Do what you know you ought to do. Why should we ever go abroad, even across the way, to ask a neighbor's advice? There is a nearer neighbor within us incessantly telling us how we should behave. But we wait for the neighbor without to tell us of some false, easier way.
—H.D. Thoreau
Please excuse the lengthy exposition below, with its scant source material.
Unitarian Universalists are proud boat-rockers. Speaking truth to power is encoded in UU theology. UU's trace their religious ancestry back to theologians and activists who were considered heretics in their time. More recently, the movement has been identified first with "liberal Christianity," which changed over time to "liberal religion" because a large percentage of UU's self-identify as humanist, agnostic, atheist, or pagan.
At various times in US history, Unitarians and Universalists have vocally opposed war and slavery. UU churches in the South opened their doors to black worshipers and visitors when segregation was the law. UU churches across the US were among the first to welcome LGBT congregants and ministers.
UU's also tend to be knowledge-workers: academics and teachers, doctors and lawyers, artists and architects. Although they represent about 0.1% of the US population, UU's make up a huge chunk of America's intellectual 1%.
A huge majority of UU's in the US are active Democrats. Conversation at coffee hour sometimes turns to politics, and everyone can safely assume that everyone else is at least liberal, if not a practicing Democrat. Quite a few of us UU's consider ourselves progressive, economically and socially to the left of the Democratic mainstream.
Yeah, So?
Now that we have established that we are taking about very smart, open-minded people, let's get to the substance of this post.
Within the UU movement, there is a rather unsettling degree of unwritten orthodoxy. My impression, from 20 years as a practicing UU, is that it's easier for a typical UU Democrat to understand that some UU's are Republicans than that some of us are Green or Libertarian. Some have trouble wrapping their formidable minds around the concept of "third parties." This binary "either/or" thinking is a baseline human trait, but it is also a form of intellectual laziness, especially for people who recognize the falsity of the gender binary.
Unitarian Universalists are proud boat-rockers. Speaking truth to power is encoded in UU theology. UU's trace their religious ancestry back to theologians and activists who were considered heretics in their time. More recently, the movement has been identified first with "liberal Christianity," which changed over time to "liberal religion" because a large percentage of UU's self-identify as humanist, agnostic, atheist, or pagan.
At various times in US history, Unitarians and Universalists have vocally opposed war and slavery. UU churches in the South opened their doors to black worshipers and visitors when segregation was the law. UU churches across the US were among the first to welcome LGBT congregants and ministers.
UU's also tend to be knowledge-workers: academics and teachers, doctors and lawyers, artists and architects. Although they represent about 0.1% of the US population, UU's make up a huge chunk of America's intellectual 1%.
A huge majority of UU's in the US are active Democrats. Conversation at coffee hour sometimes turns to politics, and everyone can safely assume that everyone else is at least liberal, if not a practicing Democrat. Quite a few of us UU's consider ourselves progressive, economically and socially to the left of the Democratic mainstream.
Yeah, So?
Now that we have established that we are taking about very smart, open-minded people, let's get to the substance of this post.
Within the UU movement, there is a rather unsettling degree of unwritten orthodoxy. My impression, from 20 years as a practicing UU, is that it's easier for a typical UU Democrat to understand that some UU's are Republicans than that some of us are Green or Libertarian. Some have trouble wrapping their formidable minds around the concept of "third parties." This binary "either/or" thinking is a baseline human trait, but it is also a form of intellectual laziness, especially for people who recognize the falsity of the gender binary.
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