The Religious Value System of Unitarian Universalists

Abstract

This study sought to discover whether there is a distinctive value system for Unitarian Universalists which distinguishes them from other religious groups. The Rokeach Values Survey was used to determine the values held by a representative sample of Unitarian Universalists. The study found that such factors as frequency of church attendance, perceived importance of religion, and economic class have almost no influence on their value patterns. Their value system differs from that of Christians, Jews, and persons claiming no religious affiliation. Finally, the study identified a distinctive Unitarian Universalist paradigm of values marked by a high ranking of the terminal values (self-respect, wisdom, inner-harmony, mature love, a world of beauty, and an exciting life) and the instrumental values (loving, independent, intellectual, imaginative, and logical) which, taken together, show an orientation towards competence rather than morality and stress personal realization, individual self-fulfillment, and self-actualization. In Part I of his H. Paul Douglass Lecture for 1969, Milton Rokeach offered a stimulating analysis of religion by identifying "the existence of value differences between the religious, the less religious and non-religious" (Rokeach 1969: 23). His conclusions defined a certain style of "being religious," but it appeared to us that further investigation might well identify different ways of being religious which need articulation. On the basis of personal knowledge and acquaintance, we hypothesized that the pattern Rokeach had identified from samples drawn in 1968 would not describe the value system of at least one religious denomination, the Unitarian Universalist Association. We further speculated that the use of the value survey instrument and the analytic techniques he had developed might reveal a distinctive Unitarian Universalist value sytem which would define a different way of being religious. Rokeach had clearly identified one pattern of religious valuing. Others might be similarly de-