I'd like to call your attention to a community in need. They have been living in secret for a while. Their friends, family and neighbors reject who they are. Those who find out about them renounce their identity and tell them that they are going to Hell - that they are corrupt. But, by the grace of God, many of them have been coming out. They have been opening the closet doors one by one. Who am I talking about...? I'm talking about the new universalists.
 |
| Rob Bell: yup, he's a universalist |
I know that the strategy has mostly been to stay quiet - to distance ourselves from the theological ground behind our Principles and covenant so that we won't upset our most cantankerous members. But I'm afraid that if we don't claim our tradition now, we will very quickly lose the authenticity ever to claim it.
So many bright, probing, incredibly talented and wildly popular evangelicals are shaking the ground of Christianity, discovering for themselves the truth of God's vastness and boundless love without ever needing us to tell them. In fact, let's be clear - Universalism and the Way of Love manages to find a way into people's hearts without us. That's what's happening right now - hence this letter requesting that we get on board someone else's train. I'm a firm believer that the best ideas never die - that's why they keep popping up in so many of the world's religions.
Ok, so who do I mean and where should we start? I think we gotta jump on what's hot right now - and that would be Rob Bell! I had a couple readers send me links to this guy today and I'm glad they did! Here's the deal-
Rob Bell is the hottest thing in American religion right now. His name was one of the highest trending on Twitter this weekend - and in case you are not super tech savvy, that is a BIG deal. Why all the fuss? He's an evangelical heavy weight who just announced a new book, which is a treatise on universalism called "Love Wins." This guy is magna hot right now- and his book comes out March 29 so you haven't much time! Act now! You can read more about him and the conservative backlash here.
After that storm calms down I would take some time and get to know Brian McLaren, Jonathan Brink and some of the other evangelical universalists who have helped shape the Emergent Church and Big Tent Christianity. Become their facebook friends, publicly support them. Maybe you could even write reviews of their books - anything to associate Unitarian Universalism as a supportive friend and ally to all the practicing universalists out there keeping Hope alive.
I pray that you will act in faith on this matter and be the national voice and leader that we have called you to be.
With love,
Anna
Anna, I love your blog. Just to let your readers know, in case they don't: Phillip Gulley and James Mulholland (universalist Quakers) have two wonderful books, If God is Love and If Grace is True. More recently, Gulley released If the Church Were Christian. Probably also worth directing people to Robin Meyers' (UCC) book Saving Jesus from the Church. Cheers, Amanda
ReplyDeleteAnna, terrific letter to Rev. Morales! Thank you so much for your inspiring work.
ReplyDeleteDivine Blessings, Lisa from Kailua, Hawaii
I agree 100%... except that I don't think there's the ghost of a chance that the creaky old UUA can possibly come through on something like this. It's up to us, the Universalists out here, especially the younger ones, to do it for ourselves. We ought to get on YouTube right away with a preemptive video (or lots of videos) welcoming Rob Bell and all his readers/viewers to UUism, including a bit of well-presented info about our Universalist past and current trends in Universalism.
ReplyDeleteThe UUA is designed to deliver services to congregations. It is not the mouthpiece of Unitarian-Universalism. That would be us. If we want things like this, we have to do them.
Wonderful - thanks - and shared on the UU Church of Berkeley's Facebook page.
ReplyDelete"I know that the strategy has mostly been to stay quiet - to distance ourselves from the theological ground behind our Principles and covenant so that we won't upset our most cantankerous members."
ReplyDeleteDo you mean the ever so cantakerous, to say nothing of intolerant and outright bigotted, "fundamentalist atheist" sub-set of "Humanist" U*US Anna? The sad fact of the matter is that there are *some* reasonable grounds to believe that President Peter Morales himself is, or at least was. . . one of those "most cantankerous" militant atheist U*Us. Did you miss the part of Rev. Morales' "stump speech" announcing his candidacy for President of the UUA where he demonized and marginalized Judaism, Christianity, Islam, and any number of other "old religions", as "obsolete religions, created for another time" which "lead to tribalism, violence, suspicion, hatred, and oppression" and "contribute to the darkness" of "hatred, injustice, prejudice, ignorance"?
There is just something so oxymoronic about trying to "own" God's universal love. I divide all religions into the universalists and the partialists, because there are so many folks in every religion who can't reconcile their loving God and the partialists' fiery hell. When you hear them say, "live and let live" that's usually a giveaway.
ReplyDeleteI sent a link to this post to the Public Relations Director and the Director of Communications for the UUA. Who knows, maybe they'll stop by and follow-up on your idea.
