Blasphemy or Enlightenment?

by Joelle Renstrom

Mrs. Lovejoy: [sees empty collection plate] "Everyone turn around and look at this!"
Grampa Simpson: "What is it? A Unitarian?"

I was born agnostic. Even as a child, I knew the whole “God” thing wasn’t for me. I believed in people, and also in something intangible and ill-defined. I remember walking home from school with a friend of mine, Amanda, who constantly chastised me for not believing. Once, she lifted the cross from around her neck and asked, “Do you even know who died here?” And in all seriousness I replied, “Jesus Christ, Amanda, of course I do!”

Crosses became popular accessories in elementary school. Girls held their necklaces out near their chins and moved glittering crosses back and forth across dainty chains. The popular girls shopped together for church clothes, their friendships solidified by Sunday School, Bible study and prayer camps.

I felt somewhat ashamed for not believing. Roughly 30 million people in the United States consider themselves Christian Fundamentalists and believe in a strict, literal interpretation of the Bible. Even though being Christian was “in,” it didn’t appeal to me. I wanted to find the fine line between fundamentalism and atheism and walk it gracefully, cartwheeling my way into acceptance by everyone.

My mother’s family is Jewish, which technically makes me Jewish too, since the religion is passed through the mother. Even though I agree wholeheartedly with the philosophical underpinnings of Judiasm, I’ve never been tempted to practice. But if I ever want to marry a Jew, I’m good to go without conversion. I’ve mangled the Hanukkah prayer plenty of times, and I like latkes—without ketchup.

My dad’s family is Methodist; his brother is a minister. For a long time I had no idea what that meant, other than I couldn’t swear in front of my grandparents. For me, it was like the set up of a joke—what do you get when you breed a Jew with a Methodist?

The answer can be found in the gospel of The Simpsons as Bart plays “Bible Blaster” with Ned Flanders’ ultra-religious kids:

Kids: Convert the Heathens, Convert the Heathens!
Bart: Yeah! I got one!
Kids: No, you just nicked him. Now he's Unitarian.

Unitarianism is a glass that can be half-full or half-empty. A Unitarian might be halfway acceptably religious or Unitarian halfway atheistic (or worse).

According to Unitarianism Universalism, ethical living is the true manifestation of religion. Unitarians strive to lead lives governed by compassion, justice and equality and have historically viewed science and religion as compatible. Religious freedom is paramount, so one could be, say, both a Jew and a Unitarian. Unitarianism is not mutually exclusive to any thoughts or belief systems, hence the Universalism. That’s the beauty of it. That’s also what’s confusing and sometimes alienating about it. Religions often deal in labels, categorization and credos. But Unitarianism escapes grasp and definition—it’s the slippery un-religion.

Because there are no dogma or deities that Unitarians must believe in, there are many different branches: Sabbatarian, Rational, Conservative, Atheistic. Unitarians believe in dynamism—that each person can and should change as he grows and learns, and that believing and being are lifelong processes. They cultivate and appreciate differences of opinion and lifestyle, believing that diversity leads to a healthy world. Those crazy Unitarians!

Father Shawn: I can only absolve you if you're Catholic.
Homer: So how do I join? Do I whale on some Unitarians?

Unitarianism tends to attract liberal, politically-informed (and often Democratic), active people, including teachers and college professors, writers, artists, scientists and therapists. Matt Groening, creator of The Simpsons, is a Unitarian. So were John Quincy Adams, Sylvia Plath, Kurt Vonnegut, and Christopher Reeve. Take that, Scientology!

Before each service, our Unitarian minister would spin morally ambiguous and challenging tales to stimulate our brains. One of us would light the chalice (we fought for this honor regularly and practiced using matches and lighters at home) and then we’d go to class.

In class we talked about the difficulties of growing up. We focused our frenetic energy on creative projects. When I was in the sixth grade, we had a sex education unit in church class. And it’s a good thing we did. I asked all the questions I never could or would have asked at school.  My “health” unit in elementary school consisted of snickering at badly drawn naked bodies and culminated in a classmate asking if he could “borrow my vagina” so he could finish labeling his diagram of the female reproductive system.

