This is in reference to recent posts by PeaceBang and Never Say Never to Your Traveling Self
Hafida Sofia of the latter blog prosed the question of why a Unitarian need ever care about Christianity. This was my response on the comments and I've added some more to fully flesh this out to a full post.
I think that to have a good understanding of where Unitarians came from, one ought to have a good grounding in Christian thought.
I draw an analogy to music. I’m a musician, and unless I’d taken the time to do the historical research into what had transpired before me, I know I wouldn’t nearly have had the skill and the originality to make a new contribution to the art that wasn’t hackneyed and totally cliche.
That’s what I find true with today’s music–it has no appreciation for the classics and relies on too few primary sources and far too many secondary sources.
That, in a nutshell, is why I believe it’s important for every Unitarian to have a thorough grounding in Christianity. The best artists, the best poets, the best theologians are the ones who take the time to examine as many different sources as possible and by doing so, form a brand new sound/genre/theory that although it is once indebted to its sources, but so multifaceted that it proves itself to be brand new, fresh, and ultimately relevant for a great long while.
Both Christianity and Unitarianism strike to find the best ways to stay relevant in today's 21st century world where most people are largely un-churched and increasingly cynical towards any sort of organized religion. Where I draw the line between Unitarianism and Christianity is that Unitarianism seeks to use the scientific process to improve itself to the point that real perfection can be reached. As I've said before, I feel that is highly unrealistic. The Liberal Christianity I ascribe to seeks to touch the lives of many people who are thirsting and searching, with the full understanding that there is no real perfection and it's unrealistic to think otherwise.
I'd sure sure like to know just what scientific process Unitarian*Universalists aka U*Us used to determine that the insulting and defamatory attacks on me and other people by Rev. Ray Drennan and Rev. Victoria Weinstein were "within the appropriate guidelines of ministerial leadership" or otherwise acceptable behaviour. U*Us may talk the talk of using "the scientific process" to improve themselves but they do a very poor job of walking the walk. I guess that may be what you are hinting at here. From where I stand I have good reason to believe that inordinate hubris, if not outrighht narcissism. . . is a serious problem within the U*U "church".
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