When We Were in Power Rev. Catie Scudera First Parish in Needham, 2/17/19

House Representatives Judy Chu and Ami Bera are both California Democrats who have been serving in Congress for ten and six years, respectively. Both of their parents were immigrants, Representative Chu’s from Guangdong, China, and Representative Bera’s from Gujarat, India, and both representatives have spent their whole lives living, learning, and serving in California. Before entering politics, Representative Chu served as a professor of psychology and Representative Bera as a professor of medicine.

But what the two have in common that may be of most interest to us here today is that both Representative Chu and Representative Bera are Unitarian Universalists. Our national denomination, the Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations, announced this in January just before Inauguration Day, thanking the pair for “living [their] UU values in [their] service to this country.”

The faith, ethics, and values of politicians matter, in the same way our Unitarian Universalism matters to each of us in our every day lives. Our inner moral compasses direct us day by day, and each of our compasses’ “true north” is influenced by the philosophy, stories, and actions of our faith traditions. At least, as a pastor, I assume that what we hear in our services — what we ponder in our religious exploration workshops and Small Group discussions — what we read from our congregation’s blog and social media — and what actions we take together in community — I assume that this has an impact on each of our personal ethics and words and deeds. Learning more about Representatives Chu and Bera in recent weeks, I can see how our UU values may be influencing their service to their districts and our country, in their support for young DREAMers, abortion access, and the Affordable Healthcare Act.

To call this sermon “when we were in power” is a little disingenuous, though it makes a catching headline. It’s not that American Unitarian Universalists today hold no or even little power, especially compared to how few of us there are in the United States. Representatives Chu and Bera comprise 0.46% of the House of Representatives, just a slightly higher percentage than how many Unitarian Universalists there are in the United States — about 0.3% of the U.S. population, according to the Pew Research Center. I’m sure there are many among us today who have or are currently serving as Needham Town Meeting members or in other town elected positions — could you raise a hand if you are or have? As our former pastor Rev. John Buehrens used to say, First Parish is a “religious center with a civic circumference.” We dream of co-creating a more equitable and just world that reflects our inclusive and compassionate values, and we work in part through extant political structures of our nation to make this so. When We Were in Power Rev. Catie Scudera First Parish in Needham, 2/17/19

And, that is what our spiritual ancestors hoped for and did as well. Particularly in the late eighteenth- and then nineteenth-century, Unitarians and Universalists wielded governmental and educational power disproportionate to our population in the American colonies and fledgling United States. Numerous signers of the Declaration of Independence, U.S. presidents, federal and state legislators, policy advocates, and educational powerhouses came from the Universalist and Unitarian traditions.

As modern queer womanist author and activist Alice Walker wrote, “To acknowledge our ancestors means we are aware that we did not make ourselves, that the line stretches all the way back, perhaps to God; or to Gods. We remember [our ancestors] because it is an easy thing to forget: that we are not the first to suffer, rebel, fight, love, and die. The grace with which we embrace life, in spite of the pain, the sorrows, is always a measure of what has gone before.”

Today, we ask our Universalist and Unitarian ancestors who served in the public square during our century of power to “be with us” in spirit as we reflect on how they used their power here in Massachusetts and across our nation, and consider what lessons our time of great authority have for us today. In our time of reflection together, we hope to gain more grace and mindfulness in how we “suffer, rebel, fight, love, die, and embrace life.”

How did our spiritual ancestors gain their power? Boston Unitarians, in particular, already had power by the time Unitarianism broke from Congregationalism in formerly Puritan churches like First Parish. There were prominent Universalist and Unitarians elsewhere in the country, notably Pennsylvanian Universalist physician Dr. Benjamin Rush who founded Dickinson College and signed the Declaration of Independence and Universalist Representative and Senator W.D. Washburn of Minnesota. But, many of our spiritual ancestors who were influential in our nation’s government were men who came from wealthy, white, Harvard-educated, Boston Brahmin families.

Nineteenth-century Unitarian medical professor and poet, Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., borrowed the word for the highest Hindu caste when he first wrote about the “Boston Brahmin,” a group of New England families descended from early English colonists who had an extraordinary impact on the founding of major American institutions. Most of these “brahmin” were Episcopal or Unitarian, and, on our side, included the Eliots, whose members were politicians, presidents of Harvard and the American Unitarian Association, and founders of Washington University in St. Louis; the Quincy-Adamses, as in Presidents John and John Quincy and their wives, Abigail and Louisa Catherine; Holmes Senior’s own family, which included 2 When We Were in Power Rev. Catie Scudera First Parish in Needham, 2/17/19 himself, a Harvard professor, and his son, a Supreme Court Justice; and, many more, including Transcendentalist literary luminaries like Ralph Waldo Emerson and the Peabody sisters. All four Unitarian chaplains to the federal House of Representatives and Senate were also from prominent New England families and educated at Harvard.

Local Unitarian Universalist minister and historian Mark Harris wrote in his book Elite, “By the 1830s, Unitarians made the decisions that shaped [Boston’s] economy. Compared to other denominations, Unitarians had twenty-two times more lawyers, twenty times the number of bankers, twice as many merchants, and twenty-eight times the number of manufacturers. But they had almost no farmers, craftsmen, or industrial proletariats. In 1850, two-thirds of the wealthiest Bostonians were Unitarians. By 1870, the average Unitarian was thirteen times richer than the average member of any other denomination… Boston Unitarians were almost entirely upper- middle and upper class.”

