About
UUBahai.com is a blog about Unitarian Universalism and the Bahai faith. It is a place for liberal, open-minded religious thought and dialogue — among Unitarian Bahais, UUs interested in Bahaism, Bahais interested in Unitarian Universalism, and anyone who supports or wishes to learn about the interfaith movement in general and the UU and Bahai traditions specifically.
Bahaism and Unitarian Universalism are two of the most significant progressive new religious movements of modern times. The Bahai faith emerged from Islam in the Middle East, and the Unitarian and Universalist churches grew out of Christianity in North America, during the 1800s and early 1900s. Both share a world-embracing vision and a focus on human rights, social justice and equality, democracy, international peace, and mutual respect and reconciliation among people of different races and religions.
The Bahai religion is presented in this blog from a Unitarian Bahai perspective. Unitarian Bahaism is an interpretation of the Bahai faith that more fully harmonizes with Unitarian Universalist principles and values, largely existing within UU churches, independent of the relatively conservative “Haifan” (Haifa, Israel based) Baha’i Faith organization to which most Bahais in the world belong. UUBahai.com supports the Unitarian Bahai Association and the Unitarian Universalist Association, but is not an official website of either organization. Several individual Unitarian Bahais are the authors and editors of this blog.
Topics covered here are wide ranging, and may include spiritual issues, social issues, cultural issues, organizational issues, and other subjects relevant to Bahais and Unitarian Universalists.
Tasteful and respectful comments are welcome and will be approved — even by people expressing disagreement. Comments that contain personal attacks, slander, gross factual inaccuracies, cursing, condemnation of people with different religious views, or other inappropriate content may be rejected at the sole discretion of the editors.
The editorial team of UUBahai.com can be contacted at unitarianbahai@yahoo.com.
I endorse this movement. I have blogged about the Baha’i Faith, including the new Unitarian Baha’i movement:
http://circleh.wordpress.com/category/religion/bahai-faith/
Hi there, big welcome from Interfaithing.com! We want to wish you luck with your new blog. I’ve never heard of a Unitarian Bahai so that exciting, sounds very interfaith to me. We will be in touch!
Love the blog all you folks. Your hard work never ceases to amaze me. As a meek and mild lover of Yeshua, I say to you lovers of Bahaullah and progessive thought, GREAT JOB! I look forward to all your posts. Thank you for all your hard work and inspirational insight. As a Christian, I would love nothing more than to live in a progressive Bahai World. I think it would be a povistive direction towards bringing about the reign of the Creator here on Earth and any movement thats leads in that direction I am all for. I wish you great JOY in this your first cause and endeavor.
Your faithful observer,
Mark
I have looked at various UU websites, but find the structure confusing. Apparently UU requires its member groups to be led by approved clergy trained in Bible-based seminaries, and practice Christian-derived traditions such as hymn-singing on Sundays. On the other hand, pagans and Buddhists (and now Baha’is) seem to be involved. How does this work? Do the non-Christians operate under different rules concerning governance and worship style?
By the way, I live far away from North America, in a country with no apparent UU presence. Since the UU’s approve of other religions, I suppose they should simply recognize the religions which are already here, if sufficiently liberal versions can be found. But surely that’s not how it works…?
Zla’od,
Unitarian Universalist churches are NOT required to be led by approved clergy trained in Bible-based seminaries. Most UU churches have ministers who are trained in a UU seminary, which provides an interfaith religious education. In fact, there is not even any requirement that a UU church’s leader must have a seminary degree at all, though in practice most do.
Hymn-singing is common in UU churches, but is not a requirement.
The culture of the UU churches has been influenced a lot by Christianity, since both the Unitarian and the Universalist churches (which in 1961 merged to form the Unitarian Universalist Association) were originally Christian denominations. But in recent decades, there has been a strong move in an interfaith direction in most UU churches. Some remnants of Christian religious culture remain, however, especially in UU Sunday worship services.
Many UU churches have small groups that hold meetings for specific religious interests, such as UU Buddhists, UU Pagans, UU Christians, UU Humanists, or whatever else. Such groups can do whatever they want in their meetings. It’s a very eclectic religious organization.