From: shava@hermes.oit.unc.edu (Shava Nerad Averett)
Newsgroups: alt.pagan
Subject: Re: the Unitarian church
Date: 8 Apr 92 04:14:01 GMT
Organization: University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill

In article <29D78A4E.22846@orion.oac.uci.edu> cortese@hepxvt.ps.uci.edu (Janis Maria Cortese) writes:
>In my studies of old religions and feminist stuff, I've run into the
>Unitarian church several times, and a friend of mine had it recommended
>to her by an anthropologist.
>
>Just what IS the Unitarian church?  It's come up quite a few times, now,
>and I'm curious.

I knew there was a reason I dropped in to catch up here tonight...;-)
This is more than you want to know, so skim and enjoy what you want.

Often these days just referred to as the Unitarian church, it's really
the Unitarian Universalist Association of North America (usually UU or
UUA).  It's the union of two liberal 'protestant' churches, the Unitarians,
and the Universalists, who merged in 1961.

The most familiar Unitarians to most people would probably be people like
Ralph Waldo Emerson and the american transcendentalist movement of the 
1830's.  The transcendentalists were a nature-centered philosophical
group that fostered authors like Emerson, Thoreau, Margaret Fuller,
Walt Whitman, and who sponsored the first translations of works such
as the Tao Te Ching into English.

Unitarians and Universalists have been strongly identified with social
causes such as abolition, pacifism, civil rights, civil liberties, 
feminism, gay rights, pro-choice, environmentalism, religious freedom,
and so on.   Unitarian Universalists are ecumenical in the sense that
all world religions are taught, and liturgy in a single service may
include christian, buddhist, native american, and secular texts and
music.  Sermon titles may have more to do with social causes than
with 'religious morality' as a whole -- this is not a dichotomy that
comes easily to the UU.  

Demographically UUs are overwhelmingly white and highly educated, 
and many are well off, though high education correlates more strongly
than wealth.  (This will probably not surprise many of you studying
for advanced humanities degrees out there...;-)  Since UU churches
operate by congregational polity, they get to choose their own minister,
and also more or less dictate the form and content, overall, of 
religious education and sermons and such.  This means that UU churches
vary wildly as to how 'christian' or 'agnostic' or 'pagan' they might
seem.  UU ministers must have a divinity degree, and must be ordained
by the denomination.  However, congregations need not have a minister,
and many (mostly small, but some large) are lay-led.

UUs are also, demographically, about 90% 'come-outers' or people who
were born in another (or no) religion in their family.  I represent
an almost non-existant entity -- a 'birthright' UU between the ages
of 16-35 who actually attends church.  Many of my generation are off
being religiously independant, and doing their own thing.  Some married
into other faiths that were more insistant and less inclusive.  Some
are buddhists, quakers, pagans, or reformed jews.

If there is a 'theology' of UUism, it is that the search for truth is
an individual thing; that it can not be codified, dictated, or captured
in amber; that people should try to help each other and their world.

It is an inclusive religion, in that you can be UU and (pagan and/or
taoist and/or buddhist and/or christian and/or atheist and/or agnostic
and/or pick-your-favorite-flavor), so long as that fits with your own
view of things.  However, most of the traditional liturgy is christian
in derivation, without reference to the trinity.  If you can see that
this is just a free aesthetic choice, and that all sorts of other 
religions are included too, then you'll have a good time.  If the
word 'jesus' gives you hives, I'd bet you won't like the services.
Language in most liturgy has been changed to use inclusive language
('That One' rather than 'He' for god/dess, 'humankind' rather than
'mankind', and so on -- at the cost of completely ruining some very
nice poetry at times...).  

A major adult religious education curriculum is called "Cakes for the
Queen of Heaven," and is based around feminist thealogy -- altho it
is more feminist thealogy-based than pagan-based, it's pretty pagan-
friendly.  It was written by a non-pagan woman in the same congregation
that three of the CUUPs founders came from.

The unitarians started out as a split in the congregational societies
of new england in the late 1700's (I think).  Some parishes thought that
the doctrine of the trinity was a good idea, some thought it was a bad
piece of pedagogy.  So they split into two camps:  the unitarian 
congregationalists (unitarians) and the trinitarian congregationalists
(congregationalists).  While the unitarians still identified themselves
as christians, they did not believe in the special divinity of Jesus --
this is to say, they perhaps believed that he was an enlightened and
godlike man.  Essentially, they were espousing a more mystical viewpoint.

The universalists started out as a reaction to calvinism, which believed
that people were doomed to hell unless elect and saved.  The universalists
could not believe in a god that condemned innocents who did not have
'benefit of the intervention of the Church' (perhaps a little irony 
here?).  Ergo, the universalists believed in 'universal salvation': no
hell.  The hell you are condemned to is the one you make in this life
by your own works; the heaven you find you find within yourself.  A
different tack towards a lot of the same ideas as the unitarians.

Before either of these formal denominations coalesced in the US, there
were people of these dispositions in Europe also.  Servetus was burned
at the stake for espousing unitarian (or was it universalist?) ideas.
Also Jan Hus in what is now Czechoslovakia.  There was a unitarian
kingdom in transylvania (what is now part of Romania and Austria, I
think), who established unitarian christianity as the state religion,
but also legislated perfect freedom of religion, back in the 1500's.

The ideas of liberal religion (remember, liberal means 'of liberation')
that gave momentum to the unitarians and universalists (and a diminishing
membership, and a general lack of overlapping presences) caused the
denomination leaderships to negotiate a merger in the early 60's.

UU congregations theoretically follow a Statement of Purposes, established
by the UUA.  I don't have a copy here, but it contains things like freedom
of belief, lack of creeds, the right of the individual to seek truth via
his/her own path, stewardship of the environment, other nice stuff.  
Panthea, in Chicago -- a coven -- was voted in as a member congregation
a few years back, from what I hear.

CUUPs, the Covenant of UU Pagans, was started 6 (or is it 7?) years ago
this summer by a half dozen pagans who decided to hold an impromptu
solstice ritual at the General Assembly (annual conference) of the UUA.
To our great surprise, we got over 50 people (we expected maybe a dozen)
and even more people who got in touch after to say they didn't hear about
it in time.  Four of us got together at lunch the next day, came up with
a nifty acronym, and CUUPs was born.  CUUPs is the fastest growing 
UU affiliate organization (others include the UU Christian Fellowship,
the UU Buddhist Fellowship, UU Religious Humanists, ...).  Margot Adler
is current secretary of CUUPs, and she opined at the last GA that CUUPs
was probably the largest non-profit pagan organization in the US.

You can contact CUUPs at:  P O Box 640, Cambridge, MA  02144 (oh blast.
that looks like a somerville zip...  Someone got the right zip?)  Member-
ship is something like $15-25/yr, and includes a usually quarterly news-
letter (well intentioned, but full of good stuff...).  Mostly, you should
look up your local UU church and see if there is a local chapter...  There
are over 70, last count, around the country, and more forming all the time.


	
-- 
Shava Nerad Averett				shava_averett@unc.edu
/*  all materials (c)1992, Shava Nerad Averett, and have nothing significant
    to do with the University of North Carolina, a mostly owned subsidiary 
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