I was telling some friends that I thought the biggest un-talked-about story in Unitarianland is the discussion of Neoliberalism that came up during the Annual General Meeting (AGM) of the General Assembly of Unitarian and Free Christian Churches early in Holy Week — not the best time for ministers overseas to take note, to be sure.

Andrew Brown, the minister to the Cambridge church, wrote about this at the time (“Neoliberalism’s Destructive Influence Both Inside and Outside the Modern Unitarian Movement, ” April 13,  Caute) and so I would recommend you read that; I’m running down the links he suggests and going to find that George Monbiot book I bought and never got around to reading. (We’ve all done that, right?)

What made me think this was important was the how sungly most of us are within a Neoliberal worldview and how that undercuts our faithfulness; limits our ability to use it effectively where appropriate; and (getting back to the issues that were captivating American Unitarian Universalists this Holy Week) distorts the ways we speak with one another.

I was going to write up this beautiful analysis, but by the time I did that (if I ever did that) the moment would be lost. Instead, I recommend the above article — and that we keep it on our radar.

Later: I’ve already made one fix to a note, and created a pretty hacky PDF of the book — ignore the title page and how the chapters are numbered at the top — by request. Again, better asthetics later.

Download the PDF at http://universalistchristian.org/books/ancient-history/ancient-history.pdf.

I’ve also created an ePub — to download at http://universalistchristian.org/books/ancient-history/ancient-history.epub — and I’d appreciate feedback on its readability.

Two days ago, I mentioned how I was processing the Ancient History of Universalism for the web. I’ve gotten to a good stopping place and would like to share the work with you.

It’s on the site I use for my Universalist Christian Initiative, at http://universalistchristian.org/books/ancient-history/.

A fascinating read, but a slow start so you may want to jump into the middle. Chapter nine is a story of intrigue with a vivid mental picture of what is now the West Bank. I imagine it would have been thrilling to those who would have had no other way to “see” it.

And be sure to dig into the footnotes, which in several places show the progress of scholarship in the generations after Hosea Ballou, II, particularly this note on whether Theodoret was a Universalist and whether Universalism was condemned at the Fifth Ecumenical Council. Other notes, apologies from Ballou, for works he could not afford to buy or borrow to consult leave a twinge, particularly since they can be looked up online in scanned reproduction today.

Like this …

As you may note, it’s a very basic design; the whole book with notes and index (no internal links, I’m afraid) is a mere 162 kb. My goal is to make bulky resources like these easy to download on the fly, with aesthetic improvements later. If you see typos — I couldn’t have gotten them all — send me a note and I’ll make periodic fixes.

Some process notes. I got the messy text from https://archive.org/details/ancienthistoryof1872ball, I edited the text with the Atom editor, in Markdown, and processed it with pandoc. (If you’re comfortable with the command line.)

pandoc -s -S --toc -c basic.css inputtext.md -o output.html

I was inspired by a set of very vulgarly-named and written websites promoting simple web design, the names of which are outside the standards of this blog. Search for the most vulgar words you know, plus “website” and you’ll surely find one, but there’s a competition of imitators. I also consulted Practical Typography’s section on websites for confirmation.

I’ve worked up the outline of a style guide for this book, which I learned years ago helps maintain consistancy and easy for modern readers. I really should type that up.

I’ve been writing a blog since 2003, and this is post #4,000. I saw this coming and thought it deserved a little something extra.

Earlier this week I was speaking with a friend and colleague about Universalism and Eastern Orthodoxy, and recalled to him Hosea Ballou II’s 1828 Ancient History of Universalism, which traced the doctrine from the period from the end of the writing of the New Testament to thhe Fifth Ecumenical Council, particularly in the East. Among other things, the work positions Universalism within the entirety of Christian history and not as an innovation then a scant two or three generations old. And given the role Hosea Ballou II played within the denomination, his influence would have been important in his lifetime. I thought to read it, and knowing from my early (1990s) transcription projects that the best way to read one of these old works — and retain any memory of it — is to edit it for web publication, and that’s what I am doing to celebrate post #4,000.

