Universal Unitarians

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I have googled this brand of faith and have found very little in explanation. I recently found out that my aunt and uncle (both in their 60’s) who were raised in Catholic homes are of this “faith”.

Can someone please shed some light as to What they believe?

Are they Christian ( i.e. believe in the Trinity?)

How are their worship services conducted?

I love them and fear for the souls.

Thanks for any help given.
 
I think you mean Unitarian Universalist. If you google that you will get a lot of results.

They are not Christian. They are a liberal religious organization that is open to people of any faith and is based on shared principles rather than doctrine.

Their worship services vary greatly from church/fellowship to church/fellowship, as the denomination has a congregational polity, which means each church is in charge of itself, and decides how it will conduct it’s services.

There are Christian members and some churches and fellowships that emphasize Christianity, but UU is not a Christian denomination.

You can find tons of information at uua.org/
 
:o Thank You for the correction cheddarsox.

I went into the site you posted and was amazed at what Little information it contained. It seemed that their entire focus was on Self and community service (not always a bad thing, but also Not the only thing). I did not find anything about worshiping God, just spiritual self.

Is that all there is to this brand of faith?..The “worship” of self and Not God? at least that is what I took away from the site.
 
My Mother-In-Law and deceased Father-In-Law are/were Unitarian and my Husband was raised Unitarian from an early teen until he joined the Methodist Church as an adult.

The Unitarian “Church” is a mixture of Agnostics, Athiests, and a very small number of “christians” and then anyone else. One Sunday the pastor may speak from the bible and then the next Sunday present a talk on Buddhism. My husband went a couple of weeks ago and they just had an Orchestral Classical Concert. I feel most people who attend the Unitarian Church do so because they struggle deeply with God/Spiritual matters and finally give up and turn to the Unitarian Church. It is mostly an anything goes (except a Christ Centered Faith) type community but I would not call it a church. They are big on re-cycling and community/protecting the earth type projects. They “preach” tolerance of all faiths but even my husband will say they are extremely intolerant of faiths that emphasize Jesus. They shun Evangelicals and I never feel free to be myself around them. My Father-In-Law never allowed prayers at meals. They also seem like a lonely and unpeaceful group to be around. They are not exposed to the pure love of Christ very often. It is very sad. 😦
 
There was a joke around that one should never offend a Unitarian-Universalist member of the Ku-Klux-Klan. He might come and burn a question mark on your lawn. 😃

From what I can recall Unitarianism split from the Congregational churches in the New England in the 18th century. Unitarianism prevailed in Massachusetts, Harvard was a focal point. The Congregationalists prevailed in Connecticut with Yale as their focal point. One notes the result in who has the old churches in each state. Sometime in the middle 20th century it was noted that the Unitarians were essentially the same as the Universalists who were centered in the mid-west; so they united to form one body.

That is a fast dump of a fuzzy memory. I apologize for any mistakes. Hopefully they are omissions rather than positive errors.
 
Then I am right to be concerned for their souls. I cannot imagine not having Christ as the very Center of my worship/faith.

Conservation of earths resources is a wonderful thing, community service projects are a wonderful thing as well, but if these are done to bring glory and honor to the individual and NOT to God then what good are they in the long run when it comes to the soul?

This sounds like a “religion” of people wanting to do things their way and NOT God’s way.
 
This a religon for you if you are almost an aithiest but not quite. If you don’t believe in christ, God, the Bible, but you think some great power had to create the universe, then this is the religion for you.

I dated one women who was a Universal Unitarian. She basically liked to stand out and be different, so she wore religion like something you wear to a party. Universal Unitarian was new, it was bold, it made her feel like a rebel in society rather than a conformist. So like many young rebelious youths, this made her feel like she stood out in the crowd.
 
I was raised as a UU. They called themselves a “creedless church,” and this particular congregation was heavily into secular humanism. I saw no point in going, so once I was old enough that my parents didn’t make me go anymore, I quit. My father is an agnostic and my mother is close to that, and I think they only reason we went to that place was so they could pretend they were giving us some sort of “church” experience. :rolleyes:

The UUs were always talking about “free thinking,” which to them, meant going against traditional Judeo-Christian values. Well, I “freely thought” my way first into baptism into the Methodist church, and then into full communion with the Catholic Church through RCIA. Praise God for that! 🙂
 
I dont know much about them, but I know they reject the Trinity, and dont really have an “official” belief on who or what God is. Also, Im under the impression there is no such thing as morality, good, evil, etc, everything pertaining to life and doctrine is a grab bag.

