Newsflash (to Me): The World Wide Web was Invented by a Unitarian Universalist

Ok, I’m thinking this is something all the other Unitarian Universalists already know, but it’s news to me. The World Wide Web was invented by a UU — Tim Berners-Lee! How cool is that?

And Berners-Lee has written about the similarities between the values of Unitarian Universalism and of the World Wide Web. He writes in Weaving the Web: The Original Design and Ultimate Destiny of the World Wide Web:

There’s a freedom about the Internet: As long as we accept the rules of sending packets around, we can send packets containing anything to anywhere. In Unitarian Universalism, if one accepts the basic tenets of mutual respect in working together towards some greater vision, then one finds a huge freedom in choosing one’s own words that capture that vision, one’s own rituals to help focus the mind, one’s own metaphors for faith and hope.

Unitarian Universalism is like the World Wide Web! Both are places where diverse ideas are openly explored and where communities develop — there’s freedom and cooperation. Having grown up in no religious tradition (and therefore a very large amount of religious choice), I sometimes take for granted that Unitarian Universalism is the “faith of the free.” Yet the tension between individual freedom and communal responsibility is one of our defining characteristics.

In our church life, our emphasis on freedom gives us opportunity to maintain close bonds to one another, even as our individual beliefs may develop in new directions. But those bonds also involved responsibilities — the responsibility to care for one another, to support the congregation, and to nurture our own spiritual health.

Shortly after reading the above excerpt from Berners-Lee, I came across Rev. Christine Robinson’s post “Saying Yes, Saying No.” She explains that in thriving congregations, leaders are given the freedom to develop their ideas. However, even in such climates of innovation, the wise minister still must quash projects that threaten to damage the congregation or its members.

Robinson describes the programs that have thrived in her congregation, where there is a sense of experimentation (within appropriate boundaries):

I have to comment here that I have learned that I’m a very poor predictor of which of these programs will “fly,” so it’s a good thing I don’t feel the need to be controlling. Who would have thought that the group going to work in New Orleans would raise $7,000 by making one appeal on a Sunday morning?…Or that the little group of techies who wanted to video-tape the sermon to put up on Utube and public access TV would morph into our current video ministry which serves two branches, a third service on our site, videos on our website and a sermon subscription service to lay-lead congregations?

The Unitarian Universalist emphasis on freedom need not be limited to theology. Our congregations become vibrant places when we re-envision the whole process of “doing church,” challenging our preconceived ideas about what we are capable of accomplishing together.

P.S. For more resources on Tim Berners-Lee and his engagement with Unitarian Universalism, see…

Berners-Lee’s 1998 webpage exploring similarities between the development of the web and the values of Unitarian Universalism.

The UUWorld’s 1999 article by E.J. Graff entitled “Keeping Cyberspace Free: Tim Berners-Lee and the World Wide Web.”