The third installment of the Contestants on a Game Show! series:

Here’s the full script as written, though it may have been modified in performance or in editing:

John: So far we’ve made two hundred and ten thousand, one hundred dollars for our congregation by appearing on game shows.

Sarah: This week, we’re going to try Celebrity Family Feud.

Emma: Aarav, we want you to be part of our family.

Aarav: I’m willing. But we’re not exactly celebrities.

John: Once we’re on TV, we’re automatically celebrities. Let’s go!

[Greg appears to wild applause, bowing to the audience, while the Announcer speaks offscreen] Announcer: It’s time for Celebrity Family Food! Introducing Aarav, Emma, John, and Sarah playing for UUCPA! Playing against Fannie Farmer! And now, the star of our show, Greg Becker!

Sarah: Did he just say “Celebrity Family FOOD”?

Greg: Welcome to Celebrity Family Food!

Aarav: Yes, he just said “Celebrity Family FOOD.” What’s going on here?

Greg: Now it’s time to play — Fast Money! Fannie Farmer, I’m going to ask you three questions about Unitarian food in 20 seconds. If you can’t think of an answer, just say pass.

Sarah (as Fannie Farmer): I’m ready.

Greg: Tell them what you’re playing for.

Sarah: Twenty five thousand dollars.

Greg: All right, here are your questions. What famous Unitarian published a cookbook in 1896?

Sarah: I published my cookbook in 1896, and it’s still in print.

Greg: Who introduced the idea of standardized measurements in cooking?

Sarah: I said that you should use a LEVEL teaspoon, so it was always the same amount.

Greg: Who printed the first recipe for brownies?

Sarah: I didn’t invent the brownie. But my cookbook had the very first recipe for a brownie.

John: This is weird. Isn’t he supposed to say, “Survey says,” and then show how many people answered the question in the same way?

Aarav: I don’t think this is Celebrity Family Feud, guys. It’s like we’ve entered some kind of weird alternate universe.

Greg: Now it’s time for the UUCPA team to answer some Unitarian food questions.

Emma: Can I ask you a question?

Greg: Sure, ask me a question!

Emma: Aren’t you the same person who the host of the last game show we were on?

Greg: Don’t ask me a question. I’m going to ask you questions about Unitarian food. Since there are four of you, you get four questions. Which famous Unitarian printed a cookbook with a recipe for roasted opossum?

Aarav: Irma Rombauer, in her cookbook The Joy of Cooking.

Greg: What famous Unitarian got the help of her women’s group at church to write her cookbook?

Sarah: Irma Rombauer.

Greg: Marion Rombauer Becker, who grew up in a Unitarian church, wrote the fifth edition of The Joy of Cooking. What was her mother’s name?

John: Irma Rombauer.

Greg: Here’s your last question….

Emma: Irma Rombauer.

Greg: I didn’t even ask the question.

Emma: Irma Rombauer.

Greg: Well, that happens to be correct, so you beat Fannie Farmer and win twenty-five thousand dollars!

Aarav: Is this game show legit?

Greg: What do you mean?

Aarav: This doesn’t look anything like the real Family Feud.

Sarah: Yes, what’s going on?

Greg: Well, actually….

Announcer: Tune in next week, and find out what’s actually going on!

The second installment of the Contestants on a Game Show! video series:

Here’s the full script as written, though it may have been modified in performance or in editing:

Announcer: And now, here he is, the one, the only, Groucho Becker!

Groucho: Oh, brother, what I know about him. Oh, that’s me! [Audience applause]

Groucho: Well, here I am again with a chance for our contestants to win ten thousand bucks. No contestant ever won ten thousand dollars, they’re either dumb, or we’re crooked. And if any of them say the secret word, the duck will pay them a hundred dollars.

DUCK DROPS DOWN WITH THE SECRET WORD: “NAME”

Groucho: OK, Duck, oh ree-vwah. (to audience) He’s a French duck.

Announcer: Groucho, we have John, Emma, and Sarah from Silicon Valley. Folks, come in here and meet — Groucho Becker.

Groucho: What made you want to come on this show?

John: We’re raising money for our congregation.

Groucho: Is that right? Now, Sarah, what do you do?

Sarah: I’m a student at Mountain View High School.

Groucho: I didn’t know they had any students at Mountain View High School. (looks at audience for laugh) John, are you a student too?

John: Yes, I study history.

Groucho: You know, I’ve noticed that most historical figures are dead. Is that true?

John: Yes, but can I just say that you remind me of someone?

Groucho: I hope I remind you of me. Now Emma, what profession are you studying for?

Emma: Artist. Umm, may I say a few words?

Groucho: Sure, go ahead.

Emma: Food. Smile. Tree. Room. Street. [she looks up for the duck] I didn’t get it.

Groucho: What kind of artist did you say you wanted to be?

Emma: A painter.

Groucho: I was thinking maybe con artist. And now let’s play You Bet Your Life. If you get four right answers in a row, you win ten thousand dollars. You selected Unitarian Universalist History. Who stayed with the Universalist Nathan Johnson on his first night as a free man?

John: Frederick Douglass!

Groucho: That’s right! What Unitarian Universalist theologian wrote the book “Is God a White Racist?”

Sarah: William R. Jones.

Groucho: That’s correct. This congregation that you’re raising money for, is it Unitarian Universalist?

John: Why, yes.

Groucho: I could have guessed that. Which Unitarian Universalist won two Nobel prizes, one in Chemistry, one in Peace?

Emma: His name was Linus Pauling.

DUCK DROPS DOWN

Groucho: NOW you said the secret word. (Hands money to them) You three split a hundred dollars.

John, Sarah, and Emma: Thank you!

Groucho: You have three right answers, one more and you win ten thousand dollars. You sure you don’t want to change topics?

John: No, not really.

Groucho: I could ask you questions about something you know nothing about.

Sarah: No, that’s OK.

Groucho: If you answer this question correctly, you win ten thousand dollars. Which Unitarian was the most famous African American author of her day?

John: Sarah Watkins Harper.

Groucho: That’s correct. That’s ten thousand dollars. Go ahead, give ’em the money.

[Announcer hands them the money]

John: Thank you!

Sarah: We’ll give this money to our congregation.

Emma: If I say “name” again, do we get another hundred dollars for our congregation?

Groucho: No. It’s been a pleasure to have you on the show, now get out of here.

Sarah: Did you notice that Groucho looked a lot like the game show host from last week?…

We’ve been having some warm evenings here, warm enough to sit outside in our small back patio. I wanted to sit and the patio and read, so I picked up the LED lantern we have as emergency lighting. We now have to have emergency lanterns on hand because Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E) has decided that in times of high fire danger, it’s cheaper to turn off power than to actually spend their shareholder’s money to upgrade their crumbling infrastructure.

The problem with LED lanterns is that you have to keep buying batteries. Plus the LED lanterns we have tend to have weird internal reflections and shadows. I looked at Carol’s collection of oil lamp parts, harvested from her scrounging expeditions, but unfortunately there weren’t enough compatible parts to make one working oil lamp.

Surely there must be a way to make a simple oil lamp without buying anything, I thought to myself. A quick Web search revealed lots of DIY plans for a glass jar oil lamp, all of which probably stem from an old Mother Earth News article on the subject.

I took one of Carol’s Mason jars, cut a piece of cotton string for the wick, and bent a piece of wire to hold the wick up, and poured in some olive oil (the only vegetable oil we happened to have on hand). The tiny wick didn’t produce enough light to read by, so I braided three pieces of string together. Now the lamp produced enough light to read by.

Unfortunately, with the bigger wick, the lamp produced a lot of smoke; I’d never use this lamp indoors. And the glass jar didn’t adequately shield the flame from the evening breezes, so the flame flickered and jumped, making it hard to read; in fact, I had to leave the LED lantern turned on to have enough light to read.

There’s a reason manufactured oil lamps have elaborate glass chimneys, and large flat wicks the height of which can be adjusted by a turn screw. Those technological innovations provide more light, and prevent the lamp from smoking. The glass jar oil lamp is better than nothing, so it’s useful for emergency lighting if you don’t have anything else. But with fire season due to begin soon, and with the continued incompetence of PG&E suggesting that we’re going to have more power outages this fire season, I guess I’d better bite the bullet and buy some manufactured oil lamps, with wide flat wicks and glass chimneys.

The first installment of the Contestants on a Game Show! video series:

Here’s the full script as written, though it may have been modified in performance or in editing:

Sarah: I heard that because of COVID, our congregation is losing lots of rental income.

John: How can we raise money to help? I’ve got it! We’ll be contestants on game shows.

Sarah: Whatever prize money we win, we’ll give to the congregation!

John: Let’s start with our favorite game show….

Offscreen announcer while Greg is on screen smiling: Here’s Alex Tribble!

Greg: This is Lethargy, America’s favorite answer and question show. Today’s contestants are John and Francesca from Silicon Valley. And our returning contestant is Sigmund Freud, from Freiberg, Austria.

John: Hi!

Sarah: Hi!

Sigmund Freud: Hi.

Greg: Here are the three categories for in this round: Famous Unitarians, Famous Universalists, and Famous Unitarian Universalists.

Sigmund: What is this Universalist Unitarian nonsense?

Sarah: I’ll take Famous Unitarians for $200.

Greg: She wrote the famous children’s book Little Women.

Francesca [hitting buzzer]: Oo, oo, I know! Who was Louisa May Alcott?

Greg: That’s correct.

John: I’ll take Famous Universalists for $500.

Greg: He started a famous circus.

John [hitting buzzer]: Who was P. T. Barnum?

Greg: That’s correct.

Sigmund Freud: I choose Famous Unitarian Universalists for $1000!

Greg: The answer is: The inventor of the World Wide Web.

Sigmund [hitting buzzer]: What is the interpretation of dreams?

Greg: No….

Sarah [hitting buzzer]: Oo, I know! Who is Tim Berners-Lee?

Greg: That’s correct! Now it’s time for Final Lethargy. The category is: Unitarian Universalist hymns.

John and Sarah jumping up and down: OO! OO!

Greg: Whoever gets this right wins $100,000! And the answer is: The hymn with a rose in wintertime.

Sarah (hitting her buzzer): I know! What is “Come Sing a Song with Me”?

John (hitting his buzzer): I know! What is “Come Sing a Song with Me”?

Sigmund (looking confused): What? What is this rose? Are you all neurotic?

Greg: John and Francesca, you each win $100,000! Today’s third place contestant wins a beautiful lounge suite.

Sigmund (looking furious): I hate lounge suites.

John: Wow, we won!

Sarah: We have $200,000 to give to our congregation!

Greg: Tune in next week when I host another game show….

I did register for the online General Assembly (GA), but I have to admit I attended very few sessions. I discovered that I have a limit on how much screen time my body will tolerate in any given week, and I had pretty much reached that limit by Thursday. I watched perhaps an hour of the business sessions — long enough to realize that I’m going to miss our current co-moderators. I find them inspiring and visionary in their leadership. And while I’m sure the incoming co-moderators are highly competent people, it was awfully nice to have co-moderators who were younger than I am.

The one session from GA that really stands out in my mind is a session that I missed, but was brought to my attention by Linda H., a member of the curriculum subcommittee in my congregation. This was session 203, “Collaborative Planning of Highly Interactive Family Worship,” with Louise Marcoux of the UU church of Sharon, Mass. I started listening to the recording, and remembered that I heard Louise talking about this concept a couple of years ago. At that time, I had filed the idea away in my memory as very interesting but impossible to do in our physical space at the UU Church of Palo Alto, because we don’t have a room we could use for family worship on Sunday morning. But we’re going to be doing everything online for some time to come, and it looks like Louise’s concept could translate really well to an online setting.

A video of memories of the stuffed animal sleepover:

Here’s the full script as written, though it may have been modified in performance or in editing:

Mr. Bear: Last week’s Stuffed Animal Sleepover was so much fun.

Ms. Bear: Let’s show some of our favorite photos from the sleepover. Dr. Sharpie, can you start the slide show?

Sharpie: Mm-hm. [Slideshow begins]

Mr. Bear: I wish we could have a sleepover at UUCPA every week, so I could see my stuffed animal friends.

Ms. Bear: Yes, it’s sad that we can’t see our stuffie friends every week. But think about the UUCPA humans: because of COVID-19, they won’t get to see all their human friends at UUCPA for months.

Mr. Bear: Well, it’s very nice then that we can show them all their favorite places at UUCPA. And it’s nice that we got to drink hot chocolate for them.

Ms. Bear: Remember when Pengui spotted the trash, and we were worried Trashman would appear?

Mr. Bear: Thank goodness Ecojustice Avenger showed up in time to prevent that! Ms. Bear, do you think we’ll be able to have another stuffed animal sleepover at UUCPA?

Ms. Bear: Yes, we will. I’ll be talking with Amy and Dan, the UUCPA ministers, to figure out a time for another sleepover.

Mr. Bear: We’re coming to my favorite part of the sleepover.

Ms. Bear: You mean playing Red Light, Green Light?

Mr. Bear: No, my favorite part was the evening worship service. I felt so peaceful afterwards. [Slide show ends]

Ms. Bear: It’s fun looking at these photos.

Mr. Bear: I can’t wait until we have another sleepover!

Below is the text of an online talk I gave on feminist theology this evening. The best part of the talk was the discussiona fterwards; unfortunately I can’t reproduce that here.

I’d like to begin with the predictive power of feminist theory. Back in the year 2000, feminist theorist and public intellectual bell hooks wrote a slim volume titled Feminism Is for Everybody. In one of the essays in that book, hooks describes what men can become in the absence of feminism:

“Patriarchal masculinity encourages encourages men to be pathologically narcissistic, infantile, and psychologically dependent on the privileges (however relative) that they receive simply for having been born male. Many men feel that their lives are being threatened if these privileges are taken away, as they have structured no meaningful core identity.”

These two sentences, written twenty years ago, accurately describe several contemporary politicians, including Donald Trump, our current president of the United States. Trump is an extreme example of what happens to a man who is firmly rooted in patriarchal masculinity. Unfortunately, he’s not the only American male this description fits. I’ll go further and say that, due to a decades-long decline in feminism, most white American men — including myself — fit this description to a greater or lesser degree. We white men in America all tend to think we are the most important people in the room, even when we claim to to be enlightened feminists; this means we are all narcissistic to some degree, and infantile insofar as we are psychologically dependent on our male privilege. (Parenthetical note about the reality of male privilege: one of the most interesting things that I have learned from the greater willingness of transgendered persons to be open about their gender identity is hearing what it’s like for people who transition from female to male in their college years: they report that suddenly they have male privilege; suddenly women and other men defer to them; suddenly their opinion becomes more important just be virtue of being male.)

Seeing all these narcissistic, infantile, dependent men should be a wake-up call to all of us, and especially to us as Unitarian Universalists. We already knew that patriarchal masculinity damages girls and women girls through sexual violence and sexual harassment, through repressing their natural abilities. But patriarchal masculinity is also warping boys and men, and it’s creating increasing numbers of toxic monsters like Donald Trump.

We need feminism more than ever before. In particular, we Unitarian Universalists need to develop a feminist theology that offers a positive vision of hope for our future. For this is one of the things that Unitarian Universalism can do best in our society: offer a positive vision.

At the Unitarian Universalist Church of Palo Alto (UUCPA), we say that our mission is to transform ourselves, each other, and the world. A positive feminist vision can help all genders, including men, transform themselves into whole and psychologically healthy human beings. A positive feminist vision can help us keep men and boys from being warped by patriarchal masculinity, and help all other genders from suffering damage at the hands of patriarchal masculinity. A positive feminist vision can help us envision a world where humans do not try to dominate other humans, and where humanity does not try to dominate the non-human world.

With this in mind, this adult religious education class is going to be a whirl-wind tour of feminist theology. I’m going to touch on four feminist theorists that have influenced the way Unitarian Universalists have thought about women and about feminism. And in the end, I hope I will have outlined something of a feminist vision of hope.

I’ll start with Mary Daly, because her 1973 book Beyond God the Father had a huge impact on U.S. feminists, including Unitarian Universalists. Beyond God the Father pointed out how religion did not need to be founded on a vision of a male god; we did not need to reinforce patriarchal masculinity through the belief structures and institutions of organized religion. In this book Daly wrote: “Exclusively masculine symbolism for God, for the notion of divine ‘incarnation’ in human nature, and for the human relationship to God reinforce sexual hierarchy. Tremendous damage is done….” [p. 4] Unitarian Universalist paid attention, and within ten years we, like many of the more liberal religious groups in the U.S., began including women’s voices and images in religion by, for example, issuing collections of hymns that replaced the old masculine religious imagery with gender-neutral imagery. By 1985, the Unitarian Universalist Association had revised its statement of principles and purposes with the express intent of removing sexist references.

However, Unitarian Unviersalists did not, for the most part, follow Daly as she became increasingly radical in her feminism. Unitarian Universalists aimed for equality between men and women. But in 1978, in her book Gyn/Ecology, Daly criticized equality under what she calls “tokenism.” According to Daly, tokenism “is commonly guised as Equal Rights, and [it] yields token victories….” Daly went on to assert that tokenism, or equal rights, whatever you want to call it, serves to deflect what she calls “gynergy,” which might be loosely defined as female power unbounded by patriarchy.

The effect of tokenism and equal rights, said Daly, is that:

“…female power, galvanized under deceptive slogans of sisterhood, is swallowed by The Fraternity. This method of vampirizing the Female Self saps women by giving illusions of partial success while at the same time making Success appear to be a far-distant, extremely difficult to obtain ‘elusive objective.’ When the oppressed are worn out in the game of chasing the elusive shadow of Success, some ‘successes’ are permitted to occur — ‘victories’ which can easily be withdrawn when the victim’s energies have been restored. Subsequently, women are lured into repeating efforts to regain the hard-won apparent gains.”

While this statement still may appear radical to us Unitarian Universalists today, I believe Daly gave an accurate prophesy of what actually happened in Unitarian Universalism. We Unitarian Universalists went down the path of equal rights: we worked hard to make sure of women’s equality in ministry; we worked hard to provide non-gendered references in our hymnal and other worship resources, in the name of equality; we worked hard to provide equality in lay leaders, both at the level of local congregations, and at the denominational level. And what was the result?

Today, a bit more than half our Unitarian Universalist ministers are women; yet male ministers are still more likely to have the high-paying positions at high-profile congregations. Furthermore, religious educators — who do what is traditionally considered “women’s work” and nine-tenths of whom are women — are mostly part-time and poorly paid employees whose jobs are the first to be cut in economic hard times. (Parenthetical note: two northern California congregations have cut their religious educator position entirely in the past twelve months rather than reduce the hours or salary of the minister position, thus revealing that “men’s work” is more valuable to us than “women’s work.”) So even though women serve equally as unitarian Universalist ministers, “women’s work,” taking care of children, is still devalued. Overall, success for women as religious professionals remains exactly what Daly said it would be: a “far-distant, extremely difficult to obtain ‘elusive objective’,” in spite of some hard-fought successes.

It is depressing to see this play out in Unitarian Universalism. In 1985, Daly wrote: “Despite the many and solid gains of recent years, the battering of women’s psyches in this period of backlash has dis-couraged many from the process of understanding phallocracy and imagining ways of breaking out. Indeed women are terrorized into amnesia and made afraid to know the full implications of patriarchal power.” Too bad Unitarian Universalism didn’t follow Mary Daly’s lead; as it is, we still don’t have an adequate feminist vision of hope for the future.

Unfortunately, I even see this dynamic at play in our own congregation. While girls at UUCPA have a great role model in Amy Morgenstern as the religious head of the congregation; while they can see me, a man, getting great satisfaction from doing women’s work; — nevertheless the congregation is still run on the “Great Man” model of leadership, with a powerful Board president (who happens to be a woman), and a powerful senior minister (who does however make every effort to distribute power widely). This is to say: we still rely on a patriarchal model of leadership and management at UUCPA; perhaps it could not be otherwise, for here we are in Silicon Valley, surrounded by the virulent sexism of the tech industry; and like it or not, we are affected by our surrounding culture. At UUCPA, we are perhaps less patriarchal than the surrounding culture, but we are very far from the positive vision outlined by Daly, of women freed to be themselves, freed of male domination.

Domination becomes an important concept in feminist, and to explore it a little further I’ll turn now to Rosemary Radford Reuther. Reuther is a feminist theologian who is connected to eco-feminism, which I addressed in the last class. So I won’t spend as much time on her as I did on Daly. But I would like to read you this passage from Reuther’s book “Sexism and God-talk,” where she talks about the roots of domination:

“In her well-known article ‘Is Female to Male as Nature Is to Culture?’ Sherry Ortner postulates a universal devaluation of the hierarchy of culture (the sphere of human control) over nature (spontaneous processes that humans don’t originate or control but are dependent on). Women are symbolized as ‘closer to nature’ than men and thus fall in an intermediate position between culture as the male sphere and uncontrolled nature. This is due both to woman’s physiological role in the biological processes that reproduce the species rather than in processes that enhance her as an individual and to the ability of male collective power to extend women’s physiological role into social roles confined to child nurture and domestic labor. Female physiological processes are viewed as dangerous and polluting to higher (male) culture. Her social roles are regarded as inferior to those of males, falling lower on the nature-culture hierarchy.” [p. 62]

Reuther wrote this in 1983, and we might argue with her based on today’s more careful distinction between gender identity, biological sex, and gender roles. Nevertheless, it’s clear that patriarchy exists; and Reuther is making a larger point here:

“Ultimately we have to ask why nature itself comes to be seen as devalued and inferior to the human. We cannot criticize the hierarchy of male over female without ultimately criticizing and overcoming the hierarchy of humans over nature.” [p. 62]

In this passage, Reuther is leading us to the conclusion that environmental destruction is caused by patriarchy. It’s a hierarchy, where humans are more highly valued than the non-human realm, and then in the human realm men are more highly valued than women. We can, by the way, extend this argument further: non-white humans have been symbolized as somehow closer to nature than white humans — black people are supposed to be better dancers and athletes, indigenous peoples of the Americas are seen to be more attuned to nature, and so on — and thus non-white people are seen as falling lower on the culture hierarchy than white men.

Since we explored ecofeminism in the last class, I’m not going to go any further into this topic, except to say that I continue to believe that ecofeminism, with its critique of domination, offers a powerful vision of hope for the future.

