Coffee Hour

Ike says:

In the weeks after I heard a UU minister on NPR. They sounded more reasonable than most in those paniced times.

I looked up the local UU church, called and talked to the minister. She said jokingly well you don't have to believe in god, and no matter what you'll be saved. I said, sounds good to me.

Attended for the 1st time in September of 2001. Am currently serving as VP of my congregation.

Chris Walton says:

I had encountered a UU minister for the first time as a high school senior. The Rev. Barbara Bush (now Barbara Hamilton-Holway) was one of four religious leaders on a panel about religion and racism at a day-long program for high school student leaders in Utah. Two things stuck in my mind: She was a woman minister (something new to me as a Utah County Mormon in 1988), and she quoted Malcolm X.

I visited a Unitarian church my third year in college because I had read an article in the University of Utah campus newspaper about the celebration of Unitarianism's centennial in Utah. The Sunday I showed up, the Rev. Tom Goldsmith was hosting a series of speakers on the Anita Hill-Clarence Thomas hearings, which featured a professor of women's studies and a black lawyer. I was amazed by the topicality of the church service, and by the fact that the congregation laughed during the service. (I don't think I had ever experienced that before.) But it was the service the next Sunday that really clinched it for me, when the organist played a Bach prelude and I saw how these Salt Lake City Unitarians merged current-events humanism with the aesthetics of Protestant liturgy. (I love a good hymn, I love organ music, etc.)

In an essay I wrote several years ago, I described my first impressions of Unitarianism:

When I began attending the First Unitarian Church in Salt Lake City, I wasn't looking for a church, at least not consciously. I was lonely and restless. You might say that I had a God-shaped hole in my life — a spiritual closet with a tightly locked door, and I didn't have any idea whether I should unlock it, or how. When I first walked into a Unitarian church as a college student in 1991, I wasn't looking for a church; I was looking for some sort of context for a set of religious questions that I didn't even have words for. You might say that I visited churches because I was curious, not because I was interested. I stayed at first because the church defied all my expectations. Inside the small New England chapel — with its bell and steeple, its coffee hour rituals, its Bach and its Jazz Vespers, its social action projects and folk music concerts, its sermons and forums — gathered people with the same apparent contradictions in their religious lives that I felt in my own: simultaneous interest in the ancient stories and in modern science; independence and community; moral seriousness and progressive politics (a novelty in Utah) leavened with a hearty and sometimes zany sense of humor.

Elizabeth McKeeman says:

Well, some people were talking about it on a board I go to. One person asked what holy texts the UU church uses. A friend say everything and talked about how his minister had given a talk based on the book "Seabiscuit". For some reason I just thought "That's the church for me" and started to read about the UU church online. Then I went to a great congregation and felt so at home I just about cried.

Mark Brooks says:

I was raised as a preacher's kid in the Church of the Nazarene. I quit attending church at about age 16. I didn't attend again until about 28 years later. I visited a UU church on Christmas Eve. I was impressed enough (we sang Jingle Bells) that I went again the next day with was Sunday. My wife and I joined a couple of months later. That was nine years ago. It has just the right about of irreverence and reverence about important things for me. I have made a circle from being Christian (as a kid) to atheist to agnostic to Buddhist to Christian again. But, this kind of Christian is very different from the first kind.

Rana says:

I was introduced to UU by my mother when I was a child, so I never had one of these "Wow!" moments. Instead, UU for me is a comfortable mix of lentil stew, funky ceramic art, the smell of paste, flower communions, people who share my political and ethical views (who I know will agree with me on the big things even when we disagree on the small), and a respect for the environment -- in short, it's like the home of long-time friends that I visit from time to time.

Julia Gregory says:

I was lucky and my family joined the First Unitarian Church of Dallas when I was 10 years old. We had previously attended the Methodist church which I never really felt moved by and this all occurred at a time when I was having some major doubts about faith. I never felt comfortable about asking questions. But when we got the the UU church, I knew I was home. For the first time it didn't matter what we wore, and it was o.k. to doubt and ask questions. We studied religions around the world. Instead of being told what to beleive, we were taught that there are lots of ways of believing.

Will Shetterly says:

My dad was active in civil rights in Florida in the early '60s--a newspaper article called him the only liberal in Levy County. But he knew there were other liberals about an hour away at the Unitarian Church in Gainesville, and he knew that my mom liked the idea of Sunday school for the kids. So I became a Unitarian for a few years. That fell off when we moved away from Florida.

My wife and I moved to Los Angeles about nine years ago. We wanted something spiritual in that place which presents an extremely materialistic front. We realized that the little Spanish-style building which looked like a school that we had been walking past for several months had the most discreet sign imaginable at the edge of its property. It was the Unitarian Universalist Church of Studio City. (They now have a more prominent sign.)

Almost two years ago, we moved to Bisbee, AZ. The nearest UU congregation is nearly 30 miles away in Sierra Vista. We thought we might drop into a service once a month or so. Now I'm the President of the Board, and Emma's heading up Sunday Services.

That covers the what of it, anyway. I'll have to think a long time to begin to discuss the why. Maybe it's just that I like contradictions, and most UUs are willing to embrace, well, an agreement about disagreement.

Chris Walton says:

At the other end of the spectrum, Melanie (of Just a Bump in the Beltway and The Village Gate) describes her spiritual journey from Unitarian Universalism to Roman Catholicism.

Stentor says:

I was raised Lutheran (ELCA). When I went to college, I attended University Church, the Protestant service on campus, which was extremely ecumenical. Over the years my theological position steadily liberalized. The summer before my senior year, a friend mentioned on her blog that she had decided it wasn't really accurate to describe herself as a Pagan anymore, and she was thinking of calling herself a Unitarian (though she's never been one for participating in formal church services). I was intrigued, and looked it up online, and decided that it was a fitting label for me as well. I finished out my undergrad career in University Church (I "came out" as a UU during Deacon training, and nobody seemed to think anything of it). That summer I went to Universalist Memorial in DC and found it to be a great experience, as was Miami Valley UU in Dayton, where I went the following summer. Unfortunately, I haven't really clicked with the UU church where I live during the other seasons (in part because it's logistically a pain to get there, so I attend irregularly). So lately I've taken to going to the nearby Methodist church (don't kick me off the UU blogs list -- I'm still a Unitarian at heart, I swear!)

Melanie says:

Chris,

You've made a spiritual journey that is every bit as compelling and dramatic as mine. Do you have any comments on my story--or a willingness to share yours?