The Day Faith Changed.
I begin with a small wager: I am willing to bet that few, if any, in this room, believe that Jesus is the son of God. Would you join that bet?

I came to that sudden realization as a high schooler. On a fateful Sunday, I stood to recite the Apostles' Creed as was our custom. I went so far as to say, "I believe in God, . . ." and stopped. I could not go on with, "and in Jesus Christ, His only Son, our Lord."

That was the day I left the Lutheran church of my family. I wandered and wondered if there was any place for an unbeliever like me. In my youthful ignorance, I had no idea of all who had preceded me in asking the very same thing. I began to search for what truly matters in one's religious faith. As a former Christian, I asked what, if anything, does Jesus have to do with it? Happily, I found Unitarian Universalism and no felt longer so weird. Since then, I learned that the life of Jesus and the teachings about him are all important for Christians. I learned also that, while many Unitarian Universalists find his life is of some interest, we regard the ideas about him to be mostly in error. Yet, his teachings still have much to say to us, which is why I've entitled this sermon "Redefining Christianity: From Savior to Exemplar." I may not accept Jesus as the Son of God, but I can accept him as a moral example for my life. I'll wager again that many in this room would agree to that.

A Series of Sermons
The German Kaiser Wilhelm once asked an astronomer, "What's new in the starry sky?" The astronomer replied, "Does your Majesty already know the old?" Sadly, many recent Unitarian Universalists do not take advantage of opportunities to learn about the heritage of their adopted faith. Consequently, we end up with rehashing old quarrels and, in our ignorance, creating the wrong expectations of what the Free Church has to offer. Too often, we see ourselves as anti-Christian rather than differently faithful.

Thus, today I begin a series on the general theme of "The Radical Reformation. " I intend to take several religious questions over the next few weeks and illustrate for you how Unitarian Universalism has redefined each and offers a distinct, positive answer to people's spiritual questions. Today the question is: How to understand Jesus of Nazareth?

The Radical Reformation and Its Origin.
Our story begins in the little village of Torda, in the Transylvanian hills of what today is northwestern Romania . In 1568, a young John Sigismund, the only Unitarian king in our history, called a convocation of scholars to debate the true meaning of the scriptures. In attendance were defenders of the Roman church, the Reformed or Calvinist community, and followers of Luther and the Unitarian David Ferenc, lead preacher in the capital city of Kolosvar .

After a month of uncertain debate, exhaustion set in. King John sent the scholars home. Although he was convinced by David, he issued an edict, the very first declaration of religious liberty in the West . He welcomed all four faiths in his realm, and ensured that none would be persecuted on account of his faith expression.

This took place amidst in the continuing ferment of Christian Renaissance, the time of Magellan and Copernicus. Anti-Trinitarianism was not unique to David. Just a few years earlier, Calvin had burned to death the Spaniard, Miguel Servet, for his book, On the Errors of the Trinity (1531). In Poland and Holland, scholars argued that Jesus was God's revelation but a mere man; his holiness was a function of his office, not his nature (after Faustus Socinii). Another liberating strain argued that humans were not of a fixed nature, but rather free to accept or to reject God's gift of salvation (after Jacobus Arminius).

The Reformation search for the purity of faith in time gave birth to the Enlightenment and moved into the New World in the mid-18th century as part of the Puritan revolt against the established Church. Afer the excesses of the American Great Awakening (ca. 1730 - 1745), many sought to free Christian faith from the errors of time, the corruptions of church politics, and the deadening weight of the creeds. The early American Unitarians thought themselves to be Bible-adhering Christians first and foremost. Their only ambition was to recover the essential revelation of God. The early Universalists never questioned the divinity of Jesus. They affirmed that God's gift of salvation was all inclusive, not reserved only for a select few. Both traditions emerge, mostly in New England in the mid-1800's, energized by the rationality of the Enlightenment and building on the emerging democracy of a new nation.

John Calvin - Unitarian Universalist's most important theologian
Those new to our faith are startled when I assert we began as a Biblical fundamentalism. They are even more surprised when I declare that John Calvin of Geneva (1509-1564) is our most important theologian. Why? Mostly because we believe him wrong on so many counts! Indeed, it is a fair reading of our history to argue that both Unitarianism and Universalism are the result of Calvinist error. We arose out of the need to further reform the great reformer.

