ter⋅ror⋅ism  [ter-uh-riz-uhm] – noun 1.the use of violence and threats to intimidate or coerce, esp. for political purposes.

Our church budget (including and especially my compensation) has been slashed;
our four-year capital campaign has been terminated (I prefer "postponed," but
others insist it's now or never); and our Michigan economy continues to
decline--and these things open us to new possibilities.

Once again, Planned Parenthood is coming under attack in the community, this time from the Columbia School District, where a group of parents have lobbied the school board to get PP removed from the sexuality education curriculum. The school board meeting was last night, and a number of supporters turned out. I don't know yet when they'll make their decision. Here's the statement I made to the board:

Hello; good evening,

I’m the Rev. Cynthia Landrum, and I am the minister of the Universalist Unitarian Church of East Liberty, a church that has been in this area for 153 years, often with members who are not only taxpayers, but parents of children in this school district, and sometimes teachers, as well.

Our church is a proud supporter of Planned Parenthood, a decision we made by congregational vote about four years ago. We are also part of a denomination that believes strongly in the importance of comprehensive sexuality education. In 1994, we passed an “Resolution of Immediate Witness” in support of comprehensive sexuality education in public schools. It asks for us, as a member congregation to advocate for:

the availability of comprehensive, objective, unbiased, up-to-date, age-appropriate, sexuality education curricula in public schools, including information about:
· the reproductive system and its functions;
· the proper use of all forms of contraception, including the option of abstinence;
· sexually transmitted diseases, their prevention and treatment;
· sexual abuse, sexual assault, sexual harassment, rape (including date rape), and incest, as well as their prevention and treatment through counseling, information, and resources;
· pregnancy counseling and options including information about organizations such as Planned Parenthood and…
that sexuality education curricula be taught by teachers specifically
trained to educate youth on the topic of sexuality education…[1]

Parents look to sex education to provide their children with practical skills that students and teachers report are not consistently covered. More than eight in ten parents say how to use condoms (85%) and other forms of birth control (84%), as well as how to talk about them with partners (88%), should be taught. They also want schools to address real-life issues, such as pressure to have sex (94%) and the emotional consequences of becoming sexually active (94%). Three quarters say abortion (79%) and sexual orientation (76%) should be discussed; most (74%) further specify when issues such as these do come up in the classroom they should be presented in a “balanced” way that presents different views in society.[3]

If you haven't seen the original ad that this parodies, go see it on youtube here. There's also a very nice parody by Stephen Colbert.

Meanwhile, if you're done watching videos I just want to say that I'm very excited about going to the HRC Clergy Call in a couple of weeks. I made the decision to go today, and am looking forward to meeting up with other UU ministers who attend, as well as my elected representatives. This is my first ever lobbying trip to DC (and I've never attended a march on the Mall, either), so it's pretty exciting in that regard.

A sad sign of the economy, related to this however: the UUA's continuing education fund for ministers has dried up for the year. *sigh*

But I look around my metro area and see at least 4 UU congregations that are dying. Five years ago, all five had part time ministers. Now none of them do.

Do you recommend some readings or some wisdom for turning the tide in those congregations?

How much does location affect the size of our congregation?

• Size of the local population (Jackson County: 158442)
• Size of sanctuary (Full capacity, about 100)
• Size of parking lot (Unknown number of spaces, but overflowing into cemeteries when sanctuary is packed)
• Size of religious education space (already we're using the social hall)
• Location (outside of the city, not on the main highway)
• Natural Plateau Points (between 50 and 70 in worship is a natural plateau point between family and pastoral sized churches--see The In-Between Church)
• Staff (to be staffed for growth we would probably need an administrative assistant, but I don't have the literature on that one to be sure)

Why does a movement that says it wants to grow and that has hundreds of thousands of people ready to join it stay so small?
What are the barriers between us and the future we say we want? What can we do to make that future of vital, welcoming, growing churches a reality?
The answer is religion. Really.
Religion. And more specifically, religious community. We have tried all kinds of things, mostly to little or no avail. Ironically, and tragically, we have never tried religion as a growth strategy.

