In my opinion, a church either develops ways in which it can minister to [the] spiritual needs of its members, or it fails in its most distinctive responsibility. Passion for social justice, for world brotherhood, for collective security, and for intellectual discovery, should never supplant concern for the order of the individual and the personal in the activity of the church.
         In spite of revolutionary transformations in thought and in moral outlook, these elemental human needs persist, and the church that ministers to them has a distinctive function. That function, moreover, has its continuity with the function of religious groups in earlier periods; hence, it may be appropriately regarded as the abiding function of the church. We come to a church not primarily as teachers or students, as scientists or artists, as employees or employers, as of the city or of the farm, not even as men or women, or as old and young -- we rather come in our common role as human beings. In this role we all share certain primary experience such as birth, family life, death, dependence on one another, as well as dependence on those life maintaining and life enriching conditions and processes which we have learned to call 'nature.'
        A church succeeds in one of its deepest functions as it develops ways of dealing with these elemental experiences and learns how to talk about them so as to sustain, dignify, and give increased meaning to that human career we all have in common. These processes of communion and of ritualized recognition of our dependence on one another and on the resources of that nature which gave us life naturally blend and flower into worship. Worship is one of the modes through which that which human beings have in common achieves significant articulation. Either naturalists -- citizens of the modern world -- will evolve forms of worship that to them are spiritually satisfying, or they are not likely to continue indefinitely as adherents of the church. The church is an ancient institution, and we should do our best to preserve it by adapting both its forms and its practices to the world in which it now operates.
-- John R. Childs, "The Function of the Church in the Modern World," [March 6, 1960], pp. 8 - 9.

… when man sinks to the subhuman level after being equipped with symbolized ways of life he becomes a pervert and a monstrosity, unlike other animals.
        This is the reason that man must ask and answer ever anew the religious question: Why live, how live and for what?
-- Henry Nelson Wieman, "The Potential of Unitarian Commitment," October 8, 1961, p. 2.

… suppose it is true that the human level of existence is of such a nature that the basic thing underlying it, creating it, sustaining it, lifting it to higher levels when required conditions are present, is the process of individuals and peoples learning from one another across the barrier of diversity; that human life takes on greater value to the measure that individuals and peoples learn more profoundly, fully and freely across the barrier of greater diversity; that this is the fundamental problem to be solved because of the nature of human existence; that in this way we form a pool of values cherished by a community, to which diverse individuals and peoples have access to meet the need of each; that this accumulation of values sustained by a community made of increasing diversity of individuals and peoples is what makes human life good.
        If this is the process that creates and sustains the human level of existence, saves it from self destruction when lifted above counter processes, and transforms it toward the greater good, then this process is what we must try to understand far better than we now do. This is our primary responsibility· If the statement I made is not true, if this is not the process we must promote for all men everywhere, then we must find out what this other process is, because we have come to a time when our power is so great that we must know how to use it lest we destroy our humanity.
. . . . . . . . . . .
        The proper difference between the liberal and the dogmatic orthodox is not that the liberals go off in all directions, dissipating their energies and ending in futility, although that is true of one kind of liberalism· But the proper difference is that the liberal seeks by intellectual inquiry to find what is basic, universal and absolute for the human level, while the dogmatic orthodox accept it from the dictates of some authority not derived from inquiry.
-- Henry Nelson Wieman, "Responsibility and Freedom," October 7, 1962, pp.3, 4.

Prayer, as I understand it, is not giving God information concerning our needs· Prayer is a practice by which we bring our total selves into action in the form of a commitment, with some urgent need or problem, seeking communion and guidance and innovating insight to find our way to a better life. Prayer is directed to what one believes does operate with a power greater than that of the isolated individual or local group to bring forth the greater good. What the power is I leave to your individual judgment. But I am convinced that no great thing can ever be accomplished without some practice by which the resources of the individual, in community with others, are brought most fully into action in commitment to what does in truth create, sustain, save and transform toward a good greater than the good envisaged by our biased and distorted imagination at the time of seeking. There is a creativity which, when we give ourselves over to it, corrects, widens and deepens our ability to distinguish between the better and the worse. Whatever else God may be, to this at least we can pray.
-- Henry Nelson Wieman, "Dialogue with God," [September 29, 1963], p. 1.

