Being UU in the UK: An Outsider’s Perspective on Values

This week we welcome back to the pulpit a former UUCH Worship Chair, Angel Scott-Bottoms (formerly Hundley). About her virtual homecoming sermon, Angel writes… 

I was a member of UUCH for nearly a decade, raising my children in this church. But then in 2017, we moved to Manchester, England, and a lot of things changed for us. For one thing, there’s no such thing as Unitarian Universalism. There’s just the Unitarian bit, which isn’t quite the same. But then, nothing in the UK is quite the same: it tricks you sometimes, because so many things are so similar, but then something happens and you realize how foreign you are. 

And that’s what this sermon is about — it’s about belonging and not belonging, it’s about having a community and then not having that community. And it’s about realizing that sometimes, the differences in a new way of life can make it a little easier to be who you want to be. Moving to the UK has sharpened my sense of the things that I most value, even as I’ve had to leave behind the place where I learned many of those values. I hope that these reflections on a personal journey will have something in them that resonates for you too.