Posted on 09/19/2007 1:11:02 PM PDT by SmithL
Garrison Keillor has long joked that Unitarian missionaries founded Lake Wobegon after a failed attempt to convert American Indians through interpretive dance.
The Prairie Home Companion host has miffed some members of the free-thinking, socially conscious faith with quips like, if you offend a Unitarian, you risk having a question mark burned in your front lawn.
Now, Unitarians are seeking converts and hoping radio spots on the iconoclastic Companion will draw the same earthy, progressive, crowd the show does.
Seventeen Bay Area Unitarian Universalist congregations have launched a $300,000 marketing campaign financed by 600 member donors. Its theme: "Imagine A Religion."
TV, radio and print spots designed by gUUrilla marketing began airing this week on Comedy Central, The Daily Show and A Prairie Home Companion
About 500 signs are going up in BART stations. Mainstream publications and specialty magazines serving Spanish-speaking or gay and lesbian readers will carry ads.
The campaign also features sequential billboards, based on the old Burma-Shave ads, meant for passing motorists to read.
"Imagine a religion that embraces many different beliefs ... including yours," reads a magazine ad that pictures a middle-aged gay male couple, a young African-American man, a mother holding a young child and a mixed-race family.
"For us, this campaign reflects a change of heart," said the Rev. William Sinkford, president of the national association. "We've been willing to be the best kept secret in religion. This represents a coming out effort."
The denomination has its roots in the Christian Protestantism of Transylvania and Poland but is not Christian per se. Rather, it draws from numerous religions and belief systems in a common "search for truth and meaning." It respects the sacred texts of all religions, but believes that none hold an absolute truth.
Unitarians "pitch a big theological tent," Sinkford said. "We want to make Unitarian Universalism available for those who yearn for a liberal religious home."
The ad blitz, which dovetails with the national Unitarian Universalist Association's growth drive, is the most recent attempt by religious progressives to make themselves heard in the public discourse over faith dominated by religious conservatives for some 25 years.
"The problem with that is the discourse is incomplete," Sinkford said.
The Unitarian-Universalistic faith prizes conscience and reason, has little use for dogma and a traditional distaste for proselytizing.
But previous ad campaigns showed a little evangelizing could go a long way.
Similar drives in Kansas City, Houston and Southern California netted new members. A Houston, Texas congregation grew by 10 percent -- 40 people -- after a 2005 advertising blitz.
"Unitarians aren't very much for trying to convert people," said the Rev. Bill Hamilton-Holway of the Unitarian Universalist Church of Berkeley. "But so often, people come, and they say, 'This is me, this is perfect for me, but I never knew you were here.'"
The crafters of the campaign say many Americans are unaware of the fundamental role Unitarians have played in shaping the nation's character.
Julia Ward Howe ("Battle Hymn of the Republic") was a Unitarian, as were presidents John Adams, John Quincy Adams, and William Howard Taft. Celebrated Unitarian legal scholars include Oliver Wendell Holmes, Daniel Webster and Clarence Darrow. Unitarian civil rights activists James Reeb and Viola Liuzzo were both slain during Freedom Summer.
Membership declined during the 1970s and has picked up since but modestly.
"We are absolutely interested in younger people," said gUUrilla marketing's Sue Polgar.
Once they arrive, "We hear, 'Where have you been all my life?'" said Cilla Raughley, director of the Central Pacific District.
The church appeals to parents of young children who resist training them in a creed, said Linda Laskowski, trustee from the Berkeley church.
"We don't teach a religion," she said. "We teach religion."
The Unitarians recruitment ads are online at http://swardlick.com/client_review/1056uua/
Information on Unitarians is at http://www.uua.org
No it doesn't.
There were non-Trinitarian relgious bodies in those areas in the Reformation period, but they did not found any churches in the New World.
The Unitarian Universalists of the USA come from a crew of radical Congregationalists from New England like Jonathan Mayhew and Roger Williams and from the radical Anglo-Huguenot Universalists of England and New England.
That fits well with what I have observed about a great many Unitarians ...
I caught that B.S. too. It’s like they are trying to make Unitarian history more exotic. Transylvania! Goth kids might go for that!
The “Seinfeld” of religions, a religion about nothing.
Patriotic Unitarians say “ In something we trust”.
The minister's answer back? "Because we find that most of our members have Sundays open on their calendars"
Its theme: "Imagine A Religion."
I don't have to imagine. The "faith once delivered to the saints" was passed on to me by a long chain of the faithful.
LOL! Too funny!!!
How do you advertise nothing?
>> The denomination has its roots in the Christian Protestantism of Transylvania and Poland <<
Well, that accounts for a couple nasty, mostly untrue stereotypes... of Transylvania and Poland.
>> The “Seinfeld” of religions, a religion about nothing. <<
I’m pretty sure that Festivus is the most holy day on many UU calendars, and I’M not joking!
>> Julia Ward Howe (”Battle Hymn of the Republic”) was a Unitarian, as were presidents John Adams, John Quincy Adams, and William Howard Taft. Celebrated Unitarian legal scholars include Oliver Wendell Holmes, Daniel Webster and Clarence Darrow. <<
The UUA was founded in 1961. Saying there were no Unitarians before that is a little like saying there were no Lutherans before the ECLA was created in the 1980s, but the UUA is radically different than early Unitarian churches, which held to many truths as objective and universal, including many Christian doctrines. Saying the Adamses were Unitarian in the same sense that the UUA is would result in grave misunderstandings.
I would go no further than to say that the Unitarians and the Adamses were both non-Trinitarians. To quote Wikipedia:
“Strictly speaking, modern-day Unitarian Universalism is not Unitarian in theology. Despite its name, this denomination does not necessarily promote either belief in One God or universal salvation. It is merely the inheritor of the Unitarian and Universalist church system in America... Some Unitarians, because they felt that the mainstream UUA churches are not accepting of Christians, or that the larger Unitarian-Universalist organizations are becoming too political and liberal to be considered a religious movement or faith, have decided to affiliate with the American Unitarian Conference. The vast majority of Unitarians have sought out liberal Christian churches in other denominations and have made homes there.”
>> The “Seinfeld” of religions, a reli
Ha, ha. In my area they gave up having services during summer and instead had Sunday volleyball games and a potluck lunch. Accordingly, they are sometimes referred to as the “Church of the Volleyball.”
You know, the real reason they are doing an ad campaign is that they know the Episcopalians are going after their market share bigtime! Same demographics and lack of beliefs, but with prettier costumes and stained glass.
The Unitarian church in our area is a gathering place for atheists who want to give their children a “sense of community” without religion interfering.
From was an article in our local rag a year or so ago.
Go figure.
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