Theology

I was raised a Unitarian Universalist during our Humanist period and hold dear our value for reason and our hopes for humankind. In seminary, however, I learned that I also resonate with Religious Naturalism.

Religious Naturalism holds that there is nothing outside of nature. In other words, there is no supernatural–only the natural. Humans are a part the immense and superlative natural world. This notion allows me to stay true to my Humanist roots, while the knowledge that humans are part of something so much larger gives me wings.

We are all created, literally, from stardust– a finite set of elements. Yet out of that set of building blocks we get life from non-life, we get extraordinary diversity, we get consciousness. This phenomenon of emergence, “something else from nothing but”, is where I ground my hope. We live in a world of possibility.

Everything, literally everything, happens in relationship. From the cellular to the societal, everything that is created, is created in relationship. This seems especially important for a faith whose bedrock is a covenant with one another.

Religious Naturalism also acknowledges that we live in an ambiguous world–it does not seek to explain away suffering or evil. On the other hand, we live in a world of extraordinary beauty and creativity and a world with tender love.

These pillars of Religious Naturalism, emergence, relationship, ambiguity and beauty are the primary components of my theology.

This is my path, and I suspect that many people in our congregations feel right at home traveling this path with me. The beauty of Unitarian Universalism, however, is that there are many paths. I think the fact that we are not all practicing religion in the same way is our beauty and our great strength. We are all in spiritual formation on our own journey.

Finally, I think that growth happens in disorder and if our faith is not challenging and changing us, it isn’t doing its job. So I continue to adopt, adapt, jettison, deepen and challenge the threads of my theology. I am grateful every day that I don’t make this journey alone, but instead have fellow sojourners to travel with me.