It’s not the first edition nor the second, but the 1872 edition, with added notes. I’m about half-way through, and will post it online as a web page and intend to create an epub edition, suitable for most book readers. (If you want a print reproduction copy of the first edition, get one here.)

And what value is it today? Among other things, to see how a leading and influential Universalist saw his faith and contrasted with others (allegory is silly; reason, good) and to have handy access to those texts (including biblical texts) that early Universalists used to support the faith. And perhaps past both of these, to enjoy a grand piece of period scholarship and to inspire new studies; I’ve since ordered a modern history of Origen to take me where HB2 couldn’t.

I’ll post afresh when and where the files go up.

No sooner did I beg off following news from the UUA Board than a couple of people kindly noted news in the Board packet for the meeting this weekend. There was — with a gigantic and startling packet of recent Board correpondence — the news, that the First Universalist Society, Hiram, Maine had “dissolved.” (I prefer the term “disbands” as it seems less like it was dropped in a barrel of acid.)

The Hiram church was not large. In my copy of the 2001 UUA directory, it reported four members. Even in 1878 (a quick look at the registers online) only show 28 families in the parish. The inland town has also never been large, and while in a beautiful setting that doesn’t mean that any church could keep residents, or attract ministers. Its existance, in any form, was its accomplishment.

It was listed as federated. I don’t know what it’s federation partners were, but if they continue I hope they have long years of ministry ahead. (Perhaps this community church, converted last year to a cultural center?) If not, I hope the people of Hiram find and create ministry where they can.

A friend asked if the church in the header was Universalist. Indeed it is, or was. That is Universalist Meeting House, Hingham, Massachusetts. The image, now in the public domain, was extracted and hosted a Flickr.

This is the original source, The History of the Town of Hingham, Massachusetts.

Phoebe Hanaford was one of its pastors. The church disbanded in 1929 — so many disbanded in that decade — and the building, which still stands, has been converted to a private house.  Its papers are in the Unitarian Universalist archive at Harvard-Andover Library.

A couple of centuries ago, had I been a General Baptist — a group later folded with the Unitarians — I might be at the annual conference, held in London each Easter Monday. This Easter Monday I want to revisit my relationship with the Unitarian Universalist Association. You may see your experience in my words.

First, I’m not storming off in a huff, but hasn’t this last week been a challenge? Or is that the last year? Last decade? But there is this malaise, and it’s only improved by not thinking about the UUA.

In fact, not being in a pastorate since 2003, I’ve had little functional connection to the central institutions of the UUA, but had thought it better to stay as engaged as possible. I felt that was my responsibility. Even now I have some forms on my desk to fill out. So I follow the programs, read the Board minutes, stay informed and attend General Assembly when possible. But even though there aren’t fewer words, there’s less to read. Theological conversations? Engaging with counterparts overseas? A new hymnal? (New churches for that matter?) I look at the work of the UUA that appealed to me twenty years ago, and see less every year. Much of what continues has been sourced outside the UUA (or dropped), and with unseating of the independent affiliates (and the undermining of the Commission on Appraisal) that “outside” is also sidelined. GA workshops, save the UUCF communion service, are worthless to me. (Lunch is always an option.)  If I seem farther away from the center, maybe it’s because the scope of the UUA has shrunk, and I’ve spoken to others who feel the same way.

Instead, so much of the work of the UUA seems invested in maintaining the UUA itself. And the language of “your UUA” and “our saving faith” (definition forthcoming) seems to replace program with identity. But as Universalist Christian, that’s a non-starter. I could use programs, but the majority identity, itself under stress from demographic changes that all the old mainline churches face, actually makes it harder to make a claim a place in a theological federation.

