Rigid, authoritarian, and emotionally abusive
Religion is not all bad, we’re told. Religion is often good, we’re told. Some atheists do nothing but bash religion, we’re told. Some atheists do nothing but bash “the religious,” we’re told.
Not all religions are literalist, we’re told. Not all religions are fundamentalist or theocratic or doctrinaire, we’re told. Unitarian Universalism, for instance, is liberal and swell, we’re told.
But some former Unitarian Universalists beg to differ.
There is a contrary trend, though, in many local UU congregations and in the national UU Association (“UUA”): extremely strong religious privilege and (largely as a consequence) severe distaste for open atheism and criticism of religion. Very few UUs believe in “God” as that term is broadly understood by theists (and atheists) the word over, but lots of UUs believe in “religion,” “faith,” “prayer,” “church,” and (indeed) “God” as terms and systems that deserve support and defense. Gnu-bashing is overwhelmingly common and accepted among UUs, especially clergy and denominational administrators, as I have documented repeatedly (several selected examples here).
In one of those selected examples we read
our Association is dotted by powerful ministers and administrators who regularly push outrageous and bigoted messages about atheists, agnostics, not-particularly-“spiritual” humanists, and anyone whose skepticism leads her to an outlook that is less pious than these figures would prefer. UU discourse about atheism and skepticism is riven with bigotry, disrespect, and ignorant stereotype–and the broader community’s reponse has been… for the most part utter silence.
This, depressingly, confirms what many of us already know: that atheists are the last (or almost the last) group (non-criminal group) it is not just ok but positively virtuous to malign.
My own minister has declared that I, and everyone who sees the world the way I do,
are often unaware of the sharp limits of their empathy and their abilities to construct and identify with the interior feelings and processes of others. Religiously, these persons are often drawn to the rigidities and seemingly unambiguous teachings of fundamentalism–and there are liberals and radical fundamentalist spirits. As spouses, parents and bosses, such persons are, at the best, insensitive, and at the worst, rigid, authoritarian, and emotionally abusive.
Read that last sentence with attention, and ponder it. That’s what putative liberal religions think of atheists.
I was a choral accompanist for a year at a UU church. I thought, maybe, here, at last, is a congregation where I can fit in (this was at the end of a decade-long stint as a church musician). You will not be surprised to hear that I discovered I was not comfortable with their frequent open endorsement of woo.
I visited that church a few years later, and mentioned to the pastor that I was an atheist (this was around the time that Gnu atheism was gaining ground, and I had embraced it). She suggested that I ought to write my own theology. Irritated by this head-spinning suggestion, I couldn’t come up with anything that wouldn’t be really insulting in reply, so I just let the subject be.
Cue Andrew Lovley waving his hands in 5-4-3-2…
There does seem to be some variation among UU clergy on this point. I hear scattered stories of some ministers being quite supportive of atheists and atheist groups, although I know that there is at least one UU church in my area that produces much rhetoric like the above.
The feeling I get is that, as atheism is on the increase, and people like the gnus become more visibly cranky about all this religious privilege stuff, people who would have been UUs now gravitate towards atheist (or pro-secular, or humanist) groups, and people who see a lot of value in religion are the only ones left in UU congregations.
What really, really annoys me about some liberal religious people, is how I can be really good about not looking for an argument, not criticizing religion in excessively general terms, and carefully avoiding value-laden terms while talking about the history of some oppressive stupid phenomenon…
and then they will still make statements about how I think that all religious people are crazy stupid cult leaders, or something. I don’t even have to use any insulting words or overgeneralizations at all, because they will clearly remember that I said those terrible things that I didn’t say.
Sometimes, I think that merely using the “atheist” label is what did it. If I hummed and hawed about my personal beliefs, and then said the exact same things, then that would be OK. In fact, it would be important information about fundamentalist oppression, or con artistry, or whatever. But if an atheist says it, it must be because I’m stubborn, prejudiced and hateful, or something. It’s really just a bias towards the in-group, and I guess also an out-group homogeneity bias. (“I’ve heard of a couple of atheists saying insulting things, so that’s what all atheists are thinking about all religious people all the time.”)
I guess this kind of criticism doesn’t bother me too much in that I know it’s unfounded. But really, it can be painful watching someone say these things, while being supremely unaware that they are actually the ones who are striking the first unjust blow.
