When the significance of this transformation first broke upon me, I felt an impulse to leave the church, and attach myself directly to the labor movement. I recall how my soul leapt in answer to the great scene at the close of Kennedy's "The Servant in the House," when the Vicar strips off his clerical garb, seizes the dirty hand of his brother, the Drain-Man, and cries out, [9] "This is no priest's work—it calls for a man!" I was deterred, however, not, I hope, by cowardice but by wisdom. On the surface I felt that I should miss the services of the church—the prayers and worship with my people. Deeper down, and nearer the heart of things, was an unshaken trust in the church as a social institution. I loved her traditions, reverenced her saints and prophets, believed in her destiny—was unconvinced that she must necessarily serve the interests of reaction. At-bottom, was a perfectly clear understanding that my approach to the social question was a spiritual approach, and my acceptance of it the acceptance of a religious task. I saw my new position as nothing more nor less than the logic of Christianity. Men must be free from all oppression, because they are children of God, and therefore living souls. They must be equal in opportunity and privilege, because they are members of the holy family of God, and therefore brothers. They must be lifted up out of poverty, disease, war, because their heritage is the life of God, and they must have it abundantly. The material aspects of the social question, I would be among the last, I trust, to ignore. These are central—but central only as the fetters are central to the problem of slavery. Furthermore, the means which I recognized to the great end, were also spiritual. I could find no place in my thought for the use of violence. The plea of class-conscious rebellion never won my acceptance. Only patience, persuasion, and much love for humankind, seemed to me legitimate weapons of reform. In other words, I was again a victim of the logic of Christianity. And where did this logic hold me, if not to the church? Where could I make plain my spiritual position, or bring to bear my spiritual influence, apart from the church? If this institution must hold me altogether aloof from the social question, then of course my duty was manifest. But its pulpit was wide open to social preaching; its altar a chosen place for social consecration; and its machinery of service all at hand to be shifted from the gear of [10] charity to the gear of justice. Why not stay, therefore, in the church, as Theodore Parker stayed, and fight capitalism, as he fought slavery, in the garb of a minister of Christ?
Decision on this point came fairly early, and it was favorable to the church. Strangely enough, however, it brought me little peace and surety in my church relations. Outside, in the denomination at large, I found myself in almost constant conflict with my fellows. There were few meetings or conferences in which I did not speak in protest and vote with minorities. Here in the Messiah parish there was no trouble, thanks to your forbearance, friendship, and scrupulous loyalty to freedom; but almost from the beginning there was uncertainty, wonderment, at times unrest, on the part of those longest associated with this society; and the records show a melancholy tale of withdrawals of those, not unable to endure differences of opinion, but impelled to turn away when the institution, long precious in their sight, no longer presented the recognizable attributes of a Unitarian church. That my own shortcomings as a man and a minister were responsible for much of this disturbance inside and outside the parish, I have no doubt. But as I look back over the years, I also have no doubt that there was something much more fundamental here, at the heart of the trouble. That I was a heretic on the social question was insignificant, for Unitarians have long since learned not only to tolerate but to respect their heretics. What was infinitely more important, as I now see, was the fact that unconsciously through these years, I was coming to question not the church itself, as I have explained, but the whole order and purpose of the church as it now exists. Every ecclesiastical institution today is denominational in character. It belongs primarily to some particular sectarian body, and is pledged to the service of this body. Sometimes the central body is narrow, as in the case of the more orthodox Protestant denominations; sometimes it is liberal, as in the case of the Unitarians and Universalists. [11] But always there is a distinctive form of organization, or type of ritual, or doctrine of belief, or spirit of association, which binds these separate churches into a single group; and always this distinctive feature is something which had its origin, and still finds its vitality, in the thought and experience of an earlier age. Every one of our denominations, and every one of the churches in our denominations, is representative of past controversies, not of present interests and duties. No one sect can be distinguished from any other, except by a reference to the text books of Christian history.
Now with the intrusion of the social question into religion, a new concept of church organization came immediately to the fore. The unit of fellowship was now no longer the denomination, but the community. The centre of life and allegiance was no longer the challenge of ancient controversy, but the cry of present day human need. The more I became interested in questions of social change, the less I was concerned with questions of denominational welfare. The more I became absorbed in the people of New York City, the closer became my fellowship with other ministers similarly absorbed, and the remoter my fellowship with those who were bound to me only by the accident of the Unitarian tradition. More and more my hand and heart went out directly to men who saw and labored for the better day of which I dreamed; and only indirectly to those with whom I was appointed to serve, but who could not or would not catch the vision of my dreams. An irreconcilable conflict was here being joined—the old, old conflict between a dead and a living fellowship. It was my intuitive, although unconscious knowledge of this fact, which made me a rebel in every Unitarian gathering of the last ten years. It was a similarly unconscious instinct of self-preservation which taught my Unitarian brethren, to whom the old association was still central, to resent the things I sought. We had been born together, and we lived together; our past and our present were joint possessions. But when we faced the future, we divided; my [12] colleagues, many of them, were content with old, familiar ways, while I sought new associations.
