And of course Name Unnamed.
You may guess from this that Unitarians today do not impose a particular belief about God, about the nature of the Divine, on others. It is up to each one of us to experience the Divine in our own way, spirit to spirit, heart to heart, soul to soul. This respect for the individual’s right to work out their own beliefs has resulted in a wide spectrum of perceptions of God within our denomination. In any Unitarian congregation, there will be a wide diversity of beliefs about who God is. Some are what I would call “Liberal Christians”, who would define God as a person, perhaps a loving parent; others would say that they “experience God as a unifying and life-giving spirit; the source of all being, the universal process that comes to consciousness as love in its creatures.” as Cliff Reed describes it.
Yet others, whom we might describe as
religious humanists, would use the word “God” to signify the best and noblest
aspects of human beings themselves, to which they aspire. And then there are
some whose chief perception of God is that of the “still, small voice” within
us, rather than any external power. It should also be realised that these
beliefs are not mutually exclusive. Most of us would say that belief in a
combination of them is where we would find God.
Over the years, Unitarians have recognised that if
we are made in God’s image, as it says in the Book of Genesis, then God must be
beyond gender. We have sought other ways to describe the Divine. Unitarian Universalist minister F. Forrest Church
Let us
explore some different concepts of what deity is. Monotheists believe that
there is only one God; polytheists believe in more than one – in other words,
divine power is spread around among several deities. Pantheists believe that
all the created world together equals deity. Related to this, but not the same,
is animism, the belief that every part of creation – both animate and inanimate
– is filled with the Divine or has a soul. Deity is equally present everywhere,
but is usually not divided into parts as with pantheism. As Unitarians, we can
choose which type of deity we believe in, or we can choose not to believe in a
deity at all.
In
conclusion, Unitarians accept that the concept of the Divine is a very complex
one, and there are no right answers (or right beliefs!). The deity you believe
in may be transcendent (that is, superior to everything else in the universe,
and usually separate, or removed from it). He (and it usually is he!) is “up
there” or “out there”, apart from humankind. Or the deity you believe in many
be immanent, in other words, wholly present with creation because it penetrates
creation in some fashion. The immanent divine is often perceived as feminine.
As Marija Gimbutas writes: “The Goddess in all her manifestations was a symbol
of the unity of all life in Nature. Her power was in water and stone, in tomb
and cave, in animals and birds, snakes and fish, hills, trees, and flowers.
Hence the holistic … perception of the sacredness and mystery of all there is
on Earth.”
This is
echoed in the Tao Te Ching, which
many Unitarians find inspirational (this lovely translation is by Stephen Mitchell):
"Every being in the Universe is an expression of the Tao.
It springs into existence, unconscious, perfect, free, takes on a
physical body, lets circumstances complete it.
That is why every being spontaneously honours the Tao.
The Tao gives birth to all beings, nourishes them, maintains them,
cares for them, comforts them, protects them, takes them back to herself,
Creating without possessing, acting without expecting, guiding
without interfering.
That is why love of the Tao is in the very nature of things."
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