USH-Enews for July 5, 2007 Print Only Edition

Home Page for the website of the Unitarian Society of Hartford.
Word Version of this document in color with photographs, which will print nicely for those who use Microsoft Word.
Link to various "normal" newsletters.

The USH-Enews is a weekly email newsletter produced for members and friends of the Unitarian Society of Hartford. The USH web address is: http://www.ushartford.com/ Check at the end of this USH-Enews for information on submissions, subscriptions and escape from the mailing list. And, to read the monthly Meetinghouse Messenger (newsletter) on line, or past issues of the weekly USH-Enews click here.

Office hours: M-F 9-3 (excluding W 10 -11); Rev. Jamestone: Phone: 860 233-9897; Email: RevBJ@USHartford.com - Rev. BJ office hours: Tuesday, Wednesday, and Friday by appointment.

Sunday - 8 July - The Joy of Music (10 AM Service) - From my early days to the present: a journey of a lifetime through music. - Sid Garvais .

Welcoming Sid - This week our own Sid Garvais returns to the pulpit for a journey of a lifetime through music.

He contributed Fellowship Hall music for the installation reception. Recently, he was featured in a Courant article, Honoring the Man Who Made Room for a Cause. He also contributes music to the Seabury Community where he and Betty reside. - DCN

From the Editor: On behalf of the USH community, we extend our deepest appreciation to the members of the Board and Council appointees who completed their terms of office June 30th. Charles Huntington, President; Sue Kinney, Secretary; Nancy Mandly, At Large COCW; Hugh Schweitzer, Chair COA; Fred Louis, Chair COSJ, Peg Otto, Social Justice At Large; and Nina Elgo, Chair COSJ, who has changed hats and is now Secretary. In many cases leadership activity covered several years in various capacities. - DCN

This Week’s Feature Articles

Unitarians and Universalists have always been heretics. We are heretics because we want to choose our faith, not because we desire to be rebellious. Heresy in Greek means choice. During the first three centuries of the Christian church, believers could choose from a variety of tenets about Jesus. Among these was a belief that Jesus was an entity sent by God on a divine mission. Thus the word Unitarian developed, meaning the oneness of God. Another religious choice in the first three centuries of the Common Era (CE) was universal salvation. This was the belief that no person would be condemned by God to eternal damnation in a fiery pit. Thus a Universalist believed that all people will be saved. Christianity lost its element of choice in 325 CE when the Nicene Creed established the Trinity as dogma. For centuries thereafter, people who professed Unitarian or universalist beliefs were persecuted.

This was true until the sixteenth century when the Protestant Reformation took hold in the remote mountains of Transylvania in eastern Europe. Here the first edict of religious toleration in history was declared in 1568 during the reign of the first and only Unitarian king, John Sigismund. Sigismund’s court preacher, Frances David, had successively converted from Catholicism to Lutheranism to Calvinism and finally to Unitarianism because he could find no biblical basis for the doctrine of the Trinity. Arguing that people should be allowed to choose among these faiths, he said, “We need not think alike to love alike.”

In sixteenth-century Transylvania, Unitarian congregations were established for the first time in history. These churches continue to preach the Unitarian message in present-day Romania. Like their heretic forebears from ancient times, these liberals could not see how the definition of a human being or the simple recitation of creeds could help them to live better lives. They said that we must follow Jesus, not worship him.

During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Unitarianism appeared briefly in scattered locations. A Unitarian community in Rakow, Poland, flourished for a time, and a book called On the Errors of the Trinity by a Spaniard, Michael Servetus, was circulated throughout Europe. But persecution frequently followed these believers. The Polish Unitarians were completely suppressed, and Michael Servetus was burned at the stake.

Even where the harassment was not so extreme, people still opposed the idea of choice in matters of religious faith. In 1791, scientist and Unitarian minister Joseph Priestley had his laboratory burned and was hounded out of England. He fled to America where he established American Unitarian churches in the Philadelphia area.

Despite these European connections, Unitarianism as we know it in North America is not a foreign import. In fact, the origins of our faith began with some of the most historic congregations in Puritan New England, where each town was required to establish a congregationally independent church that followed Calvinist doctrines. Initially these congregational churches offered no religious choice for their parishioners, but over time the strict doctrines of original sin and predestination began to mellow.

