 Testing testing. Thank you Please join me in a few moments of centering silence. Please remain seated while we sing the Gathering Hymn, which is 300 in your hymnal or is printed in your program. And welcome to First Unitarian Society of Madison. This is a community where curious seekers gather to explore spiritual, ethical and social issues in an accepting and nourishing environment. Unitarian Universalism supports the freedom of conscience of each individual as together we seek to be a force for good in the world. My name is Pat Coulson and on behalf of the congregation, I would like to extend a special welcome to visitors. We are a welcoming congregation. So whatever you are and wherever you happen to be on your life journey, we celebrate your presence among us. Newcomers are encouraged to stay for our fellowship hour after the service in the commons area of the Atrium Edition. And you may access that through the loja or you can go across the parking lot. Members of our staff in lay ministry will be on hand to welcome you and usually are congregated around the library area. If you are accompanied by a young child, please remember that if they need to talk or move around, again the loja area, to my right is a good place to retire with them. And at this time, we ask you to turn off your beepers, cell phones and other electronic equipment that might cause a disturbance during the hour. I would like to acknowledge those individuals who help run our services so smoothly. Rebecca Bernstein is out as a greeter. Bob Rodford and Shirley are here with as lay ministers and I think Dublin is ushers. Our hospitality coffee will be put together by one of our favorites, Willie Bernstein. So I hope you will join us for coffee. And the flower offering today is from Becky Smith. Please note the announcements on the red floor insert in your order of service, which describes upcoming events at the society and provide more information about today's activities. We have a couple of more announcements to add, especially about next Saturday when we will be having a special prepared meal, chicken, roast, vegetables, spring rolls, cherry cake and macaroons. Is your mouth watering yet? If it is, then please join us on Saturday, January 9th from 6.30 to 8.30 for our annual dinner and celebration of our international partnership. This dinner is taking the place of our monthly Saturday potluck. So don't bring a dish, bring your donation and plan to be a part of this magical evening created by our high school youth group. The dinner supports student scholarships and music program for our partner church in Romania as well as a UU high school student in the Philippines. There will be delicious food, music and dancing. Find out more from your red floors insert and look for Kelly in the Commons after the service to sign up. We want to be sure to have plenty of food for that special event. Again, welcome. We hope that today's service will stimulate your mind, touch your heart and stir your spirit. Thank you Collin for that energetic opening. Come as you are. You don't need to get your beliefs on straight first before you come. Just come as you are. Come with your doubts and your questions and your ambiguities. Come and be welcome. Come here just as you are. Let us be together this evening. Let us all grow in free and open religious community. I invite you to rise and body and spirit as we light our chalice this evening. And our words of affirmation are responsive in nature if you will join your voices in reading the bold and italicized sections. Let religion be to us life and joy. An eye that glories in nature's majesty and beauty and a heart that rejoices in deeds of kindness and courage. Let it be to us hope and purpose and a discovering of opportunities to achieve excellence through daily tasks. Let it be a call to generous action and in the spirit of that generosity I invite you to turn and exchange a warm greeting with your neighbor. Well this is actually a story about someone who went to school and was really really smart and I want to tell you about him because he was actually born 500 years ago in the year 1515 and he was born in a small village in what is now the country of France and this boy's name was Sebastian. Anybody know any Sebastians? There's a few out there and as a child in his home he was taught his native language which was French but he was also taught the language of Italy Italian and then when he first started going to school he learned a third language which was German. Now we really don't know a whole lot about Sebastian's childhood except for this that he was very very smart but in time he did go to a university in a city called Lyon and while he was at the university in Lyon he learned three more languages Greek Latin and Hebrew so by the time he graduated how many languages could he speak? Six that's right and he also seems to have been a fairly accomplished musician okay he could play instruments and he was also quite a good poet. Now he was raised in the Roman Catholic Church but during his student days at the University of Lyon he noticed he observed that people who disagreed with what the Roman Catholic Church taught were arrested sometimes and they were tortured and sometimes they were even killed and this made him very very upset. Sebastian said just because someone believed something other than what the church believes why should