So, what’s left that mostly works? Ministerial credentialing, the retirement plan, and (for those in search) settlement. I read the UUWorld, and I really like Elaine McArdle‘s writing. If everything else magically vanished, I might notice, but might not care. (Others will have other lists, of course.)  If the other work is meaningful, it would find a new home anyway.

There are, of course, friends and colleagues who do good work, and I want to support them; I can do this directly. There’s a vacuum (vacUUm?) that will needed to be filled. But there’s no reason I should examine UUA membership data if it’s clear from the outset that the outcome is “smaller.” If the UUA does not make communal religious life easier and richer, then others will find a way to do it better. Maybe the next president — I have no opinion about who that should be — will improve things, and if that happens I hope someone will tell me. In the meantime, I will focus on the innovators, the activity at the fringes, co-workers in the ecumenical world and my personal friends. I don’t have time to worry about the UUA, and so that’ll be the last I have to say on the subject.

A couple of weeks ago, I found the online archive of the Unitarian Universalist Church, in Muncie, Indiana, and found the summary order of service from April 18, 1954: Easter Sunday.

Here it is:

This was First Universalist Church, as it was know then, and just renamed from St. John’s Universalist Church. Let’s decode the service.

The “tell” is from the first line. The service is the Easter service from Services of Religion, prepended to the “red hymnal,” The Hymns of the Spirit.

This makes the hymns (483) “Fairest Lord Jesus” and (192) Charles Wesley’s famous “Christ the Lord Is Risen Today.” The doxology (500) begins “Praise God the love we all may share.”

Responsive Reading 72, entitled “Easter,” is mainly drawn from the third and fourth chapter apocryphal Wisdom of Solomon (the citations in the index should read verses 1-9, not verse 19; it’s a mix of KJV and RV, with some heavy edits) and reads:

The souls of the righteous are in the hand of God,
And there shall no torment touch them.

In the sight of the unwise they seemed to die,
And their departure is taken for misery,
And their going from us to be utter destruction:

But they are in peace: and their hope full of immortality.
And having borne a little chastening, they shall receive great good:

For God proved them, and found them worthy for himself.

And in the time of their visitation they shall shine forth,
And the Lord shall reign over them for ever.

The faithful shall abide with him in love:
Because grace and mercy are to his chosen.

For in the memory of virtue is immortality:
Because it is recognized both before God and before men.

But a righteous man, though he die before his time, shall be at rest.

For honorable old age is not that which standeth in length of time,
Nor is its measure given by length of years:

But understanding is gray hairs unto men,
And an unspotted life is ripe old age.

Being made perfect in a little while,
he fulfilled long years;
For his soul was pleasing unto the Lord:

For the path of the just is as a shining light
That shineth more and more unto the perfect day.

It’s interesting that the anthems proceed thematically from Thursday to Sunday. I tried to track down the organ music and anthems, but none of the titles are distinct enough to shake anything useful out of Google.

And the preacher? The Rev. Sidney Esten (1892-1965) was not the church’s pastor. (That was the famous Russell Lockwood, would be installed that fall; perhaps he hadn’t arrived yet?) After studying at St. Lawrence, Esten was ordained and served at the long-gone Anderson, Indiana Universalist church; he also taught school. Money was tight, and — per his obituary from the Indiana Academy of Science (PDF) — it seems Anderson was his only pastorate. But he married people and supplies pulpits for years. (Sounds familiar.) He later got a graduate degree and taught science in an Indianapolis high school. He was a  “noted authority on birds” — indeed, feeding birds when he died suddenly.

I would have been happy to have been there. Can you image the flowers? Happy Easter to you, when it comes!

The Unitarian Universalist church in Muncie, Indiana has a Universalist foundation, and so I was happy to find a digitized archive online today while I was casting around for citations for today’s Universalist Christian Initiative newsletter.

Haven’t dug much into it. Enjoy!

http://libx.bsu.edu/cdm/landingpage/collection/UUCRec

Thanks to Richard Hurst for noting that encoding rot made the “Ordo de Diservo” — Order of Worship — unreadable, even for those who do read Esperanto.

