Customer Reviews

Unitarian Universalism

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1 star:		(15)

 

 

This book (as well as others in this series) shows a lack of understanding and respect for the religious group it is attacking. I have no objection to the author's beliefs, but to degrade the religious affiliations of others so brashly is disrespectful and cruel. I was embarassed to have read this book by the time I was finished. I agree that this series serves as a good tool for members of the critiqued sects or religions: it is a sort of encyclopedia of some of the most extreme views of evangelical Christianity toward their belief. I found that this book was FULL of information, but lacked wisdom and compassion entirely. Are these not virtues celebrated by Christianity? The whole idea behind this series (armament for proseletization) is preposterous to those of us who love other human beings.

(I would like to add as a note that I am NOT a Unitarian Universalist and this is not a cry of defense for my own beliefs. I merely think that Christians should have more tolerance and compassion than to ever write such violently derogatory books!)

Although I deeply respect Christianity and its principles, I have a hard time understaning where fundamentalist Christians are coming from when they try to tear down something that they don't understand such as UUism. So with an open mind I decided to go through this book in hopes of educating myself.Needless to say, I found it to contain nothing more than rhetorical manipulation and propaganda. If Unitarians really were like how he presented them to be, trust me I wouldn't be one myself.As a 20 year old, I came across UU on my own and have been attending a UU fellowship for 4 years. In that time I've never once been asked to make a monetary contribution and no one has ever tried to pressure me to do anything.Furthermore, I'd suggest the author look up the definition of "cult" in the dictionary or at least read some empirical studies on cult psychology. Some elements that real cults have are intimidating and charismatic leaders, the inculcation of dogma (thus suppression of thought), and the requirement of complete loyalty. UU has none of these things while certain denominations of Christianity do. And think of this - have you ever had a UU person come around knocking on your door trying to recuit you to share "the good word?" Please. People come to it and not the other way around. The whole premise and the whole concept of UU as a cult is nonsense, as is this book. And towards the end I only realized that it's pointless to try to understand where fanatics like him are coming from since they don't base arguments on reason anyway.

It was a bit of a shock to find a book from a supposedly reputable publisher that claims the church I've been attending for the past decade was a cult. However, forwarned is forarmed - so I got a copy of it and took it to the High School Sunday School class I teach - to let them in on what the "traditional" Christian world thinks of them.

While the author claims to have studied UUism, and his outline of it does contain some fairly recent source materials on it - from the arguments he poses against UUism it is clear he doesn't GET what it means to be a participant of a non-credal religion. Or that quoting Bible verses on the authority of the Bible is anything other than totaly irrelevant to Atheists or Neo-Pagans (and circular logic to boot.)

One thing that surprised me as an Earth-centered UU, was the author's most scathing rhetoric was not aimed at Pagans like myself or Atheists - but at UU=Christians! He targets them specificly for their "counterfeit and cultic" practices. Whether this is because familiarity (of shared theological elements) breeds contempt, or it's easier to use the Bible to take potshots at others who revere it is haard to determine.

As I said there is some small utility for UUs to buy this book to see what the Religious Right thinks of them - however, I would expect that it would be extremely ineffective at its reputed purpose - converting UUs to more orthodox forms of Christianity. The most likely response one would get from it would be, "I'm sorry you feel that way about it.", or if they're more blunt, "So What?"

"Unitarian Universalism," by Alan W. Gomes, is part of the Zondervan Guide to Cults and Religious Movements series. It's a relatively short book (94 pages), but densely packed with information. The book is an examination of Unitarian Universalism from a fundamentalist/evangelical Christian perspective. The book even includes witnessing tips for those who may be motivated to try to convert a UU to Christian fundamentalism.

This book is actually a remarkably interesting and useful source of information about UUism, even though the facts are often presented with an obvious negative bias. The text covers many aspects of UUism: history, social activism, "faith stances" within UUism, the historic heritage of Transcendentalism and Humanism, etc.

Unfortunately, the author's bias against and hostility towards UUism makes this one of those books that leaves a bad taste in my mouth. He is particularly harsh on those UUs who identify as Christian within the UU umbrella; he declares that their way of being Christian is "counterfeit and cultic."

Although I am not a member of any UU church (yet!), I have had some experience of UUism and find Gomes' portrait to be somewhat unfair and misleading when he strays from hard facts. Still, the bibliography, wealth of footnotes, and many hard facts in this book make it a great resource for those who can read critically past the author's bias. I recommend you choose as companion texts some of the many fine pamphlets and books put out by the UUs.

