Revolving-Door Membership

[donald....@gmail.com]

This group seems to have been inactive for a while, but thought I'd
post anyway.
I was raised in the Unitarian Church, and one of the most
interesting things I've noticed is that very few people raised in the
organization stay on as adults - most of the current adult members were
raised in other religions.
I chose to leave for a number of reasons. For one thing, as a
political conservative, I felt a great deal of intolerance toward my
political affiliation. At one point, the "Learning Community" had to
deal with another student who was a republican. Messages flew back and
forth over "The Bridge" (the LC's newsletter). One of the Sunday
School teachers felt that the student should be accepted, but that
efforts should be made to persuade him that his beliefs were wrong.
The second reason that I left was simply that I was a Trinitarian,
not a Unitarian. Don't ask me how you raise a kid in the Unitarian
Church and get a Roman Catholic out, but that's what happened to me!
I have to say that I learned some important values in the
Unitarian Church. The two most important were tolerance for other
religions, and moderation in my own practice. The Unitarians do a
great job at teaching their kids about other belief systems; in the
seventh grade, our Sunday school class attended a Catholic Mass, an
African-American Methodist service, and an Eastern Orthodox service.
At that time of our lives we learned a healthy respect for others in
their beliefs. We also learned about Judaism and Islam, and these
lessons have really stayed with me. Many of my friends belong to other
religions - especially Islam.
Moderation, too, is important. I'm not terribly fond of
evangelical Christianity; my faith is private, and I don't want to
impose it on other people. I think the best way to share your faith is
through your actions, but your actions should reflect a genuine desire
to help others without the ulterior motive of prosletyzing.
I have a number of issues with the Unitarian Church. I certainly
would not call myself a "recovering Unitarian," but I'm interested to
see if anyone else discovered the same problems with UU. One major
problem was the inconsistency I found between their professed values of
tolerance, and their absolute intolerance toward Christianity. My mom
has Catholic friends and relatives, but some of the things she says at
home are shocking to me - I wonder how those friends and relatives
would feel if they knew what she says about their religion [for the
record (1) she was born and raised in the UU Church (2) I haven't told
her I'm Catholic]. We can all do better in living up to our professed
values, but I saw no attempt to tolerate Christian viewpoints, no
regrets about saying some of those things.
The other problem I had with Unitarianism was with the structure
of the Church. The Church has very few basic tenets beyond respect and
tolerance. You're free to believe anything you want. My mom teaches
Sunday school at the UU Church, and one parent asked her whether it was
legal to talk about God at Church. The Unitarian Church wasn't right
for me because it really wasn't a community of faith. In the Catholic
Church, the members of the community support one another in faith; at
the Unitarian Church, they don't really have a consistent belief. I
think that it's a good stopping point, and a wonderful place to explore
religion, but it's really best as a short-term thing.
The other thing that troubled me about the Unitarian Church was
its lack of consistency. All good organizations will adapt to address
new problems, just as the Catholic Church made major changes with
Vatican II, but I really feel that changes need to be made slowly; it's
more important to stick together as a community of faith than to
radically alter the doctrine for political purposes. The Unitarian
Church has changed a great deal from when my mom was raised in it; at
one time, they professed faith in God, and it was a house of worship.
As a child I don't remember ever hearing the the word "God" in church.

At any rate, I think I derived some good values from the UU
Church, but I'm much happier as a Catholic. Did anyone else have
similar experiences?