Domination is related to another topic in feminist thinking, understanding violence against women. And this brings us to Rebecca Parker, a liberal Christian who was for many years the president of Starr King School for the Ministry, a Unitarian Universalist theological school. In a book she wrote with Rita Nakashima Brock titled “Proverbs of Ashes,” Rebecca Parker wrote:

“A woman’s religious home can be a place where she is endangered rather than nurtured, put at risk rather than initiated into freedom and life…. women need to construct alternative religious ideas that allow for women’s lives to be resurrected from the scourges of violence and abuse.” [p. 19]

Parker writes from a liberal Christian perspective, and she specifically targets Christian ideals of sacrifice. Many Christian women find justification for tolerating abuse in the Christian story: that Jesus died for our sins, that the Christian God was sacrificed on the cross to redeem all humanity. If Jesus could make the ultimate sacrifice, then surely a human woman could follow Jesus’s example, and put her life at risk by enduring abuse from her husband, a clergyman, a man in her church.

Now then, non-Christian Unitarian Universalists, you shouldn’t feel smug when you hear this. True, Unitarian Universalists — both those of us who are Christian and those of us who are not — have for the most part rejected the idea that Jesus gave his life to redeem all humanity. However, all too often I have seen Unitarian Universalism women abused by men, and not finding the resources to resist such abuse in Unitarian Universalism.

I am particularly bothered by the male Unitarian Universalist ministers who prey on women. In my home church, the man who was minister when I was a child had sexual intercourse with quite a few women in the congregation. I don’t want to demonize him, for he did many things right: he spoke out against the Vietnam War when it wasn’t popular to do so; he advocated tirelessly for better programs and ministries for children. But at the same time he was a sexual predator, and the congregation tolerated his behavior for too many years before finally ousting him.

And UUCPA is a congregation where many women were not able to feel safe from the mid-1970s through 1999. Bill Jacobson was the minister of UUCPA during this time, and it’s pretty clear that he was a sexual predator who had sexual intercourse with women in the congregation, possibly including teenagers. Now some might want to excuse Jacobson, arguing that in those years we didn’t know as much as we do now about the negative effects that happen when a minister, someone with institutional power, has sex with someone in the congregation. I’m willing to excuse single male ministers who married a woman in their congregation — behavior we now know to be unacceptable, but which was considered acceptable for many years — but I am not willing to excuse a male minister who had sexual contact with multiple women in his congregation; there never was any acceptable justification for such behavior; those male ministers were sexual predators because they could get away with it, not because it was considered right or proper behavior.

Indeed, it was only a few years ago that the Unitarian Universalist Ministers Association changed its code of ethics to specifically prohibit having sex with congregants. And the code of ethics went further than that: if one minister believed another minister was engaging in behavior against the code of ethics, the first minister was supposed to confront the misbehaving minister before doing anything else. I was a member of the Unitarian Universalist Ministers Association in those days, and I ignored that last requirement. There were male ministers who were known to us to prey on female religious educators, and I was one of several ministers who told women who were new religious educators to stay away from those male ministers; confronting those men would have been an exercise in futility, since they were part of the Old Boys Network, and we religious educators were relatively powerless; confronting them might cost us our jobs; yet we wanted to be sure vulnerable women were warned.

(As an aside, one of those sexual predators is still an active Unitarian Universalist minister and is revered in the denomination; everyone once in a while, someone will tell me how wonderful he is, and I still stay silent. He has more power and money than I do, and I don’t want to be sued by him for slander nor bad-mouthed by him to important denominational officials. I tell you this as an example of the extent to which patriarchy still rules in Unitarian Universalism.)

I will say that UUCPA is doing better than the denomination as a whole in protecting women in our congregation from sexual harassment, including sexual predation, unwanted touch, unwanted contact, and so on. At UUCPA, we have a pretty good behavioral covenant. Men at UUCPA mostly behave pretty well — or at least, we behave better than the wider culture — and for the most part, when UUCPA men are told to back off, we back off. For the most part.

But let’s face it, in a society governed by patriarchal masculinity, I may well be unaware of instances of misbehavior by men in the congregation (and if you’re a woman who has experienced sexual harassment at UUCPA, I hope you will feel able to tell Amy, me, or a member of the Committee on Ministry about it). And I readily admit we UUCPA men are still pretty bad about dominating conversations, talking over women, not hearing women’s concerns or women’s voices. We still have work to do.

Nevertheless, Rebecca Parker offers us a vision of hope for the future, and I recommend the book Proverbs of Ashes to you. Rebecca Parker and Rita Nakashima Brock offer powerful stories of how women have faced up to sexual violence. They also offer an important message for those of us who haven’t experienced sexual violence, but who are trying to help and understand those who have. Brock and Parker say: Be quiet and listen. I think this is especially powerful, because under patriarchy we’re either supposed to fix problems, or defend ourselves and pretend the problem doesn’t exist. Of course, if a woman tells me that she is currently experiencing sexual harassment or sexual violence or domestic violence, I’m going to ask her if I can help extricate her from that situation. But more important is to listen without turning away; to listen in order to try to understand.

This is an important part of a feminist vision for the future: listen to those who have experienced violence. And in this moment when the wider culture is suddenly aware of the daily violence experienced by people of color, this is an important thing to remember. Yes, we all need to work together to change policing policies so we prevent further violence. But those of us who have not experienced this kind of violence also have to listen to people of color who have experienced; to listen without turning away from the anger and rage. I would go further and say this is ultimately a religious task: to still our own needs, and listen to those who have been harmed by violence. And this is an essential step towards ending, or at least greatly reducing violence.

I have time for a brief look at one more feminist theologian, the neo-Pagan writer Starhawk. Here is Starhawk’s vision for her feminist neo-Pagan theology, taken from her 1987 book Truth or Dare: Encounters with Power, Authority, and Mystery:

“We are never apart from the power of the mysteries. Every breath we take encompasses the circle of birth, death, and rebirth. The forces that push the blood cells through our veins are the same forces that spun the universe out of the primal ball of fire. We do not know what those forces are. We can invoke them, but we cannot control them…. Yet somehow we human beings … have managed to create a culture in which the power of the mysteries has been denied and power itself has been redefined as power-over, as domination and control… We are not particularly happy in this condition. We do not enjoy being the targets of nuclear warheads or developing cancer from our polluted environment. We do not enjoy starving, or wasting our lives in meaningless work, nor are we eager to be raped, abused, tortured, or bossed around. Whether the bosses enjoy their role is not the issue. The question is, how are the rest of us controlled? Or, even more to the point, How do we break control and set ourselves free?” [p. 6]

Starhawk has been a big influence within Unitarian Universalism partly because she offers a powerful vision of a feminine divinity, but perhaps more importantly because of her insistence that religious ritual is essential for social justice work, and also because she offers practices and exercises to reveal the working of power and authority in groups. Indeed, her book Truth or Dare is almost a recipe book for how to do groups based on feminist power analysis. I use her tools and exercises all the time in small groups that I’m a part of.

In particular, she takes the distinction between power-over and power-with — a distinction that, to the best of my knowledge, was first articulated by theologina Bernard Loomer, who was affiliated with both the Presbyterians and the Unitarian Universalists — Starhawk takes the somewhat lofty concepts of power-over and power-with and translates them into practical things you can implement in your small group. Here’s how she defines these two types of power in Truth or Dare:

“Power-over is decision-making power, control. In a hierarchy, it flows from the top down. In an egalitarian group, it remains broadly based. Decisions are made by the people most affected by them, and/or those who will carry them out. Power-with is influence. Whose voice is listened to? Whose ideas are most likely to be adopted?” [p. 268]

Starhawk also considers a third type of power, power-from-within, and explores how that type of power can be used to resist domination and control. And although Truth or Dare is a little dated now, it’s still an excellent resource for building non-patriarchal leadership in small religious groups.

So I’ve almost concluded my whirlwind tour of feminist theology. I’ve left a lot out of this whirlwind tour. I wish I had had time to talk about Sharon Welch, a theologian and ethicist who is both a humanist and a feminist. I wish I had had more time to talk about the feminist thinking of black women theologians, and Latina women theologians, and so on. I wish I had had time to dive into Queer theology, and talk about non-binary gender definitions in theological thinking. I wish I knew enough myself to talk about some of these things!

But I don’t have time. So I’ll end with a final vision of hope from the feminist bell hooks, again from her book “Feminism Is for Everybody,” published back in 2000:

“We are told again and again by patriarchal mass media, by sexist leaders, that feminism is dead, that it no longer has meaning. In actuality, females and males [editorial addition: and all other genders] of all ages, everywhere, continue to grapple with the issue of gender equality, continue to seek roles for themselves that will liberate rather than restrict and confine; and they continue to turn to feminism for answers. Visionary feminism offers us hope for the future….” [p. 117]

I heard about stuffed animal sleepovers from my sister Abby, the children’s librarian. Children’s librarians have been hosting stuffed animal sleepovers at their libraries for some years now. I thought it would be fun to do one for my congregation, but the time never seemed quite right. But now, when children aren’t allowed to go into the congregation’s buildings due to the pandemic, is the perfect time for a stuffed animal sleepover.

So here’s how you can host a stuffed animal sleepover at your congregation.

The end result of a stuffed animal sleepover is a photo album that you post on Facebook or other social media platform. I started out by looking at a couple of Abby’s photo albums from her stuffed animal sleepovers at the Harvard, Mass., public library: the 2019 Stuffed Animal Sleepover and the 2018 Stuffed Animal Sleepover. And for your reference, here’s our 2020 Stuffed Animal Sleepover.

Abby pointed out some of the educational content in what seems like light-hearted fun. In the course of the sleepover, the stuffed animals see some of the library’s resources that might be of interest to children; they look at some books that Abby wanted to make more widely known; and they became familiar with the library building as a place that was both fun and welcoming to children.

That helped me establish my own educational content. In my congregation, our primary educational goal is to have fun and build community. This is both a practical goal — organized religion is very much an optional activity in our culture, and if it isn’t fun then families are less likely to remain involved — and an idealistic goal — religious education is not mere preparation for life, it is learning by doing, learning how to build the beloved community by creating community in religious education settings. So in my congregation, a Stuffed Animal Sleepover is going to be light-hearted fun for kids, it’s going to promote a feeling of identity with the congregation, and it’s going to show stuffed animals living in beloved community.

With that idea in mind, I began to write out a script for the photos I wanted to take. Because children have now been away from our building for three months, I wanted to show remind them what their classrooms and other places on campus look like. I wanted to incorporate some of the basic rituals of congregational life, including lighting a flaming chalice, drinking hot chocolate (in surveys with children, over 90% of kids report hot chocolate as a favorite part of our congregation), and being in a worship service in our Main Hall.

The actual written script didn’t go into all this high-level stuff, though. My script was terse and practical. Here’s an excerpt:

Saturday morning:
Room 10:
Brunch
[Props: Granola, hot chocolate]
Lighting chalice, check-in
[Props: chalice, candle, matches]
Room 7:
Play time
[Props: play equipment already in the room]
Room 6:
Playing games
[Props: board games]
Coloring
[Props: crayons, coloring pages]
POST PHOTOS TAKEN THUS FAR

Our campus is spread out, so I used a wagon to carry the stuffed animals from one location to the next. The wagon also allowed me to show more of the campus: I could leave the stuffies in the wagon, as if they’re going on a tour, and take photos of them admiring parts of the campus.

The captions you write are just as important as the photos themselves. In the captions, you find out that the stuffed animals vote when they’re making important decisions; you learn that some of the stuffies identify as LGBTQ+; you discover that the stuffies have conversations about race and racism; etc.

I was also able to showcase some of my favorite cooperative board games, and I could highlight some books to which I wanted to draw attention.

I created an online registration form for the stuffed animals. Mostly, I wanted to have the cell phone and name of the adult who was going to be dropping off the stuffed animal. But, at the instigation of my sister, I added questions like: What time does your stuffie have to go to bed? and What kind of snakc is your stuffed animal allowed to have?

Publicity started going out 3 weeks before the event, with an announcement in the monthly religious education newsletter. I made a two and a half minute video with the two chaperones, two plush puppets named Mr. and Ms. Bear who were going to be the chaperones of the event, and this video was aired during the congregation’s online worship service the week before the event. Then I sent out email announcements 3 days before, and the day before. Out of a total enrollment of 112 children and teens, 10 children brought stuffies to participate. (Several other parents told me that their child couldn’t bear to part with a stuffie; some families just plain forgot; and some more families reported that their family didn’t understand what it was all about, but now that they knew they would participate the next time.)

I spent most of Wednesday prepping rooms for photos. A homeless shelter had just vacated our rooms a few days before, so I did some touch-up cleaning, arranged furniture the way kids would remember it, etc. More importantly, I got props ready — story books, games, snacks, etc., were either placed in the room where they’d be used, or were placed in paper bags ready to carry to the appropriate room.

Drop-off for stuffies was Friday evening. I asked that stuffies be brought in a paper bag, and told everyone that they were going to be left overnight in quarantine (actually to minimize my own risk of getting COVID-19 from a stuffie). I posted a few photos of the check-in process on Facebook, to build some initial interest.

Saturday was a 12 hour day. I planned to take between 80 and 90 photos (I actually wound up taking 83 on Saturday). Moving stuffies from room to room, arranging the stuffies and props, taking extra photos just in case, uploading photos to Facebook and writing cpations — it all takes time. I managed an hour for lunch, and half an hour for dinner. Bed time for the stuffies was 8 p.m., but then I spent another hour or so cleaning up.

Then on Sunday morning, the stuffies appeared in the livestreamed service. Arranging them, and lighting them, took more time of course. Then once the service was over, I returned them to their paper bags, and spent the afternoon waiting for families to come pick them up again.

As my sister Abby warned me, doing a Stuffed Animal Sleepover takes hours and hours of time; I spent most of my forty hours this past week on the sleepover. The response — both from the children, and from adults with no children — has been overwhelmingly positive. Plus this is the perfect activity for this pandemic– yes the stuffies are cute, yes there’s some obvious educational content — but right now people of all ages just want to see the campus that they spent so many happy hours in before shelter-in-place.

A group of Christian evangelicals have published a book titled “The Spiritual Danger of Donald Trump.” In an interview with Religion News Service, the editor, Ronald J. Sider, founder of Evangelicals for Social Action, answers the question, “So what is the spiritual danger of Donald Trump?”

“I would summarize it this way [Sider says]: Trump lies constantly. He has repeatedly demonstrated adulterous sexual behavior. He fails to make justice for the poor a concern in his policies. He constantly stokes white racism. His response to COVID-19 was dreadfully weak in the first couple of months. His position on climate change is simply disastrous. And his constant attacks on the fake media undermine democracy.”

Most Unitarian Universalists don’t like Donald Trump, but rarely do we speak about why he is a spiritual danger; mostly we focus on why he’s a political danger. I’m obviously not an evangelical Christian, and therefore not the target audience for Sider’s book or his remarks, but I think this summary of Trump as a spiritual danger is spot-on.

Another interesting point Sider makes in this interview is in response to the question of why white evangelicals supported Trump so strongly in 2016. A part of Sider’s response is particularly relevant to Unitarian Universalism:

“It’s partly because, let’s be honest, there’s a left wing fundamentalism as well as the right wing fundamentalism. And there’s a part of the liberal wing of the Democratic Party, which is really, I think, hostile to Christianity and certainly to evangelicalism. White evangelicals feel that, and don’t like it.”

This describes too many Unitarian Universalists: we can indeed come across as left wing fundamentalists who refuse to acknowledge that intelligent people can disagree with us on religious issues. For example, there are Unitarian Universalists who are convinced that global climate change is one of the top two or three most pressing issues facing humanity, who claim they’ll do everything they can to arrest global climate change, yet who are condescending and dismissive when they hear the term “creation care.”

There is no doubt that Donald Trump represents a pressing spiritual danger: he’s a liar, a racist, a misogynist, and he’s going to let the world go up in flames. It would be wise for us Unitarian Universalists to figure out how we can work effectively with all those who want to stop this clear and present spiritual danger.

It has been very interesting to listen to Donald Trump respond to the protests following the lynching of George Floyd by Minneapolis police officers: Trump has made calls for “law and order.” For anyone who remembers Barry Goldwater or Richard Nixon, in the not-so-distant past a call for “law and order” was code for using police to keep African Americans in their place. But that history goes back before Goldwater and Nixon, as is made clear in this excerpt from “O Say Can You See,” the blog of the National Museum of American History:

“William J. Simmons, a former minister and promoter of fraternal societies, founded the second incarnation of the Ku Klux Klan in Georgia in 1915. His organization grew slowly, but by the 1920s, Simmons began coordinating with a public relations firm, in part to chip away at the (accurate) perception that the Klan was an outlaw group involved in extralegal violence. Membership in the Klan exploded over the next few years. As part of this PR campaign, Simmons gave an interview to the Atlanta Journal newspaper in January 1921. While explicitly advocating white supremacy, Simmons played up his group’s commitment to law and order … and even boasted of his own police credentials. He claimed members at every level of law enforcement belonged to his organization, and that the local sheriff was often one of the first to join when the Klan came to a town. Ominously, Simmons declared that ‘[t]he sheriff of Fulton County knows where he can get 200 members of the Klan at a moment’s call to suppress anything in the way of lawlessness.'”

This blog post ends with a pertinent question in Latin, “Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?” Here’s my free translation of this phrase: “Who will police the police?”

It’s been interesting watching to see what online religious education resources people actually use. How-to craft videos? Single digits for number of views. Read-aloud programs? Low double digits, if I’m lucky. It’s not a great return for my invested time.

But what about “Story for All Ages” videos that are included in the Sunday service? We typically get over a hundred log-ins to our Zoom worship services, probably representing 1.5 humans on average, and posting on other social media (Facebook Live, Youtube) might add 10-30 views to the total. Plus a lot of informal positive feedback. These videos are definitely a better return for the time I invest, and as a result that’s what I’ve been concentrating on recently.

Since the “Story for All Ages” gets the largest audience, I thought maybe I’d try a tie-in video. The current “Story for All Ages” video series is about the conflict between Ecojustice Avenger and a dastardly villain named Trashman. The Ecojustice Avenger videos have a 12 second jingle, and after two episodes some kids had memorized all the lyrics to the jingle. That inspired me to expand that 12 second jingle to a full 1:41 music video, with videography inspired by Nam June Paik:

Will this reach kids? Maybe…probably not. But doing religious education in the age of COVID-19 requires constant experimentation until we discover what we can do that will reach kids.

Harvard Business Review (HBR) has a couple of articles on virtual meetings. Back on March 5, they published an article by Bob Frisch and Cary Greene titled “What It Takes To Run a Great Virtual Meeting.” If you’re experienced at running online meetings, most of this will seem like good common sense, but you should read it anyway. Some of HBR’s suggestions should be obvious, like “test the technology ahead of time.” Others may be less obvious, but are still critically important, like “make sure faces are visible.” HBR suggests having a facilitator for meetings, someone who can take the pulse of the group; and one of their more innovative ideas is that the facilitator can use a parallel phone-based survey tool like “Phone Everywhere” to get that feedback.

An earlier article, published in 2015, by Keith Ferrazi was titled “How To Run a Great Virtual Meeting.” This covers much of the same ground, though with different emphases. Ferrazi spent a couple of years researching virtual meetings, and his article summarizes his research findings. One of my favorite points from this article: ban multitasking, because it doesn’t work and it slows down the team. I’ve been guilty of multitasking at virtual meetings, and it’s true: when I start checking email, I lose track of what’s going on in the meeting. That’s one reasons why Ferrazi says to leave video on: so you can see when someone is trying to multitask. (This, by the way, is a big drawback of Google Meet: depending on how you set up the meeting, you can only see 4 people at a time.)

An article by John Wimberly of Congregational Consulting Group got me started reading up on the topic. Wimberley titles his article “Will There Ever Be A Non-Virtual Meeting Again?” Wimberley says that once the COVID crisis ends, many urban congregations will keep doing virtual meetings because of the time it saves commuting to and from meetings. Actually, it’s not just urban congregations: congregations in suburban areas also have traffic problems; plus virtual meeting can include those who can’t travel at night (elders and people with young children); and for those of us in regional congregations, drawing from a big geographical area, virtual meetings allow our more far-flung members to participate. Before COVID-19 hit, our Palo Alto congregation was already doing hybrid meetings — some people in person, some people online — and I expect after COVID-19, there will be more committee and Board members who opt for the virtual option.

The bottom line: since virtual meetings are here to stay, we should learn how to run great virtual meetings.

Beginning back in the 1980s, science fiction writer Jerry Pournelle wrote a column for BYTE magazine called “Computing at Chaos Manor” which consisted mostly of entertaining accounts of his struggles with computers and other IT software and hardware. Later on his blog “Chaos Manor,” arguably the first blog ever, Pournelle continued to write about his IT struggles, though unfortunately it looks like those old posts disappeared when Pournelle moved his blog to the WordPress platform in 2011. That’s too bad, because it would be fun to read those posts today, and se whether we’ve made any progress in home computing.

This past week, I’ve felt like I entered the land of Chaos Manor.

My troubles began when my HP Laserjet 1320 started malfunctioning: it would only print a page or two of a multi-page document, then shut down. At first I suspected that perhaps I’d missed an update for the printer driver, only to learn that HP no longer issues updates for that printer; I have to rely on Apple’s drivers. I’m told that writing printer drivers is not that hard — if you’re a software engineer, which I’m not. Instead, I looked online and bought a smaller, more energy efficient monochrome laser printer for under a hundred dollars. I had grown to like the old printer, as one grows attached to well-designed and reliable tools. Plus there is still plenty of toner in the cartridge (a corollary of Murphy’s Law says that a printer will die not long after you’ve purchased a new toner cartridge), and it can still print one page at a time. So it will go to my office as a last-ditch emergency back-up printer.

Then I made the mistake of learning how to use JamKazam, a service that allows you to make music online with other people, in almost real time. The problem with making music with other people online can be summed up in one word: latency. From a musician’s point of view, latency is the lag time between musicians, measured in milliseconds. 10 milliseconds of latency is approximately equivalent to standing 11 feet from your fellow musician; for a rule of thumb, think of 1 additional millisecond of latency as being 1 additional foot away from a fellow musician. Most musicians won’t even hear a latency of 10 milliseconds; 20 milliseconds becomes noticeable and may require extra concentration; and a latency of, say, more than 35 milliseconds makes it difficult to play in synch. If you want to know more about latency, you can read these posts on JamKazam’s support forum.

Jam Kazam provides a way of minimizing the latency, but it is not a plug-and-play-music solution. As I found out very quickly. When I tried to use the JamKazam service, their desktop client gave me several error messages. After a certain amount of swearing and head-scratching, the problem proved to be in my 11 year old wifi router. I attempted a firmware update, and the router stopped working. I had a moment of panic — Carol and I both rely on our internet connection, and we’d be in deep trouble if the router went down — but when I shut the power off and rebooted the router, it started working again. Sort of. Clearly, it was time to buy a new router.

