A diary that has made it to the top of the rec list today raises once again the issue of religion on DKos. I should probably stay away from these diaries, but since I make my living in religion, I often get sucked in. I got there late for this one, but still made a few posts at the end.
What happened illustrates my sigh.
I made the following post in that diary:
For those who understand Unitarian Universalism (1+ / 0-)
this whole debate doesn't even make sense. We are people of faith, but not as some would define that phrase. We have many atheists as members, but I would contend that we are more authentic a religion as a result, not less, because our commitment is to truth itself, whatever it may be, not to a prescribed set of doctrines. It's exhausting sometimes being part of a religion that some people say isn't really a religion while others lump us in with religious fundamentalists.
Ours is a this-worldly religion. We understand our interdependence with other people and the planet on which we live. We do affirm the worth of all people, which would include religious fundamentalists, but that doesn't mean we have to sit back and watch them take control of our culture and politics. Love and tolerance at a personal level have to be combined with justice and a commitment to the common good at a collective level.
And the reply I received was:
"We have many atheists as members, but I would contend that we are more authentic a religion as a result"
So you're better than me because you believe in stories about snakes and virgin births and I don't. It's just a matter of time until you can dumb me down to believe in your fiction.
Not. Going. To. Happen.
Enjoy your "religion", but don't try to include me in your stories, I don't need or want it.
This response illustrates exactly what I find so frustrating and exhausting. (I am not presenting this as typical of responses by atheists, but it is the response I got.) I have no need to convert anyone to anything, but it's tiring to be misunderstood, which is part of why I sometimes give in to the temptation of jumping into religion diaries (or even creating one--I may regret this).
I know many atheists (but not all) feel a lot of frustration at being treated as pariahs or having religious folks try to convert them. I know, because many of the people in my own religion are atheists. Yes, atheists can be part of a religion, or at least this one. (And I'm not even arguing that "our" atheists are better, just that it is possible. Some of the most kind and ethical people around are atheists who want nothing to do with any form of religion, but some of them want a community like the one we have. We're not alone, either--for example, there are some reform Jews who consider themselves atheists, and many Buddhists are also atheists.)
At one level, this debate about religion is a matter of semantics. I consider Unitarian Universalism to be a real religion, even as it has little in common with what many people think of as religion. So we get caught in both directions, sometimes lumped in with religious fundamentalists and sometimes treated as not a "real" religion. At another level, there are real distinctions among religions that matter in the world. That's part of why it is important to distinguish the semantics from the substance.
For those who are not familiar with it, Unitarian Universalism is a religion that is about a lifelong journey, not a fixed destination. It is about how we live in the world religiously, and how we treat each other along the way, not what we must believe. Our commitment is to be open to truth no matter what it may be (a genuinely religious impulse, I would argue), not to claim that we possess truth (which is really the opposite, more like idolatry than what I consider an authentic religious impulse).
Our name doesn't help much, because it comes from historical doctrines about the unity of God and universal salvation. But both branches of our history evolved over time, and we have continued to evolve since the merger of those traditions in 1961 into something that transcends our origins. We affirm principles such as the inherent worth and dignity of every person, justice, equity and compassion, a search for truth, and respect for the web of life and all existence. Even these do not constitute a creed, but they are guides for how we wish to approach living in this world. We are open to learning from any source, including science, other religions, and personal experience. Here is the full statement from our national web site. We don't accept anything uncritically or on blind faith, but neither do we rule out any possible source of truth a priori.
When they work well (and I know we don't always live up to our own principles), our congregations are true religious communities of mutual care, prophetic voices for justice in the wider world, and places of learning, spiritual growth (again, be careful about semantics here), and cermonial marking of the transitions of life. I have often wondered if it is possible to have what is good about religion without what is bad about it, and that is what we strive for even if we do not always get it right.
We also happen to be mostly Democrats, by the way, although that is not required either. I know there are more than a few UUs on this site, but we still often get lost or misunderstood in religion diaries.
We don't need to prosyletize, because we don't think anyone is going to hell if they don't believe what we do. As I said, we have many members who are atheists, and they are genuine atheists, not former atheists who we dumbed down or turned into something else. We have members who consider themselves Christians, Theists, Humanists, Buddhists, Pagans, and any or no other category of belief. Kind of like Daily Kos. We manage to get along in our congregations, which gives me hope for Daily Kos and for the world in which we live.
Again, my point is not to convert anyone to anything, just a (perhaps vain) hope that my own religion won't be misunderstood in these religion diaries. No one wants to be misunderstood, whether atheist, Christian, UU or anything else. And I don't mind at all if someone takes issue with what I believe--just please don't take issue if you can help it with what you think I believe but that I don't.