they be hurt and so he decided after he graduated to leave his home in France and to go to the city of Geneva in Switzerland and this is Sebastian by the way this is Sebastian. Now he chose to go to this particular city in Geneva because it was the home of a very important religious reformer named John Calvin and it seemed like John Calvin from the books that Sebastian had read that John Calvin had written that John Calvin was a more tolerant person than the Roman Catholic priests that he knew in France and so Sebastian whose name was Castelio well being very smart and wanting to get to know this very intelligent man John Calvin went to Geneva to see whether he could work with him but there was a little bit of a problem here because you see Sebastian was so smart that he liked to think for himself he didn't like to be told what to think or what to believe well when he got to Geneva John Calvin welcomed him with open arms and could see that he was very very intelligent and he invited Sebastian to work with him in Geneva but it wasn't very long before the two had a very very serious disagreement they locked horns because Sebastian knowing all these different languages he wanted to translate the Bible from Latin and Greek into French now why would he want to do that well because 500 years ago hardly anybody knew how to speak and to read Latin but lots more people knew how to speak and to read French and so Sebastian thought if I could translate the Bible into French then lots more people would be able to read the Bible well John Calvin didn't like that idea mainly because it wasn't his idea and also because maybe if people started reading the Bible on their own then they'd start forming their own opinions getting their own ideas and they wouldn't be the same as John Calvin's so that was the first of several disagreements the Sebastian had with John Calvin and this by the way is John Calvin so sometime later Sebastian insisted that there was something kind of wrong in the city of Geneva that what John Calvin and the other ministers were telling the common people to do just everyday people was not exactly the same thing that they themselves were doing not everybody was following the same rules and so Sebastian said you know the ministers and John Calvin and even I we need to follow the same rules as we're telling everybody else to follow well John Calvin didn't like that very much either because he thought it was undermining the power of him and his fellow ministers so Sebastian was disappointed kind of disillusioned about life in Geneva and he decided he was going to move to another city he moved to the city of Basel in Switzerland and Basel was very famous because religious rebels from all over Europe used to go to Basel because it was a very tolerant city and he soon got a job in Basel teaching at that university teaching Greek to young students but Sebastian never forgot about what he had first seen in France where people were being hurt because they disagreed with what the Roman Catholic Church taught and so he learned that John Calvin was actually doing the same kinds of things in Geneva and Sebastian was 38 years old when he learned that a man named Michael Servetus who was actually one of our Unitarian ancestors that Michael Servetus was arrested by John Calvin in Geneva and he was thrown into prison and he was tortured and he was executed and Michael Servetus's crime was that he simply wrote things about Christianity that John Calvin simply didn't agree with and didn't like and so he killed him so what did Sebastian decide he needed to do Sebastian decided that he needed to write his own book and his book was entitled concerning heretics anybody know what a heretic is a heretic is a person whose religious ideas might not agree with yours or with mine religious ideas that are considered to be dangerous or unacceptable and so what Sebastian did was to write a book and it was the first book of its kind ever to be published in which he made a strong argument that people should not be hurt simply because they believe something different from the established church authorities and Sebastian said in his book that's what's really important is how we treat each other whether we follow the teachings of Jesus and a person's ideas about Jesus even if they're a little strange should not be a reason for that person to be punished he basically said that a person who was punished because of their beliefs well that's wrong than having having bad beliefs to begin with just shouldn't do that but when he read that book that Sebastian Castelio had written John Calvin was furious and he contacted the authorities in Basel and tried to have Sebastian arrested and thrown into jail but Sebastian was so popular in the city of Basel that the church fathers just simply said we're just going to ignore John Calvin we're going to leave Sebastian alone and so Sebastian was able to live peacefully in his own house in Basel for the rest of his life but all that strain and all that conflict with John Calvin really kind of kind of took all of his energy out of him and he died at the young age of 48 but Sebastian Castelio died having given the world its first comprehensive defense of religious freedom and religious toleration the idea that we all must be allowed to follow our own conscience while striving always to live together in the spirit of love I know that's