As I mentioned on another comment: I am a Unitarian Universalist and an athiest, married to a seminarian in the religion. Happy to answer questions about UU and what it's like. It has definitely made me far less lonely to belong to the UU community, and I don't feel pressured to "believe" anything I don't want to.
Okay, I have a question. You guys have weekly services, right? What do you do? I assume there are no songs to sing, and so someone has to do the speaking. What do they talk about? Since there's no formal religious principles to promote, my naive picture of it is being the sort of stuff you'd see in self-help books. Which seems, I don't know, boring? (Personally I don't think there's much of value in self-help books.)
Hey! So services vary widely from place to place (since congregations run democratically). The form is based on a traditional protestant service, but with modern adaptations. We sing a lot of songs - I've heard everything from christian hymns to buddhist chants to the Beatles and Peter Meyer (probably not during the same service). We have three hymnals, including one in Spanish.
UUs have seven principles (https://www.uua.org/beliefs/what-we-believe/principles) but none of them require any sort of supernatural belief. Coming from an anti-theist background they were all already things I agreed with. Some people say that you can believe in anything and be a UU, which isn't quite true - any belief system that sees others as "less than", for example, would be incompatible.
As for who does the talking, most congregations have a trained minister (like my partner) who leads most services. They talk on a variety of topics, but mostly about community, justice, activism, and lessons from other religions.
Thanks, it's really very interesting to me that you have music. Seems to trigger the ritualistic aspect of religion that others have talked about in this thread.
My impression was always that UUs were a sort of offshoot of Protestantism; I think "Unitarian" refers to their non-belief in a trinity of beings that are a core doctrine of most modern Christian denominations - is that right? Would you say that UUs have entirely abandoned their Christian / Protestant heritage other than the form of the service?
