Universalist minister Hosea Ballou died this day in 1852.

(Well, this Universalist saints feature I planned isn’t going as I hoped. Think about Hosea anyway.)

I got an aside from a Well-Respected Minister who liked “that little book video insert piece” in my last blog post. It’s the BookReader of Internet Archive, the source of the book.

I think it’s the best desktop or laptop interface for reading books, and since the Internet Archives has a large number of public-domain Universalist and other works, I will sometimes read books this way, even if I have the actual book. But you can’t just drop other books into it.

Now, here’s how to share the books they do have on your site. First, of course you find one, like this 2003 Massachusetts Conference of the UCC directory.

When you click on the page, not only does it become larger, but you get added controls. I’ve pointed out the “share” link, which looks a bit like a sideways V. Click that.

Now you have links for sharing and embedding. The fault imbed is one page at a time, and the first page. I usually want it to look like a book open to the title page, so I select that, as in this example.

Now you might say, surely that directory isn’t it the public domain? True. Some libraries and collections have contributed their own works with permission. And many of them are religious. (And Boston-based for that matter.)

Wouldn’t it be helpful and useful if the Unitarian Universalist Association could host its old Commission on Appraisal reports, Board minutes, classic guides, and pre-consolidation AUA and UCA directories the same way. Our twentieth-century history is hard to access first hand, unless you’re old enough or well-connected enough — or close enough to Boston — to get paper copies of what you want.

How could we make that happen?

The prospect of job automation is more than a bit scary. Everyone likes a bit of help, provided that bit doesn’t help them out of a job. NPR ran a feature (“Will Your Job Be Done by a Machine?,” May 21)

While some professions will almost certainly be automated to some degree, there’s only a 0.8% chance that the clergy will be automated.

This made me think of a particularly odd episode in Universalist history where it wasn’t the clergy that was to be automated, but the works of divinity.

To be fair, John Murray Spear had left the Universalist ministry in 1852 for Spiritualism, which was intensely popular (and controversial) among Universalists.

In Lynn, Massachusetts, he gathered a group of followers to “[create] the ‘New Motive Power’, a mechanical Messiah which was intended to herald a new era of Utopia.” [citation] Like made of machinery.

It didn’t work. But it is an intensely weird and wonderful episode that deserves a read. (One version of the story.) But in re-reading the story today I discovered that Spear channelled Universalist founder (and namesake) John Murray, and published his revelations in Messages from the superior state: communicated by John Murray.

“Important instruction to the inhabitants of the earth”? That’s something I’ll have to read!

I just published the 1925 “A Joint Statement on Interchurch Relations from the Commissions of the Congregational and Universalist Churches” but didn’t want to clutter that document with thoughts. Indeed, I’ll want to review some of the standard denomination histories to see why the Universalists aren’t a part of the United Church of Christ today. Partnering with the Unitarians wasn’t the foregone conclusion so described today.

Union was in the air, then. Indeed, contemporaneously, the Congregationalists were making overtures to the Christian Church, leading to a merger. Most of the Congregational Christians then merged with the Evangelical and Reformed Church (itself merged) to create the United Church of Christ. The Universalists were also talking to the Unitarians; years ago I published a Universalist report from the same commission in 1927. And now I want to see what else they reported out.

Some loose thoughts:

1. I’ve heard it suggested that the relative size of the Congregationalists would have made organic union an absorption, rather than a merger.
2. It makes the later, if minor, Universalist participation with the “continuing” Congregationalists make more sense.
3. There are words the joint statement that echo in the 1935 Universalist Washington Declaration, namely in the second paragraph. “The kingdom for which he lived and died” for instance.

I hope this sparks interest in the history of Universalist polity…

Printed in Christian Union Quarterly (1925), p. 431ff.

A Joint Statement on Interchurch Relations from the Commissions of the Congregational and Universalist Churches

The National Council of Congregational Churches and the Universalist General Convention, at their sessions held in October, 1925, referred to the Congregational Commission on Interchurch Relations and to the Universalist Commission on Christian Comity and Unity certain proposals looking toward closer fellowship. The members of these commissions, after fraternal conference and discussion, join in issuing the following statement:

We believe that the basis of vital Christian unity is a common acceptance of Christianity as primarily a way of life. It is faith in Christ expressed in a supreme purpose to do the will of God as revealed in Him and to co-operate as servants of the Kingdom for which He lived and died. Assent to an official creed is not essential. Within the circle of fellowship created by loyalty to the common Master, there may exist differences of theological opinion. With that primary loyalty affirmed, such differences need not separate; rather, indeed, if the mind of the Master controls, they may enrich the content of faith and experience; and if it does not control, theological agreements will not advance the Christian cause. “Religion to-day does not grow in the soil of creeds.”

The unity of a common loyalty to the Christian way of life is already a fact, to which the high task in which we are now engaged is witness. Not only Congregationalists and Universalists, but multitudes of other forward-looking Christians, share this unity of faith and endeavour. It is not something to be artificially formed, but a growing relationship to be recognized and afforded ways of practical expression. None of us would advocate, as none of us could enter, a fellowship that would compromise loyalty to the truth as any one of us may see it, or would stifle freedom to bear testimony to its worth and power. What appeals to us is the challenge of a great adventure to prove that a common purpose to share the faith of Christ is a power strong enough to break the fetters of custom and timidity and sectarian jealousy that hitherto have put asunder Christian brethren who at heart are one, and who can better serve the Kingdom of God together than apart.

The Protestant churches of America are learning to work together. By so doing they honour their heritage and fulfil their mission. The Congregational and Universalist Churches are branches of the same parent stock. They grew out of the same soil and are bearing the same kind of fruit. The historic reasons for their separation have practically disappeared and new and stronger reasons for union have arisen. In statement of faith, in form of worship, in organization for work, and in standards of life, these two branches of Protestantism differ now in no essential respects. They can accordingly begin at once to co-operate in the heartiest way. If the prayer of our Lord is ever to be fulfilled, the beginning will be made by the mutual approach of denominations between which there is no longer any reason for separation.

In the judgment of the commissions, the time has arrived for the Congregational and Universalist Churches to seek the closest practicable fellowship. Their activities are proceeding already along lines closely parallel. They can do many things together to advantage which they are now doing separately. Each church will be quickened through this free fellowship.

We therefore recommend:

First: That the ministers and representatives of each denomination be invited to sit as corresponding members in the local, state, and national associations of the other denomination and to participate in their deliberations.

Second: That the agencies of each denomination in the realms of religious education, social service, evangelism, rural church development, and similar problems, be urged to arrange for joint programmes for promotion as far as practicable.

Third: That in each community where churches of both denominations are found they be urged to study what they can do together with mutual profit by way of union services, the interchange of pulpits, and the promotion of common enterprises.

Fourth: That there be a mutual interchange of representative speakers at national, state, and local gatherings.

Fifth: That the denominational journals be urged to make the largest practicable interchange of editorials and of printed matter of common interest, in order that each constituency may be kept fully informed regarding the other and of the progress made in the direction of closer fellowship.

Sixth: That, in order to secure more thoroughly co-ordinated movements, no actual steps toward the organization of local Congregational and Universalist churches be made without consulting their respective commissions.

Seventh: Wherever the problem of an adequate church constituency presses for solution, and in any community where denominational divisions work for wastefulness, those responsible are urged to co-operate in organizing for more effective service.

We believe that from these and similar joint undertakings increased effectiveness in common tasks and even more will result. Comradeship in a common faith and loyalty will be its finest and most prophetic grace. That quickened sense of comradeship will fashion its own ecclesiastical instrumentalities. None of us can yet foresee clearly what sort of organized fellowship will arise to give form and coherence to the spiritual unity that Christians of the open mind gladly confess. We are convinced that it will be something larger and more inclusive than anything that now exists. What we do see, with a profound feeling of gratitude and responsibility, is that, in the providence of God, these communions which we represent have been led by their respective historic traditions and spiritual development to a common faith in the Christian way of life as their supreme concern. They would travel it not only as friends but as allies, with a spirit as inclusive as the mind of the Master.

In such a larger fellowship Congregationalists and Universalists alike, both as churches and individuals, may find fresh incentive to service and sacrifice. The Kingdom of God requires the uttermost loyalty and devotion of both and the mutual recognition of what each may contribute to the common endeavour. The stirring challenge to forward-looking Christians of whatever name to-day is to make their churches vitalizing centers of the Christianity that is in Christ, and so to promote the broader fellowship through which alone the mighty task of winning the world by the Master shall be accomplished. To that we commit ourselves. The event is in the hand of God.

[From The Congregationalist, Boston, Mass.]

One set of people suggests liberal religion, and Unitarian Universalism particularly, is easy, insincere and a mental or spiritual plaything because of its inherent looseness and high regard for personal autonomy.

Another set of people — that’s us — seems to take that that as a challenge, rather than opportunity to correct our behavior or refute the premise. (Or not care about the challenge.) The conventional answer is that Unitarian Universalism is the most difficult religion (because of all the decisions and so forth) and thus very sincere and serious and so forth. There’s a mountain of sermons like that. Cue the rueful laughter in the background.

This approach should die a quick death. It makes our religion look like a crashing bore, and without the payoff of grand institutions, a mass movement or a corps of spiritually exhalted leaders. It’s all the burden of our Puritan heritage with none of the value.

One of the things that makes religion appealing is its capacity for joy — sometimes spiritual, sometimes material, often unseen or unappreciated by outsiders.  The grinding, scolding earnestness that you so commonly find when two or three Unitarian Universalists are gathered makes me want to hide. Usually hide with friends at General Assembly.

Last night, reading the program guide for this month’s General Assembly was the proximate cause of this blog post. Reading it to stay informed, as I’ll not be there. (For the reduced number of workshop slots, don’t some people show up over and over?) Family comes first; see you in Columbus in 2016. I’m sure there will be good parts, but the earnestness leaps off the page. Even the fun doesn’t sound so fun.

I spent the rest of my evening improving my Esperanto skills. Now, Esperantists are a people who have the earnest-fun balance down pat. A group created well-game-ified lessons on the Duolingo site. I spent the evening taking little game-like tests, tracking my progress, and earning immaterial rewards. The subtext was “this is fun, this is possible, you can do it.” And so I kept doing it.

There’s a lesson in that.

Follow my progress in my Esperanto studies on Duolingo, if you like. And join in.

I only had time to scan a ton of Universalist polity documents when I was at the Harvard-Andover archive last year, and I’ve still not transcribed them. And it would be nice to have in an easy to read and search format some of the rules and procedures of how Universalists operated — hints of which, and sometimes more — are still in use today. Here’s a taste.

I’m no Tom Sawyer, but Universalist polity documents aren’t whitewash, either. Can anyone commit to typing or editing for an hour? Seminarians, especially, who might find a tidbit for unexplored research.

So, I was talking with a couple of people: what would we do if the Unitarian Universalist Association ceased to exist? Not a death wish, but contingency planning. And a way of identifying what’s a must-have and not just a might-want.

Someone mulled, “what does the NACCC do?” That’s the National Association of Congregational Christian Churches, made up of churches that did not join the United Church of Christ on polity grounds. I’ve been long interested in them, as some of the Universalist churches that didn’t join the UUA “went NA”. Also, First Parish, Plymouth, and Universalist National Memorial Church, both members of the UUA have honorary membership. And the Council of Christian Churches in the UUA has — I believe — “fraternal relations.” In short, they’re close to us. Sorta.

And famous (or infamous) for having a lean administration. The kind that the UUA might back into, or be replaced-by.

So I was just browsing their site and noticed they have a single easy-to-find page with helpful handbooks ready to download.

That just made my day. Something to emulate.

Source: Handbooks (NACCC)

So, my dear Unitarian Universalist Christians, see if this sounds familiar. You let your Christian faith be known at church or fellowship or what-have-you and someone asks “how does that work?” or “have you considered the United Church of Christ?” — or something actively negative, suggesting that you shouldn’t be there at all, as if Unitarian Universalism was a refuge for a mix of non-Christians. I thought about all of these after reading “More than just a starter church” at The Widow’s Mite-y Blog. Like her, I became a Christian when a Unitarian Universalist.

