THE BELOVED

Towards a Unitarian Universalist Language of Reverence

Erik William Resly

When Carolyn McDade approached her piano to prayerfully compose Spirit of Life, she could hardly have anticipated that her refrain would become the de facto anthem of Unitarian Universalism. No other song, no other prayer, no other piece of liturgy is so well known and loved.1 McDade had not intended such repute. Spirit of Life grew out of her activist fatigue at a particularly personal and vulnerable moment in her work for Central American solidarity in the early 1980s. Out of the depths of despair, McDade summoned the presence of the divine. Hers was a devotional petition for liberating strength: Spirit of Life, come unto me. Sing in my heart all the stirrings of compassion. Blow in the wind, rise in the sea; Move in the hand, giving life the shape of justice. Roots hold me close; wings set me free; Spirit of Life, come to me, come to me.2 In six short lines, McDade managed to capture the contemporary Unitarian Universalist imagination in all of its promise and in all of its paradox. Her hymnic prayer yearns for an intimate experience of the divine, yet it addresses its apostrophe to a curiously abstract and diffuse presence: the Spirit of Life. That epithet, so beloved in Unitarian Universalist circles, evokes an image of the holy that indwells in creation, but in a rather impersonal way. It remains amorphous, hard to pin down, and therefore difficult to engage in meaningful, heartfelt relationship the way I would a companion or a lover. The Spirit of Life might endow me with a rush of courage in times of fear, but it wont take my hand. When I muster the strength to push through, it is unlikely that the Spirit of Life will let out a deep sigh of relief. As much as I might try, I struggle to form a close attachment to anything imagined as a spirit. In my devotional life, by contrast, intimacy defines my relationship with the sacred.

1 2

French, Carolyn McDades Spirit of Life, 2007. Reprinted in: French, Carolyn McDades Spirit of Life, 2007. See also: UUA, Singing the Living Tradition, #123.

What quality of spiritual connection might a more personal language of reverence describe, or even create? What might it accomplish? In this paper, I introduce a new religious moniker to the contemporary linguistic landscape of Unitarian Universalism. I argue that the impulse towards divine immanence and personality in the appellation The Beloved provides Unitarian Universalists with a language of reverence that holds profound devotional and liberationist potential. I proceed in four steps. The first section of the paper discloses the discursive power enfolded within any description of the divine. It then demonstrates how Unitarian Universalism presently lacks a formal language of reverence yet relies on a functional dialect that envisages the holy as a benevolent force. The second section turns back to mid-nineteenth century Massachusetts to resurrect a long forgotten theological current within Unitarian tradition. In so doing, it supplements the more popular taxonomic axis of divine transcendence-immanence with that of divine impersonality-personality. The third section identifies the impulse towards divine immanence and personality in both liberal and liberation theologies alike. It shows how formative voices in both traditions privilege this theological approach for different reasons: liberals often stress its devotional advantage, while liberationists frequently highlight its emancipatory promise. In the fourth and final section, I propose the reverential epithet The Beloved as a viable and valuable description for Unitarian Universalists of an immanent and personal experience of divinity. I conclude by raising and addressing possible concerns that this language of reverence might spawn.

1. TALKING ABOUT GOD

It matters how we choose to describe the divine. In her prayerful petition, McDade appeals to a presence that she terms the Spirit of Life. Other names, like God or the Lord, similarly point to that which exceeds all naming. McDade presumably avoided these appellations in favor of an image that better encapsulated her cognitive and affective understanding of that which she so desperately sought to summon. Hers was a deeply personal decision that over time has gained considerable influence and reach. What is at stake in how we talk about mystery? Gail Ramshaw coins the phrase liturgical language to describe those words employed by a religious community in the corporate enactment of their faith. When a practicing Catholic attends Sunday mass, for example, she not only hears, but also actively participates, in the use of liturgical language. At the very outset of the service, for example, she responds to the priests greeting by crossing herself in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Throughout the mass, she returns to these, and other, expressions of reverence. They structure her worship experience and inform the way she understands her faith. In categorizing these rhetorical habits as liturgical language, Ramshaw alerts us to their symbolic nature. God-talk is necessarily metaphorical. No human word can fully contain or wholly exhaust that which lies beyond human cognition. To name the divine is to merely point towards it. Still, religious communities rely on the symbolism of liturgical language because it contains many layers of meaning simultaneously.3 Religious metaphor can be interpreted in different ways and accessed from different points of view. To counterbalance this hermeneutical freedom and avoid theological anarchy, faith traditions leverage the second aspect of liturgical language: its social currency. Ramshaw
3

Ibid, 8.

