UUSC, a sermon by Bill Chess, Sunday, January 2, 2005

UUSC, a sermon by Bill Chess, Sunday, January 2, 2005.

As I researched the material for this morning's talk, I found a wealth of information for future presentations. There is an amazing amount of material available on all sorts of interesting topics.

There are many biographies of well known (and not so well known) UU's any one of which could make a good starting place for an entire morning's talk.

There are new developments in science and new approaches to philosophy and cosmology that could generate very good talks and light up talkbacks.

I cannot talk about the UU Service Committee without also talking about the AFSC (American Friends Service Committee). The two organizations are alike in many ways and, of course, also different in some ways.

In addition UUSC has worked closely with AFSC in many of its endeavors.

In researching this talk I also realized that we have never covered the Society of Friends (also known as the Quakers.) The Friends are not just another Christian sect. They are unique in many ways and are much closer to UU in their fundamental philosophy than just about any other denomination.

So I'm going to start out by reviewing the AFSC and you will see what I mean.

Here is their mission statement:

The American Friends Service Committee is a practical expression of the faith of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers). Committed to the principles of nonviolence and justice, it seeks in its work and witness to draw on the transforming power of love, human and divine.

We recognize that the leadings of the Spirit and the principles of truth found through Friends' experience and practice are not the exclusive possession of any group. Thus, the AFSC draws into its work people of many faiths and backgrounds who share the values that animate its life and who bring to it a rich variety of experiences and spiritual insights.

This AFSC community works to transform conditions and relationships both in the world and in ourselves, which threaten to overwhelm what is precious in human beings. We nurture the faith that conflicts can be resolved nonviolently, that enmity can be transformed into friendship, strife into cooperation, poverty into well-being, and injustice into dignity and participation. We believe that ultimately goodness can prevail over evil, and oppression in all its many forms can give way.

AFSC Values

We cherish the belief that there is that of God in each person, leading us to respect the worth and dignity of all. We are guided and empowered by the Spirit in following the radical thrust of the early Christian witness. From these beliefs flow the core understandings that form the spiritual framework of our organization and guide its work.

We regard no person as our enemy. While we often oppose specific actions and abuses of power, we seek to address the goodness and truth in each individual.

We assert the transforming power of love and nonviolence as a challenge to injustice and violence and as a force for reconciliation.

We seek and trust the power of the Spirit to guide the individual and collective search for truth and practical action.

We accept our understandings of truth as incomplete and have faith that new perceptions of truth will continue to be revealed both to us and to others.

AFSC Work

We seek to understand and address the root causes of poverty, injustice, and war. We hope to act with courage and vision in taking initiatives that may not be popular.

We are called to confront, nonviolently, powerful institutions of violence, evil, oppression, and injustice. Such actions may engage us in creative tumult and tension in the process of basic change. We seek opportunities to help reconcile enemies and to facilitate a peaceful and just resolution of conflict.

We work to relieve and prevent suffering through both immediate aid and long-term development and seek to serve the needs of people on all sides of violent strife.

We ground our work at the community level both at home and abroad in partnership with those who suffer the conditions we seek to change and informed by their strength and vision.

We work with all people, the poor and the materially comfortable, the disenfranchised and the powerful in pursuit of justice. We encourage collaboration in social transformation towards a society that recognizes the dignity of each person. We believe that the Spirit can move among all these groups, making great change possible.

Seeking to transform the institutions of society, we are ourselves transformed in the process. As we work in the world around us, our awareness grows that the AFSC's own organizational life must change to reflect the same goals we urge others to achieve.

We find in our life of service a great adventure. We are committed to this Spirit-led journey, undertaken "to see what love can do," and we are ever renewed by it.

Sounds familiar, doesn't it?

The American Friends Service Committee was founded in 1917 to provide young Quakers and other conscientious objectors an opportunity to serve those in need instead of fighting during World War I.

Four decades later, the AFSC and the British Friends Service Council accepted the Nobel Peace Prize on behalf of all Quakers.

During AFSC's first year, it sent young men and women to France, where they worked in cooperation with British Friends to feed and care for refugee children, found a maternity hospital, repair and rebuild homes, and provide returning refugees with the necessities to restart their lives.

After the war ended in 1918, the AFSC's work spread to Russia, where workers helped victims of famine and disease; to Poland and Serbia, where they established an orphanage and helped in agricultural rehabilitation; and to Germany and Austria, where they fed hungry children.

The 1930s brought new challenges. Quaker workers helped refugees escape from Adolf Hitler's Germany; provided relief for children on both sides of the Spanish Civil War; fed refugees in occupied France; and helped victims of the London blitz.

The AFSC engaged in relief and reconstruction in many of the countries of Europe after World War II, as well as in India, China, and Japan. Helping Throughout the World.

OK, you thought this talk was going to be about the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee. So it is:

Unitarian Universalist Service Committee

Mission Statement

Grounded in Unitarian Universalist principles that affirm the worth, dignity and human rights of every person, and the interdependence of all life, the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee is a voluntary, nonsectarian organization working to advance justice throughout the world.

