Remarks of William G. Sinkford,
President, Unitarian Universalist Association
Civil Liberties Forum
October 17th

Former Beacon Press Director Gobin Stair, Former UUA President Rev. Bob West, Rev. Jack Mendelsohn, and current UUA President Bill Sinkford

I, too, would like to welcome all of you to this recognition and celebration of Unitarian Universalist defense of civil liberties. I want to thank Kim Crawford Harvie and the staff and members of Arlington Street Church for their gracious hospitality. And I want to thank the esteemed participants in this forum for their willingness to share their stories with us tonight. One of themes which will no doubt emerge from tonight's forum is that the defense of our civil liberties is an ongoing struggle. We have much to learn from those who have engaged in this struggle before us, and tonight we both celebrate their achievements and dedicate ourselves to the continuing struggle for freedom.

In addition to welcoming you, my role tonight is to provide a brief outline of Universalist, Unitarian, and Unitarian Universalist support for civil liberties down through the centuries. You will forgive me, I trust, if I begin by reaching back to the roots of our faith.

This past summer I visited our Unitarian cousins in Transylvania, and during the course of my time there, I was struck by two realizations. First, the residents of Transylvania (most of which lies in Romania) are still dealing with the aftereffects of life under totalitarian government, a life without any civil liberties at all. But secondly, I was reminded that more than four hundred years ago, King John Sigismund of Transylvania, the only Unitarian king in history, issued an edict of religious toleration that permitted the people of his kingdom to follow whatever religion they wished. In 16th Century Europe, torn by religious warfare, this liberty, this separation of state from church, was absolutely unique. So even then, as Unitarian belief was emerging from the cauldron of the Reformation, we find support among our ancestors for religious freedom.

But this freedom was not to last. John Sigismund died young, and his successors abolished the edict of toleration. The state again held sway over people's religious beliefs. The triumph of religious liberty was fleeting.

Closer to home, early American Universalists contributed significantly to the struggle for civil liberty and religious freedom. In 1777, several members of the First Church of Christ in Gloucester, Massachusetts, began to stay away from Sunday services because they were listening to the radical preaching of John Murray, and in 1779, these early Universalists formed the Independent Church of Christ in Gloucester. But the Universalists were told by the state government that they were still required to pay taxes for support of the First Parish, the church that they had left. When they refused, their possessions were confiscated and sold to pay the delinquent taxes. The Universalists brought the case to court, and in a landmark decision handed down in 1786, they were recognized as a distinct religious community exempt from paying taxes to support the church of another faith. In the early days of the American republic, it was these Universalists who fought to establish in practice the guarantee of religious freedom found in the Bill of Rights.

Another struggle for civil liberty emerged in the 19th Century over the question of slavery. Unitarians were by no means of one mind about abolition, and our celebration tonight should be tempered by the understanding that we have not always acquitted ourselves well. But at the forefront of the abolitionist movement were Unitarians such as Samuel May, Jr., Theodore Parker, Maria Weston Chapman, Thomas Wentworth Higginson, and John Pierpont. The sculpture of the Massachusetts 54th Regiment which stands directly across from the Massachusetts State House shows Col. Robert Gould Shaw, a member of Theodore Parker's congregation, leading the African American troops of this volunteer regiment, many of whom, along with Shaw, would sacrifice their lives for freedom.

The basis for our civil liberties is the United States Constitution. But the Constitution did not guarantee the freedom of Black Americans, and it relegated women to second-class citizenship. The long struggle to gain for women the right to vote was led by both Unitarians and Universalists. Susan B. Anthony is the best known of these Unitarian suffragists, but there were many others. And Universalist women such as Clara Barton and Mary Rice Livermore demonstrated by their work during the Civil War that women were deserving of the full rights of citizenship.

And we should not discount the role played by early women ministers, women such as Olympia Brown and Celia Burleigh. As women occupied the pulpits and became the spiritual leaders of congregations, it proved harder to deny them their rights as citizens. So, while under our Constitution state and church are, and must remain, separate, we see how religious communities can effect positive change in our society.

Unitarians and Universalists continued this defense of civil liberties in the 20th century. The prophetic Unitarian minister John Haynes Holmes was instrumental in the founding of both the NAACP and the American Civil Liberties Union. Among the several founders of the NAACP was the Unitarian lay-person, Mary White Ovington, a member of Holmes' Community Church of New York. The ACLU was founded in 1920 at a time when Americans feared that Bolshevism would spread from Russia to the US. It was a time similar to today when fear led the government to attempt to cut back on the civil liberties granted by the Constitution.

The fear of Communism also led to the governmental violations of civil liberty following World War II, a time now known as the McCarthy era. During this period, ministers and members of Universalist and Unitarian congregations were spied upon by the government for doing nothing more than exercising their rights as citizens. The program for tonight's forum includes a photo of the Rev. John Cummins and Senator Margaret Chase Smith taken at the Universalist Church of Brunswick, Maine, just after Sen. Smith issued her Declaration of Conscience condemning the violations of civil liberty by Sen. Joseph McCarthy and the House UnAmerican Affairs Committee. Meetings such as this one were not uncommon in both Universalist and Unitarian churches during this period.

Throughout the 1950s, both the American Unitarian Association and the Universalist Church of America passed resolutions condemning the curtailment of civil liberties by federal, state, and local governments. In 1951, ten years before their official consolidation, the AUA and the UCA issued a joint resolution on civil liberty, part of which I would like to read to you now because I think it illustrates the dedication of Universalists and Unitarians to this struggle and also because its words are still resonate 51 years later:

"Whereas certain men have persecuted many innocent persons with accusations of disloyalty, and in their fear, many are trying to censor free speech, free teaching, and communication, we resolve to affirm loyalty to the freedom of the mind to believe and of the tongue to speak what the mind believes.

We condemn all persecution of persons for belief without evidence of treason, all enforced submission to doctrine, religious or political. And we assert that national security is guarded more through freedom and constructive criticism than it ever could be through the silence of conformity and fear."

We will hear more about Unitarian Universalist defense of constitutional freedoms from our distinguished speakers tonight. But I want to remind you again that this struggle is not over, and will never be over as long as there are forces that would attempt, for whatever reason, to curtail our civil liberties. And Unitarian Universalists are today still at the forefront of the struggle to protect our constitutional freedoms. Last June, the delegates at our General Assembly voted to recommend to congregations a two-year study/action issue on civil liberties. At the end of this two-year period, at the General Assembly in June, 2004, the delegates will vote on a final resolution on this issue. Civil liberties are at the forefront of our congregations' attention.

And, finally, this good news. Just last week, First Unitarian Church of Salt Lake City won a stunning victory when the 10th United States Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the Church of Latter Day Saints, the Mormons, could not impose restrictions on free speech and expression on a stretch of Main St. in Salt Lake that the Mormons control. First Unitarian brought this suit three years ago along with the ACLU and several other groups dedicated to First Amendment rights, and tonight I want to salute the work of this congregation and its minister, Tom Goldsmith, for adding another chapter to the story of Unitarian Universalist defense of civil liberties. This is the latest chapter, but I assure you, it will not be the last.

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