observes how [o]ne way or another, a canon of words will be approved for corporate worship and will constitute the liturgical language of that community.4 Invoking the divine as Subduer5 would seem foreign to Catholic audiences, but it is actually quite common in Muslim circles. The uniqueness of each religious community is premised on and perpetuated by concrete decisions about liturgical language. These choices cycle over time and throughout the year. According to Ramshaw, the whole body of liturgical language is less like an index, a list of words in alphabetical order, and more like a tree, with some words as essential as the trunk, and others as seasonal as autumn colors or as short-lived as that one single leaf.6 The words circulating in religious communities hold discursive power. Liturgical language is not neutral. It shapes the theological tools for making meaning and structures the theological space for being together in community. Liturgical language thus carries great promise and great peril. Feminist theology has poignantly and provocatively illustrated the high stakes of such an enterprise. Since religion fulfills deep psychic needs, Carol Christ observes, its symbols and rituals communicate implicit assumptions about human worth and dignity.7 Consequently, liturgical languages that privilege a male God create moods and motivations that keep women in a state of psychological dependence on men and male authority.8 Masculine symbols legitimate male-dominated social structures as well. Mary Daly insists that [i]f God in his heaven is a father ruling his people, then it is in the nature of things according to divine plan and the order of the universe that society be male-dominated.9 To dismiss liturgical

4 5

Ibid, 5. Translated from the Arabic, Al-Qahhr. 6 Ramshaw, Liturgical Language, 6. 7 Christ, Womanspirit Rising, 274. 8 Ibid, 275. 9 Daly, Beyond God the Father, 13.

language as mere poetics is to ignore the profound influence that religious symbols have on personal experience and social structures. Unitarian Universalism showcases many images but formally commits itself to none. Bring many names, we sing.10 Unitarian Universalists welcome religious pluralism and achieve theological consensus locally, if at all. For example, the members of First Parish in Milton (Massachusetts) underwent a rigorous process of renewing their covenant while I served the congregation as intern minister. They eventually voted on a revised version that replaced the reference to Jesus with mention of the God of limitless love in whom we are one. Few would question the religious quality of this liturgical language, and it functioned, as Ramshaw would have it, as a socially constructed symbol easily woven into corporate praise and prayer.11 The same cannot be said, however, of the covenant that binds congregations together on a national scale. William G. Sinkford, former president of the Unitarian Universalist Association (UUA), made this observation almost a decade ago in his reflection on Unitarian Universalisms language of reverence, or lack thereof. Mounting the pulpit at First Jefferson Unitarian Universalist Church in January 2003, Sinkford opened with a confession: I realized that we have in our Principles an affirmation of our faith that uses not one single piece of religious language. Not even one word that would be considered traditionally religious.12 Sinkford admitted that this rhetorical anemia poses serious challenges and worrisome concerns. He wondered whether this kind of language can adequately capture who we are and what were about.13 Beyond strengthening our sense of identity as a denomination, Sinkford felt that a shared language of reverence would deepen devotional practice: I would like to see us

10 11

UUA, Singing the Living Tradition, #23. Ramshaw, Liturgical Language, 5 12 Grodzins, A Language of Reverence, 2. Italics his. 13 Ibid, 2

become better acquainted with the depths, both so that we are more grounded in our personal faith, and so that we can effectively communicate that faith and what we believe it demands of us to others.14 In helping Unitarian Universalists to discern social responsibility, a language of reverence would also empower activists to explore the ability of humans to shape and frame our world.15 Interestingly, most critics did not take issue with Sinkfords analysis. It was not the summons but the solution that concerned Unitarian Universalists at the time. Unitarian Universalism may lack a formally sanctioned liturgical language, but it seems to display a functional one. In a 1987 survey conducted by the Unitarian Universalist Association, only four percent of Unitarian Universalist respondents described the divine in terms of a supernatural being who reveals himself in human experience and history.16 By contrast, over three fourths of those surveyed referred to the divine as the ground of all being or some natural processes. I am convinced that these unspoken yet pervasive theological commitments persist to this day. I recently asked a fellow seminarian about her exposure to Godtalk within Unitarian Universalist congregations. She offered up the phrase benevolent force as a term she frequently hears applied or alluded to in the religious circles she frequents.17 Mark Morrison-Reed initially described this same rhetorical impulse as neo-deist, although he later dropped that term from his own vocabulary.18 Nevertheless, the thrust of his observations remains compelling and, in my experience, accurate. He submits that most Unitarian Universalists dont believe in a personal GodAt most we will cede that the Divine, being synonymous with the natural order, works in and through us.19 Morrison-Reed ties this
14 15

