The Sources of Our Faith: Prophetic Men and Women March 4, 2011 NOTE: Because I was ill during this week, I was unable to pull together my own thoughts for this Sunday s sermon. Here are some wonderful words from various sources, talking about the impact of Prophetic Men and Women who are one of our denomination s Six Sources of wisdom and inspiration. I m so glad that there are others who share their thoughts and research! Rev. Victoria From the Rev. Lilli Nye, in a sermon delivered on March 9, 2008 Each month, I have been offering a service and sermon that explores one of the foundational sources of Unitarian Universalism. Our UU movement is so open and broad theologically and finds so many varying expressions. We are not encircled by any formal creed that would tell us, explicitly, what all UU's believe, because freedom of belief itself is one of our values. Many of us who find our way into UU communities can feel adrift in all that openness. And yet, broad as it is, Unitarian Universalism is not "nothing in particular," and it is not everything all at once without any boundaries or definition. Nor is it "all the religions" thrown in a pot and stirred into a stew. In fact, it isn't really an "it" but "a way," a progressive, exploring, relational way of approaching community, society, ethics and religious life. So I have tried to help us get grounded in "the way" of this tradition, by using the statement about the six "sources of our faith" as touch stones, or as an organizing framework. These statements of our Sources and Principles have served to unify us, and have remained almost unchanged, for more than 20 years now. But they should still be thought of as living words, not engraved in stone. They can be changed as we ourselves evolve in awareness, in selfunderstanding, and in response to life in the world. The "Words and Deeds of prophetic women and men" have been a crucial foundational source in how Unitarian Universalism faces life in the world. Let's take a moment to consider what we mean by "prophetic." What is a prophet? We may think of a prophet as someone who foretells the future. They have a sight beyond other people that allows them to predict what has not yet occurred. For example, my thesaurus states that some of the synonyms of prophet are clairvoyant, psychic, diviner, telepathist, parapsychologist, seer, or soothsayer. I actually like the synonym "forecaster," since it's more down to earth-it suggests that anyone who's paying attention to the data can probably make a guess about coming trends. One doesn't need extrasensory perception to notice that if we keep going on a particular trajectory, things are likely turn out in a particular way. That's one aspect of the prophetic voice. But in the myth and lore of our Judeo-Christian roots, the idea of the "prophet" has specific meaning, which I think remains relevant to UU history and to us today. The Hebrew word for a prophet is navi. It comes from the term niv sefa tayim, meaning "fruit of the lips." This suggests the prophet's role as a speaker, as one who calls to the community, one who declares to the community the need to change in response to higher law. The speech and witness of the prophet, if it is heeded, will bear fruit.
It could be said that the prophet's career begins with "the call," a sense of being called by God or by a higher law, to speak and witness to the people. But really the prophet's work begins with listening, with being receptive to that call. The gift and burden of being a prophetic messenger isn't arbitrarily placed upon anyone; rather, it comes from an individual's spiritual and moral readiness to bear than gift and the burden of being a navi, a messenger, and to carry out its demands. It should be acknowledged that many prophets do not want the gift or the burden. Some of the great prophets of the mythic past, such as Moses, and Samuel, and Jonah, they all went to great lengths to avoid taking up the call, knowing what it would require of them, what it would cost them. Another important thing to say about the prophetic person is that he or she is a custodian of the covenant of the people. What do we mean by covenant? A covenant can take the form of explicit promises, like the vows stated between two people marrying. A covenant can be a behavioral or moral agreement, like a church's community covenant saying, "We will dwell together in peace, and seek the truth in freedom, and serve humanity in a spirit of fellowship." Or, a covenant may be an overarching vision of right relationship expressed in a religious or moral philosophy. We could say that, because of our seventh UU principle-affirming the interconnected web of all existence-we know ourselves as bound in a covenant with the whole of life, and so we are troubled when we know that we are violating that covenant. The covenant is the vision of right relationship that guides a people, and the prophet is the covenant's custodian, when the people have become forgetful and neglectful. Lotta Hitschmanova: From the Unitarian Service Committee of Canada website. In the 1940s to 1970s, Dr. Lotta Hitschmanova became one of Canada s most recognized public figures. More importantly, she became one of Canada s greatest humanitarians, as she mobilized a whole generation of Canadians to reach out and help others in need. In a very real sense, she was instrumental in helping to shape the caring society that Canada has become. Born in Prague on November 28, 1909, Dr. Hitschmanova came to Canada during World War II as a refugee. In 1945, she founded the organization to whose mission she would dedicate the rest of her life: the Unitarian Service Committee of Canada, or USC Canada, as it later became known. She died in 1990. Dr. Hitschmanova deeply cared for her fellow human beings in far off lands. Her work took her back to post-war Europe, and to Africa and Asia to conflict zones and newly-independent nations, where the need was greatest. She urged Canadians to become more aware of people s living conditions and to take action and help. Dr. Hitschmanova devoted her whole life to making the world a better, kinder place for all. She was a tireless campaigner, criss-crossing the country for months on end in order to get her message out. On these annual trips, she was able to mobilize donations in astounding quantities food, clothing, and cash and reported back to Canadians on where the need was greatest and
