The First Parish in Bedford Unitarian Universalist 75 The Great Road, Bedford, Massachusetts 01730 On the Common 781-275-7994

“A Passionate New Year’s Call for the
Revival of Freethought, Secularism,
Unbelief, and Religious Infidelity”

A sermon by Rev. John E. Gibbons

delivered on Sunday, January 2, 2005

at The First Parish in Bedford, Massachusetts

Reading

from a letter printed in USA Today, December 28, 2004

‘Righteous living’ built USA

After reading Charles Haynes’ and Jim Wallis’ commentaries on values, I can conclude that both of these men miss a key point: Our great nation was founded on the holy Bible and on God’s providence, protection and blessings upon our land (“First Amendment can steer us toward common ground”; “Neither Democrats nor Republicans have a clue,” The Forum, Dec. 20).

Early citizens and leaders of our nation realized that they had an obligation to live in a morally upright manner that honors God in return for all he’d done for us.  But as a nation, we have slipped from that humble position to one of increasing decadence led by Hollywood and the extreme liberal left. Many would seek to remove any semblance of faith and spirituality from all aspects of society, and have misinterpreted the First Amendment as a pseudo-rationale for their position.

Such a humanistic, proud attitude is a slap in the face to a gracious God who led our leaders as they risked their lives on the battlefield so we could become a free country in the first place.

I believe President Bush is a sincere, Bible-believing Christian.  And, yes, the 2004 election was in large part a victory for those moral citizens who finally stood up and said, “We aren’t going to sit idly by while a liberal minority of practical atheists send us further down the tubes.”

As a nation, what we do now and whether we come back to righteous living will determine whether we fall like Rome in a heap of destruction, or prosper with God’s continued blessing.

Bill Kibble

Boise

Sermon

I got the idea for this sermon after seeing the movie Kinsey, the dramatization of the life of the sociologist, biologist and sex researcher Alfred Kinsey.  If you have not seen this film, do!  In a most humane and disarming manner, it illumines Kinsey’s liberating lifework which, indeed, was nothing less than to free humanity from superstition and taboo, misinformation and prejudice regarding our distinctive and highly individual human sexuality. 

Beginning as an entomologist who catalogued hundreds of thousands of gall wasps and discovered among these seemingly-similar insects unimagined diversities, Kinsey in 1938 was persuaded by his students at the University of Indiana to teach a course on sex.  He discovered not only that students were often clueless and guilt-ridden about factual matters – masturbation does not cause insanity, for example, nor does oral sex cause infertility – but he further discovered that no one, including the experts, knew much about many aspects of human sexual behavior. 

Kinsey’s lifework was a taxonomy – like that he made of gall wasps – a compendium of a million sexual histories whose cumulative effect was to abolish many assumptions about normality, to expose unimagined diversities, and to demonstrate that human beings are widely varied distinctly different individuals – and that we are all worthy of understanding and self-understanding. 

In addition to basic science, Kinsey’s work contributed to the women’s and gay rights movements and truly helped all people to reclaim our birthright to sexual knowledge and identity.

The film again, by the way, makes me proud of our Unitarian Universalist commitment to comprehensive across-the-generations sexuality education, the curriculum called OWL, Our Whole Lives, pioneered here at First Parish in the 1970’s, that has changed and sometimes saved so many lives. 

And so it is that thinking about sex has, yet again, stirred my religious imagination.  What Kinsey did for sex, we must do for religion!  In this New Year, I would urge us to reclaim our birthright to a religion that informs and does not obfuscate, a religion that liberates and does not constrict, a religion that neither diminishes nor demeans but honors, affirms and celebrates the irrepressibly diverse expressions of the human spirit.  Such a religion is nothing but the sanctity of your own heart and mind.

Seldom – in my memory – have we been as awash in utter religious nonsense, misinformation, prejudice, deceit, and confusion as we are today – we in this country, surely, but we throughout the world.  And, though you may be assured that I this morning will rail against these powers and principalities, there is another very human and vulnerable dimension that I know is distressing.

