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Before Clarence Skinner: Rediscovering Early Universalist Radicals

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Before Clarence Skinner: Rediscovering Early Universalist Radicals 1 Before Clarence Skinner: Rediscovering Early Universalist Radicals Dan McKanan Emerson UUA Chair, Harvard Divinity School Keynote Address delivered at the joint annual meeting of the New York State and Pennsylvania Universalist Conventions, Binghamton, NY, 8 Oct. 2011. One hundred years ago, Clarence Skinner declared that Universalism was at the forefront of social revolution. The “traditional Protestant church,” he said, was dying and deservedly so. But Universalism was uniquely suited to “meet the demands of the new age, because it is the product of those forces which created the new age.” Universalism had prepared the way for a social rather than individual gospel, Skinner explained, by teaching that all people had a common destiny of salvation. “Never was there such a bold proclamation of brotherhood as this; never such implicit faith in the solidarity of the human race.” Universalist beginnings, he said, were “linked with the stormy days of political and industrial revolution,” and Universalist “prophets” had been “stoned in the streets” for daring “to challenge the olden tyrannies of ecclesiastical authority.”1 Skinner’s Unitarian friend John Haynes Holmes shared his revolutionary vision but had a different sense of his denominational heritage. Classic Unitarianism, in his view, was a faith of individual virtue as far removed from a true social vision as its evangelical opponents. In its emphasis on character 1 Social Implications of Universalism, 5-6, 11, 38. Copyright © 2011, NYSCU 2 development, Holmes explained, “liberalism, like orthodoxy . is essentially an individualistic religion. We desire to save ourselves.”2 Contemporary Unitarian Universalists, in my experience, remember our heritage in much the same way as Skinner and Holmes. We think of our Unitarian forebears as intellectual radicals, perhaps, but as too enmeshed in economic privilege to commit to social radicalism. It was the Unitarians, after all, who forced Holmes out of the denomination because of his staunch opposition to World War I, while the Universalists made the equally pacifistic Skinner dean of one of their seminaries. The Universalists, we like to think, are the REAL radicals in our family tree. But when we look beyond our denominational walls and consider how non- UU historians have told the story of religion and social justice in the United States, the situation changes. Suddenly, Unitarians are everywhere and Universalists disappear. Histories of abolitionism and women’s rights are chock full of Unitarians, even if they are not always identified as such. Unitarians play leading roles in the standard histories of pacifism in nineteenth century America, and in the story of John Brown’s very non-pacifist raid on Harpers Ferry. The utopian socialists at Brook Farm, most with Unitarian backgrounds, are far better remembered than their more enduring Universalist counterparts at Hopedale. The twentieth century story of racial justice is also dripping with Unitarians, from NAACP founding members John Haynes Holmes and Mary White Ovington, to civil rights martyr James Reeb, Urban League chairman Whitney Young, and student-activist-turned D.C. mayor Marion Barry. Apart from Adin Ballou, Universalists are either not mentioned or not identified as Universalists in histories 2 Revolutionary Function, 10-11. 3 of American radicalism. You would be hard pressed to find anyone, not a Unitarian Universalist, who has ever heard of our beloved Clarence Skinner. I’ve been aware of this discrepancy for some time, but it was the invitation to be with all of you today that really prodded me to think it through. I now think I know why the Universalist contribution to social justice has been overlooked by outsiders, and I’d like to share my hypothesis with all of you. Before I do that, I’d like to say a few things about my own standpoint to avoid any misunderstandings. I identify personally as a radical and as a Unitarian Universalist. As a radical, I believe that the old ideals of liberty, equality, and solidarity have not yet run their course. We have more work to do to bring them to fruition, and that work involves conflict and struggle. As a Unitarian Universalist, I believe that Unitarianism and Universalism fit well together, and that together they fit very well with radicalism. I first came to Unitarian Universalism because I was looking for a tradition that would honor my own desire to place radicalism at the center of my personal faith. However, I do not assume that all of you share these perspectives. I know that many Unitarian Universalists are politically liberal or moderate or conservative rather than radical, just as many radicals hold other faith commitments. I know that there are many Universalists who have not felt fully honored by the UU marriage. In lifting up some strands of the Universalist heritage that I personally cherish, I do not mean to deny