How Shall We Think of Religion?
- on the Centennial Anniversary of the dedication of the building
October 15, 2006
Anne Bancroft

Good morning – and welcome to this somewhat unusual mid-October service. It is not often that we spend quite so much time focusing on ourselves, our history, our building. I hope if you are new or visiting, you will forgive this slightly myopic celebration. Perhaps the sermon will give us an opportunity to broaden our scope a little bit.

Early in September, someone asked me if I was all set with the answers to the four questions I proposed to address this fall in a series of sermons. Who shall we be? How shall we think of religion? How shall we think of God, and finally of Jesus? Well, in a way I was ready – because I had at least identified the questions, and that’s at least half the task! The answers tend to arrive a bit more organically. I find it helpful to trust the serendipitous confluence of ideas that typically fall in my lap, or perhaps to trust that I can form what comes along into some cohesive thoughts by the time I need them. I often imagine that I’m carrying a bucket on my hip, and things fall into it – and wait for the mixing into a hopefully conclusive whole.

Sometimes one gets to pick and choose what contents drop in, but not always.
Today, for example, I wanted to consider how we might think of religion. What is religion, and how does it serve us as humans or disserve us? What I found in my bucket was the centennial anniversary of this building’s dedication, which might not necessarily have been the first thing that came to mind in addressing the question of religion.

On the other hand, it does beg the very interesting question of the relationship between space and religious observance. What part of religion is dictated by our physical location or our surroundings? To what degree does the building in which people gather to express their spiritual inclinations matter? And the answer, apparently – if I can trust my angels of serendipity, is “more than you might think!” Consider, for example, our ancestors’ perspective when they built this building: no longer was the simplicity of the Puritain-esque, unadorned enclosure adequate to celebrate the glory of God. You have only to look at the cover of your Order of Service, at this Society’s original worship space, to know the degree of change that this sanctuary represented. The former building was a fairly typical, white clapboard church structure with tall yellow-paned windows – simple, even “homely,” as Tom mentioned. Well, enough with Calvinist austerity, they decided – let us gather the artistry and magnificence of materials – slate and stone, wood, stained glass and velvet – let us replicate the devotion of European cathedral architecture, let us visibly represent our commitment to our faith by showing to any and all the grandeur of our gathering space – let us celebrate our good fortune and commit ourselves to the work of our tradition! And so they did. They built a building that eschewed the hard bench of doctrinal discomfort in favor of one that humbles us by its grandeur, a building that seeks to exemplify all that we can and should aspire to in its detail and height and artistry.

It’s stunning, actually, to think that this structure was built in thirteen months. Anyone who has done renovation, even, let alone original construction, can appreciate the accomplishment – and few of us live in houses this big. One thousand people came to the dedication on October 15, 1906, to celebrate a sanctuary designed, originally, to seat 700. The Children’s Chapel – what we now know as the Parish Hall, was designed to hold 350 young Unitarian worshipers. These were builders with big dreams for this Society, big hopes, big expectations.

It’s so easy to get caught up in the bigness of it all, isn’t it – for better or worse, love it or not – the pillars and angels, the tower, the bells? But let’s not forget to consider what it was, really, that they were trying to accomplish. Peel away the layers of grandeur, the iconography, the physical and public statement, the desire for craftsmanship and elegance to be the immediate visual message of the First Unitarian Society in Newton. This is, and has been since its beginning, a home for religion, for the Unitarian and subsequently the Unitarian Universalist tradition. In the pendulum swing of artistic predisposition and expression, this is still simply the early twentieth century’s answer to how our forefathers chose to represent their faith. It is important to remember that. These materials are sand and dust – this is mirage, really. If the only way we could express our belief were through the materials we chose, we would be in trouble of not knowing ourselves very well. So, what does this space we use tell us about religion?

It tells us only that we are human, and that grace, as Thomas Aquinas suggested, does not abolish human nature. Grace does not abolish human nature. If religion can be recognized as that which moves us towards grace, towards the expression of our best selves through knowledge, compassion, understanding, and love, it does not guarantee that our human nature will not fall victim to the whims of popular opinion, or popular architecture.

