Well, I think in my heart of hearts that the UCC and the UU will join forces to become the UUU, where everyone will have to adopt wrestling names and worship The Vince.

(either that, or they are harbringers to a time where everyone will be able to express their imaginations with more freedom --- intentionally delving into inner worlds instead of doing it more blindly)

(or who knows? maybe the G_ddess will show up some day and say "Took you long enough. Now aboot those dishes you haven't cleaned up lately...")

Body blow to the Divine,

Inannawhimsey

for me, i can only speak from my experience of the UCC... having never actually been a member of the UU community, i don't think i can speak for what they believe or where they are going.

personally, i would suggest that there will always be a segment of the faith community that will gravitate towards beliefs like those held by the UCC.  (please excuse the fact that my thoughts are going to come out all over the place here)  i grew up in the catholic faith, and found that catholics are content to stick with the faith even when they don't find it is filling their needs... they can have the worst priest in the area on the altar, but don't seek another church.  whereas in the UCC community, i find that more people are actively searching for a good minister and a church that challenges them and fufills their spiritual needs, and will move around until they find it, even if it means they have to travel to get there.  so, in a way, the UCC will survive only as long as they have pastors who are able to connect with the congregations and motivate the people with their vision of what to do to be a follower of christ. 

to a certain extent, i have seen some evangelical churches have the same issues... some of the 'megachurches' in the us are huge because, imho, they have a particularly charismatic leader who is very good at motivating people. 

does that make any sense at all??

In one sense Liberal Christianity will experience a problem in the future, however given the idea of flux and emergence, there is a movement that will be a child of liberal christianity and it is one form of progressive school of thought - it is process theology and without it liberalism does not have staying power. 

Can't speak for the UCC folks, but UU isn't just a social club, like you suggest. It offers a real chance to explore one's understanding of the universe and our place in it. Because we don't have a set theology, changes in theological or philosophical attitudes don't invalidate UU'ism, but become another opportunity for our members to challenge their beliefs and engage with other's beliefs. We focus on individual spiritual develoment (and by "spiritual", I don't mean "theistic" but rather developing our notion of who we are and how fit in to the greater scheme of things), and that is never going to go away, regardless of how "irrelevant" atheists believe traditional churches are becoming.

Also, we are not a Christian or (officially) theistic religion at this point so the analogy to the UCC isn't quite right, either. In the other thread, we are drawing the analogy to progressive Christianity, which is a theological/philosophical movement that is not, by any means, confined to the UCC, although here in Canada you may find it more in the UCC than in other denominations (at least, that's my perception). The question isn't whether the UCC and UU are going to become irrelevant because, as I suggested in my first paragraph, we are not. The question is whether progressive Christianity is going to move ever closer to UU'ism so that the liberty of religious exploration that we UU's enjoy will become a part of the UCC and other Christian denominations which adopt progressive Christian ideas. And, as has been alluded to before, will that eventually lead to progressive Christians and UU's joining together in some formal way as the Unitarians and Universalists did 45 or so years ago to create my present church. I think there's still a long way to go before that moment comes, but after reading some of Gretta Vosper, I'm open to the possibility that it may come sooner.

Hi Mendalla, 

What a good question!  Will progressive christianity move ever closer to UUism?

It is important to keep in mind that there are different strands of progressive Christian thought.  Gretta Vosper, who wrote With or Without God, chairs the Canadian Center for Progressive Christianity.  The defining points of the CCPC are very close indeed to your Unitarian principles.  I see Gretta as pretty much on the same page as the UU religious humanists.  She favours the theology of Don Cuppitt and Lloyd Geering, who are arguing that humanism is the only logical next step for the Christian church to take. 

In contrast to UU which supports religious pluralism, Gretta is calling for the distillation of Christianity and other faith traditions down to the core values they hold in common - - love, compassion, and so on.  She does, however, make allowance for exploring the spiritual practices and sacred stories of various traditions.  I don't mean to suggest she rejects such explorations, but the seeking of common values is her "bottom line" principle.  She advocates passionately for "non-theistic gatherings" in place of traditional Christian worship.

