The Rev. Joshua Mason Pawelek
Unitarian Universalist Society: East
Manchester, CT
April 2nd, 2006
Curtis Williford Reese was born on September 3, 1887 in Madison County, North Carolina to Rachel Elizabeth (Buckner) and Patterson Reese, the latter a farmer and merchant. Curtis was raised in his parents' Southern Baptist faith. His father was a church deacon. Several of his ancestors had been ministers. At age nine he publicly accepted Christ as his personal savior and was baptized. A few years later he received a call to become a preacher. He studied at Mars Hill, a Baptist college in North Carolina, from which he graduated in 1908. Ordained in the Southern Baptist ministry by the Mars Hill Baptist Church, he then enrolled at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky. In 1910 he graduated from seminary and became the State Evangelist for the five hundred churches in the Illinois State Baptist Association. At that time he undertook further study at Ewing College, in Ewing, Illinois, receiving a doctorate degree in 1911. That same year he accepted a call to the First Baptist Church in Tiffin, Ohio. While serving this congregation, he had an awakening. He began to come to terms with something that had been nagging at him. He found that while he was able to preach what he believed, he was unable to preach “what I did not believe.”
At this moment in his career he began speaking to colleagues in the Unitarian ministry about opportunities to serve within the American Unitarian Association. He made plans to convert to Unitarianism. His family members, all devout southern Baptists, were horrified. They declared they would rather see him burn in hell, as he surely would, if he left the Baptist Church in Tiffin to become a Unitarian minister. Amidst the pain and alienation of this rejection, Reese became minister of the Unitarian Church in Alton, Illinois. His sister, who had previously named her son Curtis, legally changed the child's name to that of a Baptist evangelist. Reese served in various Unitarian ministries throughout the Midwest. He was a powerful leader in a variety of social justice efforts, most notably housing. He was even appointed the first housing commissioner for the state of Iowa, a role he fulfilled while continuing to serve Unitarian congregations.
In Unitarian pulpits he could finally say what he did not believe. He did not believe in God. In 1916 he delivered his first fully humanist sermon—humanism is a term that often coincides with atheism in UU congregations. In 1920, in a lecture to seminarians at the Harvard Divinity School called “The Content of Present-Day Religious Liberalism” he questioned “the theistic basis of religion” and inaugurated what is known in Unitarian history books as the Theist-Humanist debate. In a 1931 book entitled The Meaning of Humanism he wrote: “The trend in modern religious developments is away from the transcendent, the authoritative, the dogmatic, and toward the human, the experimental, the tentative; away from the abnormal, the formal, the ritualistic; and toward the normal, the informal, the usual; away from the extraordinary mystic expression, the exalted mood, the otherworldly; and toward the ethical, the social and the worldly.”
John Hassler Dietrich was born in 1878 to a farming family of German-Swiss descent in Chambersburg, Pennsylvania. His parents, Sarah Ann Sarbaugh and Jerome Dietrich, sharecroppers with little formal education, were devout members of the Reformed Church. John went to Mercersburg Academy where he was valedictorian. He then attended Franklin and Marshall College in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, with the goal of becoming a Reformed Church minister. After college he studied at the Eastern Theological Seminary, and was ordained in 1905 by the Pittsburgh Synod, and became the minister of St. Mark's Reformed Church in Pittsburgh. He was a popular preacher. Sunday morning attendance at St. Mark's tripled. But there were some puzzling inconsistencies around the edges of his ministry. He upset some church members when he modernized the order of worship and introduced a new hymnbook edited by a Unitarian. Although the majority of members stood by him, the situation continued to worsen and he ultimately resigned. Like Reese, Dietrich was also having an awakening. However, he apparently was able to preach what he did not believe. At the behest of the orthodox ministers of the Allegheny Classis of the Reformed Church, he was charged with heresy for denying, among other things, the virgin birth, the deity of Jesus, and the infallibility of the Bible. A trial was scheduled, but not held because Dietrich refused to defend himself. As a result, in 1911 he was defrocked.