When we speak of God we are talking of what has a certain value for human living· Just what kind of reality has this importance is the matter in dispute. One person, group or people, says it is this kind of reality. Another person, group or people, says it is this kind of reality. The identity in all cases is not the designative meaning of the word, but it is the kind of value which anything must have to be given the name of God. In case of God we have a certain kind of value looking for its object just as, in other cases, we have an object looking for its value.
…The problem is to find the kind of reality which has the value of God. Therefore the first step to take when we inquire about the idea of God is to ascertain what is the evaluative meaning of this word. Only after that can we intelligently seek to know what has this value.
        We do not have to say that God is a supernatural person if we find that no supernatural person has this value. We do not need to say that God is a cosmic creativity, or a cosmic mind, or a vision of ideal values or the infinite if we find that none of these alleged realities has the kind of value which is the evaluative meaning of the word 'God.' . . .
        Now for over a million years the human race has been hurt, terribly hurt. When man is terribly hurt he wants to know what makes life worth living no matter how much it hurts.
        That, I think, is the evaluative meaning of the idea of. God. When we cast off all illusions, when we face up to the follies, frustrations and futilities of life, to the misery and cruelty and horror of human history, when we see human existence as it truly is, we are hurt. Many voices today are crying about the hurt of human existence, especially the existentialists. The drama at present on the stage at Proscenium One here in Carbondale, called Waiting for Godot, by Samuel Beckatt, is crying over the hurt to human existence. So was Albert Camus, so was Kafka, so was William Faulkner, so is John Updike, so is Jean-Paul Sartre, so are almost all the outstanding novelists, dramatists, poets, artists of all kinds, and many philosophers.
        So the question stands, what can we find which will make life grandly worth living, no matter what happens, provided that we commit ourselves to it, and live for it supremely? That is the question about God. When we find the answer to that question we find what properly goes by the name of God.
-- Henry Nelson Wieman, "The Idea of God," November 1,1964, pp. 2-3.

May we see the divinity of childhood in the Bethlehem story. May the promise and the hope of the human race, born anew in each generation, be to us the star of wonder guiding toward more perfect light. To this high end may the children in our keeping be to us a sacred trust; and may every word and deed and thought and feeling be faithful to this trust. May we so live that the groping hands and seeking minds of little children will find the way of life leading on to wonder and to love. With deep devotion we give our lives to the divinity of childhood with the promise it carries that newness of life in time will bring peace on earth and good will among men. Amen.
-- Henry Nelson Wieman, "Benediction" [concluding children's Christmas program], December 20, 1964.

The basic moral principle for a better world must be that nothing is more important than the well-being of men, all men. Commitment to this old value, crudely expressed as the infinite worth of the human individual, is an essential guard against war, colonialism, human displacement and the like· Practical derivatives of this principle would be that parasitic economic practices are morally wrong everywhere, in Asia, Africa, MississipPi and Carbondale; that violence visited upon our fellow men, whether in personal encounter or in war, is a moral evil; that the practice that puts the smooth functioning of the system above the well-being of its participants cannot be right; and so on. Some such rules as these, my friends, we must adopt and observe in practice or our future will not be bright.
-- Willis Moore, "New Morals for a New World," September 30, 1962.

… I am saying that this Unitarian theological looseness or creedlessness is an expression of our faith in the ability of each human being to work out his own theology, not in solitary cogitation, but in open, cooperative discussion with like-minded fellow-men. Taken in its full depth and breadth this is no trivial operational principle but a set of affirmations with regard to the nature of man. It says not only that each and every man is capable of participating in this community reasoning process but also that any particular project of reasoning that neglects the possible contribution of even the least member of the group is itself incomplete and defective: No conclusion is adequate except it include the perspectives of all. This, of course, is an ideal but as such an important guiding principle for society. It is one facet of the democratic philosophy so prominent in the thinking of our American religious ancestors. Viewed from another angle this principle says that every man is of incalculable worth, for no other man can contribute his perspective; each is unique in what he can contribute to the total perspective, hence irreplaceable. There is a softer side to this theory of man which brings us to the same conclusion, a side inherited by Unitarians from their long Christian tradition but not emphasized in the doctrines of the Enlightenment. This is the factor of compassion or love of man for his brother man. We need the other man not just because of his unique perspective but because we feel an incompleteness without him. We are not simply our brother's keeper but, as one of Kenneth Patton's readings puts it, we are our brother. This softer side of the picture is, I believe, a necessary corrective of the harsher view of man derived from the 16th Century over-emphasis on his rationality.
-- Willis Moore, "The Dialogue with Man," October 6, 1963, p· 4.

