Free Republic

As soon as she saw it, Tejinder Jit knew the old white church was the perfect place for a Hindu temple. click image to enlarge The former First Universalist Church of Scarborough and South Buxton is now the Maine Hindu Temple, the first community temple in Maine. Photos by Fred J. Field/Staff Photographer "We feel that it is a special place and the perfect place to do Hindu prayers," Jit said. "God is already existing there."That old white church, at County and Broadturn roads, straddles the Scarborough-Buxton town line, surrounded by woods. It's everything one would expect in a traditional...

Visitors to the Unitarian Universalist Association website will see a rainbow chalice in the listing for the Unitarian Universalist Society of Geneva (UUSG), recognizing the church’s recent certification as a welcoming congregation to those in the LGBTQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and questioning) community. According to Bruce Fackler, a gay man who joined UUSG in 2007, the certification simply makes official what he experienced when he was introduced to the church five years ago. Fackler said he had moved here from Minnesota and was searching for a congregation that could be a supportive family. “I found more than I was...

On Vancouver Island, pagans are lighting cauldron fires and dancing through giant evergreen hoops to symbolize being reborn In Vancouver, pagans are bowing to stag antlers, revering pentangles and burning cinnamon incense to mark Yule, which celebrates the "rebirth of the sun" at winter solstice...There are roughly 400,000 pagans in the U.S. and Canada, according to the American Religious Identification Survey. Their numbers have more than doubled in the past decade. ..Despite many pagans' inclination to privacy, one spiritual organization in B.C. that won't be carrying out its Yule ceremonies in secrecy is the Vancouver Unitarian Church. The large congregation...

...Theo Hobson wrote about his first experience of a Unitarian Universalist church in Brooklyn on this website, finding it "harmless" but edging towards the vacuous. The service itself offered "as much sense of dangerous otherness as a tots' singalong at the local library". Yet as a movement, at times it has been the Unitarian attitude to otherness that has taken them into dangerous territory. ...Unitarian Universalism is sometimes referred to as America's "other" religion – one that offers a reverse of the stereotype of American religious conservatism. US census data shows it to be a significant minority religion with between...

Over the last two years at the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Danbury (UUCD), as we continue to settle on "the Ridge" (Clapboard Ridge Road), we have had a great focus on growing our membership and growing our church....In this idea of shared ministry we view everything -- from leading Sunday worship, to religious education, to balancing "the books," to making sure the carpets are clean -- as a form of ministry. Each of these activities serves the greater purpose of our spiritual community, serves each of our own spiritual journeys, and is thus a ministry....In his book "Moving On from...

At the Unitarian Universalist Village Church on Sunday, the congregation will hear a presentation on “Understanding What and Who We Are as Natural Beings.” A question-andanswer session will follow. This will be the first in a three-part series exploring what and who we are as individuals and as a congregation...

A North Carolina state university has put out a list of approved "gay-friendly" churches for faculty and students raising concerns by at least one professor that taxpayers are inadvertently involved in "telling people where to go to church." An office with the University of North Carolina's Wilmington campus began circulating the list late last month. It was compiled as part of a broader guide to gay-friendly businesses, nonprofits, health centers and other services in the area. The "lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, questioning, intersex and allied students, faculty, staff, and alumni" office described the document as a "local resource guide" for...

The service at the Unitarian Universalist Community of Lake County (UUCLC) for Sunday, July 17, is entitled, “The Healing Power of Laughter.” The service begins at 10 a.m. at the Kelseyville Senior Center, 5245 Third St. in Kelseyville. Guests are always welcome to attend to learn more about the liberal religious traditions of Unitarian Universalism. Speaker Carrie Knowles-Hance will look at how humor, like art, grapples with life’s great mysteries: sex, death and spirit. Knowles-Hance says, “Laughter returns us to balance. Grownups, however, laugh less than one 20th the number of times that kids laugh.” She intends to reverse that...

A recent Sunday service at the First Unitarian Church of Baltimore ended with an apology. Laurel Mendes, a neo-pagan lay member who led the service, feared that a reference to God in the hymn “Once to Every Soul and Nation” might have upset the humanists in the pews. So, Mendes explained to the congregation that religious doctrine had been duly scrubbed from hymns in the Sunday program. “I didn’t want to make anyone uncomfortable by reciting something that might be considered a profession of faith,” Mendes, 52, said after the service. “We did say ‘God,’ which you don’t often hear...

Gays and lesbians seeking a spiritual journey through organized faith might find several roadblocks in society, especially with media focus on the anti-gay stances of many churches, but one woman found a welcoming congregation in Geneva. Pamela Rumancik, 49, who’s openly lesbian, recently finished a year of training as a minister at Geneva’s Unitarian Universalist Church. Her role was assistant minister, leading services and performing weddings and memorial services. Rumancik grew up Catholic and was always involved with the church. “I couldn’t be a minister in the Catholic Church, but I could as a Unitarian,” she said...“As a Catholic, I...

