Home“India has carried out its first execution in years. It’s army fights an ongoing war with separatist militia’s in Kashmir. This is taking place in the land of Mahatma Gandhi, the modern apostle of peace. What hope is there for love, peace and justice in our world if even the land of Gandhi cannot find them?”
Calvinist Theology was very important in the founding of America. The Puritans were Calvinists who came here to establish a new land and a new covenant because, in their opinion, the England from which they came was too open and tolerant for their liking. People did things like celebrate Christmas and listen to music and dance and drink. They wanted to live where their children would not be tempted by things which harmed the soul—like having fun. (That is an unfair stereotype, but I’m going to use it.)
Calvinism saw human beings as inherently broken and flawed by Original Sin, by the act of disobedience of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. Calvinists believed that anything created by imperfect, sinful and selfish human beings would itself be inherently flawed.
In part because of that belief, when the Founders created this nation they built in many checks and balances between the various branches of government and between the large and small states, and between the power of the people and the power of the states and the federal government.
People are flawed, they will act selfishly, we need to find ways to be able to contain and counter bad behavior. That included popular election for the House of Representatives, but state appointments to the Senate, and two-year terms for the House—allowing the people to have nearly immediate impact on governmental decisions, but six-year terms for Senators, defending the nation from passing fervor and overreaching on the part of the people.
In the minds of the Founders, the people were to be viewed with some caution, after all, it was ‘the people” who had killed both Socrates and Jesus.
Both Universalists and Unitarians parted from Calvinism in no little measure because of its theology of human nature. They did so for somewhat different reasons.
The Universalists believed that a loving Father God could never condemn his children to an eternity in Hell for the sins they committed during their time in this world.
The Unitarians rejected the idea that human beings are inherently sinful and evil. “Unitarianism prospered in the late-18th century among the Harvard elite, and emerged full bloom in the early-19th century as a rational, mystical, liberal religion that rejected the divinity of Christ as well as the Calvinist view of man as totally depraved. The Unitarians believed that man was not only morally perfectible, but that education was the only true way to salvation. Since they believed that evil was caused by ignorance, poverty, and social injustice, they were convinced that only a good liberal education, provided by the government at no charge, would solve society's problems (1/96, The Blumenfeld Education Letter, p. 2).”
Unitarians were instrumental in establishing our system of public schooling. They were not the only ones, but they were among those who pushed for and obtained that great boon to this nation and its people.
Universalism appealed to the populace on the frontier, which back then began somewhat west of Washington Square, while Unitarianism appealed to the intellectual elite clustered both metaphorically and, to a great extent, literally around Concord, Massachusetts.
This gave rise to the quip that the Universalists believed God was too good to condemn them to Hell, while the Unitarians believed that they were too good for God to condemn them to hell.
Among the principles of liberal religion, aside from a faith in reason and science—and in applying each of these to religion--was this rejection of the evil nature of humanity.
At that time, religious and social liberals believed that human beings were inherently good and they believed that the natural course of humanity was “onward and upward forever”, as an old slogan of Unitarianism put it. They looked at human history and saw an ongoing march towards growing moral development, growing intellectual understanding, and growing social improvement all accompanied and led, in part, by the expansion of education.
Then came the Twentieth Century. By the middle of that century, the liberal faith in the inherent goodness of humanity and in never-ending progress towards a better world had been shattered in the public mind, and among many liberals themselves.
It was a century of terror and death. The two world wars had destroyed not only the political structures that had existed at the beginning of the century, but had resulted in such death, such carnage, such human evil and depravity towards other human beings that it was difficult to see how anyone could call the human spirit one of goodness.
By the end of the century, those who had no faith in human goodness could point to the fact that the Twentieth Century had begun with the slaughter of Armenians in Turkey and ended with Rwanda, Bosnia and Kosovo.
This coming week is marks birthday of Mahatma Gandhi, the great apostle of non-violence, the man who preached against violence in any form. India and Pakistan, the two nations that now exist in the territory that Gandhi set out to free from colonialism, are now both nuclear powers and came very close to all out war in recent years. The lessons of Gandhi, I guess, are simply forgotten.
And one might say that if current trends continue, the Twenty-First century will not be much better than its predecessor.
And so liberalism of the religious kind, the kind that believes in the inherent goodness of all people, is now in some disrepute. That is true to the extent that even the Unitarian Universalist Association’s Statement Of Principles and Purposes does not declare the inherent goodness of people but instead speaks of “the inherent worth and dignity” of each person. That is a vast change from 18th Century Unitarianism. It seems that even we have given up on the inherent goodness of humanity.
