Rev. Rod Debs January 11, 2009
Listen to the podcast at “Voices of Liberal Religion” (mp3)
This morning I wish to introduce to you one of the founders of our faith, David Ferencz of Kolosvar, Transylvania (Cluj-Napoca, Romania), whom we know as Francis David. David was born in 1510. His father, a Saxon shoemaker and his mother, of a noble Magyar family, so David was fluent in German and in Hungarian. He attended Wittenberg University, and on return to Transylvania, he was made the rector of a Catholic School and then later served as parish priest.
After only five years of ministry, Francis David embraced the Lutheran Reformation. In two years he was named Rector of the Lutheran School in Kolozsvar (1553), and then, for successfully defending Lutheran faith in public debate with Calvinists, he was elected bishop of the Hungarian section of Lutheran Churches (1557). But unable to dislodge doubts planted by Calvinists, Francis David resigned as Lutheran Bishop and joined the Calvinists. (Unitarian Universalism: a narrative history, David E. Bumbaugh, 2000, p.48-9)
One of the relatively unique characteristics of Unitarian Universalists is that we often discuss our religious journeys. In our statement of Principles we covenant to encourage spiritual growth. At our newcomer orientations some of us speak of our Evangelical Christian, Methodist, Presbyterian or Catholic religious pasts. Some of us have explored various religious communities, Buddhist, atheist and secular spiritual paths. What is common to us all is that the question, “What is your faith?” could only elicit a misleading snapshot in the drama-filled movie of our religious journeys.
My journey has taken me from childish nostalgia for the Holy Land: from the days of Moses and the prophets, and Hebrew kings, to Jesus, the disciples and Paul’s missionary journeys in the Roman world. My religious journey took me to the wanderings of the Buddha in India, to post WWII followers of Japanese Sensei’s, and to Buddhist war-brides who spread their faith to U.S. college students like myself. My journey took me to scientific naturalism, questioning literal interpretations of ancient texts to reclaim my body, my human companions and the entire eco-system with new eyes—as companions on life’s journey, all, without exception sacred (universalism).
My faith has not been a destination, but a journey. Nor, I dare say, is yours. My religious explorations have been broad and deep. Many words have shaped my thinking. Many people have influenced my views. Rather than arriving at a creed as a final destination, I have arrived at changeable working hypotheses. What is more, I have entered a religious community of mutual trust and support united by a covenant (promise) to accept and encourage one another on our journeys. No stagnant destination in the flow of our religious explorations.
How appropriate that Francis David, a founder of our faith should have journeyed from Catholic to Lutheran to Calvinist and to Unitarian religious perspectives. This morning I wish to celebrate January 13, as Religious Freedom Day, a day that marks our freedom to make our religious journeys, to follow our Right of Conscience.
First, a little history: In 1540, Queen Isabella of Transylvania (Hungary/Romania) gave birth to John Sigismond just two weeks before her husband, King John Zapolya’s death. In those two weeks, King John arranged that the Queen and two counselors be named regents to his infant successor and appealed to the Turkish Sultan as their protectors. King John Zapolya’s rival, Ferdinand invaded but was driven back by the Sultan’s army and Transylvania was declared independent of Hungary. (Ibid., p. 44)
These were the years when Lutheran and Calvinist Reformations were displacing centuries of Catholic tradition. Priests were being turned out, images torn down and sacred vessels melted down for coinage. Recognizing that Calvinist and Lutheran faiths had displaced most Catholics, rather than declaring Transylvania Catholic and seeking to violently turn the tide, Queen Isabella decreed at the Diet of Torda (1557):
“Inasmuch as We and Our Most Serene Son (the young King John Sigismond was seventeen years old) have assented to the most instant supplication of the Peers of the Realm, that each person maintain whatever religious faith he wishes, with old or new rituals, while We at the same time leave it to their judgment to do as they please in the matter of faith, just so long, however, as they bring no harm to bear on anyone at all, lest the followers of a new religion be a source of irritation to the old profession of faith or become in some way injurious to its followers—therefore, Peers of the Realm, for the sake of procuring the peace of the churches and of stilling the controversies that have arisen in the gospel teaching, we have decreed to establish a national synod, wherein, in the presence of devoted ministers of the Word of God as well as of other men of rank, genuine comparisons of doctrine may be made and, under God’s guidance, dissensions and differences of opinion in religion may be removed.” (Unitarian Universalism: a narrative history, David E. Bumbaugh, 2000, p. 46-7)
Queen Isabella’s Edict of Torda in 1557, is remarkable. European monarchs up to this date would declare their religion the religion of the entire nation, and other faiths would be banished. But the Edict of Torda declared “that each person maintain whatever religious faith he wishes,… while (the monarchs) at the same time leave it to their judgment to do as they please in the matter of faith, just so long, however, as they bring no harm to bear on anyone at all.” And in order to procure peace and still controversies, Queen Isabella decreed to establish a national synod, a debate, so as to resolve differences of religious opinion. Amazing, how optimistic!