Anecdotally. there’s less of the overt hostility out there than there once was. Whether that’s true or not, and if so, whether that’s due to fewer hostile non-Christians, fewer Christians to be hostile to, or a real change of attitude is for others to discern. Plus, I’m a member of one of a handful of Christian churches in the Unitarian Universalist Association, so it’s not really a problem anymore.

But what remains isn’t acceptable. And it starts with the questions that together can but put under the heading, “Demonstrate that you really exist.” Unitarian Universalist Christians are a small part of a small denomination, and particularly outside New England you may not meet one in person. And there is decades of preaching and identity formation — again, especially outside of New England — that liberal religion was becoming something greater than Christianity, first incorporating it, and later transcending it. The actual reference to Christianity in the UUA Principles and Purposes was a political process — and a bit before my time — and not a given. Some people really, honestly believe that Christianity is beyond the pale.

Mix this with a “question everything (that’s convenient)” ethos and it’s no wonder that that people, both the kind and unkind, can ask some terribly corrosive questions.

When I was younger, I felt a responsibility to spread the word and be a patient, agreeable, non-threatening, cheerful ambassador.  When this did nothing than embolden the passive-aggressive, I stopped being apologetic, and started to enjoy my faith, stopping only to challenge side-lining, red-lining comments however made. (Unitarian Universalist rhetoric still distinguishes between good and bad Christians in a way that other religions aren’t.)

About ten or fifteen years ago, the zeitgeist turned from defense and apology to joy, communication and personal representation. My friends and I chuckled about rueful complaints — overheard at General Assembly and online — about “the Christians taking over” and “the Christians being everywhere.”

This change of self-conception means that  I won’t be told I’m welcome, but only if I act in a way others aren’t expected to keep. Or if I tone it down. Or if it means answering petty, barb-filled, conspiracy-seeking questions.

I won’t leave. I just won’t comply. And, my dear Unitarian Universalist Christian friends, you need not comply — or leave — either.

Having non-biblical readings has become such a canon among mainline Unitarian Universalists that Unitarian Universalist Christians face a crisis on the subject of readings. Is it proper to have non-biblical readings in worship?

The question of authority isn’t clear-cut. My home library has several works of daily readings: selected sections meant to be read regularly to enrich one’s faith, and not just in private reflection. Robert Atwell, the compiler of one such work (Celebrating the Seasons) notes in the introduction (page iii.) that

In monastic custom… the Scriptural reading at Vigils was supplemented by a non-Biblical lection. In the words of St. Benedict’s Rule: ‘In addition to the inspired words of the Old and New Testaments, the works read at Vigils should include explanations of Scripture by reputable and orthodox writers.’ The reading of commentaries (presumably on what had just been read) enabled the monk not only to engage with Scripture more intelligently, but also to place his personal meditation within the context of those of other Christians from different ages and traditions.

We’re not monks praying Vigils, but in our liberal-Reformed tradition we insist on the considered and thoughtful expounding on the lessons in the sermon. The lesson does not disclose itself, and we rely on the preacher to unfold its meaning.

In this sense, the non-biblical reading acts — or could act — as a replacement for the sermon, not the revealed word. But current Unitarian Universalist practice is far removed from this. When — about a century ago — Unitarian and (to a lesser degree) Universalist ministers cast abroad for non-biblical preaching texts, they drew from weighty stuff: often the classics, or a work of philosophy, or — as a standby — a bit of Shakespeare.

But today, it’s not uncommon for a liturgical element from the back of the gray hymnal, or a segment from a ministerial contemporary to be pressed into the role of scripture. It an odd thought that a minister might visit a church and hear her or his words — not unjustly quoted within the sermon — elevated to the role scripture once held. It’s hard to shake off our flippant and shallow reputation if that’s the norm.

So, there may be a place for non-biblical readings in Christian worship, but to help us hear and understand the word of God: not to become it.

A cautionary tale. I’ve worshipped with Micah here in D.C. so I sawa little of what he described but I’m certainly no Quaker, and (happily) have since gone back to my old church. But the critical mass issue is one that Unitarian and Universalist Christians are going to have to grapple with, in part because we’re probably too radioactive to attract ecumenical partners. Which is its own shame.

If Quakers don’t have the strength or inclination to seed new congregations, perhaps it’s time to partner with those who do.

Source: Are Quakers Capable of Planting Churches?

At the risk of austerity-mongering,  it’s worth asking what a small, or new, or fragile church can do without in its worship to make worship sustainable, and to free up money and energy for other parts of church life.

Some things come to mind; here I’m thinking of middle-of-the-road mainline Protestantism. You could have worship

• without a meeting-place you own
• even without a fixed meeting-place
• without a full-time or resident minister
• without a sermon, or at least a long, originally-composed sermon every week
• without an organ, and probably without a piano
• without a choir
• without hymns

The list goes on, but you may already have experienced one or more of these “deprivations” in your own church. You might not even consider it a deprivation.

I’ll be looking at some of these options on and off for the next few weeks under the banner of “doing what you can, but doing it well.”

Burnout is a real risk under diminishing resources and opportunities. Burning out the leadership, leaving them hopeless, is not an option. Or else you’ll be

• without a church

This is a blog-beg for preachers and ministers of any denomination who preach or have preached in churches that meet less than weekly, and who use a lectionary or observe a traditional church calendar. I appreciate your sharing this with anyone who has experience.

In short, how do you make it work? Do you use the lessons or propers of the day however it may fall? Do you pick from one of the Sunday lessons since the last worship service? Or before the next? And what about major holidays?

For a church that meets once a month or so, do you transfer Easter and Christmas (and Pentecost, today) to the nearest service, or rely on members worshipping with another congregation at the proper time? And if you do transfer the holiday, is it a kind of Lent-Easter/Advent-Christmas service? And how does that work?

Churches that meet infrequently probably aren’t high on anyone’s list, so it would be a great help to share ideas and resources. I’d appreciate details in the comments.

Submitted without comment. An unlikely circumstance, given the fact there are far more ministers in Unitarian Universalist Association fellowship than settlements. But there you are.

We are in an unprecedented situation with regards to the interim ministerial search this year, one that has not occurred in the recent history of Unitarian Universalism.  In the broadest description, the issue is that there are significantly more congregations this year looking for interim ministries than there are ministers available to fulfill those interim ministries.  Not Interim Ministers… ministers.

Source: Important Information about Interim Minister Searches This Year

A little lunchtime Googling led me to this page, which has a large selection of United Methodist worship resources.

Welcome to the collection of resources from The United Methodist Book of Worship (1992) owned by The United Methodist Publishing House.  These are offered on our website by written agreement between The United Methodist Publishing House and Discipleship Ministries.  Congregations and other worshiping or church-related educational communities are free…

Source: Book of Worship – umcdiscipleship.org

I’ve written about the option of organizing churches as unincorporated nonprofit associations in states that provided for them by law. That provides structure and protections more like what you have in a nonprofit corporation but with fewer complications. Unfortunately, that’s not too many states. Last month, Kentucky joined the club.

Gov. Steve Beshear signed into law new regulations making the governance of nonprofits and the management of small associations easier.

Source: Kentucky Updates Rules Governing Nonprofits—For the Better – NPQ – Nonprofit Quarterly

Saw this today. Will examine later and hope to come up with creative ways to make use of this new UUA status.

Emerging Ministries are any new group or project that is grounded in Unitarian Universalism and brings people together in covenanted and intentional ways.

Source: Announcing (new and improved!) UUA Support for Emerging Ministries

I’m moving through my copy of Elbridge Gerry Brooks’s 1874 Our New Departure: or, The Methods and Work of the Universalist Church of America — his manifesto for the Universalist church — to his chapter on prayer. It’s a goldmine of Universalist attitudes, so I’m lifting out quotations; this is the first of two parts.

He starts on prayer in his overview (p. 43)

How many [Universalists] there are who pray in the voiceless secrecy of their communion with God, it is for no human pen to assume to say. But the custom of family, social, or stated private prayer does not, to any considerable extent, prevail among us, because there is no prevailing sense of duty in these directions; and how rare it is to find those in our congregations who can be called to lead in public prayer, we all know. We have opinion rather than faith; more nominal assent than spiritual impulse or purpose.

from page 176

Since I entered the ministry, it was not usual to find family prayer even in the homes of our ministers, while a family altar in a Universalist layman’s home was a thing almost unheard of. The home in which I was reared — reared most tenderly and carefully — was a fair type of the best Universalist homes in this respect, my mother being a church-member, of devout mind and heart, and my father, though not a church-member, a most upright and scrupulously conscientious man, whom, to the last, nothing but serious illness could keep from his place at church, so long as he could get there. The children were trained to revere and read the Bible, to honor the Sabbath, to love and practise goodness, and to ‘go to meeting’ with punctilious regularity. But — saving that we children, in our earliest days, were taught to ‘say our prayers’ every night on going to our pillows — the voice of prayer was never heard in our home, except when the minister was with us to ‘say grace’ at table. And this, so far as my knowledge extended, was the universal rule among us as a people.

from pages 176-177

The propriety of prayer — at least to some extent — is not open to debate. They would not see it dispensed with in our Sabbath services, at the marriage altar, in the chamber of the sick, or at the burial of the dead. They not only recognize, but, if need be, would insist upon, its fitness on these and various special occasions.… For if we should pray at all, it can only be because there is, for some reason, use and power in prayer. What mummery all praying is if so much as this be not true? And if there be use or power in praying at all, then the more we have of prayer of the right sort, under suitable circumstances, the larger the measure of use it will serve, — the greater the degree of power it will impart. Public prayer being well, then why not private prayer? If prayer in the church, why not in the home? if prayer in the pulpit, why not in the closet? if prayer on special occasions, why not as the habit of life?

There is a view of the subject which seeks to avoid the difficulty of this question, How? presents, by affecting to affirm the use of prayer, and at the same time alleging that it avails nothing with God, — only does us good on the same principle that religious meditation serves to strengthen, soothe and uplift us. This theory has found some advocates among us. But it seems to me — and I think I may say, to nearly all of us — a theory most unsatisfactory, and every way open to objection. No really devout mind can fail instinctively to shrink from it, and protest against it. Not only does it deny the Psalmist’s statement that God heareth prayer, — i.e. hears in some sympathizing and responsive sense, — and equally deny Christ’s repeated assurances to the same effect, but it makes prayer a travesty of devotion as actually as though there were no God.

From page 179, a bit of humor

Or, still more like perhaps, it is as if one, desiring to scale a mountain, should stand in a basket, trying to lift himself by going through the motions of pulling at a rope which he knows does not exist, but which he plays is dangling from the sky and fastened to the basket, all the while invoking the aid of some deaf or helpless friend!

From page 180

It is important that we should duly keep in mind the fact of man’s freedom; but it is even more important that we should take care not to overlook or compromise the grander fact of God’s freedom. Because this fact fails to be properly taken into account, there is, in the habits of thinking quite too widely prevalent touching this whole matter of God’s connection with us, not a little virtual Atheism. We hear a great deal about the laws of nature, and the established chain of causation, and the inviolable order of things; and there are those who never weary in insisting that it is not at all probable that this machine-like fixity and succession of events ever has been, or ever will be, intermitted in answer to anybody’s prayers.

So, then, what might future worship look like? And what will it accomplish?

Peacebang, that is, blogger, Unitarian Universalist minister and friend Victoria Weinstein asked, and I replied

.@peacebang Whatever they are, they'll need to be participatory, sensory-rich and laity-driven. And not over-wrought. #futureworship

— Scott Wells ن (@bitb) May 16, 2015

One concern I have is the cultural norm, among Unitarian Universalists, for creating and finding the right words for every service: weddings, funerals, dedications, Sunday services, the lot. The right words, and lots of them.

This tendency comes from the laudable standard of speaking to the context of the ministry you’re in, and the liturgical tradition of the centerpiece sermon and the long prayer, composed by the minister.

I’m not saying we should abandon either, but we should count the cost, not only in the salaries of those who draft them, but on the dependence the words create. And this has spread to new compositions to open worship, close worship, kindling flames, talking to children — even reaching to preaching texts.