In recent weeks, I met with parents who not long ago had experienced a death in their extended family and then, of course, one of their small children had questions:  Why did this happen?  Where does someone go when they die?  Her voice quavering, the mother then said to me that, in responding to her questioning child, she heard herself repeating things that she had been told as a child – things about God and about heaven – and she nearly choked on her words because these were things that she did not believe at all. 

Beliefs can be imprisoning and, though some may use beliefs to intimidate or manipulate us, we can also imprison ourselves.  The point, of course, is not that this mother should not have shared her religious convictions – it would have been fine had she believed her own words; the point is that, lacking the words or experience, she conformed to a cultural perception of what’s religiously normal when, in fact – just as for gall wasps or sex – there’s no objective standard of normality.  Aware that she needed some support in her non-conformity, it was at that very moment that she resolved to join First Parish!

In the public testimonies of patriotic speeches, in funeral orations and in sermons, among public officials, Boy Scouts, parishioners and clergy alike, I hear holy oaths and exhortations, of which I know the speaker believes not a word.  And, granting that some speakers may actually believe their own words, it is nonetheless reprehensible when they assume or expect that others will believe as they do.

Again, I make no case for atheism or for God, or for any particular affirmation or debunkery: I plead for the freedom of unbelief and belief.  I plead for the reclamation of freethought.  The freethinking tradition – thinking freely - is the essence of our liberal (as in liberating) religion; and the secular tradition – that is, the tradition that makes no religious test of one’s patriotism – the secular tradition is at the heart of American freedom.

This morning I want to pay particular attention to the freethinking tradition of American secularism but it should again be said that even for the very many Unitarians and Universalists who affirm the reality of God in their lives, God’s greatest gift is the gift of reason and human agency. (This is our theological heritage from Francis David in the 16^th century, to William Ellery Channing in the 19^th century and unto the present.)   Thus to solve our problems we must use our heads and our hands; no God will solve our problems for us.

I read to you the letter from USA Today for it is so typical, though I could have read a letter that appeared in the most recent Bedford Minuteman that, likewise, purports some liberal conspiracy that would stifle us from saying, Merry Christmas.  We are awash in propaganda that would have us believe that our nation is Christian or Judeo-Christian or in some way inherently religious when, most nearly, the opposite is true.

I will take us on a whirlwind historical tour of American secularism, and it begins with our revolution which threw off the shackles both of monarch and priest.  One cannot overestimate the importance of Virginia’s religious freedom act of 1786 which Jefferson regarded as his greatest achievement and which, despite the protests of evangelical Christians, formed the bedrock of our freedom of religion and our freedom from religion – later enshrined in our Bill of Rights. 

In most states in the 17 and early 1800’s, including Massachusetts, semi-theocratic systems prevailed with provisions for voting, office-holding and taxation given or withheld on the basis of religion.  So entrenched was the Protestant lock here that John Adams predicted “a change in the solar system might be expected as soon as a change in the ecclesiastical system of Massachusetts.”

But when the dust settled, our Federal Constitution begins with the words; “We the people” do establish this government – not God, not king.  “No religious test” shall ever be required to hold office, and this secular point was not lost on one North Carolina minister who, in his state’s ratification debate, decried this provision as “an invitation for Jews and pagans of every kind to come among us.”  At the Massachusetts convention, one speaker warned that “a Turk, a Jew, a Roman Catholic, and what is worse than all, a Universalist, may be President of the United States.”

Still, disestablishment of state churches was slow – not happening in Massachusetts until 1834.  But when Connecticut disestablished the Congregationalist Church in 1818, Jefferson rejoiced in a letter to Adams that “this den of the priesthood is at last broken up, and that a protestant popedom is no longer to disgrace the American history and character.”

