Unitarian Universalism I

I’ve started some reading about the UU church and I’ve decided to attend a service a week from tomorrow. I have some friends and friends-of-friends who are UU and they’re willing (indeed excited) to show me the ropes.

There are several attractive points about UU. For one thing, they don’t believe in the trinity. They don’t define themselves as Christian and so we won’t have any difficulties with a theology that holds Christ as divine, because I just can’t go there. In my search for a faith community I’m going to do my best to hang onto as many of the positive things in my current religion as I can.

Instead of a creed, UU has seven principles:

• The Inherent worth and dignity of every person
• Justice, equity and compassion in human relations
• Acceptance of one another and encouragement to spiritual growth in our congregations
• A free and responsible search for truth and meaning
• The right of conscience and the use of the democratic process within our congregations and in society at large
• The goal of world community with peace, liberty, and justice for all
• Respect for the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part

I can get behind almost all of that. Where I have trouble is with the “free and responsible search for truth and meaning.” And let me be clear. I am 100% AOK with that for other people. I absolutely support every individual’s right and indeed responsibility to figure out what they believe.

But me? I like rules in my religion. I likes do’s and don’t in my faith structure. I believe in the five pillars of Islam and I like relying on the wisdom of the Koran and Hadith (sayings and actions of the Prophet Muhammad). That doesn’t mean I believe in everything that comes out of Islam. Shariah law? Yeah, I’m not a fan. And I wouldn’t particularly want to live in any Muslim country I know about. I’m an American and this is where I want to be. Women’s rights as developed in modern Western society trumps religious expression for me personally every day of the week.

But when it comes to questions about, say, the Virgin Birth, I’m perfectly satisfied, indeed comforted, to turn to the Koran and read that the prophet Jesus was born of the Virgin Mary. I don’t need to think about it any further than that. I don’t need to ask myself whether I believe God is capable of performing that miracle, or, if He is, whether He did in this case. The Koran says so. The Gospel says so (also a holy book in Islam). We’re done here. It feels sacreligious to spend too much time thinking about it. As well as rather against the point. I actually like taking religious miracles on faith.

And while UU wouldn’t have any problem with me personally deciding that that’s how I want to approach a certain set of miracles, it also feels like I wouldn’t be fully participating in their value structure by choosing not to question, by choosing not to debate it, by choosing simply to believe.

We’ll see. UU has some promise. Let’s see what I think of the service and the congregation.