At one point, Baptists required no creedal test for membership, believing in total freedom of religion and each individual's right to interpret religion for themselves. Around 1707, the Philadelphia Association of Baptists adopted a "profession of faith," a brief statement of beliefs which was not binding on other churches. That statement developed, however, to the extent that today Baptist doctrine is as rigid, if not more rigid, than any other denomination.
I give this little story as an illustration of what can happen to a non-creedal church group. The Unitarian Universalist Association has adopted its own "Principles and Purposes," described as a "covenant" which is "not in conflict" with any member society. Interestingly, the Principles and Purposes have already been used to determine whether or not a new society may be admitted to membership in UUA!
I see this as a dangerous trend within our denomination. A case in point is the fastest growing segment of Unitarian Universalism, the neo-pagan movement, which only last summer received recognition in the Principles and Purposes of UUA. But is it appropriate for a non-creedal denomination to establish a membership test based on creed?
To understand the Principles and Purposes of UUA we must go back in history a little ways, to uncover the basic sources of our denomination's traditions.
Back in the fourth century of the current era, unitarians were those Christians who didn't believe in Christ. The major spokesperson was a Bishop Arius who argued that Jesus was only a human being and not a god. These unitarians opposed the movement within Christianity that would eventually turn it into a Roman mystery cult like Mithraism, its greatest rival. Mithraists already worshipped at a ritual meal, called a mizd, in which they symbolically ate the flesh of their god. Their mizd eventually became the Christian mass.
Early unitarians thought Jesus was a great person, perhaps even a supernatural person, but they did not think he was a god.
Around the same time, the followers of another African bishop, Origen, were arguing against the existence of a hell. These precursors of later universalists accepted reincarnation as a reality, but they were intrinsically Christian.
Later, in the medieval period, free-thinkers arose within Christianity. These people, like Servetus and the Polish Brethren, were essentially Christians who denied the trinity of god.
At the time of the American Revolution, unitarians in this country were a slightly different breed entirely. They were primarily deists. Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson both claimed to be unitarian (lower-case) and Franklin actually brought the unitarian minister and discoverer of oxygen, Joseph Priestley, to the United States and set him up in the first openly unitarian church in America.
Deists believe in god, of course, but they believe the world was created by a god who then set up natural laws to run things, and who doesn't interfere after that point. Deists believe the world is like a clock that god winds up and then walks off and leaves. It's a good compromise between Christianity and science. When the American Unitarian Association was founded in 1825, most of the leadership was deist.
Around the middle of the nineteenth century, another wave of beliefs overtook Unitarianism. This was transcendentalism, inspired by eastern, mainly Hindu, philosophy. Ralph Waldo Emerson and Theodore Parker were the main exponents of this concept, which said there was something in the human being that transcends the purely physical. They were, essentially, mystics, and they challenged the scientific foundation of traditional Unitarianism. Emerson left the ministry while Parker was banned from preaching in Boston by his more conservative Unitarian ministers.
Fifty years later, around the turn of the twentieth century, religious humanism became popular. This philosophy, which went beyond deism by denying the necessity, if not the reality, of any deity whatsoever, was a reaction to the transcendentalists. Again, it was a scientifically oriented religion.
In this century there have been a number of Unitarian ministers who have emphasized the prophetic posture, those who challenged the denomination to become involved in the problems of the world. Social conscience has been a major drive within our denomination since at least the Second World War.
Since the war, large numbers of Jews, having rejected the religious nature of Judaism, have come into Unitarianism. Called "Jew-nitarians," they have made up a large portion of the denomination in Florida for several years. In the 1960s, the Unitarian denomination merged with the Universalist Church and became the present Unitarian Universalist Association.
And more recently, New Age people, echoing the transcendentalism of the last century, have flocked to our denomination.
So how do you describe these elements if you want to write down what our denomination is all about? You develop a list of "principles and purposes," of course. That's what we have today.
