Call to Worship and Chalice Lighting

Universalist Voices Then and Now Unitarian Coastal Fellowship May 26, 2013 © Rev. Sally B. White

Universalist Voices Then and Now. Last weekend I was at the Outlaw’s Bridge Universalist Church in nearby Duplin County to attend Universalist Convocation 2013, a gathering of Unitarian Universalists from around the country who, together, learn about, celebrate, and draw from the heritage of Universalist faith and experience. This morning, I will share with you some of what I have learned about the past, the presence, and the future of Universalism around us and among us. I hope you will find spiritual sustenance in this visit to our history, and our legacy. Reading: From the “Welcome” brochure of Outlaw’s Bridge Universalist Church, a reflection on the symbol of the off-centered cross, used since 1946 as a symbol for Universalism (found on the cover of your Order of Service, entwined with the Flaming Chalice): The circle represents the universe and the all inclusiveness of God’s love. The empty space in the center represents the heart of the universe, that which we call God. The cross represents Christianity, out of which Universalism grew, and which is the path toward God that most religious people in North America follow. It is placed off-center, to leave room for other points of view and to acknowledge the validity of other paths to God.

Message: Ninety miles northeast of here, big old live oak trees spread their branches over the grass at a crossroads in rural Duplin County. Those trees, or trees like them, stood at that crossroads in 1866, as an epidemic of influenza swept through the countryside, and claimed the lives of Bryan Outlaw and two of his young sons. Julia Kent Outlaw, mourning the deaths of her husband and her boys, was not 2 much comforted by the teachings of the local Baptist and Methodist ministers, who preached that all who were not “saved” by their sincere acceptance of Christian doctrine would spend eternity suffering in hell. How could Julia be certain that her beloved Bryan, and their children, were truly in heaven? How could she bear to think of them not being saved? How could she make her peace with a God who might – who could – condemn a faithful man, an innocent child, to eternal damnation?

Into this rural countryside came traveling ministers, riding on horseback or in mule-drawn wagons. Some of these traveling ministers preached a different doctrine. “God is love,” they said. “The very nature of God is love,” they taught, and this loving God would somehow find a way to save all people. The whole family of humankind. No exceptions. “Universal salvation,” they called it. They called themselves Universalists. [Richard Trudeau. Universalism 101: God Is Love. p. 51.]

Julia Kent Outlaw was much comforted by these Universalist teachings. Gradually, she turned her heart from fear to hope, and she turned her face from grieving to living. Gradually there grew in her a conviction that Universalism would be a life-saving doctrine not only for her, but also for others, and especially for children, who could grow up without the fear of hell, or the fear of God. On a Sunday morning in July of 1869, under the shade of those big old live oak trees at the crossroads in Duplin County, Julia Outlaw gathered fourteen children and launched her Universalist Sunday School.

There was opposition from the Baptists and the Methodists, who feared that, without the threat of eternal punishment for bad behavior, there would be nothing to motivate Universalists to live good lives, to help others, to be good people – to be God-fearing people! There would be no incentive to keep the commandments, 3 to study the Bible, to go to church. Universalism would undermine faith, and society, and religion.

But the children came, and kept on coming. In rainy weather, and in winter, they met in a schoolhouse near the crossroads. They grew up, and had children of their own, and in 1905 they decided to form a Universalist Church, and to build a building of their own, to house their Universalist faith. Outlaw’s Bridge Universalist Church stands in the shade of those big old live oak trees, at the corner of Outlaw’s Bridge Road and NC Route 111 in Duplin County.

On Friday night a week ago, I drove the 90 miles to that crossroads. I joined about 40 other Universalists, from Rochester, New York; and Dows, Iowa; and Ellisville, Mississippi; and North Easton, Massachusetts; and Knoxville, Tennessee and Eastern North Carolina. We shared a North Carolina country supper, home-cooked and home baked by members of Outlaw’s Bridge Universalist Church. After supper, we worshipped together. We lit a flaming chalice and we sang Spirit of Life and we listened as the minister read the church’s statement of “Who We Are:” We are a rural liberal church; Encouraging freedom of thought and a fearless search for God Emphasizing the goodness of all people Inspiring us to do right out of love.

On Friday night, we heard the moving and inspiring story of Judith Sargent Murray, wife of Universalist minister John Murray, who was an eloquent and prolific advocate for Universalism and for women – for her Universalist theology rested on a conviction that every person, male or female, was equally human, equally beloved of God, and equally worthy of respect and opportunity. Her story, 4 and quotes from many of her letters, written between 1775 and 1818, transported us back to the eighteenth and early nineteenth century.