By he mid-1700s a group of evangelicals were calling for the revival of Puritan orthodoxy. They asserted their belief in humanity’s eternal bondage to sin. People who opposed the revival, believing in free human will and the loving benevolence of God, eventually became Unitarian. During the first four decades of the nineteenth century, hundreds of these original congregational churches fought over ideas about sin and salvation, and especially over the doctrine of the Trinity. Most of the churches split over these issues. In 1819, Unitarian minister William Ellery Channing delivered a sermon called ”Unitarian Christianity” and helped to give the Unitarians a strong platform. Six years later the American Unitarian Association was organized in Boston Massachusetts.

Universalism developed in American in at least three distinct geographical locations. The earliest preachers of the gospel of universal salvation appeared in what were later the Middle Atlantic and Southern states. By 1781, Elhanan Winchester had organized a Philadelphia congregation of universal Baptists. Among its members was Benjamin Rush, the famous physician and signer of the Declaration of Independence.

At about the same time, in the rural, interior sections of New England, a small number of itinerant preachers, among them Caleb Rich, began to disbelieve the strict Calvinist doctrines of eternal punishment. They discovered from their biblical studies the new revelation of God’s loving redemption of all. John Murray, an English preacher who immigrated in 1770, helped lead the first Universalist church in Gloucester, Massachusetts, in the battle to separate church and state.

From its beginnings, Universalism challenged its members to reach out and embrace people whom society often marginalized. The Gloucester church included a freed salve among it charter members and the Universalists became the first denomination to ordain women to the ministry, beginning in 1863 with Olympia Brown.

Universalism was a more evangelical faith than Unitarianism. After officially organizing in 1793, the Universalists spread their faith across the eastern United States and Canada. Hosea Ballou became the denomination’s greatest leader during the nineteenth century, and he and his followers, including Nathaniel Stacy, led the way in spreading their faith.

Other preachers followed the advice of Universalist publisher Horace Greeley and went west. One such person was Thomas Starr King, who is credited with defining the difference between Unitarians and Universalists: “Universalists believe that God is too good to damn people, and the Unitarians believe that people are too good to be damned by God.” The Universalists believed in a God who embraced everyone, and this eventually became central to their belief that lasting truth is found in all religions, and that dignity and worth are innate to all people regardless of gender, color, race, or class.

Growing out of this inclusive theology was a lasting impetus in both denominations to create a more just society. Both Unitarians and Universalists became active participants in many social justice movements in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Unitarian preacher Theodore Parker was a prominent abolitionist, defending fugitive slaves and offering support to American abolitionist John Brown.

Other reformers included Universalists, such as Charles Spear, who called for prison reform, and Clara Barton, the Civil War “angel of the battlefield” who became the founder of the American Red Cross. Unitarians such as Dorothea Dix fought to “break the chains” of people incarcerated in mental hospitals, and Samuel Gridley Howe started schools for the blind. For the last two centuries, Unitarians and Universalists have been at the forefront of movements working to free people from whatever bonds may oppress them.

By the middle of the twentieth century it became clear the Unitarians and Universalists could have a stronger liberal religious voice if they merged their efforts, and they did so in 1961, forming the Unitarian Universalist Association. Many Unitarian Universalists became active in the Civil Rights movement. James Reeb, a Unitarian Universalist minister, was murdered in Selma, Alabama, after he had 20 percent of the denomination’s ministers responded to Martin Luther King Jr.’s call to march for justice.

Two thousand years ago liberals were persecuted for seeking the freedom to make religious choices, but such freedom has become central to both Unitarianism and Universalism. As early as the 1830s both groups were studying and promulgating texts from world religions other than Christianity. By the beginning of the twentieth century, humanists within both traditions advocated that people could be religious without believing in God. No one person, no one religion, can embrace all religious truths.

Today we are determined to continue to work for greater racial and cultural diversity. In 1977, the Women and Religion Resolution was passed by the Association, and since then the denomination has responded to the feminist challenge to change sexist structures and language, especially with the publication of inclusive hymnal. In 1999, the Association announced that just over 50 percent of its active ministers were women. The denomination has affirmed the rights of bisexual, gay, lesbian, and transgender persons, including ordaining and settling gay and lesbian clergy in our congregations, and in 1996 it affirmed same-sex marriage.

All these efforts reflect a modern understanding of universal salvation. Unitarian Universalism welcomes all to an expending circle of understanding and choice in religious faith.

