Why, you have a Sunday morning to lose! A chance to sit around and read the paper in your pajamas! I never understood this drive people have for “fellowship”. Fellowship involves beer and fire, not polite singing.
But my wife and 2 out of 3 kids go to the local UU Fellowship. My daughters greatly enjoy the Religious Education classes (learning about all different religions). Wife likes chatting with people. Ours is a nice mellow place with some moderate spirituality.
I sang in my dad’s UU church choir for a while. We were actually sometimes allowed to do real religious music - Faure’s Requiem, for one. I am so hard an agnostic as to generally refer to myself as an atheist, but I love classical religious music.
Other than the relentless political correctness, the only thing that bothered me was that they’ve changed all the words to the standard old hymns and the Doxology. Having spent grades 4-6 in a Presbyterian church choir and therefore very familiar with the traditional words, it just made me nuts, and I would defiantly sing the actual Doxology while the rest of them were singing the same tune with some vague references to Spirit (whatever that is).
If you enjoy having a church community, but have no particular religious beliefs, I think the UUs are your best bet - it’s certainly why my Dad and his lovely wife go. But as people have already pointed out, they vary substantially from congregation to congregation, so if you try one and don’t like it and there’s another within reach, try that one.
Erp! I really HATE HATE HATE it when I get dragged to Christmas Eve services with my folks and the new hymnals take out “man” or “mankind” or whatever and replace it with some weird crap that doesn’t scan. I really like church music and I dont’ see a need to go screwing around with it.
Also, a Sunday morning I go to church on is one that I don’t spend out in the garden, duh. But I’d like to widen my circle of friends.
So do a lot of us UUs. Many of us just sing with the traditional lyrics.
Something to bear in mind about the removal of the sacred/references to God/watered down text etc. in UU services. There is a significant number of people in UU churchs who ended up there because they were in some way “abused” by the denominations of their childhood.
Examples would be gay/lesbians in a place that preached hate of that , folks who were told as children that they would go to hell for asking questions, women who were told that that they were unbearably selfish for gettting divorced just because their ex-spouse was an alchoholic/wife beater. You get the picture.
A person like that is going to be MUCH more sensitive to anything that sounds like their old place of worship. In my experience, the amount of “churchy” stuff at any congregation depends totally on the previous life experience of the minister and majority of the congregants.
The original minister of the church I attend came to UU after terrible experiences in Christian church, and there were very few referrences to the bible or God and a complete avoidance of any ritual that didn’t have a secular or non-Christian base. The current minister has none of that baggage, and uses the bible to illustrate her sermons, can say God without flinching, etc. It makes the service much more “church-like.” That’s something I prefer, but resulted in the departure of some members who now find the services too reminiscent of their childhood churches and thus too painful.
Some more points:
It can’t hurt to attend a few Sundays and see if you like it. Every congregation has its own slant - so if a particular church isn’t your cup of tea, try another.
The fellowship I attend, in Lafayette, IN, has a 1 hour discussion session on topics of interest before their service. There are many folks who go to that, er, religiously (looking for intellectual discussion no doubt) who never go to the actual service. They do, however, attend pic-nics and carry-ins. Perhaps that’s the sort of interaction you’re going after.
I’ll just second that specific churches can be veeeery different in styles/attitudes of worship. Probably more than any other denomination I can think of.
Definitely try a few. I know that just in my area I can get a Christian-esque, intellectual, or spiritual (non-theist) experience depending on the church I go to.
Also, I know that the larger UU church in my area has groups (cuups has been mentioned here already) that are often attended by folks who don’t go to the regular Sunday service. So, even if you don’t ‘go to church,’ there still may be groups affiliated with the church that are up your alley.
Zsofia, like you, I grew up Presbyterian and am now agnostic. I didn’t care for the Unitarian services I’ve attended–they were far too wishy-washy for me. In addition, for me, music is often the most moving part of a service, and the UU churches I’ve been to have not had stirring music. I vaguely remember a song about Florence Nightingale…
On the other hand, most of the Unitarians I know are lovely people, so if you find that the service doesn’t bug you, go for it.