Sermon: “Dear Mr. Isaacson, Ben Franklin was Unitarian”
A Sermon by Charles Blustein Ortman, September 19, 2003
To begin, I just have to say what a pleasure it was to read Walter Isaacson’s Benjamin Franklin: An American Life. This weekend marks the tenth in a row that it has been listed on the top ten book list in the New York Times Book Review. Just so you know, I was given the book as a gift this summer from your own Board of Trustees.
Like many people, I had known a bit about Benjamin Franklin from studying American History in school and from the iconic, commercial, cartoonish character of him that we sometimes see in the media. Before reading the book, though, I had no idea of the breadth and width of Franklin as a writer, a scientist and inventor, as a columnist, as a diplomat and statesman, and as a major influence in the development of the American character. He was many other things as well, including a prankster, a humorist and, perhaps, even a bit of a philanderer, (although there is evidence that his reputation in this last regard was considerably overstated, and probably much the result of his own invention).
One thing I had always thought though, was that Benjamin Franklin had been a Unitarian. But there was nothing in the book to encourage that thought. Several times, Mr. Isaacson related to issues regarding religion, theology, morality, or philosophy and I’d think, here it comes – Franklin was Unitarian. But, no! The word Unitarian was never mentioned. “Dear Mr. Isaacson,” I began an imaginary letter in my head several times, “Mr. Franklin was indeed Unitarian!” But I get ahead of myself . . .
Just who was Benjamin Franklin? For the fuller answer, minus one crucial element perhaps, I highly recommend the book. In brief Ben Franklin was the tenth of twelve children born to Abiah and Josiah Franklin. He was born in Boston on January 17, 1706. He would die 84 years later in Philadelphia on April 17, 1790. Between those dates he lived a life of mythic proportion, and so understandably he has been one of our country’s greatest legendary figures.
There are many elements of his life that are commonly known, and many more that heretofore have been known mostly only by scholars. Beginning in the area of education, many folks know that Franklin was self-taught and yet went on to create the University of Pennsylvania. Not many people know that in his first year of formal studies, he rose to the top of his class at the Latin Prepatory School in Boston, and that then, for no apparent reason, his father refused to pay his tuition to Harvard, ending his formal education.
So Franklin taught himself to write. He would begin by first reading articles and essays. Then a few days later, without looking at the text, he would recreate the essay using his own words. Then he would often rewrite the text again, this time in poetic verse, so that he could improve his use of vocabulary. Finally, he would take the poems and from them try to recreate the essays. He became, of course, one of the most famous and published writers of his day.
Because of his writing skills and his scientific imagination, his discipline, and intellectual prowess, Franklin would eventually receive honorary doctorates from all the highest ranking colleges on both sides of the Atlantic. The German philosopher, Immanuel Kant, would refer to him as the, “new Prometheus.” Other historians would equate his achievements to those of Galileo and Newton. Those comparisons were probably not too overblown, though they were and still are debated. Many people are familiar with the story of his snatching lightening from the sky with the use of a kite and a key. Some are familiar with the theory he developed (and proved many times over) regarding the common cold and how it is a contagious virus, not something acquired by catching a chill. His prescription for preventing colds, by the way, was exercise and plenty of fresh air. There is an amusing anecdote about how one evening in France, Franklin was forced to share a room and bed with his sometimes friend but mostly nemesis, John Adams. Adams was suffering miserably from a head cold. Franklin insisted, over Adams protests, to sleep with the window open wide to the chilly night air. He did not catch Adam’s cold.
Some are also familiar with the tricks Franklin perpetrated on many friends, secretly employing oil dispersed from a hollow cane to quiet troubled waters. Few are aware that these pranks led to his experiments at sea that eventually led to the discovery of the atomic weight of the elements.
His theories and tests with lightening led to the creation of the lightening rod, which in turn compelled cathedral bishops everywhere to thank both God and Franklin for sparing them from one of their greatest former vulnerabilities. He was responsible for coining much of the language of electricity that is still used today: battery, charge, neutral, condenser, conductor, insulator, and capacitor as well as the concept of electricity as a “single fluid.”
His bifocal glasses and the Franklin wood burning stove are legendary. But, did you know that he also studied the evaporation of gasses, which led to the invention of refrigeration? Based on his theories of mass and water displacement he designed ship hulls that more efficiently passed through narrow canals. He also designed compartmentalized ship hulls for ocean going vessels that reduced the risk of sinking when ships struck or were struck by objects at sea.