Our faith begins then as a negative reaction, a religion of protest. I would argue even today most who reject Christianity do so because they likewise abhor the dictates of John Calvin's rigid system, its legalisms, its intolerance, its fatalism, and its nasty view of both God and humankind.

What is his system? This is what John Calvin taught:

• That all of existence was predetermined by an all-powerful god, who has elected true believers to grace by the sacrifice of his son Jesus.
• This means all others are condemned to eternal damnation.
• Calvin also taught that salvation was God's gift; that there is nothing anyone can do - for good or ill - to change the election.
• Finally, adherence to orthodox belief is proof of your election; disbelief is proof that you're going to hell.

Calvinism is premised on the doctrine of original sin, which declares that all humans are inherently sinful, totally depraved, and utterly corrupt. Calvin's orthodoxy is punitive and offers no hope - unless you are among the elect. I submit that Calvinism is the prevailing theology of American culture. You hear it time and again in the rantings of the religious right yet today in their obsession with the rapture, with an excluding creedalism that damns anyone who disagrees with them, and in the messianic imperialism of American politics.

Even after little reflection, a sensible person will conclude this is a doctrine of despair. It offers no hope of reconciliation between God and humanity - let alone among human beings! Calvinist orthodoxy denies that humans have any dignity or capacity for moral and spiritual growth. Worse, it renders God a vengeful, punitive tyrant who saves or damns you without any regard to what kind of life you live.

The American Reformation of Orthodoxy
This was the painful inspiration for the birth of Unitarian and Universalist Christianity in the latter 18th century. Our Universalists argued especially with Calvin's salvation scheme. They declared, instead, that God was loving and cared deeply for all his creation. They taught salvation would in time come to all. Hence, the words of the 1803 Winchester confession: "We believe there is one God, whose nature is love, . . . who will finally restore the whole family of mankind to holiness and happiness." Our contemporary social justice emphasis has its roots here, in this faith in human wholeness.

Our Unitarians took issue with Calvin's notion of depravity. Instead, they emphasized the dignity and worth of all souls. They thus quarreled with the dreary notion of predestination. They argued that we are free beings and God has given us the ability to grow and to shape our lives toward the good and just. Without that, there can be no hope. It follows that salvation of any sort depends on our character far more than subscription to any creed. Then and now: Unitarian Universalism is a practical faith wherein the true test of the religious life is found in how you live every day.

Moments ago, I said we began as a kind of Christian faith. Liberals differ with the Orthodox essentially in our understanding of God as a unity. William Ellery Channing, the great Boston preacher defined our faith eloquently in 1819. In his sermon, Unitarian Christianity, he delineated our core teachings and understandings of a faithful Christian witness.

1. Channing said: "We regard the Scriptures as . . . God's successive revelations to mankind, written for men, in the language of men, and that its meaning is to be sought in the same manner as that of other books."
2. Arguing that the doctrine of the Trinity is unscriptural, Channing asserted "We believe in the doctrine of God's unity, or that there is one God, and one only."
3. More important, "We believe that God is infinitely good, kind, benevolent, . . . not to a few, but to all; good to every individual, as well as to the general system." Hear the echoes of Universalism in this last.
4. From this assertion, Canning continues: "We believe in the unity of Jesus Christ. We believe that Jesus is one mind, one soul, one being, as truly one as we are, and equally distinct from the one God." This is what so galls the orthodox: We Unitarian Universalists understand Jesus to be wholly a man, akin and a kin to us, worthy of our affection and respect but not our worship.
5. Channing concludes Unitarian Universalists believe that "God's justice (is) in perfect harmony with his mercy." And of Jesus, "We believe, that he was sent by the Father to . . . to rescue men from sin . . . and to bring them to a state of everlasting purity and happiness"

The liberal Christians held to the notion that there is a "spark of divinity" in everyone and that the purpose of church is to encourage you and me to ignite that spark and grow into our "likeness unto God." That is, we need to cultivate our character as moral beings, for on that our salvation rests - not on creeds nor conformity to the dictates of the church fathers.

The Transcendentalist Challenge.
So far so, good. Earlier, I said we are the church of the continuing reformation. Hardly had Channing rebuffed the orthodox and along came the Transcendentalists with further challenge. In 1838, when, just 35 and having failed as a Unitarian minister, Ralph Waldo Emerson gave his famous Divinity School Address to the graduating class of seminarians at Harvard. His sermon became the defining moment which moved our tradition well outside our Christian inheritance.

