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Over the years I have participated
in a number of theological conferences. Gatherings where Unitarian
Universalist ministers present and discuss scholarly papers about
their theologies. It is always very stimulating and exciting
intellectually but frustrating and challenging to try to translate
the scholarly ideas into everyday living. Ideally of course, your
theology, your convictions about what is of ultimate concern and
value, should influence how you live—your understanding of yourself,
the way you relate to other people, the kind of society you work to
achieve. Most of us human beings however have a strong tendency to
say one thing and do another. We don’t mean to do that. We’re just
phenomenally good at putting our ideals in one mental compartment
and our activities in another. But there are some few courageous
persons who with great effort and determination struggle all their
lives to bring these compartments together, to make their theologies
or values evident in their lives.
William Ellery Channing was such a person. He was a small, frail
man who never wanted to be a radical. But he felt called to
articulate a new theology and to live accordingly. He was born in
Newport,
Rhode Island in 1780 and raised in
a family of culture and education. He was educated at Harvard and
after great inner torment decided to enter the ministry. He was
called to the Federal Street
Church in Boston in 1803 and remained with that congregation
throughout his career.
Jack Mendelsohn’s biography of Channing is aptly titled The
Reluctant Radical. Channing’s life-long reluctance to take
radical stands was directly related to his theological convictions.
Those same convictions, however, forced him repeatedly to speak with
passion and eloquence on the social issues of his day.
Calvinism was the dominant theology in New England Congregationalism
when Channing was growing up. God was seen as all-powerful, and
human beings as inherently sinful. Channing, however, believed in a
God of love and benevolence and a Jesus who was fully human. What
these beliefs meant to him was, first, that human beings are born
with the potential for becoming good and loving persons, and second
that if only that potential for good could be encouraged in
individuals, society would be transformed. Channing considered his
life work as a minister to be the development of goodness and
tolerance in the people he was called to serve. He spoke out
against anti-Catholic bigotry and worked with his good friend the
Catholic bishop to improve conditions for Boston’s poor. This same
commitment to a path of acceptance and tolerance of differing views
made it difficult for Channing to contribute to dissension by
answering the theological attacks of Orthodox Calvinists. And in
later years he was cautious at first in speaking against slavery
because he disliked the abrasive activities of the abolitionists.
Reluctant or not, in 1819 Channing accepted the challenge of
answering the theological attacks of the orthodox. Until that time
he and other liberal ministers had avoided controversial issues in
their preaching, ignoring the angry words of the orthodox who
demanded that the liberals admit their heresies. Channing finally
spoke in Baltimore at the ordination of Jared Sparks and set forth
the theological position of the Unitarian Christians of that time.
The sermon was published and has been called the most widely read
sermon in America. Channing proclaimed a theology which
freed human beings from the tyrant god of Calvinism, the guilt of
original sin, and the neglect of reason in reading the scriptures.
With a loving deity and a human example of perfection in the life of
Jesus the responsibility for good and evil was placed upon the
individual. Each person was called to develop a just and loving
character. Channing was greatly admired and his optimistic theology
was seen as a basis for the wave of social reforms which
characterized much of the nineteenth century.
The abolition of slavery was the major social cause taking shape
during Channing’s life. As a young man he spent two years in
Virginia as a tutor and was nauseated by the slavery he saw for the
first time. “There is one object here which always depresses me,”
he wrote. “It is slavery. This alone would prevent me from ever
settling in Virginia. Language cannot express my detestation of
it.” Yet he was strangely silent on the issue for many years. In
1819 when Missouri asked to be admitted to the Union
as a slave state Channing said nothing publicly.
Mendelsohn points out that Channing’s spiritual vision was forever
blessed (or cursed) with a comprehensive perspective. He considered
slavery to be morally wrong. But how could a nation so entangled in
a vast entrenched system of evil find the moral strength to
extricate itself? A Baltimore abolitionist, Benjamin Lundy, visited
Channing to enlist his help in organizing abolitionist societies but
Channing was wary. His benevolent and comprehensive perspective is
evident in the letter he wrote to Senator Daniel Webster in
Washington. “A little while ago,” he wrote, “Mr. Lundy of Baltimore,
the editor of a paper called The Genius of Universal Emancipation
visited…to stir us up to the work of abolishing slavery at the
South, and the intention is to organize societies for this purpose.
I know few objects into which I should enter with more zeal, but I
am aware how cautiously exertions are to be made for it in this part
of the country. I know that our Southern brethren interpret every
word from this region on the subject of slavery as an expression of
hostility. I would ask if they cannot be brought to understand us
better, and if we can do any good till we remove their
misapprehensions. It seems to me that, before moving in this
matter, we ought to say to them distinctly, ‘We consider slavery as
your calamity, not your crime, and we will share with you the burden
of putting an end to it…’ We must first let the Southern States see
that we are their friends in this affair, that we sympathize with
them, and from principles of patriotism and philanthropy, we are
willing to share the toil and expense of abolishing slavery.” To
narrow one’s perspective to a hatred of slavery was not enough for
him, lest the power of that single-minded rage end in sheer
destructiveness. What his perspective lacked was empathy with the
feelings of slaves. But in 1830 the Channings spent six months in
St. Croix and there he took upon himself a series of face to face
discussions with slaves. According to his biographer Channing once
passed a slave woman who was singing. He asked her why she found
her work so pleasant. She answered decisively that she did not.