It isn't a church, it's a cult. They don't even believe in God. They worship the God of secularism. These sick people aren't Liberals, they're Ultra-Liberals. This is a collection of sicko's, weirdo's, & homo's. The UU church is the Fountainhead, the veritable wellspring of anti-American organizations like Moveon.org, Code Pink, and
other anti-American groups. Those people are absolute Hypocrits. They embrace every pervert that comes down the pike, but if they find out your a conservative, they absolutely Hate you. I know, I experienced it.

Members of my congregation have been hurt. But we have also been healed by the feeling that there is a love greater than our theological differences, a compassion that is not limited by the boundaries of any creed. I firmly believe, now more than ever, that love is stronger than death. Love is more powerful than hate.

• Gerdau Mac Steel has laid off 300 of 380 workers indefinitely.
• Michigan Automotive Compressor Inc. has offered buyouts to nearly all of its 740
workers.
• TAC Inc. has offered buyouts to 70 of 590 employees and gone to a
four-day week.
• CertainTeed has temporarily laid off 80 of 250 workers.
• Jackson-based Sparton Corp. has cut its workforce of 1,000 by 60.

• We know how to work collaboratively, because we've had to.


• We know about


• We have a proportionally huge impact in our communities, for those small UU churches in small towns.

Gods rest ye, Unitarians, let nothing you dismay;
Remember there's no evidence there was a Christmas Day;
When Christ was born is just not known, no matter what they say,
O, Tidings of reason and fact, reason and fact,
Glad tidings of reason and fact.

It's in good humor and it points to something very real about how we approach Christmas as a religion. For example, our UU hymnal changes a lot of words to Christmas carols. One example is "Joy to the World," which, in our hymnal, reads:

Joy to the world!
The word is come:
let earth with praises ring.

A far cry from:

Joy to the world!
The Lord is come:
let earth receive her King.

O holy night! The stars are brightly shining,
It is the night of our dear Saviour's birth.
Long lay the world in sin and error pining,
'Til He appear'd and the soul felt its worth.
A thrill of hope the weary world rejoices,
For yonder breaks a new and glorious morn.
Fall on your knees! O, hear the angels' voices!
O night divine, O night when Christ was born;
O night divine, O night, O night Divine.

Over the river, and through the wood,
To Grandfather's house we go;
The horse knows the way to carry the sleigh
through the white and drifted snow.

Abide with me, fast falls the eventide;
The darkness deepens; still with me abide.

Abide with me; fast falls the eventide;
The darkness deepens; Lord with me abide.

Maya Angelou recites her Christmas poem

We, Angels and Mortals, Believers and Nonbelievers,
Look heavenward and speak the word aloud.
Peace. We look at each other, then into ourselves,
And we say without shyness or apology or hesitation:

Peace, My Brother.

Peace, My Sister.

"Peace, My Soul.

Shouldn’t we be taking “authentic steps of transformation” to stop domestic violence and other forms of abuse and discrimination among our members?

What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? I answer: a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelly to which he is the constant victim. To him, your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciations of tyrants, brass fronted impudence; your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, with all your religious parade, and solemnity, are, to him, mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy - a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages. There is not a nation on the earth guilty of practices, more shocking and bloody, than are the people of these United States, at this very hour.

Harsh, harsh words from Frederick Douglass, but well warranted to a country that had yet to throw off slavery. He was speaking of Independence Day and people who were not free. Just as he asked, “What to a slave is the Fourth of July?” it might be asked, “What to a Native American, is Thanksgiving?”

So, no, I do not come here today to preach a glorious history full of peaceful meals between Pilgrims and Native Americans, not I, whose family participated in the stripping of the Native Americans from their land, in their forcible eviction.

But I do say that I had misunderstood patriotism when I focused on the past. And I would misunderstand Thanksgiving if I focused on the historical events of our nation. A recent article in Time magazine summed this up nicely, saying, “America is less a common culture than a set of ideals about democracy, equality and the rule of law. American history is a chronicle of the distance between those ideals and reality. And American patriotism is the struggle to narrow the gap. Thus, patriotism isn't about honoring and replicating the past; it's about surpassing it.”[1]
On Thanksgiving we must struggle between our ideals and our reality, and we must struggle to close the gap. On Thanksgiving, I don’t want us to honor and replicate what the Pilgrims did, I want us to surpass it.

