“Be kinder to people than you think they deserve.
Everyone you meet is fighting some kind of battle.”
– Unknown
UU Heritage and Identity: Faith Sourced by Spirit
Services | Faith Sourced by Spirit | Embracing Our Heritage | Embracing Our Future
An historic 1961 worship service celebrated the coming together of two Protestant religions, Unitarianism and Universalism (both born of the liberal wing of the Protestant Reformation) and the foundation of a new denomination: the Unitarian Universalist Association. That service proclaimed the “birth of a new world religion…taking its place besides the other great religions of the world.”
What backs Unitarian Universalism’s claim to be a “world religion”? Not its size, certainly, or its antiquity – though its roots explicitly go back to the earliest Christian era, and arguably back to the Earth-Centered Pagan/Goddess wisdom tradition which preceded it. Clearly we can claim the denomination’s ground breaking openness to all sources of knowledge – from direct experience of the Transcendent Mystery of Being, to sacred texts and wisdom traditions of all cultures, to knowledge gleaned from science and the humanities. We can claim, too, our 450 year old, unbroken tradition of binding communities together through covenant rather than creed, as most other denominations do.
It is in the Principles and Purposes of our UUA Covenant that our claim to be a “world religion” finds its most powerful argument. It is our unwavering commitment to inclusion – to the “inherent worth and dignity of every person,” to “justice equity and compassion in human affairs,” to the “free and responsible search for truth and meaning,” to “acceptance of one another and encouragement to spiritual growth,” to the “democratic method,” “to peace, liberty and justice for all” and to “respect for the interdependent web of life” that justifies this lofty claim of “world religion” for our community of faith. Unitarian Universalism is, potentially, the world’s biggest tent – and we have just begun to fill it!
Our UU story can ground our present day faith, enriching our sense of context and of mission.
“I have a whole new sense of what it means to be a UU. I take pride in our religious heritage and lineage now. It’s mine, too, and I can claim it! I can stand my ground with people who question my choice to be a Unitarian Universalist in a whole new way.” – PCD Leadership School participant