I really didn’t get online to make the previous much-too-long statement, but to try and throw out a few ideas as I think about my next sermon, on August 24, the big annual “What is Universalism?” event for newcomers to church.
The Christian cohort within the UUA, while producing some good minds, devoted laypersons, and godly pastors, hasn’t exactly been the hot-place-to-be these forty-plus years since 1961. We’re certainly guilty of our own kind of sectarianism, and always worried when one of our beloved got ecumenically active: if a minister, this person often transferred to a Christian denomination with its greener pastures.
But the one question we should have asked, needed to ask, but rarely if ever did was “What is a Christian?” What charisms within Unitarian and Universalist life inform the life of Christian? What then, do we mean by “Christian”?
For far too long, we played the “what is Unitarian Universalism?” game inside the family to make sure we weren’t written out of it. The journals of the UUCF before the 1985 General Assembly, when the Principles and Purposes were adopted, make for a harrowing read.
In generations before, at least on the Universalist side, the operating question was “What is a Universalist?” since this was the point of controversy and departure, and since Christianity was pretty much a given.
Now it isn’t, and with a low level of religious literacy, increasing secularism, and the church being at such a low level of reputation, I think those-that-are need to examine “What is a Christian?” before going to more particular subjects.
If you wouldn’t mind posting your sermon, my wife is struggling with the very same question you raise here, and we both would be very interested in your words.
As would I.