Adin Ballou on “Practical”. PS; Hughes; p. 11
“The word practical denotes that the essential Principles of the Christian religion, as held by our kind of Socialists, are interior to all external ceremonies, formalities, ecclesiasticisms, scholasticisms, sectarianisms, localisms, temporisms and mere incidentals; are of universal application to human relations and conduct; are such as imperatively require of all individuals and all societies, divine love in their affections, divine purity in their motives, divine wisdom in their understanding, divine rectitude in their conduct and divine order in their relations.”
George Bernard Shaw–Anglo Irish writer, dramatist, critic, man of letters, provocateur, winner of the 1925 Nobel Prize in Literature/
“This is the true joy in life–that [of] being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one. That [of] being a force of nature, instead of a feverish, selfish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy. I am of the opinion that my life belongs to the whole community and as long as I live it is my privilege to do for it whatever I can. I want to be thoroughly used up when I die. For the harder I work the more I live. I rejoice in life for its own sake. Life is no brief candle to me. It’s a sort of splendid torch which I’ve got to hold up for the moment and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it on to future generations.”
Practical Unitarian Universalists
Last Thursday, April 23, was the 217th anniversary of the birth of Adin Ballou in nearby Cumberland, Rhode Island. Now if I were the guest preacher in almost any other Unitarian Universalist church, I would have to take some time to explain just who Adin Ballou was and his place in the evolution of what became Unitarian Universalism. I would further have to take some time to explore the founding, in 1842, of Fraternal Community No. 1 in a corner of Milford, Massachusetts known as the Dale and its evolution into what eventually became the village of Hopedale and Hopedale Unitarian Parish, with a glance along the way at Draper industries and the whole Blackstone Valley region.
However, I feel pretty confident that I don’t need to spend whole lot of time with you on that the details of that story. It is our story, of course, extending from the founding of the community and on into living memory, as some who are today members of what became Hopedale Unitarian Parish grew up in it and worked at Draper or had family who did, or knew many who did. It’s the Hopedale story and more than any church or group within town, it is our story. It’s a fine and worthy story, but what I find most inspiring about it, as your new minister, is that it’s a story which has not yet come to a close but is continuing to unfold, even at this very moment.
So, how did we get here from there and what can that mean for us today? The founders of Hopedale were filled with inspiration and they acted on that with real commitment. I think we would want to ensure that the fine and worthy story of their commitment still has meaning and inspiration for us today. How can we do that?
Firstly, I think it would be helpful to explore just a bit a term used by Adin Ballou and those first Hopedalers. It is familiar to us from our story and we still use it today, but its meaning has changed over time.
I’ve been reading through Practical Christianity, an epitome of Practical Christian Socialism, Ballou’s fundamental work. This “epitome,” meaning summary or abstract, was prepared by Lynn Gordon Hughes, a Unitarian Universalist scholar who has specialized in the study of Adin Ballou and the Hopedale community. I’m grateful for her work. Brother Ballou was a very…generous writer, who would never limit himself to one word when five or six others could be thrown in to make his point. His work is well worth perusing but I wouldn’t call it a light read, so thank Ms. Hughes for putting in a more accessible form.
As you perhaps know, early decades of the 19th Century were a restless age in American religious history. Many churches, sects and utopian communities with religious purposes were founded. Most of them flourished for a short time then faded away. Hopedale was one of the few that survived, though as we know, to do so it changed its original organization from a fraternal community to a business and a recognized township, while its religious vision became the Unitarian Parish of which we today are the stewards.
Just what was Adin Ballou thinking when he organized Fraternal Community No. 1? Most importantly, what did he intend by this term, “practical” in his original manifesto—Practical Christian Socialism? Now “practical” is a word we use today and know what we intend by it, but I think to Ballou and his followers, it was a far more powerful concept, and I believe it could carry some real inspiration for the Hopedale Parish of 2020.
