Our Faith
Unitarian Universalism“We are people of all ages, people of many backgrounds, and people of many beliefs. We are brave, curious and compassionate thinkers and doers. We create spirituality and community beyond boundaries, working for more justice and more love in our own lives and in the world.
Unitarian Universalism affirms and promotes Eight Principles, grounded in the humanistic teachings of the world’s religions. Our spirituality is unbounded, drawing from scripture and science, nature and philosophy, personal experience and ancient tradition as described in our Six Sources.”
About Our Church
The Eight Principles
Unitarian Universalist congregations affirm and promote seven Principles, which we hold as strong values and moral guides. We live out these Principles within a “living tradition” of wisdom and spirituality, drawn from sources as diverse as science, poetry, scripture, and personal experience.
As Rev. Barbara Wells ten Hove explains, “The Principles are not dogma or doctrine, but rather a guide for those of us who choose to join and participate in Unitarian Universalist religious communities.”
- 1st Principle – The inherent worth and dignity of every person;
- 2nd Principle – Justice, equity and compassion in human relations;
- 3rd Principle – Acceptance of one another and encouragement to spiritual growth in our congregations;
- 4th Principle – A free and responsible search for truth and meaning;
- 5th Principle – The right of conscience and the use of the democratic process within our congregations and in society at large;
- 6th Principle – The goal of world community with peace, liberty, and justice for all;
- 7th Principle – Respect for the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part;
- 8th Principle – Journeying toward spiritual wholeness by working to build a diverse multicultural Beloved Community by our actions that accountably dismantle racism and other oppressions in ourselves and our institutions.
The Six Sources
Our six sources are a quintessential feature of Unitarian Universalism, creating a “religious pluralism that enriches and ennobles our faith.” They take seriously the fact that our religious sensibilities differ. We are invited to embrace those sources that speak to our soul, using them as touchstones to nurture us and inform our actions, using them to deepen our understanding and expand our vision, using them to lead lives of integrity and authenticity.
1. Direct Experience
Religion begins with experience, not with words. It is through our direct experience of life, that transcending mystery and wonder, affirmed in all cultures, which moves us to a renewal of the spirit and an openness to the forces which create and uphold life. Through our experience, enduring and nurturing connections are created, ones that uphold us through this journey that we call life. We are not isolated beings. Rather, we are both made of the stuff of stars and connected through time and space with all that exists.
2. Deeds of Prophetic Women and Men
In every age they arise, some known to history and revered as exemplars—people for us to emulate in word, deed, and spirit. The vast majority of these prophetic women and men, however, became anonymous with the passage of time, but their legacy of courage endures. They used the life they were given doing the work that they believed would help bend the moral arc of the universe toward justice. Unitarian Universalist minister Tom Owen-Towle has characterized Unitarian Universalists as “free-thinking mystics with hands,” a term that captures three essential characteristics of our religious tradition: freedom of belief, a spiritual grounding, and deeds in service of justice. When future generations speak of prophetic women and men, may they also be speaking about us.
3. Wisdom from the World’s Religions
It is the wisdom of our religious tradition to seek wisdom far and wide, rather than arrogantly assuming that we already possess it or that it is the province of some peoples, some cultures, some religions, and not others.
Unitarian Universalist minister Jacob Trapp likened the world’s religions to the strings of a harp, each with a distinctive note, but not the same note. Each one addressing a unique and urgent existential dilemma. Each one asking different questions about the meaning, purpose, and challenge of life, and arriving at different and compelling answers, each a source of wisdom. May we honor the world’s religions, finding in each inspiration and challenge and wisdom.
4. Jewish and Christian Teachings
Love is a gift to our religious tradition from both Judaism and Christianity. When Ferenc Dávid, one of our founders who lived in the 16th century said, “We do not need to think alike, to love alike,” he was recalling the words of Jesus who demanded a radical and transforming love as both the basis for human relationship and the gateway to relationship with the divine. With those simple, but profound words, Dávid said we will gather as religious communities based on love, not intellectual propositions; on covenant, not creed; on orthopraxy or right practice, not orthodoxy or right belief. Because we have tended to embrace the religion of Jesus, rather than the religion about Jesus, we share a religious affinity with Judaism that is as strong as our historical association with Christianity. We have taken the foundation of love from both traditions and used it to build Unitarian Universalism. Because of this, we have always been standing on the side of love.
5. Humanist Teachings
Humanist teachings counsel us to heed the guidance of reason and the results of science, and warn us against idolatries of the mind and spirit. The constructive work of reason and science involves synthesis, seeking order out of chaos. At the deepest level, this is the search for unity. And this often results in surprise and paradox. Danish physicist Neils Bohr captured this when he said, “The opposite of a correct statement is a false statement. But the opposite of a profound truth may well be another profound truth.”
6. Earth-based Spirituality
Spiritual teachings of earth-centered traditions celebrate the sacred circle of life and instruct us to live in harmony with the rhythms of nature. Creation did not end on the sixth day as the story in Genesis would have us believe. It is a continuous process and we have become co-creators with nature. Our appropriate role is not to dominate the earth, but to use our technology to allow us to live human lives with dignity and meaning within the earth’s ecological means. The first step in changing our relationship with the earth is to awaken in us and in all humanity a reverence for the earth. May this reverence lead us to honor the earth. May it deepen into something so profound that the earth becomes sacred to us. May this deep reverence transform our actions, so that our very living becomes a touch that caresses the earth.