An interesting, material story of our power comes from Euro-American reporter Michael Paulson at The New York Times: “The American Unitarian Association, peopled and powered by [Boston’s] Brahmin elite, announced its presence [downtown] in 1886 with a grand and stately headquarters at the very top of Beacon Hill, right next door to the Statehouse. If anyone doubted the denomination’s might, its next move made it clear: In 1927, strapped for space, the Unitarians finished building a new home next to the capitol on the other side, even persuading the legislature to change the street’s numbering so they could take their address with them.” That’s how much power we had, that we convinced the Commonwealth of Massachusetts to let us keep the out-of-order street address “25 Beacon” for nearly a hundred more years until we moved to 24 Farnsworth in the Seaport District in 2014. We may often think of Unitarian/Universalists as outside agitators from the halls of power, but we’ve been integral builders of those halls.

There are notable, modern exceptions to this elitist political history, including our current two Unitarian Universalist representatives. Another, mid-century Illinois Representative Emily Taft Douglas, was one of the first women elected to Congress and was only distantly related to the more famous male Tafts, including the faithful Unitarian William Howard Taft branch who served as U.S. president and Supreme Court chief justice. Along with hundreds of other Unitarian Universalists including our church member of blessed memory, Ed Lane, Rep. Douglas marched for Civil Rights from Selma to Montgomery. But, we find these are exceptions to the historic rule that Unitarians in power came from powerful Bostonian families. I wonder for each of us, are we each aware of the various privileges of our birth and upbringing, and do we consciously use whatever inherited power we have for the betterment of all peoples and the earth? 3 When We Were in Power Rev. Catie Scudera First Parish in Needham, 2/17/19

So, what did our ancestors do with their power? Suffice to say, Unitarians and Universalists in power carry a mixed legacy, as would be expected of nearly person or group from the 1800’s. Here in Massachusetts, we founded the first public kindergartens, and also founded and ran elite private institutions, namely the Universalist Tufts and the Unitarian Harvard. Tufts’s financial foundation came from the philanthropy of a Universalist factory owner with “Boston Brahmin” origins and of a prominent Universalist circus showman, neither of whom could claim equitable and safe business practices. Unitarian Presidents John Adams and John Quincy Adams were instrumental in developing the foundations of American democracy and foreign policy, which meant both positive influence over the Constitution and Bill of Rights yet also entanglements with slavery and the attempted genocide against indigenous peoples. As we have been exploring this month, members of our faith have fought as abolitionists and liberators — such as feminist and racial justice activist Lydia Maria Child and Union commander of the first all-black regiment, Colonel Robert Gould Shaw — and members of our faith have also been slaveholders, such as the parents of Unitarian Abigail Adams, Universalists in Gloucester, and our own founding minister, Rev. Jonathan Townsend. Unitarian President Millard Fillmore was applauded in his day for preventing further war between the United States and Mexico, but he is best known today for his attempt to avert war within the United States by compromising on slavery, notably by signing the Fugitive Slave Act. There were Universalist and Unitarian activists on both sides of the women’s suffrage debate on whether to support black men gaining voting rights. It is incredibly difficult to predict which of our actions will spur greater justice in the long-term, and which contribute to long-term inequity. We learn from our ancestors to act boldly, and not to just assume we are on “the right side of history” because we come from a free faith devoted to pluralism, science, and reason.

And, How did the Unitarian/Universalist faith influence them? We can see the tensions inherent in these two root traditions of modern Unitarian Universalism. The memory of the War of Independence and the desire for the American experiment in democracy to flourish made many of our spiritual ancestors compromise on their belief in the equality and worthiness of all people; in the nineteenth-century, many only spoke quietly of abolition and women’s suffrage for fear of losing the Union over such debates. The New England Puritan work ethic and false pride in the so-called meritocracy of America was at odds with ethics of compassion and desire for social uplift to create a “heaven on earth.” A commitment to spiritual freedom was in tension with creating equal opportunity for all residents. Like many in the 1800’s, and even today, Universalists and Unitarians supported social service programs that could lift marginalized communities out of abject poverty, but not lift them high enough

4 When We Were in Power Rev. Catie Scudera First Parish in Needham, 2/17/19 that the impoverished might have the opportunity to come into the halls of power themselves.

Does any of this sound familiar to us with the struggles we face in the public sphere today, and how we as Unitarian Universalists respond to them?

Twentieth-century Greek-American Massachusetts politician, Paul Tsongas, once said, “On this journey, we will reach into the future and commit ourselves to thinking in generations. We are a continuum. Just as we reach back to our ancestors for our fundamental values, so we, as guardians of that legacy, must reach ahead to our children and their children.”

First Parish and Unitarian Universalism today is not what it was when the Universalists and Unitarians were in the apex of their political power, though we must acknowledge our lineage and consider what our own legacy will be. As we remember our spiritual ancestors in governmental service, let us remember what example we may be leaving for younger Unitarian Universalists. When they look at us, either now as children and teens or later after we’re all long gone, how will they answer these questions: “How did we gain our power? What did we do with our power? How did our Unitarian Universalist faith influence us?” We can think about this both individually and collectively, whether we are living boldly and faithfully into our congregational covenant of love, diversity, and service to achieve our congregational mission to “celebrate the sacredness of all living things, nurture lifelong spiritual and ethical growth, and work for social and environmental justice locally and throughout the world.”

Modern queer Unitarian Universalist minister Rev. Lyn Cox writes,

“Spirit of Life… Remind us that we are not alone in history, Ignite us with the courage of the living tradition. Remind us that we are not alone in entering the future, Anchor us with patience and perseverance…

“Source of stars and planets and water and land Open our hearts to all of our neighbors Open our souls to a renewal of faith Open our hands to join together in the work ahead.

“So be it, blessed be, [and] amen.”

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