Heirs of the Puritans
I attended a memorial service the other day at a Bay Area Unitarian Universalist church. This was my first direct experience of a UU congregation. Perhaps the most notable feature was that the minister never made reference to God or Heaven. I did some reading up afterward and discovered, as the Wikipedia article linked above points out, that most Unitiarians today identify themselves as Humanists, and that only a small fraction (~13%) identify themselves as Christians (tied with those identifying themselves as Pagans).
As it happens, Lisa and I are watching lectures on Early American History, and we're learning more about the religious foundation of New England. Just prior to that, we finished up a series on the Foundations of Western Civilization, which traced the different threads of the Protestant Reformation in the final lectures. So it was interesting to see that the origins of the Unitarian church are in the 19th century Congregational churches in New England, which in turn trace their origins to the 17th century Puritan churches of the Massachusetts Bay Colony.
To go from New England Puritans to a church in which 87% of members identify themselves as something other than Christian. Purely from a Christian perspective, somewhere along the line this train went off the rails.
Comments
I've had similar experiences at my friend's Congregationalist church in NW Connecticut. Little talk of God but lots of "spirituality." An inscription over the door reads, "gathered in 1720." I'm sure the original congregation wouldn't know what was going on there. I always leave the service feeling empty. Some of these Protestant denominations have strayed far from their origins and that is, I think, because they have let go of the power of the Word of God--as the Bible says, it is the sword of the Spirit. These days I really crave a good 40 minute sermon and there's not much of that there. As one of my favorite pastors, David Jeremiah, says," soft preaching produces hard hearts while hard preaching produces soft hearts."
Posted by: Betsy Cuthbertson | August 14, 2007 7:47 AM
Besty, I like your quote about "soft preaching." One of the things I love about St. Margaret Mary is that our priest is not afraid to preach about the Four Last Things (Death, Judgement, Heaven, and Hell.) That sort of focuses one's mind.
Posted by: Lisa Roberts | August 14, 2007 6:18 PM
a good 40 minute sermon
I miss good speakers at Mass. Lately I've been thinking that the priests who have been giving the homilies have just been uninspired and not very interesting speakers. I sort of want them to attend Toastmasters or something once every few months for some constructive feedback.
Posted by: Sean Ahern | August 17, 2007 5:05 AM