Should be all fixed, here and at RevScottWells.com, where I write slighly more frequently.

Seen now on Twitter, that swastikas were scratched on the doors of Fourth Universalist, in the Upper West Side of NewYork.

Here are some of the tweets that speak about it.

2 swastikas were scratched into the wooden doors of the Unitarian Universalist Church on Central Park west#1010wins pic.twitter.com/Bz1enTxHmp

— Carol D'Auria (@CarolDAuria) March 1, 2017

A hate crime being investigated at a Universalist congregation on the UWS. Why the reverend believes they were… https://t.co/pgaMuwozZ4

— Alice Gainer (@GainerTV) March 1, 2017

UWS Universalist Church Vandalized With Swastikas https://t.co/jdYm8IO3OP via @Gothamist

— Nulla dies sine line (@moodylonerphile) March 1, 2017

Over the years, troves of images have been released into the public domain or under liberal licences. The most recent release is from the Metropolitan Museum of Art. (Search page)

Here is “The Church at Gloucester“by Childe Hassam (1918) and now in the public domain. The church is, of course, the Universalist church — the first in the Americas.  John Murray was its pastor; Judith Murray, a founder, was an author and leading figure in Gloucester.

A small blog administration note. I like this theme, but that header image needs to change. And I’ll try out the extra features.

The UUA Board packet went online on January 20 for the meeting this week. (I must have been occupied by something else then.)

See https://www.uua.org/uuagovernance/board/packets/board-packet-january-2017

Skimming through, so far:

• Two new covenanting communities, a name change, and “The Hattiesburg Fellowship (Hattiesburg, MS) has dissolved.”
• GA Planning committe recommends Providence for GA 2020.

From time to time, I consult Percy Dearmer‘s The Parson’s Handbook to test the standards of liturgical norms. I don’t always agree with him — little wonder as we come from very different places within Christianity — but you can’t fault him for his thoroughness and style. (To tell you the truth, I read it for pleasure, as I do travel guides and cookbooks.)

The book went through twelve editions in his lifetime, with a thirteenth (heavily altered, I gather) thereafter. Some are in the public domain, and I’m making a list below as a directory.

• 1899, second edition. https://archive.org/details/theparsonshandbo00dearuoft
• 1902, fourth edition (United Kingdom). https://archive.org/details/parsonshandbookc00dear
• 1902, fourth edition (United States). https://archive.org/details/parsonshandbook00deargoog
• 1907, sixth edition. https://archive.org/details/parsonshandbookc00dearuoft

So, it’s 2017 now. I’m in that group of people who wants to make New Year’s resolutions, but doesn’t keep them well. I’ve made ill-fated resolutions about losing weight so many times that I’ve given up on them. I’ll try these ten non-resolutions instead:

1. Try to keep my sodium intake down. That should help with my blood pressure.
2. Find and use a tailor to make my clothing fit. Easier than trying to tailor myself.
3. Try to walk a bit more. It’s the most exercise I get, so I might as well get more.
4. Move my diet closer to vegan (I’m already a vegetarian) particularly by restricting egg consumption. I don’t really like them anyway, and it’s a good way to lose some more saturated fat.
5. Work on core strength. Do those exercises I learned in physical therapy. A concrete step to overcoming back pain.
6. Settle on a good haircut, with a reliable barber. I wasn’t going to lose skull weight anyway, so a good haircut would help my head look better. Ditto the beard.
7. Cut back on white bread. I like it, but it sits on me like lead.
8. Try to take outings that don’t focus on getting food or eating.
9. Take the stairs more and see if that helps strengthen my knees, or see an orthopedist if it doesn’t.
10. Learn to stretch my back to help relieve back pain.

So I won’t make a resolution to lose weight, but will endeavor to change those behaviors that will get me closer to having those health and appearance improvements that I attribute to weight loss. After all, it’s not the particular number of pounds that I want.

We’ll see if that works, or at least if I can keep up with it.