Though there were a few evangelical Christians among our patriot forbears – Patrick Henry was one – most others, including the Adamses, Jefferson, Franklin, Madison, and even Washington – were skeptics, deists, and freethinkers.  And often they were vilified as infidels, especially Jefferson, who said, “The legitimate powers of government extend only to such acts as are injurious to others.  But it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods, or no God.  It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.”

The other great infidel we must honor is Tom Paine.  In the Unitarian Church in Chicago where I grew up, the pulpit is named the Tom Paine Pulpit.  In Sunday school, I was expected to memorize, “These are the times that try men’s souls.  The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands it now deserves the love and thanks of man and woman.” That’s what I call religious education!  When Jack was minister in Indianapolis, he preached beside a bust of Tom Paine.   

Paine, in fact, saw himself as a religious man, a believer in a God of reason but he ceaselessly attacked church hierarchies and all beliefs at odds with science.  Speaking of Christians, Jews and Muslims, he said, “Each accuses the other of unbelief; and for my own part, I disbelieve them all.”   “…The world has been over-run with fable and creeds of human invention….Those who fled from persecution persecuted in their turn, and it is this that has filled the world with persecution and deluged it with blood.”  You’ll be glad to know that yesterday I ordered a bust of Tom Paine for us.

In every age, the forces of religious reaction have battered the wall of church/state separation.  I recently learned that one of the first battles lost by our secularist heroes was over delivery of the mail.  From the earliest days, Congress decreed that mail was to be delivered every day, including Sunday – because no religion was to have special privilege.  Sometime in the mid-19^th century, a Christian Coalition lobby – convinced that opening one’s mail on Sunday was an affront to God – finally got their way and (snail) mail today is delivered most days but never on Sunday.

Freethinkers were prominent in our nation’s greatest struggle – over slavery – and in the corresponding women’s’ rights movement.  By and large, most churches in the south and many in the north defended slavery and the subjugation of women because, of course, “it’s in the Bible.”  Thus it was the freethinkers – the skeptics, the agnostics, the occasional atheist – who led the way in opposition.  The ones who were the most radical were those who coupled their abolitionism or their feminism with their religious unbelief and infidelity – because they knew that religious prejudice was the foundation of injustice.  This so offended religious authorities (and their own more timid allies) that the contributions of these radicals – like that of Tom Paine – was vilified and written out of our histories.

Radical reformers Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucretia Mott, and Ernestine Rose are prime examples.  Stanton was the founding mother of modern feminism and she split the feminist movement when she wrote a feminist Women’s Bible; abolitionist Mott at her death in 1880 was regarded as the greatest woman of the 19^th century; and Rose – an atheist - was the first Jewish immigrant to campaign for human rights.    It is not only that these women objected to the churches’ support of slavery, poverty and discrimination; it is that they identified religion itself as a social problem that earned them opprobrium and ostracism.

The last quarter of the 19^th century and the first of the 20^th may be the golden era of American secularism.  The religious divide between north and south, rooted in slavery, hardened and nearly every new idea was identified with the Yankees.  In the early 1800’s many abolitionists and women’s rights advocates left the south and migrated north.  So too did scientists in the 1870’s.  (I hope this is starting to explain some things.)    

Evolution was the next battleground.  Southern professors who persisted in teaching evolution were fired.  Patronizing northern intellectuals, like the editor of Popular Science Monthly probably made matters worse by saying, “The stupid Southern Methodists that control the university, it seems, can learn nothing.”  In 1925, the circus really came to town when biology teacher John Scopes was tried in Dayton, Tennessee and Clarence Darrow rose for the defense, with William Jennings Bryan for the prosecution.

A name nearly forgotten today but famous then was Robert Ingersoll from Dowagiac, Michigan, “the Great Agnostic.”  A political leader and orator, people flocked to his lectures which were clearly reasoned but witty, charming and down to earth.  Ingersoll made friends for freethought by talking sense and not talking down, by appealing to those who might disagree with him and then convincing them. 