It’s a particularly pernicious form of religious privilege. If a liberal religious person makes a complaint about fundamentalism, that person is delivering a nuanced and respectful criticism about how some people abuse religion for personal gain. If an atheist makes the same complaint, that person is a militant, dogmatic authoritarian, obsessed with equating all religion with fundamentalism, who sees no shades of grey and wants to destroy all texts that aren’t scientifically accurate. Or something.
I’m starting a Sunday meet up of Less Wrong. That’ll be my congregation. I’ve had a belly full of church. It’s intolerable to me even in homeopathic doses.
This is the first I’ve heard about UU atheist intolerance. I almost included surprisingly, but looking back the only times I’ve ever heard claims about how amazing and liberal and inclusive the UUs are were from christian apologists arguing against atheists (or other atheists arguing against gnu atheists).
It is an agreement between my spiritual/agnostic girlfriend and I that when we have children, if they express interest in church I am supposed to let them go. I was planning on just her taking them to a UU church (it was a long enough fight to keep it from being a Catholic church); but now I’ll forego the sleeping in and be sure to accompany them. Religion can’t afford to play fair; and I won’t let my kids be indoctrinated.
Yeah, UUs are all over the map. My agnostic parents joined a small UU fellowship in retirement (which turned out to be very valuable when their health started to decline, what with me living in another city). Everyone from the ultra-liberal Christians through the vaguely spiritual types to the outright non-believers seemed to get along, to the extent that my Dad was fellowship Chair for a while, ie. he was respected and liked (though he privately expressed annoyance at the people who wanted “spirituality” as if the word meant something).
It probably helped that it was a small, sort of anarchistic group that had no regular hired minister or staff, thus no real power structure to corrupt things. The noblest sentiments and best intentions seem to go out the window as soon as there’s something material at stake….
I grew up in an UU church in Arkansas and during my teen years took a leadership role in the district (Texas and surrounding areas), and I visited a few UU churches and fellowships at the time. I was shocked at how Christian some of the churches were: they actually mentioned God and talked about stories from the Bible as if they were relevant!
In my church, the reverend speaks highly of faith more than I like, but when he or she (it varies) does mention a specific religion, you can see a few eyes narrow in the audience and tensions build, probably because we have a smattering of Wiccans, Jews, Buddhists, and atheists in the audience. It’s kind of hilarious, and I really like the community, but there really is a bit too much appreciation for faith. I’ve tried getting the reverends to speak about “human reason” or “evidence of the heart” or anything instead of faith, but they haven’t gone for it yet.
I did notice that the more rural a congregation, the most liberal it was generally, and even at the time I figured that was odd. I think it must be because the more rural an area, the fewer churches it could support (sometimes only one within a 2 hour drive), and so all the non-christian liberals and christian liberals had to share a congregation and that might have mellowed them out a bit. UUism is a quarter million strong, I think they were recently surpassed by the Amish in the US, and UUs are concentrated in the Northeast, where it is particularly urban, so maybe my experience wasn’t very representative. Still, I love all of the 7 principles and it definitely improved my childhood for the better I think.
And I enjoyed the overnight, chaperoned parties we had at the church; I remember one time I dressed up in a toga, declared myself a reborn god, married some kids, and smote some people who refused to help make breakfast, all to general applause. So, UUism in the Bible Belt is a mixed bag, though it can be pretty atheist-friendly at times.
Thanks for looking into my work as a (mediocre) blogger, Ophelia.
I do want to clarify a little what I am and am not saying. First, the tradition of “congregational polity” that UUism inherited from its ancestry in the Congregational church is important to keep in mind; different UU congregations deal with (a)theology in strikingly disparate ways. As I mentioned on the previous thread, there are numerous UU congregations in the U.S., especially in the more heavily Christian parts of the country, that provide a desperately needed island of relative sanity for atheists. In those congregations, and in a handful of UU bodies outside of the Bible Belt and similar places, atheist-bashing is not common.
However, within the past 20-25 years, the center of theological gravity in the national Association at large has swung heavily against open criticism of religion and toward a theology-flavored form of accommodationism. In my longer comment in the previous thread, and much more on my old blog, I found and quoted a nauseating number of works in which the most powerful figures in the Association baited, marginalized, and/or savaged atheists for the dastardly crime of being open about the critical conclusions that our “free and responsible search for truth and meaning” (one of the seven Principles the UUA purports to “affirm and promote”) had brought us to.