In his business and civic life Franklin was and still is widely known as a printer who had a keen interest in politics and in the promotion of the common good for the community, the state, and eventually for the nation. Less known, at least outside of Philadelphia, is the fact that he developed, and nourished many organizations that were the prototypes for our present day voluntary associations. His Junto, a group of Philadelphia tradesmen, was the forerunner of the Rotary Club and other similar groups. He also developed a volunteer fire brigade, the first lending library, and the first colony-controlled militia. All of these organizations were based on Franklin’s belief that we are all here to serve the common good by serving one another.
I mentioned earlier that Dr. Franklin was a self-taught writer. Among his more popular works was his “Poor Richard’s Almanac.” Among his most important writings were his contributions to the Declaration of Independence, and the Constitution of the United States, the peace treaty with England and the accord signed with France after the Revolutionary War.
Over the years Franklin published under a couple dozen pseudonymous names. From Silence Dogood’s playful satirical installments in the Boston Courant in his early years, to Pacificus Secundus’ scathing satire of British military rule, published in London just before the war, Franklin used his wit anonymously to raise the consciousness of his readers.
Just as his scientific and inventive achievements are too numerous to list or even summarize, so, too, are Franklin’s vast accomplishments in statesmanship and diplomacy. To say it frankly, Benjamin Franklin was a pragmatic, democratic republican with a phenomenal capacity to achieve accord in the negotiation of a new nation. His convictions and skills determined not only the international policies and agreements of the United States, but had a great influence in the very creation of the new nation. Franklin believed in the common person and in the common person’s ability to be educated, community minded, and cooperatively self-governed.
It is commonly known that Franklin participated in scripting the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. It is less known that, after Thomas Jefferson wrote the original draft of the Declaration, he walked the document down the hall to be first edited by his esteemed friend, Benjamin Franklin. While it is known that Franklin was a major player in scripting the structure of the constitution, it is less known that a compromise which accommodated a bicameral congress and that saved the Constitutional Convention from imminent failure, was proposed by Franklin. Through Franklin’s role in the creation of America, it can be said that his personal character became a significant part in the formation of the nation’s character.
It is only fitting to mention Franklin’s history regarding racism. In some ways his history mirrored that of the country. He had, in his early years, been a slave owner and had written some very harsh and malicious racial comments. Eventually though, he had, to a considerable extent, transcended his early transgressions, had become an abolitionist, and had written apologies for his earlier comments. I’ve spent a fair amount of our time this morning introducing you to this national treasure on a level, I hope, which for many of you may be informative. Walter Isaacson does so in far greater detail and with far more talent than I. But now I reach the point where I take issue with Mr. Isaacson –the area of religion, which I do not think is of little consequence.
Benjamin Franklin was born into a Calvinistic Puritan family. The predominant orthodox preachers in those days included Cotton Mather and Jonathon Edwards. Mather stood for hellfire and brimstone, while Edwards was the lead figure in the Great Awakening – a movement also characterized by God’s fierce rule rather than God’s loving mercy. Franklin parted ways, if he had ever kept them, with the orthodoxy of his family and of his day, at a very early age.
Even in his early teen years, his religious sensibilities were those of a pragmatist. Things that were effective in business, science or diplomacy were things that worked. Why should religious belief be any different?
Theologically, Franklin was a deist. And so he believed that the loving creator had set the universe in motion – according to certain principles and appreciations – and then left it, lovingly, to run on its own, without intervention or tinkering of any sort. Intervention and tinkering were tools left to humanity to improve itself and to honor the creation and the creator. Social structures and convention, and even physical invention, were, Franklin believed, the way to achieve the religious life. On all this Mr. Isaacson and I agree. Though Isaacson concedes that Franklin was reverent in his own humble and sometimes not so humble way, he states, in various assertions, that Franklin took membership in no particular religious community. To the contrary, I say that he did and the community with which Franklin kept company was Unitarian.