Our myth about the Pilgrims and the Indians, that tells of brotherhood being forged there and belies the bloody history that follows, however, does give us an important lesson, that ideal, from which we grow our future. A central message of that story is the message of interfaith cooperation. We remember, on this day, that we are a land of immigrants and native peoples, a blending together of many cultures. We remember what it says on the Statue of Liberty, of the “Mother of Exiles,” who says:

Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless,
tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!

So we celebrate Thanksgiving today, the coming to this land, and the blending of cultures that happened here, even from the first. In using bread from many cultures, we celebrate our diversity in this community. While my name, “Landrum” is Scottish, and I am descended from slave owners, our own reality is always more complex: my own ethnic heritage is German, Scottish, English, Swedish, Welsh, Irish, French, Native American, and probably a multitude of other things. In this room we represent many continents and many cultures, and we are grateful for that. We are grateful that we are a nation like a patchwork quilt. It links us to the past and to each other, but most of all, it links us to the diverse world and the interdependent web of which we are a part. One of the values of America that I’m proud of, and which I’m Thankful for, is this value of diversity, this value of welcoming in the immigrant.

Another American value I’m particularly proud of and grateful for is religious freedom. And we’re celebrating tonight, here at this interfaith service, that value of religious freedom and how it, together with the value of diversity, brings us to a modern version of Thanksgiving, to a time when we can worship together, across religious boundaries, knowing that while we have different cultures and different beliefs, we are one people, one nation. Sometimes people think of Thanksgiving as purely a Christian holiday. But it is, in fact, an interfaith holiday. The Pilgrims were there, but the Native Americans were, too. Thanksgiving, then, is a holiday which belongs to all of us. It is, if it is to remain true to its purpose, a time which brings differing people together across the table—the pilgrims and the Native Americans, or today, perhaps warring countries or event the most diametrically opposed of faiths. If we are to set our Thanksgiving table today, we must make room for Muslims, Jews, Christians, and people of Eastern and Native religions. Thanksgiving also includes atheists, agnostics, and Humanists. Our Thanksgiving table is the welcome table.

The scripture passages we read earlier show, too, how much we have in common. They speak of knowing God, of Thanking God, and of celebrating God. They speak of how we are to live together as people of different religions, yet all created by the same God, despite different scriptures and different passages. And so, tonight, as people of different faiths, we raise our voice together in Thanks, thanks for our creator, thanks for all the creation.

As people of faith, we come together this evening also, however, because we are part of one larger community, this Jackson community, and, as such, despite our different houses of worship, we have a common home in this community. And we know that this community is hurting right now. We have a national economy that is in shambles, a state that is particularly hurting and has been for a while, reliant on an industry that is going under. We have a community where we are high in unemployment, and low in economic security, high in foreclosures and low in economic growth. We have food pantries running low and shelters running full right now in this community. We are a community that is seeing harder days. The songwriter Irving Berlin, in a similarly depressed economy, said, “Got no check books, got no banks. Still I'd like to express my thanks - I got the sun in the morning and the moon at night.” Despite our troubles, and I know some of you have troubles of health, or shelter, or jobs, we come together to give thanks.

In the Christian scriptures, it tells a story about loaves and fishes. Jesus took five loaves of bread and two fish and managed to feed five thousand. Some see that as a story of a miracle—food that expanded to fit the need. I see it as a story of people’s matching generosity with their own, and managing to see abundance rather than scarcity. People of a loving God know that there is no limit to God’s love. People of a loving community know that there is no limit to our resources when we pull together. In my tradition, we often tell the old tale of “Stone Soup,” a folktale that’s been told in different ways in different cultures. The story is a person goes into a new community, and this traveler is told that there is no food for him. He says that this is okay, he was planning on making soup to share with everyone. He is loaned a pot, and he sets water to boil, and he puts his magic stone in the pot that will turn it into soup. As villagers ask how it’s going, he tells them one by one “Oh, it’s good, but it would be better with a carrot,” or an onion, or a potato, and so forth. The villagers supply the items and by the end, there is enough soup to feed everyone, including the traveler.

I’m thankful today to live in this community, not because of our history, but because of our possibility. Because we have ideals of freedom, of diversity, of interfaith cooperation, and of generosity. I’m thankful to live in this community not only because of the blessings that it provides to me, but also I’m thankful that it provides me with opportunities to become my best self, to live from a perspective of abundance, rather than scarcity, to practice generosity, rather than to horde my blessings. I’m thankful that we have this opportunity to come together, to live our values and our faith in this circle of diversity, in this sanctuary of open love and acceptance.