What eventually convinced me that I had to leave was when the UUA’s antipathy leaked into my local congregation; in 2007, the senior minister (a UU Christian who treated others’ perspectives respectfully but who was apparently a lousy administrator) was fired and replaced, first, by a firebreathing atheophobic temporary (“interim”) minister who preached that “are often unaware of the sharp limits” horseshit… and then, by a permanent minister who spent a lovely paragraph in his application essay blasting “fundamentalist humanism [and] atheism.” The latter’s first sermon as a full-timer argued against the widespread notion that UUism isn’t defined by beliefs; he contended that the fundamental UU beliefs are the “Great Commandments” Jesus declared in Matthew 22:35-40 and Mark 12:28-31: “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind” and “Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.”
I was already well out the door by the time I heard that, but geez—what a kiss-off.
Anyway, I want to make it clear that there are a sizeable number of atheists within UUism. Some of them attend and contribute to congregations that respect and celebrate atheistic ways of seeing the world. Many others belong to congregations in which they’re slighted and marginalized—or else held up as the acceptable contrast to the bad “fundamentalist” atheists who insist on doing Gnu-ish stuff. And the powers-that-be within the national Association, as well as the two seminaries, the Ministers’ Association, UU World magazine, and the most prominent UU blogs are very much on board with the atheist-bashing program. That, I think, is the tragedy: atheist dollars are filling the pockets and coffers of institutions that openly detest us.
For a slightly different take on the UUA’s ugly attitude toward atheists, here is an important blog post by Matthew Gatheringwater, a former atheist UU seminary student who was expelled, under mysterious circumstances, from the UU seminary in Chicago. I think he and I see things largely the same way, but Matthew’s approach tends to be poetic where mine is pissed off.
Careful, guys. You might alienate these valuable allies by calling them on their rank bigotry.
And I should mention that the UUs I’ve met are all extremely pro-gay rights and women’s rights. We’ve even had a few lesbian church presidents and one reverend for my old congregation.
…Sorry, one other point I wanted to make regarding UUs and antipathy toward atheists.
Overtly atheophobic UUs, in my experience, are in the distinct minority, though they seem to be far more common in the corridors of UUA power than they are in the laity. But no one does squat about the problem; almost no one even cares to entertain the thought that it exists.
For some absurd reason, the internal conventional wisdom is that UUism is controlled by atheists (presumably because religion is subjected to slightly more skepticism inside many UU congregations than it is in U.S. society at large)—and thus the very notion that UU clergy and administrators could harbor bigotry against atheists is routinely dismissed as simply absurd. One can confront ordinary UUs with example after example after example of shockingly malicious attacks leveled against atheists by UU ministers and administrators… and they see nothing. After years of trying to get through the impenetrable walls of UU denial—to get people I liked and respected to take notice of the awful behavior of their own leaders—I gave up.
So in a sense, UUism is burdened more by a small proportion of atheophobic “bad apples” than by the broader swath of its membership, who I think are measurably more tolerant of religious dissent than Americans in general are. But given that that huge swath has no interest whatsoever in taking the bad apples’ misconduct seriously, it’s not exactly a help.
Pissy disgruntlement has a poetry to it, too.
No, that’s what one bloke believes. (Others might, o’course, but we’re only offered his opinion.) You’d be irritated if somebody took a choice extract from Pharyngula and applied it to all atheists, no?
Ben:
Actually, “Rev. Smith,” the interim minister at my congregation whom I was quoting, is a woman. (She, in turn, claimed to be quoting that passage from James Fowler, a Methodist minister and theologian.) And I suggest you follow some of the (my) links in the original post; “Smith” is by no means alone.
“Smith” is not a random blog commenter; she’s a senior clergywoman who has ministered to UU congregations all over the country for something like twenty years. And I’ve yet to see any UU (besides myself, the ex-UU) say an unkind word about the way she treats nonbelievers. It seems to me a questionable analogy to compare her to a random Pharyngula commenter.
Yes, but people who preach in churches are more beholden to the people in the pews or on the benches than bloggers are to their readers. They speak for their organization in a way that most bloggers don’t – certainly PZ doesn’t.
Still, you’re right that one preacher doesn’t just equal a church.
