In May of 2004 Texas State Comptroller Carole Keeton Strayhorn ruled that the Red River Unitarian Universalist Church in Denison did not meet the approved definition of a religion. The church, she wrote, "does not have one system of belief;" and so she denied its tax-exempt status. Within a week her general council, reflecting perhaps on the uncomfortable fact that two of the nation’s first Presidents, John Adams and John Quincy Adams, were Unitarians, compelled her to reverse her opinion.

Still, it’s quite true that Unitarians have a reputation for unapologetic theological incoherence. Many that I know almost embrace it with pride. I believe it was a Unitarian who told me the following joke –

What happens when you cross a Unitarian with a Jahovah’s Witness?

Someone who rings your doorbell and doesn’t know what to say.

There is, for me at least, a certain comfort in this irreverence. At its best it reflects humility; a recognition that religion may be too important and too mysterious to be taken entirely seriously, that religious certainty and idolatry may be close cousins.

Last Sunday’s shootings in Knoxville, though, were a horror beyond irreverence; beyond eloquence. Like many of you I’ve wrestled with them all week. No amount of philosophizing or moralizing can bring meaning to senseless brutality. Yet the unflinching, selfless heroism of the members of the congregation of the Tennessee Valley UU; their immediate, unthinking self-sacrifice that kept the shooter from killing many more, reflects a profound religious certainty. They were acting out of that concern for others that his Holiness the Dalai Lama describes as the essence of spiritual practice. To do so in the face of death evinces an ingrained and habitual goodness to which I could only hope to aspire.

I can take some comfort that pluralists can act from so deep a Faith; that tolerance for another viewpoint is not simply refusal to believe anything at all. The members of the TVUU have proven just how wrong Comptroller Strayhorn was. And they have made me very proud, once again, to gather with all of you in a humility that dares not judge other traditions, that claims no absolutes, yet remains compelled to act.

In recent writings the philosopher and ethicist Susan Neiman has proselytized what she calls the “Enlightenment hero.” As she puts it in her 2003 essay “What is Enlightenment?”

“Enlightenment heroes have courage enough to question themselves, faith enough to reject idolatry, skepticism enough to suspect every form of cant. Their commitment to reason is not a rejection of passion but of blind faith in authority or intuition. This is a commitment to public processes - itself a commitment to democracy, which in turn implies the belief that human beings have the potential to think for themselves. …. Far from being relentlessly optimistic, the Enlightenment could be very dark. Its belief was not that progress is inevitable, but only that it is possible - that the cycle of war and cruelty and envy and injustice is not one to which we are eternally condemned. Above all, this belief rests on the belief that the world may come to make sense: that we can devise intellectual and political structures that make the links between virtue and happiness less contingent than they are now.”

At its best, I believe Unitarianism represents this Enlightenment heroism. Neiman asks us to act with skepticism but passion, with moral clarity but without dogma. This is a delicate balance, and very hard to maintain. But the Unitarians of Knoxville have reminded us that it is possible.

As we face so many seemingly overwhelming problems – local concerns of what sort of community we want Northampton to be, national questions of what role the US may play in the world, global questions about the impact of our lifestyles on the climate, I hope we can remember their courage. A simple, unpretentious courage that even in the face of tremendous evil knows itself to have to power to change the world in the only way anyone ever can, and in the only way that matters – through unflinching but humble action out of concern for others, with trust in the power of community.

Tennessee Valley Unitarian congregant Kenneth Mcdonald wrote with blistering reverence “…never before have I felt the fire of the Chalice in my own heart burn as bright as it does now in my grief and admiration.” The “fire of the Chalice” – the phrase has an almost evangelical feel. I imagine that were Kenneth Mcdonald to ring your doorbell, he would know exactly what to say.

And so, it is with renewed respect that I read the principles of Unitarianism, from the By-Laws of the Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations:

We, the member congregations of the Unitarian Universalist Association, covenant to affirm and promote:

The inherent worth and dignity of every person;

Justice, equality, and compassion in human relations;

Acceptance of one another and encouragement to spiritual growth in our congregations;

A free and responsible search for truth and meaning;

The right of conscience and the use of the democratic process within our congregations and society at large;

The goal of world community with peace, liberty, and justice for all;

Respect for the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part.