Among the notable things he said was a direct challenge to relying at all on scripture, church teaching, or even church leadership for religious truth. Disabused by authority, wary of superstition and leery of supernaturalism, Emerson and the other Transcendentalists spoke not of a mysterious God "out there," but rather of a God close at hand, intuitively known, felt as ever present and accessible to our common senses. Theirs, and dare I say ours, is a living god immediately and directly knowable in Emerson's famous phrase "without mediator or veil." For Emerson, scripture and doctrines were impediments to faith, not the singular gateway. It is your own direct apprehension of the divine that is to be trusted and relied upon.

For our purposes this morning, Emerson argued against worrying about Jesus at all. "Historical Christianity," Emerson claimed, "has dwelt, it dwells, with noxious exaggeration about the person of Jesus. The soul knows no persons." Sounding zen-like, not only did Emerson reject Jesus as savior, but as a moral model as well. He urged the new ministers to guard against the good models, saying "The imitator dooms himself to hopeless mediocrity." Emerson really believed the divine is in each of us and knowable in our own heart. Elsewhere he wrote, "To believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true for all men, - that is genius."

We don't have time for controversy that followed, which was major. However, a few years later, Theodore Parker, surely one of the greatest preachers of the era, in an 1841 sermon, drew the conclusions the both the Orthodox and the liberal Christians found implicit and objectionable in Emerson's challenge. Parker moved the religious liberalism clearly into a non-Christian faith, saying in good Puritan fashion, "If Jesus of Nazareth had never lived, still Christianity would stand firm, and fear no evil. None of the doctrines of that religion would fall to the ground; for if true, they stand by themselves . . . (not because they were) lived out by an infallible teacher, - but that it is true, like the axioms of geometry, . . ."

The Living Tradition of Unitarian Universalism
By the end of the 19th century, our faith settled pretty much into its current formulation, as something more than Christian and primarily humanistic. Oh, the Reformation continues - particularly in our deconstruction of patriarchy and the recovery of feminine wisdom, in our struggles to be both reverential and worldly, in our as yet unproductive efforts to become anti-racist and multi-cultural, and especially in our emerging understandings of a spirit-based environmentalism. We remain highly suspicious of superstition, dogma and idolatry. We demand that religious truth be consonant with reason, experience, and the natural world. We still hold liberty of conviction as a cardinal value to our community. And whatever else may be said of us, we seek genuinely if imperfectly to walk our talk, to be a religion of practical hope, affirming human worth, and committed to social justice.

The Transcendentalists and the Humanists who followed the Liberal Christians moved our faith even further from our Christian origins, while keeping the ethical and rational aspects of religion. Today, Unitarian Universalist Christians are a minority in the Free Church - perhaps because of this regrettable linkage between Calvinism and whatever else appears under the Christian name. Yet, we do ourselves a disservice if we fail to look again at what Jesus taught as a guide to human living. We need not worship Jesus as the Christ, God's only Son and our Lord, and our savior, to learn from his life. He can be our moral exemplar. As Parker said, it's the teachings, not the teacher, that matters most.

And what did he teach? Nothing more and nothing less, nothing easier nor more difficult than the Great Commandment, as recorded in the Gospel of Luke:

One day an expert in religious law stood up to test Jesus by asking him this question: "Teacher, what must I do to receive eternal life?" Jesus replied, "What does the law of Moses say? How do you read it?" The man answered, "`You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your strength, and all your mind.' And, `Love your neighbor as yourself.'"[c] "Right!" Jesus told him. "Do this and you will live!" Luke 10.25-28 (see also: Deuteronomy 6.5)

Many Sundays we begin services by affirming that "Love is our teaching." This phrase comes straight out of our Christian and Jewish heritage. What can be meant by this? That we are called to live by the highest ideal and the most demanding of ethics, truly to love only what is most important and to demonstrate that love in how we treat each other. Said simply, we best love God or the divine when we love one another. The saying is easy; the doing is something else. In our frailty and fear, we often succumb to distrust and disdain rather than to the divine spark of god-likeness (godliness) in our soul. It is our claim, however, that we can get better at it, that no one is ever finally lost. Tempting though it may be, there is never a reason to give up on any person's potential, including our own.

