(In my Religion section I have a number of entries on a variety of non-mainstream religions. This one offers my very short comment on the quasi-religious phenomenon known as Unitarianism, comprising a rather elite group of some 800,000 individuals worldwide. [Mind you, the differing membership numbers are quite confusing.])
Unitarianism is billed as an open-minded and individualistic approach to religion, allowing for a very wide range of beliefs and doubts. Religious freedom for each individual is at the heart of this “approach.” Every Unitarian is free to search for the meaning of life in a responsible way and to reach his own conclusions. No standard set of faith and practice exists. People of all religions are invited to join without renouncing their former or current beliefs.
“No individual or group in Unitarianism makes an exclusive claim to the truth. Each Unitarian can believe what they feel is right. Unitarians believe religion should make a difference to the world, so, they are often active in social justice and community work…”
This wholesome and undemanding act of interfaith seems like a bucketful of honey, with just two spoonfuls of bitterness, which make Unitarianism both misleading and disingenuous.
One is this. Whatever you call it, Unitarianism is a distinctive religion, and, as such, it virtually demands that each “former” leave his or her previous religion at the doorstep of the Unitarian temple. Whether one might pick it back up afterwards, is another matter: If one does, good riddance! (But one is always welcome back, of course.) If one doesn’t, smart move, neophyte!
The other spoonful is its in-your-face nametag. “Unity contra Trinity” is a declaration of war. Incorporating this challenge into their name, the Unitarian universalistic call for mutual accommodation and compatibility is off to a bad start.
So, what’s in a name? On the one hand, the Unitarians insist that they are so called because they profess the oneness of God and affirm the essential unity of humankind and all creation. On the other hand, however, ever since the early times of the sixteenth century, when the original Unitarian movement started in Poland and in Transylvania, the openly contentious point of the movement was that the language of the Bible spoke clearly of one God and that the traditional Christian idea of God being a Trinity was therefore wrong.
No wonder then that, from the viewpoint of mainstream Christianity, Unitarianism is a heretical belief, and that for many centuries the Unitarians were persecuted by the Christian Churches as a bunch of heretics.
Today’s universalist status of the Unitarian movement is plagued by the same bitter conflict with the rest of Christendom as before. It is quite surprising that despite its wholesale tolerance toward women-priests, homosexual flock and clergy, and other such permissiveness, the one and only matter of intolerance which remains, and where the Unitarians have no intention to give in, is their categorical rejection of the Trinity.
As if they are on a mission to defy Christianity by their stubborn intolerance, while destroying all classical religions by their overindulging tolerance.
Unitarianism is billed as an open-minded and individualistic approach to religion, allowing for a very wide range of beliefs and doubts. Religious freedom for each individual is at the heart of this “approach.” Every Unitarian is free to search for the meaning of life in a responsible way and to reach his own conclusions. No standard set of faith and practice exists. People of all religions are invited to join without renouncing their former or current beliefs.
“No individual or group in Unitarianism makes an exclusive claim to the truth. Each Unitarian can believe what they feel is right. Unitarians believe religion should make a difference to the world, so, they are often active in social justice and community work…”
This wholesome and undemanding act of interfaith seems like a bucketful of honey, with just two spoonfuls of bitterness, which make Unitarianism both misleading and disingenuous.
One is this. Whatever you call it, Unitarianism is a distinctive religion, and, as such, it virtually demands that each “former” leave his or her previous religion at the doorstep of the Unitarian temple. Whether one might pick it back up afterwards, is another matter: If one does, good riddance! (But one is always welcome back, of course.) If one doesn’t, smart move, neophyte!
The other spoonful is its in-your-face nametag. “Unity contra Trinity” is a declaration of war. Incorporating this challenge into their name, the Unitarian universalistic call for mutual accommodation and compatibility is off to a bad start.
So, what’s in a name? On the one hand, the Unitarians insist that they are so called because they profess the oneness of God and affirm the essential unity of humankind and all creation. On the other hand, however, ever since the early times of the sixteenth century, when the original Unitarian movement started in Poland and in Transylvania, the openly contentious point of the movement was that the language of the Bible spoke clearly of one God and that the traditional Christian idea of God being a Trinity was therefore wrong.
No wonder then that, from the viewpoint of mainstream Christianity, Unitarianism is a heretical belief, and that for many centuries the Unitarians were persecuted by the Christian Churches as a bunch of heretics.
Today’s universalist status of the Unitarian movement is plagued by the same bitter conflict with the rest of Christendom as before. It is quite surprising that despite its wholesale tolerance toward women-priests, homosexual flock and clergy, and other such permissiveness, the one and only matter of intolerance which remains, and where the Unitarians have no intention to give in, is their categorical rejection of the Trinity.
As if they are on a mission to defy Christianity by their stubborn intolerance, while destroying all classical religions by their overindulging tolerance.
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