On Saturday morning, we began with worship. We sang “Though I May Speak With Bravest Fire.” The short service was called a “devotional,” and the Rev. Barry Whittemore offered us a reflection on faith, and hope, and love, and on his devotion to Universalism, which he called “something that is so good. Something we can devote ourselves to, and from that giving find strength.” “Universalism,” Barry said, “is the best at healing the world, the most hopeful, and felicitous” of religions. Barry is a Unitarian Universalist minister who uses “Unitarian” as an adjective, to specify a particular kind of Universalist.

And then we heard the story of Clara Barton, likewise a Universalist, a one-woman relief-agency and battlefield nurse during the Civil War, perhaps best remembered as the founder of the American Red Cross. Clara Barton’s story, illustrated with PowerPoint photographs and drawings, transported us back to the mid and late nineteenth century. After lunch, we drove an hour through lush green countryside to Shelter Neck, founded in the early 1900s by Unitarians from Massachusetts as a school for rural children, and maintained today as a camp and retreat center by the Universalist Convention of North Carolina, Inc. (or UCONCI).

By the time I returned home on Saturday evening, something in me had shifted from the here and now to the there and then. I was steeped in the history of a slower time and of a religion that seemed, indeed, to have turned its energies to healing the world; a religion that radiated the soft glow of hope, of love, of felicity – an old-sounding word that means happiness, and fruitfulness. I had entered a time warp, and a part of me has still not completely emerged even now, a week later. 5

There is a strong pull to this time warp. Unitarian Universalist minister Richard Trudeau, author of a small book called Universalism 101: God Is Love, was at the Convocation last weekend. This is his 21st Universalist Convocation. “This is where my spirit gets fed,” he told me. “More than any other Unitarian Universalist gathering, this one renews me, refreshes me, restores me.”

And there is a down side to the time warp. Immersing oneself in Universalism “back then” and “over there” induces a feeling that Universalism is a quaint but outdated precursor to Unitarian Universalism. The late Charles Howe, educated and ordained a Universalist minister (and, later, a Unitarian Universalist minister), was the author of The Larger Faith: A Short History of American Universalism. In that book, Howe wrote of the decline of the Universalist denomination in the twentieth century, in the period between the wars (just a little later than the years we visited at the Convocation last weekend). “[Some Universalists] interpreted the decline as evidence that their distinctive doctrine had carried the day,” Howe wrote, [The Larger Faith, p. 95], for following the First World War there was much less hellfire and damnation abroad among mainstream Protestants in the US. Ultimately, this decline was one factor in the consolidation of the Universalist Church of America with the American Unitarian Association in 1961, forming the Unitarian Universalist Association, of which this Unitarian Coastal Fellowship and Outlaw’s Bridge Universalist Church are both member congregations.

Richard Trudeau recognizes this marginalization of Universalism within Unitarian Universalism, and argues that we are the poorer for it. “With the loss of Universalist perspective, our combined Unitarian Universalist religious movement is being impoverished. Universalism was different from Unitarianism. It originated among laypeople, not clergy. It drew on the experience of a less 6 privileged social class. Its message was more radical, its scope was larger, and its taproot went deeper into the heart.” [Universalism 101. p. 1]. He lifts up the Universalist Declaration of Faith, adopted in 1935 and 1953: We avow our faith in God as eternal and all-conquering love the spiritual leadership of Jesus the supreme worth of every human personality; the authority of truth, known or to be known; and the power of [persons] of goodwill and sacrificial spirit to overcome all evil and progressively establish the Kingdom of God.

We lose this Universalist perspective to our detriment, Trudeau argues. For one thing, the Universalist logo – the off-center cross – would help to attract to our churches people who come to us with no formal religious background – the “never churched.” “The off-center cross,” Trudeau writes, “in contrast to the UUA logo, is immediately identifiable as a religious symbol because it incorporates the widely recognized symbol of the cross. And the Universalist declaration of faith feels like a religious statement because of its use of biblical language. Despite differences in ethnicity and social class, most North Americans who are brought up to be religious are brought up in religions that involve the Bible. Universalism speaks the language of the majority – though in a challenging new way.” …Universalism encourages people to face the big religious questions, …it helps people to confront their own religious pasts, and …it willingly acknowledges the UU movement’s Christian past.” … Just by speaking the language, Universalism conveys that if you come to a UU church, you don’t have to give up everything. UU values are 7 compatible with much of your tradition. But by using the language in a new way, Universalism also conveys that if you come to a UU church, you do have to reevaluate everything. We are not religion as usual.” [Universalism 101. pp. 26, 42-44].

