Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Bennington. Freedom at the Heart of Religion. Story for All Ages: Mum Bett and the Sheffield Resolves

Transcription

1 Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Bennington July 8, 2018 Freedom at the Heart of Religion Story for All Ages: Mum Bett and the Sheffield Resolves Rev. Kathy Duhon

2 Mum Bett and the Sheffield Resolves Not too far from here, in the Southern Berkshires, Mum Bett is famous, a celebrated figure. School children write essays about her and visit places where she lived and is buried. The rest of the country hasn t heard much about her, but that s about to change, with a big film coming out in the next couple of years. Mum Bett is important for our history. She is also called Elizabeth Freeman, which is her post-slavery name. Mum Bett, Elizabeth Freeman, was the first slave freed in America by the government. I have visited the house where Bett lived as a slave Colonel Ashley s house. They were not terrible to her, relatively speaking though the loss of liberty is unfathomably horrible by itself however, there is a story of a younger slave girl (her sister? her daughter?) being badly hurt by the mistress, and Mum Best defending her. There is also a proud story of Mum Bett bravely hiding the family silver from thieves. She was a midwife and a nurse and highly regarded in the community. She made money for her medical services and bought property. One cold January, in 1773, a few people who cared about freedom gathered at the Ashley house, a committee, including Theodore Sedgwick, clerk of the committee, and father of Catherine Sedgwick she became a Unitarian, author, and reformer. (And dare I throw in the strange six degrees of separation, to note that actress Kyra Sedgwick, married to actor Kevin Bacon, is also a direct descendent of Theodore Sedgwick?) It is believed that Mum Bett was there for the committee meeting, serving refreshments, and listening to the freedom talk.

3 Theodore did the writing of the Sheffield Resolves, or the Sheffield Declaration, as it was also called, similar to the role Thomas Jefferson played in writing the Declaration that our nation celebrates on the fourth of July, and actually, the writing is similar to the Declaration of Independence, but 3 ½ years earlier Mum Bett was about 30 years old and was interested in all the talk about rights and freedom, and she thought it applied to her as well. A few years later, she took as her lawyer that same Theodore Sedgwick, and sued for her freedom. Elizabeth Freeman was freed by the Courts, which directed the legislature to change the laws, so slavery became illegal first in Massachusetts, based on the same principles of freedom and equality as were fought for in the American Revolution. Elizabeth Freeman finished her life in the Sedgwick home as a beloved member of the family, and is buried in the Sedgwick family plot in the Stockbridge cemetery. Because she dared to believe the truth that freedom applied to her life, Bett and her freedom-loving lawyer, Theodore Sedgwick, who became a Unitarian at the end of his life, helped change the country and the world.

4 Freedom At the Heart of Religion We have just celebrated freedom with our Independence Day festivities. We began as a country by noticing that our rights include Liberty, and that governments are supposed to secure those rights justly, with the consent of the governed. And for a long time, as a nation, we believed, and the world believed, that we had succeeded in establishing freedom, and so we reached out, Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, for we will be the home of liberty for the homeless who are desperate enough to come here to America. Hmm. We are the country of mass immigrant detention, forced family separations, caged children, lost children, detention camps in tents in the desert, and questions of whether this president may be unfit to be the ruler of a free people. (W)henever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, (Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness), it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it. Let us alter this government that has so badly trampled liberty. The Declaration of Independence has long inspired us, but another beginning point of our American freedom happened earlier and near here, in the Berkshires. As I just noted, in January 1773, a few people gathered at Colonel Ashley s home in Sheffield, including the clerk, Theodore Sedgwick, to write a declaration against the British rule. Some believe that Jefferson read the Sheffield Declaration. (Both Jefferson and Sedgwick are considered to be Unitarians for some of their lives.) This was signed by one of the founders of Sheffield, the town clerk, Stephen Dewey. He was the grandfather

5 of the Rev. Dr. Orville Dewey, who went on to become a Unitarian minister and the 4 th president of the American Unitarian Association. On January 12, 1773, the town of Sheffield unanimously approved the Resolves, which began this way: Resolved that Mankind in a State of Nature are equal, free and independent of each other, and have a right to the undisturbed Enjoyment of their lives, their Liberty and Property. The Sheffield Resolves helped spark the first armed resistance to the British, which nobody knows happened in Great Barrington in 1774 no one was killed and it was mostly farmers with pitchforks and such - over 1000 people - and it did stop the local British rule. In 1781, the brand new Massachusetts constitution, (now the oldest in the world), spoke so clearly of freedom and equality that slavery was deemed unconstitutional. It took more than 200 years for that same equality clause in the constitution to begin the process in Massachusetts by which marriage has now become an equal right around the country. As Cicero wrote, We are in bondage to the law in order that we may be free. The law of this land is equality, and therefore we have great freedom. I am not a historian, but as I understand it, Christianity was greatly responsible for our development of equality and freedom to the point where we have a constitutional democracy. Yes, ancient Greece had the first democracy, but it was quite different from ours, and it did not last. The Western model of equality began in earnest when people followed the Christian Way that values everyone equally.

