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

[estirose]

On my end, most of my family (with the exception of my step-grandmother, who's very, very evangelical/conservative christian and nobody with a sense of preservation mentions religion to) knows that I'm UU. There are a few that know I'm a secular Humanist but I just haven't been in touch with to tell them I joined UU. Some people outside my family know I've joined as well. It doesn't come up in conversation too often, but if people ask, I do tell them what I am. (An awful lot of people think I joined another Protestant Christian denomination until I clarify what UU is.)

As someone who doesn't get to a physical congregation on anything resembling a regular basis (I belong to CLF) and was raised as a Christian (and strongly influenced my my pastor grandfather, who encouraged me to examine the bible and my faith, and my family believes would have been fairly comfortable with me joining), I use the terms I grew up with. I don't celebrate most Christian holidays, but that's because I don't see the point - Christmas being an exception because it's the winter holiday I'm used to, and for the most part my family treats it as a secular holiday anyway.

[shoshanna_g]

Wow, so many big questions! And me with only a few minutes in which to answer them, because I'm about to go away for several days.

I am very publicly a UU. I wear a flaming-chalice necklace, which was a birthday gift from my best friend (who is married to a UU minister), and I talk about going to church and so on. However, I will say that it took a couple of years for me to be comfortable saying things like that! I grew up with a lot of unspoken prejudice in my family against religion, a silent message that of course it was all right for Those People (the less educated, more foolish, lesser people). Now I feel as though claiming a religious identity (for UU values of "religious") is a way of fighting back against that: this is what a religious person looks like, you know? But I still kind of worry sometimes that people will think I'm weird, or conservative (or Christian) when I say something about church.

I don't carry P&S cards, but I'm a lay chaplain, so I carry my own business cards, which are fold-over cards and have the seven principles on the inside. (And coming up with an elevator speech, a quick explanation of UUism, was one of the things I was asked to do in the application process!)

My family know, and have no problem with it, except that I think my mother, who was most clear with the unspoken messages when I was a kid, is a bit wistful about me not professing Judaism,which is our heritage, though no one in our family has been religious for a couple of generations. (In her own later years, however, she has joined a synagogue! She says she likes the scholarly traditions.)

UUism is complicated, which is part of what makes it fun to talk about!

[spaceoperadiva]

When I was a member of a UU congregation, I was very publicly UU. We had UU bumper stickers and tee shirts and a pin or two.

Currently I'm no longer attending UU church for a variety of reasons. The Principles still resonate for me, but I find that although I'm very UU supportive, I am more pagan than UU and CUUPS doesn't work for me at all. That being the case, I have slowly shed my public UU markers.

[jjhunter]

This might work better icon-wise (borrowed from a theological library webpage):


As for me, I grew up UU. I used to carry around a Principles & Sources card around in my wallet for years, but it eventually fell apart. My childhood minister retired & then passed away when I was in high school; after the interim search year, the new minister who came in had an interesting background in Sufi mysticism but was so poorly organized & inept administratively that she alienated many of the older members who ran key committees. It tore the congregation apart. My parents went from being very active members to essentially leaving the church within two years, and I drifted with them.

When I started college...I'm not entirely sure why I didn't join the local UU church. When I move again in the fall there'll be one ten minutes walk away. I think I'll drop by and see what the water's like come that time. This comm is reminding me of that absence.

[edenfalling]

I wasn't quite born-and-raised UU -- my parents joined my childhood congregation when I was two -- but close enough. I am and always have been publicly UU, and have been fortunate that the place I moved to for college (and then stayed in) has a local congregation, though I confess I held off on joining for several years until the congregation resolved a protracted fight over the then-minister, who was the unfortunate successor to a wildly popular long-term minister. There was a sort of small ministry group on the college campus at that time (which has since gone defunct) that was one of my primary supports while I was struggling with depression and other issues; I have always been grateful for that.