Dependence? We like to think of ourselves as a laity-driven religious movement, but that’s only true in certain constrained ways. If our religious experience relies on an endless stream of original composition, or at least curated selection, then someone has to produce it or find it. And that speaks of specialized skills — or haphazard results. Is this creative output our most pressing need?

While traditions with liturgical textual traditions seem restrictive, the access to a reliable, common language of faith can also be very liberating.

While I was cleaning off my bedside table, to change out my reading, I came across my copy of Elbridge Gerry Brooks’s Our New Departure: or,The Methods and Work of the Universalist Church of America… (1874) This was his manifesto for the Universalist church, near the end of his life.

Brooks’s writing style was rather stilted, making his habilitation as theological influence unlikely. But I thought a few edited quotes might help — here, from his chapter “Experimental Religion” — largely made readable by unknotting the negatives and restating (in square brackets) some of his unwieldly dependent clauses.

[The Universalist] conception of religion… still prevalent among us, is that it is a good conscious towards man, rather than a pious heart towards God.

Protesting against Catholicism and Episcopacy, and reacting from them and their abuses, the Puritans renounced many things which are now seen to have been not only desirable, but, in a sense, essential. The result was a most austere religious life and a singularly barren worship, fitly symbolized in the bleak and rocky coast and the inhospitable soil to which the Plymouth pilgrims.

Moral faithfulness is indispensable. But nothing is farther from the truth than the idea, however or by whomsoever held, that we are religious enough when we are morally faithful. It virtually ignores God. It fails to take a whole half of our nature into account.

Made to be religious, we can never wholly rid ourselves of this tendency, and are sure at some time to come back to the recognition of God, however we may have lapsed from it.

Recognizing in us needs and capacities which crave something deeper than any intellectual solution of the universe, and something more interior and vital than any mould for our outward life, it comes to us a Religion, seeking not only to inform the understanding and instruct the conscience, but to take possession of every faculty, pervading it with the required sense of God, and so putting our whole being into time and tune with Him.

Opinions will change. Forms will perish. Interpretations will pass away. But man will never outgrow God. Religion there will always be the necessity of souls; the support and handmaid of the intellectual and moral elements of our being, whatever the progress possible to them.

It is one of the chief misfortunes of Universalism that it is so widely supposed to be fatally wanting in religious efficacy. This impression it is our duty immediately to correct; but it can be corrected only as we bear in mind the Master’s test, “By their fruits ye shall know them.” One life demonstrating that Universalism has power to infuse a sense of God into souls, and to make His life theirs, will do more than whole libraries of books, or any amount of argument.

I’d love some feedback from my readers — anonymous with a legitimate email address is fine in this case — to find out what supply preachers are getting paid, if anything. A denominational identification and a general sense of the area (region and relative cost of living) would also be very helpful.

Why? Because supply preachers — paid per service or sermon — is likely to continue as a solution for churches, particularly as the decline of the influence of churches in the United States escalates. But I worry that the rate is too low. And if it’s too low, the people who will preach supply will be students, retirees, plus perhaps those who have well-paying work (and may not have much opportunity to preach) or who are desperate for every penny. Too low for what? Putting together a living with part-item gig. That itself isn’t ideal, but is probably going to become more common as the United States economy also changes. Supply preaching will have to pay as well as other casual opportunities. This is all the more complicated since prospective mission churches are the ones more likely to need supply services, and they’re less able to afford them.

No answers now, but something worth flagging.

For the last couple of years, I’ve been trying to understand the Oriental Orthodox churches and the Church of the East: Christian churches that have an early history of divergence from the Eastern Orthodox and the Catholic and Protestant churches in the West. The Coptic Christians I’ve recently written about are in this group. So were the Eritrean Orthodox who worshipped downstairs at Universalist National Memorial Church so many years ago. Also the British Orthodox I’ve cited on this blog. Originally, I was interested in them because some nineteenth-century Universalists saw a kind of pro-universalist apostolic purity in them; a history ripe for the reclaiming. But lately I’ve been more interested in their approach to mission.

For one thing, they’re not bashful about missions, and why should they be? Most come from parts of the world where Christianity isn’t a majority faith. To survive you have to have a strong sense of identity that corresponds well with missions. But you’ll forgive me if I suggest that their approach to the faith isn’t Mod or particularly attuned to contemporary culture. But, as they say in the software world, “that’s a feature, not a bug.” They work, or seem to work on a different timeline than your garden-variety mainline Protestant (Overstatements follow, but follow me.)

So I was a bit shocked to see that so many of the mission churches meet only once or twice a month. And many, perhaps most, of those — with English-language websites anyway — meet on Saturday morning.

The reason is pretty obvious. It allows the priests to serve more congregations. Some of the Copts travel several hours from their home parishes to serve missions, something that wouldn’t be practical if the mission had a Sunday evening liturgy following a liturgy at home.

This, too, is something those nineteenth-century Universalists would have understood, and also I’ve done my rounds of supply and circuit preaching. But their usual appointments (and mine) were on Sundays, which is also the tight time for church buildings. Few edifices are as well suited for worship as a church building, so why not gather for worship on Saturday mornings.

Another friend, minister and blogger Adam Tierney-Eliot continues the discussion about a graceful adaptation to how we do church and ministry.

Source: Burbania Posts!: Think Broadly About Bi-Vocational

PeaceBang, the nom de blog of friend and minister Victoria Weinstein, opines at length about the foundational changes shaking our United States church experience.

Because everything is changing so fast, even those of us in the profession can’t keep up with the framework, the lingo or the expectations.  The fancy name for all of this is adaptive leadership, which is a nice way of saying that we’re all running like Indiana Jones a few yards ahead of the boulder of cultural change that threatens to flatten us at any moment.

She was speaking from her own observation, but a report that came out this week from Pew Research Center — quantifying the numerical shrinkage of American Christians and a comparably increase of the unaffiliated — alerted people that might otherwise not care so much.

She suggests that I might know how the remaining worshippers of the future will act, and so I’m adjusting some of my previously planned writing to address the question that’s the title of her blog post: “What Happens to Worshipers When The Traditional Church Closes Its Doors”?

The adjustment will come in phases, so let me address what won’t work; that is, doing church more cheaply. This won’t save us. So keep the champagne flowing? No. A cheaper, simpler approach won’t save us, but neither will we have an option. In time, even a deep endowment can dry up.

So the four directions in downsizing the church are taking creative alternatives to

• staffing the church work with trained and ordained ministers, in new configurations
• staffing the church work with new groupings of people with differing professional interests and accomplishments
• making use of space other than conventional church buildings
• making different use of the church buildings that exist

So what’s the solution? It’s making the experience of the church more desirable than the cost. The financial cost, true, but also of time, patience, labor, expertise and reputation. This last may be the hardest. Like climate change that melts the permafrost, releasing methane accelerating the warming — mull on that simile for a moment — if someone feels like a sucker for participating in a church, no cost savings, no special programming, no reasoned (or emotional) appeal will make it seem like a good idea.

And overcoming that dilemma is more than the subject of a blog post.

Like so many people, I have an enormous pile of books on my bedside table, and the ones on the bottom will be compressed into diamonds before I get to them. There a Japanese word — tsundoku –to describe the habit of acquiring books without reading them, and I’m guilty of that, too. Being a slow reader doesn’t help. Nor does the vast variety of good books, now in the public domain, that can be had electronically from Archive.org or other places.

But a book list has inspired me to declare tsundoku bankruptcy, restoring the unread books to a shelf, and pulling out those I own. I might even end up buying a book or two. But only after I finish the rest.

Join along with “Essential Readings on Universalism” from the Eclectic Orthodoxy blog.

Over the last few days, I’ve chatted with some minister friends about the appeal of the Coptic church, particularly with respect to its antiquity, perseverance under genuine persecution (particularly lately) and the beauty of its liturgy.

And I almost decided not to mention these attributes in blog post, and I wondered why I felt that way. Which means that I should write about my hesitance.

I’ve been around Unitarian Universalists long enough to know that we add practices and make decisions without appealing to reasons or traditions. We devalue our internal logic and traditions, and then wonder why we agree on so few things and tend to follow each passing fad. Tired of hearing that Black Lives Matter or about Nepalese relief or even about regionalism of seminarian in-care programs? Wait a while. Is that right? No. Is there a better way we can reply? Perhaps.

Over all, our tendency is to look wide and abroad for answers, resources and solutions. The Copts could easily — well, perhaps not so easily, but you get the paint — join a river of borrowed influences. What we could learn from them is that a church’s history, theology and customs create systems of thought, preferred methods and particular choices. This is what we do, and how we do it. At its best, it provides a matrix to know what’s essential, and what’s not. A recently announced Coptic initiative to plant churches relies on this ability to make choices. It’s anticipating the transition from immigrant Copts to their American-born children, and possible converts. The faith, liturgy and music would stay the same, but the name (Coptic means Egyptian) and language of worship (to English) will change. The essential gifts of their church will remain the same, or at least that’s the concept.

As Universalists and Unitarian Universalists, we need a better grasp of the gifts God gives us a church, so that we can apply these to our decision-making and contribute them to others who may benefit from our experience.

I can think of a few.

1. While most Unitarian Universalist churches are non-Christian, they do somehow create and nurture a small (but not negligible) number of Christians.
2. We have long histories of women’s ordination, and LGBT* ordination. We have worked out some (not all) of the cultural and professional details that churches that have made this decision more recently have not.
3. We take cues from nature, time and seasons more seriously in our worship than many. This is not my original opinion, but that of an Episcopalian musician I met who had strong opinions on the subject.
4. Yes, well, congregational polity, which is not the sell it once was. But it’s easy to underestimate it when there’s no bishop trying to shutter your church. And with it come some skills and resources for self-reliance.

And there are surely other gifts we should own up to.

I look forward to reading this.

The Christian share of the U.S. population is declining, while the share of Americans who do not identify with any organized religion is growing. These changes affect all regions in the country and many demographic groups.

Source: America’s Changing Religious Landscape | Pew Research Center

So, tomorrow is Mother’s Day. And I’m glad I’m not preaching. It’s an impossible gig. I’m really glad I’m not preaching.

• You need to talk about Mother’s Day, as if it were traditional for churches and not a civil and cultural observance, so lacking many of the liturgical hooks that makes worship manageable.
• You need to show how important motherhood is, particularly for those who have dedicated large parts of their lives to it, without minimizing those who did not or could not have children, or suggesting that this is the main end of womanhood.
• You need to extol maternal love, but also recognize that some mothers are or were hurtful, abusive, or otherwise harmful.
• You need to acknowledge the deathlessness of the love that often did exist without hurting those still mourning their mothers.
• You may need to talk about the fact that we are all someone’s child, without harming those who lost their children.
• You may recognize that some people grow up with no mother, but perhaps not without one or more fathers, at the risk of making motherhood a vague concept.
• You can point out that Mother’s Day began as a peace action, but not without addressing the other points.
• And you need to balance all these conflicts, and pray that this careful act isn’t undercut by some well meaning custom, like rose corsages. A custom that may be very well-loved by some.

So good luck, preachers.

And remember: Father’s Day is only a month away.

Next up on my reading list: The Social Implications of Universalism, by Clarence Russell Skinner

A hundred years old, but some of what I’ve already read seems familiar, if not particularly current.

I got an email from Doug Drown yesterday:

Several years ago I sent you a link informing you of the sad demise of the Gardiner, Maine Congregational Church (UCC), formerly the First Universalist Church — one of the handful of congregations that elected to affiliate elsewhere rather than be part of the UUA merger.   This article, from [the May 2] Augusta Kennebec Journal, tells  of what is about to become of the lovely old meetinghouse.

I appreciate the news. I hate to see churches die, but since the conversion by a cider maker will preserve the attractive building, I can’t complain.

Source: Hard cider company buys Gardiner church, hopes to sell cider by July – Central Maine

A few days ago I experimented with my Facebook and Twitter feeds. This was about when the crisis in Baltimore was getting hot, and I could already see the signs. Unitarian Universalists — I’m thinking of ministers particularly, because that’s who I know mostly, but I see lay persons do this, too — would bring a particular intensity to, well, I can’t rightly call it a discussion.

It’s more like a frantic, often doctrinaire, echo chamber.