a little bit of a history lesson maybe getting a jump on your school studies there but Sebastian Castelio was a very very important person and particularly because he took the side of one of our earliest unitary ancestors Michael Cervantes so we're going to sing you out to your classes right now with our next him number 287 enjoy yourselves religion is not a theory it is a practice it is not a creed it is a life true religion is subordination of the passions to the perceptions of the intellect religion has not civilized man man has civilized religion religion does not consist in worshiping gods but in aiding the well-being and the happiness of humankind no human being knows whether any god exists or not all that has been said or written about our god or the gods of other people has no known fact or foundation words without thoughts clouds without rain let us put theology out of our religion because religion and morality they have nothing in common and yet there is no religion except the practice of morality what you call religion is merely superstition real religion means the doing of justice real religion consists in the duties of man to man in feeding the hungry clothing the naked defending the innocent in saying what you yourself believe to be true now we do not pretend to have circumnavigated everything and to have solved all difficulties but we do believe it is better to love men than to fear gods that it is grander and nobler to think and investigate for yourself than to repeat a creed we are satisfied that there can be but little liberty on earth as long as men worship a tyrant in heaven we do not expect to accomplish everything in our day that we do want to do what we can and to render all the service possible in the holy cause of human progress we know that doing away with the gods and supernatural persons and powers is not an end in itself it is a means to an end the real end being the happiness of humankind a religion that does not command the respect of the greatest minds will in a little while excite the mockery of all and the second selection comes from a preface to morals by walter litman this book was published in 1929 and walter litman was one of the outstanding public intellectuals of the early 20th century insofar as men have lost their belief in a heavenly king they have to find some other ground for their moral choices than the revelation of his will it follows necessarily that they must find the tests of righteousness wholly within the human experience the difference between good and evil must be a difference which men themselves recognize and understand happiness that cannot be the reward of virtue it must be the intelligible consequence of it it follows too that virtue cannot be commanded it must be willed out of personal conviction and desire such a morality may properly be called humanism for it is centered not in the super human but in human nature when men can no longer be theists they must if they are civilized become humanists it is evident that a morality of humanism presents far greater difficulties than a morality premised on theism for one thing it is immediately put to a much severeer test humanism cannot claim all eternity in which its promises may be fulfilled unless its wisdom in any sphere of life is demonstrated within a reasonable time in actual experience then there is nothing to commend it the teachers of a theistic morality when the audience is devout have only to fortify the impression that the rules of conduct are certified by god the invisible king the ethical problem for the common man is to recognize the well-known credentials of his teachers and so in practice he has merely to decide whether the prince or the elders are what they claim to be and once he has done that there's no more radical questions to be asked but the teachers of humanism they have no credentials they have to prove their case by the test of mundane experience they speak with no authority which can be scrutinized once and for all and then forever be accepted they can proclaim no rule of conduct with certainty for they have no inherent personal authorities and they cannot be altogether sure that they are right and so they cannot command they cannot truly exhort they can only inquire infer and persuade they have only human insight to guide them and those to whom they speak must themselves accept in the end the full responsibility for the consequences of any advice that they choose to accept and yet with all of its difficulties it is the morality of humanism that men must turn to when the ancient order of things dissolves when they find that they can no longer believe seriously and deeply that they are governed from heaven and there will be anarchy in their souls until by conscious effort they find a way of governing themselves please join me in the spirit of meditation let me be open-eyed observant of the perpetual miracle of life and love on this fragment of a star flung across the infinity of space may I be appreciative of earth's symphony of color its harmony of shape the ubiquity of its beauty may I be aware of the wonderfulness of little children and the strength and dignity of ordinary men and women their unsung heroism to every intimation of divinity in the lives around me may I be open and aware let me be open-eared tuned in to all the varied music of the world to human melodies and to the songs of wind and