PRACTICING WHAT WE TEACH

The Flaming Chalice

© Cheryll Wallace 2008

If you have attended a Unitarian Universalist church even once there is a good chance you have seen the lighting of the chalice. The flaming chalice, usually a wide lipped cup on a wide base with a flame rising out of the bowl of the cup is the symbol of Unitarian Universalism.  Do you know where it came from?

The History of the Flaming Chalice

The chalice and the flame were brought together as a Unitarian symbol by an Austrian artist, Hans Deutsch, in 1941. Living in Paris during the 1930's Deutsch drew critical cartoons of Adolf Hitler. When the Nazis invaded Paris in 1940, he abandoned all he had and fled to the South of France, then to Spain and finally, with an altered passport, into Portugal . There, he met the Reverend Charles Joy, executive director of the Unitarian Service Committee (USC). The Service Committee was new, founded in Boston to assist Eastern Europeans, among them Unitarians as well as Jews, who needed to escape Nazi persecution. From his Lisbon headquarters, Joy oversaw a secret network of couriers and agents. Charles Joy felt that this new, unknown organization needed some visual image to represent Unitarianism to the world, especially when dealing with government agencies abroad.  Deutsch was most impressed and soon was working for the USC. He later wrote to Joy:

"There is something that urges me to tell you... how much I admire your utter self denial [and] readiness to serve, to sacrifice all, your time, your health, your well being, to help….I am not what you may actually call a believer. But if your kind of life is the profession of your faith---as it is, I feel sure---then religion, ceasing to be magic and mysticism, becomes confession to practical philosophy and---what is more- --to active, really useful social work. And this religion--- with or without a heading---is one to which even a `godless' fellow like myself can say wholeheartedly, Yes!"

The USC was an unknown organization in 1941. This was a special handicap in the cloak-and-dagger world, where establishing trust quickly across barriers of language, nationality, and faith could mean life instead of death. Disguises, signs and countersigns, and midnight runs across guarded borders were the means of freedom in those days. Joy asked Deutsch to create a symbol for their papers "to make them look official, to give dignity and importance to them, and at the same time to symbolize the spirit of our work.... When a document may keep a man out of jail, give him standing with governments and police, it is important that it look important."                                    

Thus, Hans Deutsch made his lasting contribution to the USC and, as it turned out, to Unitarian Universalism. With pencil and ink he drew a chalice with a flame. The flaming chalice design was made into a seal for papers and a badge for agents moving refugees to freedom. "a chalice with a flame, the kind of chalice which the Greeks and Romans put on their altars. The holy oil burning in it is a symbol of helpfulness and sacrifice....“  In time it became a symbol of Unitarian Universalism all around the world.  The story of Hans Deutsch reminds us that the symbol of a flaming chalice stood in the beginning for a life of service. When Deutsch designed the flaming chalice, he had never seen a Unitarian or Universalist church or heard a sermon. What he had seen was faith in action—people who were willing to risk all for others in a time of urgent need. (from http://archive.uua.org/aboutuu/chalice.html

CURRENT UUA  CHALICE	SOME FLAMING CHALICES

 Extension Activities:

1. The next time you are in a Unitarian Universalist church, count the number of flaming chalice designs you see. How many different styles do you find?
2. What does the Flaming Chalice mean to you? If you were going to design a new chalice design, what would it look like and what would each pat of the design symbolize?
3. Design a new symbol for Unitarian Universalism, other than a flaming chalice. Why did you choose that particular symbol?