[Buddha-l] Universalist Unitarian

[Alex Wilding]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: buddha-l-bounces at mailman.swcp.com [mailto:buddha-l-
> bounces at mailman.swcp.com] On Behalf Of Richard Hayes
> Sent: Sunday, 28 December 2008 5:22 AM
> To: Buddhist discussion forum
> Subject: Re: [Buddha-l] Will this be on the final exam?
> 
> On Fri, 2008-12-26 at 14:33 -0800, Mitchell Ginsberg wrote:
> 
> > I still don't know what Universalist Unitarian is supposed to be
> 
> Neither do any of the Unitarian-Universalists I know. Mort Sahl's joked
> that the Ku Klux Klan liked to burn question marks into the lawns of
> Unitarians. He also quipped that Unitarians teach that Moses came down
> off the mountain carrying tablets on which were written the Ten
> Suggestions.
> 
> Historically, of course, Unitarians were Christians who denied the
> doctrine of the Trinity and so denied 1) that Jesus was divine and 2)
> that the death of Jesus on the cross was a sacrificial atonement for
> human sin. This helps explain why Unitarians are usually quite
> comfortable forming alliances with synagogues and Buddhist
> organizations.
> 
> Historically speaking, Universalists advocated the doctrine that the
> death of Jesus on the cross was a sacrificial atonement for the sins of
> ALL beings, whether they accepted Jesus or not. Even Satan and all the
> beings in hell are destined to be fully reconciled with God (whether
> they want it or not). They tended to be biblical literalists who claimed
> that there is no biblical support for the doctrine of eternal damnation.
> 
> In early America the centre of the Unitarian universe was Harvard. (Part
> of what explains the intense rivalry between Harvard and Yale was that
> Yale was an evangelical stronghold; Unitarians and evangelicals have
> always viewed one another with mistrust and suspicion). Universalists in
> early America were mostly poorly educated farmers and tradesmen. Egghead
> Unitarians and uneducated Bible-thumping Universalists had little in
> common, except that they were both despised by Catholics, Anglicans,
> Presbyterians and Puritans and both managed to get themselves beaten up
> in riots by religious bigots and by people who owned slaves. (Both the
> Unitarians and the Universalists tended to have strong opposition to
> slavery.)
> 
> In 1961 or so the Unitarians and Universalists in the United States
> united as a single church and in so doing jettisoned most of the beliefs
> that differentiated them from one another. The Universalist influence
> survives in the tendency for UU's to believe that absolutely no one is
> damned, no matter what they do or believe, because the universe is
> basically good, and whatever it is that runs the universe has a goodness
> that will eventually prevail over all evil. What got jettisoned from the
> Universalist picture was any reference to salvation through the
> crucifixion of Christ. Indeed, jettisoning what divided Unitarians from
> Universalists resulted in jettisoning pretty much everything that
> remained of traditional Christianity.
> 
> The void left by the absence of Christianity was quickly filled with an
> improbable combination of possible candidates for who or what is the
> source of the goodness that informs the universe. Some UU followers like
> the language of Daoism, others prefer the language of Buddhism, while
> still others like Wicca or radical eco-feminism or secular humanism. In
> a typical UU fellowship you'll find a Pagan contingent, quite a few
> Wiccans, a good number of secular Jews, a few Twelve-Step people, a
> circle who orient their lives by the Course in Miracles, a Zen group and
> a Vipassana group, and a handful of people trying hard to be Navajos.
> Oh, and lots of folk-dancing groups, and at least one Esperanto club.
> 
> If you either tentatively believe something or question everything,
> you're bound to be 100% in agreement with Unitarian-Universalism,
> provided you are not inclined to reject anyone on the grounds of race,
> creed, preferred ritual practices, sexual orientation, economic status
> or political views.
> 
> Subscribers to buddha-l may be amused to check out the
> Unitarian-Universalist Buddhist Fellowship Discussion Group
> (uubf-l at list.uua.org); go to
> http://lists.uua.org/mailman/listinfo/uubf-l for more information.
> 
> Mitchell, anyone who has read your book, The Inner Palace, would see
> that you have Unitarian-Universalist stamped all over you. (I love the
> book. I would. I grew up in a Unitarian family.)
> 
> > I just retook the test and stayed 100% Univ. Unitarian
> 
> I don't think anyone on buddha-l has managed to get less than 96% on the
> Unitarian-Universalist index. Maybe Benito Carral managed to get a low
> UU score. I'd guess that anyone who managed to get a really high score
> in Orthodox Judaism (or orthodox anything else) would most probably get
> a pretty low score on the UU index. Unitarian-Universalists don't do
> either orthodoxy or absolutism very well.
> 
> --
> Richard