 The
Need of a Unifying Faith
by Robert Cummins
1949
Luke, in his ". . . they shall come from the east, and the west, and the
north, and the south, and shall sit down in the Kingdom of God," offers a
prophecy not only of the ultimate geographical inclusiveness of the world church
but also of its spiritual comprehension a fellowship whose unshut gates will
include all who desire to enter. This is the ideal. This is "Universalism".
The passing of human isolation calls for this unifying faith-faith able to
live in the light of free history and free science-faith held by such a
fellowship of men as can lead them confidently to a conquest of the hates and
fears now filling our lives with foreboding. The great need is a type of
religious loyalty emphasizing the universal qualities of life such as draw men
together, as opposed to the creedal distinctions that keep men apart.
Facing the necessity of unity and peace on a world scale, we must set
ourselves to the task of creating instruments capable of carrying and sustaining
this unity and peace: instruments such as world government, world law and order,
a world monetary system, a health program for the world, world trade, world-wide
scientific projects, and educational programs of unlimited dimensions. The ideal
we must have, but we must have also these means through which the ideal can grow
into reality.
Yet it seems vain to hope that men can join together in the building of ONE
WORLD if they are not agreed upon basic standards of morality, basic values. And
these are the province of religion, of course; and, if we are going to have ONE
WORLD, we must have a religion big enough and fine enough and vital enough for
ONE WORLD, and to which all can come for a faith that is to them both reasonable
and satisfying.
Today and tomorrow the peoples of the earth will band together to build a
world commonwealth, or they will go down together in a welter of blood, sweat
and tears. Religion that may have seemed to suffice yesterday is proving
inadequate for today. Religion that is less than universal, that is limited by
creed, that is a caste system for the elect, will perish and rightly so.
Our world cries out in agony for political union, but such union will depend
for success upon the belief of the peoples of the world in the unity of the
human family, and in the rightness of universal law and justice, order and
peace. As long as man is separated from his fellowman by wedges of creed, wedges
driven deep by the smug ecclesiasticism of organized Christendom, world union
will not have its necessary religious foundation.
Less and less will white American orthodox Christians have reason to send
missionaries to the benighted heathen in far away lands. Peoples of all faiths
are now traveling everywhere and living everywhere. Churches will learn to
welcome them, or churches will pay the piper. And most churches are in no
position to welcome anyone who falls short of answering correctly the authorized
answers to questions listed in the "pony" to their particular texts.
The need is for a church universal. And the need now has grown to gigantic
proportions. Today's problems and goals are no longer local. They are
everybody's. Parochialism must go out, and out also must go the high priests and
spiritual dictators. This is the time for brotherhood, for confidence in man as
a child of God. The very urgencies of the time demand freedom and democracy, and
only a person who respects other persons, can have respect for their privileges
and their freedoms.
A religious fellowship attempting to represent this idea today is that of The
Universalist Church. It happens to be "my church", but this was not always the
case, for it is the church of my adoption. I was reared a Scotch-Calvinist,
instructed in a faith from whose fellowship my Catholic and Lutheran and
Episcopalian boyhood chums were barred. And, being a Calvinist, I was thereby
barred from their Roman Church, and Lutheran, and Protestant Episcopal.
In later years, I lived and worked in the tropical Orient, worked with (and
came to have great admiration for) people of virtually all races, nationalities,
and religions-people who, through the sheer accident of birth, happened to have
been born inside skins of another color, reared in different traditions, taught
to call God by other names. We shared the same hopes and fears, victories and
defeats. Our ideals were one, and my soul rebelled against the whole gamut of
theological spider webs woven by the ecclesiastics to separate men from their
fellowmen. In order to survive, my soul had to break those barriers; and I chose
quite deliberately the fellowship of The Universalist Church. I chose it because
of the ideal cherished by its faith. As democracy is government of the people,
by the people, and for the people, so is Universalism a religion of the people.
Unlike our authoritarian friends, we Universalists harbor no thought of other
churches uniting with our Church. We do hope, however, that others may come to
see the distinctive values represented by our fellowship-that there is a spirit
within which men of varied persuasions may find a home. We are wistful that men
generally may choose to be bound by the same tie as the bond which unites us not
that of enforced conformity to a fixed set of prescribed beliefs, but a common
purpose.
Obviously, it is not realistic to think we can just go out and make our
Universalism universal. But to realize the value of this faith of ours in this
kind of world to recognize the goals and to work toward them, is to have a
foretaste of the thing itself. What, after all, is religion if it is not the sum
total of the goals and the dreams of the people? These dreams and goals are now
cherished by us, but they must not be kept by us, for they are not ours to keep.