So I started muting people, leaving ministers who are close personal friends, old college mates, former co-workers and the like. Rather than falling into an insulated world of cat videos, the quality of discourse about Baltimore’s situation improved. Deep analysis and more varied voices, particularly from people who live or have lived there. (I do live an hour away by train, so this is also a regional story.)

What vanished was the anxiousness, the agita and the dubious logic of borrowed framing.

There’s a bad lesson in that. And I’m not sure I’m going to unmute the anxious presence. More importantly, who would seek it out?

By request, I transformed the 9-year old file I made of James Relly’s 1759 Union: or, a Treatise of the Consanguinity and Affinity between Christ and his Church to the ePub format for book readers. This is the work that would later encourage a group of believers in Gloucester, Massachusetts to gather, which John Murray would subsequently pastor as the first Universalist church in America.

No guarantees about the beauty of the ePub; it’s a pure software transmogrification, but perhaps useful to you.

Union (ePub fromat)

Universalist pioneer and minister James Relly died this day in 1778.

I  re-published his most influential work, Union, (PDF) a few years ago and wrote about the church building he preached in, long a landmark synagogue, in London’s East End.

I’m glad to be invited back to preach at Universalist National Memorial Church this Sunday.

Using images of the Good Shepherd, I will (try to) explore what it mean to be a Christian in a pluralistic age, with readings from the Gospel of John and the Acts of the Apostles.

Twenty years ago today, Timothy McVeigh blew up a truck bomb in front of the Murrah federal building in Oklahoma City, killing 168 people.

I was in the middle of my ministerial internship not so far away in Tulsa, and I was getting ready to go to church when the news came over the television. What I remember more than anything else that day was

1. How quickly one of the national news anchors suspected Arab terrorists. That made no sense to me. In Oklahoma? I guessed it was a revenge act by someone who felt hurt by the government, like a bankrupted farmer, which was closer to the truth.
2. I shaved my beard immediately. Tulsa had a decent Muslim population, in part from its petrochemical industry and training, and the mosque wasn’t far from where I lived. I feared for them — if that’s how the news went — and feared for me, since (for reasons I’ve never understood) I read Arab. And, indeed, had to escape a mob of drunk sailors, a couple of years prior. (Perhaps after the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.)  But I don’t recall any violence in Tulsa that night.
3. I do recall the sadness. Particularly at a gay bar I went to that night. Many of the patrons were EMTs and ER nurses. But the devastation was so complete that they weren’t needed in Oklahoma City.

Universalist minister Elhanan Winchester died this day in 1797.

Though less well known than “the father of Universalism” John Murray, Winchester deserves a place in our consciousness because he risked — and lost — a position of privilege and authority to follow a true sense of mission. That is, losing the pastorate of the First Baptist Church, Philadelphia and taking a rump congregation (the Society of Universal Baptists) into exile.

A word about his theology. It was based on God’s promises and so George Williams, when creating a typology of Universalist theology in 1970, described his as “future-oriented Universalism” with a particular focus on future punishment, a focus that would crop up as a deep controversy from time to time for more than a century following.

• Webpage about his grave in Hartford, Connecticut.
• Past blog posts on Elhanan Winchester
  1. Three Prophets of Universalism?
  2. Online article about Elhanan Winchester
  3. Winchester’s first sermon

Universalist National Memorial Church — that’s the church I’m a member of — has announced a part-time (12 hours a week) Office Assistant position.

The church is on the east side of the Dupont Circle neighborhood, close to the Metro. The S2 and S4 bus stops in front of the church.

Details here.

The Unitarian Universalist way of running congregations has a built-in contradiction.

On the one hand, we’re supposed to give money to support them; they are self-governing and self-supporting. And on the other hand, church members supposed to be a covenant people with a common ultimate interest, or mission. The two ideas do not necessarily go together, particularly if there are people of different incomes and conflicting interests about what is the proper level of giving and spending in a church.

The old parish-church distinction could remedy the contradiction with a parish serving the former role and the church serving the latter. Some would be members of one and not the other, but the conflicts between the two entities aren’t hard to imagine. The remedy might be worse that the disease.

I think that part of the subtext about how awful the Fellowship Movement depends on your view of church finances. Do you want a “full service church” and a budget to match? Can you personally afford it? And if you can’t? Well, I’d fight for my little group in a rented room with everyone pitching in, too. But I’ve never heard the conflicts put in such basic terms. It makes the membership allowances for those unable to give as richly as others seem down-right Edwardian.

The bigger problem is our heritage of territorial parishes, and the idea that in most places there’s only “room” for one Unitarian Universalist congregation. That’s a pretty limiting view. Can you imagine Methodists stopping at one? Little wonder were about 8 in 10,000 in the United States. And falling.

In just about every other private endeavor you can think of, there’s market segmentation. It seems to me that if there’s a desire to grow and reach out there needs to be a willingness to allow churches to prosper at different levels of spending.

I usually write about Universalist polity, but some chat a few weeks ago about “Beyond Congregations” reminded me about the English “Unitarian van mission” of more than a century ago, and interest that stirred up here in the United States.

I’ve found references as far back as 1908, with its evident zenith in the 1910s. According to Georges Salim Kukhi, himself a London Unitarian preacher in 1919, there was more than one van, indeed, four that roved Britain. The vans have not only a pulpit, but sleeping quarters and room for print material. They were fitted with technically-advanced acetylene lamps!

Preachers, sometimes lay preachers, would address the crowds from the van; sometimes they’d be harangued. But it seems there was also a desire for information:

The Unitarian Van Mission in England allows its out of doors audiences to ask questions and finds frequent anxiety for information concerning the talking serpent in the Garden of Eden the veracity of Balaam’s ass the truth of the whale and Jonah incident and other Old Testament marvels.

They would also distribute publications.

I’ve not been able to find evidence of a Unitarian van in the United States, though there was a stated desire and a bit of embarrassment that that the gung-ho Americans didn’t do it first! (In fact, there was something called a van mission in Kansas in 1896. That’s something to research.)

But there is this charming report about an initial, and similar measure, in Massachusetts around 1903 that relied on camping in outpost towns, with audiovisual equipment (a stereopticon).

I’m a slow reader. If I can learn something from a video in a few minutes or an hour, rather than reading, I will…

The Bible’s Buried Secrets — an episode of Nova —  is a great example, if you want to learn the documentary hypothesis and the development of the Torah and ancient Israel.

An open post, for comments.

I was thinking about how many Pesach/Paska films there are — or at least with a biblical theme and replayed on television this time of year. The Ten Commandments, sure, but does anything else appeal to you? Must watches?

Like each Holy Saturday, I spent the morning reading The Dream of the Rood, in this translation.

Not many churches have a Holy Saturday service, so I observe it by reading. This year I’m adding 1 Peter, because of the text (3:18b-19, NRSV)

He was put to death in the flesh, but made alive in the spirit, in which also he went and made a proclamation to the spirits in prison…

May Holy Week and Easter bless you.

I’ve casually mentioned my plans this week to several people and almost every time I’ve been asked what I mean by Maundy Thursday.

1. It’s today.
2. It is the anniversary of Jesus’ last supper with his disciples.
3. And so it is the anniversary of the giving of the Lord’s Supper as a sacrament or ordinance. It’s also known as the Eucharist, or Communion, or the Mass, or the Liturgy. The alternate term Great Thanksgiving deserves use, too.
4. Some churches — I’m thinking of the Unitarians and Universalists here — who might not have the Lord’s Supper at any other time might have it on Maundy Thursday.
5. It was especially beloved by Universalists, who would welcome members at the service.
6. Some churches wash feet at the service.
7. The term maundy comes from the Latin mandamus, “commandment” from Jesus’ new commandment, “love one another as I have loved you.” (John 13:34)

So, I’ve finally begun reading Universalism and Problems of the Universalist Church (1888) and I recognize some themes. The idea that their faith was so logical that it would prosper as an inevitability — a theme maintained among Unitarian Universalists through the 1960s at least, with echoes, if embittered, today.

The author wasn’t willing to accept the (falsely) inevitable, and notes the weaknesses of the lived faith, and these too have the ring of familiarity.

• p. xii

Have we but to fold our arms and wait to see the salvation of the Lord? What of evolution?—Is it a cause or a method, only? Is evolution such an intelligent, vital force, as that, independent of the agency of man, right results may be predicated thereon? Is man of no value as a civilizing agent? Rather is not man the divinely appointed agent of the Most High in the furtherence of His plans? Can truth be propagated except as man becomes a co-worker with God? Do not many of the adherents of our church hold false views of Optimism, such that it leaves man as a moral agent out of the question and predicates all moral advancements upon God alone? Or, worse yet, do not some regard Evolution as the sole force in working out and shaping our destinies? Has man nothing to do in working out his own salvation? Do not the Bible, Reason and Nature all agree in holding man morally accountable?

• p. xiv

While doubt has its value and proper sphere in the investigation of theological dogmas and the search for truth, yet should we not be wary how we deal with this subject? Does not the ventillating of their doubts become chronic with some ministers to the great detriment of our cause? And, when doubt becomes their “chief stock in trade”, ought not professional honor and honesty enable them to see that the door, by which they came into the ministry, has an outward swing, also?

• p. xv-xvi

Our church bears the name of being progressive; and, in a large measure this is true; but in the use of the best methods it is not so in fact. We ought to be progressive in the truest sense. Our faith is such that it ought to enable us to be abreast of the times in all that is good and helpful in extending and making permanent the cause of the Master as we understand it. But for some reason we do not concentrate our forces nor wield them to effect the best results. In some directions our work drags where it ought to soar. We seem to undervalue our abilities and our opportunities. We talk of this enterprise and that, and are enthusiastic in adopting them; but when it comes to execution of our plans the wind is pretty much out of our sails.

Home and work life will be busy this week, so the blogging will be necessarily light. I hope y’all had a stirring Palm Sunday, and great prayers for Holy Week.

Here are the palm crosses I made yesterday afternoon from the palms I got at church. Typical 30-32 inch strips, once trimmed of the very thin top pieces, made crosses about 4 inches tall. The one on the left came from thinner and — by the time I got to it — dryer material, so it split lengthwise while folding.

About now, the 2015 British Unitarian and Free Christian annual general meetings will be breaking for dinner, having already had its opener and first plenary session. There’s no streaming content, so far as I can tell, nor a set Twitter feed or hashtag. (If you know one, please note it. Later. It seems to be #gauk.) And gauging by last year, I’m not going to expect real-time photos, either.

But you can see the print materials, including the handbook at the same link.

I watched a bunch of palm cross how-to videos, so you don’t have to.

My bias is to make a palm cross out of a single strip, and to have both arms, the head and of the foot of the cross folded back into the central knot. I think they look better, because they’re less flimsy and more evenly shaped crosses.

This video not only show this, but also how to strip and trim the palm.

A moment to think about the British Orthodox Church, a small culturally-British Coptic jurisdiction. I don’t think it’s unfair to say that it is very small, but is able to create new church missions, and that should draw our positive attention.

Is it because it has a surplus of clergy? It doesn’t seem so. Or cash? Again, no evidence. Or because it’s tapping into a populist consciousness? You’ll forgive me if I suggest the appeal speaks more to a deep past and hopeful future than being of the moment. (That’s is surely an appeal to some, but let’s leave that for now.) And it’s not to say that all of the missions are super-healthy. But nothing ventured, nothing gained. First, they have a stated goal:

We are seeking to plant at least two new missions each year to fulfill our vision of a community in every county.

And what the British Orthodox Church — and other churches — have is a model that makes worship possible, approachable and above all scalable.

The key is the daily office, and particularly the services of matins (morning) and vespers (evening), also known as “raising of incense” or the Coptic name for the daily round of services, the Agpeya, And it’s a good choice, too. Don’t know about the British Orthodox in particular, as it applies to public worship, but the daily office also belongs to the laity, so perhaps a member of the lay faithful could lead it. Or perhaps someone in minor orders (a concept Protestants don’t have) or certainly a deacon, thus expanding the pool of who can lead worship in missions.

