Sacrilege, Cultural Borrowing & My Theology by Del Carpenter (sermon to CVUU 1-19-20, then to Town & Gown Supper Club 1-21-20)
This sermon started as a speech for a group called Town & Gown supper club. When I started, it was not intended as a sermon. I picked a religious topic because I have a long history of being interested in religion; for instance my master’s thesis in history, completed almost 48 years ago, was about a particular variety of religious groups. Also some of the members of the supper club are religion or philosophy professors. I don’t have to worry about a grade. I wanted to talk about something that already interests people. And this subject very much interests me.
Last summer, while I was looking for a topic, I was privileged to listen in on and somewhat participate in a conversation two Unitarian Universalists were having about their personal response to a particular Sunday service here at CVUU about 3 or 4 years ago. Both had felt uncomfortable about that service and still carried what I will call hurt or pain from that service. Did I say clearly enough both of them were then and still are now Unitarian Universalists?
My own official Unitarian Universalist membership stretches over a period of 51 years. The longer I’m a UU the more convinced I am, I ought to be able to translate enough to be able to sit down and worship with almost anyone. I respect both of the two UUs having the conversation about how they felt about that one particular service. Their conversation started me on a theological journey to understand how a Unitarian Universalist service could feel somewhat sacrilegious to two Unitarian Universalists. I should mention they did not mention sacrilege but that is the term that came to my mind. The term sacrilege already interested me because of my UU nephew’s insistence that cultural appropriation is often a form of sacrilegious oppression.
So what is sacrilege?
Sacrilegious is often used in reference to religion, or to religious things, so it is easy to see why people might be confused by its spelling. However, sacrilegious and reli
"The earliest sense of sacrilege, in use since the beginning of the 14th century, was concerned with the theft, misuse, or desecration of sacred or holy things. It still is used in this sense quite often, but has also taken on a broader meaning, in which it refers to irreverence to a person, place, or thing which may or may not have religious significance.
“come with us now to those thrilling days of yesteryear” (bonus points for identifying that reference)
Historically the Unitarian denomination is based on a belief the concept of the Trinity was wrong, Perhaps their most important religious contribution was early support for religious freedom or tolerance as found in the Edict of Torda which was issued on January 13th, 1568 in Transylvania. The concluding paragraph of the edict says in part:
…in every place the preachers shall preach and explain the Gospel each according to his understanding of it, and if the congregation like it, well. If not, no one shall compel them for their souls would not be satisfied, but they shall be permitted to keep a preacher whose teaching they approve. Therefore none of the superintendents or others shall abuse the preachers, no one shall be reviled for his religion by anyone, according to the previous statutes, and it is not permitted that anyone should threaten anyone else by imprisonment or by removal from his post for his teaching. For faith is the gift of God….
The Universalist denomination which was called the Universalist Church of America traces its roots to the 18th century when John Murray’s immigration to America brought a doctrine of Universal Salvation. Other religious groups have had similar doctrines, such as some Anabaptists, & Moravians, and some others.
In Waterloo IA a 1954 centennial commission noted the 2nd religious group organized in Waterloo was a Universalist group which began meeting in 1867 and built a church in 1889. A Unitarian Fellowship was established in Cedar Falls in the 1940s. The two national UU denominations merged in 1961. The local UU groups either merged in 1960 a year ahead of the merger of the national denominations or a year after in 1962. The local merged group called themselves the Unitarian Universalist Society of Black Hawk County which later became Cedar Valley Unitarian Universalist.
Reading the Edict of Torda today one might think it extended religious freedom to all groups in that area. History wasn’t that simple. But the Edict was part of the foundation which helped to lead both to religious freedom for all groups and also for all individuals.
That was part of how we got to the priesthood of all believers. Within Unitarian Universalism and in some other denominations we have also in effect come to what I will call the pope hood of all believers. The fact that an adult curriculum called Building Your Own Theology is one of the most popular courses published by the Unitarian Universalist Association is not accidental. UUs do expect and use that amount of religious freedom for themselves, and are comfortable being in services next to members who also use that freedom even though the individual results are different. We Cedar Valley Unitarian Universalist members are Atheists, Agnostics, Buddhists, Christians, Jews, Pagans, and perhaps others.
Sometimes we UUs may need to adjust whatever sense of sacrilege we have so we can sit next to each other in a service.
Our UU congregational polity is like that of the Congregational Church. Each UU congregation handles all of its own affairs including selecting ministers; and holding on to or letting go of ministers. No bishops, no real popes. We have an organizational democracy and a Theological democracy.
