Not a subject I want to get into often here, but this essay on The New Republic's blog ( by a writer who is a secular Jew)seemed to have some small- l liberal things to say about the Pope controversy.
Money quote:
"By my human standards "No man comes unto the father but through Me" is a terrible way to run a universe; but if there is a God I have no reason to think that His rules will conform to my contingent, twenty-first-century Western liberal human standards. And so I don't expect religious believers to softpedal the exclusionary implications of their beliefs. I don't think Unitarian Universalism is somehow a better religion than Catholicism or Mormonism or Orthodox Judaism ( sorry Mary !)just because its god seems to be so nice and inclusive; indeed, my sympathies for the aesthetic and moral-psychological experience of religious belief tends to run the other way. This is a bit like the stance of many American lapsed Catholic or many Israeli secular Jews, I incline to say, "I don't believe in God, but the God in whom I don't believe is a serious one!" But I don't quite mean that. Rather, I want to say that if there is a point to religion and theology, then that point is undermined by the reluctance to draw distinctions and take them seriously."
1 comment:
Unitarian Universalism is not a religion. It is a denomination, which is to say an association of congregations which are voluntary groups of free thinkers. There is no doctrine. There are some principles you can find at the website. Just because the Abramic religions are all bullies and insist on premising everything on whether God (a big giant human) exists or not, doesn't mean that other religious groups are like that. Some say that a theology with no theos (big daddy) is not theology, but philosophy. Suits me.
Prairie Mary
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