In 1927 in the city of Nuremberg, six years before the National Socialists came into power, I was watching a Sunday parade on the occasion of the annual mass rally of the Nazis. Thousands of youth, as a sign of their vigor and patriotism, had walked from various parts of Germany to attend the mass meeting of the party. As I watched the parade, which lasted for four hours and which was punctuated by trumpet and drum corps made up of hundreds of Nazis, I asked some people on the sidelines to explain to me the meaning of the swastika, which decorated many of the banners. Before very long I found myself engaged in a heated argument. Suddenly someone seized me from behind and pulled me by the elbows out of the group with which I was arguing. In the firm grip of someone whom I could barely see I was forced through the crowd and propelled down a side street and up into a dead-end alley. As this happened I assure you my palpitation rose quite perceptibly. I was beginning to feel Nazism existentially. At the end of the alley my uninvited host swung me around quickly, and he shouted at me in German, "You fool. Don't you know? In Germany today when you are watching a parade, you either keep your mouth shut, or you get your head bashed in." I thought he was going to bash it in right there. But then his face changed to a friendly smile and he said, "If you had continued that argument for five minutes longer, those fellows would have beaten you up." "Why did you decide to help me?" I asked. He replied, "I am an anti-Nazi. As I saw you there, getting into trouble, I thought of the times when in New York City as a sailor of the German merchant marine I received wonderful hospitality. And I said to myself, 'Here is your chance to repay that hospitality.' So I grabbed you and here we are. I am inviting you home to Sunday dinner[1]."

Sermon

James Luther Adams is one of the most important Unitarian liberal religious thinkers of the twentieth century. David Robinson, author of The Unitarians and the Universalists, comments "Adam's spiritual odyssey incarnates much of the story of the twentieth century. In Unitarian historian George H. Williams judgement, Adams ranks with William Ellery Channing and Henry Whitney Bellows as one of the three greatest American Unitarian institutional leaders.

So why haven't most of us heard of him? Probably because he hasn't been dead long enough!

I bring you biographical information on Jim Adams and some highlights of his thinking because of a recently published, delightful little book of his writings edited by George Kimmich Beach. This is the most accessible book I have read on Adams and brings his thinking out clearly and understandably. Adams has lived most of the Twentieth century, encountering the theological giants of the right and left, interpreting them for a liberally religious audience and applying them to the world. By looking through his eyes, we may gain a new perspective on our own times and a vision for the future of liberal religion.

Adams was born in 1901[2], son of a fundamentalist "tentmaker" minister/farmer who prepared Jim to be an emissary of the end times. His father died while he was young and Jim had to do odd jobs to help support the family. In his teenage years, he learned shorthand and managed to rise to the level of Secretary to the Superintendent of the Northern Pacific Railroad. If he had followed this path, he might have become a railroad magnate. Instead he went to school. At the University of Minnesota, in pursuit of a little knowledge about Shakespeare, he met an influential Unitarian minister who changed his life: Humanist John Dietrich. In his college years, he cast off the narrow religion of his father and became a avowedly secular humanist. He wrote for the school newspaper scathing critiques of traditional religion. It was his professor of rhetoric, Frank Farig, who saw the budding minister in him and encouraged him to go to seminary at Harvard.

In his first pastorate in Salem, Massachusetts, he met his wife Margaret Ann Young, a pianist recently graduated from the New England Conservatory. They raised three daughters together. Once the children were on their own, she became a social worker while they lived in the Chicago area. She was deeply committed to economic and racial justice encouraging her husband's social activism. As he put it, "Margaret always insisted on putting her towel to the left of mine in the bathroom. She was the truly radical one in the family."

At Harvard doing advanced post graduate work, Adams' humanism changed under the guidance of Irving Babbitt toward Literary Humanism While rejecting the world negating theology of his father in favor of a theology that had more faith in our potential for good, he didn't shed all of what his father taught him. He remained engaged with the idea that history is not random but operates toward a divinely directed goal and each moment is a moment of decision and commitment. Either one's life is a life of commitment, or else it is a meaningless pastime.

To "complete his education" he traveled to Europe in the 20s and 30s studying in England, France, and Germany. On his extended trips to Germany he encountered the Nazis and, more important, he encountered the failure of response in the liberal circles to the Nazi threat. This pivotal experience shaped his understanding of religious institutions.

When he returned to America, he settled into teaching religious social ethics at Meadville Theological School in Chicago.

A man with strong institutional commitment, Adams worked with the Commission on Appraisal of the American Unitarian Association in 1937, advocating reforms in religious education, publications, church extension, international service, and youth work. Adams later returned to Harvard Divinity School to become professor of Christian social ethics in 1956. Throughout his years in Chicago and again in Cambridge, his and Margaret's home remained open and a weekly center for late evening conversations with Unitarian students. Adams had a great appreciation for youth as keys to social change so he always endeavored to be in communication with students beyond the classroom creating his own caring community.

He was forced in to retirement at age 65 and wasn't ready. He continued teaching at Andover Newton and back at Meadville-Lombard. He died in 1994 at the age of 92.

