Ten or fifteen years ago, a clever idea occurred to someone, who posed the question, “If it became illegal to be a Unitarian Universalist, and you were accused, would there be enough evidence to convict you?”

 It is not a pleasant thought, having one’s religion made illegal. One liked to hope it’s far-fetched, although one does get the sense that our religion is not as highly regarded by the country at large as it was in earlier centuries, when four of our presidents were Unitarian. It’s been almost a half-century since even a semi-Unitarian like Adlai Stevenson, who was also a Luther, even ran for president, and it’s not apt to happen again soon.

Still, the odds are good that none of us will be burned at the stake for our faith, as Michael Servetus was in Calvinist Geneva for his unitarian heresy. None of us is apt to die imprisoned in a dank Transylvania castle, as did Francis David, the first great Unitarian leader. That was the sixteenth century and far away.

None of us is likely to be elected president, but neither are we likely to be put on trial for our affiliation here. But what if we were? It’s not speculation as much as it is a sort of mind game. What evidence could the prosecution bring forth that would convince a judge or jury that yes, you are a Unitarian Universalist, no doubt about that?

Some of you may have had this question raised about you, not by a district attorney, but by a co-worker or a member of your extended family. Maybe at Thanksgiving you overheard Aunt Maude wonder out loud to Cousin Tom if maybe you hadn’t become a Unitarian. Maybe you overheard someone at work mention at a lunch table something you did, and someone added, “Isn’t that just like a Unitarian.” Maybe in both cases it was meant as a compliment. Maybe it wasn’t.

What would it mean, anyway, to be a Unitarian Universalist in someone else’s eyes, for better or worse? Well, for starters, it would suggest that you were part of a UU congregation. I could get some argument on this point. In every national or continental survey two or three times as many people identify themselves as UUs as all our societies have on their membership roles. So there are lots of people who think they’re UUs even though they don’t belong to a congregation or even show up for worship services.

Personally, while I’m happy these people like the designation well enough to claim it, I don’t think it qualifies as evidence, just that you named us to a pollster. Evidence would be your bottom in a pew on occasion. Even people who people live too far from a UU church to attend, or people at odds with their local congregation or its minister or both, can join the Church of the Larger Fellowship, which has over three thousand members now, including my parents in Montana.

I figure, participation of some sort matters. So your being here this morning could be held against you at our fanciful tribunal. It looks like you may indeed be a Unitarian Universalist. (It occurs to me that a happier way to have constructed the mind game would have been, If there were a huge bequest to anyone who was a Unitarian Universalist, would there be evidence that you were entitled to a share?)

By the way, I do know your being here does not necessarily mean that you’re a UU – and I mean that with no negative connotations. You may be friend of family of baby Henry, you may be here for the first time and realizing that as pretty as the building is, this isn’t what you expected. You may be here because your partner is a UU and you’re a good sport. You may be here because you love the First Parish in Wayland – the wonderful congregation, the building, the music, the Sunday school program, the social action projects – but not because you feel yourself to be a UU.

I know Congregationalists who are here because the church across the street is not part of that denomination, called the United Church of Christ, but an independent enterprise of more conservative cast than one might expect. A number of people who worship here happily will, upon leaving the area, go back to a more conventional Protestant worship, or to a synagogue, or to a purely secular life. In the meantime, we are delighted to have them as a part of us.

They may even be thinking that, at least for now, they are sort of UUs. They may even be ready to sign the book. After all, they can still go back to being something else when they depart, or even before. But for anyone who feels that this UU church is their religious home, signing the membership book is powerful evidence of their current adherence to our religious way.

Other such powerful evidence is serving and pledging. Those of us who know that we are Unitarian Universalists can testify to our affiliation with our support, spiritual and material alike.

So maybe that’s what the fellow meant at the lunch table at work about your behaving just like a UU: you belong to the local congregation, you attend worship services here, maybe you teach Sunday school or usher or sing in the choir, you donate generously, you tell your close friends how much the church means to you and you invite them to join you if they’re looking for a religious home.

But one suspects he meant more. Maybe he knew you were a freethinker, with a minority viewpoint on theology, or the separation of church and state, or some contemporary social issue. Or maybe he meant that in addition to your church involvement, your Unitarian Universalism affected the way you actually acted.

 I am talking about living out our values in the world, in the workplace, at home, in our daily commerce, wherever we are. Please understand, I know we are not alone in trying to make that effort. I saw on the sign out front of the Sudbury Methodist Church last week that the sermon was “Walking the Talk,” a succinct way of referring to the distinction often made these days between people who talk the talk, who say the right things, who profess the right values, and people who, as they say, “walk the walk,” who act out of those values in their lives.

Many Methodists try to live out their values in the world, and so do many Taoists and Reform Jews and Mormons and others, whether they believe in this god or that god or many gods or no god. Some of the values of all those people are very much the same, like honesty and kindness. Others are different.

We are a part of that mix. Some of our values line us up with most other faith traditions, which likewise champion freedom and justice, love and peace as age-old religious values of high importance. In some ways, we take those values more deeply to heart than most. For us, the social virtues of freedom, justice, love, and peace are nearer the center of our interest, with much less concern paid to the individual’s attainment of personal salvation from sin and eternal damnation. At our best, being a UU has meant a passion for fairness, a commitment to environmental action, a devotion to one’s own conscience, and the like.

