How do the guiding principles of your church stack up to the guiding principles of Starbuck's Corporation?

TGW has the story, relevant quote:

"Embracing diversity and treating people with dignity is one of the guiding principles of our corporation,"

To help evaluate, use this handy guide:

• If your church opposes these principles, or attacks those groups who support them, then it's time for some soul big-time searching.
  
• If your church speaks out of both sides of its mouth, saying love the "sinner", but hate the "sin", and then spends most of its time hating the "sin" without regard for the real-life consequences of the "sinner", then maybe its time for reform. After all, what church wants to be upstaged morally by a coffee company?
  
• If your church is truly guided by such principles, then it's time to sing a round of the Hallelujah Chorus. (Check the extended entry for the story of why that author feels that the UU is a truly "spirit-filled" church.)

My road back began at age fourteen when a friend, the son of a minister, told me about Jesus' love for me. Naturally, having grown up unloved, this message had a profound impact on me. I dedicated nearly a decade of my life, thereafter, to Christianity, remaining active in church, attending a Baptist University, and maintaining a brief enrollment in seminary. Oddly, however, during those years I found this same religion that, for the first time in my life, found me worthy of love and acceptance, was teaching me to reject others because of shallow differences in belief and lifestyle.

It wasn't until I came near the end of my college career that my life's circumstances forced me to take a good look at this disturbing paradox. It seems my younger sister, after a negative encounter with the law, was forced into counseling. It didn't take long for her court appointed counselors to figure out she had been molested by my father. Well, the family cat was out of the bag! My father was arrested and my older sister also admitted years of being tormented by his sexual abuse. My mother, who it turns out, was aware of my father's behavior all along, found her life in shambles. She was completely devastated with no where to turn, so, she decided to turn to me, the member of the family studying the ministry. "Todd," she asked, "What do I have to do to become a Christian?"

After telling her she needed to believe Jesus died for her sins and accept him into her heart, she responded, "Oh." then turned and walked away with the same broken, empty and devastated look she had when she asked the question. Just a couple years later she escaped her suffering by eating herself up with cancer.

But Mom didn't die before having a profound effect on me. You see, she came to me looking for salvation and I gave her nothing. It was apparent that she was the same miserable woman after my answer to her question as she was before. So I began asking myself, What's so good about the good news? What, if anything, was there about Christianity that could change lives? During a process of many years, I began to look beyond the stories of Jesus' miracles, and even began ignoring may of his beautiful teachings. Instead I focused my attention on his encounters with the people whose lives he is reported to have changed. I noticed one commonality with them all, he accepted them unconditionally. As you know, he was constantly criticized for associating with social outcasts, sinners, tax collectors, prostitutes and the like.

I love the story of Zaccheus, the short little tax collector, despised by his own people for betraying them to the Romans, who climbed a tree just to catch a glimpse of Jesus through the crowds. Jesus, to his surprise, approached the tree and said, in effect, "Hey Zaccheus, come down here, let's do lunch." This had a profound effect on Zaccheus. It transformed him! He gave back everything he had ever stolen and them some, not because Jesus told him he had to if he wanted to be saved, but simply because Jesus accepted him for who he was. This was definitely good news for the tax collector.

In another story Jesus asks a Samaritan woman, gathering water from a nearby well, for a drink. This was more than unusual because Jews didn't speak to Samaritans, men didn't speak to women in public, and holy men didn't speak to known adulteresses, which happened to be the case with this woman. Here was Jesus, not only speaking to her, but asking her for a drink of water from the same unclean cup that muct have touched her unclean lips a thousand times. To the Jews eating and drinking was a form of intimacy, which, I think, was Jesus' whole point in asking the woman for a drink. He wanted her to know that he found worthy of love and acceptance.

In another example, a woman caught in adultery is brought before Jesus to be judged. The law said she must be stoned to death. But Jesus instructed her accusers, "Let he who is without sin cast the first stone." After the crowd quietly dispersed and this frightened and embarrassed woman was alone with Jesus, he asked her, "Where are your accusers?" In other words, there were only two people present, and Jesus didn't consider himself the woman's judge. He accepted her.

Although I don't consider myself a Christian today, at least not in any orthodox sense, I must admit my liberality has grown out of my understanding of Jesus, summed up in the lyrics of the simple children's song, "Jesus love's me, this I know, cause the Bible tells me so."

I have found this same simplicity of spirit here amongst the Unitarian Universalists. Although many of us have come here for different reasons—some, like myself, from fallings out with orthodox Christianity, or others coming from different faiths entirely, perhaps, Buddhism, New Ageism, even Atheism—we all share this same spirit, the spirit which I consider the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of God, the Divine Spirit.

Unitarianism is the doctrine that God is one. This doctrine was born out of the cruel execution of Michael Servitus, burned at the stake by John Calvin for heresy, simply because he didn't think the idea of the Trinity, three in one, made any sense. As a result, Unitarians tend to place less value on strictly adhering to church doctrine. They are naturally, more accepting and tolerant of other ideas. In the 1950's the Unitarians joined with the Universalists, a similar group, who opposed Calvinism's doctrine that only a chosen few would be saved, the doctrine of predestination. Instead the Universalist believe everyone is salvageable, everyone has something to offer. Unitarian Universalists speak the universal tongue of love and acceptance. In so doing we demonstrate the Spirit of God. We really are a church filled with the Holy Spirit.