In the early 1960s, Rev. David Cole was our minister. I’m going to share excerpts of some of his sermons over the next several weeks. For this edition of the enUUs, I’m taking sections from the introduction to his sermon series, “The Coming Great Church.” 

Rev. Cole began by asking his congregants, “Are you really content having an ordinarily good church, which marries, buries, dedicates children, educates the young, and keeps you busy financing and administering the institution? What are the deepest needs that you have that could be filled by a great church? What are the needs of this community and its institutions that the church ought to be serving?”

He then reviewed what Unitarianism and Universalism “pushed out” of our churches in the past one hundred years [150 years now]: the trinity, hell, and God. As he was writing in 1960, he said that “The latest movement to come alive in our denomination is to push Christianity out of the organization, or perhaps it would be more accurate to say ‘to take the denomination out of the Protestant-Christian fold’.”

Rev. Cole cites Martin E. Marty, one of the country’s foremost theologians and religious historians of the Twentieth Century, saying that the main goal of churches then was to not offend anyone. That protestant churches upheld, with religious fervor, the status quo. In this sermon, Rev. Cole said, “Success is the great god of Protestantism, and making money and giving part of it to the church is the criterion of saint-hood.”

Over the next three pages of his typescript, our minister reflected critically on 1) modern church architecture, “almost any one of them could pass for a motel, and insurance office, or a bank.”; 2) the crumbling family structure, with the divorce rate and number of unhappy marriages growing; 3) the cities are crumbling, too, with his best advice for New York is “Don’t go there.”; 4) then there are the weapons of mass destruction, “a terror so immense and so horrible we cannot fully comprehend it.” 

Not even what Rev. Cole called the “annual pilgrimage through the nature-cycles pertinent to primitive man: the three big festivals of the Christian church – Thanksgiving (harvest), Christmas (winter solstice), and Easter (return of spring)” escape his contumely. They aren’t enough to “impart to us the meaning of life in the atomic age, don’t give us a sense of renewal of hope in the midst of tragedy, nor give us an awareness of purpose that gives substance to our routine.”

I don’t know about you, but this sermon would have depressed the bejesus out of me. Finally, on page six, Rev. Cole wrote, “Perhaps by this time, you feel that I do not believe in the church, but I assure you that I do.” He then explained that the church is the one institution devoted to “the whole man.” The church is essential, as it is the only place to go to “repair and find ultimate answers to the meaning of it all.” 

Paraphrasing Rev. Cole now … Because Unitarian Universalism is unburdened of hell, Christ, or God, it should be leading the way to meet the demands of the time. Our UU church can be equal to the challenges of life and death, can give great meanings to life and to eternal significance, can provide purpose and holy inspiration and great passions.

He began to wrap up with a look again at the status quo and our inadequate visions of what the world could be if it were freed of international rivalries, self-serving politicians, and petty values, drudgery, and intellectual sterility. He believed that other churches may have missed the mark but Unitarian Universalism could fill the urgent need for a significant church.

He wanted his parishioners to become aware of “the depth of feeling in our hearts, the inner creativity that lies dormant within us, the inner spirit that is the unique and precious quality of human beings.”  

He wanted – for us – “A great church that will thus enable us to live fully, wholly, and devotedly.”