FAMOUS UUs: PT Barnum & Greta Gerwig
Sermon | August 27, 2023 | Lisa Jebsen
Based on conversations with some of you, I think it’s safe to say that we love to discover famous UUs. This is a natural human trait – seeking out commonalities. Especially when those connections might support and justify our own beliefs. Given how much we sometimes struggle to explain Unitarian Universalism to others, there’s a certain comfort in being able to point to people like Sylvia Plath, Rod Serling, Sophia Lyon Fahs, Francis Ellen Watkins Harper among so many others. Today I’m happy to tell you about two more. Now, while writing this sermon, I wasted a lot of time beating my head against the wall, trying to weave these stories together. Finally I gave in and resigned myself to keeping their stories separate. And that’s OK!
Phineas Taylor Barnum was born on July 5, 1810 in Bethel, CT and despite the fact that he was not a professional theologian, he was quite religious. During his lifetime, Universalism was estimated to be the fourth largest denomination in the US. Thanks to his museum in New York and traveling circus, Barnum was one of the wealthiest, most famous men in the world around the time of the Civil War. Connecticut History dot org describes him this way:
…one of the greatest entertainment entrepreneurs in history. His traveling shows, museums, and world-famous circus helped him amass a multi-million-dollar fortune on his way to becoming personal friends with such iconic figures as Abraham Lincoln, Queen Victoria of England, and Mark Twain. His inventive marketing campaigns solidified his standing as the father of modern advertising and showmanship.
From today’s perspective, many of his tactics and exhibits are problematic at best and criminal, exploitative and downright racist at worst. I like to think that if he were living today, he would have a much more UU approach to his offerings, but obviously, we’ll never know.
What I find heartening are his actions later in life. For example, Barnum was quite the philanthropist. He regularly gave to the Universalist Church and helped to found Tufts University in Boston. Originally Tufts was a Universalist school with a seminary. Although it is now independent “Jumbo” (the namesake of the famous elephant from his circus days) remains their mascot.
Before his death on April 7, 1891, like other Universalists at the time, fought for the abolition of slavery. In fact, he entered the world of politics as a state representative in Connecticut for the specific purpose of fighting for the ratification of the 13th amendment. He wanted to hold office so that he could personally vote for this action.
In his sermon about PT Barnum Rev. Dr. Joshua Snyder at the First Unitarian Church of Wilmington Delaware gives this valuable insight:
Toward the end of his life, Barnum started to atone for some of his past excesses. He was a prolific author. His favorite subject was himself and his life. He wrote a book on hoaxes and how to figure them out, such as séances. And one of the subjects that he writes about is his Universalist faith. In our modern reading today, Barnum talks about the love of God as the foundation of the New Testament. Certainly that can be seen in passages such as the one I read from first John. He believed that every soul was a child of God, connected to God by God’s love. This was a fairly sophisticated statement of Universalism at the time. Also impressive in Barnum’s pamphlet is his use of the Bible. He believed that rather than picking out specific bible verses and flinging them at each other in some sort of scriptural titfortat, that what he looked to was the general trend of the Bible’s teaching. Again few believers even today take such a well thought out view of the biblical text. To him this pointed to a God that was ever loving and forgiving…
And it is here that we come to the heart of Universalism really: that God loves us all. That is what the author of First John says, and that is really the centerpiece of Universalism. Heaven is not a place up in the sky; it is a status of our heart, mind, and body right here and right now. So too would be hell. The religious life, then, is lived perfecting and striving to make our life and especially the lives of those around us, resemble heaven more so than hell. One would think that this doctrine would argue against taking a mummified monkey’s body and putting a fish’s tale on it, and charging people money to see your strange concoction, but apparently it didn’t for Barnum. The monkey/fish thing was called the “Feejee Mermaid” and it was one of his most famous exhibits. But Barnum’s point in this morning’s reading is still a good one: religion is about the spiritual legacy we leave behind. Ultimately that is what we are all striving to do. Barnum’s legacy no doubt is a mixed bag, but I dare say most of us will leave a mixed bag of a legacy behind us.
I’d like to close this portion of my sermon with this quote attributed to PT Barnum – and no it’s not “there’s a sucker born every minute.” There is no actual evidence that he ever said that. No, I’m talking about this quote with sort of touches on our conversation about the word evangelize we had last Sunday…
“Without promotion, something terrible happens: NOTHING.”
