What Do We Believe?

While our roots are Judeo-Christian, our outlook keeps an open mind to the spiritual questions people have asked for centuries. This is why we are called a liberal religious faith. To make an important distinction, ours is not a “literalist” faith. That means we do not believe in the Bible or any other religious writing as inerrant or divine. Instead we dedicate our lives to the values that we believe best promote responsibility, peace and compassion in the world. We draw from all religious writings those truths that best enlighten us in our present time. In other words, liberals understand their religious writings to be symbolic and metaphorical rather than “literal.” So our Sunday morning services might present readings from theism, religious humanism or a variety of ancient or modern myths. At first, it may sound strange to hear language that expresses spirituality in such diverse ways. Beneath the different styles of expression, there is a much deeper and more relevant list of beliefs we all share.

These values are also taught to our children in Religious Education. We do not teach dogma to our children. Instead we try to teach them the moral values and ethical responsibilities described above, not as religious dogma but as human values by which to live for the common good. We also want to help them explore and develop their own spirituality and discover their own intuitions about the meaning of God or the Life Force within. In the words of William Ellery Channing, one of our founders: The great end of religious instruction is not to impose religion upon them [our children] in the form of arbitrary rules, but to awaken the conscience, the moral discernment.

All Unitarian Universalist congregations belong to a national organization called the Unitarian Universalist Association, about which more is written below . The member congregations of the UUA have all agreed to a covenant of principles which are also included below (or found elsewhere). In addition to those principles, and while each person might state these a little differently, here is a list of some of the views many of our members hold:

Do Unitarians Believe in God?

The concept of God is one that many people, including many Unitarian Universalists, struggle with in our modern, scientific world. Some find the idea of God profoundly meaningful, others less so. Some reject God altogether and hold a strictly atheistic view of the universe.

Reverend Dr. Forrest Church, minister of the Unitarian Church of All Souls in New York City, tells us that “as the ancient Hebrews recognized, God is not even God’s name. God is our name for a power that is greater than all and yet present in each.” In other words, many Unitarian Universalists believe in the presence of a Life Force all around us and within us with which an intuitive relationship is felt, i.e. being a part of something greater than ourselves. Therefore some use the term God to convey very different ideas, such as the creative power of evolution in the universe, or the ongoing power of love, or simply the ultimate mystery within which we all must live.

Regardless of one’s point of view about God, we strive to respect each other’s perspective and to learn from each other, whether one’s outlook may be atheist or theist or humanist or agnostic or Christian or Buddhist.

What Does Our Name Mean?

Unitarian

The Unitarian movement was born out of the Prostestant reformation which was started in the 16th century by Martin Luther and John Calvin. A couple of decades after Luther’s break from the Catholic Church, other radical reformers appeared, such as the Mennonite, Anabaptists and the Unitarians. While all other reformers remained “Trinitarian,” the Unitarians taught that Jesus was a great teacher and prophet but not divine. He was human like everyone else. They also observed that the concepts of the Trinity (Father, Son and Holy Spirit) were never written about in the New Testament. Michael Servetus, often called the founder of Unitarianism wrote a book denying the Trinity as scriptural and insisting that God is one. In fact, the concept of the Trinity was the creation of 2nd and 3rd century theologians.

American Unitarianism was founded in 1824 by William Ellery Channing who was a Congregationalist minister. He preached about “Unitarian Christianity.” American Unitarianism was influenced by 18th century Enlightenment period and was influenced by the explosive growth of sciences in the 19th century. Channing and his followers believed that religious beliefs must change to remain in step with the scientific discoveries about the origin and nature of life. Conservative religion taught that old beliefs must be accepted in spite of scientific advances. The American Unitarians understood things differently. They taught and we still believe, that our world and our consciousness are defined through our sciences and our expanding knowledge. And our beliefs can make sense of our lives only if what we believe fits with what we know.

Universalism

Universalism was initially a branch of Christianity that taught that after death everyone goes to heaven, that God was too good to punish anyone for eternity, especially if the reason was only due to not knowing or accepting Jesus as God’s son and savior. People began to lose interest in “hell” in the 19th century and Americans became more aware of other religions from other cultures. The more we studied other religions, the more people became aware that while there are differences, most religions share common interests: meaning and purpose in life, “eternal life” (either its literal meaning of “living forever,” or in its liberal meaning of “living in harmony with eternal values.”) So people became more open to other faiths or religious paths as life-giving. Our quest for meaning and depth is a universal one. In other words, many of us believe today, that while there may be one Truth or One Light of Truth, or some would say God, it is a Light that can never be seen directly or completely by anyone. It is a Light refracted through many windows, as one sees light refracted through the stain-glassed windows of many cathedrals, and apprehended in our limited fashion by each respective individual. This limited access that all humans have to Truth, must therefore keep us humble. No individual ever knows all the Truth or can claim that her or his faith is the only faith. One of the more dynamic aspects of our Fellowship is that we have members who come from Christian, Buddhist, Jewish, theist, atheist and agnostic persuasions.

Unitarian Universalist Association

American Unitarianism and Universalism were never exactly the same, but their members often found that there views about liberal political ideas and social programs were often similar. In 1961, the Unitarians and Universalists blended their resources and formed the Unitarian Universalist Association, with its headquarters in Boston, Massachusetts. The word “association” is important here. In a denomination, belief statements are often dictated by the headquarters. In an association, the power remains within individual churches and members and the Boston offices exist to provide such services as the member churches desire. There is far greater freedom of belief within an association that there is within a denomination. And so the UUA is dedicated to safeguarding the kind of freedom which has championed our faith from the start.

Nevertheless, the UUA does espouse a covenant of principles and purposes written by representatives of our overall membership and supported by all our member congregations. If this covenant is ever deemed as needing revision, it can be rewritten by a vote of the member churches, not the headquarters at Boston.

Our Covenant

We, the member congregations of the Unitarian Universalist Association, covenant to affirm and promote:

We hope this part of our website has given you some insight to our identity as a liberal religious community. As you spend more time among us, listening to sermons and getting to know some of our members, and if you are parents—bringing your children to our Religious Education program– your understanding will broaden and deepen.

One last word. We are a “welcoming congregation,” which means we welcome all who enter our doors seeking truth and meaning, including those of gay, lesbian and transsexual orientation. Unitarian Universalists have been a long-time advocate of homosexual rights and welcome those who would join us and support our principles.

Jim Covington, M.Div., M.A.

Our Fellowship Mission

adopted by the congregation June 2001