Apparently Unitarian Universalist president Bill Sinkford is proposing that we add God™ to our Purposes & Principles. [By the way, the redesign looks nice, but you’ve completely buried the P&P. Not what I’d call “user friendly.” And, no, burying it in a section marked “newcomers” doesn’t make it any better.] Sinkford says that God’s™ absense from the un-creed “reduces the document’s effectiveness in comforting people and also puts the denomination out on the fringe of religious life in America.” Sinkford also said he abandoned his non-theistic humanism and had “a change of heart and mind when his teen-age son was critically ill after a drug overdose,” turning to prayer to God™.
Some rejoinders. First, the current P&P is not hostile to theism. It leaves room for It™ and even mentions It™ in connection to “Jewish and Christian teachings.” It also doesn’t mention reincarnation™, Vietnam war protests™, or Carl Sagan™, which experience teaches me rank rather high in the UU pantheon, such as it is.
Which leads to my second point. Perhaps we should poll all UUs whose children have experienced life-threatening drug overdoses and add everything they’ve turned to during their dark hous of crises to the P&P. That would be democratric and inclusive, wouldn’t it? Note to baby boomers: your having a Moment™ is no reason to inflict it upon everyone else in the form of a nationally approved un-creed. And even though I haven’t had the experience of children in rehab, the last occasion I had a loved one in a life-threatening medical situation, I found myself prostrate before a certain Dr. Zinni. Could we add him too?
Third, it’s not a creed, so it’s not a creed. It can’t, by definition, tell the world what we believe in.
Fourth, so what if we’re in the “fringe of religious life in America?” Why is that a bad thing? Many of us are UU precisely because it’s a fringe religious movement, not out of some punk need to rebel, but because we’ve found the un-fringe of American religious life to be unfulfiling, abusive, and/or corrupt. Adding It™ to the P&P is not comforting; it is precisely the opposite.
As readers no doubt are aware by now, pres. Sinkford did not make the remarks originally attributed to him – I would be interested in the poster’s remarks to what pres. Sinkford actually did say, not to what he was reported to have said. Surely a rationalist of all people should check his/her facts!
dp,
I believe this was posted before it was known that Sinkford was misreported. I’m not going to issue a retraction for commenting on the facts as I knew them at ths time.
And no one who knows me would call me a “rationalist.” Many UUs feel the same.