I am firmly in the camp of PT Barnum regarding this as it applies to UUism. We must evangelize, promote, shout from the rooftops the proud history and good works of UUism if we care about its survival here in Midland, the Permian Basin and around the world.
Although one could debate if we can fully claim PT Barnum since he was decidedly Christian and his fellow Unitarians did not join forces with Universalists during his lifetime, we can unequivocally claim Greta Gerwig as “one of us.”
Rev. Joanna Fontaine Crawford from Live Oak UU Church in Cedar Park, TX has this to say about Barbie – the smash hit written and directed by Greta Gerwig’s:
Yes, I absolutely think you should see it. I just preached about how Unitarian Universalism is a transgressive religion, and this is a movie in which there are two worlds with very different norms, and what happens when those norms are turned inside out?
Not bad for a movie that some might dismiss as a dumb story about a doll ! Rev. Crawford continues:
… it is of no surprise to me that the writer/director, Greta Gerwig, was raised Unitarian Universalist…
Part of being a Unitarian Universalist, in my opinion, is about loving the questions, loving the quest for meaning, and when we find answers, holding them loosely, knowing that we may receive new information and new insights that change those answers.
Gerwig was born August 4, 1983 – she just celebrated her 40th birthday! She grew up in Sacramento, CA where her family belonged to the UU Society of Sacramento. In fact, her home church was one of the settings in her film Frances Ha – the 2013 semi autobiographical film about a young woman’s pursuit of a living space of her own.
It seems that her career as a filmmaker was an indirect one. As a teen, she studied ballet and fencing and set out to get a college degree in musical theatre but ended up getting one in English and Philosophy.
Gerwig’s film career started to take form with her work on independent films where she worked mostly as an actor. Eventually she was also dabbling as a director and screenwriter. From those humble beginnings, she worked her way up to bigger projects like Lady Bird and Little Women which both earned nominations for the Academy Award for Best Picture. Lady Bird received Academy Award nominations for Best Director and Best Original Screenplay, and Little Women was nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay.
Going back to her connection to UUism, from her 2013 interview with UU World, “Greta Gerwig, UU film star” she spoke about her connection to her home church.
I was born into the UU community. My parents were married [at the UU Society of Sacramento], and I had my “naming ceremony” in 1983 with the then-minister Ted Webb. My parents ended up leaving the church for a time in the 1990s but have since returned. My mom likes to say that having a time of a “walkabout” is almost part of being a Unitarian. I think religion has always been something that has occupied me as a person, and Unitarianism is the most complete expression of my multiple and, at times, contradictory thoughts about the spiritual life. I think the openness of the community allows for a greater variety of personal faith and ideas. It isn’t oppressively open, but generously so.
She continues that the elements of UUism that most resonate with her are…
… a gentleness and equanimity that expresses itself through the church that I think is incredibly rare and should be the cornerstone of any spiritual or religious practice. I love how open the church is, but that it also provides the structure and community of religion. I think I keep returning to a UU church again and again because it resonates with something deep inside of me that feels that all I really know is that I don’t know. Unitarian Universalism is the best place for me to experience the fullness of that sentiment of not knowing.
It will be great fun to keep an eye on the career of this gifted artist. According to her talent agent, Jeremy Barber, she had been “looking to move beyond the small-scale dramas she was known for,” and that her ambition was to be a “big studio director.” It definitely seems that she is well on her way to achieving that goal – Barbie is the first time a woman has solo-directed a film that grosses a billion dollars. She shows no signs of slowing down. Recent reports show her work on the screenplay for the upcoming live-action version of Snow White and that she’s been hired by Netflix to write and direct two film adaptations of C. S. Lewis’ The Chronicles of Narnia. The latter project is particularly intriguing, given the overt Christian references in the source material, it will be interesting to see how it is handled by a UU.
Although I said at the beginning of this that I couldn’t find an artful way to weave these two stories together – but that’s not really true. In learning just a bit about PT Barnum and Greta Gerwig, I am delighted to see how these fellow UUs have found ways in their lives to reflect our principles. I look forward to exploring more famous UUs with you in the future.
SOURCES
https://universalistchristian.net/universalist-theology/p-t-barnum-why-i-am-a-universalist/
https://firstuuwilm.org/files/FamousUnitarianUniversalistsPTBarnum2-27-11.pdf
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greta_Gerwig
https://www.uuworld.org/articles/gerwig-uu-film-star