Thank you for commenting. Again, I think you raise a topic that really deserves its own post, so I’m going to write a response post in the coming week.

A few quick thoughts I have…I think most of us UU leaders bear a responsibility for the inadequate discussion of UU history in our own congregations (for that matter, I don’t discuss UU history very often on Looking for Faith).

My sense is that while the UUA could put out useful materials (maybe they already do, I haven’t checked it out yet), the responsibility for exploring and promoting our UU history lies with all of us UU’s. I think most of us don’t do that as much as we should due to a number of factors, not the least of which is a concern about how to relate our modern pluralistic UUism to the Christian theological issues that were so important to our forebearers.

It could also be that there’s been a recent dearth of serious historians of UUism, so that there isn’t enough fresh new writing about our history that illuminates its relevance to today. (I may be wrong on this point. If readers can recommend any scholars of Unitarian Universalist history who have published in the last fifteen or so years, please let me know).

I question, however, whether we still make any meaningful effort to affirm and teach either of those traditions authentically. They are still upheld to a greater or lesser degree in a few of our congregations, but only sporadically and spontaneously, and not in the same sort of co-ordinated or systematic way across all of our congregations that other principles and causes are promoted. Certainly, it has been a very long time since anything programmatic came out of 25 Beacon to aid congregations or individuals in traditional Unitarian or Universalist faith formation.

Terri, your story rings true to me; often people decide to check out church in times of crisis, or significant change. I also think you are right that our worship in many congregations needs work in order to appeal to newcomers (as well as members). There’s been an interesting discussion about this recently among UU ministers, which you can read glimpses of on the UU blogs “Monkey Mind” and “Ms. Kitty.”

John, I’m glad you mentioned the impact of the baby boomers, because this is also a key point in the book. Wuthnow argues that baby boomers strayed from congregational involvement, then returned to religious engagement when they married and had children. Some people might expect the same thing will happen with today’s young adults. But the flaw in this logic is that now young adults are waiting longer to marry and have children (if they get married and/or have children at all), and so the needs of young adults today are quite different than those of the baby boomers.

I think of this as a natural out growth of the baby boomers first being ultra liberal in their world views and then later becoming much more conservative and religious. We’ve grown up with the mixed message of tolerance-but-not-too-much and making the best of what we’ve learned. Of course, that’s just my observation.

Namaste.