water and insects and birds among the wild grasses let me also be responsive to the still sad music of our kind the falling of human tears the anguish wrenched from human hearts let me be open-minded receptive to unfamiliar thoughts to strange viewpoints making doubly sure to give fair hearing to all that challenges my staunch convictions my unexamined assumptions so let me be open to all things and let me open my mouth not in foolish boast or in garyless speech but with heartfelt praise for the privilege of being let us continue on in a moment or two of silent meditation blessed be thank you Colin about 20 miles up the road from here and a few blocks off of us 12 in sock city there is a stately wood frame building known to local residents as park hall it was built in 1884 and it is listed as a us historical site and for the past 130 years it has served as the home of the free congregation of sock county but the roots of this particular religious community go back even farther to a group of german immigrants who settled on the banks of the wisconsin river and established this their spiritual home in 1852 these were men and women who were known as 40 aiders they were refugees from germany and austria whose dreams of democracy and religious freedom in their own countries had been dashed by a resurgence of authoritarianism after a heady period of revolution and reform in the early years of the 19th century and so in the decade leading up to the civil war many forward-looking and progressive germans settled here in the upper midwest bringing with them a unique perspective on religion at one time there were as many as 30 german speaking free congregations in the state of wisconsin alone these pioneers jeff strobel wrote in 1984 were discontented with the traditional doctrine of the established churches and so they created a fellowship without creed or doctrine with no minister no hymns no authorized version of the holy bible in fact nothing beyond the realm of scientific fact and rational thought was professed as true and indeed in their articles and incorporation these founders of the sock city free congregation listed these principles and objectives a strict allegiance to reason which is defamed by the priests of all revealed religion advancement of the intellectual and moral freedom of man and his independence in thinking deciding and acting the rejection of all creeds and dogmas and the refusal to take a position on questions of god or immortality the use of ritual and ceremony as long as they are sensible beautiful and voluntary leadership in these free congregations was vested not in the minister not in a priest but in a speaker who was chosen by the congregation following an appraisal of his or her qualifications and moral character sock city's first speaker was a man named edward schrader who served in that capacity for the first 36 years of its existence three days stand out in the free congregations liturgical calendar they celebrate a spring festival founder's day and pains fest the celebration of the life and the legacy of thomas pain now i have reviewed in brief this notable chapter in the history of american free thought for two reasons first because that congregation in sock city is the last of its kind in the united states the sole remnant of a once thriving free thought movement as of 1955 that congregation took on a dual identity as a unitarian and a free thought institution a step that probably ensured its survival but secondly this congregation represents one side of the american free thought movement its institutional aspect over the years however commentators and historians have focused mainly on a small coterie of outspoken and independent individuals who also embraced this label free thought and in so doing achieved significant notoriety so let's begin and continue with the latter the man often recognized as the founder of american free thought was in fact thomas pain thomas pain was regarded as a national hero for his revolutionary writing most notably for the widely distributed pamphlet common sense pain fell from grace when his religious views later came to light the age of reason was published 20 years after common sense and it delivered a broadside against the major religions in all their varied forms and although this particular book like its predecessors sold briskly it also made the author of pariah at least in the united states pain pulled no punches in that book every national church he wrote has established itself by pretending some special mission from god communicated to certain select individuals so the jews have their moses the christians have their jesus the turks have their mohammed as if the way to god was not open to every man alike each of these churches he says accuses the other of unbelief and i for my part i disbelieve them all although thomas jefferson whose own perspective on religion resembled pains continued to befriend him this man thomas pain the man whom tennie roosevelt once called a filthy little atheist he died ignominiously at the age of 72 the quakers vetoed burying him in their cemetery in new rachel new york so thomas pain was quietly interred under a walnut tree on his own farm and yet his ideas lived on and those ideas influenced such 19th century notables as the suffragettes elizabeth katie stanton and lucrecia mott mark twain robert green ingersaw and america's 16th president