One thing to bear in mind about heresies is that they can only happen from within a community of believers. If somebody hands a priest some radical Protestant interpretation of doctrine, the priest can dismiss it not as heresy but as some wrong teaching of another faith. Now, if that priest reads this interpretation that is against Catholic teaching, decides that it is true, and starts to teach according to those ideas, then that priest is guilty of heresy. Heretics are only born within communities of believers—they challenge their own orthodox teachings and doctrines; it is not heresy to challenge somebody else’s belief or faith—only one’s own. The term heresy is tossed around pretty loosely in Unitarian Universalist circles, and as we discuss our history the term gets used quite proudly. Heretics are not to be taken lightly nor dismissed easily. Most mainline Protestant religions were founded by heretics, not just ours.

When Luther nailed his papers to the door of the church, he had no idea that he was starting a new religion—he just wanted his own Catholic church to change.

When I was a child trying to understand religion, I thought that, in the beginning, everyone in the world was Jewish, then Jesus came and people had to decide what to believe. Then after Jesus, people were either Jewish or Catholic. Imagine my bubble bursting when I started to find out about Buddhism, Islam, and other parts of the world that had never been Jewish nor Christian. As a Religious Studies major, I finally began to understand that there has never been one unified, codified belief system within Christianity, not even right after Jesus’ crucifixion. In the first few centuries of Church History dating from the crucifixion of Jesus, there have always been differing schools of thought. Why do you think it took four gospel writers, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, to tell one story? Since the common era began, about 2000 years ago, we have been slugging out our doctrines, beliefs, and practices, all in the name of God’s love.

It has been said that history is written by the winners, and this is also true of Church History. From my seminary days I can not tell you how many times in a Church History course some name would come up, Arius, for example, as somebody who fought to change the existing Trinitarian orthodoxy and lost. Arius lived from 256 to 336 in Libya. He was a parish priest in Alexandria, who believed and preached the scriptures as clearly stating that the somewhat new Trinitarianism was wrong doctrine. He is one of my favorite heretics because while I studied Arius within a Christian seminary, I was trying to figure out for myself what is the difference, really, between Christianity and UUism. Realizing that the Arian controversy was just 300 years into the Common Era, it became clear to me that the paths divided a very long time ago and not just recently.

I was able to embrace our history more because it was older than I had previously realized, and fraught with much more peril than I had imagined. Suddenly UU history was more fun when I met Arius.

His main tool for mounting his defense was his appeal to Scriptures and reason, saying that of course Jesus and God are one and the same, but what of this holy spirit and trinity idea? He was an anti-trinitarian heretic. His ideas never went away—we Unitarians count him as one of us even though the term Unitarian would not be used for more than a thousand years after his death. He was excommunicated before the Council of Nicea had met, which was held largely in part due to his beliefs and followers. The Council vote did not favor his view, and he was not only excommunicated but also banished. Funny how a good idea just will not go away sometimes, and after Emperor Constantine had banished him, the Emperor could not get rid of his followers, called Arians. For the record, in no way do these Arians share any history or meaning with Aryan white supremists—the spelling and stories have no similarities. Constantine had ordered that Arius would be allowed communion again, because Constantine was a politician whose people largely followed Arius, but Arius died before his excommunication could be reversed. People were calling themselves Arians well into the 1600’s when Unitarian replaced the term. We would call him a church founder, an early Unitarian. In Church History class, however, he is a heretic whose views were found to be incorrect.

Now we turn to my next favorite, Jan Hus. Hus was from Czechoslovakia and lived from 1369 to 1415. He is one of my favorite heretics because I like it when things are spelled out for me very simply, when I know what the story is behind the reason we do something. I like to know and be able to explain our customs and rituals. Jan Hus’ story is one that explains one of our most easily recognizable symbols, the flaming chalice. He was a priest, and later, Rector of the Charles University of Prague. He always believed that the heart of the church was the common working person, the ordinary Czech on the street. The clergy believed that the church was about the clergy.

This was right as the much-needed Reformation began, with very wealthy and corrupt clergy wielding their power to keep the poor oppressed, while lining their own pockets. John Wycliffe, who was speaking against the corruption of clergy in England was a major influence on Hus. Hus became a champion of the people, even going so far as to offer the communion cup, or chalice, to parishioners, flying in the face of common practice for only the clergy to celebrate the Lord’s Supper. He also rebelled against the selling of indulgences. Now, the idea of indulgences has always fascinated me. A priest or some official of the church would collect a sum of money for one to buy their way out of hell, or even a relative’s, whether they were dead or alive. Sort of like afterlife insurance. I have always thought it would be a great fundraiser at a GA some year. If your great grandfather was a narrow minded bigot but you feel bad that he’s in hell, you could pay the UUA a sum of money to have his soul move from hell to heaven…..we could send Jerry Falwell a notice, like a gift certificate, that a Unitarian indulgence has been paid to keep his homophobic soul from eternal fires. But I digress. Indulgences helped to fill the church coffers, and speaking out against them as well as helping to empower the oppressed commoners put Hus into a dangerous position.