The Rev. Walter Mason, minister of the First Unitarian Church in Pittsburgh, was impressed with Dietrich and recommended to the American Unitarian Association that they welcome him into Unitarian ministry. In responding to their invitation Dietrich wrote: “I have been fighting hard for a liberal interpretation of religion in Pittsburgh for five years, and now I feel that I want to belong to the liberal movement, rather than to stand alone in an orthodox denomination.”
Dietrich was not as adamant an atheist as Reese. He never rejected theism; he merely found no evidence for God. He and Reese together were the primary architects of the humanist movement within Unitarianism and, later, Unitarian Universalism. Sometimes referred to as religious humanism, this modern theological tradition places humanity and ethics, rather than God, at the center of the religious life. Dietrich summarized this movement in a 1934 pamphlet: “If we live in a great impersonal universe with no friend to guide, it matters tremendously how we conduct ourselves, for we are actually the makers of human destiny.” [Our responsibility] “is to put beauty in place of ugliness, good in place of evil, laughter in place of tears; to dispel error with knowledge, hatred with love; displace strife and contention with peace and co-operation.” Naturalistic humanism, he concluded, brought to him “a feeling of bliss, and with it the intense longing that I may so live that posterity may have this feeling more fully and more often, in the better world we ourselves must build.” Curtis Reese and John Dietrich, along with many others, introduced atheism into Unitarianism through the humanist movement. To this day, humanism continues to be one of the defining theological traditions within Unitarian Universalism.
About two and a half years ago, around the time I was beginning my ministry here, I attended a board meeting of the Greater Hartford Interfaith Coalition for Equity and Justice or ICEJ. These meetings always include a time for faith sharing: an invited guest speaks for a few minutes about their religious tradition and how it calls them to the work of justice. That afternoon, Sarah Karstaedt, from this congregation, was the invited guest. She spoke about being a Unitarian Universalist and an atheist. She spoke words that could’ve been spoken eighty years ago by Rev. Reese or Rev. Dietrich. As I remember it—this is my language, not hers—her message was that atheism, far from instilling in her a lack of concern for humanity, for social justice, for the earth; far from instilling in her a lack of hope, an existential angst, or a hedonistic selfishness, rather informs her that she must be responsible for what happens in this world. She must be responsible for social justice. She must be responsible for the planet. There is no God who is going to reach in and make things better, not now, not at the end of time. Humanity is our best and only hope, and, in fact, we are justified in being hopeful.
She raised some eyebrows. She was respectfully received. There are many who still remember that particular faith sharing. I was very proud. “She’s from my new church,” I said, smiling, to the people sitting next to me. I remember telling Sarah I thought it went very well. I don’t think I ever said to her how well I felt she represented the humanist tradition. Our partners in ICEJ have little familiarity with this tradition. After Sarah’s faith-sharing, some developed the impression that all UUs are atheists, which has made it all the more confusing over the years as other UUs have prayed to the Spirit of Life, the Creator, Divine Mystery, or the Great Goddess. That confusion ought to be a signal that Unitarian Universalism is a religious movement with room for a vast array of theological views, some of them in direct conflict with each other. I believe in God. And I am immensely proud that Unitarian Universalism is not only a religion that welcomes and affirms atheism, but has, over the years, embraced atheism and continues to defend it as a valid path to truth, meaning, insight and inspiration. For all those who question the existence of God, there is more room in this church. For all those who question the doctrines and dogmas of their religious past, there is more room in this church. For all those who embrace reason and science as valid tools in their spiritual seeking, there is more room in this church. For all those who put their faith not in God but in humanity’s capacity to save this world, there is more room in this church.
As we prepare to launch our annual financial canvass; as we look forward to our kick-off celebration next Saturday; as we think about our financial commitment to this congregation for the next fiscal year; as we think about generosity and what it means to be a generous contributor to this congregation, I want us to reflect on how truly rare it is to find a church with such spacious room for searching and questioning, puzzling and praying, experimenting and exploring. I want us to grasp just how valuable and precious such a church is in a world now reeling from the effects of religious rigidity, religious intolerance, and religious war.
