Not that I am mocking the Unitarian Universalist churches, but do you *really* need an organization to tell you all that?

The UU church does not exist to tell you what to believe. It exists so that you can share and celebrate those things with other people.

The seven principles were voted on by elected representatives of the individual UU congregations worldwide, not handed down from some moldy holy book by pederasts. The principles are open to modification should the church membership so decide.

The main reason for the existence of the principles is oppression by religiously bigoted judges and courts in the USA, who have occasionally insisted that the church cannot qualify for the constitutional protections afforded other religions unless it enforces strict dogmas on its membership. Although the UU church has always refused outright to create a binding dogma, the principles were established – as a voluntary statement of the values of the church, not a requirement for membership – to provide a touchstone for those people incapable of understanding non-authoritarian relationships. Those people can pretend that the principles represent a dogma.

I mean, those values closely mirror the ones I was raised on – and I’d like to believe that those are values that every human being in the civilized world abides by, differences notwithstanding.

Sadly, this is very far from the truth. Unless you make the logic uselessly circular, by defining “civilized” as holding these values.

I myself have a great deal of difficulty with the first principle Aunt Babe listed. It seems to me that some people are just vermin. But no UU Church would turn me away for believing or saying this.

It’s one thing to embrace the difference, say, in culinary styles from Europe, VietNam, and Mexico, and quite another to embrace the “difference” in a culture/religion which practices ritual clitoridectomy.

Why bring Jews into this? Oh wait, that’s penises.

Maybe difference is a blessing when you are traveling somewhere new on vacation or hunting for something different on your spice rack.

I don’t think it is as fun when “difference” is taking over your land and slying turning it into something you are not (+ where you are not welcome).

At that point I would say difference becomes experienced more like a curse.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-12969641
http://en.wikipedia.org

/wiki/German_occupation_of_France_during_World_War_II

In a sense, he was saying the same thing: embrace diversity for making the world interesting. The good, the bad, the ugly. A world without differences is a pathetic place.

http://www.uua.org/visitors/6798.shtml

There are seven principles which Unitarian Universalist congregations affirm and promote:

* The inherent worth and dignity of every person;
* Justice, equity and compassion in human relations;
* Acceptance of one another and encouragement to spiritual growth in our congregations;
* A free and responsible search for truth and meaning;
* The right of conscience and the use of the democratic process within our congregations
and in society at large;
* The goal of world community with peace, liberty, and justice for all;
* Respect for the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part.

We’re not just the butt of Garrison Keillor jokes.
My congregation has Christians, Jews, Buddhists, atheists, humanists, and a few wiccans
and pagans thrown in for good measure. We all get along just fine, and when we don’t it’s
usually not about religion but about something sillly like the church newsletter.
We don’t just embrace, we bear hug our differences.

A worthy goal would be the Christian ideal of loving one’s enemies, not just “tolerating” those who are different but aren’t even actually enemies. But that’s too much to hope for, since apparently even tolerance fails in so many places.

…they interpret them as saying that your choice of religious belief doesn’t matter.

An’ it hurt no other, your choice of religious belief should matter deeply only to you. It’s not within other people’s responsibilities to make your choices for you.

Tolerance is an early step in diffusing ignorance, but is not an end in itself.

Dr. Mahallati’s sentiment is excellent, but to say “I will tolerate you for the time being” could extend for a lifetime. This opens the opportunity for the descendants to learn the blessing of the embrace.

3) Their religion mandates tolerance.

Let me give an example. I was raised so religiously conservative, we technically don’t even count as Protestant. We consider Protestants, Catholics, Orthodox, etc as liberal offshoots. A lot of the teaching of our church could be summed up as “What would Jesus do?” By all accounts he was a pretty nice guy and very tolerant, so we try to do the same.

In all these years, I can never remember any talk, from the pulpit or amongst members, demeaning any race, anyone’s sexual orientation, politics, career, or financial situation. It’s essentially taboo.

The message that needs to be sent, and the one Dr. Mahallati is talking about, is not that differences don’t exist or don’t matter, because we’re [sic] all worshiping God; it is that it’s possible for one to feel a relation of necessity to one’s choice of religious faith, but still recognize other religions as having equally necessary and mutually valid relations to their constituents. Not only that, but that the existence of other forms of worship and theology is vitally advantageous, insofar as it deepens each religion’s self-understanding through comparison/contrast and the realization of deeper patterns.

The problem is that this doesn’t really jibe with Enlightenment sensibilities, so democratic humanist discourse tends not to portray it that way. We’re all rational and autonomous agents, and religions are just syndromes of discourse and behavior, right? It’s unfortunate that so few people are able to step outside their worldview enough to achieve real communication about values.

(that said, kitten videos are awesome too.)

He got the “tolerance” part right, though: ugh!

You must, however, defend– to the death, as the saying goes– another’s right to say and do things with which you don’t agree and don’t like. That’s tolerance.

Rather than it just being a beneficial coincidence.

And, as South Park once said, (paraphrasing) ‘… tolerance means you are willing to live with it. There’s no rule that you have to like it.’
So I tolerate friends’ desire to attend church, and I tolerate brussels sprouts with dinner.

1) don’t really believe in their religion — not a bad thing, imho, but they should be more open in their disbelief.

2) are just using it as dishonest propaganda, much as how both the US and USSR claimed they were both for peace and mutual understanding while trying to undermine each other.