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chipotleThe good folks in Texas have decided that
Unitarian Universalism is not a religion because it "does not have one system of belief." The state comptroller's office denied them tax-exempt status, and says for any organization to qualify as a religion, members must have "a belief in God, gods, or a higher power."
Now, I'll grant that UU is an unconventional religion -- being less about the destination than about the path (which is, I submit, what attracts people to it) -- but it has a long deist history, not to mention a close association with several of America's founders. And what about Buddhism, which isn't a theistic religion at all? Do we deny it religious status as well?
While it's easy to wonder why this is coming up now in particular, the more concretely disturbing issue is summed up in a brief excerpt from the Star-Telegram article that reported on this: "What constitutes religion? When and how should government make that determination? Questions that for years have vexed the world's great philosophers have now become the province of the state comptroller's office."
So when did the idea of separation of church and state fall so far out of favor? The country was undeniably founded on Christian principles, but it was explicitly not founded as a Christian state. Anybody else remember that? That was the specific intent of many of those founders -- people like Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, and Thomas Paine, Unitarians or Universalists all. (From the very beginning, they were the denominations of "freethinkers" -- deist and, in most ways, Christian, but always willing to question authority, even seemingly divine authority. The actual doctrines that both unitarianism and universalism name are, by canonical Christian doctrine, heretical.)
Quite frankly, I'm not sure how many of them would have approved of the idea of a tax-exempt status for any religion. (Ethan Allen, who UUs claim but who had little use for anything resembling organized religion, surely wouldn't have.) Yet I can't help suspect they'd be uncomfortable with how Texas is drawing the line.
Unitarian Universalism is not a religion because it "does not have one system of belief." The state comptroller's office denied them tax-exempt status, and says for any organization to qualify as a religion, members must have "a belief in God, gods, or a higher power."
Now, I'll grant that UU is an unconventional religion -- being less about the destination than about the path (which is, I submit, what attracts people to it) -- but it has a long deist history, not to mention a close association with several of America's founders. And what about Buddhism, which isn't a theistic religion at all? Do we deny it religious status as well?
While it's easy to wonder why this is coming up now in particular, the more concretely disturbing issue is summed up in a brief excerpt from the Star-Telegram article that reported on this: "What constitutes religion? When and how should government make that determination? Questions that for years have vexed the world's great philosophers have now become the province of the state comptroller's office."
So when did the idea of separation of church and state fall so far out of favor? The country was undeniably founded on Christian principles, but it was explicitly not founded as a Christian state. Anybody else remember that? That was the specific intent of many of those founders -- people like Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, and Thomas Paine, Unitarians or Universalists all. (From the very beginning, they were the denominations of "freethinkers" -- deist and, in most ways, Christian, but always willing to question authority, even seemingly divine authority. The actual doctrines that both unitarianism and universalism name are, by canonical Christian doctrine, heretical.)
Quite frankly, I'm not sure how many of them would have approved of the idea of a tax-exempt status for any religion. (Ethan Allen, who UUs claim but who had little use for anything resembling organized religion, surely wouldn't have.) Yet I can't help suspect they'd be uncomfortable with how Texas is drawing the line.
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no subject
Date: 2004-05-20 08:18 (UTC)To give you a little bit of a background on the UU people, they were originally founded as a split off of Christianity. So their roots are, in fact, with the same religion that Bush is a fundamentalist of. They split on the Unitarian ideal, originally -- that Jesus Christ was a teacher/philosopher, not a 'trinity' of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. So saying that these people aren't a real religion is, in my opinion, like saying most of Chrisianity isn't a real religion. The UUs do teach Christian philosophies, but they teach them alongside Buddhism, Hinduism, Zoroastrianism, Sikhism, Native American Religions, etc. Just because they're not Evangelical Bible-beating holy-rollers shouldn't declassify them as a Christian-founded religion, though. The UUs facilitate the quest for truth, but acknowledge that what is true for one person isn't true for everyone -- you must know this because you mentioned that they concentrate on the path and not the ends. Many UU members believe in a God, divine spirit, or "higher power" as the retarded Texas legislature put it.
UU is also a very well-established religion/philosophy. It's not something that sprung up out of the ground like other Texan beauties, such as the Branch Davidian cult. UU members are not gun-toting lunatics -- you would be hard pressed to find a single one carrying a gun. But with membership totaling up to something like 2 million worldwide, and with over a thousand established centers of worship just in this country, plus two seminaries at prestigious universities (University of Chicago and University of California-Berkeley), it would be difficult to deny that they've been a long-established religion that's been around for ages.
So knowing all this, plus everything you've mentioned about what is considered religion, I think it's safe to say there has to be some other driving force behind this. I doubt there's a single mind on the Texas Legislature -- Comptroller included -- that is capable of even knowing what a theology is, let alone getting to hand-pick what it is. I imagine this will go to court, quickly, and that it will be struck down as unconstitutional. Some rednecked bull-whipping cowboy fucktard isn't going to have the last say.
(Just one last note: Ben Franklin wasn't a UU -- he was a Quaker who attended a Unitarian church once or twice when he was in England).
no subject
Date: 2004-05-20 09:35 (UTC)There may well be political components to this, of course -- it's hard not to notice the timing of this, since the UU church has been rather vocal about supporting gay marriage -- but the Star-Telegram article noted that the comptroller's office has been more active than usual in denying tax-exempt status to churches in the last few years, and that most of the churches denied are "non-traditional" ones. This leads me to suspect that it's less political than an act of essentially misguided moralism.
no subject
Date: 2004-05-20 09:51 (UTC)comptroller's office has been more active than usual in denying tax-exempt status to churches in the last few years, and that most of the churches denied are "non-traditional" ones.
Even if they focus on tradition, it's been the tradition of the UUs to be liberal about their religion. And quite frankly, the argument could be made that Evangelical Christianity is not even close to being traditionalist -- that'd leave Eastern Orthodoxy and Latin Roman Catholic in the Christianity bunch.