Is There a UU Theology?

Filed Under quotes, religion, spiritual practice, uuism

“Theology is just not important in Judaism, or in any other [non Christian] religion, really. There’s no orthodoxy as you have it in the Catholic Church. No complicated creeds to which everybody must subscribe. No infallible pronouncements by a pope. Nobody can tell Jews what to believe. Within reason, you can believe what you like.”

Karen Armstrong quotes Hyam Maccoby in her book, The Spiral Staircase. Help me out here, folks. Is this what UUism is trying to get at? And if so, why is not having a creed such a big deal for us? What are UUs talking about when they refer to a specifically UU theology? The conversation between Karen and Hyam continues.

“No official theology?” I repeated stupidly. “None at all? How can you be religious without a set of ideas - about God, salvation, and so on - as a basis?” “We have orthopraxy instead of orthodoxy,” Hyam replied calmly, wiping his mouth and brushing a few crumbs off the table. “‘Right practice’ rather than ‘right belief.’ That’s all. You Christians make such a fuss about theology, but it’s not important in the way you think. It’s just poetry, really, ways of talking about the inexpressible. We Jews don’t bother much about what we believe. We just do it instead.”

Comments

One Response to “Is There a UU Theology?”

Ron Stevens on May 31st, 2006 11:10 pm

If our UU “radical protestant” heritage has been more about the development of a particular attitude or temperamant instead of correctness of doctrine (in matters of religion)–a tradition of passionate, stubborn free-agency and sincere expectations of personal honesty/ authenticity and ultimate humility–then in our tradition we do NOT have the luxury of believing “whatever we like within reason.” The closest thing we have to a theology is a “theology of reality” (scientifically and cosmologically supportable), which pervades all of nature, including human nature. It includes diversity within a context of unity. Our “radical protestant” heritage picked up on this many centuries ago, in embracing “the inherent and sacred worth of all souls” and “the ultimate connectedness/kinship of all souls” as children of a common creation (however defined). These two assumptions of our liberal faith have continued to define a religious movement of both self-assertive and integrative tendencies, both personal freedom and interconnectedness, both diversity and unity.

To me at least, this “theology of reality,” though it remains uncommitted in terms of the origins of the universe, has both spiritual and rational validity and provides the foundations for a faith of abundant freedom, tolerance, mutual respect, compassion, and love.

Ron

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