by Rev. Terry Davis
Delivered at Northwest Unitarian Universalist Congregation
on February 1, 2015
We may all be gathered here together to worship at Northwest this morning. But, by later today, I imagine some of you, along with people across the United States and around the world, will be gathered around TVs with chips, dip and adult beverages to worship at the altar of another religion: football.
Today is Super Bowl Sunday. I’m not a big fan of football – I didn’t even know who was playing in this year’s game until a few weeks’ ago. Yet, whether or not you’re a fan, it seems that it’s hard to miss the arrival of this annual event. That’s because the Super Bowl is really more than a championship football game. It has become an evening of superlatives.
For starters, it’s frequently the most watched American television broadcast of the year – 112 million people are expected to tune in to tonight’s game. It’s the second largest day for U.S. food consumption, after Thanksgiving Day. And, it’s the third most watched annual sporting event in the world, behind the World Cup and El Clásico soccer championship games.
Because of its high viewership, commercial airtime during the Super Bowl broadcast is the most expensive of the year. Forty advertisers, including companies like McDonald’s, Anheuser-Busch, and Fiat-Chrysler, have each paid $4.5 million dollars for a 30-second commercial spot. And, some of the world’s most popular singers and musicians have played during the event’s pre-game and halftime ceremonies.
All of the money and all of the hype surrounding the Super Bowl makes no practical sense to me. But, as a former marketing professional, I recognize that practical sense isn’t the point.
Super Bowl Sunday isn’t a logical event – it’s an emotional one. Tonight’s game and all of its trappings are intentionally designed to stir up a variety of human feelings. We may find ourselves rooting for one team or the other, even if we may have cared less about them just weeks before. We may get caught up in the festive atmosphere and find ourselves eating or drinking too much. We may laugh or cry at the commercials or find ourselves helplessly developing strong emotional connections to products and brands.
Ultimately, it seems that Super Bowl Sunday doesn’t strive to appeal to our heads at all. Its primary goal is to appeal to our hearts. The players, celebrities and corporations that pour their energy, talent and dollars into it understand that they’re delivering an emotional experience. Whether we have feelings of American pride or team spirit, or whether we find ourselves simply enjoying the camaraderie of good friends over a favorite national event, it seems as though the Super Bowl accomplishes its goal of satisfying our human desire for connection, excitement, and happiness.
No wonder why it is religiously watched every year and loved by millions.
Like the teams in and sponsors of the Super Bowl, not too long ago I, too, was in the business of appealing to human emotion. The firm in Atlanta I once owned regularly created annual reports that attempted, among other things, to evoke feelings of loyalty among shareholders of publicly-traded companies during good times and bad times.
For instance, we made a case for sticking with Delta Air Lines in the aftermath of 9/11 when airline stocks were tanking. We highlighted Coca-Cola’s product diversity and good corporate citizenship at a time when health and environmental concerns were growing. We championed the small-town friendliness of big corporations. We emphasized the safe and steady quality of companies whose industries were fraught with turmoil, mergers and acquisitions.
Ultimately, we made any positive claim about our clients and their financial performance that we thought had integrity. We attempted to push any emotional button that we thought had relevancy to the company’s mission and objectives and would help the cause of building shareholder confidence. We didn’t lie and we were good at what we did.
And, yet, it seems that to confess this is to admit to something corrupt. Relying on emotional appeal to win someone over is perhaps rightly viewed by some with a healthy dose of suspicion. I don’t know if Unitarian Universalists are especially on guard against being emotionally manipulated, but we do seem have a reputation for insisting on knowing the facts behind the myths . . . and for emphasizing the rational over the emotional.
In fact, Unitarian Universalism’s emphasis on intellectualism and the head versus placing priority on emotions and the heart is something that Rev. Mark Harris argues is at the root of our faith’s problem with achieving greater growth and diversity. In his book Elite: Uncovering Classism in Unitarian Universalist History, Harris says that the intellectualism and upper-class status of our American Unitarian forebears is still pervasive in our religious movement today.
As a result, Unitarian Universalism’s message and culture appeals less to persons who aren’t well educated or come from lower- or middle-income segments of our society . . . persons who tend to be seeking a simpler, more emotional message of love, hope, and acceptance.
Where Mark Harris finds hope for our religious movement, however, is in our Universalist heritage, which is what I’d like to explore with you today. Unlike the Unitarians and, perhaps, more like the teams and sponsors of the Super Bowl, our Universalist ancestors seemed to understand that Sunday was meant to be first and foremost an emotional experience. To be a person of faith meant to be engaged in an spiritual journey that centered on love and other matters of the heart.
As Lynne read to us this morning, Universalists believed that God’s loving embrace – and the Universalists believed in a supernatural, transcendent God – was meant for all people. “The true word of God must be imprinted on your heart, not learned from a book,” wrote Universalist minister Hosea Ballou.
Ballou, who lived from 1771 to 1852 and is often called the father of American Universalism, felt that a Universalist minister should deliver a sermon that appealed to all people in informal, homespun and emotional ways. Consequently, he and other Universalist ministers who preached in this populist style attracted a much wider variety of people to its churches than did the Unitarian ministers of the day.