… I do not decide to have a faith or not have a faith. To exist at all I must in some way commit my will and my feelings. To move to a more coherent (more adequately empirical, more meaningfully integrated, more effective) faith I do not move from no faith into faith. I always begin from some standpoint and some commitment. Every commitment is always under judgment; the burden of 'proof' cannot be placed upon religious faiths alone. Existentialists have helped to make us aware of the subjectivity which is concealed within each pretense of objectivity and immunity. The question which always remains is: What is the most adequate faith? God is as much alive today as he ever was. What have expired but not wholly been interred were a large number of childish and irrelevant notions about him. The God who is dead is the God of professional patrioteers, Sunday School papers, and the scorn of E. Haldemann Julius.
        In my moments of deepest sincerity I find a hunger for meaning to which most scientific and theological discourse seems irrelevant. This hunger for meaning is neither merely subjective nor merely pathological. When I confront other thus in ultimate seriousness, I find it in them too. The meaning of our existence must be sought in a total encounter with it, facing both its value and its evil, both its rational structure and its brute given-ness, both its power to determine us and the freedom which we have within it. The Existent is the ground of every existence, even that of the rootless modern man who finds it hard to accept a fact beyond the range of technology and majority vote.
-- William Henry Harris, "Existence and the Existent," March 12, 1961, pp. 5, 6.

... It is not always kept in mind by liberals themselves that their true vocation is not suppression of religious differences but creation of an atmosphere where differences can be expressed without bitterness.
        It is far more desirable to defend the right to celebrate Chanukah without harassment, or even embarrassment, than it is to discourage public celebrations of Christmas. We must not only aim at external safeguards against imposition of religious opinion; we must encourage minorities and individuals in such a self-conception that differentness is not in itself an embarrassment. I should examine myself as well as society if I am ashamed to be different. It is not the function of constructive liberalism to build a society where everyone is like everyone else; constructive liberalism cherishes the right to be different. Beware the broadminded man who tells you of the 'good Jew,' the 'good Catholic,' the 'good Negro' -- good because they are 'just like anyone else.' Differentness is a challenge to understanding, to the range of human possibilities, not a matter to be ignored or obliterated. Dialogue disappears when people simply echo one another's opinions.
-- William Henry Harris, "The Nature and Conditions of Interfaith Dialogue," [November 17, 1963], p. 4.

Since religion is a basic and universel approach to experience, my conception of it must be broad enough to embrace a very great variety of phenomena, some of which I find highly significant, much of which I find among the greatest of the evils which man has visited upon man. I define religion as the expressed conviction that the values upon which my existence depends are sustained by Reality.
        Religions differ as to what that good is upon which our existence depends. It has many, many times been conceived in incoherent and demonic terms. When the idolatrous and incoherent is believed to be sustained by God himself, religion becomes the most effectively demonic force in history. When coherent and objectifiable values are held to be religiously sustained, a serenity and courage is produced which gives effectiveness to those values in a way which the noblest ethical humanism does not.
        Religions also differ as to how that Reality which sustains our values is to be conceived. A person who finds it reasonable to believe in God as a kind of person will often find himself in close agreement with many humanists as to what the fundamental values are which make personal and inter-personal existence possible. He often finds much more rapport with those who cannot affirm a religious faith than with those who conceive God not only as personal but as an anthropomorphic projection of selfish and particularistic interests. But it is important to make a personal decision as to whether a religious affirmation is reasonable. If Reality does sustain some values it is terribly important for me to find what those values are and to attune my life to what is really good.
-- William Henry Harris, "God and the Sacredness of Persons," November 15, 1964, pp. 1,2.

Non-violence is integration, construction, the expression of purpose and rational control. It aims to establish a reciprocal relation with the person who opposes you, not to humiliate and crush him. Instead of writing people off as unworthy of continued concern and hope, it holds open the possibility of future cooperation while firmly refusing to cooperate in a presently evil process. It is not passivity. It tries to live truth and love even while these are being systematically denied. Thus Gandhi was able to live with the dignity of a free man and force the British to expose the fact that their laws denied this. Non-violence has done much more to build dignity and courage among Negro Americans than surreptitious acts of violent retaliation could have ever done.
        Some of us would, of course, confess that our devotion to non-violence goes deeper than a belief in its reasonableness and practicality, however strongly and honestly we hold to these. It has at its core a rejection of the ugliness and evil of cruelty and violence, a rejection so strong that it is very hard for us to see that good can come from anything so clearly evil...
-- William Henry Harris, "Why Non-Violence?" April 11,1965, pp. 6-7, 10.

It is . . . simply not true that religion is outmoded in the Space-Age. Mythology is outmoded, but ethical religion need not be mythological. Even Theism, in the Space-Age, may have serious difficulties in maintaining itself. But, in ethical religion, there is no necessary need for a deity: witness Buddhism, which everyone will admit is not merely a religion but even a profoundly ethical religion -- yet is non-theistic!
        As a matter of fact, it is precisely because of the all too obvious loss of moral fibre on the pert of modern man that I would insist that a profoundly ethical religion is called for today as much as at any time in human history.
-- Paul A. Schilpp, "Wanted: A Religion for the Space-Age," [October 17, 1965], p. l0.

