Yet Another Anti-Pagan, Anti-Christian, Anti-Religious Unitarian*Universalist "Church". . .

I had a quick peek at an old post titled Unitarian-Universalism and Paganism on pagan U*U Jason Pitzl-Waters' excellent 'The Wild Hunt' blog earlier today. The post is dated September 17th 2006 and addresses the Humanist/Theist divide in Unitarian*Universalism aka *The* Tiny Declining Fringe Religion and the penultimate comment by Jason Pitzl-Waters is 145 weeks old. I could not help but notice however that someone going by the handle PaganMama had the last word so far. . . Here is what PaganMama had to say about her experience of the Humanist/Theist divide in an unidentified Unitarian*Universalist "church" in south-west Florida -

Not all of the UU churches are friendly toward Pagans. I stopped attending mine as the Reverend is anti-Pagan, and actually said that she did not understand why people would believe in a religion that has no basis. That if we feel the need to believe in any religion, we should believe in one that is already established. Mine is a recon religion. So if I was paying attention in history, the Roman religion I am trying to study/pratice as closely as possible (with some needed offering substitutions) wasn't there before the big ones today?

She even had the gall to preach again Native Americans (I'm half one of those, along with my Italian ancestors). Ugh, how embarassing. We once had a visitor from another state stand up during the get to know the newbies/visitors, and when she thanked Jesus in the end for allowing her to be there with her family (surviving a potentially fatal disease) the congregation actually booed this wonderful lady. I have not been to, nor will I go again, until the current reverend leaves her position. Unfortunately, being in SW FL things are so far from each other, and the next UU church is >40 miles from my house.

end quote

So in one feel swoop unofficial U*U "Mystery Worshipper" PaganMama reveals that not only did she personally experience anti-pagan intolerance from what she describes as an anti-Pagan U*U Reverend aka a "less than excellent" U*U minister but that she also personally witnessed, or at least heard about, some quite egregious anti-Christian intolerance and bigotry on the part of the no doubt predominantly "Humanist" U*U congregation of this unidentified south-west Florida U*U "church" who reportedly intolerantly booed an out of state visitor who committed the unforgivable crime of publicly thanking Jesus in *their* U*U "church". . . Talk about graceless and rude Unitarian*Universalists. This testimony of PaganMama makes me wonder if U*U minister Kenn Hurto, the UUA's District Executive for Florida, ever paid a visit to this particularly graceless and rude U*U Unwelcoming Congregation.

There are a fair number of U*U churches in the Florida District of the UUA, more than I expected, but there are really only a small handful of U*Us churches in south-west Florida, assuming that south-west means south of Sarasota or at least south of Tampa. The Emerson Avenger is sorely tempted to play a little game of guess the anti-Pagan, anti-Christian, and most likely much more broadly anti-religious South-West Florida Unitarian*Universalist "Church", either as an update to this blog post or, rather more likely. . . as a brand-spanking new Emerson Avenger blog post.