Since August I’ve been preaching a loose series of sermons on theology and theological literacy and sharing my own theological explorations as a model of what it means what it means to say, “I’m a UU.” As you may remember, last June the Unitarian Universalist Association’s Commission on Appraisal published a study entitled Engaging Our Theological Diversity, in which they claimed UUs generally suffer from a lack of theological literacy. I responded to the report by preaching about theology, by establishing, at least in my mind, the place for theology in Unitarian Universalism. You’ve now heard sermons about the theology of mystical experience—the hermit crab in my three-year-old’s hand, the wasp on the windshield—sunder warumbe, “without whys and wherefores.” You’ve heard sermons on the limits of language, on the necessity of not simply saying theological words, but living theological lives. You’ve heard about the arrival of feminist and neo-pagan theology in Unitarian Universalism in the late twentieth century. You’ve heard about a quiet, fragile, powerless God. You’ve heard a theology of dying and breathing—“life’s like an hour-glass glued to the table;” a theology of darkness at Advent time; a theology of lambs and angels at Christmas time; a theological assessment of the impact of racism on our lives. You’ve heard Jungian theology, liberation theology, a theology of ministry, and a critique of rapture theology—“flying Mother Nature’s silver seeds to a new home in the sun.” You’ve heard the theologies of participants in the Building Your Own Theology class. You’ve heard from Jan Willis, the Baptist Buddhist. You’ve heard theology from Jim Adams, Penny Field, Art Swanson, Mary Panke, David Lacoss and many other members of this society. You heard last week from our children how they express what it means to be a UU. This morning you’ve heard briefly about atheism and religious humanism.
I believe one of the most significant gifts we receive from Unitarian Universalism—and a compelling reason to give generously to Unitarian Universalist congregations—is its theological openness. There is room here: room to study, room to question, room to explore, room to seek, room to challenge, room to doubt, room to relax, room to heal, room to grow, room to believe and room to not believe, room to just be. Krissy Wild said it beautifully the other night at canvasser training. We asked the canvassers what was most important about this congregation to them. Krissy said, “I can breathe here.” Room to breathe.
Unitarian Universalism does not present us with doctrinal answers to our ultimate questions. Unitarian Universalism presents us, week after week, with a variety of paths that guide us, sometimes gently, sometimes in more challenging ways, into a faithful sense of wholeness and purpose. I believe a church with a multiplicity of truths, a multiplicity of paths, and a community that embraces theological diversity is a truly open church, an engaged church, a faithful church, a generous church. I believe a church where atheists worship is not, as some would allege, a church that has woefully lost its way, but rather a church that trusts humanity, a church that embraces doubt and fears no spiritual questioning, a church where the mind is open, the heart unbridled, and the spirit free.
When you sit down with a canvasser to talk about your financial pledge to this welcoming liberal religious community east of the Connecticut river, this community committed to shared ministry, caring for one another, searching for truth an meaning, seeking justice and peace and living in harmony with the earth, this community whose building no longer has the physical room to accommodate all its members, please remember just how much room there really is here. Please remember how truly rare it is to encounter a religious community with such latitude and longitude for seeking. Please remember that in this place you will always be able to say what you do believe and what you don’t believe. Please remember, and please pledge generously.
Amen and Blessed be.
Adapted from the entry for Curtis Reese in the online “Dictionary of Unitarian Universalist Biography,” an activity of the Unitarian Universalist Historical Society. See the following link: http://www.uua.org/uuhs/duub/articles/curtiswillifordreese.html.
Quoted in Wilson, Edwin H., Genesis of a Humanist Manifesto. See the following link:
http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/edwin_wilson/manifesto/ch2.html
See the following link: http://www.uua.org/uuhs/duub/articles/curtiswillifordreese.html.
See the following link: http://www.uua.org/uuhs/duub/articles/curtiswillifordreese.html.
Adapted from the entry for John Dietrich in the online “Dictionary of Unitarian Universalist Biography.” See the following link: http://www.uua.org/uuhs/duub/articles/johnhasslerdietrich.html.
