Unlike many other Christian traditions, Unity has no dogmatic creed in which one must profess their faith in order to be a member. While Unity is decidedly Christian in its orientation, it does not teach in a top down, hierarchical manner. There is no rigidly codified set of beliefs that have been decided on long ago that reflect the end all, be all presentation of truth. In fact, Unity’s co-founder, Charles Fillmore, who believed in the ongoing revelation of truth, famously reserved the right to change his mind should new truth be revealed that would require it. However, he also maintained he would never change his mind about truth principles.
The closest Unity comes to anything remotely resembling dogma is the five principles. However, if you have been around Unity for any length of time, you likely know there is no one “official” presentation of the five principles to be found. Indeed, if you go to a different Unity church every Sunday, you will only rarely see the exact same wording of the five principles from church to church.
I first became aware of the five principles when I began attending Unity churches a little over 20 years ago. I began to notice I was having trouble remembering them, because every time I encountered them, it was like I was looking at them for the very first time. I got frustrated that I was unable to commit these short powerful truth principles to memory. It took a while to sink in that I actually was looking at them for the first time every time I saw them, because the articulation was different each time.
Is there an “official” version of the five principles?
I had always assumed that there was an “official” version and that all the different versions were taking liberties. It wasn’t until I took a S.E.E. course based on Rev. Ellen Debenport’s book, The Five Principles: A Practical Guide To Spirituality, that I began to really understand and internalize the five principles. I also learned during that class that Unity was over 100 years old when Charles and Myrtle’s great-granddaughter, Connie Fillmore Bazzy, first published a booklet titled The Keys to the Kingdom: Five Fundamentals of Truth that articulated what we now know as the five principles.
It surprised me when I learned that the first actual articulation of the five principles had occurred a short five years before I began attending Unity churches. I had assumed they had been around since the beginning. In truth, there was evidence of the principles in many of Charles and Myrtle’s writings, as well as Emilie Cady’s Lessons In Truth and other Unity writers, including my favorite, Eric Butterworth. However, until Connie Fillmore Bazzy was asked to write them down as a way of teaching the underlying truth principles that Unity teachings are based upon, the five principles did not technically exist.
It’s the essence, not the specifics that matter.
As stated above, there are many different articulations of the five principles including versions created for children. This is not inconsistent with Unity teachings, nor would Unity co-founder Charles Fillmore have had any real issue with the diversity. Charles Fillmore viewed truth in the classical and traditional sense, meaning that, for him, truth is revealed. Further, Fillmore believed that the revelation of truth was ongoing, so it is entirely appropriate that the five principles came more than 100 years after Unity was founded. While he would certainly have been proud that they first came through his great-granddaughter, Charles would likely have been equally proud if they had come from any other Unity teacher or student in the entire movement.
For me, I turned a big corner with the five principles when I read the following statement in the introduction to Ellen Debenport’s book, The Five Principles. “Don’t be distracted by the specific language. Pay attention to the essence of the teachings.” For me, those two short sentences symbolize the moment when I began to move beyond just trying to memorize the principles and began to look deeper into their meaning, deeper into the underlying principles that supported the truth they embody. They reminded me of Jesus’ admonishment of the Pharisees for teaching the letter of the law, rather than the spirit of the law.
What are the principles of principle?
From that moment forward, the five principles truly came alive for me. I began writing about them, speaking of them, referring to them in conversations with family, friends and associates. For the first time in my life, I had a concise means of articulating the most fundamental truths in which I believed. This was not dogma in which I was expected to profess undying belief and devotion. The five principles are simple statements of truth that I am free to believe or disbelieve, use or ignore. As truth principles they do not require my belief or devotion in order to be true.
After almost 13 years of attending Unity churches and about 8 years after first attending UCOH, I was finally beginning to understand and live in accordance with the five principles. Today, hardly a day goes by that I do not refer to them at some point during the day in conversations with others, or in my own writings. Over time, I have come to understand that the five principles are themselves based on underlying principles. These represent the characteristics that truth principles must embody in order to be truth principles. I call them the principles of principle.
To date, I have identified five principles of principle and in next week’s blog entry I will detail them for your consideration. In the meantime, if you want a refresher on how UCOH articulates the five principles, go here.
