What I’m “Up To” Here…

By now some of you have wondered what’s going on here, with this “Faith of the Free” blog: Who’s this guy? What's he up to? Do we really need yet another UU blog? Those are fair questions, and I’d like to take a moment to offer a response.

-- First, let me say that I'm not a UU minister, nor do I in any way represent the UU Association. I have never received any formal training in religious theory or any practical matters of parish leadership. Actually, I’m a career “government weatherman” who has moved around quite a bit over the years with my job, and have sampled our liberal faith from different angles and perspectives as a “UU layman” and served in a number of capacities in small Unitarian Universalist congregations. I briefly served as an officer in the Mid South District of UUA, and for a time was also a member of the large All Souls Unitarian Church in Tulsa, Oklahoma (led at the time by John Wolf and Brent Smith), as well as the UU Church of the Larger Fellowship--our worldwide “church by mail.” (I’ve attended only one UUA General Assembly, by the way…the one held in Atlanta in the mid 1980’s.)

Although there are aspects of my small-town, Southern Baptist upbringing that I still cherish (the music and the organization, for example, and their sense and clarity of mission), I long ago rejected the Calvinistic mindset and embraced a thorough-going “Universalism” with its high-road and uncompromising regard for love, goodwill and radical acceptance—yes, extended even to matters of religion. At the same time, a strong “nature-bias” and “free-spiritedness” were also becoming deeply embedded within my overall “worldview and Godview,” and finally, as a young adult, all of this came together and led me to deliberately seek out a new religious home that would refuse to erect any fences around its love and acceptance, and any constraints upon the exercise of the free mind and heart of a responsible human being. For many hours, and several days, I sat in an Atlanta public library, with pen and paper beside me, studying every possible religious and spiritual option (no matter the size), and listing, side by side, the “best fits” for my own free, open, questioning, and honesty-seeking understanding of religion.

Out of those “final candidates”—which (as best I can recall, over 30 years later) included the liberal Quakers, humanistic Jews, Unity, Bahai faith, Ethical Union and the Unitarian Universalists—from those, I made a conscious and informed decision to pursue Unity and Unitarian Universalism. Finally, and with utmost regard for Unity and its positive understanding of Christian spirituality, I chose the Unitarian Universalist faith--with its radical free-spiritedness, the open-ended acceptance, the encouragement of honest, deliberate questioning (and even honest doubting) and the increasing embracement of diversity—this unreservedly became my “chosen faith.” Although (perhaps from my Baptist roots) I have often felt pain and frustration over the organized expressions and directions of Unitarian Universalism (or lack thereof), I have never for a moment doubted the ”personal rightness” of that decision.

-- But enough about me, right? Regarding the blog, what I would like to do (first of all) is provide a place for the comprehensive assessment of the “core identity” of our liberal faith. I know that there have been periodic discussions among the blogs--also in places like Beliefnet, My Space and Yahoo groups--about those “central premises” that bind or draw us together (in all of our rich and colorful diversity), but I want to go deeper still, and to analyze, with even greater detail, every aspect—each of our “talking points,” so to speak. I especially want to go well beyond those (both loved and despised) “seven principles” and explore their connectedness and confluence with identifiable trends and attitudes, which (arguably) go back for many centuries.

"It is no less true that the faith of the future must be positive rather than merely negative. It must have affirmations as well as denials. [Liberal] religious faith to date has been a world-shaking movement. It has broken down age-old superstitions. It has set minds free. It has looked straight at facts, hated mysteries...It was suspicious of enthusiasms. While truth was being emancipated from tradition and inherited faiths, and from the dominance of emotions, it is impossible to live in a vacuum. It is all very well to eliminate those crude utilitarian incentives from religion. But what urge does one propose to substitute for the ancient ones?"

-- Rufus Jones

American Quaker leader, from “Faith and Practice of the Quakers,” 1927

-- Why such a “heritage emphasis?” At the very least, I would respectfully argue that it’s important because when any organized social movement—such as our liberal-religious one —begins to lose sight of its “reason for being”---when that particular train starts to “come off the track,” (as appears to have occurred in our case over the past couple of generations) the best way to figure out where (how and why) that happened is to go backward “along that same track” and look for the point(s) where the breach occurred. This, of course, assumes that the track itself has some importance—is a legitimate consideration—that continuity of heritage and legacy are indeed important, if for no other reason than to help a movement get “back on track” whenever necessary.

-- Another “new twist” with this blog is that I hope to use the “companion site”—the “Faith of the Free” Yahoo group (at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Faith_of_the_Free) as an alternate place for ongoing discussion of the topics that are presented here. I cordially invite all of you to join us over there as well!

-- My long-term goal for this blog may also include multiple contributors—perhaps a small group of “visionary UU leaders” (and ministers emeritus) who could periodically use this venue to share their own thoughts and insights. This, also, we can discuss in greater detail as we go along.

Again, a warm welcome to this little blog from the (also unseasonably warm) Southland, a website that's dedicated to the recognition and advancement of the world’s “Faith of the Free!” It’s my pleasure and honor to be here with so many fine, thoughtful and inspirational UU and liberal-religious bloggers. With your help and input, we'll make this a very useful and worthwhile venture.