What was dimly felt in those days, was suddenly transformed into something clearly seen by the impact of the Great War. If this stupendous conflict has revealed anything in religion, it is that the sectarian divisions of Christendom are no longer to be tolerated. In the fusing fires of battle, Presbyterian, Methodist, Episcopalian, Unitarian, even Catholic, Protestant and Jew, have been melted, and now flow in a single flaming stream into the mould which shall fashion them into a single casting. Man after man has returned from the front, to tell us that the denominational church is dead. A new ordering of Christendom is at hand. The unit of organization will be not the one belief, nor even the one spirit, but the one field of service. Not the sect, but the community, will be the nucleus of integration. We will have groupings not of Methodist churches, and Baptist churches, and Unitarian churches, to remind the world of ancient differences, but of New York churches, and Boston churches, and San Francisco churches, to teach the world of present needs and future hopes. Our churches will be related as the wards in a city are related, or the cities in a state, or the states in the nation. We shall be all Christians together, as we are all Americans together. We shall have different religious ideas as we have different political ideas. But we shall be organized religiously, as well as politically, in a single community. Our churches, like our schools, will be the possession, and the resort, of all!
This vision of the church as a community, or civic centre, is the logical application of socialized religion. It is no accident that together these two things have captured my life. For a moment, just as the idea of the social question set me thinking of leaving the church altogether, so this idea of the community church set me thinking of leaving this church and organizing in this city an independent religious movement. Indeed, this latter thought has been something more than a [13] momentary temptation. To have a church has been with me from the beginning a necessity. To have a church of the new community order has become a great desire. Last spring I seriously considered presenting to you my resignation, that I might enter upon the fulfillment of this hope. Last summer I pretty definitely made up my mind to lay this problem and prospect before you, as soon as peace should come, and the distractions of war be gone. Then, at the very moment when peace came, as though to anticipate and thus forestall my decision, there came the call from Chicago.
Most of you know what Abraham Lincoln Centre is, and many of you by what pioneer devotion this church of the future was fashioned out of a traditional church of the past. It is not perfect; in some ways it is already itself became traditional again. But it stands today as a more complete embodiment of what I feel a modern church should be than any other institution of which I know in America. The invitation from the people seemed to me an instant bestowal of all for which I seek. I do not think I could have resisted this call to service, had it not been for your rightful claims of loyalty and affection, and my own reluctance to abandon the project of accomplishing my desires in New York. These considerations made me hesitate—and while I hesitated, I thought. Why should I turn elsewhere for the fulfillment of hopes which may be as surely if not as swiftly realized here? Why should I undertake to build an independent church in this city, or accept the leadership of a church however remarkably developed in Chicago, when the Church of the Messiah, pledged to freedom, and long committed to the idea of progress, lies ready to my hand? Why should I seek the easy inheritance of another man's completed work, and thus avoid the hard labor of building an institution of my own, which, for that reason alone, would be moulded nearer to my heart's desire? Above all, why should I assume that my people who have loved and sustained me these dozen years, are unwilling to move on with me in comradeship [14] to the new pathways of the new world which we have entered, or by what right make decision involving my future ministry here or elsewhere, without taking them fully into my confidence and searching the utmost temper of their minds? These were the questions which came to me promptly on the receipt of the Chicago call. Should I undertake to organize an independent church in New York, should I go to Chicago as minister of All Souls' Church and Director of Abraham Lincoln Centre, should I stay here as minister of this Church of the Messiah—this was my problem. I could not solve it, with fairness to myself or to you, until you had spoken. Hence, the meeting of last Monday night, called by the helpful co-operation of the Board of Trustees, and attended largely by our people.
In addressing this meeting, I stated in some detail the future conditions of church work which I proposed to establish or to find. I had intended originally not to make these public, at least all at once; but rumor has been busy, and exact information, for purposes of correction, if nothing more, has now become essential.