It has been suggested that Gretta is seeking to develop a new incarnation of religious faith which will replace all others.  I don't know if this is true, or not.

The Center for Progressive Christianity (TCPC) in the US, chaired by Jim Adams, has a more distinctive Christian flavour.  Marcus Borg is associated with American style P/C, and his theology is specifically rejected by Gretta in WWG. 

Diane Butler Bass also identifies as a progressive Christian in the United States.  We have started to study her book, Christianity For the Rest of Us, here on wondercafe.  Canadian author Bruce Sanguin is much closer to TCCP than CCPC.  We studied his book Emerging Church on wondercafe a few months ago.

This second "cluster" of progressive Christians is close to UU's who identify as Christians, as far as I can tell. 

If a union of UU and UCC ever comes about, we will have enough strands of theological thought to make our heads spin!  

I agree completely that the need for spiritual fellowship is never going to go away.  Gretta Vosper speculates about a time when churches will no longer exist, by the way.  You will read about this when you get to the final chapter of her book.  It is on the last page, before the toolbox.

Panentheism, 

I am interested in your comment that liberalism lacks staying power.  Can you expand on this a little?

Thanks ... P3

Greta is the logical outcome of liberalism -of one type - it ends with God as projection and for example the acts of God is what we do with no reference - in one sense it cuts out the sense of God as a reality - religious experience is hard to hold in liberalism - its strength is pragmatics and action - thus I come out of that tradition but process theology allows one to claim a real God and inter faith without collapsing the differences which liberalism tends to d.

Pluralism suggests insights that are different and we need those different insights - while is true deep down we are all the same we are also very differebt, and contrast and difference adds to the experience of shared reality.

This thread opened with a false statement that's formulated out of an eccentric (postmodern western) point of view: in fact, 84+ per cent of the global population believe that there's some greater consciousness "out there".

Atheism is the alien ideology. It is the arrogant assertion of a small incredibly supremacist group of Westerners who have isolated themselves from discomfort and genuine experience of anything who, from their circumscribed little towers of intellectual conceit fail to appreciate the severe limitations of a the human mind and the incapacities of human perception; rather, they believe they can, in a unique way, see to the ends of the universe, that they have assembled their data with "impartiality" and that their logical accomplishments far outweigh any insight that has bee derived from generations of experience and accumulated wisdom in any culture on the planet.
Atheism is a form of alienation from the human condition. The truth is that NO-ONE knows whether there is a "god" or not — and the confusion is intensified because the word "god" gets in the way: but we DO know that, for human beings, there is a horizon beyond which lies mystery.
To say there is NO god is as insanely deluded as saying there is ONLY MY GOD. But there sure as hell is mystery. And you can choose to trust it (by discerningly entering into the wisdom of a religion) or be terrified by it. But there is no way the mystery is going to go away, not while we remain human beings on this wee planet of ours… and claims that it doesn't exist are as fallacious and conceited as exclusivist claims to know the face and nature of "god".
We have to accept not knowing for sure. And the best of science and the best of theology are capable of doing that.
So…
What the UCC and UU offer are relatively open forums for discussing questions and seeking insights derived from the Christian tradition.

The Christian tradition runs very deep, very long, very wide and is very rich. It is enormous and wonderful. But any religion, to be healthy, must be far more concerned with asking better questions than about asserting doctrinaire answers from poorly understood sources. Religion is one of the worst disciplines a lazy thinker, a sentimentalist or a credulous person can mess about with. The risk of going bananas is very clear, not least on Wondercafe.
"Liberalism" often fails because few people are up for the self-reflection that religious good health involves. A lot of people in the dysfunctional West tend to look to religion for self-justificaton which, along with the need for identity, is a powerful drive in our society — we all start fearing that we might be as corrupt, as selfish and as stupid as everyone around us and,of course, we are… to our eyeballs. Only a patently false ideology can convince us otherwise (hence the enormous popularity of capitalism and consumerism which make a virtue out of mindless acquisition).
....