Our history has carried us from liberal Christian views about Jesus and human nature to a rich pluralism that includes theist and atheist, agnostic and humanist, pagan, Christian, Jew and Buddhist. As our history continues to evolve and unfold, we invite you to join us by choosing our free faith.

Rebecca Bryan's sermon, The Many Faces of Power, from last week has been posted on the web.

UU Singles Dinner and Fireworks - If you are single and looking for a way to celebrate the Fourth, come join us for the evening of Saturday July 7. We will start at the Prospect Cafe for dinner at 6:00. Then we will go to Trinity College for a patriotic carillon concert at 8:00. Then the fireworks will go off at 9:45.

Meet other singles from the three local UU churches and others of like mind. Join the group and participate in our activities throughout the year. RSVP to Larry Lunden, bigcheese(at)yahoo(dot)com, or 232-2416 so I will know you are coming.

Men's Group Picnic July 17th - The Men's Luncheon Group will have a picnic at USH on Tuesday, July 17th at 4 PM. Please contact Chris McClurg for additional information. Chris can be reached at wchrismc(at symbol)cox.net or 860-563-9776.

Volunteers Needed - to paint and assist with renovations to our children’s classrooms. If you have some time available in August, contact Skip Berrien at f.berrien(at symbol)comcast.net or call him at 243.0149. (Note: the email address was listed incorrectly last week for a time, and subsequently corrected.)

Adult Programs: - Why Not Try Small Group Ministry This Summer? In summer we run shortened Small Group Ministry, with only four weekly sessions. The July group is full, but we still have openings for August. Margaret Leicach will facilitate the group, starting on Thursday, August 2. It will convene at the Meeting House in air-conditioned space. If you haven't tried SGM before, this is a great way to test the waters. You may sign up by contacting the USH office.

Caring Network - I've learned that you shouldn't go through life with a catchers mitt on both hands. You need to be able to throw something back. ~ Maya Angelou - You are the ears of the Caring Network. Diana Heymann is the Chair of the Caring Network. Please tell Diana (heydiana(at symbol)comcast.net) 860.461.0908, or call the office when you learn of any of our members enduring the stresses of life so we can reach out to those in need. - Offer your services. A wide range of community services are available to help you. Call InfoLine at 211.

Friday, July 6
7:00 pm Rental, Library

Sunday, July 8
9:00 am Music Rehearsal, Chapel
9:00 am Building & Grounds, Murray
10:00 am WORSHIP SERVICE, SANCTUARY
11:00 am Coffee Hour, Fellowship Hall
3:00 pm Rental, Chapel

Monday, July 9
6:30 pm Survivors of Incest Anonymous, Murray
7:00 pm Small Group Ministry, Library

Tuesday, July 10
6:00 pm Human Resources, Library
7:00 pm ICEJ, Servetus
8:00 pm AA, Fellowship Hall

Wednesday, July 11
6:00 pm Dharma Gathering, Emerson
6:30 pm Tai Chi, Fellowship Hall

Thursday, July 12
7:30 pm Rental, Chapel

Friday, July 13
5:00 pm Wedding rehearsal, Sanctuary

Saturday, July 14
9:30 am Rental, Chapel
4:00 pm Wedding, Sanctuary

Sunday, July 15
9:00 am Music Rehearsal, Chapel
10:00 am WORSHIP SERVICE, SANCTUARY
11:00 am Coffee Hour, Fellowship Hall
3:00 pm Rental, Chapel

Italicized entries are non-USH events.
Please notify Brian Mullen (233.9897) of all additions or changes to the calendar. More general calendar information covering several months may be found here.

A Matter of Opinion: (space for comment on USH issues from members and friends) - Editor retains the right to make minor changes – letters should be issue oriented)

External Events and Educational Notes

Announcing a new event for The Humanist Association of Connecticut Meetup Group!

What: Truth: The New Agenda for Peace and Security? - Humanist Society meeting -- PEACE strategy

When: Monday, July 16, 7:30 PM

Where: Unitarian Society of New Haven, Hartford Tnpke, Hamden, CT

Event Description: At the Humanist Association of Connecticut's monthly meeting for July we will welcome Eugene B. Kogan. He will discuss why and how truth is vital

Eugene is a Senior Political Analyst at Americans for Informed Democracy. (aidemocracy.org).

We'll start with coffee and conversation at 7:30 PM. The main program will follow brief announcements at 8:00 PM.

For further details and car-pooling, contact Ed Savage at ESavage1(at symbol)Gmail.com or phone 860-232-5603