Witnessing

[zvi]

I … rather envisioned people saying something here? I guess I'll go ahead and goose the discussion a bit, but I'd like people to can do intro posts or talk about practice, beliefs, intuitions, congregational life, anything that relates to your life as a religious person.

Okay, so, one of the things about me is that I'm a (non-UU) preacher's kid and some of the time I use Christian language to describe congregational practice that makes sense to me, but I'm an agnostic more-humanist-than-anything-else, and I'm not talking about Jesus or any god.

Are you publicly a Unitarian Universalist?

When people discuss religion in daily life, do you clarify the religious tradition to which you belong, rather than sticking to a single vocabulary of Christian sounding words like church or pagan sounding words like magic or Buddhist sounding words like meditation?

Do you proactively witness the tradition? Do your internet profiles include UU identifications*? Do you wear chalice jewelry or t-shirts? Do you have spare Principles & Sources cards to whip out of your business card wallet?

Does your family know what kind of religious community you belong to? Do they know that you don't only celebrate the holidays you grew up with, but now incorporate rites and practices from other traditions, or have given up rites and practices all together?

How do we tow the line between being open about our religious life and being proselytizers? Is being open on this issue part of your religious belief system? If you believe strongly in a specific faith tradition, like Islam or Judaism or atheism, alongside with your UU identification, do you prefer to identify that way? Is UU too complicated to talk about?

*Speaking of, can anyone recommend a more attractive icon than this one? It displeases me.

P.S. If anyone wants to reframe the questions, feel free? I know I stacked the deck with the implication that coming out is better, but if your coming at these questions from a whole other angle, feel free to lay that groundwork with your own questions and then answer those.

Comments

[zvi]

I want to ask loads of questions about Welsh unitarianism but I don't want to be pushy if you're not interested in talking. On the other hand, if you wanted to go on about it at any length, that would make an excellent entry in the comm.

Does Wales/the UK have a mail/Internet fellowship/congregation/ministry? I mean a formal one, not something formal like a Dreamwidth comm or Facebook group.

Why did your school records have a religion noted?

And, okay, I couldn't stop myself from having two nosy comments, but I'll stop there and just say welcome.

[shanaqui]

I haven't actually attended any religious services in Wales -- I grew up in England. But my family are Welsh, so that's where I get the Welsh influence. I gather Unitarianism was more popular than the Anglican church among the Welsh; don't know to what extent it was a part of or just alongside the Nonconformist tradition. Considering our family was packed full of miners, and have been purely Welsh for many generations, I'm surprised we seem to have a strong Anglican background. The Anglican church didn't play nice with the Welsh people: didn't preach in Welsh, often, or speak to the congregation in general in Welsh, when it'd likely be all they could speak.

I'm not sure, since I don't get involved with UUism as organised religion, so much. Several of my friends attend chapel and get involved a lot; I'll be pointing them here, no doubt. I think so -- my "Flaming Unitarian" badge was given me by a friend who got it from a friend who attended a big meeting, as far as I gathered.

I... sort of figured all schools did that? Maybe not, mine was a private school, not a state school. Probably partly to decide which assembly we "had" to go to (they had two: Anglican Christian and Muslim -- you couldn't pick "none of the above"). You're white, you're Anglican, basically, in that school's eyes.

[zvi]

Cool! I'm always curious about Unitarianism outside of my context (the U.S.) as I'm not sure how parallel the evolution of the movement has been internationally.

And no public school (er, state school?) in the US would record a student's religion. It might come up in the course of a lesson, and there might be some sort of student religious organization, but it's not the sort of thing one would keep a record of.

I've never attended private school in the US, but there's an enormous amount of variety here. I suspect some religiously affiliated schools might keep track of their students' religion, but I suspect that a lot of religious schools just tell people that they have to go to a service as part of the curriculum, and if people don't like it, they can just not enroll in that private school.