Member-only story
Religion Only Works When It Means Something
I used to attend a Unitarian church.
Living in a conservative town, I was after a pro-LGBT refuge. I needed people who wouldn’t see me as a target for conversion or “spiritual warfare,” who didn’t think I was the embodiment of everything running America into the ground.
So, every Sunday, I went to church. The minister quoted Khalil Gibran and Adrienne Rich. The congregation sang the way the old joke would lead you to expect: Why are Unitarians such bad hymn singers? They’re always reading ahead to make sure they agree with the lyrics. But they needn’t have bothered, since every song in the Unitarian hymnal had already been painstakingly scrubbed of any references to God.
After each service, I asked myself what the point had been.
After all, mainstream churches, synagogues, and Buddhist sanghas all know why they’re there. Even the loosest and most open groups (unprogrammed Quakerism, Jewish Renewal) have a reason to gather every week. They want to pray, meditate, or listen for the Holy Spirit’s call. Unitarian-Universalists, though, aren’t comfortable asking for that. Their services contain no prayers and no hard-and-fast theology. The few rituals they allow themselves lack any clearly-defined meaning. Even though most UUs are atheists or agnostics, they aren’t even willing to disavow theism…