Considering My Options

[poliphilo]

Ailz and I have been thinking that  we should check out the Unitarian church- that maybe we'd find we were Unitarians.

So I was reading up about them. They're OK.  Maybe a little on the serious side. I can't find anything to disagree with.

But they're a gang. And I don't want to join a gang. I don't want to go round sporting gang colours.

It suits me better to be out on the margins. It always has done.

Which is why it works for me to attend an Anglican church. Anglicanism is the state religion and everyone who isn't specifically something else is Anglican by default.  Anglicanism isn't a gang; it's an atmosphere. If I became a Unitarian I'd be signing up for something, but by continuing as an Anglican I'm just going to church. There's a difference.
 
I've always been afraid of being co-opted, of becoming one of the crowd.

Or worse, of becoming a spokesman for a particular crowd- where you have to say what the crowd thinks (which is actually what the leader of the crowd thinks) not what you think yourself.

You see them on TV-  the spokesmen and spokeswomen. So carefully turned out, so carefully spoken.

I pity them.

I was like that when I was a vicar. It killed the mischief in me. And what's the use of a priest without mischief?

Comments

[glitzfrau.livejournal.com]

A friend attends the Unitarians irregularly, and I've been along with them on three occasions. I found them unbearably smug and utterly blithe about cultural appropriation. The message I got from them was 'we have taken the best from the world religions and combined them in one superior religion'; it seemed to me as though in doing so they had completely disregarded the cultural traditions that inform those religions, and set themselves up as morally and intellectually superior beings who see beyond all that superstition to the profound truths that, like, God is love, man, and you shouldn't be hurting people. In short, it seemed like a white liberal middle-class organisation for feeling good about yourself, with a surreal gloss of mid-Victorian earnestness.

I know this isn't everyone's experience, and certainly in the area of queer rights I have the utmost respect for them, but I was still astonished by how tiresome I found them and how little desire I had to go back.

[veronica-milvus.livejournal.com]

You could BE the leader of the crowd... I do think it is perverse of you to NOT want to join something because you agree too much with it, but you DO want to join something where you don't agree. It's like joining a football team because you want to play cricket.

But, you are allowed to do that, it isn't a criticism.

And I am not sure if we are all Anglican by default. Not unless we are baptised that way.

[haikujaguar.livejournal.com]

And what's the use of a priest without mischief?

This is... wow, an amazing sentiment. I'm going to let it percolate a while.

[zoe-1418.livejournal.com]

The religious communities I've actually officially "joined" in adulthood have been Episcopal (Anglican) and then Unitarian Universalist. I've been sort of Quaker-on-the-side, loving the philosophy (seeing "that of God" in everyone; listening for "that of God" to speak in yourself) but missing the liturgy. Now, as you know, I'm planning to visit the Episcopalians again. And they vary SO greatly here in the U.S., from diocese to diocese and even parish to parish.

I don't think UUs here are necessarily smug... but I've seen the type -- interestingly, I also had that experience when I first went from evangelicalism to liberal Episcopalianism -- a sort of patronizing "well, we know better and eventually you will, too."

[sovay]

And what's the use of a priest without mischief?

Do you think you'd make a good priest now?