Symbolically, I think it's much worse than other designs I've seen them use in the past. The feeling of the symbol doesn't match what UU is about at
all:
Circles. They're gone. Gone is the symbol of unity and kinship, of integrity and wholeness, of interconnectedness and reconciliation. Why? But far, far worse than that is the color choice. Red. Red has got to be the
worst color choice possible to express what the religion is about. Red is an authoritarian power color and a divisive, passionate color that evokes things like violence, war, blood, fertility, and sex. Seriously... I can't figure out
what they were thinking with this one. The color choice has completely blown the intended meaning of the flaming chalice to me. Instead of looking like a symbol of illumination, hope, or truth, it looks like a ruddy war banner or something you'd see championed in competitive sports. This war-banner appearance is compounded by the replacement of the chalice with... well... a torch. It's just a torch. Something you light and race around for Olympic sporting events. Something you light in mass quantities to riot on the streets to ferret out heretics. And the torch in conjunction with that U shape looks rather like a pitchfork. Torches and pitchforks, guys. There's no gentle chalice, but an aggressive, upward-pointing U-shape with a rallying torch. Whenever I look at this, I'm going to think "war-banner."
