No Greater Love
A Sermon offered on March 11, 2001
By Rev. Hilary Landau Krivchenia
Unitarian Universalist Church
Lafayette, Indiana
Readings
Sophia Fahs said:
Our own relationships are boundless. Our new cosmologies, our new moralities, our new hope of world brotherhood – when once they take deep root and spread in our common social consciousness – will give us songs to sing, new experiences to celebrate, new devotion to fire our zeal. We need to realize that life never ceases to be a giving and receiving. If our long-time goal is the salvation of the world community rather than merely the salvation of a few individuals our concept of individual responsibility is changes. We no longer feel like racers each rushing to gain his own crown of glory. Nor do we feel like worthless sinners begging for pardon before the Judge of all the earth. Instead we are joined together in one family, all seeking for a richness of life never before known.
The Reverend Mark Morrison-Reed in Black Pioneers in a White Denomination wrote:
M artin Luther King, Jr., wrote, "only through inner spiritual transformation do we gain the strength to fight vigorously the evils of the world in a humble and loving spirit." The Latin word for spirit means "breath" or "the breath of God". This spirit comes in many forms and appears in many places but it always comes as a breath of new life that inspires and revitalizes the human condition. It allows the individual to span the chasm that divides one from the other. And it reveals to us the truth that all people are one, for the depth of our experience of life is our common bond. Once felt, this spirit inspires us to act for justice. The dynamics of intellectual, spiritual, and political freedom occur within the religious community. Together our vision widens and our strength is renewed.
Words of Jenkin Lloyd Jones in 1905:
There is a pre-vision that belongs to the faithful heart, a foresight that is born of insight; there is a light of heaven blazing up from within in every soul, and the greater the soul the clearer is the light…Those whom the ages unite in calling prophets. Jones 1905
Our political passions and our religious convictions are usually connected. As Unitarian Universalists we are both highly individual thinkers and members of a tradition with a deep shared history. A key piece of our Unitarian Universalist history unfolds every June at our General Assembly. To be among a few thousand other Unitarian Universalists is an energizing experience. The General Assembly can be a relief for those who come from smaller towns and cities and are, so often, a tiny religious minority at home. And because we have no popes or bishops, it’s a powerful time to engage in the democratic process as matters of policy, the election of national officers, and matter of social conscience are discussed and voted on by congregational representatives – we’ll have four delegates going this year. It’s a time to exchange resources, to worship together, to get to know one another, to play, and to explore ideas. It is particularly a place where ideas are shared, examined, and debated. And it is a place where, with those ideas, we make history.
This year our General Assembly meets nearby in Cleveland, Ohio, as most of you probably know. It’s been 33 years since the last General Assembly met there and the return offers us an occasion to revisit our history as a religious movement connected to racism. It was in Cleveland in 1968 that a conflict unfolded that nearly rent this association asunder. It’s a story of the beauty and power and of the great danger of ideas. Ideas can liberate or enslave.
I want to share with you a sliver of the history of our engagement with the idea of freedom – a history in which in which we have showed at times profound wisdom, at times profound compassion, and at other times lost sight of human reality.
In 1851 Ralph Waldo Emerson gave his address on the Fugitive Slave Law. This evidence of his own struggle with conscience had broad ripples. I have mentioned before the slave owner and Christian minister Moncure Conway who read Emerson’s words and wrote to Mr. Emerson "About a year ago I commenced reading your writings. I have read them all and studied them sentence by sentence. I have shed many burning tears over them; because you gain my assent to Laws which, when I see how they would act on the affairs of life, I have not courage to practise." Two years later Conway found that courage and came north to join the ranks of Unitarian ministers and involve himself in the anti-slavery movement.
