Good day to all of you. It’s so wonderful to be here this morning – especially considering the alternative. My name is William Ellery Channing, and I am dead. I hope you don’t hold that against me.
I do appreciate the opportunity to be temporarily revived for this morning’s service by your good minister, Michael McGee. He tells me that this time of year many people are what he calls “church shopping,” and that it would be of great benefit if I informed these visitors as to the nature of the Unitarian faith, as well as reminding many of you who have been members for a longer period of time about why this faith is so vital to our lives.
I’m certainly impressed by what I see before me: a Unitarian Universalist Church – I understand you’ve merged with the Universalist since my demise – with 1,000 members, a beautiful building, progressive programs, and all outside the confines of New England. I congratulate all of you on helping our movement not only to survive but to thrive so vigorously.
I am somewhat surprised by the informality of your dress as well as the lack of proper tradition in your worship. Your “Sharing of Joys and Sorrows” is especially new to me. But your minister has warned me that times certainly have changed during the more than two centuries since I was born, so I will attempt to practice tolerance in my attitude, and I ask you to do the same.
Reverend McGee asked me to tell you about my life this morning and what I was able to contribute to Unitarianism, which I am happy to do. I was born in Newport, Rhode Island, in the year 1780 – just four years after the signing of the Declaration of Independence. My father was a lawyer, and my grandfather, Ellery Channing, was one of the signers of the Declaration. As a boy I sat with many of the great leaders of the revolution, including George Washington and John Jay.
My health was poor throughout my life. Even as an adult I had to be soaking wet to weigh 100 pounds and my five foot frame suffered dyspepsia, deafness, and many other illnesses (apparently I’ve gained some pounds and inches since I died). But I made it a point never to let my physical weakness affect my mental and spiritual condition.
I was a learned young man. I entered Harvard at the age of 14 and then graduated at the head of my class in 1798 at the age of 18. Following my graduation, I spent a year-and-a-half tutoring the children of the Randolf family in Richmond, Virginia -- not far from here I understand. It was in Richmond that I became acquainted with the supporters of the radical, Thomas Jefferson, as well as learning first hand the injustice of slavery.
It was also in Virginia that I became inspired toward theology. I remember having a mystical experience while walking beside a running river outside of Richmond. I wrote in my diary that evening: I longed to die, and felt as if heaven alone could give room for the exercise of such emotions; but when I found I must live, I cast about to do something worthy of those great thoughts.
And so when I returned to New England I entered Harvard Divinity School. In 1803, I was ordained and called to the ministry of the prestigious Federal Street Church in Boston, which was the only church I served in my 39 years of ministry, in spite of many invitations from other churches and more than a few suggestions from members of my own church.
I began my studies at Harvard as a moderate Calvinist, but I soon cast aside the cynicism of that belief and fully embraced the more hopeful convictions of liberal religion. Following the Revolutionary War a deep desire for freedom and rationality spread throughout the Congregational Church in New England, but the Calvinists did everything they could to obstruct it. Any preachers who varied from Calvinist dogma were called the most hated label of the times: Unitarians. But many happily accepted the name Unitarian and wore it proudly. Among them were John Adams and John Quincy Adams, Thomas Paine, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Henry David Thoreau, and many more.
I must confess that I was a reluctant liberal at first, not willing to stress issues that would lead to divisions within the church. But as the Calvinists continued their attacks against us, and as my own religious views developed, I became more enthusiastic about this new – and yet very old – movement we were growing.
Those early years of my ministry were exciting ones. I married my childhood friend Ruth Gibbs in 1814, and together we brought four children into the world, though two died in infancy.
My great love in ministry was preaching. My primary message over 39 years of ministry was expressed in one of my sermons this way:
To understand a great and good being we must have the seeds of the same excellence. God becomes a real being to us in proportion as his own nature is unfolded within us. To a man – excuse me, I understand that you have stopped using the generic male pronoun -- To a person who is growing in the likeness of God, faith begins even here to change into vision. We carry within us a proof of a Deity, which can only be understood by experience. We more than believe, we feel the Divine presence...
I proclaimed to my congregation a heartfelt belief in an inner God – a God who must be experienced within ourselves – a God who pushes us outward into the moral life.