Ibid, 4 Ibid, 5 16 Gilbert, The Prophetic Imperative, 75 17 She attended a mid-sized urban church before joining a small fellowship-style congregation during college. She now serves a self-identified Christian Unitarian community. 18 Morrison-Reed, Dragged Kicking and Screaming into Heaven, 2008 19 Morrison-Reed, Dragged Kicking and Screaming into Heaven, 2009

prevailing language of reverence to the religious culture out of which it originates and which it in turn fosters: Our God is more abstract and less personal, more a symbol and less a felt presence, more in our heads and less in our hearts, an idea we argue about rather than an intuition we rely upon.20 Despite his academic acumen, Morrison-Reed struggles to connect to this theological brand of cosmic formlessness. I suspect he is not alone. Morrison-Reed confesses that UU abstractions of God simply don't meet my emotional needs or take me to that sacred place.21 He yearns for a God who drags the last, unrepentant sinner into heaven a God who talks to you when you are in doubt, rejoices with you when times are good, or carries you through lifes trials.22 Unfortunately, Morrison-Reed finds little room for this language of reverence in Unitarian Universalism today. His experience begs the questions: Is there precedent for this type of divinity within our heritage? Does Unitarian Universalism have a historical as well as pastoral responsibility to make space for Morrison-Reeds God? In the following sections, I answer these two questions with a resounding yes. Out of profound respect for Unitarian Universalisms investment in non-dogmatic religion, I would never want to impose a liturgical language from above. It would be inappropriate for the UUA to mandate one way of describing the divine. However, it is both my hope and my conviction that the language of reverence advanced in this paper could take hold from below. That is to say, we must not only make space for it, but we should remain open to the possibility that it could create a sacred space in which Unitarian Universalists of diverse stripes can take spiritual refuge. Admittedly, it offers a strong counterpoint to the benevolent force rhetoric. Still, I suspect that it will resonate with, or at least creatively challenge, the experiences of many who
20 21

Ibid. Ibid. 22 Morrison-Reed, Dragged Kicking and Screaming into Heaven, 2008

find themselves in that metaphysical camp. In general, I would like to see Unitarian Universalists achieve greater consensus in our liturgical language and I believe that the way forward ultimately lies in looking back.

2. REVISITING DIVINE IMMANENCE AND PERSONALITY

The language of reverence that captured Morrison-Reeds soul represents an oft forgotten theological current within Unitarian Universalism. Its origins go back at least to the nineteenth century, specifically to the work and world of Ralph Waldo Emerson. Much as William Ellery Channing had delivered the theological manifesto for the first wave of Unitarianism in May of 1819, Emerson articulated the Transcendentalist program of Unitarianisms second generation in July 1838. Acclaimed by some and harangued by others as the American apostle of selfreligion,23 Emerson invested great faith in the active power of the human being to exhibit selfpossession and enact self-determination. He exhorted his ministerial colleagues to risk ignoring tradition in order to acquaint men at first hand with Deity.24 Consequently, Emerson played a pivotal role in moving Unitarianism away from its roots in the rational supernaturalism of Channings liberal Christianity. Emersons religious shift towards the autonomous and empowered seeker carried enduring theological implications. In his Divinity School Address, which he delivered before a graduating class of seven and a gaggle of Bostons most prominent Unitarian scholars, Emerson emphasizes the spatial immanence of the divine. He opens his discourse with florid images of the refulgent summer in an attempt to poetically illustrate the indwelling Supreme Spirit that

23 24

Dorrien, The Making of American Liberal Theology, 59 Emerson, Divinity School Address, 1838

saturates the natural world.25 Human nature, in particular, harbors this Spirit in the form of laws of the soul.26 To perceive this law of laws is to awaken[] in the mind a sentiment which we call the religious sentiment, and which makes our highest happiness.27 While Emerson does not deny the eternality of these laws beyond space and time, he is insistent on their ready availability to humanity through the soul in the throes of everyday life. He challenges his fellow Unitarians to live after the infinite Law that is in you, and in company with the infinite Beauty which heaven and earth reflect to you in all lovely forms.28 Emerson also emphasizes the temporal immanence of these eternal laws. The divine is not only present in the world, but, above all, present in the world today. Emerson bemoans the fact that [m]en have come to speak of the revelation as somewhat long ago given and done, as if God were dead.29 The figure of Jesus, heir to the true race of prophets, refused to silence the revelatory voice of God. According to Emerson, he estimated the greatness of man by boldly proclaiming that [t]hrough me, God acts; through me, speaks.30 True Christianity, thus, does not seal the divine up in ancient scripture, but rather releases the divine to build up the infinitude of man.31 To this end, Emerson reminds his ministerial colleagues that [i]t is the office of a true teacher to show us that God is, not was; that He speaketh, not spake.32 While Emersons impulse towards immanence was noteworthy, it was not new. A decade earlier, Channing had bequeathed humanity a likeness to God that encouraged immediate connexion between the Divine and the human mind.33 Similar to Emerson, and possibly even