But more importantly, it’s a service with lower barriers than the Liturgy (Eucharist, Mass) and therefore more welcoming. To review, two takeaways:

1. Broader pool who can lead the service.
2. A service that’s more welcoming by its nature.

And it’s short and stable in content. Say, 20-30 minutes. I think spoken prayers, followed by some refreshment and a training or discussion — as indeed, is prepared monthly in some of these missions — is pretty darn achievable, particularly as they meet in Anglican churches at times (even Saturday mornings) that the host parish doesn’t meet. To review:

1. A stable, predictable service. Not too long.
2. Some kind of enrichment activity.
3. Setting a time to be accessible, not conventional.

And know that elements can be added or removed as conditions demand.

• Sermon or none
• Instrumental music or none
• Hymns sung or not
• Candles lit or not, and so forth

Get used to these check-ins; otherwise, it may be too easy to throw the idea of a book on the scrapheap of good intentions. For one thing, it looks like I may be envisioning not one work, but three.

1. A book about what Universalist Christianity, in a liberal vein, might look like today. And not necessarily a majoritarian view. Somewhat practical. Not too long. This would ideally be published by an existing press, and would be what I would pitch first to Skinner House.
2. A documentary history. A corrective, in some sense, to what we have. This might be a self-published work or perhaps a website. The readership would be small, but important, but not so important to justify the publishing or promotion costs (or effort) a traditional approach demands.
3. A monograph or other shorter subject answering the “so, what did happen to Universalist Christianity?” Perhaps for a journal, and to scratch that itch and to keep the first book in the present, and perhaps not so morose.

A preacher, after all, needs not put everything in one sermon.

I’m at that point in my Esperanto education that I had better move the next level or accept being left as an eterna komencanto: an “eternal beginner.” That’s not bad (article in English) per se, but I would like to attend conferences — organized, if off-beat, travel (esperante) is one of Esperanto culture’s big pay offs — and I’m hardly going to do well, if I can’t make dinner plans effectively. Some of the conferences are for and by Christians, (esperante) and they’re appealing and (once you fly to Europe) cheap. So I figure I’d better memorize the Lord’s Prayer.

Jen…

Patro nia, kiu estas en la ĉielo,
sanktigata estu Via nomo.
Venu Via regno.
Fariĝu Via volo
kiel en la ĉielo, tiel ankaŭ sur la tero.

Nian panon ĉiutagan donu al ni hodiaŭ.
Kaj pardonu al ni niajn ŝuldojn,
kiel ankaŭ ni pardonas al nian ŝuldantojn.
Kaj ne konduku nin en tenton,
sed liberigu nin de la malbono.

Ĉar Via estas la regno
kaj la potenco
kaj la gloro eterne.

Amen.

So, my blog is old enough that the character set is all goofy. Translation, when I try to write something in Esperanto with circumflexes, I get question marks or oddments in their place.

Example: ĉiutaga preĝejo. This will not do. This blog needs to display in UTF-8, but doesn’t. And converting the database is not risk free.

This notice is in case I ruin my blog for a few hours or a few days.

Not an original thought, but part of the name of a book that I’m reading as a prelude to my writing project.

Its full title has a familiar ring:

Problem of the Universalist Church, Or a Statement of Our Doctrines the Reasons For Preaching Them, the Causes Retarding the Growth of Universalism and a Plea for Better Methods a Discussion of the Work of the Church and The Duty of the Laity Including Hints and Helps for Pastors, Officers, Teachers and Parents on the Organization and Management of Sunday Schools and on Teaching and Governing Classes.

Or, if not familiar, certainly there’s something there to interest everyone…

So, hot on the heels of reclaiming the univeralistchurch.net site, I backed up this blog in such a way that it was easier to sort the 3,800+ blog posts in order by title, and see if themes emerge.

Interestingly, after nearly twelve years of writing. I’ve said relatively little on what Universalist Christianity means, or how it may be embedded in a larger theological system like Free Christianity. I do need to catch up on the current literature, but I’m a miserably slow reader, and (to be plain) the current offerings usually fall into one of the following three forms:

1. “Everybody going to heaven would be a great idea, and I just though of it.” Thin treatments by thick writers.
2. A variation, “Universalism really isn’t a dastardly heresy” but the theological starting point is usually Evangelicalism of a Reformed variety. Sometimes it sounds good, but like French pop music, it takes a lot to understand it and that’s not a culture I want to go back and learn. Evangelicalism, I mean.
3. The “biggest word in the dictionary” crowd, who relish the bigness of Universalism, but recast as a warm, sensitive variety of Unitarianism, and rarely if ever deal with it in on its own terms.

So, I’m thinking about writing a book that deals with Universalist Christianity within its own mature self-conception, with a mind of how that might apply today. Not as a particular doctrine or controversy (which frontier Universalists before and after the Civil War did cultivate) but as a church and an internally-logical system.

But first that reading and planning a proper work flow. The want of a good workflow and access to documents scuttled my thesis twenty years ago. But this wouldn’t be history or liturgy — and so it will take some time to think of what it is.

Short update: I lost my oldest domain — universalistchurch.net — because I don’t have the email addresses I used to register it years ago. I feared I might have to transition to universalistchristian.net, but lo! I got the original domain this week. Whew! (I transferred it to a new owner: me.)

Universalistchurch.net reads as universalistchristian.net now — both addresses work — and in time I hope to move the content to a simpler, faster platform. And maybe add more documents!

The Unitarian Universalist participation in the fiftieth anniversary observances is Selma, Alabama this last weekend leaves me with mixed feelings. Happy for those that found it moving, and I’m usually heartened when Unitarian Universalists turn up and participate with others. Less so when I think about the focus on James Reeb and Viola Liuzzo because, despite their deaths, the work then and now is not about them. Or, put another way, would there have been as much of an outpouring if they hadn’t died? And then there’s return of the Baby Boomer lens of history, that makes events of the 1960s more real and important than other times. And the typical trope of the South among Unitarian Universalists as “other” — one I feel deeply as a native Southerner. Selma calls for unrivalled attention, but we just passed the fortieth anniversary of the Boston busing riots that passed without a peep.

We don’t even have a church in Selma. The nearest one is in Montgomery. But that wasn’t always true. I knew from my long-abandoned thesis work that the Universalists migrated across the middle of the deep South — through the Black Belt — and indeed in 1840 there was a church in Selma, though it probably didn’t last long. (The preacher was unfellowshipped, and new to Universalism.)

But my point is the same: to escape the peril of exoticism, live where you work and work where you live. Be not tourists, but companions. Be present in the place. Show up daily, not every fifty years.

The Unitarian Universalist Association Board meets, starting this Thursday (tomorrow).  Two congregations have applied for membership.

• Open Door Unitarian Universalist Fellowship, Owensboro, Kentucky.  It was organized in 2013 with nine members and applied for membership with 36 members about a month ago.
• St. Croix Unitarian Universalist Fellowship, Saint Croix Falls, Wisconsin. It was organized in 2012 with sixteen members and applied for membership with 41 members about a month ago.

This is better news than the January Board meeting. But I can’t help that observe that these candidate members:

1. It takes about three years to go from launch (not inception) to membership.
2. That new members are rarely much larger that the thirty-member minimum.
3. Both of the candidates are named “fellowship,” a term that for many years out of favor.

Also, the emerging Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Ashtabula County, (archived site) Ashtabula, Ohio, is no more.

I’ve not been blogging much lately, and I don’t have much zeal to do so. I’m a little sad that Leonard Nimoy died, but mixed with that hope that I too might live long and prosper. I could walk though the pros and cons of UUA.org, but I don’t know what that would prove, other than it’s not fully rolled out. I could be angry about the destruction of genuine and reproduction antiquities in Mosul, but that’s a feeling shared by most sensible people. I’m just not keen to state the generally obvious.

So, I’ll lean on some interesting things I’ve read lately. I use Newsblur to manage my feeds. I subcribe to dozens of feeds, and subscribe to Religion and Ethics Newsweekly and Pew Research Center Religion & Public Life “Religion in the News” for general religion news.

But I’m interested in other matters,and have been reading about other things. Such as applying the most appropriate level of technology to a given situation. Whether that’s delivering natural gas, improving prosthetic knees or re-capturing ancient lessons about heating homes (and churches).

I’ve also read this challenge to white homogeneity among Anabaptists and also  this informative graphic about what image file standard to use and when. (And you don’t need to use Photoshop.)

British Unitarian minister and blogger Stephen Lingwood gives us his annual update of membership numbers in the Unitarian and Free Christian Churches in England, Wales and Scotland. (Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland have a different history and related, but distinct, denomination.)

The news is not good; a sharp decrease. Reminds me of the opening sequence of the re-imagined Battlestar Galactica series, which gives the census of surviving human beings. The British Unitarians and Free Christians now number 3,179.  When I was a youngster, it was about 15,000.

He refers to an annual report. We don’t get them on this side of the Atlantic, but you can download one. (PDF)

Well, I can’t seem to reclaim the universalistchurch.net domain, despite my repeated appeals to the registrar. (I don’t have access to either email address with which I registered it aeons ago.)

But I own universalistchristian.net, so after some tinkering I’ve moved the site dedicated to the “Christian hope in the final restoration of all souls, and those who believe it” there. It’s largely historical and liturgical material.

But this episode has shown me the limits of WordPress for what should be a simple site, so I plan on converting it (with all the text) to a simpler, easier-to-maintain and (I hope) faster loading platform like Pelican. And now that I have a functioning site, I can try.

I’ve not blogged much this week — lots going on at work — but one news story keeps rolling in my mind: the beheading of twenty-one Egyptian Coptic Christians fishermen by ISIL militants in Libya. They were targeted because they were Christian, in the context of wider persecution of Copts. That puts them among the Christian martyrs, and so, as a Christian, makes them a special focus for prayer and concern. But what prayers shall we say over the bloody water, or with those who wail in grief? Sometimes borrowed words say what the soul means.

If you have a copy of Hymns of the Spirit, join me in praying the commemorations in the shorter communion service, page 151. It is described as “composite, based on Greek Liturgy.” But it seems dependent on Frederic Henry Hedge’s liturgy, which was used by Unitarians, Universalists and others, and that was particularly drawn from the Liturgy of St. James, one of the ancient liturgies of the church. But that is clearly tied to the sacrament in a way the composite prayer isn’t. (If you don’t have a Hymns of the Spirit, much of the same text can be found here, starting “we remember the fathers….”)

It seems fitting to use an old prayer that our forebears prayed and that has echoes with prayer the Copts may still use, to remember those poor slain men and to build bonds of spiritual communion and solidarity.

I was talking to a friend about Ash Wednesday services. They’re not my favorite — the ashes can be ostentatious, and it reflects a particular Western Christian piety that I don’t care for — but the service has become more widely observed in the last couple of generations, so I’d like to revisit three blog posts that might help those who conduct it.

• “Planning the Ash Wednesday service“

• “Doing Ash Wednesday“

• “Ash Wednesday housewares“

Now, with the preaching done for the day, I’m trying out three technology fixes:

• to find the best (that is, most appropriate and quickest to learn) tool for modifying images for a website, social media and the like.
• to see which of the static web development tool would work best for something like a church website, particularly reviewing Jekyll, Middleman and Pelican. Even better if I can use the super-cheap Amazon S3 service with it.
• to try out the lightweight Midori browser, so we’ll see how that goes.

You might note a theme of lightening up.

The only thing people are going to talk about today in Unitarian Universalist-land is the announcement yesterday from Starr King School for the Ministry that their Ad-Hoc Committee had reported out about the crises associated with their presidential search process last year.

There’s just so much in the letter and the three documents you can download at the end that I scarcely know where to start. The professions of sadness are certainly thorough.

Well, start by reading. The comments are open.

“Closing a Sad Chapter” (SKSM)

Greetings, dear readers: A quick post to ask “what resources would you like to see here?”

That could be theological, liturgical or administrative. Something I create, or something I uncover. Please note in the comments.

Here to be helpful; without you I’m nothing!

So, I’m waiting for Lucky Dog to come on this morning, with CBS This Morning (which comes on just before) on in the background so I don’t miss it. There was a segment about digitizing The Spirit of St. Louis and other Smithsonian-held artifacts through 3-D scanning. Even President Obama got the treatment, like President Lincoln (who had to suffer plaster) before him.

