Revisiting Unitarian Universalism
It was that great theologian, "Star Trek's" Captain James T. Kirk, who said that too much of even a good thing can be bad. It's in that spirit that the Rev. Earl K. Holt III raises a question: Has the Unitarian Universalist church, renowned for its diversity of religious viewpoints, gone too far in pursuing diversity?
It is not just any UU, as church members call themselves, who's asking. Holt comes from five generations of Unitarians, and he's the minister of King's Chapel in Boston, the nation's first Unitarian church (George Washington wasn't even president yet). Nor is it just any old question. In American secular culture, diversity is sacrosanct; among Unitarian Universalists, it is a primal assumption in a consciously creedless church.
Holt honors the freedom of conscience that remained a tenet after Unitarians merged with the Universalist Church to form the Unitarian Universalist Association in 1961. And yet, he said, "I'm ready to defend now the hypothesis that Unitarian Universalism as it presently exists is not in any meaningful way . . . a continuity of either of the traditions" from which it sprung. Embracing all theological viewpoints -- "at some point, pandering would not become too strong a word" -- the UUA has lost the sense of unity that underlies community, Holt argues.
He heads the nine-member Commission on Appraisal, which reports every four years to the church's annual meeting on important issues. In its next report, due next year, Holt hopes the commission calls on the UUA to reexamine its statement of Principles and Purposes. That statement cites Jewish and Christian teachings, among a half-dozen influences.
"Any average Rotary club in America could probably affirm [them]," Holt said.
He'd like the church to stress that "this was a biblically centered faith, and that from that anchor . . . it has sought to be as open as possible" to other forms of inquiry.
Failing that, a statement that the UUA simply isn't Christian anymore "might be a cleansing thing to do," he said, acknowledging that few other commissioners share his view that the church should orbit within Christianity's gravity.
"I would agree with him that we have grown away from the Jewish and Christian roots," said the Rev. Tom Owen-Towle, a commissioner from San Diego. "We have grown beyond them in what I would say is a maturing process."
Whereas Holt comes from a long line of Unitarians, Owen-Towle converted to the UUA from Presbyterianism. Those backgrounds shape their respective answers to the question of what keeps them in this faith. Owen-Towle sums up his as "free-thinking mystics with hands." By that, he means the UUA stands on a triad of respect for rational open-mindedness, spirituality, and compassionate service to others. By contrast, said Holt, "What keeps me in this decidedly nontraditional faith [are] very traditional reasons. I not only grew up with it but have a sense of connection to my family's history."
To some, this may seem a tempest in a denominational teapot. Claiming about 215,000 members in the United States, the UUA ranks 46th in size among denominations that report their numbers to the National Council of Churches. But in an era of explosive growth for conservative and evangelical churches, the UUA is the one mainline denomination to have stabilized its membership, while others have decreased or collapsed entirely.
Holt doesn't foresee quitting the UUA over the issue. The only concessions on religious language may come from the UUA's president, the Rev. William G. Sinkford. Holt noted that in a sermon last year, Sinkford, while rejecting Christian language, called on the church to cultivate "a vocabulary of reverence." Like Holt and Owen-Towle, Sinkford came to his views from personal experience, which he shared in his sermon.
He abandoned his "rabid" humanism, he said, when his teenage son took a drug overdose. Sitting with him as he lay near death in the hospital, Sinkford began to pray.
"First the selfish prayers for forgiveness . . . for the time not made, for the too many trips, for the many things unsaid, and, sadly, for a few things said that should never have passed my lips," he preached. "But as the night darkened, I finally found the pure prayer. The prayer that asked only that my son would live. And late in the evening, I felt the hands of a loving universe reaching out to hold. The hands of God, the spirit of life. The name was unimportant. I knew that those hands would be there to hold me whatever the morning brought.
"And I knew, though I cannot tell you how, that those hands were holding my son as well. I knew that I did not have to walk that path alone, that there is a love that has never broken faith with us and never will."
His son lived. As did the father's memory of that desperate night, when the love for a sick child merged with reverence for an unseen divine.
Rich Barlow can be reached at rbarlow.81@alum.dartmouth.org. 