I think about that overheard remark at the lunch table at work – that someone acted just like a UU -- and I imagine the scenes that may have inspired it. A racist or homophobic joke was told and – in my fantasy –someone objected, just like a UU. Volunteers were recruited to help out painting the residential hall for patients with AIDS, and someone came forward, just like a UU. For the first few moments, no one welcomed the new employee, a Sikh from Pakistan, until someone arrived and went right over to her with greetings, just like a UU. A vacancy opened up in sales staff and knowing how tradition and prejudice had kept the staff there white and male, the personal director pressed to get a second position so he could fill them with a black man and an Asian-American woman, just like a UU.

Some of you remember our honoring one of our high school students last year here in a service because when her fellow students would use the word “gay” disparagingly, as they do all the time as a general pejorative, she would confront them. Just like a UU.

I say again, it’s not that a Quaker or Reform Jew or secular humanist might not have done the same things, because that would be just like a Quaker, just like a Reform Jew, just like a secular humanist who was trying to live out his or her values in real life. But I think it can be just like us to do those good things, too.

After all, the commitment in theory is built right into our denominational by-laws in the purposes of the movement. We unite to affirm and promote the inherent worth and dignity of every person; justice, equity, and compassion in human relations; the goal of world community with peace, liberty, and justice for all; respect for the interdependent web of all existence; and the rest.

Maybe the words should read that we unite to affirm, promote and practice those things, to make it clear that these are not just words for the posters, these are guide lights by which we will try to steer the course of our lives.

One area that has been a focus of denominational concern for decades has been that of racial justice, committing ourselves to break down barriers of prejudice and oppression, to participate in efforts to create more diverse and inclusive communities, to help achieve fairness and honor for people of every color and cultural heritage.

 I remember back in seminary, over thirty years ago, being in a class where we were having our timeless discussion of whether ours is a religion with a content of its own or a religious way of being, with everyone having their own particular set of beliefs. As I said last week, this is a disagreement that we will always have, because both sides are right and we go on best living in the tension or balance between them.

Anyway, the professor, a distinguished Unitarian historian, weighed in on the side of our being a religion with certain fixed beliefs, despite our rejecting the notion of creeds. When challenged to name what such a belief might be, he immediately cited the denominational stand on racial justice that had been adopted by our annual General Assembly. To be a Unitarian was to reject racism and to work to overcome it. To be a Unitarian Universalist still means that, if we are to take seriously our commitment to the inherent worth and dignity of every person and just, equitable human relations.

We’re into the fourth year of a five-year effort called the Journey Toward Wholeness that aims at making the UUA and its member societies anti-racist agencies. Hiring goals were set for our headquarters and field office staffs. Congregations have been urged to join in this focus. Sue Souter took part in an intensive team experience. She and Tricia Marshall convened a Racial Justice Task Force here at First Parish which some of you attended that ran for several years.

There has been an ongoing debate about whether the Journey Toward Wholeness has the right name, the right focus, or the right methodology. I don’t want to get into that. I want to affirm the basic premise that we all need to keep working to overcome racial and cultural oppression, intolerance, and discrimination.

And that means much more than avoiding overt signs of hostility like racist language. It means more than mere toleration of difference. It means taking action to challenge and transform institutions and attitudes that perpetuate racial imbalances of power.

There are many ways to do that. As one of our members, Tricia Marshall, wrote, “There are those who have great intellectual curiosity and would therefore with joy examine these issues in the abstract. Others want to make connection with a great variety of people on a very personal level -- a transformation by conversation, if you will. Others prefer to jump in the deep end, placing themselves in new environments to challenge their conventional thinking.”

I might mention that Tricia herself is a model of involvement of the third sort, having become so active in the after-school program at the First Church of Roxbury that he established and heads the program there for middle-school youth.

“But,” she goes on, “most people are caught up in the day-to-day busy-ness of their lives. I was certainly one of those until I began to question society’s conventions and to reach for deeper answers.

“Is it possible to challenge church members [if] they are only talking the talk of being Unitarian Universalists? Although we are not in the business of religious conversions or Born-Again revelations, UUs do encourage the soul’s transformation, and therefore a search for more meaning in one’s life could begin with a study group grappling with issues like racism.

“I think there is a pervasive sense in American that something is missing in our lives. I would argue that may be from a disconnect internally to our souls and externally to the world at large -- a lack of wholeness, to use our term.  Can we challenge ourselves to such an undertaking, to tone-up our souls as our New Year’s resolution for the millennium?”

Well, just such a study group will be beginning today after the service, of the very sort that Tricia mentioned for people who want to think through the issues involved, engaging in a deep, extended conversation about the interconnections between racial and economic problems set in historical context. Other possibilities for action will be discussed today as well.

Some of you may hope to get involved in more immediate, hands-on work, as in the tutoring programs we are connected to in Roxbury and in south Framingham. Others of you may want to get a group of your own going to work on racial progress in some other way.

And then there will be the many folks who may not get involved in any of those ways this year and maybe not next, but who will find ways of relating to the world that confront and help eliminate racism and other social ills by the votes they cast, the causes they help sponsor, the attitudes they embody, the commitment to our UU values they express in every business decision they make and every personal choice.

It matters. It redeems our lives and invests them with dignity and meaning. We are not just competing, consuming, and accumulating beings. We have values that we believe in, values that can give a sense of purpose to our lives, values to live by and prosper inside. Maybe not as much as Dr. King, but we too may be people of deep faith and action, we too can leave committed lives behind. And wouldn’t that be just like a UU.
 
 

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