First he was excommunicated, but when he handed over his papers from Wycliffe, it was overturned and he was re-instated. He had only handed over the papers because by this time he appealed only to scripture and reason, believing that his positions were correct, and that Wycliffe’s were also, based on scripture. He was excommunicated again when his handing over of papers did not change his teachings, and then he was brought before the Council of Constance to defend himself in November of 1413. He was arrested and imprisoned, and on July 6 of 1415 he was burnt at the stake as a heretic. We light our chalice as a beacon of hope, but it has a long, awful history of people who gave their lives for religious freedom, Jan Hus being one of them.

The third heretic from centuries past that I want to tell you about is Frances David. He was the court preacher of the only Unitarian king in History, King John Sigismund of Transylvania. In 1568, under advisement of Frances David and others, King Sigismund declared religious tolerance in an official edict. Although his rule was short-lived due to poor health, the King became Unitarian due to David’s influence and never persecuted any Lutheran, Calvinist, or dissenter during his rule during the tumultuous Reformation. As if this is not reason enough to love David, much of his story is tied up with the Polish Brethren. When I told my Polish Catholic father that Unitarian roots go back to Poland, it eased some of his uncertainty toward this strange religion I had embraced. In practical terms, however, in order that non-Poles can love David, too, here are some points of interest. At the time that David’s ministry was taking shape there was a schism in the Lutheran church over this issue of whether Christ was present bodily or spiritually in the Lord’s Supper. Calvin’s followers, David being one, believed the dissenting stand –it is present spiritually. As Luther himself was not trying to start a new religion with his 95 theses, but rather improve his own old Catholicism, David was not trying to help the splinter group of Calvinists break off from the Lutherans, but that is what happened. So he was already a Catholic who became a Lutheran who was now a Calvinist. The issue of Jesus’ place in the trinity had not even been an issue yet, but when it became an issue, the Catholic Lutheran Calvinist then became Unitarian. Calvin and David saw eye-to-eye on many theological issues in David’s early years. Again, like most heretics, David was a well-respected clergyman of high repute. He appealed to scripture and reason, believing that Scriptures and Jesus, himself, taught us how to pray to God, and not through him. This heresy was called innovation and was the final straw. At the Diet of Torda he declared that “God is One,” referring to the error of the trinity. He was declared anti-Trinitarian and with the early death of the Unitarian king, David had no more protection for his beliefs. He was found guilty of innovation at his trial, sentenced to perpetual imprisonment, and like so many political prisoners, we really do not know what his final days were like. We do not know exactly when he died, or even where he is buried. Another one of his famous quotes we see on Wayside Pulpits is “We need not think alike to love alike.”

The last heretic I would like to tell you about is Lydia Maria Child. She wrote the little poem that children sing, “Over the river and through the woods, to grandmother’s house we go” which is probably the only non-radical thing she ever wrote and ironically the only way people today may know her. In her own lifetime she was a journalist, published author, radical abolitionist, and proponent of Native American rights and respect for world religions. Born in 1802 to strict Calvinist parents, she adored her older brother, Convers Francis, who became a famous Unitarian minister. Maria, as she was called, was his best and most radical disciple. Although she identified with the Unitarian church all of her life, she found it to be quite limited when she began to explore world religions. Also, the Unitarians had been very slow to get on the abolitionist bandwagon, having sat on the less radical anti-slavery fence through most of the Civil War.

Before her 25th birthday she had written two novels that were quite controversial but well received. Hobomok is about a white woman who loves a Native American man, bearing his son. Incidentally, her interest in Native Americans came from living in Maine as an adolescent and getting to know local Penobscots. She considered this to be an historical novel, as was her next one, The Rebels: Boston Before the Revolution. Both had been published anonymously as it was not proper for women to be in this career, but her name got out regardless and she was quite famous and accepted. Because of these two novels, she was able to found a children’s magazine, called The Juvenile Miscellany, which carried her name as editor. She was well connected with the Boston Unitarians by now and tuned in to the social justice causes of the day. After a long engagement she married David Child, a young lawyer. He had very high principles and a true heart for justice and social change, but she was clearly the better business person in the couple, having to rely on her writing skills through most of their marriage for their livelihood.