They are deeply disturbed and lost people, I would say a worse state than the LDS and JWs.
 
My ex-wife raised our kids as Unitarians. I know that she joined that church because she believed that being a member of a church would help her case in the divorce proceedings, and it was the closest thing to a church she could find that didn’t actually require belief.

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I tried on the UU Church for a short while. The focus is self and community. I was atheist at the time, and the day they had pagans doing a faerie blessing ceremony thing…I tried to stay all UU, accepting and toleran, act like I thought it was ok that people were giving me faerie blessings, but on the inside, I was not OK with it, I thought it beyond absurd.

This was followed shortly by helping them out in our local gay pride parade. When the float in front of the UU church float was comprised of young men in their underwear dancing in cages…that was the day I started to really, really question, what the hell am I doing?

I’m all for love of fellow humans, but there was this overall accepting attitude by my community of UUs, of this public display of sexual bondage marching down the streets. With people lined up on the side of the road cheering, some with their very young, underage children. And all of the UU adults that were there thought it was all so wonderful and were congratulating each other for showing support for the gay community. It was too much, even for me in my atheist mode of all things are relative. Not to mention, I have gay friends and family, and none of them would accept this as their “community”.

Then, my daughter was invited to one of their youth conferences, or CON. I volunteered as a parent to go along because I wanted to see what they were teaching my kid. It was your basic UU event, gather together and talk about community. Sing songs, stay up late. They had little workshop breakout sessions. I went to one where two teenagers were explaining to the other teens the correct usage of terms for gender identity. Very educational, for anyone who might have friendships or associations with trans-gendered people. But again, I wondered what this had to do with “community”, as a whole. It started to seem to me that community, in the UUs, only meant the LGBT community. Which, was not me.

No, they are not Christian, or an other major religion. They do not worship anything or anyone, not as a group. Individuals may worship something. There were one or two people who self-identified a Christian. Mostly the people at the UU church I went to were atheist or pagan. That is a term used often in UU…self-identity. You can’t assume what anyone believes or identifies themselves as in a UU community. You almost have to ask a list of questions, as some people identify as things like: "I am a male Wiccan who identifies as female and prefer the pronoun “he” (or “her”, depending). I’m not making this up, I have had UU “training” on this very thing.

I hung around a bit longer in the UUs because of friendships, but I also started to look around at religion. I didn’t consider the UUs a religion, more like a social organization. I liked their humanist approach, as it looks on paper, such as at their website. But once I started attending Mass, and experienced Worship, like I have never experienced in my life…that was the beginning of me becoming a Christian.
 
How sad for the UU’s. I worship in the greatest of communities, a community established by Jesus through His Church. We feed the hungry, clothe the naked, give drink to the thirsty and visit the imprisoned, Seems like we as Catholic and Non-Catholic Christians take COMMUNITY very serious.

My new husband and children and I are going to be spending a week with them in June and from the looks of things, it will be quite interesting. Looks like I need to “bone up” on my understanding of Secular Humanism (still not entirely sure what that means) but mostly just stay solid in My faith.

My uncle’s reasons are very sad for his joining this “church” (his wife…now she I understand why:banghead: ) he told me that when he attended the Catholic Church, it seemed impersonal and cold, just rituals (and he used to teach religious ed.). Now that he has “found” this new agey sort of what ever, he feels like he has a community (he loves this word). He left the True community of Christ believing people who gather together to worship God for a group of people who worship themselves and their great social agenda:eek:

I plan on sharing my conversion story with him when I visit. I was once an atheist so maybe he might like what I have to say. I just pray I can plant some seeds.:gopray:
 
I’ve actually recently started to attend Unitarian services, after a lifetime of Catholicism.

The biggest thing that made me switch was that I realized that the Catholic Church just didn’t want me around anymore. They don’t want a reiki practicing, independently minded person who wants to see priests married, women ordained, gays have secular rights (gasp!), and is interested in Taoism. I hung on as long as I could, but when I would go to Mass and couldn’t even bring myself to say the creed, I said that “it’s time to go”.