abraham lincoln lincoln as is well known never belonged to a church indeed early in his political career his opponents called lincoln an infidel an accusation that contributed to his defeat when he first ran for elective office as a young man lincoln had read with approval pains the age of reason and his longtime law partner william herndon later insisted that lincoln's arguments were what showed what caused him to lose his faith during his career lincoln seldom invoked the deity in his speeches and when he did as in the second inaugural address the references were clouded with doubt and inconsistency he offered little comfort for those who in every crisis of war want to chant god is on our side susan jacobie writes this period in american history from the 1840s through the 1880s was jacobie notes the golden age of american free thought and it was the era of colonel robert green ingersaw a man known to the public as the great agnostic ingersaw was a captivating public speaker an attorney by training a civil war hero and a prominent political figure whose endorsement was sought after by candidates for high office including candidates for the united states presidency his reputation and his talent assured ingersaw a curious and often a receptive audience for his later lectures debunking religion in his public lectures often attended by thousands ingersaw would systematically and satirically dissect the propositions contained in the bible and one of his most popular public pieces was was a lecture simply entitled some mistakes of moses in another lecture the gods he argued that throughout history the gods had failed humankind because they were simply a product of human longing and human projection he was jacobie writes the first american to lay out a coherent secular humus alternative and to present the case for free thought to a broad public there is no 21st version of ingersaw she says and indeed there was no 20th century version of ingersaw that's not to say that he wasn't controversial and often the target of severe criticism and disapproval following his death the new york times accused robert ingersaw of quote depriving people of their religion without pretending to offer them anything in its stead and thus the times concluded his effect upon the public could not be otherwise then bad but others like wisconsin's fighting bob le fallot rose to ingersaw's defense the man had helped to shape his own social conscience la fallot conceded and he was someone who wanted men to think boldly about all things he demanded intellectual and moral courage la fallot wrote and wanted men to follow wherever the truth might lead them he was a rare bold heroic figure and that same boldness defined elizabeth katie stanton who with susan b anthony and lacrysia mott led the charge for women's rights during the second half of the 19th century all three of those women were religious free thinkers and nonconformists anthony was a professing unitarian mott was a progressive quaker and stanton was an independent investigator stanton a stay-at-home mom of seven children wrote the speeches that the unencumbered anthony subsequently delivered it was a powerful collaboration until until the popular stanton like thomas pain began to speak out on matters religious now stanton had let her own views be known as early as 1848 at the first women's convention that was held at seneca falls new york but as time passed she became increasingly outspoken at an 1885 meeting at the national women's suffrage association stanton offered a resolution condemning all religions for teaching quote that woman was an afterthought in creation her sex a misfortune marriage a condition of subordination and maternity occurs ten years later her thoroughly researched and highly controversial women's bible was published you may go over the world and you will find that every form of religion which has breathed upon this earth has degraded women she wrote and so long as ministers stand up and tell us that christ is the head of the church and so mad as the head of the woman how are we to break the chains which have held women down throughout the ages with this publication the women's bible this particular woman elizabeth katie stanton who had affectionately been dubbed america's grandmother was now subject to withering criticism stanton was repudiated not only by the devout but by most of the co-workers in the in the suffrage movement that had worked with her for decades and so in 1897 the suffrage association passed a resolution disavowing the women's bible and in effect the founder of the entire suffrage movement well within a couple of decades of ingress hall's death and statin's fall from grace the free thought movement ceased to be a distinct intellectual force in american life susan jay could be concedes but while it is undoubtedly true that no one of the stature of stanton and ingress hall or pain has arisen to carry that banner forward the cause that these men and women served was then and is now alive and active in institutional form organizations as various as the society for ethical culture the american humanist association the society of friends and very much in the stanton ingress hall lineage madison's freedom from religion foundation all of these are free thought citadels but our own movement unitary universalism is without question the most prominent organization upholding and