I teach RE (religious education), but I tend to call it Sunday school for ease of communication, which then results in me explaining that no, I'm not Christian. Possibly I should get a Principles & Sources card for such occasions... Anyway, I have taught RE since I was in high school, and actually started teaching at my current congregation before I officially joined it. *wry*

I think every internet profile I have that has space for the information says that I am UU. I have a "Famous Unitarian Universalists" t-shirt someone got me years ago, which I wear sometimes on days off work. (I confess the shirt annoys me, because it claims as UUs some people who were neither Unitarians nor Universalists, though they might have been in sympathy with the general principles of the movement.) I also have a chalice necklace, but I don't wear it because the closure is awkward and the length doesn't work with the neckline of most of my shirts. :-(

In terms of my beliefs, I am an agnostic secular humanist with a vague leaning toward pantheism (which I define as a feeling that the whole universe is sacred) and a thing for communal music and the ritual lighting of candles. Mostly I think the existence or non-existence of any deity/spirit/whatever is unprovable, undisprovable, and completely irrelevant to leading a good and moral life. If faith works for some people, that's cool. If it gives some people hives, that's cool too. What I wish is that the effort to be a good home for people who came to UUism from restrictive traditions didn't tend to make UUs twitchy about establishing any kind of rituals. I mean, as a denomination, we have been gradually creating rituals like chalice lighting, Joys & Sorrows, Water Communion, Flower Communion, and so on, but it's slow going. And I grew up through the YRUU program (Young Religious Unitarian Universalists) and YRUU cons involved a lot of emotionally powerful ritual-based worship services (generally held with candles and singing and hand-holding and movement, right around the dead of midnight), which does leave me feeling kind of unfulfilled by lecture-style sermons. On the other hand, Sunday morning services include communal hymn singing, which I find powerfully moving, so there's that. :-)

Here is a post I made a while ago about what UUism means to me. You can find more stuff under my Unitarian Universalist tag, though a bunch of that is rather dry mentions of church process; posts about RE lessons and lesson plans; or random posts about other things where I think my perspective is influenced by being UU, though there is often no obvious connection to UUism.

[busaikko]

I'm planning on being a lurker here, but I'll say hi *waves*

I was raised Episcopalian but it was more 'religion as service and community' than 'religion as belief'. I stopped going to church when I left home, then married into a fairly typical Shinto/Buddhist family (though my husband is in a branch of the Mahikari cult /o\ ). I don't attend any regular services or pray. But. One of my dearest friends is UU in the US and I love reading her sermons, and another friend's father is UU and she talks about wanting to start a congregation. Tentative connections, but um. Lurking and learning?

[shanaqui]

I've been a public Unitarian Universalist since I was fourteen (and painstakingly corrected my school every time they 'corrected' my personal information to 'Anglican').

If I'm talking about religion with people, I immediately clarify that I'm a UU, and what that might mean for our conversation. I tend to use Christian vocabulary, with a bit of the Welsh Christian in there (i.e. I'd possibly call it chapel, I might say a particularly eloquent preacher had hwyl). I also use Buddhist terms, and... really, whatever else feels right.

I wear a chalice necklace (when I'm not wearing a lovespoon necklace, anyway), and have a UU badge on my bag ("Flaming Unitarians" *grin*). I live with two practising Christians, one lackadaisical Christian, and a fervent atheist, so the fact that I have a UU chalice symbol pinned up along with quotes from various different religions/religious leaders is possibly worthy of note here... I identify more readily as UU than as anything else bar Welsh (and I'm including gender identity here).

My family know, definitely. My dad's an agnostic (leaning toward atheist), my sister is an atheist, and my mother's an Anglican with definite UU leanings. The only reason I don't call her UU is because she's happy to identify as Anglican (from this I gather that my family, unusually for our origins, were not Welsh Nonconformists).

I don't proselytize. If religion comes up, I answer frankly and openly, but it's part of my own personal code that I don't talk about religion with someone who hasn't willingly brought it up themselves. UU isn't too complicated to talk about, from my point of view, and I happily answer questions about it.

I don't currently attend chapel, because I'm not comfortable with the meeting group in my city (older than me, mostly male, an established and small group, due to the UU chapel proper closing). I haven't before, either. I tend to practice on my own, if I do practice in any sense, which I don't always. I have attended various different religious services, but in general, it's not for me. (Habit becomes complacency, with me. For that reason, I always think, feel and react as a UU, but I don't have any specific religious practices I do as habit.)

