Wednesday, November 16, 2005

Unitarianism

Lorem responded to an earlier post saying that I might check out Unitarianism. Well, I finally had a chance to do a little research and have to say that we can rule this one out. Here's one definition:
Unitarianism is the belief that God exists in one person, not three. It is a denial of the doctrine of the Trinity as well as the full divinity of Jesus. Therefore, it is not Christian.

That's from CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS & RESEARCH MINISTRY
I think my background is just too steeped in the Christian tradition to deny the divinity of Jesus or the Trinity.

Well, any other suggestions?! I've often thought of researching some of the Eastern traditions. Some of them seem to be more life philosophies than religions; things that could comfortably sit alongside my "God doesn't care but I still feel the need to be a good person" sort of thinking. I figure I have to come up with a sound religious philosophy before the Little Miss is old enough to start asking piercing questions.

2 comments:

lorem ipsum said...

I'm afraid you're more Catholic than you thought, my dear! Like me. I listen to quite a bit of George Harrison too.

Trista said...

I go to the Unitarian-Universalist church, though I am Wiccan. The thing I love about it is that there is space for everyone there. The Unitarians had a schism once because one group wanted to codify beliefs and the rest thought that would be creating dogma and wanted no part of that. They reconciled the schism after 60 years had passed and no one got around actually to codifying anything. The church vowed when the two halves were reconciled that the one thing they would hold to was that they would never hold to only one thing. Make sense?

Now, what you just quoted is historically accurate (but only for the Unitarian half, the Universalist half definitely holds to the divinity of Christ), but doesn't really enter into the daily workings of the church. They don't teach the Unity of God in that way unless you go to the minister and say "teach me this". Other than specific one-on-one or small group lessons on that particular belief, the belief in Unity enters (at least at our church) through the belief that we are all one and that we are all divine. That we cannot know how or why things are created, but that it is up to us to care for the creation that we have been given. And that, further, we are all on our own spiritual journey that no one can tell us is wrong, and that a church community is here to support and witness a member's journey, but not to prescribe it.

We have Christians in our church as well as Jews as well as Wiccans, and the community of questioning and searching and dialogue and caring that that creates is truly wonderful.

But don't take this as proselytizing. We don't believe in proselytizing. I'm just saying that before you cross Unitarian-Universalism off as a possibility, you visit your nearest church and see what it is they're doing there.

Of course (can I make this comment any longer) a good friend of mine loves the idea of UU in theory, but really, deep-down wants more theological structure from a church and so doesn't feel that UUism fills all her religious needs. If you're like that then I support that, too. (see, for a wiccan I am such a good Unitarian!)