25 26

Ibid. Ibid. 27 Ibid. 28 Ibid. 29 Ibid. 30 Ibid. 31 Ibid. 32 Ibid. 33 Channing, Likeness to God, 1828

endorsed by him, Channing argued that religious instruction should aim chiefly to turn men's aspirations and efforts to that perfection of the soul, which constitutes it a bright image of God.34 The two men differed, however, in their conception of that divinity not where it was located, but how it was present. While Emerson defined the divine abstractly as the individuals own soul carried out to perfection,35 Channing directed his devotion towards an allcommunicating Parent whom worshippers praised as our Father.36 Emerson would have likely taken issue with this representation of the divine. Distancing himself from historical Christianitys noxious exaggeration about the person of Jesus, Emerson firmly held that the soul knows no persons.37 The distinction between Channing and Emerson is at once semantic and significant. The two languages of reverence evoke, at least for me, markedly different affective responses. There seems to be something more at work in the Divinity School Address than a shift towards divine immanence. Henry Ware, Jr. described it as a loss of divine personality. [T]here have been those, and Ware was almost certainly thinking of Emerson, who hold that the principles which govern the universe constitute the Deity.38 Ware brandished such a language of reverence as un-Christian and inhumane. He attributed its popularity to the machinations of philosophy, which steps forth and insists that the soul is to be satisfied with abstractions. As if human nature were anything without its affections! As if a man were a man without his heart!39 Ware held potent fears about the resulting sense of cosmic isolation. To depersonalize divinity indefinitely was to destroy the relation of man, in his weakness and wants, to a kindred spirit

34 35

Ibid. Cited in: Dorrien, The Making of American Liberal Theology, 61 36 Channing, Likeness to God, 1828 37 Emerson, Divinity School Address, 1838 38 Ware, Jr., The Personality of the Deity, 1838 39 Ibid.

infinitely ready to aid him.40 It was to take a little boy away from his mother and insist that he be satisfied with the idea of her. Ware countered by championing divine personality. He was careful, though, to avoid accusations of extreme anthropomorphism. By divine personality, Ware did not intend to make Gods substance into a person. Rather, he hoped to make Gods nature personal. Wares idea of personality41 depicted the divine as one who thinks, perceives, understands, wills, and acts.42 Shape and form were less relevant. It was consciousness, and the power of will and of action that mattered.43 In common parlance, the term personal often stands in for individual or singular. We imagine the faithful praying to a personal God in the cloistered confines of their own room and heart. I cannot imagine that Ware would have reproached such solitary practice, but he also would not have wanted the concept of personality to be cornered into exclusively private spaces. The personal God was unabashedly public the Father of the universe.44 Returning to this single moment in Unitarian history reveals at least two axes that define any language of reverence. The more common axis is that of divine transcendence and immanence. It asks the theologian to consider where the divine is present. While maintaining other-worldly coordinates, Emerson moved divinity towards immanence, that is, in the direction of this-worldliness. He stitched the law of laws into the human soul and its natural surroundings. In so doing, however, Emerson made another wager. He leaped across the second axis of liturgical language, namely that of divine personality and impersonality. This second axis measures how the divine is present. Ware accused Emerson, even if indirectly, of replacing the intimacy of personality with the indifference of abstract principles. Personally, I am not
40 41

Ibid. Ibid. 42 Ibid. 43 Ibid. 44 Ibid.

convinced that Emerson abandoned personality to quite the same degree that Ware alleges.45 His infinite Law pulsates with virtue and can uplift and vivify.46 It is far from cold, though impersonal in its impartiality. I think it is more accurate to suggest that Emerson initiates, rather than consummates, the impulse in Unitarian Universalism towards divine impersonality. In this way, Ware represents the counterpoint, tugging tradition back towards a language of reverence founded on divine responsiveness to, interaction with, and investment in the trials and triumphs of creation. The oft forgotten theological current within Unitarian Universalism is this latter impulse towards divine immanence paired with divine personality.