The new router arrived today, and setting it up was mercifully easy. I started up the JamKazam desktop client on my MacBook Air, and everything worked well. However, the Jam Kazam client reported that at time I was using 20% of my processor power — and that was with just me, and no other musicians. So I started up the JamKazam desktop client on my Mac Mini, which has a much faster processor, plugged in my Blue brand Snowball USB microphone — and JamKazam returned an error message. The Snowball microphone samples at 44.1 KHz, and although JamKazam claims to allow you to change the sampling rate of your microphone, it soon became clear that unless I used a USB mic with a sampling rate of 48 KHz, the audio quality would be poor. In addition, the JamKazam desktop client revealed that the internal latency of the Mac Mini was quite high; it turns out this is a known issue with Macs: the Mac sound card introduces significant latency, which can be overcome by purchasing an external audio interface for, oh, two or three hundred dollars, or more.

I had just spent $180 on a blazing fast new wifi router; that expense I can justify. I cannot justify spending several hundred dollars on an audio interface and a new microphone. I went back to the MacBook Air. Using the internal microphone, the basic latency was under 10 milliseconds — more than sufficient for me to try using JamKazam with other musicians to see if I even like the experience.

One final addition to my home office has nothing to do with information technology, though it is the biggest improvement so far. I purchased a small apartment-sized rowing machine for under a hundred dollars. I can’t type while I’m rowing, but I can sit on the rowing machine and watch webinars or even read long pieces on Web sites. And whenever I need a five minute break, there it is, ready for me. If you’re ever on a videoconference call with me, and I turn off my video, you’ll know why — I’m rowing.

Speaking of which, I’ve been sitting at my computer too long. It’s time to row.

Religion New Service has reports on an important consideration before your church reopens:

You’ll want to talk with your insurer first.

Insurance companies, as you’d expect, are remaining “neutral on whether churches should reinstitute physical gatherings when restrictions are lifted.” Yet because they’re concerned with safety in general, insurance companies are offering concrete suggestions on how churches might one day safely reopen. According to Religion New Service:

“Guy Russ, Church Mutual’s expert on risk control, said his company’s recommendations include maintaining 6-foot distance from other parishioners in all directions, sterilizing all surfaces, using hard-cover seating options instead of fabric-covered pews to expedite cleaning, removing physical holy books or hymnals from use, and posting signage or projected messages to clearly indicate expectations for worship attendees.”

For our church in Palo Alto, that means reducing the seating capacity from 150 seats to about 50. Then since most of our chairs have fabric covers, we’d have to dig up 50 chairs with hard surfaces.

“Russ also stressed the need for religious groups to train staff and volunteers not only on cleanliness and social distancing practices, but also on how to address individuals who fail or refuse to comply with posted guidelines. In addition, he suggested houses of worship consider instituting some form of ‘contact tracing,’ whereby faith leaders either retain the contact information of people who attend events or use smartphone applications to help local authorities to trace the spread of the coronavirus if members of the congregation get sick.”

This means training a lot of volunteers. This also means taking attendance, including names and contact information, for all in-person services.

“‘If everybody has followed everything that you ask them to do and somebody who has attended an event at your facility becomes ill, what is your protocol going to be?’ he said. ‘We are recommending that each organization thinks through that question.'”

This means yet another safety policy for the Board of Trustees to vote on BEFORE reopening.

Plus there are other considerations. For instance, our music director tells us that we probably shouldn’t have any group singing, nor any group speaking, until there’s an effective vaccine — so no hymns. Beyond that, no choirs and no wind instruments either. From my perspective as an educator, I see major difficulties enforcing social distancing with younger children, so maybe there would have to be a lower age limit.

It begins to look like it will be a major challenge to hold in-person services before there’s an effective vaccine.

Which leads me to ask: What about those states that are allowing churches to reopen soon? Have they thought all these issues through?

More to the point, what about those churches that decide to reopen because they are sure God will protect them? Rev. Stephen Fearing of Beaumont Presbyterian Church in Lexington, Kentucky, has the best answer to that one:

“Bad theology has consequences.”

Former president Barack Obama has called the current presidential administration’s response to the coronavirus situation “an absolute chaotic disaster.” (Full quote here.)

Even accounting for some measure of political calculation, hoping to help his own party’s chances in the November election, there’s a lot of truth in what Obama said. For example, look at this bar graph showing the number of cases per country:

And to quote the BBC: “More than 77,000 people have now died and the US has 1.2m confirmed cases — both by far the highest in the world.”

Just one of those weeks. A few too many things to do at church, a big outside volunteer commitment, plus the ordinary maintenance things that have to be done.

On Monday, Zoom released a major update to the Zoom client. If your church is using Zoom for religious education and services, note that the 5.0 version will be required for all users by May 30, so start reaching out to your congregation now — after May 30, they won’t be able to log in to one of your meetings without upgrading.

If you run kids’ programs on Zoom, you will want to upgrade now. Zoom has plugged some obvious holes that could be exploited by trolls — or by mischievous kids wanting to disrupt a class. Most important, the host “can disable the ability for participants to show their profile picture or change it in a meeting.” Other critically important security upgrades for those of us who do Zoom meetings with legal minors include the ability to embed an audio watermark in recordings (you really don’t want anyone recording minors without parental permission). And there are a few other enhancements to security that will also be helpful to teachers.

According to the Associated Press: “Louisiana authorities arrested pastor [Tony Spell] on an assault charge on Tuesday after he admitted that he drove his church bus toward a man who has been protesting his decision to continue holding mass gatherings at church in defiance of public health orders during the coronavirus pandemic.”

By contrast, after learning that the governor of Georgia planned to reopen churches and other businesses, despite contrary advice from public health professionals, “Bishop Reginald T. Jackson, the presiding prelate in Georgia for the African Methodist Episcopal Church, instructed the state’s roughly 520 AME congregations not to gather,” according to Religion News Service.

And by way of further contrast: Angelus Temple, a megachurch in Los Angeles, has now served 350,000 free meals during the pandemic, according to Religion News Service. The pastor, Matthew Barnett, said a few people disagreed with the decision to stop holding services in mid-March and concentrate instead of feeding people in need, but such criticism is “not productive in bringing about healing and possibilities of what we can do during this time.”

The difference between Tony Spell on the one hand, and Reginald T. Jackson and Matthew Barnett on the other, is that Jackson and Barnett have a more mature understanding of Christianity. They understand that their actions go far beyond the churches they supervise; their actions have ethical and moral implications that transcend their own self-interest.

What I’m taking away from this: I’m going to do my best to NOT be like Tony Spell, selfish and immature when it comes to quarantine restrictions. Instead, I’m going to do my best to model my behavior after Jackson and Barnett — looking to the greater good, acting with kindness and compassion.

My younger sister the children’s librarian has inspired me. Her library is closed, or course, so she’s creating online content by uploading an average of a new video every day to the Harvard (Mass.) Public Library Children’s Room Youtube channel. So far, she’s got a simple craft project, story time that parents can do with young children, and she’s reading aloud the entire Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.

I like several things about Abby’s videos. First, they’re a great supplement to Zoom calls — some of us are getting Zoom burnout, and it’s nice to be able to watch a video when YOU want to watch it. Second, they’re Goldilocks videos — not too long, not too short, but just the right length. Third, they don’t put a big burden on parents — the crafts project can be done by kids on their own without parental supervision, kids can watch the installments of Alice on their own, and the story time for young children has them doing what they’re going to be doing anyway which is sitting in a parental lap.

So I repurposed this Youtube channel, where I already had some religious education videos. I added a video we used in last Sunday’s service. I created a couple of playlists, one for crafts (Abby’s craft video is included there), and another for story time (Abby’s Alice stories are going there, because Alice in Wonderland is a sacred text). I’ve got a children’s librarian from our congregation half convinced to do a story time, I’m planning a story time (I think I’ll read aloud from an old edition of the Jataka Tales), there will be more crafts projects.

Blog readers, if you know of some videos that you think would be appropriate to share on this Youtube channel, please send me the links. I can’t promise to put everything up, but I’d really like to see your suggestions — send them to danharper then the little “at” sign then uucpa then a dot then org.

This Sunday, during our congregation’s online service, we’re going to go back in time…

…to the year 29 C.E., to a small town in the land of Judea. There we will meet a fellow named Ishmael, who’s the kind of person who loves to spread rumors.

If Ishamael lived today, he’d be the kind of fellow who emails you the latest internet conspiracy theory. But since he lives in the year 29 in Judea, he spreads his rumors face-to-face in the town’s marketplace. He meets up with a woman named Martha. When he learns that Martha’s brother Peter has joined the entourage of the famous rabbi Jesus of Nazareth, not surprisingly he has a few conspiracy-theory-type rumors to tell Martha. This causes Martha to wonder if her brother is going to be OK….

Our trip to the past will take less than three minutes, allowing us plenty of time for the usual singing, music, preaching, etc. The whole thing will be livestreamed on the Facebook page of the Unitarian Universalist Church of Palo Alto, this Sunday at 9:30 and 11.

One of my favorite hymns about peace begins:

Years are coming — speed them onward!
When the sword shall gather rust,
And the helmet, lance, and falchion,
Sleep at last in silent dust!

This hymn has mostly been reprinted in Universalist and Unitarian Universalist hymnals, and it is usually attributed to the Universalist minister Adin Ballou, who founded the utopian Hopedale community in Milford, Massachusetts, in 1842. Ballou and the members of the Hopedale community were believers in women’s rights and abolition and temperance and education and pacifism. Recently, while I was researching family history, I discovered that my mother’s great-grandparents Nathan Chapman and Hepzibah Whipple left the utopian Rogerenes of Ledyard, Conn., to join the nearby utopian Hopedale community in Massachusetts; and their daughter Jeannette was married in Hopedale to her husband Richard Congdon by none other than Rev. Adin Ballou; and though by the time of this marriage the Hopedale community had gone bankrupt, the spirit of the community lived on in the Hopedale Unitarian church of which Ballou was the minister.

Not only did this family history help explain why I’m a feminist, pacifist, educator, and utopian dreamer, but I decided it must explain why I like this hymn so much.

Except that Adin Ballou didn’t write this hymn.

The poem that begins “Years are coming” did, in fact, first appear as a hymn in Adin Ballou’s Hopedale Collection of Hymns and Songs for the Use of Practical Christians (Hopedale, Mass., 1850). But Ballou did not credit himself or anyone else as the author of the poem. A very little research on my part revealed that the poem was probably first published in The Western Literary Messenger, ed. J. Clement (Buffalo, N.Y.: Jewett, Thomas, & Co., Publishers), vol. XI, no. 1, September, 1848, p. 40, where it was credited to “G. H. C.” of Rochester, New York, and labeled “Original” (that is, presumably written for that magazine and not lifted from some other publication, which happened a lot in those days before good copyright laws). Here’s the poem as it first appeared in 1848:

The Future

Years are coming — speed them onward!
When the sword shall gather rust,
And the helmet, lance, and falchion,
Sleep in silent dust!

Earth has heard too long of battle,
Heard the trumpet’s voice too long,
But another age advances,
Seers foretold in song.

In the past, the age of iron,
Those who slaughtered most their kind,
Have too often worn the chaplet
Honor’s hand has twined.

But the heroes of the future
Shall me men whose hearts are strong:
Men whose words and acts shall only
War against the wrong.

But the sabre, in their context,
Shall no part, no honor own;
War’s dread art shall be forgotten,
Carnage all unknown.

Years are coming when forever
War’s dread banner shall be furled,
And the angel Peace be welcomed,
Regent of the world!

Hail with song that glorious era,
When the sword shall gather rust,
And the helmet, lance, and falchion,
Sleep in silent dust!

Adin Ballou’s 1850 version included only four stanzas of the 1848 original, the first two and the last two. It is impossible to know what tune this hymn was sung to, as Ballou included no tunes in his hymnal. It’s an odd meter for a hymn, 8.7.8.5.; I was not able to find any hymn tunes in that meter published as early as 1850.

By 1866, right after the end of the Civil War, these same four stanzas were included as hymn no. 346 in A Book of Prayer for the Church and the Home; with Selections form the Psalms, and a Collection of Hymns (Boston: Universalist Publishing House, 1866), and Adin Ballou was given credit as the author. The editors altered the hymn from the awkward 8.7.8.5. meter to 8.7.8.7. by adding two syllables to the last line of each stanza. This hymnal again had no tunes, as was common in those days, but there were lots of 8.7.8.7. tunes to which one could sing the hymn. The 1866 version of the hymn went like this:

1. Years are coming — speed them onward!
When the sword shall gather rust,
And the helmet, lance, and falchion,
Sleep at last in silent dust!

2. Earth has heard too long of battle,
Heard the trumpet’s voice too long!
But another age advances,
Seers foretold in ancient song.

3. Years are coming when, forever,
War’s dread banner shall be furled,
And the angel Peace be welcomed,
Regent of the happy world.

4. Hail with song that glorious era,
When the sword shall gather rust,
And the helmet, lance, and falchion,
Sleep at last in silent dust.

Then in 1876, the hymn was included in another Universalist hymnal, Church Harmonies: A Collection of Hymns and Tunes for the Use of Congregations (Boston: Universalist Publishing House, 1876). The editors of this hymnal altered the hymn again, combining the first and second stanzas into one long stanza, and the third and fourth stanzas into another long stanza. This hymnal included tunes, and the editors paired this hymn with a tune they called “Pilgrim.” The editors did not credit the composer of “Pilgrim,” which went like this:

This pairing of tune and text continued in the 1937 hymnal Hymns of the Spirit, a cooperative venture of the Unitarians and the Universalists; the 1937 editors claim the tune is “Attributed to Mozart,” but I have not been able to confirm that Mozart had anything to do with either the tune or the arrangement. Finally, in the 1964 Unitarian Universalist hymnal Hymns for the Celebration of Life, the text was paired with the familiar hymn tune “Hyfrodol,” and that pairing of text and tune continue in the most recent (1993) Unitarian Universalist hymnal, Singing the Living Tradition. I feel the text goes better with the tune “Pilgrim” than with “Hyfrodol,” but it’s worth singing with either tune.

But a mystery still remains: Who wrote the text? And if you’re like me and prefer singing the hymn to the tune “Pilgrim,” there’s another mystery: Who wrote that tune?

And for your singing pleasure, here’s a PDF of two copyright free versions of the hymn, one version with three verses from the original poem paired with the tune “Pilgrim,” and another version paired with the tune “Hyfrodol.”

Ralph Drollinger, former professional basketball player and now the leader of Capitol Ministries in Washington, D.C., leads Bible studies for old white guys in power. He can boast that 11 of the 15 members of Trump’s cabinet attend his Bible study. According to the journalist Katherine Stewart, Drollinger should be identified more with politics than religion; specifically, with a political movement Stewart calls “Christian nationalism.” In a recent interview, Stewart quoted Drollinger on the subject of responsibility to the poor:

“The responsibility to meet the needs of the poor lies first with the husband in marriage, secondly with the family, and thirdly with the church. Nowhere does God command government or commerce to support those with genuine needs.”

This sounds to me as though Drollinger is telling rich men that if they will only support their wives and family and maybe give something to their church — beyond that, Drollinger is giving them permission to ignore the poor. Which reminds me of a story in the book of Mark about someone very like Ralph Drollinger who went to Jesus to ask a question:

“As Jesus was setting out on a journey, a man ran up and knelt before him, and asked him, ‘Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?’ Jesus said to him, ‘Why do you call me good? No one is good but God alone. You know the commandments: “You shall not murder; You shall not commit adultery; You shall not steal; You shall not bear false witness; You shall not defraud; Honor your father and mother.”‘ He said to him, ‘Teacher, I have kept all these since my youth.’ Jesus, looking at him, loved him and said, ‘You lack one thing; go, sell what you own, and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me.’ When he heard this, he was shocked and went away grieving, for he had many possessions.”

If Ralph Drollinger will go and sell everything he owns, and give the money to the poor, then I’ll be willing to listen to his thoughts about supporting poor people. Until then, I’m going to ignore his cold-blooded and heartless words, and I’m going to continue in the tradition of my New England forebears who believed that one of the key roles of government was, in fact, to support those in need.

In an interview on the Religious Studies Podcast, journalist Katherine Stewart points out that it’s wrong to identify all Christian evangelicals with the Trump White House. Stewart’s research shows that the Trump White House uses religion to mobilize voters to support them — specifically, mobilizing voters around abortion and opposition to same sex marriage and LGBTQ+ rights. She calls this a political movement, which she names “Christian nationalism.”

When pressed by the interviewer, David McConeghy, Stewart elaborates on why Christian nationalism is fundamentally about politics, not about religion. Speaking of one of the leaders of the movement, Ralph Drollinger, Stewart says:

“The policies he’s promoting are: deregulation; sort of a compliant workforce; a lack of basic workers’ rights; I think he’s called the flat tax something like ‘God’s form of taxation.’ And you know, this is all music to the ears of the funders of the movement. Many of the funders are these members of plutocratic families … the DeVos and Prince families, the Green family. And these very hyper-wealthy families rely on minimal workers’ rights, and economic and environmental deregulation to maintain and increase their profits. So the movement is promoted to the rank-and-file as being about these culture war issues. But when movement leaders are talking amongst themselves, or to political leaders, the message is much more expansive.”

Stewart also believes, based on her research, that Christian nationalism as a political philosophy is basically opposed to representative democracy; yet the Christian nationalists are also very sophisticated at manipulating the electorate to get their supporters into positions of leadership and power.

For these and other reasons, Stewart asserts that this is a political movement, one that uses religion for its own ends. I think this is a helpful way of looking at electoral politics in this election year: rather than being distracted by the red herring of Christian evangelicals getting involved in politics, we would do better to pay attention to the manipulation of the electorate by the political force of Christian nationalism.

With the shelter-in-place order, any socializing we do is on camera. Plus many of us have to use videoconferencing for work. As long as we’re going to be spending lots of time on camera, we might as well look our best. So here are some tips for making yourself look good on your laptop’s (or your phone’s) crappy little web camera.

First of all, and perhaps most importantly, have your laptop or phone sitting on something stable. Ideally, you want to move the camera as little as possible, for two reasons. First, if you’re in a videoconference, you want to focus attention on your face, and if you move the camera around that’s going to be a distraction. Second, unless you have a really fast internet connection you probably want to save bandwidth; if you have a stable backdrop, that will be less information you’re sending out, and so you’re less likely to have degraded audio or video.

Second of all, don’t place your camera too low. If your camera is too far below your face, people will be looking up your nose, and if you’re middle-aged they can see all those incipient jowls that you’ve been trying to hide. In other words, don’t do this:

Boy, do I look ugly in the photo above! Don’t make yourself look ugly. Place your computer or phone so that the camera is about at the level of your chin. However, don’t place your camera too high; there’s a psychological disadvantage to giving your viewers the impression that they are higher or taller than you.

In addition, learn about the Rule of Thirds. Imagine that your screen is divided in thirds both horizontally and vertically, sort of like a tic-tac-toe board. Have your eyes placed so that they’re about a third of the way from the top of the screen. Move so that your head is NOT in the center of the frame, but about a third of the way to one side (I like to move to my left, so that my right hand, my dominant hand, can make gestures in the space to my right). Setting up your camera using the Rule of Thirds will make you look more professional, because that’s what we’re used to seeing in movies and on television.

Now let’s take a look at lighting. In movies and television, they use what’s called “three point lighting.” That just means that they use three light sources to light someone’s head. First, you set up the “key light,” which is the most important light. If you’re at home and on a videoconference during the day, your key light is most likely determined by the nearest window — in that case, try to sit so that the light from the nearest window is coming towards you at about a 30 degree angle — and you want diffuse daylight, so make sure there’s a curtain or something to give diffuse light. At night, sit so that the strongest light in the room becomes your key light.

With only the key light, your head will look a little one dimensional or washed out; and if you have any wrinkles or blemishes, they will tend to stand out. Therefore, you need to set up another light, called the “fill light,” which will fill in the stark shadows cast by the key light. The fill light should be less bright than the key light. The drawing below shows where the key light and the fill light come from:

Then if you want really professional lighting, you’ll add what’s called a “back light.” This comes from the same side as the key light, and it lights up the back edge of your head. By lighting up that back edge of your head, it makes you look that much more three dimensional. However, it’s super time consuming to set up a back light, so I don’t bother when I’m on a videoconference.

Now here are some examples of what I look like with these different lights. Here I am with just the key light — it’s adequate, but pretty stark:

Now here I am with the key light and the fill light — my head looks more three-dimensional:

And finally, here I am with a back light. I find it quite difficult to place the back light on myself; I think this photo would have been better if the back light had been pointed a little higher on my head, instead of just above my ear:

All the photos above were done with the crappy low resolution camera in my laptop. If you have good lighting, you can produce good images even with a crappy camera.

And now, here’s a photo of what my lighting set-up looked like for these photos. The key light is my regular swing-arm desk lamp, which has a bulb that provides a slightly blueish light. The fill light is a clamp lamp, clamped to a bookcase, with a bulb that’s about half as bright as the key light, and which gives a warmer light. Finally, the back light is a LED flashlight on a tripod.

As I said earlier, setting up the back light was difficult and time-consuming. Setting up the key light and the fill light, on the other hand, took me less than five minutes, and will give you perfectly adequate lighting for a videoconference.

By now, you’ve also figured out that I minimize the background as much as possible. That’s easy at night: I point the lights at my head, making sure whatever is behind me remains dark. During the day, it’s more difficult for me. Our spare bedroom, where I have my home office, has windows on two walls, and a huge mirrored sliding closet door on a third wall. The mirror is very distracting when videoconferencing, and for the moment I’ve hung some decorative cloth over it; eventually, I’ll get some plain white curtains to cover it, which will provide a good distraction-free background.

Another obvious point that you’ve figured out: don’t sit with your back to a window. Your face won’t be lit at all, and you’ll look like crap.

To conclude:

If you’re going to be spending a lot of time videoconferencing, why not look your best? Spend a few minutes to make yourself look good:
— Place the camera on a stable platform, level with your chin;
— Spend five minutes setting up a key light and fill light;
— Get rid of distracting backgrounds.

