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| The Liberal Preacher, February 1935 Boston: David Reed, 1835 |
Rev. John Pierce of Brookline, Massachusetts
The Liberal Preacher: A Monthly Publication of Original Sermons
Vol. 5 N.S., Sermon CX, February, 1835
Boston: David Reed, 1835
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The Reverend John Pierce
Rev. John Pierce (1777-1858) was a minister in the Congregational and Unitarian churces, serving more than 50 years at First Church in Brookline as well as in other capacities.
About the Sermon
The sermon presented here is referenced to Proverbs 1:8. It offers biblical sources for the value of women in family and society, how Jesus Christ demonstrated that mothers and women are to be held in high esteem, and reasons that mothers in particular should be shown respect and honor in their capacity as educators and developers of moral character in their children. Pierce advocates for the education of women in areas that will benefit them in whatever role they find themselves in life. Near the end of his sermon Rev. Pierce makes it clear that his teaching is not the same as that found in Rights of Woman which refers, I assume, to the publication A Vindication of the Rights of Woman by Mary Wollstonecraft.
About the Liberal Preacher
The Liberal Preacher as noted in The Christian Spectator, Vol. 1, 1827, as proposed by Rev. T.R. Sullivan, to be monthly publication of sermons by living ministers in the Unitarian denomination. In 1828 the publication was launched being published by Bowles and Dearborn (The Unitarian Review and Religious Magazine, Vol. 5, 1876). David Reed took over the publishing in 1832.
Comments About 19th Century Unitarian Publications and the Pierce Sermon
When reading sermons and books published during the 1800s authored by Unitarian ministers and theologians it is the truth that unless the reader knows the background of the writer there is little to identify the material as Trinitarian Christian or Unitarian Christian. The question then becomes, does it make a difference? No doubt, for some Christians it will.
The sermon under scrutiny here by Rev. John Pierce, D.D., has nothing in its contents to indicate that it is anything but Christian. Pierce believed he was a Christian though it is nearly certain that he did not believe in Father, Son and Holy Spirit: One God.
What Was a Liberal Faith in the Nineteen Century?
This was the question I was curious enough to look into further because I am a Christian who believes completely in the Trinitarian nature of God.
Unitarianism in America has its roots in the Puritans of New England who followed the teachings of John Calvin. The theology of Calvinism includes double predestination, meaning that every person is destined in eternity by God's choice to Heaven or Hell with no human input. John Calvin rejected the biblical teaching about free will.
Samuel Eliot in the Introduction to the book, Heralds of Faith Vol. 1 (1910): As Samuel Adams and James Otis challenged the right of a despotic king to do what he willed with his own, Jonathan Mayhew challenged the right of a despotic God.
Thomas Starr King (1824-1864) is quoted in Phases of Religion in America: A Course of Lectures by W.S. Crowe (1893) as follows:
Thomas Starr King, who started out in the Universalist church and ended up in the Unitarian church, used to say that he was a Unitarian-Universalist. When somebody asked him why he used both words, he replied, “Because I believe both doctrines: the Universalist doctrine that God is too good to damn people, and the Unitarian doctrine that people are too good to be damned. (Source Link)It was not uncommon for Christians to believe that God was not a God of love but only a God of wrath and anger meting out punishment even by Christians who believe that each person is ultimately responsible for choosing to sin and rejecting Jesus Christ. In my humble opinion, Unitarianism is a reaction to the notion of a complete helplessness in the fate of life no matter how good a person may be.
A liberal faith at the time this sermon was written was a way of living according using reason first and Christian teaching second that evolves and changes over time rather than a process of blossoming faith of a transformed life after being born again in Jesus Christ.
Selections from the Introduction to Heralds of a Liberal Faith, Volume I: The Profits, edited by Samuel A. Eliot. Boston: American Unitarian Association, 1910. (Source Link)
A significant religious movement must thus
cherish the good that the past has had, and at the same time welcome the
infusion of new methods and measures. It
must blend the new and the old in just proportion, and join to the steadfastness
of good habit the joy of fresh experiment.
It must unite the maturity of age with the elasticity of youth. It must at once conserve and create.
The serviceable man knows how to use acquired
momentum and how to safeguard the gains of the patient generations. He understands the vitality of an institution
is not to be sustained by detachment from its past. The master architects are gone, but they have
left their incomplete designs on the drafting board, and we must study them if
we are to rightly build the temples of religious freedom.
I have felt that I could not better testify to
my devotion to my own calling and to the traditions of the Christian fellowship
which I happily serve than by planning and carrying through such a work.
They were, too, men who built their lives into
the most indestructible of human institutions,--the Christian Church,--and the
story of their experiences is thus interwoven with the history of the churches
they honorably served.
Many honored names which might have found place
in this record have been omitted because my purpose has been not only to call
to remembrance the half-forgotten careers of notable men, but also to
illustrate by personal memoirs the origin and development of the movement in
the Christian Church toward the more spiritual interpretation of Christian
truth and the closer application of truth to life.
I have not been unaware of the fact that there
have been and are many heralds of liberalism outside of the body of Christians
known as Unitarians. It has, however,
seemed to me wise to confine my present endeavor to the limits of the Unitarian
fellowship. The title indicates that the
books describe the Heralds of a
Liberal Faith, and not of the Liberal
Faith.
Moreover, Unitarianism is so essentially a habit
of mind and principle of conduct that it cannot be analyzed and defined like a
more logical and compact system.
The religious life of any age takes form and
color from its secular life. There is
action and reaction between them. If Christianity
made democracy possible, so the ideals of democracy have profoundly affected
Christianity.
The liberalism of the Massachusetts ministers
was just the translation into the language of theology of the political ideals of
the Revolution. As Samuel Adams and
James Otis challenged the right of a despotic king to do what he willed with
his own, Jonathan Mayhew challenged the right of a despotic God. Channing’s doctrine of the dignity of human
nature was simply the theological expression of the doctrine of the Rights of
Man. Between a theology teaching total
depravity and a democracy upholding self-government there could be no
peace.
Yet, while reluctantly obliged to separate from
cherished fellowships and to break old ties, it is clear that the “Pioneers” of
a liberal faith did not aim or desire to create another little
denomination. They simply wanted to
promote certain principles of thought and conduct which they believed in, such
as the right of free inquiry, the authority of reason and conscience in matters
of religion, and the placing of character above doctrinal accuracy as a test of
religious vitality.
They strove to rationalize and simplify
theology, to reaffirm the fundamental teaching of the Gospels, and to turn from
outward authorities in matters of faith to the inward witnesses. They argued the spirit of the Bible against
the letter, the Unity of God against the Trinity, and the impulse of love and
good-will against the compulsions of fear.
They appealed to men to be religious not with the old arguments of
self-reproach, but with the arguments of self-respect. They found in human nature, in the imperatives
of conscience, in the revelations of reason, in the sentiments of reverence and
aw, the witnesses of a divine origin and an open way to an immortal
fellowship. They joined together
Christian faith and broad philanthropy, close fellowship with God and
neighborly service, the life that now is and the life eternal.
It [Unitarianism] is primarily a declaration of
the present life of God in the present life of men.
Unitarianism is not merely an intellectual revolt:
it is fundamentally a revival of spiritual life.
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