A New Day is Dawning
By Rev. Steven A. Protzman
January 25, 2015
© January 2015
First Reading:
Second Reading:
Decade Roundup: 7 Signs We Are Becoming More Spiritually
Focused By Russell Bishop1
Map of the Journey in Progress by Victoria Safford2
Sermon
The Persian poet Rumi wrote: "The dawn has secrets to tell. Don't go back to sleep." A
member of our congregation said recently that our process for finding a new facility is an
awakening in which we are discovering new opportunities for who we can be in the
world. What does it mean to awaken spiritually as individuals and a community and
what secrets, what wonder, what joy awaits us in this new day that is dawning?
Once upon a time, at a Sunday service in one of the very big Unitarian churches in
Boston, a man was making a ruckus in the back pew. The minister said, "We are held by
the spirit of life and love" and the man shouted: "Amen! A few moments later the
minister said something else and this time the man shouted: "Hallelujah!" One of the
ushers approached the man and spoke to him discreetly. "Sir, umm, we just don't do
things like that here." The man replied, "But I got religion!" The usher said, "Well you
certainly didn't get it here." I don't know who wrote that brilliant joke, but I confess that I
find it so useful that I've told it to you more than once. I've been tempted to tell the same
joke for several weeks in a row and see how many different ways I can interpret it, but I
will spare you that exercise for now.
As with many jokes, they're funny because they reveal a deeper truth about something.
In this case, the very notion of getting religion, of having an emotional conversion
experience, goes against our UU tendency to shape our worldview using fact, reason and
logic. After all, as Unitarian Universalists, we are children of the Enlightenment, a
European philosophical movement that swept America in the 1700s. Also called the Age
of Reason, this era laid the foundation for a scientific, rather than religious, worldview.
Freedom of conscience was at the heart of this struggle against old regimes and old ways
of thinking, and it changed the way people viewed authority. In the same way, a
religious revival, called the Great Awakening, changed the way people thought about
their relationship with the divine, with themselves and with other people. The
Enlightenment engaged the mind, but the Great Awakening engaged the heart.
The First Great Awakening affected British North America in the 1730s and 40s. True to
the values of the Enlightenment, the Awakening emphasized human decision in matters
of religion and morality. It respected each individual's feelings and emotions. In stark
contrast to Puritanism, which emphasized outward actions as proof of salvation, the Great
Awakening focused on inward changes in the Christian's heart. The first Great
Awakening was not without its excesses though. One of the most infamous traveling
preachers in the First Great Awakening was James Davenport. Just as the Puritans had
1
done, Davenport taught that people needed to avoid the influence of the Devil in
everyday life. He held public bonfires so his followers could burn the things that
distracted or tempted them to pride. Non-religious books and luxury items commonly
ended up in ashes. But one night, Davenport went too far in saying fancy clothes were
luring people to vanity. Leading by example, he took off his pants and threw them in the
fire! That was the end of his preaching career.3
The Second Great Awakening swept the United States from the 1790s into the 1830s.
This awakening fundamentally altered the character of American religion. At the start of
the Revolution the largest denominations were Congregationalists (the 18th-century
descendants of Puritan churches), Anglicans (known after the Revolution as
Episcopalians), and Quakers. But by 1800, Evangelical Methodism and Baptists were
becoming the fastest growing religions in the nation. The Second Great Awakening is
best known for its large camp meetings that led many people to convert through an
enthusiastic style of preaching and audience participation. A young man who attended
the famous 20,000-person revival at Cane Ridge, Kentucky, in 1802, captures the spirit of
these camp meetings activity: "The noise was like the roar of Niagara. The vast sea of
human beings seemed to be agitated as if by a storm. I counted seven ministers, all
preaching at one time, some on stumps, others on wagons ... Some of the people were
singing, others praying, some crying for mercy. A peculiarly strange sensation came over
me. My heart beat tumultuously, my knees trembled, my lips quivered, and I felt as
though I must fall to the ground."
