STANDING BEFORE US-UNITARIAN UNIVERSALIST WOMEN MAKING THE WORLD BETTER

March 3, 2002

Service presented by the Rev. Dr. Dorothy May Emerson, Executive Director of the UU Women's Heritage Society

OPENING WORDS - Ramona Sawyer Barth, Journal for Liberal Religion

Our Unitarian and Universalist women of the last centuries . . . have had one virtue in common. They have been pioneers. . . .

These women who have literally made history were not outstanding persons who happened to be Unitarians or Universalists in their religion. Not at all. It was their dynamic religious liberalism which made them great . . .

The Unitarian and Universalist religion was . . . an ethical leaven, and the result was an era of "Feminine Foment."

RESPONSIVE READING #569 - "Stand by This Faith"
Olympia Brown, the first well-known woman minister ever, preached the words of our responsive reading in Racine, Wisconsin, shortly after the passage of the Constitutional amendment, acknowledging women's right to vote. The Rev. Brown had served as a parish minister for over 20 years before shifting her energy to work for women's suffrage full time. She was one of the few early suffrage workers to live long enough to actually vote. Through all her work, she was sustained and empowered by her Universalist faith. May this same faith sustain and empower us in these troubling times.

CHILDREN'S CIRCLE
Today we are going to talk about voting and who has the right to vote. Julie told me that today there will be a choice of snack between graham crackers and brownies. Let me first ask the boys. What would you like? OK, you all get what you want. (Give them their choice.)

It looks like the girls will have to settle for what's left over, that is if you boys decide to share what you have with them.

What's wrong with this? How do you girls feel about not being able to make your own choices? How do you boys feel about having all the power? This is the way it was 100 years ago. Women were not allowed to vote in national or state elections.

And there were other people who could not vote when our country was founded. Do you know who? People of color and white men who did not own property were not allowed to vote. What happens when people can't vote for the things that are important to them?

Who has the right to vote now? What are you going to do when you get to be that age?

MEDITATION - "Confession of Faith," by Anita Trueman Pickett
Our meditation this morning was written by Anita Trueman Pickett, who served as a Unitarian minister for 45 years, mostly in Massachusetts. While serving as summer minister in Rowe, she helped found Rowe Camp. In her "Confession of Faith" she shares with us her sense of connection with the Divine. During the silence that follows, consider how you might describe your own sense of faith.

Let us enter, then, into a spirit of meditation, as we hear this "Confession of Faith."

The Divine Self has created within its Being many separate selves
That in each it may enfold a revealer and a beholder of its own perfection.

I am one of these separate selves, and I follow my destiny.
Every day is a romantic adventure.
Every place I visit is holy ground.

All persons I meet are Divine Companions, seeking me as I seek them,
That we may reveal the Divine in our souls one to another,
And share the Divine that we discover in our Universe.

To realize and reveal the Divine within my soul,
To see, serve, and worship the Divine in all else:
This is my life, my faith, my religion.

READING - from "The Church and Poverty," by Caroline Bartlett Crane
Today's service is based on one that I have been giving all over the country for the past year. After September 11th it has taken on new meaning. The women of our UU tradition shared a vision of a world where such violence and tragedy would be unthinkable, because the root causes of injustice would have been dealt with and transformed. May we be inspired by their lives and their words to work for such a world.

Caroline Bartlett Crane, the author of today's reading, was one of a remarkable group women ministers known as the "Iowa Sisterhood." These women supported each other in building up churches and expanding liberal religion in the Midwest. A little over a century ago, the Rev. Crane challenged the ministers and lay people of the Western Unitarian Conference to move beyond philanthropy in their efforts to deal with poverty. She called upon them--and us--to change the system that causes poverty in the first place. She said:

Today the church, so far as it is wise, seeks the causes of the evils it would remedy. Not so often to give unto [those who ask] as to contrive that [they] shall not need to ask. Regarding poverty as a symptom of physical, mental, moral, or industrial disorder or disease, the problem is how to find and apply the remedy. A few churches of today (and it will be many churches of the future) engage in this high and holy task-a task so great that it overflows Sunday and fills every day of every week.

Preaching from the pulpit those eternal principles of human rights and [community] which are at war with every form of oppression and slavery . . . seeking to so enlighten the minds and touch the hearts of the people that they, as business [people] or lawyers or doctors or editors or legislators or aldermen or laborers, as women in public or domestic life, shall commit themselves, according to their several consciences, to whatsoever things make for the common good.

SERMON

Nearly 100 years ago, in what was then the new Beacon religious education program, Ella Lyman Cabot wrote:

We sometimes speak as if the past were over and done with: "That's past; that's out of date; that's ended." Yet try to obliterate in your thought all that is past. It is impossible, of course, because in so doing we obliterate ourselves. Without the help of what we call the past we could not live at all.

The past, instead of being done with, is, then, the real fiber of the world as we know it. Just as the food we eat nourishes us till it becomes what we act with, so the past is always what we think with. . .

