Answering the Questions and Questioning the Answers

[DRyelle]

I'm new to UU and interested in learning more about it. I've read the Pocket Guide and just started A Chosen Faith this morning. I wanted to attend last week's CLF 8p service, but Livestream doesn't like my satellite internet or something, because the feed kept breaking up. (I'd go to my local church, but it's 35 minutes one way and that's a drive I don't want to be dealing with on a student's budget, especially now that we're in the midst of winter.)

I need a little :help: getting started. As you may imagine from my title/religion, I have no problem with independent/solitary worship. However, I find myself struggling to reconcile my beliefs with that of UU. (Which I think is exceptionally strange, given that UU is the most liberal religion/faith/organization out there.) I wonder if my own beliefs are liberal enough--if I am liberal enough to be a UU. (As a Pagan of fifteen years, I find it difficult to imagine that I'm not, but--as my father is fond of saying--stranger things have happened.) I know my beliefs are accepted in light of the six sources and CUUPs, but I also wonder that if I were to publicly lean toward Paganism, would be it accepted in the UU mainstream.

These may seem like deep questions for someone who is just starting to read books and is seeking out a forum to "get to the meat of things" with fellow believers, but there's a reason behind that. I recently realized that with the military's restrictions on Pagan religious gatherings (we're only allowed to have Designated Faith Group Leaders), the only way to become a Pagan chaplain is to go UU--and that's precisely what I want to do. I want to serve the Goddess and God by serving others; by (as the subject line says) helping servicemen and women get their questions answered, but also helping them to question the answers.

For me, I guess it all boils down to, "Is there any such thing as 'not liberal enough for UU'?"

 

[bicker]

Just to be clear, I'm interpreting your use of the word "liberal" in a specific, religious way, based on what you wrote and what seemed to be the differentiate you were making - i.e., equating literalist belief in a personified deity with "conservative" and relative absence of such literalist belief as "liberal".

As such, I think you will always find a bit of a gulf between the mainstream of UU and that kind of "conservative", "God the Father"-type, religious belief. We've actually had an ongoing conversation within the UUA about (re)adopting a language of reverence - there are still many UUs are opposed even to speaking about God in what I like to call "UU ways", for example, pantheism - and that antipathy for "God language" gets stronger the further west you go. And in terms of UU, Michigan is "west" to a great extent.

Anyway, there are a couple of answers to your question. The first answer would be that there is no such thing as being "not liberal enough" for UU. We welcome all. There's obviously more to it than that - otherwise you wouldn't be asking - but at that first level, the answer is 'no'.

The second answer comes from a realization that UU, itself, is the spiritual home of UUs and of compatible religious perspectives that don't have a spiritual home of their own. Within our church is a thriving gathering of Buddhists. The closest Buddhist temple is 12 miles away, which isn't far, but it is a different "rite" from what I can tell, and so this gathering of Buddhists have found a spiritual home within our UU church.

What's interesting there is that the vast majority of Buddhists don't actually join with us in our other activities. A couple do: One is even on our governing board, and another recently held the position in the church I now hold. But for the vast majority, they see themselves as a church within a church. And that's okay for them, and for us.

But let's be clear: They're practicing Buddhism in a UU church. While Buddhism and UU are compatible, they aren't equivalent, and UU isn't a catch-all: UU is a real religion, in its own right, as much a religion as Buddhism, Christianity, etc. So our church has a number of Buddhists, several Christians (by the way), some Jews, and a whole lot of UUs. The Christians and Jews probably hyphenate, i.e., UU-Jewish, UU-Christian, but the UUs are UUs through-and-through.

Regardless, it is probably going to be difficult to find a UU church that has as strong of a church-within-a-church for your specific religion. We've only had a couple of (true) pagans over the years. They are welcome - appreciated even, since their participation in our activities adds to our ability to expand our own understanding and appreciation of more of the six sources. However, I fear that because we have never developed a critical mass of (true) pagans, those that do join us don't tend to stay.

I've injected the word "true" in the paragraph above to differentiate folks who use pagan principles to shape their practice of UU, from folks, perhaps like yourself, who regard the tenets of a specific pagan religion being paramount. You should know that a lot of UUs do tend to make creative use of pagan principles in their worship, but from what I can tell, many true pagans wouldn't consider such practice as practice of their specific pagan religion.

