July 3, 2008
The Unitarian-Universalist Buddhist Fellowship will hold its third Convocation in Oceanside, California from March 27-29. The featured presenter will be Shinzen Young, talking on “The Science of Enlightenment.” Register by July 15th for just $60; by February 15 for $80; or regular rate at $100. More details, and the registration form, are available at http://www.uubf.org/UUBF-Flyer-2009-GA.pdf (note: this is a pdf document).
July 3, 2008
A post here yesterday described how the Universalists also used to call themselves the Universalians, which prompted Philocrites to amusingly wonder whether UUs might today be called Unitarian Univers-aliens, a rather out-of-this-world moniker. There are other terms that have dropped out of use, but were once popular as self-descriptions in the annals of Unitarianism and Universalism. For example, the Universalists used to refer to themselves as the Broad Church, and yet another name they used was the Larger Faith.
So, if preferences hadn’t changed as much over the years, perhaps today we’d be talking about Unitarian-Broads (Unitarian-Broaders? Unitarian-Broadists?) or Unitarian-Largists. Or, maybe the names would’ve been switched around, with Broad-Unitarians or Larger-Unitarians instead of Unitarian-Universalists. Considering the girth of some UU pewmates, perhaps those last two names wouldn’t have been so inappropriate. . .
Although this is of course rather silly, there’s a point to all of this too. The names that are currently popular in liberal circles are not the ones that had to be, and not the only ones there have been–and the future may hold yet other, as yet unforeseen, name changes. For the time being, it appears that any successful name change would have to be a) descriptively accurate, b) shorter than Unitarian-Universalist, and c) manage not to weigh too heavily toward either the term Unitarian or Universalist, lest those who value one or the other tradition in particular (there are still pre-merger folks around, as well as people from a venerable line in one or the other denomination) be enraged. That’s a rather tall order, it seems, and there’s also the obstacle that many younger UUs have grown attached to Unitarian-Universalism as a marker of self-identity. But someday the name will probably change (perhaps after the UUA mergers with some other liberal denomination), since all things do change given enough time. The dropping of Universalianism, the Broad Church, and the Larger Faith from our common lingo are testament to that fact.
July 2, 2008
There are persistent grumblings about the length, tongue-twisting, and Unity/Unification-like nature of the term Unitarian-Universalist. Right after the two denominations consolidated there was a strong push to change the name to the Liberal Church or Liberal Christians, but the proponents were outmaneuvered and the name Unitarian-Universalist hasn’t been challenged on the institutional level since.
It’s worth recalling that neither Unitarian or Universalist (to say nothing of Unitarian-Universalist) were predestined names. During the formative period of Universalism some people actually preferred the term “Universalian” to that of “Universalist.” So modern day UUs could’ve ended up calling themselves Unitarian-Universalians, for example. Or perhaps Unitarian and Universalist could’ve been retired in favor of Universalian as the name of the new denomination back in the 1960s. Universalian: it sounds a bit unusual, but perhaps it implies not just universalism of theology and fellowship, but also a sort of universe-oriented thinking, outward-looking toward the cosmos and consistent with a modern, post-geocentric approach to life and meaning.
There were terms for the Universalists’ opponents that have also fallen out of favor at this point. Universalists used to refer to other Christians as Partialists or Limitarians, because they had a partial or limited view of salvation vs. the Universalist/Universalian understanding of unlimited salvation and total reconciliation of man to man, God to man, and man to God (as the language of the day would put it).
July 2, 2008
Bill Baar asks what “retribution” means in the 1899 Boston profession by the Universalists, which is today’s Universalist Quote of the Day. To put it simply (since your T&P blogmaster is still on partial summertime research hiatus), there were two main camps that developed in the Universalist ranks, historiographically known as the Restorationists and the Ultra Universalists.
The Restorationists believed that after death, some people would go to hell (or some similarly-conceived posthumous place/state of punishment) and receive punishment according to the degree of their sinfulness during life. However, this hell was more of a purgatory, a temporary state, because eventually all such souls would be released from punishment and reconciled with God, to enjoy eternal life and happiness along with everyone else. To the Restorationists sin demanded some degree of just punishment as retribution, yet just as no sinful act is infinite in scope and duration, so too no divine punishment could rightly be ever-lasting. Thus the amount of time (in hell) would equal the crime, and when one had paid one’s dues, the all-loving Father God would welcome his wayward children–properly chastened and now with eyes opened to the truth–back into the eternal fold.
The Ultra Universalist wing of the Universalist movement, on the other hand, denied the existence of posthumous punishment. For them, one would either immediately go to heaven and be with God, or would lie in the state of unconscious death in the grave until the last days, when they would be called forth to spend eternity in heaven. Sin was forgiven by God and did not result in hellish punishment, even for a season. Punishment either occurred in this mortal life, or was felt in the soul when one realized with horror after death how one had disappointed God and harmed one’s brothers and sisters.
The statement about punishment in the 1899 profession is deliberately vague. And we have to note that the several professions of faith that the Universalists produced over the years were non-binding, as well as often ignored in part or in whole by individual ministers and laity. Ministers could (and did) choose to be ordained without pronouncing the words, and they were seen as descriptive of commonly held beliefs, not prescriptive of the beliefs one must hold to be in fellowship.