On Sunday morning I returned to Outlaw’s Bridge for Sunday morning worship in the Universalist tradition, in the twenty-first century. The Rev. Holly Lux-Sullivan told us a story that touches on several dimensions of the power of Universalism. In the late 1990s, Bishop Carlton Pearson was at the pinnacle of his career. An evangelical Black Pentecostal minister in his early 40s, he had attracted the attention of Oral Roberts himself, and graduated from Oral Roberts University. Pearson had founded Higher Dimensions family church in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and ministered to its congregation of 6,000 members. He was a superstar in the evangelical world, preaching, singing, hosting a weekly radio show. And then, in the spring of 1996, he had what he calls “a divine revelation.” Watching a television news report one night about the genocide in Rwanda, he fell into what the UU World magazine calls “a sort of reproachful prayer: God, I don’t know how you can sit on your throne there in heaven and let those poor people drop to the ground hungry, heartbroken, and lost, and just randomly suck them into hell.” He says he heard God answer: “We’re not sucking those dear people into hell. Can’t you see they’re already there – in the hell you’ve created for them and continue to create for yourselves and others all over the planet? We redeemed and reconciled all of humanity at Calvary.”

This was a Universalist revelation. Carlton Pearson began to realize, “The whole world is already saved, whether they know it or not – not just professed Christians in good standing, but Muslims, Jews, Buddhists, Hindus, atheists, gay people. 8 There is no hell after you die.” [http://www.uuworld.org/life/articles/145503.shtml]. He began to preach this “Gospel of Inclusion,” as he called it. It did not go well.

In 2004, a formal tribunal by the Joint College of African American Pentecostal bishops branded Carlton Pearson a heretic. His congregation dwindled to about 200. He lost his staff, his building, copyright and royalty rights to sermons, books, audio, and video. He was denounced from conservative and evangelical pulpits.

In 2008, Pearson and his small congregation began meeting at All Souls Unitarian Church in Tulsa. The minister there, Rev. Marlin Lavanhar, recognized a kindred soul when he saw one. Together, Pearson and Lavanhar and their congregations created a multiracial, multicultural church that preached and practiced Universalism. The experiment has continued even though Pearson has moved on to new ministry in Chicago. Every Sunday at 11:30am All Souls offers a contemporary Worship service that, “[fuses] All Souls inclusive, philosophy of religious freedom with God-centered worship. In this service the songs draw from Gospel, Praise, Pentecostal and Popular music and also find room for occasional Classical, Jazz and R&B songs. The instruments are often electric and the feeling is always electrifying. This is a service for those who seek not just a free and intellectual, exploration of God, but also an energetic, embodied experience of God. [http://www.allsoulschurch.org/worship].

Universalism has the power to move its detractors to fear and to rejection of those who preach and practice it – witness the story of Carlton Pearson. It has the power to move its adherents from fear to hope and love – witness the story of Julia Kent Outlaw. It has the power to move its practitioners to tireless action and advocacy for human worth and dignity – witness the stories of Judith Sargent Murray and Clara Barton, and the congregations of All Souls and New Dimensions in Tulsa. It 9 has the power to renew and refresh and restore the soul, to inspire devotion and give strength, as Richard Trudeau and Barry Whittemore can testify. Universalism has the power to transport any one of us to a place beyond place and a time beyond time, where God is love and that love, whatever name we choose to call it by, is all-inclusive. Is universal.

As Unitarian Universalists, we are heirs to the Universalist tradition. As Unitarian Universalists, we are the voices of Universalism today. Will our Universalism be “back then” and “over there,” or will it be here and now, vigorous and vital? Will we embrace the words of Olympia Brown, which we spoke at the opening of this service: “Stand by this faith. Work for it and sacrifice for it. … Go on finding ever new applications of these truths and new enjoyments in their contemplation, always trusting in the one God which ever lives and loves.” [from opening reading #569].

Take a moment now, in silence, to reflect on all that you have heard this morning, spoken and unspoken.

The bell will lead us into silence, and music will lead us out. Bell Silence Music