JETPIG: The UUA has officially jumped the shark
A once respected liberal church is now the butt of international jokes
Meet Unitarian Universalism's new mascot for its values: Pootchie— I mean JETPIG (No, this is not a joke)
Unitarian Universalism (UU) has historically been a place for free thinkers and intellectuals. Renowned independent thinkers such as Julian Jaynes, Kurt Vonnegut, Louisa May Alcott, and Ralph Waldo Emerson were once among its members. Its congregations were vibrant centers for exchanging ideas, offering thought-provoking classes and sermons that stimulated mental growth. In previous years at my congregation, I attended classes ranging from Islam to mysticism to the philosophy of science.
In recent years, however, UU seminaries, many ministers, and national church leaders have increasingly embraced fringe political views and eccentric postmodernist ideologies. Examples include claims that expecting punctuality and showing one’s work is racist, calls to abolish the police, support for rioters and looters, assertions that reason and science are forms of oppression, beliefs that mathematics and logic are “white ways of thinking,” and that all whites are oppressors and all blacks are victims. It should not surprise that Robin DiAngelo’s book White Fragility was published by the UUA imprint Beacon Press.
Read: Why Robin DiAngelo-style anti-racism trainings are counterproductive
Defying its classically liberal and free-thinking traditions, the national church leadership, seminaries, and indoctrinated ministers and activists have become intolerant and dogmatic. In many UU spaces today, questioning the new postmodernist identitarian orthodoxy has resulted in UU laity being censored and ad hominem attacked.
Read: How Unitarian Universalism Became a Church of Shaming, Bullying and Coercion
Predictably, this shift has led to strife, division, toxic and dysfunctional congregational cultures, and failed ministries. There has been an ever-increasing loss of membership and congregations.
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Outsiders are dumbfounded at what has become of the UU church
Outside observers are aghast at what has become of a once proud, intelligent church. The below are some sample international reader comments to the Financial Times of London article “The Culture Wars Dividing America’s Most Liberal Church.”
“It's like a Monty Python skit.”
“This sounds like an episode of South Park.”
“I'm not sure if this is intentionally funny or not, but made me lol several times reading it.”
“Total madness. Like the French Revolution they are eating their own and hopefully will cannibalize themselves out of existence.”
Jerry Coyne, the internationally renowned University of Chicago evolutionary biology professor, organized religion critic, and academic freedoms champion, often promoted UU as the only church he would recommend due to its lack of dogma, and its championing of freedom of thought and speech. However, following its recent turn to intolerance, censorship, and dogmatism, he took back that recommendation, writing, “But as for me, if forced to pick a faith I’d now take Buddhism over Unitarian Universalism.”
Read: More national articles on how UU is circling the drain
Listen: How the Unitarian Universalist Church Melted Down
A woman commented, “I am your basic believing Presbyterian and even I recognize that when the Unitarians become ideological Puritans we are in big trouble.”
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The infantilization of UUs and dumbing down of UU
Under the paradigm of making UU a “safe space” and preventing “emotional harm,” the church and many congregations have dumbed down content, infantilizing laity by “protecting” them from diverse and challenging ideas. The word standing was removed from the slogan “Standing on the Side of Love” because the word was deemed “harmful” to those who cannot stand. When I told this to a non-UU friend, she thought I was joking.
My mother, who quit UU and her congregation, said, “I joined a church not a daycare.” I joked to a congregant, “You know the For Dummies books? The UUA has come out with Theology for Infants.”
Read: Progress Requires Treating People Like Adults: Infantilizing minorities, the disabled and the young is regressive
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Officially jumping the shark: The UUA’s new cartoon mascot
At the 2024 UUA General Assembly, the UU’s 7 Principles and 6 sources were undemocratically removed and replaced by postmodernist identitarian inspired values. The mascot for the new values is JETPIG, based on the acronym for the new values. Below are different pictures of the new mascot:
One UU wrote about JETPIG, “Beyond the association with jets and pigs, and the awful art— it trivializes what are being proposed to be our deepest values . . . Our statement of faith shouldn't be a marketing campaign with buzzwords that will soon be dated (as dated as a pig in a jetpack already is.) Faith is serious stuff.”
Another wrote: “Please say no to JETPIG. I personally don't think it's funny or cute or represents us and I hope I'm not alone.”
The Pootchie in the first line of this post was an allusion to The Simpsons episode about Pootchie, the ill-conceived cartoon character (Watch below link).
Leaders of the UUA and many ministers in their ideological bubble seem completely unaware that, to many, the church now resembles a sketch from Saturday Night Live or Monty Python.
It is heartbreaking to see what has become of the UUA. Luckily my local Congregation pays absolutely no attention to those idiots. JETPIG indeed!
Someone should track all the disaffected clergy and congregants who have pulled away from this presumptuous power mongering. A small movement, dwindling and divided. Sad and angering. I once served a religion, not a few groups' pet causes as if they are the only way to be religious, questions and differences unwelcome.