The shelter-in-place order has made livestreaming our church’s worship services a little more complex. We had a tech rehearsal last night with worship leaders and tech support people each in their own locations, using Zoom as our basic platform. We have learned a lot since we livestreamed last week! Here’s a summary of what is currently working for us:

(1) Before the rehearsal, whoever owns the Zoom account needs to log in to their Zoom account and go over the settings carefully (see the screenshot below to see where to find “Settings” when logged in to Zoom). The critical settings you need to be aware of are as follows:
(a) Do not allow “Join before host.” This is to prevent someone from hijacking the feed with inappropriate screensharing before you take control.
(b) UNtick “Participant video: Start meetings with participant video on.” You want participant videos off, partly to prevent distraction, but also to prevent trolls from putting inappropriate content on their video feed. (Zoom will allow participants to start their video feed again, so you’ll also need someone to monitor participant videos during the service; see below.)
(c) Tick “Mute participants upon entry.”
(d) Tick “Allow co-hosts,” for two reasons: First, you’re going to need 2-3 people to manage the video feeds; second, make all worship leaders co-hosts because that puts them at the top of the participant list so you can more easily find them when switching back and forth between worship leaders and musicians.
(e) Tick “Allow host to put attendee on hold.” Just in case.
(f) Under “Screen sharing,” make sure you select the option where only allow host(s) can share screens. This prevents so-called “Zoombombing,” where trolls put up inappropriate images on your Zoom feed.
(g) Tick “Disable desktop/screen for users.”
(e) Tick “Allow users to select original sound in their client settings.” This improves the audio quality of musicians enormously.

(2) Well before the service starts, make sure you have email addresses for all co-hosts and worship leaders. Cell phone numbers would be a good idea too. If something fails, it’s nice to have a backup communication method besides private chat within Zoom.

(3) Start the Zoom call at least 15 minutes before the stated start time for the worship service, and make sure your co-host(s) who are managing participants also log in early. You want to have at least two hosts managing participants before the stated start time, when you’ll have your big influx of participants log in. Have your worship leaders log in early as well, and assign them co-host status so they appear at the top of the participants list.

(4) During the worship service, you’ll want people in the following tech roles:
(a) One host to “Spotlight video” of whichever worship leader or musician is on.
(b) One or two hosts to manage the participants. If you have a really small service (say, 30 or fewer participants logged in), you might be able to combine this role with the previous role.
(c) One or two people to work on audience engagement; these people will be monitoring the chat. Specific tasks might include monitoring chat for joys and sorrows (we’re going to allow joys and sorrows in chat); pasting hymn/song lyrics into chat at the appropriate moment; watching for newcomers to the service and perhaps greeting them privately in chat; generally monitoring behavior.
(d) Optional: we’ll also have a few knowledgable people monitoring audio and video quality, and providing feedback and/or advice as needed.

(5) Send out a script ahead of time. Our script, which was the basic order of service, proved to be inadequate. The primary worship leader (the senior minister in our case) is going to send out a full script, and our music director is going to insert cues for the host who’s in charge of switching the video feeds.

(6) We did a brief postmortem to talk about what worked and what didn’t work, and of course we’re doing email follow-up as well.

One final point: While putting on a worship service is always a team effort, it becomes even more of a team effort when you’re livestreaming (especially when everyone has to watch from home), because the tech crew becomes an integral part of the worship team. I consider this a major benefit of livestreaming services: in these times, when we’re all feeling a little isolated and scared, being a part of a team effort can be quite comforting.

For me, the biggest stumbling block for livestreaming worship services has always been copyright issues.

Especially troublesome are hymns.

Many of the most popular hymn tunes are protected by copyright. Even if a tune is in the public domain, the arrangement may be copyrighted (and it can be difficult to find out if the arrangement is, in fact, copyrighted). Even if the arrangement is copyrighted, some people will claim copyright for their typesetting of the hymn. If a hymn is protected in any way under copyright, you’re not supposed to photocopy or project or electronically disseminate the printed version of the hymn; if any part of the music is protected under copyright, you’re not supposed to broadcast audio of it. No, not even if you own hymnals with the hymn: owning a hymnal just allows you to use the hymn in an in-person event such as an in-person worship service.

The solution to this problem: copyright free hymns.

For the past few years, I’ve been collecting copyright free hymns and spiritual songs. I have huge disorganized files (both electronic and hard copy) of public domain tunes and texts and arrangements. I’ve pulled many songs from the great early African American collections, including Slave Songs of the U.S. (1868), the Fisk Jubilee Singers songbook (1873), and Cabin and Plantation Songs, assembled by the Hampton Institute (1901). Although most of the hymns I’ve found are Christian, I’ve also found some good hymns and songs with Buddhist, Jewish, Neo-Pagan, Ethical Culture, or secular content. All the hymns I’ve found would be suitable for use in a Unitarian Universalist worship service; indeed, many of them are public domain versions of hymns in our current hymnal that are protected by copyright in some way.

I’ve just put 24 of these copyright free hymns and spiritual songs in a Google Drive folder here.

I’ll put a list of the songs currently in the folder below the fold. And I’ll be adding more copyright free hymns and spiritual songs as I find time to produce fair copies of the versions I have.

Copyright free hymns and spiritual songs now in the folder:

Amazing Grace
Some people prefer to add a fermata on the first note of the seventh measure, and on the final note. This arrangement is only moderately good, but it’s copyright free!

Ancient Mother
This chant emerged from the late 20th century North American Pagan community. It is typically sung repeatedly for 3 or more minutes.

Buddha’s Hymn of Victory
Words Gautama Buddha supposedly said upon achieving enlightenment, from two English translations, and set to “Windham,” one of the most popular late 18th century American hymn tunes.

City of Our Hopes
Text by Felix Adler, founder of the Ethical Culture movement. Also known as “Hail, the Glorious Golden City.” The tune is the familiar “Hyfrodol,” in a robust late 19th century gospel arrangement.

Down by the Riverside
The tune and arrangement are taken from the earliest publication of this tune. Some of the verses are of unknown origin.

Down in the Valley To Pray
There are many different versions of the tune, including many recorded by Euro-American bluegrass and country singers; this is an African American version from the earliest known publication of the tune, in the 1867 book Slave Songs of the U.S.

For the Beauty of the Earth
The traditional hymn, with text variants from early 20th century Unitarian hymnals.

Forward through the Ages
Text by Unitarian minister Frederick Hosmer, and tune by Sullivan of Gilbert and Sullivan, this hymn was the favorite of Dana Greeley, first president of the Unitarian Universalist Association.

Get on Board
This version published in 1873 by the Fisk Jubilee Singers, the first internationally known African American singing ensemble.

How Can I Keep from Singing?
This is not an old Quaker song, as is claimed in many hymnals and songbooks. The original text came from a poem published in a newspaper in the late 19th century, and the tune is by the well-known gospel song-writer Robert Lowry. The third verse, written in 1950 by Doris Plenn, was the subject of litigation when Enya recorded this verse, thinking it was a public domain song. Pete Seeger’s publishing company sued her, claiming copyright, but in litigation the court determined that Seeger did not have a good claim to the copyright, and that Plenn had intended the verse to go into the public domain.

Hail the Glorious Golden City
See: “City of Our Hopes”

I’m on My Way
The arrangement came from a photocopy I once had of a late 19th century anonymous arrangement; it is uninspired, but copyright free!

Jacob’s Ladder
This version is from the Hampton Institute, with added anonymous verses.

Joyful, Joyful
Although often attributed to Ludwig van Beethoven, the music is actually an arrangement based on Beethoven by Edward Hodges, from the late 19th century Trinity Church Collection. Some people will tell you that this tune is not the way Beethoven wrote it, and they’re absolutely correct; but this is, in fact, the way Hodges arranged it. After looking at Beethoven’s score for the Ninth Symphony, I decided I appreciated Hodges’s ability to make something that’s singable by us ordinary mortals.

Lo, the Eastertide Is Here
A lovely text by Frederick Hosmer, paired here with a charming and catchy tune by the great American composer William Billings.

Mother Moon
An anonymous late 20th century North American chant from the Pagan community. The first verse can be sung repeatedly as a chant; sing for three minutes or so. Or the other anonymous verses may be added to make a short song.

Now Shall My Inward Joys
A brilliant choral miniature by William Billings. This tune deserves to be better known.

Oh, Freedom
This song is best known from the versions sung during the Civil Rights Movement, but this late-19th / early-20th century arrangement from the Hampton Institute is quite good.

O Life That Maketh All Things New
A classic Unitarian text by Samuel Longfellow, paired with the classic hymn tune “Truro.”

Sioux Song
Many Native Americans wound up at the Hampton Institute (of which the primary residents were African Americans). This song was recorded at the Hampton Institute, and translated by them, in the late 19th century. Although chord suggestions are provided, this chant is best sung a capella. A transliteration of the original Sioux words is also provided.

Study War No More
See: “Down by the Riverside”

Sun Don’t Set in the Morning
A rousing zipper song from the African American tradition.

There Is More Love Somewhere
Go listen to the Alan Lomax recording of Bessie Jones singing this song. The transcription does not do justice to Jones’ many subtle variations on the basic tune; there is no reason to sing this song exactly the same way every verse. Jones sang this a capella.

Wade in the Water
A classic African American song, as transmitted in the early 21st century folk music scene. For another public domain version, Harry T. Burleigh did a marvelous version (also in D minor) with a delightful piano accompaniment.

We’ll Stand the Storm
From the Fisk Jubilee Singers, this song deserves to be better known.

Will the Circle Be Unbroken?
Often assumed to be a folk song, the text was published in 1880, and the tune is by the great late-19th century gospel composer Charles Gabriel.

Another pollinator, this time a bumble bee (Bombus sp.). For my money, bumble bees are perhaps the most attractive of all insects. Unfortunately, this individual was very active, and as a result most of my photos of it were blurry.

A bee, probably a species in the genus Halictus, in a blossom of a California Poppy. There are over 200 species in the genus Halictus; since I didn’t collect a specimen and don’t have a dissecting microscope, I won’t attempt to determine which species. It’s enough for me to have seen the bee, and admired it.

For the past two or three decades, there have been scholars who have argued (fairly persuaively, in my view) that “religion” is not a particularly useful category. I’m currently working my way through Tim Fitzgerald’s book The Ideology of Religious Studies (Oxford Univ. Press, 2000), and Fitzgerald offers some compelling arguments why “religion” is not a useful category for academic study. For example:

“Claims … that religion is a phenomenon, or humans are religious beings, or all societies have religion(s), or religion is an aspect of society, or society is an aspect of religion imply a further proposition that ‘religion’ indicates some reality that is not already covered by ‘society’ and ‘culture,’ that religion is something over and above and additional to society and culture. Outside of a specific theological claim, this implication is, I believe, a fallacy. This is because there are virtually no situations now in the scholarly literature produced by religious studies writers where religion has any useful work to do as an analytical category pointing us to some distinctive aspect of human reality. The word ‘religion’ is now used to refer to so many different things that it has become virtually synonymous with ‘culture’ and ‘society’ in the broadest senses….” (p. 222)

I find a great deal to agree with in this statement. Having had some training the fine arts, I’m more inclined to think of ‘religion’ as part of one specific aspect of culture, the arts: a religious building combines architecture and installation art; religious services are performance art with music, or maybe they’re drama, improv, theatre games; ritual is conceptual art (or is conceptual art ritual? they’re hard to tell apart).

One of the differences between what we call “religion” and what we call “art” in our culture is that “art” is made by experts and bought and sold by rich people, whereas “religion” is co-created by a few experts and lots more non-experts, and it is (in many cases) self-funded and not consumed but participatory. If that’s the case, then when I look at the continuum from art (created by experts, consumed by rich people) to religion (co-created by non-experts, participatory-not-consumed), I want to be on the far left of the “religion” end of the continuum.

Any blogger worth their salt now has to write a post about the novel COVID-19 virus, popularly known as coronavirus. I want to talk about the recommendations for handwashing issued by the Center for Disease Control (CDC).

Now, the CDC is recommending that we wash our hands frequently to avoid spreading infection from COVID-19 and other infectious diseases like the flu. I’m fine with that. According to the CDC, proper handwashing technique involves five steps. I’m fine with that, too. But in Step 3, the CDC instructs us to sing the “Happy Birthday” song twice so we make sure we wash for a full 20 seconds.

Ugh. I hate the “Happy Birthday” song. I don’t want to sing it once, let alone twice, let alone every time I wash my hands.

Fortunately, I have an alternative. Ginger, a UU religious educator in the Bay Area, found this, which was posted in a bathroom of a UU congregation:

“Wash, wash, whoever you are,
Wanderer, worshipper, lover of cleaning,
Rinsing the germs off is easy to do
Wash, yet again, wash.”
(with presumed apologies to Rumi and Coleman Barks)

If you sing “Wash, wash, whoever you are…” to Lynn Ungar’s tune in the UU hymnal Singing the Living Tradition (no. 188), at a reasonably quick tempo (about 144 bpm), it takes about 16-17 seconds to sing. Then you can repeat “Wash, yet again, wash” to make a full 20 seconds. Much better than the “Happy Birthday” song.

And there are still more songs you (and/or your children) can use to time your handwashing.

More than a decade ago, Dr. Robert Piper, retired professor of political science at UMass Dartmouth, demonstrated how you can sing the ABC song to time your handwashing. Since I trust retired professors of political science, that’s what I’ve been doing ever since.

Or, if you want to be religious, there’s a passage from sacred scripture that neatly fits the tune of the ABC Song (which is, by the way, a lovely folk tune immortalized by Mozart in K. 265) — I’m referring of course to the Mad Hatter’s poem in the holy writ of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland:

“Twinkle, twinkle, little bat!
How I wonder where you’re at!
Up above the world you fly,
Like a tea tray in the sky.
Twinkle, twinkle, little bat!
How I wonder where you’re at!

So you see, if you too hate the “Happy Birthday” song, you (and/or your children) now have 3 other options to time handwashing: “Wash, wash, whoever you are”; the ABC song; and “Twinkle, twinkle, little bat.”

Update: (1:12 p.m.) Ginger found yet another UU handwashing song online, which also lasts about 20 seconds:

“Come wash your hands with me
Come wash your hands with me
Come wash your hands with me,
So we can know peace of mind.
And I’ll bring you soap,
When soap is hard to find,
And I’ll wash my hands with you
So we can help humankind.”

So what’s the difference between baptisms, christenings, and child dedications? (Historical info about these ceremonies: here, here, and here.)

Baptism ceremonies use some formula that gives a name to the child in the name of, variously, God the Father (alone); Lord Jesus (alone): or God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit )together); at least one Unitarian baptism ceremony used the trinitarian formula. A baptism ceremony may be generally understood to be in the Protestant tradition where there are just two ordinances observed by a Protestant Christian church, that of the Lord’s Supper (i.e., communion) and baptism.

Dedication ceremonies prior to the late twentieth century use some formula that dedicate the child to God the Father, or to the example of Jesus. From the late twentieth century on, dedication ceremonies may dedicate the child to a moral life, a higher purpose, etc.

Christening ceremonies give a child its “Christian” name. In some cases, a christening ceremony is understood as the same as a baptism. In other cases, for example in the Western Unitarian Conference, a christening is significantly different from a baptism; a christening may simply name the child, or may dedicate the child’s life to “to virtue, to truth, to love, to duty, to the service of God and humanity,” etc.

Ministers and academic theologians will want to make clear distinctions between baptism, christening, and dedication of children. Baptism, it may be argued, is a Christian rite for which various justifications can be provided from the Christian scriptures; an explication of baptism will most likely get into the theology of original sin. Christening is also a Christian rite, it may be argued, distinguished from baptism in that it is a simple naming ritual, giving a child its Christian name; and distinguished from baptism in that there is no specific example of christening found in the Christian scriptures. Dedication, it may be argued, originally came from a rejection of the necessity of infant baptism (on whatever theological ground), so that the ceremony is simply a dedication of the child’s life to God, higher purpose, or what-have-you. — These academic distinctions could be (and have been) argued at great length.

In common practice, none of these terms appear to have had a precise definition. Nineteenth century Universalists appeared to have maintained some distinction between the terms “baptism” and “dedication”; roughly speaking, a dedication was used by those who did not feel that children needed to be baptized, either because they found no justification for baptism in the Christian scriptures, or because their theology of salvation held that baptism was not required, or for some other reason; but that is at best a rough distinction. Nineteenth century Unitarians tended to use the terms “christening” and “baptism” somewhat interchangeably, although sometimes there appears to have been some slight distinction between the two, with “baptism” perhaps indicating a slightly more conservative theology. In the twentieth century, “christening” and “dedication” seem to appear more frequently among both the Unitarians and Universalists; however, “baptism” also appears as a synonym for “christening” or “dedication,” sometimes coupled with one of the other terms, e.g., “christening or baptism.” Into the mid-twentieth century, there appears to have been increasing preference for the terms “christening” and “dedication”; by the end of the twentieth century, the dominant term was “dedication,” while “christening” and “baptism” fell out of widespread favor.

Today, in the first quarter of the twenty-first century, I feel that these three terms have definite connotations within Unitarian Universalism. “Dedication” has become the default term for mainstream Unitarian Universalism; the term is typically interpreted as meaning that we dedicate children to some higher purpose; and the term connotes adherence to mainstream Unitarian Universalist values. “Christening” is being used less and less frequently, but when it is used it seems to appear with a naming ceremony related to late twentieth century liberal Protestantism; thus the term “christening” connotes a respect for recent tradition, and a desire to carry that tradition on. “Baptism” is probably used more frequently than “christening” these days among Unitarian Universalists; this I suspect is due to the influence of liturgical renewal movements among liberal Christians who are reclaiming the rite of baptism; thus, the term “baptism” connotes some kind of liberal Christian identity, sometimes combined with a leftist or social justice perspective (even though that perspective might not find its way into an actual infant baptism rite).

However, in our increasingly multicultural society in which fewer and fewer people have been raised in any kind of religious community, these fine distinctions between “baptism,” “christening,” and “dedication” are lost on many people. I would venture to guess that half or more of younger Unitarian Universalists — those who are at an age where they have having babies — know what a child dedication is, or why they should want one for their child; they may be more aware of what a baptism is, but they probably associate baptism with some stereotype of creepy conservative Christians. Furthermore, in many regions popular culture and popular religion provide things like gender-reveal parties, alternative do-it-yourself ceremonies that, for many families, fill the need for some kind of ceremony to recognize babies.

Here in Silicon Valley, I’m seeing fewer and fewer families who know what a child dedication ceremony is, nor see any need for their family to have such a ceremony. Perhaps more families would want a child dedication ceremony if they knew what it was, but with the information overload facing all families with children, getting through to them is going to be difficult. Perhaps one way to get through to busy, non-religious, multicultural Unitarian Universalist families is to start calling this ceremony by a more understandable name. Calling it a “child dedication” is actually somewhat meaningless unless you already know something about the history of baptism and why we’d want to reject the notion of baptism.

Maybe it would help to start calling it a “naming ceremony,” a straightforward, non-technical name that accurately describes what is going to happen at the ceremony, and the age at which you probably want to have that ceremony for your child.

Here are two documents that give a picture of late eighteenth century Unitarian and Universalist views of baptism.

1783: Unitarian baptism ceremony
late 18th C.: Description of Universalist dedication ceremony

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1783: Unitarian baptism ceremony

Joseph Priestley, best known as the discoverer of oxygen, was also a Unitarian minister. He published a prayer book while still living in England, and presumably he continued to use the same formula for baptism when he came to North America. I do not find this a very likable baptism ceremony; Priestley dwells a great deal on how children can go astray, and how parents can fail in their duties to raise children well. Nor does it seem to me to differ all that much from orthodox Christian baptism ceremonies of the same period, except in the absence of the trinitarian formula. I include it here, not out of affection, but because it’s the earliest Unitarian naming ceremony that I could find that plausibly was used in North America.

Joseph Priestley, Forms of Prayers and Other Offices, for the Use of Unitarian Societies (Birmingham: Pearson and Rollason, 1783), pp. 141 ff.:

AN OFFICE FOR INFANT BAPTISM

The person who officiates, and the parents of the child (if convenient) standing up, in the presence of as many of their friends as they may think proper to assemble, let him address them as follows:

My christian friends,

As you are no presenting this your child to be baptized into the christian religion, I shall take this opportunity of explaining, in a few words, the nature and end of this ordinance.

When our Lord Jesus Christ gave his commission to his apostles about the propagation of his religion in the world, he bad[e] them teach and baptize all nations; and he himself, that he might fulfil all righteousness, submitted to be baptized by John in the river Jordan. Now this baptism, or washing with water, properly expresses that purity of heart and mind and of life which is required of all that profess the gospel of Christ; and when applied to infants, must be considered as a declaration of the parents that they are christians, and a solemn promise before God, and witnesses, that they will educate their child in the principles of the christian religion, as contained in the books of the New Testament.

There we learn that God sent his son Jesus Christ to reclaim the world lying in wickedness, and to reconciles sinful men with God; by assuring them of the divine favour and acceptance on their sincere repentance, and that he himself is appointed by God to judge the world at the last day; when all mankind shall rise again from the dead; when the wicked shall go to a place of punishment, and the righteous into life eternal. There we also learn that after performing many unquestionable miracles, such as no man could have done if God had not been with him, in confirmation of his doctrine, he submitted to death, was publicly crucified, and laid in his grave; but that God raised him to life again, after which he was seen and known by many of his former disciples, and in their presence ascended up into heaven.

Now this act of bringing your child to christian baptism is a declaration that, as christians, you believe these things to be true, and that you are ready to solemnly promise before God, and us who are here present, that you will educate your child in this faith. Do you make this promise?

Then let the parents (or any other persons who will undertake for the christian education of the child) signify their assent by saying I do, or in any other manner that shall be sufficiently expressive of it.

After this, let the person who officiates take the child in his arms, and asking its name, say (as he sprinkles it with water, or immerses is, at the pleasure of the parents) This child, whose name is N. M. I baptize in the name of Jesus Christ; adding, if he thinks proper, in order to his being instructed in the principles of that religion which was the gift of God by Jesus Christ, and which was confirmed by the holy spirit.

This being done, let him address the parents in the following manner:

My christian friends,

As you have now devoted this your child to God by the ordinance of baptism, engaging to educate it in the principles of the christian religionk of which you make profession, I shall endeavour to suggest to you a few motives to the religious and christian education of your child.

A religious and christian education is the greatest benefit you can confer upon a child, and all the riches and honours of this world are not worthy to be named with the solid advantages that may be derived from it. It is to teach him so to live here, as to be happy for ever hereafter.

The virtuous education of your children is likewise a debt which you owe to society, and to the civil constitution under which you live; to the good laws, and wise administration of which, you owe the peace and security of your lives. Now a virtuous and proper education will make your children an advantage, and an honour to their country; but except they be well principled, they may prove the pests of society; so that it might have been better for the world if they, or their parents, had never been born.

