A Thanksgiving Medley

Yum. First off, happy Thanksgiving to all of my friends in the blogosphere, y'all are the best, and I hope you had lots of turkey today and pumpkin pie today.

Not the Uniform Commercial Code. Thunder asked about the UCC and Unitarians in reference to my post from last Sunday. First let me clear something up, just incase there is confusion, despite the joke that the UCC stands for “Unitarians Considering Christ,” the UCC has substantial differences from the Unitarians, despite its close alliance with the same.

As far as background, the UCC draws on two separate lineage of churches: the Evangelical & Reformed church, which has its history in the Evangelical and Evangelical Lutheran movements that came to the U.S from Germany; and the Congregational Christian Church, which draws its origins from the Puritanism brought over from England by the Pilgrims (appropriate for today). Unitarianism in the U.S. draws its closest link to the Pilgrims' Puritanism (as well as Deism) rather than the German heritage that pervades many UCC churches.

Officially, at least, the UCC is also a trinitarian church and one that officially believes in Ultimate Reality (if not always the God of the Bible). I do not think that you will find a lot of United Churchpeople that are atheistic. The fifty percent figure Thunder mentions I would imagine applies to the Unitarian Universalist Association (UUA), which officially declares it supports both atheistic and theistic world views (as another joke goes, being a Unitarian means that you believe in, at most, one God). What the two sects have in common are their “Sunday School materials” program (which is sickening, frankly), universalism (often times) and willing integration with non-Christian religions. Some UCC churches have witch doctors, imams and others regularly appear and lead the service.

The key distinction in reality is that it is possible for a truly Christian church to operate under the UCC, whereas I do not think that is realistically possible in the UUA. Many such churches form the Biblical Witness Fellowship, a group that provides UCC churches with an alternate source of educational materials, pastoral search tools (in partnership with the EARCCC, a group for ex-UCC churches) and so on. The Evangelical & Reformed denomination was more conservative than the Congregational Christian Church, but there are Bible believing churches in the UCC from both sides of the merger.

As a whole, however, the UCC has promoted reimaging of Jesus, Gaia and Sophia worship, and other theological heresies. Moreover, as one of the largest mainline Protestant churches, it has used its position to do political lobbying for liberal social causes. Therefore, I reject the denomination as a orthodox Christian organization, but continue to recognize the Biblical Witness that remains within the denomination. This can be seen simply by noting how many churches are, like my own did in 1998, choosing to de-affiliate with the UCC.

• For more information on the UCC, I would point to my three part series on the subject, of which I only wrote the first two parts so far. Part I, Part II.

Concerning lack of a deity, Thunder's other question (if I read his question correctly), I don't think having a deity is necessary for something to be a religion — usually in such a case there is a replacement idol. I'd point to Paul Tillich's phrase that religion concerns that which one is “Ultimately Concerned” with. Outside the realm of theory, we have examples such as Theravada (Conservative) Buddhism, Philosophical Taoism and Confucianism that seem to meet the requirements of atheistic religions. Although both Theravada and Taoism have an Ultimate, albeit impersonal, Reality in the Void and the Tao, respectively.