ReplyDeleteAnd maybe just maybe the Public Relations Director and the Director of Communications for the UUA will stop by and give some consideration to what a public relations disaster it *could* be for The U*U Movement if more Jews, Christians, Muslims, etc. etc. etc. knew how UUA President Morales has demonized and marginalized their respective "obsolete religions". . .
ReplyDeleteI agree with you Anna that we should noise abroad our support of emerging universalisms wherever they may be found. And I agree with Transient and Permanent that the UUA does not exist for this purpose. It's us to us as individuals and congregations (those capable of coming to a consensus on this).
ReplyDeleteI would call you though on one thing, you refer to "these newly arrived spiritual immigrants to our heritage, faith, theology and tradition." I think that is taking this thing farther than the facts support. Rob Bell is not an immigrant to OUR HERITAGE, OUR FAITH, OUR THEOLOGY, OUR TRADITION. He has his own heritage, faith, theology, and tradition. He is on a path that is not our path even as it shares some contours with ours. I am glad he is on it. I celebrate where it is taking him. But it is not my path in the slightest. And he is not coming into OUR world, he is developing along his own trajectory in ways that are more compatible with us than the paths of official and mainstream evangelicalisms.
Let's not make the error of claiming yet another non-UU as one of us. That's a declaration for him to make should it ever represent what he sees himself as be(com)ing.
While this is certainly an exciting development, since I always rejoice when someone is freed from the destructive belief of eternal damnation, it is far from certain that Rob Bell would be comforatable in a UU congregation. I don't think he would be willing to worship with pagans and embrace their views as equally valid as his Christian views. I could be wrong, but based on my reading of one of his books, Velvet Elvis, I'm pretty sure he still views Christianity as the best source of truth. We shall see.
ReplyDelete@ Paul and Doug - I don't think anyone thinks Rob Bell is a UU. I'm sure he's not. The debate is whether or not Rob Bell is a classical universalist. As the inheritors of that theology - which gives us our second U - we should be supporting those who espouse it - whomever they are, wherever they come from and whatever journey they are on.
ReplyDeleteAnd behold...
ReplyDeletehttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/rev-peter-morales/what-is-universalism_b_835913.html
I'm going to go on the record as eating my words. I thought the UUA and Rev. Morales couldn't come though on this, and I was wrong. And I'm pleased to be wrong, in fact.
ReplyDeleteHe appears to be a Trinitarian Universalist.
ReplyDeletehttp://marshill.org/believe/
Unfortunately, most of the UUA is still uncomfortable about God talk and Universalism is just another delusion. I think it will take a bottom up approach with certain UUA or non-affiliated UU churches starting up that embrace a theistic or even deistic universalism to bring life into the UU world. Each church will have to forge a set of basic beliefs..yes, dogma..and become more like the original Unitarian Christian churches. Just my 2 cents.
Heretics are a sure sign that the orthodox no longer works, except that now (at least in the west) they are no long burned at the stake and can communicate freely.
I'm going to go on the record as eating my words. I thought the UUA and Rev. Morales couldn't come though on this, and I was wrong. And I'm pleased to be wrong, in fact.
ReplyDeleteHe appears to be a Trinitarian Universalist.
ReplyDeletehttp://marshill.org/believe/
Unfortunately, most of the UUA is still uncomfortable about God talk and Universalism is just another delusion. I think it will take a bottom up approach with certain UUA or non-affiliated UU churches starting up that embrace a theistic or even deistic universalism to bring life into the UU world. Each church will have to forge a set of basic beliefs..yes, dogma..and become more like the original Unitarian Christian churches. Just my 2 cents.
Heretics are a sure sign that the orthodox no longer works, except that now (at least in the west) they are no long burned at the stake and can communicate freely.
While this is certainly an exciting development, since I always rejoice when someone is freed from the destructive belief of eternal damnation, it is far from certain that Rob Bell would be comforatable in a UU congregation. I don't think he would be willing to worship with pagans and embrace their views as equally valid as his Christian views. I could be wrong, but based on my reading of one of his books, Velvet Elvis, I'm pretty sure he still views Christianity as the best source of truth. We shall see.
ReplyDeleteAnna, I love your blog. Just to let your readers know, in case they don't: Phillip Gulley and James Mulholland (universalist Quakers) have two wonderful books, If God is Love and If Grace is True. More recently, Gulley released If the Church Were Christian. Probably also worth directing people to Robin Meyers' (UCC) book Saving Jesus from the Church. Cheers, Amanda
ReplyDelete