Author Archives: unitarian reform

04/30/09

There is no Plan C – Conquering False Hope with Faith

Today is Loyal Thursday, and during these 12 Days of Trust — celebrating the virtue of Faith — it is important to remember the fallibility of Hope.  Faith is the complement of Hope, and its antidote when Hope becomes false:

Faith, rather than meaning credulous obedience to dogmatic authority, is simply what we modern Americans would call “stick-to-it-iveness”: a confidence that is not shaken by contest and competition, or lured away by fleeting temptations. It is the same faith as that found in a “faithful” husband or wife, the same faith in the military oath “to bear true faith and allegiance.”

Faith is a virtue in marriage and the military not because one’s spouse is the best partner on Earth or because every battle can be won but because, without faith, the reality supported by that faith crumbles to dust. Faith is the virtue of focus … Hope is the virtue of open-mindedness.

Without Faith focusing on the nitty-gritty particulars … Hope becomes mere naïveté.

In order to to act as virtues rather than vices, clear-minded Faith and open-minded Hope must be reconciled with each other. Continue reading →

04/23/09

Joyful Thursday

hopeToday, the second Thursday after Easter, is the beginning of the 12 Days of Blessings, which is the first of the three dozenals of the Ascension Season.

The 12 Days of Blessings are a celebration of the open-minded virtue of Hope (ἐλπίς in Greek), and Joyful Thursday is a day to feast in optimistic happiness. Hope is the virtue of open-minding thinking, the antidote of despair, and with Faith a vital half of the highest Christian virtue of Love.

04/20/09

AUR FAQ Page Posted

Some time ago, a FAQ was promised to address the basic AUR issues better than the Introduction page.  The following questions are now up on the AUR FAQ page, clickable in the sidebar.

1. What does it mean to be Unitarian?
1.1 What significance is Jesus Christ to (Reform) Unitarians?

2. Do Unitarians reject the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit as Trinitarians claim?
2.1 Why is the Reform Unitarian view more correct than the Trinitarian view?
2.2 How did the early Church view the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit?
2.3 Why do so many modern Christians believe that Trinitarianism is central to Christianity?

3. Don’t Unitarians not really have any specific beliefs any more?
3.1 What does it matter if the word “Unitarianism” is used for groups that no longer believe in Unitarianism?

4. What does it mean to be a Reform Unitarian?
4.1 What is Reform Unitarianism restoring and improving?
4.2 Is Reform Unitarianism only concerned with restoring and improving Christianity?

5. What is American about American Unitarian Reform?
5.1 Does American Unitarian Reform violate the Separation of Church and State?

6. What is the Reform Unitarian attitude toward Scripture?

04/18/09

Notional American Unitarian Reform Church No. 1

This is the first in a series of light-hearted signs for hypothetical American Unitarian Reform churches, created using an online image generator. We hope to show a range of attitudes and ideas all possible within the scope of AUR.

Today’s notional church is named in honor of Reverend Jonathan Mayhew of Boston, who popularized the “no taxation without representation” talking point in the mid-1700s.

01mayhewaur

04/10/09

Crucifixion Friday – Barabbas and Jesus

ecce-homoOne of the more controversial aspects of traditional Passion plays is the scene wherein Pontius Pilate offers to release one prisoner to the Jews, as part of what the Gospels indicate is a Passover custom in Roman-occupied Judea.

The crowd gathered below chooses the criminal Barabbas, and insist that Jesus be crucified. The scene is often decried as anti-Semitic for its negative portrayal of the Jews as a violent, criminal mob, politically motivated and spiritually blind. Indeed it has often been used to stir up hatred against Jews.

But, a deeper meaning available in this scene is entirely missed by most. It begins with an understanding of the symbolism in the name Barabbas, which is Aramaic for “Son of the Father.” In the context of Christian theology, therefore, those gathered before Pilate chose the man who was named “Son of the Father” rather than the man who was the Son of the Father.

