Easter can be a tricky holiday for Unitarian Universalists: our faith is deeply rooted in Christian teachings and traditions, but many of our members do not feel a close affinity with the particulars of the crucifixion and resurrection stories as they are told in the Bible. Many carry wounds from encounters within traditional forms of Christianity and the emphasis that is placed on the violence of the story.

However, as the Rev. Kathleen McTigue, who serves the Unitarian Society of New Haven, Connecticut, says very eloquently in her Easter sermon from 2006 (PDF), we are called as Unitarian Universalists to “look beneath” for “the kernel of gold, the core truth, still there underneath the layers of dogma.” That kernel, she says, can be found within our own hearts.

What We Bring Forth

by Rev. Kathleen McTigue

One of the great gifts of the Universalist part of our faith is that it teaches us to look for spiritual truth not in one particular religious tradition alone, but in many of them. It teaches us to look for lessons in scripture, but doesn’t let us think of those lessons as exclusive. It lets us move away from orthodoxies that don’t work for us anymore, but pushes us to look beneath them to find the kernel of gold, the core truth, still there underneath the layers of dogma.

But there are perils in Universalism, too. One of them is that if we’re not careful, we can sometimes dilute the particularity of each religious tradition. We can look so hard for a common denominator that we end up reducing down to almost nothing the specific beauty of a story, a tradition, a spiritual practice. That’s especially perilous at this time of year because the Jewish and Christian holy days of this particular season are intertwined, and always have been. It isn’t accidental that the celebrations of Easter and Passover fall at the same time. Jesus and all his disciples were Jewish, after all; and according to the gospel story the last meal they shared with each other before his arrest and death was the Passover meal. As long as Christians have celebrated Easter, they have done it right around the time when Passover is being celebrated.

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One of the struggles in Unitarian Universalism is to balance the needs of the individual with the needs of the community, to go beyond the individualism that a free search for truth and meaning can sometimes foster, and to see our place as part of a greater Whole.

The Rev. Tom Owen-Towle, currently serving as the interim minister at the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of San Dieguito, California, spoke beautifully on these concepts to his congregation this September, urging and challenging members to build Beloved Community (pdf) right where they are planted.

For consideration: how does membership in your community challenge you to become more than you are by yourself?

Growing the Beloved Community!

by Rev. Tom Owen-Towle

I wrote a book recently on what I consider the 12 hallmarks of healthy congregations. Now, there’s been a lot written on theology, from every conceivable angle, but precious little on ecclesiology, especially the art of being and doing church the liberal religious way, our Unitarian Universalist Fellowship way.

I will be conducting a Saturday morning workshop, November 17th, here at our Fellowship, on this very topic. I hope you will plan to participate.

As San Dieguitans you pride yourselves on being individual questers: pursuing the good, the true, and the beautiful in your own fashion. And so you should, and so do I. But, I dare say, there’s more to this strange, wondrous business of progressive religion. Being a solitary traveler is but a 100% half-truth. For Unitarian Universalism, at its finest and fullest, demands far more of its adherents than rugged independence. It requires that we become builders and sustainers of the interdependent web wherever we’re planted.

(Read on … )