After the Civil War the next step – that of creating a new and just society was far more elusive – for Unitarians as well as the rest of the nation. While Unitarians were growing diverse theologically – embracing humanism, natural religion, and beginning to make peace with Judaism, there were few people of vision and courage who were willing to reach across lines of difference such as class or gender or race. One notable exception was Jenkin Lloyd Jones, who worked with the settlement house movement in Chicago. Jones served the church of All Souls and founded the Abraham Lincoln Center because he had a vision of a community church. He spoke of it, in 1905, as that "which must emphasize Universal Brotherhood – a great community… at the heart of which should be the interracial, non-sectarian church." The other notable exception was the Reverend John Haynes Holmes who was minister of the Community Church of New York, and one of the founders, in 1909, of the NAACP – the National Association for the Advancement of Colored Persons.
The Civil Rights movement finally galvanized Unitarian Universalist churches to become active again with regard to race. They worked hard on projects and issues and took great risks. Churches like First Unitarian, in Chicago, worked not only outside of the church but made and carried out a commitment to integrate themselves – it took First Unitarian more than a decade of intentional work to become a truly integrated church, which they remain – and during that time they also worked effectively on issues faced by their community.
In 1965 the conflict over the National Voting Rights Bill intensified. Many African Americans had lost their lives in the struggle by the time that Jimmy Lee Jackson was killed in early March. When the call came out from Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Southern Christian Leadership Council to clergy of all denominations to come south to support and bear witness to the great struggle being waged in Selma – Unitarian Universalists responded. It was on March 7, 1965 that the Reverend James Reeb, Jr. was watching the evening news with his family – and he was shaken by what he saw. Millions of people watched that newscast around the country that showed the brutal treatment of black demonstrators by police in Alabama. It was the shock of the truth coming home everywhere – the truth of oppression and of the high cost of freedom. Jim Reeb was a Unitarian minister – though he had only been one for seven years he’d been active in justice and advocacy work for most of his professional life. Reeb was born in Wichita, Kansas in 1927. Rheumatic fever made him pretty sickly until he was about ten years old and he had crossed eyes until he had surgery at seventeen. Maybe it was this that made him sensitive to the suffering of others.
But Reeb’s story is the story of an ordinary man. It is in some ways remarkably like many of our lives, as Unitarian Universalists. He was raised in a religion that he grew beyond. Jim answered a strong call to the ministry through the Presbyterian Church. In his first ministry he chose to work in the inner city of Philadelphia among the poor – that was where his heart was. His vision stretched beyond the bounds of the hospital in which he served. Reeb said "I want to participate in the continuous creation of a vision that will inspire people to noble and courageous living. I want to share actively in forging the spiritual ties that will bind humanity together in brotherhood and peace."
In theological school Jim had begun to question the unquestioned faith he had grown up with. He said "My understanding of religion has changed, but my desire to pursue the quest for the full depth of the meaning and purpose of life and give it expression in my day to day living has not." It was in 1956 that someone gave James Reeb a copy of this book – Today’s Children and Yesterday’s Heritage – by Sophia Lyon Fahs – one of the leading figures in the history of our Religious Education. It’s still a vital book 49 years after it was written. When Reeb read her words he had that feeling so many of us have when we finally encounter Unitarian Universalism – oh – I must have been one all along… Speaking of Unitarianism, Fahs said, "The natural approach to religion stands in marked contrast to the traditional approach of authority and indoctrination. We are searching for new words and new thoughts. We believe it is important from what thoughts we mold our action… Indeed we quiver on the threshold of a new day …there is a thrilling and a glowing hope in being part of that young movement, even though it be small and may long be unpopular." Her words made James Reeb’s questions feel right at home. In 1959 he went to All Soul’s Unitarian Church in Washington DC and in 1962 he received final fellowship into the Unitarian Universalist ministry.
