Rational Religion and the UU Church

Peter Taylor examines religion from a Unitarian Universalist perspective.

A couple of articles I read recently on the relationship between science and religion got me thinking about the functions that religions perform, and the methods religions use to perform those functions. I offer here my own opinions about what I think are some of the more important functions and methods of religion, and their implications. By extension, I hope to answer the question of what makes for a good religion. By further extension, I hope to suggest ways to improve Unitarian Universalism (UU).

...One criterion for a good religion is that it should strike a good balance between promoting social cohesion and avoiding promoting xenophobia. A good religion should significantly encourage people to build charity hospitals and take casseroles to sick neighbors, without causing too many people to be burned at the stake or starting too many unnecessary wars.

A second criterion, closely related to the first, is that a good religion should strike a good balance between comforting people who are suffering, and avoiding dishonesty. How much deception or self-deception is too much, and how important this is relative to social cohesion, are judgment calls. In some cases, avoiding dishonesty is a simple yes or no question about telling the truth vs. lying. Is it okay to tell a comforting lie to someone who is on his deathbed? In other cases it is a question of finding a balance between keeping an open mind vs. having a mind so open that one's brains fall out. How respectful should we be towards people who take the claims of parapsychology seriously?

A third criterion for a good religion is that it should help us cope with our more troublesome psychological predispositions. One way a good religion can help us here is by offering us a rich set of stories and metaphors for understanding ourselves. It helps to be eclectic, I think, and the non-creedal nature of UUism is an advantage in this regard because it allows us to adopt ideas freely from all the other religions.

...Our real theology problem is our differences in how we want to relate to the theologies of people outside our churches, especially those who take their conjectures seriously enough to want to give them the force of law. In practice, this usually means relating to Christianity. "Conservative" UUs may regard the Unitarian (one God) and Universalist (no Hell) heresies as the authentic voice of Christianity, and want to "reclaim" the Christian tradition from its false friends. The more radical UUs (including me) regard this as both historically wrong and politically infeasible and counterproductive. There are similar divisions in our views of Paganism. Is Paganism (1) a reasonable approach to doing personal psychology, (2) a superstition to be opposed, or (3) a political weapon? (And if it is a political weapon, is it one that should be sheathed or drawn?) More generally, is UU a cave in which we hide from dangerous or unpleasant crazy people, a lamp post from which we shine our lights on them, or a first aid station where we try to help them? I think our historical relation to Christianity, our small numbers, and our lack of a creed make these sorts of issues more divisive for us than similar problems are for other churches.