This is a compilation of different affirmations of faith
enacted, for lack of a better word, at different Unitarian, Universalist (and
Unitarian Universalist) conventions since 1790, at roughly 15 year intervals.
What’s most obvious is the disappearance of God and Jesus
post-merger. I wonder by
looking at these if the merger did more to get God out of us (or to relieve him
of us) then we had intended.
Obviously, the Unitarians and the Universalists merged because they
LOOKED the same. But I’m
considering here that the reason that God disappeared was because once they
started talking about it, they realized that when you scraped off the covering,
they were really, really different underneath – but having gone this far, it
was too late to turn back and the result was the disappearance of God.
Or maybe, it was a sign of something that needed to
happen. How does someone who
believed in the then-standing Universalist Bond of Fellowship just drop from an
all-powerful God with All-Conquering Love all the way to the super-soft 1961
version of the UU principals which sounds more like a social group or NGO than
a religion?
1.
Was this a sign that things had changed in the hearts
and minds of those involved?
2.
Was this a sign that Universalism was OK implicit
rather than explicit mention of God/Jesus/Spirit due to their obvious presence
in the work?
3.
Or was it just a sort of giving up, throwing in the
towel and recognizing that, as they said in Social Principals, that salvation
was gained through works anyway.
The ends justify the means, such as it was.
By reading these, you could make a case for the Christianity
of both U’s up through 1961, after which, either Christianity had changed to
the point where both U’s wanted to distance themselves from it, or the U’s had
changed so much that they no longer considered themselves to be Christian.
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