After a successful tenure, Reeb left All Souls in 1964 and took a community ministry in Roxbury, Massachusetts. Reeb had four children with his wife, Marie, and the six of them moved into one of the toughest neighborhoods in America and made their home there with the people that Reeb wanted to work with. They were ordinary people and it was there, in the most ordinary sort of way, that Marie and James sat, on the evening of March 7th, watching the news in shock. The next day the appeal came from King and the Southern Christian Leadership Council and Jim could not imagine not answering that appeal – body and soul. On March 8th Reeb flew to Selma. He said the Atlanta airport looked like a conference of Unitarian ministers. On the 9th the march took place and later in the day, after the march, Jim and his colleagues braved the tense atmosphere at Walker’s Café. The three Unitarian Universalist ministers emerged from the restaurant after their meal into the dark of evening. Out of the darkness four white men attacked, calling them niggers. Reeb was struck on the back of the head. His colleagues were injured but survived. Back in his college days Jim had asked the other students what was of great enough importance that they might be willing to give their lives for it. James Reeb died at University Hospital on March 11th from head injuries and found that answer for himself.
Reeb’s death brought the focus of the nation more clearly on the civil rights struggle. While there had been whites working in that struggle it had been largely a movement of Black Americans taking the risks. And the record had largely been of Black Americans getting hurt and losing their lives – the list is carved into the Civil Rights memorial in Montgomery Alabama. But that had shifted. Somehow, the struggle got the nation’s attention when white people were hurt.
Viola Gregg Luizzo was a 39-year-old housewife married to a teamster. She had signed the membership book in 1964 at the First Unitarian Church of Detroit. She had been haunted by the same newscast that had moved James Reeb to come to Selma, with thousands of people from all over the country. When, four days later, she got the news of Reeb’s death she got in her car alone, saying goodbye to her husband and five children, and went to help people register to vote in Alabama. She was an energetic woman who had gone back to school for professional training in the early sixties. She’d spent her adult life as a wife and mother. Like Reeb she was an ordinary person – but she felt called, too, to serve in this immense struggle for freedom. Those who worked with her said that she had such energy they felt challenged to do more. She used her car, tirelessly for days, to shuttle and escort Black Americans to register – often they would hide on the floor since the Klan was always on the hostile lookout for mixed race vehicles. On March 25, when the three day march from Selma to Birmingham concluded Viola helped to shuttle people back to their homes or to their cars. Three white men who – coincidentally – had met that evening with the man who had killed James Reeb, sited Liuzzo in the car with Leroy Moton a young black man. Encouraged by him they had gone looking for a victim – they followed Viola’s car and shot her – Moton survived by feigning death.
For better and worse these events finally woke a sleeping nation. Because of these and finally because of all the other tragedies the civil rights movement began to turn around. President Johnson pressed forward the Federal Voting Rights Bill within days of Reeb’s death. Thousands of people around the country rallied in mourning and protest. New bonds of solidarity and action were formed and it was, briefly, a time of unity and accomplishment. It was, largely, a movement of people moved by their hearts – people like you, like some members of my own family – and many other people I have known – people moved by compassion and moved to courage. Students, clergy, housewives, teamsters – all sorts of people who could, finally, beyond all difference, feel that bond of brotherhood that Jones or Fahs or King or Reeb had spoken of.