The queen died in 1559, leaving the throne to her 19-year-old son. The Synod debates King John Sigismond observed two years later, failed to resolve the heated disputes between contesting faiths. In 1563, King Sigismond renewed his mother’s decrees ordering “that each may embrace the religion that he prefers without any compulsion, and may be free to support preachers of his own faith, and in the use of the sacraments, and that neither party must do injury or violence to the other.” (Ibid., p.48)
Years before, Queen Isabella’s mother had sent her trusted physician to provide for the health of her daughter and infant grandson. After Isabella’s death, young King John Sigismond entrusted this court physician Biandrata with organizing synod debates. Francis David who was now the superintendent of Calvinist Churches in Transylvania, was named Court Preacher as a result of Biandrata’s influence with the King.
Biandrata raised questions concerning the doctrine of the Trinity in conversation with Francis David, and by 1565, Francis David was preaching publicly against the Trinity and the divinity of Jesus. The founding of Unitarianism is dated to the 1566 Synod in which Francis David succeeded in limiting the debate to language of scripture, excluding doctrine and dogma of the church, thereby excluding language of the Trinity which emerged only after 325CE and Constantine’s Council of Nicea.
Religious debate became everyday conversation from taverns to fields, and after ten days of synod in 1568, in which Francis David’s arguments for the unity of God carried the day, throngs of Kolozsvar residents embraced the Unitarian faith. In that same year, 1568, the Diet of Torda unanimously affirmed the Edict of Religious Toleration and Freedom of Conscience:
“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 manner now, in this Diet, he 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, this comes from hearing, which hearing is by the word of God.” (The Epic of Unitarianism: Original Writings from the History of Liberal Religion, David B. Parke, 1957, p. 19-20)
Let me emphasize these words: “no one shall compel them for their souls would not be satisfied.” This historic Edict of Religious Toleration and Freedom of Conscience acknowledges the heart-felt demands of religious integrity, the persistent sense of conscience that remains dissatisfied despite threats of social and state coercion.
Only fifteen years earlier, in 1553, the Spanish doctor and theologian Michael Servetus had been burned at the stake in Geneva under order of Calvin for his heretical text, On the Errors of the Trinity. Servetus had escaped the inquisition, pursued medicine under an assumed name, had even made the scientific discovery of the circulation of blood in the body, but he had been unable to remain silent about his religious convictions. He had exchanged letters with Calvin and blown his cover. He even traveled through Geneva, was recognized, was denied what we consider due process, was convicted and executed—burned at the stake.
Please understand that true believers in the 16th century, like many true believers today, were convinced that those who spread religious heresies are causing countless innocents to suffer eternal damnation, including impressionable children. Then and now, fundamentalists of many faiths believe that compassion compels them to eliminate the spread of political or religious heresy using the powers of the state, or of “freedom-fighters” in order to save innocent souls from our damning influences.
After tens of thousands had been killed by Catholic Inquisition, after Servetus’ execution in 1553, Sebastian Castellio was one of many who condemned the killing of heretics. He wrote: “Moreover, faith and heresy are never so entrenched as when they are opposed by sheer violence apart from the Word of God, for everyone can see that such violence lacks a just cause, since it proceeds without the Word of God, and can defend itself only by pure force like a brute beast. Even in civil affairs force has no place unless injustice has already been convicted by justice. How much more is it impossible to proceed in these exalted and arduous cases by sheer violence without justice and the word of God? See what wise lords these are who wish to drive out heresy, but succeed only in fortifying their enemies and making themselves suspect and in the wrong. Would you eliminate heresy, then you must devise a plan to pluck it from the heart and root it out of the desires. With force you will merely entrench, not expel. What have you accomplished if you confirm heresy in the heart and weaken it only on the tongue and drive men to lies?” (The Epic of Unitarianism: Original Writings from the History of Liberal Religion, David B. Parke, 1957, p. 12-3)
I am reminded of our world’s battles against terrorist violence. State torture and bombing simply don’t work—any more than insurgent rockets and suicide bombings. As the bumper sticker reades: “We are making enemies faster than we can kill them.” On both sides. Castellio said: “With force you will merely entrench, not expel.”