3. RECLAIMING DIVINE IMMANENCE AND PERSONALITY

To suggest that there is a present pastoral need and a past theological precedent for reclaiming an immanent and personal conception of the divine is not yet to exhaust the motivation for this alternative language of reverence. Throughout the nineteenth century, liberal theologians repeatedly stressed the devotional advantage of divine personality. They felt it evoked an affective response that was necessary for meaningful religious worship. By the mid-twentieth century, liberation theologians emphasized the emancipatory advantage of an immanent and personal divinity. They yearned for divine solidarity amidst the perilous struggle for equal rights and equal opportunity. These two traditions deserve a fair hearing, as their respective insights speak directly to the hopes that Sinkford articulated for Unitarian Universalism today. As suggested, liberal theologians expressed concern that an impersonal divinity could not command the requisite worshipful attention to maintain healthy and holy religious communities.
45

Of course, Ware never confronts Emerson by name in The Personality of the Deity, so his most biting critique may be leveled at other Transcendentalists. 46 Emerson, Divinity School Address, 1838

In his treatise on divine personality, Henry Ware, Jr. not only argued for the metaphysical and biblical limitations of the set of principles position, but he addressed its emotional deficiencies as well. From the vantage point of the devotional life, Ware opined, the difference between conformity to a statute and obedience to a father is a difference not to be measured in words, but to be realized in the experience of the soul.47 He felt that an impersonal God might evoke reverence, but it simply could not command worship. Abstract laws do not bring devotees to their knees, or inspire rousing hymns, or direct heartfelt prayers. They can serve as the object of praise, but they fail to participate in it. This dynamic of interaction defined the very meaning of worship for Ware: It is praise, thanks, honor, and petition, addressed to one who can hear and reply. If there be no such one if the government of the world be at the disposal of unconscious power and self-executing law then there can be no such thing as worship.48 Decades later, Unitarian broadchurchman Frederic Henry Hedge similarly probed the devotional paucity of an impersonal divinity. His foil was not Emerson but the influential critic Matthew Arnold, who drew literary inspiration from Emerson all the same. To Hedge, Arnold typified the theological camp that would have everything rationalized into scientific statements and abstract formulae.49 These, he countered, belonged to science and not to religion. The latter realm of human experience did not concern philosophic perceptions so much as sentiment and imagination.50 Hedges reproach to Arnold was more than a taxonomic issue of accurate categorization, though. To render philosophic perceptions religious was to threaten the very fabric of worship. In contrast with Arnold, who dismissed a loving and thinking God as a magnified non-natural man, Hedge declared its necessity: The God of our devotion,

47 48

Ware, Jr., The Personality of the Deity, 1838 Ibid. 49 Hedge, Personality and Theism, 17 50 Ibid.

if devotion is to have a definite object, must be in some sense human.51 Hedge reasoned that in order for devotees to connect with the divine, they had to in some way to identify with it. His was a God who sees and hears, and thinks and loves, and pities and approves.52 Such God-talk, Hedge admitted, entails anthropomorphisms, [b]ut I maintain that they are necessary anthropomorphisms; religion cannot do without them.53 These two liberal theological voices bear witness to the devotional significance of a personal divinity. Admittedly, most contemporary readers will balk at the androcentric language of reverence that Ware and Hedge employ. But one need not reject the type of intimate relationship they describe on account of the masculine God they acclaim. In fact, some of the most outspoken voices within the feminist backlash to this brand of sexist God-talk preserved similar aspects of divine personality even as they re-gendered it. Roman Catholic theologian Elizabeth Schssler Fiorenza, for example, contends that the Goddess of radical feminist spirituality is not so very different from the God whom Jesus preached and who he called Father.54 Divine personality can surface in patriarchal and egalitarian communities alike; in both cases, it appears to answer a deep human yearning for spiritual relationship. The rise of liberation theology in the 1960s disclosed yet another advantage of an immanent and personal liturgical language: its capacity for political transformation. The turbulence and radicalism of the mid-twentieth century served as a fertile breeding ground for these theologies, which challenged racial injustice and the economic status quo. This newfound cultural consciousness did not emerge ex nihilo, however. Ware, in fact, had gestured towards the precarious social implications of Emersons set of principles a century before, insisting that

