"Association Sunday "

READING

Eugene Pickett was president of the Unitarian Universalist Association from 1979-1985. These reflections on Unitarian Universalists and our Association were quoted in a biography written about him by Tom Owen-Towle.

"Because we are individualist, we tend to distrust our institutions. Because we are Congregationalists, we tend to support associative action reluctantly. Because we are non-conformists, we tend to resist the lessons of the past, many of which warn us of mistaking rhetoric for substance and embracing an arrogant, if not excessive, individualism which can be destructive of the common good.

"These years as president have made me deeply aware of how much we need one another. It is only as we recognize our mutuality, honor our diversity, and reconcile our differences with respectful honesty that we can build a strong and vital religious community. . . .

"I have found that I need you in order to be me, that we need them in order to be us, that only together do we have a future. Could we but accept and act on this simple but basic insight, prejudices would be undermined, injustices denounced, and exploitation of nature and people condemned. The world would become ours and all women and men us."

From O. Eugene Pickett – Borne on a Wintry Wind,
by Tom Owen-Towle

SERMON

You don't need to know much Unitarian Universalist history to appreciate what an accomplishment it is that we have any organized institutions at all. Both Unitarian and Universalist movements grew out of protests and schisms, away from established traditions and towards something new and unknown. They bucked convention and dared themselves to live as they really believed, not as others told them. They were willing to go it alone if they had to.

 "Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind," Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote. It's no accident that we turn to texts such as "Self-Reliance" when we want to learn from history who we are. It shaped our character. Respect for the individual and the power of standing up for oneself are central themes in our tradition. They give the impression, however, that we are a brave but rather lonely people. And this might be the case, if we didn't have each other.

Our pattern of creative dissent works both for and against us. It's no accident that the decisive moment in the formation of Unitarianism in our country is known as the "Controversy." And that was just the beginning. "Almost as soon as Unitarianism achieved an identity," historian David Robinson notes, "it produced its own rebellion, Transcendentalism."[i] Transcendentalism was mild compared to another conflict within the new religious movement: radicals who wanted to discard the organization altogether. They called themselves the Free Religious Association, a group without any common agreements or even bylaws. It didn't last long.

Yet both the Transcendentalists and the Free Religionists led the way for Unitarian thought today. What they argued passionately we now accept on principle. A love of nature as a source of spirituality, a trust in the search for truth, a confidence in human nature and the capacity to learn: all contributions from our splinter groups. We have also internalized their dynamics in the community we share.

Historic conflicts between the individual and the collective, between preserving relationship and challenging authority, have left us a lingering uneasiness about institutions. It's a stretch for many of us simply to join a congregation. Finding a group of people who are as ambivalent as we are is the sign for some of us that we have found our spiritual home.

Just as deep rooted, however, is our vision of religion as a relational experience, embedded in community, with relational values, such as democratic process, to guide us. In this sense we are far from lonely. It's almost as if we can't make a move without consulting each other and discussing our differences. We usually end up knowing more about each other's opinions than we want to know. Such exchanges are lively – even transformational – at times; they can also be frustrating and cause decisions to be drawn out over what feels like an eternity, while enthusiasm ebbs away.

The insistence on self-governance is one of our earliest values, going back to 1648, when a group of congregations met in Massachusetts and drew up an agreement called the Cambridge Platform. This agreement established that each congregation would be free-standing and autonomous. Without church authorities telling them what to do, each congregation developed its own personality, generating theological and social differences, but sharing a commitment to the democratic way.

This is why our Unitarian Universalist churches are so diverse and yet so similar at the same time. You can go into an historic building in Massachusetts and find a Unitarian Universalist congregation using an Anglican prayer book. Or to the central coast of California, where Unitarian Universalist members have formed their own Buddhist sangha. They each belong to a larger community, the Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations, that preserves the values they share without dictating what form they will take.

This larger community is a voluntary association - not a denomination - because we are an organization of equals, not franchises. We work according to democratic process on every level. No one can tell us what to do. But we don't have to do it all alone.

James Luther Adams, Unitarian Universalist minister, social ethicist, and theological school professor, has written extensively about the voluntary association. He argues that "freedom in this institutional sense distinguishes the democratic society from any other."[ii] The "voluntary association becomes an essential mode of 'commitment' for the individual."[iii] In this way we actively help preserve democratic values in our world.

According to Ken Collier's story of the competition between the Hyena and the Hare, a fancy hut belonging to just one person gives pleasure to that one person alone. But a hut in a village where people share their strengths and help each other becomes a beautiful, lively, and happy place that gives everyone's life great joy. This utopian vision of community tells our story too: the essential relationship between the individual and the larger group, between independence and interdependence; have all played out in our past and are still with us today.

"I have found," wrote Eugene Pickett, former president of the Unitarian Universalist Association, "that I need you in order to be me, that we need them in order to be us, that only together do we have a future."[iv] We need each other - we need our relationship with each other - to become who we are meant to be. That is true for individuals. It is also true for congregations.

Our congregation here in Santa Monica has a lively youth group - Young Religious Unitarian Universalists, or YRUU - who learn the value of association early. One YRUU custom is large regular gatherings, drawing youth together from many different congregations, to meet, learn, and worship together. (I'm sure there's more to it than that.) I'm always struck by how significant our young people find this encounter: how comforting not to be alone; how empowering to see who they are together. There is strength in their numbers.

The same is true for the UUA. The Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations is the result of a merger between Unitarian and Universalist associations, in 1961. This event echoed familiar themes. According to historian David Robinson, ". . . there was much continuity between the old organizations and the new one in the merger, [but] there was also a definite departure from the unique identities that both . . . had developed in America since the eighteenth century."[v] Each group recognized that they complemented the other, and they wanted to grow. Although a post-World War Two boom in religious affiliation had benefited both Unitarians and Universalists, many congregations reached a peak in membership then that they have not achieved since. Today we are looking at a total number of Unitarian Universalists that is the same as it was in 1961 - not bad for a liberal religion, except that relative to total population, we are much, much smaller than we were.[vi]

Today's Unitarian Universalist Association is serving our local congregations in many ways. It oversees the credentialing of professional leaders and the development of religious education programming; it provides training and advocacy, all good things that we cannot do on our own. This network gives us strength in numbers, but we would be much stronger if we were larger. Growth has become an urgent goal for our Unitarian Universalist institutions, which is why the fund-raiser today, the marketing program, and the plan to make outreach resources available at the local level.

The future of every congregation relies on the growth of our movement everywhere. No individual church, however dynamic it may be, can thrive all alone. Just as people do not grow in isolation, neither do our institutions. We need community, relatedness, reciprocity. These associations we create, with all their history and idiosyncrasies and vision of the future, are what make us who we are and what keep our society open and free. Now is the time to give and to grow.

[i] David Robinson, "The Unitarians and the Universalists" (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1985), p. 5.
[ii] From “On Being Human,” as quoted by David Robinson in "The Unitarians and the Universalists," p. 184.
[iii] Robinson, p. 184.
[iv] As quoted by Tom Owen-Towle, in "O. Eugene Pickett - Borne on a Wintry Wind" (Boston: Skinner House).
[v] David Robinson, "The Unitarians and the Universalists," p. 3.
[vi] Stephan Papa, as quoted in "InterConnections" (Boston: UUA, Fall, 2007).