June 21, 2026 – Fourth Sunday after Pentecost
The Deuteronomy 6.1-9
I Corinthians 8.1-6
Yes, U.U. Can!
Fourth Sunday after Pentecost
What do the following religious traditions have in common? Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter Day Saints, Native American religion, Deism, Unitarian Universalist Church, Rosicrucians, Humanist, Wiccan and Spiritualist. Every one of them has been eliminated from the Department of Defense’s list of authorized religions as they pertain to military chaplaincy. So if you are Mormon, or Native American, or Humanist or a member of any of 180 different faith expressions serving in the US Armed Forces, there is no longer a chaplaincy service for you. I will hasten to add that the Mormon Church, which includes several members of Congress, put up such a fuss that their designation was restored. Too bad there are no Wiccans in Congress I bet they could cast a spell! Still, I would think that every person of any faith would want to be respectful of persons of other faiths, if for no other reason than to defend their right to their own religion; besides, if one person’s faith is decertified by the Pentagon, who is to say whose faith won’t be next?
But I suppose I am particularly sensitive to this because one of the most prominent faiths on the list is one of our own denominational children, direct descendants of the Congregational Church. In 1819, The Rev. William Ellery Channing, Minister at the Federal Street Church in Boston, a Congregational Church, was invited to preach a sermon at the ordination of Jared Sparks in Baltimore’s First Independent Church. Channing had been chafing at some of the more Calvinistic beliefs of late 18th and early 19th century Congregationalism and was a member of what were then being called the “New Lights” as opposed to the “Old Lights” of Puritan theology. His sermon, titled Unitarian Christianity, inflamed a long-simmering resistance to some of the stricter practices and ideas of Congregationalism, and sparked the formation of a breakaway branch of the church come to be known as Unitarianism. He was not the originator by any means, as the Unitarian tradition has its roots in the European Enlightenment, specifically in a rejection of the strictures of the Church of England. But it was his sermon that turned a progressive movement away from Congregationalism and toward a new, more humanistic understanding of Christianity.
What came to be called “the Unitarian Controversy” spread thorough New England like wildfire. It first took root at Harvard University and dominated the churches of Boston. So much so that part of the Unitarian Affirmation of Faith, which was summarized as “The Fatherhood of God, the brotherhood of man, and the leadership of Jesus,” was quickly parodied as a religion that believed in “The Fatherhood of God, the Brotherhood of Man and the Neighborhood of Boston.” It created a divide that split the church down the ecclesiastical middle. Harvard became so Unitarian that faithful Congregationalists left the school and founded Andover seminary, which many of you knew as Andover-Newton. Likewise Yale became so liberal that Hartford Seminary was founded by refugees from the New Haven campus. One school that retained its Old Light status in the Presbyterian tradition was Princeton, which saw an exodus of Unitarians leave to establish Union Seminary in New York City. Needless to say it was a time of heady theological ferment across New England and beyond.
If we were to put Unitarianism into an elevator speech, we would say that the Unitarian faith is grounded in the Oneness of God. Both our Scripture lessons this morning bear witness to the foundation of Unitarian faith and belief. “Hear O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is One.” This, of course, is also a foundation of Jewish faith and belief – it is the Hebrew shemah. And Paul wrote to the Corinthians, “There is one God, the Creator, from whom all things came and for whom we live; and there is but one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom all things came and through whom we live.” Whereas most mainline Christians are Trinitarian – Creator, Christ and Spirit – Unitarians are focused on the unity and oneness of God alone. Thank you for coming to my TED talk.
Still, as direct heirs of the Congregational tradition, Unitarians have remained, in a way, our beloved offspring. In 1961 the Unitarian Church merged with the Universalist Church of America, and today the denomination is known as the Unitarian Universalist, or U.U. for short. To an even greater extent than our own United Church of Christ, the U.U. church is in the forefront of progressive Christianity in America. When I served my church in Beverly Massachusetts, a city of around 60,000, there were four congregations that were consistently at the forefront of issues like racial equality, LGBTQ rights, affordable housing, feeding the hungry and social advocacy: the Episcopal Church, the local temple, our congregation and the U.U. church. We partnered on many social and faith initiatives and did our best to be a beacon of hope in the community. To put a fine point on it, the Unitarian Universalist Church is as much a part of mainstream Christianity as the Congregational Church and United Church of Christ. Which is why I was more than a little surprised at the Defense Department’s decision to cease providing chaplaincy services to them. And to those of Native American faith and heritage, and to the others, Deists, Humanists, Spiritualists and so many others. Of course, we understand the religious proclivities of the Defense Secretary are of a form and flavor other than progressive Christianity. But as much as the first amendment forbids the government to favor one faith over another, it also forbids the government from disfavoring one from another. Or so you might think.
So I did a little digging into our American history and Unitarian faith. As it turns out, among those who would today be disfavored by the Pentagon are Unitarians like John Adams, Thomas Jeffereson, John Quincy Adams, Millard Fillmore and William Howard Taft, or the second President of the United States, the third President of the United States, the sixth President of the United States, the thirteenth President of the United States, and the twenty-seventh President of the United States. The order would also leave out Americans like Louisa May Alcott, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Clara Barton, Paul Revere and Alexander Graham Bell, Universalists all. Debbie and I visited the grave of Paul Revere on Monday, and I cannot say for certain, but it sure looked like someone was rolling over in it, perhaps because his faith had just been decertified by the nation he helped create.
And to downgrade Deism on the cusp of America’s 250th birthday! Did the Pentagon really just turn its back on Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Paine, Ethan Allen, Presidents Madison and Monroe, Abraham Lincolnn, Thomas Edison and Neil Armstrong!? This is another sermon entirely, but if those who believe the U.S. Constitution and Bylaws are Christian documents took a closer look, they would discover that the documents are clearly Deistic rather than Christian; which is to say, they honor and recognize God and say nothing of Jesus.
But there is also a sense in which none of the above matters. Just because there are famous Unitarians and Deists woven into the history of the nation does not mean members of other demoted faiths are less important. And I think this goes to the heart of the matter. There are between 24,000 and 31,000 Native Americans serving in the US Armed Forces. Are their religious beliefs of no importance? There are twice as many who identify as atheist or agnostic. Does this mean they have no spiritual needs whatever? The old canard is that there are no atheists in foxholes, but if men and women who do not believe in a God the way that I believe in a God are going to put their lives on the line for mine, they are deserving of every benefit the US military has to offer. Who was it that went out of his way to minister to the person who had fallen among thieves in Jesus’ parable? It wasn’t a priest or a rabbi or an elder, it was a Samaritan, a person of a wholly different ethnicity and faith from the religious leaders of Jesus’ day. Is he to be denied the comfort and succor of God? Jesus didn’t appear to believe so. And remember, this was Jesus’ story to tell.
A colleague of mine who was also a former seminary student of mine sent me an article yesterday about a Unitarian minister in Texas whose partnership with a local Muslim community was attacked by some locals who had little tolerance for either faith. The article suggested that it is a slippery slope from harassing Muslims to targeting Unitarians and who knows where it might lead next – Catholics? Methodists? Call me naïve, but I don’t share that worry. At the end of the day, it is folks like you and me who are called to stand hand in hand and shoulder to shoulder with women and men whose faith we may or may not share simply because we believe differently. If we want our faith to be honored and respected by others, then we need to begin by honoring and respecting other’s faiths as well.