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[invinoveritas]

Right on fossil....

JP obviously offends easy if you trash religious studies though. 

I don't blame him....there is much to be learned from the study of religion and its impact on history and our present 'zeitgeist'. 

At the same time....I do think that religion generally sits on a pedestal that needs to be broken.  Religion is a natural phenomenon just like anything else...a set of beliefs and practices handed down from one generation to the next.  There are many religions just as there are many cultures.  I'm no relativist...to be sure...but they can't all be right.  And, quite frankly, when it comes to evidence for the truth of religious claims...or consistent moral theory....they all fail miserably.

So...why shouldn't the claims of religions be held to same standards as any other field of study?  Again...I'm talking about 'the claims', not 'the study of'.

(I think this was part of fossil's point....if only implied....I've also had too much wine tonight...regardless...I think the point is important)

[zharkov]

State-supported established churches probably tend to be more theologically and liturgically conservative than independent denominations.

I've always wondered about this idea, considering that the Anglican Church was heretical and wildly liberal in its day, yet seems to have become the opposite over time. I suspect the answer has more to do, as always, with the need to mark our turf. What might the UU church look like in twenty years?

To what day of the Anglican church are you referring? And heretical relative to what? Also, why should we expect the UUs to change more in the next 20 years than they have in the last 20, or the 20 before that? The UUs have been around quite a while (the merger happened in 1961, but both denominations had a long history before that).

To continue TRB's point, Unitarians -- non-trinitarian Christians -- have been around more or less as long as Christianity. It was reborn, if you will, during the Protestant reformation (Francis David, Isaac Newton) and grew in the US in the late 18th to mid 19th centuries (Jefferson, Emerson).

I don't know about 20 year, but over the last 50 or so years, I think the largest trend is that fewer UUs self identify as Christian.  I get that sense from talking to elderly UUs, who were brought up with the idea of the UU as a Christian church, less the case today.

[husqvarna]

JP obviously offends easy if you trash religious studies though. 

Heh.

Yes, the first thing I think of when I think of JP is an overly defensive, reactionary butterfly who quivers at the slightest hint of critique.

Pul-eeze. 

[conjugate]

Oh My GOD!

You are SOOO right!!!

The text is tedious and confused and nasty. 

I mean, there's really no point in doing any serious scholarship on, say, its origins, its composition and collection history, its impact on art, its cultural influence, its effect on military and colonial expansion, its impact on public morality, its effect on individual values,

I mean, wow.  WOW!  s***.  You're so f***ing brilliantly right.

I was going to work on my monograph more this summer but now, wow, I mean, now I guess I just don't have to.  Hell, I think I'll work on my short game.

Thank you, fossil.

You must be the absolute most smartest person on the whole freaking planet.

If only I'd met you a decade ago...

Dang, JP.  You just blew out my Portable Sarcasm Detector.  And to think I had lowered its sensitivity to minimum because I read the fora a lot.

Funniest thing I've read in a while.

[john_proctor]

It's true.

I'm a delicate, hothouse flower.

Be gentle with me.

[hollow_man]

Pul-eeze. 

I hate to be a pedant, but I believe the correct spelling is "puh-leeze."

[sad_goat]

Wondered where the pulleys reference fit...

[husqvarna]

Pul-eeze. 

I hate to be a pedant, but I believe the correct spelling is "puh-leeze."

So sorry!

[conjugate]

Pul-eeze. 

I hate to be a pedant, but I believe the correct spelling is "puh-leeze."

So sorry!

Alas, your link to the OED is useless unless I subscribe, which I don't.

Bartleby.com has nothing in their American Heritage dictionary:

pugmark pugnacious pug nose puisne puissance puke pukka pul pula Pula Pulaski, Casimir pulchritude pulchritudinous pule puli

So neither spelling appears.  Sadly, we must relegate it to the obscurity of the nonce word or phonetic spelling.

[fossil]

To continue TRB's point, Unitarians -- non-trinitarian Christians -- have been around more or less as long as Christianity. It was reborn, if you will, during the Protestant reformation (Francis David, Isaac Newton) and grew in the US in the late 18th to mid 19th centuries (Jefferson, Emerson).

I don't know about 20 year, but over the last 50 or so years, I think the largest trend is that fewer UUs self identify as Christian.  I get that sense from talking to elderly UUs, who were brought up with the idea of the UU as a Christian church, less the case today.

Speaking as someone with an interest in that curious character Newton, rather than in religion, per se, I think it's something of a distortion to see Newton's anti-Trinitarianism (a common idea in the radical Puritanism leading to the English Revolution) as being the same sort of thing as the Unitarianism that became popular among "liberal" Christians in the US in the 19th century.  Newton's rejection of the full divinity of Jesus was based on a literal reading of scripture, rejecting the authority of the Patristic texts and the Council of Nicea.  His biblical literalism was full-bore, which is why he devoted so much time to extracting the prophetic meanings of the biblical text in connection with the End of Days.

Unitarians, in the usual sense, were anything but biblical lliteralists and tended to view the Bible as edifying myth rather than metaphysical truth.

[zharkov]

To continue TRB's point, Unitarians -- non-trinitarian Christians -- have been around more or less as long as Christianity. It was reborn, if you will, during the Protestant reformation (Francis David, Isaac Newton) and grew in the US in the late 18th to mid 19th centuries (Jefferson, Emerson).

I don't know about 20 year, but over the last 50 or so years, I think the largest trend is that fewer UUs self identify as Christian.  I get that sense from talking to elderly UUs, who were brought up with the idea of the UU as a Christian church, less the case today.

Speaking as someone with an interest in that curious character Newton, rather than in religion, per se, I think it's something of a distortion to see Newton's anti-Trinitarianism (a common idea in the radical Puritanism leading to the English Revolution) as being the same sort of thing as the Unitarianism that became popular among "liberal" Christians in the US in the 19th century.  Newton's rejection of the full divinity of Jesus was based on a literal reading of scripture, rejecting the authority of the Patristic texts and the Council of Nicea.  His biblical literalism was full-bore, which is why he devoted so much time to extracting the prophetic meanings of the biblical text in connection with the End of Days.

Unitarians, in the usual sense, were anything but biblical lliteralists and tended to view the Bible as edifying myth rather than metaphysical truth.

That's certainly true today, but I would add that is a belief that evolved over time.

I went by William Ellery Channing's grave last year when I visited Mt.Auburn Cemetery near Boston.  The gravestone of one of the leaders of the 19c Unitarian movement announced him as "A Minister of the Gospel."   It is very unlikely you'd see that today.

About connecting the dots from Newton to 19c liberal Christianity, maybe not, but some UUs also like to them as themselves existing on the heterodox margins or fringes of orthodox Christianity for a long time, maybe since the beginning.

Let me also add that contemporary UUs are free to take the Bible literally, or in any way they see fit. Most would, true, see it as symbolic or mythic truth, not literal truth.

[invinoveritas]

There is a difference between fun sarcasm and nasty sarcasm. 

Some of us know the difference....others don't.

Usually when a person intends to publically riducule someone, their intention is derogatory.