The Liberal Pulpit: Topics

What Is Liberal Religion?

What Religion is About

Unitarian Universalists believe . . . that your religion isn't about what you believe. So what is religion about?

1. Religion is about the way you live: the ethics and values that guide your life.

2. Religion is about community: the people with whom you choose to join in faith community, and the rituals, songs, and stories that affirm and strengthen community connection.

3. Religion is about experience: the moments of transcendence, awe, mystery, wonder, beauty, interconnection and oneness.

A faith congregation, liberal or conservative, aims to bring these three very different things together in such a way that each one reinforces the other two.

The Five Smooth Stones of Liberalism

What, then, makes religion liberal? James Luther Adams (1901-1996) identified these "five smooth stones":

1. Openness to New Truth. "Religious liberalism depends first on the principle that revelation is continuous. Meaning has not been finally captured. Nothing is complete, and thus nothing is exempt from criticism." Our religious tradition is a living tradition because we are always learning.

2. Freedom. "All relations between persons ought ideally to rest on mutual, free consent and not on coercion." We freely choose congregational relationship and spiritual practice. We deny infallibility and resist hierarchical authority.

3. Justice. We are morally obligated to direct our "effort toward the establishment of a just and loving community. It is this which makes the role of the prophet central and indispensable in liberalism."

4. Institution Building. Religious liberals "deny the immaculate conception of virtue and affirm the necessity of social incarnation....Justice is an exercise of just and lawful institutional power." Institution building involves the messiness of claiming our power amid conflicting perspectives and needs, rather than the purity of ahistorical, decontextualized ideals.

5. Hope. "The resources (divine and human) that are available for the achievement of meaningful change justify an attitude of ultimate optimism."
(For Adams's full text, see HERE. For Liberal Faith, see HERE.)

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