I thought it might be bitterly funny to put Unitarian Universalism under the lights and cameras to preserve it digitally against loss, so that, one day the files might be pumped into a 3-D printer and the whole thing could be recreated. Well, perhaps only as a plastic model. A scan will preserve the shape and appearance, but not its workings and certainly not its life.

We attempt to preserve though recording that which is valuable and may or shall be lost. A shadow is better than nothing. I started putting Universalist Christian documents online, now almost two decades ago, because I feared the tradition would be lost before even the basics could be laid down. The documents are easier to get now, but the traditions still seems highly endangered and unvalued.

And in my almost thirty year association with Unitarian Universalism, I’ve noticed that what happens to one subset will apply to others in turn. Ask any classic Humanist if that tradition is well-respected and thriving. Throwing up your hands and saying “change happens” only says to me that you’ve not felt the bite yet. And there’s no guarantee that the whole fellowship of Unitarian Universalists worth wither away in a generation or two. We can take pictures, or find another way to preserve Unitarian Universalism.

Analyzing UUA member congregation numbers is so much easier now that you can bulk-download the data, which includes helpful tidbits like pledge income and average attendance. The stats were due on Monday, and so I hope they’re complete. [Scratch that: the deadline was extended to last night, due to recent bad weather in Boston.]

I’ll noodle over the numbers to see what they reveal — perhaps nothing profound — but it’s worth noting that they’re only as good as reported. Does a significant drop in members mean people left, or that a long-overdue cleanout took place?

It’s with that in mind that I note that about ten percent of reporting congregations report the exact same membership numbers as last year. Which is certainly possible, but also makes me wonder what may not be said or known.

This is a bleg. A blog beg. I’m looking for a copy of a liturgy.

In Protestant Nonconformity and Christian Missions (ed. Wellings Martin) I learned of a Unitarian-Free Catholic service book: J. P. Oakden’s 1934 A Free Church Liturgy based on the Words of holy Scripture together with A Simplified Latin Rite and Orthodox Liturgy.

If you have access to a library that has this 27-page book, I would very much appreciate a copy or scan of it.

For many years — thirty? — I’ve been trying to find my place within Unitarian Universalism. It has been my most constant companion, and it has lead me to strange places.

Today, I am happy as a Universalist Christian, and content to labor thus. Even if it means being orthodox among the heterodox. and thus heterodox myself. But it’s not all about religious opinions and never has been.

I muddle through because I have friends in the ministerial college and outside it. And because I’m happy in the church I’m a member of. And because I don’t pretend the reception is warm elsewhere.

I’ve not settled on an ecclesiology or a mode of churchmanship, but the insights of the Free Catholic movement among late-nineteenth/early-twentieth century English Dissenters, and the earlier catholicizing movements — including the Mercersburg movement — in American Protestantism are interesting and compelling. These were reforming and corrective movements to Protestanism’s insular, sectarian and anti-intellectual excesses, many of which have not vanished. And the Free Catholic approach eschewed dogmatism and accepted compromise.

I intend to investigate it, and what might convey to the twenty-first century. I’ll post what I’m reading.

A few years ago, graceful degradation was the goal for web design. Web browsers weren’t created equal (and aren’t, though it’s better now), and what might look beautiful in one browser may fail to load properly in another. And since there’s not enough time to make a site work equally well for all browsers, it had to be sufficient for the site to load “well enough” if the browser was old or eccentric. You may not get special features, but you would get the essentials, like the text.

It may seem an odd jump from Internet Explorer 6 to your church, but the idea isn’t too strange. If it fails to everything desirable — for want of money, leadership, members, options or a supportive community — then it can, at least, do the basics. What that is is, of course, debatable. But I’ve certainly visited churches that tried too much and failed to do what they wanted, perhaps out of pride and a misplaced sense of historic capacity. They could have done less, and done it well, but could not degrade gracefully. There’s something to be said for one good sermon a month instead of four indifferent presentations. A clean tablecloth instead of dusty silk flowers. Good singing instead of a wheezing organ.

It may not be what we had, or even what we would prefer. And it’s not to say that even this reduced activity would be easy, but a chance to succeed is better than failing ungracefully.

The Services of Religion associated with the red Hymns of the Spirit drew from many sources. One was Devotional Services for Public Worship (1903), an example of English Congregationalist liturgy; it represents a parallel strain to Free Christianity within English Dissent.

To note.

And when I ask “Is there a place for poor Unitarian Universalists?” I don’t mean one, or two, or a small handful of poor people within a congregation of prosperous people, but a vital presence of Unitarian Universalists in a particularly poor community, or coming out of the experience and responding to the poor people in a mixed community.

I’m not too hopeful; we’re pretty homogeneous. It’s hard to find a Unitarian Universalists congregation that’s not high-majority white, though I can think of a couple that may count or at least come close. And I remember my experience as a native Southerner in Unitarian Universalist: far from affirming, and tinged with the feeling that Southern Unitarian Universalists, save those who grew up in the old Universalist churches, were transplants and that the congregations served a kind of outpost. Economic poverty seems like another excluding category.

And its solution is more remote, too. Without new models of ministry. How would such a church be organized? How could it be supported? How would it be accepted, without pity or distancing? It’s hard to be different, either as a person or congregation.

And harder to expose how much poverty — or near-poverty — is likely unrecognised.

I’ve been thinking about the general fellowship of Unitarian Universalists — I often do, and I mean more than the membership of churches though the UUA — both because of the current crises at Starr King School for the Ministry, and the pan-mainline concern about ministerial salaries, maintaining buildings and (generally) the survival of theological seminaries.

But another, familiar question came up over coffee at church yesterday.  That, in essence, it is very hard to describe what a Unitarian Universalist is, what keeps us together, or even what brought us to this place. That is, without rolling the bus over someone.

Perhaps the problem isn’t that we’re too small, but too large.

I’m half-joking, half-serious. We are institutionally too complex, with structures that are just large enough that they have to invest a high level of resources to keep going, but without the benefit of an economy of scale. I bet that’s true of a number of congregations, too. And yet we have systems that try to span the variety of religiosities we’ve inherited. Can’t speak for others, but these systems do not serve Christians well. What would we do if each of the new regions had to go it alone? Or if the theistic and Christian churches stood off? We would certainly have change and a lot of work, but sometimes a good divorce is better than a bad marriage.

Of course, “staying large” (if what we have is largeness) is not in our hands. Social, economic and demographic challenges will probably cause us to shrink, refactor and contract. Indeed, we’ve been going through this for several years already, and when we get further along we’ll know when the decline started. But shrinking what we have won’t be enough of a solution. We’ll need solutions (possibly institutions) that address needs quickly — not “at the speed of church” — and creatively, with few resources.

If not, we’ll end up very small, still muddled and surely embittered.

So, I may pivot towards longer form, evergreen writing; at this phase, everyday short blogging is too much work and not terribly rewarding. I particular, I want to write Universalist theology and other works demonstrating scholarship.

So, a request. Who out there would be willing to review ideas? And what would you like to see addressed? I’m still working through this.

So, I’ve got about a month to prepare for my next sermon, and I’d love you to to hear it– and visit Universalist National Memorial Church — on February 15, 2015, at 11 a.m. (Directions.)

That’s the Feast of the Transfiguration, and I’ll be preaching from the appointed Revised Common Lectionary texts.

So, there was a discussion on Facebook about — in so many words — the Fellowship movement, midcentury Humanism and church development. But with all things Facebook, it’s as hard as Hades to find it once the thread grows cold. And since my long comment was essentially a blog post, I thought I share it here, and am sorry if there are jarring omissions now that it’s out of its original context.

So…

I think the “trouble with authority” and “crusty Humanist” tropes are canards, and follow rather are the source of the mixed blessing and hard feelings about the Fellowship Movement. When in doubt, follow the money.

Even at the height of the Fellowship Movement, and for decades before, some Unitarian churches were developed in a conventional, cost-intensive “airdrop” model. About three at a time, and the success rate was far from 100%. Some of the middle America Progressive-era churches come from this. But these were very expensive, and ministers were few. (The Unitarians transferred Universalist ministers in, an untold history.)

The “lay center” concept goes back a hundred years. In the post-war era, they were ideal: lay-led and cheap. Many had religious education of the Baby Boom at their core. And one demographic reason it just can’t be restarted.

But remember the old UUA subtitle? “Of churches and fellowships”? Because they were long regarded as different things. A fellowship could become a church, and there were (in the 1950s, anyway) fixed standards for church status: a settled minister and at least 65 families, for instance. I believe the “fellowships not real” feelings come from the genesis of the distinction, and (I suspect) are fueled by ministers short of work, and lay-leaders tired of the long-established dynamic.

As for a para-professional class, well, the Universalists had one — fellowshipped lay ministers, a twentieth-century development to cope with the minister shortage. But the door was closed on this option at the formation of the UUA. In time, they all died out and — what? ten years ago? — the fellowship category was at last eliminated.

So, I look forward to the Unitarian Universalist Association Board of Trustee meetings packets. They get posted online, and there’s a January meeting. That one got posted yesterday.

The good news in that the Unitarian Universalist Bay de Noc Fellowship, Escanaba, in the upper peninsula of Michigan, is being proposed for membership, and I have no reason to think that won’t happen.

Also announced? Well, that’s the bad news. The congregations in Florence, South Carolina (emerging) and Kodiak, Alaska are no more. And two other Michigan congregations — Paint Branch Unitarian Universalist, Rochester and Emerson Unitarian Universalist, Tray — have merged to become Beacon Unitarian Universalist, Troy. The last part is not bad per-se, but it does mean a net decline of two congregations.

Or, you can read the memo here. (PDF)

The metrics dashboard (PDF) — read, participation and membership numbers — also gives pause.

We had a bit of unexpected warm weather yesterday afternoon in Washington, D.C. but fear not for the cold weather is returning! Which made me think of very cold weather. As in polar.

More than a decade ago, I wrote about the churches of remote northern Greenland, so it’s only fair to go south. Fortunately, others have had the same idea. There are several churches and chapels in the Antarctic. Most are Catholic, two are Orthodox and one (American, in case you wondered, at McMurdo) is multi-faith.

This page reviews the chapels, in English, to plead for a chapel at the Italian base Terra Nova.

This page, in Spanish, has better photos. (“Las iglesias de la Antártida, las más meridionales del mundo.“)

All are fascinating in their own way, but the chapel at Belgrano II — well depicted at the second link — is made of ice and has a special beauty.

This video is making the rounds, and should seem familiar to anyone who has ever preached a “Saturday night special.”

I don’t preach again until February 15, but I’m starting to work on it now. And I love those lectionary texts.

Internet Archive has a tool that searches news broadcasts back to 2009, but since it’s fairly new, you may not have heard about it. Lots of uses, but I’m thinking particularly of those preachers who heard of, or were told of, a news segment but then don’t have access to it.

I thought a demonstration was in order, but so many of the searches were old or sad (funerals, vigils) that when I came across this 2014 Fox News segment with a Unitarian Universalist named John “Mac” McNichol, who is a living kidney donor, I knew I had to share it.

I’m not much for resolutions: I rarely start well, forget them quickly and then late in the year reproach myself for failure. Why bother?

But I will make plans for the blog. I mean it both as a notebook for me and (more importantly) a resource and commentary for you, the readers. A review of blog traffic, feedback and my own thoughts lead me to focus on:

• practical, ready-to-use resources for churches and individual believers
• fresh interpretations of Universalist Christianity
• skills to cope, survive and thrive in a changing world without snark or finger-wagging

I’ll also work on building readership, and would appreciate you help though referrals, plus links on blogs and in social networks.

Ah: I could write on boy bands, as so many seek them here, but I won’t consider that right now.

Happy New Year! My (minimal) celebration plans are done, the last of my year-end charitable giving is out and I’m musing on resolutions (to not have any).

Back in April, I established some goals for the blog and now that the year’s ended, I thought I’d report back.

