 This is the first time I've seen a person who has a lot of experience in the field. I've seen this go really pretty well. She's got a shot of a bullet in her eye. She's got a lot of bullets in her eye. I think that would be great. I'm seeing her going through her eyes. One point. One point. She's got a shot of a bullet in her eye. I'm seeing her going through her eyes. I'm seeing her going through her eyes. I'm seeing her going through her eyes. I'm seeing her going through her eyes. I'm seeing her going through her eyes. I'm seeing her going through her eyes. I'm seeing her going through her eyes. I'm seeing her going through her eyes. I'm seeing her going through her eyes. I'm seeing her going through her eyes. I'm seeing her going through her eyes. I'm seeing her going through her eyes. I'm seeing her going through her eyes. I'm seeing her going through her eyes. I'm seeing her going through her eyes. I'm seeing her going through her eyes. It's like, yeah, yeah. And also, Is there a way? I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. Please join me in a few moments of centering silence. And now, Please remain seated as we sing our in-gathering hymn, which is number 295, and the words appear in your order of service. 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 nurturing 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 Karen Rose Gredler, and on behalf of the congregation, I would like to extend a special welcome to visitors. We are a welcoming congregation, so whomever you are and wherever you happen to be on your life's journey, we celebrate your presence among us. Newcomers and others are encouraged to stay for our fellowship hour after the service and to visit the library, which is directly across from the center doors of this auditorium. Feel free to bring your beverages and any questions you may have. Members of our staff and lay ministry will be on hand to welcome you. You may also look for persons holding teal-colored stoneware coffee mugs. These are FUS members knowledgeable about our faith community who would welcome visiting with you. Experienced guides are generally available to give building tours after each service, and I believe we will have John Powell doing that after this service. So if you would like to know more about this sustainably designed addition or our national landmark meeting house across parking lot or through the indoors, please meet over on this side, your left of the auditorium right after the service, and John will meet you there. We welcome children to stay for the duration of the service. Sometimes it's difficult for some in attendance to hear in this lively, acoustical environment, so if your child wants to hop around, talk a lot, or whatever, and it becomes a little bit loud, you may visit the, excuse me, you may visit the Child Haven, there's some folks back there right now already, or the back of the auditorium, and the services can be seen and heard very well there. This would also be a great time to turn off any devices that might cause a disturbance during the hour, especially your cell phone ringers, please. And now I'd like to acknowledge some individuals who are helping our service run smoothly this morning. David Brails is our sound operator. Tom Boykoff is our lay minister. Mary Elizabeth Kunkel is the greeter, and our ushers are Dick Goldberg, Liza Monroe, Paula Alt, and Mary Hollis. Back in the kitchen, Fixing Coffee for us are Rick DeVita and Nancy Kosseth. I believe that John Tooze worked on taking care of our plants, and especially the piece of lilies this morning. So thank you all for your service. Please note the announcements in the red floors insert in your order of service for things that are going on today and upcoming. There's lots of information in there, and it's important to remain aware of everything that's going on. Again, welcome. We hope today's service will stimulate your mind, touch your heart, and stir your spirit. Thank you. This morning may it be a place for you to find meaning, to choose justice, to remain faithful to your highest values. Here may we reaffirm our conviction that truth brings freedom, that freedom inspires reason, that reason fosters tolerance, and that tolerance reinforces the search for truth. With true collegiality, we welcome all who would travel with us along this road of interdependent thought and worship to this hour of search and celebration we welcome you. I invite you to rise in body and spirit for the lighting of our chalice. The words of affirmation printed in your program are responsive in nature today. Please join your voices in reading the bolded sections. We have gathered here in search of answers to life's riddles. We have come in search of hope and healing. Let this be a place not only of inquiry, but of insight. Let this be a place where healing fosters giving and hope fosters service. And in the spirit of that circle of love, please turn to your neighbor and exchange with them a warm greeting. Leslie Ross, director of Children's Religious Education, and I have the pleasure of introducing our banner parade today. Every year our children create banners as expressions of what they do in class during the year. It's their way of sharing what they think about, what they play about, what they care about, and what they love about being here. Between our three service