This was a comment from Chalicechick to the Discuss! thread, promoted to a post of its own for pertinence

A few months ago, as an experiment, I asked the UU theology mailing list if anyone had seen or experienced any atheists giving theists grief or vice versa IN THE LAST COUPLE OF YEARS. I emphasize that last bit because lots of people have stories of mistreated theists that are a decade or two old, and they always seem to tell them as if they happened yesterday. I wondered if it ever happened anymore or if we just talked about it like it did.

I got one "yes" response, and that it was an incident from several years ago and soon after, his/her church got a new minister who made it clear that this behavior wouldn't be tolerated and there hasn't been an issue since.

That one "yes" aside, literally no one had seen any anti-theism or anti-atheism in their churches on the last couple of years. But several people still announced that "theism vs. atheism" was this incredibly important divide within UUism. I really don't understand why. To me it seems like the idea of people being actually mistreated and churches being divided on "theism vs anti-theism" or "atheism vs. humanism" is a big Boogeyman that scares lots of UUs but is mostly illusory.

Do you see "the God question" as something that divides your church right now? Have you seen anyone actually treated badly because of their faith in the last couple of years? If not, are se sure it's really that big a deal anymore?

Those who remember my many forum posts and debates may well have gotten the impression that I have problems with UU. Well, it’s way past time to correct that impression. Fact is I do have problems with the UUA- but I love UU. To explain why, I must discuss what a religion is...

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(Caveats: Professionally, I am a party planner. I wrote this one a one-hour lunch break while shoveling down two day old pasta salad. Be kind. )

To me, the good news of UUism is that we are a voice of integrity of the mind and spirit in a world where integrity of any sort is talked about a lot more than it is practiced. To be a UU is to live an examined life.

I said things like “I believe in the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body and the life everlasting” for years without thinking through what those words meant...

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Scott Wells over at Boy in the Bands started a lively conversation about whether authentic Universalist and Unitarian beliefs no longer have a home within the UUA. In the course of that conversation, visitor Kim asked what it is that UU Christians want in a UU church, considering that (in her experience) many UU churches don't like to talk about theology. It's a great question that I tried to answer over there, but I'm not sure if Scott's blog host accepted my post, and in any event I think it also deserves its own stand-alone thread. Here's my answer again, slightly edited.

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Awhile ago, I surmised that it might be cool if the UU bloggers started a "blog carnival" a la the carnival of feminists. Every two weeks, a different member of the UU blogger community would collect up links to all of the most interesting posts.

Well, this is a more permanent version of that. I'd really like this to be one of the places where we send new people who find our blogs and ask about UUism. I'd like the UU bloggers to get to the point where when they write a post that they think it particularly good, they send it over here right away.

So send me some posts already!

CC