Every act, every conduct, every behavior is really moral only to the precise extent to which it is capable of enhancing man's uniquely human potentialities: his rational, his social, his moral, his spiritual nature. This, as a matter of fact, is the only justification even for democracy. I have said for a great many years that I can put my own faith in democracy in two very straight-forward and simple sentences.
        The first sentence is 'The only government worthy of man (man being what he is, namely a creature capable of reason, morality, sociality and spirituality) is self-government.' That is the first sentence. And the second sentence: 'The only government I know of (now there may be one I don't know) but the only government I know of which at least aims at self-government (and I am not saying that any has actually or completely achieved it) is democracy.' . . . And a potentially -- and don't forget that word potentially -- rational, social, spiritual creature can, in any age, achieve a type of both individual and social conduct which so far from destroying its uniquely human potential would enhance it. Would make it possible for him to live, in the first place, as a person, a rationally significant, a morally useful, socially helpful, and spiritually insightful kind of life. And, in the second place, to work in the kind of society of whatever radical change he may find himself in, for the enhancement and promotion of these potentialities in human nature, which are found wherever relatively normal human beings are found. He may learn to use every new challenge in every area of this rapidly changing age so as to approach all issues and problems not by looking backward, not by letting yesterday's mores decide his reactions and decisions, but by letting his best rationally trained mind, his highest intelligence, broad social considerations and his spiritual self-transcendence help him to approach everything, if necessary, even in a radically new, different, and perhaps never previously heard way.
-- Paul A. Schilpp, "Private and Public Morality in a Rapidly Changing World," p. 5.

I believe in MAN because he IS a mind, capable of reasoning, capable of learning from history, from past mistakes -- if only be could learn to be willing to recognize them as such. It really is our WILL, much more than either our knowledge or our rational intelligence which is at fault.
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In rationality, certainly in will-power, yes, and perhaps even in emotion, we are still in our diapers. But, some day, just perhaps, humanity may grow up and will create, on this very planet, a veritable Garden of Eden. We do have the knowledge, we have the capacity -- all we need is the will to apply what we already know. Very little of what we see today looks like paradise. But paradise, surely, is not in the past. If ever it is to be, it will have to be created in the future. To aid in moving towards that end I shall dedicate whatever of life I have left. And I invite each of you to join me in that quest.
-- Paul A. Schilpp, "Around the World in Eighty Years," [February 6, 1977, his eightieth birthday], p. 8.

Each communicant is called out of solitude into relationship to another by something they care about in common. Furthermore this calling forth is not merely communication, not simply a set of glances, a spate of words, a twitch of gestures: it is an action in relation to a reality held in common. The human communication following from it is truest and deepest in proportion as that communication remains in the background, as a byproduct, as an accompaniment rather than the main theme. Every parent knows how difficult it can be to talk with his children in any seriousness and depth, especially if he sets out to do just that. Children are anxious about their souls and tend to hide them from almost everyone except a trusted few of their own age. Perhaps families should concentrate on doing things of importance and delight together and let the talk fall where it will.
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Physically and theologically we are of the world. Here is our link with others. We find our communication by a mutual caring for the larger and smaller realities in which we find and fulfill our beings. Our best communication occurs unannounced and unsum-moned, as when eyes meet in sudden joyous surprise after the last note of a wondrous music has faded away.
        We are physically and theologically of the world. And the world itself is a vast gift, uncreated by our efforts and far beyond our powers to purchase, recompense, or deserve. The world is a glory to be loved and shared, just as it is in its pristine radiance, or just as we make it in the marvels of human fabrication and cultivation. Our common worship is our habit of acknowledging the great gift, our celebration of glory, and our recognition of the responsibility entailed in the fact that the gift is ours. As individual, isolated units, we count for very little in the greet oceans of space. But as common recipients of a ~rast glory, a glory of which we can trace only a few of the details, we are linked with eternity, and therefore also with one another. Our deepast brotherhood is not a community of talent, a similarity of privilege, not as a coterie of parsons especially or uniquely gifted. Our deepest brotherhood is our common indebtedness to a divine and eternal richness far beyond our calculation or our deserving. The first point of communication in human worship is praise. The second is the expression of common need. The third is the mutual exchange of pledges of help and assurances of strength. Out of these ingredients our common worship is fashioned.
-- John F. Hayward, "Beyond Communication," September 22, 1968, pp. 2, 3 - 4.