Rieux –
Those quotes are ignorant, yes, but not unpleasant in the sense of “Rev. Smith”‘s “rigid, authoritarian and…abusive” tripe. If I was to claim affection for Dr Who was stupid I might be accused of uninformed prejudice. If I was to claim that fans of Dr Who are idiots and total bastards in the bargain I might not escape so lightly.
Apols for the assumption that it was a man, by the way. My subconscious forgot which century’s in.
Great, informative comments. Thanks all.
Okay, Ben, I agree that the Buehrens and “Jones” material I quoted in my previous comment isn’t as nasty as the passage Ophelia took her title from—but it seems to me a matter of degree, not kind. There’s serious antipathy toward nonbelievers in all of them.
If you want comparably nasty, I think you can review the material I quoted in the previous thread; I think that that stuff from Buehrens (again—he’s a bit of a habitual Gnu-basher) and Weinstein, plus the Letter to the Editor from Andrea Liounis I linked to later in the comment thread, can hold a candle to “Smith”’s nastiness. Liounis, a random layperson I’ve never heard of otherwise, probably is analogous to a Pharyngula commenter… except that some UU World editor decided to print her letter. Meanwhile, Buehrens, Weinstein, and “Smith” are all bigshots within the Association, and “Jones” is an up-and-comer.
The broader point is that the hostility I’m talking about is not a rare phenomenon within UUism, or one that’s at all limited to “Smith.” The passage Ophelia quoted might be a bit harsher than average, but there’s a lot of further ugly material where that came from.
You may be a mediocre blogger (as in can’t be arsed to update it that much), but you are stunningly clear thinker and writer. You and I haunt several of the same blogs, and scroll-finger gets itchy whenever I see your ‘nym. I know it’s going to be good stuff. You are one of my favorite commenters of any blog I’ve been involved with.
Well, that’s the problem then, isn’t it? You’re not still searching. Conclusions makes you fundamentalist
I’ve found this all very interesting, and I thank everyone, Rieux especially, for bringing it to my attention. I grew up knowing of Unitarian congregations as institutional hosts for social justice gatherings. I never knew how they were when gathered among themselves.
Atheist-bashing among UU leaders makes perfect sense, though, doesn’t it? Everyone else in the local council of churches thinks you coddle atheists, so you have to prove them wrong to remain in their spiritual fellowship.
Re quotes @#14: Unless they can point to the body of writings we treat as infallible[1], and the list of necessary and indisputable principles we derive therefrom, I will treat anyone who uses the term “fundamentalist atheist” as a dishonest propagandist (or if I’m feeling charitable, a dupe thereof). That’s what the original fundamentalism was all about, and the term can be meaningfully extended to similar mindsets in Islam, Judaism, etc (possibly even secular philosophies like doctrinaire communism). But atheism, not so much.
Damn, forgot to add the footnote (which rather spoils the effect):
[1] Well, other than the Terry Pratchett oeuvre.
Josh, you are very kind. I feel the same way about your work.
I’m glad that my UU-related experience strikes a chord with you-plural. Thanks, all.
Cripes, I hate typos:
BTW, I asked Ophelia in an email if she’d ask you if it was OK to give me your email address.
I’ll add my thanks to Rieux. My exposure to UU was limited to a very few experiences in college in the eighties. My take on them was basically nice people to attend a pot luck dinner with, but a bit on the vague, woo-ish side for my tastes, even back then. Thanks for the informed update.
Funny, despite repeated accusations of a level of naiveté, groupthink, and intellectual laziness, I still routinely encounter new information and perspectives here.
The vast vast majority of what is said and done at UU congregations is basically congruent with a liberal atheistic view of the world. A high proportion of UU congregations are atheists. Every UU congregation is a little different and you have to check them out for yourself to get a feel for it. Many atheists are looking for an accepting community of people who tend to share their liberal outlook and UU churches tend to offer that.
On the other hand not everyone at a UU church is an atheist. If you show up in a “I survived the God Virus” t-shirt, you will probably be the only one. UU churches are probably a net plus for secularism, but they have room to improve.
I’m sure we’ll get more hand-waving, strawmen, accusations of immoral nihilism, and no-true-scotsmen arguments from Lovely (presuming he bothers to show up to defend himself and doesn’t just bail for another month or two before popping up to troll us again)
@Craig
Well, I don’t know about that. I can’t think of a brand of cigarettes that is “a net plus” for the no-smoking movement. (The only thing I can think of are those cigarette-like contraptions, but those are specifically intended to wean people off cigarettes completely. You use them with the expectation—the hope—that you soon will have no need for them.)
