"The Voluntary Association"
by Rev. Kimi Riegel
November 17, 2002

In the beginning, there was the committee. Or at least that’s what the bulletin board at First Church said the year I started there. On the board was a typical creation picture with sun streaming through the clouds in the standard “glory” from God image but up in the clouds sat a group of people around a big table.  Now I suspect if a committee had created the world it would have taken more than seven days but there would have been a few things, like avocados, that would have been improved on. This morning I will take on the task of discussing the importance of committees, groups or organizations that we freely choose to join. These voluntary associations are the cornerstones of democracy. Associating in a voluntary way is one of the essential components missing in totalitarian government. Take away our right to associate freely and whatever other rights we might retain, even the freedom of speech, mean very little.  Without our ability to gather with whom we choose, we would loose freedom of religion. Church and state would no longer be separate and democracy couldn’t exist. It is the freedom to associate and the responsibilities there entailed that we will examine this morning.

James Luther Adams was a Unitarian Universalist minister who was later on the faculty at Harvard. Much of his work is pivotal in the area of voluntary associations, their history, sociology and theological grounding. I will be quoting from his work where many of my ideas have their roots.  

Humans are born into involuntary associations and at some level, depending on our path in life, they remain a part of our daily existence. We have very little choice, especially initially, about the families, countries, or ethnic groups into which we are born. The core of our early identity and early nurture is through involuntary associations. Involuntary associations such as prisons are a part of all cultures. And at certain times in history, involuntary associations have even been a part of our democracy, such as the McCarthy era black lists.

James Luther Adams tells of watching a Nazi parade in the city of Nuremberg, Germany, in 1927. When Adams started arguing with a Nazi supporter about their politics, he was grabbed and dragged away by a person who thankfully turned out to be a friend, who told him, “In Germany today when you are watching a parade, you either keep your mouth shut, or you get your head bashed in.” For Adams, this was a formative experience. He saw in this event the seeds of his theories about the importance of freedom of association. Those that stood in opposition to the Nazis were not allowed to gather to offer their criticisms. Adams relates that story to the 1950’s, when Senator Joseph McCarthy attempted “to smother freedom of association” in America. Adams writes: “Every totalitarian theory rejects just this freedom. Indeed the rejection of the freedom of association, the rejection of the freedom to form groups that attempt to affect public policy, can serve as the beginning of a definition of totalitarianism.”[1]

For many people religion remains one of those involuntary associations; several religious traditions assume that once born a Christian, Jew, Hindu or Muslim always a Christian, Jew, Hindu or Muslim. In this country and at this time however, churches, synagogues and mosques are voluntary associations, but it hasn’t always been the case. In early New England everyone in a particular town supported and belonged to the town church. You attended that church on Sunday, that minister buried you and perhaps most important your tax dollars went to pay that minister’s salary. But even further back in the early church, there was the beginnings of voluntary associations. The early Christian Church rejected the law of the Jewish people, which had in turn rejected the way of the pagan faiths. Each of these had put an end to the way it had been expected that one would believe, each forming a new voluntary association with others of like belief; yet each of these then taking control of an area, a people and especially a government. Each of these voluntary associations eventually centralized power and become, in time, less voluntary. The Reformation, and its radical cousin that spawned Unitarian Universalism, were born of the voluntary associations in response to other voluntary associations that had become less voluntary.

It wasn’t until the move to do away with state control of religion that we truly began to see the switch to religious communities as enduring voluntary associations. These were built on the groundwork laid by the Radical Reformation and groups like the Anabaptists. The Anabaptists believed that a true believer was one who came to the faith of his or her own accord through reason and study of scripture. They believed in only adult baptism, as becoming a member of the faith was possible only after the age of reason. It was these radical notions of choice and those of groups like the Quakers, who believed the only faith was through a direct personal line to God, that coercion in matters of faith becomes unsupportable. Thus the only authentic faith became a voluntary one, the only way to come to a faith was to choose it.

This radical conception of a faith through choice was not easily accepted at the time. People were drown, burned at the stake and persecuted for their beliefs. The freedom to choose our religion was won at a high cost to human life. And still today it is not available to all around the world.

