Can creedless Unitarians make it another 50 years?
A recent Sunday service at the First Unitarian Church of Baltimore
ended with an apology. Laurel Mendes explained that religious doctrine
had been duly scrubbed from the hymns in the congregation's Sunday
program. But Mendes, a neopagan lay member who led the service, feared
that a reference to God in "Once to Every Soul and Nation" might upset
the humanists in the pews.
"I didn't want to make anyone
uncomfortable by reciting something that might be considered a
profession of faith," said Mendes, 52, after the service. "We did say
'God,' which you don't often hear in our most politically correct
hymns."
Such remarks are typical in the anything-but-typical
Unitarian Universalist Association, a liberal religious movement with
a proud history of welcoming all seekers of truth—as long as it's
spelled with a lowercase t. For 50 years the Boston-based UUA has
conducted a virtually unprecedented experiment: advancing a religion
without doctrine, hoping that welcoming communities and shared political
causes, not creeds, will draw people to their pews.
