 Please join in a moment of centering silence, so we can be fully present with each other this morning. And now let's get musically present with each other by turning to the words for our in-gathering hymn, which you'll find inside your order of service. Welcome to the first Sunday of 2016 at First Unitarian Society, where independent thinkers gather in a safe, nurturing environment to explore issues of social, spiritual, and ethical significance as we try to make a difference in this world. I'm Steve Goldberg, a proud, free-thinking member of this congregation. And it is a special pleasure to extend a happy hello to any guests, visitors, or newcomers. If this is your first time at First Unitarian Society, I know that you'll find this is a special place. And if you'd like to learn more about our special buildings, we offer a guided tour after every service. Just gather over here by the windows after the service, and we'll take care of you. And speaking of taking care of you, I think you know the drill by now. This is a perfect time to silence those pesky electronic devices that might interfere your enjoyment of the service. And this includes those of you watching or listening at home. And if you are accompanied this morning by a youngster to today's service, and you think that youngster would rather enjoy the service from a more private space, we offer a couple options for you. One is our child haven in the back corner of the auditorium, and then, of course, the authentic Frank Lloyd Wright seating right outside our doors in the commons. The service is brought to us today as it is every weekend by a wonderful team of volunteers whose names I'm going to read now so that you can thank them a little bit later, give them a handshake or a hug or a happy New Year's greeting. Thank you to David Briles for operating the sound system. Thank you to Tom Boykoff for serving as our lay minister today. Jeanine Nussbaum, whose smiling face greeted us as we walked in upstairs this morning. Our usher team, including Marty Hollis, Mary Savage, and Ann Ostrom. The all-important coffee and hospitality are hosted by Nancy Kossoff after the service. Flowers were donated by Becky Smith, and Michelle Masson is our tour guide this morning. Just a couple of announcements before we begin the service. First, listen to these food items. Chicken, roasted vegetables, spring rolls, cherry cake, not to be confused with cherry Coke, and macaroons. Is your mouth watering yet? Well, if it is, then our high school youth group invites you to join them on Saturday, January 9. This Saturday from 6.30 to 8.30 for our annual dinner and celebration of our international partnership. Proceeds from this special evening will support students, scholarships, and music programs of our partner church in Romania and a student who is studying in the Philippines, a UU student. All proceeds will help support the work of those programs. So come join the high school youth group on Saturday evening this weekend. Delicious food, music, and dancing. If you have questions, you can look for Kelly in the commons after today's service to sign up. Two more announcements. One is on January 24th, so three weeks from today. Right after the 11 o'clock service, right in this very room, the Board of Trustees invite you to join them for a financial update regarding the congregation's financial situation. And it's a great opportunity to get special insight regarding the congregation's finances. One thing that makes it a special opportunity is lunch will be served by the world famous food haulers. So right after the 11 o'clock service on Sunday, January 24th. And speaking of dates, in 117 days in this very building, Friday evening, April 29, cabaret. So speaking of things to look forward to, please sit back or lean forward to enjoy today's service. I know it will touch your heart, stir your spirit, and trigger one or two new thoughts. Again, happy New Year. We're glad that the New Year and you are here. Come as you are. You do not 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 as you are. This morning, let us be together and let us grow in free and open religious community. I invite you to rise in body and spirit for the lighting of our chalice. And our chalice-fighting words are responsive, so if you will join your voices in 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 to your neighbors and exchange a warm greeting. And if we have some youngsters in the congregation today, now is the time for the message for all ages. I'd invite you to come forward. So everybody have a good Christmas? Yeah. Good. So I got a question for you to start off. If I were to say something about Santa Claus. Something that you didn't like. And you were to disagree with me about Santa Claus. What would we do next? We'd start arguing. But would it be a friendly argument? Would it be a friendly argument? Oh. Well, I hope it would be a friendly argument. I would hope it would actually be a nice conversation. And that maybe we would end up agreeing about some things. Okay. Santa Claus is kind of an important person around Christmas, right? Okay. Alright. Okay. Well, you know, someone like Jesus or God is kind of important to some people all the time. And so this is a story about a man who lived 500 years ago. In fact, he was born in 1555, 500 years ago. And he had some disagreements about God and about Jesus with some very, very important people. And this is about what happened to him and what he did. He was born in 1515. And this is 2016. So, 501 years ago. Now, this man's name was Sebastian. And when he got older, he looked like this. That's the way people looked in 1515. And he was really, really smart when he was a kid. Anybody smart here? Yeah, you're smart. Sebastian was so smart that by the time he had