So here we are in a new century and a new millennium, at a time when we've suffered a terrible tragedy, and this past that we think with is missing some major pieces that might help us deal with what's going on. How can we think about ways to create a better future, when we're missing part of the tool kit we need to think with?

In an essay called "Why History Matters," Gerda Lerner makes the following claim: "All human beings are practicing historians . . . We live our lives; we tell our stories. It is as natural as breathing." (p. 199) Each of us has a story that is worth telling.

If we were lucky, we grew up hearing stories of both women and men in our families, but most of us only learned about men when we studied history in school. When what learn as the important past omits the stories of whole groups of people, it cannot help us understand the world we live in, the world that has been created out of the stories of all of the people of the past. That is why it is so important to recover and share the lives and words of those whose stories have been buried and almost, but not completely, lost.

For the past decade it has been my great privilege to participate in one aspect of this important recovery of our past-writing women back into Unitarian Universalist history. Establishing the UU Women's Heritage Society has been an essential part of that work, making possible the development of a variety of educational materials, including this new anthology, Standing Before Us: Unitarian Universalist Women and Social Reform, 1776-1936. This important resource contains writings and biographical sketches of fifty women who worked to make the world better. This anthology begins to make accessible some of those missing tools from the past, tools we need to think with to help us deal with the challenges of today and work for justice.

We can learn a great deal from the women who stand before us, and we can be proud that so many of them were part of the liberal religious movements of Universalism and Unitarianism. Susan B. Anthony, Lucy Stone, Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, and Julia Ward Howe are a few of our most significant Unitarian women. Mary Livermore, Clara Barton, Judith Sargent Murray, and Olympia Brown are among the most important Universalist women. If these names are not immediately familiar to you, perhaps it is because the history of our women and their work has yet to become an integrated part of our knowledge. The celebration of Women's History Month reminds us that we have a lot of catching up to do.

For too long our understanding of religious and social history has been limited by focusing only on the lives and work of men. Women, however, were often the ones to activate and demonstrate the values of our faith, such as freedom, tolerance, acceptance of diversity, and individual rights. They translated liberal theology into real work to promote justice in the world. They fought against tide of their times to make the world a better place.

"Make the world better" were the last audible words said by Lucy Stone, one of the women whose names I mentioned earlier. I imagine all of us want to be part of making the world better. That's why we're Unitarian Universalists, and that's why we gather together in religious community.

Lucy Stone, a Unitarian, was the first woman in Massachusetts to graduate from college. She was called "the morning star of the women's movement" because she was one of the first to give public speeches on women's rights. In fact, she gave her first lecture on women's rights in 1847, the year before the famous "first" women's rights convention in Seneca Falls. Lucy went on to become a leader in the movements to end slavery and to gain the right for women to vote. She was determined to do whatever she could to make the world better.

Another popular speaker and leader in various social reform movements was Mary Livermore, also from Massachusetts. She and her Universalist husband served several Massachusetts parishes before moving to Chicago, where they co-edited a The New Covenant, a Universalist social reform journal. During the Civil War, Mary became a leader in the Sanitary Commission, a forerunner of the Red Cross. Besides frequent trips to the battlefield, she began her career as a public speaker in order to raise money for much needed supplies. In the process, she helped organize over 3000 local aid societies!

After the war the Livermores came back to Boston, settling in Melrose, while Daniel served the church in Hingham. Mary's fame as a lecturer grew and for the next quarter century she traveled from coast to coast and to Europe, delivering over 3000 lectures and earning the accolade "Queen of the Platform."

One of her most popular speeches - "What Shall We Do with Our Daughters?" - challenged people to think about the future for the young women in their care. She gave this speech over 800 times. In it she advocates full education for girls so that they may be prepared to support themselves and live independent lives if they so choose. She chides her audiences for their "culpability in neglecting to give [their] daughters some knowledge of business affairs. With utter indifference," she says, girls "are allowed to grow to womanhood unfamiliar with the most ordinary forms of business transactions." Unfortunately, this is still far too often the case even today.

Like many Unitarian Universalists of today, both Lucy and Mary questioned particular beliefs of the orthodox Christianity of their childhood. Like many of us, they found their way to a new faith that would support them in fulfilling their paths in life and empower them in their efforts to make the world better.

Their liberal religious faith also taught them to think beyond the immediate alleviation of suffering as a response to the problems of their world. It encouraged them to look deeply into the causes of injustice and to seek to change the systems that oppress people. That's why they worked to establish once and for all the right of women to participate as full citizens in this democracy.

And it is why many other Universalist and Unitarian women worked in international organizations to promote understanding across national lines in the interests of world peace.

Women like Julia Ward Howe, who in 1870 issued a call for women to "leave all that may be left of home" and gather "for a great and earnest day of counsel." Thus was the original Mother's Day, established and celebrated as a day for women to meet to "bewail and commemorate the dead" and "then solemnly take counsel with each other as the means whereby the great human family can live in peace."

