Sunday Musings

UUA Pamphlets: The Faith of a Theist

There Must Be a God Somewhere

After a time, I began to pay attention, not just to coffee hour, but to the hour before that, when the community gathered amid the banners representing the great religions of the world. I sat beneath those banners and heard from the pulpit and the pews the deepest longings of my heart. I learned about the similarities among the great religions of the world, about their common hopes and aspirations for humanity. I heard about the beloved community—the gathered people hungry to do justice and love mercy and walk humbly with God. I heard about people who had risked all they had—even their own lives—in order to speak out loud the longings of their hearts, longings so much like mine.

And I heard about all these things in the context of freedom, the freedom to think for myself about God and about the world, the freedom to decide how I might live so that one day "righteousness and peace would kiss one another," even if I would not live to see that day.

No one required me to make promises I could not keep. There was no list of beliefs that determined whether I was in or out of favor. And most importantly, there were no gatekeepers who decided on my worthiness or unworthiness. Everyone in the sanctuary, including me, was part of a glorious creation. Just by being alive, I was good, I was worthwhile, I was sacred. It was a revelation. For a long time, it was enough—this freedom to think for myself, to embrace the spirit of skepticism and the rejection of doctrine. I reveled in the community of like-minded people, all of us fleeing the excess and rigidity of our childhood beliefs, the blind and unquestioning faith of our fathers and mothers.

Of course I grabbed all the pamphlets when I joined a UU church:

The Faith of a Humanist


The Faith of a UU Buddhist

They don't have a pamplet right now but this Faith of an Atheist - short sermon.by Barbara Rowell is similar.

An interesting related website is atheists-for-jesus.com which cuts to the heart of the matter - what we know as Christianity has at its base the religion of Paul over some teachings of Jesus.