Huh. This is something I haven’t heard about before. I definitely have to go and read up on it.
For the record, I’ve been attending a UU church semi-regularly with my wife for the better part of two years. She’s a liberal ex-Catholic, I’m an atheist, and this was basically meeting in the middle. But this wasn’t a grudging accommodation on my part; I wouldn’t attend any church where I felt disrespected, and I don’t feel that way here. I literally can’t recall the last time I heard the word “God” mentioned in a sermon, and there are atheists in the congregation who are more ferocious than me and wouldn’t stand for it if it was used more than very, very rarely.
I’m not saying this is the state of affairs everywhere. Unlike, say, Catholics, UU churches are owned and managed by their individual congregations, so the minister is our employee and works for us. This probably also means UU churches vary from place to place a lot more than other denominations, depending on the wishes of the congregation, and I have heard that in the South, they tend to be more like a generically liberal Christian denomination. I’m sure New Age-type woo is prominent as well.
Our minister isn’t an atheist, but I respect her enormously regardless, and she’s never shown any intolerance or hostility toward atheists. In the past, I’ve read sermons from Robert Ingersoll as part of the service. It’s even partly thanks to her recommendation that I got a speaking gig with the Secular Student Alliance. Granted, there may be people higher up in the UUA who don’t feel the same way, which would be very discouraging if true.
@ #27
I do not need to defend myself here, the article does not refute anything I have said. Thank you for your awesome contribution anyway.
Adam and Craig, I’d just direct you to the evidence I’ve adduced regarding the ample atheophobia there is to be found within UUism, especially high in the UUA hierarchy. Most of my cites are getting a little old now, given that I took my leave in 2008.
On the other hand, there is also the 2009 UU World/Freedom From Religion Foundation incident that MosesZD mentioned on the previous thread; here’s Hemant “Friendly Atheist” Mehta reporting (and again) on that fracas. I’m with Moses; isn’t it troubling that the denomination your membership funds go to support decided to censor the FFRF ad? Doesn’t the official response suggest something disturbing about the Association’s (or at least the magazine’s) attitude toward criticism of religion?
Adam, you’re in NYC, right? I’m curious about which congregation you attend. I presume it isn’t All Souls, the biggest UU church in the City (and indeed the world, I think); until recently, that was the stomping grounds of Rev. Forrest Church, who was one of the nastier (and most famous) atheophobes in the Association until he died in 2009. I have to think the “ferocious” atheists you mentioned would have pelted Church with heavy hymnals in response to all of the abuse he dished out at us.
Frequently I suspect that UUs who testify that there’s never any disrespect of atheists in their congregation are just blithely, though generally innocently, ignoring the ugliness that is in fact going on. That’s a bit less plausible when the atheist in question is Ebonmuse, though. It appears to me that Adam is in one of the handful of heavily secular congregations—especially if he’s never heard the word “God” mentioned!
But here’s a (late) New York UU minister who preached to a bigger crowd:
It seems to me that that—like a whole lot of Church’s oeuvre—is pretty nasty stuff.
Ack! I just posted a comment with eight hyperlinks in it, which of course fell afoul of Ophelia’s spam filter.
Is there a blogger in the house?
Sarcasm is not your strong suit. Try harder.
This is reason #968 that sleep, reading, brunch, and taking a walk are better uses of my time on a Sunday morning than church.
While some UU members are atheists or agnostics, the postmodern movement certainly seems to have highly affected the thinking of most of the UU folks I know. The dogma in many of these circles is not theological; it is philosophical. While members (and ministers) may hold a wide variety of religious beliefs, the philosophical position of what Paul Boghossian calls “the doctrine of equal validity” is held as absolutely the only correct position in regards to religious “knowledge.” It creates an environment where fundamentalism is redefined- basically as anyone who is a philosophical realist that privileges certain knowledge. The UU churches seem to be in a bit of an identity crisis between historical roots in rationalism and modernity and the strong push for postmodern equal validity/lots of Karen Armstrong “It’s only a psychologically true myth!” business. That’s what I love so much about Ophelia’s blog; she undercuts the arguments for equal validity an highlights the harm these ideas are wreaking around the world.
