I hate, hate, hate, hate Texas (via Kevin, Patrick, Julia…) :

According to the office of Texas Comptroller Carole Keeton Strayhorn, a Denison Unitarian church isn’t really a religious organization — at least for tax purposes. Its reasoning: the organization “does not have one system of belief.”

Never before — not in this state or any other — has a government agency denied Unitarians tax-exempt status because of the group’s religious philosophy, church officials say. Strayhorn’s ruling clearly infringes upon religious liberties, said Dan Althoff, board president for the Denison congregation that was rejected for tax exemption by the comptroller’s office.

“I was surprised — surprised and shocked — because the Unitarian church in the United States has a very long history,” said Althoff, who notes that father-and-son presidents John Adams and John Quincy Adams were both Unitarians.
. . .
What constitutes religion? When and how should government make that determination? Questions that for years have vexed the world’s great philosophers have now become the province of the state comptroller’s office.

Questions about the issue were referred to Jesse Ancira, the comptroller’s top lawyer, who said Strayhorn has applied a consistent standard — and then stuck to it. For any organization to qualify as a religion, members must have “simply a belief in God, or gods, or a higher power,” he said.
. . .
Those who oppose the comptroller’s “God, gods or supreme being” test say that it can discriminate against legitimate faiths. For example, applying that standard could disqualify Buddhism because it does not mandate belief in a supreme being, critics say.
. . .
But the lack of a single creed is a hallmark of Unitarianism, Althoff said. Instead, Unitarian Universalists have seven guiding principles, including “respect for the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part,” according to the Unitarian Universalist Web site.

The group also draws from various religious and philosophical traditions, including Jewish, Christian, humanist and Earth-centered teachings, but promotes individual freedom of belief, according to the Web site. It notes that Unitarians and Universalists have operated in the United States for at least 200 years, although the two groups did not merge until 1961.
. . .
Despite its lack of a specific creed, Unitarian Universalism is as much a religion as any other, Althoff said. From his perspective, religion is not just about the answers to life’s big questions, but also calls on people to evaluate the questions themselves.

“It seems to me that any [group] that is specifically organized to address and explore the issues of what constitutes the good life, both here and perhaps in the afterworld, would qualify” as a religion, Althoff said.

The Rev. Anthony David, lead pastor of Pathways Church in Southlake, said he is disturbed by the comptroller’s decisions because it ignores Unitarian Universalists’ belief that spiritual fulfillment can emerge in “different ways at different levels.”

“It reflects an incredible misunderstanding of what a church needs to look like,” David said.

Pathways teaches that God is a term that describes the source of ultimate meaning and purpose, but the church does not advocate a one-size-fits-all theology, David said.

“Creedlessness doesn’t mean no belief or anything goes,” he said.

Having been raised in the Unitarian Universalist (and Southern Baptist) churches, this story really hits a nerve with me. People are so married to the idea that church is the place where you go to have your beliefs handed to you, that many religious folks have a hard time comprehending what Unitarian Universalism is or why it’s considered a religion. Since I’ve answered this question a lot over the years, lemme see if I can quickly sum it up :

Like the article mentioned above, the Unitarian and Universalist churches were separate until the 60’s. Their roots faiths are basically liberal offshoots of Christianity. The Unitarians believed that there was one god (as opposed to the trinity) who didn’t necessarily need to be worshiped and the Universalists who believed that everyone would end up in Heaven (unlike the Catholic Church who, at the time, was selling tickets into the afterlife). Here’s a relevant quote from a pamphlet about the origins of Unitarian Universalism :

Unitarians and Universalists have always been heretics. We are heretics because we want to choose our faith, not because we desire to be rebellious. ?Heresy? in Greek means ?choice.? During the first three centuries of the Christian church, believers could choose from a variety of tenets about Jesus. Among these was a belief that Jesus was an entity sent by God on a divine mission. Thus the word ?Unitarian? developed, meaning the oneness of God. Another religious choice in the first three centuries of the Common Era (CE) was universal salvation. This was the belief that no person would be condemned by God to eternal damnation in a fiery pit. Thus a Universalist believed that all people will be saved. Christianity lost its element of choice in 325 CE when the Nicene Creed established the Trinity as dogma. For centuries thereafter, people who professed Unitarian or Universalist beliefs were persecuted.
. . .
Two thousand years ago liberals were persecuted for seeking the freedom to make religious choices, but such freedom has become central to both Unitarianism and Universalism. As early as the 1830s, both groups were studying and promulgating texts from world religions other than Christianity. By the beginning of the twentieth century, humanists within both traditions advocated that people could be religious without believing in God. No one person, no one religion, can embrace all religious truths.

So while most churches have a “one size fits all” approach to religion, UU is more about presenting religious ideas that are consistent with the church’s principles and purposes and letting the congregation figure it out for themselves. For this reason, UU churches often have very different personalities.

When I was in high school, I was pretty active in the UU church and I’ve been to quite a few churches throughout Texas. Having sat through UU services in Dallas, Austin, San Antonio, and Houston, I can say with authority that they all have a lot more in common with Christian Churches than bigots like Texas Comptroller Carole Keeton Strayhorn would have you believe. All of the services I’ve attended have had ministers, sermons, pews, hymns, and prayers/meditations. They’ve also had plenty of references to the Bible and Jesus too, but apparently the sticking point is that Unitarian Universalism doesn’t beat you over the head with a system of beliefs that you must accept in order to be a member of the congregation. Well, if that’s the most important aspect of religion, then consider me proud to be a non-religious atheist.