So, ministers: how many of you, particularly in the free traditions, have your own “book” — often a three-ring binder — where you keep sermon and service texts, and perhaps a calendar and other flat items? (I keep Geneva bands in mine.)

I’ve written about this subject before and have bought several of these books myself but they tend to be utilitarian and covered in vinyl, and the best-looking of these are perversely the ones that fall apart the fastest.

Cloth-covered board and glazed paper covers are sometimes available. There’s one book I’ve had for years, with a textured surface looking more like leather, but made of paper; it’s falling apart, and no longer for public use.

A few weeks ago I found this binder from the Martha Stewart collection. I got it on Amazon for $6 and the red color seem suitably ecclesiastic. (There is also a teal version.)

The description wasn’t clear but it’s the same kind of pebbled paper that my old standby has and seems sturdy, if a bit stiff. I think it’s going to be a favorite.

There’s been a flood of new Bootstrap-y sites for churches made over the last couple of years, and I’m sure that’s the kind of thing that some other churches would want and cannot afford.

I’m looking at the new default business-minded WordPress theme — Twenty Seventeen — and it pushes some of the same buttons that those other sites push. Cutting edge design? Hardly? But it might what a church needs to refresh its look, and it has features that should make it easy to manage by non-pros.

For a week or so, I’ll have the default Twenty Seventeen theme up. (I’m not selling plants now.)

This is (almost) what I preached today at Universalist National Memorial Church, Washington, D.C. from the lessons from Titus and Luke.

I’d like to think Pastor Dave Gatton for inviting me back into the pulpit this morning.

Merry Christmas to you all.

The Christmas story, as accounted in the Gospel of Luke, is so familiar that we might not hear the words. Even if you were not brought up in a church and are, say, under 50 years of age, there’s a good chance you learned this passage from Luke off television, from A Charlie Brown Christmas, in Linus’s staggering but guileless spotlight speech.

Mary and Joseph on to Bethlehem. No room in the inn. The manger. The angels and the shepherds: these are familiar and friendly.

But this year, it’s hard not to hear the words with renewed meaning, starting at the beginning of the passage from Luke:

In those days a decree went out from Emperor Augustus that all the world should be registered. This was the first registration and was taken while Quirinius was governor of Syria. All went to their own towns to be registered.

This was no simple census. It was a foreign intrusion and assertion of power from Rome. Resented, sparking the political movement of Zealots we would meet later, in Jesus’ ministry. Judea, his home, was then administered from Syria, the eastern reach of the Roman Empire, and later united with it. The holy family were vulnerable, and then threatened under Herod’s murderous rage.

The name Syria leaps up from this passage. Aleppo, an ancient city, existed then under another name, so with our new focus on Aleppo, it’s possible to imagine how it was for Jesus’ family in those days, or others like them. The terror and the dying. The wanderings and hunger. Living just beyond the reach of help, but shaped by powerful forces.

That was a time in Judea of religious and political radicalization which ultimately led within a matter of decades to the end of the temple, a radical transformation of Judaism and the end of an independent Israel until living memory. I need not tell you the state of the world today In this telling, the gospel crashes into today.

But, apart from a historical curiosity, what does that show us? That there is suffering always? Are we stuck with endless violence and suffering. If so, what joy is there in Christmas then? Or, put another way, apart from the celebrating, what gospel is there in Christmas.

First, it’s worth owning that we have a lot invested in Christmas, perhaps too much, which has little to do with that first Christmas. Christmas today is a magical, mysterious, otherworldly, amazing, terrifying, bewildering and perplexing time of the year. Its power is palpable and recognizable. I can’t think of another religious holiday in the United States that is so easily made emotionally and socially available to all whatever their religious beliefs. In some ways it is an all-purpose celebration of goodness and hope and that should be available to everybody.

This, on its own, has religious value. As Christians, we should look towards that time that in both now and not-yet, when will we be whole and God will be all-in-all. As with the Lord’s Supper, we share our feasting and happiness in thanksgiving and preparation for that Heavenly Feast before us.

