Hello all! I have been greatly heartened by the last time I posted here regarding spiritual issues. When I post on Christian subs, it is kind of...conservative most of the time. God is big!

To clarify, I identify as UU and believe all Gods are one. However, my therapist is Christian and so when I speak to her, I use God for the ease of communication. I learned about the Christian idea of discernment from a Christian minister with UU experience - essentially if you feel calm and at peace, that would be discernment. Unease = not.

(I understand that all these are big ideas, I am simplifying so I don't write an entire novel here. I have been UU for about 15 years now.)

I am at an in-between space in my life where I need to make clear choices about certain things, including careers and choice of residence. Understandably these are not easy to make! I have done some good work with a UU spiritual director - in our conversations, a certain career choice felt "right" and gave me great peace of mind.

While working on this with my therapist before (this was before the UU director) she once asked me "what does God want you to do?" While God has occasionally answered with thunder and trumpets before (most of my many spiritual experiences have been numinous in nature) I felt peace in contemplation.

Putting the two and two together, I was wondering if God was answering because discernment = peace with a certain decision?

I am well aware that the spirit cannot be fully comprehended with the mind, yet we all have minds, which is how I am writing this. Since I am not part of any congregation at the moment, I thought I would ask here. I am continuing to pray on it.

For those who responded to my initial post, thank you for welcoming me! I have stated that I'm looking for a Universalist church modeled after the Universalist Church of America. It's been extremely disconcerting that I haven't been able to find such a place of worship. Unfortunately, there's no interest in starting one in my area, leaving me with little options. I'm comfortable enough attending a UU church but do feel somewhat out of place. My beliefs are squarely in the 19th incarnation of Universalist theology, yet I'm not a Unitarian. There is but one congregation (First Universalist in Providence, RI) that fits the bill but I live too far to attend services and be an active member. My other options are to worship with the Sanctuary Downtown (Denver) and Community Universalist Church (Christian Universalist Association). Both options don't fit, leading to a crisis of sorts. First Universalist doesn't offer live streaming nor do they record their services.

I am unique when it comes to being a Unitarian Universalist. My beliefs follow those of one of the denominations that founded the UUA, the Universalist Church of America (1886 to 1961). My beliefs as a Trinitarian Universalist differ greatly from those of the majority of you, which is good. My views are continually shifting, as does my understanding of religious expression. What draws me to UU is its emphasis on action and [radical] love. My confession of faith, which is a paraphrase of the Winchester Profession of Faith, is as follows:

I. I truly believe that the Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments reveal God's character as well as mankind's responsibility, interest, and ultimate destiny.

II. I believe in one God, whose nature is Love, revealed in one Lord Jesus Christ by one Holy Spirit of Grace, who will eventually restore the entire human family to righteousness and happiness.

III. I maintain that holiness and genuine happiness are closely intertwined and that believers should take care to keep order and do selfless acts because these things are beneficial and helpful to humanity.

Thank you to everyone that suggested I go. I did email them and got two responses saying to wear my mask and that I was welcome to come.

It’s a very small group of people that are a little older. They don’t have a minister so they take turns doing the service. Todays was on the history of Valentine’s Day and love. It was so wonderful.

It was everything I wanted it to be and I will be going back!

Former Catholic and now UUs, how do you reconcile the similarities? Jesus!!!! (For lack of a better term)

Don’t know if this is the right place to post this, but it honestly felt like the only place I could, as well as potentially fitting with UU’s philosophy of respecting all belief systems, and besides the idea is in my head and I just feel the need to write it out. Forgive me if I am wrong in posting this here.

So, as the titles says, it’s no secret that atheism (or perhaps more accurately anti-theism) absolutely dominates the spiritual conversation on Reddit. r/atheism is a big sub, anti-religious subs seem to outnumber the straightforwardly religious ones (they are certainly pushed further by the site’s search and algorithms), subs like r/religion — ostensibly devoted to discussion about religion — are instead devoted almost entirely to atheists criticizing and trying poke holes in it (the same “gotcha!”/mic drop atheist talking points like “why does god let babies have cancer?” are repeated ad nauseam) and many of the larger religious subs regularly have zealous atheists storming in to hijack the conversation. Even non-religious subs occasionally have them barge in to tear down others’s religion (mention Catholicism in any way and chance of sparks flying increases exponentially). Atheists are upvoted and rewarded constantly for their opinions, to an almost suspicious degree.

And yet they are the minority; Reddit atheists continuously claim their lack of belief is rising, but even a cursory reading of the data shows this is untrue and can only be claimed through blatant skewing of information to support such a narrative; namely lumping atheism in with three other demographics — secular, irreligious, and agnostic people — and acting like this combined grouping all represents atheists… when they actually form the smallest demographic in that grouping, being vastly outnumbered by people who are theistic, agnostic, and/or influenced by religious principles but do not participate in any organized religion — e.g., people who identify as Christian but do not regularly attend church, people who express general spirituality but do not ascribe to any specific group, people who simply haven’t decided they believe, etc..

The idea that religious belief is “dying” or “declining” is farcical clickbait; it is true and provable that attendance of churches and such is declining in much of the developed world, but church attendance does not equal faith; many people these days believe in higher powers and the supernatural and simply do not see organizations like churches or such as necessary to express or hold that faith. I myself am among them. I believe strongly in God and the afterlife, but see churches as mere places of teaching/advice/shelter rather then some necessary aspect of believing. No matter which way you slice it, atheism is a small minority, with the overwhelming majority of people identifying with some sort of faith; religion may be becoming more personal, but it is going nowhere soon.

So why do atheists so utterly dominate Reddit? And could the site culture in anyway change to foster more equal religious discussion on Reddit? Clearly these angry, intolerant atheists are a vocal minority and social media does not represent the whole (I have not known many atheists in real life — proving the point about them being a minority — but those I did know were good, normal people who respected others), but I have not encountered this problem with actual religious groups online; the extremists are there, but do not dominate as with atheists.

To be clear; this is not to suggest that atheism is any less valid a belief then any other. Such an idea would be contrary to the ideals of this movement. I am simply seeking to start conversation about the possibility of improving online discourse (if that’s possible; as an internet veteran, I have generally leaned more into simply ignoring The Discourse^TM due to its lack of value).