how the money was being spent. She also spent long periods of time each year personally monitoring the projects that USC was supporting around the world. A trained journalist, with a PhD from Prague University, Dr. Hitschmanova was a master communicator, and a great story teller. Thousands of Canadians from all faiths and walks of life responded to the sincerity of her message, and became lifelong supporters of Dr. Lotta, as she affectionately came to be known. The loyalty of these supporters, and the admiration in which they held Dr. Lotta, is legendary. Dr. Lotta s influence was not restricted just to her work with USC Canada, however. Thanks in large measure to Dr. Lotta s tireless efforts, and the efforts of others of her generation, a solid foundation for the Canadian public s support to international humanitarian and development assistance was laid. Emily Stowe: From the UUA Website/Dictionary of Unitarian & Universalist Biography Emily Howard Jennings Stowe (May 1, 1831-April 30, 1903), a path-breaking Canadian woman physician and suffragist, led campaigns to provide women access to medical schools and other professional education. Her efforts led to the organization of the woman's movement in Canada and to the foundation of a medical college for women. Emily was born on a farm in Norwich, Ontario. In 1846, at age 15, Emily, who had been educated at home by her mother, became a teacher at a one-room schoolhouse in nearby Summerville, Canada. During 1853-54 Emily attended the recently built Provincial Normal School in Toronto, the only advanced school open to women in British North America. She graduated with a First Class Certificate. She then worked for the Brantford School Board, 1854-56, perhaps the first woman appointed principal of a public school in Canada West. Emily married carpenter and carriagemaker John Stowe in 1856. She left teaching and moved to his community of Mount Pleasant, south of Brantford. Their three children were born between 1857 and 1863. After John was diagnosed with tuberculosis and sent to a sanitorium, Emily resumed teaching to support her family, but found it economically unrewarding. Influenced by her Quaker upbringing and having learned homeopathic medicine in the 1840s from a family friend, in 1863 she decided to become a doctor. While she studied, her sister Cornelia cared for the Stowe children and household, just as Quaker women once did for married women who went on preaching journeys. In 1865 Stowe was denied admission to the Toronto School of Medicine. The Vice-President of the University of Toronto told her, "The doors of the University are not open to women and I trust they never will be." Stowe replied, "Then I will make it the business of my life to see that they will be opened, that women will have the same opportunities as men." Unable to get medical training anywhere in Canada, Stowe attended the New York Medical College for Women, 1865-67.
In the United States, Stowe met and learned fom Susan B. Anthony. A witness to the divisions within the American woman's movement, Stowe adopted a patient strategy, encouraging gradual progress, when later advancing women's rights and suffrage in her own country. After graduating in 1867, Stowe began to practice homeopathic medicine in Toronto. Stowe was disappointed that, even with her degree, she still could not obtain a medical license. Not until 1870 was she allowed to take the courses at the University of Toronto required of holders of foreign medical credentials, and then only by special arrangement. Inspired by a woman's meeting she attended in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1876 Emily Stowe founded the Toronto Women's Literary Club (in 1883 reorganized as the Canadian Women's Suffrage Association). The Literary Club campaigned successfully to improve women's working conditions. Stowe lectured on "Women's Sphere" and "Women in the Professions." She said that a woman "ought to understand the laws governing her own being." In 1883 a public meeting of the Toronto Women's Suffrage Association led to the creation of the Ontario Medical College for Women. As part of a delegation from the Women's Christian Temperance Union, in 1889 Stowe addressed the Ontario Legislature asking for the vote for widows and spinsters. In 1879 Stowe signed the membership book at the Toronto Unitarian Church. John Stowe died in 1891. Emily died 12 years later. Viola Liuzzo: From the UUA website/dictionary of Unitarian & Universalist Biography Viola Fauver Gregg Liuzzo (April 11, 1925-March 25, 1965), a Unitarian Universalist committed to work for education and economic justice, gave her life for the cause of civil rights. The 39-year-old mother of five was murdered by white supremacists after her participation in the protest march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama. Viola was born on April 11, 1925, in California, Pennsylvania. Her family lived in Tennessee and Georgia and perhaps other parts of the South. Viola grew up in poverty and in the midst of racial segregation, discrimination and hatred. At age six, when her mother was manager of a small Georgia grocery store, Viola took money from the cash register and gave it to a black child whose family was even poorer than her own. During the early months of World War II, inspired by posters depicting Rosie the Riveter, Viola moved to Detroit to look for war work. There she met Sarah Evans, an African American woman who became her closest friend. The two had much in common, including childhood in the South. Viola married twice and had five children. Evans cared for the children while Viola worked as a waitress. Liuzzo was also active in local efforts on behalf of reform in education and economic justice. Twice she was arrested, pleaded guilty, and insisted on a trial to publicize the causes for which she was an advocate. Evans said of her friend, "Viola Liuzzo lived a life that combined the care of her family and her home with a concern for the world around her. This involvement with her times was not always understood by her friends; nor was it appreciated by those around her."
