Easter can be a tricky holiday for Unitarian Universalists: our faith is deeply rooted in Christian teachings and traditions, but many of our members do not feel a close affinity with the particulars of the crucifixion and resurrection stories as they are told in the Bible. Many carry wounds from encounters within traditional forms of Christianity and the emphasis that is placed on the violence of the story.

However, as the Rev. Kathleen McTigue, who serves the Unitarian Society of New Haven, Connecticut, says very eloquently in her Easter sermon from 2006 (PDF), we are called as Unitarian Universalists to “look beneath” for “the kernel of gold, the core truth, still there underneath the layers of dogma.” That kernel, she says, can be found within our own hearts.

What We Bring Forth

by Rev. Kathleen McTigue

One of the great gifts of the Universalist part of our faith is that it teaches us to look for spiritual truth not in one particular religious tradition alone, but in many of them. It teaches us to look for lessons in scripture, but doesn’t let us think of those lessons as exclusive. It lets us move away from orthodoxies that don’t work for us anymore, but pushes us to look beneath them to find the kernel of gold, the core truth, still there underneath the layers of dogma.

But there are perils in Universalism, too. One of them is that if we’re not careful, we can sometimes dilute the particularity of each religious tradition. We can look so hard for a common denominator that we end up reducing down to almost nothing the specific beauty of a story, a tradition, a spiritual practice. That’s especially perilous at this time of year because the Jewish and Christian holy days of this particular season are intertwined, and always have been. It isn’t accidental that the celebrations of Easter and Passover fall at the same time. Jesus and all his disciples were Jewish, after all; and according to the gospel story the last meal they shared with each other before his arrest and death was the Passover meal. As long as Christians have celebrated Easter, they have done it right around the time when Passover is being celebrated.

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Today’s selection is really a treat. I went looking for Unitarian Universalist perspectives on the events in Pearl Harbor, the attack that happened on this day in 1941, and came across the writings of Rev. John B. Isom (December 2, 1909 - April 23, 2004), who served as an Army chaplain during World War II. He was a Baptist minister, who then underwent a theological crisis and became a Unitarian in 1955. He served churches in Spartanburg, South Carolina, Louisville, Kentucky, Wichita, Kansas, and the First Unitarian Church of Des Moines, Iowa, where he was named an emeritus in 1975.

Rev. Isom was quite a prolific writer, and his children and grandchildren have collected many of his works for the public to read. The excerpt I chose for today is from “As I Remember Me,” Rev. Isom’s memoir, specifically dealing with his theological crisis. His reading of Albert Schweitzer’s The Quest for the Historic Jesus was a major tipping point for him, which he describes here. What strikes me is the pain that is evident in Rev. Isom’s realizations that he can no longer believe what he was raised to believe, and his sense of loss as he comes to these realizations.

I hear echoes of the sermon I posted last Friday, in which the Rev. James Covington states, “No, my friends, you and I are not free to believe anything we choose. You and I believe what we must. The beauty and genius of a faith like ours is that we are not asked to pretend to believe things we do not believe. You and I are not free to choose what we believe, but we are free to stay with our religious community when we grow and when we change our minds.”

For consideration: Have you experienced a crisis of faith? Have you experienced a conversion to Unitarian Universalism, not just from another religion, but perhaps a moment of realization of your commitment to your faith?

From “As I Remember Me”

by Rev. John B. Isom

When I went to Spartanburg, as I have already confessed, I had some serious doubt about some things I was expected to believe and teach as a Baptist minister. I knew then that I had no hard evidence to justify me believing some of the very basic assumptions which were essential to the Christian faith of Baptists and most other Christian believers, such as the Bible being the holy word of a supernatural being called God, who created the heavens and the earth and all life therein; the supernatural events associated around the birth, life and death of Jesus; Heaven and Hell as places for the eternal abode of all human beings. By the time I read “The Quest for the Historic Jesus” I knew I had no evidence for believing such assumptions. All I had left was a very dim hope that such evidence might still be found. After reading “The Quest for the Historic Jesus” that dim hope was no longer possible. There are a number of reasons why that book made me face up to the truth of my disbelief in the basic essentials of the faith as taught in most Christian churches.

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