As the Dawn Chorus swells into mid-morning and reaches its mid-day crescendos, human beings are responding to life, expressing their thoughts and feelings, conferring, disputing, and of course, dealing with problems, although speech more often confuses problems than it solves them. The chorus includes laws, commands, directions, stop and go signs. But it is much more than these. It is the characteristic human action, not less nor more important than eating, working, making love, and sleeping. But it is distinctively characteristic: all the other great actions are shared with the wild creatures. And if we look at recent researches, even the animals have some rudimentary speech although they may not have self-conscious symbols.
        The opposite of speech is not action, but silence. And silence, too, like the rests in music, belongs to us and is for our good. The beauty of the Dawn Chorus is enhanced by the return to silence with the ending of the day. I notice young lovers must be forever speaking as though there were never enough daylight, or as if the night too should be filled with music. But old lovers, by wisdom and also by boredom, have leerned that the flow of speech needs a rest and that being together in silence may be no less a profession of love than being together in speech. A household of a sleeping family is itself a declaration of love and trust, a restorative silence before the awakening chorus of tomorrow. I do not fear silence when it is held in love. We may do one another a service by practicing silence together. And I am praising silence not alone as a foil for new speech. The time will come when we shall all be together in silence alone. Then, if we act, we shall act only in the consciousness of the living. Our communion having been, we remain silently in the body of humanity.
-- John F. Hayward, "The Talk-Action Split: A Reflection on our Summer Meetings," October 10, 1971, p. 4.

I mean not only that humanity is bigger than the sum of its parts; I mean also the faith that humanity will not be defeated. And I assert this in spite of the huge, uneradicated growth of human folly and human malice!
        That good man who lived among us a number of years and whose presence often graced this place -- Henry Wieman -- saw this paradox clearly. He asserted that our best efforts, our human created goods, regularly go awry. The world has to be periodically recreated because of our fallibilities. No victory is stable or permanent and every day is a kind of frontier to be won anew. Mr. Wieman also recognized an unreached and unreachable source of our human created goods which he called Creative Good. This never fails. Human failure and chastisement are the very means by which, through Creative Good, the new vision comes to birth.
        Perhaps the same faith is contained in Lincoln's simple and enduring aphorism: you cannot fool all the people all the time. Devotion to Creative Good working through mankind despite the failures of every created good in individual persons and groups is what keeps us all going and ultimately hopeful.
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We used to think that we, as the privileged intelligentsia of the religious world, knew the best answers for our ailing planet. We used to believe that the ritual of telling ourselves these 'answers' on Sunday was a major step toward the healing and renovation of the world. We came to church to hear enlightened and clever ministers put into words the answers we all more or less shared. This strong spectator emphasis caused us to decide by virtue of the preacher or his sermon or lecture topic whether or not we would go to church on any given Sunday morning. The church service was a 'service' to people who patronized it if they liked it and who quietly abandoned it if they didn't. It is small wonder that the word 'congregation' has steadily given place to the word 'audience.' We gathered as audio-visual receptors, not as a truly 'gathered' congregation. I must admit to some of the same motivation in myself. I am more attracted to the Gospel according to Johann Sebastian Bach than to a lecture on the economics of contemporary Afghanistan -- or to a sermon entitled, 'Identity: Crisis and Renewal.'
        But if I look at the matter closely, my real reason for being here on Sunday is not a spectator's choice of selected delights. I come to this congregation because I have been gathered into a long line of the faithful of which this group is, for me, the current and living exemplification. I belong to that long historical march which, through all its crises, has sought to keep the faith; and by virtue of the faith it has kept, their renewals have been unfailing. The line began with Abraham, who refused to stay in the land of the Assyrians but roused himself toward Israel. It continued through Moses who had the wit and courage to take his people out of bondage. It continued in the Pilgrims who journeyed first to Holland and then to the unknown and menacing wilderness that they might be both faithful and free. The same long line was greatly increased by the armies of black slaves who were forced from their homeland to an alien bondage and whose struggle for freedom involves and enhances my own. I think also of all the immigrants who came to American for freedom and opportunity and who had to pay in labor and blood for every inch of progress they made. These endless lines and millions of bodies of the faithful culminate for me at this moment, in this small place, in yourselves. You are now the company with whom I travel, my small scene in the great drama, my part in the long march. And I came here - to be enlightened, inspired, amused, corrected -- yes, all that -- but primarily to be with you and to serve you in any way I can by keeping alive and current the faith. The faith is no one narrow creed, nor anything we all have to agree on. It is faith in Creative Good over created goods, in the power of persons, animals and stars to continue through all discords a triumphant symphon.
        To lose that faith would be as death and damnation.
        To keep it is the nearest we shall ever come to everlasting life.
-- John F. Hayward, "Identity: Crisis and Renewal," January 14, 1973, pp. 2, 5-6.