• So before the end 2015, I want to have written 4,000 blog posts. On track, this is post 3,778.
• And I want to have reached 3,600 blog posts by the end of 2014 General Assembly. Accomplished May 23, 2014.
• From the beginning of 2014 to the end 2015, I want to be cited at least 25 times by blogs which linked back to my blog. Twenty-eight already, the UUA Interdependent Web roundup being the most frequent source.
• Because the writing is complementary, I want 750 followers on Twitter by the end of 2014. (I’m @bitb.) Accomplished July 15, 2014. Reached 800 on March 24, 2015.
• I’d like my average readership to be 60 per day by the end of 2014. Maybe, but if so, just barely. Probably the wrong way to measure. This blog has had 23,430 sessions.. That’s an average of 64 a day. 84% of visits were from the United States.
  
• As a product of my blog work, I want to be invited, by the end of 2015, to participate in one non-blogging event, though it can be online, and I’m disallowing invitations by close friends. Not yet, but I was invited on friend, minister and blogger Victoria Weinstein’s Peacebang tenth anniversary spectacular yesterday.

Happy New Year!

I’m making a historical review of worship at Universalist National Memorial Church, by request, to help worship leaders understand how worship has developed. I’m curious to see what will turn up.

I’ve written very generally about a set of orders of service, saved in the Library of Congress ephemera collection and posted online. Two posts (1, 2) from 2012.

So, what can we tell from the order of service? Some initial thoughts.

• It’s pretty easy to see the morning prayer format. The Venite, the typical morning psalm, is a pretty big tell, too. The current UNMC service has all of the elements of morning prayer, with some parts more emphasized than others, and new elements (joys and concerns, center aisle greeting) added.
• The call to worship, invocation and Lord’s prayer are grouped, with the organ prelude and hymn (music) and procession (action), as a unit: the opening sequence.
• In Hymns of the Church services, the opening sequence may begin with opening words, but the hymn fills that role, presumably. The call to worship is the statement of the purpose of worship. The second service has a prayer for purity, which almost presumes a private and unspoken confession. Or if not confession, then at least a good intent. You see this construction in other published services.
• With sentences, we hear echoes of this sequence at UNMC today, though the Lord’s Prayer is in another place.
• The responsive readings are really long. About twice as long as found in the 1964 Hymns for the Celebration of Life and absolutely endless by 1993 Singing the Living Tradition standards. About two psalms worth, but perhaps used in halves, as suggested by the order of service, and the penciled notes in the Archives.org version of the Hymns of the Church.
• The prayer after the scripture reading may be a general thanksgiving, a part of a larger sequence from Anglican morning prayer. The “pastoral prayer” or “long prayer” may be implied here.
• In morning prayer, two major elements can appropriately be put in different places: announcements and the sermon. The announcement placement problem is perennial. In one version of “morning prayer and sermon” the sermon comes close to the end, before an optional prayer, final hymn and benediction. This is what UNMC has now. The printed order of service has the sermon after the reading, which might be a more modern ordering. But that’s not necessarily an endorsement.
• This service includes communion, a service its own right of course, after the usual morning service. Several years ago, a member of UNMC told me that Seth Brooks, who began his long pastorate the following week, presided over communion from the pulpit. Make of that what you will: better amplification perhaps, and that the thin space behind the altar was never meant for a versus populum service. (I recall getting a shoe wedged in.) And there’s no way that stone will move.

It’s a long story (involving old contact emails) but I’ve temporarily lost control of the universalistchurch.net domain. Probably not the end of the world, but I hope to get it back.

If not, I have other domains that will suit, and will move the universalistchurch.net content over, probably in January.

You may have noticed that there’s a widget on the right-hand column called “This week we pray for” that has a date, a list of nations and a picture. This links to a prayer resource from the World Council of Churches, focusing on a different region of the world each year.

Each resource page features a photo, thanksgiving and petitions, prayers, links to information about the churches in those countries, and sometimes other resources. The idea is to stimulate intentional prayer for the people of the world.

To get the code to share on your site, go to
http://www.oikoumene.org/en/resources/prayer-cycle/share.

Bonus blog post, following up from earlier. So, it seems the 1908 and 1946 editions are close — there’s a preface missing the later edition — indeed, so close that the arranged version of the customary Luke 2 passage, read at Christmas shares a page number. But what’s the reading based on?

It’s Luke 2:8-20, essentially the King James version, with bits of the American Standard Version to (gently) modernize the reading. Reminds me of Linus’s discourse in the Charlie Brown special. Good stuff.

It’s a given that old hymns may be re-arranged to suit the particular service better, even if it’s just to choose some verses and not others. And responsive readings are often edited from their source documents to better suit the occasion.

Readings for preaching are chosen, and are sometimes edited for inclusive language, but I wonder how often biblical readings are “compiled” — to use the responsive reading idiom — rather than be read in a standard translation, as cited.

But there is an alternative. I wrote about an early twentieth-century service book intended for Unitarians organizing “lay centers,” that assumed the use of a particular compiled book of readings: The Soul of the Bible. Or as its subtitle calls them, “synthetic readings.”

It must have been popular. The copy I found and bought is about thirty years younger (Beacon Press, 1946) than the service book. (Also noteworthy: the editor, Ulysses G. B. Pierce was the minister of All Souls, Unitarian, Washington.)

Here is the 1908 edition.

So, I wondered, would it have been useful for Christmas Eve services? That’s for later. But for now I wanted to raise the idea, surely against the flow of the last two generations of Christian liturgics, but also having its own honesty. The scriptures do not, at last, preach themselves, and we will shape our interpretation of them.

This is the time of the year — after Christmas, before New Year — when I review my charitable giving and either try to do just a bit more, or make up for lost opportunities.

So I review what’s touched my heart over the last year — a months’ old situation is unlikely not to need more money — all the while able to make better choices about who to give to.

But I rarely find a worthy cause as good as a ministerial discretionary fund. So much of funding good work is trusting that the money will be put to the best possible use. (And I’ve never been peppered with mailings to give to one.) Ministerial discretionary fund are built on filling needs that would otherwise go unmet, and presumably you trust your minister’s judgement.

These funds often help deeply; I say this is someone who has run one, donated to several and received help from one. But the funds are themselves often not deep.

Consider donating, and if you have means, donate to others.

A merry Christmastide to you all. Now returning to the regular blogging.

Please remember in prayer the dead from the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, and the people who survive them. About 230,000 people died, mostly in Indonesia and Sri Lanka. Deaths of Western tourists (including 543 Swedes) in Thailand made the news here, so you may recall that part.

The recovery continues, the mourners are many.

So is the great and wide sea also; wherein are things creeping innumerable, both small and great beasts.
There go the ships, and there is that leviathan, whom thou hast made to take his pastime therein.
These wait all upon thee, that thou mayest give them meat in due season.
When thou givest it them, they gather it; and when thou openest thy hand, they are filled with good. When thou hidest thy face, they are troubled: when thou takest away their breath, they die, and are turned again to their dust.
When thou lettest thy breath go forth, they shall be made; and thou shalt renew the face of the earth.
The glorious majesty of the Lord shall endure for ever; the Lord shall rejoice in his works.
The earth shall tremble at the look of him; if he do but touch the hills, they shall smoke.
I will sing unto the Lord as long as I live; I will praise my God while I have my being. (Psalm 104: 25-33, Coverdale)

Less a proper blog post than a thought, perhaps to amplify later.

I’ve read — but forget where — that Christmas is the time when Protestants become (more) Catholic. A higher regard for the saints and the generous use of medieval images come to mind. Not just the “you and me Jesus” focus that, in its own simplified way, places the Protestant ethos.

Which, is a bit weird for Unitarian Universalists, except perhaps for a small minority of the Christians who are already looking at this religion askew. Sometimes we seem like Protestants — certainly in our forms and structures — without Jesus. Something akin to “my experience with an uncertain universe” but with Sunday meetings and urn coffee.

Christmas is one of the times that flips that. Less the art than the songs and — if you’re using scripture at all — the biblical narrative. It’s hard to talk about a birth without considering the mother, and especially so when she’s one of the world’s well-loved religious figures and objects of projection. Particularly in an era where we’re more consciously trying to hear the testimony of women.

So far, Mary’s been a safe bet as the role of Jesus’ mother. But what ought we, might we say about her — even to her — once the boy is up and walking? Something to ponder.

As we approach Christmas, and before our collective attention span shrinks as short as the daylight, I want to put a concluding thought on the series of posts around Unitarian Universalist social engagement, though I expect to come back to the theme.

The big takeaway is that we are not powerless. Political and social influence are valuable, but we need to remember that our sense of self, and thus ultimately our power, does not derive from these. As human beings, we share an imprint of the living God; our hope rests on our common origins and common future. For these, our political and social actions are tools for a greater good. Tools, but not ends.

It’s no wonder that behind the recent killings of a set of black boys and men, particularly by police officers, that the theme of dignity and worth arise. And the shocking indignity of the killings, plus the overall callousness of the official response, only widened the conversation, here to include black girls and women, there to dead Gazans.

Substituting “all lives matter” for the call “black lives matter” — as sometimes happened — was a simultaneously true and false action. False because, in the moment, it was important to accent the peril that black people particularly face. And true, because of the underlying and unspoken fear that a régime of unaccountable violence can all too easily become universal, or near universal, as global wealth becomes more and more concentrated.

But I think of St. Lawrence, the early Christian deacon and martyr, who when asked to cough up the treasure of the church to Roman authorities, presented the poor. These are the treasure, he said, and for which he was tortured to death.

We are the treasure of the church, beloved by God and full of worth. Poor in this sense — for when some few have so much wealth and power, who isn’t poor? — yet not helpless. Though a cultivated will, though the blessings of mutual care and — yes — the multiplication of social and political engagement we can plainly assert our own value.

But this understanding is how we unlock this power, and as religious people we owe it to others to continually proclaim its truth.

“Blue Christmas” and “Longest Night” services are related phenomena that respect the worship needs of mourners, depressed or distressed people. Or more generally, those for whom the cheer of the season brings more pain than joy.

But it’s not easy to find these services if you’re not looking for them, and some are well before Christmas.

If you know of a service (or are hosting one), feel free to note it here. Not that this will create a catalog, but perhaps will attract people to the idea and prompt them to plan for next year.

A pause from my thread on re-orienting Unitarian Universalist approaches to social engagement to note Esperanto, and two things it can offer us.

Today is Zamenhof Day, the birthday of L. L. Zamenhof, Esperanto’s founder. (As featured on the UUA’s Wall of December Holidays.)

The first is a cautionary tale. I like Esperanto, the world’s most commonly used constructed language, in spite of the fina venko movement among Esperantists and not because of it. The fina venko (“final victory”) would be when Esperanto would be used as a second, auxiliary language to communicate across cultures and around the world, and with it improve mutual understanding and reduce the risk of warfare. I enjoy Esperanto for the game quality of learning it and the odd culture that’s grown up around it. (Even the Wall Street Journal picked up on conventional Esperantist wanderlust.) I’d like the fina venko to take place, but I have no faith it will happen. So I won’t invest effort to bring about world understanding that way. There may be some parallels to how people approach churches, but I’ll let you work that out yourself.

The second thing is a newish style of meeting found among North American Esperantists. Esperantists in Europe or Japan have an endless number (the link is to a calendar; in Esperanto, klare, but you can get the gist) of conferences and meetings often somewhat entertaining and often at shockingly little cost. And little wonder for a language community where ali?ilo (“registration blank”)  is a basic vocabulary word.

They’re low-cost because they’re designed that way. If perhaps more than we’re personally accustomed to. Beware the offer of the amasejo (“mass area”) for sleeping: likely a piece of bare floor for which you’ll have to provide a pad and sleeping bag. (This music festival  provided “luxury” accommodation: the same space as the non-luxury, but providing a mattress and bedding. And 20 roommates. But it was 60 euro, for North and South Americans, for nine days. A guesthouse option was also available.) All things being equal, it’s nice to see the needs of the cash-strapped considered.

But in North America, our wide distances and fewer numbers make these extended festivals impractical. Enter the Urba Semajnfino, the City Weekend. Like an overnight meetup. And there may be a model here for Unitarian Universalist affinity groups who want more meeting opportunities.

The organization manual is in Esperanto, but Google Translate makes a decent job for non-Esperantists. It suggests cost savings, even if you don’t want to go as far as sharing beds, and how to price the event. Plus a suggested schedule, how to make the best use of restaurants (UUs and Esperantists both seem to attract vegetarians) and a reminder to cite the event where there are reasonable amenities and a bus or train station.