First of all, therefore, may I say that I made announcement to this meeting, as I would now make announcement to you, that I have left, or am planning to leave, the Unitarian denomination, and propose not much longer to be known specifically as a Unitarian minister. The reasons for this change in my life, I shall make plain at another time; this morning I content myself with stating the fact. Almost a year ago I resigned the office of vice-president of the Middle States Conference of Unitarian churches, which have held ever since I came to New York. Two months ago, I resigned from the Council of the Unitarian General Conference. Two weeks ago, I resigned my life-membership in the American Unitarian Association. Next May, when the new list is made up, I expect to withdraw my name from the official roll of Unitarian clergymen, and thus sever the last strand which holds me to the Unitarian body. Of course, I shall join no other denomination, and in [15] this sense shall be independent. But to me this action means not isolation, but entrance into that larger fellowship which I so long to share. No barrier will then separate me from those Episcopalians and Baptists and Methodists and other men, who are my real spiritual brethren. I shall be at one with all men everywhere—at home with the family of mankind. I shall not so much cease to be a Unitarian, as to become a Christian. This matter is of course personal; and it thus affected only incidentally the problem which was before our meeting last Monday night. It is easy to find precedent for the occupancy of a Unitarian pulpit by a minister not a Unitarian. At the time of the famous Year-Book controversy, Mr. Potter of New Bedford, Mass., and several of his colleagues, withdrew from the Unitarian body, but continued to hold their Unitarian pulpits. The latest instance of which I chance to know was called to my attention by the death last week of Prof. George A. Foster, of Chicago University. Dr. Foster was born, bred and ordained a Baptist; and yet last year was called to fill the pulpit of the First Unitarian Church church in Madison, Wisconsin; and died in the service of this church, a Baptist.
Even in orthodox churches, the denominational tag is losing its significance. Thus, when the City Temple London, the most famous Congregational church in the world, sought a successor to Dr. Campbell, it chose Dr. Joseph Fort Newton, of Iowa, a Universalist. We are getting sensible enough these days to recognize that the essential thing even about a minister is not his name but his manhood. Nevertheless, my contemplated change in denominational status might well be regarded as a part of the whole problem before us, and I therefore made careful mention of it last Monday night. Secondly, and more important, I stated my desire that the church which I should serve tomorrow, might itself be undenominational, at last to the degree implied by my conception of what I have called the community church. By this I meant that the church should proclaim [16] as its primary interest and aim identification with, and service of, the people of its community, to the subordination, and, if necessary, the ending of its connection with persons of various and scattered communities who have no other bond of union than that of a single denominational inheritance. Was I wrong when I ventured the assertion at the meeting of our Society, that in this church we have already moved far in this direction? Unconsciously, in the last dozen years, it seems to me, we have been moving out of the denomination, into the community. Nearly every interest in this parish is a community and not a denominational interest. Our natural affiliations as a church in this city have not been so much with churches of our own denomination, as with churches of various denominations distinguished like ourselves as predominantly civic, or community, institutions. This congregation is an independent congregation. If the Unitarian name adheres to it at all, it is to the embarrassment of those whose Unitarianism is their pride, and to the confusion of those who, not Unitarians either by birth or conviction, desire to join us in spirit and active work. For years, like "the chambered nautilus," we have been outgrowing our denominational shell, and seeking "more stately mansions." Is it not time, now, that we left this "outgrown shell," and became at last the full and free community institution of which I speak? Should we not at least clear ourselves of ancient entanglements to such degree that we may invite people openly and honestly to come into our portals not because they want to profess themselves Unitarians, but because they want to confess themselves lovers and servants of mankind?
Again, I stated at last Monday's meeting my desire that the church which I shall serve tomorrow, may have a name which means something in the language and thought of our time. The application of this principle to our church is obvious. The name, Church of the Messiah, is precious to many of us, because it awakens memories and revives tender associations. But a name [17] is important not from the standpoint of those who know what it means, or ought to mean, but of those who do not know. The name of a church, like that of a business, is an advertisement. It is a symbol, a slogan, a banner. It should tell at once to everybody what is behind it, what it stands for; and this is exactly what our name does not do, except to the initiate. Dr. Savage tried to save the situation by associating with the name, Lowell's familiar line, "some great cause, God's new Messiah." I have tried to breathe the breath of life into the corpse, by attaching it deliberately to our various activities—as the Messiah Forum, the Messiah Social Service League, etc. But all in vain! Our name suggests a hope of ancient Judaism, a period of Unitarian history, a habit of Episcopalian nomenclature—and that is all! It should be changed, to give some adequate expression of our ideals. The City Church, the People's Church, the Community Church, the Church of the People, the Church of the New Democracy, the Fellowship, the Free Fellowship, the Fellowship of Social Idealism, the Fellowship of the Kingdom, the Fellowship of Spiritual Democracy, the Liberal Centre, the Community Centre,—think of what we might call ourselves, if we but had the courage. And after all, what courage would it take, save that long since displayed by our fathers in this church? How many of you know that for fourteen years, this church was known simply as the Second Congregational Unitarian Society of New York. Then in 1839, because the name Unitarian was open to serious misconstruction, this name, except in its strictly legal uses, was dropped, and the highly orthodox name we now bear, was substituted. I stated at our meeting that if I should remain as your minister, I should hope that this church might similarly baptize itself afresh in the language of our own time, and in the spirit of our own life!