(This comment shows me how much my Welshness impacts my religious identity. Hadn't realised that before. Wow.)

[lovepeaceohana]

Thanks for getting things started :3 And, er, you're free to use this icon, if it speaks to you; I borrowed it from Google image search anyway, and the text on it is hopeful.

These are some really interesting questions, and I'm really enjoying reading others' answers. I'm a baby UU myself; I only started coming to our congregation a little under three years ago, although since then I've become pretty active in our YA (25s-35s) community, and involved with our Journey Toward Wholeness committee (by which I mean I co-chair it ^^;). I still kind of struggle with identifying as UU, but I feel like that's okay - personal search for truth and meaning and all that ^^;

My family and in-laws know that I am attending a UU congregation (and I try to say congregation rather than church, because, associations): the former because I dragged my mother to a service, and the latter because our calendar is posted in the kitchen we share and there are UU-related activities all over it. Nobody except my mother really initiates conversations with me about religion, or faith, and so I try to respect that and don't give elevator speeches except on request. Not that I actually have an elevator speech, but, I am working on developing one! Practice makes perfect and all :)

[zvi]

I, too, am new at this. I started attending services in March, started listening to sermon podcasts this winter.

What's a Journey Toward Wholeness committee?

I agree with you that congregation or fellowship would be better, but our official name ends in church, so it's a little more awkward for me. Apparently there was a very intense vote about this just last year, so I don't feel like I can bring it up any time soon, since I am so new.

What did your mother think of the service?

[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]

Welcome. You can lurk or you can comment on things, as you like. I'm not sure where you are, but the International Council of Unitarians and Universalists lists member and affiliate groups around the world.

[zvi]

I confess to some jealousy of a church with a good music program. We don't have the money to pay our music minister enough money to have even a ghost of a chance at having a decent choir. There are some members who are fairly talented pianists, but our singing trends toward the awful.

I know exactly what you mean about rituals! I am trying to get a weekly Adult Religious Education program restarted at our church, and one of the ones I'm considering is Spirit in Practice. (Also looking at Spirit of Life and BYOT.)

Thanks for joining the comm. One of the things I'm hoping for is that people with more experience in the denomination may be able to share about congregational practice. I mean, I know every congregation is its own polity, but sometimes people tell me things about how we interact with the UUA and I want to give them squinty eyes of skepticism. And, also, since every congregation is a law unto itself, it's sort of cool to compare. At least, I think it is.

[zvi]

Oh, I'm sorry for you and your parents! It seems like the high independence of congregations is both a strength and a weakness. Our congregation is in the search process and it's…well, it's something.

I envy you a very local UU church. Mine isn't far in absolute terms, but I don't drive, so getting there generally requires making arrangements.

Anyway, welcome! Feel free to post and comment!

[zvi]

Well, I hope you find a coven or circle that you fit better. But, welcome, friend, stick and around and talk and ask questions and all the like.

If I may, I don't know much about CUUPS. How were you and the organization a mismatch?

[busaikko]

Thank you for the link! Sadly, everyone is in Tokyo (but if I'm honest, I rarely even make it into Osaka these days *is suburban nester*).

[zvi]

Oh, I'm glad it's not just me! I've been very slowly dipping a toe in atheist waters, and every time you turn around there, someone is saying how religion is a terrible thing which ruins men's lives by sucking their brains out their ears, and so I get sort of handflappy and uncomfortable, because saying, "Not all religions are like that," is generally inappropriate, but at the same time, I'm a UU. No one makes me believe stories about a giant sky father coming to rescue me! Or damn other people to hell! Or decide my fate based on the alignment of the stars the night I was born, or any of that sort of thing. *sigh*

If I read the link correctly, a lay chaplain has only ceremonial duties, not pastoral or administrative ones (not directly related to the ceremonial ones, I mean, I assume you have to sign the paperwork for marriages.)

That's very exciting for your mother! I, too, am developing an interest in religious education, although perhaps not with quite the rigor of Torah studies.

Anyway, welcome and well met. It would be lovely, when you got back, if you could post an entry discussing a little bit about how you came up with your elevator speech? I still feel a bit at a loss for words when I have to discuss such things.

