"If God is Love"

READING

Although John Murray is regarded as the founder of Universalism in this country, it was Hosea Ballou, an upstart younger preacher, who articulated its liberal theology. In his "Treatise on Atonement," published in 1805, he wrote words that still convey the spirit of Universalism today:

"Be cautious of any system of divinity . . . . The moment we fancy ourselves infallible, every one must come to our peculiarities or we cast them away. Even the truth may be held in unrighteousness . . . . The cause of truth wants nothing its service but the fruits of the spirit, which are love, joy, peace, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, and temperance. . . . If we agree in . . . love, there is no disagreement that can do us any injury, but if we do not, no other agreement can do us any good. . . . Let us endeavor to 'keep the unity of the spirit in the bonds of peace.'"

He ends his treatise, by "humbly hoping and expecting the glorious increase and extensive growth of what I have (though feebly) contended for; namely, the holiness and happiness of all [hu]mankind. I look with strong expectation to that period when all sin and every degree of unreconciliation will be destroyed by the divine power of that love which is stronger than death . . . ."

SERMON

Unitarian Universalism manages to embrace diverse perspectives on the nature of God, including rejection of the concept altogether, demonstrating a flexibility that confuses outsiders but gives us all the freedom we need. When it comes to talking about God, most of us would agree with Hosea Ballou, who warned, "Be cautious of any system of divinity." And we are wary.

As were our predecessors. Universalist leaders in the nineteenth century set out to offer alternatives to Calvinist Christianity, and what they had in mind was neither systematic nor - ultimately - Christian. And yet the Universalist faith drew its inspiration from its original concept of God, and for that reason, we should understand what they meant.

What do people mean when they talk about God, when they cannot know or prove that such a reality even exists? Some might answer that question by saying that the concept of God is meaningless or empty. But in fact the concept of God is cluttered with meaning - meaning that we have given it, in endless projections of our own minds and experiences. God is a human concept, a reflection of the way we feel and think about ultimate reality, about our reality, and about what it is like to live in the world. Thinking about God is not ever really thinking about God. It is thinking about ourselves.

According to contemporary theologian Gordon Kaufman, the concept of God is an "imaginative construction," an effort of the human mind to come to terms with our own existence and its meaning. Kaufman's approach to theology has always seemed to me to be compatible with Unitarian Universalism. Kaufman himself is a Mennonite, belonging to one of the Christian peace fellowships that settled in the Pennsylvania Dutch country and the midwest. Christians have criticized his work, accusing him of being a humanist, which of course he is. And yet he insists that thinking about God is the most important, perhaps the ultimate human activity. There is no conflict there.

This elegant treatment of the human urge to contemplate and reflect on our destiny can help us to understand our own history. For our concept of God, if we have one, has changed dramatically -- in some ways -- from the Universalist concept. In other ways, it has not changed at all. Hosea Ballou's words reminding us that "even the truth may be held in unrighteousness" still conveys our preference for right action over self-righteous faith. "The cause of truth," he says, "wants nothing in its service but the fruits of the spirit," which he lists: "love, joy, peace, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, and temperance." The proof of a good faith comes out in our good actions.

For the Universalists, that good faith came from the way they thought about God. The central belief of Universalism was a rejection of the Calvinist concept of a God who punished humankind for our human failings. Instead of imagining a God who would decide which people were worthy of heaven and which would go straight to hell, the Universalists imagined a different kind of God. "The [contrary] belief that the great Jehovah was offended by his creatures to that degree," Ballou preached, "that nothing but the . . . endless misery of [hu]mankind could appease his anger, is an idea that has done more injury to Christian religion than the writings of all its opposers, for many centuries."

Ballou proceeded to argue that God never rejects anyone. He retold the story of Adam and Eve, to show how Adam actually rejected God, not the other way around. God's love, Ballou preached, never lapsed.

With this refreshing message, Hosea Ballou took up a ministry in Boston. The Second Society of Universalists installed him as their first minister on Christmas Day, 1817 - Universalists considered Christmas Day to be the ideal time to celebrate special church events - and soon after he was preaching three times a Sunday to a full hall. Clearly the people were ready to hear this radical take on Christian religion. What they were hearing had as much to do with the people they were becoming as the God they were worshipping. If the concept of God is a construct of the human imagination, then the qualities we give to God reflect the qualities we value most highly in ourselves. For Universalists, God was love.