To many the picture of the Universe, and of man in the Universe, as it is painted by science, is grim and dismal, but to us the awakened ones, or the partially awake, the sketch is or should be inspiring. How glorious to be a part of the plan that includes stars and atoms, sunsets and altruism, receding galaxies and the art of meditation. How glory-filled to be actors in a world-wide production; how glorious to carry even a small spear in the magnificent drama called Cosmos.
        As organic individuals we are but temporary waves on the ocean of all existence. But what an ocean; yes -- what an ocean!
-- Harlow Shapley, "Introduction to Religion in an Age of Science," January 26, 1964, p. 6.

At birth one is suddenly thrust from a state of complete dependence into a new world where one must begin to assume responsibility for himself. In the Garden of Eden man ceased being a creature and became a creator. He became like a god. The great moral goal of life inheres not in obedience. Rather, it lies in self-creation. Man has the potem tiality for self-regulation and self-management. What is potentiality for, except to become actualized? The destiny of the acorn is to become an oak. The destiny of man is self-actualization. The basic moral obligation is for man to become what he can become.
        This same moral commitment belongs also to Society. The great moral imperative for society - is to organize itself in such ways that every human individual can develop his potentialities and become creative.
-- Noble H. Kelley, "Man's Moral Commitment," December 9, 1962, p. 5.

… aesthetics can supply unobjectionable tradition and continuity in an institution otherwise noted for its iconoclastic nature and suspiciousness of churchly tradition ~nd heritage. In our haste to break the old images, to build our personal empires, aesthetics can supply the techniques for quiescence and meditation, something to stop and stare at ..... or through. After all, the only bit of eternity of which we can be certain, is that which a philosophy of beauty has judged to be eternally beautiful: a bit of Etruscan art, a Ming vase, a Brahms symphony, a Bach mass, a Lutheran chorale, a Gregorian chant, a medieval stained glass window, a Gothic arch, a poem of Goethe, or a Psalm of David.
        Unitarianism has as much right to authenticate and promote its convictions through aesthetics as any other organized religious group. Indeed, perhaps it has a greater responsibility to do so, for this reason: the arts, according to Alfred North Whitehead, are first perceived by emotions. What the emotions can perceive, the intellect can capitalize upon. In addition, attention to aesthetics very well may satisfy the void in Uni.tarianism created by those occasions when the mysteries of life cannot be answered or solved. And surely those occasions arise whether we like to admit it or not.
-- Wesley K. Morgan, "Aesthetics and Unitarianism," January 8, 1961, p. 5.

It is only within the last few years that there has been any necessity to question the validity of indiscriminate exploitation of natural resources, and to give some thought to what ends the materials at our disposal might be put. As great forests begin to disappear, as soils become eroded and effete, as water sources become polluted and filled with detergent suds, as coal, natural gas and petroleum reserves diminish we might begin to ask ourselves whether or not it is worthwhile to burn several of our irreplaceable tons of coal per day to provide the power for an industrial plant which devotes itself to producing electric back-scratchers.
-- Davis Pratt, "Designs for Living," February 25, 1962, p. 3.

The phonograph . . . can be a curse. It follows us everywhere, into elevators, eating places, halls, social rooms, and even rest rooms, like ubiquitous big brother. This kind of aural wallpaper can at best be described as innocuous, at worst as gratingly insulting. It is not music we hear, but an acoustic noise barrier, literally used to 'soothe' one's responses to normal sounds like knives and forks, shuffling feet or conversation. Almost everyone is forced to develop a kind of callus of the eardrum which is difficult to remove when the proper time and circumstances for geniune listening arrive. Sound should be a treat, and I'm sure that physiologically we are only able to absorb so much of it without needing relief. By its very abundance sound as a stimulant to the thought processes and emotional responses becomes a depressant. Rather than making of musical experience something special, it becomes commonplace, like tile flooring, metal chairs, or concrete -- not undesirable but hardly worth our serious attention. Continual saturation will dull us when we find ourselves drenched in what passes for music, at least in what resembles music.
--Will Gay Bottje, "Men, Music and Machines," February 14, 1965, p. 1.

