Give Them Hope, Not Hell

By Joan Beal

Let's go back and imagine... the late 1700's in the new U.S. The family of a hardy but poor farmer, Samuel Gilkey, moves to an island off the coast of Maine, where they fish, raise sheep, spin, scratch out some crops from the rocky, seaswept soil, and live in isolation, but great beauty throughout the year...a natural beauty that those people who work hard to survive in it may notice but more because they must co-exist, depend, and sometimes battle with it. For what we know and surmise, they are people of few words and probably do not write poems, journals, sermons, or reflections. They have little time for such. Still, there is in the family that quality of optimistic self-reliance, of being your own boss, of pride in hard work, that the early settlers, the pioneers, the people who moved through the later advancing West all shared. Samuel Gilkey and his family, wife and 5 sons were real. I discovered them in a small book as I was engaged in the never ending chore of sorting our books for a future move. Frederick May Eliot, a professor of Harvard in the late 1800's, and later the head of the American Unitarian Association, wrote their story. The second generation of the family sailed across a reach to deliver eggs and fish to the newly expanding wealthy summer colonies of people like the Eliots, around Bar Harbor. Eliot's purpose was to show the courage, integrity and complexity in even simple lives. His point seemed to be that all but the fewest of us will be completely forgotten eventually, but lives well lived are all uniquely valuable, inspiring , and interesting.

I mention Samuel Gilkey and his family because, while I enjoyed reading his story, one sentence stuck out in relation to today’s topic. The sentence said, " His wife Mary, who had been taught in the religion of the time, that the path to Hell was paved with the skulls of infants, began to turn away from this religion and become interested in Universalist teachings." I enjoy thinking of Mary Gilkey in a small, cabin, spinning or weaving(the endless chores of women of that era) with the north winds whistling around her island home, becoming more certain that the honest and hard working life she leads is quite sufficient to her salvation. Indeed she is already saved. Similarly, Martha Ballard, a midwife in Central Maine in the late 1700's and early 1800's, whose preserved diary was turned into a Pulitzer Prize winning history by Laurel Ulrich, also was partial to this heresy. She mentions being "favorably entertained" by the town minister's sermon, with its universalist leanings, shortly before he was kicked out of his church for his heretical ideas. However, though fierce debates continued, the Universalist message that all God's chidren would be saved, had already taken root. As Laurel Ulrich states of that time, and the reading by Clarence Skinner answers more than 100 years later, the "Universalists appeared most threatening because they undermined the socially useful distinction between the saved and the damned. How could society survive once the doctrine of an eternal judgment was destroyed?"

Though universal salvation, had once, in the early days of the Christian church, been accepted and believed, that belief had long ago, by 544, been condemned and placed under the curse of heresy. However, it never really died and began to flourish in the new democracy of the United States, a more fertile ground. It offered hope, not hell to citizens who were feeling the power of their own potential, experiencing the freedom to question old beliefs, and seeing the overwhelming abundance and beauty of the new world. Surely this was a good world with a good God. What a change from religions of fear, eternal damnation, of never really knowing if you were one of the elect who just might be saved or if you were the spider dangling over the pit of hell by an angry God.

In the coming century, people took their religions seriously, not least the Universalists. In 1843 there was a Universalist convention in Akron Ohio. More than 5000 people showed up (this is more than most GA's today) though there were, at that time, few railroad connections to Akron, no housing for all these people, and no facilities. They travelled from the East, bringing their food, wagons, bedding, and camped for 5 days, listening to hours and hours of discussions, sermons, treatises on Universalism. The church in Akron removed all their windows and erected a huge tent outside where people stood and listened to the speakers who stood in the windows of the church to preach. What was offered that fired such commitment? Perhaps the picturesque image (as Gordon McKeeman says) of the last unrepentant sinner who would be dragged kicking and screaming into Heaven, unable at last, to resist the power and love of the Almighty. Perhaps the notion that, if humans were so loved by a Creator, that it was their task to save humanity on earth, to help all souls grow into that awareness of the divine, (as in the reading of the Winchester Profession) to establish the commonwealth of God. Perhaps the idea that holiness(in the sense of wholeness) and happiness were inseparable, that the good news must be shared and that all were equally capable of realizing that love. It was their job to help everyone...prisoners, slaves, women, laborers, the oppressed grow into that love. Hence, the first official ordination of a woman in any denomination, anti-slavery resolutions, working men and women's self-improvement groups, endless effort throughout the 19th century to abolish capital punishment, and, similar to their Unitarian counterparts, constant efforts at civic improvements, ranging from schools, to mental health, to prisons, to sanitation, to working conditions in factories. The idea of universal salvation in an afterlife caught the imagination of the times,but our Universalist forbearers also knew that the very concrete realities of hunger, disease, and brutal living conditions were the first obstacles to realizing spiritual growth.

Consequently, Universalism grew. It was an evangelizing religion, unlike Unitarianism, which tended to keep itself above the fray. Universalists waded in with debates, polemics and refutations of older Orthodoxies. By the Civil War Universalism was one of the largest religions in the country. In Maine alone, there were more than 200 churches. There were Universalists in every region of the country and circuit riders reaching into the West and South . Tufts University, St. Lawrence University, Lombard (later merged with Meadville), Goddard, Caltech, all began as Universalist oriented colleges or seminaries. Certainly not all Universalists were as liberal in their acceptance of social justice movements as the "ethical universalists", those who acted radically on their beliefs. However, its faith did inspire several generations of tireless, advocates for justice. In the state legislatures such as Maine, when Universalists held the majority, they abolished capital punishment.

