Unity Candidating Q&A 10: Pluralism

Describe your theology and the role of the minister in a congregation that has multiple theologies.

(00:05):
This question of theology in a pluralistic congregation is one that's really important for Unitarian Universalists to figure out both for us individually and for us as institutions. I come at it primarily from the lens of differentiation. That good healthy differentiation is really important. We lose this sometimes in the breadth of our understanding of Unitarian universalism, Unitarian universalisms because our capacity to navigate and live in a pluralistic context requires a clear sense of healthy differentiation. I thou relationships work when they distinguish well between the I and the thou. So my primary theological lens, my theological lens, is agnostic humanism. I tend to emphasize in my preaching that importance of this particular moment with these particular people over theological abstraction. My humanism is informed by two primary traditions, the Methodist Church of my childhood, which several members of my extended family served as clergy, and that I still have great fondness for. Even if my theology no longer fits and the Jewish tradition of my wife's family, and by extension my daughter, this matters for our collective religious life in Unitarian Universalist spaces because we are always going to be both navigating difference and avoiding appropriation. And the best way to do both of those things, I think, is to get clear on our own position and from that point of clarity, get curious about those we are in relationship with.