But there is another large segment of Unitarian Universalists: those who feel the environment is in desperate need, that women have been denied a place in modern society, and that ancient principles of community and cooperation must be re-instituted. This movement, called neo-paganism, women's spirituality, the goddess movement, deep ecology or earth-centered religion, has existed within our movement for decades, but had little voice within the denomination at the leadership level.
Nearly a decade ago, a movement was made to place the words "respect for the Mother Earth" into the statement of principles of the denomination. At the last minute, through a questionable parliamentary procedure, this was watered down to "respect for the interdependent web of all existence" and adopted. Now, these are certainly high-sounding phrases, but they deliberately avoided bringing in a recognition of the feminine principle in religion.
This past summer, another attempt was made to recognize this large segment of our denomination. This time, a sixth source of our traditions was added. It, again, is a fine-sounding expression, but again it fails to recognize the feminine. It is interesting that our denomination, despite its claims to egalitarianism, has a rigid hierarchy at the national level and refuses to accept that the deity might just possibly be female instead of male.
Let's look at the sources for our living tradition as listed in the Principles and Purposes:
Notice that transcendentalism, which didn't come into the denomination until a century and a half ago, is listed first. This is, by the way, an excellent statement of personal mysticism, the mysticism of San Juan de la Cruz and Francis of Assisi. The ability of each person to approach the divine directly, without any go-between or priest.
There is a sop here to the deists, by the way, who otherwise aren't mentioned. (Channing is probably turning over in his grave!) The "forces which create and uphold life" must refer to the immutable laws of nature so revered by the early scientific community.
Ah yes, the mid-twentieth-century emphasis on prophecy, which led to the creation of the U.U. Service Committee and to social action, is mentioned second, though it happens to be one of the newest sources. This source is heavily tainted by evolutionary thinking, the kind of concept that says everything is getting better and better and we can build a better world just by paying attention to great thinkers of the past.
Notice the inherent conflict here. The first source says each individual can obtain religious truth directly, without going through anyone else. The second source says we owe our vision to other people, who must "challenge" us to action. The second source is a justification for having ministers, for if everyone could find religion directly, no religious professionals would be required.
Where did that come from? There is no tradition in Unitarian Universalist that seems to come close to this source, unless -- ah yes! -- we include New Age philosophy. Yes, New Agers got their say in as the third source, even though the movement is only a couple of decades old. Regrettably, the "world's religions" have been construed to include only the "great religions," the modern religions which all began after patriarchy began to rule humanity.
This is an interesting one. "Love thy neighbor as thyself" is part of the Christian scripture, not the Jewish. Also, this is the only mention of a deity by name in this document, by the way, and it uses the masculine term.
Does this sentence imply that the essence of Judeo-Christian theology is that humans should love each other? Or does it say that the only part of that theology we accept is the part that urges us to love each? The former is obviously false. Jewish and Christian theology are concerned primarily with the relationship of the individual to God, and only secondarily to other people. The other, if it is what is meant, contradicts the third source which urges us to draw wisdom from all the world's religions.
Okay, here's the humanist source. But what do they mean by "idolatries of the mind and spirit"? You mean "religious superstition"? But we just got through saying (up in source three) that we accept the wisdom of all the world's religions!
Plus, the humanists certainly don't have an exclusive on "guidance of reason and results of science." The deists believed in that. So do most Unitarian Universalists, whether they are humanist or not. This source is the only one that happens to be openly negative in tone, seeming to oppose the New Age and transcendentalist philosophies.
Actually, it's just another example of patriarchal thinking, which pretends that all other beliefs are mere "idolatries" and not worthy of consideration. Strange that it is included in a document that is supposed to be so open and accepting.
. Notice another catch-phrase of patriarchy: "spiritual." The dichotomy of our time teaches us that the only valid part of the world is the spiritual. The physical part of our world is assumed to be lesser than the spiritual, if not downright evil. Earth-centered religions, of course, do not emphasize the spiritual over the physical. Instead, they teach that the earth is itself sacred. The physical world is just as valuable as the spiritual one.