Jesus never claimed to be God nor did he desire to be worshiped. The Jesus of orthodoxy and of the miracles is rightly rejected. This we do. We understand Jesus was a teacher, a rabbi, pure and simple, and as he often said, "let those who have ears, listen." That's all he asked.

Jesus spoke of the kingdom of God. Too often, the Christian church has made it an other-worldly concept, a next-life idea and device with which to manipulate the ignorant and fearful. That is simply wrong. What did Jesus mean when he spoke of it? The kingdom of God, said Jesus, is at hand, in our midst, and revealed over and again whenever we practice the art of loving our neighbors. When the lawyer then asked Jesus to say who the neighbor is, Jesus told the parable of the good Samaritan who came to the aid of the man beaten alongside the road. Noting that the righteous then as now avoid the down and out, he asked:

"Which of these three do you think was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of robbers?" The expert in the law replied, "The one who had mercy on him." Jesus told him, "Go and do likewise." Luke 10.36-37

What Jesus has to offer modern Unitarian Universalists is the invitation or the challenge to identify with and have compassion for the poor and outcast.

This then is the lasting legacy of our early teachings as radical reformers: to know again Jesus as the exemplar, a fellow traveler and guide to show you and me the way to a better life. May we go and do likewise, and live. Blessings, my friends. Amen.

Notes to the text:

• I believe in God, the Father almighty, creator of heaven and earth.
• I believe in Jesus Christ, God's only Son, our Lord, who was conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, and was buried; he descended to the dead. On the third day he rose again; he ascended into heaven, he is seated at the right hand of the Father, and he will come again to judge the living and the dead.
• I believe in the Holy Spirit, the holy catholic church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting. Amen.

2. Among those who disavowed the divinity of Christ was Thomas Jefferson, who, in the Establishment tradition of the Virginian Commonwealth, had to resign to being "a Unitarian by myself." Believing an authentic Christianity had been hijacked by the fundamentalist posers of his day, Jefferson sat down and literally cut apart his Bible with scissors. In a few days, he pasted it all back together to create what today is known today as the Jefferson Bible (published today by our own Beacon Press; see Unitarian Universalist Association [www.uua.org] Bookstore for a copy). Jefferson called it The Philosophy of Jesus of Nazareth. Having purged all the miracles, including the resurrection, Jefferson compiled a human Jesus, very much along the lines presented in this sermon.

By the way, the reader might be interested to know that every member of Congress is sworn in on and receives a copy of the Jefferson Bible as his or her first official act.

3. Whether we are anti-Christian is a delicate question. It may be fair to characterize Unitarian Universalism as such given that we reject the Roman and orthodox Protestant teaching that God manifests itself in three ways (the Trinitarian formula). Further, we reject the dual nature hypothesis of Catholic teaching of Jesus as wholly God and wholly human. More, we disavow the resurrection miracle and the doctrine of vicarious atonement as evidence of God's intention for humanity.

All that is true. However, our Universalism invites us to love those with whom we disagree on matters of theology. At our best, we are simply differently faithful, respectful of religious convictions we do not share and open to genuine dialogue with those who believe differently. At our worst, we are disdainful and unkind, perhaps even paranoid about Christian teaching. To the extent these fears are founded in oppressive, righteous Christian rhetoric, we are properly on guard. However, in keeping with Jesus' teaching, we ought to love those whom we find in error, lest we emulate their condemnation of us.

4. The Radical Reformation refers to those who rejected both the Roman Catholic tradition and the Protestant alternatives to it, in the name of what they considered true or apostolic Christianity. The radical reformers felt Luther and Calvin had not gone far enough, content with reorganizing the church without reexamining the basic and moral teachings of Christian faith.

5. Transylvania ("across the forested mountains") is the name of a beautiful, hilly region of east-central Europe. Historically, part of the Hungarian empire, after World War II, it became appended to the newly formed Romanian state. Today, more than 100 Unitarian congregations survive, primarily in small, rural villages. The people are linguistically and ethnically Hungarian and subscribe to a pietistic, Bible-centered faith in "the One God."

6. David Ferenc (also Francis David) (1510-1579) is the acknowledged founder of European Unitarian religion. David spoke of "the one God" to distinguish his faith from orthodoxy. A powerful preacher, he is said to have converted the entire city of Kolosvar in a triumphant sermon following the meeting at Torda. After King John died, the counter-Reformation set in. Oppression succeeded tolerance. David was assailed as a "Judaizer," arrested and died in prison at Deva in 1579.