The History of UUSC:

Both Unitarians and Universalists watched with apprehension the rise of Hitler and the Nazi fascism in post-World War I Europe. Hitler took power in January l933, and the American Unitarian Association, at its General Assembly later that year, passed a resolution stating that we "greatly deplore the persecution of the Jews in Germany as a violation of equity, tolerance and humanity."

Between l934 and 1938, the Reverends Charles Joy and Robert Dexter (both members of the AUA staff) traveled abroad and reported back regularly on conditions among the refugees. In 1936, the GA delegates again passed a resolution regarding the "suffering of victims of religious and civil oppression." In post-depression, isolationist America, these calls largely went unheeded.

Hitler seized Czechoslovakia in October 1938. The fall of that country stunned American Unitarians, who had close ties to Czech churches; in fact, the Czech "First Lady" was a Unitarian from New York. In December the Board of Directors of the AUA responded by approving Dr. Dexter's plan for a "service mission to Czechoslovakia."

In February, Martha and Waitstill Sharp, AUA representatives, sailed for Europe "to see what could be done." They arrived in Prague as the Nazi troops were marching into the city, which held 250,000 refugees.

Waitstill, a minister on leave from the Wellesley Hills, Massachusetts church, and Martha, his wife, worked independently. Martha worked primarily with refugees; her tedious, persistent efforts enabled many to cross borders safely, one by one. Meanwhile, Waitstill set up an underground escape route, about which little is known to this day.

Decades later, Martha would say only that "Waitstill Sharp was a very courageous man." Their rescue list included intellectuals and anti-Nazi political leaders, and other relief agencies often referred their "hot cases" to the Unitarians. In August l940, the Sharps returned from Europe, barely escaping arrest and detention. Later, after the fall of almost all of Europe, they returned to Marseilles and Lisbon to carry out a child emigration project from those cities.

In May 1940 the Unitarian Service Committee was established as a standing committee of the AUA.

The Unitarian Service Committee was now an organization, with a staff and a mission. But just what was its mission? Was it politically-neutral humanitarian work, or pro-active human rights work? After much debate, the USC chose not to be neutral: it took a stand for democracy outside of the United States, a controversial decision at the time, and set the direction for its future.

In April 1941, USC adopted as its seal a flaming chalice symbol. Here is the story:

The chalice and the flame were brought together as a Unitarian symbol by an Austrian artist, Hans Deutsch, in 1941. Living in Paris during the 1930's Deutsch drew critical cartoons of Adolf Hitler. When the Nazis invaded Paris in 1940, he abandoned all he had and fled to the South of France, then to Spain, and finally, with an altered passport, into Portugal.

There, he met the Reverend Charles Joy, executive director of the Unitarian Service Committee (USC). The Service Committee was new, founded in Boston to assist Eastern Europeans, among them Unitarians as well as Jews, who needed to escape Nazi persecution. From his Lisbon headquarters, Joy oversaw a secret network of couriers and agents.

Charles Joy felt that this new, unknown organization needed some visual image to represent Unitarianism to the world, especially when dealing with government agencies abroad.

Deutsch was most impressed and soon was working for the USC. –

The USC was an unknown organization in 1941. This was a special handicap in the cloak-and-dagger world, where establishing trust quickly across barriers of language, nationality, and faith could mean life instead of death. Disguises, signs and countersigns, and midnight runs across guarded borders were the means of freedom in those days. Joy asked Deutsch to create a symbol for their papers "to make them look official, to give dignity and importance to them, and at the same time to symbolize the spirit of our work.... When a document may keep a man out of jail, give him standing with governments and police, it is important that it look important."

Thus, Hans Deutsch made his lasting contribution to the USC and, as it turned out, to Unitarian Universalism. With pencil and ink he drew a chalice with a flame. It was, Joy wrote his board in Boston, "a chalice with a flame, the kind of chalice which the Greeks and Romans put on their altars. The holy oil burning in it is a symbol of helpfulness and sacrifice.... This was in the mind of the artist.

The flaming chalice design was made into a seal for papers and a badge for agents moving refugees to freedom. In time it became a symbol of Unitarian Universalism all around the world.

Today, the flaming chalice is the official symbol of the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee and the Unitarian Universalist Association. Officially or unofficially, it functions as a logo for hundreds of congregations. A version of the symbol was adopted by the General Assembly of Unitarian and Free Christian Churches in Britain. It has since been used by Unitarian churches in other parts of the world. Perhaps most importantly, it has become a focal point for worship. No one meaning or interpretation is official. The flaming chalice, like our faith, stands open to receive new truths that pass the tests of reason, justice, and compassion.

Universalist Service Committee

Just as the Unitarians had ties to Czech churches, so too the Universalists had tie to Dutch churches, and felt compelled to act. In 1940 the Universalist Board of Trustees appointed an emergency War Relief Committee to organize support for its Universalist War Relief Fund.