While riding high on public support of Unitarianism, Biandrata and Francis David made good use of a printing press given them by King Sigismund. Calvinist opponents responded with slander and abuse. In 1569, six days of debate between Francis David and the Calvinist Bishop Melius further alienated Calvinists and spread Unitarian faith more widely. At the conclusion of the synod, King Sigismund decreed: “Inasmuch as we know that faith is the gift of God and that conscience can’t be forced, if one cannot comply with these conditions let him go beyond the Tisza (River—go to Hungary) since we demand that in our dominions, there will be freedom of conscience.” (Bumbaugh, p.51)
Let me wrap up these historical reflections: In 1569, King John Sigismund declared himself and his court to be Unitarian. In 1571, the Diet and King gave legal recognition to the Unitarian Church. As a result of a carriage accident, two months later, King John Sigismund died without a successor. Stephen Bathori, one of the few remaining Catholic magnates in the country was elected by the Diet to the throne promising to preserve the liberties of the nation. The next year, Prince Stephen confirmed the decree defining four received religions but outlawed further “innovations.” For his ongoing doctrinal reform, Francis David was found guilty of innovation and condemned to life in prison. Francis David died in the dungeon at Deva on November 15, 1579, and Unitarianism was forced into apparent doctrinal stagnation for the next two centuries. (Bumbaugh, p.50-6)
You may find little cards entitled “What Unitarian Universalists Believe.” Throughout our Unitarian and Universalist history there have been passing efforts to write down a Unitarian or Universalist creed, what is “commonly held among us.” This is, in my opinion exactly contrary to our faith which honors the Right of Conscience. From the text of the 1568, Edict of Torda: “no one shall compel them for their souls would not be satisfied.” Ours is a religious community that covenants to respect each person’s right of conscience and encourages the further “innovations” of ones spiritual growth. We can have no creeds or statement of beliefs.
This week my Baha’i friend Ron Frazer shared with me the Massai definition of the term ubuntu: “I am because you are; you are because we are.” Bishop Tutu described the spirit of ubuntu as the attitude African villagers had toward strangers passing through: Hosts would offer food and water and provide a place to sleep, without being asked. The movie Quest for Fire humorously showed an African village welcoming a stranger by recognizing that they needed his exceptional DNA in their stagnant gene pool; the movie showing all the fertile women lining up outside his hut for the benefit this stranger brought to the tribe.
Ron said that Baha’is, like Unitarian Universalists, consider the presence of each newcomer among them to be, not a time to fit the stranger into our way of doing things. Rather, each stranger, say, a family with children, is time for the group to re-organize to the new configuration we have become. “I am who I am because of who you are.”
In our own UU New Member Welcoming Ceremony, the Minister declares: “As new members, I charge you to share your creative wisdom, your experiences of life, your questions, your doubts, your sorrows and joys, and that which matters most to you. I charge you to shake us up with your honest thinking, to stir us with your conscience and to stimulate our hopes with your dreams.” And together we all declare: “We are willing to be changed by your presence among us.”
Our Radical Reformation has only begun in this world. When our promise to respect the right of conscience catches on such that all people everywhere look not at what might be strange and scary about those who are not like us, but rather look at what is strange as a wonderful and transforming gift—call it desert hospitality, call it the spirit of love, the grace of universal acceptance, call it ubuntu—then rather than fearful of enemies, we will be able to embrace every stranger, as our UU Principles conclude: “Grateful for the religious pluralism which enriches and ennobles our faith, we are inspired to deepen our understanding and to expand our vision. As free congregations we enter into this covenant, promising to one another our mutual trust and support.” (UUA Bylaws)