[zvi]

I very nearly joined CLF, because of a really gripping bout of shyness! I eventually got over it and got to my local UU church, but I still listen to Quest every month.

May I ask how you found out about/got involved with UU, since you didn't have access to a physical congregation? (Or did you have one and move away?)

[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.

[edenfalling]

Thanks for the link -- that course looks really interesting. I should mention it to the Adult RE committee at my church.

Tangentially, I would like to confirm that Building Your Own Theology is an awesome course! I had the luck to take it with Rev. Gilbert, who wrote the course book, when he was serving as an interim at my current church several years ago. It helped me mop up the lingering dregs of the spiritual crisis I wandered into in high school, and it was really neat listening to everyone else slowly articulate what they believed about the world, humanity, religion, and so on.

Ithaca is kind of spoiled when it comes to local musical talent. The fine arts students at Ithaca College are always interested in performance venues and are therefore willing to be guest musicians at a Sunday service in return for using the sanctuary as concert space in the evenings.

[estirose]

I believe I discovered it courtesy Wikipedia! I was reading up on something, ran across a reference to Universalism (the belief), realized that I'd shared that belief since I was a pre-teen, found the reference to UU, hit UUA and discovered that I had a lot in common with UU principles, looked for a local congregation, and ended up in CLF.

I love CLF because I do get to be in the ebbs and flows of a wonderful, thoughtful group, but I'm at a little disadvantage when talking to other UUs, because I have never belonged to a physical group and I'm a fairly new UU, so I don't know what people who attend physical congregations/groups know.

(There are two UU groups in my area, but as someone who's public-transit dependent, they're both a horror to get to by that on Sundays. I can't drive due to an illness, so I ended up in CLF.)

[lovepeaceohana]

Journey Towards Wholeness - um. There's actually a bit of discussion right now, thanks partly to me, as to what JTW actually does/is for. Our function in the congregation is supposedly to act as something of a conscience for the Board, and to be proactively anti-oppression (if that's not too great a cognitive dissonance?); we're also supposed to somehow be in conversation with other ministry teams and congregational groups to ensure that fail does not happen. What we actually appear to do is to provide programming, i.e. workshops around diversity education - we actually brought in a guest speaker last October to do a day-long intercultural training thing. My goal for JTW is to ensure that we don't become just some kind of "oh look, you want a diversity team, here ya go" group that functionally does nothing; I am absolutely a-okay with educational workshops, but I also want us to be able to call out policies and systemic practices that inhibit inclusivity and etc. (I totally feel you on feeling too new to make waves! But since my co-chair pulled me into the chairship with the intention that I would make waves, I do not intend to disappoint!)

Ahaha! Ours does also - although I do kinda feel like we have more of a Christian slant than other UU congregations might, so that kinda makes sense. Our worship space is also very, er, familiar to me, having come from a Catholic background - we even have a narthex ;)

My mom really liked the service; as per the above paragraph, it actually very closely mimics a typical Christian service, with an entrance song, a group affirmation of beliefs, a reading or two, some meditation, a sermon, more singing, and a closing benediction/final thought (and more singing). It really only lacks something like the Christian sacrament of Communion/Eucharist - so she reported feeling very welcome and comfortable. :)

[shoshanna_g]

I've wondered how well CLF works, so I'm really glad to hear it's been so good for you!

[shoshanna_g]

Nope, definitely not just you!

If I read the link correctly, a lay chaplain has only ceremonial duties, not pastoral or administrative ones

Yes, that's right. I am, in fact, explicitly forbidden to do pastoral counseling; I'm not trained or qualified for it. Although obviously there's a certain amount of counseling that happens as you see people through a major lifecycle ritual, especially a funeral! But I've seen the guideline phrased as "when the ceremony is over, my relationship with them is over," which is a nice succinct guide.

And I would be glad to talk about my elevator speech when I have time to write something up! I has Thoughts.

[zvi]

You have found a congregation that works for you, so I am not urging you to quit that, but if your desire to check out a location-based group increases, it might be worth it to contact the minister or church administrator to ask if any members near you would be willing to give you a ride. That's how I started going to my local congregation. Just as an option, if you start wondering what a service might look like, or especially if you want to get in for flower communion or water communion or Passover or something specific.

