It is important to honor our ancestors and it is important to let people know that fact about our history. Many people do think we are a new age religion and while we have members who are new-agers our faith tradition is old.

We are an evolving faith tradition which I believe is one of the wonderful things about our faith. If I come back in a hundred years and UUism has remained the same as it is today, I would feel that I have failed as a minister. Individuals faith journey changes as they grow, it is part of the journey. I know no one who remains static in the faith they were born into or chose as an adult. If they did it would be out of dogmatism and fear.

If we see ourselves as a denomination that means that we are a denomination of a specific faith tradition such as Christianity. Yet, we no longer identify as a Christian faith. We may have people who honor their Christian heritage and identify as Christian but Unitarian Universalism is not a Christian faith.

There are other Unitarian and Universalist faiths out there… are we a denomination of them? Judaism is unitarian in theology. Islam is unitarian in theology. Oneness Pentecostalism is non-trinitarian ( Jesus is the one God, so the emphasis is different) in theology. There is also the Biblical Unitarians. Unity is a universalist faith. And there are pockets of universalism within Methodism, Roman Catholicism, United Church of Christ, and Episcopalian traditions, to mention a few. Are we a denomination of these groups? The closest we could be affiliated would be Judaism because they are also a covenantal faith like we are (there are also some major differences which would separate us) but the others have very strong doctrinal and creedal requirements which we as a whole do not meet.

Therefore it seems that declaring Unitarian Universalism a religion is closer to the truth of our identity since the term denomination does not seem to match. I know that there are many of us who will cling to the word denomination for nostalgic reasons but we really are no longer a denomination.

There is a point that I fully agree with Joel on and that is what motivates us to tout our ancestry? It is one thing if we drop names because we are proud of our heritage or it is part of a history lesson of our past. It is another if we do it because we have low religious self-esteem and therefore drop names to help us feel good or equal with other religions. That said, I did not feel the video developed was done from the latter reasons. At least that is not how I viewed it. But then I do not need Emerson or Dickens to feel good about my faith. I am glad that I am part of the lineage of religious liberal thought that includes such people but I do not need to have them in my pocket to pull out to show others. My faith is stronger than that. Blessings,

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# A formal statement of religious belief; a confession of faith.
# A system of belief, principles, or opinions.

Anyone who is a ‘good’ member of a creedal faith subscribes to the creed, which articulates explicit beliefs that all *believers* — all ‘good’ members of the faith — believe. Creedlessness as a creed? What’s the shared articulated belief system, the confession of faith?

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There was a reason I used the word “denomination”. To my ears, saying that I had a problem with our religion sounded like I had a theological issue, whereas using the word “denomination” sounded like an issue with some of the people, not the faith. I was trying to find the best connotation.

I had to laugh at your first paragraph- as a NeoPagan, a syncretic Wiccan, I really DO “go to “some hippie church some weirdos started in the woods.””! More seriously, I don’t believe that one needs an illustrious ancestry to be validated. If you’re wrong, quoting some dead guy won’t make you right. If you’re right, it doesn’t matter how new your truth is. Just look around- Wicca is only around 60 years old, and is now bigger than UU.

As you surmised, part of my objection to those sorts of lists is that it’s backwards looking. Worse, it’s irrelevant to the people we’re trying to attract. Most young adults have no emotional connection to anyone on that list, save possibly Christopher Reeve. We have a lot of modern UU celebrities to tout, and a lot of heroes who are not celebrities, but should be. If we got people’s attention with cultural celebrities such as the creators of The Twilight Zone or The Simpsons, we could use that to bring attention to lesser known heroes that were on the cutting edge of the Civil Rights movement and other social issues. I think the general public feels more affinity to Rod Serling than President Taft.

But I also think this list implies a continuity of thought that just doesn’t exist. If one had such a list of Roman Catholics, say, you would find a consistant set of beliefs throughtout. Today “the ONE CREED of UUism is CREEDLESSNESS”… but that was not neccessarily the case for Universalists of 200 years ago. It’s fine to revere our ancesters, but bad tactics to use them for recruiting- we want people to join the church as it is today, not as one portion of it was centuries past. Several of the people on that list were well known theists; suppose one of their fans walks into a UU congregation that happens to be majority atheist? Isn’t he likely to feel confused, if not betrayed?