I'd say that Unitarians were God's thoughtful people, but they make no particular claims about God. In some parts of the country that takes real courage.
My first wife and I joined a Unitarian church in suburban DC and raised our kids there. She and I were from different religious backgrounds - in a way, I was from different religious backgrounds, raised in Judaism but with Catholic and Southern Baptist relatives. We both practiced Buddhist meditation (and found others there that did the same.)
Unitarians tend to be intellectual, verbal, literate, thoughtful, and from a variety of backgrounds. Some are atheist, some are agnostic, others believe in God in a variety of Eastern and Western forms. Some would describe themselves as "ethically Christian," although others would not - and it is not an exclusively Christian group. The running joke among Unitarians was that the name "Jesus" is only heard when someone falls down the stairs, and that the only sacrament is the black coffee brewed after services.
The Unitarian Universalist (or UU) denomination is the product of a merger between Unitarianism and Universalism, two centuries-old Christian denominations. Unitarianism was founded on the belief that the Trinity was illogical and that there could only be one divinity. Universalists believed that God was too merciful to condemn anyone to an eternity in hell, and that even the most evil person would get out of there eventually (after fifty thousand years or so). Eventually they merged and abandoned all dogma. (You can read the Knoxville church's website for a summary of beliefs.)
When my work sent me to Hungary, I arrived in the only nation on earth that ever had a Unitarian state (during the reign of King John Sigismund, who decreed religious tolerance in 1568). Ralph Waldo Emerson is the closest thing to a saint that UU's have. An ordained minister in the church, his Harvard Divinity School address was revolutionary in its day.
Emerson rejected all claims of the supernatural in the Bible. He said that miracles were "monster," in the original meaning of that word as "against nature." In a characteristically striking turn of phrase, he said they were "not one with the blowing clover and the falling rain." Emerson was telling us that the beauty of the manifest world should be enough.
Is it worth killing a person for believing that?
My current (and future) wife and I were married by the Rev. Forrest Church at All Souls Unitarian in Manhattan. (Dr. Church is now teaching us how to face death.) When at several points in my career jobs came up in the Deep South, I always checked to see if there was a Unitarian Church nearby. One of those job possibilities, which I chose not to pursue, was in Knoxville.
Jim Adkisson of Powell, Tennessee was the man with his finger on the trigger. He had mental health problems, and a hard and bitter life. He apparently left a letter explaining that he hated the church for its liberal beliefs and opinions. And the church had a sign outside indicating it welcomed gays and lesbians.
Who really killed those Unitarians? Was it the preachers who spread hatred and intolerance? The politicians who court and flatter them instead of condemning their hate speech? The media machine that attacks liberals, calls them "traitors" and suggests you speak to them "with a baseball bat"? The economic system that batters people like Jim Adkisson until they snap, then tells them their real enemies are gays and liberals and secular humanists?
If you ask me, it was all of the above.
You killed them, Pat Robertson. You killed them, Pastor Hagee. You killed them, Ann Coulter. You killed them, Dick Morris and Sean Hannity and the rest of you at Fox News.
The shooting began while the children of the church were putting on a musical based on "Annie." One broad-shouldered church member blocked the bullets from hitting other people, and died. You don't need to believe in dogma to be a hero. Remember that song from "Annie"? It probably got on your nerves like it got on mine. "The sun'll come out tomorrow."
The sun coming out. That's natural. It's one with the blowing clover and the falling rain. But a man driven insane, then programmed by society to kill people just because they're loving and tolerant?
That's monster.
RJ Eskow blogs:
A Night Light
The Sentinel Effect: Healthcare Blog
Future-While-U-Wait
RJ Eskow at the Huffington Post
Follow RJ Eskow on Twitter: www.twitter.com/rjeskow
Loading comments… 
Right wing hate media is a new form of *violent* pornograph
Violent pornograph
Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote, “It is to the credit of human nature, that...it loves more readily than it hates. Hatred, by a gradual and quiet process, will even be transforme
It is that "constant new irritation
It is that "constant new irritation
A mad man can take the ideas of any group and distort and pervert them for his own terrible use. History gives us numerous examples where the best and most noble of ideas are tortured to suit the madness of mankind
===
Right.
And the Columbine Massacre and all those suicides are the fault of heavy metal and goth culture icons.
You killed them, Ozzy, and you kiiled them Judas Priest, and you killed them Metallica.
Jeez Louise, RJ.
It's just like ol' Pete Townsend said, 30 years ago: "Meet the new boss. Same as the old boss".
Let's get real here: the overwhelmi
It's simply absurd to blame either Marilyn or Pat for the destructiv
His show follows Randi Rhodes and I usually hear the beginning of this show. I normally turn it off within a few minutes. This was his opening tirade.
If you can imagine, his radio show is much more venomus tha the TV show.
It is very sad to me that this man took out his rage, frustratio
Let's call it for what it is and always has been......
Disgusting and sadly unsurprisi
When I heard about this shooting last night, it felt like someone had opened fire on my family. Yet what I hang onto today is the same thing I hung onto when 9/11 happened: I work in a blood bank and on 9/11, just when it seemed that darkness and evil had taken over and God had left the scene, I looked over the overlook into our lobby and saw people--hu
Our only response to evil must be to be even more good, to do even more good. As the famous and very wise phrase tells us: better to light one candle than to curse the darkness.
That said, my heart is very heavy today and I hope we will all keep the members of the Tennessee Valley UU Church in our hearts and prayers.
I was raised in a great Unitarian Universali
It is sad that this hate-fille
...CONTINU
"SmackWate
Breaks ones heart, but as you've clearly pointed out, and correctly so, there is shared blame, many have blood on their hands indeed.
"Now Big Jim the Chief stood for law and order, said, we got to clean up the streets for our wives and daughters.
And so it goes... Agape.
"When will they ever learn, when will we ever learn?"
Name one incident where a conservati
A lefty would have thrown a pie.
No, you can't. McCain is stalked all over the country by lefties who heckle and disrupt his speeches. Name one incident like this that's ever happened at an Obama event.
A lefty would have thrown a pie? Oh, please. I don't have time to list all the violence committed by lefties in recent years, but here are some:
an anti-war activist shot and killed an airman. Demonstrat
And many more.
The first thing that any corrupt fascist regime does is it turns the population against the intelligen
All this is vital to stop the public understand
The Nazis understood this very, very well. I think they'd appreciate George Bush's Bully Nation.
What makes me really sad is the people being manipulate
Sadness turns to sickness when thinking about the people driving this from the top: they are morally bankrupt and have made their choice to manipulate people. It's sickening that more moderate Republican
Rovian politics must end.
I listen to both conservati
You also stated that you believe its the government that is the enemy. Why is that, simply because Bush is in the White house? The real question is how would you feel if a Democrat was in the White house with a filibuster proof majority in both the House and Senate? What makes it even scarier is the fact that the Liberals who shouted so vehemently against it now willingly embrace it simply because it matches their political ideology. The current House and Senate is an embarrassm
Will those who are always talking about people needing to take responsibi
We can only hope so. In the meantime, don't mourn ... ORGANIZE!
I am a Catholic now but I was married in a UU church many years ago. My children were in UU performanc