But at least, earth-centered traditions are given a place in official Unitarian Universalism. There is still no recognition of the value of the feminine in religion -- a regrettable omission -- but better than nothing at all.
The most glaring omissions in the statement are that the words "universal salvation" are missing and these were the primary theological focus of Universalists for more than a thousand years, along with the words "humanity of Jesus," which was the primary focus of Unitarians for more than a thousand years. Pick up this document and you won't have a clue about the history of Unitarian Universalism!
The entire statement seems to be somewhat of an exercise in futility, however, or -- as Shakespeare described it: it is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. It's composed of a great many fancy words which don't really seem to say a lot of anything. And at the end of everything, it says: without requiring adherence to any particular interpretation of religion or to any particular religious belief or creed. So why, we might ask, write the thing in the first place?
Who knows?
Those of us, however, who are trying to bring about a revolution in people's thinking -- to overthrow four thousand years of patriarchy and institute a return to a religion based on the feminine principles of cooperation, community and responsibility, are happy to have the sixth source included in the Principles and Purposes. After all, if you are going to have such a thing, it should at least include the concepts of the newest movement within the denomination.
As pagans, we are not trying to bring back a worship of the old gods of Greece and Rome. We are trying to bring back a sense of oneness between human beings and nature. We are trying to tell the world that every time another species disappears from this planet the human species is diminished thereby. We are trying to stop our species' headlong rush toward destruction by pointing out peoples' insane reliance on masculine principles of control and power.
Yes, there are dangerous superstitions that must be warned against, but they are not the harmless superstitions of New Age dreamers. They are the age-old superstitions that say males are more important than females, that power always arises from outside the individual, that competition is an efficient way for humans to function, and that individual rights and property rights are more important than the right of the species to maintain its existence.
We are non-violent revolutionaries who call for a total reorientation of society. All the patriarchal concepts of exclusivity, superiority, freedom without responsibility and progress as a religious principle must be eliminated -- not because we want to be right but because we want our children and our children's children to have a world to live in.
The sixth source understates the intensity of the pagan, the feminine and the ecologist's vision. But it does provide a place within Unitarian Universalism for people who hold that vision. The question is, will the denomination keep a place open for pagans, or will it gradually seek to force the anti-patriarchal movement out? Already, throughout the nation, pagans are finding a cool reception in many societies and from many U.U. ministers.
Three years ago, the Florida U.U. Ministers Association voted to censure me for my stand on paganism and petitioned Boston to request my expulsion from the denomination. UUA responded by sending me a letter asking me to leave Unitarian Universalism. My congregation reminded UUA that each society is solely responsible for selecting its own minister. The matter was dropped.
This year I will begin my twentieth year as minister of the Hollywood Fellowship. In that period, the congregation has gone from imminent bankruptcy to owning its own building, fully paid for, with a modest investment portfolio.
Despite that, the denomination was perfectly willing to force me out of my position in the Fellowship to appease a few conservative ministers. Other pagans in the denomination have reported similar tales. Some ministers refuse to allow CUUPS (Covenant of Unitarian Universalist Pagans, the official UUA organization) chapters in their churches. Pagans have been asked to leave U.U. churches.
If we as a denomination don't open our doors completely to this rapidly growing segment of the nation, we take the chance of being left behind. The movement is growing, despite opposition, so we might as well accept it.
The organized arms of Christianity took three hundred years to relegate witchcraft to the trash heaps of society. At the end of the Burning Times, folk culture was declared evil and decadent. Healers and midwives were burned at the stake for their temerity in treating the sick.
Right now, all over the country, witches are "coming out of the broom closet" in droves. My last two series of courses -- originally designed for classes of a half dozen -- have been filled beyond capacity -- 20 to 30 new students at a time. And every daily newspaper in the area refuses to advertise them!
Go on the Internet and search for pagans. You'll find thousands of Web pages devoted exclusively to neo-paganism and witchcraft. My congregation has its own, by the way, an electronic magazine called Black Fire/Moon Fire at RETURN TO HOME PAGE