The Post Modern Preacher

With the big news of the national ad campaign in Time, the splash campaign in the SF Bay, and thoughts of what I will be doing with the MBD, I am often struck by how inarticulate we UUs are about our message. The ad for the Bay Area begins with descriptions of what UUs are not and doesn't bring in the positivity until halfway into the commercial. Do people really go to church for what they won't be recieving? I don't go to an Indian restaurant because I don't want McDonald's, I go because I want tikka masala and samosas.

Why is it that there is an ethos of shame around our message? Why do we time and time again begin with taglines like you don't have to believe in God to come to our churches. As clever as it sounds, "You have questions, so do we" doesn't really say much about us either. Some alternate wordings could make the statement stronger. Something like, "Unitarian Universalism, where we have the courage to live in the questions." This statement boldly claims that we don't just have questions (who doesn't) but that we live in them. The statement says we don't have cheap grace. What about claiming that everyone is welcome to come to our table. Our congregations might not be so friendly to the more conservative minded but they are welcome to our table even if our faith will challenge their belief. We could even crib Anselm's tagline of "faith seeking understanding" as our message since we do not divorce our thinking heads from our feeling hearts.

Maybe we want to feel some level of shame since there is no profession of our sins so we cannot with clear conscience move past our guilt. Are we so hurt by our pasts that we have to preface who we are with who we are not? Why do we parade our woundedness as a red badge of courage? Today, I heard a comment from a fellow UU seminarian that the title of religion is problematic for UUism and we are perhaps better labelled a movement. Do you go to a building on Sunday mornings to sing songs, hear wisdom, and listen to the exegesis of texts and moral encouragement from a movement? Do you go to a movement to wed or to have a memorial of your life? Do you go to a movement for counselling when life is hard? Why are we afraid to say religion? There are many atheistic religions. Well, by many I mean sects of Buddhism, Confucianism, with the door open to other traditions of which I am ignorant. There are Buddhist churches. Yet, our churches shouldn't be called churches, they should be called meeting houses...

I hope one day we can get over ourselves. I hope we can find our way in our spiritual journey without prefaces of what we don't believe or do. I hope one day we can see any spiritual journeyor who is authentic in their path and call them friend, even if their spiritual guide isn't the Roshi or Lama of the week and is instead perhaps Julian of Norwich. Maybe one day we will let people learn from Marian traditions as much as we allow folk to learn from Kuan Yin. Maybe someday we can talk of Mohammed instead of Rumi.