For our part, we honor those who came before by remembering how rare and wonderful it is to choose to freely associate in a faith community. We honor the past by remembering that once chosen, one faces the responsibilities and challenges of maintaining the voluntary association. Voluntary associations demand our attention, our time, our energy and our resources. There is even a book about Unitarian Universalism called The Challenge of a Liberal Faith. In some ways life was easier before such choices. We were told what to believe, what to give to the church and what the church required of us. My Catholic priest friends who want something done in their churches tell their flock and it is done. With Unitarian Universalists it’s many conversations, and committee meetings with challenges and changes and improvements to our ideas. We face the challenge of seeking support through the techniques of persuasion in order to sustain in our voluntary associations.[2]

Thus this sermon is about voluntary associations as a way of persuading you to become active in this one of your voluntary association. I can’t just tell you to come work for the church; we do not have that kind of polity. Our church, our faith was formed in response, reaction to control exercised by clergy, especially bishops.[3]

You may have heard it said that we Unitarian Universalists have congregational polity. That means that the churches are freely associating separate entities, which in our case are supported by a national office, but not dictated to by that office. And the clergy have the same say as others in the community; maybe more training or experience in church work, but the same one voice. James Luther Adams calls it the “priesthood of all believers and the prophethood of all believers.”[4] In the established church the priesthood was responsible for the work and mission of the church. Our faith tradition, with its beginning in nonconformity to the established church, includes the priesthood of all believers. In other words each of us has the privilege and responsibility of shaping the mission and policies of the church. The prophethood of all believers implies that like the prophets of old who offered criticism, foretold the future, and offered leadership in new directions, we are each responsible for our church and its actions in the world. We are its prophets and its priests. Adams quotes Charles Perguy a French Catholic writer:

“In Roman Catholicism the priests prepare the meal according to established recipes and then present the food to the “faithful” who are expected humbly to eat with gratitude and without criticism: and in Radical Protestantism (read Unitarian Universalism) both the clergy and the laity go to the kitchen and prepare the food and then together take it to the table for the common meal”[5]

So it’s our meal and we cook it together. And to carry the metaphor perhaps a bit too far – with us there is no such thing as too many cooks spoil the broth. We are built on the notion that you don’t need uniformity of (recipe) belief to have (good food) fellowship – in fact we like to think of ourselves as protecting the minority opinions. Minority opinions have a home with us. We like new foods with new flavors in combinations that we haven’t tried before, but enough of that metaphor.

But now you can see how this makes community life for Unitarian Universalists a challenge. Everyone must participate in some way or another to create this community. Without us it doesn’t happen. The policies and operation of this church are entirely up to us. This church will go in the direction those involved want it to. This church will be the community that those involved in it want it to be. It can be no more or no less.

We all belong to many voluntary associations that make our world a better place. As a result of this movement toward religious freedom came democracy and all the voluntary groups it requires. Some of these associations even nurture and care for us the way our families did in our early years. There are peace groups, earth caring groups, support groups, informational groups, boards, political, school and community groups. Most of us belong to and support several. Unitarian Universalists are known to be among some of the most generous and civically active people in the country. The important message for you to take away today is not that you aren’t doing enough but that this religious community is you and it is me and the others sitting next to you. This is the joy we share. This is the privilege and responsibility we share. We are a freely associating religious community that can be whatever we would like to be. The vitality and effectiveness of this church is about us and no one else. We aren’t dependent on a pope or clergy or board to be who we want, it’s about us. We set our path and we evaluate how we are doing. As Adams says: “by their groups shall ye know them”[6]

By participating in this church, Sunday morning, committee work, coffee hour, teaching, cleaning, cooking, greeting, giving money, organizing, criticizing, creating, learning and all the other ways – we are part of a great chain of freedom of association. May it continue forever!

I would like to end with a story:

A person who died was being given a tour of the facilities in the next world. First he was taken to one great room, where huge tables were covered with platters of food: shrimp and lobster, roast beef and caviar, fruits and vegetables prepared in the most elegant ways, and huge mounds of deserts and chocolate delicacies: the ultimate feast. Milling about were great numbers of people, all with spoons and forks attached to their arms. However, since the spoons and forks all had handles three feet long, no person was able to carry any food to his or her mouth, and they wandered from table to table, moaning and groaning, seeing and smelling the very best food imaginable, but eternally starving. This was Hell!

Then the visitor was led down the hall to the next room, which had an identical setting: all the same food elegantly presented, and mobs of people with three foot spoons and forks attached to their arms. But here, something very different was happening. Instead of trying to feed themselves and failing, these people were happily feeding each other. This was Heaven!

The people in Heaven had chosen to work with others for the common good. They had established voluntary associations. May we too continue to create heaven on earth. Amen. Blessed be. Namaste.