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The Pick 'N Mix Religion
Unitarianism blends a little of this with a little of that, and urges adherents to make up their own mind
RON CSILLAG
Globe and Mail, Toronto, July 2000
If it's hard to define what the Unitarians are, then think instead of what they are not.
They are not followers of the United Church, the Uniate churches (those with Eastern or Greek Catholic affiliations), the Unity Church (a modern Christian movement that stresses meditation and self-help), or the Unification Church of the Rev. Sun Myung Moon.They are not Unitarian Service Committee, whose address (56 Sparks St., Ottawa) was seared into memories through 1960s television commercials by poverty activist Lotta Hitschmanova. (The committee was started using Unitarian churches as a base of operations but today, it is independent of the faith movement).
But Unitarians might be comfortable borrowing bits and pieces from all those, and then some. Their hymnal, Singing the Living Tradition, combines readings from Buddhism, Sikhism, Taoism, Native American spirituality, Islam, Hinduism, the Old and New Testaments, and secular humanism.
It's hardly surprising that there's an old joke about how Unitarians begin their prayers: "To whom it may concern.
But from this theological stew has arisen a highly rational and elastic philosophy that is rooted in Christianity, yet rejects the Trinitarian nature and divinity of Jesus; which is fanatical about individual rights but stresses the good and welfare of the collective; a questioning faith that vigorously eschews dogma, statements of belief and hidebound traditions in favour of seeking truth from the human experience with nothing more than the free use of reason, and maybe a sense of adventure.
All beliefs can be questioned, examined, accepted, modified or rejected. Truth with a capital T is repudiated. The shibboleths of old are traded for what probably can be boiled down to a central tenet: Think as you must, then say what you really believe.
But is it a religion?
While he was busy helping to edit the ambitious, multivolume Encyclopedia of Religion, Martin Marty, one of the most respected theologians in the United States, asked rhetorically: "What is a religion?" His answer: Anything that has gone into the encyclopedia. And Unitarianism is in there. Kim Turner, a fourth-generation Unitarian and president of the Canadian Unitarian Council, sees her church as "a forum in which people can be religious without the trappings of religion. There are no absolutes here. We are open to the belief that people can make their own decisions."
That explains why one of the more popular programs the movement offers is called Build Your Own Theology.
Unitarianism attracts a wide range of followers, including Buddhists, pagans, agnostics, those in mixed marriages, disaffected Christians and even atheists, Turner says. They're all looking for the same thing: Some kind of spiritual fulfillment in a communal atmosphere.
As one Unitarian minister in British Columbia has put it, this is a path for people who are sure about God, and for those who are not.
But God isn't a central figure this Sunday morning at the First Unitarian Congregation of Toronto, the second oldest and third largest of Canada's 44 Unitarian churches, congregations and fellowships.
There is no mention of a deity. There is no cross or any religious symbol in the spacious, plainly decorated sanctuary. The coral- and teal-coloured walls are adorned with spiritually themed artwork for sale. About 100 men and women of all ages and colours occupy the pews. At the front of the sanctuary sits a large copper chalice cradling an open flame, from which tapers are kindled in one of Unitarianism's few rituals, known as Joys and Concerns. Anyone may light a candle to mark either a happy or sad occasion.
Welcomed warmly this day are six new members who pledge to uphold "the heritage of religious freedom, ethical living, faith, hope and compassion enshrined in the tradition to which we have now joined." Congregants hope, in unison, that the new adherents presence will "enable us to walk in the: unity of the spirit and in the bonds of peace.
Faith? Compassion? Peace? This must be a bona fide church.
Not, apparently, according to the Canadian Council of Churches, a Christian umbrella group in which the Unitarians don't qualify for membership on theological grounds (they are, however, active on the council's committee on aboriginal rights).
The council's constitution states that only churches "which confess the Lord Jesus Christ as God and Saviour," and profess "the glory of one God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit" may belong.
Unitarians posit that God if He exists is one. The concept of the deity as a unity - hence the word Unitarian, as opposed to Trinitarian -was born of Judeo-Islamic monotheism in 16th-century Spain, not long after Jews were expelled and Muslims were being persecuted.
In that charged atmosphere, a doctor and theologian named Mich'l Servetus came forward with the following heresy, after having read the New Testament in Greek: There was no Christian text to justify the doctrine of the Trinity.