7. The Edict of Torda, promulgated at the Diet at Torda, 1568 by King John Sigismund (emphasis added by kgh):

His majesty, our Lord, in what manner he - together with his realm - legislated in the matter of religion at the previous Diets, in the same matter now, in this Diet, reaffirms that in every place the preachers shall preach and explain the Gospel each according to his understanding of it, and if the congregation like it, well. If not, no one shall compel them for their souls would not be satisfied, but they shall be permitted to keep a preacher whose teaching they approve. Therefore none of the superintendents or others shall abuse the preachers, no one shall be reviled for his religion by anyone, according to the previous statutes, and it is not permitted that anyone should threaten anyone else by imprisonment or by removal from his post for his teaching. For faith is the gift of God and this comes from hearing, which hearings is by the word of God.

8. The 16th century in Europe was a remarkable time. The Christian Renaissance unloosed a century of spiritual stagnation. In addition to the Reformation of the Roman Church, major breakthroughs in the West's understanding of the world occurred. Columbus had discovered a whole new world. Magellan's crew had circumnavigated the world. Copernicus discovered that the earth really was not at the center of things. It was the time of Galileo Galilei (1564-1642) and Johannes Kepler (1571-1630), of Shakespeare (1554-1616) and the King James Bible. New ideas kept arising to challenge the old ways.

9. Anti-Trinitarianism was part of the rebellion against the Roman church and its oppressions. Miguel Servet published in On the Errors of the Trinity in 1531. It was a bestseller, which challenged orthodoxy's claim that there could be no further innovations in matters of faith - for which John Calvin had him burned at the stake in 1553.

The Italians Laelius Socinus (1525-1562) and his nephew Fausto Paolo Sozzini (1539- 1604) were other anti-trinitarians, from whose name "Socinianism" arises. Their teaching rejected the notion of the divinity of Christ. They visited with David Ferenc and later inspired the Polish Brethren in Racov to create the Unitarian Racovian Catechism of 1605.

Dutchman Jacobus Arminius (1559-1609) was another influential thinker who argued for human freedom either to accept or to reject God's salvation. This idea was challenged by the orthodox as undermining God's sovereignty. The Arminians countered that it made no sense not to have choice; otherwise, the salvation was of no consequence.

In the 17th century, Englishman John Biddle (1615-1662) was an influential nontrinitarian in England and the founder of Unitarianism there. Other notable nontrinitarians include John Locke (1632-1704) and Isaac Newton (1643-1727).

10. Both the Unitarians and the Universalists relied on proof-text arguments from scripture for their point of view. As with the Europeans two hundred years earlier, they believed that faith must be in accordance with the Holy Scriptures. As the doctrines of trinity and partial salvation are not found in the Bible, they rejected them, drawing on passages that supported their view of God as a unity and that under God's plan all were elected to eventual restoration to grace.

11. It is fair to say the American political revolution and the spiritual/theological revolution of religious liberalism in the 18th century were manifestations of the same spiritual opening of mind and heart. You cannot really appreciate the one without understanding the other.

12. Fundamentalism: "Although the term fundamentalism in popular usage sometimes refers derogatorily to any fringe religious group, or to extremist ethnic movements with only nominally religious motivations, the term does have a more precise denotation. "Fundamentalist" describes a movement to return to what is considered the defining or founding principles of the religion. It has especially come to refer to any religious enclave that intentionally resists identification with the larger religious group in which it originally arose, on the basis that fundamental principles upon which the larger religious group is supposedly founded have become corrupt or displaced by alternative principles hostile to its identity." Excerpt from Wikipedia, an on-line encyclopedia at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamentalism.

13. The very name Protestantism refers to the idea of objecting, protesting previous theological formulations. However, once the genii of re-forming institutions and ideas is out of the bottle, there is no putting it back. Liberation is itself liberating. Once an opening occurs, the human spirit wants to keep expanding its reach, which may be why so many conformist theologies fear dissent in any form.

14. John Calvin's (1509-1564) seminal work is his Institutes of the Christian Religion, published in 1536 when he was but 26. The Institutes remain one of the core documents of Reformation theology and provides the primary intellectual foundation to orthodox Protestant Christianity.