The Second Great Awakening marked a fundamental transition in American religious
life. Many early American religious groups in the Calvinist tradition had emphasized the
deep depravity of human beings and believed they could only be saved through the grace
of God. The new evangelical movement, however, placed greater emphasis on humans'
ability to change their situation for the better. By stressing that individuals could assert
their "free will" in choosing to be saved and by suggesting that salvation was open to all
human beings, the Second Great Awakening embraced a more optimistic view of the
human condition. The repeated and varied revivals of these several decades helped make
the United States a much more deeply Protestant nation than it had been before. The
Second Great Awakening also brought about the Civil War as the conscience of America
realized it could no longer tolerate slavery and it created greater public roles for white
women and much higher African-American participation in Christianity than ever
before.4
Our UU history is not without pendulum swings between logic and emotion. It was
partly due to what many saw as the emotional excesses of the first Great Awakening that
Unitarianism arose in this country with its emphasis on the use of reason. The
Transcendentalist movement in 19th century Unitarianism, led by some of the greatest
American minds, including Ralph Waldo Emerson and Margaret Fuller, was a reaction to
what Emerson called "corpse cold Unitarianism". He felt that Unitarian preaching and
worship were too academic and irrelevant to living and that true religion must appeal to
the heart as well as the mind. In his famous 1838 Divinity School address, Emerson
urged the newborn bards of the Holy Ghost, as he referred to the graduating class, to
speak from their own authentic experience. In the early 20th century, the Humanist
2
movement arose in Unitarianism as a reaction to historic religions that were seen as
superstition and holding human progress back. John Dietrich, a Unitarian minister and
leader of the Humanist movement, proclaimed that humankind must rely on ourselves
and abandon the childish emotional notion that God will fix everything for us.
Today the pendulum is somewhere between the two extremes as we seek to find a
balance between the use of reason and appealing to emotion and the heart, although there
are congregations in our Association that are experimenting with some evangelical
practices. On Facebook yesterday I read that a UU Revival is happening in Ft. Worth,
Texas this weekend. I wonder just what a UU revival would be like. Will it be people
reciting our principles and shouting Hallelujah? Or regular outbursts of "Amens" and
"Preach it brother or sister" during the services? Will there be an altar call, an invitation
to come forward and be saved? As the usher said in the opening story, we just don't do
things like that. A website advertising this event says that this revival is not the typical
fire and brimstone tent gathering but it will have fiery preaching and outstanding
testimony as a way of deepening faith and inspiring seekers with the promise of Unitarian
Universalism.
You and I are not strangers to the idea of conversion or awakening, those moments that
change us. It is a normal part of human experience. We all experience the natural ebb
and flow of life with the losses, the a-ha moments, the achievements, the struggles that
coming with living, those times when we are able to be our best, most authentic and most
human selves, those moments of being fully awake, of having a conversion experience.
If we seek to live as fully as possible though, our goal for spiritual growth should be to be
as awake, as aware and as connected to life as possible. In one of my favorite poems
Rumi writes:
The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you.
Don’t go back to sleep.
People are going back and forth across the doorsill
where the two worlds touch.
The door is round and open.
Don’t go back to sleep.
Rumi knows that the natural human tendency is to move back and forth all the time
between our best selves and our flawed, struggling self. It’s so easy to go back to sleepthe sleep of convenience, of complacency, of indifference. To ignore the longing for
something better, something more meaningful. It’s so easy to shut out the inner voice
that tells you what you already know to be true but don’t want to admit. It’s so easy to
choose safety over soul, but when we have those times of awareness, we grow spiritually,
we have moments of conversion. In the second reading, Victoria Safford talks about her
moments of conversion: "Here’s a place where I forgave someone, against my better
judgment, and I survived that, and unexpectedly, amazingly, I became wiser. Here’s
where I was once forgiven, was ready for once in my life to receive forgiveness and to be
transformed. And I survived that also. I lived to tell the tale. Here’s where I was told
that something was wrong with my eyes, that I see the world strangely, and here’s where
I said, "Yes, I know, I walk in beauty." Here is where I began to look with my own eyes
3
and listen with my ears and sing my own song, shaky as it is. Here is where, as if by
surgeon’s knife, my heart was opened up - and here, and here, and here, and here. These
are the landmarks of conversion."5
As the Great Awakenings demonstrate, conversion experiences are also possible on a
large scale. Many philosophers, theologians and great thinkers have written that it's past
time for a third great awakening in our country. Some people believe it's already
happening. In the first reading, Russell Bishop asks: "Could it be that more and more
people are seeking an inspirational or religious awakening, a conscious re-connection to
something deeper, something that causes them to awaken to something more meaningful
than ordinary day-to-day pursuits? Could people be awakening to something that
connects them (again) to a deeper source, a more loving, caring and forgiving source, one
that can sustain a person at a deeper level, transcending the temporal nature of physical
world possessions?"6 Yes!