The belief in the power of reason was another foundation of my ministry. I believe that reason is a gift of God, and therefore to be prized and made use of as much as possible. As I said in one of my sermons:
Our ultimate reliance is, and must be, on our own reason. Faith in this power lies at the foundation of all other faith. No trust can be placed in God, if we discredit the faculty by which God is discerned.
A third belief I tried to instill in my congregation was what I called The Law of Humanity. I believe that all human beings are equal before God. All are filled with the divine presence, making each one of us on equal terms with the next, each of us of incalculable value.
The great duty of God’s children, I preached, is to love one another. This duty on earth takes the name and form of the law of humanity. We are to recognize all men and women as brethren, no matter where born, or under what sky or institution of religion they may live...
My belief in the goodness of humanity was a far cry from what the Calvinists of my time trumpeted. And this is perhaps what distinguished the Unitarians of that day – and of this day as well from what I can tell. Unitarians saw the rise of humanity instead of its fall. We beheld a divinity within the human race, within each and every individual, instead of crying out at the evil nature within each person’s heart.
The fourth and last belief I proclaimed was in what I called spiritual freedom. This freedom is absolutely necessary for the growth and religious development of the individual.
Without an openness and flexibility to life one cannot change when change is needed. This ability to change, to be curious and seek out the mysteries of life, the Truth behind what seems to be true, is one of the most vital aspects of the religious life.
On Election Sunday, 1830, I gave a description of the free mind, which I’m pleased to see in your hymnal and to read with you this morning. I do fervently believe that we must use our free minds to jealously guard our intellectual rights and powers, that we must not content ourselves with a passive or hereditary faith, but that we must open ourselves to revelation wherever it may emanate.
These beliefs in an inner God who we are challenged to embody, in the revelatory power of reason, in the law of humanity that envisions all humans as equal before God, and in the spiritual freedom to grow and develop our religious and ethical powers, were the foundation of my 39 year ministry, and I believe of Unitarianism itself.
I would sum up these beliefs into a simple and powerful statement: We are one! Not only is God one creative force indivisible and ultimately incomprehensible, but so humanity is one race, indivisible by nation, culture, religion, skin color or class, bound together by our common experiences and fate. We are one!
I tried to live out these beliefs instead of only preaching them to my congregation. I worked with the anti-war movement (it was the War of 1812 at that time), and I was committed to the abolitionist cause. I also founded the Peace Society of Massachusetts and I worked with Dorthea Dix (another Unitarian) to help bring about prison reform and the development of adequate care for the mentally ill. And I worked hard to help the impoverished people of Boston.
The climax of my life came in May of 1819 when I was asked to deliver the ordination sermon for the young Jared Sparks in Baltimore, Maryland -- also not far from here. It was a long and difficult stagecoach ride from Boston to Baltimore, especially for someone of my delicate constitution, but I was eager to proclaim the ideals of the our faith.
For many years I had tried to keep the Congregational Church united, with Calvinists sitting next to Unitarians. But the Calvinists kept insisting that religious liberals must either conform to their outmoded faith or leave the church. I finally decided that the only course was for us to form our own Unitarian churches.
And so I went to Baltimore with the intent of letting the world know what our faith stood for. For a full hour and a half I spoke to that enthusiastic congregation. The title of my sermon was Unitarian Christianity, and the biblical text I used was, Prove all things; hold fast that which is good.
I’ll spare you the full hour and a half -- unless you would like me to repeat it (I do have plenty of time) -- but essentially I, as you might say in today’s vernacular, brought Unitarianism out of the closet by stating clearly and definitively our beliefs and convictions.
What we stood for then, and what I hope we still stand for, is the fearless use of reason in our spiritual explorations and the unity of God and life. I told the Baltimore congregation that Our leading principle in interpreting Scripture is this, that the Bible is a book written for [human beings], in the language of [human beings], and that its meaning is to be sought in the same manner as that of other books. I went on to explain that all books, and all conversation, require in the reader or hearer the constant exercise of reason...
I understand from Reverend McGee that almost 200 years later this is still a radical concept. My argument that day against the trinity was based on scripture as well as reason. The New Testament proclaims one God not three, a divine unity, not a fragmented piecemeal Creator. God is one and we are one!