6 The early church struggled to figure out how to form itself and what to believe, and so they brought folks together in councils to meet and vote on matters of theology and church governance. Our UU system of church governance, called congregationalism, is the most democratic form of church polity (governance) that there is. Our General Assembly each year, just held, is the direct descendent of the church councils and synods of the last two millennium. Another descendent of these historical church gatherings is the Congress of the United States. We vote to have people represent us because we all matter; we all are equal, and our lives are equally important, and that is our faith, the faith that underpins our liberty and freedom as a nation, and as a religion. That is our past we have been the freedom seekers, the equal rights resolvers and voters. And it is amazing to realize that some actions and a few words by various people have made such huge differences over the years. Back then. And now? What does it mean to be concerned about freedom now? Sometimes it seems that we can hardly get our minds around this idea of what freedom really means. Could we actually stand up to violence for the right to vote, be a people who write declarations of rights, draw up a constitution that stands the test of time, but who first risk and sustain the injuries to body and spirit and family and livelihood that are involved in the work of freedom? Can we defend freedom today for those who have been denied it? Do we really understand freedom? Do we ever know how precious it is? We are not yearning to breathe free any longer. Because freedom is as close to us as the air we breathe, as familiar to us as our families, as easy to countenance as a stroll, as quick to

7 forget as what we ate for lunch a month ago because freedom is all of this to us and not a struggle, not a central life concern, not a dearly desired and missing aspect of our lives, is then freedom susceptible? Yes, it surely is. We need these annual American reminders, at least, in order to continue to cherish and try to understand the importance of freedom, and thereby guard and guarantee it. We need to sustain our faith in the inherent worth of all people, which anchors our freedoms. I want to read you the first amendment to the Constitution of the United States, the beginning of the Bill of Rights: Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise therof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances. Please note that religion is the first thing mentioned. It s how we Americans got here pilgrims, puritans, and plenty of others came first for religious freedom. Europe was a bloody mess from all the religious repression and violence in the name of one or the other of the religious sects, although we can be proud that the Unitarians and the Universalists were only ever persecuted, never persecutors. Many came here determined to be free religiously. What if we were all required to go to one church, and it was one we could not respect? What if we were forced to forsake all religion, and yet longed for the sustaining and comforting aspects of our religious traditions? If following our hearts and minds and

8 spirits, and the ways of our ancestors, cost us our freedom, our homes, our lives, wouldn t we be willing to travel to the ends of the earth for religious freedom? Freedom is at the heart of religion; religious freedom is at the center of Unitarian Universalism. Earl Morse Wilbur, the 20 th century historian of Unitarianism, concluded that we were centered in Freedom, Reason, and Tolerance. We would likely modify that today. I would say that at our center is Freedom and Responsibility, Reason and Creativity, Inclusivity and Diversity, Peace and Justice, Compassion and Community, Faith, Hope, and Love, and Transforming Joy. Everything rests on the plank of freedom, though. We don t know what it would be like not to be able to meet together freely, speaking our minds and hearts, doing what it is that brings us joy, well-being, with the ones we love, on behalf of the world and our future generations, but we can imagine that our lives would feel both constricted and threatened, whereas now we feel open and comfortable we feel free to be here today, and to do religion in our own way. Freedom is at the heart of the religious life also in terms of spirituality. Freedom of the spirit is both what we have and what we continue to seek. We have the freedom to meditate, to pray, to seek, to explore, to express, to bless, to follow our hearts, but only in so much as we are free within our ongoing work. Free of addictions of all kinds, free of the constraints of our past, free of the confinements of selfishness, free from the controlling parts of our lives oh, we have a lot of work to do for our spiritual freedom none of these freedoms is easy thank goodness for grace and for spiritual practices, for inner work and for much seeking.

9 The ultimate freedom comes with the sense of oneness that is at the heart of all religious practice. When we know that the well-being of anyone, of the whole world, is our well-being as well, then we are willing to do what the folks at the beginning of this nation did work for the freedom of all. We are not free until all are free, all over the world. Eugene Victor Debs said, While there is a lower class, I am in it, While there is a criminal element, I am of it, and While there is a soul in prison, I am not free. While there is a soul in prison, either of bricks and mortar, tents, or the state s constraints, or the mind s fortress however we find ourselves imprisoned ourselves, all of us we have work to do for freedom. As it says in our stirring song, America, we hear freedom ringing from every mountainside and so we proclaim, Long may our land be bright with freedom s holy light. Go forth with whatever form of pitchfork or pen, or whatever is appropriate to you to work for this mighty cause of freedom for all. Amen.