As a PhD student in religion and the humanities myself, I witness this constant effort by liberal religionists to paint everyone as a villain who does not endorse the doctrine of equal validity- every single day. It is at the heart of the anti-gnu attack, a philosophical dogma enforced by those trying to claim that, ironically, they are the only non-dogmatists.
Blah blah blah, religion, yak yak yak, faith. The important thing is HAPPY BIRTHDAY OPHELIA!
Most Sundays I take my mother to services at the UU Fellowship in my Southern California beach town. She and my father, adamant agnostics, joined the group forty years ago, and I’ve known some of these old folks for half my life. They’re generally godless and dependably liberal. My mother has Alzheimer’s and, although she enjoys the company of friends and the singing and the children and the lesson, she wouldn’t be able to get through it without me at her side.
Our new pastor has acknowledged that a large contingent of the congregation is atheist. Last year a rabbi delivering a guest sermon asked for a show of hands for belief in an afterlife: maybe 25%. I recall a moment from a few years ago, when I could simply drop my mother off and pick her up later, when one of her elderly friends expressed her dissatisfaction with the trend in the service, especially with people lighting candles to express a silent joy or sorrow. She brightened when I suggested that this was actually a fine pagan practice.
It just depends upon the audience.
Is it wrong just to find the whole concept of UU hilarious? A church for people who don’t like church? A faith for people who can’t agree what to believe?
How far is this some kind of distinctively US-ian Stockholm-Syndrome-type response to the impossibility of being comfortably and openly non-religious without getting questions asked about your morals?
It amazes me that agnostics and even atheists join UU churches to “fit in” and to have a sense of “community”, as if a church were a country club. I thought churches were supposed to be about God!
Is it the rituals? Do people like appearances without actual content? I probably don’t understand, but to me, it’s like: “I don’t like soccer, but I like the crowds and the grass and such soccer-related stuff, so we’ll create a soccer team without players or a ball, and we will congregate at the weekends in our stadium to cheer at the grass and yell at the referee (who’s just standing around, since there’s nothing to référer about).”
Isn’t this sort of argument symptomatic of the utter emptiness of the accommodationist position anyway? Superficially it’s a potentially useful contribution – rather than just airily asserting that religion can be a good thing someone has actually cited a specific religious group as evidence for this position. Great! A claim we can actually test for once. But the thing is, even if we take this claim at face value, even if we accept that Unitarian Universalists are uniformly sweet and lovable, that would mean that thus far accommodationists have been able to find one tiny new church, of questionable religiosity, seemingly restricted to the cultural environment of North America, with which to support their position. That comes pretty close to an open admission of failure.
Someone close to me has a Unitarian family, and I’ve had the opportunity to attend services. Based on the experience, as well as talking to Unitarians, I have to say that while this may be the least harmful to the goals of secularists of any religion, in other respects it’s an intellectual disaster. The vacuity of what counts as a sermon is truly breathtaking. The reason for this seems to be clear. Unitarians are too reasonable to accept supernatural claims and too wedded to the old forms to opt out altogether. Other than general exhortations to goodness there’s nothing left but a shell.
I do agree that there’s a distinctly postmodern “vibe”, though no one comes out and says that all beliefs are equal. I had to suppress the urge to ask questions so as not to make people uncomfortable.
Benjamin S Nelson said:
Is it your birthday?
In that case Happy Birthday! (or happy birthday yesterday if I’m late!)
Same here: ‘Lá Breithe Shona Duit’ HAPPY BIRTHDAY OB!
Hand waving it is then!
Oh, and Happy Birthday Ophelia
Sometimes I get the impression (as others have sort of alluded to) that the UUs sometimes suffer from what Bunge labels in an article “absolute skepticism equals dogmatism”, or in the venacular, “it is possible to be so open minded your brains fall out”.
Wow. I didn’t think it was possible, but apparently there can be such a thing as a “No True UU”.
Just goes to show that all religion is nutty.
Join a bridge club or a golf league instead.
#28
I can think of a brand of sterile mosquitos that are supposed to be a net plus for the non-mosquito movement, though.
Happy Birthday Ophelia! :)
—
Re: philosopher-animal #45
Whenever someone accuses me of this because of my staunch atheism, I tend to take the Santa route and ask them how it is possible for them to have not fully rejected that childhood superstition. No one’s ire is stoked by “dogmatic a-Santaism” (as long as it isn’t done around the children, of course). Actually, I think this is psychologically similar to the way some Christians can have a good laugh about Scientology or Mormonism while still sincerely holding their own ridiculous beliefs.