In 1964 Liuzzo began attending the First Unitarian Universalist Church of Detroit, two blocks from the Wayne State campus, and, through Evans, became active in the Detroit chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). In late February, 1965, Jimmy Lee Jackson, a young African-American, was fatally wounded by police following a voter rights demonstration in Marion, Alabama. In response the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. organized a march of protest from Selma to the State capitol in Montgomery. Liuzzo, with millions of other Americans, had seen on television the horror happening in the South. On March 8 she decided to go to Selma. She asked Evans to explain to her children where their mother had gone and to tell them she would call home every night. Evans warned that she could be killed. Liuzzo replied simply, "I want to be part of it." The drive to Selma took three days. On Sunday, March 21, she joined 3,000 other marchers as, five abreast, they marched across the Pettus Bridge, the site of Bloody Sunday, and began the trek towards Montgomery. The marches continued, and she joined the marchers, barefoot, for the last four miles to the capitol building in Montgomery. With everyone else she sang freedom songs and listened to the speeches. When the march was over, Liuzzo met civil rights worker Leroy Moton, who had been using her car all day as an airport shuttle. The two of them drove five passengers back to Selma. When they were dropped off, Viola volunteered to return Moton to Montgomery. Viola's biographer, Mary Stanton, describes the ride to Selma. "Between the airport and Selma a car full of whites drove up behind them and banged into the bumper of the Oldsmobile several times before passing... When they stopped for gas, Moton remembered, white bystanders shouted insults at the integrated group. Further along, the driver of another car turned on his high beams and left them shining into Vi's rearview mirror. 'Two can play at that game,' she said and deliberately slowed up, making the offending car pass her. Finally, when another car pulled up alongside the Oldsmobile while one in front slowed down, Vi had to jam on her brakes. They were boxed in, one of the passengers remembers, but Mrs. Liuzzo seemed to be more annoyed than afraid. As they drove along Highway 80, Vi began singing freedom songs: 'And long before I'll be a slave I'll be buried in my grave and go home to my Lord and be free.'" Gary Thomas Rowe was a Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) informant and a member of the Klux Klan (KKK). According to his court testimony, events transpired as follows. After the passengers were delivered, he and three other members of a KKK "missionary squad" Collie Leroy Wilkins, Jr., William Orville Eaton, and Eugene Thomas spotted Liuzzo and Moton stopped at a traffic light in Selma. They followed her car for twenty miles. While she attempted to outrun her pursuers, she sang at the top of her lungs, "We Shall Overcome." About half way between Selma and Montgomery the four men pulled their car up next to hers and shot at her. Liuzzo was killed instantly. Her car rolled into a ditch. Moton escaped injury. Jim Liuzzo learned of his wife's death at midnight. The following day President Lyndon Johnson called Jim to say, "I don't think she died in vain because this is going to be a battle, all out as far as I'm concerned." Jim told the President, "My wife died for a sacred battle, the rights of humanity. She had one concern and only one in mind. She took a quote from Abraham Lincoln that all men are created equal and that's the way she believed."
Again, from Rev. Lilli Nye s words: Clinton Lee Scott spoke pointedly to our dilemma when he wrote: Always it is easier to pay homage to prophets than to heed the direction of their vision. It is easier blindly to venerate the saints than to learn the human quality of their sainthood. It is easier to glorify the heroes of the race than to give weight to their examples. To worship the wise is much easier than to profit by their wisdom. Great leaders are honored, not by adulation, but by sharing their insights and values. Grandchildren of those who stoned the prophet sometimes gather up the stones to build the prophet's monument. Always it is easier to pay homage to prophets than to heed the direction of their vision. So, the message is a challenging one for us. Are we, as Unitarian Universalists, prophetic? Or are we the sleeping and stuck people whom the prophets need to wake up. We should feel proud of all the good that has been inspired by this faith. We should know why and how it has given so many people the power and conviction to accomplish great things. We should certainly feel inspired to action by the example of others. And when someone from within our own ranks raises a prophetic voice, we should take heed. We can each in our own way become those who make prophetic witness to one other and to the world. Let us be moved by our own reason, our own senses, and by the spiritual fire of love, to be the new navi, today's prophets. Rev. Olympia Brown: Stand by this faith. Work for it and sacrifice for it. There is nothing in all the world so important as to be loyal to this faith which has placed before us the loftiest ideals, which has comforted us in sorrow, strengthened us for noble duty and made the world beautiful. Do not demand immediate results but rejoice that we are worthy to be entrusted with this great message, that you are strong enough to work for a great true principle without counting the cost. Go on finding ever new applications of these truths and new enjoyments in their contemplation, always trusting in the one God which ever lives and loves. Blessed be.