F&RS is the philosophical/religious blog of Doug Muder. Its title comes from "a free and responsible search for truth and meaning," the 4th principle of Unitarian Universalism. You can find Doug's weekly political summary at The Weekly Sift and his longer political articles at Open Source Journalism. He also writes on a number of group blogs under the pseudonym Pericles.
My quarterly column is up at the UU World web site. If you read this blog regularly, you'll suddenly understand where the ideas in May's My Volo Credere post came from. More and more, I'm seeing UUism as being about religious self-discipline, not religious freedom.
1 comment:
Hi Doug, that is another lovely essay. What you describe--that Unitarian Universalism is about religious self-discipline--is close to how I was raised to practice. I would only add one note: you're focusing on self-discipline in belief, but I was also taught self-discipline in action/morality as well. In other religions people restrain their impulses because an exterior supernatural force (God, karma, etc) will punish them if they misbehave. But we have no such fears. This could make us the religion where we can do whatever we want--the parallel to the religion where we can believe whatever we want. But just as we are actually the ones who can't believe whatever we want, we are also the ones who can't do whatever we want. The stress on gratitude, interconnection, and kinship with all people led to self-discipline for the sake of others rather than from fear for oneself.
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