By mid-1945, the Universalist Service Committee was formed officially, and within months it had contacted the USC, its Boston neighbor, to propose a joint Unitarian-Universalist post-war European relief project. This was one of the earliest occasions of close cooperation between the two denominations that eventually would merge into the Unitarian Universalist Association.

Because of its origins, many UUs today think of the UUSC as an emergency relief agency-a sort of "Red Chalice," akin to the Red Cross or CARE. Although UUSC is the primary agency that channels our denominational response to disasters, in fact that is not the day-to-day activity of UUSC's staff in Cambridge and Washington, D.C.

Here are some Excerpts from UUSC bylaws:

Providing experiences that promote self-determination and human freedoms and changing oppressive institutions and practices; educating and mobilizing individuals and groups for service and action; and bringing occasional emergency direct relief where human dignity and human rights are violated.

In affirming the inherent worth, dignity, and human rights of every individual, the Corporation will function in all its structure and activities with attention to overcoming barriers related to race, ethnicity, class, creed, age, gender, sexual orientation or physical disability. The Corporation will make its values clear in all its programs and will remain nonsectarian in its approach.

Membership is open to all persons who support the mission and the programs of the Corporation.

We can gain a further insight into UUSC by the following article by Donald E. Skinner which I have abridged here.

New UUSC head brings passion to job.

Charlie Clements has had a couple of life experiences that have crystallized for him the importance of social justice work. The first came during the Vietnam War when, serving as an Air Force pilot, he concluded that the war he had volunteered to fight in was based on a lie. He refused to fly missions into Cambodia and was discharged.

Another pivotal experience came later, when working as a physician caring for thousands of rural people in El Salvador: He and they were bombed or strafed almost daily by the Salvadoran military as it tried to quell an uprising against the government.

“There were a number of moments when I thought I would probably die,” said Clements. “From those experiences emerged a much greater appreciation of my life and the knowledge that I had survived for a reason. I chose to think that that reason was to continue to dedicate myself to social justice.”

Clements, who has devoted three decades to social justice work, was named president and chief executive officer of the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee in August 2003. He worked for the UUSC before as director of human rights education from 1986 to 1988. In that capacity he led scores of elected officials to Central America as part of human rights delegations. Additionally, he provided congressional testimony on several occasions.

Clements came back to the UUSC because of the Iraq war. He was on an emergency human rights mission to Iraq a few months before the war started. “I was so angered by the deception that led up to the war and the consequences of the war that I decided I wanted to do more than go on missions,” he said. “I wanted to find a place where I could be a full-time human rights advocate. When I was approached about this job I was very open to it.”

His vision for the UUSC is one of growth. About 10 percent of UUs are members. He’d like to see that grow to 30 to 40 percent and be complemented by non-UU members who are attracted through campaigns about issues such as torture and the right to water.

It will be up to the UUSC’s members to carry its message into the world. “I hope that I can inspire people by helping invoke their hope and their faith rather than their guilt,” he said. “I’d also like for every UU to have the opportunity of participating in a human rights mission or a work camp at which they meet people who they think of as they and have them leave the encounter understanding them as us.”

“What is unique about the UUSC,” says Clements, “is that we have a natural constituency of a thousand congregations to mobilize. There are other social justice groups that have interesting missions, but no constituency. We have a constituency, and that gives us a significant leg up.”

Is there a difference between the social justice work done by the UUA and by the UUSC? “We are ‘competing’ in a sense for the attention of UUs to engage in social justice,” said Clements, “but we try not to duplicate efforts. Bill Sinkford and his staff and we at UUSC are committed to working more collaboratively.”

“There’s a whole lot of need in the world,” he said. “Sometimes I’m discouraged. But I find comfort in words in the Talmud: ‘Do not be daunted by the enormity of the world’s grief. Do justly now, do mercy now, walk humbly now. You are not obligated to complete the work, but neither are you free to abandon it.’”

Now this is me speaking again:

We have seen that there are two aspects of UUSC. One is to vigorously advocate human rights and to monitor and protest where rights are seriously abused. The other aspect is to bring aid and go to the oppressed people and try to ameliorate their suffering.

I also notice that most of the work is done in other countries- a sort of United States outreach program.

I have some UUSC literature and some membership applications available to those of you who are interested. I urge you to look them over and to consider your active support to UUSC.

This is indeed a noble cause. But there is also an increasing need for the same actions within the United States and particularly in our local communities. We here at NCUU have participated in food and clothing drives for local need. It is commendable. But there is a wider need within the immediate community. I know that many of our members are quite active in other organizations, such as Hospice, on an individual basis. Some of our members are quite active politically and are great letter writers. Also some of our members are quite active in various community outreach organizations. Our UU community spiritually supports their endeavors.

The question is: do we need something like UUSC on a local basis? I'll leave you to answer this question during the discussion period. (formerly known as the "talk back")