times we have 29 classes and over 450 kids. So there has been a lot of banner decorating going on here. If you see glitter and sticky things on the floor, you know why. And we're really thrilled to be able to have them share this part of their experiences here with you. During the service, we'll be hanging the banners up in the commons area. So when you come out of here, it's going to look extra beautiful. So let's begin now with our parade. Religious Education, we're always looking as the beginning of the year commences in September, always looking for teachers and people who are willing to work with our kids. We recruit for that purpose in April. So be kind of thinking about maybe what you might want to contribute next year. So we continue with a couple of selections from retired or deceased Unitarian Universalist ministers. Randy, lovely, the author of this first reading was actually an individual who taught at a seminary I attended back in the early 1970s. He writes that simple direct observation leads me to believe that, especially in religious matters, most people do not want to think they do not want to judge for themselves. Most individuals expect the minister, priest, guru, rabbi to be the religious leader who knows the saving truths and the moral oughts. He or she tells the people what to believe, how to act, and points out who the heretics and the sinners are. This expectation is widely held not only by churchgoers but also by those who completely ignore organized religion. There are only a very few individuals who take religions seriously and are also willing to take the responsibility of thinking and feeling it through for themselves in concert with other thoughtful caring individuals who are involved in the same process. Now, some religious liberals think that we should do more to attract multitudes, positioning ourselves as the church for all people, but I think this is misguided. If we attracted multitudes we would be unable to practice our faith. Our task is to attract curious, independent religious seekers and there simply are not hordes of them. The purpose of our movement is to serve our uniqueness and our religiously nurturing and spiritually expanding. Most people could care less about this kind of a church. What we need to do is to accept the reality of this situation. Forget that inane myth that we ought to have universal appeal and conscientiously seek out those who like us are willing to doubt, to test, to think, to affirm and to live their religious values day by day. The second selection comes from Judith Walker Riggs, a retired Unitarian minister, and she says that some years ago, some friends of mine, including the dean of one of our theological schools, the president of the Unitarian Universal Association and a philosophy professor from Canada, they were midway through a trip to our sister Unitarian churches in Transylvania. Now, this was before the end of the Cold War when travel in Eastern Europe was a little difficult and, at times, pretty risky. And so as this party was leaving Hungary where they had visited many descendants of our Unitarian churches in the 1600s, they were about to enter Romania and, of course, they had to go through customs. Their belongings were thoroughly searched. Why do you want to come into Romania? They were asked. To attend a religious festival of our faith and meet with local religious leaders was the reply. That answer provoked an even more thorough search of the Westerners' luggage because the guards were looking for Bibles, for religious tracts, the importation of which was strictly forbidden by the repressive Ciescu regime. Our Unitarian Universalists felt secure, however. They were not hard-shell revolutionary Baptists trying to smuggle in seditious religious literature. They relaxed. Fine. Here. And indeed, nothing was found, not a single Bible, not a single religious tract, which led my friends to being detained for four more hours. Are you trying to tell us that you are religious officials and you are not carrying any Bibles? Who are you really? Some days you can't win for losing. You see, it's not easy to explain to a border guard that your religion is connectedness to the power of life itself, one that constantly challenges us to love and to think in an ongoing search for an ever-illusive truth. This doesn't pack very well in a suitcase. It's hard to communicate in a few simple phrases, but it's no less valuable or tangible for that, for the occasion. Many moons ago and with a newly minted PhD, I accepted a call to serve the Unitarian Universalist Church in Binghamton, New York. Now after the holidays, that first year of my service, I became aware of a long-standing custom of pulpit exchanges among clergy in the Protestant community during what was called a Week of Christian Unity. So hoping to build some bridges for local colleagues, I submitted my name and looked forward to participating in this annual event. The coordinators duly matched me with the Presbyterian minister, and so a few Sundays later, I preached what I thought was an engaging but inoffensive sermon to a rather smallish crowd in that large ornate sanctuary. I came away feeling pretty good about the morning, and my own congregation seemed to be just ecumenical undertaking. It was not an opportunity that my immediate predecessor had ever taken advantage