However, I was referring to the out-of-touch ideas about religion held by many if not most non-church-going adults who I assume are the target of the “God is optional” slogan, as well as the UUA’s “Is God Keeping You Out of Church?” ads. My Presbyterian Sunday School concept of God and religion kept me out of all religious institutions for most of my adult life despite a strong spiritual longing. Now I have been changed (”saved” if you will) by my UU experience. If I hadn’t understood that God was explicitly optional I would never have felt comfortable in this church or come far enough on my spiritual path to feel as comfortable as I do now about the meaning of God in my life. Problem is, most non-religious people I speak with seem to assume I’ve given into magical thinking and making sacrifices to wizards if I mention worshiping God.

If Christian leaders are frustrated by UU claims of being unique, they would do well to bring their litergy up to date with their proclaimed openness to doubt and skepticism, and we could all get on more honestly and cooperatively with the real purposes of organized religion. Otherwise they continue to give us all the taint of being either believers in magic or hypocrites.

I have mostly reclaimed the words god, worship, prayer and church in my own mind but still struggle when using those words in discussing spiritual or religious ideas with non-UU others. I have to assume they will ascribe some meaning that is not what I intend. One of those meanings which is very wrong for me is the concept of god as a magic object or personhood outside myself to be venerated, which is the meaning I read in your question.

That “god = deity object” and “worship = celebrate magic properties of deity object” and “prayer = ask deity object for magic help” meaning is what many unchurched adults think religion is about, which is why “god is optional” may speak to them. I believe many seekers are looking for god but don’t know it. They long for a connection with a deeper meaning, but don’t associate that concept with their childhood definition of god, which is possibly why so many people describe themselves as “spiritual but not religious.”

Maybe the slogan should be “Magic is optional…”

[Hi, Mike. Thanks for your comment. I’m going to have to respectfully disagree with you a bit here. Unitarian Universalists have a problem with “terminal uniqueness” that it’s high time we challenge amongst ourselves. We tend to think that we are the only church-going folk who are skeptics, scholars of religious ideas, agnostics, and not prone to “magical thinking.” That’s just not true. While our religious tradition is unique in that our liturgical tradition (ie, our worship) explicitly allows for (and celebrates) our skepticism and intellectualism, individual UUs are not at all that different than individual Catholics, Methodists, Jews, Muslims, Baptists, etc. etc. etc. who also harbor doubts about doctrine and supernaturalism. In my experience as a Christian UU in the ecumenical world, I find a lot of frustration towards UUs because other Christians are tired of our arrogant assumptions that “to worship” in the non-UU context means to blindly venerate some magic-working deity. It’s just not true any more. It hasn’t been true for a long time. Ask a garden variety Protestant some time what they mean by worshiping Jesus Christ or God and you’re likely to hear words like “reverence” and “exemplar” and “holy” and “love” — they’re not any more into the idea of worshiping a Heavenly Traffic Cop in the Sky than you are. - PB]

It’s an example of the implicit ethical eschatology that one sees in Unitarian Universalism.

Had I seen that banner on Sunday morning, I definitely would have walked away without ever entering the building.

I had visited that church a couple of times in the last decade or so prior to my most recent visit. The difference with respect to my last visit was that I was involved in a concerted effort at trying to find a church community, whereas the previous visits years ago were more casual in intention. It did, however, reinforce my earlier impressions. I also made an effort to read the newsletters and look online to get a better understanding of what the church was like.

Again, I’m not knocking the church. I’m just saying that it is not my cup of tea. It might be true that the church membership in their private reflections feel very spiritual, and if so, that’s great. It just didn’t work for me.

However, one could argue that whatever the longer history or whatever the personal revelation, the current conventional wisdom tends to have this very narrow view of what God is supposed to mean. So narrow, in fact, that many theists and atheists would agree that any other view is a cop-out or a watering down of the “true” meaning of the word. I came up with a handy way of dealing with this confusion by rejecting the validity of the premise behind the question, “Do you believe in God?” If the person identifies as an atheist, I say “Yes”, because I don’t reject the God she rejects and I am open to other ways of Being. If the person identifies as a theist I (often) say “No”, because I don’t accept the God she accepts and I am open to other ways of Being. I would agree with Tillich that it is silly to “believe in” God because that places God as an object alongside other objects rather than as the ground of Being. Hence, my position is that “I do not necessarily accept or reject any particular form of God-talk.”

Which then brings us to the sign. I don’t find it offensive, but I do think that it raised the question, “What’s the point?” Atheists are clever enough to know that there are people who see God as “more than a person/more than not a person”. But what is binding this community together, calling it to a purpose greater than individual satisfaction but caring intimately about each individual? Whether we refer to this Ultimate Reality, or a Common Heart, or Spirit, or the Divine, or whatever we feel comfortable calling this Source of unitive experience of compassion and selflessness, is it the very concept of an immanent presence that transcends our intellectual understanding that we object to or is it the associated baggage of expectations, requirements, and images that we associate with our culture’s concept of this presence- that is, God?

That is the problem I have with the sign. It isn’t clear which of these is being made optional. In my humble opinion one of these is essential for a successful congregation. For what it’s worth, I think the banner/slogan would work better if it read “The term God is optional. You are not.” Of course, that sounds too academic, so perhaps a more clever phrasing is in called for, but that is the point that needs clarification.

If we consider God as Ground-of-all-Being or Being-Itself or the deepest Self, in Tillich/Jung terms, then maybe the average person might welcome an opportunity to explore who God or the divine might be for her. This is quite different from discarding God, the way one might pick the onions off a sandwich.

Not trying to argue into going back, just saying that your impressions of this group’s religious convictions might not be accurate after one visit. Personally, I have never visited that particular church. Did you happen to ask anyone there about whether they saw God as an object of awe and wonder?

If I want to be involved with a secular social justice mission, I don’t have to go to a church to do that. I was seeking something more transcendent. It just wasn’t for me. I am not saying that there is anything bad about it; obviously the congregation of the San Francisco church likes it there, or they wouldn’t attend. But it isn’t for me. I was looking to attend a church where the word God was actually used, and not just as the source of postmodern analysis, but rather as an object of awe, wonder, mystery, poetry, transcendence.