What if I’d grown up Unitarian?
I sometimes wonder what might have been different if I had grown up Unitarian.
For one thing, I think I would’ve been more likely to stick with church. I stopped going to my parents’ church (Methodist) when I was in junior high or high school, partly because I never found it to be all that meaningful to me. Maybe it was just my anarchic streak; Christianity tells you what to believe, and it claims to have the final answers, and it claims to be The One True Way And Everyone Else Is Wrong So We Must Bring The Nonbelievers To The Light, and none of those things ever appealed to me. What happened to “love thy neighbor”?
Unitarians are… a bit different.
If you’re Christian, then you believe certain things. That’s what “being Christian” means, by definition. So by definition, it goes both ways: if you believe those certain things, then, well, you’re a Christian. That’s what the Apostle’s Creed is all about: you’re a Christian if, and only if, you believe the things stated in that creed.
Then there’s us. Unitarians are non-creedal — whether you’re Unitarian has nothing to do with your spiritual beliefs. This takes some getting used to! There are atheists who go to my church, along with agnostics, secular humanists, Christians, Jews, Wiccans, Buddhists, and probably at least thirty-one other flavors. Writing sermons for this lot has got to be a challenge!
Q: Why are Unitarians such lousy hymn-singers?
A: Because they’re always busy reading ahead, to see if they agree with the words.
Going back to my reasons for leaving church: Unitarians don’t tell you what you have to believe — we help you figure out what your own beliefs are. We don’t claim to have the final answers; most of us would agree with Andre Gide, “Believe those who are seeking the truth; doubt those who find it.” And we don’t claim that we’re right and everyone else is wrong. (Well, we try not to, anyway. Fundamentalists and their agendas do make it hard sometimes!)
I really think it would’ve been cool to grow up Unitarian, and go to Unitarian Sunday school and youth group. Learning how to question instead of follow (not that I ever learned much about following anyway). Talking about gay rights at church. Going through a year-long Coming of Age program in ninth grade, writing my own personal statement of beliefs, and reading it in front of the congregation. And the sex-education classes.
Yes. Unitarians have a sex-ed program, called “Our Whole Lives” (OWL). It covers not just the biological side of things, but also the emotional and spiritual. I’m told that some of the discussions can get extremely interesting.
Unitarians aren’t the only ones to do this; the OWL program was actually developed jointly with the United Church of Christ. UCC is cool — they’re the ones who got turned down by some of the TV networks recently, when they tried to air a commercial saying that gay people can be religious too.
The idea of church sex ed is a little jarring at first, isn’t it? U.S. culture has some very screwed-up ideas about sex, and most of them seem to stem from religions with some very unhealthy ideas about “sin”. (”Sex is the most awful, filthy thing on earth and you should save it for someone you love.” — Butch Hancock) But at the same time, church is where people gather to talk about their moral values, and get in touch with the spiritual — it’s about the only place most people do either. So what better place to talk about something that’s so deeply intertwined with both morality and spirituality?
(Okay, I’m getting a little too philosophical here.)
I think back to some of the hang-ups and the teenage neuroses I had back in high school and college, and I wonder if it would’ve been different if I’d had the chance to take those OWL classes. It might be wishful thinking, of course; being a teenager is never easy. But I think that OWL is the number-one reason that I wish I’d known about Unitarians back then.
But all is not lost. I certainly could’ve used this stuff back then, but they call it Our Whole Lives for a reason. The main curriculum is aimed at grade 7-9, but there are also units available for kindergarten/first grade (age-appropriate, but tying into the whole), grade 4-6, and grade 10-12.
And there’s also an adult OWL curriculum. My church is offering the adult class (I think for the first time), and Jennie and I both signed up. It’ll be a twelve-week class, starting later this month.
I really don’t have any idea what to expect, but I’m really looking forward to this. It should be… well, interesting, at any rate. (It remains to be seen how much of it I’ll actually blog about, mind you.)
January 17th, 2005 at 1:30 pm
Yep, I know how you feel. I grew up attending a Nazarene Church (closely related to the Methodists), but declared myself an atheist around the age of 23. Though it wasn’t sudden–there were a lot of steps in that transformation I’ll not get into here . . .
Anyway, I’ve started going to the Unitarian Church in Louisville and I love it there. I just expressed my desire to join yesterday, and now I’m waiting for a call from the pastor. Exciting times for me
BTW, what is this about an adult OWL? I may have to look into that.
January 17th, 2005 at 1:39 pm
Yeah, the adult OWL isn’t nearly as well-known as the youth OWL. But the UUA has a curriculum and course materials for the class (I’m not sure of many details yet). They even have seminars to train the people who will be leading the class.
Check with your pastor and/or your church’s religious education committee. If they’re not familiar with it, I can see if someone here can send some information over to you and/or your church.
April 27th, 2005 at 7:01 am
From the mouths of babes
May 22nd, 2005 at 4:40 pm
I just Graduated from 8 Grade OWL. Its wierd having sex, i mean sex-ed, in church.
July 12th, 2005 at 3:58 am
I enjoyed your post. I grew up in a God-less home, with a lapsed Methodist mother and a lapsed "union church"–Protestant–but a small neighborhood all inclusive church. They called themselves agnostic at the time but now that I am adult they say they are athiest. My parents wanted me to seek my beliefs as an adult not, in their words, "brainwashed as a child". It was hard making a shift from nothingness to believing. I am still "on the path" and figuring it out and it is interesting. I have been attending services at Chrisitan Science church which is all about questioning and seeking and is a pretty open atmosphere (more open than many beliefs that I grew up with).
September 8th, 2006 at 9:41 am
You might be suprised, actually. Growing up Unitarian Universalist or UU (as it’s known) probably has the ups and downs of growing up in any religion.
Growing up Unitarian Universalist means:
-Hearing the adults in your life argue (sometimes mid-service) with the minister.
-Seeing families made up of all sexes, religious upbringings and races. But mostly white.
-Going to camp and watching the boys wear skirts and the girls fall in love with each other (and with the boys).
-The OWL program which, as I understand, is much better than the AYS (about your sexuality program) that I experienced as a 13 year old. The AYS program consisted of watching slideshows of EVERYTHING you can imagine. The idea was to open up discussions.
BUT
Being a Unitarian Universalist- especially as a child- means never building an infallible foundation. We were taught to explore, to discover, to learn about other religions… And we learned the strength of community and the power of thinking, feeling people. BUT there was not a God. There was no one holding us in the palm of his hand. There was no absolute right or wrong (except that hatred and intolerance were not tolerated- but even then we had to tolerate the people who were intolerant).
I guess the drawback to growing up UU is that you don’t have a strong structure. It can leave you feeling a bit lost.
And as a kid, you know WAY WAY WAY more about human sexuality than anyone else you know.
September 10th, 2006 at 9:10 pm
Heh. Yeah, that all sounds pretty spot-on, from what I’ve seen.
Of course, I was brought up in a Christian church, but I never really had a personal belief in God. So I sort of had the downsides of being a Unitarian, without any of the benefits. Maybe that’s why I help out with the youth group now.