Background and Faith Stance as of February 2022

This is the first of two week 1 discussion questions from my Spring 2022 course Making Sense of Theology through Pathways Theological Education.

By way of self-introduction, describe your denominational background and your current faith stance in general terms using the concepts of embedded and deliberative theologies. What has drawn you to taking this course?

The terms embedded and deliberative theology come from our textbook, Stone and Duke How to Think Theologically, 3rd Edition. Embedded Theology is "the understanding of faith disseminated in the church and assimilated by its members in their daily lives." Deliberative Theology is "a process of reflecting on multiple understandings of the faith implicit in the life and witness of Christians in order to identify and/or develop the most adequate understanding possible."

I was raised in the Unitarian-Universalist Association and my parents were essentially theist. We celebrated most holidays - secular, Jewish and secularized Christian (in the case of Christmas and Easter) - and the most commonplace of family events with my mom's best friend who was like an aunt or second-mom to us. She was a devout Jew and we lived in a predominantly Jewish neighborhood for 4 years of my childhood (as in, there wasn't anywhere nearby to buy bread during Passover.) I gained a strong embedded understanding of Judaism (in addition to UUism) and learned as an adult that the only reason we didn't go to synagogue was that my father was opposed to Zionism and our local synagogue was strongly Zionist. As I was in my teens and twenties, I gained more of an understanding and connection to Unitarian Universalism and as part of seeking more of a deliberative understanding, found a historic Unitarian (Unitarian Church of America) book at a local used bookstore, Letter and Spirit by Richard Metcalf. This book lead me to an understanding of Christianity that I could and did embrace. (Like many Unitarians of the 1800's he was also a universalist.) I joined the Christian small group in my church and started paying attention to what the UUCF (Unitarian Universalist Christian Fellowship) was doing.  

I had thought about ministry in my 20's but it didn't feel right and I ended up with a career in tech. In my late 40's I both had to stop doing tech work for medical reasons and realized I had a call to chaplaincy. As I looked for options on how to do that without traditional seminary (particularly without meeting the UUA denominational requirements with their strong focus on preparing for the business of managing a church, often at the expense of pastoral care training), I decided to take part in an extremely accessible undergraduate fundamentalist focused chaplaincy program, because while many of the people in need of spiritual care in my area (and the US in general), have a fundamentalist or evangelical embedded theology (including those who have rejected but not replaced them), I really knew very little about it. Studying fundamentalist theology on a deliberative basis was not entirely a sociological experiment for me. In particular, in having to study apologetics against universal salvation, I found the arguments so uncompelling that further study and reflection made me realize that to me universalism is the core of Christianity.  As I was finishing that program, I contacted the Christian Universalism Association asking about their education program and they basically recruited me to join their denomination (I don't think we have publicly announced yet that we filed the IRS paperwork to officially be a denomination rather than a parachurch organization in January, but it isn't a secret.) I have been gaining both embedded and deliberative theology experience around Christian Universalism since, helping start an online CUA church and working on my chaplain track ordination requirements. 

An important aspect of my personal theology is that I believe very strongly that neither trinitarianism or unitarianism should be used as part of a test of belief. This is in part because I have seen trinitarianism be a huge stumbling block for people's belief. I think it is also problematic that they are often poorly understood even by many who claim a belief in one or the other. I personally lean towards trinitarianism, but I suspect that they are merely examples of imperfect models for understanding the nature of God and the relationship of God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit and that in the next life, we will understand they are both (all) incomplete. I believe these models are only useful to the extent that they improve our relationship with God and need to be released if they are a stumbling block.

I decided to take this class because I really enjoyed Understanding The Bible as a Progressive Christian. This class looked interesting and on a practical level, I believe it will help me formalize some of the ideas I need to put into the essays I am required to write as part of my candidate process for the CUA.