An Organized Religion for People Like Me

Amanda and I finally got our butts into church. Some of you will say, “Why?” and others About time.” I’ll take the former first. During our time studying cultural anthropology we learned a few things, one of which was the profound feeling of isolation that being raised without any religious tradition can create (we heard about these feelings firsthand from a fellow student back in Christine Eber’s undergraduate anthro class), and we decided that we didn’t want our children having those issues.

As for asking “What took you so long?” I can say that we’d made some valiant attempts in the past, including trying to become members of South Church in Portsmouth a few years back. Also, it didn’t make sense to take Hazel until now as she wasn’t old enough to understand.

Amanda and I had good experiences with Unitarian Universalism in the past, and a few weeks ago she discovered that there was a UU church in Nottingham, so we decided to give it a try. At the annual town meeting I heard its minister, Pastor Pat, give an invocation, and the following day we packed up the kids.

I was raised a Southern Baptist, and I was “saved” when I was a young teenager and later walked away from the hate and hypocrisy that I found in Born Again Evangelicalism in my late teen years. I searched for a few years more, investigating Quakerism, Roman Catholicism, Buddhism, and a few others.

I soon decided that no organized religion exactly agreed with my values. There’s usually some statement that parishioners recite together in every flavor of religious service, and in each of those there tends to be some ideas that you believe, and several more you really don’t. The Nicean Creed, for instance, while not nearly as strident as most evangelical statements I’ve heard, still includes a bunch of literalistic bits that I would mumble over. Jesus didn’t simply return from death, he “rose on the third day according to the scriptures.” The Trinity is enforced through the recitation of belief “...in the Holy Spirit, the Lord and the Life-giver, that proceeds from the Father, who with the Father and Son is worshipped together and glorified together....” And then there are those pillars of faith that you don’t object to but that appear irrelevant, such as the acknowledgement of “one baptism for the remission of sins.” Why only one? And who really cares? If somebody has more than one, will God really be pissed? Is that like taking an extra seat on the bus?”

Here’s the statement the parishioners at the Nottingham Community Universalist Church recite:

Love is the doctrine of this church.
The quest for truth is its sacrament,
And service is its prayer.
To dwell together in peace,
To seek knowledge in freedom,
To serve human need,
To the end that all souls shall
grow into harmony with the Divine —

Thus do we covenant with each other and with God.

To love, to quest for truth, to serve and dwell in peace, seeking knowledge in freedom. I realized with amazement that I believed every word, and that there was a small group in my little town that feel the same.