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Cherish your choices!

 If you are a member of the Fellowship, every couple of months you should receive an issue of UU World, “the magazine of the Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations.” [Please note: sometimes it takes a few months to get the new member information to the UUA, so if you have just joined the Fellowship, you may not have received a copy yet. But if you have been a member for three months or more, and have yet to receive an issue, please let the Fellowship office know, so we can take appropriate action!]

 While there are many different articles and items of interest in UU World, the Fall 2005 issue contained an essay that I found particularly helpful. Written by Doug Muder, a member of the congregation in Bedford, Massachusetts, it was titled “Who’s Afraid of Freedom and Tolerance?” It presents a constrast of the different and competing worldviews of fundamentalists and religious liberals. Since our region includes both these worldviews, to at least the same degree as Massachusetts does, if you haven’t seen it, I urge you to read it!

 Muder argues that it helps to recognize a basic distinction between liberals, who value freedom in the form of individual choices, and fundamentalists, who find personal meaning within tradition expressed as a network of roles and obligations. When a liberal couple chooses to define their relationship in a non-traditional way, the fundamentalist feels threatened. When a fundamentalist couple understands and defines its relationship in a traditional manner (without even considering alternatives), the liberal feels perplexed. When the fundamentalist criticizes the liberal for making a choice that is non-traditional, the liberal feels angry and persecuted. When the liberal criticizes the fundamentalist for failing to exercise his or her individual freedom, the fundamentalist feels angry and persecuted. It’s easy to enter and escalate a cycle of criticism and anger, especially when the liberal and the fundamentalist are people who do care about each other.

 But what’s the alternative? An acceptable alternative has to value choice as the expression of our heritage of religious freedom. But it should also make it clear that our commitment to choice is not a commitment to “whatever feels good right now.” Rather, it is a commitment that uses choice to reflect values that we have tried and tested over time, values such as freedom, reason, tolerance, and love (for example). It is a commitment not to “the easy way,” but rather to “the right way, as we understand it,” and part of that understanding is that it may not be the right way for everyone else.

 Doug Muder suggests that we “need to explain why we want freedom and choice . . . to talk about the committed life and how committed liberals escape the superficiality and nihilism that the [fundamentalist] fears and assumes we represent.” And in doing so, we need to speak with a sense of love for our opponents and to bless with hope those who may curse us with anger. As we do so, we embody the full power of our religious heritage.

 One of my favorite readings in our hymnal begins “Cherish your doubts, for doubt is the attendant of truth.” We choose to doubt, that we may find a better understanding of what is true. And as “doubt is the attendant of truth,” so I believe choice is the embodiment of freedom. So I hope you’ll choose to spend some time with Doug Muder’s full article!

 Yours in choice, (signed) Bill S.