Religion that makes us believe we are not accepted and loved just as we are is a problem. If we loved and accepted people as they are rather than trying to save or convert them, the world we be a much more loving and peaceful place.

I would suggest that the highest mission of humanity is the creation of beloved community, not the conversion of persons to the same religious perspective. When we accept and love each other as we are and cultivate a sense of true belonging without the threat of hell or exile from the community, then we can develop the trust needed to challenge one another to grow together in expressing love and justice more effectively in the world. Our motivation comes from the positive incentive to grow more fully as persons into beloved community rather than from fear.

The experience of love and acceptance in community should be experienced as a given and not as something we have to gain or for which we have to prove ourselves worthy through accepting a certain set of beliefs or doctrines. Very few things are more damaging to persons than having their love and acceptance by their families and communities be predicated on the way they believe or on having to reject who they experience themselves to be.

When love and acceptance of persons by religious communities is predicated on adhering to a certain set of beliefs, religion becomes a tool for controlling persons rather than a means of liberation. Sadly, it is difficult to break free from the control that some religious communities have over persons, especially when one has been told over and over that one will be somehow estranged from the Divine if one does not believe and behave as the religious community requires.

Often the conditional love and acceptance that we experience within religious communities that require adherence to a set of beliefs and doctrines in order to be included become a substitute for an unconditional love and acceptance of who we are. When we realize that the offering of conditional love and acceptance is more about controlling us rather than loving and accepting us, it can be experienced as a heartbreaking loss of community and belonging.

When one begins to question, challenge, or reject beliefs and doctrines upon which love and acceptance are predicated in some religious communities, that person is perceived as a threat and no longer receives the conditional love and acceptance they once experienced. They enter into a form religious exile, and their admission back into the religious community can only come through recanting their “heretical” beliefs or through suppressing who they truly are.

Having been a member of a religious community in my youth in which love and full acceptance were conditional and predicated on adhering to a prescribed set of beliefs about God and Jesus, I know first hand what the backlash feels like when one questions such a system of conditional love and acceptance. I know what it feels like to no longer be fully accepted in a community that had once been so important to me and my religious identity.

Back in the early days of Facebook when I was much more likely to connect with anyone and everyone whom I knew from my youth, I very publicly proclaimed my views that all persons regardless of their sexual orientation or gender identity should be fully included in the life and ministry of our religious communities. I also made it clear that I did not believe in the existence of hell or that one has to believe in supernatural miracles or identify as a Christian to be included in the love and acceptance of the Divine Mystery within beloved community. I have held these views since my time in seminary in the late 1980s and early 1990s, and I had even written about them and given presentations about them in various settings, but that is not quite the same as having the expression of my position go somewhat viral on Facebook. Ah yes, the double edged sword of social media.

I lost track of the number of messages I received condemning me for my views and attempting to shame me or guilt me into either recanting my views or leaving my role as a minister within a Christian denomination. Any time I write about these views on my blog, I am also certain to receive similar responses. Although these responses have led me to experience my own measure of religious trauma, it is somewhat mild in comparison to the religious trauma that so many persons have experienced in their religious communities when they discover that a love and acceptance they once thought was unconditional actually has so many strings attached that they cannot be who they really are and remain within the religious community.

This is why the third principle of Unitarian Universalism, “acceptance of one another and encouragement to spiritual growth in our congregations” is so important. It reminds us that our religious communities can be a place where love and acceptance are a given and not something that has to be earned through believing or behaving a certain way. And in this context of love and acceptance we can challenge each other to grow spiritually together in our congregations and in our communities.

The third principle calls us to cultivate communities that are places where we all can be who we truly are, places of respite to heal from religious trauma, and places to grow spiritually and live more fully into beloved community where all are loved and accepted and where all belong.