Unitarian Universalists: July 2005 Archives

Jeff Wilson over at Transient and Permanent writes:

I see a similiar dynamic in the conflicts that roll within contemporary UUism. In certain ways, some who hold to a particular truth (be it Christian or Neo-Pagan or Humanist or whatever) are trying to make their understanding central to UUism, for the benefit of all UUs , because they honestly think they've tapped into something of genuine value. It's like the salvation Universalists, who believed they had access to the real thing and that everyone would be better off if they got onboard: not because of malice toward anyone, but because they were so joyful at awakening to the fact that they AND their opponents were all one in receiving a gift of unestimatable value.

Jeff in his essay makes a distinction between salvation Universalists (who witness to Universal Salvation), and fellowship Universalists (who assert that is a common vision behind all world religions.)  Jeff generously argues that fellowship Universalism evolved out of salvation Universalism.  Its a good read, even if I am not convinced that latter day fellowship Universalists were that concerned with their own continuity toward the historic gospel of Universalism.

But I feel called to write about Jeff's statement above.  In recent years, I have not observed UU Christians, or UU Humanists  "trying to make their understanding central to UUism."  I think that may have been true in the past, but  I can't recall a time when either the Christians or the Humanists have broken out of their bunkers in decades.  I agree with Jeff that both Christians and Humanist believe that they have discovered a good thing, both are devoted to the good and welfare of Unitarian Universalism but in my opinion both seem to have adopted a defensive posture.

And the pagans?  If they are trying to speak for that elusive empty core of Unitarian Universalism, I have missed it.  The pagans I have spoken to are still seeking acceptance.

But the idea is a provocative one.  If each of these groups would even try to make their understanding central for UUism, a conversation would begin.  Soon after the merger, the UUA committed itself to being officially distant from both the Christians and the Naturalistic Humanists.  The leaders some who had ties with the Christians, and some who had ties with the Humanists let their affiliations lapse, and the Christian and Humanist organizations became alternative theological centers in a  UUA that practiced "hands off" theology.    The Commission on Appraisal is saying that we have not done "the hard work of finding common ground to build a strong, effective religious voice. What is at the center of our faith? What occupies the focus of our common loyalty?" Chapter one, Engaging Our Theological Diversity.


Is it time for a revisit the decision to avoid theology made over forty years ago? Perhaps Jeff's essays on Universalism are harbinger of things to come, and we join in the conversation to establish a common ground.

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You may have seen it in a film, but if we went back say two centuries it was common for a town would hire a crier to walk around the streets giving the news of the day. "Hear ye! Hear ye! The Ship has come in from London, with mail and tea and spices galore!"

This way of getting the news out, a loud voice yelling for all to hear has ancient roots. In the ancient Roman empire, the criers wouldn't say "hear ye" but rather would announce their tidings with the phrase "euangelion" (latinized version of Greek phrase) which roughly meant good news.  I am sure that sometimes the good news turned out to be not so good news, for these were government employees, and they were spinning the news.  In our imagination we can hear them now;  "good news, Caesar has announced new taxes on incense.  Good news, the fifth legion needs porters to carry their swords." Somethings never change.

Well the early Christians went announcing their message chose this culturally familiar idiom as the title for writings that told their version of the Jesus story.  So we have Mark's good news, and Matthew's, and several others we know about from the Christian Bible, and some that were kept out.

So we have a concept, sharing our good news.  And there have been several good posts on the weblogs of Unitarian Universalists recently sharing various versions of the good news of religious liberalism.  And that in itself is good news, because our ideal of ourselves envisions  us creating communities of caring people who enable each other to express their own theological understandings of what is good and meaningful with each other, for the mutual enrichment of all.  And that is my good news statement for today.  A good news statement might be more vision than a reflection of present practice, but without a vision the people perish, so let us hope for the best.

Trouble is the idea of sharing "good news" has bad connotations for many people, because of that original Christian way of using "euangelion",  we know that announcing good news is to evangelize, and of course somewhere, at some coffee hours sometime it was decided that Unitarians don't evangelize.  And that was that!

