Our Theological House

drawing by Tyler Seymour

 

The house where I live right now is an old house- it was built in 1890. It creaks and slants- I don’t know if there is a level floor in the place. It has a beautiful wrap around porch that we love and is right in the heart of the city of Ithaca, which we also love. We are grateful that it is warm and snug. And even though the closets are tiny, and my partner can’t stand up in the basement without hitting his head, it is our home. 

At the 2002 LREDA conference, Rebecca Parker gave us a tour of what she called “Our theological House” which we inherited from those Unitarian Universalists who came before, those who built it, those who renovated it and added that wing. When each of us entered the UU faith tradition, whether by birth or by choice, we become stewards of not only our beautiful historic buildings, but our theological house as well. And as with our beautiful old buildings, there are some parts we cherish, like our beautiful stained glass windows, some parts which require upkeep, like our boilers and masonry, some mysterious quirky parts you just get to live with, and some parts that are perhaps dangerous and rickety and need to be repaired or replaced. An important example of this is the institutional racism that like asbestos, is everywhere in our time and culture, and our beloved theological house is no exception. So we are working on a major renovation right now together to make our house anti-oppressive. By taking the time to know this house we inherit, we are better stewards of it.

Newcomers to UU often get the misunderstanding that “you can believe anything you want” if you are UU. And while it is true that there is no UU creed that we all subscribe to, we don’t each have to build our own house from scratch, nor do we have to love every bit of this house we inherit, but by coming to know it we can appreciate and use it’s gifts, take shelter in stormy times, and leave a structure that is sound for the generations who follow.

Rev. Rebecca Parker, who was first ordained as a Methodist minister before becoming the president of the Starr King School for the Ministry, where I went to seminary, showed us that that we UUs do, indeed live in a theological house like other faith traditions. And that the structures of meaning making have some things in common with other faith traditions. In your goody bag (slide) is a worksheet that illustrates Parker’s metaphor- which is not a perfect one but can be fun to play with- matching each part of a “systematic theology” with the parts of a house. What it means to be a church is called “ecclesiology” you can see those are the sheltering walls. Other theologies have different “ecclesiologies” or beliefs about the why, what and how of religious community.

“Theology” is the part of our belief system that has to do with God. Parker says that this is like the foundation of our house. When you are talking to your Jewish or Catholic or Muslim neighbors, and they talk about God, you can know that your house has a foundation too- what theologian Paul Tillich called “the ground of being.” Whether or not you believe in God, whether that word makes sense for you, all of us stand on some foundation of belief even if we never notice or name it. Talking about our foundations is one of the hardest conversations for UUs, because when this house was built, our fore-parents had no trouble talking about God. The Universalist side of our tradition, built their house on the foundation of a loving God, a God whose love included everyone. Universalism is a house built on the foundation of Universal love, a good strong foundation with no holes that some people fell through, no locks that let some in and kept others out. One of the foundations of Unitarianism was that we could use our minds, and the reality perceived by our senses, and we could use reason to connect with God. Unitarianism was built on a foundation that included all the exciting things we were learning in the emerging field of science (which was brand new when Unitarianism was born) and that this scientific exploration was compatible with faith. Our Unitarian foundation doesn’t crumble when you shine the light of consciousness on it.

Some of the folks who grew up in our house or moved in as adults were founding pillars of the humanist movement. At the start of the 20th century, they said “enough arguing about what the foundation is made of. People are suffering- the roof is caving in, the interior needs paint, and we can see out the window that there’s an ambulance has pulled up at the neighbors -- they need a pot of soup and probably some other things; there are 2 world wars – let’s go do something to help!”

In 1913 the members of our Athens church built an annex onto their original building, and if you stand in our social hall you can see where old meets new. Our theological house has some similar places where old meets new. I want to tell you the story from the history of the Athens & Sheshequin congregation about an important and controversial building renovation to our metaphorical house, that leaves a funny seam in our metaphorical house as well, where old and new were joined. All the 7 little churches near the Sheshequin church were old-school Universalist churches. They believed in God, Jesus, the bible, but what made them radical, so radical that the neighbors had been giving them trouble since before the Old Sheshequin House was first built, was that they believed that everyone, EVERYONE was included in God’s love. And if you know everyone is included, and you see someone suffering, or being excluded, well you are most likely going to feel called to do something. That’s why the old Universalist churches supported women’s suffrage, supported abolition, that’s why the old Cortland church was part of the underground railroad.

