Part II:  Our Beliefs
[Adapted in part from Challenge of a Liberal Faith, by George N. Marshall]

    Both Unitarianism and Universalism for the most part grew out of Puritanical backgrounds in the English-speaking world, but increasingly diverged from the orthodoxy of its origins.  Worship for us is a quite different thing from what it is for many groups, which is why newcomers frequently ask such questions as: “Are we really a church?” “Have we a right to call ourselves Christians?”, “Do we mean the same thing by the word ‘religion’ as  others do?”, or “Should we use some word other than ‘God’ for the spirit or force we mean, because God implies an anthropomorphic being?”.
    All of these questions can be answered by any minister or lay member, though we will often answer them differently, and the same person may well give different answers at different times and be completely honest each time. I see this not as a weakness but as  one of our great strengths.
    The very word “worship” derives from a root meaning to consider that which is
worthwhile. It is what we do every Sunday. I believe it is no accident that our modern movement was born in the Enlightenment.
    Unitarian Universalists find a beauty in thoughtfulness, a sense of exaltation in facing a challenge, and our security rests upon those things which make sense to the mind. Thus, our worship experience becomes a warm and moving experience for us, and we leave the church personally stimulated.
    We will have followed some definite thoughts (in sermons, in services and in our daily lives) leading to an inner spiritual development, as well as stimulation in contemporary concerns.  We may touch on a new book of current social concerns, the international situation, some challenge to human dignity, new discoveries of Biblical history, dealing over a period of time with a broad sampling of religious, scholarly, social and personal concerns.  
    We will worship with words reminiscent of ancient liturgy, but filled with modern
passages from contemporary thought, provocative prose, or uplifting poetry; and we will do it in aesthetic settings as diverse as the old New England church our first minister once served, or the modern Belluci church structure I helped to build in Maryland, or the meeting room we used for many years at Opportunity House here in Hendersonville, before moving to a home of our own.
    The common denominator in all these settings is the flexibility and disdain of cant that mark our worship leaders, both those of the cloth and the laity.
    With this as a background on our flexible approach, let’s examine some of our major beliefs. First in my judgment is the acceptance of the natural world as the chief arena of living. The afterlife and immortality become secondary considerations. This natural world being the chief environment for living, there is no need for miracles to prove the intercession of supernatural powers. Revelation is not necessary, for the Scriptures and the teachings of the prophets and apostles stand on their own merit, along with all other sources of knowledge and authority.
    For the religious liberal, there is always the danger that in reacting according to our own version of a prescribed formula, one may present a negative approach to faith, and this is, indeed, what Unitarian Universalists have often done. But it need not be.  Let us examine the case of a few specifics: prayer, the Bible, God, and Jesus.
    A medieval monk by the name of Theophilus noted that prayer was talking to God, and meditation was listening to God. Many Unitarian Universalists, like others, may do too much talking, among themselves, but still recognize that the art of meditation, of listening, is an essential virtue.
            Indeed, many of our churches--including our own Fellowship--have periods of meditations, rather than prayers, in many services.  Call it what we will, it is the direct means by which we relate ourselves through directed thought to a relationship larger than our daily human fellowship, extending our lives to connections beyond the limits of our skin.  Somehow, some of us enter into a universal experience when we join in prayer or meditation, an experience difficult to understand or explain, but nevertheless meaningful if freed of the old supernatural limitations.
    The Bible is, of course, important to Unitarian Universalists.  Its translations into the common languages of Europe opened the way for free inquiry into its pages, and changed it from a privileged document of the clergy written in their special tongue, Latin. Erasmus, in his translation, made the discovery that the Trinity was not a Biblical doctrine, but superimposed. Servetus later did the same, and so began the first great protest of Unitarian rejection. Our debt to the Bible does not end with its role in our institutional existence.  It is a treasure of material rich in faith and ancient culture, in  teachings of wisdom,  in poetry and literature, even as a source book of Near Eastern history, and a field book for working archaeologists.
    A former minister of mine used to close each service with this benediction from Micah: “What doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, to love mercy and to walk humbly with thy God...”  If he had put the same thought into other non-Biblical words, would they have resonated with the same force and power?
    As to God, with a capital G, Unitarian Universalists tend to be agnostics, though many would shy from the word, and individuals run the gamut from belief in a supernatural God to atheism, from God as nature to God as some sort of vaguely defined force in the universe. The one aspect of Godhood that most would agree with--one God, at the most--does not, in my judgment, accurately reflect actual belief, but this is a subject too complicated to enter into here. (Those interested will find a tape in our church library of a Sunday talk I gave “In Praise of Pagans.”)
    Which leaves Jesus, whose significance for Unitarian Universalists is primarily the ethical teaching, timeless because timely, now as then. While one may  believe in Jesus as a divinity without being proscribed as a member, it is reasonable to expect that those so believing will instead join a church supporting a multiple Godhead.
    Remember my  earlier recounting of the first church to use the Unitarian name in Transylvania? They made a pledge not to persecute each other because of differences of opinion on religious questions.  Eventually, those who believed it necessary to hold to the Trinity for Christian worship, withdrew, and things have not changed all that much since the 16th century.
    Finally, there is the business of creeds. Our denomination has none. More precisely,  there is no test of specific beliefs; you become a member by signing the membership book, not by making a required declaration.  What we share are values, not dogma. What we require, as a practical matter in a non-creedal church, is a tolerance for the beliefs of others, not a toleration of ethical evils. In this we are not perfect.  Self-righteousness is one of the more common Unitarian Universalist sins. But our hearts are pure.