51 52

Ibid, 18 Ibid, 18 53 Ibid 54 Christ & Plaskow, Womanspirit Rising, 138

an impersonal God cannot uphold human responsibility: the idea of responsibility implies someone to whom we are responsible, and who has a right to treat us according to our fidelity.55 Liberation theologians built upon this premise by radicalizing the meaning of fidelity. It was not sufficient, they argued, to merely believe in the Kingdom of God; one was responsible for actively working towards it in this life. The divine participates in that process. I have chosen three liberationist theologians, each working in a different social context, to illustrate the appeal of divine personality across regional, cultural, and gender divides. I begin with James Cone, an African American theologian affiliated with the African Methodist Episcopal church, who was one of the first and most formative voices to leverage Christian theology in the fight for Black Power. Cone mediated between anti-Christian advocates of Black Power and practicing Christians who emphasized love to the point of propagating Christianity as the oppressors religion. The balance Cone struck was that of reconciliation: Christianity is not alien to Black Power; it is Black Power.56 At the heart of this theo-political fusion looms the figure of Jesus Christ. Drawing on the Christocentrism of Karl Barth, Cone insisted that Jesus Christ functions as the special disclosure of God to man, revealing who God is and what his purpose for man is.57 In the perseverance and passion of Jesus, who lived in solidarity with the oppressed right through his crucifixion and subsequent resurrection, God is revealed as an immanent divinity invested in the human struggle for justice. The New Testament depicts a God who descends into the very depths of human existence for the sole purpose of striking off the chains of slavery, thereby freeing man from ungodly principalities and powers that hinder his relationship with God.58 The theological

55 56

Ware, Jr., The Personality of the Deity, 1838 Cone, Black Theology & Black Power, 38 57 Ibid, 34 58 Ibid, 35

imagery that Cone encountered in Christian scripture bears little resemblance to the abstract indifference of Emersons law of laws. Cone refused, though, to confine Jesus to the pages of ancient texts. Like Emerson, Cone conceived of divine immanence in both spatial and temporal terms. He turned to Christ as our contemporary.59 Unlike Emerson, Cone described the divine as a personal power that takes sides, picks fights, and struggles in the midst of misery and humiliation. Christ resides where the oppressed are and continues his work of liberation there.60 Cone invented a language of reverence to depict this divine activism: Christ is black, baby.61 It appears that black liberation discovered a God with whom it could identify in its march towards emancipation, much as Hedge felt devotionally sustained by a conception of divinity that was in some sense human. Gustavo Gutierrez led the first wave of vanguard liberationism in the Latin American context. Writing within the Roman Catholic tradition, Gutierrez tapped the Churchs postVatican II social teaching and took up the theological fight against poverty. His weapons were biblical and his God near. While Cone rooted himself in the New Testament, Gutierrez plumbed the Hebrew Bible for clues about Yahwehs shekinah, or divine indwelling in history. One particular passage caught his attention: the theophany in the storm on the mountain does not keep Moses from speaking frankly to Yahweh and experiencing Yahwehs intimate presence.62 The biblical God, Gutierrez concluded, seeks communion with creation by coming to the people. That God of scripture is still alive today. Gutierrez witnessed firsthand how the process of

59 60

Ibid, 38 Ibid. 61 Ibid, 69 62 Nickoloff, Gustavo Gutierrez, 133

liberation that is now going on in Latin America is pregnant with new forms of closeness to the God of life and to the poor in their situation of death.63 Gutierrez penchant for divine personality is evident not only in his theology of God, but also in his theology of evil. While Emerson exhorted Unitarians to sever the soul from its connection to persons, Gutierrez judged such a detached soul to be sinful. Individuals commit a sin, he reckoned, when they break off their friendship with God and other human beings.64 Such disconnection forms the ultimate root of all injustice and all division among human beings.65 While Emerson and Gutierrez would likely agree on the moral duties befalling social relationships, Gutierrez refused to separate the social from the sacred. Alienation from either results in an interior, personal fracture.66 The human being cannot achieve wholeness until it restores a personal relationship with both. Hence, the struggle for justice is intimately bound up with reconciliation: [t]he entire process of liberation is directed toward communion among humans, with the divine.67 As an important complement and counterpoint to Cones black Christ and Gutierrez biblical God of communion, Kwok Pui-lan applies a postcolonial feminist critique to the traditional theological trappings of Christianity. She asks: How is it possible for the formerly colonized, oppressed, subjugated subaltern to transform the symbol of Christ a symbol that has been used to justify colonization and domination into a symbol that affirms life, dignity, and freedom?68 After all, the image of Jesus introduced by white missionaries to the Third World mimetically resembled the colonizers themselves, replete with blue eyes and a straight nose.