They chose outward appearance over inner reality. Continue reading →

04/6/09

Garden Thursday – Living The Sermon

During the the Sermon on the Mount, while expounding on anger, adultery, oaths, and retaliation, Jesus repeatedly emphasized the importance of intention over action. It is not the act of adultery that makes us adulterers, but the desire. It is not the voicing of our hatred that is the sin, but the hatred itself.

The moral character behind our decisions, that inner seed of the actions which are regulated by Law, was at the core of Jesus’s teachings. Continue reading →

04/2/09

Palm Sunday And The Idiomatic Approach To Religion

[Please see the updated, 2010 version of this here.]

palm_sundayPalm Sunday commemorates the day Jesus entered Jerusalem on the back of a colt (or donkey) with throngs of Messianic enthusiasts paving the way with palm fronds.  Celebrations of this holiday therefore often include palms.

In some regions, however, this tropical plant has been difficult to acquire, particularly in the past when shipping methods were primitive.  For this reason, local trees were often substituted for palms, and the name of the holiday revised to match.

Were Christians who celebrated “Yew Sunday,” because their culture knew yews and did not know palms, practicing a heresy?  Other-Than-Palm Sundays certainly could be described as “un-scriptural” but are they un-Christian? We don’t think so, and we think that this is a critically important point that supports our idiomatic, rather than dogmatic, approach to religious creed. Continue reading →

03/19/09

Comments on the Pope’s Visit to Africa

Despite AUR’s disagreement with Rome’s trinitarian theology, there is much to admire in a church that contains a variety of traditions, viewpoints, and saintly followings* that allow for diversity under a unifying central vision.  There is much more to Catholicism than the doctrine of the Trinity, a broad range of redeeming characteristics, which is unfortunately not the case for many Protestant trinitarian denominations.

Still, there are occasions for disagreement with the Vatican beyond the misadventures of the 4th Century, when it becomes instructive to show how the views of RCC and AUR differ.  During his recent travels in Africa, while speaking to Muslims in Cameroon, Pope Benedict stated that “genuine religion … rejects all forms of violence and totalitarianism: not only on principles of faith but also of right reason.” Continue reading →

03/5/09

Thursday Observance

AUR views itself as a particularly American and Unitarian Christian expression of the universal search for Truth. Just as the earliest Christian communities struggled with the question of Saturday or Sunday worship (the outcome of which is disputed even today by Seventh Day Adventists) and Muslims took Friday as their Day of Gathering, the Reform sought a weekday that honors the particulars of its idiom. Continue reading →

02/24/09

Why the Cross is Okay on Ash Wednesday

ashcrossTypically, Reform Unitarianism avoids the use of the cross.  One reason is that the cross did not become an important symbol in Christianity until well into the 4th Century, after conflationist corruptions had begun to undermine Christian theology.  The cross simply does not represent original Christianity.

More importantly, however, veneration of the cross puts salvific power in the murderous actions of Romans and the foolish decision of the mob of Barabbas.  In AUR, we believe that the moment of salvific power during the passion narrative was not at Golgotha but at Gethsemane, when Jesus of Nazareth committed his soul to the will of his Father and ours: the Creator of all things.  

The metaphorical Cup of Gethsemane (“take this cup from me”) which Jesus ultimately accepts (“nevertheless, Thy will be done”) is the universal key to salvation.  The cross is merely the local instrument of Jesus’s punishment and execution.  Suffering and death were indeed necessary for Jesus — as they are for us — but it is “Thy will be done” that effects salvation, not the Roman whip, thorn, nail, and spearpoint.

Still, although the chalice is a more spiritually accurate symbol of salvation through commitment of the soul, the cross remains a potent material reminder of what that commitment meant for the founder of our religion. To use the cliché that has arisen from the passion narrative, each of us has our own “cross to bear” — but the cross born by Jesus Christ was one of the thousands of actual crosses on which so many were tortured and executed in ancient times.

On this day, as a reminder of the material consequences of our spiritual commitment, Reform Unitarians join with other Christians in taking the ashen mark of the cross to remember that we are dust, and to dust shall we return.