This Curious Religion ©
Reverend Janet Parsons
Gloucester UU Church
May 17, 2026
People tend to think that it’s easy to be a Unitarian Universalist. After all, they like to tell us, we can believe anything that we want! What could be simpler? And the comments are many and frequent, often condescending. “Those people – they don’t believe in anything.” “It’s a social club.” “Coffee is the most important part of Sunday morning.”
I will concede some truth in that last point.
I remember the time, years ago, when for some reason my sons’ high school held an awards ceremony at my home church, the Winchester Unitarian Society. There were two high school girls sitting in front of my spouse. One of them stood right up on the pew to take a photo, and her friend chastised her for doing that in a church. My spouse heard the other girl respond, “It’s not really a church.”
I guess if you are trying to define what a ‘real church’ looks like, stained glass in every direction and organ pipes don’t count.
This morning, as we do each year, we have joyfully offered our hands and our hearts to a group of new members. Marcie, Wendy, Josh, Julee, and Laurence, along with Jonathan and Val, we are so glad that you have chosen to join us as we work to create community together and to make meaning of our daily lives. And in speaking to each of you before you joined, I am confident that none of you are here with us this morning because you think it will be easy.
There are some fundamental threads that run throughout our history that we honor here every Sunday. We don’t often name these. First and foremost, we call ourselves a ‘living tradition.’ By this we mean that we don’t think that we as individuals know all there is to know about mystery, about sacredness about what it means to be human or what the Holy might be. Our most eminent theologian of the 20th century, James Luther Adams, used to say that “revelation is continuous.” We believe that all has not been revealed to us, and we accept that a religious tradition doesn’t have all the answers to those questions either. Now, not all religions agree; they assert that their dogma is fixed and settled. They offer people hard truths that they can rely on throughout their lives. But we are different. We see our religion as alive, as evolving, as responding to the times and environment in which we live. To believe otherwise, to refuse to doubt or to question, or to continue to learn more, would be to cut off the oxygen to our religion, to let it risk dying. And it can be that during difficult times, we have less to hold on to than those who believe in a fixed doctrine. The ground might shift more beneath our feet. I would not call that easy.
And so, one of the reasons it’s not easy to be a UU is that we are asked to accept change. We are always called to learn, to remain open to change, and to stay curious. Becoming part of a Unitarian Universalist church means that you have agreed to live your lives from a place of curiosity. It is our job.
Another challenging aspect of Unitarian Universalism is that we deliberately create a religious community made up of people with widely varying beliefs, or no religious belief. As the Reverend Michelle Collins wrote, we “insist(s) that this is not a problem to be managed but a gift to be received. This only makes sense if curiosity about one another’s spiritual experience and theological frameworks is treated as a genuine spiritual practice rather than a polite tolerance.”
Look around you for a moment. The person sitting near you might be a practicing Buddhist, an atheist, a Christian, or a religious naturalist. Or none of the above. We can learn so much from each other if we treat each other with curiosity. Again, that is our job.
The question always becomes, given our receptivity to change and growth, and our commitment to support wide diversity of belief, what is it that holds us together? We sense that we need to be more than a social club with a commitment to justice and fairly traded coffee. Like the mariners of old, we do need some stars in the night sky to steer by, to help us to create the framework of a community based on covenant.
Earlier, Carol spoke about our Principles, that most of us are quite familiar with. Abiding by these, keeping them always in our thoughts as we navigate life, helps us greatly in creating a community devoted to mutual respect and care, not just for those of us within the walls we build, but for all beings.
Two years ago, Unitarian Universalism put itself to a test, choosing to update the Principles that have guided us since 1985. The original intention had been to update them after 15 years. We held onto them for 40. Even knowing that, many people were unprepared for the changes that emerged: the creation of our six core values. It would have been easy to just keep the Principles. But once again, we stepped away from the tried and true, and expressed curiosity about who we are now and what we need to express our beliefs. We settled on six values: Justice, Equity, Transformation, Pluralism, Interdependence, and Generosity. And we depict these graphically in a circle, with Love at the center. How will these help us in the living of our faith? Time will tell. Our work is to learn them and to be curious about what they mean to us.
Through all the centuries, all the changes, we can return again and again to the stars that guide us, that help us to follow the thread of tradition we follow as we walk together on life’s journey. These stars are: We seek to practice compassion. We seek to leave the world better than we found it. And we seek to remain ever curious, to enable our hearts and our minds to remain open to what the world reveals to us in its time.
No one says it will be easy. But that’s why we gather, so that we can draw on each other’s strength when we need it, and offer ours in turn to others, to lean on this community when we need to, and to bolster it every way that we can.
It will never be easy. Nor should it be. But it is our work to do in the world.
Blessings on your hands and hearts and minds. And welcome.