He published two books arguing that Christians should adjust their views on God and Jesus to conform with Jewish and Muslim-style monotheism. Jesus, wrote Servetus, while a great prophet and a child of God (like the rest of us), was not God.
One step ahead of the Inquisition, Servetus fled to Switzerland, where Protestant reformer John Calvin promptly had him burned at the stake.
But his radical ideas spread and took root in, of all places, Transylvania, now a northwestern region of Romania but then part of Hungary. Persecution drove early adherents from Italy and Poland to Transylvania, where in 1566, King Sigismund recognized the Unitarian church. Its liberal but cool rationalism soon came to appeal to such leading Enlightenment figures as Voltaire and John Locke.
American revolutionaries and fellow free-thinkers Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin and John Adams became Unitarians after serving on diplomatic missions to France. The faith migrated north to Canada around 1800, when Unitarian and Universalist preachers visited. The first Unitarian church in this country was established in Montreal in 1842.
Today, Canadian Unitarians number nearly 5,200, says Ellen Campbell, executive director of the Canadian Unitarian Council, established in 1961; the same year Unitarians merged with Universalists, a Protestant church that taught that God's purpose is to save everyone from sin. That's why many Unitarians calls themselves Unitarian Universalists.
Theologically, Campbell explains, "neither we nor most traditional Christian groups would look on us as a Christian group. This is a religion in which we want to be able to feel intellectually comfortable, as well as spiritually comfortable with our beliefs."
Unitarians have been knocked as everything from un-Christian to irreligious. But Campbell defends the faith as an authentic religion because its followers, like those of other faiths, are "dealing with ultimate questions of meaning and truth with a small 't.'
Each Canadian congregation sets its own level of belief, ranging from the purely intellectual to the more theological. In all of them, social action is stressed. Unitarians are often on the front lines of activism on poverty, disarmament, and human rights.
Their global numbers are still concentrated in Transylvania, where adherents number about 80,000. There are 25,000 in Hungary, about 7,000 in Britain and 3,000 in India (and 100,000 in the U.S.).
Canadian congregations, more than half of which have ministers, offer children's programs, adult education and life-cycle ceremonies (including same-sex union). And to the extent there is a creed, Unitarians in this country strive to promote:
· The inherent worth and dignity of every person;
· Justice, equity and compassion in human relations;
· Acceptance of one another and encouragement to spiritual growth in our congregations;
· A free and responsible search for truth and meaning;
· The right of conscience and the use of the democratic process within our congregations and within society at large;
· The goal of world community, with peace, liberty, and justice for all;
· Respect for the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part.
Ironically, it is Unitarianism's inclusiveness that threatens to weaken it, says John Stackhouse, a theology professor at the University of British Columbia's Regent College.
"They end up welcoming any form of recognizable religion," Prof. Stacknouse notes. 'What is the unity that will hold them together? Can the net contain all that diversity?"
Campbell doesn't disagree: "We struggle with how to encompass the kind of diversity that is part of our religious tradition without breaking apart."
Ron Csillag is a Toronto writer who specializes in religion. He can be reached at csil1ag@home.com |
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Pick 'N Mix Religion
Article in Globe and Mail,
Ron Csillag, July 2000
Ask The Experts/Religion
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Articles Rev. Brian Kopke,
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Letter to the Citizen,
Rev. Brian Kopke, January, 1999
Headline Promotes Prejudice (Not for Publication)
Letter to the Editors,
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November 22, 1998
Measuring the Graham Crusade
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Rev. Brian Kopke, June 1998
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Controversy Over Reporting on Wicca
Article on
Earth-Centred Spirituality, Bob Harvey
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Article on
Wicca, Bob Harvey, February 3, 1996
Response Sermon, Rev. Brian Kopke, February 11, 1996
Atrocities in Bosnia
Letter to Citizen,
Rev. Brian Kopke, July 19, 1995
Joy Williams Stand-Off and Deportation
Report in Citizen,
Leonard Stern, November 22, 1994
Joy Williams Deportation
Citizen Letter of the Day,
Rev. Brian Kopke,
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Sue Rodriguez and Assisted Suicide
Letter to Citizen,
Rev. Brian Kopke, Feb. 19, 1994
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