Another Unitarian activist for peace was Emily Green Balch. For her important work, she became the second woman in history to receive the Nobel Peace Prize. She also received a lifetime achievement award from the American Unitarian Association.

Early in life Emily felt challenged to discover and address the causes of poverty and worked with the Children's Aid Society to found and direct a settlement house in Boston. But she realized that as important as direct service was, it did not address the root causes of poverty, so she joined the faculty of Wellesley College to teach economics, political science, and sociology, hoping to awaken in her students "the desire to work for social betterment."

Emily also served on various state commissions, including the first commission on minimum wages for women in the United States. She became cofounder and president of the Women's Trade Union League, supporting striking workers, and speaking out against racial discrimination and class exploitation.

A pacifist since the Spanish-American War, Emily joined the American delegation to the International Congress of Women at The Hague in 1915. This was a remarkable gathering where women from many countries, some of whom were already fighting each other in World War I, struggled with their differences and managed to reach agreement on a plan to bring about peace by instituting continuous mediation. As one of the envoys chosen to carry out this plan, she traveled to Russia and to neutral Scandinavian countries and later conferred with British leaders and with President Woodrow Wilson.

Although world leaders were not yet ready to listen to the women's peace plan, Emily continued in her efforts to find ways to avoid the violence and destruction of war. Because of her radical activities and associates in this work, the trustees of Wellesley College voted not to renew her appointment. At age fifty-two, she faced life without the security of a job but proceeded nevertheless to work for the cause of peace.

In 1919 she traveled to Zurich for another important meeting of the International Congress of Women, where they issued the first published criticisms of the Versailles Treaty, which you may recall from history set the context for growing unrest leading to World War II. The Congress took another important step at that meeting and became a permanent organization, now known as the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom. Emily became the first paid staff member, setting up an office in Geneva and making the organization's primary focus the study and elimination of the causes of war.

When I think about the horrific events of last fall and the war we are currently engaged in, I wonder where we might be today if the world had paid attention to the wisdom of these women of the past, these women who figured out how to solve international conflicts without war and who identified the root causes of war and proposed ways to transform the world so war would not longer be needed.

Recently a UU woman wrote:

Since the events of September 11, our television screens have been filled with the voices and images of men of power who decide what happens in our world, either as the perpetrators of terror or defenders against it. I don't think that men should be the only ones to decide what happens next to our world. I want to hear the voices of the women of the world at this decisive time.

It's time to listen to women's voices. We need the wisdom of women of the past to guide us as we struggle to make sense of what has happened. We need their voices to inspire and empower us as we work to make the world better, as we struggle to understand what is needed to eliminate violence and war as a response to poverty and oppression.

In her essay on the importance of history, Gerda Lerner describes the value of connecting with the past as we move into the future. She writes:

We act individually and collectively in a process over time, which builds the human enterprise and tries to give it meaning. Being human means thinking and feeling; it means reflecting on the past and visioning into the future. (p. 211)

We need to understand our past through the experiences of women as well as men, people of color as well as white people, people in countries far away as well as those closer to home, lesbian and gay people as well as those who are straight, poor and working class people as well as the rich and powerful, and people who thrive despite disabilities as well as those who don't face those struggles.

We need all our history, because the past is what we think with. It's how we know who we are, where we come from, and where we are going.

If we are ever going to create a truly inclusive, broad-based understanding of our past, one that includes women and men from all walks of life and all of the places where our liberal religious movements have flourished, we need your help. We need you to tell the stories of your women-women in your families, your congregation, your community, your life. We don't have enough women's stories.

And even though this new anthology is 600 pages long, it does not include a section on women's work for peace. We need to continue our research and bring forth this important work as soon as possible. You can help by becoming a member of the UU Women's Heritage Society, by participating in the research, and by contributing financial support for this much-needed work.

I've heard it said that what you don't know can't hurt you, but I'm not so sure I believe that anymore. The past we do not know may be the very information we need to survive and to grow. Not knowing the past can hurt us, because it deprives us of the strength we need to make it through the problems we face today. The past we do not know is part of us nevertheless, like a deep inner well that could quench our sorrow and pain, if only we knew how to tap into it.

We still confront many of the same issues faced by our foremothers. By engaging with their words and their life stories, women and men of today can gain empowerment and inspiration to continue the work of creating a world of justice and peace for all. In the process of finding our foremothers, we should not be surprised to find ourselves.

As you continue to build your enterprise here in Newburyport, reflect on the past and learn from it, that you might envision a better future and together bring it into being.

Blessed Be.

CLOSING WORDS
The closing words, written by the 19th century astronomer Maria Mitchell, are one of the best articulations I know of to describe our 7th UU principle affirming the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part.

Small as is our whole system compared with the infinitude of creation,
brief as is our life compared with the cycles of time,
we are so tethered to all by the beautiful dependencies of law,
that not only the sparrow's fall is felt to the uttermost bound
but the vibrations set in motion by the words that we utter
reach through all space and the tremor is felt through all time.