Our Yankee Doodle Dandy UU Heritage

 

 

By WAYNE DAWKINS

 

TOMORROW is July 4, Independence Day, that most American of American holidays. I have a fond memory from two decades ago of rereading the Declaration of Independence ? reprinted in its hand written form ? on a back page of The Philadelphia Inquirer..

 

For the last handful of summers, I waited patiently to listen to the dramatic reading of the Declaration by National Public Radio personalities. I then chuckled when Bob Edwards noted that King George III of England wrote in his diary that day, “Nothing of consequence happened.”

 

History told well can be very moving, entertaining and of course relevant to the present and future. History and heritage is so important to our progressive religious movement, Unitarian Universalism.

 

It is near impossible to study American history and not run smack into Unitarians and Universalists who shaped mainstream American values in the 19th and the first half of the 20th century.

 

These “heretics” [AND I SAY that word endearingly] deserve more celebration and display for sake of educating the greater community, and, us.

 

In the 21st century members new to our movement should be assured that numerous people quietly are doing great, prophetic work and deeds to make our country and our world a better place.

 

We must proudly recall and honor our “heretics” so we are not marginalized or misrepresented by others, like Texas Comptroller Carole Keaton Strayhorn. She recently tried to strip Red River UU Church in Denison, Texas of tax-exempt status. Why? Because Strayhorn determined that Unitarian Universalism was not a religion. http://www.rruu.org/

 

Initially, the tax exemption was denied on the grounds that Red River “did not have one system of belief,” reported a clearly amused agnostic & atheism blogger, whose piece was entitled “Unitarians are a religion after all.”

 

The Texas comptroller’s general counsel read the church application then came to the conclusion that Red River “is an organization created for religious purposes and should be granted the requested tax exemption.”

 

At this fellowship, I read about the antics in Texas from a newspaper clipping pinned on the bulletin board. I thought the story was a spoof, a parody. It was neither. We live in polarized times when religion is the topic. UUs are occasionally targets.

 

There are many people ? leaders even ? who say that conservative Christianity rules, and eveeryone else is either wrong or unfaithful, and therefore may be menaces to society.

 

Our liberal religious movement ? rich and deep with tradition and history ? must nt not sit by idly and be misrepresented or bullied.

 

Individuals must muster the courage and creativity to speak truth to power.

 

SPEAKING OF history, it might be a shock to many Americans that at least five, probably six, or up to seven of our 43 U.S. presidents were Unitarians or Universalists.

 

There’s JOHN ADAMS, 2nd president and signer of the Declaration of Independence, who attended 1st Parish Church of Braintree [now known as Quincy] and married the well read and politically astute Abigail [Smith] Adams.

 

There is THOMAS JEFFERSON, 3rd president, and lead writer of the Declaration of Independence. Technically, Jefferson did not join a Unitarian church, but look at the evidence: He was greatly influenced by the British Unitarian Joseph Priestley. Jefferson was a deist and his search for truth and meaning made him follow Priestly’s advice and write “The Jefferson Bible,” a historical search for Jesus based on the Gospel of Matthew.

Our 60-congregation Southeastern District is named after Jefferson.

 

There’s JOHN QUINCY ADAMS, 6th president and the 2nd president’s son who as a nine-term member of Congress successfully argued the case of the Africans who in 1839 rebelled and commandeered the Amistad slave ship.

 

Adams also helped establish the Smithsonian Institution.

 

There is MILLARD FILMORE, 13th president who in the 1850s was in the crosshairs of an approaching Civil War.

 

There’s CHESTER A. ARTHUR, 21st president, who the Rev. Jim Sanderson [a librarian] mentioned matter of fact-like during a winter church service.

 

Arthur succeeded James Garfield, who was shot and critically wounded only months after taking office in 1881. Then Garfield died 2 months later in September. The UUA claims Chester Arthur as a Unitarian; other sources list him as Episcopalian. The answer closest to the trust must be “To the consternation of his parents, Arthur never formally joined any church.”

 

And there was WILLIAM HOWARD. TAFT, 26th president, who later served as a U.S. Supreme Court justice in the 20th century.

 

According to adherents.com, 11 of our presidents were Episcopalians, and 9 were Presbyterians. Unitarians share a 3-way tie with Baptists and Methodists at 4 presidents each. Yes, I know I said at least five and maybe six. The site did not count Jefferson or Arthur. Also, Rev. Sanderson on June 5 told me there may be evidence that U.S. Grant was a Universalist.

