#unitarian

[pinkpetalbee]

[brothernick]

[cabbagequeen323]

Is Judaism unitarian?

[woadge]

Spoilers for Nimona and TW for Christianity & Catholicism mentions

Heads up: This post contains a lot of Christianity talk, and I know that’s not for everyone, and I also don’t want this to be taken as some attempt at proselytizing; I simply resonated with this reading of the story as a queer Christian myself and I wanted to share. Tl;Dr, Ballister is a Queer Unitarian Christian and we love that for him and the story is about how he and his Genderfluid Satanist daughter destroy the pope and the catholic church together. Here’s a reading of Nimona I haven’t seen yet: While the story of Nimona (the character) is about transphobia and how fascistic and discriminatory governments often are willing to kill entire populations simply to kill “the monster”, Here’s a way I read Nimona as a Transfem Pansexual Christian Anarchist: The story of Knighthood being Christianity, the institute being the organized Catholic church. We see two opposing knights, a black knight (black sheep ref for sure), and a golden one. Both queer, and in this reading, both Christians. Both pushed by the institution and “brainwashed” as Nimona says, into dogmatic belief. The status of being a knight is the allegory for being a Christian. The moment the institution turns their back on one queer, the golden queer turns his back on him as well; he cuts his arm off in the reaction, and spends most of the first half of the movie hunting him to throw him in prison or kill him. The organized religion has actively turned the queer lovers against each other. Throughout the movie, Ballister maintains his knighthood. He maintains his practices, his belief systems, and his desire for honor, justice, etc. At first he tries to justify his hatred of the director but not the institute, and then becomes disillusioned with the organization as a whole, at one point considering abandoning the religion and leaving with Nimona. Nimona tells him, functionally, that he’s a good person. And if he can be a good person and still be a knight, then others can as well. Nimona never encourages him to abandon his core beliefs, even when the organization is very obviously corrupt, because there isn’t anything inherently harmful or even necessarily untrue about his yearning for knighthood; only his reliance on the structure of the state as a means to acquire it. Ballister’s story to me reads as a queer Christian, abandoned by the church and other queers who sought acceptance from said church. He maintains his Christian faith but learns to exist without the structure of the church, even hybridizing many of his beliefs with those of other systems; he even hangs out with someone who is frequently depicted as a monster and a dragon, who has been cast out from the land: Nimona being an allegory here for anything the church considers evil, and to some extent, satanism as a concept (which is not inherently evil even from a Christian standpoint, instead it is hated because it is misunderstood by many). But yea Ballister is Unitarian and we love him and I refuse to read Ballister as a cop like some others might do because Ballister is actually perfect in every way and acab

[crow-collective15]

I just went to a UU church for the first time and it was amazing!! Everyone was so accepting and sweet I’m so excited to back next week!! And like at the end of the month there’s gonna be a lil pitch in dinner with the pagan group there and we’re gonna watch Kiki’s delivery service!! I’m so happy it’s so accepting and sweet

[kings-speaks]

An Ex-Catholic’s Wager, or No Binary Can Hold Me, Including the Binary of Belief/Unbelief

Two years since the last time I stepped foot in a church, my friend asked me, “Do you still believe in God?” What an interesting question.

There is nuance to belief, I wanted to tell her, And belief Is not the same thing as worship.

Like Pascal, let me lay out my wager. Belief and unbelief, my lack of worship; Even when I gain I lose. God is, and is, and is, and is not

A church pew, a forest, A father, a stranger, an asshole, A street corner, a far-away star. I believe in four choices.

Choice One: If God is like the god of my childhood, Then he can eat my entire ass and balls. I was raised to love a god who hated me,

Raised to love the sting of fear, To breathe in the incense and the candle smoke And feel the hunger Lightheaded inside of me, and call that holy.

I was raised to love pain, To pour myself out onto the plate to be a sacrifice, And I would walk, knowingly and gladly, into hell Rather than worship that thing that almost killed me.

And I think I’d be right to. If the god of my childhood exists, He’s an abusive asshole, And I want him to lose my number.

Choice Two: If God is like the god of my adolescence, Then God is a complicated, numinous, And multivalent thing

Shining through the cracks In our universe like a star. God is the contradictory, diverse Infinite That we're all already looking for.

The capital-t Truth, A sun with a thousand different planets, A star with a hundred thousand points, And what I’m doing now

Isn’t any better or more imperfect a way to worship God Than anything else. If the God of my adolescence exists (in any comprehensible way), Then he knows why I had to leave.

Choice Three: Or maybe the Truth really is multivalent. Maybe God isn’t just one thing, And there are as many different spirits

In the wild, teaming universe As there are blades of grass, Not one path but a thousand thousand, curling Through the rich, wild

Insect-bitten and overgrown forest. Maybe each tree is holy, And the river that sings does not sing With another god’s voice, but with its own

And the gods are just as many and as different As anything else. If God is just one of many, Then I choose a different path.

Choice Four: And if God does not exist, Then all we have Is this one life, right now, that we’re living.

There is no perfect life, No perfect Truth besides the stuff in front of us. Doesn’t that make us The most important fucking thing in the whole universe?

Doesn’t that make every person And every empty parking lot and street corner Unbearably precious? And brief?

If there is no God, then I won’t Spend my one life on my knees, Small and waiting to be struck down. I’ll spend it as whole as I can be,

And happy.

[homoqueerjewhobbit]

Can someone help me, a yid, keep track of all the different random flavors of protestant? Preferably blasphemously?

[spokanefavs]

New Unitarian Congregation Forms in Spokane, Home to Nearly 100 Members

Inland Northwest Unitarian Universalist Community - INUUC

"The group spent their first year meeting over Zoom as they worked to get their non-profit status, joined the Unitarian Universalist Association and decided on a name for their new congregation.

They partnered with Westminster United Church of Christ in downtown Spokane, where they held some worship services initially and still use a conference room as an office."

[revveduphutch]

[pinkpetalbee]

[brothernick]

Life is a dream.

God is the dreamer.

God is dreaming about us, what it is like to be us and what we do.

Our ego/personality is just a character god is dreaming.

When our lives end, our true self, God, merely wakes up and returns to being Himself.

So we never really die, we Iive on with, through and in God.

[cabbagequeen323]

I'm rereading north and south by Elizabeth Gaskell and it's just such a lovely book. I'm enjoying it in such a different way this time too. Like an adult idk.

I noticed this time that the reasons that Mr. hale had his crisis of faith and left the church are never made clear. I couldn't find hardly anything that talked much about what crises were going on in the Anglican church at that time. The one article that did made the argument that Mr hale had become Unitarian.

As far as I understand, Unitarian theology is that Christ was not God. (I'm happy to be educated if there's more I should know.) I am also intensely curious- how does one turn from Trinitarian theology to Unitarian? It just seems like straight up heresy? And what is the draw? It feels like taking the holy, inexplicable, and beautiful mystery of who God is and trying to derive it into something that is comprehensible to mortals.

If anyone has any input (for, against, tangential) I would love to hear it.

[uumendu]

We're still streaming services!

Tomorrow's is "The Waters of Life" by Rev. Patricia Hatch.

If you're curious, here's the blog entry, which has the YouTube link as well. It streams at 10:30! If you live near Mendon, MA, feel free to join us in person <3

[crow-collective15]

I swear I nearly cry whenever someone from our church says something kind, or welcomes us to the community because our church is so sweet and I’m so very excited about it and I love humans

[timmurleyart]

Kris Kringle at First Parish.🎄🎄❄️🎅🏼❄️🎄

[thetithingman]

King’s Chapel library sent by King William in 1698 to his minister in the Americas!