The religious education of your children is, moreover, a duty which you owe to God and to religion your children, Parents, are not your own, so as that you are not accountable for the care and conduct of them to another. You, and your children, are equally God’s. He is their father in the most important of all senses, and he only puts them into your hands for their improvement Their infant minds are to be formed by you to virtue and immortality. Be sensible, then, of the important trust. Bring up your children as for God; that when he requires them at your hands, you may deliver them up to him well instructed, and trained up in the best principles and habits; perfect in those lessons which they were put under your care to learn; their tempers corrected, and formed to the love of goodness, to the love and fear of God, fit to live with him, and enjoy his favour for ever; and for this you will received a glorious reward. Your pious labor, whatever be the result of it to you children, will not, with respect to yourselves, be in vain in the Lord.

Lastly, the virtuous and religious education of your children is the best provision you can make for the peace and comfort of your own future lives; one of the most important duties being the love and respect of children to their parents.

You, Parents, have peculiar advantages for watching over the morals of your children, as they are ever under your eye, and you have a natural and uncontrouled [sic] authority over them, at a time when their minds are exceedingly pliable; so that it is almost in your power to make them what you please. By all means, then improve this advantage, which nature, and the God of nature, give you, to the best of purposes. And you have this encouragement, that if you train up your children in the way in which they should go, when they are old they will not depart from it; but if you neglect their education in their early years, the task will be peculiarly difficult, and the effect uncertain, afterwards; as you will then have bad principles and bad habits to root out; and divine providence is often awfully just, in permitting wicked children to be a curse to their criminally indulgent parents.

Indeed, no pains you can take can absolutely insure success; but by the divine blessing it generally does; and there will be a wide difference, with respect to the peace of your minds, between seeing your children turn out corrupt and vicious notwithstanding your best endeavours, or in consequence of your ngelct. In the former case you are disappointed, indeed, and greatly so; but still you have the satisfaction to reflect that you have done your duty, and that you could do no more; whereas, in the latter case, nothing can alleviate your distress.

That the best of consequences, to yourselves, and to your child, may follow your endeavours to do your duty in this respect, Let us now call upon God.

A Prayer.

Almighty and ever-blessed God, we acknowledge and rejoice in the consideration of our near relation to thee, as our creator, preserver, and benefactor; our moral governor also, and our final judge. Thous hast of one blood made all the generations of men to dwell upon the face of this thine earth; and we adore the wisdom of thy providence, that as one generation of our race passes off the face of the earth, another still succeeds; to behold thy glorious works, to learn they will, and to attain to supreme happiness in thy favour here and hereafter.

We thank thee for the rational nature which thou hast given us, whereby we are capable of this excellence and happiness; but more especially we thank thee, that when mankind had debased and corrupted their nature, by an addictedness to vice and folly; when they had lost the knowledge of thee the only living and true God, thou wast pleased to make the most gracious manifestations of thyself and of thy will to us, in part by thy former servants the prophets, but more clearly and fully by thy son Christ Jesus.

We thank thee that, in consequence of these revelations of thy will to us, we are now perfectly acquainted with what it is that thou the Lord our God requirest of us, in order to live and to die in thy favour; even to do justice, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thee our God. More especially do we rejoice that life and immortality are brought to light in the gospel of thy son.

We thank thee for his excellent instructions for the conduct of our lives, and his perfect example of obedience to thy will, in the course of a most useful life, and in the painful suffering of death. We thank thee also for the positive institutions of our holy religion, baptism, and the Lord’s supper, so well calculated to impress our minds with a sense of thy great love in sending thy son to live and die for us.

Bless, we entreat thee, the present administration of baptism. May thy servants, who, by joining in this rite, declare themselves to be christians, be careful to live as becomes such; and as they hereby lay themselves under a solemn obligation to educate this their child in the principles of the christian religion, may they be enabled to fulfil their resolution. May they spare neither correction nor instruction for the real good of their child; and may they enjoy the happy fruits of their pious labours, in seeing him grow up in wisdom and in virtues, in favour with God and with man. May he live to be the joy of his parents, and a blessing to society.

Bless thy servants at the head of their family. May they walk together as the heirs of the grace of life, mutually careful to promote each others’ temporal, but more especially their everlasting interests; and may they so live together below in thy fear, and in the discharge of their porper duty in life; that when they are removed hence by death, they may have a joyrful meeting in the regions above; where they shall be happy in the enjoyment of thee their God, of each other, and of their children and friends, to all eternity. This we ask in the name, and as the disciples, of thy son Christ Jesus; through whom, to thee, O Father, the only living and true God, be glory for ever. Amen.

The Blessing.

May the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the fellowship of his holy spirit, be with us all evermore. Amen.

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Late 18th C.: Description of Universalist dedication ceremony

While the following document was published in 1833, it contains a record of how Rev. John Murray conducted child dedications ceremonies in the late eighteenth century. This description is influential among Unitarian Universalism in the present day, at least insofar as we insist on calling naming ceremonies “child dedications.” However, most Unitarian Universalists are now far removed from John Murray’s theology. Given that sense of removal, and given that over the past two centuries, Universalists, Unitarians, and now Unitarian Universalists have used the terms “baptism” and “christening” more frequently than the term “dedication,” perhaps we need not be so insistent on calling a naming ceremony a “child dedication.”

John Murray and Judith Sargent Murray (1816), ed. and expanded Thomas Whittemore (1833), The Life of John Murray (Boston: The Trumpet, 1833 [1816]), pp. 214 ff.

…The ordinance of the Lord’s supper was administered agreeably to their ideas of its genuine import. Parents brought their children into the great congregation, standing in the broad aisle, in the presence of the worshippers of God; the father received the babe from the hands of the mother, and presented it to the servant of God; who, deriving his authority tor this practice from the example of his Redeemer, who says, ‘Suffer little children to come unto me,’ &c. &c., pronounced aloud the name of the child, and received it as a member of the mystical body of Him, who is the second Adam, the Redeemer of Men. How often has his paternal heart throbbed with rapture, as he has most devoutly repeated,’ We dedicate thee to Him, to whom thou properly belongest, to be baptized with His own baptism, in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost; and we pronounce upon thee that blessing, which He commanded his ministers, Moses, Aaron, and his Sons, to pronounce upon his people, saying, The Lord bless thee, and keep thee; The Lord make His face to shine upon thee, and be gracious unto thee; The Lord lift up Hit countenance upon thee, and give thee peace.’

[footnote] Mr. Murray rejected the practice of infant sprinkling. To him is to be attributed the ceremony of dedication which has obtained so generally in the Universalist church. His sentiments on this subject will be found scattered through his ‘Letters and Sketches.’ The following is a slight conversation concerning ordinances which passed between Mr. Murray and Rev. Elhanan Winchester, shortly after their first interview.

‘I have had some conversation with Mr. W. on the subject of ordinances.

W. You do not use water baptism, I think, Mr. M.

M. No, sir; we listen to the baptist, and we hear him say: ‘I indeed baptize you with water unto repentance, but he who cometh after me is mightier than I; he shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost and with fire’; we know that John the baptist pointed in this passage to the Redeemer, and we prefer his baptism to that of his harbinger; nor can we advocate a plurality of baptisms, when we hear the Apostle say, there is but one Lord, and one baptism….

In the following, Mr. Murray speaks directly of the origin of the ceremony of dedication:

‘You ask an account of the ceremony I have originated, instead of infant sprinkling. On my first appearance in this country, during my residence in the state of New Jersey, I was requested, as the phrase is, to christen the children of my hearers. I asked them what was their design in making such a proposal to me? When they replied, they only wished to do their duty. How, my friends, returned I, came you to believe infant sprinkling a duty? ‘Why, is it not a command of God to sprinkle infants?’ If you will, from scripture authority, produce any warrant sufficient to authorize me to baptize children, I will immediately, as in duty bound, submit thereto. Our Saviour sprinkled no infant with water: those who were baptized by his harbinger, plunged into the river Jordan, which plunging was figurative of the ablution by which we are cleansed in the blood of our Saviour — but infants are not plunged in a river.

‘Paul declares he was not sent to baptize, and he thanks God that he had baptized so few: nor does it appear that among those few, there were any infants. It is not a solitary instance to find a whole household without a babe. The eunuch conceived it necessary there should be much water for the performance of the rite of baptism: all this seems to preclude the idea of sprinkling and of infant baptism: and it is said, that whole centuries passed by after the commencement of the Christian era, before the sprinkling of a single infant. I am, however, commencing a long journey — many months will elapse before my return. I pray you to search the scriptures during my absence; and if, when we meet again, you can point out the chapter and verse wherein my God has commanded his ministers to sprinkle infants, I will immediately prepare myself to yield an unhesitating obedience. I pursued my journey — I returned to New Jersey, my then home — but no authority could be produced from the sacred writings for infant sprinkling. Still, however, religious parents were uneasy, and piously anxious to give testimony, public testimony of their reliance upon and confidence in the God of their salvation. Many, perhaps, were influenced by the fashion of this world; but some, I trust, by considerations of a higher origin.

‘I united with my friends in acknowledging that when God had blessed them by putting into their hands and under their care one of the members of his body which he had purchased with his precious blood, it seemed proper and reasonable that they should present the infant to the God who gave it, asking his aid in the important duty which had devolved upon them, and religiously confessing by this act, their obligation to and dependence on the Father of all worlds. Yet we could not call an act of this kind baptism; we believe there is but one baptism; and this, because the Spirit of God asserts, by the apostle Paul, that there is but one baptism, and the idea of this single baptism is corroborated by the class m which we find it placed. One Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is above all, and, through all, and in you all. Ephesians iv. 5, 6. After much deliberation I proposed, and many of my hearers have adopted the following mode: The parent or parents (I am always best pleased when both parents unite,) bring their children into the great congregation, and stand in the broad aisle, in the presence of the worshippers of God. The Father receiving the babe from the arms of the mother, presents it to the servant of God, who statedly ministers at his altar. The ambassador of Christ receives it in his arms, deriving his authority for this practice from the example of the Redeemer, who says, Suffer little children to come unto me, for of such is the kingdom of heaven. The minister, therefore, taking the infant from its father, who gives him, as he presents it, the name of the child, proclaims aloud, John or Mary, we receive thee as a member of the mystical body of him who is the second Adam, the Redeemer of men, the Lord from heaven. We dedicate thee to him, to whom thou properly belongest, to be baptized with his own baptism, in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost; and we pronounce upon thee that blessing which he commanded his ministers, Moses, Aaron, and his sons, to pronounce upon his people, saying,

‘The Lord bless thee and keep thee;
‘The Lord make his face to shine upon thee, and be gracious unto thee;
‘The Lord lift up his countenance upon thee, and give thee peace.
‘For this procedure we have the command, the express command of God. Our reason and our religion concur to approve the solemnity, and our hearts are at peace.

‘The Lord, we repeat, hath commanded us to bless the people; God himself pronounced this blessing upon all the people, in the first Adam, when he placed him in the garden of Eden, and blessing and cursing came not from the same mouth upon the same characters. God, our God, is the ever blessing God; nor are blessings given only to the deserving. The blessings of providence and of grace are freely bestowed upon the evil and the unthankful; and when the evil and the unthankful obtain the knowledge of this truth, they earnestly sigh to be good, to be grateful.

‘But the ever blessed God, not only blessed the people in their first general head, but in that seed, which is Christ. In thy seed, said the Lord Jehovah, shall the families, all the families of the earth be blessed. This was a royal grant. We are not, in general, sufficiently attentive to this particular. It is common to talk of being blessed by, and some say, through Christ, but few, very few, ever think of being blessed in Christ.’ — Sketches, &c. ii. 366—368.

See also ‘ Letters and Sketches,’ iii. 345. T. W. [Thomas Whittemore]

As a follow up to this post, here are Universalist documents from the nineteenth century describing naming ceremonies (baptism and dedication).

1839: Universalist baptism and child dedication
1850: Universalist dedication/baptism
1872: Description of a Universalist naming ceremony
1895: Universalist naming ceremony

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1839: Universalist baptism and child dedication

Menzies Rayner’s book of services met with favorable reviews when it was first published; the Universalist Union of Aug. 17, 1839, reprints excerpts of several of these reviews, and urges readers to buy and use the book. However, it is difficult to know how widely used the book actually was, and the review in the Universalist Union does seem to be responding to some resistance towards the book. In any case, the book does not seem to have remained in print very long. Before converting to Universalism, Rayner was an Episcopalian minister, and his services borrowed from the Episcopalian Book of Common Prayer, with superimposed Universalist theology. Rayner spent several pages discussing his theology of Universalist baptism; I have omitted those pages here. After giving a “Proposed Form and Manner of Administering the Ordinance of Baptism” for adults, he gave his plan for both an infant baptismal ceremony, and a child dedication ceremony.

Menzies Rayner, The Universalist Manual: Or Book of Prayers and Other Religious Exercises (New York: P. Price, 1839), pp. 125 ff.:

FORM FOR THE PUBLIC BAPTISM OF CHILDREN.

The minister, either before or after sermon on the Sabbath, may desire the child, or children to be presented for baptism. Then going within the altar, he may begin the baptismal service, by offering some appropriate observations such as the following:—

Christian Friends and Brethren: Very gracious and endearing is the language of our Saviour, in relation to young children, as we find it recorded in the tenth chapter of the gospel by St. Mark. “They brought young children to Christ, that he should touch them, and his disciples rebuked those who brought them. But when Jesus saw it, he was much displeased, and said unto them, Suffer the little children to come unto me, and forbid them not; for of such is the kingdom of God, Verily I say unto you, whosoever shall not receive the kingdom of God as a little child, he shall not enter therein. And he took them up in his arms, put his hands upon them, and blessed them.”

St. Peter also, on the day of Pentecost, when under his preaching men were pricked in their hearts, and inquired what they should do, replied, and testified, saying, “Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ, for the remission of sins — For the promise is unto you, and to your children,” &c. We see by these scriptures, that the affection of our heavenly Father, and his covenant of promise, embrace little children. We also learn from other parts of the divine record, that in the days of the apostles, whole households, or families, were dedicated to the service of God in Christian baptism ; and which appears to have been done on the faith, and doubtless at the request of the parents, or governors of such households, on their conversion to Christianity. In imitation of which examples, this child is (or these children are, if more than one) now presented for baptism. Let us, therefore, invoke the divine blessing on this religious service.

Let us pray.

Almighty and everlasting God, who hast so loved the world of mankind, as to give thine only begotten Son, Jesus Christ, for their redemption and salvation: who was holy, harmless, and undefiled; who, when on earth, went about doing good, healing and delivering all that were oppressed. Who also, in the tenderness of his compassion, and his great benevolence, took little children into his arms, embraced and blessed them, declaring that of such is the kingdom of God; we beseech thee, heavenly Father, to receive and embrace in the arms of thy mercy and love, this present little child, whom we now publicly offer and dedicate unto thee. Shed upon him (or her) O Lord, the holy and purifying influences of Divine grace, emblematically set forth by the sprinkling of pure water. And if in thy good providence, the life of this child shall be prolonged to mature age, grant that he may be both disposed and enabled to honor the Name and the holy religion, into which he is now to be baptized: May he be an exemplary and useful member of the Christian Church, and richly enjoy its inestimable privileges and blessings, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

The minister may then take the child into his hands, or, it being conveniently placed before him, and its name given, he (distinctly pronouncing the name) may discreetly pour, or sprinkle water upon the child, saying:—

I baptize thee, in the name of the Lord Jesus; and receive thee, as a lamb of the Christian flock, into the fold of Christ the great Shepherd, (here laying his hand upon the child he may continue, saying) and do pronounce thee blessed, in the name of the Lord, a member of his kingdom of gospel grace, and an heir of the kingdom of glory; according to the good pleasure, and the eternal purpose of God, our heavenly Father, through Jesus Christ, our Redeemer and Saviour. Amen.

The baptismal service may then be closed by some short advice to the parents concerning the bringing up of the child, and by devoutly, and unitedly repeating the Lord’s Prayer; or in such other way as the minister may think expedient.

DEDICATION OF CHILDREN.

There are many in the denomination of Universalists, who do not regard it as a duty incumbent on them, to offer up their children in the ordinance of water baptism, either by immersion or sprinkling; not finding in the Scriptures, as they think, any command or example, requiring, or commanding the same. But while they dissent, in this respect, from the general opinion of the Christian church, they cannot reasonably be supposed to entertain less affection for their offspring, or less solicitude for their spiritual welfare. Believing, as the Psalmist expresses it, that “children are a heritage of the Lord,” and a gift which cometh from him, they esteem it both a duty and privilege, publicly to devote and dedicate them, as a free-will offering, to him, and to his service.

It has been thought that both in the Old and New Testaments indications are given of such an observance, sufficient to warrant the practice; and hence, in the denomination of Universalists, the custom of the public dedication of children, by solemn prayer and thanksgiving, has obtained in many places, and to a considerable extent. Indeed, the conduct of our blessed Saviour toward the little children that were brought to him, as particularly stated in Mark x. 13-16, is of itself an ample justification of such religious service and dedication. In compliance with this authoritative, and most endearing example of our Lord and Master, the following form is humbly submitted. At the appointed time, the parents with their child (or children) may present themselves before the minister, who may then address them on this wise:—

Beloved Brethren: It is the testimony of the Scriptures, that children are a heritage and gift that cometh of the Lord; and under the Jewish dispensation, children, and especially the first-born, were wont to be solemnly devoted to the God of Israel, and his blessing implored upon them. And although we are no longer under that law, and the yoke of the many irksome observances which it imposed, yet are we equally bound to offer and devote our children to God, even the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, and who also is like the God and Father of all men, and to invoke for them his constant favor and benediction. The example of Jesus also testifies, how precious little children were in his sight; how lovely their innocence, and how worthy to be imitated. Hence the Evangelist tells us, “They brought young children to Christ that he should touch them, and his disciples rebuked those who brought them. But when Jesus saw it, he was much displeased, and said unto them; Suffer the little children to come unto me, and forbid them not, for of such is the kingdom of God. Verily I say unto you, whoever shall not receive the kingdom of God as a little child, he shall not enter therein: and he took them up in his arms, put his hands on them, and blessed them.”

From this portion of the gospel testimony, we learn the great affection which Jesus entertained for the lambs of his flock: how he rebuked those who would have kept them from him: how he embraced and blessed them, and pronounced them heirs, and fit subjects of his kingdom, even that kingdom of grace and salvation, which, “in the dispensation of the fulness of times, shall gather together in one, all things in Christ”; making, of the universe, one blessed family.

Being thus persuaded of the good will, and the great and unceasing love of our heavenly Father toward his whole human offspring; and not doubting that he favorably regardeth this pious care in presenting this child (or these children] to be dedicated to his service, let us devoutly give thanks, and offer our fervent supplications unto him.

Let us pray.

Almighty and everlasting God, our heavenly Father, we give thee humble thanks that thou hast vouchsafed to call us to the knowledge of thy grace and faith in thee, as revealed in the gospel of thy Son, our Redeemer, Increase this knowledge, and confirm this faith in us ever, more and more. Be pleased, we beseech thee, O Lord, graciously to look upon this child, whom we now offer and dedicate to thee, in all humility and gratitude. Receive it, we pray thee, as thine own, and have it always in thy protection and holy keeping. Endue it with thy good spirit: counsel it with thy wisdom, in its journey through this mortal life, and save it with thine own free grace, in Christ Jesus our Lord. Amen.

The minister then addressing himself especially to the parents, may say as follows:—

Dearly beloved: Ye have brought this child here to be dedicated to him who gave it. Ye have prayed that God’s holy Spirit may rest upon and accompany it through life. You should, therefore, constantly bear in mind, that it is your most solemn and bounden duty, to endeavor that this child be brought up ” in the nurture and admonition of the Lord.” Your counsels and your example are, in a great degree, the influences under which, in the providence of God, its mind and manners are to be moulded, and its character formed. Be careful, then, to instill into its young and growing mind, those salutary lessons of religion and morality which are found in the gospel of our salvation. And inasmuch as your teaching and your precepts, will usually be of little avail, if a corresponding practice does not accompany them, I entreat you to commend your counsels and admonitions, by a well-ordered life and conversation, thereby adorning the doctrine of God our Saviour in all things, and walking worthy of the high vocation wherewith ye are called. And may you be of the number of those who are “the blessed of the Lord, and their children with them.”

The minister then taking the child in his arms, or having it conveniently placed, and its name given him, he repeating it in an audible voice, may say as follows:—

N——— We hereby dedicate thee, by solemn prayer and supplication, laying our hand upon thee (here the minister may lay his hand upon the head of the child) in imitation of the blessed Jesus; in his name, declaring thee blessed, and an heir of the kingdom of God. “The Lord bless thee, and keep thee: the Lord make his face shine upon thee, and be gracious unto thee: the Lord lift up his countenance upon thee, and give thee peace.”

The minister then, returning the child to the parents, may conclude the service as follows, saying:—

Let us pray. Our Father who art in heaven, &c. (The whole of the Lord’s Prayer may here be said, the people audibly repeating the same with the minister, who may then further add:)

O Lord, our heavenly Father, may the offering we have now made unto thee, in the dedication of this child, be acceptable in thy sight. Crown, we beseech thee, our imperfect devotions with thy heavenly benediction, and grant that these parents, and this child may be sanctified by thy grace, and received as thine own children by adoption : and may we all be a people to thy praise and glory, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Ghost be with you all evermore. Amen.

———

1850: Universalist dedication / baptism

The book of services from which this service was taken was published by a group of Universalist ministers along the Merrimac River in Massachusetts. The service was to be used both for baptism and dedication of children. For a baptism, after the child’s name is given it was baptized in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. For a dedication, after the child’s name is given, it was dedicated to God “while yet unstained by sin.”

I. D. Williamson, The Universalist Church Companion: Prepared by the Merrimac River Ministerial Circle for the Use of Its Members and Others, rev. and enlarged ed. (Boston: A. Tompkins, 1850), pp. 110 ff.:

FORM FOR DEDICATION, OR BAPTISM OF CHILDREN.

(The child should be presented by the parents, or, if an orphan, by near relatives.)

Pastor. — Our Saviour, when on earth, said, “Suffer little children to come unto me, and forbid them not, for of such is the kingdom of heaven.” His words are “the same yesterday, to-day, and forever;” and now, as then, he calls upon us to bring our children unto him, and assures us, that his blessing awaits them.

Beloved friends; you have brought this child here for solemn dedication, [or for baptism.] You thus signify your desire to bring up your child in the nurture and admonition of the Lord, and to seek the Divine blessing in the performance of this sacred and important duty.

Will you earnestly and faithfully seek the virtue and happiness of this child?

ANS. — I will.