finished grade school, when he was about 12 years old, he knew how many languages he could speak. He could speak French. And he could speak Italian. And he could speak German. And then he went to college. And he learned how to speak three more languages. Latin, Greek, and Hebrew. So he knew six different languages. He did not know English, though, so he probably couldn't talk to us. But in any case, he was also a very good musician. And he also wrote poetry, really good poetry. But he was really, really interested in religion. Now, he lived in France. And in France, at that period of time, 500 years ago, when somebody would disagree with what the Roman Catholic priests or the bishop said, then they could get really in trouble. And sometimes the Roman Catholic people would actually hurt people that disagreed with them. They would really hurt them very, very badly. And Sebastian would see this happening. And he didn't like that at all. So he decided he was going to leave France. And he went to live in the country of Switzerland, which allowed people to disagree without necessarily hurting each other. And he went to a city called Geneva because Geneva was ruled over by a man named John Calvin. And this is John Calvin. And he thought that John Calvin was a pretty neat guy because Calvin had written some things that seemed to indicate that if he had a disagreement with somebody, he would talk it over with him. He wouldn't try to hurt him, okay? And so he went to live in Geneva and he met John Calvin. And John Calvin liked Sebastian and said, you're really a smart guy. So why don't we kind of work together? And so they worked together for a while on religious kinds of things. But then at one point Sebastian said, you know, John, I'd like to do something special. I would like to take the Bible and translate it from the language of Latin to the language of French because you know what? Most people can't read Latin. But a lot of people can read French. So if we have a Bible in French, then more and more people can read it. Isn't that a good idea? Not so much, said John. John Calvin didn't like that idea because if lots of people could read the Bible, they might start forming their own ideas about it. And they might be different ideas than John Calvin's ideas. So John Calvin didn't want Sebastian to do this. Well, that made Sebastian kind of mad and so he decided he wasn't going to stay in Geneva. So instead he went to another city called the city of Basel in Switzerland. And he got a job there teaching in a college, teaching Greek and Latin. And he was very happy there until he heard one day that this man had come to Geneva named Michael Servetus. Michael Servetus was an early Unitarian, just like us. And Michael Servetus came to Geneva and good old John Calvin didn't like what Michael Servetus was saying and writing about Jesus and about God. And so what do you think John Calvin did with Michael Servetus? He threw him in jail. And then he hurt him really badly. As a matter of fact, he killed Michael Servetus. And when Sebastian heard about this in Basel, he decided I have to do something. I am going to write a book and in my book I'm going to tell people how bad it is to hurt somebody because they disagree with you. And that book was called Concerning Heretics. And Heretic is someone who says something that you just don't seem to like and you don't want to have to put up with them. But he was saying, Sebastian in this book, that we should never hurt somebody because we disagree with the ideas they have. The only thing that we should expect from each other is that we live according to the rules that Jesus taught us in the New Testament. And so what Sebastian did was to write this book and well, John Calvin got a hold of a copy of the book and he read what it had to say and he was really angry and he contacted the people in Basel and he said, you need to arrest this Sebastian guy. But they wouldn't do it. And so Castelio lived peacefully in Basel. John Calvin really couldn't hurt him. And after a while he died but this was the first book that was ever written almost 500 years ago in which someone said you should not hurt somebody because they believed differently from you. And so we remember him today for that wonderful lesson that he taught us. So that's our story for today. That's our New Year's story and we hope you enjoy your first class of the New Year as we sing you out with our next hymn. The way Sebastian's last name was Castelio. Sebastian Castelio. And he was indeed one of the forefathers of the free thought movement in the Western world. And another notable in this tradition is the 19th century writer and notable speaker, Robert Greene Ingersoll who lived from 1833 to 1899. Every church that has a higher standard than human welfare is dangerous because true 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 or not any god exists. All that has ever been said and written about our gods or the gods of other people has no known fact or foundation. Words without thoughts. Louds without rain. Let us put theology out of religion. Religion and morality have nothing in common and yet there is no religion except the practice of morality. What you call religion, that's simply superstition. Real religion means doing justice. Real religion consists in the duties of man to man in feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, in defending the innocent, in saying what you believe to be true. We do not pretend to have circumnavigated everything and to have solved all the difficulties but we do believe that it is better to love men than to fear gods. That it is grander and nobler to think and investigate for yourself rather than repeat a creed. We are satisfied that there can be but little liberty here on earth as long as men worship a tyrant in heaven. We do not expect to accomplish everything in our day but we want to do what we can and to render all service possible to the holy cause of human progress. We know that doing away with gods and supernatural persons and power, that 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 then moving into the 20th century from preface to morals, a book published in 1929 by perhaps the most notable public intellectual of the early 20th century, Walter Littman. 