Also, I know that CLF has a physical service at the Annual Meeting, if you ever have the wherewhithal to attend.

I'd love it if you made a post talking about CLF and how the members of CLF interact with each other, as well as with the ministerial team, and anything else you'd care to share. And if there are specific things that you'd like to know about how physically-based congregations work, please feel free to make a post asking that question, and everyone who wants to may answer. "What do UUs do?" questions are exactly the sorts I want to encourage here.

[zvi]

Oh, that's nice! We do have a concert series with local musicians, but we do not often have musical guests for services.

I'm a little wary about jumping into BYOT because I will be leading ARE and I've never done it before, so it seems kind of heavy for the first time out for all of us. I mean, I guess everyone has a first time, so that's not a real reason not to do it, but it does make the whole thing a little scary.

[zvi]

JTW sounds like a really good idea! I hope you guys get in and start poking around. It seems to me (from way out here not having anything to do with your congregation) that probably JTW needs to be distributed into the organizational structures, although not with JTW committee members getting invested in the committees with whom they're in contact. Like, committees should expect some JTW member to drop in not infrequently, but not have their own specific JTW person. But, again, I say this as someone who does not actually know anything about your church, and maybe that wouldn't work at all.

Your service sounds pretty UU typical, in that modified Protestant deal way, except ... group affirmation of beliefs?!?! I would expect chalice lighting to go there, but it wouldn't be a time when we subscribed to a belief system.

[spaceoperadiva]

Our issue with CUUPS was that since all paths have to be considered equally valid, we couldn't ever ask for a standard of behavior at circle. So if someone wanted to talk over the speaker or get up and dance around while everyone else was doing a guided meditation, or blurt out in the middle of a song or prayer that they thought it was all bullshit, we had to keep letting them come and put up with it.

I have no idea why they thought this was the way things should be or even a good idea. You can't just stand up during Sunday Service and start talking over the minister and when this same person did that, they told her to knock it off or they'd escort her out of services. But for some reason we as the CUUPS group were supposed to be more "open" and accepting of her "eccentricities".

Rituals aren't just dress up parties where you can show up and participate or not depending on your mood of the moment and it's not okay to force everyone to put up with disruptive behavior just for the sake of being inclusive.

The last straw came, however, when we were told that we should stop singing a hymn to Kore that everyone liked (including non-pagan members of the congregation) because as a CUUPS group, we couldn't worship any specific gods or follow any specific path, but had to be completely generic in every ritual.

This may all be the result of misinterpretation on the local level, but several years ago when this all happened the national CUUPS was no help at all in resolving any of these issues. We came away pretty bitter about the whole thing.

We had joined the church and participated in other activities and committees for quite some time before forming a CUUPS chapter and worked very hard to make sure that members who joined from outside the congregation joined the regular congregation as well and participated in the life of the greater congregation. We worked on the setup committee, my husband taught for several years in the R.E., I was on the regular Worship Committee and I was also the Music Director for a couple of years.

I mention this because usually when I talk about this, UU people start going on about CUUPS groups that use the UU church but don't participate and really don't understand the UU way of doing things and take more than they give to the congregation. We tried really hard to not be that kind of group and almost everyone that joined our CUUPS from outside became a regular active UU member too. :/

[lovepeaceohana]

Hrm, maybe that's not what it's called - oh! It's our Aspiration; I really feel like I should have it memorized, but I don't! ^^; It's less a statement of beliefs than an affirmation of our goals as a community - something like, may love be the spirit of this church, the quest for truth be its sacrament, and service be its prayer. It's part of the chalice lighting.

And, ahaha, that's actually what we're working towards :3 I'd like to have a JTW core team member in each ministry team, because I kinda feel like the resistance to the idea is one of feeling like we'd be looking over their shoulders? But barring that a designated liason would be okay too. We're still trying to figure it out :3

[shoshanna_g]

since all paths have to be considered equally valid, we couldn't ever ask for a standard of behavior at circle

...Wow. Also, ugh. Sounds like the number 1 Geek Social Fallacy in virulent action, and I'm really sorry to hear that this happened, and that the national group was no help. No wonder you came away bitter.