Would it surprise you if I told you that we're having a revival here at UUSIC? There isn't
a tent set up outside with hellfire and brimstone preaching- you know that's not my stylebut a lot of energy has awakened and is alive and well around here- a spirit of joy, of
commitment, a desire to share the message of Unitarian Universalism with a world that
needs the hope and love we have to offer. Two and a half years ago we wrote a mission
statement that is about conversion, about the power of the human heart to change and to
help others change- we are a diverse spiritual community that touches hearts, changes
lives, and transforms the world- and the energy behind our mission is obvious to
everyone who comes through our doors.
Now there's even more energy here as our process to create a facility worthy of our
mission continues. One of our members recently wrote these words: "our process of
finding a new facility is like an awakening for our whole UU community-we are
awakening to the possibilities of so many opportunities: what we may offer our children,
what we may offer our community in programs, who may join us and add to our
community, what will envision our church to look like, how we may be more
environmentally friendly, more accessible and so many more opportunities. When we
started talking about this you could see and feel how the whole group awakened just
talking about it! What a wonderful time it is in our church community! Thanks to all of
you who are bringing us there!"
I confess that at moments I stop and wonder sometimes why we're here, why this
congregation exists, why you brave souls keep showing up week after week. Someone
recently quipped that it's because you never know what I'm going to say up here. That
may be true, but then I realize you're also here because you've discovered our secretthere is wonder, beauty and joy in being together. We are a church that laughs and
applauds, a church that experiences the power of being spiritually awake, a church that
walks in beauty, a church that finds joy in serving others, a church that knows, as
yesterday's Winter Day of Service demonstrated, all the amazing things we can do
together. We are also a church that has also come to a unique time in our history in
which our vision continues to expand and with it our imagination of what is possible.
4
A new day is dawning.
It's been a long time coming, but it's here. It's scary, it's exciting, it's the culmination of
years of dreaming, of studying, of disappointments and struggle, it's history in the
making, it's our combined spirits and the Spirit of Life at work in our midst. Next week
we will make a once in a lifetime decision. On the surface, the question is about building
a new facility. In November of 2013 we decided that this building as it currently stands
or with renovations does not and cannot serve us or our mission. Together through a
transparent and inclusive process we began the search to discover what we need for now
and the next 100 years. With a creative and affordable solution proposed, next week's
vote asks us to say we are willing to commit our resources and to make the sacrifices
necessary for a new building that will better serve our mission and the needs of Iowa
City. That's not the real question though. Next week's vote is really about answering
life's question:
Are we ready?
Are we ready to leap beyond the surface of what we know and trust into a great adventure
that will ask us to change, to take risks and to move boldly forward in faith, trusting each
other and walking together toward the new day that is dawning?
We can do this like a revival. I won't have an altar call and invite you down to the front
to demonstrate your commitment to UUSIC, but I will ask you to say yes out loud if you
are truly ready.
So, are we ready?
As life calls us on, may we walk boldly together toward the dawning future that is ours to
dream and to make real.
References
1
Bishop, Russell, "Decade Roundup: 7 Signs We Are Becoming More Spiritually
Focused", Huffington Post article, March 2010, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/russellbishop/decade-roundup-7-signs-we_b_403719.html
2
Safford, Victoria, "Map of the Journey in Progress", from Walking Toward Morning,
Meditations, Boston: Skinner House Books, 2003, pg. 57.
3
Lutz, Alexandra, "The First Great Awakening: Religious Revival and American
Independence", http://education-portal.com/academy/lesson/the-first-great-awakeningreligious-revival-and-american-independence.html
4
"Religious Transformation and the Great Awakening", US History,
http://www.ushistory.org/us/22c.asp
5
Safford, Ibid.
6
Bishop, Ibid.
5