Channing said to her, “Tell me then what part of your work is most
pleasant.” She answered, with much emphasis, “No part pleasant. We
forced to do it.” Channing commented in a letter that these words
let him into the heart of the slave. He began to outline a major
essay on slavery. Still he hesitated and the essay was not
completed and published until five years later. On his return to
Boston he did preach an anti-slavery sermon. But when asked to join
the anti-slavery society he refused. He could not perceive Southern
slaveholders and moneyed Northerners as a mass of immoral or evil
people when to him they were individuals with varying moral
capacities. Abolitionist Lydia Child had many conversations with
Channing. Of his caution she wrote, “I learned that it was justice
to all, not popularity for himself which made him so cautious.” It
was Samuel J. May, one of Channing’s protégés who finally reached
him with a personal challenge. One autumn day while May was
listening to Channing’s routine carping about the harshness of
abolitionist language, his patience snapped. “Dr. Channing,” he
said, quite forgetting his usual reverence for the great one, “I am
tired of these complaints…It is not our fault that those who might
have managed this reform more prudently have left us to manage it as
we may be able. It is not our fault that those might have pleaded
for the enslaved so much more eloquently, both with the pen and with
the living voice than we can, have been silent. We are not to
blame, Sir, that you who more perhaps than any other man might have
so raised the voice of remonstrance that it should have been heard
throughout the length and breadth of the land,--we are not to blame,
Sir, that you have not so spoken. And now, because inferior men
have begun to speak and act against what you yourself acknowledge to
be an awful injustice, it is not becoming in you to complain of us,
because we do it in an inferior style. Why, Sir, have you not
moved, why have you not spoken before?” There was a moment of tense
silence and then Channing replied, “Brother May, I acknowledge the
justice of your reproof; I have been silent too long.” He published
his essay on slavery and was immediately in the center of the
storm. Old line members of Federal
Street
Church stopped calling at the Channing home, some even refused to
speak when passing him on the sidewalk. As Mendelsohn writes, he
who had been an object of almost mystical adulation was suddenly a
pariah. Thereafter he spoke out repeatedly on behalf of the rights
of abolitionists and against the annexation of Texas as a slave
state. When Channing’s friend, abolitionist Charles Follen died on a
burning ship, Samuel May, on behalf of the Massachusetts
Anti-slavery Society requested the use of the Federal
Street
Church for a memorial service and was turned down by the Standing
Committee though every member knew that Follen had been one of
Channing’s dearest friends. Channing memorialized his friend from
the pulpit anyway. Then he addressed a letter to the committee
relinquishing his salary and asking that his public functions as
pastor should cease. Shortly before his death in 1842 Channing was
vacationing in the Berkshires. On the fourth anniversary of
West Indies
emancipation, Channing asked to use the Lenox meetinghouse
pulpit to memorialize the event. In his final public utterance he
said: “We were told…that emancipation was to turn the green islands
of the West Indies into deserts; but they still rise from the
tropical sea as blooming and verdant as before. We were told that
the slaves if set free, would break out in universal massacre; but
since that event not a report has reached us of murder perpetrated
by a colored man on the white population. We were told that crimes
would multiply; but they are diminished in every emancipated island,
and very greatly in most…In truth, no race but the African could
have made the great transition with so little harm to themselves and
others…The spirit of education has sprung up among the people to an
extent worthy of admiration…there is reason to believe that a more
general desire to educate their children is to be found among them
than exists among portions of the white population in the slave
States of the South…
“Emancipation can hardly take place under more
unfavorable circumstances than it encountered in those islands. The
master abhorred it, repelled it as long as possible, submitted to it
only from force, and consequently did little to mitigate its evils,
or to conciliate the freed bondman. In those island the slaves were
eight or ten times more numerous than the whites. Yet perfect order
has followed emancipation…Emancipation conferred deliberately and
conscientiously is safe.”
Perhaps we are all, like Channing, rather reluctant to be radicals
in any cause no matter how just. Channing’s God of love and reason
made him reluctant to condemn others, but also led him ultimately to
what was in his day a radical stand.
- Who or what is your god?
- What ideal guides you
in your search for truth, and in your actions?
- What are the social
causes we face today?
- What are the roots of
your reluctance to take a stand?
- What is the source of
your courage to stand firm when necessary?
Channing lived out his theology as
best he could, having the courage to do so even when his personal
comfort and popularity had to be sacrificed. What is even more
remarkable is that however passionate he was in his own convictions,
he was able also to affirm the freedom of others to articulate their
own views. The free mind was of ultimate concern to Channing. He
even dared to suggest that children should be nurtured in that
freedom. Again his theology forced him to a radical position; it is
still a radical position in religious education today. I would like
to close with his well-known words on the subject:
"The great end in religious instruction is not to stamp
our minds upon the young, but to stir up their own; not to make them
see with our eyes, but to look inquiringly and steadily with their
own; not to give them a definite amount of knowledge, but to inspire
a fervent love of truth; not to form an outward regularity, but to
touch inward springs; not to bind them by ineradicable prejudices to
our particular sect or peculiar notions, but to prepare them for
impartial, conscientious judging of whatever subjects may be offered
to their decision; not to burden the memory, but to quicken and
strengthen the power of thought; not to impose religion upon them in
the form of arbitrary rules, but awaken the conscience, the moral
discernment. In a word, the great end is to awaken the soul, to
excite and cherish spiritual life."
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