Are Unitarian Univeralists stymied by their pluralism? Not for long.

Tom Schade at Prophet Motive asks:

Have you heard sentiments like these?

• “We could really moving into the mainstream of the culture, except that we are always pulled toward marginal, fringe movements, like polyamory.”
• “We could be a terrific social reform movement, if we were not burdened by the huge number of middle class, affluent folks who don’t want to move.”
• “We could be gathering up all the despairing, disheartened mainline Christians, if some people would let us talk once in a while about God and Jesus.”
• “We could be breaking new ground into a third Axial age of human spiritual interconnection, if people would just let us leave this liberal Protestantism behind.”

Philocrites in turn cites this example:

I saw it rather baldly on display recently when Roger Brewin, editor of Religious Humanism, suggested to readers of the HUUmanists e-mail list (no, that’s not a typo) that “humanists who stay UU should make common cause with Pagans — our best hope of fending off the rechristianization of UU.” Oh, boy! Triangulation! As a way for humanists to fend off their own institutional decline, this strikes me as a fruitless path. I have tried more than once to suggest that religious humanists might want to learn from the ways the UU Christians have revived themselves against long odds rather than simply spite them for their success. Then again, I’m not over 50, so what do I know?

My proposal? We form a new group: Unitarian Universalists for Spiritual Interest Group Feudalism (UUFSIGF). Its mission will be to affirm and promote the inherent worth and dignity of all Interest Groups, their pretensions of being a movement, and their aspirations to become bureaucracies.

All UUs will be asked to join one officially recognized Interest Group; petitions to join more than one Interest Group must be approved by the UUFSIGF regional adminstrator, who shall be a UU ministerial legacy. Since most Interest Group members will be over fifty, funding will be drawn from the Mind the Gap initiative. Interest Groups shall have the authority to discipline their members—in accordance with the democratic process. New Interest Groups may form with the approval of a majority of existing Interest Groups at a vote taken at General Assembly.

Except for the polyamory group. That’s just fucked.