P. — Will you endeavor to instruct him (or her) in the principles of the religion of Christ, that he (or she) may be led to remember his (or her) Creator in the days of his (or her) youth?

ANS. — I will.

P. — Will you exhort him (or her) to keep God’s holy commandments, and walk continually in the way of truth and duty?

Ans. — I will.

P. — May God give you strength so to do. Then, should all your efforts prove fruitless, you will not feel the guilt of negligence, or the bitterness of remorse. But should your labors be crowned with success, great will be your reward.

What is the name of this child ?

Ans. ———

P. — A. B., child of innocence, emblem of purity, and image of thy Maker; “Of such is the kingdom of heaven.” Now, in the morning of life, while yet unstained with sin, we present thee, a living offering, a lamb without blemish, to the good Shepherd and Bishop of our souls. The Lord bless thee, and keep thee. The Lord make his face shine upon thee, and be gracious unto thee. The Lord lift up his countenance upon thee, and give thee peace. Amen.

(If Baptism is preferred, say as follows:)

P. — A. B., I baptize thee in the name of the Father, thy Creator and Preserver, and of the Son, thy Redeemer and Saviour, and of the Holy Spirit, thy Comforter and Sanctifier. The Lord bless thee, and keep thee. The Lord make his face shine upon thee, and be gracious unto thee. The Lord lift up his countenance upon thee, and give thee peace. Amen.

Let us pray.

O thou God of power, of wisdom, and of love; from thee we have received our life and all its blessings. Thou art the infinite fountain of good; and all our springs of happiness are in thee. May the smiles of thy providence, and the richer gifts of thy wisdom, grace, and truth, rest upon this child now dedicated (by baptism) unto thee.

We pray thee, O Lord, grant thy blessing upon thy servants, to whom thou hast intrusted this child, to be educated as thine. Be pleased to direct and guide them aright in the discharge of this important duty; and may the great Shepherd of Israel crown their labors with success.

Bless thou all now before thee. Grant us the knowledge of thee, and thy grace. May we walk in all virtue and godliness, while on earth, and at last be united around thy throne, in heaven. Amen.

———

1872: Description of a Universalist naming ceremony

In a section on Children’s Sunday in The Myrtle, vol. 22, no. 10, July 6, 1872 (Boston: Universalist Publishing House), a report on how Children’s Sunday was observed in various Universalist churches, appeared the following report from Hartford, Connecticut:

“Rose Sunday” was celebrated at the Universalist church in Hartford in a very interesting and impressive manner. About twenty children were baptized, and the pastor, the Rev. Mr. Skinner, delivered an appropriate sermon from Luke, ninth chapter, 47th and 48th verses. At the conclusion of the christening, Mr. Skinner, in accordance with his usual pleasing custom, presented to each of the baptized little ones a fragrant rosebud. Excellent music was furnished at intervals by the choir, under the direction of Mr. S. T. Bissell, and the entire service was one of pleasure and profit. In the evening a creditable Sunday School concert was held, a large audience being present. The floral decorations were exceedingly tasteful and were greatly admired. Besides bouquets, pyramids, rustic stands filled with trailing vines, &c , there was a large and elegant star placed above and behind the pulpit, and said tube one of the richest floral pieces ever seen in this city. A touching feature was a memorial arch of beautiful flowers, bearing the names of Gracie and Mattie, and erected to the memory of Grace Barnes and Mattie Smith, two little ones who have died since their baptism a year ago….

———

1895: Universalist naming ceremony

This service for infant baptism comes from a book of services published by the Universalist Publishing House; the book appears to have had fairly wide use among Universalist congregations of the day. There was only a service for baptism, with no mention of child dedications; the baptism is carried out in the name of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

Book of Prayer for the Church and the Home; with Selections from the Psalms, revised edition (Boston: Universalist Publishing House, 1894/1895):

THE MINISTRATION OF BAPTISM FOR INFANTS.

When the Child has been brought forward to the Altar, the Minister may read as follows, from the Gospel of St. Mark:

They brought young children to Christ, that he should touch them; and his disciples rebuked those that brought them. But when Jesus saw it, he was much displeased, and said unto them, Suffer the little children to come unto me, and forbid them not; for of such is the kingdom of God. Verily I say unto you, Whosoever shall not receive the kingdom of God as a little child, he shall not enter therein. And he took them up in his arms, put his hands upon them, and blessed them.

He may then use the following, or some other suitable Exhortation:

My brethren, in our treatment and regard of children, we ought to partake of the spirit of our Lord Jesus Christ. We should by no means despise or neglect them ; but by gentleness and watchful care, do all that we can to bring them into the fold of the Good Shepherd. That God may bless our efforts in so doing, let us now pray.

Then may be offered the following Prayer:

Almighty and most merciful God, we give thanks unto thee, that by thy goodness we have been brought to the knowledge of Jesus Christ, and to faith in him. We bless thee for the kind and encouraging words which he spoke, and for his tender compassion towards those whom he came to save ; that he did not suffer little children to be driven away from his presence, but took them in his arms and blessed them. And now that we have brought to thy altar this little one, we pray that thou wilt guide and direct us, while we consecrate him to thee and to thy service. Wilt thou grant that this Baptism of Water may be the type and the earnest of the purifying influences of thy Holy Spirit, by which alone the soul can be regenerated and saved. This we do humbly ask, through Jesus Christ Our Lord. Amen.

The Minister may then say to the Parents or Guardians of the Child:

By the act of bringing this Child here at this time, you express in the most solemn manner your desire and resolve to instruct him in the gospel of Christ, and in every way to do what lieth in you to enable him to resist sinful inclinations and to keep God’s holy will and commandments.

Then the Minister shall take the Child into his arms, and shall say to the Parents or Guardians:

Name this Child.

Naming the Child, he shall apply the water, saying:

I baptize thee, into the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.

Then shall follow this Benediction:

The God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ bless and shelter thee; and through his Son, and by his Holy Spirit, aid thee in infirmities, comfort thee in sorrow, guide thee into all truth, and at length receive thee into his heavenly presence. Amen.

In Choirs, or places where they sing, here shall follow (unannounced) an appropriate Hymn. After which, the Benediction:

The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit, be with us all evermore. Amen.

As a follow up to this post, here are Unitarian documents from the nineteenth century describing naming cermonies (baptism and christening).

1827: Description of Unitarian naming ceremonies
1844: Unitarian naming ceremony
1884: Unitarian naming ceremony

In the next couple of days, I expect to post some documents on nineteenth century Universalist naming ceremonies in the next couple of days. That should be followed by a blog post with documents relating to eighteenth century Unitarian and Universalist naming ceremonies.

1827: Description of Unitarian naming ceremonies

This description of Unitarian naming ceremonies comes from a tract published by the American Unitarian Association in 1827, just two years after the AUA was organized. (I have not been able to find out anything about Augustus P. Reccord, though I did uncover an Augustus Phineas Reccord who was a Unitarian minister born in 1870 and died in 1946; perhaps the writer of this tract was the grandfather of the later minister.)

Rev. Augustus P. Reccord, “Baptism and the Lord’s Supper and Interpreted and Observed by Unitarians,” Fourth Series of tracts (Boston: American Unitarian Association, n.d. [1827]), pp. 8 ff.

…The baptism of children, or “christening,” as it is so often called, has a double significance. First of all, it is a dedication of their little souls to God. Just as
Mary went up at the appointed time and presented the infant Jesus in the temple; just as, in later years, mothers brought their little ones to him that he might bless them; so today we bring our little ones into the temple of God and consecrate them to his service. As we pray for God’s holy spirit to descend upon them, even as it is said to have descended so many years ago, we venture the hope that this childlike purity, of which the water is but the emblem, may never be tarnished, and that the childlike unfolding may be symmetrical and complete.

“I think, when I read that sweet story of old,
When Jesus was here among men,
How he called little children as lambs to his fold,
I should like to have been with him then.
I wish that his hands had been placed on my head,
That his arms had been thrown around me,
And that I might have seen his kind look when he said,
‘Let the little ones come unto me.’ ”

But this is longing for the impossible. And yet, although the children may not feel his hand upon their brows, nor feel his arms around them, nor hear his voice, yet with our help they may be so reared that the Christ-spirit will dwell within them, that his voice will be heard whispering to them, and that together with him they will feel that they are ever supported and sustained by the Everlasting Arms.

This suggests the second significance. It is not only a dedication of these little ones, but of their parents and elders as well. As we feel how great is childhood’s innocence and purity, how perfect its love and trust, we may be pardoned if for the moment we are led to regard them as messengers of God sent forth to rebuke the world for its selfishness and hypocrisy, and to announce that the Kingdom of God cometh not with observation, neither can men take it by force, but it yields only to the simplicity and purity and faith of the little child. We appreciate at length those beautiful words of Faber:

“Thy home is with the humble, Lord!
The simplest are the best.
Thy lodging is in childlike hearts,
Thou makest there Thy rest.”

And so with this vision of childlike purity and holiness before our eyes, we dedicate ourselves to the bringing in of that Heavenly Kingdom which will be ushered in only as we too become as little children….

[Reccord concludes the tract by saying:]…Such are the “sacraments” [baptism and the Lord’s Supper] of the liberal faith. They are a part of our religious inheritance. They suggest the beginning and the end of that brief ministry which gave us a new civilization and a new era. Gratefully received, truthfully interpreted, and reverently administered, they will be to us what they have been to others, a source of spiritual power and inspiration.

———

1844: Unitarian naming ceremony

The following naming ceremony, used in the Church of the Disciples, Boston, was probably written by Rev. James Freeman Clarke.

Service Book: For the Use of the Church of The Disciples (Boston: Benjamin H. Greene, 1844). The principal author, though uncredited, was James Freeman Clarke.

The Baptism of Infants

And Jesus took a child, and set him in the midst; and when he had taken him in his arms, he said unto them, Whosoever shall receive one of such children, in my name, receiveth me; and whosoever shall receive me, receiveth not me, but him that sent me.

And they brought young children to him, that he should touch them; and his disciples rebuked those that brought them; but when Jesus saw it he was much displeased, and said unto them, Suffer the little children to come unto me, and forbid them not, for of such is the kingdom of God. Verily I say unto you, whosoever shall not receive the kingdom of God as a little child, he shall not enter therein.

Whosoever therefore shall humble himself as a little child, the same is greatest in the kingdom of Heaven.

Take heed that ye despise not one of these little ones; for I say unto you, that in heaven their angels do always behold the face of my Father which is in heaven.

My friends:—

You have brought this child here to be baptized.

I ask, therefore,

Do you give this child to God, to Christ, and to the Church, that he may be God’s child forever; and by this baptismal water, the ancient symbol of purity, do you express your desire that he should grow up amid the purifying influences of the Gospel, and come to Jesus through the medium of all Christian institutions and influences?

Answer. We do.

Will you instruct him in the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ, and exhort him to keep God’s holy will and commandments, and to walk in the same all the days of his life?

Answer. We will.

The child shall then be baptized, the Minister saying—

I baptize thee into the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.

A prayer and hymn may follow, or precede this service.

———

1884: Unitarian naming ceremony

The Western Unitarian Conference included Unitarian congregations in what we would not call the Midwest; the headquarters of the organization was in Chicago. The member congregations ranged theologically from fairly conservative Unitarian Christian, to very liberal Christian, to proto-humanist; the liberal elements tended to dominate the conference. Note that several suggestions for words for the actual naming are included at the end of the service, ranging from fairly liberal (God named as both Father and Mother), to fairly conservative (baptizing in the name of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit). The hymn tunes provided are forgettable, so I haven’t included them; actually, the hymn texts are pretty forgettable, too; nevertheless, the inclusion of so much music is characteristic of this service book, an attempt to integrate the arts into worship.

Unity Festivals (Chicago: Western Unitarian Sunday School Society, 1884).

Christening Service

The children and parents being assembled before the pulpit, the Minister makes a brief address: after which—

The Minister. Do you bring your children hither in this spirit?

The Parents. We do.

The Minister. By what name shall this child be known on the earth?

(One or both of the parents repeat the name.)

The Christening by the Minister.

After the christening of each child, let the children of the Sunday school, or the choir, sing this

CHANT.

Glory be to the Father, who | is in | heaven.
The high and |holy | One;
As it was in the beginning, is now, and | ever shall be.
Worlds without | end, A- | men.

Or these words:

Bless the Lord, | O my | soul:
And all that is within me | bless his | holy name
Bless the Lord, | O my | soul:
And for- | get not | all his benefits!

After the children are christened, a short

PRAYER.

While the little ones are being taken away, let the children of the Sunday School, or the choir, sing this

SONG.

O beloved little children,
Blessing and light descend
On the dear love parental
Which hath offered you here.

Hallowed and consecrated
By holy song and prayer.
May love be filled with wisdom
To guide the feet of the child.

HYMN. If desired.

My child is lying on my knees;
The signs of heaven she reads;
My face is all the heaven she sees,
Is all the heaven she needs.

I mean her well so earnestly,
Unchanged in changing mood;
My life would go without a sigh
To bring her something good….

Lo! Lord, I sit in thy wide space,
My child upon my knee;
She looketh up unto my face,
And I look up to thee.

—G. Macdonald.
From Unity Hymns and Chorals.

The following forms for words for the Christening in actual use by different Ministers, are given as suggestions:

I christen you ……….. in the thought of God, our Father, from whose land you come; in witness of the joy, gratitude, and consecration of your parents; and in testimony of the love, care, and fellowship of this church.

Henceforth you shall be called ………… the name your mother [or father, or parents,] gives you now. May the name be very blessed to you and honored among men. And may God, our Father and our Mother, be dear to you ………… as you are dear to God.

Then in your behalf I publicly consecrate to virtue, to truth, to love, to duty, to the service of God and humanity, these your dear children [or this your dear child] ………… May their lives [or his or her life] be pure, noble, wholly consecrated to what is beautiful and good. May the love and the prayers of this assembly be for you and for them: and may the blessing of God, our Father, rest ever upon you! Amen.

In the Name that is above every name, the Name in which all the families of the earth are one, we receive these little ones in this place and give them names which henceforth they are to bear. I christen thee ………… in the name of God our heavenly Father, and into the fellowship, joy, and service of human life on earth. Amen.

I baptize you in the name of the Father whose child you are, and of Jesus who loved little children, and of the Holy Spirit which is within you.

I baptize thee into the love and service of God, into the Divine Fatherhood, into the divine Sonship, into the Holy Spirit and the life eternal.

………… We dedicate thee to God: to the keeping of his love, to the service of his righteousness and truth.
[Footnote] The minister who uses this form says: “I say ‘we’ instead of the more private ‘I’ because with the few preliminary remarks I make, I try to have all the church feel that they individually and unitedly enter into this act, its validity depending upon the sense of responsibility we all feel toward the young life we now receive among us, and consecrate.”

At the Religious Studies Project, Dick Houtman has written a blog post titled “After Secularization: Unbelief in Europe.” Houtman has done some small-scale studies of unbelief in Europe, and relates his findings to larger intellectual trends, including the rise of “spiritual but not religious.” Houtman concludes that while this new contemporary spirituality is not old-school Christianity (which is where we get the “not religious” piece of the label), it is nevertheless a religion:

“Despite the still popular notion that contemporary spirituality is too privatized and individualized to have much social significance, this has become increasingly difficult to maintain [that’s it’s not a religion]. Surely, spirituality’s very character stands in the way of loyalty to church-like organizations and religious doctrines, but it does boast loyalty to what Campbell (2002 [1972]) has called ‘the cultic milieu’, a milieu to which the western mainstream has increasingly opened up. In the process, it has become clear that the public role of spirituality differs significantly from the ideological and political role that Christian religion used to play, and in many countries still plays. Guided by the spiritual motto, ‘One does not need to be sick to become better’, the public role of spirituality is more therapeutic than ideological and is played out in realms that range from work (Aupers & Houtman 2006, Zaidman 2009) to health care (Raaphorst & Houtman 2016, Zaidman 2017) and education (Brown 2019).”

It’s a short post, and worth reading for anyone trying to understand so-called secularization; I particularly like Houtman’s use of the word “unbelief” to name what is erroneously called “non-religiousness.”

I don’t do Lent — I guess I’m too deeply rooted in the New England Puritan tradition to feel comfortable with such a practice — but I really like what some liberal Christians have come up with for this year’s Lenten season.

These liberal Christians have issued “A Call to Prayer, Fasting, and Repentance Leading to Action” for this Lenten season. It’s a strongly-worded statement that includes phrases like these:

“We reject the resurgence of white nationalism and racism in our nation on many fronts, including the highest levels of political leadership….
“We reject misogyny, the mistreatment, violent abuse, sexual harassment, and assault of women that has been further revealed in our culture and politics, including our churches, and the oppression of any other child of God….
“We strongly deplore the growing attacks on immigrants and refugees, who are being made into cultural and political targets….
“We reject the practice and pattern of lying that is invading our political and civil life….”

You can read more at their Web site, ReclaimingJesus.org, and if you’re a liberal Christian, or in sympathy with their aims and practices, you can sign the pledge and join this season of national prayer and fasting.

As for me, though I won’t be signing their pledge, I’m in sympathy with their aims. I can feel the viciousness in the air these days, and I do feel we’re all complicit in promoting that viciousness — yes, even us religious liberals, who are (in my opinion) too ready to badmouth people we disagree with, too willing to pick fights even with potential allies, too proud of our own self-proclaimed virtuosity. I’ll cop to all those vices. Maybe I’ll do a day of fasting myself, like the old New England Puritans, a day to reign in pride and engage in a little spiritual humility.

The middle school ecojustice class has extended their rainwater collection project into the restrooms of our congregation:

(And yes, I did flush using rainwater.)

“There is a fine old story,” writes Carl Jung, “about a student who came to a rabbi and said, ‘In the olden days there were those who saw the face of God. Why don’t they any more?’ The rabbi replied, ‘Because nowadays no one can stoop so low.’…” [Memories, Dreams, Reflections, “Retrospect”]

I suspect most Unitarian Universalists today would not even be able to stoop so low as to ask the question….

Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve been intensively writing a curriculum on world religions for middle elementary grades. Most of my time has been spent in developing activities for children to get inside the stories that are the basis of the curriculum — so my home office, and my office at work, became workshops where I was making prototypes of paper bag puppets, mobiles, board games, masks, and so on. And the rest of my time was devoted to writing up those activities. Yet all the while I was producing material aimed at second and third graders, and their volunteer teachers, I was thinking about what religion is. Because when you’re trying to make something clear to second and third graders, you first have to make it clear to yourself.

Here, then, are some of my thoughts on religion:

First of all, it is widely accepted among current religious studies scholars that religion is not a thing; that is, there is not “thing” out there that you can point to and say, “That’s religion.” Some religious studies scholars will say that religion is at most a social construct. Other scholars argue that there really is no such thing as religion; that what we call “religion” is actually the West trying to impose the characteristics of Western Christianity — belief in a transcendent being, hierarchy and clergy, weekly meetings, exclusive adherence to one religious group, etc. — on other societies. Still other scholars point out that religion is a valid category within Western jurisprudence, because the West holds dear something we call “religious freedom”; but that defining what constitutes a religion which can receive the legal protection under laws pertaining to religious freedom is often problematic (e.g., Scientology is defined as a religion in the United States, but not in some Western European countries; Mormonism was allowed to become a religion in the United States in the legal sense only after it renounced the tenet of plural marriage; etc.). Finally, still other scholars argue that “religion” is really merely a tool of colonialism; this may be seen, for example, when the British Empire took over the Indian subcontinent, and, for ease in colonial control, defined something called “Hinduism” that didn’t exist before; though then some newly-created “Hindus” figured out that the Western concept of religious freedom could give them some autonomy in which to resist colonial oppression, making everything far more complicated than it might appear at first.

In short, religion is at best a social construct; at another extreme, it might not even exist at all.

More importantly, when talking about “religion,” we must be very careful to avoid imposing Western definitions and criteria. This means that talking about “faith communities” is problematic: “faith” implies that Western-style belief in a transcendent being is the central feature of a religious group; but many Therevada Buddhists simply don’t have a transcendent being; certain strands of Judaism emphasize correct action (orthopraxy) over correct belief (orthodoxy); etc. Indeed, talking about “communities” is problematic, because it assumes a subset of Western-style voluntary associations called “congregations”; but many strands of Daoism in China have nothing that remotely resembles a congregation; the Buddhist sangha, usually conceptualized in the West as a congregation, in other parts of the world is a small grouping more like what we in the West would think of as monks.

Nor should we talk about “adherents,” a common term in the United States to designate persons who are associated with a religious group. The word “adherent” carries connotations of Western-style Christianity, where you get to choose which religious group you want to adhere to; but in many parts of the world, you are born into a “religion” and it’s not a choice, so that religious affiliation is closer to ethnic identity. We wouldn’t say that someone born in Ireland who emigrated to the United States is an “adherent” of Irish-Americanism; the same is true for many religious affiliations.

Even as a social construct, religion — considered carefully — challenges many of our preconceptions. We are accustomed to making broad, sweeping generalizations about a given religion: for example, all Christians believe in God. But that simply isn’t true: there are today a good many Christian atheists in the United States, people who embrace many of the teachings of Christianity, but who simply don’t believe in God. When I have pointed this out to some non-Christians, they become offended, because they “know” that all Christians believe in God, and therefore they didactically proclaim that a Christian who doesn’t believe in God isn’t a “real Christian.” But this kind of statement cannot be accepted: how can a non-Christian presume to dogmatically declare who is and who isn’t a Christian? — indeed, this kind of statement helps us understand how “religion” was used as a tool of colonial control: an outsider proclaims that what a colonized person is doing is religion, and therefore that colonized person has to do it a certain way, or else…. If we remember that religion is a social construct, and specific religions cannot be defined by broad sweeping generalizations, we can save ourselves from attempting to control other people in this way.

Along these lines, we can also remember to let religions speak for themselves, rather than trying to speak for religions. As I was looking at older world religions curriculums, I was struck by how often the curriculum writer was willing to take a religious story and turn it to their own ends. This most often happens when a curriculum writer takes a story, removes some specific religious content, and repurposes the story as a moral tale. A common example of this is the way curriculum writers (and children’s book authors) use Buddhist Jataka tales. Most Jataka tales take the form of a story-within-a-story: the framing story is an incident happens within the community of monks surrounding Gotama Buddha; next the Buddha tells the story-within-the-story, an incident from one of his previous incarnations; finally, we return to the framing story where Buddha and the monks talk over which of them was which character in the story-within-the-story. But curriculum writers (children’s book authors) tend to strip away the framing story, rewriting the story-within-the-story as a simple folk tale; but this imposes an outside (probably non-Buddhist, probably Western) interpretation on the Jataka tale.