@39: Churches (or any other club) are about whatever the members make them be about, whatever the nominal purposes may be. As one friend put it: she didn’t know if she believed half the stuff the church taught, but they were a great bunch of people to hang with, and work together on community projects (this was a very liberal urban United Church congregation that was doing some genuinely valuable work in their downtown neighbourhood). There really is more stuff than just theology going on in many churches.
Just take all that stuff, remove the theology, and you’ve still got a community that understands itself as being both about friends-and-fellowship and some larger purpose and projects. Like, our local CFI group (of which my wife is the director).
Thanks all!
Josh L must have rescued Rieux’s comment, unless goddidit for my birthday. Thanks Josh!
Jose,
Do people like appearances without substance? Have you seen any pop culture lately?
“It amazes me that agnostics and even atheists join UU churches to “fit in” and to have a sense of “community”, as if a church were a country club. I thought churches were supposed to be about God!”
Me and my wife considered joining a UU church basically for the “community” aspects for our children. Church picnics, barbeque’s, social things for our children. We decided against it though.
James Fish–
Small but perhaps relevant correction: not all UUs are in North America, though it can seem that way in some parts of the Boston area. I happen to know of some Unitarians in Lancaster (someone I know has talked about his parents’ congregation there), and there may still be Unitarian churches in Transylvania. At a guess, we’re hearing about the American ones because there’s less pressure on English nonbelievers than American ones to affiliate with some sort of church.
Wait, though, Vicki: there’s a fundamental difference between the Unitarian Universalist denomination, which is indeed almost entirely in the United States and Canada, and the Unitarian Church, which is largely in Britain and Transylvania.
There are historical and theological connections between the two, and the American UU hierarchy likes to play them up; but Unitarianism-as-such is, to my understanding, a full-blown (though quite liberal) Christian denomination. UUism isn’t.
In the context of modern Unitarianism, it seems rather odd to recall that Emma Darwin was concerned for her agnostic husband’s eternal destiny ;-).
Eamon Knight, so esentially it’s like my country club or my soccerless soccer team analogies. That’s where my eyebrows rise up to the ceiling. A political party is inextricably connected to politics as is a soccer team to soccer or a church to religion. That’s how it is in this part of the world, anyway. Probably I’m just culturally dislocated.
However, it still worries me that although the actual religious content is gone, the idea of having a church and belonging to one remains as something healthy and good for a community.
Thanks for the links, Rieux. I’ll look them over very carefully, rest assured.
Yes, I’m familiar with the FFRF ad controversy in UU World, since I wrote about it myself. :) I have to disagree with your characterization: the ads weren’t “censored”, they were accepted and printed in the magazine. (I scanned the image of them that’s in my post from my own copy.) This suggests to me that most of the people involved in the editorial process saw nothing problematic about them. It’s only subsequently that some people complained, and as I wrote in my post, I think this is because Unitarian Universalism needlessly put itself in the line of FFRF’s fire by choosing to use archaic and arguably inaccurate religious terminology to describe itself.
To me, the biggest selling point of Unitarian Universalism is and has always been that, even if members of the UUA have made ignorant and bigoted remarks about atheism, UU itself has no creed in the sense of a list of statements that must be believed by faith. The closest thing it has a set of seven principles for moral action, which individual members can justify to themselves in any way they choose. It’s not like the officials of the UUA have any formal authority over any other member, the way a Catholic bishop does over a Catholic congregant. If we disagree with them, we’re free to call them (for example) ignorant and bigoted, and there’s not a thing they can do about it. This, of course, doesn’t excuse them from making such remarks in the first place, nor does it imply that they deserve my continued support.
I don’t attend All Souls, but a smaller UU church on Long Island. (If you’re curious, feel free to e-mail me and I’ll tell you all about it.) I will say that there was a guest speaker last week who made me somewhat irritated: she was discussing how the UUA’s membership numbers have been flat the last few years, and urged current members to reach out to family and friends and try to bring them in. That would have been fine, except that she particularly urged us to reach out to the 15% of Americans who are, as she put it, “unchurched”. She spoke of that group in a manner which implied we’re up for grabs, so to speak, without acknowledging that some of that 15% might have their own convictions and are unchurched by choice. Especially in light of what I’ve read in this comment thread, I’m going to have to consider this very seriously. Still, I’ve never heard disparaging talk about atheists or atheism from our regular minister or any of the board of trustees.