 

Baptists represent 18 percent of the U.S. population and, Methodists 8 percent.

 

Catholics [26 percent] the largest American religious bloc, produced one president.

 

Unitarian Universalists? Try two-tenths of 1 percent.

[We’re small in number yet significant!]

 

Are UU ideas and ideals on the margins of our society and our history?

 

Of course not.

 

Our “heretics” who we should honor often were in the forefront of social and reform movements.

 

THREE UU STANDOUTS [out of a galaxy of stars] from the late 1800s are Thomas Starr King, Clara Barton and Olympia Brown.  

 

Starr King, the boyish minister from New England moved west to San Francisco and used the power of oratory to convince Californians to remain in the Union at the start of the Civil War. King was convincing. You try preaching to a crowd of miners all armed with revolvers and bowie knives. King helped create the United States Sanitary Commission, a forerunner of the American Red Cross to assist wounded, poorly fed and clothed soldiers. One of King’s churchgoers was Leland Stanford, future governor of California, and yes, the Stanford in Stanford University. One of our great UU seminaries is named after Thomas Starr King.

 

Clara Barton’s Unitarianism was very Christian: it had the dogma, but the big difference was a belief in a LOVING GOD. She lived that belief in treating wounded soldiers on the blue and gray sides of the Civil War. She ministered to men’s hearts as well as their bodies. Barton worked with the American Sanitary Commission, another forerunner of the American Red Cross [see a pattern here?]. She was the lone woman among 400 people at  an International Red Cross conference in Europe in 1884. Barton was a contemporary of Susan B. Anthony, Dorothea Dix and Olympia Brown.

 

Olympia Brown, first woman to graduate from an established theological seminary in 1863, was also the first American woman ordained by a recognized denomination when she settled in to parish ministry in Weymouth, Mass., then later a Universalist church in Racine, Wis. See what Brown started? In 1975, about 2 percent of active UU ministers were women and many of them were confined to religious education.* By 2005, 50 percent of UU clergy are women, according to Rev. Shirley Ranck of the Williamsburg Unitarian Univeralists [4/24]. [*Congregation UU Church, Woodstock, IL]

 

OK, I’ll name drop now: Heard of Bela Bartok; Ray Bradbury, Norman Cousins*, E.E. Cummings; William Kiplinger; Mary White Ovington; Eliot Richardson; Arthur Schlesinger; Pete Seeger; Adlai Stevenson; Frank Lloyd Wright, and Whitney M. Young Jr.? These are notable Unitarians from the years 1936-1961 that I cherry picked from a list compiled by the Harvard Square Library.

 

[I am still looking for the notables list published post-1961]

 

Remember my assertion that it is difficult to read American history and not encounter Unitarians and Universalists? Well, I’ve been reading the 2nd Pulitzer Prize-winning biography of W.E.B. DuBois, and there was the minister of my infancy, John Haynes Holmes of the Community Church of New York. Many years before he was a co-founder of NAACP, just like Mary White Ovington, who with DuBois are names synonymous with the Civil Rights organization. According to author David Levering Lewis, Holmes was a “conscientious and tactful” board member who raised questions about the budget for the Crisis, the association magazine that DuBois edited. [D.L.L., Pages 34, 36]

 

I searched for the biographies of Holmes, and Donald S. Harrington, the latter the minister of my childhood and adolescence. I was reminded that I attended a remarkable church. Holmes was a co-founder not only of the NAACP, but also the American Civil Liberties Union. In the 1920s, Holmes praised the non-violent social action of Mohandas Gandhi long before others realized the major changes that were coming.

 

In 1962, my church hosted a debate between Malcolm X and Bayard Rustin, the civil rights organizer and brains behind the 1963 March on Washington.

 

The Community Church of New York was not unlike hundreds of UU congregations practicing social action.

 

AS WE REFLECT on and of course, celebrate tomorrow, bold actions that ignited an American revolution more than two centuries ago, remember the revolutionaries of the Unitarian Universalist movement.

 

They, too, were soldiers and statesmen for justice, compassion, reason and the search for meaning. These remarkable women and men ? our heretics ? deserve wider and frequent recognition. Blessed be.