Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Stanislaus County

Learn More About Us

Some of our web visitors are church shopping. We hope you will come by some Sunday and see what we're like. We try to welcome everyone. We come together to nurture our spirits and help heal our world. We draw our inspiration from the world's religions, from science and philosophy and from our own experience of truth, wonder and spirit. Each of us has a somewhat different understanding of our world, of our place in it and of the sacred. A sign out front says "Room for different beliefs. Yours." See you soon?

At least ten of our members were in harmony with our beliefs for most of their lives, but didn't know there was a church like us. You may be the eleventh. We are a church:

Where Agnostics, Atheists, Buddhists, Christians, Humanists, Jews, Pagans and Theists can worship together.

Where people who draw religious inspiration from a redwood grove can share a meal with people who draw religious inspiration from the Bible.

Where, as Francis Dávid said, "We need not think alike to love alike."

Our denomination developed from the Unitarians and the Universalists, two denominations with roots in colonial America. They merged in 1961.

We don't claim to have all the answers. We do claim to ask lots of questions. We respect the Torah, Bible and Koran, but we don't think any one of them has all the answers. Our denomination's hymnal has readings from eight of the world's major religions and from some gifted poets who didn't fit into any particular slot.

We embrace science. If the Pope had been a UU when Galileo discovered that the earth went around the sun, he would have made Galileo a saint. We don't think all the mysteries of the Universe have been unveiled yet. We don't think the Bible is everything you need to understand those mysteries. If science and religion differ, we're willing to admit religion - or at least the people who interpreted religion in the past centuries - may have been wrong. Almost all of us believe the theory of evolution is the best explanation for the diversity of life on earth.

We welcome GLBT people. We are a Welcoming Congregation.

Read Why I finally joined a church on Salon.com, by Jane Roper. (Opens new window.) She starts: "I was a religious skeptic who bristled at joining a community. But two things changed that: My kids . . .".

Curious? Take a short, free Belief-O-Matic test. (The link opens a new window.) If you come back:

Our Beliefs page will tell you what we believe. While just under half of us believe in a supreme being [read more about that], we all believe people exploring spiritual matters have an easier time of it when they have company.

Our Sunday Services page will give you an idea of what we talk about on Sunday.

Our Minister's page will tell you about Rev. Joe Cherry, who became our Interim Minister in January 2012.

We have a collection of sermons, by our former minister, Rev. Grace Simons, who retired in October 2011, and a collection of Guest Sermons. Both will give you an idea of what we talk about.

Our Children's page will tell you what we're doing this year. Our Sunday School program runs in a three-year cycle. We do a year on Unitarians and Universalists, a year on the Judeo-Christian religion, and a year on World religions. It also has a 130-year old mission statement and an editorial comment on mission statements. The editor isn't fond of mission statements, but he admires courage.

Our FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) page will answer some of your questions if you consider visiting us.

We had a service which asked everyone in the audience all to answer the question What Does Being a Unitarian-Universalist Mean to You?

We asked our members why they joined the fellowship, in 100 words or less. Why I Joined has their answers. (Not all of them answered; it is short, but eloquent.)

Our Virtual Tour will show you our church buildings. We have a special tour of our new (as of November 2010) Classroom Building.

Our News page will show you what we've been up to lately.

Finally, if you are out of the area but interested in learning more, the Unitarian-Universalist Association, our national body, has much more information. Their "Find a Congregation" page will help you find a UU congregation in your area.

You'll notice the navigation bar repeats the links above. We have the bar on every page. Our web master thinks being consistent is more important than changing his socks.

[Ed. note: The top section of this page was written by the web committee, as a committee, not by the web master. He did the paragraph about Galileo and what follows, though.]