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 human experience. The difference between good and evil must be a difference which men themselves recognize and understand. Happiness 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 superhuman, 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 severer 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 human 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. And the ethical problem, therefore, 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 priests, the prince, or the elders are what they claim to be. And from that, there are 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 human experience. They speak with no authority, which can be scrutinized once and for all, and then forever accepted. They can proclaim no rule of conduct with certainty, for they have no personal authority and cannot altogether be sure that they are right. And so they cannot command, they cannot truly exhort, they can only inquire, infer, and persuade. Because 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 the advice that they choose to accept. And yet, with all of these 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, then there will be anarchy in their souls until, by conscious effort, they find ways of governing themselves. So 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. This building was constructed in 1884. It is listed as a US historical site. And for the last 130 years, it is served as the home for the free congregation of Sock County. But the roots of this particular community go even farther back to a group of German immigrants who settled on the banks of the Wisconsin River and established this their spiritual home way back in 1852. These were men and women known as the 48ers. 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-thinking and progressive Germans settled 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 established churches. So they created a fellowship without doctrine or creed 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 truth. And indeed in their articles of incorporation, the founders of the Sauc County Free Congregation listed, among others, these principles and objectives. One of them is to take religions to reason, which is defamed by the priests of all revealed religions. 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 and immortality. The use of ritual and ceremony are sensible, beautiful, and voluntary. Leadership in these free congregations was vested not in a 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. Sauc City's first speaker was a man named Edward Schrader, who served in that capacity for the first 36 years of its existence. Now, in the free congregations, three dates stand out on their liturgical calendar. A spring festival, looking forward to that. Founders' Day to honor the founders of the congregation and Payne's Fest, a celebration of the life and the legacy of Thomas Payne. I have reviewed this notable chapter in the history of American free thought for two reasons. First, because the congregation in Sauc City is the last of its kind in the United States, the sole remnant of a once-thriving movement. As of 1955, it took on a dual identity as unitarian and free thought, a step that probably assured this congregation's survival. And the second reason that I bring this up is because the Sauc City Free Congregation represents one aspect of the American free thought movement, its institutional expression. But over the years, commentators tend to have focused mainly on a small coterie of outspoken, independent-minded individualists who also embraced this label free thought, and in so doing, achieved significant notoriety. So let's begin or continue this discussion with some of the latter, these independent free thinkers. The man often recognized as the founder of American free thought was, of course, Thomas Paine. Regarded as a national hero for his revolutionary writing, most notably for a widely distributed 1776 pamphlet, Common Sense, Paine fell from grace when his religious views two decades later came to light. The Age of Reason was published in 1794. It delivered a broadside against the major religions in all of their varied forms. And although this book sold briskly, it also made the author, Thomas Paine, a pariah, at least in this country. Paine pulled no punches. Every national church, he wrote, has established itself by pretending some special mission from God communicated to certain individuals. And so the Jews have their Moses, the Christians have their Jesus, the Turks have their Muhammad, as if the way to God were not open to every man alike. Each of these churches he continued accuses the other of unbelief. And for my part, I disbelieve them all. Although Thomas Jefferson, whose own perspective on religion resembled Paine's, continued to befriend him. The man, Teddy Roosevelt, once called a filthy little atheist, died ignominiously at the age of 72. The Quakers vetoed burial in their own cemetery in New Rochelle, New York. So Paine was quietly interred under a tree on his own farm. Still, his ideas lived on, influencing such 19th century notables as the suffragettes Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott, Mark Twain, Robert Green Ingersoll, and America's 16th president, Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln, as is well known, never belonged to a church. And indeed, early in his political career, his opponents called Lincoln an infidel, an accusation that contributed to his defeat when he first ran for an elective office. Now, as a young man, Lincoln had read with approval Paine's age of reason. And his longtime law partner, William Herndon, later insisted that it was Lincoln's arguments that caused him Herndon 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, inconsistent. Susan Jacobi says that Lincoln offered little comfort to those who in every crisis and every war want to chant, God is on our side. This period in American history from the 1840s through the 1880s was, Susan Jacobi writes, the golden age of American free thought. And it was the era of Colonel Robert Green Ingersoll, a man known in the larger public as the Great Agnostic. He 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 and even for the United States presidency. His reputation and his talent assured Ingersoll a curious and often receptive audience in his later speeches where he debunked religion. In his public lectures, often attended by thousands, Ingersoll would systematically and satirically dissect the propositions offered in the Bible. One of his most popular stump speeches was a piece simply entitled Some Mistakes of Moses. In another, entitled 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, Jacobi writes, the first American to lay out a coherent secular humanist alternative and to present the case for free thought to a broad audience. There is no 21st century version of Ingersoll, she says. Indeed, there was no 20th century version of Robert Green Ingersoll. This is not to say that this man was not controversial. He was often the target of severe criticism and disapproval. And so following his death, the New York Times accused Ingersoll, quote, of depriving people of their religion without pretending to offer anything in its stead. And thus the Times concluded his effect on the public could not have been otherwise but others, like Wisconsin's fighting Bob La Follette rose to Ingersoll's defense. The man had helped to shape his own social conscience La Follette wrote, and he wanted men to think boldly about all things. He demanded intellectual and moral courage and wanted men to follow the truth wherever it might lead them. He was, La Follette said, a rare, bold, heroic figure. That same boldness defined Elizabeth Cady Stanton, who, with Susan B. Anthony and Lucretia Mott, led the charge for women's right during the second half of the 19th century. All three of these women were religious free thinkers and nonconformists. Anthony was a professing Unitarian. Mott was a progressive Quaker and Stanton was herself an independent investigator. She was a stay-at-home mother of seven children. She wrote the speeches that the unencumbered Anthony subsequently delivered. And that was a very powerful collaboration until the nationally popular Stanton, like Thomas Paine, began to speak out on matters religious. Stanton had let her views be known as early as 1848 at the first women's convention at Seneca Falls, New York. But as time passed, she was very outspoken. And at an 1885 meeting of the National Woman Suffrage Association, Stanton offered a resolution condemning all religions for teaching that, quote, women is an afterthought of creation, her sex a misfortune, marriage a condition of subordination and maternity a curse. Ten years after this, she published her thoroughly researched and highly controversial women's Bible. And in it she said, you may go over the world and you will find that every form of religion, which has breathed upon the earth, has degraded women. As long as ministers stand up and tell people that Christ is the head of the church and man is the head of women, how are we to break the chains which have held women down throughout the ages? With this particular publication, the woman who had affectionately been dubbed as America's grandmother was now subject to withering criticism. Stanton was repudiated not only by the devout, but by most of her co-workers in the suffrage movement as well. In 1897, the Suffrage Association passed a resolution disavowing the women's Bible and in effect, disavowing the founder of the entire suffrage movement. Within a couple of decades of Ingersoll's death and Stanton's fall from grace, the Freethought movement ceased to be a distinct intellectual force in American life, Jacobi writes. But while it is undoubtedly true that no one of the stature of Ingersoll or Stanton or Paine has arisen to carry the banner forward, the cause that these men and women served was then and is now active and alive in institutional form. And so organizations as various as the Society for Ethical Culture, the American Humanist Association, the Society of Friends and very much in the Stanton-Ingersoll lineage, Madison's Freedom from Religion Foundation, these are all Freethought citadels. But our own movement, Unitarian Universalism is without question the most prominent organization upholding and practicing the principles of Freethought today. And this has been true for at least two centuries. Take William Bentley, for example. Bentley served the Unitarian Church in Salem, Massachusetts from 1783 until his death in 1819. Known for his scholarly, undigmatic preaching and for his skepticism regarding the divinity of Christ, he made a very positive impression on Thomas Jefferson who at one time offered him the presidency of the University of Virginia. Bentley demurred telling Jefferson that he could not bear to leave his long-time parishioners in Salem, Massachusetts. And yet, Susan Jacobi writes, Unitarianism moved religion itself into the camp of Enlightenment rationalism. And at