Clearly, this Gomes guy is just looking to stir up controversy (and it seems to have worked). He tries to validify this book of misinformed UU statements with some history of UU. While the history part was accurate and informative, the rest of it was a load of you know what. If Gomes wants to talk about a "cult", which by definition means, "a group or sect bound together by veneration of the same thing, person god, etc...", he should talk about any religion. "Cult" almost infers that beliefs are forced upon the followers, when in fact UU is just the opposite. We (the UUs of the world) HAVE religious freedom, and although we are bound together by the common belief that every person should be treated equal and that all beliefs have merit, so is every religion bounded together by a common belief. Therefore, we should not be tossed aside as some "cult". Any non-UU reader who was led to believe by Gomes that the non-historical contents of this book are true, should visit a UU church. Everybody is welcome.

To his credit, Mr. Gomes does present a good historical summary of Unitarianism. Beyond that, however, I can see little to recommend this book. Unless one agrees with his initial set of premises (most notably, that Christianity is the One True Religion and the Bible is the Revealed Word of God), none of his arguments have any substance. The book is supposed to be guidelines for The Faithful to help them convert the Heathen, in this case Unitarians. Since a large percentage of Unitarians come to the religion only after becoming disillusioned with another, the odds of getting a Unitarian to convert back to something he has already tried and found wanting must be rather remote. But Mr. Gomes soldiers on, wrapped in the mantle of righteousness. But what's the point?

It reminds me of the story of the four boy scouts whose scoutmaster asked them if they had done their good deed for the day. "Yes sir. We helped a little old lady across the street." "It took all four of you to help her across the street?" Yes sir, she didn't want to go." One does wish that Mr. Gomes would realize that most people are quite content to be on the side of the religious street they're already on.

Gomes provides an accurate and complete history of Unitarian Universalism. The rest of this little handbook, however, is nothing more than a diatribe against liberal religion and religious diversity. He is particularly condescending toward UU Christians (who aren't really "Christian" according to Gomes). So, legalistic and hatemongering Christians are writing handbooks on how to witness to Unitarian Universalists. That must mean that the free-minded, non-dogmatic and inclusive religion that is Unitarian Universalism is experiencing such growth and renewal that they're getting alarmed. That's good news indeed!

Gomes provides a good history of Unitarian Universalism, but I have little other reason to commend this work. Gomes would have made his case better if he did not keep attacking UU syncretism and collegial dialogue between our neopagan, humanist and christian strands. I admit proudly that Unitarian Universalism is a pluralistic insitution, that we respect women's ethical insights, and are committed to the full inclusion of lesbians and gay men. We tend to be a well- educated and high-income lot, and we are also strongly committed to ending human misery,precisely because we believe that all humans are precious in the life of God/ess. This is where Gomes gets embarrassing, as he has not read any liberal Christian critiques of dualist harm, the consequences of disembodied ethics, and environmental damage. Moreover, his objection to ethical relativism falls apart too, once one recalls the UK Hart/Devlin debate of the sixties. Despite commitment to a set of core moral stances that form foundational social values, many biomedical or sexual ethics issues are up for grabs, and can be resolved through reference to scientific and empirical premises. This does not go down with militant fundamentalists like anti-abortion fundamentalist "philosopher" Dr. Francis Beckwith. Apparently, we are supposed to abandon the Enlightenment and Renaissance and return to the days of Plato and Aristotle before the emergence of pluralism and tolerance within a diverse civil society. However, Unitarian-Universalism resists this arrogant exclusivist discourse, and contend that it causes damage. We do not accept shallow a priori reasons that refer to the alleged infallible content of a sacred text that is processed through highly authoritarian interpretative communities. I would like fundamentalists to explain why we should accept their antipluralist stance given the horrors of religious exclusivism in Rwanda/ Burundi, Bosnia,Kosovo and the Sudan.

I find Beckwith's review particularly chilling. His Calvinist forebears killed Michael Servetus and Catholics took the life of Socinius. Why do I suspect that in his brave new fundamentalist world, my coreligionists religious freedom and intellectual inquiry would be silenced?

A fundamentalist gave me this book to read to convince me I was part of a cult. After reading and enjoying the part of our UU history, I then started to laugh out loud at the rest of the book. Mr. Gomes wouldn't know a cult if he was the member of one, which I think he is. So, I cut out the laughable sections, gave them back to the fundamentalist, and now I have a neat book about the history of UU. Thanks for doing the research Mr. Gomes, now go get a life.

Seeing how I am forced to attend an evanglical church every week, I found this to be more of the same. Fundamentalist Christians are extraordinarily biased as usual and manage to blast the innocent UU church which has done nothing but help people and just be decent.

Indeed... UU's have not claimed to be "christian" since 1960--and before that, they explicitly talked about God and Jesus and such in their statement of beliefs.