Page 66 - The International Journal of the Royal Society of Thailand Vol.XIII-2021

The International Journal of the Royal Society of Thailand
Volume XIII – 2021

Manifesto”, endorsing political humanism as a form of religion, alongside such
intellectuals as the philosopher John Dewey. Thomas Mann and the radical minister
got along well, as Caldecott’s letter to Mann on his seventieth birthday in 1945

illustrates:

My dear Dr. Mann: Word has come to me that you have just passed
your seventieth birthday. I could hardly believe it because on several
occasions when I had the opportunity of meeting you, it would seem
to me you were scarcely sixty … I should like to express the hope that
you will live as long as you desire to do so, but not a day longer …
Cordially yours, Ernest Caldecott.

The choice of this minister to perform the baptisms of his four grandchildren
was Thomas Mann’s alone. A letter of April 1942 shows that just before the ceremony,
even Elisabeth Mann did not know into which church her children would be
baptized. She later recounted that they could only tell the minister just before the
ceremony that: “‘You see, we are the children’s parents.’ The minister almost fainted”.

Although Thomas Mann’s insistence on Unitarian baptism was actually an act
of heresy – the Protestant churches of the United States recognized neither the
Unitarian Church nor its non-sacramental ceremonies as Christian – he continually
insisted on the Christian origin and character of Unitarianism. At the crossroads of
the Christian and non-theistic alignment, which the Unitarian Church faces today,
Thomas Mann plainly advocates a liberal Christian orientation. In a great speech at
4
the Library of Congress in 1942, on his novel “Joseph and His Brothers” , Thomas
Mann considered this literary and religious main work of his life in the light of his
religious experience and translated the concept of religion as attentiveness and
obedience: attentiveness to the inner changes of the world, the mutation in the
aspects of truth and right … To live in sin is to live against the spirit, to cling to
the antiquated, obsolete, and to continue to live in it, due to inattentiveness
and disobedience.

4 Joseph and His Brothers (German: Joseph und seine Brüder, is a four-part novel by Thomas Mann, written
over the course of 16 years. Mann retells the familiar stories of Genesis, from Jacob to Joseph (chapters
27–50), setting it in the historical context of the Amarna Period. Mann considered it his greatest work.
The tetralogy consists of: The Stories of Jacob (Die Geschichten Jaakobs; written December 1926 to Oc-
tober 1930, Genesis 27–36); Young Joseph (Der junge Joseph; written January 1931 to June 1932, Genesis
37); Joseph in Egypt (Joseph in Ägypten; written July 1932 to 23 August 1936, Genesis 38–39); Joseph the
Provider (Joseph, der Ernährer; written 10 August 1940 to 4 January 1943, Genesis 40–50)

56 Unitarianism as “Applied Christianity” Thomas Mann and the Unitarian Church in the USA