I rest my opinion on the following points: Franklin’s early years were spent in Boston – the hot bed of religious liberalism and the birthplace of Unitarianism in this country. Some of Ben Franklin’s closest associates throughout his life were also Unitarians. Thomas Jefferson and John Adams were among them. While John Adams and Franklin were more of a nemesis to each other than they were friends. Adams, who is buried under the floor of First Parish Unitarian Church in Quincy, Massachusetts, was a formidable figure in Franklin’s life, and vice versa. Thomas Jefferson, on the other hand, for whom a Unitarian Universalist District is named in the Carolina southeast, looked up to and admired Franklin. These three men worked together through the years, including a considerable period of time while serving as ambassadors in France. It is not at all unlikely that they shared conversation of a religious nature. Another one of Franklin’s long time close friends and confidants was Joseph Priestly. Priestly discovered the process of oxygenation of the blood in the human body. The two men shared a deep interest in the sciences. It is more than likely that they also shared as deep an interest in religion. You might be familiar with Priestly from Unitarian history, as well. When he immigrated to America from England, he did so as a Unitarian minister. He founded First Unitarian Church in Philadelphia, Franklin’s hometown.
These associations are hardly coincidental. Still they don’t meet the test of placing Benjamin Franklin within a Unitarian congregation. That information can be found though, in the records of Essex Street Chapel in London. Earl Morse Wilbur, renowned Unitarian historian, reports that not only was Franklin in attendance at the first Unitarian service held in England on April 17, 1774, but that he had a long standing friendship with the minister there, Theopholis Lindsey, and that, “he continued to worship here as long as he remained in England.” (Wilbur) In his own autobiography, Franklin does not mention this connection directly. But in a letter written to a clergy person in 1790 defining his theology he places himself in the Unitarian camp by stating, “…I have, with most of the present Dissenters in England, some doubts as to [Jesus’] divinity…” I think that I offer here, a reasonable alternative to the claims not made by Walter Isaacson and that I establish reasonable grounds for arguing that Ben Franklin was indeed Unitarian. But then that begs yet another question: So What? What does it matter if Franklin was Unitarian or not?
I think it really does matter, not because Ben Franklin was really something and that makes us really something, too. And while it does matter that Franklin likely had an influence on the development of early Unitarianism, I think perhaps it matters even more that Unitarian thought had an impact on Franklin’s development. He was fortified by the same principles that we uphold today – of an unbending confidence in the inherent worth and dignity and potential in every person, and of a vast appreciation of our interconnectedness within the larger whole, the common good. Unitarianism, and its democratic religious impulse was a part, at least a part, of what gave Benjamin Franklin a vision for this democratic nation – and if not in origin then at least in affirmation. To some extent – and I suggest to a considerable one–many of the higher aspirations and values of this country were incubated within a Unitarian environment. And again we might ask, so what? Isn’t that all very nice, but what does all of that back then have to do with us now? The answer could be this: this new nation – even the world – needed Unitarianism then to nurture the seeds of democracy. And Unitarianism was there. But who would have known? Franklin didn’t make it known. His biographers haven’t made it known and so the connections have largely gone unidentified. But how might it have been different had these connections been known? I have to think that there would be more than a few hundred thousand Unitarian Universalists in the country at this time. And I have to think that some of those larger ideals and larger aspirations with which this nation began, could be more in the center of our public policy and national character today.
It would have made a difference, I have to think, in the history of our nation, had it been known that Franklin and the other forebears, the major players in those formative days were part of a religious tradition that believed more in the potential for human good than it did an outmoded and controlling ideology of the depravity of human nature. So what does this mean for us? What does it mean in an era when social progress is making an about-face? When environmental security is endangered? When international diplomacy has been cashed in on for far too simple military solutions to complex global problems? It means that we can’t wait for Walter Isaacson or other historians to get it right. We do need to take our rightful place at the writing desk of the history that is being recorded today. It’s time that the world knows that there is a religious tradition – based in reason, and tolerance and freedom of conscience. It’s time the world knows that there is a religious way based in a common belief that all of humanity is sacred, that none of us are saved unless all of us are saved, and that none are more deserving of life’s bounty than any other.
It’s time for the world to know that there is a spiritual path, a religious tradition that leads toward justice for all and just not for a saved few. Walter Isaacson didn’t know about that part of Benjamin Franklin’s life and so it wasn’t included in the biography. And so the question I leave you with this morning is this, who will know about the religious impulses and values of your life? If your biography were to be written, would the author be able to find the whole story? Who will know that story, unless you who make it known? And doesn’t the world need to know? Doesn’t the world need to know about this religious message, now!
|
