Varieties of Faith (of the Liberal Kind)

Over at UU World Online, Doug Muder has contributed another of his thoughtful essays, this one Unfinished with Christianity. Within a context of how he finds it hard to have an “elevator speech,” a succinct statement of liberal religious faith, Doug argues much more expansively (and I’m sure, persuasively) than I write here how we need to struggle with our faiths of origin and as Unitarian Universalists, whatever else may also be true, our faith of origin is Christianity.

I, too, have had that trouble coming up with brief statements. (And it’s not just because I’m a minister and therefore by definition a gasbag…)

I know when I try to describe Unitarian Universalism to people I have to say a few things along the line of how somewhere in the first part of the twentieth century Unitarian Univeralism shifted from a liberal Christian faith to a liberal faith with Christians. And others, many others…

Then I find I have to observe while we may for the most part be “post-Christian,” we remain protestant, that is we have a distinct spiritual culture that is Protestant Christian to most observers. In fact I suspect a Martian visiting would think we are Christian, even our most fervent Humanists, at least when gathered together on a Sunday…

For me, like for many others, I think, this is additionally difficult as we have found some core to our Unitarian Universalism that is to some degree idiosyncratic. So, I’m a Zen Buddhist. Even ordained as a Soto Zen Buddhist priest in more or less good standing with the North American institution…

I’ve tried to reconcile this with my oft repeated self-description of having a Buddhist brain, a Christian heart and a Humanist stomach…

But more and more these days I think of that Christian part.

On a couple of occasions lately I’ve found myself saying I’m a Zen Christian…

But that doesn’t work, completely, either.

And it certainly doesn’t unpack what it is we are collectively, we who claim and are claimed by Unitarian Universalism.

I suspect this is a conversation that will go on for some time.

So…

More anon…