Can a creedless denomination make it another 50 years?

Jun 29, 2011
by Daniel Burke

BALTIMORE (RNS) A recent Sunday service at the First Unitarian Church of Baltimore ended with an apology.

Laurel Mendes explained that religious doctrine had been duly scrubbed from the hymns in the congregation's Sunday program.

But Mendes, a neo-pagan lay member who led the service, feared that a reference to God in "Once to Every Soul and Nation" might upset the humanists in the pews.

"I didn't want to make anyone uncomfortable by reciting something that might be considered a profession of faith," said Mendes, 52, after the service. "We did say `God,' which you don't often hear in our most politically correct hymns."

Welcome to a typical Sunday in the anything-but-typical Unitarian Universalist Association, a liberal religious movement with a proud history of welcoming all seekers of truth -- as long as it's spelled with a lowercase "t."
Dramatic readings from the biography of 20th-century labor leader John L. Lewis? Sure. An altar crowded with Christian, Buddhist, Islamic and Jewish symbols? Absolutely. God-talk? Umm, well...the rest   MCJ

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