a new vision of Universalism

I am one of those old fashioned religious liberals that has a high regard for the teachings of Jesus and a low regard for many of the teachings of the historic Christian Church. It occurs to me that Jesus was more interested in getting "heaven" into people, and while the Church has made getting people people into heaven central to its mission. Heaven was for second Temple Jews a mystic state of "being in God", and it became in the centuries that followed a place to go after we died. While followers of Jesus yearned for the realm of God, where the beatitudes would be realized in human interrelatedness, the Church saw fulfillment is an eternal bliss to come.

American Universalism was born in the context of the American revolution, and it rejected the notion an aristocracy of souls who had already been selected for salvation. God's love included all, and all would be saved. But the 19th century Universalists did not wrestle with the nature of salvation, to be saved was to go to heaven, and heaven was in the words of that old wobbly song "we'll have pie in the sky, in the sweet bye and bye."

Its otherworldly visions of salvation have had less appeal among religious liberals in the twentieth century than they did in previous centuries. Unitarianism which placed ethical living central to becoming "whole" created a way of being religious that is a modern version of "putting heaven into people." But eventually, Unitarianism with its "salvation by character" has revealed its shadow; self reliance became relationship denying self sufficiency, and progressive character development has became the self indulgence of self help fads and the novelty of new "spirituality's." Religious liberalism is being renewed by an emphasis on "salvation through quality relationships ." Can we be saved, that is can we become "whole" alone?

William Schultz writes: We affirm that every one of us is held in Creation's hand - a part of the interdependent cosmic web - and hence strangers need not be enemies; that no one is saved until we All are saved where All means the whole of Creation.

I find Schultz's affirmation to contain a new vision of Universalism, one that goes beyond the works righteousness of 19th century Unitarianism, and the problematic "pie in the sky" promise of 19th century Universalism. Creation's promise is yearning to be fulfilled.