For us, “practical” is a workaday word. Think of how we use it. “While not sporty or glamorous, the mini-van is a practical motor vehicle for a family.” “It wasn’t elegant or beautiful, but we found a practical way to get the job done.” How about what we’re doing, right now? “This ZOOM thing is a practical way for us to get together when we can’t gather in person. It’s not the greatest, it’s not what we really desire, but it’s practical.” (And by the way, it’s so practical, now that we know how to use it, we’re going to add it to our regular parish toolbox. As long as there’s a desire for them, I will continue to host our Wednesday evening and Tuesday noon ZOOM INs. We now know how to cope with the occasional Sunday service cancellation due to bad weather, and so forth.). Maybe not the best, maybe not what we really wish, but it gets the job done; it’s practical for us
Now here is a part of what I quoted earlier from Brother Ballou, “The word practical denotes that the essential Principles… are of universal application to human relations and conduct; are such as imperatively require of all individuals and all societies… divine rectitude in their conduct and divine order in their relations.” For Ballou and the original Hopedalers, “practical” was a deep, thorough and all-encompassing way of life, far more than just something to get the job done. As did all utopians, Ballou conceived and planned a complete system of life ranging from individual spiritual practice to the daily work of the community to national, even world, political systems. In the case of Hopedale, those national and world shaping visions meant temperance, abolition and pacifism, just to name three important issues of the day.
In today’s sense of the word, we might think of practical in that very deep sense as more like, “practicing,” as when someone describes themselves as a practicing Roman Catholic or a practicing Jew. Someone who names themselves in that way is not just taking up their religion as if it were a tool or a procedure to get a job done; it’s in no way a temporary or casual commitment. For such as person, to be a practicing Roman Catholic or Jew or Christian is a total way of life, as it was for those original Hopedalers. They gave it their all and it was not, at first, easy. At the time the Dale was described as “an overgrown farm that had no apparent promise.” They struggled in many ways. Ballou himself wrote, of those early years, “My hope was too large and my economic judgement too small.” Ballou’s idealistic vision never wavered; however, even as the changes took place that stabilized the finances and future of the community, he was disappointed that his vision for practical Christian socialism was not more widely shared as the years progressed.
Although theologically very different from the institutional churches of the establishment, Adin Ballou and the Hopedalers were nonetheless grounded very firmly in a biblically informed Christian faith. As we know, contemporary Unitarian Universalism, even here in Hopedale, is far more inclusive and diverse than ever Brother Ballou, freethinker that he was, would recognize. As inheritors and stewards of the Hopedale story, how might we today, in our more diverse fashion, draw inspiration from that witness? What could it mean for us, here in 2020, to be practical Unitarian Universalists—and by that, I mean the deeper sense I explored earlier? What could it mean for us to be “practicing Unitarian Universalists?”
Well, diverse as we are, it means for one thing that we cannot simply rely exclusively on a biblical grounding for such a practice, even one rather liberally interpreted, along with plenty of room for science and respect for the validity of other religions. It will not be as easy as following the 24 Essential Divine Principles that Adin Ballou laid out for his followers in great and complete detail. It will be more wide ranging and more attuned to personal beliefs than he might recognize and will place far more responsibility on the individual to craft their own faith path.
Even though we share a common dedication to our own version of Fraternal Community No. 1, here in 2020, we also know there can be many ways to think about this, many ways to approach it; different starting points, different paths each may take along the way. What, then, might be something we can hold in common? I like to think not so much of any particular fact or belief, but something more like the essence that Ballou had in mind, a certain shared energy, a certain shared quality of one’s commitment. I quoted earlier the words of the protean and provocative thinker, Bernard Shaw, who was no particular friend of Christianity or of any religion—at least, not all the time. “This is the true joy in life–that [of] being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one. I want to be thoroughly used up when I die. For the harder I work the more I live. I rejoice in life for its own sake. Life is no brief candle to me. It’s a sort of splendid torch which I’ve got to hold up for the moment and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it on to future generations.”
It would not be a bad thing to believe that we here in 2020 have taken a torch, a flame of inspiration from the founders of Hopedale and understand that it is that very flame with which we light our chalice every Sunday. And we want to make it burn as brightly possible for as long as it is entrusted to us and that we will pass it along to future generations. It is for this we are here.
May it be so.
