernment.

It might also be pointed out that Roger Williams was one of the first and among only a few leaders of his time that became friends with the Native American people and gave them due respect. It should also be mentioned that William Penn wrote religious freedom into the Charter of Pennsylvania.

It is significant to note how a little persecution from the government can inspire someone to embrace religious liberty. This was the case for Baptists in America who, up until our time, were strong voices for separation of church from state. They knew what persecution was, and persecution could only be halted through government neutrality toward religion.

It is also significant to note how a little favorable brush with government power can weaken a church’s commitment to religious liberty and church/state separation. Churches that prosper by government favoritism find little motivation to keep religion free from government influence.

It is one of the fortunate turns of history that those who founded this nation, those who wrote the Constitution, were largely committed to the spirit of religious liberty. Thomas Jefferson, who called himself Unitarian, believed religious freedom to be of paramount importance. It is the very first freedom mentioned in the Bill of Rights of all Americans. Jefferson considered his authorship of the Virginia Statute on Religious Freedom to be as important as his drafting of the Declaration of Independence.

Jefferson and James Madison were the strongest voices among the founders to advocate for religious liberty. To them it wasn’t just a matter of basic human rights, though that was important. They also believed that progress in ideas can happen only in the atmosphere of freedom. To allow free inquiry in matter of thought encourages advancement of human understanding. To coerce thinking, or to suppress ideas prevents real progress. More than that, suppressing religious freedom has produced a long history of tyranny. In his journals, Jefferson said it this way:

“Difference of opinions is advantageous in religion. The several sects perform the office of censor morum over each other. Is uniformity attainable? Millions of innocent men, women and children, since the introduction of Christianity, have been burnt, tortured, fined, imprisoned; yet we have not advanced one inch toward uniformity. What has been the effect of coercion? To make one half of the world fools and the other half hypocrites. To support roguery all over the earth.”

The long history of Unitarianism is filled with martyrs. I referred earlier to the Unitarians of Poland and Transylvania who were oppressed at the hands of the church. Before them there was Michael Servetus, who was burned at the stake under orders from John Calvin. In England, the scientist and Unitarian minister Joseph Priestly, was harassed by mobs incited by the established church, who burned down his home, threatened the lives of him and his family, and was run out of England. Priestly came to America where he became a friend and ally to both Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson.

Even today, while the more violent and vicious religious persecution has been mostly overcome, as Unitarian Universalists we have be on the receiving end of religious bigotry.

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I have reviewed this story of the development of religious liberty not just because I love history and am inspired by the story, but also because it helps remind us where our values are rooted and about the soil from which they grew. It is, of course, not only our story – other traditions have contributed significantly to the growth of religious liberty, not just Baptists and Quakers, but also those free-thinkers and humanists, whom the orthodox have inclined to call “infidels.”

I review this story to remind us on one hand that the struggle for religious liberty has been long and painful. There has probably been no greater source of human misery on earth than when religion has been wedded to the government.

It is easy to take for granted the freedoms as we enjoy them today. It is easy to rest content with the way things are. However, what is required from us is to be constantly alert to threats to this liberty.

In the public arena, the challenges to liberty continue. For example, the move continues to teach various forms of creationism, such as “intelligent design” in science classrooms. Fortunately, every time it has been tested in court, the courts, based on expert testimony, have concluded rightly that creationism is religious doctrine, not science. There are continual attempts for government to sponsor prayers in school programs.

Speaking of school programs, I have spent more than 25 years attending school programs, and sometimes, especially at the holiday season, the schools’ promotion of sectarian religion can be blatant. Yes, they have changed the name of the “Christmas” program to “Winter Festival” – or something similar – but the content is often no different than would be found in a church program.

I continue to have serious concern about the government subsidies for so-called “faith-based” programs run by churches. Yes, good work is being done in helping needy people, but there is virtually no oversight that the churches are, in fact, not promoting their creeds along with serving hot meals to the homeless. Anytime the church accepts money from government, that money is tainted. It is, as Jesus would say, Caesar’s money.

It is sometimes advised that you should never borrow money from relatives. Why? Because it creates strings between you that can tangle up a relationship. Someone has the higher hand. I believe it is the same principle between church and state. For one to subsidize the other is to taint the relationship and blur the independence of both. And along with independence, liberty is threatened.

But there is another reason for reviewing this story and re-affirming our commitment to freedom in religion, and that reason has nothing to do with government, with church and state. It has to do with ourselves as Unitarian Universalists.

One vital characteristic of our tradition is to honor freedom not just in society, but within our own religious community. More than almost anything else, this is what distinguishes Unitarian Universalism from most religious groups. The operating premise of most religions is that they have discovered the true religion, and they have converted their truth into a creed. It is then the mission of any religious tradition to persuade others to subscribe to their creed, their truth.

That view is entirely alien to Unitarian Universalism. To declare that others need to subscribe to my beliefs, to proselytize for converts, is for us tantamount to heresy itself. We tend to agree with Jefferson and Madison that encouraging free thought rather than coercing beliefs is healthy for society, and for religions as well!

Religious liberty is something to be honored not only in society, but also within our own congregations, our religious communities. This principle is easy to declare, but not always so easy to follow. It is not uncommon for someone among us to suggest that what someone else here believes about God or doesn’t believe about God is “un-Unitarian.” Or that what someone else believes about government policy is “un-Unitarian.” Our Unitarian tradition is not defined in terms of belief at all. It is defined in terms of values. One of those values is respecting others’ rights to their beliefs. In this context, the only thing that is truly “un-Unitarian” is intolerance.

So this is another reason for me to return to the story of religious liberty, for it is not just a story about the place of religion in society, but for us it addresses our own internal religious principles, and is at the heart of who we are as Unitarian Universalists.

Religious freedom is inherent to our genes. It is important to affirm that regularly.

READING from William Ellery Channing

Introduction to “The Works of William Ellery Channing” (1841)

I proceed to another sentiment, which is expressed so habitually in these writings, as to constitute one of their characteristics, and which is intimately connected with the preceding topic. It is reverence for Liberty, for human rights ; a sentiment, which has grown with my youth, which is striking deeper root in my age, which seems to me a chief element of' true love for mankind, and which alone fits a man for intercourse with his fellow-creatures, I have lost no occasion for expressing my deep attachment to liberty in all its forms, civil, political, religious, to liberty of thought, speech, and the press, and of giving utterance to my abhorrence of all the forms of oppression. . . .

My reverence for human liberty and rights has grown up in a different school, under milder and holier discipline Christianity has taught me to respect my race, and to reprobate its oppressors. It is because I have learned to regard man under the light of this religion, that I cannot bear to see him treated as a brute, insulted, wronged, enslaved, made to wear a yoke, to tremble before his brother, to serve him as a tool, to hold property and life at his will, to surrender intellect and conscience to the priest, or to seal his lips or belie his thoughts through dread of the civil power. It is because I have learned the essential equality of men before the common Father, that I cannot endure to see one man establishing, his arbitrary will over another by fraud, or force, or wealth, or rank, or superstitious claims. It is because the human being has moral powers, because he carries a law in his own breast, and was made to govern himself, that I cannot endure to see him taken out of his own hands and fashioned into a tool by another's avarice or pride. It is because I see in him a great nature, the divine image, and vast capacities, that I demand for him means of self-development, spheres for free action ; that I call society not to fetter, but to aid his growth. Without intending to disparage the outward, temporal advantages of liberty, I have habitually regarded it in a higher light, as the birthright of the soul, as the element, in which men are to put themselves forth, to become conscious of what they are, and to fulfil the end of their being.