Much of the vocal opposition to gay marriage in New York state has come from folks with reverend as their title.Some Hudson Valley religious leaders see same-sex marriage in a different light."When any commentator says religion is against gay marriage, it really rankles me," said the Rev. Jan Carlsson-Bull of the Unitarian Univeralist Congregation of the Catskills. UU ministers presided over hundreds of gay weddings in New Paltz in 2004 after Mayor Jason West was barred from doing so.Nothing in the old or new testaments suggests to Carlsson-Bull that marriage must be between a man and a woman."(The Bible) is...

Reflections On Ministry is the topic for the morning to be presented by Interim Minister Rev. Tracey Robinson-Harris at The First Unitarian Universalist Society of Middleborough, 25 South Main Street, on Sunday, May 1. The service begins at 10:30 a.m. Joining Robinson-Harris for this service is the Rev. Judy Campbell, Ministerial Settlement Representative for the Ballou Channing District. The shared sermon will offer reflections on ministry and what it means to be settled. The service will also include New Member Recognition honoring five new members of FUUSM: Sophia Rose, Barbara Bancroft, Louisa Place, Jeremy Place and Jeff Giddings. Following the...

It seems that the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) will collaborate with anyone, as long as it works to further their political and social justice agenda. The Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations (UUA) is not a Christian denomination. They describe themselves this way, "Unitarian Universalism is a caring, open-minded religion that encourages seekers to find their own spiritual path. Our faith draws on many religious sources, welcoming people with different beliefs." (see here) With that in mind, let’s look at the strong connection and relationship the ELCA has with the Unitarian Universalist Association by looking at some of the...

Esbensen, 53, who was ordained as a Unitarian Universalist minister in 1996 and recently became head of a Madison congregation, does not believe in God or life after death. She calls herself a "humanist atheist." She thinks belief in deity has arguably done more to hurt than help the world. "People who do not believe in God are actually kinder, gentler people," she says. A personal belief in God, for instance, was not needed for Esbensen to comfort the dying woman in Minnesota, to "say what she needed to hear." This fall, Esbensen became minister of the Prairie Unitarian Universalist...

...According to the Associated Press the president "described himself as a "Christian by choice" who arrived at his faith in adulthood because "the precepts of Jesus Christ" helped him envision the kind of life he wanted to lead." Some conservatives and political opponents have questioned Obama's Christian faith... "my mother was one of the most spiritual people I knew, but she didn't raise me in the church" "So I came to my Christian faith later in life, and it was because the precepts of Jesus Christ spoke to me in terms of the kind of life that I would want...

...there is a lot more to this minister than worship, Scripture and creeds as he holds to what he refers to as “unorthodox views.” The “liberal-leaning United Church of Christ” has “allowed him to work as a campus minister in such places as…the University of New Mexico-Albuquerque.” He has also been a part of one of the most discredited scholarly hoaxes of modern times the (anti) Jesus Seminar which is described as “a colloquium of scholars who tried to peel off layers of church dogma to unearth the historical Jesus.” Yet, the Jesus Seminar attempted to bury Jesus in layers...

America your portion has been measured in full and the time of true shaking has come ! Now watch as I touch your pocketbooks , watch as I annihilate the sin in your lives and watch as All this occurs I set the captives free and destroy the rebellious as korah for I shall swallow up sin and it's roots . I shall cleanse this nation as never before . There shall be crevasses where there has been great rivers allowing the ocean in , Deserts where there has been pools of great waters , Mountains where there has been...

...Now, here is the issue and it is the same issue as with the popular versions of syncretism, relativism, inclusivism and pluralism of all sorts and kinds: the fact is that we are all exclusivists. This is very simply proved: if you disagree with the statement “we are all exclusivists” then you have just proved the point as you have excluded the statement from the realm of truth. Consider this: all religions do not claim that all religions have the answer. All claim to have the answer. All claim some sort of exclusivity; or else they would not be distinct...

On my last "Open Line" radio show (Thursdays from 3:00-5:00 p.m. ET), I took a call from Ben, a pleasant and well-spoken Unitarian fellow who took the Catholic Church to task for its "divisiveness" on issues such as abortion and homosexuality. We had a friendly but animated 15-minute debate of his opinion. Take a listen and see what you think. (Click the picture to launch the audio.)

Mayor Adrian M. Fenty will sign legislation Friday to legalize same-sex marriage in the District at a bill-signing ceremony so historic that his staff scrambled to find the perfect location Thursday. Would it be All Souls Unitarian Church, a Northwest house of worship known for its diversity, liberalism and welcoming of same-sex couples? Would it be Covenant Baptist Church, a predominantly black church in Southwest where husband-and-wife team of Dennis and Christine Wiley serve as co-pastors and support gay marriage? Or would it be a secular site? Late in the day, Katie Loughary, executive director at All Souls, said it...