It’s the history of humanity and the reality of culture. We don’t question the mix of ingredients that created Christianity, or Judaism for that matter. No one thinks it’s wrong for the Japanese to grab a burger at Mos Burger (OK weird name aside) or for a white guy like me to feast on Indian food. Our language is a mish-mash of other languages. Ideas from one human culture interact with ideas of another and sometimes something new is created.

Alfred Hall said it well in his work “The Beliefs of a Unitarian::

“Instead of saying that the Bible alone contains the word of God, they [Unitarians] hold that every true ad uplifting word is inspired by him.”

“Unitarians believe that God has inspired the saints and prophets of religions other than Christianity, especially the great religious teachers of the East.”

To find, use and appreciate wisdom from other traditions is a good thing; to practice those traditions in a superficial way is disrespectful (for example, having a “seder” or celebrating “diwali” without any real tie or understanding of these holidays). However, in order to appreciate other tradition’s wisdom I believe one must have, as an earlier poster mentioned, one’s own tradition (framework) in which to work. Since much of UUism does not have a common theological framework this may be more challenging.

That one I’ve heard. I don’t care for it much.

I also like the idea of discipline, and I will say two other things for the old formulation: (a) It is in the active voice, and (b) it has a relational element that the new one lacks.

(a) Note that the new search is disembodied; there is to be a search, but I sure can’t tell who’s supposed to do it. Scientists? Theologians? Everybody? The Pope? Richard Dawkins? Polka-dotted midget unicorns? The old version has us ALL called to search.

(b) The old version also has us in community with each other while we do it. The old version is thus not just about theological freedom, but about our ecclesiology — about what we think it is to be a church. The newer one has lost all that, and I miss it. We seem to have a lot of trouble these days talking about our churches.

A very interesting topic, PB. Thanks for writing about it. I wish I had more time to join in on the discussion. [Well, I really appreciate what you did have time to write, so don’t apologize! Your insights are goin’ right into my sermon, under the topic “Great Minds Think Alike!” - PB]

I think if UUs in general had a firmer sense of identity as UUs, as a specifically religious community of seekers that grew out of particular approaches to theology rather than a smorgasbord, then asking our people to commit to a deeper study of theology of all kinds wouldn’t be such a big deal. We have a logical roadmap, but we shy away from it.

The Wellspring program at Rochester is doing a marvelous job of working on this — I only wish for a more accessible model for smaller churches.

There is something very elitist in the UU position that we can just pick out the parts of ancient faith traditions that make us feel all warm and fuzzy and proclaim that to be “truth” and a better way to live.

Where to do UU’s proclaim this? [I grew up hearing it as our central message, I hear it in our congregations and among our laity all over the nation, and I see it in older pamphlets that we’re still distributing.When I say “harmony” I mean harmony between the essential teachings of the various world traditions. This often gets expressed as “once you take away the doctrines, we’re all worshiping the same things, really.” - PB]

I think that you actually describe our theological position accurately when you say

‘an essentially humanistic religious community that gathers in covenanted community to do the work of individual and societal transformation guided by its foundational liberal Christian values, more contemporary Humanist wisdom and the theological insights of various world religions’,

although I question whether we have incorporated any theological insights from other religions, at all. Perhaps Buddhism.

We do, however, read from a broad reading list of world literature, much of which was written within specific religious contexts. What we like among all our readings is those texts that support our religious stance — broadly religious humanistic, communitarian, transformationist, universalistic etc.

I believe that where UU’s are is one place that Christians who dig deep into Christianity can find themselves — setting aside all the ways that Christianity has made an idol of itself and retaining only the ethical and moral teachings and some of the forms of the church. I think it is a great place to be, not because it is the start of a new world religion, but because it turns us toward reality and toward the future and toward the freshest possible language of meaning.

Two quotes that I like are worth considering in this context: one from Spong, the other from Borg. First, from Borg:

When a Christian seeker asked the Dalai Lama whether she should become a Buddhist, his response, which I paraphrase, was: “No, become more deeply Christian; live more deeply into your own tradition.”…By living more deeply into our own tradition as a sacrament of the sacred, we become more centered in the one to whom the tradition points and in whom we live and move and have our being.

A Christian is one who does this within the framework of the Christian tradition, just as a Jew is one who does this within the framework of the Jewish tradition, a Muslim, within the framework of the Muslim tradition, and so forth. And I cannot believe that God cares which of these we are. All are paths of relationship and transformation.

And now from Spong:

I do not believe that I contribute to the interfaith dialogue by seeking to master a faith tradition other than my own. While I certainly do not think that God is a Christian, I believe the ultimate pathway to religious unity comes through my willingness to go so deeply into Christianity that I escape its limits. Only then can I bring to the interfaith table the pearl of great price that I believe Christianity has to offer. I hope that all religious people of all traditions will be equally dedicated to discovering the essence of holiness that that their faith tradition possesses so that they can share with me the essence, the pearl of great price that they have received from their life in Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, and Hinduism. My goal is to enrich the world with the essence of Christianity even as I am being enriched by the essence of other worship traditions.e