Unitarian Universalist Meeting of South Berkshire

January 21, 2007

“Joseph Priestley: Combustible Theologian”

Rev. Kathy Duhon

When my son Will was five years old, he had a well-child doctor’s visit with Denny Tresp, our beloved pediatrician, who died tragically last fall in a tree cutting accident. Dr. Tresp asked Will what he wanted to be when he grew up, which was not idle conversation, but rather a doctor’s entrée into whether a child is hopeful, interested, thinking critically, open, aware. It was a useful question in all these ways, undoubtedly, but probably mostly because it put a child at ease – Dr. Tresp was the least scary children’s doctor ever.

Five year old Will surprised me by answering that he wanted to be a priest or a scientist. Denny, without missing a beat, a man who had considered the priesthood himself before settling into the science of medicine, reassured Will that he could be both. Pierre Teillhard de Chardin had been both a priest and a scientist, he explained. Well, I knew about that wild theologian, but what a surprise that Dr. Tresp did, and that he took a small child’s interests seriously and answered him well.

Will, in his senior year at college, is not on track for the priesthood, nor for science, but today’s sermon reminds me that there was a man before Teillhard de Chardin who was both a minister and a scientist – our own Joseph Priestley. He was a Unitarian, English and American, an 18^th century theologian, philosopher and scientist. And not just your avid amateur type scientist either, for he discovered oxygen, ammonia, carbon monoxide, hydrogen sulfide, and other gases. He “wrote the book” on electricity at the time, with Ben Franklin’s encouragement. He also wrote an important essay which influenced philosopher Jeremy Bentham, called “First Principles of Government and the Nature of Political, Civil, and Religious Liberty”. It seems like we need Priestley today. His essay was about freedom, civil liberty, and he supported the American and French Revolutions, as an Englishman.

Joseph Priestley was born in 1733 to a working class family, the oldest of six children. When his mother died, he was raised by a liberal aunt. The family hoped he would become a Presbyterian minister, and he shared the dream of ministry, but soon found that he was questioning certain aspects of Christianity. He was quite the scholar, and great at languages, especially the ones important for understanding the Bible.

He prepared for the ministry as a nonconformist at a liberal academy, becoming a questioning Presbyterian minister. His first ministry did not go well, because he stuttered and was radical in his beliefs. To help support himself, he picked up extra work teaching. His next ministry went better, and he also started a school. He was soon hired as a tutor at Warrington Academy and awarded an honorary degree. Priestley was the first to teach the subjects of modern history and the sciences at a school. He also built a laboratory at home and began experimenting with electricity. Soon, without any real scientific training, he was made a fellow of the Royal Society, an honor as a scientist.

This was during the time when he met Ben Franklin, who was in England, and published a difficult text on electricity. He decided to also publish one that was less complicated and more for the popular reader, which meant that he taught himself to draw with perspective in order to illustrate it. So, then he wrote a book about drawing. And to top it off, since he made many mistakes in the process, he discovered the use of rubber for an eraser of lead-pencil marks. He was the one to coin the word “rubber”, since he used this substance to rub out his drawing mistakes.

Next in his life, he married Mary Wilkinson, when he was 29. He was still a minister, and became ordained as a Dissenting minister. He went to serve a new chapel, in Leeds. During this time, he started experimenting in chemistry, partly because they lived next door to a Brewery and he was curious about the gases. His work changed the way air was understood, from being just one substance to a multitude, and his experiments influenced the whole way chemistry was taught. He invented carbonated water, published the finding, got a nice award, and gave sparkling water to his friends as a refreshing drink. So you can blame Priestley for Coca Cola. He also discovered that air is restored by plants and depleted by animals, a precursor to the understanding of the cycle of oxygen and carbon dioxide. Without any formal training and with limited apparatus, he became one of the best chemists of his time. He discovered oxygen, although it was shortly after another man had, Carl Scheele, which Priestley didn’t know about, and Priestley published his findings before Scheele published his, so he tends to get the credit. Priestley also did two political publications during his time at Leeds.

For a short time he was being considered as a naturalist to accompany Captain Cook on his second voyage, but his religious opinions got in the way. He became the librarian to the Earl of Shelburne and the tutor to his son, which provided a good income, and allowed Priestley to continue to write and experiment. After a few years, he left this position to return to the ministry.

He went to Fair Hill, near Birmingham, a liberal church, and he wrote about Christianity from what was becoming a decidedly Unitarian perspective, something still new in England then. In this time, Josiah Wedgwood, master potter, became his beneficiary, giving him funds for his experiments. He published his research on gases. He preached against slavery, early to do so. He joined the Lunar Society, and they were called lunatics because they were interested in natural science and literature – how crazy is that? Benjamin Franklin was a frequent guest of the lunatics. Priestley published his controversial Unitarian theology and interpretation of the Christian scriptures at this point too. This earned him denunciations and attacks.