I still have some sense of sacrilege. I have a bass voice. One of my sources of joy is singing the bass part on hymns. To me the current UU hymnal is somewhat “sacrilegious” because the harmonizing parts on two of my favorite songs are missing. In this hymnal both “O Come O Come Emmanuel”, and “Morning Has Broken” are printed to be sung in unison. The harmonizing parts in the previous hymnal were left out of this hymnal. My enjoyment of two of my favorite hymns is damaged each time we sing those hymns. The omission of the harmonizing voice parts doesn’t meet what most people would call sacrilege. But, that omission creates for me a feeling of loss. Some day I’m going to photocopy pages from the old hymnal with the harmonized parts and paste them into the new hymnal.
In the first conversation two other UU’s were talking about a particular UU religious service about 2-4 years after that service. In that service they felt something they individually held sacred was being somewhat violated. They did not use the term, sacrilege. But to me, a UU listening to and participating in the conversation, I thought they were talking about that particular UU service as though they had been in the presence of sacrilege or something close to what they regarded as sacrilege. Listening to them I wondered on the one hand, how can they really be UUs if they can have that reaction within a UU religious service? Even while I was having that thought I knew deep down they were and are Unitarian Universalists. So what had happened?
Both of them felt an emotional touchpoint was stepped on in that service. It was a communion service on an anniversary Sunday in a January at Cedar Valley Unitarian Universalist. The Universalists first met in Waterloo in 1867 (the second group mentioned in a 1954 listing on early Waterloo churches.) , They built their first church in 1889, moved to a 2nd building in 1915, and merged with the Unitarian Fellowship of Cedar Falls in 1962. I don’t know if Anniversary Sunday refers to their 1867 beginning as a group or the 1889 construction of their first building.
Sometime around 2010 after a long time without any communion services our minister at that time, Eva Cameron, started having communion on each Anniversary Sunday, celebrating of our Universalist heritage, on the first Sunday in January. I participated in those services and was not at all offended by them. A few years later I was privileged to be part of a conversation with two other UUs who attended the one of those communion services and who both felt offended by the service. Both of those UU persons felt the service encouraged play acting by non-believers. Both felt that sense of play acting was not sufficiently sacred or not respectful enough to what they regarded as the intent of communion. One of the them was no longer Christian, one of them was still Christian: both were disturbed by a lack a sense of sacredness in the communion service. Neither of them used the term sacrilegious. I don’t know if either of them would say that UU communion service was sacrilegious. But my experience in that conversation was a catalyst in leading me to this sermon.
What had happened was a question that bothered me? Two UUs for whom I have a lot of respect felt damaged by a lack of sacredness in a UU communion service. I did not have that same feeling. Why were they not as tolerant as me? Why was I not as damaged as they? After considering these issues off and on for about 6 months, I think I finally have an answer.
What we believe intellectually or what we are willing to allow intellectually is not the same as what we are willing to allow emotionally. Emotional responses that build up and are reinforced over decades can’t be as easily converted as our intellectual response. Given new information today we might change our mind and say we now believe something new. But our emotional response won’t change today. That slow emotional change might explain part of the persistence of emotional attachments, positive or negative; such as some of the persistence of racism. And it may explain why a behavior that was regarded by us in the past as sacred can still give us an emotional twinge or hurt or damage even though our current beliefs don’t hold that behavior as sacred. In my case the fact I wasn’t bothered by the communion service could mean my emotional attachment to my past beliefs wasn’t as strong as I had thought.
Saturday in the middle of the night I thought of another explanation and wondered why I didn’t think of it before. In high school I acted in three all school plays, 4 main plays at UNI, one student production, and one Wesley Foundation play. I’ve written & presented several skits for UU finance campaigns. Play acting doesn’t always work. Not for everyone. But sometimes, play acting conveys truth.
Sacraments don’t always work either. Sometimes the outer sign of a hoped for inner grace is just the outer sign of an inner desire for grace. If the only result of play acting with a sacrament is awakening a spark of a desire for inner grace for some, then I think the play acting was worthwhile.
In another conversation with a UU who is a nephew of mine I listened to a righteous expression of anger as he talked about instances of what I call cultural borrowing, which he calls cultural appropriation and which he regards as cultural oppression of Native Americans. I think for my UU nephew what he was describing was sacrilege. I agree that is true part of the time. I still think most cultural borrowing is just borrowing; just the most recent example of what humans do and not oppression in intent or effect. We don’t agree on that yet. We are still talking. And that is another example of what humans do.
We have a theological democracy for good reason. We are here among people of differing beliefs, with different senses of what is sacred because, we choose to rely somewhat on each other and our differences to help us to a better path.
That is also a good reason to have a political democracy: our differences can help us to a better path.
