Not a "Watered Down UCC!"

It has been gently suggested that Unitarian Universalists who support the idea of being more open to religious language are perhaps longing for a "watered down" United Church of Christ.  I think this is a misreading of the motives of many Unitarian Universalists.  Speaking for myself, I have been a Unitarian Universalist for six decades.  What I seek is a Unitarian Universalist religious community that has freed itself from its own self censorship, from its tendency to tolerate bad theology, and bad behavior, so that it can  really be the liberal religion that it has the potential to become.  I do not, nor have I ever longed for the church across the street.  (In Massachusetts, where I came of age, the congregationalists are often just across the green, or down the street from the UUA congregation.)

In May of 2003, UUA President William Sinkford gave a sermon in which he said in part:

I would like to see us become better acquainted with the depths, both so that we are more grounded in our personal faith, and so that we can effectively communicate that faith-and what we believe it demands of us - to others. For this, I think we need to cultivate what UU minister David Bumbaugh calls a "vocabulary of reverence."
Now David is a Humanist. And he believes that Humanists, who "once offered a serious challenge to liberal religion, now find [themselves] increasingly engaged in a monologue," largely because of a vocabulary inadequate to engage other people of faith. "We have manned the ramparts of reason and are prepared to defend the citadel of the mind," Bumbaugh writes. "But in the process of defending, we have lost€¦the ability to speak of that which is sacred, holy, of ultimate importance to us, the language which would allow us to enter into critical dialogue with the religious community."
Our resistance to religious language gets reflected, I think, in the struggle that so many of us have in trying to find ways to say who we are, to define Unitarian Universalism.

The point of the sermon was to suggest that we could deepen our discourse with religious language. He sought to expand our toleration of the use of metaphor and symbol in personal communication.  Sinkford was not seeking to impose a particular vocabulary on Unitarian Universalists.  On the contrary, he is speaking about a problem that many of spoken about before him.  We have choosen avoid the use of words that might upset a minority of members who express a negative reaction to religious language, especially to Jewish and Christian religious language.  We have given a veto to a few over our ability to speak the words we feel are necessary to express our deepest spiritual longings, and religious aspirations.  But giving myself permission to use religious language, in no way implies a requirement on others to a particular set of words, to say what for them would be inauthentic.

I know of no one supports "a language of reverence" is seeking to  exchange our Unitarian Universalism with a watered down UUC,  We have been and will continue to be a  historically formed U.S. movement that listened to the enlightenment, to the transcendentalists, to the world religionists, that came to understand the earth based spiritualities, and now finds itself in a plurality of religious perspectives. 

I will follow up this post with another, making a clear distinction between a  future Unitarian Universalism which I pray will be come open to religious language, and the real (dry) United Church of Christ.