Ann’s Talk on James Luther Adams and the Five Smooth Stones

May 19, 2019

Has anyone here today wondered why we have a saucer with five
rocks in it on the altar? These rocks are symbols which are a big deal
to UU’s. Just this week, in his newspaper column in the village, Rev.
Walz referred to the five smooth stones. This morning I am going to
tell you about what they stand for. They have to do with James
Luther Adams’s ideas about liberal religion. Adams was an
intellectual, and probably the most influential UU theologian of the
last century because he taught so many of the people who became
UU ministers. His writing is not an easy read, but I am going to try to
make sense of the life experiences which influenced his thinking and
talk about the meaning of the five stones which are associated with
his work.
James Luther Adams — “JLA,” as he came to be affectionately known
— was born in Ritzville, Wash., in 1901, the son of James Carey
Adams, an itinerant Baptist preacher and farmer, and Leila Mae
Bartlett. When his father, who later joined the Plymouth Brethren,
went on his Sunday preaching circuit, young Luther (as he was called
in the family) often went along, taking his violin to accompany the
hymns. His childhood experience of fundamentalist Christianity and of
farm life deeply influenced his development, and became a source of
the story-telling for which he later became renowned. At age 16,
when his father fell seriously ill, he dropped out of high school in
order to help support the family. Among other jobs, he worked for the
Northern Pacific Railroad, acquired speed shorthand, and soon rose to
the position of secretary to the regional superintendent. To his boss’s
astonishment, he turned down the lucrative offer of promotion in

order to further his education. In 1920 he entered the University of
Minnesota, while continuing to work nights in the railroad yards.
After a phase in which he radically rejected all religion, Adams came
to recognize it as his passion and ministry as his calling. He entered
Harvard Divinity School in 1924, with the intention of becoming a
Unitarian minister. (Did you know that Harvard was founded by
Unitarians?) In his autobiographical essay of 1939, he recounted his
transitions from the fundamentalism of his youth, to “scientific
humanism”.
He spent a lot of time in Germany so he could study with noted
German theologians in the 1930’s and was there to see the rise of
Nazism. He once was at a Nazi parade in Heidelberg horrified by all
the military bands, kids in brown shirts and the goose-stepping
soldiers. He struck up a conversation with a stranger in the crowd. As
he defended his anti-Nazi views, the crowd got bigger and angrier.
Finally, he found himself seized from behind by the elbows and
marched out of the crowd, down an alley where the man who had
taken him, said, “Don’t you know not to attend Nazi parades or speak
to anyone there? They were ready to knock you down.” His rescuer
was an unemployed workman who was not a Nazi and who invited
Adams to have dinner with him that night.
Adams’s personal encounters with Nazism, including being detained
for questioning by the Gestapo, deepened his sense of global political
and cultural crisis, a crisis he believed demanded spiritual renewal
and social-ethical commitment. Does this sound a little a little like
what we are dealing with in today’s world? It is this sense of
historical urgency and engagement that underlies one of the most
characteristic expressions of his thought…the five smooth stones of
liberal religion.

Adams greatly loved the story of David and Goliath. The young David
was able to conquer Goliath by using a sling and five smooth stones
he picked from a stream bed. Adams condensed his thinking about
the importance of liberal religion as a counter to the global and
political crisis he witnessed into five ideas about liberal religion, called
the five smooth stones.
The first stone is that revelation is continuous. Everything we know
about our faith is not in one book like the Bible or the Koran. We are
all always learning. New truths are revealed by science and thought
almost every day. This information can cause fear in people when
they sense the world is changing faster than they can keep up with it.
There is a tremendous desire to keep things like they always have
been and possibly to resent those who see a need for change. We live
longer lives now than in past decades. UU’s know that the only
constant is change and our religion must keep up with what we know
to be true. Mac McPherson, a retired Methodist minister who was a
member of our church said once that if your religion disagreed with
science, you needed to find a new religion.
The second stone states that relations are consensual, never coerced.
The first thing that came to my mind when I remembered this was
how relevant this was to today’s “Me, too” movement. No one
person should have all the power in a relationship. All relationships
should be voluntary and chosen. People need to feel free to join and
leave relationships when they need to. As Jessica York wrote,
“Unitarian Universalism is a living faith. We think that people should
be free to believe what they must believe — the truth of their life
experiences ——instead of professing a belief in what we are told to
believe. This is what we mean when we say ours is a "creedless"
religion.