Happy Thanksgiving.

[1] Peter Beinart, “The War Over Patriotism,” Time Magazine, Thursday, June 26, 2008, http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1818195-2,00.html.

I’m not sure what to do with this. I’m thrilled that we’ve just elected our first African-American president. I wept last night. I wept reading the papers this morning. But I can’t help but feeling hurt that the love and support aren’t mutual.

I do know this, though: I’m done pretending that the handful of racist gay white men out there—and they’re out there, and I think they’re scum—are a bigger problem for African Americans, gay and straight, than the huge numbers of homophobic African Americans are for gay Americans, whatever their color.

Now, on one hand, Dan Savage is known for being inflammatory. On the other hand, we have had him speak in a workshop at the UU's General Assembly. And he's someone who, while extreme, is read by a lot of readers. So take that example with a grain of salt, but I could throw a lot of examples your way about this.

The numbers people have been looking at are based on an exit poll - see here - which says that 70% of African Americans voted yes on 8, while a bare majority of white Americans voted no.

Two things that can be said about this. Most problematically, is how people zeroed in on race, in an election where race was such a major issue. There are a lot of demographic groups that this exit poll could pin it on (Hispanics also voted yes on 8 in this exit poll, but not by as big a percentage). For example, you could blame lack of education--people with post graduate degrees voted 60% against, while people with a high school diploma only voted 57% for. Party affiliation is a big one, with 82% of Republicans voting for 8, and 85% of conservatives. Protestants and Catholics both voted overwhelmingly for 8, at 65% and 64% respectively, and white Evangelicals at a whopping 81% while the nonreligious voted against. Married people, voting 60% for, could also be blamed, and married with children more so at 68%. Another big break was by age. The older the demographic, the more likely they voted for 8. New, young voters age 18-24 voted against at 64%.

Yet with all these demographic groups to blame, people started quickly pointing the finger at African Americans. What's the problem with that? Plenty. For example, if the white vote had been 70% against, do you think we would hear, "It's white people who are to blame for this"? No, we wouldn't. We would break it down into the other demographics immediately--it'd be about white Republicans, or white evangelicals, or white married people with children. But with African Americans, we treat them as one monolithic group. Also, the African American vote is a small percentage of the vote. It took a whole lot of white people voting that way for their vote to be added to for this to pass. Numerically, rather than by percentages, there are way more white people who voted for 8 than African Americans.

It's significant that people pointed the finger at African Americans rather than the Hispanic vote, because Hispanic people vastly outnumber African Americans in California. So why are people focusing on African Americans? Barack Obama is African American, that's why. So the popular mythos has people saying, "Those black people showed up to vote for Obama, and if they hadn't done that, this wouldn't have passed."

But that's just not true, which leads to another major problem with all of this, which is how quickly people jumped to accept the poll's results, without question. If you want to read a good rebuttal of the CNN exit poll and the assumption that's being thrown about that African Americans made up enough of the electorate to turn the election against 8, look here.

Robert Cruickshank paints a more reasonable explanation:

“The other data that appears to be emerging (BUT yet to be totally verified) is that African-Americans who early voted (which was a huge number) voted YES while those on election day voted NO. Remember we did not do extensive campaigning in many of the African-American precincts until the final week or so which was long after tens of thousands had already voted. Our campaign was slow to use Obama's opposition to Proposition Eight which he gave the day after the initiative qualified five months before the election.”

That explanation makes much more sense than anything else I've seen. Early voters tend to be older and it would make sense if some of them in the African American community were strongly associated with Yes on 8 churches. Once the No on 8 campaign finally got its act somewhat together and did outreach to African Americans, we saw the rewards on Election Day.

Ultimately this reminds us how cheap, stupid, and misguided the scapegoating of African Americans over Prop 8 has been. Prop 8's passage revealed that the marriage equality movement has a lot of outreach to do in this state - to older voters, voters living in "red California," to some Latinos and African Americans but also to numerous white voters (if whites had voted strongly No, this discussion would be moot), to Asian and Pacific Islanders, to some religious groups, including LDS Californians.