The original converts to Universalism in the 18th century were Baptists, and the denomination ultimately grew to include an aspiring and hard-working middle class who occupied positions in all ranks and stations of life. Universalists were farmers and small merchants, and shopkeepers and modest property owners. They were ship captains and mill workers, carpenters and shoemakers, white and black, financially secure and dirt poor.
What held them all together, says Mark Harris, was Universalism’s message of spiritual equality. As we heard in this morning’s reading, “Central to the Universalist gospel is an egalitarian, classless idea of salvation. [Universalists believed that] it is not our individual acts that will save us, but our connection with that larger moral force which unites the universe.” Mark W. Harris, Elite: Uncovering Classism in Unitarian Universalist History[ref](Skinner House Books, Boston, MA: 2012), 56.[/ref] That larger moral force for Christian Universalists was the love of God and Jesus Christ.
Like the early 19th century Unitarians, Universalists didn’t believe that certain persons were condemned to hell but, rather, that all persons were worthy of God’s love. Unlike the Unitarians, however, Universalists felt that this message could and should be simply stated and enthusiastically carried to people everywhere. Universalism therefore, was both emotional and evangelical. Universalist preachers were often charismatic leaders who felt compelled to bring the gospel of universal salvation to the urban poor and to families in small towns and rural communities.
As most of you know, the Unitarians and Universalists merged their two religions in 1961, and our faith tradition today is one that honors a wide range of beliefs and spiritual paths. And, yet, some like Mark Harris argue that our Universalist heritage of a faith guided by love and the heart that appealed to a diversity of people has taken a back seat in our UU congregations and theology.
Why is that?
Does the idea of a worship service that places emotional appeal over intellectual appeal leave us feeling a little uneasy? If a Sunday worship service is intentionally designed to bring us in direct contact with some of our most powerful human feelings – much like the Super Bowl does for its spectators or my former marketing firm used to do for corporate shareholders – would that violate the integrity of the experience in some way? Would we feel emotionally manipulated? Intellectually insulted?
As we sit here today – not as Unitarians and not as Universalists, but as Unitarian Universalists – how might we honor the needs of the human heart in our religious movement without casting to the curb our simultaneous need to use our reason and intellect to explore and understand the realities of our world and of our human experience?
How might we offer a good blend of both, which Harris and others in our religious movement believe is the key to achieving the racial, economic and social diversity we seek? How might we do a better job of welcoming into our community those whose first priority is to seek emotional nurturing rather than satisfy intellectual curiosity?
At Northwest, I believe that there is something we do each Sunday that is emotionally powerful and widely welcoming. It’s our ritual of Stones of Joys and Concerns. This is a time in our service that has no other objective than to invite us to open up and speak from our hearts.
Visitors, newcomers and long-time Northwest members and friends have participated in this ritual. When a person drops a stone in the community water bowl and shares a personal experience, the rest of us are also invited in that moment to connect to our feelings of joy, heartbreak and even discomfort.
The shares are simple and brief – most of the time. Ultimately, Joys and Concerns are best when we are able to put aside what we think or believe, and talk instead about how we feel. Expressions of joy, sadness, fear, frustration, nervous anticipation – these are the kinds of emotional messages from the heart that make this ritual so meaningful.
Telling you what I think about a person, an organization, or a political cause isn’t the same thing. When I do this during Joys and Concerns, I’m staying in my head instead of speaking from my heart. Therefore, what I say may inadvertently come across as judgmental or lecturing.
When we share from a place of deep feeling, I believe that Joys and Concerns can provide us with a rare and powerful emotional experience. For a few moments, we can share something lovely or tender about our lives and know that we will be deeply listened to by others. For a few moments, we can experience the compassion and care of an entire community,
Where else do we get an opportunity like that?
In addition to Joys and Concerns, I’m also aware that talking and visiting with one another in the Lobby both before and after the service is a popular activity at Northwest. Why is that?
While I know that the conversations can and do cover a wide range of topics, I also can’t help but believe that the most important thing happening in the Lobby isn’t the intellectual stimulation, but the emotional connection. I believe the reason we visit with one another in the Lobby for a long time is because we crave the social experience Northwest offers and the sense of well-being these experiences provide us. Ultimately, I think our coffee time here is one of our most popular times at Northwest because it’s where our love for one another is most discernable.
By joining Rev. Mark Harris in championing Universalism’s focus on the heart in our congregations, I’m not suggesting that we check our brains at the door when we come to Northwest. Rather, I’d like for us to consider what it will mean for this congregation if our Sunday worship and activities were able to provide a meaningful emotional experience for a wider group of people.
How might a community that is more racially, ethnically, economically and socially diverse challenge us? How might it change us? How might our increasing diversity ensure the future of our faith for our children and future generations?
As we go from here, I invite all of us to keep an open mind to the importance of reclaiming our Universalist heritage – one that emphasizes the heart over the head.
While Unitarian Universalists may not think or believe alike, we certainly share the common bonds of joy and sorrow and the need for connection.
If we build a place with those emotional priorities at the center, I believe we will indeed have a community and a faith that knows no bounds.
May it be so. Amen.