of. So when the next year rolled around, I exchanged again, this time with a Methodist minister, and I was beginning to feel like one of the gang. But before the third round, something shifted. Shortly after applying, I was informed that, as a Unitarian Universalist, this is a week for Christian unity, I was told, and you and your congregation simply do not meet that criteria. To be honest, the coordinators did have a point. The Binghamton Unitarian Universalist Church was comprised primarily of humanists with a few Pagans and cultural Jews thrown in. Although its lineage, like this one, was Christian, only a minority still self-identified as Unitarian Christians. And frankly, my own convictions have always aligned more closely with Buddhism than with Christianity, but it was a slight. And so I appealed the decision to no avail. There would be no comedy between Unitarian Universalists and the Protestant community. Some of the sting of that rejection was softened, however, as the Jewish rabbi down the street and I developed a warm relationship which led to our own single exchanges. Which made good sense, because from an historical standpoint, Unitarians have long been criticized for being more Jewish than Christian, owing to our opposition to the doctrine of the Trinity. Indeed, our detractors several centuries ago called us Judaizers. I found a much different religious climate here in Madison when I arrived in 1988. One of the first calls that I received was from our near neighbor at First Baptist Church over on Franklin Street. And he welcomed me to the community and invited me to join him at the next gathering of the downtown clergy group. Lutheran, Episcopalian, Methodist, Jewish, Presbyterian, United Church of Christ, Baptist and Unitarian leaders from Madison Central Core all participated in 1988 in this informal body which had been formed originally in the tumultuous 1970s. And the founders of the downtown clergy group included my predecessor Max Gabler and they had come together initially to act as mediators when violent clashes broke out between Vietnam War protesters and local law enforcement. But then after things quieted down hey, they kind of liked getting together. And so this band of clergy brothers and they were all brothers back then continued to meet weekly for coffee and conversation. I became a regular and I grew to appreciate how much we all shared in common despite our theological differences. And since that time I've spoken at any number of local Protestant churches at their invitation. And First Unitarian Society now collaborates with many faith-based organizations on a host of social justice issues as many of you know. And in 29 years here no one has rejected us to my knowledge for our lack of Christian credentials. But in matters of religion Madison is a remarkably tolerant and accepting community. And the First Unitarian Society for years has enjoyed a great deal of respect. And yet we are the quintessential heresy. At least if words have any meaning. You see our English word heresy comes from the Greek heresis which literally means to take for oneself to choose on one's own. And this is of course what we Unitarian Universalists do in our non-cretal non-doctrinaire tradition where the right of individual conscience is held sacred we each choose what to believe or to disbelieve. As Ralph Waldo Emerson once put it no facts to me are sacred none are profane I simply experiment an endless seeker with no past at my back. Now in confessional religions one does not choose one submits at least with respect to the essentials of the faith. And so on doctrines like the trinity the virgin birth, infant baptism the vicarious atonement choice is not allowed but the question these immutable truths is to invite an accusation of heresy. Now from the standpoint of the world's great religions this is a rather exceptional stance to take. Heresy is a foreign concept in Hinduism, Buddhism Taoism, Confucianism and even Judaism. These days one can profess atheism and still be considered a good Jew. The Hindu philosopher Sarapali Radhakrishnan fondly speaks for many in the non-Christian world when he writes this principle of unity in variety is both a profound spiritual truth and it makes abundant sense. Religious exclusivism has been a frequent source of fanaticism and strife. A little less missionary ardor a little more enlightened skepticism he writes would be very good for all of us. But even within early Christianity it was very little uniformity of belief and thus no grounds for labeling somebody a heritage. Those ancient Christians argued strenuously among themselves about the nature of God, the status of Jesus the significance of the sacraments they disagreed about many things Richard Rubenstein writes but there still was a closeness among and between them but then eventually some powerful figures within the church decided that this unity in diversity thing wasn't such a hot idea that it posed an existential threat not only to the individual Christian but to the Christian movement as a whole and so these powerful figures argued successfully that salvation and belief were indissolubly connected if the correct doctrine was not observed if it was not imposed then millions of souls would be lost and Christ himself would be dealt a terrible defeat and so in 325 AD the reign of orthodoxy