Chicago Tribune, April 21, 2001

Unitarian group splits, wants God in its religion

By Julia Lieblich Tribune religion reporter

Two dozen dissidents have charged the nation's most famously accepting church with, of all things, being "extremely intolerant."

The Unitarian Universalist Association, they contend, may welcome humanists, pagans and Buddhists, but it has little room for people who want to talk about God.

On Saturday, disgruntled church members will meet in Virginia to discuss plans for a new church body for Unitarians who want more God and less politics in church. The move raises questions about just how inclusive even a liberal church can be, and who can claim the mantle of Unitarianism.

"The Unitarian tradition ... draws inspiration and sustenance from the divine," said attorney David Burton, a co-founder of the new Virginia-based group. "But Unitarian Universalism as it's practiced today is almost devoid of religious content."

Atheists and theists, he said, "can't be in the same religion."

The association, based in Boston, says it's not true that believers in God are unwelcome in its ranks. An estimated half its congregations are theistic in some form, according to one church leader.

The fledgling group might not have rankled the association—in fact, it likely would have invited the dissidents to operate under its umbrella along with such groups as the UU Christians, UU Humanists and UU Pagans.

"An affinity group based on shared views would have been welcome," said Rev. John A. Buehrens, president of the association, or UUA.

But the new group has taken a name that the church claims as its own: the American Unitarian Association, and Buehrens isn't feeling tolerant about that. He's suing.

With "clear malice," he wrote in a statement posted on the church's Web site, a group of individuals disaffected from their congregations has tried to steal the identity of the church.

As a name, the American Unitarian Association dates to 1825. The organization merged in 1961 with the Universalist Church of America to form the Unitarian Universalist Association, and the UUA still claims the old name as part of its heritage.

The suit, filed in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, seeks to prevent them from using it.

Burton wants to adopt the name, he said, because for most of its life the AUA was "an organization dedicated to promoting a tolerant religious faith that saw reason and a belief in God as congruent rather than hostile."

In time, the Unitarian tradition, which has no creed, shed its exclusively Christian focus and embraced other forms of religious expression, including humanism and Buddhism. Today, he said, the church "would hardly be recognizable to its founders."

Renewing historic faith

Burton said his breakaway organization will be "dedicated to the renewal of the historic Unitarian faith." He hopes the group will reclaim a belief in God while retaining a healthy respect for science, and will focus on religious questions about right and wrong and life's purpose rather than on political issues.

Most people attending his meeting are Unitarian Christians, he said. "Jesus is central to their religion. In most UU congregations, if you got up and started talking about Jesus, you'd be run out on a rail. ... The UUA is extremely intolerant."

He said it is impossible to generalize about how his group's members see God, except that it's not a Trinitarian conception. He considers himself a deist, meaning that God created the world but does not providentially guide or supernaturally intervene in nature or in human affairs.

Rev. Stephen Johnson, a minister at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Loudoun County in northern Virginia, will deliver the sermon at the meeting. He's not sure he's a Christian and leans toward a "feminine notion of the divine."

Like most Unitarians, he describes himself as a liberal Democrat. "We're all in lockstep on the great social issues," he said.

Still, he's drawn to the group, he said, because he feels that Unitarian Universalists are not focused enough on worship and spiritual questions.

"What has replaced faith and belief is political commitment," Johnson said.

But Rev. William R. Murry, president of Chicago's Meadville/Lombard Theological School, one of two affiliated with the UUA, said the charges of exclusion and lack of spirituality don't ring true.

The diversity in the denomination, he said, "leaves room for just about everyone." He estimates that half the association's 1,055 churches have a theistic orientation, as do half his school's students. Of the nation's 216,000 Unitarian Universalists, about 4,600 live in the Chicago area,

UUA spokesman John Hurley also said he finds the group's timing odd given that congregations have become more spiritually inclined in recent years.

Disagreements not uncommon

This is hardly the first time tensions have arisen over emphasis in Unitarian belief and practice. A group called Unitarians for Conscience, for example, does not like the fact that the General Assembly of the UUA takes a stand on social, economic and political issues.

In general, said Hurley, the dynamics over emphasis play out differently in each congregation. In one case, humanists might consider a congregation's focus on an earth-based spirituality superstitious. In another, theists might feel hindered from talking about God.

Finding a balance, he said, "is a fascinating interplay of theology and organizational dynamics," in which the influence of a minister, church board or worship committee may come into play.

Even Burton admits that he's been in congregations where atheists and theists have "peacefully coexisted." But he wants a religious group that states unequivocally there is a God.

The dissidents' meeting does not represent a schism in the denomination, Buehrens said, because no congregations have expressed plans to leave. Burton said he believes most members will come from outside the church.

Johnson wants to see the formation of a new denomination, though he'll keep his UUA membership as well.

In the spirit of tolerance, Murry said he hopes the group reconsiders and comes back to the old denomination. In such a diverse church, he believes, there's room for deists and atheists—and for the devoted and the disgruntled.

-- Lars (larsguy@yahoo.com), April 21, 2001

Answers

I used to go to a UU church but decided I could read my Sunday NYT at home.

-- (Paracelsus@Pb.Au), April 22, 2001.

I've heard they've got good food.

-- Mr. Nice Guy (mr@nice.guy), April 22, 2001.

Very nice people, but a talky bunch to say the least. One joke they tell on themselves has humanity marching down a road until they come to a fork. One sign says "To Heaven," while the other sign says "To a discussion of Heaven." Everyone takes the road to Heaven except the UUs.

-- Peter Errington (petere@ricochet.net), April 23, 2001.