When we let religions speak for themselves, we also have to remember the internal diversity within religions. One Christian cannot speak for all Christians; not even if he’s the Pope, for the Pope only speaks for Roman Catholics (and maybe not for all Roman Catholics, as we seem to be seeing in the resistance of conservative Catholics to the current pope’s reform efforts). When you look at the internal diversity of the “religion” of Christianity, it boggles the mind. How are silent meeting Quakers the same religion as Eritrean Orthodox Christians? How is the Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter Day Saints the same religion as the Church of the Lord (Aladura)? It is true that they all share a reverence for Jesus; but there are Muslims and Hindus and Bahai’s who also share some kind of reverence for Jesus (perhaps a lesser reverence, but how can we measure that?). It is true that the wildly diverse groups refer to some of the same books as a shared religious scripture, but these books are translated in interpreted differently, and some add other books, are leave out parts of some books. Moving beyond Christians, what about the internal diversity of Hinduism: what do Vaishnavism, Shaivism, and Shaktism have in common, aside from all being rooted in the culture of the Indian subcontinent, and aside from all being grouped together by British colonial rule? In today’s political climate in India, it might be said that Hindusim has become more like a politicized ethnic identity; but where does that leave the large Hindu community in Bali?

We must also consider how religions vary over time. Today we thinking of all evangelical Christians in the United States as wanting to outlaw abortion; yet there was a time, not so long ago, when many or even most evangelical Christians supported the right to abortion. The Sikhs at the time of Guru Nanak’s death did not have the “five Ks”; yet they were nevertheless Sikhs. Mormons didn’t practice plural marriage, then did practice plural marriage, then didn’t practice plural marriage (except for a few small splinter groups); yet who am I, a non-Mormon, to say who was and who wasn’t a Mormon?

To recap, here are some of the things I had to wrestle with as I was writing this curriculum:
— “Religion” is at most a social construct, and may not even exist;
— We have to be careful not to use the social construct of “religion” to impose our will on others;
— “Religions” are internally diverse, sometimes wildly so;
— “Religions” vary over time.

Trying to embed these concepts in a curriculum such that middle elementary children can get some sense of them was challenging. Trying to embed these concepts in a curriculum so that adult teachers would challenge their own (Western, colonial) preconceptions seemed almost impossible….

In the depths of curriculum development. Coming up for air soon….

While developing a curriculum for middle elementary grades, I found an interesting game, “Patol House,” originally played by Native Americans in New Mexico. I found this game in the book Handbook of American Indian Games by Allan and Paulette Macfarlan (Toronto: General Pub., 1958; reprint, Mineola, N.Y.: Dover Pub., 1985). The Macfarlans are recreating games for use by middle class white kids in summer camps in the 1950s, and no doubt they have modified the rules to this game somewhat. I have further modified the rules, turning this into a board game suitable for use indoors in a multi-racial Sunday school classroom; and I further modified the rules to fill in a gap or two that we found in the Macfarlans’ rules during test play.

Sample game play with adults showed this can be a fun game. It’s supposed to be a game of skill and strategy, not of luck — the skill comes in being able to throw the counting sticks to yield the number you want; the strategy comes in planning your moves to “kill” opponents’ horses. In our sample play, we gained enough skill to throw the desired number maybe one out of ten times, so it was mostly a game of luck for us. But even as a game of luck, it was enjoyable to play.

With no further ado, here’s how to make and play the game:

Making the game: According the the Macfarlans, the Indians used a game board of 40 stones arranged in a circles, with 4 gaps between the stones; the gaps are “rivers.” The design shown in the photo below reproduces this game board on paper; the blue stripes are the “rivers.” I printed the design in halves, on two 11 by 17 inch pieces of cardstock; then gluing the cardstock to foamcore to make a 17 by 17 inch game board. The counting sticks are popsicle sticks that are shortened; the sticks are marked (based on Tiwa Indian designs) as follows: all three sticks have two hatch marks on one side; two are left blank on the reverse side, while one is marked with three hatch marks on the reverse. A flattish stone goes in the center; this is to bounce the counting sticks off. I made two cards showing how to score the throws of the counting sticks. For playing pieces, I found some small stones, as you can see in the photo below; however, these were not very satisfactory, and I have since substituted colored game pawns.

(Notes on making the game: 1. The point of this game is not to try to recreate an utterly authentic Native design, but to make a game that is easily playable. 2. The file for the game board is something like 5400 x 5400 pixels at 300 dpi and too big to post here, so you’ll have to draw your own game board. 3. I’m prototyping the game using the Board Games Maker Web site; when they ship it to me I’ll post a photo on this blog.)

This game works best with 8 or more players. If you have fewer players, give each player two horses; players take a separate turn for each horse.

Setting up the game:

Put the stone in the center of the game board. The playing pieces, called “horses,” remain off the game board until a player plays them.

Throw the counting sticks to see who goes first:

Hold the three counting sticks in your hand about a foot above the game board. Bring your hand down, and release the sticks about 6 inches above the stone (but no closer). The sticks hit the stone, bounce, and fall with one face or another showing. 

The diagram below shows how many points you get, depending on which sides of the counting sticks are showing. The player with the highest number of points goes first.

Game play:

The first player throws the counting sticks, and, starting from a blue circle nearest to where they are sitting, moves their horse that number of spaces. Players may move either clockwise or counterclockwise as they wish, but once they begin moving in one direction they must keep moving in that direction in subsequent turns. However, if they throw a 10, this would place their horse in a river. Horses may not land in rivers. Whenever a throw lands their horse in a river, the player must throw the counting sticks again until they throw a number that will not land their horse in a river.

The other players may begin from the same river that the first player started from, or from a different river. Again, they may move either clockwise or counterclockwise, but once they begin moving in one direction they must keep moving in that direction.

Player’s horses may pass over other players horses. But if one player’s horse ends up on the space occupied by another player’s horse, the other player’s horse is considered dead and must start over. A player may have to start over several times during the course of a game.

If you start over, you must start in the same river you started in before (that is, in the same blue circle). However, if you start over, you can again choose to go either clockwise or counterclockwise—though again, once you choose a direction you have to keep going in that direction, until you have to start over again.

Winning the game: 

The first player whose horse makes it all the way around the circle, back to their starting point or past it, wins the game. 

Strategy: For good players, this is a game of skill. A good player can hold the sticks in their hand and bounce them in such a way as to get the number they want. But be sure to release your hold well above where the sticks hit the stone, so you’re not accused of cheating.

I’m in the middle of writing curriculum for middle elementary grades, and here’s a children’s craft project I just developed for this curriculum. These are puppets for acting out the story-within-the-story of the Buddhist Jataka tale “The Little Tree Spirit” (which you can read on my old blog here).

You will need:
patterns that you print and cut out ahead of time
glue sticks or paste
scissors
pencils
black magic markers
paper bags (lunch bag size, 5 x 10 in. folded)
paper or card stock in the following colors:
—pink (for noses and mouths)
—white (for eyes)
—dull green (for Little Tree Spirit)
—bright green (for Great Tree Spirit)
—orange (for Tiger)
—yellow (for Lion’s head)
—brown (for Lion’s mane)

Let’s start by seeing how the Tiger is made.

(1) Cut out the head, attach it to the paper bag:

Trace the head shape from the patterns or draw it freehand on orange paper, then cut it out. Glue the head to what is the usually bottom of the paper bag.

(2) Add details to the head:

Cut out the nose from pink paper, and two eyes from white paper. Glue on the eyes and nose, and draw pupils in the eyes. Using the black magic marker, draw stripes and whiskers on the tiger as shown above.

(3) Add the mouth:

Cut out the mouth, and fold it at about one third of the way across the diameter (about one inch from the edge). Glue the mouth in the flap formed by the bottom of the paper bag where it’s folded over, as shown in the drawing. You want a little bit of the pink mouth to show below the head of the puppet.

(4) Try your puppet:

Put your hand inside the puppet, and make sure the mouth looks right when you open and close the puppet’s mouth.

(5) Make the other puppets:

The rest of the puppets are made in much the same way. (1) For the Lion: use the same head pattern but cut the head out of yellow paper; then cut a mane out of brown paper and glue the head on the mane. (2) For the Little Tree Spirit: use the tree pattern and cut the tree out of green paper. (3) For the Great Tree Spirit: use the mane pattern, cutting the shape out of green paper for the “head.”

Now you have all the puppets you need to act out the story. They’re kind of crude, but they’re effective.

A couple of years ago, I printed a biographical dictionary of Palo Alto Unitarians from 1891 to 1934. Since then, a missing box of old records resurfaced, and those records provided me with many more names of early Palo Alto Unitarians. Today, I completed the draft version of a new, expanded biographical dictionary.

Eventually, this biographical dictionary will be printed out and placed in the archives of the Unitarian Universalist Church of Palo Alto, successor to the late nineteenth and early twentieth century Unitarian congregations in Palo Alto. But first I have to proofread it (a task which I abhor), and check it for errors (marginally less abhorrent). Who knows when I’ll get that done?

In the mean time, I’m releasing a PDF of the uncorrected proof — mostly to get this information on the Web for people who might be looking for it, including genealogical researchers and people looking into Unitarian history.

Unitarians in Palo Alto, 1891-1934: A Biographical Dictionary — uncorrected proof (PDF, 2.3 MB)

Many of biographical appeared here earlier, in a slightly different form, as blog entries.

For scholars of Unitarian and Universalist history, perhaps the most interesting point made in this biographical dictionary is that David Starr Jordan did indeed formally become a member of a Unitarian church, contrary to what is stated in his biography on the UU Historical Society Biographical Dictionary Web site. Records of the Unitarian Church of Palo Alto show: “In his annual report for 1925, Rev. Elmo Arnold Robinson noted that David became a member of the church in that year, and he appeared in the 1926 List of Resident Members.” [Note that in the uncorrected proof, “1925” is mistyped “1295.”] I also touch on Jordan’s now-controversial embrace of eugenics.

Local historians will be interested to learn a little more about Rev. Leila Lasley Thompson, the first duly ordained woman installed in any Palo Alto congregation. Feminist historians will appreciate the effort made to trace the lives of women in the congregation; too many histories of congregations ignore women members and participants.

However, this biographical dictionary is going to appeal to a very limited number of people; if it bores you, ignore it.

A little-known song for Christmas by Henry Lawes. This song, published in 1669, is a Christmas party song, with absolutely no religious content except the word “Christmas.”

’Tis Christmas now, ’tis Christmas now,
When Cato’s self would laugh,
And smoothing forth his wrinkled brow,
Gives liberty to Quaff,
To Dance, to Sing, to Sport and Play,
For ev’ry hour’s a holiday.

And for the Twelve days, let them pass
In mirth and jollity:
The Time doth call each Lad and Lass
That will be blithe and merry
Then Dance, and Sing, and Sport, and Play,
For ev’ry hour’s a holiday.

And from the Rising of the Sun
To th’Setting, cast off Cares;
’Tis time enough when Twelve is done
To think of our Affairs.
Then Dance, and Sing, and Sport, and Play,
For ev’ry hour’s a holiday.

Click on the image below for a PDF of sheet music for this song. The melody in the sheet music is Lawes’ melody; Lawes outlined a bass line to be played on theorbo or bass-viol, and I changed the rhythms of this slightly to fit the lyrics so bass voices could sing this part.

I’m in the process of writing a curriculum for middle elementary that will include a story from the Kongo religious tradition, “Spider Steals Nzambi Mpungu’s Heavenly Fire.” As a supplementary activity, I’m planning to include instructions for Kisolo, a traditional Congolese game that resembles the well-known Mancala game that’s commercially available in the U.S. So here’s my first pass at Kisolo rules, somewhat simplified for middle elementary grades. (If you play this game, let me know what you think of the rules.)

To make a Kisolo board: Take two egg cartons, and cut their lids off. Tape them together to make a game board with six by four holes. (Most traditional Kisolo boards are four by seven holes in size, but a smaller board is allowable and makes for shorter game play.) You can also use he commercially available Mancala boards — take two of them, place them side by side and ignore the large bins at the ends of the boards.

To set up the board: Place three “seeds” in each bin. You can use actual bean seeds, or small glass tokens or what-have-you, for seeds. (For a faster game, plant only two seeds per bin.)

To start:

Two players sit at the long sides of the game board opposite each other. The twelve bins on your side belong to you, and the twelve bins on your opponent’s side belong to them. Each player has six “outer bins” (the row of bins nearest to them) and six “inner bins” — see the diagram above.

To play:

Youngest player starts.

When it is your turn, see if one of your inner bins contains seeds AND your opponent’s inner bin opposite it contains seeds. (If that’s true of more than one of your inner bins, just pick one; OR if you can’t capture any seeds, see below.)

Then remove all the seeds from your inner bin, plus the seeds in the corresponding bin that belongs to your opponent, and any seeds in your opponent’s outer bin that’s next to that inner bin.

Now “sow the seeds,” that is, starting with the inner hole you’ve just emptied, place one seed in each of your holes and continue counterclockwise sowing seeds only into you holes, until you have sown all the seeds.

If your last seed falls in one of your inner holes, then you ALSO get to remove all the seeds from your inner bin, plus the seeds in the corresponding bin that belongs to your opponent, and any seeds in your opponent’s outer bin that’s next to that inner bin. Then you sow the seeds as before—it’s like you get another turn (but after that your turn is over).

IF YOU CANNOT CAPTURE ANY SEEDS, then empty the seeds out of any one of your holes and sow those seeds counterclockwise into your own holes.

To win the game:

Capture all the seeds in your opponent’s INNER holes (doesn’t matter how many seeds are in the OUTER holes).

Note that some games will end in a draw, where neither player can win. If it feels like the game is going nowhere, the players can agree to a draw.

A historian, Frank Alfred Golder was born near Odessa, Russia, on Aug. 11, 1877, and emigrated to the United States about 1880. He attended schools in New Jersey and Kentucky, and attended Bucknell Univ., from which he graduated in 1898. He then taught for three years in a government school in Alaska, where he collected Aleut songs and stories which he published in the Journal of American Folklore. He went to Harvard Univ. in 1902, received his A.B. in 1903, then did graduate study relating to Alaska, receiving his Ph.D. from Harvard in 1909. He taught briefly at Boston Univ. and the Univ. of Chicago before joining the faculty of the State College of Washington in Pullman, Wash.

His dissertation was published in 1914 under the title Russian Expansion on the Pacific, 1641-1850. He was studying in Russia in 1914, and on Aug. 2 saw the Tsar address an excited crowd in front of the Winter Palace, telling the nation that they were at war. He returned to the United States by way of Siberia, and resumed teaching in Pullman. But he returned to Russia in 1917, sailing from Seattle to Petrograd, arriving on March 4, less than two weeks before the Tsar was overthrown. He remained in Russia through August, working in the archives on material relating to Russian expansion on the Pacific Coast of North America, but he also witnessed the July uprising in the capital city of Russia; he also traveled in Russia between Vladivostok and Petrograd, and in European Russia as well. The notes during 1917 he took helped him write The Russian Revolution and the Jugo-Slav Movement, published in 1918; his work in the archives studying the Russian presence in North America led to the book Bering’s Voyages (vol. 1, 1922; vol. 2, 1925).

In 1920, he returned to Russia, and did relief work there under the auspices of Herbert Hoover’s American Relief Administration; this work led to the book On the Trail of the Russian Famine (coauthor Lincoln Hutchinson, 1927).

In 1923, he went to the Hoover War Library, Stanford Univ., where he was both professor of history and one of the directors of the library. He visited Russia again in 1925 and 1927.

He joined the Unitarian Church of Palo Alto in 1924, and was listed in the 1926 “List of Resident Members.” He died Jan 7, 1929, in Santa Clara County, Calif.

Notes: 1920 U.S. Census; Passport application, Frank Golder, Aug. 23, 1920 (no. 84075); H. H. Fisher, “Frank Alfred Golder,” Journal of Modern History, June, 1929, pp. 253-255; California Death Index.

Another in a series of stories for liberal religious kids. This is a Tlingit myth recorded in Wrangell, Alaska.

A young man and a young woman on the Haida Gwaii, the Islands of the Haida People, married. The young man was a chief, and the couple were very happy together. But soon after they were married, the young woman fell ill. Her husband sent around everywhere for the very best shamans, to try to cure her of her illness. He heard about a very fine shaman from another village on the island, and sent a canoe there to bring that shaman. But that shaman could do nothing. The young chief heard about another fine shaman at another village on another island, and again sent a canoe; but neither could that shaman cure the young woman. The young man sent for several fine shamans, but none of them could help his wife, and after she had been sick for a very long time she died.

The young chief felt very badly after his wife had died. He went from village to village to find the best wood-carvers in order to have them carve a sculpture of his wife. But though he asked several fine carvers, no one could make a sculpture that looked like his wife.

All this time there was a wood-carver in his own village who could carve much better than all the others. This man met the young chief one day and said, “You are going from village to village to have wood carved like your wife’s face, and you can not find anyone to do it, can you? I have seen your wife a great deal walking along with you. I have never studied her face with the idea that you might want some one to carve it, but I am going to try if you will allow me.”

The young chief agreed to try. The wood-carver found a very fine piece of red-cedar and began working upon it. When he had finished, the wood-carver had dressed the sculpture just as he used to see the young woman dressed. Then he went to the young chief and said, “Now you can come along and look.”

The young chief came to the wood-carver’s workshop, and when he got inside, he saw his dead wife sitting there just as she used to look. This made him very happy, and he said he would like to take this sculpture home. “What do I owe you for making this?” he asked the wood-carver.

The wood-carver had felt sorry to see how the young chief was mourning for his wife, so he said, “Do as you please about it. It is because I felt badly for you that I made that. So don’t pay me too much for it.”

But the young chief paid the wood-carver very well, both in slaves and in goods.

The young chief dressed this sculpture in his wife’s clothes and her marten-skin robe. When he finished, he felt that his wife had come back to him. He treated the sculpture just like her. One day, while he sat very close to the sculpture, mourning for his dead wife, he felt the sculpture move. He thought that the movement was only his imagination. Yet he knew his wife had been as fond of him as he was of her, and so each day as he ate his meals he sat close to the sculpture, thinking perhaps some time it would in fact come to life.

After a while the whole village learned the young chief had this sculpture of his wife. One by one, they all came to see it. It was so life-like that many people could not believe that it was not the woman herself until they had examined it closely and saw it was only made of wood.

One day, after the chief had had it for a long, long time, he sat down next to the sculpture, and saw that the body was just like the body of a human being. Now he was sure the sculpture was alive, and he began to treat it just as if it were his wife. Yet though he was sure the sculpture was alive, it could not move or speak.

Then one day the sculpture gave forth a sound like cracking wood. The man was sure something was wrong; perhaps the sculpture was ill. He had some people come and move it away from the place where it had been sitting, and when they had moved the sculpture they found a small red-cedar tree growing there on top of the flooring. The man left the young red-cedar tree to grow there, until it grew to be very large. (For many years afterwards, when people on the Queen Charlotte Islands went looking for red-cedars, if they found a good one they would say, “This looks like the baby of the chief’s wife.” And it is because of the young chief’s wife that red-cedars on the Queen Charlotte islands provide the very best wood for carving.)

But to return to the red-cedar sculpture of the young woman: The sculpture continued to grow more and more like a human being day after day. People from villages far and near heard the story, and came in canoes to look at the sculpture, and at the young red-cedar tree growing there, at which they were very much astonished. The sculpture moved around about as much as a tree trunk might move in the wind, which is to say not much at all, and the sculpture was never able to talk. Yet the woman’s husband had dreams in which she spoke to him, and even if the sculpture could not talk, it was through these dreams the husband knew his wife was talking to him.

Source: Tlingit Myths and Texts, John R. Swanton, Bureau of American Ethnology Bulletin 39, U.S. Government, 1909, pp. 181-182

The above is an edited public domain photograph of the Centennial Pole, dedicated in 2011 at the Sitka National Historical Park, Sitka, Alaska, showing the woman carved at the bottom of the pole. “The bottom figure…is a fascinating female portrait by Donnie Varnell, a Haida carver from…Ketchikan (Alaska). Flanked by male and female salmon, she represents Mother Earth.” (Mike Dunham, “Sitka’s Centennial Pole a showpiece of modern totemry,” Anchorage Daily News, June 6, 2014.) Since the story above is a Tlingit tale of the Haida Gwaii, the homeland of the Haida people, it seemed appropriate to use a Haida sculpture to illustrate the story.

…on Nov. 15, 1969, Son House was recorded live, performing “Death Letter Blues,” “John the Revelator,” “Preachin’ the Blues,” and “I Wanna Live so God Can Use Me.” House accompanies himself on guitar on the first and third songs; the other two are a capella. Since he was Son House, he did a little preaching too. All four songs are worth listening to, but the first song, “Death Letter Blues,” is my favorite. Listen on Youtube.

Yesterday I went for a walk along Charleston Slough in Palo Alto at high tide. It was a gray day, and the light seemed to make the colors of the ducks appear more dramatic than usual. Looking at the ducks helped me forget the crazy stuff that’s in the news these days.

Notes: Common and Latin names from Dunn and Alderfer, Field Guide to the Birds of North America, 7th ed. (2017); however, the AOU now assigns American Wigeon to its own genus, Mareca. Photos: inexpensive superzoom camera (cheaper than your smart phone) and free image manipulation software.

The Daffodil Project aims to “champion gender equality in classical music.” In a blog post, Elizabeth de Brito writes:

“Mozart and Beethoven together make up just over one third of all classical performances…. Add the next 4 most played composers — Bach, Brahms, Schubert, Tchaikovsky — and they make up 78% of classical performances. Over 400 years and hundreds of amazing composers, but nearly 80% of all performances are of just 6 white male composers that all died over a century ago?!”

De Brito produces an online gender-balanced classical music program which in its first year had “409 composers including 204 female composers, 155 living composers, and 40 BAME composers/composers of colour.” The most played composer? — Florence Price.

And De Brito has hit on one of the main reasons why I don’t bother going to hear classical music concerts much any more — I’m so bored by hearing the same composers over and over again. I like “classical” music just fine, but I don’t want to hear Beethoven and Mozart again and again, I want to hear living composers, women composers, non-white composers….

Which brings me to Unitarian Universalist services that use mostly classical music: what would happen if half the music in our worship services was composed by women? or if we programmed more composers of African descent? and how about a Mexican composer? Life would be a lot more interesting.

“Free will exists to an extent for the individual, but disappears in the group.” — Spider Robinson, Off the Wall at Callahan’s (Tor Books, 1994), courtesy of.