began the Nicene Creed made belief in the trinity obligatory for all adherents of the Roman Catholic Church on this question the possibility of personal choice was forever eliminated and to ensure that the faithful told the line a list of anathemas was added to that Creed but those who say there was a time when Christ was not and he was not before he was made and he was made out of nothing or he is of another substance or essence or the Son of God is created or changeable or alterable these are all condemned by the Holy Catholic Apostolic Church by the 6th century deviation from doctrines like the trinity infant baptism all of these were made punishable by death needless to say that proved to be a pretty effective deterrent for many centuries people dared not even think about such things or privately to imagine possible alternatives as the historian Steven Greenblatt points out the church had also rigorously condemned curiosity as a mortal sin it would be almost a thousand years before anyone successfully challenged the main tenets of the Roman Catholic faith and those who dared like the 13th century Cotters the 15th century Hussites a few willful theologians they were all violently suppressed the Protestant Reformation of the 16th century broke the Catholic Church's monopoly on sacred truth and it saw the rise of numerous religious innovators but certain age-old doctrines remained inviolable those who questioned the trinity were condemned as heretics by Catholic and Protestant leaders alike one of the few things that they agreed upon and thus Michael Servitas one of our forebears was burned at the stake in Geneva, Switzerland by a Protestant his insightful book on the errors of the trinity was banned and all but a handful of copies were destroyed a few decades later the non-cretal Unitarian-oriented minor reform church of Poland was decimated by a coalition of Roman Catholics and Lutherans a remnant from that church fled to the mountains of Transylvania where they joined the one Unitarian movement that was able to resist this war on heresy on choosing for oneself throughout history then Unitarians and Universalists for that matter have been regarded by mainstream Christians not just as your garden variety heretics but as arch heretics with the 18th century enlightenment that began to change penalties for disavowing the trinity were relaxed Unitarian congregations began springing up in England in Wales and here in the colonies and although our forebears were still decried as heretics by defenders of orthodoxy a state of uneasy coexistence slowly began to emerge now with respect to the 18th and 19th century Universalists not the Unitarians but the Universalists the story was a little different John Murray was one of our early Universalist evangelists and he was often pelted with eggs and sometimes with rocks when he came to a new town to preach the good news of universal salvation because they were not sufficiently God fearing the universalists were barred in our own country from testifying in a court of law or holding public office as Max Coots Riley observes by reading themselves of hell the Universalists scared the hell out of everybody else even the Unitarians similar to the Universalists in so many ways had qualms about the latter's blithe dismissal of eternal damnation many Unitarians back in the 19th century agreed with their orthodox rivals that only a just harshly punishing God could deter a humankind from acting sinfully but for both of these denominations Unitarian and Universalists freedom of conscience was a hallmark and yet we were not wholly consistent on that score ourselves when it was thought necessary in both instances to curtail people's ability to choose we did so and so in the early 1800s when the transcendentalist movement was gathering steam two of its most notable spokesmen Ralph Waldo Emerson and Theodore Parker found themselves suddenly on the outside looking in in the wake of Emerson's 1838 Divinity School address at Harvard Andrews Norton a distinguished Unitarian professor at that same institution rebuked him saying words God, religion, Christianity have a definite meaning well understood but how shamefully they have been abused in modern time by infidels and by pantheists and should preachers like Mr. Emerson abound and grow confident in their folly we can hardly overestimate the disastrous effect that they would have upon religion and the moral taste of the community well in time temper is cooled Emersonian thought prevailed transcendentalists within several decades had gained acceptance in our movement followed in short order by humanists and pagans and a number of other chosen faiths and by 1894 the association had revised its constitution emphasizing that no doctrinal test was required and that membership in the Unitarian association was open to everybody the universalist church showcases a slightly different story the universalist were very afraid of losing their distinctiveness losing their bearings and so they clung to their Christian identity much longer than the Unitarians and at one point the universalist even placed limitations on their members freedom of conscience and for a short time imposed a creed and it was during this stressful time that the church conducted its first and last heresy trial yes the universalist conducted a heresy trial the Reverend