Being a Unitarian-Universalist

I liked the basic idea of being a Unitarian-Universalist from the start: a religious community in which you don't have to believe in the supernatural (are are allowed to if that is your thing). But I have, in my previous years with the faith, been vaguely unsatisfied with the idea that I felt I had to identify myself as a particular sub-set within Unitarian-Univeralist (Humanism). I had not really worked on what being just a plain old Unitarian-Universalist might mean. I have recently started to work that out for myself, and I posted on that earlier this year here.

Now there is probably never going to be a standard Unitarian-Universalism - a fundamental part of the religion is that there is no creed. But UUs are encouraged to develop their own spirituality and in the past I have looked on that as meaning if you are Christian to develop your Christianity, if Pagan to develop that, if Humanist, etc. But now I think of it in terms of coming up with a Unitarian-Universalism that works for me. Not a Humanist Unitarian-Universalist (though I remain a Humanist) but just a Unitarian-Universalist. The Humanist part is my philosophic identity, I suppose. Like "Democrat" is my political affiliation. But political affiliation is not the same as religious affiliation and neither is philosophic.

One of the great things about Kaufman's In Face of Mystery is that he makes it clear, repeating it often, that the Christianity he is constructing in this book is a choice. It is not a conclusion that has to be reached due to the "reality" of something "out there." It is built because he wants to build it and comes out the way it does because he makes choices that lead him there - the choices conform to observable reality (or at least do not contradict it) but the way the reality is interpreted is personal, and he admits it.

This was revelatory to me as a concept in a religion. For him to be able to say: this is how I am going to choose to shape the reality we all experience and share in for myself and it will have meaning to me, even if it doesn't have meaning for everyone. That is okay! Because religion is ultimately personal - an expression of our mysterious and unfathomable "ultimate concerns" which may be totally beyond expression but cannot be left without us trying to give them shape and expression despite that - because that is what human being seem driven to do. Kaufman gives me the best reason to retain the concept of "God" I have read - that because the history of our culture has shaped us to express our most powerful concerns in terms of "God," a word that resonates so powerfully for many of us, to give it up just because some have made it into something simplistic and supernatural is to give up something too useful. It is to give up too much.

Unitarian-Universalism seems to me uniquely suited to letting such a way of thinking about religion, and God, grow and develop, and so I cast my lot down with the UUs and look forward to seeing what happens next!