Last year I invited a friend to come visit our sixth grade class and our Youth Group to share with them her perspective on sacred space. Azra is a Muslim woman from Bosnia. She and her family were dislocated by the Bosnian genocide when she was fourteen. They landed in Austria, where she lived until coming to MIT to earn a doctorate in Islamic Architecture. Azra is also a seamstress, and in studying the design and construction of Islamic worship space, she has created what she calls a Nomadic Mosque. She has adapted an outfit of clothing that incorporates the required elements of Muslim spiritual practice. Her belt buckle is a compass – so that she can pray in the appropriate direction, facing Mecca. Her pants unzip to unfold a prayer rug, to cover the ground; a head covering unzips from her collar, so that she can be sufficiently respectful; and there are special coverings for her shoes, so that her feet are clean in the way that is required in Islamic practice.

Her point is that specific location and the surrounding structure is fundamentally irrelevant to the expression of one’s faith. In a collection of photographs that she shows in her presentations is a picture of a large square foundation wall somewhere in Turkey. There is nothing to the building but the beginning: the foundation and maybe a two foot high wall on the perimeter of what should have been the building. Within the stone rectangle, open at one end where the door would have been, it looks like a meadow is growing. But Muslims gather there daily, no matter the weather, to pray and to practice their faith together.

I wonder: if we had no roof, would you still come? What is imperative in this building that makes you willing and interested in being here? The angels? The organ? The seat cushions? As a function of our religious practice, do we need this space as it is? I hear my mother-in law’s classic response: “Need? What is need?” There may be some among you who would prefer, actually, that we not be encumbered with all of this, that it has never been a determining factor in your presence, in fact perhaps you have come despite this building!

But the building is not our faith. The building is not our religion. The building is the choice of those who came before us. It is that through which they chose to articulate their hopes and dreams for the future of their faith– big enough to hold large gatherings, bold enough to make a statement, high and mighty and celebratory. It was their accomplishment, their gratitude, their expression of grace. And it has been the choice of generations since then, including the present one, to honor that expression by maintaining it. Not the responsibility, mind you, but the choice.

The language of the original dedication liturgy makes it clear how much more theologically disposed our ancestors were. Part of the 1906 dedication reads: In all times and places the children of God have acknowledged their dependence upon him and have sought communion with him by ways of the holy life and the religious spirit. To this end they have builded houses of worship and have consecrated altars of prayer. In sympathy with these universal aspirations we have reared this house. Let us now dedicate it to the worship of God the Father of all souls, in whose abundant love we live and move and have our being.

Our language of religious expression is not nearly so explicitly theological in nature. And perhaps the building we would have created today would have been equally less elaborate, less iconographic, and insinuate less theological inclination. But remember, the building is not our religion. The building is art and history, our history.

And religion, our religion, serves us best when it encourages us to take gifts from the people in our past, integrate them with what we offer of ourselves and share them with our future. Imagine the hands that have touched these walls as our children did today, how much hope passed through them into our own touch. Imagine the hands that will touch these walls one hundred years from now. What will they know of us?

That we cared, each of us, to be here. That we cared to be Unitarian Universalist seekers of more whole and grace-filled living. And that we cared for the gift of this amazing piece of art during our time, when it was our turn, so that they also might worship within its walls, in whatever way they choose their expression in the service of love.

I hope you will join me in the re-dedication of this space, that it might be used well and fruitfully for the next hundred years and beyond, as a gathering place for Unitarian Universalists to harness their human natures in the search for grace. This is what religion can be. This is what religion can be, here.
Amen.


Words of Re-dedication
Out of wood and stone,
Out of dreams and sacrifice,
The People have built a home.
Out of the work of hands and hearts and minds
They have fashioned a symbol
And a reality.

May this house continue to be
A place of Meeting –
Meeting one with another
In warmth and joy and openness;
Meeting one with another
In courage and love and trust.

May all who enter here
Trust one another so surely
That they dare to share the deep fires
That burst into anger
As much as the sweet springwaters
That swell into laughter
The slow erosion of wounded tears
As much as the soaring song.

May these walls continue to know silence
As hearts search inward
Each for its own small spark of hope
That might otherwise
Be lost to the noise.

May these rafters hear the voice of the child
As surely as that of the orator,
The sound of the lute,
And the swish of the broom,
And know that all are as holy
As the shout of a million stars.

May the rain fall lightly on this house,
The sun shine warmly,
The winds blow softly,
And bless it
As a place of joy and peace.