the core of a religion man-like Bentley 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 early 19th century, our denomination lurched toward orthodoxy. And 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 at least two years. And so Ralph Waldo Emerson said in despair, this church is no longer large enough for me or for humankind. He and others left the Unitarian Association and joined forces to establish a rival free religious association where free thinkers of all strikes would be welcome. And on matters of belief there was little unanimity among the ministers and the lay persons who belonged to this new association, but they were all of one mind in rejecting dogmatic authority and maintaining an open mind with respect to basic theological questions such as the existence of God and the likelihood of immortality. One Unitarian minister of that era described the free religious association as a spiritual anti-slavery society. Now although he never joined the association, Jenkins Lloyd-Jones the uncle of Frank Lloyd Wright Jenkins Lloyd-Jones an influential Unitarian minister who helped establish Unitarianism here in Madison. He carried the free thought torch throughout his long and illustrious career. While he was serving our church in Jamesville in the 1870s, Joan began publishing a periodical simply called the Sunday School was unique in its time for its objectivity, its rationality 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 drawn not from Genesis or the Bible, but from the life sciences completely original for its time. Another series was entitled Great Teachers and introduced readers to the thought of Zoroaster and Confucius and Buddha and Socrates as well as the Hebrew prophets and Jesus of Nazareth. Lloyd-Jones once described his ideal Unitarian church in these words 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 thinker's home and over its portals that this test is to be written to ward off an honest thinker or an earnest seeker. This church must emphasize universal brotherhood. It must stand on the grand emphasis of that great word of the century, unity. It will seek out the high and the low, the rich and the poor, the unbeliever and the believer alike. This 19th century description is close to what our own congregation as the well as the one in Sauk City stands for today both in theory and in practice. It is wholly in keeping with our original 1879 bond of union, which still holds before us a spiritual ideal that we strive to live up to. A movement such as ours is vitally important in today's media-driven world where religious iconoclasm and free thought are either disparaged or ignored completely. Public figures try to outdo one another today in proclaiming their own orthodoxy. And then we have at the other end of the spectrum vociferous critics of religion like Bill Maher, Sam Harris, Daniel Dennett whose ideological rigidity sometimes seems antithetical to the spirit of genuine free thought. But then what about the nearly 20% of Americans who today as nuns they don't belong to any particular faith tradition. They are undogmatic, doubtful souls who perhaps could benefit from a companionable spiritual home like this one. Young nuns now outnumber young evangelicals by a margin of three to two. And in explaining their disaffection many say that they're simply turned off by the intolerance, the homophobia and hypocrisy of the established churches that they have known. Most of these young men and women and older ones too are not religiously indifferent, but they are disillusioned. Are they prospective candidates for membership in a non-cretal free thought community such as ours? As we enter the new year I would encourage you to think about your own friends your family members, your colleagues the nuns that you know that share your spiritual values. I encourage you to invite them to come for a service here at FUS for if we don't keep this all American tradition alive no one else will. Blessed be and amen. Now I would invite you to participate in the giving and the receiving our offering and as you can say a portion of it this week will be given to the Madison Area Rehabilitation Center please be generous. We gather each week as a community of hope and to this time and place we bring our whole and occasionally our broken selves. We bring with us the joys and sorrows of the recent past seeking here a place where these might be received and celebrated and shared and we would take a moment now to acknowledge Cece Bollard's sister-in-law Carol who was recently diagnosed with pancreatic cancer she lives in Arizona and Cece had mentioned a couple of weeks ago to me and we announced in this space that Carol's daughter is also suffering from stage 4 cancer so that family is unfortunately very star-crossed and we wish them our best and we send our warmest thoughts and prayers to Arizona. And then Gordon Olson has told us that his father passed away this past month at the ripe old age of 90 was buried in western Minnesota following a good and long life. So our condolences to Gordon and his family and we're grateful that his father had such a good and meaningful life. And for any joys and sorrows that remained unarticulated we hold those with equal concern and affection in our hearts let us be silent together in the spirit of hope and empathy. And so by virtue of our brief time together today may our burdens be lightened and our hopes and joys expanded. And now I would invite you to rise once more in body or in spirit as we sing our closing hymn number 113. From here may we find the courage to live our faith, to speak our truth and to strive together for a world where freedom abounds peace prevails and justice is done. May we know the fullness of love 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 loop.