He supported the French Revolution, also controversial, although he did not go to a dinner celebrating the second anniversary of Bastille Day, which was well attended by folks like him who supported the Revolution. And it was also protested by many with contrary views. Unfortunately the crowd of protesters got out of hand, as well as drank too much, and they sacked and burned the church, his home and laboratory, and the homes of many other dissenters. He escaped with his wife and nothing more than the clothes which they wore. In the fire, he lost all of his valuable library and all of his work, including some unpublished manuscripts. He and his wife escaped to London, about 100 miles away, fearfully traveling only by night. His sons were unable to find work and decided to leave for America. Priestley was even shunned by the fellows of the Royal Society and so he and his wife joined their sons and set sail for America in 1794, at age 61.

When Priestley arrived here, he received letters of welcome as an acclaimed scientist from George Washington, John Adams, and Thomas Jefferson. The family settled in Northumberland, Pennsylvania, where he preached, and he also preached in Philadelphia, where he helped establish the First Unitarian Church in the city in 1796, which was the first church to be called Unitarian in the United States. His writings influenced others and helped to change Kings Chapel in Boston to a Unitarian church, the beginning of the Boston area religious revolution. Later, Thomas Jefferson became his close friend, as we saw in his letters, and also consulted Priestley on the curriculum for the University of Virginia that Jefferson was about to found.

Theologically, Priestley changed over his lifetime. He’d been raised in Calvinism. He early on embraced Arminianism, which challenged the doctrine of predestination, meaning that some are born saved and some are born damned, while Arminianism maintained that free will is important. He then took up Arianism, which comes from the early days of Christianity, and means simply that Jesus is not truly divine. Soon he progressed to Socinianism, which rejected the Trinity and believed that Jesus was God’s revelation, while simply a man. God called Jesus to demonstrate to us what living could really be like at its best. Priestley decided that much of Christian dogma was a corruption, that the original Christianity was actually Unitarian, and that Jesus was not God, nor was the Holy Spirit a separate person of God. Most importantly, he believed in the tolerance for all religious sects and complete religious freedom.

Priestley was ill for the last few years of his life, and yet kept working. The final thing he did, on the last day of his life, up until a half hour before his death, was to edit his latest manuscript with the help of a friend and his son. Then he said, “That is right; I have now done.” He was 70 years old and he put his hand to his face to spare his wife and son from witnessing any last struggles he might have with his old friend oxygen, and then he died. What a way to die.

What a way to live. His mind was open and curious; his heart was dedicated and faithful. With a remarkable work ethic, and a courageous ability to speak the truth, and to advocate for what is right, he impacted a huge swath of society, and his enormous affect is with us still. And not just in erasers and carbonated beverages, but in the struggles for liberty and tolerance, and in the efforts to be faithful to a faith that makes sense, that honors the truth.

Two weeks in a row of greatness explored at our services – can we stand it? Last week we heard about Martin Luther King, Jr., both in this service and at the Interfaith one, and in both places we were treated to examples of other great people who had been influenced by King, or had kept alive the dream. I don’t know about you, but I go away from such tributes both inspired and humbled. Really humbled. What have I done, after all?

And if it wasn’t enough to be humbled by King, a great minister who worked for peace and justice, now we turn to a scientist/minister/theologian/philosopher whose accomplishments live on in so many ways, to inspire and amaze and exhaust us when we think of all that he did. We just walk in his footsteps. Joseph Priestley actually said something that might be useful to us when we think of the greats, like him. He said, “I never read the life of any important person without discovering that he knew more and could do more than I could ever hope to know or do in half a dozen lifetimes.” And where does that leave the rest of us?!

What pebbles we are, tossing hither and yon, or being held back by our fears and our despair. Boredom and laziness, annoyances and stress all take their toll. What pebbles we are. Even Joseph Priestley thought of himself as a pebble when compared to the really important people he’d read. And Martin Luther King, Jr. was probably preaching to himself when he said, “Everybody can be great. Because anybody can serve.” And he went on to say all the stuff you didn’t have to do well or perfectly. He served with “a heart full of grace. A soul generated by love,” as he encouraged others to do, trying not to worry about perfection or all that he wasn’t able to do or know. Joseph Priestley served with a mind on fire and a faith dedicated to truth, trying not to be discouraged by the many times he was forced to begin again, by the attacks he always faced.

And for the benefit of the rest of us pebbles who are not really hoping to be great, but perhaps are inspired enough and not humbled too much so that we will strive to serve in each our own way, I will close with Julia Drury’s piece called “Pebbles”, from our meditation manual.

“I had an idea walking along, looking down at the gravel on the side of the road. Little, tiny things that we do – like writing a poem, a letter – are pebbles. It’s important to get things out there. We don’t know what gifts they are, or what they mean. But other people need them; need us. We don’t have to write a perfect book or the perfect essay. Just put out our pebble, or one-sixtieth of a pebble.

Let the world be a compassionate place;

let the world be a safe place;

let my pile of pebbles grow.”

Amen.