15. In the Hebrew Bible, Genesis 2-3, one finds the story of Adam & Eve in the Garden of Paradise. Original sin refers to their rebellion against Yahweh's (the name of the Hebrew god) command not to eat of the tree of knowledge. Christian theology draws on this story to characterize the human condition as a falling away from God; hence, the purpose of faith is to restore one to God's grace, to a perfect wholeness free of sin.

16. Universalism is simply the teaching that all souls will be saved. The Universalists, drawing on Biblical texts affirming God's inclusive love, could not understand orthodoxy's portrayal of God as vengeful. They argued that no truly loving parent would treat His children with endless punishment for their mistakes and shortcomings. Hence, our ancestors taught that whatever else may be said, God is Love in action. This is the good news of liberal Christianity, a sentiment that eventually filtered into the affirming vision of humanity held by the Unitarians. It explains why many Unitarian Universalist congregations are named "All Souls."

On a lighter note, these positive notions of divinity and humanity are well-captured in a quip by the Reverend Thomas Starr King (1824-1864), often credited for having saved California for the Union. King had served congregations in both communions, so he knew their shared thinking. When asked what distinguished the two, he told a joke: "The Universalists believe that God is too good to damn anyone. The Unitarians believe that humans are too good to be damned by anyone."

17. While both the Unitarians and the Universalists were resistant to creeds as a condition of membership, from time to time both promulgated affirmations or confessions of faith to summarize their consensus of faith. The Universalists often included a "Liberty Principle," which said that no words shall be used to exclude faithful followers. Here is the Winchester Profession of 1803 in its entirety, followed by the "Liberty Clause."

1. We believe, that the Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments contain a revelation of the character of God, and of the duty, interest, and final destination of mankind.
2. We believe there is one God, whose nature is love; revealed in one Lord Jesus Christ, by one Holy Spirit of grace, who will finally restore the whole family of mankind to holiness and happiness.
3. We believe, that holiness and true happiness are inseparably connected; and that believers ought to maintain order, and practice good works, for these things are good and profitable unto men.

18. It helps to consider that our God-concept, to the extent we still hold it in our post-modern, humanistic, naturalism is very similar, if not the same, as held by the Jews and the followers of Islam. Our mono-theism compares favorably. Jews and Muslims share our quarrel with the Roman/Protestant formula of the Trinity.

19.Unitarian Christianity is a classic "apology" or defense of faith delivered by Channing at the Ordination of Rev. Jared Sparks in The First Independent Church of Baltimore on May 5, 1819. Channing, then a member of the Harvard College faculty and pastor to the Federated Street congregation, was the acknowledged leader among the liberals. Sparks ordination was understood to be a pivotal opportunity for the liberal Christians to distinguish themselves from and to critique their orthodox attackers. Next to Tom Paine's Common Sense, Channing's Unitarian Christianity was a the most widely read essay of the day.

20. From Emerson's essay, On Self-Reliance (1841).

21. It is sometimes said that one's generation's radicals are the next's conservatives. The Transcendentalists, While grateful for the Liberals' breaking free of orthodoxy, Emerson felt they had not followed the logic of their convictions to its natural conclusion. Given the atmosphere of the day and the long history of social, moral, even legal oppression, it is not surprising that the Liberals were content to be simply distinctively Christian.

Emerson was independent enough that he did not worry too much about how others received his views. Indeed the firestorm that arose after this address took him by surprise. Still, he felt no need to enter into the fray. Of course, the orthodox saw where Emerson's ideas led. What strikes us today as puzzling is the harsh reaction among the Liberals. The Reverend Andrews Norton (1786-1853), sometimes jokingly referred to as "the Unitarian Pope," was a Professor of Sacred Literature at Harvard. Along with Channing, he was one of the best known Liberal Christians. Feeling the need to defend mainstream Unitarian thinking from Emerson's radical departure, he replied to Emerson in a major and scathing address a year later, entitling his remarks "A Discourse on the Latest Form of Infidelity" (1839).

22. Theodore Parker, The Transient and Permanent in Christianity (1841). In this sermon, Parker delineates what is inherent in Emerson's thinking. In effect, Parker claims that Christian morality is true for all time and places (the permanent) independently of the forms and institutions which express it (the transient). This, joined with his fiery stance in favor of abolition of slavery, so alienated many of his clergy colleagues that they refused Parker the time-honored hospitality of pulpit exchange.

23. An affirmation of Unitarian Universalist faith reads: