Reply #16: As has been mentioned here, old Transcendentalists have...

[TreasonousBastard]

little to do with modern UUs, even though modern UUs love to talk about them.

I grew up Missouri Synod Lutheran-- first communion, confirmation, elementary and high schools... the whole thing. There was a consistancy of thought that I admired, and the secular education was great, but from childhood I never seriously bought into the theology. Didn't take long after HS to drop the church. A couple of months I think it was.

Fooled around with a few things spiritual, but most ended up bullshit. Took me 30 years or so to get around to looking into serious alternatives, serious being defined as something that's been around for a few generations and had time to mature, and I started looking at Quakerism and the creedless ways of worshipping an undefined God in undefined ways. Works for me-- since creeds and doctrines about the Almighty are interpretations of scripture and have no way of being tested or proven, there is little point to having them at all, except to define the particular sect.

After moving to an area without a large Meeting, I started going to the local UU church, and it's great for social sctivism, community and such, but it is a spiritual vacuum. Although I'm a Universalist myself, they just take it a bit far and, in order to not offend anyone, take no stand on God at all, or even on the possibility of God existing. I don't mind atheists, but for them to call the shots in a "church" just seems a bit much.

Curiously, there are also Quaker meetings where any mention of Jesus brings frowns, which is also a bit odd, but this is one result of creedlessness.