But Christmas is the foundation of an even greater hope, if we can move past the conventions of the telling — the peppermint and snow-flecked trimmings — we see the world around us is not what it seems. The Gospel of Christmas is the direction, pointing us on the way we should go.

We already know in our hearts that the world is not as it should be, as it must be. The soul craves a world refreshed and transformed, and we must bear witness to it. This is the source of true and lasting gladness.

In the passage from Paul’s letter to Titus, we learn to grow in confidence, knowing that our relationship to God is not from what we can provide God, but because of the relationship that God has initiated with us and which is manifested through Jesus’s life which we celebrate today, “we might be made heirs according to the hope of eternal life.”

We have to remember that the Christmas story is not about one child who managed to attract God’s love and attention but as one child who leads us all back to God’s care. It’s also important how this happens.

The story itself is a story of a “reversal of Fortune”: a reversal of what is important.

Did God’s approved leader appear with strength and might, from a position of power, in a center of power to conquer? None of these happened.

Jesus was born to the Jewish nation, itself very small, and not in Rome, but far from the centers of power. And the promised savior appeared not as a political or military leader but as a newborn infant.

The hope of the ages is knowing that in our smallness, and our powerlessness, and our short lives, and that we might live richly and fully and yet without hurting or dominating one another.

(If you wonder why we gather in prayer the rest of the year, it’s to learn how.)

And yet we are not left alone. God dwells with us, another girt of Christmas. And so we live in hope, and with promises from God reflected in scripture and confirmed buy an inner voice of Truth.

If we are sad or distressed or perplexed or harassed, if we are troubled or menaced or persecuted or embarrassed remember that you are a child of the Living God and that God came to Earth to lead us through a child. And so we grow as children to adulthood with earnestness curiosity joyfulness and loving kindness.

So we celebrate Christmas, even if not in the conventional way. It’s not a prize for being good, but an orientation to how life should be, particularly when everything is going wrong.

The future does not belong to us. But it is before us. Let us approach it with a Christmas spirit: with kindness, love and boldness.

It’s not the most important thing in the world, but churches could do a better job with printed orders of service, which is keenly felt on Christmas Eve, when churches often get their largest congregations all year.

I’ve written about this over the years, and I’m far from convinced that that the two- or three-column theatrical program style is the best option, even when every last blessed word is printed out. (Such is the irony in too many Episcopal parishes, with an ignored prayerbook in the pew, and a veritable book published for each service.)  And there’s unlikely to be one solution that works everywhere. And, as before, it’s not the most pressing problem…

But, in any case, I’m always glad to see others join in.  Like David Schwartz, senior co-minister at First Unitarian, Chicago, a church with a long history of liturgical standard-raising, who presents the beginnings of order of service style guide. Good on him!

Read it on his own Tumblr blog. (Memory and Hope)

Time again to point out the Open Hymnal Project, which has a special PDF booklet of public domain Christmas hymns, (direct link) and a ZIP (archive) file GIF (image) files of individual files that should make it easier for you to put individual hymns in an order of service, downloadable from the main page.

See this page for an index of available hymns, Christmas or not, from which you can download related files, including single PDFs and GIFs.

If you are in Washington, D.C. on Christmas morning — it’s a Sunday this year — join me at the Universalist National Memorial Church, at 1810 Sixteenth Street, N.W. at 11 a.m. I’ll be preaching,using the second Revised Common Lectionary texts for Christmas, if you’re following along.

You’ll get a warm welcome, even if it’s cold outside.

Wipf and Stock publishes more theological works that deal with issues of universal salvation (if not institutional Universalism) than anyone else — and probably on a scale unrivaled since the heyday of the Universalist Publishing House. (They have a wide-ranging catalog.)

