Waun Introduction to Unitarians
By The Rev. Renee Waun
“UUs: the Uncommon Denomination” – You may have seen that bumper sticker somewhere in your travels.
Who are the UUs? We are Unitarian Universalists, and our history goes back about 450 years to the time of the Protestant reformation in Europe.
Unitarian Universalists are becoming more visible, however we are still fairly unknown and are sometimes confused with other religious groups or even cults.
There is a story of a woman who was answering the intake interview questions while being checked into a hospital when the clerk asked what religion she was. When the woman answered “I’m a Unitarian Universalist,” the clerk reportedly smiled and typed into the form “None.”
This story simply illustrates how relatively unfamiliar we are to the average person. UUs have sometimes been mistaken for followers of the Unity movement and of other lesser known religious groups. So I welcome this opportunity to introduce Unitarian Universalism to you as I share a bit of UU history with our neighbors in the Ohio Valley.
In the eastern European region known as Transylvania there once lived a king named John Sigismund, who was a lover of intellectual pursuits, especially theology and public debate. His court preacher was a man named Francis David, who had originally been a Roman Catholic priest, then a Lutheran priest, then a Baptist minister.
In 1568, King John gathered three other theologians: a Roman Catholic, a Lutheran, and a Reformed minister for a nine-day debate with Francis David – who took the position that “God is one,” not three-in-one, as traditional Trinitarian Christianity asserts.
At the end of the nine days King John declared Francis David the winner of the debate, thus making Unitarianism the king’s own stated religion. In addition, there was issued an Edict of Torda, which proclaimed that everyone in Transylvania was free to believe as they wished and that Christian pastors and priests could speak freely from the pulpit from their own perspectives without fear of censure or judgment.
Obviously Transylvania was thus an area of extreme religious tolerance, unlike western Europe where people who deviated from the accepted teachings of the church were persecuted and often killed.
Over time Unitarianism spread throughout Transylvania, Poland, Eastern Europe and west to England, where some Unitarians emigrated to the American colonies seeking religious freedom and tolerance. Among them were people of great political influence, such as Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson, whose religiously centered values and principles were written into our country’s foundational documents – noting especially the separation of church and state.
Today there are still about 60,000 Unitarians who survived the communist era in the valleys and villages of Transylvania (now located in Romania). In the United States, there are about 1000 UU churches with many other congregations throughout the world. American UUs have been forming partnerships with some of the churches in Romania, Hungary, India and the Philippines. So we have a keen awareness of roots and branches.
A parallel movement called Universalism joined with Unitarians in the early 1960s because our beliefs and ways of governance were so similar. Universalists are the ones who teach that “all are saved.” So from our history, Unitarian-Universalism stands for “God is one” and “All are saved.”
UU headquarters is located in Boston where we have program offices for every aspect of church life. Our president is the Rev. William Sinkford, who has shown strong leadership in the areas of social justice and public discourse on controversial subjects.
UUs in the States value strongly the idea of religious tolerance, freedom of thought and honest dialogue, and most congregations are deeply concerned and involved with social action, politics, and equity issues.
It can be said that those are characteristics we American UUs still share with our partner churches in other parts of the world; however where the American movement has expanded to include a great variety and latitude of beliefs within each congregation, the Hungarian and Romanian UU churches are best described as Christian Unitarians.
For those who are interested, there is a great variety of historical, theological and social justice material on the web site of the Unitarian Universalist Association: www.uua.org.
I invite you to have a look Just for fun, you will also see hundreds of names of famous people who are (or were during their life-times) Unitarian-Universalists.
You will find there the seven Principles that unite us in our ministries and missions. We are not a “creedal” religion because of our allowance for freedom of thought. We are a value-centered religion.
You are welcome to visit the Unitarian Universalist Church of the Ohio Valley at any time. Our circle of love includes everyone., and we truly celebrate the diversity of all who choose to be part of our community of faith.