The unitarian church in my city is actually quite good. It is not afraid to talk about the Divine, which I find comforting.

I would not characterize their worship as “self worship”. Rather, in my experience, they understand that only place to know the Divine is in that Still Small Voice within oneself. The Divine does not exist “out there”, rather It exists inside the individual.
 
My boss is Jewish. Only by culture since I know more about the Jewish faith than she does (she’d never even heard of the Pharisees). She goes to the local UU church, and even for her she sometimes finds them so open minded that their brains are in danger of falling out. No one in the congregation will say: “hey, that’s wrong” about anything, unless it’s to bash Republicans.

Most of the UU members I know are the kind of people who really don’t like to be told No, you can’t do this.
 
cheese_sdc said:
I would not characterize their worship as “self worship”. Rather, in my experience, they understand that only place to know the Divine is in that Still Small Voice within oneself. The Divine does not exist “out there”, rather It exists inside the individual.
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In the contect of secular humanism, everything comes from the individual. When individuals work as a community, that is where social change can be made.

This sounds Catholic, but it is only partway there. There is no God in secular humanism. The individual and community are reliant only on themselves. They believe change can only be effected by what they do. Which is driven by what they believe, as an individual first, and a community second.

So yes, this is a form of self worship as God is left out of the process entirely. Individuals may believe in God, or god(s), but for the community, this doesn’t matter. God is just a sidebar to that individual. It is part of their self-identity which has nothing to do with anyone else or the community as a whole.

If/when UUs discuss God, they do so in a way that is very academic. Like a religion course at a university.

On the whole, the idea is to not let your individual beliefs be an inconvenience to the community as a whole. When there are differences, the community works them out, and there are always hurt feelings. There is more drama in UUs than a jr. high cafeteria. That was my experience.
 
Biblioassistant said:
Most of the UU members I know are the kind of people who really don’t like to be told No, you can’t do this.
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Most of the UU members I know are people who are looking for a community but don’t want to be involved in a structured religion. I have known only one raised-as UU, everyone else came in from somewhere else, and there aren’t too many that stick around. Most people move on to something else.
 
My husband and I attended the “dedication” of the infant daughter of one of my employees. There was some nice secular singing, a talk by two Wiccans, and then a communion type service where we were told to close our eys and they passed a plate of childrens crayons. We were told to smell them and remember our childhood. It was really weird. At the refreshments after, we were introduced to a man who channelled spirits, another who, though not a native american, was very into native religions and called himself Red Feather. I gave them our gift and departed quickly. It was really weird.
 
I have a few acquaintances who are Unitarian Universalists, but I have never had any serious religious discussions with them or attended any of their services, so I will not attempt to characterize their beliefs or practices.

I will mention that on a recent trip to Boston I was surprised by how many of the older churches are there Unitarian. I also learned that John Adams and John Quincy Adams were both Unitarians, as were Millard Fillmore and William Howard Taft. I was surprised to learn what an old denomination this is.
 
Thomas63116 said:
I have a few acquaintances who are Unitarian Universalists, but I have never had any serious religious discussions with them or attended any of their services, so I will not attempt to characterize their beliefs or practices.

I will mention that on a recent trip to Boston I was surprised by how many of the older churches are there Unitarian. I also learned that John Adams and John Quincy Adams were both Unitarians, as were Millard Fillmore and William Howard Taft. I was surprised to learn what an old denomination this is.
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The Unitarians of old are not the same as modern Unitarian Universalists. Though many Unitarian and Universalist churches chose to merge in the 50’s when their numbers were dwindling, the modern UU has altered unrecognizably from those earlier Christian denominations.

Though UU’s claim Unitarians and Universalists of old as thier spiritual ancestors and part of their “rich heritage”, the religious practiced by those people was very different.

The honorable practices of social justice and civil rights have been carried on, but much was also left behind.

Modern day UU is a new amalgam of ethics, not really a religion at all.

I attended a UU fellowship for seven years and though I met some wonderful people I found the “faith” to be an effort in futility. It was considered cool to talk about all sorts of beliefs there, but not to really hold and practice any religion. It was like an endless class in other people’s religions, but never really practicing any faith at all.

I hear that many UU churches in the North East hold to the older traditions from which they sprung, but in my neck of the woods, that is not the case.
 
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