Trying to capture a man's lifetime of theological reflection, analysis and understanding in a sermon is a little ludicrous. As I considered doing this, I wondered what people will be saying about me and my thought after I'm gone. Rather than try to recapitulate the full measure of his thinking which I know I cannot, I would like to direct our attention to areas of modern liberal religion which concerned Adams and highlight them for you.

Adams cared deeply about religious institutions and their vital role passing on our values and shaping the political and social culture towards the demands of love and justice. It is right in this area that he had the greatest concern. Liberal religion usually moves in the direction of individualism and personal religion. For Adams, religion is not merely a personal concern but also a social concern.

His commitment to religious institutionalism comes partly from his childhood faith and in part from witnessing the rise of Nazism. He was sensitized to the importance of time by his father's apocalyptic faith that the end times were near. Emotionally, this made the decision for ethical living today very important as the opportunity for salvation might be lost in the near future. As he visited Germany and watched the rise of the National Socialists, he saw the institutional forces that might have stopped Hitler's rise to power, among them liberal institutions, crumble before him. Again and again, good liberal Germans chose silence rather than risk "getting their head bashed in."

The values and traditions of freedom can be passed on by individuals only during the course their lifetime. The Nazis systematically eliminated these individuals. Only the institutions which are larger than the individual can survive the death of inspired leaders. Without the church, the great wisdom of Jesus would have been washed away with the next historical tide. It is by history mediated through institutions that we are fed from the past. Imagine if E=mc squared died with Einstein. Imagine if the golden rule had to be invented with each generation. Imagine if a mother had to bring children into this world without help or guidance. We too easily take for granted the myriad of institutions which support our well being.

Liberal religionists are often the ones that take our institutions for granted. We are caught up in a personal pursuit of truth pretending as if no truth had ever been uncovered before we were born! This individualism often degenerates into self-culture rather than the cultivation of the institutions that support the truths to which we concur.

The hallmark of liberal religion is rational thought. Almost all liberals trust the rational processes of their own minds before trusting outside authority and are especially suspicious of revealed religious authority. Yet all our rationality is built on axioms which we accept as true. Adams notes:

The world has many educated people who know how to reason, and they reason very well; but, curiously enough, many of them fail to examine the pre-established premises from which they reason, premises that turn out on examination to be antisocial, protective camouflages for power[3].

Contrast the rational view with the classical Dionysian conception that sees the world as tragic eternally torn between creative and destructive forces. Existence is composed of vital energies and forces which pull in different directions. Rather than a universal harmony, these divergent forces cannot be resolved into a higher order. The human task is to choose the good, creative, life affirming force and turn away from the evil, life denying force which brings destruction, which brings disorder and chaos. The tragedy comes from our inability to separate these forces and immunize ourselves against evil. Jesus becomes an archetype of this view as he loses his life on the cross, his ability to work in history and time sacrificed for his love of the good, creative force of God. We are ruled by Fate and our dignity and worth come from our choice of the good. Rationality cannot eliminate this evil from worldly existence - only provide us with noble choices for the Good.

The critique that Adams brings to liberalism arises from the lack of a demand by rational religion to choose and commit oneself to the good. In his words:

This element of commitment, of change of heart, of decision, so much emphasized in the Gospels, has been neglected by religious liberalism, and that is the prime source of its enfeeblement. We liberals are largely an uncommitted and therefore a self-frustrating people[4].

We need conversion within ourselves. Only by some such revolution can we be seized by a prophetic power that will enable us to proclaim both the judgement and the love of God. Only by some such conversion can we be possessed by a love that will not let us go.

No appeal [need be] made to scriptural sanction or to supernatural revelation, and no fixed program is offered [by Jesus]. Instead Jesus uses a rational method of analogy [in the parables] appealing to empirical experience self-evident to Jew, gentile, or Samaritan.[5]

However we believe when it comes to the source of this community forming power, be it natural or supernatural, Adams believes it demands our loyalty and commitment. I felt this community forming power at work here yesterday as 47 members of the congregation worked hard developing dreams, goals and objectives for our Fellowship. It is in this love we will find peace and fulfillment.

In his focus on the need for the commitment to the community transforming power of love, he elevates a value both humanists, theists and those in between can cherish.

There is much more to say about James Luther Adams but I'll finish here with some affectionate words from his editor and student which speaks to the core of his message for us today:

But none of these things explains the deep impression Adams made on countless students, colleagues, audiences, and friends. What we have felt, I believe, is that in Adams we encountered one who fought for and achieved a principle of authentic faith, namely that we take seriously the demands of time and history to make a difference in the struggle for justice--under the Great Taskmaster's eye--and that we do so with loving kindness, laughter and grace.

[1] Beach, George Kimmich, The Essential James Luther Adams: Selected Essays and Addresses, Skinner House Books, Boston, from The Indispensable Discipline of Social Responsibility: Voluntary Associations given at the University of Padua, Italy, in 1962, following the Second Vatican Council, where he was a Protestant observer, Pp 180-1 ISBN 1-55896-352-9
[2] the content for this biographical info is lifted from Beach's introduction.
[3] p. 73
[4] p. 78
[5] pp. 144-5