The civilized person is more like the artist than the upright moralist. The good life is more like a carefully balanced composition than a careful application of a set of rules....
        Where in the world wou/d a person acquire the kinds of skills -- sensitivity, perceptiveness, harmony, enhancement, clarification, exciting order - we've been discussing? Forgetting for the moment innate differences in capacity, if there are any, the answer is clear: one learns such skills from his culture. If the culture provides many and varied opportunities for learning, good; if it is drab, uniform, chaotic, disordered, full of conflict, flat, dull, vulgar, or cheap, it is more difficult for people to learn to make very successful aesthetic judgments, for their perceptiveness never develops, and their compositional skills never get exercised.
        It therefore becomes a necessity that the appearance of a city be orderly, exciting and refreshing; that towns and countryside provide rich and varied opportunities for experiencing the greatest possible range of moods, spectacles and scenes .... How to order this situation, this experience, this feeling, this relationship, so as to provide the maximum excitement or intensity compatible with harmony and balance -- that is the kind of problem we typically have. I think we could work out a fairly satisfactory arrangement under the guidance of the Sermon on the Mount, or of Nietzsche, or of the Utilitarians, or of Kant, or of the oriental religions, or others, provided that we employ the rules of these grand theories with aesthetic sense and sensitivity. Otherwise, as I tried to say earlier, any of them would be intolerable.
-- George McClure, "Ugliness and Morality," May 2, 1965, p. 6.

I raise this… in the context of the social environment we are building and the values we are attempting to transmit to our children. Here we provide our children with some of the questions and point toward discovery. It seems to me our thrust of development is toward those conditions which make and sustain creative intellectuals. This is what we are demanding of our children that they become.
        It is a lot to ask ....
        I know it, and I am going to continue to do it, to demand that they give their best. But with these demands hopefully will come the support, the work to build a social and value environment where they can survive and grow, and the personal struggle to change so I can keep my standards relevant. I'll pay the price in time and energy.
        This is for the children's own sakes, because to ask anything less is to cut off some of their potential humanity. I won't cheat them by pointing to comfort and conformity as the deeply satisfying way to live.
        This is for the sake of what seems necessary to be accomplished in the world for humans to survive. The need for innovative leadership on a tremendous scale was never greater. One mother here said to me, 'This sounds sentimental, but I believe these children are the hope of the world.' I agree with her, for I am enough of a veteran in childrearing to accept the sociologist's figure that only five per cent of a population become creative innovators. Many of our children fall into that five per cent category. It is our job to hold up the challenge.
        But I do this for myself, to earn my key to the future. Entrance into the interior lives of those that will help implement the Great Society is more difficult than turning on a TV set to watch men in space. Investment in the young yields dividends of insight into their world view, reports of adventures, trials and triumphs in dimensions never imagined in my youth, l'm curious and I care about them and the future and want to be told the ta les ....
-- Paula Franklin, "Of Thee and Me; Of Us and Our Own," January 23, 1966, pp. 4, 7.

… What potentials remain before us are beyond our imaginings, but they are likely to open new doors of satisfaction to mankind. They must, or mankind will be lost.
        It is because of all these breakthroughs and potentials that I say we are on the threshold of a new era in the epic of man on earth. Whether we like it or not it will be a new era; whether it turns out to be the greatest ever in the history of mankind depends on how we respond to the challenge in this decade and generation.
        What do we expect our young people to feel in the face of all of these problems that involve them directly? Our young people know as much or more than many of us about the Golden Age and the reasons for its being thwarted. Small wonder that many are impatient with the small gains or diversions or excuses or the constant attention to self-interest rather than community good .... One wonders if we ought to attend to adult delinquency before criticizing the weakesses and foibles of the younger generation.
-- David E. Christensen, "On the Bridge," November 21,1965, pp. 4, 5.

The anti-politician Bernard Shaw wrote: 'liberty means responsibility. That is why men dread it.' I do not believe that liberty or freedom should be given up so lightly; responsibility is little enough to pay for the privilege of freedom, whether that privilege is God-given or man-made. But until the effort toward responsibility is undertaken and maintained, liberty is jeopardized.
        I have often wondered whether, were Thomas Jefferson alive today, he could be elected to public office. Would there be enough responsible citizens who would take an interest in his campaign? Would there be enough responsible citizens who would vote for him?
        Until the day comes when a man of Jeffersonian stature -- a truly responsible politician --can safely assume that he can seek and be elected to an office of public trust, let us put the burden of responsibility where it properly belongs, on ourselves. That is the beginning of our responsibility.
-- Richard E. Richman, "Responsible Politicians and Irresponsible Citizens," March 21,1965, p. 5.

The wrong people at times are allowed to control this world. If one needs power to feed his greed and reduce his apprehension then he will sacrifice all other values and other people for that power. We seem to support, though, and select the self-seeking, the narcissistic, the manipulators, as if in doing so we satisfied our own repressed desires. Maybe power corrupts; maybe some seek the opportunity to be corrupted. Supporting authority which values the needs of all people should be our principle and fighting narrow, brutal, self-centered authority should be our action. Malignant, magical, supernatural authority has to go. The world and its gifts belong to all people, not just the select -- whether they are professors, priests, industrialists or government officials. I categorically reject the divine right of authority which is based alone on tradition, magic, and malignant self-interest. I humbly accept Thomas Jefferson's eternal hostility to any tyranny over the minds of men. We should support the authority that works for the common good.
        We are stuck with each other: we must rely on each other: we become human in compassion through the ministrations of others. We have no choice but to turn to each other. With all of our limitations we are all that we have. Some semblance of love might come from that. It had better!
-- John G. Martire, "Concepts of Man: A Psychologist's Viewpoint," February 20, 1966, p. 4.

