I mentioned in my comment to the introductory post that I had had to come up with a brief description of Unitarian Universalism as part of applying to become a lay chaplain (the specific question posed was "If I were to explain Unitarian Universalism in 5 sentences, I would say..."), and zvi asked if I would talk about it here. So I am!

I've often heard it said, and I think it's correct, that one of the problems we as a religious movement have is that we too often define our religion in negative terms, as what we're not. As an institution, we're not Christian. We're not creedal. We're not focused on an afterlife, or on sin and salvation. Essentially, I think we're saying, we're not like those religions. A problem with that is that defining by negatives never actually says what we are! It doesn't make us sound particularly appealing. Also, in my opinion it can all too easily slip into denigration of "those religions": the UUA's and CUC's^* statement of principles and sources specifically includes "wisdom from the world's religions" and "Jewish and Christian teachings," among others, but it's not uncommon for a significant number of UUs to wince when someone tries to bring in Christian teachings. (I do understand where that comes from, and I sympathize; my point is that sometimes an emphasis on what we're (institutionally) not can be a slap in the face to those individuals who are -- who are Christian, or theist, or whatever -- whether they are also UUs or not. And here I'm verging on a much larger and contentious and important topic that I don't want to derail this post to engage with, so I'll move on.)

[^*There are Unitarian and Unitarian Universalist (and a few Universalist) congregations all over the world, and their theologies vary widely; indeed, I went to a couple of sessions at the Canadian Unitarian Council's annual meeting recently that essentially asked whether anything truly binds them all together as something we can reasonably call "Unitarian," and if so, what? Generalizations I make here and elsewhere are not merely generalizations, which means that there will be many counterexamples to be found but I hope I am correctly identifying overall tendencies; they are also generalizations specifically about U.S. and Canadian Unitarianism/Unitarian Universalism. I can't claim to know more than the barest minimum about, say, Indian Unitarianism, or Hungarian, or Filipino, or another branch, and nothing I say is intended to cover them. I'd be glad to learn more about them.]

So how can we define UUism by what it is, rather than what it isn't? Here's what I came up with for my application:

Unitarian Universalism is a religion without a creed; there's nothing you have to believe, no ritual you have to undergo, to be a Unitarian. But there are general principles that UUs tend to adhere to, and they center on the dignity and worth of every person and of the natural world, and on the right of people to determine for themselves, in accordance with their own sense of spirituality, their conscience, and their intellect, what sort of religious life and expression is right for them. We draw on and adapt many religious traditions, especially Christianity, which is our direct ancestor, but also Judaism, Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam, and paganism, among others; and we also emphasize the importance of rationality and rational inquiry, so we draw on humanism and scientific thought as well. Basically, we believe that religion is important, spirituality is important, spiritual community is important, but we don't set out to define what those mean for everyone. Unitarian Universalism invites people to come together, work together, and seek deep meaning together, no matter how they understand and live their spirituality.

You'll notice that I still started with a negative! (Also that I totally cheated on the five-sentence limit, by using semicolons.)

I'm pretty pleased with that, as far as it goes (and, y'know, my application was accepted, so I guess the committee reading it was too). But it's rather formal, as befits the context it was written for.

Some time ago, I got an inquiry from a couple looking for an officiant for their wedding. They didn't know a thing about Unitarianism; my name is on a list of officiants that a beautiful chapel affiliated with McGill University provides to people in the McGill community who want to be married there, and I think there are only two people on it who don't have a specific religion listed after their names (the other UU lay chaplain and I are listed as "Spiritual"), and I'm the only one of us two whose email address is listed. So I got the query. "Is it possible to have you as the officiating minister?" they asked. "We're not religious."

So I had a couple of things to clear up right away: I am not a minister (but I can still perform a legal wedding), and there is absolutely no contradiction between their being "not religious" and my officiating at the service. A formal five-compound-sentence definition of UUism wasn't what was called for here, but some kind of "no, see, this is where I'm coming from" was. So I wrote back,

Hello, [names], and congratulations on planning your wedding! I am available on [date] and would be honored to officiate at the ceremony. Please note that I am not an ordained minister, but a lay chaplain affiliated with the Unitarian Church of Montreal and licensed to perform weddings in Quebec. Unitarian Universalism is a theologically diverse religion that requires no specific belief (not even in God), drawing wisdom from many traditions and welcoming theists, atheists, and humanists, encouraging each person's free and responsible search for truth and meaning. My goal as a wedding officiant is to work with you to plan a ceremony that will reflect your relationship, your values and principles, and your love and joy for the future.

(My usual template text, for responses to inquiries through the church, says "your spiritual values and principles," but I took the word "spiritual" out in this instance.) It still includes a negative, but the idea of a religion that doesn't demand a specific belief is so foreign to most people that I can't think of any other way to make the point clear! Even the Principles and Sources are not a creed, although they do tend to get used as one; the member congregations have agreed to "affirm and promote" them, but that doesn't bind every individual member of those congregations to do so, let alone someone who identifies as UU but isn't a member of a congregation. I've explained it to visitors to our church by saying, "You're not required to believe them! but if they're not generally the kind of thing that you can go along with, you may find that this isn't a congenial space for you." (Which is basically what I meant in my application essay by "there are general principles that UUs tend to adhere to.") And certainly each of us tends to find that some of the principles and sources speak more to us, are more powerful and important to us, than others, and a conversation about that would be interesting to have here sometime, too.

Anyway, so those are my elevator speeches, my brief explanations of UUism. Do they reflect what you all think of as being the center or core of UUism? What would you say differently? I'd love to hear your thoughts and your own ways of explaining what UUism is to you.