Liberal Religious Ad in Time Magazine

@Chris: Good - great - thoughts. However, I think the association in question is missing the mark you are articulating by a mile. I too, as you know, am not interested in the sort of dogmatic expression of Christianity that makes zero room for people who “don’t quite have it all figured out.” You see, I think you hit the nail on the proverbial head when you wrote that “people are looking for that.” yes, people are looking for it, and yes they do have very real questions. However, associations like the UUA stop right there, at that point, because they honestly have nothing real (read: transformational, effective, and affective) to offer in the place of discarded dogmatism. So, one ends up simply “living” in the question. This is no good and will not work. It’s almost like the guy who happens upon a lost bunch of travelers who need to get somewhere, boasting about how he has a map that will in fact lead them to where they need to go, and then sheepishly admitting that he has no car to take them there. This is the sort of association that the UUA is at this moment. Why? Well, because they totally gutted their heritage and history (i.e., Christianity, albeit a liberal, New England sort). Now, they are thoroughly new age, humanistic, and, it seems, comfortable telling Time readers that they can rest assured God will not be an issue in their churches. What a strange brew.

I believe that if the basic Gospel of the New Testament is embraced and lived authentically you will discover a way not given to dogmatism (Jesus?), but rooted in something that transcends transient aspects of culture (the UUA can’t do this because they are more North American Social Liberalism than actual faith). Call me simple, but I call this way “Basic Christianity.” Orthodoxy need not be gutted to live it practically.

As regards your last question concerning “agreed ethics.” I suppose one could say that an association like the one in question does have an agreed upon set of ethics, but these ethics are interpreted and reinterpreted by all of the different expressions living shoved into the big tent. So, all that it amounts to is constant blabbering about how to articulate and practice these ethics. Watch the UU blogs for a while and you’ll see the same conversations and internal struggles pop up over and over and over again. It goes nowhere because an agreed upon set of ethics actually requires enough group cohesion (deep cohesion) for a practical statement to be lived in real-time. This will not happen beyond the surface level of the UUA “about us” page on the association website. Participants in this particular expression do rally around ethics derived and/or rooted in political expression (mostly liberal), but this just exposes the seriously deep association between this “church” and North American politics. There is rarely any agreement on religious or theological ethics … because there is almost no recognizable theology or religious agreement upon which such an ethic can be constructed and delivered.

Also, the phrases “loving, spiritual community” and “help heal our world” are phrases rooted in observable spiritual communities squatting under the UUA roof. Lots of spiritual groups can say those words, but they also live out real aspects of their personal faith expressions too. Many of these expressions are rooted in spiritual practices and expressions that clash with basic Christianity and its principles. I, without being dogmatic, can’t take these phrases seriously when they are coming from polyamorist, atheistic, nominally-Buddhist witches, or things like this, or this.

So, the question I’m left with is a simple one: Can we live the basic Gospel of Jesus Christ (Orthodoxy), without the same sort of dogmatism that killed Jesus, without becoming something like the UUA. Yes. We can and I am. There must, however, be boundaries. The UUA has zero.

Great questions, Chris. These are questions I have been wrestling with for some time now. I think the answer can be found in the basic expressions of a Biblical Gospel.

@Chris: Right on. By itself, I think the ad is wonderful, because I think the church has contributed much to the equally false idea of a God who is on one hand loving enough to incarnate and die to free us, but on the other hand horribly impatient with our knowledge of the universe. Yeah, it is as ridiculous as it sounds! :)

I too think it is a shame about the UUA. I personally know of a handful of Christian (even Trinitarian!) UUs who somehow have not allowed their own frustrations with what it has become to send them looking for more agreeable pastures. I honestly don;t know how they stick it out. God bless them.

With all of my heart, I want to be a church that epitomizes Jesus’ ridiculously welcoming and egalitarian table meals. The key to finding one’s way through the confused conglomeration that is North American religion is Jesus’ itinerant table meals. We’ll look at those deeply soon, brother. I have a feeling it’s what a lot of us are looking for … I know I was for ten years.

Keep thinking these thoughts, Chris. Keep knocking. :)

@Connie B: LOL! Enlightened? FYI: I attended a UU church for over a year while in seminary. I also was an approved candidate for ministry (cleared aspirant status, passed the psychological/career assessment [a rarity for UU students at the seminary I attended], and “green lighted” the RSCC interview), a member of the UUMA and regular participant in my local UUMA cluster, attended GA in St. Louis, preached several times at a local UU church, and taught a RE class on Jesus and His Kingdom of Equals!

I left the UUA because my family decided to make Jesus Christ the center of our lives and ministry. Once upon a time, the UUA did that too. That was the UUism I was looking for, ala William Ellery Channing, Parker, and even Emerson (to a point).

I don’t hold your lack of knowledge of these things against you, Connie B. Seriously, how were you to know! :)