But I want to suggest that, in my opinion, giving up on the goodness of humanity is the wrong conclusion to reach.
I begin by acknowledging the awful terrors of the Twentieth Century. But evidence of the human ability to do evil long predates that century, and liberal theology evolved in a world where one could point to evil acts. Some quick examples from the 19th Century, and just limiting oneself to the United States, will prove my point.
During the 1800’s, this nation accepted slavery, at least for most of the century.
The United States threatened war with it’s northern neighbor, Canada; under the slogan “fifty-four forty or fight”—that was the latitude at which we wanted the border.
We fought a war with our southern neighbor, Mexico, a war that Abraham Lincoln described as shameful. In doing so, we annexed half of the territory of that nation; we stole their land from them.
We fought a horrible civil war amongst ourselves.
And all through the century we engaged in ethnic cleansing and genocide against the native peoples.
It is hard to see how a doctrine of human goodness can arise or thrive in that environment. And yet none of that severely challenged Unitarianism’s belief in the inherent goodness of human beings. The reason for that, I think, is that they recognized that we are not yet living in a world in which human beings all grow in healthy soil. It is that contention which people have lost sight of today: the belief that it is ignorance, poverty and social injustice that cause evil.
What the Twentieth Century DID challenge is the belief that a liberal education would solve society’s problems, that somehow education would serve as a nostrum to remedy all of the faults and failings within human beings.
Some of the greatest perpetrators of evil in the Twentieth Century were well-educated people. It was the fact that the Nazi movement could arise in a nation such as Germany, a nation deeply committed to education and with a well-educated populace, it was that which shocked and surprised so many. But it needn’t have. Our own south was largely run by an educated elite that was deeply imbued with racism.
The lesson for liberals ought not be that the human spirit is more depraved than we thought; the lesson ought to be that the kind of education we have provided does not touch deeply enough upon old prejudices and pains to counter them. A liberal education means, in part, learning how to think and how to challenge assumptions both within one’s self and in society at large. It is a conservative approach that says focus only on the “three R’s”. Liberal education focuses on the whole person.
But, also, liberals must recognize that some pains, some twistings of the soul, are too deep to reach regardless of the educational system used. Reasoning will not reach some deep recesses of hurt, rage and fear that spark evil actions. And that is where liberal religion enters in.
What CAN reach those places within many people is the transforming power of love and the message of hope for relief from that pain.
The faith in reason of Unitarianism and its belief in the inherent goodness of human beings, combined with the message of unconditional love of Universalism those two together can make a world of difference in the minds and hearts of people.
There are some who are beyond the reach of both reason and love, or at least seem to be. But they ought not be allowed to destroy our reason and our love. In an illiberal age, in an age of ethnic and religious hatred, how we respond will either make things better or make them worse. If we yield to fear, to rage or to our pain, then we betray our religious heritage and we betray our better selves.
What does all of this mean?
First, it means that we ought to keep our faith in people and in the future. There is plenty going RIGHT in the world. There are countless examples of compassion and generosity. There is a sense of justice that transcends race, religion, culture and borders, that ties together all of humanity.
Second, it has a practical affect on how we live in the world today, we as individuals and we as a nation.
In watching the presidential debate the other night, I was dismayed that it seems to be the belief of both candidates that our approach to the war on terrorism means we must hunt down and kill all of the terrorists.
We need to stop them from harming any more people. If we can do that without killing, we ought to. They, too, are people of inherent worth and dignity. They, too, are inherently good, no matter how misled by pain or hate may be. That is my faith.
Killing in self-defense sometimes is necessary; killing as an act of vengeance is never justified.
If there is to be love, peace and justice in the world, someone must show that it is possible. It is we liberals who believe it is possible, so it is we who must live in such a way that we prove it.
The human spirit is still inherently good. It can still be twisted by injustice, by illness, by cruelty, by pain.
Even you and I can be so twisted, by anger or by fear.
But we can also call upon our better selves, we can hold fast to principles and beliefs, to our faith. And we can proclaim, despite the Calvinism that still seeps through our culture, that the human spirit is good when nurtured into health.
May we echo the words of a young girl, words spoken from the midst of the worst horrors of the last century: I still believe, in spite of everything, that people are really good at heart”.
We do fail, wee people. We do fall short. But we also have the capacity to envision what could be and to reach for ti. Let us be faithful to ourselves, let us proclaim the good news of human decency, let us save humanity from despair for humanity, and in doing so, let us save the world.
So let it be. Amen.
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