For many Unitarian Universalist congregations, the time of “In-Gathering,” or the first Sunday of the regular church year, is fast approaching. For many, this is a time of re-commitment to their faith community, of “getting back into the swing of things” and reconnections. Many congregations will begin their year with new faces in their pulpits, an added service, or other changes to the way they do things.

Rev. A. Powell Davies (1902-1957) preached the sermon from which this excerpt is taken on September 10, 1944. Even ninety-four years later, his message rings true. Why do we go to church? Because we can be more together than we are by ourselves.

from “On Going to Church”

by Rev. A. Powell Davies (1902-1957)

Let me tell you why I come to church.

I come to church—and would whether I was a preacher or not—because I fall below my own standards and need to be constantly brought back to them. It is not enough that I should think about the world and its problems at the level of a newspaper report or a magazine discussion. It could too soon become too low a level. I must have my conscience sharpened—sharpened until it goads me to the most thorough and responsible thinking of which I am capable. I must feel again the love I owe my fellow men (and women). I must not only hear about it but feel it. In church, I do.

I need to be reminded that there are things I must do in the world—unselfish things, things undertaken at the level of idealism. Workaday enthusiasms are not enough. They wear out too soon. I want to experience human nature at its best—and be reminded of its highest possibilities, and this happens to me in church. It may seem as though the same things could be found in solitude, but it does not easily happen so.

In a congregation we share each other’s spiritual needs and reinforce each other. In some ways, the soul is never lonelier than in a church service. That is certainly true of a pulpit, for a pulpit is the most intimately lonely place in the world—yet it is a loneliness that has strength in it. Perhaps this is because the innermost solitude of the human heart is in some paradoxical way a thing that can be shared—that must be shared—if the spirit of God is to find a full entrance into it.

We meet each other as friends and neighbors anywhere and everywhere, but we seldom do so in the consciousness of our souls’ deepest yearnings. But in church we do—in a way that protects us from all that is intrusive, yet leaves us knowing that we all have the same yearning, the same spiritual loneliness, the same need of assurance and faith and hope. We are brought together at the highest level possible. We are not merely an audience, we are a congregation.

I doubt whether I could stand the thought of the cruelty and misery of the present world unless I could know, through an experience that renewed itself over and over again, that at the heart of life there is assurance, that I can hold an ultimate belief that all is well. And this happens in church.

Life must have its sacred moments and its holy places. The soul will always seek its nurture. For religious experience—which is life at its most intense, life at its best—is something we cannot do without.

Source: from “On Going to Church” by Rev. A. Powell Davies, as reprinted in Without Apology: Collected Meditations on Liberal Religion by A. Powell Davies edited by Rev. Dr. Forrest Church.

The Rev. A. Powell Davies (June 5, 1902-September 26, 1957) was remarkable in the way he could say and write deeply profound ideas in just a few, well-chosen words. This short piece is from the collection of his writings edited by Rev. Dr. Forrest Church, Without Apology: Collected Meditations on Liberal Religion by A. Powell Davies. In it, an affirmation, and a challenge.

Is This Your Religion?

by Rev. A. Powell Davies (June 5, 1902-September 26, 1957)

We are the consummation of thousands of years of religious history. We are thousands of years that have stripped off superstition and battled with tyranny; thousands of years that struggled to take fear out of religion–to take it right out of human life; thousands of years that have marched, sometimes joyfully, sometimes in agony, toward spiritual emancipation. We are indeed the consummation of something.

Yet in this world of blood and sorrow it is scarcely important, hardly worth mentioning, unless in addition we are the beginning of something, unless our religion is new–the religion that has always been new in every prophet who died rather than forsake it; the religion that has been buried over and over again in creeds and rituals and sacred sepulchers and yet has always come to life; the religion that today is new all over the earth, stammering itself into utterance in every language known to humankind.

The religion that says freedom!–freedom from ignorance and false belief; freedom from spurious claims and bitter prejudices; freedom to seek the truth, both old and new, and freedom to follow it, freedom from the hates and greeds that divide humankind and spill the blood of every generation; freedom for honest thought, freedom for equal justice, freedom to seek the true, the good and the beautiful with minds unimpaired by cramping dogmas and spirits uncrippled by abject dependence. The religion that says humankind is not divided–except by ignorance and prejudice and hate; the religion that sees humankind as naturally one and waiting to be spiritually united; the religion that proclaims an end to all exclusions–and declares a brother-and sisterhood unbounded! The religion that knows that we shall never find the fullness of the wonder and the glory of life untl we are ready to share it, that we shall never have hearts big enough for the love God until we have made them big enough for the worldwide love of one another.

As you have listened to me, have you though perchance that this is your religion? If you have, do not congratulate yourself. Stop long enough to recollect the miseries of the world you live in: the fearful cruelties, the enmities, the hate, the bitter prejudices, the need of such a world for such a faith. And if you still can say that this of which I have spoken is your religion, then ask yourself this question: What are you doing with it?