practicing the principles of free thought today and moreover this has been true for at least two centuries take william betley for instance william betley served the unitarian church in salem massachusetts from 1783 until his death in 1819 betley was known for his scholarly undaugmatic preaching and his skepticism regarding the divinity of christ betley made a very positive impression on thomas jefferson who at one time offered him the presidency of the university of virginia betley demure telling jefferson that he could not stand to leave his long time parishioners back in salem susan jacob he says that unitarianism moved religion itself into the camp of enlightenment rationalism and at the core of a religion of a man like betley lay not an unquestioning faith but a deep reverence for the power of the human mind and the value of human doubt now in subsequent decades the unitarian denomination lurched toward orthodoxy in fact in 1866 a conservative faction of the american unitarian association sought to impose a christian creed on all member churches which they succeeded in doing for two years and so ralph wallow emerson said the church is no longer large enough for me or for mankind and he and others left the association and they joined forces to establish a rival free religious association where free thinkers would be welcome on matters of belief there was little unanimity among the ministers and the lay people who belong to this new free religious association but they were all of one mind in a rejecting dogmatic authority and maintaining an open mind with respect to basic theological questions like the existence of god or the likelihood of immortality one unitarian minister described the free religious association as a spiritual anti-slavery society although he never joined the association jake and loy jones the uncle of frank Lloyd Wright and an influential minister who helped establish unitarianism right here in madison jake and loy jones carried the free thought torch throughout his long career while serving our church in janesville in the 1870s jones began publishing a periodical called the sunday school and it was unique in its time for its objectivity and its inclusiveness one issue of the sunday school was entitled leaves from god's book of revelation and it offered a series of lessons on the world of nature not drawn from the book of genesis but from the life sciences themselves another series was called great teachers which introduced readers to the thought of zero aster buddha confucius socrates as well as the Hebrew prophets and jesus loy jones once described his ideal church in these words it would be a free congress of independent souls it is to lead in the campaign for more truth rather than stand guard over some petty fragment of acquired truth it will be the thinkers home and over its portals no dogmatic test is to be written to ward off an honest thinker or an earnest seeker this church must emphasize universal brotherhood it will stand upon the grand emphasis of the great word of the century and that word is unity it will seek to welcome the high and the low the rich and the poor the unbeliever as well as the believer that nineteenth century description of a unitarian church comes close to what our own congregation as well as the one in sock city stands for today both in theory and in practice it's holy in keeping with our original 1879 bond of union which holds before us a spiritual idea which we still strive to live up to and a movement such as ours is vitally important in today's media driven world where religious iconoclism and free thought are either disparaged or completely ignored a world in which public figures try to outdo one another in proclaiming their own orthodoxy and then at the other end of the spectrum we find those vociferous critics of religion like bill maher and sam Harris and daniel denett whose ideological rigidity sometimes seems antithetical to the spirit of genuine free thought and then what about the nearly 20 percent of americans who today identify as nuns undaugmatic doubtful souls who have no religious affiliation but who could certainly benefit from a companionable spiritual home like ours young nuns now outnumber young evangelicals by a margin of three to two and in explaining their own disaffection many say that they're simply turned off by the intolerance the homophobia and the hypocrisy of the established churches most of these men and women are not religiously indifferent but they are disillusioned and they are dissatisfied are they prospective candidates for membership in a non-cretal free thought community like this one as we enter a new year i would encourage you to think about your own friends family members colleagues the nuns that you know who might share your spiritual values invite them to join you sometime at f us because if we don't keep this all american tradition of free thought alive and strong no one else will bless it be end on that it is now the moment for the giving and receiving of our offering and as you can see it will be shared this weekend with the Madison area rehabilitation center please be generous peace prevails and justice is done may we know without fear and of security without oppression may we hold one another in the deep and tender places of compassion and know that the divine spark within makes soul mates of us all please be seated for the post