Segregated Churching

Unitarian Universalist Congregations pride themselves with being liberal congregations in theory. Theory is easy, getting folks to change is the hard part. Making it easier for people to change is possible but a lot of habits are hard to change and the parties must want change to happen.

Even good church going folks have their differences as evidenced by this hatchet job on Unitarian Universalism.  Just telling people to wake up and smell the coffee doesn't work very well. Historically UUs were in favor of the abolition of slavery but that didn't make UUS the go to religion.

Don't ask me why but churches are a lot like fraternal organizations and a lot of them are not very integrated either. When and if stuff like happens requires big organizations with a large advertising budget and some rules everybody signs on to.  Unfortunately, this usually only works when selling products and military which isn't very voluntary except when you sign up.

BY GABRIELLE DEVENISH, CHRISTIAN POST REPORTER

December 4, 2011|6:12 pm

Which road leads to God?

For the Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations, the answer is any, all or none of the above, theologians assert.

According to John Ankerberg, president and founder of The Ankerberg Theological Research Institute, UU followers have varying ideas about God. They “believe anything or nothing: one is free to be atheist, pantheist, polytheist, agnostic, deist, theist or even Satanist,” Ankerberg writes in his website post on UU theology at www.johnankerberg.org.

“Basically, it is spiritual humanism,” explained Craig Branch, director of the Apologetics Resource Ministry, in an interview with The Christian Post. “All roads lead to God.”

“God is usually defined as a more eastern mystical entity – an ultimate spiritual consciousness. It is difficult to nail down a specific nature of concept of God in UUA [teaching],” Branch said.

“They can believe in any gods, as long as they’re not supernatural,” agreed Fred Miller of True Light Educational Ministry in Shirley, N.Y.

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Therefore, UUs deny Christianity by default, at least in the orthodox understanding, Miller told CP.

“They are anti-Christian. Everything we believe in, they don’t,” he stated.

Branch agreed. “Any religion like orthodox Christianity that says there is one is essentially false [to a UU believer],” he said.

Unitarian Universalism actually has its roots in Unitarianism – denial of the Trinity – “principally in relation to negating the deity of Christ,” Jim Beverley, professor of Christian Thought and Ethics at Tyndale University, told the CP.

In the 1500s, theologians Michael Servetus and Faustus Socinius merged Unitarian beliefs with universalism, belief that all faiths can lead to salvation, he explained. The religion came to the United States around the 18th century, with notable UU leaders including John Murray and Joseph Priestley, and quickly rose in popularity, attracting people such as Susan B. Anthony and Ralph Waldo Emerson.

The noncommittal beliefs of the UU religion seem to attract social and scholarly figures, Miller agreed. Presidents John Adams, Thomas Jefferson and Howard Taft ascribed to a UU faith. Paul Newman, Frank Lloyd Wright and Charles Darwin were all UU followers, and recently, according to Wikipedia, notable UUs include Christopher Reeve, Kurt Vonnegut and Pete Seeger.

Unitarian Universalists claim to be compatible with Christianity, but they deny the basic tenets of Christian, pointed out Kurt Goedelman, founder of Personal Freedom Outreach, in an email to The Christian Post.

Unitarian Universalists “deny the Trinity, deny Jesus is the incarnation of God and deny there is any eternal punishment,” agreed Paul de Vries, president of New York Divinity School, in an email to the CP.

Branch’s apologetics website also notes that UU followers hold a works-based view of salvation.

Miller said that UU followers believe that the Bible, as a whole, is not true.

However, de Vries said “many of their concepts come from the Bible – but they pick and choose what they like.”

“They claim the Gospel writers were not honest because they were trying to make Jesus God and therefore, were untrustworthy,” agreed Miller.

And Ankerberg pointed out, “The UU view of the Bible is that it is an entirely human product, a result of the thinking of fallible and sometimes ignorant men.”

“They do not believe in any spiritualism or any deity or the hereafter,” said Miller. “They don’t believe in any supernatural,” and “They believe that there is no sin – man is naturally good but if you want to be better, you have to do it yourself,” he said.

While the UUA maintains a low profile – “they don’t go door-to-door,” Miller noted – it is attractive to many.

“It is an easy belief, with no commitment and no serious theology, and a Santa Claus god,” said de Vries, “… everyone goes to heaven anyway.”

A fitting religion for today’s culture.

As R. Albert Mohler, Jr., president of Southern Baptist The

Read more at http://www.christianpost.com/news/cults-in-culture-unitarian-universalist-a-multiple-choice-religion-part-6-63955/#v9oK4yTk20HrILWe.99