“While I am opposed to all orthodox creeds, I have a creed myself,” the Great Agnostic said; “and my creed is this.  Happiness is the only good.  The time to be happy is now.  The place to be happy is here.  The way to be happy is to make others so.  This creed is somewhat short, but it is long enough for this life, strong enough for this world.  If there is another world, when we get there we can make another creed.”  (The place that has the Tom Paine busts has bust of Ingersoll too!)

(The day after delivering this sermon, John Gibbons left for India where he visited with Unitarians in the remote Khasi Hills of northeast India.  In a small isolated village, meeting in the home of a Unitarian, he noticed a plaque on the wall with the above quotation from Ingersoll inscribed!  Though the Khasi’s are unlikely to ascribe to his agnosticism, the presence of his words in such a remote place testifies to Ingersoll’s remarkable globally-pervasive influence.)

Historians say that freethought’s golden era may have ended in the 1920’s and 1930’s with the rise of radio and TV.  Emotion and entertainment can trump rationality. Father Coughlin and Father Sheen demonized liberals as communists and atheists, and witheringly attacked public education.  They led the way for Norman Vincent Peale, Billy Graham, and on unto the likes of Swaggart, Schuler, Robertson and Falwell.  

Perhaps this will have to be a sermon in installments because I cannot briefly do justice to those 20^th century freethinkers who resisted the tyrannies of those who, in the name of anti-communism, national security, or morality, would dismantle our American secularism.  The struggles for access to contraceptives, reproductive freedom and the rights of sexual minorities are essentially struggles in defense of American secularism because these causes are opposed by those who would impose a particular religiously-informed standard of morality.  In our era, faithful unbelievers like (Bedford parishioner) Ellery Schempp and his family successfully upheld American secularism and our public schools from the intrusion of required prayer. (You should see Ellery’s holiday letter to friends:  “Another odd thing that happened this year,” he says, “is that I joined a church.”  This one!  Freethinkers defend the right to be odd!)

I must acknowledge that sometimes in places like First Parish it can be assumed that all good religious liberals think this way or that.  Not so! The true freethinker is beholden to no political party, to no religious ideology and is neither a fundamentalist Christian nor a fundamentalist humanist.  The freethinker is curiously, inquiringly, and fearlessly skeptical – resistant to all categories and pigeon-holes – yet unafraid to believe or to disbelieve.  

I advertised this sermon as a passionate call and so it’s now or never.  Hear, first, these cautionary words from freethought historian Susan Jacoby:

Values are handed down more easily and thoroughly by permanent institutions than by marginalized radicals who, even if they change minds in their own generation – as the abolitionists did – are often subject to remarginalization in the next.  Every brand of religion maintains and is a permanent mechanism for transmitting ideas and values – whether one regards those values as admirable or repugnant.  Secularist movements, with their generally loose, nonhierarchical organization, lack the power to hand down and disseminate their heritage in a systematic way….  When your own mind is your own church, it can take a very long time for future generations to make their way to your sanctuary.

My passionate call is for us – that is, we the people of the First Parish in Bedford, Unitarian Universalist – to reclaim our freethinking, unbelieving, secularist tradition of religious infidelity...but not simply by encouraging freethinking individualism in our beloved, inimitable, loose and nonhierarchical organization.  We need to make our freethinking values visible – in busts and banners and pictures on the wall and maybe even peace poles – but even more enduringly visible by strengthening our organization so that we will have the power to disseminate our heritage in a systematic way.  If we are to have power it will require of us commitment and time and money and discipline, and not being distracted, and keeping our eyes on the prize.  There are needs aplenty in this congregation, in our community of communities, and in our world. 

And, like gall wasps and human beings, there are unimagined diversities among us.  In the freedom of our beliefs and our unbeliefs, I call upon us to act ever more boldly for truth, for beauty, for peace, for justice, for love and (with Ingersoll) for happiness.  Our own minds are welcome in this church – we need not check them at the door – but let us build this freethinking values-laden institution in such a way that both present company and future generations may make their way to this sanctuary.