What Do Unitarian Universalists Believe?
To Unitarian Universalists, the marks of true religion are spiritual freedom, enlightened reason, broad and tolerant sympathy, upright character, and unselfish service. Because we find the essence of religion in character, conduct, and community rather than in doctrines, creeds, dogmas, and catechisms, those who customarily think of religion as a series of theological definitions sometimes have difficulty understanding the liberal religious position.
We are believers, but our beliefs are centered in a method, a process of the religious life, rather than in closed articles of faith.
"But what do Unitarian Universalists believe?" we are asked. "What is your creed?"
We have no creed. On matters normally frozen into creedal statements, we are expected to follow the dictates of reason, conscience, and experience. Our congregations make no official pronouncements on God, Scripture, salvation, or any other theological questions generally answered with finality by more traditional religious groups. To us, creating a religious way of life is far too important to be left to the propounders of creeds and dogmas.
We become Unitarian Universalists not by substituting one confession of faith for another, but by opening our minds to receive truth and inspiration from every possible source.
The most fundamental of all our principles, then, is individual freedom of religious belief-the principle of the free mind. For us the most vital fact is this: in order to advance, humans must be free. There is no area of life in which it is more important to be free than in religion.
Those who differ with us argue that we must be directed by infallible religious guides, or else our frailties will corrupt and destroy us. But when we begin to examine closely the "infallible" religious guides, what do we discover? The religious body that claims authority to dictate beliefs is a human institution, and its truths are no more than the conclusions of its earlier human leaders.
Churches, bibles, and creeds are the creations of those who once exercised their freedom to create. Is there any reason why we should expect to do less?
Thus, a distinctive characteristic of Unitarian Universalists is our insistence that we will not bind our present and future in religion to the tutelage of the past. We will attempt to learn all that the past can teach us, but we will do our own thinking about current matters of faith and practice.
In one of our congregations, an agnostic may sit beside one who believes in a personal God or Goddess; at the after-service coffee hour, a believer in personal immortality may chat with one who accepts "utter extinction." Such are our wide diversities of individual belief.
We are together in our devotion to freedom; each living by a thought-out covenant with oneself and with life as a whole; each understanding that one's beliefs may change as insights deepen and experiences broaden. You can see how bound-less the opportunities are in this open approach to religion and the spiritual life.
Second only to our belief in the free mind and heart is the principle of reason and r sponsibility. Freedom requires responsibility. We must accept responsibility for our acts. We believe that this sense of responsibility reflects the highest ethical teachings of the world's great faiths. We believe also that it is the essence of one of our noblest human achievements, the scientific method-the process of discovering tested truth. In brief, we believe that our religious concept of ethical responsibility is much more in tune with human experience, and much more productive of good than the traditional doctrine of inherent depravity through "original sin."
How do we cultivate responsible behavior? For us a chief resource is human reason. Reason holds the place that is ordinarily accorded to revelation in orthodox religions. That person is likely to behave best who exercises reason most.
This does not mean that we are unmindful of the limitations of human reason, nor that we look upon it as an infallible guide. In our way of life there are no infallible guides. Dr. E. Burdette Backus, a prominent Unitarian Universalist minister, described our faith in reason: ". . . Intelligence is an instrument which has developed in the process of evolution to enable us to satisfy our needs more adequately. It had originally a very earthy and practical purpose, namely that of solving the problems that pressed in upon us in daily life. Although it continues this immediately pressing function it has far outsoared it and seeks to penetrate beyond the stars to find an answer to the riddle of the universe. Our reason makes many mistakes; it is frequently taken captive by our desires, so that we believe things not because they are true but because we want to believe them. It cannot give us absolute and final certainty, but it has established a substantial body of verified truth; it is steadily increasing the amount of that truth. For all its limitations it serves us very well, and those who advocate its abandonment are simply telling a person who is groping through the dark by the light of a candle to blow out the light."
Unitarian Universalism, then, is an ethical rather than a doctrinal religion, with individual freedom as its method and reason as its guide.
The path of logic leads from freedom, through reason, to a third fundamental principle: a generous and tolerant understanding of differing views and practices.