63 64

Ibid, 219 Ibid, 231 65 Ibid. 66 Ibid, 232 67 Ibid, 234 68 Kwok, Postcolonial Imagination and Feminist Theology, 168

Against the backdrop of oppression perpetuated by this Aryan ideal, postcolonial feminist theologians have looked to more contextual depictions of God, often integrating Christianity into local mythological traditions or diffusing the divine into the natural world. Asian feminist theologians, Kwok notes, often have an intimate sense that God is immanent in nature, sustaining and replenishing creation.69 It is widely believed that human history and the cosmological realm are mutually penetrating and reciprocally reinforcing. Amidst the multivocality of Asian theological discourse, Kwok discerns a trend towards divine immanence that exhibits unmistakable marks of divine personality. Theologians writing in the Asian context incline towards a compassionate God [who] listens to the cries and supplications of the Asian people, as God listened to the slaves in bondage during Moses time.70 The yearning for such an invested form of divinity derives in large part from the desperate socio-economic conditions of a people who cannot afford the luxury of an abstract or impersonal God: In a continent where many people are struggling to acquire basic necessities and human dignity, God is often seen as the compassionate one, listening to the peoples cries and empowering them to face lifes adversities.71 The divine is not merely an intellectual postulate, but the very promise of liberation. Subaltern populations access an intimate God who brings peace amidst ethnic strife, alienation, and oppression.72 Kwok shows how gender distinctions inform conceptions of divine personality as well. In Korea, many Christian women endow Jesus with healing powers typically reserved for the priestess class. Kwok invokes the Korean word han to describe the deep feeling of hopelessness and unresolved resentment that many women experience at the hands of patriarchy and

69 70

Kwok, Asian Feminist Theology, 74-75 Ibid, 77 71 Ibid, 66 72 Ibid.

persecution. Traditionally, when riddled with han, Korean women would seek out a spiritual salve available through lower-class female shamans. Over time, some women have ascribed this role to Jesus, bestowing him with the title priest of han.73 As immanently accessible as Emersons infinite Law, yet strikingly more responsive, the divine becomes a shaman who consoles the broken-hearted, heals the afflicted and restores wholeness through communication with the spirits.74 Whether immanent or transcendent, personal or impersonal, all depictions of the divine are of course just that: sketchy rhetorical paintings of a bird in flight.75 Kwok reminds us that [t]he purpose of theology is not to define God, but rather to express a sense of wonder, awe and grace in the presence of the living power and energy of the divine.76 Liberal and liberation theologians of divine personality testify to the devotional and liberationist vitality that results from intimate relationship with that living power. The God that meets them while praying and joins them in picketing is not only present but participatory at once their refuge and strength.77

4. TOWARDS A PERSONAL LANGUAGE OF REVERENCE

Unitarian Universalism could reawaken the impulse towards divine personality that lies dormant within its own heritage. Morrison-Reed has sounded the pastoral call. Ware and Hedge have expressed the devotional need. Cone, Gutierrez, and Kwok have hinted at the emancipatory

73 74

Ibid, 88 Ibid. 75 Barth, Evangelical Theology, 10 76 Kwok, Asian Feminist Theology, 69 77 Psalm 46:1

potential. The issue is no longer why, but how. What would such a language of reverence sound like? How could it, in Sinkfords words, adequately capture who we are and what were about? The popular phrase Spirit of Life moves us in the right direction. An authentically Unitarian Universalist liturgical language will have to leave Christological commitments behind. However we choose to categorize present-day Unitarian Universalism,78 almost all will agree that Jesus no longer figures prominently in our religious imaginary. Clothing Christ with black skin or the garb of a han priest would make little sense to Unitarian Universalist communities. The appellation Spirit of Life also proves compelling in its theological shift towards immanence. Most Unitarian Universalists, in Forrest Churchs experience, refuse to put this world down in favor of the heavenly, believing that other-worldliness leads us away from our ethical imperative, from expressing our ultimate concerns in ways that are redemptive in this world and in our larger neighborhood.79 A Spirit of Heaven would fail this test. Still, the moniker Spirit of Life evokes a qualitatively different affective response than the image of a divine companion. It is resolvedly non-human, unacquainted with human sweat or tears. I cannot picture a Spirit leaning over to whisper in a young boys ear during prayer, or offering the downtrodden a shoulder to lean on in times of trial, in large part because I have a hard time picturing a Spirit at all. It remains a blind force blind to my minds eye and, by extension, to the eye of my heart. This ambiguity, of course, is not necessarily false from a metaphysical perspective, but it falls short of depicting divine personality. Ware knew a God who could sing, Cone a God who would suffer.