And, appropos of the inane times in which we live, may i counsel you that anyone who watches more than five hours of television a week is almost certainly an intellectual catastrophe waiting to happen.

I think you'll find that we focus on common core values, too (that's where the principles came from), though maybe in different way. It's the only way to make religious pluralism work. And I don't see how you can find what are "common core values" without exploring the practices and stories of the various traditions. After all, religious practices and stories are part of how religious traditions have stored and transmitted their core values and if you want to know that you have core values in common with other traditions, then you need to explore those traditions to find out what those values are. Now, if you are going to be mainly focussed on core values within Christianity, then exploring other faiths stories is less important, but if you are really serious about exploring and celebrating common core values that cut across all faith traditions, then exploring those other traditions becomes extremely important. You can't talk about having core values in common with Buddhism until you've actually taken the effort to understand Buddhism and it's core values (which are, in fact, somewhat different from those of Christianity).

To that, I would add that distilling faith down to core values can water it down. I've seen that happen before. Look at how dry the UU principles are in their official form (although there are some very nice variations that are more poetic). Rather than focussing solely on values, which are fairly abstract, over stories, which are more "real" and illustrate those values in a context, I think the focus needs to be on finding new stories that are "faith independent" and reflective of those core values.

How come we never talk about the Anglicans anymore? I thought they were our best theological friends. I like the UU as much as the next ridiculously liberal person, but our other friends need us too.

Hi Mendalla, 

Yes, I think that the focus on values is the commonality between Vosper's theology and Unitarianism.  Other strands of Progressive Christian thought retain more focus on the Christian story, of course.  I quite agree that distilling faith down to core values can "water it down".

I think the United Church of Canada has become very much like the French church of the revolution - not in theology - but in the disconnect between what's going on at the top and what's happening on the ground. 

There is an "official" United Church allowing the wideness of belief (and unbelief) that fosters thinking and action of the kind represented by Gretta Vosper.  There is a small group of  explorers who have made their way forth from the "official" church to seek  new spiritual experiences.

Then there is a second church, which is where a majority of United Churches currently belong.  This second church often does things the way it has for many years and is highly suspicious of the progressive and emerging church movements.  Parishioners within the second church roll their eyes and murmer "What next?" at the latest initiatives created by the "official" church.

The greatest fear among members of the second church is that in the search for progression and emergence, they will lose the fundamentals of the Christians faith as they know it. 

The prophecies fulfilled by Christ...

substitutionary atonement...

redemption...

Heaven...

the resurrection

divinity...

These elements of Christian faith, elements that have been sacrosanct for so many centuries are being questioned, marginalized or abandoned in the search for progressive Christianity.

If you call it a hockey game, then take away the nets, the sticks and the puck, is it still a hockey game?

If you have a Christian faith, then take away the divinity of Christ, his fulfillment of prophecies, his resurrection and his redemptive powers, is it still Christianity?  Many, perhaps most in the second church on the ground, say no.  And so they fight against losing these cornerstones.  Some call these churches on palliative care.  Others call them brave defenders of the faith.

Can the "official" church and the second church that runs independent of it find enough common ground to remain together? 

Honestly, I just don't know.

God bless,

your analogy here is flawed... i would suggest a better analogy is 'if you call it a hockey game, and then shorten the rink, make brawling illegal, and then change up in the neutral zone, is it still a hockey game?'

to which i say yes, definetly. 

well, as a christian myself, i'd have to say that yes, it is. 

personally, i'm not sure why not.  however, if the second church is going to insist that the first church is 'not christian', there are gonna be issues.  someone who calls the official church 'not christian' is not a 'brave defender of the faith', imho.  they are really kind of lost.

Mike you come through again