Hey! So, I have been UU my whole life. I believe in god as a non-sentient energy that everything exists as part of, with the language of that energy being manifestation. I also believe in reincarnation. I work in plant conservation and ecology with the drive to promote environmental justice on an interspecies scale, along with just loving my career field. All of that is to say, I am very liberal, spiritual, and open minded with my beliefs.

I have been in a relationship of 3 years just about (with our anniversary coming up in January) with my partner. He is amazing and thoughtful in almost every way. However, he is a very devoted Christian, and he is unwilling to compromise on anything religious. (He has a lot of medical trauma, and one time he died briefly during a surgery. He says he say a vision that reaffirmed his beliefs. I have my own way of interpreting his vision with my own beliefs.) We try to avoid talking about our religious beliefs, and whenever we do talk about them, he is clear that he does not like my beliefs. His parents are very religious and republican (they don’t believe in climate change…), and apparently they have very strong thoughts on Unitarian Universalism. He told me to never mention it around them. From this though, he is unwilling to ever explore UU despite it being an open religion. I have gone to a few church events with him and his family, but I always feel slightly off-put when his church talks about me going to hell (I don’t believe in Hell but that’s not great energy to be around). One time, I also researched and emailed with more liberal and open minded church for a few weeks, and then I asked him to go with me to one of those. He instead told me that he already planned on going to his parents churches those days. We have talked about exploring other churches, and he was receptive then. I just wonder now if he doesn’t actually mean what he says in those conversations. We talk about our future all the time, but, occasionally, he says that I will believe what he believes. I don’t love that. I feel very proud of what I believe in, and it guides me through how I interpret the world. With the person I love hating my values, I feel like I should be ashamed of them sometimes, and I can’t talk about what I believe.

Further, I have deep problems with the whole “humans are over all other creatures” belief in christianity since I work in environmental conservation. I have had to had conversations on the plant-interspecies justice side where I ask if there would theoretically be a plant-Jesus, and he was not very interested. Hahaha

I am actually about to head out the door alone to go to my first UU event in like 7 years. I’m actually very excited to be in that environment again.

I guess, I’m just wondering what this group might think of all of that. What would you guys do? How would you approach this situation, and how would you have a conversation about that if you were in my shoes? And have any of you ever been in a situation like that? How did it go?