Source: “Is This Your Religion?” by Rev. A. Powell Davies, as presented in Without Apology: Collected Meditations on Liberal Religion by A. Powell Davies, Edited By Rev. Dr. Forrest Church.

As the Unitarian Universalist Association’s General Assembly gets underway today, I bring you words from Rev. Nancy McDonald Ladd of the Bull Run Unitarian Universalist Congregation in Manassas, Virginia. Nancy’s words call us to remember what it is we commit to in joining a Unitarian Universalist congregation, and what a church is really for, anyway — a message I find apropos as we go about the business of the denomination.

“Why Church Matters”

by Rev. Nancy McDonald Ladd, November 27 2005

Today, I was supposed to preach about Joseph Priestley. In fact, this is the third time I have been scheduled to give this same sermon about Joseph Priestly from this pulpit and the third time, that, for one reason or another and with no intended disrespect to Mr. Priestley, one of the greats of English and American Unitarian history, I’ve found myself on the appointed Sunday preaching something quite different. Once it was because of a snow storm. Once I just had a better idea, but today, in this season of thanksgiving, I shelved old Joseph Priestley because I felt the need to give praise to something other than a fine historical figure in our long tradition. There is so much to be thankful for, here among us, in this place, this congregation, this church to which we come week after week. There is so much more to be thankful for about our tradition, and I’ve determined that the aspect most in need of praise today is the impulse that brings us here, the religious impulse itself, which, even unnamed, lies at the heart of all of our actions.

Since it’s prominent in the sermon title, let me begin with the word church and explain from the outset that by using this word I am not taking a measured stand on the official name of this, our congregational gathering. To be honest, I really don’t care nearly as much about what our name is as I care about is who we understand ourselves to be. In other words, I don’t care if we call ourselves a church. What I care about is whether or not we are able to live out the very best aspects of what a church can be.

For the purpose of this sermon, I’m defining the word “church,” as a specific religious community bound together by common religious purpose, and I believe that a church like ours can and does to do more than just get us in its doors. I say this because I have seen people, including myself and so many of you, be profoundly changed by the opportunity to live a deeply religious life within Unitarian Universalism.

(Read on … )

On Monday we heard from the Rev. A. Powell Davies, a formative figure in the history of Unitarian Universalism. What some may not realize, is that at the side of such prophetic, successful, figures is usually a partner, and helpmate - in Rev. Davies’ case, his wife Muriel A. Davies.

After her husband’s death, Mrs. Davies continued his work, most notably serving as the organizing director for the River Road church in Bethesda, Maryland. This church now has over 600 members, and on November 19th, 2007, Mrs. Davies’ 100th birthday, the congregation ordained her as a Minister Emerita:

“There was no minister in the beginning and for 18 months she was the sole staff person,” said the Rev. Scott Alexander, minister of River Road. “She contacted the families, and then got the church school going. And she did all this from an office in her home.”

. . .

“It was wonderful,” said Davies, contacted later at home. “The day and the ordination meant a great deal more to me than I can say. My connection with River Road is very important to me. I went through a very hard time when my husband died in 1957. The church really changed my life. It gave me self-confidence and I became a different person through that job with the church.”

There aren’t many works by Rev. Mrs. Davies on the internet, but I was able to find a jewel of a sermon that she gave on May 17, 1998, the occasion of the 90th Anniversary of the Unitarian Church in Summit, New Jersey. Enjoy.
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Today I bring you writings from one of American Unitarianism’s patron saints, A. Powell Davies. Rev. Davies is probably best known for the cluster of churches in the Washington, D.C. area founded during his ministry at All Soul’s Church from 1944 until his untimely death in 1957.

From a biography by Manish Mishra in the Dictionary of Unitarian Universalist Biography:

Davies was a dynamic and prophetic preacher, claimed by many to be one of the finest orators of his day. He used his pulpit to remind people of the primary human calling: the cultivation and development of character and action. As Davies eloquently captured it, “life is just the chance to grow a soul.” With the skill of a poet, Davies probed and illuminated the human desire for connection and meaning. “There is no mystery greater than our own mystery,” he preached. “We are, to ourselves, unknown. And yet we do know. The thought we cannot quite think is nevertheless somehow a thought, and it lives in us without our being able to think it. We are a mystery, but we are a living mystery.”

According to Davies, spiritual life is the core of religion. “In the mind’s dimness a light will shine; in the spirit’s stillness it will be as though a voice had spoken; the heart that was lonely will know who it was it yearned for, and the life of the soul will be one with the life that is God.” God is a living spiritual reality encompassing the totality of the spirits of all beings. “God is what the soul ‘breathes’ as the body breathes air.” He sought God in the pursuit of religion, not its establishment. “For there is a God who never dies, the one and only living God whose face is ever set towards tomorrow.”

Read here a sermon called, “What to Do with Gloom,” given at All Soul’s Church on May 4, 1947, and archived by the Davies Memorial Unitarian Universalist Church.

(As with many documents from this time, you may find it necessary to substitute gender inclusive language in your reading.)

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