Herman Bisbee of Saint Paul Minnesota was called on the carpet for promoting transcendentalism and a post-Christian universalist vision of religion natural religion he said is an all embracing religion it recognizes the religion of the atheist as well as the Hindu and the Muslim it opens the door to infinite expansion in natural religion all information is welcome there are different theories to maintain truth is the great requirement and all that helps the truth helps religion he wrote those words in 1872 and he was convicted of heresy and he was drummed out of the universalist church he subsequently became a Unitarian but Bisbee's perspective about this universal religion a few decades hence would become normative for universalism but in 1872 he became a Muslim now those words are almost a century and a half old and they feel kind of innocuous to us today they have a decidedly modern ring and perhaps for a goodly number of Americans they don't seem nearly as outrageous as they did to those who condemned Bisbee in 1872 and yet I would guess that when most people pause long enough to think seriously about religion this is not where their thoughts lead them like those Romanian border guards that I alluded to earlier they probably say you call yourselves a religion where are your bibles repeat for me your church's creed now many of us who have chosen Unitarian universalism have found it to be a refreshing change a welcome alteration from the traditional orthodoxy that insists on enforcing certain doctrines and yet heresy isn't for everybody we are a small movement still because as Brandy Lovely remarked there are only a very few individuals who take religion seriously and are willing to take the responsibility for thinking and feeling it through for themselves Reverend Lovely wrote those words some 35 years ago a lot has changed since then yes ours is still a small denomination now that many mainline Protestant congregations are actively encouraging spiritual investigation and they are much less invested in imposing creedal conformity I see a parallel here by the late 19th century universalism the old universalist church before the two denominations merged the universalist church was declining why was it declining were there a number of reasons but the main reason is because the universalists had pretty much stopped preaching fire and brimstone you see the universalists had succeeded in converting their opponents today the whole concept of universal salvation is just not nearly as controversial as it was a century ago and now we see much the same thing happening with respect to this whole concept of heresy the right of conscience the freedom to choose it's a principle that more and more Catholics are agreeing to and actively practicing so yes we have throughout our history been the quintessential heretics but I would hope that today if I return to Binghamton New York and I ask to participate in that pulpit exchange for the week of Christian unity things would be different I might be allowed to participate because the stigma of heresy may be on its way out for that we can take a deal of credit for we have helped to lead the way blessed be and amen and it is at the time now for the giving and the receiving of her offering and as you can see from your program we are going to be sharing your gifts today with a worthy community organization that is doing much to improve the quality of life in the greater Madison area please be generous this week is a community of memory and of hope to this time and place where we have our broken selves we carry with us the joys and sorrows of the recent past seeking here a place where they might be received and celebrated and shared two entries in our cares of the congregation book this morning Paula and Bob all write that their great nephew who is a freshman in high school is struggling with obsessive compulsive disorder newly diagnosed and truly frightening and so we send our warm wishes and hopeful thoughts to Paula and Bob's great nephew and their family and then an unidentified entry here migration crisis stupefaction we must use the judicial process and our collective strengths and if you are concerned about the presidential directive and the migration immigration refugee crisis there is a monoteros this afternoon as many of you know a forum that begins at two o'clock in addition to those mentioned we would also acknowledge any unexpressed joys or sorrows that remain among us as a community we hold these with equal concern in our hearts let us sit silently for just a moment or two in the spirit of empathy and hope and so by virtue of our brief time together today may our burdens be lightened and our joys expanded I invite you to turn now to our closing hymn join your voices as we sing hymn number 131 dated for the benediction and the post-loop defined as a set of right beliefs and ritual observations religion becomes divisive and absurd religion as walking with others listening to others sharing with others that's not a creed it's a way of life to be religious is to be grateful for what we have been given and to give in return as much as we can religion is a way of life with sympathy, responsiveness reverence for sacred potential respect for one another and for the miraculous earth and all it's creatures religion is a way of life that love makes beautiful