Reverend Lovejoy: . . . try a bowl of this Unitarian ice cream.
Bart: But there's nothing in it.
Reverend Lovejoy: Exactly!

In Unitarianism, religious ideas are primarily based on rationality. Sermons involve issues such as spirituality, relationships, nature, communication, activism and other non-deific subjects. Since Unitarian doesn’t outline or demand a specific belief in God, is it religiously empty? The answer depends on how you define religion, but Unitarianism does address spirituality as a force each person constantly explores, creates and recreates for himself.

The lack of God in Unitarianism is its saving grace for me, but to others is tantamount to heresy. One Sunday I brought my friend Jackie to church.  Maybe it was because we watched half of the movie “New Jack City” that day, or maybe it was the kid who talked incessantly about war and video games, maybe it was the hot chocolate—suffice it to say that Jackie, who came from a Christian home, was appalled.

The next day at school, a couple kids asked if I worshipped Satan. Even though I understood the power of rumors in the sixth grade, I just laughed. No one could possibly believe that.

Except they did. They started asking questions. “Do you believe in God?” “Do you pray?” “How did we get here?” I tried to be a good Unitarian and reason with them. That’s when I realized that all too often reason has no place in religion. That’s also when I decided that Unitarianism wasn’t really a religion—that it was something better.

One year, our church class performed a play about the theories of creation. We presented a skit about evolution, a skit about seeds (replicating the big bang was beyond our means), and Adam and Eve. I played Eve. “God” stood on a ladder while another boy played the tree and held up a bright red apple. I tempted Adam until he took the forbidden fruit and God banished us from Eden.

No one ever told us which theory to believe. They only told us which parts to play and handed us the costumes and scripts. They trusted us to decide for ourselves and knew we couldn’t arrive at a “wrong” conclusion.

Perhaps actor L.B. Fisher put it best: “Unitarians are often asked where they stand. The only true answer to give to this question is that we do not stand at all, we move.”

Comments

[Robin Edgar]

Father Shawn: I can only absolve you if you're Catholic.

Homer: So how do I join? Do I whale on some Unitarians?

Actually I expect that Unitarians are more inclined to whale on Catholics than the reverse. I have seen a fair bit of anti-Catholic and more broadly anti-Christian intolerance and bigotry within the U*U religious community. I have yet to hear a Catholic whale on some Unitarians but you may find a fine example of a Unitarian whale on Catholics on Rev. Victoria Weinstein's pseudonymous Peacebang blog. Here -

http://peacebang.blogspot.com/2006/10/violating-privacy-of-mind-and-body.html

You may also want to run a Google search on - "Rev. Ray Drennan" and Catholic - for another example of U*U anti-Catholic intolerance and bigotry.

[Gabe Small]

@Robin Edgar:

As a fairly recent UU, I agree with you that sometimes UU's can exhibit open hostility towards certain other religious traditions -- particularly Catholicism and fundamentalist Christianity. This has come up within our congregation recently as something we need to address. We regularly get visitors who are there only to accompany a member, like a mother or an out of town friend, and have religious beliefs that they hold very dearly. To overhear a snide remark about Catholicism from some UU during coffee hour may be enough to convince them that UU's are all bigoted and hypocritical, or worse, to strain the relationship between them and the person who brought them.

The good news is that most of these remarks typically are simply a reaction to negative personal experiences with the religion and not a commentary on current practitioners of the religion. The better news is that most of our members are very committed to making the church feel welcoming to anyone who wishes to be welcomed, and our minister is very conscious about talking about other religious traditions respectfully (even if sometimes irreverently.) Given that his congregation contains a sizeable population of people who rejected other faiths, I can imagine that it might be tempting to elicit an easy chuckle during a sermon by taking a swipe at these faiths. That he chooses not to tells me a lot about his commitment to the UU principle of affirming the inherent worth and dignity of every person.

[Kim Shaffer]

Hear! Hear! Well said, Gabe Small.

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