They are ours to preach and to practice.
Oh, to preserve, or, if necessary, to create anew, a fellowship in which all
men may be welcomed! Here-here within our own fellowship-right here at our very
own command, potentially, at least, is just the thing so desired. What better
goal could you and I possibly have than to help cause our fellowship to be the
kind of fraternity its very name insists it must be!
Millions now live in slavery and servitude, religiously as well as in other
ways. This fact must weigh heavily upon our minds and hearts and pocketbooks.
All men must be made free, taught to cherish freedom, self-rule and
self-guidance, both for themselves and for all others. This thing just cannot
spring from the dictatorship of the creeds. Like breeds like. But it is inherent
in the ideal of Universalism.
Historically, Universalism was faith in God, as a triumphant God, capable of,
and successful in, saving all the creatures of His creation. All people,
therefore, are God's people; and who among us can well afford to be more choosy
than is God? If people are children of their Creator, then they should be good
enough for our churches.
Religiously, I came from the staunchest and most opinionated kind of
Protestant fundamentalism. I must confess it is not easy to find one's way out
of that sort of thing, but if I did it, anybody can. Our people should issue
from all religious backgrounds and from none. And if the time should ever come
that we find our kind of Universalism tending to shut out a single soul who
might, of his own volition, wish to be included, or if our Universalism is the
kind that would not appeal to others if they are made to understand it, then I
don't think our Universalism is the genuine article. It is big enough to include
all who would come to it, or it is not big enough for me, certainly. That the
Universalist Church is big enough to welcome into its fold all men is the very
thing which caused me to choose it as the Church of my adoption.
For -
"The world stands out on either side
No wider than the heart is wide;
Above the world is stretched the sky -
No higher than the soul is high.
The heart can push the sea and land
Farther away on either hand;
The soul can split the sky in two,
And let the face of God shine through.
But East and West will pinch the heart
That cannot keep them pushed apart;
And he whose soul is flat-the sky Will cave in on him by and by."*
_____
*Used by permission, from RENASCENCE, copyright, 1912, 1940,
by Edna St. Vincent Millay.
If God is Love, then love is a theology. And if Christians in various ways
and by various means and processes of thought and experience have come to the
conclusion that the way of Love has the power of God in it, then it is time they
were expressing their theology in practice. This would be faith in great
spiritual realities as shown by a readiness to act on them instead of conceding
mere intellectual assent to a set of theological propositions. True Catholicism
is the recognition of spiritual unity despite diversity.
There must be liberty of thought and utterance, genuine hospitality to all
sorts and conditions of men, and mutual appreciation. The cement that binds in a
situation of this kind is not at all a set of theological beliefs agreed upon,
but, rather, a common purpose to do the will of God. The shift of emphasis is
from personal salvation toward individual social reconstruction and maturity.
The very word "religion" means binding together. The kind of union needed, and
which must come, is a voluntary association unbound by creedal formulae or
ecclesiastical domination, persons and groups of persons coming together for a
purpose to serve the common good!
Believing in the strict unity of God, your task and mine is to join hands in
building a brotherhood universal.
Our fellowship is all-inclusive. It speaks of a common humanity. Its citizens
must be citizens of the world. Today-in this kind of faith-is a driving force to
which we must be alert and of which we must be a part.
It is your responsibility as it is my own to make it unmistakably clear that
into this wider fellowship all are welcome (not as a matter of tolerance, but as
a matter of course) : unitarian or trinitarian, Christian or non-Christian,
colored or colorless, theist, humanist, or agnostic. Faith for today's world
that is circumscribed by creed and dogma is as unthinkable as it is untenable
and unworkable.
Let us see to it in our churches that men, all men, may come to share their
deepest selves, to confess their failures and seek inspiration for higher
striving, come in their joy at the bearing of new life to name the infant and to
dedicate themselves with the infant to the service of the common good, come to
study the religious striving of the past and the problems of the present, come
to be married, come to work together to make their lives more abundant, come at
the time of death to bid farewell to their loved ones. Here let no one who would
come be shut out. Here let all be children of God, brothers and sisters all.
Then, "Let God be thanked who has matched us with this hour."
other publications available for free distribution
"The Universalist Idea of God" John Murray Atwood "Charter of Our Faith"
John Murray Atwood
"An Understanding of Universalism"
Carl H. Olson
"On Meeting Life"
Horton Colbert
"The Universalist Faith"
published by
The Literature Commission
The Universalist Church of America
16 Beacon Street
Boston 8, Massachusetts
7-49-25M
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