Thanks, Adam.
I do think the UU World/FFRF incident is an example of censorship, because the business manager of the magazine, Scott Ullrich, wrote an apology to the readership for making the horrible mistake of running the FFRF ad, one that all but promised that no such ad will ever be published again:
I’m sorry I missed your post on the matter; I’ve just now read it, and you’re quite right in pretty much everything you say in it. However, I don’t think you’re facing up to the general consensus UU response to the concern you voice, which is pretty much to declare that anyone who sees “religion” in the way you do (as do I, as does the FFRF) is clearly ignorant, possibly stupid and very likely “fundamentalist.”
Look at Ullrich: he doesn’t notice any kind of issue about what FFRF (or Butterfly McQueen et al.) may have meant by “religion.” He just takes it as a given that (P1) UUism is a religion, (P2) the FFRF ad “appears to be condemning religion in general,” and therefore (C) the ad shouldn’t have been printed in UU World. The issue you raise never enters his mind—as is the case for the overwhelming majority of UUs I’ve ever met. (Forrest Church, for one, used that ambiguity to beat atheists silly.)
You approach the issue of the meaning of religion with a level of nuance that diverges from just about my entire experience within UUism. In my experience in UU circles, religion can be defined in the “liberal” way (e.g., “the human response to the dual reality that we are alive and we are going to die”—that’s good old Forrest) or in the “narrow” way, and to pay attention to the latter is to be a blinkered fundamentalist, so one shouldn’t.
In essence, I think there’s a ridiculous level of dogmatism within UUism on precisely that kind of question. Ullrich’s failure to even consider what FFRF might have meant by “religion” is, in my experience, symptomatic of both UUA administrators and UU laity. And the result is that no one will ever be able to run an ad saying those kinds of things in UU World again. Isn’t that troubling?
I suppose—but your donations pay their salaries. (Ullrich’s, too.)
The events that led me to leave my local UU church leave me quite a bit less sanguine about congregational polity and the supposed lack of power that UUA figures have over individual UUs’ experience in their congregations. As I mentioned above, the senior minister at my church was fired in early 2007 for being a lousy administrator. He was initially replaced by an interim minister supplied by the UUA; that was “Rev. Smith,” she of the sermon accusing rationalists of being “at the best, insensitive, and at the worst, rigid, authoritarian, and emotionally abusive.”
Then we got a permanent settled minister, chosen from the options supplied by the UU seminaries. Those seminaries, of course, (1) are run by administrators who have no love for atheism and, somewhat consequently, (2) have basically zero atheists in their student bodies. (Check out Matthew Gatheringwater’s blog post I linked to above.) Predictably, the guy we hired bashed fundamentalist atheism and humanism in his application and, upon being hired, immediately declared from the pulpit that UU beliefs and Jesus’ “Great Commandments” were one in the same.
All this, starting with “Smith”‘s hostility, came as an utter shock to me. I had thought that my congregation would never put up with that kind of atheophobic garbage—but they not only condoned it from her, they hired it in her successor. And both ministers’ approaches, as far as I can tell, are representative of the broad trend right now (since the mid-’80s, really) within the UU clergy and UUA administration.
Anyway. Quite possibly those “ferocious atheists” in your Long Island congregation will be able to act as a lasting bulwark against creeping anti-atheist nastiness. Even then, though, it seems to me that your congregation is lending material support to an Association that seriously dishonors them, and indeed us. I think we all deserve better, from “Smith” and Ullrich alike.
I just read this : http://www.yesmagazine.org/blogs/interfaith-amigos/the-interfaith-amigos-answer-your-questions and it’s nothing more than religious propaganda, nothing to do with atheism or rational thinking it is just the overall bullshit of gaining spiritualism to save the earth. It is the bla-bla-bla of compassion is the real heart of every religion. We know these deluded guys who don’t like the truth. The spiritual path gonna led us to peace, and every gangster of wall street gonna gives us their money. It’s an article in “yes” of course.
[…] UU church, which was an oversight on my part. But a few months ago, I got into a conversation in a thread on Butterflies & Wheels with a commenter who goes by Rieux (I bet some of you recognize that name!), who had some […]