To appreciate how important this concept is, all we have to do is think for a moment about our own lives. Many of our notions about the world come from the way we grew up, how our parents taught us to see life outside the family, and how we experienced life inside the family too. Whether our early environments were anxious or carefree, loving or withholding, affirming or judgmental, has a lot to do with how we experience ourselves in the world where we live once we are grown. Anyone who has had any experience with psychotherapy knows how powerful these connections to the past can be, and what a grip they can hold on our lives in the present. The concept of God works as an even larger expression of our life experience. For the Universalists, holding a faith professing God's love profoundly affected their self-esteem and their respect for other people. The Universalist God was a loving, tender parent, by whom all people could be comforted, reconciled, and ultimately saved. Such a God can only produce good children.

Not that they weren't arguing among themselves about theology anyway. Refining what was meant by salvation occupied the intellect of some Universalists, but many were satisfied with the simple affirmation of God and humanity that they heard in church. And some turned their attention to creating the Kingdom of God on earth.

Throughout the nineteenth century, Universalists were attracted to communal, utopian arrangements such as the Transcendentalist Brook Farm and the Hopedale Community. Hopedale Community, founded by Adin Ballou, a distant cousin of Hosea, required its members to subscribe to a "Standard of Practical Christianity," "intended to cover the whole ground of personal and social righteousness," renouncing "intemperance, war, and slavery;" also "licentiousness, covetousness, worldly ambition, exploitation, gossip, rash judgments, idleness, rudeness, overindulgence of every kind, . . . hasty marriages, proselytism, corporal punishment, and cruelty to animals." That's not even the whole list. Some commune members left to join a free love association on Long Island called "Modern Times," but that minor disruption proves that the community was as tolerant as the "Standard of Practical Christianity" suggests.

Univeralists may have seen God as love, but they chose to describe their faith in terms of human values. That list of ideals refers exclusively to a vision of how people should act in relation to each other and their world. It says nothing about who God is or what God can do for them. And that is characteristic of the Universalist faith. In concentrating on the concept of God, they constructed a theology that produced a moral outline for humanity.

Some thirty years after he was installed at his Boston church on Christmas Day, Hosea Ballou addressed the Universalist General Convention on two themes. The first was the need for the denomination to develop colleges and universities. The second was the need to press forward with their agenda for social reform. The agenda was very broad - some forty issues were mentioned, not unlike what happens when we gather to talk about such issues today. But it is remarkable what does come up on that list of areas needing action and reform: slavery, women's rights' war, Indians, conflict of races, capital punishment, poverty, disabled persons, and gambling, among others. According to historian and Unitarian Universalist minister Charles Howe, "Universalists had generally condemned slavery as inconsistent with their theology, and its idea of an all-inclusive human family, considering it a social evil . . . They recalled with pride the strong condemnations of slavery . . . at the 1790 Convention, and pointed out that one of the original members of [founder John] Murray's church in Gloucester was a former slave." Because slavery was "inconsistent with their theology and its idea of an all-inclusive human family," it was wrong.

The Universalist concept of God as love led them back into their own society and turned them into social reformers. It's a powerful example of the power of theology, the imaginative exercise of the human mind to construct a concept of God that causes us to transform ourselves in its image. If you believe that God is love, you become more loving.

I sometimes wonder how much we contemporary Unitarian Universalists have lost in our aversion to talking about God. Taking care to keep our all-inclusive principle alive and making this community a place where atheists and theists alike can feel at home, we use secular language to talk about our experiences and perhaps that is good enough. But then I think about the Universalists and the power of transformation they had at hand because they thought and talked about God. That power was good for the world. It gave them the vision of a loving human society that extended itself to include all people, whatever their faith or lack of it. That vision remains here and everywhere people still gather under the Universalist name. God may be an artifact of our past, but love is still a sacred value.

In his "Treatise on Atonement," Hosea Ballou spoke about what he saw in the future. He said, "I look with strong expectation to that period when . . . every degree of unreconciliation will be destroyed by the divine power of that love which is stronger than death." May his words work today to break down every division between people, every painful and unreconciled hurt within ourselves, and every fear that holds us back from being the loving people his God called us to be.

Resources used to prepare this sermon include "The Larger Faith: A Short History of American Universalism," by Charles Howe. Boston: Skinner House Books, 1993.