the broader complexity of Universalism. I do hope to convince you to cherish Universalist radicalism as much as I do, but I don’t assume that you already do just because you are here. So, then, why have Universalist radicals disappeared from the broader story of American radicalism? Here’s my hypothesis. In United States history, there have been two paths to social justice. Especially in the nineteenth century, 4 Unitarians typically followed one; Universalists followed the other. And while US historians have paid attention to both paths, they have tended to notice the religious dimension only of the first path. The other path, the one that Universalists took, has been regarded as “secular” if not “anti-religious.” And so Universalists have disappeared. The first path, the one typically taken by early Unitarians, centers on ethics. It is the story of people who’ve asked, “How should we use the power that we have?” The path more typically taken by early Universalists centers on empowerment. It is the story of people who’ve asked, “How can we get more power?” The ethics question comes naturally to highly educated ministers who serve prosperous congregations, or who are sent by prosperous denominations to serve impoverished communities. Since ministers of this sort have done lots of important social justice work, it is easy to imagine that their story is THE story of religious radicalism in the United States. But it is not. The empowerment question, by contrast, comes naturally to people who feel excluded from powerful institutions, including powerful religious institutions. These folks’ style of radicalism can be perceived as “secular” or “anti-religious,” but it often reflects a kind of religion that has less to do with established, institutional power, and more to do with the self-empowerment of individuals and communities. One name for this sort of religion is MAGIC. I’d like you to consider the possibility that MAGIC might be the hidden key to early Universalist radicalism—perhaps even to early Universalism as a whole. 5 Let me stress that magic, as I understand it, is not necessarily supernatural or anti-scientific. Contemporary pagans define magic as “changing consciousness at will”—as a set of practices that align our consciousness with the deep structures of the cosmos. Alchemy is a good example: alchemists performed chemical experiments that they hoped would turn lead into gold, but the real point was to transform their own characters, symbolically, from leaden into golden. Prior to the modern period, magic and science were thoroughly intertwined. They went their separate ways only with the emergence of experimental techniques that sought to abstract consciousness out of the scientific method. Many scientists today, influenced by process philosophy, are trying to knit the two back together. What distinguishes magic from other forms of religion is its worldliness: people use magic to gain health or wealth in the here and now, rather than to score spiritual points in heaven. The “prosperity gospels” promulgated by conservative Christians and New Age gurus are among the most visible forms of magical religion in our society today. Now, I personally do not much care for prosperity gospels. But that’s no reason to dismiss magic as such. Part of my distaste for prosperity gospels is a function of my own privilege: because much of my own spiritual work involves freeing myself from the constraints of wealth and education, it is hard to remember that others may have an equally compelling spiritual need to overcome poverty and ignorance. And part of it is a sense that many prosperity gospels don’t really enrich anyone except the hucksters who sell them. That’s just to say that they are bad magic—magic that doesn’t really work— rather than that magic is bad. The history of Universalism is full of good magic. It is full, first of all, of people whose practice of alchemy, homeopathy, astrology, and mesmerism 6 empowered them to fight for the rights of workers, women, persons enslaved and imprisoned. It is full, as well, of people who dreamed of a “science of society”—a realignment of social structures to correspond more fully with the justice embedded in the universe. The “science” of Karl Marx, and before him of the utopian socialists Robert Owen and Charles Fourier, was a form of magic—and all three had a disproportionate share of Universalist disciples. Perhaps the most basic form of good magic is “consciousness raising.” Again and again, people who lack institutional authority have discovered their own power by coming together, sharing stories, discovering commonalities, and claiming new identities. Some of the first “consciousness raising” sessions in US history happened in Universalist churches. Unitarian Universalists have the great good fortune to have inherited both a Unitarian tradition that emphasizes the ethical use of privilege and a Universalist tradition that emphasizes magical empowerment. In saying this, I do not mean to reinforce the old half-truth about privileged Unitarians and working class Universalists.
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