The Ultimate "UU" Holiday!

Just putting on my "Devil's Advocate's hat" for a moment--on this first day of a brand-new calendar year--what I've been pondering is the following: If we Unitarian Universalists were to have "our own holiday," what might it be? Some of us likely would suggest the birthday of Michael Servetus, others (at least here in the United States) might say the "Fourth of July." In an earlier post, I also made a case for "New Years Day," a time of both inventory-taking and new resolve, a day that represents the "Janus-like" coming together of past and present reality and future possibility. But, in keeping with my role of "Devil's Advocate," let me suggest that the "best answer" to that question may lie elsewhere;

A couple of days ago, in another post, I accidentally hit upon something pretty profound I think... something that goes right to the very heart of this thing we (religious liberals) call religion. I was talking about my gradual personal “conversion” experience, from the widely accepted “The Bible said it, I believe it, and that settles it” paradigm to more of an “I believe it because my own mind and heart, my own observations and experiences of the world--and those of other people within it whom I've come to trust--have convinced me of its truth.”

Here’s how I put it the other day: “I long ago rejected the Calvinistic mindset and embraced a thorough-going “Universalism” with its high-road and uncompromising regard for love, goodwill and radical acceptance—yes, extended even to matters of religion. At the same time, a strong “nature-bias” and “free-spiritedness” were also becoming deeply embedded within my overall “worldview and Godview,” and finally, as a young adult, all of this came together and led me to deliberately seek out a new religious home--one that would refuse to erect any fences around its love and acceptance, and resists the placing of any constraints whatsoever upon the exercise of the free mind and heart of a responsible human being.”

What I was describing there, it seems to me, reflects far more than just my own little “personal conversion” process: It expresses something far larger…in fact, I would suggest that our entire “liberal religious legacy” is one of similar movement---from “the Bible says it, and therefore I believe it” to “the ways of Nature and Nature’s God have convinced me so.” Although I must admit that the lines which distinguish that "first paradigm" from the second one are often far from clear--and further muddying the waters are scriptural passages like 1 Thessalonians 5:21, which instructs its believers to “prove all things, hold fast that which is good”--I believe a strong case can be made that modern-day Unitarian Universalism is deeply rooted in that very movement--both in the past and present-- a migration away from automatic, unquestioned reliance upon external authority to a trust in the "sacred worth" of "soul freedom" (of personal free-agency) for the authentic, well-reasoned assessment of truth and goodness, even from scripture.

So, I would argue that perhaps our most appropriate “UU holiday of all" would be at whatever time, whenever, in human existence, and in our personal lives, the focus and the balance begins to shift, when the scales begins to tilt, away from the primacy of "arbitrary, external revelation" over to complete freedom of conscience, to spiritual free-agency (soul freedom) in the quest for "ultimate truth"...away from “the Bible says so, and therefore I believe it, and that settles it” over toward that affirmation of the sacred authority of each individual human mind and heart as the "ultimate arbiter" in what is, at last, to be considered, worthy of our ultimate commitment and worship.

Since this "conversion process" has been going on for centuries--and is still unfolding, even today--no such single date could ever be assigned for such a "holiday." Still, the significance of this "tilting of the scales" and its implications for human society cannot be overstated, and should never be forgotten.

Ralph Waldo Emerson and the Transcendentalists of the 19th Century perhaps are best known for advocating that every person, every soul, in every generation, is entitled to a "direct relationship with the Universe," Emerson, who served for a while as a Unitarian minister, and continued to give sermons late in his life (at Follen Church in Lexington, MA), summed it up this way ,in his 1836 "Essay on Nature"...

"Our age is retrospective. It builds the sepulchres of the fathers. It writes biographies, histories, and criticism. The foregoing generations beheld God and nature face to face; we, through their eyes. Why should not we also enjoy an original relation to the universe? Why should not we have a poetry and philosophy of insight and not of tradition, and a religion by revelation to us, and not the history of theirs? Embosomed for a season in nature, whose floods of life stream around and through us, and invite us by the powers they supply, to action proportioned to nature, why should we grope among the dry bones of the past, or put the living generation into masquerade out of its faded wardrobe? The sun shines today also. There is more wool and flax in the fields. There are new lands, new men, new thoughts. Let us demand our own works and laws and worship."

Our heritage and legacy of "personal conscience and reason over outside moral authoritarianism" goes back much farther than the Transcendentalists, of course. It extends to "rationalistic Christians" and mystics even prior to the formal beginning of the Reformation. Hans Denck, for example, was an Anabaptist "prophet" of the early 1500's. He was considered both a rationalist and a mystic, and both a Universalist and (accused of being) a Unitarian. For fun, let's compare Emerson's words of 1836 with these from Hans Denck, over three centuries earlier;

"I know for certain that this voice of Conscience and religious feeling tells me truth. I will therefore listen to it, whatever it may say to me. And when I find it in any creature---high or low---I will listen to it once more. Where it directs me, I shall go as itdesires, and what it warns me against, that I shall avoid....

"We should diligently and earnestly listen...We should not absolutely reject all outward testimony, but should listen to everything and test everything...If you hear your brothers say something that is strange to you, do not at once contradict, but hear whether it be right, whether you may accept it. If you do not like to hear it, still do not condemn him, and if it appears to you that he is mistaken, consider whether you may not be more mistaken.…"

"There is a witness in every man. If a man will keep still and listen he will hear what the spirit witnesses within him. Not only in us but 'in the heathen and in Jews' his witness is given, and men might be preached to outwardly forever without perceiving, if they did not have this witness in their own hearts…."

"The kingdom of God is in you, and he who searches for it outside himself will never find it, for apart from God no one can either seek or find God, for he who seek God, already in truth has Him."

-- Hans Denck

-- From his 1526 tract "Was geredet sey..." --

" God compels nobody, for He will have no one saved by compulsion...God forces no one, for love cannot compel, and God's service is, therefore, a thing of complete freedom....Everyone among all peoples may move around in the name of his God. That is to say, no one shall depriveanother — whether heathen or Jew or Christian — but rather allow everyone to move in all territories in the name of his God. So may we benefit in the peace which God gives....It is God Himself, Spirit and no letter, written without pen or paper so it can never be destroyed..For that reason, salvation is not bound up with the scriptures to make good a bad heart, even though it may be a learned one. A good heart, however, with a Divine Spark in it is improved by everything, and to such the scriptures will bring blessedness and goodness."

-- Hans Denck

-- from "Widerruff," his dying "Confession," 1527 --

What a grand heritage we have...that we share with the likes of Hans Denck and Ralph Waldo Emerson! Whatever day we might choose to be an official "UU holiday," it seems to me that it would necessarily be a celebration of the "personalized faith" of people like Hans Denck and Ralph Waldo Emerson. It would be a celebration of the lives and contributions--and the sacrifices--of so many other religious free-thinkers and free-spirits who, throughout the ages, have shared that same "conversion experience," from "The Bible says it, (therefore) I believe it, and that settles it" over to one of "humbled but adamant" insistence upon "soul freedom," upon personal authority, responsibility and accountability--even in matters of religion. At least that's what the "Devil's Advocate's" been telling me lately: What do you think?

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[A final note: I've misplaced, for the moment, my "contemporary source" for those Hans Denck quotes. I think they came from a college library in Columbus, Georgia, over 20 years ago, and are now stored away in a box in my attic. If any of you have any designs upon using/quoting them further, please let me know, and I will hunt that source down for you, and we can then give proper credit to whomever made it possible for us to enjoy these fine English translations of Denck's remarkable work. -rs]