The Seven Sermons of Unitarian Universalism is a fantastic course for adult lifespan faith development created by my friend Mark Richards during a course we took together in UU Religious Education at Harvard Divinity School in the Fall of 2006. The idea behind the course is to have a group of people discuss seven important sermons in the history of Unitarian Universalism and in the process encounter some important theological and historical concepts and events that shaped this religious movement. As Mark tells it, describing his course:

The history of any religious denomination is a history of ideas. In liberal denominations, the stream of ideas represents a continuous re-interpretation of the human experience. It is always valuable to return to the source of those ideas, to read the words as they were written and to seek new meaning in them in light of current circumstances. This course is a series of facilitated conversations focusing on the writings of seven individuals who were key to the development of current Unitarian Universalist thinking. Of course, not all voices are represented by single works of seven people, but hopefully they represent some seminal thinking on ideas important to the formulation of Unitarian Universalist thought.

I am offering this course at Pathways Church during the 2009-2010 church year with Mark’s permission.  Because one of the sermons Mark included in the original course design is very hard to find, I substituted Forrest Church’s sermon The Cathedral of the World.  Other UU’s, ministers, theologians and lay people alike may argue for what sermons should be included in a course like this, but I think that is the point.

Here are the links to the sermons I am using this year:

1. Oct. 4, 2009 - “A Treatise on Atonement” by Hosea Ballou

also most of it can be found here: http://www.danielharper.org/treatise.htm

A transcribed section from Universalism in America by  Ernest Cassara, ed. (Boston: Skinner House, 1984), pp. 95–105 where he publishes a big chunck of the text of  Treatise on Atonement by Hosea Ballou

2. Nov. 1. 2009 – “Unitarian Christianity” by William Ellery Channing

3. Dec. 6, 2009 – “The Divinity School Address” by Ralph Waldo Emerson

4. Feb. 7, 2010 - “The Transient and the Permanent in Christianty” - Theodore Parker

5. March 7, 2010 – Christian Charity: A Doctrinal Sermon for Universalists by Olympia Brown

6. May 9, 2010 – “Unitarianism and Humanism” by John Dietrich

7. June 6, 2010 – “The Cathedral of the World” by Forrest church

The three sermons by Channing, Emerson and Parker can be found together in the book Three Prophets of Religious Liberalism, edited (and with commentary) by Conrad Wright.