Some of you may know I’ve recently returned from a pilgrimage. I visited Transylvania where I spoke with current day ministers as well as saw some of the earliest sites of our faith tradition. This pilgrimage included seeing churches where Unitarianism was first preached, and the site where on our first martyrs died from starvation in the pursuit of a religious freedom, Francis David. He uttered the famous phrase “Faith is a gift from God,” meaning that no human authority had the right to coerce or limit your faith journey. You had the right to be a pilgrim.
This last fourth of July, I thought of the pilgrims who journeyed here in pursuit of religious freedom. I thought of their spiritual thirst. I thought of the Mayflower sailing on the Atlantic, and the people gathered on board who knew this sailing was their destiny. They would be play a role in creating a distinctly American tune, a tune that was full of energy, hope, and blind spots, crimes that demanded addressing in future generations. In short, it would be a human tune – imperfect, full of possibility, and in need of innovation.
I then thought of all the pilgrims who came after them, people in pursuit of a better life. I imagined crowds coming through Ellis Island. I imagined people coming from Mexico to California and Texas. I imagined people coming in the day. I imagined people coming in the dark of night. I thought of my mother and her family who passed through the Canadian border, entering Oregon, the place of my birth. I imagined my father’s family sailing with tobacco grown in Trinidad and planting them in Jamestown, making it possible for the English to become Virginians. I thought of an entire nation of pilgrims, of searchers, of people who tirelessly seek the true and the worthy. I also thought about greed and the squalls of hate. I thought of the powerful and persistent distractions along the path of our search – the kind of distractions that can either define us or teach us. As I listened to the fireworks this fourth of July, I felt the spirit of a nation in every explosion – unpredictable, tempestuous, dangerous, colorful.
I saw older men sitting in lawn chairs watching traffic. I saw pilgrims young and old. Those who are driven to keep moving, and those who have finally learned or realized it was time to be still.
Francis David was charged with the crime of innovation. David was a Catholic priest whose mind couldn’t help but question doctrine. He is best remembered for two things. He was instrumental in getting the King of Transylvania to pass the first law of religious toleration in Europe, allowing Transylvanians to worship one of the four main religions, including Unitarianism. I stood in the church where this decree was signed in Torda. The second thing David was known for was his preaching. This second gift is what got him killed. The Unitarian Church in Kolozvar has kept the rock, from which legend says he stood and converted the whole city to Unitarianism. Because of this ability, he was seen as a threat by other religious faiths. I bet you didn’t know that Unitarianism originated as an Evangelical faith.
He was locked in a small rural town in the south of Transylvania, where they still have the ruins of the citadel where he was held prisoner, and died eventually from starvation. Today I think his greatest impact on our American faith is not his faith in Unitarianism instead of Trinitarianism. His gift to us as religious liberals was his crime – the crime of innovation.
Everywhere I went in Transylvania, the Hungarian ministers commented on my Americanness. One minister told me: I could tell you were an American. You possess an unrelenting optimism. We are not optimistic, we are realistic. My reply was: I see you honor David’s claim that “faith is a gift from God.” Perhaps the faith you see in me is a different kind of gift. It is an American faith.
This kind of American faith is not necessarily patriotic. It is not the firm belief that everything will work out the way we hope. It is not a faith without doubt. In fact, quite the opposite. It is a faith that makes doubt it’s cornerstone.
I see after going abroad and coming back home, hearing about families split apart here and more people being put in cages, that we are in the process of the greatest religious debate our country has ever seen. The debate is not over philosophy. The debate is not about the nature of God, or about the right way to read a particular book. No, we are being asked to engage something far more simple and far more difficult. We are not being asked to just believe in God, to believe in something we may sense, but don’t fully understand. We are being asked for a more radical faith than this. We are not being asked to put faith in our elected leaders. We are not being asked to put faith in structures of government. We are not even being asked to put faith in our churches or religious leaders. No, that would be too easy.
What is this American faith we are being challenged to? We are being asked to have faith in each other, in the members and citizens of this land. Among our different backgrounds and opinions, we are being asked to put faith in an invisible unity, a tie that binds us together even as we try to tear ourselves away.
It’s a faith that says yes, among the reefs of greed and the squalls of hate, there is something much larger on it’s way, and it will not be late. Something is on it’s way to the USA, and it’s something we’ve yearned for from the start. Only an American could have a faith like this. Only an American would believe that the tune might change. Only an American would wait on the shores of hate in hopeful expectation of a new wind to blow through.
I’ve been thinking of a new way of looking at the pilgrims. A pilgrimage is traditionally a long journey away from one’s home or familiar surroundings in search of something true and meaningful. The trip serves a reminder of what he hold dear, of a life and freedom we seek. I’ve returned from my trip a different kind of pilgrim. As I return home, I feel I have returned to a very strange land. It is familiar and yet I don’t quite recognize it. I know it but I don’t really understand it. I think we are creating the environment in this church and in other places for a different kind of pilgrimage. We are not traveling to new lands in search of freedom.
We are learning to stand on the land many of us have grown up on, the nation that birthed us or gave us a home, and remain open to innovation in the place we’re standing. We are being asked to become pilgrims in our own home. We’re not being asked to leave. We’re being asked to stay, and discover for ourselves an innovative faith, a faith that leads me to trust you, a faith that speaks to the times we live in. We’re being asked to remain committed to openness as our political and social climate seems committed to drawing clear limits and borders and finding ways to divide us.
There is a grass roots faith taking hold in the country right now that is bigger than any church and any denomination. I feel it spreading, and yearning for our engagement. It is waiting for our doubt. It is waiting for our questioning. It waiting for our yearning. In short, it is waiting for us to test it. In the spirit of Francis David, we can now see faith as a process of innovation, as an experiment, not a destination. Faith is an orientation that allows us to use our complete faculties to engage the unknowable, and watch it unfold before us.
Faith is not for the complacent, for the silent, confident believer. It is for the doubter, for the troubled, for the indignant, for the huddled masses yearning to breathe free. It is for the stubborn seeker. It is for all those that know that the path of freedom is only meant for pilgrims.
