Liberal Religion: Freedom, Reason, & Tolerance or Covenantal Faith: Relevant, Rational, & Relational

The current conversation, sometimes heated, both traditions can be claimed… rather than one over the other; the former focuses on the means (the how) and the latter on the mission (the what). They are both vital components for our aspirations as UUs. It is about process: honest reckon with the “is” and understanding and utilizing the legacy of freedom & community. There is a ‘theology’ offered here: discerning and understanding of that with is ultimate. Conjuring a faith in the holiness of beloved community (‘Kinship of Life’) that is relevant to the times, informed by scientific and emotional reasonableness, and grounded in justice can be the idealism to inspire, heal, and commission our being and becoming.

Having unabridged freedom to serve the ‘Kinship of Life’ through acts of goodness and a reciprocal ethic is profound. That implies engagement and interaction with others as well as openness to different opinions and understandings. Ideas that are useful for the hope, happiness, and health of humanity and the natural world that is our home are of merit and worthy of loyalty.   

Individual free agency (free will informed by our creaturehood modified by are hard-wiring, our inherited DNA) is vital for finding ideals, hunches, efforts to guide their life.  But without purposeful interaction with the other, to serve goodness, it is basely selfishness. We come as an individual conscious of  the ALL which is our real home. Mindfulness opens and affirms that relatedness and behavior express it.

Goodness: The Golden Rule is the principle of treating others as one hopes to be treated. Various expressions of this ideal can be found in the teachings of most religions and worldviews.

The linking the central elements of The Enlightenment (Liberal Religion) with the fundamentals of a Covenantal Faith may find expression in humanism, mysticism, and other sorts of “isms”.

Spirituality (the energy of faith) today centers on the deepest meanings and values of human living. It implies the idea of an ultimate reality.

Not all notions of spirituality embrace transcendental ideas. Secular spirituality emphasizes humanistic ideas (qualities such as love, compassion, patience, tolerance, forgiveness, contentment, responsibility, harmony, and a concern for others).   These are ideals of life which go beyond a materialist view of the world without accepting belief in a supernatural reality or any divine being.

The story of Unitarians and Universalists, of UUs, is an evolving narrative: from challenging the orthodoxy of harden dogmatism of the early Christian church, to embracing the concepts and discoveries of science/reason, to finding modernity ideas worthy of integrating, and in the 1930s moving into the post-modern mindset and practices with difficulty. Now we have what is being styled post-post modernity (meta-modernism). It may be that the amalgamation of two timeless ideals: freedom and community. Their legacy, propositions may serve to inform our faith: being and becoming.

Doak M Mansfield                                                                                 March 21, 2023                                                                                    Newton, NJ