 

[DRyelle]

I've read your response twice and I think you left Little Miss Novelist over here speechless. :bow:

As such, I think you will always find a bit of a gulf between the mainstream of UU and that kind of "conservative", "God the Father"-type, religious belief. We've actually had an ongoing conversation within the UUA about (re)adopting a language of reverence - there are still many UUs are opposed even to speaking about God in what I like to call "UU ways", for example, pantheism - and that antipathy for "God language" gets stronger the further west you go. And in terms of UU, Michigan is "west" to a great extent.

Having been born and raised a Catholic (I declared myself Pagan long before I was allowed to stop going to church), I find it amazing that on the UU side of the spectrum, Michiganians tend to trend away from the language of reverence. Of course, I still live in/around the city in which I grew up and that has been conservatively Christian for time out of mind. (A freaking Southern Baptist preacher came into town and "set up shop" this past summer. YIKES!) I'm so used to having Christianity shoved down my throat that it seems weird that the state UUs wouldn't be into that sort of thing, too.


You know, I mentioned to my "heart grandma" this afternoon that I wanted to go to seminary and she didn't say much. But then again, she's Baptist and they don't even allow dancing, so she (and her church friends) probably don't think very highly of UU.


P.S.: I'm glad to hear there's no such thing as "not liberal enough".

 

[applewuud]

However, I find myself struggling to reconcile my beliefs with that of UU...I wonder if my own beliefs are liberal enough--if I am liberal enough to be a UU.

I guess we need to know more about your struggle, where the dissonances are. Pagans have a pretty strong presence in the denomination...my own church has a strong CUUPS chapter. What UUs are gaining from your faith tradition is a sense of the sacred and transcendent, which many of us lost when we "threw away" our original religions.

In my experience, most UUs will have no problem with your beliefs, but if you're around enough you'll probably run into a few who might criticize them as being just another kind of irrationality that they wanted to get away from when they left their original religion. If a UU minister incorporates a drum circle into the worship every week, for example, she'll get push-back from the humanists and Christians in the congregation. Too bad, but I've seen it happen. As a syncretic religion that combines from many traditions, the down side is that no single strain gets to fully express itself. Christians who want to have a communion service every week will be disappointed in most (not all) UU churches, and pagans might want to skip the traditional communion services that some UU churches have once in a while. So in that sense, yes, if you can't accept that multi-source environment, you may not be liberal enough to really adopt UUism as your core. :sorry1: But that doesn't mean you can't be a "fellow traveller".

The quick, flippant easy answer that UUs believe about ourselves is that we're open to everything. The harder truth is that there are certain kinds of beliefs that aren't "liberal enough" to find a home in a Unitarian-Universalist community, at least for very long. Meg Riley, the minister for the CLF, wrote a great article about this in the UU World magazine: "A candid welcome:
Top 10 reasons you may not feel comfortable in a Unitarian Universalist congregation":

uuworld.org : a candid welcome to unitarian universalism

Having said that... and questioning our own sense of how liberal we are...how UU of me
Bicker is right on.

It's really early for you to think about going down the road to ministry IMHO--the UUs have a very long (and expensive!) process for becoming a fully-fellowshipped minister, but as your dad says...

stranger things have happened

So, if you're interested, check out the uuma.org site and this:

UUA: Becoming a Unitarian Universalist Minister

The websites for the UU seminaries Starr King (in Berkley, California) and Meadville-Lombard (in Chicago) have some interesting nooks and crannies as well.

And, the conversation will continue here, I'm sure.

 

[DRyelle]

However, I find myself struggling to reconcile my beliefs with that of UU...I wonder if my own beliefs are liberal enough--if I am liberal enough to be a UU.

I guess we need to know more about your struggle, where the dissonances are.

I'm re-reading my original statement and thinking, "Wait, Dayanara...why did you say that?" Was it because I'd made the mistake of reading the Pocket Guide first, when I really should've picked up A Chosen Faith, which is much more informative/mind-exercising? Was there a disconnect present Sunday that I don't feel now? It's like adding something to one of my manuscripts at 2a and then coming back later and going, "Why the hell did I write that?!

As a syncretic religion that combines from many traditions, the down side is that no single strain gets to fully express itself.