But yes, it did begin to decline, especially after the turn of the century, though even in the first half of the twentieth century, its churches were far more numerous than its Unitarian counterparts. Reasons for its decline as a denomination are for another time . Some people, Richard Beal included, believe that it declined as a denomination because it won the game on its main principle. Most main line churches today are not preaching hell fire and damnation. A loving God reigns in most mainline denominations, though this loving God is rarely unconditionally loving.

We can see what this old time Universalist religion once offered, with its more concrete theological terms...God is love, we are all saved, there is no hell. However, with another of its positions.. the belief that truth grows, or with the words I like best, "revelation is not sealed", Universalism also moved...the sciences, natural and social, brought new truths. So today, we don't hear too many UU's speak of a literal hell, of a God with a "mind", or of the Kingdom of God. And, of course, there was the merger with the Unitarians, a culmination of both religions moving toward each other, largely with a common path of humanism and respect for other world religions between them. And the jokes (forgive me if you've heard them a million times. This is for visitors)... one attributed to Thomas Starr King, founder of Starr King Divinity School....The Universalists believed that God was too good to damn them. The Unitarians believed that they were too good for God to damn.....or another joke, which in some ways is all too true....When merger came and a new name was needed the Unitarians suggested that they take the UNI from the beginning of the Universalist name and the Tarian from the Unitarian name, with the name of the denomination becoming UNI tarian. In many ways this did happen. For a time, Universalists, were not merged, they were submerged. When I was new to UUism, I used to think it was just old fogeyish crackpots who fussed about always including the Universalist in Unitarian Universalist. But then, as one of my friends said, I married one of the crackpots. Now I'm kind of a convert. Probably I'm closer to a Universalist Unitarian. Why? how does the Universalist part of this heritage drive me and what can it offer to others?

If I go back to the most primitive, basic beliefs, beliefs that we often mention in our historical descriptions of the two strands of our heritage, I know that it is far more important to me to operate with the idea that God is a loving God and that we are all saved...that the moving force of the universe is love...the Universalist message....than whether or not Jesus was divine or that God is one...the Unitarian message. While it's not accurate to totally simplify each historical position...there are repercussions, complex branching ideas that are inseparable and are foundations for both positions, and now, in good Universalist fashion, both positions have become one. I still look for a simple operating principle. For me that operating principle arises out of the universalist stream...if you believe you are loved, you will act lovingly. Convince people they are cared about and they will care about others.

We often accept lesson number one from both the U's in UU...the individualism of freedom of conscience and the search for truth and meaning, like the liberty clause in the Winchester profession. But then we need to move to "So what is there beyond that? What are we really offering?"

In a world that is fractured with division and misunderstanding, Universalism says that there is, running through the universe, an urge to wholeness and integration and this is what humans have the capacity to work towards. We gave up the idea of Hell in the afterlife, and we began to notice the Hells on Earth, which we can not, because of our religion, abide...the dichotomies of Heaven for the top dogs, hell for the underdogs, heaven for the straight, hell for the gay, heaven for the Christians, Hell for the atheists. And, on a less politically correct plane...heaven for the civil rights workers, hell for the KKK and anti-choice activists. heaven for the U.S., hell for the terrorists. Perhaps they are the ones who as Bucky McKeeman says, need to be dragged , unrepentant, and kicking and screaming, into the presence of the power of that love. Our challenge is, of course, to remain truly loving, to be able to listen and to respond in ways that are realistic enough to make love real, not sappy.

From that Universalist stream, I respond to the idea that our happiness and spiritual growth depend on tapping into universal natural laws which recognize that nothing can really be thrown away, nothing is really separate from us...the interdependent web thing.. Everything is part of our life. We really are one... we live with the discards of our lives, whether they are plastic containers in overflowing landfills, mountains with their tops blown off, or children who are unwanted, and unserved by even basic health care. Whether it is an unhappy childhood that we would prefer to forget about or a childhood of privilege that in retrospect seems indulgent. Ours is not to complete the task of making the world or ourselves one, yet, as Universalist Unitarians, neither are we free to desist from it.

On an individual level, the old Universalism recognized sin. We are all sinners, in the sense that we all miss the mark at times, we all make mistakes, hurt others, hurt the world. Yet, Universalism recognized and UUism recognizes, as Kenneth Patton says, that we seek to understand, "the shyness beyond arrogance, the fear behind pride, the tenderness behind clumsy strength and the anguish behind cruelty". Our sins are what lead us to spiritual growth, to wisdom, to acceptance. Our own sins present us with the chance to understand others and administer justice. If the moving force is love and the journey is toward wholeness, then we are all able to, as the Winchester profession states, "grow into harmony with the divine". Our sins are occasions for growth, not grovelling.

If we are all to believe that we are loved, saved, akin, so must we also provide paths across the divides of culture, nationality, and religions. This is what Kenneth Patton's mission was...to find the common light across time, country, religion and culture. Art, poetry, music, dance...these are things we need to celebrate and offer to those who come questioning what inspires us...what gives us joy. The old and the new, the familiar and the strange. In the hymnbook, we find African, Asian, African American, Hungarian tunes. Again, our hope is that we find the threads like art and beauty that run through all cultures and religions.

When so much of our culture and so much of international relations seems oriented toward becoming powerful....give your own children the edge up, make our country the invulnerable world power, do not sacrifice anything you have supposedly "earned", watch out for number one, there are enemies and then there is the U.S. and all is fair if it protects our interests, Universalism sometimes seems like a quaint and naive belief. However, as W.H. Auden writes in his poem, "Sept. 11, 1939", the day of the beginning of World War II,

Defenseless under the night

Our world in stupor lies;

Yet dotted everywhere,

Ironic points of light

Flash out where the Just

Exchange their messages:

May I, composed like them,

Of Eros and of dust

Balanced by the same

Negation and despair

Show an affirming flame.

May we as Unitarian Universalists, as Universalist Unitarians, be that flame.