A Christian once described Unitarian Universalism to me as church for atheists. There was one where I grew up. It was known among gay people as the church you could go to if you were gay. Though to be honest I didn't know much about it's theology or doctrine until I went one time for pride month a few years back. Wikipedia helpfully describes the church's scripture as "officially none".

While introducing the church to us newcomers, the leader of the service explained that Unitarian Universalism exists within a tradition that goes back to the resurrection of Christ. Notably, it was the tradition of those who doubted the resurrection on the basis of reason. I guess this makes it a "heretical sect" of Christianity; my impression was that it had the structural elements of a protestant church with none of the doctrine. I found this really fascinating at the time, and I remember returning several times over the following weeks, but as evidenced by the fact that I'm not a member of my local Unitarian Universalist church, eventually I stopped.

At the time, I had a somewhat contrived reason for why I didn't think it was for me. A friend once explained that magic exists only in an internally consistent system. I'm not opposed to syncretism—if anything, I am the number one internet syncretist. But it still exists in a context, and it is in that context where it is its most powerful.

I first became interested in magick through a friend who introduced me to Chaos Magick. Chaos Magick is a postmodernist tradition of magick proposing that there is no objective reality, and that magick can operate through the manipulation of our subjective experiences. I think this is still something that resonates with me quite a bit. Chaos Magick would have you embrace various spiritual traditions to get at the essence of what makes them work. It's not a dogma so much as a practice. In this sense, it's another sort of "liberal religion", if you'll let me bend the definition of the word religion. But… that's kind of where it loses me, I think. For example, I think what makes Catholicism powerful is not the beliefs themselves, or the acts themselves, but the context they exist in. If you took one of your male friends and had him hand you a dried bread cracker, I don't think that would be a particularly magical experience on its own. I've received the advice before that in order to make it work, you need to go beyond the actions and truly embody the belief, but I don't know. Even I have a hard time handling that contradiction.

On choosing to believe

In that sense, Unitarian Universalism is the opposite of this. it is "a community of faith" first and foremost. A context in which spiritual communion can exist. It has some rituals but beyond that it's highly syncretic in terms of actual beliefs and practices. While I was attending, I felt a strange desire for someone to just tell me what I ought to believe.

At the same time, it does occur to me that the number one internet syncretist isn't going to be able to find spiritual communion anywhere if not with the lovely folks at the Unitarian Universalist church who would explicitly encourage you to get a bit weird with it.

What is spirituality without communion? I don't know if any spirituality could exist without something shared with someone or something. If I lived in a world with no other humans, then I could be in communion with nature. If I lived in a Girls' Last Tour scenario, with no humans or nature, then I could be in communion with the dying machine relics of a previous age. But instead I live in the spiritual context of a world filled with people, and to not seek communion with others would be self-sabotage.

Funny enough, now that I'm getting exposure to Catholicism again for the first time in many years through a handful of cool people I talk to on the Fediverse, I feel a bit jealous. I've said before that I'm not extremely fixed to the things I believe. It's clear to me that there are many points in my life where I could have become a Christian. It's the easiest, least controversial spiritual tradition I could have fixated on as a white Canadian. I would have gotten all the belief, practice and communion I needed. And there's a handful of specific moments in my life where had things been a bit different, it could have happened. But, perhaps it remains the project of this generation's Catholics to make our most holy religion a place where trans women don't have to be depressed men. For now I stick with my syncretism, and maybe some day the church atheists too.

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