Maybe that's what I was concerned about when I said I wondered if I was liberal enough: not being able to stretch enough ways. I have been told many times in my life that you can't please everyone, yet I still feel it's my professional duty to make sure everything comes out as well as possible. (Can we say "too much time in retail"?) I want to be true to my own beliefs as much as I can, but I also want to be able to satisfy the vast majority of people; especially given that (putting the military aside for a moment), UU congregations hire and fire their own pastors. I know what happens when you stick too much to your own values and practices...I saw it while I was still being forced to go to church. We had a priest that was more for himself than the parishioners and his attitude sent people packing in droves. I DO NOT want to be the next Father Denis! (The difference there, of course, is that parishes--in my area at least--are stuck with their priests for seven years.)

Meg Riley, the minister for the CLF, wrote a great article about this in the UU World magazine: "A candid welcome: Top 10 reasons you may not feel comfortable in a Unitarian Universalist congregation"

Read that while I was lurking on the CLF site (at least a week before I got here). I figure if I have mostly yeses and a few "meh"s, I'm in good shape.


I realize that seminary is expensive. All graduate schools are expensive (and the ones that aren't, you should probably question). I've browsed through the Meadville-Lombard site (that's where I'd go...I'm presently incapable of moving out to California to attend Starr King), so I know what they're looking for. I also know that the Air Force has a chaplain candidacy program that, once you're accepted into it (and get past the first year), will pay $4,500 a year toward tuition. I realize that's not a great deal of money, but every little bit helps.

As for it being a "little early", I have been exploring this issue since the end of last month and refuse to allow myself to make a decision any earlier than May 5th. It's not just about reading books, making the 35-minute trip to the fellowship in East Lansing, watching archived CLF videos (Rev. Meg pointed me in that direction after I said I had problems with the live feed) and asking questions on this forum...it's about searching my heart. It's about asking myself why I want to go into the ministry (UU aside, why I think I'm called to the Pagan ministry). It's about asking myself if I can handle the hardships of military chaplaincy, of Airmen crying on my shoulder and helping to pull the pieces back together. Most of all, it's asking myself if I'm a hundred percent certain that this is what the gods want for me.

 

[bicker]

I've read your response twice and I think you left Little Miss Novelist over here speechless. :bow:

I aim to please.

Having been born and raised a Catholic (I declared myself Pagan long before I was allowed to stop going to church), I find it amazing that on the UU side of the spectrum, Michiganians tend to trend away from the language of reverence.

To be clear, there was a mid-century move toward humanism, within the source denominations. (Unitarianism and Universalism merged to make UU.) I think to the extent that UUers embrace and advocate for a language of reverence today, it is a correction of a prior over-compensation.

As a syncretic religion that combines from many traditions, the down side is that no single strain gets to fully express itself.

I don't see it in that manner. I've always seen the syncreatic nature of UU to be a matter of adding richness to the core, rather than some sort of compromise. I think that we can say that anyone hoping that some source will remain unaffected by being integrated into that core will be disappointed.

 

[applewuud]

As for it being a "little early", I have been exploring this issue since the end of last month and refuse to allow myself to make a decision any earlier than May 5th. It's not just about reading books, making the 35-minute trip to the fellowship in East Lansing, watching archived CLF videos (Rev. Meg pointed me in that direction after I said I had problems with the live feed) and asking questions on this forum...it's about searching my heart. It's about asking myself why I want to go into the ministry (UU aside, why I think I'm called to the Pagan ministry). It's about asking myself if I can handle the hardships of military chaplaincy, of Airmen crying on my shoulder and helping to pull the pieces back together. Most of all, it's asking myself if I'm a hundred percent certain that this is what the gods want for me.

It still seems early to me to consider becoming a minister of a religion until you've been a member of it for a few years. It can lead to disappointment on your part, and wasted time. If you were became a minister of a church, you'd be dealing with board members who may have been involved with their organization for 20, 30 years and they'd have expectations you wouldn't have the experience to deal with.

But, since you're looking for a chaplaincy, you have a different challenge: what will you do when airmen are crying on your shoulder and expecting you to minister to them from an orthodox Christian perspective? How many of them are going to accept a pagan chaplain?

I don't mean to dampen your enthusiasm unnecessarily. :sorry1: This is an exciting possibility you're considering, but I've had many friends in the ministry get blindsided by these kinds of issues, two of them have left. They should have been better prepared.

Having said that, no one can be 100% sure of such a path, there will always be doubts. It can be a really rewarding and fulfilling life if you approach it with few expectations.