The Big Question - Universalism, take 1

UU Salon's Big Question for June, part 1:
What do you see as the meaning of the term "u/Universalism" for contemporary Unitarian Universalism?

In an oversimplified version of our history, Unitarian Universalism came into being through the convergence of two living but weakening Christian heresies: the belief that the orthodox personification of the divine as three persons distorted the more important point of its indivisible unity, on the one hand, and, on the other, the belief that in the long run humanity is not split between the saved and the damned, either - despite the grand Gospel rhetoric about sheep and goats. A unitary divinity paired with a unified humanity - that is the two-bit summary. As a new denomination, though, rather than as a mere federation of two old denominations, with Unitarian Universalism as a single two-word noun, ideas such as Jim Scott's "Oneness of Everything" may more accurately point the direction we are traveling. Oneness represents the unitarian idea; everything, the universalist. A unitarian universalism cannot distinguish, in essence, between God and Creation. All is and all are One. The religious or metaphysical core, if you will, is an undifferentiated pan(en)theistic, science-informed mysticism.

If you look at the covenanted Seventh Principle of the UUA, you could interpret it that way. The "interdependent web of all existence," though, has a more ecological than metaphysical feel to it. And if you look at the statement of sources codified in Article II of the UUA Bylaws, not only are Unitarianism and Universalism never once mentioned as sources of our "Living Tradition," the totality of Christianity and Judaism, unbelievably listed as a single source among five others, is reduced to "respond[ing] to God's love by loving our neighbors as ourselves." The totality of what the world's religions offer us, according to our Bylaws, is only "inspiration" in our ethical and spiritual lives. The only metaphysics recognized in the Sources is that found by individuals through direct experience without the mediation of any tradition. Humanism points us to Reason. Earth-centered traditions direct us to ecologically sound life. Prophetic men and women teach us to pursue social justice.

Our statement of common identity in Article II, then, is uninterested in u/Universalism or u/Unitarianism either one. They apparently were only the accidents of history that brought us together. The new religion in its organizing document formally claimed for itself an identity in which most of what we would call religious and spiritual is stated to be fully and only within the individual domain. As a group we are to encourage and engage in ecological living and social justice and not much more. Unitarian Universalism, as an organization, does not offer any concept of the divine or of salvation, the points key to unitarianism and to universalism, respectively.

Of course, our identity emerges in practice, rather than just in our foundational document of legal association. And when the Sources are referred to, I sometimes hear them reduced to a list of nouns modified by single adjectives: direct experience, prophetic words and deeds, world religions, Jewish and Christian teachings, Humanist teachings, and Pagan teachings. So while the Bylaws per se seem to strip the religion from the religion, common usage sometimes sees the Sources as claiming for us an identity as an Interfaith faith, though with no explanation of how that would work in reality. If we combine this adaptation of the Sources with the denomination's attempts to become a more multiracial and multicultural body of faith bodies, perhaps the only real-world meaning of Universalism for a growing portion of us is in this hope of emerging as interfaith, multiracial, and multicultural.

In other words, "universalism" now seems to stand for the elimination of the cultural privileging of sameness of any kind.