The question then that I posed earlier is whether man so adapted to the comforting influence and stability of folk society for so many millennia is able to accept and go on in face of the present situation (and this consideration is aside from the hydrogen bomb itself). Or, is humanity faced with one massive nervous breakdown for which there is no cultural psychiatric help?
        Can we but hope when we marvel at [man's] great adaptive achievement. Granted the problems facing humanity are much more complex but so are the adaptive mechanisms with which man can respond. The pool of experience from which man can draw is deeper and its edges extend much further. Our hope is in our humanness.
        Our faith is akin to that expressed by the prophets of old: 'What is man that thou art mindful of him, for thou hast made him but a little lower than the angels.'
-- Melvin L. Fowler, "An Evolutionary Concept of Man," February 27, 1966, p. 5.

It seems that the advocates of social revolt are a very small minority, but this has been true throughout history, and it is only as other social and political conditions set the mass of the people in motion that their ideas are taken up and become part of a popular movement. But at all times, such groups are influential far beyond the number of their members.
-- Edward L. Adams, "The Religions of Social Revolt," November 5, 1961, p. 5.

Black Power is only a pair of words. But if that pair of words can begin to give to a people dignity and community and self-respect, why should we deny them?...
        I suppose I accept Black Power as I accept Kenyatta and Kyerere. Not because I dread any less its consequences. Not because I feel myself in concert with its aims and objectives. Not because I feel any great social oneness with the non-white community. I accept Black Power because I accept history.
        And just as the liberals' task in America is to reach an understanding and acceptance of diverse movements, with diverse values, throughout the world, so, too, must we act at home. Whatever else it may do, however else we may feel, Black Power may help free the Negro from his dependence on the white man. It may be able, as something must, to give him independence in his struggle, to help him hold up his head.
-- Morton R. Kenner, "Black Nationalism," October 16, 1966, p. 7.

Creativity costs everything. Even so, creativity makes everything possible .... If man is involved in bringing to pass a world which never was, he must operate outside the confining bounds of security thus allowing creativity to operate.
……………..
There is a persistent demand to choose today between order and chaos, law and anarchy, revolution and totalitarianism. The creative person is required to give up the security of either position. In so doing he is free from having to defend either as ultimate utopia for he knows that both are material and transitory. When he reaches this point he realizes he is freed, not to find the compromise position between them but to rise above them both, or to assimilate both into himself, and to exert his creative energy in conjunction with that force of creativity which is calling into being a world so liberating to the spirit of man and so effectively operating on the principle of creativity that those masters of law and order and those frenzied heralds of revolution could not have designed its likeness even in their most self-sacrificial obedience to the interim utopias they have set for themselves.
-- Allen Line, "Creativity and the Spirit," April 5, 1970, pp. 6 - 7.

Today, I bid you join me once again in noting and remembering all those, silent but articulate, few but many, who went before us in trying to assure us the blessings of liberty, of unfettered thought, of wide-ranging religious and scientific belief, during earnest and toilsome cultivation of the earth, the mind, and the spirit, while bearing and raising their children with hopes for the future when there were times of despair.
        When there are times for despair. There are always times that try men's souls. But as Thomas Paine said, 'He that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman.'
        So let us today now give our love and our thanks to all those now silent who stood it then, and to each other, for standing it in our own lifetimes. And let us pray and endeavour that we will deserve the love and thanks of future men and women.
-- Carolyn Forman Moe, "The True Silent Majority," September 18, 1976, p. 6.

In those years following the [American Revolution], we witness a religious revolution. It was.., a time of ferment, a time when all things were called into question. Not only was the structure of governmental order overturned, but in that same time and under largely the same impulses, the past lost its sacred and holy character. Channing, Emerson, Parker, Thoreau, Whitman were the prophets and the psalmists of the age. Each in his own way responded and they form a great chorus singing of the human possibility. Theologically .... they noted the absurdity of the Trinity. Sociologically, they foresaw the necessity of the equality under law of all races of men within this nation. Religiously, they awoke to the incredible wonder of man at home in this world, as a creature that belongs. The meaning of life is worked out in the living of his allotted time, and they were convinced that human freedom is basic and underlies all lesser freedoms that may be the wish of man.
-- John W. Brigham, "The Religious Component of Human Freedom," October 25, 1964, p. 4.