Both of the Childs were controversial; David spent jail time for his political views in his pro-Native American, anti-slavery newspaper, The Massachusetts Journal and Maria kept publishing stories in her children’s journal highly regarding Native Americans and decrying whites’ treatment of them. What Mrs. Child did next to help raise their income is remarkable. She published a book for the middle class woman on how to cook and keep house and even to entertain. By doing this she acknowledged several things for the first time in American culture—that there was a middle class, that women who are not wealthy with servants still want to have nice homes, and that these neglected women were literate and capable. The Frugal Housewife was the 19th century counterpart to the red and white-checkered Good Housekeeping cookbook today that we all own. Outside of Boston she was renowned as the model homemaker and children’s publicist. This is what I love about studying this woman; she did what her integrity would allow so that she and her husband might stay afloat financially, recognizing women of different classes and promoting herself publicly one way, while her radical beliefs are what seemed to actually sustain her soul.

Mrs. Child’s public persona versus her private passion would be like Martha Stewart throwing away all of her fame and fortune to advance gay rights in this country. It would shock some while others would be swayed by her celebrity to take sides on a cause where before perhaps they had been fence-sitters. This is exactly what happened for Maria Child when, at the height of her fame for The Frugal Housewife, she published another book in 1833. 30 years before the Civil War she wrote of her plan for ending slavery and integrating blacks into white American culture through education and interracial marriage. “Publication of An Appeal in Favor of that Class of Americans Called Africans, in 1833 marked a turning point in Child's career. Outspoken in her condemnation of slavery, she pointed out its contradiction with Christian teachings, described the moral and physical degradation it brought upon slaves and owners alike, and not excepting the North from its share of responsibility for the system. ‘I am fully aware of the unpopularity of the task I have undertaken,’ she wrote in the introduction, ‘but though I expect ridicule and censure, it is not in my nature to fear them.’

The Appeal was her professional downfall, with bookstores pulling all of her work, the loss of her job at the Juvenile Miscellany, which she had founded, and the discontinuation of The Frugal Housewife sales. The Boston Unitarians turned their backs on her, canceling her library card to the prestigious library, the Atheneum. Through all of this, she only became more dedicated to the anti-slavery cause instead of shying away from it. Although she saw parallels between the freedom of blacks and the freedom of women, she took a different stand on the suffrage issue, which also put her at odds with most Unitarians of the time. She believed that black men should get the vote first and concentrated on abolition while most Unitarians, especially other women, put women’s rights first. How I would have loved to hear some of those debates! It is too difficult to decide in my 21st century life which person would have swayed me more. There is something about Mrs. Childs’ approach to the plight of whole oppressed cultures (blacks, Native Americans, poor women, etc.) that strikes me as being a higher, more far-reaching ideal of justice. Her standpoint was that NO women had the vote yet, but white men did while black men did not, so our laws were not recognizing black people as human. She did believe in women’s rights but felt that all men needed to be recognized before moving on to any women. I find it fascinating that we usually read all of Unitarian women being lumped together as working toward common goals, when in fact they might have been bitter rivals due to the passion for their causes.

When John Brown was seized at Harper’s Ferry, Mrs. Childs wrote to him asking if she could visit and help him. He replied that it would be unwise. The Governor of Virginia wrote to her, chastising her for sympathizing with a murderer. Her reply to the governor was published in the New York Tribune, the forerunner of the New York Times. In the editorial section, Mrs. Mason, the wife of the Virginia senator who had drafted the Fugitive Slave Act in 1850, took her to task. Mrs. Mason berated her for wanting to care for the ailing prisoner, and appealed to women of the North, stating that, “No Southerner ought, after your letter to Governor Wise and to Brown, to read a line of your composition, or to touch a magazine which bears your name in its list of contributors, and in this we hope for the sympathy at least of those in the North who deserve the name of woman.”

The correspondence between Mrs. Mason and Lydia Maria Child was published as a pamphlet in 1860, which sold 300,000 copies. Child’s response read,

‘It would be extremely difficult to find any woman in our villages who does not sew for the poor, and watch with the sick, whenever occasion requires…I have never known an instance where the pangs of maternity did not meet with requisite assistance, and here in the North, after we have helped the mothers, we do not sell the babies.’”

For advancing the cause of all humans she is not a noted Unitarian feminist, while I view her as one of the leading feminists of her time. She spurred the very slow-moving Unitarians to finally jump on the abolitionist bandwagon, yet, she was out of step with her church and her gender. Not burned at the stake, but often forgotten alongside other Unitarian feminists of her time, I honor her today as one of my favorite heretics.

From Libya to Czechoslovakia to Boston, may these heresies inspire us to speak out, especially in times like today where those in power will do what they can to silence a dissenting voice. If you see trouble, if you know something is not right, let your voice be heard. Vote. Protest. Write letters to the editor. Do something to let those in power know how you feel. It may take many such voices to change society, but with all movements, they all started with one single voice. Go forth and promote heresy.