When we disagree, we need to talk things out even if we end up
agreeing to disagree. But because of the covenants we make to each
other, we stay connected and stand together when need arises.
Adams was a great believer in consensual relationships and was a
member of many organizations. Harvey Cox, one of Adams’s students
said that the phrase “By their groups you shall know them” was his
most characteristic teaching. Because he saw the failure of religion
and educational institutions to thwart Nazism in the 30’s, he was very
interested in building relationships…for this reason, you could say he
believed in an unpopular thing, “organized religion.”
The third stone is that good must be made real by our actions. Adams
told of one man he spoke to at one of the confessing churches in
hiding from the Nazis. The man said, “If only a thousand of us had
stepped forward and worked ten years ago, this would not be
happening.” We work to make literally heaven on earth for ourselves
and others. A student of Adams, George Beach, wrote in a critique of
a book called American Fascists that he recollected Adams’s warning
went something like this: “When the enemies of freedom come to
‘rescue’ us from the regnant social chaos, they will not be wearing
brown shirts and hailing de Fuhrer; they will come waving the flag and
clutching the Bible—seemingly innocent symbols of American
culture.” Adams was concerned about the weakness in liberal
institutions because he saw they were powerless in the face of
Nazism. In other words, as George Beach wrote, if we are only
liberal-minded secularists with a sprinkling of spirituality who are
alarmed by Pat Robertson and Company, we will fade into
ineffectuality.
Along this same idea the Rev. Mark Walz who was installed as the
settled minister in the Village Church last week wrote that he was
going to stop worrying about who was elected president:

“In politics, we seem to be always searching for someone who will save
our economy, save our infrastructure, save our military, or save our
privilege. What we could really use is someone to save us from
ourselves.
The honest answer to our problems is deeper than the superficial
notion of needing some-one else in charge. The simple truth is that we
are no longer in charge. We have forfeited our responsibilities. We
have abandoned our core values and are living with chronic anxiety
and despair.
We obviously no longer believe in a ‘government of the people, by the
people, for the people. If we did, we would demand it at the ballot
box. We no longer believe that all are created equal with inalienable
rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Or “love our
neighbor as our self.” If we did, we would be demanding remedy for
the health, education, and opportunities of all of us, our families and
communities.
We don’t need new strategies. We need to infuse boldness and
courage into our lives. We need to transform our hearts and let them
catch fire again. We must reclaim our religious and constitutional
values and give them new life. Salvation will not come from without, it
must come from within.”
Perhaps if a thousand of us were committed enough to follow through
on this, we could start to change things that interfere with the good
that needs to happen for everyone.
The fourth stone is that we are obligated to work for a just and loving
community. Good things don’t just happen. We are the change
agents. We stand with LGBTQ people when they are treated unfairly.
We work to help migrants stranded at our border. We want women

to have equal rights and control over their own bodies. We know that
good and evil are not otherworldly things happening outside of our
control. We don’t need to praise Jesus for good things which happen
to us or blame the devil for the bad. We don’t feel that God has a
plan so we can just sit back and let things happen. I used to have a
CD by a UU minister, Amy Carol Webb, which had a song called “No
Hands But Ours.” God has no hands but ours.
The fifth stone is that resources are available to bring good things
about. This is the hopeful stone. We think change is possible. We
think we can be a part of making this a better world. Adams once
wrote that “God is the power of the community.” We work best
when we work together to tackle hard problems. There are loads of
stories about what can be achieved when people work together to do
good. We continue to hope and believe in the power of the people.
I will end with a story which illustrates Adams’ approach to problem
solving.
Have you ever noticed how when some churches have a problem with
some matter of theology or perhaps a minister, they end up starting a
new church because they can’t agree? I once asked my sister, who is
a fundamentalist, about a problem some church was having. She said,
“Oh, they will just split up.” As if that was the way to deal with a
church problem.
This story about Dr. Adams illustrates the way UU’s deal with
problems. Maybe you have heard it before. While he was teaching at
the Meadville Lombard Theological School which is right near the
University of Chicago, he was on the board of the First Unitarian
Society of Chicago which was right across the street from the School.

I don’t know if you are aware, but the south side of Chicago is largely
a black neighborhood (It’s where Obama lived.), and right in the
middle of it is the University and right beside is the Meadville
Lombard School and across the street from that is the Unitarian
Society. It was 1948 and race was a very controversial matter.
The minister of the church and Dr. Adams wanted to live their faith by
integrating the church. They took the matter to the board of the
church. Most of the board agreed, but several disagreed. One man
said, "Your new program is making desegregation into a creed," he
said. "You are asking everyone in our church to say they believe
desegregating, or inviting, even recruiting people of color to attend
church here is a good way to tackle racism. What if some members
don't believe this?"
They argued until the early hours. Finally, Dr. Adams, who
remembered he should be listening instead of arguing, asked the man
who had voiced the strongest objection, "What do you say is the
purpose of this church?"
The Board member who opposed opening the church to people of
color finally replied. "Okay, Jim. The purpose of this church is to get
hold of people like me and change them."
The First Unitarian Society of Chicago successfully desegregated.