Unitarian Universalist Church of Arlington, VA, now has a channel app on Roku. You – yes, YOU, dear reader – should check it out.
Tag Archives: unitarian universalism
Idea: Unitarian Universalist Sports Ministry
Many UU congregations with their own edifices possess a room that is used as a lending library for books, DVDs and other materials. For example, the UU Fellowship of Columbus, which I’ve attended variably since last year, has a lending library which shares space with the fellowship’s nursery.
But something that I don’t see mentioned on any UU church site is a sports/fitness space of any kind.
I’m helping set up a youth/young adult group for this congregation, and we’re starting out small (as a Facebook group). I don’t mind that we’re starting out like this, given that the church’s demographic is largely within the senior citizen demographic.
But in addition to the many events that we’ll probably do if we attract enough people, I think a solid way to attract young adults to the UU church is through an appeal to fitness and sport.
I see that many UU churches sponsor trips to mountain resorts, camp sites and whatnot, but a dedicated space for storing sports goods and playing sports would be interesting to hear about from a UU church. I can imagine people coming to UU churches after school or after work during the week, at least to work off stress without having to join an expensive gym or use a recreation center.
For the UUs, I think the benefit would be an opportunity to operate a sports/fitness space along UU principles. These spaces would emphasize equality, freedom and solidarity.
Finally, I think that such play spaces would start to expand the UU movement’s principles from the exclusively-“intellectual” stereotype of its members to people who are more interested in physical activity and engagement. I think those who are less interested in “intellectual/academic” pursuits are not being engaged enough, and can just as well benefit from UU principles in their personal experiences and social relations.
Many UU churches also have a meditation room, so why not a gym?
Universal reconciliation and universal ordination: intersecting the UUA and ULC
The Unitarian Universalists believe in universal reconciliation (the belief that all beings will return to their Creator, no matter their differences in belief), while the Universal Life Church practices universal ordination (the belief that all are naturally ordained or entitled to preach their beliefs, whatever they may be); the two doctrines are meant by their progenitors to both maximize religious liberty and diversity and run counter to the more predominant religious inclination to take a doctrinally, physically or psychically authoritarian/coercive approach to other doctrinal idiosyncracies both within and without the congregation.
I find the two doctrines to be very interesting in their approaches toward maximizing liberty and diversity; they both move beyond the paradigm of mere "religious tolerance" (since "tolerance" is something that you can do with your nose pinched shut) to proactively compromising the solidity of one own religion’s demographic strength and cultural solidity (or monopoly, in some cases), which is good if you’re looking for an action of spiritual antitrust and demonopolization.
But my qualm is that the two approaches, by themselves, don’t make room for ensuring that those who benefit from and utilize free, doctrineless ordination (say, from the ULC) provide the same free, doctrineless service to others upon request when they themselves are able to issue such ordinations (thus continuing the perpetration, propagation and maximization of religious liberty and diversity), and provide such a service without any hangups regarding ANY doctrinal differences. Thus, I think that intersecting universal reconciliation with universal ordination should result in a hybrid that calls upon the ordained minister to ordain others upon request, without any inner psychological or spiritual reservations regarding doctrinal differences between the ordained and the ordination candidate, a sort of "viral" transmission of liberties and privileges akin to the GPL’s assurance that all who bear a copy of a GPLed software application may use it, modify it and redistribute it, provided that the license and its stipulations remain intact when redistributed.
Being able to say "you are equally eligible, as I am, to bear the title of ‘Minister’ no matter our religious or spiritual differences and inclinations, as you are equally eligible to return to your Maker as I am" is, IMO, most ideal towards the maximization of religious liberty and diversity, whether its in the big cathedral or the little coven.
