Church for Atheists (long)

[TokyoBayer]

@Loopydude

Somebody in another discussion here linked to a web site devoted to U.U. jokes. One was “Q: What’s the definition of a Unitarian Universalist? A: An atheist with children.”

I went out with a woman like that. She was an atheist, but wanted her daughter to grow up with
moral background so they went to UU. Then she was really unhappy when her child started to believe in a real god. :rolleyes:

[Loopydude]

Funny you should mention that. My B. and S.I.L.'s 3&1/2-year-old daughter is nurturing a prodigious Marian obsession. The whole Christmas Pageant/live-action Nativity ignited her imagination like no Wiggle or Teletubby ever could, and it’s all Mary, all the time these days. The security blanket is now a mantle; all baby dolls are Jesus; stuffed animals and anthromorphic dolls become a makeshift Creche. She’s lately been peppering them in public with a stream of embarassing questions like “Did Mary have big nipples?” (S.I.L. is nursing a one-year-old, and her nipples are bigger than the neices, of course) “Did Mary have a boo-boo on her belly like mommy?” (S.I.L. had a cesarean), “Did Mary have a vagina?” (now that the two kids are bathing together, I can’t wait for questions about the Holy Prepuce, or thereabouts). The kid’s a congenital Catholic, I tells ya. My in-laws are playing with Pentacostal fire.

[Dangerosa]

One of the things about UUs is that they share a long religious tradition. Until fairly recently, UUs were a Christian branch, until they realized it was rather silly since they were Unitarians…

The Unitarian comes from the idea that all Gods are one God. It really doesn’t matter if you worship Shiva or Jesus, its all aspects of the same universal force. Stretch that a bit and you get the idea that it really doesn’t matter if you believe in God as God or God in more of a Deist sense or the inherient spirituality of the individual.

The Universalist comes from the idea of Universal salvation. You don’t need to undergo sacraments, or not eat meat on Fridays, or attend church on Sunday or whatever to be “saved.” Universalists believed everyone is in a state of salvation. (The whole salvation idea seems a little too dogmatic nowadays for UUs, but this is where the idea comes from).

Once you embrace “all Gods are one God” and “everyone is saved anyway” then dogma becomes rather silly. What are you going to argue about…my aspect of God will give me universal salvation in a better way than your aspect of God?

Some of the oldest churches in the country are Unitarian churchs and we’ve had several Unitarian presidents. Check out Kings Chapel in Boston sometime: http://www.kings-chapel.org.

Unitarians and Quakers, in my experience, share a close relationship, we often have Quaker speakers and it doesn’t seem unusual for Unitarian ministers to spend time in Quaker communities. Both seem to embrace the idea of religion as motivator for social justice.

[Kalhoun]

@purpler

One thing that everyone in our group shares is a sense of spiritual seeking. Everyone in the group believes that we are a spiritual community. Some, like me, are still struggling with what the term “spirit” means inside of our skeptical, realist, materialist worldviews.

The etymology of the word “religion”, while a bit controversial, is frequently accepted as deriving from the Latin religare, meaning “to reconnect.” In that meaning of the word, both the Unitarians and my own community are definitely religious organizations, even though we lack shared dogma.

Side note: most of the Buddhists that i know – and i know a lot – consider themselves to be atheists, FWIW.

I’ve found that to be true of many UU groups, but it isn’t a qualification, which makes the whole thing even stranger. I do think people use it to reconnect with their community, so in that sense, I suppose it could be called a religion. But most folks don’t really use the word as defined by it’s origins too often, so I’m going to stick with the common usage of the word.