Given that Unitarian Universalists tend to be obsessed with free will: assuming this statement is true, it would explain a lot about the dissatisfaction many Unitarian Universalists have with Unitarian Universalism.

(For the record, my sense is that free will is a cultural artifact of Western Christianity, not a valid way of thinking about how human beings interact with the world.)

Another in a series of stories for liberal religious children. I adapted this story from story 49b A raja’s daughter turned into a boy in “The B40 Janam-Sakhi: An English translation with introduction and commentary of the India Office Gurmukhi Manuscript Panj. B40, a janam-sakhi of Guru Nanak compiled in A.D. 1733 by Daya Ram Abrol,” ed. W. H. McLeod (Amritsar: Guru Nanak Dev Univeristy, n.d. [1979]), pp. 206-208. In the translation of the original story, the raja comes across as deluding himself that his child is, in fact, a girl, not a boy. But since nowhere does the raja’s child express any discomfort with identifying as male, though he is biologically female, I chose to interpret the raja’s child as transgendered. In the story, I avoid the term “transgendered” as anachronistic, but assumed that the raja’s child did in fact identify as a man; this is consistent with an assumption that there have been what we Westerners would call transgendered eprsons across cultures and throughout time. There are also stories from the Western religious traditions that present transgendered persons (e.g., queer theologians who argue that Jesus had non-binary gender, etc.), but I chose to retell this story simply because it tells about a child growing up into an adult. Note that the excerpt from the Guru Granth Sahib combines translations from Bhai Manmohan Singh, Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa, and The Sikh Encyclopedia. Now here’s the story:

There once was a raja, a Hindu king, who married a woman who was a Sikh. When she became the rani, or queen, this woman stayed in touch with the Sikhs who lived in the kingdom, and who had their dharamsala, or place of worship, just below the palace where the raja and rani lived. The Sikhs were well known for their beautiful hymns and their beautiful singing, and the raja came to enjoy listening to the hymns that were sung during kirtan, that is, during the Sikh worship service.

One day, the rani said to the raja, “Do you not wish that we had a child?”

“Oh yes,” said the raja. “I would love for us to have a child. I wish we could have a little boy.” For in the raja’s kingdom, it had always been men who had ruled the kingdom, and the raja hoped for a song that would rule his kingdom after him.

The rani said, “Let us go down to the dharamsala, and ask the sangat for a child.” The sangat was the gathered community of Sikhs, and it was thought that Guru Nanak, the founder of the Skih religion, was present in the sangat, even though he had died long ago.

The raja agreed to do this. A large congregation of Sikhs had gathered for Ekadasi, a Hindu lunar celebration. Even though Sikhs did not celebrate Hindu holidays, the Guru Arjan had said:
On Ekadasi, see God by your side,
Control your desires, and listen to God’s praise,
Let heart be content, and be kind to all beings.

The raja and rani presented their wish for a son as a hymn was being sung. “Speaking to the congregation, the raja and rani said: “You come together for Guru Nanak, and so whatever wish is asked of you will be granted. We ask that the Guru would give us a son.”

Those who were in the sangat said, “Trust in the Guru, he will grant you a son.”

Not long thereafter, the raja’s wife told the raja that she was pregnant. “Guru Nanak was right,” they said to each other, “and soon we will have a son.” When the baby was born, the baby’s body looked like a girl’s body, but the raja and his wife were confident that Guru Nanak had correctly foreseen that their child would be a son.

The raja and his wife gave the baby a name that was usually given to a boy, and then waited to see what would happen. And when their baby grew enough to begin to walk and talk and run around, it became clear that the child knew he was a boy. So what Guru Nanak had said did indeed come true: the raja and his wife had a son.

The boy grew quickly, and became a fine young man. Although he had a young woman’s body, nobody in the raja’s palace thought much about it, and the young man did everything that all the other young men did. Then one day, his father called him to the throne room.

“My son,” said the raja, “it is time you married. I would like you to marry –” and he named the daughter of a neighboring raja.

The young man thought he liked this daughter of the neighboring raja, and he also thought that she liked him, so he did not disagree with his father’s idea. But he asked, “Why is it that you want me to get married now, father?”

“I have received a marriage proposal from the young woman’s father,” said the raja. “And besides, I would like to see you married, and I would like you to have children, so that my grandchildren will continue to rule this kingdom.”

The young man looked thoughtful. “Of course I would like to have children,” he said, “but as you know, even though I’m a man, remember that I do have a woman’s body….”

His father waved this away. “Do not worry,” said the raja. “I trust in the Guru. He said that your mother and I would have a child, and we did. He said that your mother and I would have a boy, and we did.”

So the marriage proposal was accepted. The raja instructed his Hindu pandit to carry out the ceremonies to prepare for the marriage. But there were those who whispered, “The young man has a woman’s body. If he marries a woman, how can the two of them have children? The old raja will bring disgrace on us all.” But the old raja didn’t listen to these whispers; he trusted in Guru Nanak, and he knew that his son was indeed a man.

Before long the day of the wedding arrived. The young man got on his horse and, accompanied by a large party of well-wishers, rode to the neighboring raja where the wedding would take place. Suddenly a golden deer appeared in front of the party, and the raja’s son boldly spurred his horse and gave chase to this magnificent animal.

The golden deer ran from the raja’s son, leading him away from the others, until at last the deer jumped into a garden. The raja’s son followed, but when was inside the garden he found, not the golden deer that he had expected, but the Exalted One, Guru Nanak himself.

The raja’s son bowed down before the Exalted One. The Guru said to him, “My child, the Guru will fulfill your wish.”

The rest of the party had been following the raja’s son, and just then they arrived in the garden. Upon seeing Guru Nanak, the raja walked around him, then prostrated himself and laid at the feet of the Guru. “I am truly blessed, to see you, Baba Nanak!” said the raja. “You granted my wish to have a son. No human mouth can praise you enough, for you are beyond all praise!”

“Go in peace,” said Guru Nanak. “I will be with you wherever you go. Wherever you sing my hymns or offer praise to me, there you shall find me.”

The raja and all those in the wedding party became Sikhs from this moment. They continued on their journey, all chanting, “Guru, Guru!” The raja’s son was duly married to the daughter of the neighboring raja, and all was well.

Rizwan Mawani, a Canadian scholar, has published a new book titled Beyond the Mosque: Diverse Spaces of Muslim Worship. I’m interested in the book because according to an interview by Religion News Service, Mawani provides insight into the internal diversity of Islam:

“The challenge of writing a book like this is that there are exceptions to almost every universal we try to proclaim upon the Muslim world. I’m always hyper conscious about asking ‘Is this sentence true for all Muslims? And if not, how do I modify it to reflect a pan-Muslim experience?'”

Mawani looks at the diversity of architecture (as you’d expect from the title), but other kinds of internal diversity as well — such as how ritual practices are constantly evolving, thus providing insight into diversity over time. But, according to the interview, Mawani also tackles some hot-button issues, such as the issue of gender:

“[T]here are communities like the Alevis [with 25 million adherents], found mostly in Turkey, who don’t define themselves as Sunni or Shia, where men and women pray side by side in spaces called cemevis, and oftentimes even interspersed with one another. Because in Alevi theology, God doesn’t see the body. All he sees is the soul of the believer, and gender is ultimately dissolved.”

Although in the West, we typically divide Islam into Sunni and Shia, Mawani found diversity beyond this bipartite division. For example, many of the first Muslims to come to North American were probably neither Sunni nor Shia:

“Another interesting thing to consider is how Islam came into North America. If we look at the earliest migration of Muslim communities, we of course have West African slaves, many of whom we now know practiced Islam. Many of them probably brought a form of Sufi Islam. So though Sunni Islam is the predominant form of Islam in the U.S. today, it’s not necessarily how America got introduced to Islam.”

In the interview, Mawani also touches on the geographic diversity of Islam, pointing out that one in three Muslims worldwide come from South Asia. I was particularly interested in Mawani’s comments on how to find Muslim diversity in North America; a Web search for “masjid” is going to exclude some significant Muslim diversity:

“If you live in a big city, especially, there are lots of opportunities to engage or even work with various Muslim communities. Obviously you can do a Google search and walk through your neighborhood looking for mosques. But you may need to research other names. There are masjids, of course, that are used by Shia communities, but they also have spaces known as an imambara or matam or husayniya or something else, depending upon which part of the world that community comes from. There are many Sufi and mystically inclined spaces in many cities, so searches for words like tekke or zawiya or khanaqah can unearth communities in our own area that we may not be familiar with.”

Read the entire interview here.

Buying the book: Do the author a favor and do NOT buy from Amazon, because they drastically cut how much money the author receives per book. Instead, I recommend buying all your religion books from the Seminary Coop Bookstore in Chicago. They do not yet have “Beyond the Mosque” in stock, but you can special order it here.

PG&E, the utility that everyone in northern California loves to hate, is going to shut down our power tonight, due to a forecast of high winds that could cause a downed wire that could in turn spark wildfires.

Why does PG&E have to shut down the power? Because they are owned by hedge funds, which demand maximum short-term profit instead of efficient running of a utility company, and they have skimped on power line maintenance for decades. Or, to put it more pointedly, as the governor of California recently said about PG&E: “Years of mismanagement, years of greed.”

Power could go out very soon, so I’m setting up the propane stove so I can cook dinner.

Recently I read a blog post by Amod Lee on mindfulness meditation and whether it might be problematic for Christians. Lee notes that some Christian groups have mounted legal challenges to teaching mindfulness meditation in public schools, on the basis that mindfulness meditation is a religious practice, not a secular technique. Lee goes on to say that he is “not particularly interested in the particular American legal issues involved,” but rather wants to consider this issue “as a philosopher, a Buddhist, and a practitioner of mindfulness meditation.” Coming from that perspective, Lee argues that mindfulness meditation could be problematic for Christians:

“A key element to mindfulness practice is disidentification: one notices one’s thoughts and emotions as they surface, and observes them from a distance. In so doing, one comes to observe one’s mind, one’s self, as a divided entity, reducible into parts. One takes an approach which Augustine would have associated with his Manichean foes: where the soul is not one thing but the battleground for a struggle between good and evil intentions.

“That doesn’t mean one can’t practise mindfulness meditation as a Christian — or even that mindfulness meditation must mean one ceases to believe in an immortal soul. But the mindfulness approach, which explicitly comes out of Buddhist non-self, is explicitly in tension with the unified immortal essence postulated by most Christians. I think Christians would do well to at least be cautious around it.”

I found this argument helpful for me personally: I meditated for years, and finally stopped because I hated it. In the past few years, I’ve come to the conclusion that I never like meditation because I felt all the meditation techniques I was taught pushed me towards a negation of the self. By contrast, when I learned meditative techniques of self-inquiry while studying transcendental phenomenology in Edmund Husserl’s Cartesian Meditations, I found those techniques deepened my self-understanding without negating the self. Husserl’s technique led me to an understanding of intersubjectivity — that is, awareness of the self as a node in an intersubjective web of many selves — and eventually this led me to a sense that awareness of intersubjectivity is a highly desirable spiritual outcome. Similarly, meditative practices of observing non-human organisms, inspired in part by Henry Thoreau’s journals, also led me an awareness of my (non-negated) self as part of a web of intersubjective selves, many of which are non-human selves. Rather than negating the self, my own spiritual exploration led me to understand my connection with other selves, an outcome I find personally more rewarding.

My personal spiritual exploration leads me to expand on Lee’s conclusion: mindfulness meditation carries distinctly Buddhist content that people other than traditional Christians might also be cautious of, and even actively dislike. It is, in short, not a neutral practice.

(One last note: I’ve been to Unitarian Universalist worship services and workshops where the minister or workshop leader leads some kind of mindfulness meditation exercise with the unspoken assumption that everyone present will want to do mindfulness meditation. It would be wise for Unitarian Universalists to realize that mindfulness meditation is a practice borrowed from another tradition, to be careful that we do not misappropriate it, and if we do use it to remember that some Unitarian Universalists will find it distasteful or unpleasant.)

A myth that has wide currency within Unitarian Universalism (UUism) today tells the story that every Unitarian Universalist (UU) must be affiliated with a congregation. This “myth of the affiliated UU” has become one of the stock myths told by the Unitarian Universalist Association (UUA), and by many UU ministers.

Let me tell you why I think we should stop believing in this myth.

Years ago, when I was serving as a volunteer on-call chaplain at a hospital in Massachusetts, I visited someone who called themselves Unitarian. Without going into any confidential details, I can say this person was a member of a non-UU religious congregation and was quite happy about that, but still considered themselves a UU. As a chaplain, I of course accepted this person’s religious self-identification, and hoped that they would be able to use that religious identification in their healing process.

Only later did it occur to me that I knew of a fair number of other people like that person in the hospital — people who called themselves UUs but who didn’t, for whatever reason, belong to a UU congregation. Then the Web took off: I was a member of Church of the Larger Fellowship as it turned into an online church, and then I started this blog, and participated in a lot of online conversations, and I came into contact with a lot of people who call themselves UU but who aren’t part of a congregation. Really — a LOT of people.

We need a name for these people. I’m going to call them “non-affiliated UUs.”

Non-affiliated UUs are definitely UUs, but they aren’t affiliated with any congregation. They aren’t even affiliated with the Church of the Larger Fellowship, which is a happy home for a great many UUs, but which doesn’t suit the needs of lots of other non-affiliated UUs. I’m going to guess there are thousands, even tens of thousands, of non-affiliated UUs.

In the early days of Unitarianism and Universalism, you were a Unitarian or a Universalist if you said you were one. For many years, the American Unitarian Association accepted individual memberships. As for Universalists, there were lots of them who lived in rural areas or on the frontier where there weren’t any Universalist congregations. Read a book by Hosea Ballou, or a sermon by William Ellery Channing, and — bingo! — you could call yourself a Universalist or a Unitarian.

There’s a relationship between the current myth of the affiliated UU and the way we began funding UU institutions in the mid-twentieth century. From the UUA’s inception — in 1961, when the Unitarians and Universalists consolidated — the UUA as an institution received much of its revenue from per-member assessments levied on congregations. At the same time, ministry became an increasingly professionalized profession, typically requiring an expensive education that made economic sense only if the minister could count on a guaranteed income from working in a congregation. Thus, the myth of the affiliated UU became a convenient myth for both UUA staffers and lay leaders, and for parish ministers.

But the way we funded UU institutions in the mid- to late twentieth century no longer works. Too many UU ministers complete their expensive education only to find that they can’t find a job that will allow them to pay off their debts. (Not surprisingly, many people training for ministry are now turning to community ministry, so they can find non congregational jobs that will allow them to pay off their educational debt.) As the number of members of UU congregations decreased, the UUA finally gave up on the per-member assessment model, and has turned to assessments based on total operating budget of congregations.

Yet too many UU ministers and UU leaders continue to cling to the myth of the affiliated UU. This myth is taking on a destructive form: “You can’t be a REAL UU unless you’re affiliated with a UU congregation.” As a result, people who could be non-affiliated UUs are deciding that Unitarian Universalism doesn’t want them. In other words, the destructive form of this myth is forcing too many people to become religiously homeless.

Unitarian minister Theodore Parker made a famous distinction between the transient and the permanent in religion. He said that we sometimes cling to things that we think are an essential and permanent part of religion, but which are actually inessential and transient.

Being a member of a UU congregation is a good thing for many people. But congregations are a transient, inessential feature of Unitarian Universalism. You don’t need to be affiliated with a congregation to be a UU.

What is permanent about Unitarian Universalism? That you live an ethical life. That you challenge yourself to use your reason to engage with religion. That you allow yourself to doubt. That you allow your religious attitudes to change and evolve. That you value the Western religious tradition of which anglophone Unitarian Universalism is a part, while remaining open to insights from non-Western religious traditions. That you are in conversation with other UUs.

That last point deserves elaboration: How can non-affiliated UUs stay in conversation with other UUS? Through “sudden villages,” conferences and gatherings of a few days or a week where you get to meet other UUs face-to-face. Through reading UU writers, and listening to UU podcasts. Through online contacts: social media, blogs, email, whatever.

And how can UU institutional leaders welcome non-affiliated UUs? By sponsoring “sudden villages” that don’t require affiliation with a UU congregation. By supporting community ministers, those ministers who aren’t serving in a congregation. By allowing themselves to be in conversation with non-affiliated UUs, even when those conversations challenge core-but-transient assumptions about what constitutes a UU. By giving financial support to efforts that reach out to non-affiliated UUs (e.g., independent podcasts).

Above all, UU institutional leaders can welcome non-affiliated UUs by ceasing to retell the myth of the affiliated UU.

Coming up: How to be a non-affiliated UU….

Over the past decade, our congregation has seen flat attendance, slowly declining membership — but a modest increase in income when corrected for inflation. Turns out we’re not alone:

“A new nationally representative study from the Lake Institute on Faith and Giving at Indiana University’s Lilly Family School of Philanthropy finds that revenue is not necessarily declining along with attendance….

“‘We’re not hiding the fact that there are many congregations experiencing decline, or that it’s a major success to be simply maintaining,’ said David P. King, director of the Lake Institute and a co-director of the study. ‘But despite a narrative of decline for religiosity in America, there’s a wide diversity of what’s happening. A decline in participation does not necessarily equate with (a decline) in finances.’ Or as the study succinctly states: ‘Among congregations that are declining in attendance, there is not necessarily an automatic corresponding decline in revenue.’ “

Article.
National Study of Congregations’ Economic Practices study.

A Pew Research report released today aggregates yearly political surveys in which people reported religious affiliation, and finds that self-declared Christians are declining in the U.S. at a “striking” rate. According to an article on Religion News Service, attendance at weekly religious services is also way down, as Americans who attend services once a month are now in the minority:

“‘It’s quite shocking,’ said Scott Thumma, a sociologist of religion at Hartford Seminary. ‘This rapid shift is about generational replacement. The most religious folks are the ones who are dying and the least religious folks are the ones coming in.'”

I guess I’m not shocked, nor even mildly astonished: those of us who are involved in organized religion have been watching this trend for some time.

But I am interested in why self-reported religious participation is in decline in the U.S. The article offers several reasons:

“Thumma pointed to a number of cultural reasons that may be speeding up the generational shift, including [1] less social pressure to go to church; [2] the clergy sexual abuse scandal, especially in the Catholic Church; and [3] shifting attitudes toward sexuality and gender that clash with traditional Christian teachings. Greg Smith [associate director of research at Pew] said [4] a dissatisfaction with conservative political ties to evangelical Christianity may also be fueling the growth of the nones. [numbers are editorial]

To these reasons, I would add: [5] the decline in face-to-face community (the “bowling alone” phenomenon documented by Robert Putman and others); [6] stiffening competition for people’s leisure time including the increased availability of customized leisure-time activities; [7] the “post-church” movement within Christianity; [8] an increase in multicultural encounters that leave people doubting their own religious traditions; and [9] changing conceptions of what constitutes spirituality (sometimes reduced to secularization, though there’s more going on than absence of Christianity).

In a short news analysis piece, BBC reporter Anthony Zurcher says: “The recently announced formal impeachment inquiry has become all-consuming for Mr Trump — and is turning the man who likes to fashion himself as a ‘counter-puncher’ into a whirling frenzy of fists.”

Kindness has been neglected as a societal virtue in recent years. A popular catch-phrase tells us to practice random acts of kindness. While there’s nothing wrong with indulging in random acts of kindness, it’s also easy because it doesn’t require you to be kind all the time; you can just be kind when you feel like it. It is much more difficult to attempt to be kind most of the time.

Religions tell us to practice compassion, and to love our neighbors as we love ourselves. But compassion and love have their roots in the ordinary care and respect we should show for others. We begin by caring for and respecting those closest to us: our households, our families, our children and parents. This includes care for our physical selves: parents provide food for their children to eat; members of households share in day-to-day tasks. Kindness begins with such physical needs, but it extends to a sense of respect for each other as humans. A sense of respect requires us to attempt to understand others: what are they thinking and feeling? — or if not to understand, then at least to appreciate.

Care and respect should be mutual: when care and respect are given, but not in turn received, it becomes difficult to keep on caring and respecting. Random kindness in intimate relationships does not suffice; kindness should permeate households, families, and the relations between parents and children. Indeed, kindness should originate within one’s self; if you regulate yourself with kindness, then you are more likely to be kind in your household. When those in your household are kind to each other, you will more likely be kind to others; your entire household will practice consistent acts of kindness.

Some people assume that kindness means things like cutting out paper hearts and giving them to people; or, when you’re stopped at a tollbooth, paying the toll of the vehicle behind you in line. But these acts, while well-intentioned, are not particularly kind. Kindness strengthens the web of interdependence that exists between us all, and that requires consistency in thought and word and deed. Thoughts and words do matter. I wish that all supporters of the Democratic and Republican parties would understand this. When supporters of the Democratic party refer to supporters of the Republicans as “Repugs” on their social media accounts, that is not consistent with kindness, and no number of random acts of kindness can really make up for it. When Republicans make similar comments about Democrats, once again, they are being unkind.

Unkindness weakens the bonds between us, the bonds which make us human. Unkindness makes us less than human. The Non-conformist minister Isaac Watts, who late in supposedly owned a pew in a Unitarian chapel, wrote in a poem for children:

Let dogs delight to bark and bite,
For God hath made them so;
Let bears and lions growl and fight,
For ’tis their nature too.

To bark and bite and growl and fight makes us less than human. While I feel Isaac Watts maligns dogs, bears, and lions — they too can show care and respect to their offspring, and sometimes to larger groups — it is true that their social relationships do not extend as far as those of humans. Bears are fairly solitary, lions less so, and dogs are pack animals, and none of these species is as social as humankind. In a globalized world, you or I can connect with thousands, even millions of other people. In our widespread human connections, we can bark and bite and growl and fight, or we can be kind. Growling and fighting break human connections and lead to dissolution of society.

Confucius taught: “Recompense injury with justice, and kindness with kindess.” Kindness begets more kindness, crowding out injury, and helping justice to grow and flourish. Kindness, consistently cultivated — first for ourselves, then for our families and households, then more and more widely, eventually for all humankind — strengthens human bonds, and makes it possible for compassion and love to take root as well, and to shoot upwards towards the sun, and to flower, and to set fruit that will nourish us and allow each of us to thrive and grow ourselves.

I continue to make progress in recovering from the pulmonary embolism of a year and a half ago, but I still get tired easily. And I’m finally learning that sometimes when you’re tired, you should rest a little bit rather than trying to maintain the fiction that you’re perfectly all right. So I’m resting.

If you’re looking for something to read, there are some new and thoughtful comments on this recent post.