Unitarian

My father is a minister in the church, and he is also a vocal atheist. (No joke.) So you had better re-evaluate any ideas you might have of us Unitarians as Christians.

Many are secular humanists, others recovering catholics, still others lean towards neo-paganism.

While it started as a renegade transylvanian branch that rejected the trinity, Christianity has been left far behind by current evolutions. The way I see it, most unitarains believe that the important thing is to search, not to believe. We help each other to search, find, and search again.

If you ask 100 unitarians what unitarians believe, you'll get 100 different answers. And that, in itself, is the best definition I can give.

All that said, I'm growing apart from the church because the people in it tend to be opressively intellectual about things that I consider intuitve and beautiful. Many of them are, in a word, hung up.

Going to a Unitarian/Universalist church as a young teenager had an interesting effect on me.

The UUs as they often refer to themselves participate in yet another religion of Judeo-Christian origin. But, since they reject the trinity, they are definitely on the liberal side of such religions.

Looking through some of the ideas that have been ratified by the General Assembly (the big yearly UU gathering) one will find that they support legalization of marijuana, other drugs, gay marriage, etc.

A very progressive church indeed.

o.o

There are a number of flavors of unitarianism; UU is perhaps the most well-known, not to mention the most detached from being in point of fact truly unitarian in its theology.

One popular breed of modern theological unitarianism is oneness pentecostalism, as exemplified by denominations like the UPCI (http://www.upci.org/). These churches assert that father, son, and holy spirit are in fact three offices ("modes") of a truly and totally singular unipersonal god ("monad"); their position is more formally known as modalistic monarchianism.

• They interpret 1 Corinthians 11 to mean that women should not cut their hair, ever, period. This interpretation quite exceeds the literal reading of the text.
• There is a tendancy towards using the KJV translation exclusively, giving it preference over even the hebrew and greek texts from which it was derived.
• Members of this sect tend to refer to themselves as "apostolic" as they believe their doctrine to be that of the original apostles; this is not to be mistaken with the ministry of modern apostles or references to the "New Apostolic Reformation" which are trinitarian movements.
• It strikes me as odd that this doctrine is present in a pentecostal movement with a strong emphasis upon the Holy Spirit as such.

U`ni*ta"ri*an (?), n. [Cf. F. unitaire, unitairien, NL. unitarius. See Unity.]

1. Theol.

One who denies the doctrine of the Trinity, believing that God exists only in one person; a unipersonalist; also, one of a denomination of Christians holding this belief.

2.

One who rejects the principle of dualism.

3.

A monotheist.

Fleming.

© Webster 1913.

U`ni*ta"ri*an (?), a.

Of or pertaining to Unitarians, or their doctrines.

© Webster 1913.