As old and slow as it is, it is rare to meet a Christian who does not love the song “Amazing Grace.” If you are part of the small, sad tribe that doesn’t love this song, keep it to yourself. The rest of us don’t need that kind of negativity in our lives. It is a song that I believe really strikes at the heart of the Christian faith, emphasizing our brokenness, the preciousness of God’s love, the awe we should feel for all God had done for us, and above all, the amazing grace of God by which we are saved. It is certainly not the kind of song whose words should be changed in any significant way.
Recently, however, I attended a service at a Unitarian church for the first time with my Interim class and, looking in the hymnal, we discovered that they had done just that. The word “God” in the song had been switched out for “Oversoul.” Very Emersonian (I wonder if there is a translucent eyeball sauntering around in that hymnal somewhere), but certainly not Christian. What is going on here?
The class I took this Interim was New England Saints, an English department trip to Massachusetts that focuses primarily on the Concord authors of the American Literary Renaissance: Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Louisa May Alcott and others. These literary figures formed the core of the class, but in all truth it was a liberal arts class in which we learned about history, religion, writing, vocation and any number of other things in addition to literature.
It’s a Calvin class through and through, and I highly, highly, highly recommend it as a truly fulfilling and awesome experience whether you are an English major or not. In the interest of learning about religion, we went to a different type of church service each week: Trinity Anglican Church the first week and Park Street Congregational Church the third week, both in Boston. It is the second week I wish to discuss in this op-ed, however.
That week we stayed back in our home base town of Concord and attended First Parish Unitarian Church, a new experience for most of us. Traditionally, Unitarians do not believe in the Trinity but in one God alone; thus, they also deny the divinity of Christ, believing him to be a great teacher but not worthy of worship. More recently, the Unitarian Church has combined with the Universalist movement to make the Unitarian Universalist Assembly. They no longer consider themselves to be properly Christian. Instead, they are a separate religion that borrows a lot from Christianity but also draws liberally from other religions and philosophies.
The pastor we spoke with said that the church she used to work for had a large Jewish population and thus had far more trappings of Judaism than Christianity. Unitarians today, we discovered, are essentially allowed to believe in whatever they want. There are no authoritative scriptures(often the Bible is used, but it has equal authority with the Koran, the Bhagavad Gita, beautiful poetry, etc.) and sermons can be on anything the pastor wants to preach about.
There is no particularly definitive view of the afterlife (which makes me wonder where they think they’ll be for 10,000 years when they are singing about the amazing grace of the Oversoul). When we asked them what they say to those who are dying they said, “We ask them what they want us to tell them.” Also, there is no belief in Original Sin or Hell. Thus, if people aren’t really sinful or in danger of damnation, I suppose it is perfectly okay to believe whatever you want. Personally, Unitarian Universalism seems like a rather dull name to me. They should vote to change it to Choose-Your-Own-Adventure Church.
Not everything at First Parish was bad, though. They were incredibly welcoming and kind, and they are really big on love and issues of social justice. They are also very open to people asking questions and thinking critically. We talked to one of the pastors and a panel of parishioners before the service. It just so happened that all of them were converts to Unitarianism from various Christian denominations who had left their old faith because they weren’t really allowed to ask questions or because they felt like their churches did not care very much about social justice. At First Parish they found an accepting home and people who were passionate about love and justice like they were. These are wonderful things, but they have gone so beyond those wonderful things in their beliefs. The sermon that we attended was essentially a Black Lives Matter rally, and I agreed with pretty much everything the pastor said, but it didn’t feel like church. God wasn’t talked about at all. We prayed and sang, but I’m not sure who to, and I don’t think the congregation knew either. That is what really made me sad.
What troubled me the most is that these people’s hearts were in the right place, but the orthodox church had not made room for their questions and had not done enough to pursue justice and that had alienated them. This church has thrived off the failings of other churches and that should be a warning to us all. They do not know God and they do not know Jesus, thus their wishy-washy, hodgepodge theology will not be enough in the end.
However, in spite of their concerning changes to “Amazing Grace,” they do know something about the grace and love that is at the heart of Christianity, something some of us have forgotten. It is not enough, but it is an important reminder for us to respond with grace and love to others who ask questions or who are different from us, lest we throw the first stone and turn them loose to choose their own adventure apart from God.