The struggle between individualism and communalism is a common one in many religions, but Unitarian Universalism has a unique position, being without a central creed for the community to fall back upon in times of disagreement. However, we are able to find common ground in our values, our ideals, and our belief that Unitarian Universalism has a saving message that the world needs to hear.

In this short excerpt from his 2006 book, The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream, Senator and presidential candidate Barack Obama articulates the tension that exists between balancing these two ideals, the good of the individual and the good of the community, on a national and cultural level. I find that his words aptly describe the challenges in our church communities as well, particularly churches that are going through times of transition and change.

Senator Obama is not a Unitarian Universalist; he belongs to our sister-denomination, the United Church of Christ, whose core ideals are very much in line with our own.

from The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream

by Senator Barack Obama

At its most elemental level, we understand our liberty in a negative sense. As a general rule we believe in the right to be left alone, and are suspicious of those–whether Big Brother or nosy neighbors–who want to meddle in our business. But we understand our liberty in a more positive sense as well, in the idea of opportunity and the subsidiary values that help realize opportunity–all those homespun virtues that Benjamin Franklin first popularized in Poor Richard’s Alamanack and that have continued to inspire our allegiance through successive generations. The values of self-reliance and self-improvement and risk-taking. The values of drive, discipline, temperance, and hard work. The values of thrift and personal responsibility.

These values are rooted in a basic optimism about life and a faith in free will–a confidence that through pluck and sweat and smarts, each of us can rise above the circumstances of our birth. But these values also express a broader confidence that so long as individual men and women are free to pursue their own interests, society as a whole will prosper. Our system of self-government and our free-market economy depend on the majority of individual Americans adhering to these values. The legitimacy of our government and our economy depend on the degree to which these values are rewarded, which is why the values of equal opportunity and nondiscrimination complement rather than impinge on our liberty.

If we Americans are individualistic at heart, if we instinctively chafe against a past of tribal allegiances, traditions, customs, and castes, it would be a mistake to assume that this is all we are. Our individualism has always been bound by a set of communal values, the glue upon which every healthy society depends. We value the imperatives of family and the cross-generational obligations that family implies. We value community, the neighborliness that expresses itself through raising the barn or coaching the soccer team. We value patriotism and the obligations of citizenship, a sense of duty and sacrifice on behalf of our nation. We value a faith in something bigger than ourselves, whether that something expresses itself in formal religion or ethical precepts. And we value the constellation of behaviors that express our mutual regard for one another: honesty, fairness, humility, kindness, courtesy, and compassion.

Source: from Chapter 2 of The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream by Senator and presidential candidate Barack Obama.

For this Independence Day, I’ve dug out a really rich, wonderful address by Rev. Thomas Starr King. I’ve chosen some excerpts that I feel speak to the ideas of Unitarian Universalist patriotism is these times, in contrast to the perilous times in which this particular address was written in 1851. If you would like to read the entirety, the Google Books project has archived Patriotism, and other papers in PDF format.

Rev. King was a remarkable man, credited by President Abraham Lincoln with keeping California in the Union during the Civil War due to his stirring orations. According to the Dictionary of Unitarian Universalist Biography: “Barely five feet tall and physically fragile, King was undistinguished in appearance. Well into his thirties he appeared no older than a youth. His energy and magnetism as an organizer, minister, and preacher, however, quickly impressed any who had mistakenly judged him by appearance. ‘But, though I weigh only 120 pounds,’ he remarked late in life, ‘when I am mad I weigh a ton!’

He also “organized fund raising for the United States Sanitary Commission, a civilian organization, headed by Henry Whitney Bellows, charged with overseeing the health and medical care of the United States army. By the end of the war California had donated one quarter of the money received by the Sanitary Commission. The first large donation, sent by King, arrived just in time to be of use at the battle of Antietam in 1862.”

Today, one of two Unitarian Universalist seminaries is named for Rev. King, the Starr King School for the Ministry, along with two mountains (one in New Hampshire, and one in California).

As with any document from 1851, you may want to substitute gender-inclusive language in your reading of this text.

Patriotism

by Thomas Starr King

The substance of this article is from a discourse, delivered in Boston, before the Ancient and Honorable Artillery Company, on the occasion of their two hundred and thirteenth Anniversary, June 2, 1851.

[Patriotism] is a constructive quality, quickening the intellect by its love of country to zealous ambition to improve it and raise it higher. It is an imaginative sentiment. Imagination is essential to its vigor. It comprehends hills, streams, plains, and valleys in a broad conception, and from traditions and institutions — from all the life of the past and the vigor and noble tendencies of the present, it individualizes the destiny and personifies the spirit of its land, and then vows its vow to that. So that it is of the very essence of true patriotism to be earnest and truthful, to scorn the flatterer’s tongue, and strive to keep its native land in harmony with the laws of national thrift and power. It will tell a land of its faults, as a friend will counsel a companion; it will speak as honestly as the physician advises a patient; and if occasion requires, an indignation will flame out of its love, like that which burst from the lips of Moses when he returned from the mountain, and found the people to whom he bad revealed the holy and austere Jehovah, and for whom he would cheerfully have sacrificed his life, worshipping a calf.

(Read on … )