The take-away: humble and thoughtful planning makes opportunities appear. And that’s world-changing in its own way.

I’ve been very touched by the comments, here and on Facebook, on the previous posts (one, two, three) on the theme of changing Unitarian Universalist public engagement. A thought or two now about resources.

The title, “Doing this good work on the cheap” has a few meanings:

1. Recognizing that we tend to support this work as secondary and contingent, and thus not supporting this well at all. Thus, trying to do it cheaply.
2. Recognizing that to start this work, it will have to be accomplished frugally, as its  value will not be established within the congregation, or will be a rival to our current, dominant witness mode of social engagement.
3. Recognizing that church finances are likely to change radically, and accustomed levels and sources of funding may not be available to fund any church activities.
4. Recognizing that people’s time is at least as valuable as a financial contribution; both are needed.

Of course, cheap has a moral value, too and I introduce the word as a warning against cheapening this work by ceding its moral dimension. As I wrote last time, much of what we bring as religious people is an orientation to the eternal.

Let’s turn to a couple of actions, both related to information. Information to choose what actions fit best with one’s talents and current need. Information that leads to the preparation of public policy. Better information that confronts misinformation that might be used to stifle a well-chosen course of action, or that might lead to a false compromise.

Here in Washington, anyway, we lean on subject content experts: their writing, their reputation and their services. But they’re not always right, their conflicts of interest aren’t always established and “good” ones don’t come cheap. And an expert may not exist for the problems that exist in your area.

Or, rather, may not be recognized. As I wrote before, I bet we have in Unitarian Universalist congregations more expertise than we appreciate. And if not in the pews, perhaps just one degree of relationship removed. And if we don’t have the talent yet, perhaps there exists someone (or more than one) who have the will and ability to learn. (I’m gathering some training links.)

The Unitarian Universalists I know tend to be tough-minded. (Some may say pig-headed: fine.)  Surely we have the charism to take on wonky policy analysis, propaganda busting and democratizing expertise. Might not cost much, and dearly balance the talking heads whose interests may neither be ours or the most vulnerable members of society.

There’s nothing cheap about that.

For the last two days I’ve written about the strong tendency of Unitarian Universalists to engage in political activity that addresses the emotions more than having demonstrable, desirable policy outcomes.

So, what kind of outcomes should we expect?

Perversely, I think we think too large, too grandly, and this is something we share with other churches. Our own story of our sense of mission tells us that “nothing human is foreign to us” and we’ve long suspected that if certain key ills — slavery, alcohol, and binding undergarments come to mind — systems of sin and oppression would fall. Sometimes that meant building institutions like schools, settlement houses and hospitals; at other times the actions were direct, both pious and political. But this kind of general reform only makes sense in the age before the secularization and specialization of the skills the church once kept to itself. Consider, for instance, social work and community organizing. (And I suspect Unitarian Universalists have our share or more of these professionals within our ranks.) And churches are much weaker now. Even if general reform worked — and it’s so tempting to hope it would — it’s day for churches is long over.

So, it seems to me that there are three immediate actions Unitarian Universalist churches can make.

1. Recruit for the world-changing professions.
2. Support and encourage those that enter them.
3. Orient the religious lives of the people to the good that could be rather than blessing the crap out of what is.

(I think I touched my own nerve there. We really, really need a language of the world that doesn’t keep ending up in rural Vermont.)

But the mission of the church isn’t just about encouraging, orienting and commissioning, even though these roles — keeping the big view — are ideal for a church.

In our own congregational tradition, we have developed habits that help us appreciate national and global conditions while applying our own solutions to local needs. What we may have best to offer is this localizing capacity, twinned with a social capital.  I bet there are many people in Unitarian Universalist congregations today that have detailed content knowledge around real world problems, if not thousands on one issue.

And local solutions are terribly important, because these become the models — best practices, thought leadership, policy choices, leadership development, even legal precedent — for action in other localities. So we need to cultivate what we have capacity for, and promote and encourage helpful participants, even if they’re not in our congregations. That’s our mission, too. And we’re more likely to know and live with decision-makers when we work at the local level.

Before turning to the practical, following up on yesterday’s post about Unitarian Universalist functional discomfort with political power to effect good outcomes for people in hard situations. As before, I’ll keep this brief.

First, we give too much weight to “golden age” models of public witness. By which, of course, I mean demonstrations and opportunities for arrest. (Memorial vigils are a different thing, and I don’t include them here.) There seems to be something more than solidarity or justice-seeking going; something more akin to “anti-war re-enacting.”

The early to mid 1960s must have been a heady, perhaps a, frightening time to demonstrate. (I say “must have been” because like everyone else under fifty, I have no direct knowledge of any of it.) These demonstrations speak to a time of hope before it withered in the embitterment of the late 60s. Also when churches were influential and full. But those days are over and cannot return. Not only do “new occasions teach new duties” but the old idiom of social change looks quaint to younger progressives, and arthritic to the reluctant or hostile. The post-Ferguson demonstrations are the exception that prove the rule: it was the thing to do, as there was nothing else that could be done. But it doesn’t last, and without an action to follow, nothing changes and bitterness ensues. If the Occupy phenomenon shows us anything it’s that organization is hard, and all those in opposition have to do is wait for the fissures develop.

Sometimes people speak of the late 50s and the decade that followed as the “civil rights era” as if the strides made in the next two generations for women; persons with physical, developmental and emotional disabilities; and lesbians and gay men don’t have to do with civil rights. Or, to put it another way, if this isn’t the civil rights era now, what the hell are you bothering with?

The important part is something actionable. Seeking legislation, regulatory or procedural changes, public works adopted or abandoned, sincere apologies and so forth. How you gather the power to prepare and implement the plans is secondary.To paraphase: “without an endgame, the people perish.”

And that brings up social media: the new model. It’s helpful, but I’ll not praise it much, and I’ll be shorter here. Twitter and Facebook — each run by corporations that don’t give a damn about your revolution — can easily create an echo chamber. The number of heart-sick posts on each post-Ferguson told me people were spinning themselves straight from anger to despair, burning off any righteous energy that might have been applied to change. And we can’t afford that.

I’ve said enough for now; feel free to comment.

I’ll keep this brief.

I don’t know what to make of the kind of political and social liberalism that Unitarian Universalists so typically dwell in. And because this includes some friends, I don’t particularly enjoy pointing this out, but not saying something isn’t at all helpful.

But I already can feel the news cycle pivot away from Ferguson and Staten Island; perhaps United States torture practice will have its turn. And the Monday night demonstration here in D.C. was smaller than the one before. Impatience and cold weather are not friends of a demonstration-based response to a network of evils.

I’m left wondering what the end game was supposed to have been? Surely, there was (and is) a hurt that needed (and needs) to be be dignified through public expression, and it’s right to gather an empathetic companionship. But then what? It’s hard to see us moving beyond that before moving on. Activity internal to Unitarian Universalism, to my mind, counts for little or nothing. What do we have to gain by (what amounts to) an exercise in collective holiness? Less, I contend, than we have to offer by participating constantly in the nitty-gritty of public policy.

And I think we avoid this opportunity because we have grown unaccustomed to political power, and perhaps find it awkward or distasteful as a religious people. And if that’s the case, we need to get over that. So many people view governance and public policy with suspicion, but in doing so surrender their power to those who are left claim it.

I have a couple of ideas about practical actions, at least one of a scale that a group as small — another hard truth — as the Unitarian Universalists can tackle.

Well, after writing yesterday that I had no comment about Advent… well, a conversation at church changed that.

Do you know of a family — that is, appropriate for use by adult and school-aged children — daily manual for Advent, appropriate for Universalist Christians? Ideally, something with a Bible passage for the day, a meditation and a prayer.

For daily prayers at the Advent wreath?

Anyone have a suggestion? (Intergenerational resources aren’t my strong suit.)

I’ve not had much to blog lately. Nothing pertaining directly to the crises in Ferguson or New York City, nor to the related demonstrations in many cities, including Washington. Nothing about Advent or liturgy—something justifiably seasonal—either, and neither lint-pulling nor crabbing seemed appropriate. There’s a time and place for everything, and I’d like to work through a couple of thoughts in the next couple of days.

One fact about Michael Brown and Darren Wilson stood out to me, but I’ve not seen anyone say anything about it. That both men were 6-foot-4. The short end of very tall. As, it happens, am I. (Later. And Eric Garner was 6-foot-3.)

Now, I know several people who are taller — two Unitarian Universalists come to mind — but I’m in the 98th percentile for height (or so). Tallness is a part of how I see myself, down to the fear of too-short pants, losing my head in family photos, a hatred of air travel (thus my preference for the rails) and a wary eye clearing the doors in historic houses.

It’s my experience that people project all kinds of attributes to me — mainly unfriendliness or least unapproachableness; scariness — and rather than fight it I use it sparingly when people trifle with me. (It also makes a good foil when people start up with their gay man projections.) You may even see this non-trifling attitude on the blog. Even so, I was left speechless when a man I know described, jokingly, another 6-4er and me as “monstrous.”

And these experiences should make me less wary of large men, but they don’t. I try to be aware of my surroundings in city settings, including anyone large enough to hurt me. I can’t count how many times I’ve seen some giant come towards me, only to see that he was my height or shorter. I never feel good about that.

Perception of harm is so subjective. Whether that’s in a life-threatening crisis, in personal relations or in the pursuit of public policy. And that’s something my scalp-scarred brethren don’t have a lock on.

I’ve seen many, many uses by Unitarian Universalists of a passage from Hosea Ballou since the crisis in Ferguson, Missouri after Michael Brown’s shooting death and Darren Wilson’s investigation. The quotation, sourced from the service element section of the most-commonly used Unitarian Universalist hymnal, Singing the Living Tradition, is edited for worship. Number 705:

If we agree in love, there is no disagreement that can do us any injury,
but if we do not, no other agreement can do us any good.
Let us endeavor to keep the unity of the spirit in the bonds of peace.

I wondered what the original was, and how edited it got, particularly since these hymnal elements get used so much (to the exclusion of other writings) that they take on a quasi-canonical character. Even if the quotation is ersatz. (Someone asked me, “That isn’t really Ballou, is it?”) It is, but only in a limited way.

For one thing, the context of the hymnal version suggests quasi-Pauline
advice to a congregation or group. As if he was putting another way Romans 16:17, “Now I beseech you, brethren, mark them which cause divisions and offences contrary to the doctrine which ye have learned; and avoid them.” But that’s not what Ballou was getting at. Here’s the citation, in context from section 224 (“A plea for unselfishness and love.”) in the last print (1986, from a 1882 original) edition of the Treatise on Atonement,

Should we be tenacious about certain sentiments and peculiarities of faith, the time is not far distant when Universalists, who suffered every kind of contemptuous treatment from enemies of the doctrine, will be at war among themselves, and being trodden under the foot of the Gentiles. Having begun in the Spirit do not think to be made perfect by the flesh. In order to imitate our Saviour, let us, like him, have compassion on the ignorant and those whom we view to be out of the way. Attend to the exhortation, “Let brotherly love continue.” If we agree in brotherly love, there is no disagreement that can do us any injury; but if we do not no other agreement can do us any good. Let us keep a strict guard against the enemy “that sows discord among brethren.” Let us endeavor to “keep the unity of the Spirit in the bonds of peace.” May charity, that heaven born companion of the human heart, never forsake us; and may the promise of the Saviour be fulfilled concerning us, “Lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world.”

An even broader context makes it clear that Ballou is cautioning Universalists to maintain humility lest they fall into hubris and error, and continues with an appeal to non-Universalists to examine their claims with patience. Ballou disavows judgement. All good things but not how it comes across in the hymnal.

Also, the hymnal version bleeds out the Christian character of the passage. I can’t add much to that. I’ll end with citing the biblical passages above:

• “Let brotherly love continue.” Hebrews 13:1.
• “that sows discord among brethren.” Proverbs 6:19.
• “keep the unity of the Spirit in the bonds of peace.” Ephesians 4:3. (“Bond” in King James.)
• “Lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world.” Matthew 28:20.