Three years later, in Cleveland, the civil rights movement was a different creature. And a controversy erupted that was symptomatic of the times. The Black Unitarian Universalist Caucus had formed in 1967 to push the UUA to greater action on behalf of the black community. It was a group that used tactics – withdrawal from meetings, non-negotiable terms, and highly charged exchanges. They brought a demand before the Unitarian Universalist Association that there be a Black Affairs Council, that it be chosen by the Black Unitarian Universalist Caucus and be funded 250,000 dollars a year for four years. When the General Assembly met in Cleveland another group had arisen – called Black and White Action, which intended to pursue a process that included both black and whites and was competing for the funding. The congregational Assembly voted, after long debate, to fund the Black Affairs Council and awarded a small sum to BAWA. After the Assembly it was discovered that the funds that everyone thought could pay for this project had been already used for the operating budget. There was barely enough money to cover the budget. Still, somehow, the UUA decided to continue the funding. Sadly, nationally this was a time of polarization. The black and white solidarity newly formed and needing maturation, that had further empowered the Civil Rights struggle, began to fall apart under rhetoric. It was a time not of idealism but of ideologies – of people who found that their hard work had brought the country only so far and that the rest of the work was going to be slow and painstaking. The work of moving hearts as well as legislatures, the work of building that just society that had failed to appear after the Civil War. James Forman had delivered the Black Manifesto on May 4, 1969. The next month the BAC returned to the General Assembly demanding that the agenda of the Assembly be removed and that a new agenda – formed by BAC – be substituted. The General Assembly did not concede to the demands and a number of delegates – 400 – walked out of the Assembly. Further it was clear that the budget for the BAC was not going to be as large as they had at first been promised. Only mediation brought the Assembly back together – this association had come dangerously close to a split based upon political ideology. A vote was taken to stop support of the Black and White Action group. When a new administration began in the UUA the financial arrangements did change and the BAC eventually left the UUA.
The events that transpired after Cleveland left a scar on the our movement. I don’t claim that the UUA handled the Black Empowerment Controversy well. I suspect that they didn’t. I don’t claim that the UUA, as any predominantly white, middle class group does, has no further learning to do about racism and about justice – everyone of us does. I do know that the UUA has worked to rebuild a new attitude toward the work of creating that more just world – certainly we have seen that in our work with lesbian and gay issues. The UUA has also affirmed a deepened commitment to the work of anti-racism. I feel certain that, at this year’s General Assembly there will be exploration and discussion about all of this and our history will be further written – I have offered this story in the hope that you will consider going and participating in this discussion.
Our work is nowhere near done. And what I hope is that we will take our cues from those who have been idealistic without being ideological. What I hope that is that rather than hiding in analyses we are able to trust ourselves and one another enough to simply work – with devotion and purpose and commitment to one another – toward the good and do our growing on the way. What I hope is that, as Unitarian Universalists, we allow ourselves to be guided by our principles of the wholeness and dignity of every person and of the wholeness of the great chain of being in which we live. What I hope is that we will move forward taking our cues from those who have served the cause of justice in love.
We have declared ourselves to be those who would value the spirit above the creed – who would follow the heart as well in a world of divisive judgment. If we forget that love is the spirit of this church – and of our religious movement in general – we experience the only sort of fall that Unitarian Universalists can – we suffer the loss of our profound relatedness. Sophia Fahs wrote, "We want a whole self, in a world that is undivided and in a cosmos that is whole." I would say that it is in knowing our relation to the whole – what the Buddhists call right relation – that we can test and find out if our ideals are worthy of us and of our commitment.
Thandeka claimed something even more powerful in her book Learning to be White. She clamied that we have to move beyond ideologies about race and racism in order to heal the deep fissures within every one of us that our heavily divided society has produced. What Fahs and Thandeka represent, what Reeb and Luizzo and the many people who traveled along those harsh roads with King and the Freedom Marchers represent, is the deep spirit of Unitarian Universalism at its best – the deep river of love.
Sophia Fahs also said: " We need to realize that life never ceases to be a giving and receiving. If our long-time goal is the salvation of the world community rather than merely the salvation of a few individuals our concept of individual responsibility changes. Instead we are joined together in one family, all seeking for a richness of life never before known."
We are a religious movement with a spirit that lives at our core – a spirit of love and deep unity – Unitarian Universalism – a spirit that can animate our work together. This is neither weak nor is it a social quality -- it is the stuff that binds the atoms and has the strength to create worlds if used rightly. Beyond ideologies it truly empowers every one of us to step forward and serve. To animate this spirit in us and in our work is neither easy nor cheap – it requires feeling, thought and action – it requires the call and support of communities like this one. This is the love beyond which there is no greater love – that can make us rise from the evening news in urgency and put our hands into the work of the world.