Unitarian Universalism

[rppa]

Re: Christian Unitarian

Thanks, Rppa. I'd like to hear more about your Christian UUism.
How about starting with the golden oldie question "What does Jesus mean to you?" What is Christian Unitarianism to you? I may be one, too, for all I know.---SherryA.

Jesus, as quoted in the Gospels, set a standard for behavior which I think is an ideal we as humans should be striving for. I think being Christian means dedicating yourself to trying to understand this ideal and emulate it, and in so doing make the world incrementally better. And I think leaving the world better than we found it is our job, as humans.

I don't give two shakes for any purported "afterlife". I think what we as humans should be focused on is how we treat our planet and each other.

Therefore I call myself a Christian because I have decided to be a follower of Christ, insofar as I try to understand what he was teaching and what he wanted us to do.

Why some people think that requires belief in miraculous births, in resurrections, or in being a God is beyond me. I follow him because I think he was right. Period.

Did Buddha and Mohammed have much the same message? Don't know. I suspect so. Saying Jesus had the right ideas doesn't mean that Buddha was wrong. I think that kind of tolerance (the same tolerance preached in UU) was one of the most central values Jesus was trying to teach.

And actually there's a very large focus on Buddhism and meditation in a lot of UU congregations. For me, it's a path toward the fascinating subjective state called "prayer", which I'm also in a lifelong process of exploring.

 

[rastamonte]

My in-laws are all UU's. My wife grew up in a UU church. We got married in a UU church. I've been to maybe 3 UU services. We have a UU church just one block from our house, yet I've never been to a service there. I get the sense that it would be a comfortable place to go if I needed to socialize or have a sense of community. As an atheist, I sometimes wonder whether my child, age 4, is missing out on a church experience. I have thought about taking her to this church, though I haven't yet. The joke posted earlier about UU's being atheists with children made a lot of sense to me.

On the issue of Buddhism, this is something I've just recently started to get into. Whereas the UU church seems like it would serve as a good social or community experience for an atheist, Buddhism seems like it would serve as a good spiritual or consciousness raising experience for an atheist. From what I've read so far, I feel that I've already grown spiritually. I've been reading a book called "Start where you are" by Pema Chodron. If anyone out there has any Buddhist reading recommendations, I'd love to hear them.

 

[crimresearch]

Not even historically?

On a tour of a historic meeting house here in Philadelphia, my wife was told that a large schism occurred at the time of the American Revolution over the issue of whether it was permissible even to give money to American soldiers, since this would be supportive of war.

Isn't it the case that Quakers typically take the conscientious objector route for military service? I guess you're saying that there have been Quakers who served in the military, and that this was hunky-dory with their congregations. I can't speak to that.

It's certainly the case that most of the most dedicated pacifists I've known or heard about, for instance 80-year-old women willing to go to jail for participating in anti-Iraq protests, have been Quakers. I guess you're saying that people who are dedicated political activists aren't "real" Quakers?

Quaker schisms are many, but they seem to have revolved around issues such as slavery, forms of worship, and much more recently, acceptance of alternative lifestyles.

It is an historical fact that Quakers have traditionally adhered to the Harmony testimony. In WWII many Quakers found that harmony would be restored most quickly by stopping Hitler...
even if it meant taking up arms to restore peace.
http://search.barnesandnoble.com/bo...p?userid=2d6QbkoA2u&sourceid=&isbn=0688172334
Seems to have worked too.

In today's world many people have imported a political ideology into their meetings for worship...
It is said that in some of the Northeastern urban meetings, one can hardly get a word in edgewise in the hour of silent worship, for all the 'messages from God' about partisan issues, and so forth.

And a fabricated Peace testimony has been insinuated, based upon cutting and pasting out of context statements from historical Quaker writings on the desirability of peace, and purporting to represent Quakers as uniformly adhering to a creed of anti-gun ownership, or anti-military, or even pro one particular political party.

Again a small amount of research quickly point out that Quakers were based on a tradition of being more non-credal, and welcoming of disparate viewpoints....

As to whether or not the people today who call themselves Quakers and espouse an exclusionist atmosphere such as mandatory pacifism, are real Quakers...who is to say?

But I will repeat...Quakerism has no such requirement.

Anyway, it might be better to spin this off into a thread on What Quakers Believe.

 

[SherryA]

Rastamonte, my minister at the UU is an evolutionary biologist, as I've said, who practices Buddhism. There's a lot of Buddhist interest at my UU. Also, I live near Asheville, NC where there are quite a lot of Buddhists. I plan to go to the dying workshop they host there several times a year. I visited the Therevada (sp?) place in West Virginia where Bante G (Gunaratana) resides, though he was not there that day. His book on mindfulness is his autobiography and is called JOURNEY TO MINDFULNESS. http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/t...103-3907182-6318250?v=glance&s=books&n=507846
I enjoyed my day trip there. As you probably know, they welcome people for long weekends. ---SherryA.