The Unitarians and the Universalists were both influenced by the social gospel movement in which w were encouraged to turn our focus from getting into heaven toward “making God's commonwealth of justice, abundance, and peace a reality in this world.” The Unitarians and the Universalists found themselves, inspired by this ideal, showing up at the same causes like abolition, and votes for women and they both found themselves in occupied Europe during world war 2 working to help refugees. Later they found themselves marching together in the civil rights marches in the 1960s. And in working together to make the world a more just, compassionate place, they built a wing of our shared theological house, in which they worked together to save those who most needed saving, and though their theologies were different, they could all stand together knowing that we are not alone, that if our foundational values hold us all up, maybe it doesn’t matter what the floor is made of. This common room where people worked together to make a more just and compassionate world. Is a room the Unitarians and Universalists built together, and so we hang out here a lot in this beautiful room of community outreach and social justice.

But when in the 1950s the 2 movements decided to join together, the Universalists in this very valley voted against merger, because they didn’t want to associate with humanists (which, really, how much of a Universalist are you if you want to exclude humanists?) And so the people who called themselves Universalists, but couldn’t open their minds and hearts enough to actually let everyone into their own theological house, they pretty much left. And those who remained began the big home improvement project with their new Humanist family.[i]

The Humanists also felt uneasy about this home improvement project- And the story of how we got our current UU principles (which is a good one for another day) was about finding common ground from the old universalist house, and the old Unitarian house, and also about who they hoped to be in the future. The theists and the atheists, the Christians and the humanists made an uneasy truce.

Even today, the discerning eye can see in our theological house the joining places where old and new meet, and specifically the place where humanism and Christianity come together. I’m lucky to have grown up this Unitarian Universalist theological house. I was born and raised in a UU congregation in Devon PA. It was founded in the 20th century. It was an old stone house which had been joined with a beautiful modern architecture with shiny warm blond wood. My high school friend said “it looks more like a ski lodge than a church” and I suppose he was right. Where traditional Christian architecture reaches up for the sky, this mid-century architecture honored the horizontal, honored the human community. The architecture of my childhood UU church is actually a wonderful metaphor of old and new joined together, of our that new humanist wing built onto the old stone construction. It seemed natural to me that the two could be joined. The church where I grew up was very heavily humanist, and I’m not sure they ever used the word God in Sunday service. Jesus was talked about as a great teacher and community organizer, like MLK, or Gandhi, or Susan B Anthony.

Imagine my surprise as I went away to seminary, and discovered there were more rooms of our sprawling UU home. I really got to know the universalist wing, when I became your minister and met meeting UUs who have an easy relationship with a God who loves everyone. I was surprised to find, Over at that old Sheshequin house, there is a little covenant taped into the inside of the hymnals

We avow our faith In God as eternal and all-conquering love;
In the spiritual leadership of Jesus;
In the supreme worth of every human personality;
In the authority of truth known or to be known:
And in the power of men of goodwill and sacrificial spirit to overcome all evil and progressively establish the kingdom of God.

This was being read every Sunday morning in the Sheshequin meeting house, at the same time I was growing up in my modern humanist church. In our churches and fellowships right now are folks who have to work hard to translate every time that hear the “G” word. And just a few rows over are folks who miss the “G” word. Who miss just being able to talk about God, and pray the prayers they remember from their childhood.

That’s the difference between a religious tradition, and starting your own church; our tradition, our theological heritage, has many different rooms we share, some of which we prefer.

What I love about the metaphor of this house, is that I am not the house, you are not the house, the house is just the place where we meet together to serve lovingly, grow spiritually and live ethically. Each of us also has our own theological house, with different wings and roofs and gardens and foundations. If you grew up Jewish, or Hindu or Buddhist, or Catholic, or “none” your heritage, your religious education, your family of origin influenced the meaning-making structures that you use every day probably without even thinking about it. Part of growing into your own unique mature self, is understanding the house you grew up in, went to school in, and how those formative structures shaped and impacted you, but are NOT you- you are your own Self.

This winter, the ministers and members of 4 congregations came together to look at the questions on your journal sheet, our systematic UU theology. One of the folks in our 4-congregation class said they felt more grounded having taken a longer tour of our house this UU house that we share with one another, with 400 years of our theological ancestors, and with the generations of those who will follow. Hopefully this house we share feels pretty welcoming, a roof to shelter you in the storm, a solid foundation to hold us up, a nice ventilation system to let the fresh clean air through. It’s okay if you hate the moldings in the living room, and that you like some rooms better than others. But I encourage us to take the time to explore our own home. Hopefully, like the man in our story this morning, even though we travel far and wide looking for answers, it's worth coming home to look closely at our own hearth. May you also find the treasurer buried here.

Note-
[i] To learn more about this, visit the church history blog written by our own Katie Replogle  https://www.uucas.org/?p=1311