In Phil’s Little Blog on the Prairie: Do UUs Need an Out Group?, this question is asked:
Is there no difference between a UU and a secular person? After all, the original Humanist Manifesto states that “the distinction between the sacred and the secular can no longer be maintained.”
If there’s no distinction between the sacred and the secular, there’s no purpose for Unitarian Universalism, and our churches should become folk clubs. The world needs folk clubs. It’s got plenty of secular.
Phil’s post on the subject should be interesting to anyone interested in liberal religion. He begins by discussing a sociologist who
looked at a lot of mainline Presbyterian churches and found that the ones that were at least not declining in membership were the ones that did, indeed, offer a sense of identity, specifically, clarifying for members “the ways they differ from the general culture.”
Now, it should be noted that UUs have been addressing this loss of identity for at least ten years. The challenge is to find spiritual language that doesn’t exclude atheists and nonchristians who have been an essential part of unitarian and universalist thought for nearly three thousand years and who have been extremely important to modern Unitarian Universalism since Theodore Parker’s and Waldo Emerson’s time.
Much of the difficulty comes from this: Unitarian Universalists exist, but Unitarian Universalism may not. We have a great, unwieldy amalgam of a name because we do not have a defining belief beyond the belief in the validity of many beliefs. Unitarian Universalism is defined as a religion for legal purposes, but it is actually a spiritual way.
To understand the distinction, look at the roots of the words. Religion may come from religare, which means “to tie fast.” Spiritual may come from spiritus, which means “breath.” Neither root is certain, but they’re commonly accepted because they fit: Strictly speaking, religious people are tied to a way that they understand literally or metaphorically, and spiritual people seek a way that has the breath of life.
While there’s an enormous overlap between the two, the division is clear to extremely religious people, who have many names for extremely spiritual people: pagans, heathens, disbelievers, gentiles, madmen. My favorite is heretic. It comes from the Greek word meaning “to choose.” Heretics choose for themselves. Heretics are freethinkers. Unitarians and Universalists throughout history have been freethinkers. We’re not alone in that, of course. We stand with Quakers and Sufis and all spiritual communities that say the ultimate authority is in each of us.
That’s why it’s much easier to find Unitarian Universalists than it is to define Unitarian Universalism. That difficulty may be the point of Unitarian Universalism. It’s what people who seek to convert Unitarian Universalists cannot grasp. They think good paths are important because they lead to the truth. We think good paths may be the truth.
If Unitarian Universalism is to become a religion that’s consistent with our spiritual foundation, the Unitarian Universalists should tackle some of the hard words of religion so we can say, “This is who we are, and this is how we speak.” Every faith, whether religious or spiritual, has a vocabulary, usually adapted from the religions that went before it. During the twentieth century, Unitarian Universalism fled from the biggest religious word of all: God. Political liberals were surrendering words to conservatives then; it’s no surprise that religious liberals did, too. Now’s the time to reclaim them in ways that are true to us.
I’ll say this much about God now: For Unitarian Universalists, god should be a word with many meanings. Like the Bible’s favorite word for god, Elohim, God should mean both “the gods” and “the god who is great enough to be addressed in the plural.” It should include definitions that atheists respect: the universe or life or ethical behavior. No word should be rejected because it has many meanings. Words take their meaning from their context. Read what Albert Einstein or Martin Buber say about God, then read what Adolf Hitler says. You won’t have trouble knowing what they meant.
Unitarian-Universalism, in practice, is generally a congregation full of atheists led by someone with the title of “minister”.
Revel in the irony of that situation, sir … :)
Axinar, well, some are congregations of atheists, but even when the congregations are of christians, buddhists, jews, neopagans, atheists, and maybe a hindu and a muslim or two, the christian terminology can seem rather silly. Dunno what a good substitute for “minister” would be, though. I always admired the Quaker “brother” and “sister.”
Sure, there’s something that holds Unitarian Universalists together — the sacred promises of covenant. This is the point that the late great UU historian Conrad Wright tried to make over and over again during his career; alas, he was mostly ignored. The mistake most UUs make is in thinking that we have to have a common belief to be a coherent group — e.g., most UUs mistakenly think of the “seven principles” as a statement of belief, even though they explicitly say they are a statement of covenant. Covenants require you to act in certain ways, but covenants do not require you to believe in certain ways, yet they make a firm foundation for building solid religious community.
My $.0271828 worth.
Dan, time for me to read a little Conrad Wright.
I think the misinterpretation of the seven principles comes from a desire for a core belief. Having a covenant is a wonderful thing, but we want a covenant that says what we are. Our name for ourselves shows that desire for definition: The Unitarian Universalist Association means we’re an association of Unitarians and Universalists. Logically, we should now be Unitarians or Universalists who are collectively Associationists. But we call ourselves Unitarian Universalists because we want to be the Unitarian Universalist Amalgamation, even though we don’t know what that would be. Yet I agree that whatever it is, we are. I’ll think about this.
And look forward to future $.0271828 worths!
Thanks for picking up on my post about whether or not there’s a difference between UUs and secular folks. And the comments have been just as interesting. I’d like to offer two possible core beliefs that we still have, one about the nature of humanity, the other about the nature of God/cosmos/universe. The Unitarian take on Arminianism says that humans have the capacity to move in the direction of salvation (wholeness), and the Universalist take on God says that the universe is a hospitable place. Together the make up a core belief that every human being deserves to feel at home in the universe.