A fierce controversy followed the preaching of that sermon in Baltimore. The sermon was printed and distributed all across our country with the Calvinists printing just as many rebuttals to it. But I was pleased to see that following my sermon an increasing number of churches were willing to claim their Unitarian allegiance until finally in May, 1825 I was proud to help found the American Unitarian Association, the first organization of Unitarian churches in America.
I must confess that I did have some major disappointments in my latter life. One was a controversy with the Transcendentalists. After being attacked by the Calvinists for being too radical, I was then assaulted by my fellow Transcendentalist Unitarians for being too conservative in my theology. The Transcendentalists wanted to leave behind not only Calvinism but Christianity all together, pursuing truth and revelation not only in scripture but in nature, personal experience and other religions. Even my old friend Ralph Waldo Emerson accused me of practicing a corpse-cold faith.
I understand that modern Unitarian Universalism has followed the path of Emerson’s Transcendentalism more than my Christian Unitarianism. It is a shock to me that many of you do not consider yourselves to be Christian and many of you have quite a different vision of God than I. But I perceive that though your beliefs have changed -- as Unitarians have done throughout history -- your values are those that I promoted so long ago: reason, freedom and the oneness of humanity.
Another disappointment that was especially painful to me was the way I left my church of 39 years. In January of 1840, one of my closest friends, the Reverend Charles Follen died in a shipboard fire while on his way to Boston. Follen had been a longtime leader in the Massachusetts Antislavery Society. The powerful families in Boston viewed Reverend Follen as too radical in his politics since many of them thought that if slavery became illegal, their power, money and privileges would be threatened.
When word of the Reverend Follen's death reached me and the other ministers in Boston, we decided that his memorial service should be performed by me at the Federal Street Church. Follen's family, as well as the Antislavery Society, requested the use of the Church, as was the custom, from its Standing Committee. The request should have been granted as a matter of course, but I was astounded that the Standing Committee unanimously denied our request.
The news of the Committee's decision left me sick, desolated -- and angry. That Sunday morning I climbed the stairs to the pulpit, looked out over my congregation, noting that every member of the Standing Committee was present, their faces somber and stubborn, and I, knowing that I would be fired for doing so, proceeded to deliver a well-deserved memorial to my good friend.
That was the last time I ever set foot in the pulpit I had preached in for 39 years. I accepted no other call, but instead devoted myself to a wider ministry, working in my last days to stop the evils of slavery.
Two years later on October 2nd, 1842, I died. Like so many before me, the praises were more lavish after my death than before. Ralph Waldo Emerson, who for years walked into Boston each Sunday to hear me preach, but who later lambasted me, said: We could not then spare a single word he uttered in public, not so much as the reading of a lesson in Scripture or a hymn ... there was no great public interest, political, literary or even economical ... on which he did not leave some printed record of his brave and thoughtful opinion.
The great Unitarian minister, Theodore Parker, commented that: I hesitate not to say that since Washington, no one has died among us whose real influence was so wide and so beneficent, both abroad and at home.
I am pleased to see that my name and teachings have been kept alive over this last century and a half. Though Unitarian Universalism has continued to change, leaving some of the truths I held dear in its wake, I am inspired by the depth of your spirituality today, one that affirms an inward divinity, a questing rationality, and the oneness of all humanity.
I congratulate all of you on keeping these ideals alive and on building this church into such a dynamic religious community. I leave you now with these words written by my nephew, William Henry Channing, a Unitarian minister, and that I hope apply to my own life:
To live content with small means;
To seek elegance rather than luxury,
and refinement rather than fashion.
To be worthy, not respectable and
wealthy, not rich;
To study hard, think quietly, talk
gently, act frankly;
To listen to stars and birds, to
babies and sages, with open heart.
To bear all cheerfully, do all
bravely, await occasions,
hurry never.
In a word, to let the spiritual,
unbidden and unconscious, grow
through the common.
This is to be my symphony.
I pray that this was my symphony, and I hope now that it will be your’s.
Amen.
Resources:
A History of Unitarianism by Earl Morse Wilbur, Beacon Press.
The Liberal Christians–Essays On American Unitarian History by Conrad Wright, Beacon Press.
The Reluctant Liberal by Jack Mendelsohn, Beacon Press.
Three Prophets of Religious Liberalism–Channing, Emerson, Parker introduced by Conrad Wright, Beacon Press.
The Unitarians and the Universalists by David Robinson, Greenwood Press.
-Amen and shalom!