The word "evangelical" went down on list of Unitarian "do not does" long before the merger with the much more evangelical Universalists, but the Unitarians culture of self censorship prevailed and it was considered bad form to brag about the virtues of Unitarian Universalism.  So we refrained from sharing our faith, a faith that for many people was a liberating, empowering religion, and  a faith that "saved lives!"

Over the last ten years we experienced a change, people are no longer shunned at coffee hour for announcing their good news, for confessing that they are Unitarian Universalist evangelists.  And that is good news.  We can thank a born and raised Universalist and witnessing religious humanist, the Reverend Scott Alexander for carrying the ball on this.  He edited and promoted Salted with Fire: Unitarian Universalist Strategies for Sharing Faith and Growing Congregations in 1994, and we haven't been the same since.


Unitarian Universalist being able to share our "good news" is part of the whole "vocabulary" of reverence discussion, and part of our  Association wide renewal of theological thinking effort that the Commission on Appraisal is suggesting is so vital for our future.  The idea isn't that by using Christian words we will attract Christians that ought to be pew sitters in a hipper UCC, rather that we free ourselves to express ideas by using the words that best express our ideas.  For some of us, we might be alluding to an idea that we learned in Baptist Sunday School, and for others we might be saying 'Blessed Be." 

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.

Chutney writes:
I wouldn't necessarily limit the set of stories to liberation stories, which would ... tend to be perceived as "too Christian."  (Or too political, depending on how it was done.)  Going with the "sources of the living tradition" we could also have narratives of transcending wonder, spiritual wisdom, ethics, reason, and harmony with creation.  This diverse set of narratives would make it a distinctly UU set of narratives.
Chutney in the quote above is developing a powerful and compelling point concerning the power of narrative in creating community.  He is extending and deepening a comment that I had made on Thom Belote's post on Emergent Churches on the weblog Philocrites.  I did comment to Chutney on her weblog myirony relative our substantial points of agreement.
Nevertheless his post stimulated my thinking in another direction.  I thought I would devote some of my own "blog space"*  to my understanding of the political in our faith community.
Gandhi once remarked

"To see the universal and all-pervading Spirit of Truth face to face one must be able to love
the meanest of creation as oneself.  And a man who aspires after that cannot afford to keep out of any field of life. 

That is why my devotion to Truth has drawn me  into the  field  of  politics;  and I can say without the slightest hesitation, and yet in all humility, that those who  say that religion has nothing to do with politics do not know what religion means."

*(I'm too old to write jargon like that without quotes and laughing at the inner young man who once wrote like that as a matter of course.)
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Below is a post that I submitted to Coffee House.  There was some comment about New age thinking, the writer was trying to distance himself from rich consumers of religious insights.

Are you now, or have you ever been a new ager?  Yes.  I saw Hair.  I sang the song.  But then I was raised a Unitarian Universalist, and it was just Church Across the Street

Martin Gatheringwater raised the question in his essay  "Tipping Points" about what kind of changes in the UUA would cause a person to leave.  The discussion has gone on and on at the Coffee House group blog, and has developed as people continue to write about their own concept of what the core ideas of Unitarian Universalism might be.  What I write below is my thoughts in the context of the debate, but it does raise some the questions I have been pondering relative to this debate.  Do we have a problem with humanism, or do we have a problem with the American Humanist Associations attempt to define what humanism means? 

As I see it we have been religious humanists since before Francis David discovered that he was a Unitarian and didn't know it.  And there is nothing incompatible with a humanist saying "God is one."

I wrote this in personal response to Tipping Point (see above.) I hope to write more on this topic.

This is from Coffee Hour;  A Unitarian Universalist group blog.  The article is by Matthew Gatheringwater, in which he raises some important questions relative to the changing nature of our movment.  I will be commenting on this essay in the future, and so here it is as it appeared on Coffee Hour on July 16, 2005.  How do we engage our theological diversity?  Does Gatheringwater's use of Mason Olds definition of Religious Humanism necessarily limit the possibilities of humanism growing and developing to meet the needs of a new generation?

Sometimes one's mission is implicit,  and writing one's mission statement is an attempt to make that mission explicit.  That sound's like a good thing, but what does the statement mean?  This is a essay on mission for this weblog.

I wrote this as my annual report for the Unitarian Universalist Ministers Association's Committee on Ministry for Anti Racism, Anti Oppression and Multiculturalism