rivka | (no subject)

I'm convinced that one of the reasons why Unitarian-Universalism is such a small denomination is because, in general, we suck at proselytizing.

At a nursery school birthday party last month, one of the other moms took one look at my chalice necklace and said, "You're a UU!" She told me that she'd been raised UU, and had never found a local church - she'd visited First Unitarian about 15 years ago and hadn't been impressed. I told her a little about how things have changed, and she sounded very enthusiastic.

And yet I still sweated for two whole days about whether it would be pushy to e-mail her and let her know that there's going to be a special early Christmas Eve service for families with young children. Because what if she had just been being polite? What if they didn't celebrate Christmas? How could I word a note so that it would be warm and welcoming but not creepy and overbearing?

I finally sent the damn e-mail, and she wrote back immediately to say how happy she was to hear about the early service. Apparently they've thought about going to First Unitarian on Christmas Eve for each of the past two years, but haven't been able to make it work with their daughter's bedtime. So I should definitely count her in, and thanks!

I don't know why that was so hard for me. I mean, obviously aggressive fundamentalist-Christian-style conversion attempts are completely repellent, but I don't know why it's so hard for me to say, "This has been a great thing for me, and maybe you might want to give it a try sometime."

Along those lines: The Young Adults in our church (roughly aged 18-35, although probably most concentrated in the mid-to-late twenties) made a YouTube video in which they talk about why they are UUs and what they believe. Included in the video are Alex's beloved friend and former nanny Dorian; Jen, one of our closest friends at church; and both of my fellow OWL co-teachers. I think it's a lovely and thoughtful exploration of religious experience, but that may be mostly because I know these people. Anyway, I thought I'd put the link up here in case anyone wants to check it out.

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I don't know why that was so hard for me. I mean, obviously aggressive fundamentalist-Christian-style conversion attempts are completely repellent, but I don't know why it's so hard for me to say, "This has been a great thing for me, and maybe you might want to give it a try sometime."

I suspect part of the problem might be that aggressive conversion attempts make people hypersensitive to any kind of conversion attempt. Considerate people seem more likely to notice hypersensitivity and try to work around it.

That's an interesting little video. It does get a bit long, but I think if someone is watching it to really get an idea of what the UU church is like, they'll watch it all the way through.

I used to joke with my friend

probably_lost about what aggressive evangelical UUs would be like. "I want you to believe! I want you to believe whatever is personally meaningful to you! And I want you to behave in an ethical manner that respects the dignity of others! Here, let me give you a pamphlet with the list of principles that we affirm..."

You've read the Jon Carroll (http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2005/04/08/DDG27BCFLG1.DTL) column, yeah?

Edited 2007-12-06 20:27 (UTC)

I have seen that and found it quite amusing. I may have even e-mailed it to Curtis because it reminded me of his joke about aggressively evangelical UUs. I don't know why Jon Carroll isn't syndicated...

Hey, my mail lady asked me today if I went to UU. She really wanted to talk about being atheist in the southern US, but she might have invited me to the local UU (where she goes) if I'd sounded interested.