78

Some describe Unitarian Universalism as post-Christian or historically Christian. I prefer the category Abrahamic, since the present-day denomination largely retains its Christian ethics and liturgy, yet shares striking theological similarity with progressive Judaism and joins Islam in nurturing a strong social consciousness. 79 Church, The Cathedral of the World, 173

I propose the epithet The Beloved as an alternative expression of divinity. Etymologically, the phrase connotes that which is thoroughly loved. As such, it implies proximity a divine presence in relationship, unambiguously immanent in the world. It shares this sense of connection to creation with the more abstract value of Love. Both require creaturely subjects to make the conceptual principle manifest and meaningful. Unlike Love, however, The Beloved entails a level of specificity and definition that allows for true connection. The Beloved is not a diffuse love, nebulously pervading the universe like a benevolent force, but rather a directed love. It is Love in some form. It is Love transmitted, received, and actualized. When we speak of the The Beloved, we testify to being in a relationship, bound by love, living religiously in the truest sense of that word.80 We are intimately invested in the divine. We have dropped below our mind into the belly of our heart, where cries of despair are heard and pleas for companionship granted. The epithet The Beloved conjures a rich affective response because it conveys divine personality. The title describes an experience of closeness, analogous to the feelings that Ware and Hedge expressed for a God who hears and replies. We trust in and rely on our Beloved, much as Cone, Gutierrez, and Kwok turned to God as co-sufferer in the face of oppression and violence. That which we call The Beloved, by definition alone, warrants our faithfulness. We want to praise it in worship and we pledge to defend it through social action. The real benefit of The Beloved in Unitarian Universalist circles is that it describes this intimate human orientation towards the divine without eclipsing freedom of belief. When we refer to the divine as The Beloved, we are making a confession that we love, not about what we love. A selfidentified UU-Christian may conceptually conceive of the appellation differently than a

80

Etymologically, the word religion derives from the Latin religare, meaning to bind together.

practicing UU-Pagan. In this way, The Beloved embodies a spiritually bold, yet theologically broad, liturgical language. Of course, this definitional broadness is also the terms greatest vulnerability. Human history is replete with monstrous examples of people wholeheartedly devoting themselves to dangerous idols. It is not hard to see how The Beloved could serve as a substitute for Mammon81 or the autocratic rule of the strong.82 To refer to the divine as The Beloved is to say little about who the divine is and how the divine responds. Blessedly, as Ramshaw suggests, all liturgical language is contextual. It is the faith community that assumes the responsibility for setting parameters on what The Beloved will mean and how it will function. The epithet The Beloved already offers Unitarian Universalists an advantage in this regard. It implies a reciprocity of love. We certainly hope that our Beloved will care for us in return. The historic testimony of Unitarian Universalism posits precisely this all-loving, or omniagapic,83 divine reality. Our Unitarian forbearers confessed a love of the divine contingent on the divine being wholly loving. As Channing noted, [w]e venerate not the loftiness of Gods throne, but the equity and goodness in which it is established.84 Our Universalist precursors experienced this all-giving love in the divine promise of universal salvation. Articulating the Universalist position of her time, Olympia Brown described a God who can never be alienated or estranged from any; who ever seeks the means for the salvation of the world from sin, and who will ultimately bring every wandering soul home, reconciled and confirmed in the good.85 We must, and we can, guard against the perilous misuse of the title The Beloved. Unitarian
81 82

Ballou, Practical Christian Socialism, 156 Burleigh, Sacred Causes, 197 83 The coinage is mine, inspired by the distinction that C.S. Lewis draws between four kinds of love: Eros (sexual love), Storge (familial affection), Philia (friendship), and Agape (charity). Of these four, Agape is the best because it is the kind God has for us and is good in all circumstances. See: Lewis, Letters, 438. 84 Channing, Unitarian Christianity, 1819 85 Brown, Christian Charity, 1872

Universalist communities that understand the divine as omniagapic reference a type of spiritual power vastly different than that of money or political might. In the depths of desperation, McDade cried out to the Spirit of Life in hopes of summoning the intimate presence of the divine. I want to believe that The Beloved answers such a cry. Not only for her, but for all. Almost three decades after McDades musical petition, Unitarian Universalism finds itself similarly yearning for richer sacred connection. Sinkford alerted us to the power of a shared language of reverence. This paper has articulated the devotional and liberationist advantages of a liturgical language premised on divine immanence and personality. The appellation The Beloved satisfies both criteria. Additionally, it evocatively gives voice to the spiritual experience described by past witnesses and present practitioners of this faith. To join in worship of The Beloved, to labor for justice alongside The Beloved, is to discern that which is worthy of love and to devote oneself wholeheartedly to it. As James Luther Adams reminds us, we become what we love.86 It is my sincere hope that The Beloved will not only transform our language of reverence, but that it might transform our lives. That it might reorient our very being-in-this-world, so that some day we might join Sikh poet Bhai Vir Singh in confessing: Wherever I look, there is my Beloved: Here in a blade of grass, there in that big forest.87

86 87

Adams, On Being Human Religiously, 53 Adapted from Singh, Cosmic Symphony, 37

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