Belfast UU church finds niche

It’s not really the “new” Unitarian Universalist church in Belfast anymore.

Ten years after a handful of Waldo County residents started meeting in a tiny building near the Belfast library, the congregation has grown to 90 members and has a permanent home in a former Methodist church at 37 Miller St.

“As a church, it fits our Belfast community,” said Jan Anderson of Belfast, who serves on the church council and was among the first members.

“We are very interested in social issues, and we were looking for something that was not as rigorous or strict” as some other religious groups, Anderson said. “We follow a spiritual and moral code and what evolves comes from those principles.”

The Unitarian Universalist Church of Belfast is drawing attention.

Last fall, it received the 2003 Eugene Pickett Award for outstanding growth as well as for its contributions to the denomination and its community.

While the Unitarian Universalist Association is relatively young, dating from the 1960s, its two U’s have long histories. Two hundred years ago, Unitarian was the name given to those who questioned the Christian doctrine of the Trinity. A separate group, the Universalists, stressed the theology that all souls would eventually find salvation in the grace of God.

Strong in New England, both groups found they had much in common by the 20th century and wound up merging. But each congregation is independent, and, for example, Bangor’s Unitarian and Universalist churches did not become one until the mid-1990s.

“We are a small-group ministry made up of members who wish to be part of a larger community and yet express their spiritual beliefs in small groups,” said the Rev. Pam Gross, the Belfast UU church’s pastor, said this week. “We’re looking at how we keep that small-community feeling as we get bigger. We’ve got a lot of wonderful things going on and we don’t want the growth to get in the way of that.”

Anderson said she was attracted to the church because of its “open acceptance of everyone’s spiritual beliefs and journey.”

Anderson said she also was drawn to the church because of its liberal positions on social issues and its commitment to allowing members to pursue their own religious courses, involving not just Christianity but Judaism, Buddhism and other faiths.

As Gross put it, “We do have principles or guidelines for living the faithful life, but we acknowledge all beliefs.”

Gross noted that the first woman in America to be ordained as a minister was also a Unitarian.

“Some may have different beliefs, but the idea is we can all be spiritual together,” Gross said.

The church holds its services at 10 a.m. each Sunday. Following the service, members often hold periods of discussion on the social issues of the day. Along those lines, the church plans, at 1 p.m. Sunday, Jan. 11, to present two members of a UU delegation that went to Israel and Palestine last fall to urge a just peace in the region. They will report on their findings, and a discussion will follow.