Cohousing-L Mailing List: Unitarians (what's that?) [was: request for

[Fred H Olson (fholson]

I imagine a few folks are wondering...

What's a Unitarians-Universalist - a "UU" ? 

 With its historical roots in the Jewish and Christian traditions,
 Unitarian Universalism is a liberal religion -- that is, a religion that
 keeps an open mind to the religious questions people have struggled with
 in all times and places. We believe that personal experience, conscience
 and reason should be the final authorities in religion, and that in the
 end religious authority lies not in a book or person or institution, but
 in ourselves. We are a "non-creedal" religion: we do not ask anyone to
 subscribe to a creed. 

>From http://www.uua.org   (About Us)

There's a lot more at uua.org if your interested.  I'll hasten to add that
UU's come to different answers to the "religious questions" mentioned
above, including the nature and existence of God.  Hence UU's do a lot of
talking about how they see the world...  Also UU's make no claim to have
the only framework for perceiving "truth" (or whatever).  Hence there are
lots of other folks who've come upon the virtues of cohousing. 

As Joani and Rob have pointed out there is a strong affinity between some 
Unitarians-Universalists and cohousing.  I've certainly run across (and
am) one of those connections.  But as a percentage of people involved with
cohousing, I'm guessing overall UU's are a pretty small percentage.   
Fred's very wild guess:  2% +/- 1.9%  (i.e. 0.1 to 3.9% :)

BTW note that I refered to people "involved with cohousing" not "who live
in"; for example I don't live in cohousing. 

Also there are relatively small numbers of UU's in the US, and relatively
few are involved with cohousing.  One would have to do some kind of survey
to come up with a number and I'm not aware of anyone having done that.
Nevertheless there is a an notable overlap. Clearly there is a nice fit
between the ideals of cohousing and those of UU's.

Fred, who until last Feb was a long term friend but now is a member of
 First Unitarian Society in Minneapolis ( http://www.untarian.org/fus ).
 And who first learned about cohousing at a cohousing presentation at FUS
 in about  Aug 1991 by folks who later formed Monterey Cohousing -
 www.jimn.org/mococo  There are 2 UU's at Mococo that I know of.

--
Fred H. Olson  Minneapolis,MN 55411   (near north Mpls)
fholson [at] cohousing.org 612-588-9532 (7am-10pm Cent time) 
List manager of Cohousing-L & Nbhd-tc  Ham radio:WB0YQM          
Email signature details: http://www.cohousing.org/fholson


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