Mark Wenz, Unity Church of Sun Lakes
Over half of the world’s current population adheres to one of the Abrahamic religions (Judaism, Christianity, or Islam), which all worship one all-powerful deity. This adherence to one God, however, is a fairly recent historical reality. Pre-Christian societies, including the Egyptians, Greeks and Romans, were primarily polytheistic. These societies attributed forces of nature to individual gods (a sun god, river god, rain god, etc.) or believed in gods who behaved much like they did, exhibiting traits such as deceptiveness, jealousy, lust, and vengefulness. Many existing religions (Hinduism, Shinto, Wicca, Taoism, and traditional African ethnic religions) still espouse a polytheistic theology, but there has been a documentable worldwide shift from polytheism to monotheism over the last few millennia. What factors contributed to this apparent shift?
According to livescience.com, “deities specific to a particular religion [in previous millennia] were often written about as expressions of the same divine entity, similar to how Christians worship the Holy Trinity–the father, son, and holy spirit–as different manifestations of God.” An example of this can be traced to the second millennium BCE, when an epic Mesopotamian poem refers to the chief god Marduk by 50 names of gods who were subordinate to him. The implication is that these lower gods were manifestations of one supreme god. In what is now considered the world’s prominent polytheistic religion, Hinduism, the gods and goddesses in their pantheon are often manifestations of Brahman, the highest god. Thus, “when you look across human history, the distinction between polytheism and monotheism … falls apart” (livescience.com).
Unity theology can be interpreted as being a hybrid of polytheism and monotheism. The first and most important of Unity’s five principles is that there is only one Presence and one Power in the universe, God, a presence neither male, female, nor anthropomorphic. This belief in God as “one Power” correlates with monotheism. However, Unity also teaches that God, or the Divine, is omnipresent, the underlying force in all existence, the energy that is active in the universe and in each individual’s life and in every circumstance. This makes us all incarnate manifestations of God, which correlates with polytheism.
Unity theology professes that there are many paths to higher consciousness, personal spiritual evolution, and individual enlightenment. There is no “one way” to live or think. On the contrary, in Unity we believe that each individual needs to find their own path. We don’t believe in a God that would punish us because we are “fallen” or because we don’t adhere to a particular set of commandments, and we don’t condemn those who hold beliefs contrary to ours. Our mission is to provide an environment of acceptance in which all people are welcome to explore their spirituality in their own unique way.
If you would like to explore your unique spirituality, we invite you to join us on Sunday mornings at 10 a.m. in the Arts and Crafts room at Sun Lakes Country Club.