So when I learned that they are having a sale — 30% off list and free media mail shipping — I said “yes, thank you.” I got The Renewal of All Things: An Alternative Missiology by Waldron Byron Scott, and All Set Free: How God is Revealed in Jesus and Why That is Really Good News by Matthew J. Distefano.

Looking forward to Christmas reading.

Counter to the prevailing opinion, I’m not a fan of church banners that highlight social or political issues — they seem to soak up the energy and capital that might be applied directly to the need — but if you do put one up, make it big and out of reach.

In my neighborhood, at the Church of the Pilgrims (Presbyterian), Dupont Circle, Washington, D.C. It just went up.

If you saw Hillary Clinton’s concession speech today, you may have been touched by her quotation from scripture.

Let us not grow weary in doing good, for in due season we shall reap if we do not lose heart.

It drawn from Galatians 6:9, in case you wondered. It’s not a translation I know — perhaps “arranged” as one says in worship, but here’s the verse from King James Version: “And let us not be weary in well doing: for in due season we shall reap, if we faint not.”

Earlier this week, the UUWorld reported (Elaine McArdle, October 17) that the Unitarian Universalist Association Board of Trustees awarded a $300,000 grant to the Black Lives of Unitarian Universalists (BLUU), with a commitment to raise another $5 million, “guarantee[d] against the endowment.”

I have so many questions, not the least of which “why has there been no public commentary — apart from the immediate parties, and not much there — about this extraordinary step?”

And will there be room for an examination of what happened, or what this will mean to the Unitarian Universalist Association? There should be room; I’m not sure there will be.

Another story from the UUWorld is coming next week; perhaps then?

The story of the Universalist Korean mission is little discussed, surely because the Japan mission, on which it was institutionally dependent, is also little discussed and because there is no evidence that has come to light that it survived the Second World War. I’m hoping to add to the record, and follow up on the article I posted two years ago.

I was at the Library of Congress yesterday and scanned minutes and reports from the 1937 General Convention. This is from the section called International Church Extension. I’ve added links to outside resources for context.

Universalist General Convention. Universalist biennial reports and directory. Boston, Mass. : Universalist General Convention. (1938), p. 83-86.

Korea

Under the leadership of Mr. [Ryonki] Jio [or, Cho in the financial reports], graduate of Doshisha Theological Seminary, work was begun in Korea in 1929. Mr. Jio with another student from the seminary had done summer evangelistic work the two previous years. As he traveled all over the country he investigated possible centers for his future work. His final decision was in favor of Taikyu (Daigu—Korean pronunciation), a city the size of Rochester, New York.

In April, 1929, after his graduation from Doshisha, Mr. Jio rented a house and began his work. It was thought at first that no Sunday school could be conducted in such narrow quarters but on April 7th some 57 children came and three men and four women volunteered to help in teaching. What has come to be a very significant work was thus humbly begun.

Taikyu

There is a church building, and a pastor’s house on a small plot of land down a narrow alley building leading from one of the many wide streets in Taikyu. The buildings and land are being bought on the installment plan, with payments each month for something over two more years. The “church building” is an adapted ex-wrestling hall, now in quite bad condition, with uprights weakening and sinking to such an extent that the windows, which open horizontally, are immovable now, with the exception of one half of one window. A new building—one could almost say, a building—is needed badly, but the group is attempting this year a complete renovation with the limited resources these poverty-stricken people can manage to scrape together.

Here are all the usual meetings and some unusual ones —not only Church and Sunday School—but many other meetings throughout the week.

Mr. Jio has lived through some hard experiences since the start of 1929—experiences that would have embittered most men—but he has had his dream and has worked towards its realization steadily. To tabulate such activities as frequent preaching, Sunday School direction, prayer meetings, boys’ club work, Bible classes, does not begin to give one an idea of the work done. Mr. Jiu is fast becoming one of the best-known citizens of Taikyu.

In August of 1936, several months after his graduation from the Taikyu Government Medical School, Dr. Pak, who had for several years served as Sunday School superintendent, in cooperation with Mr. Jio and in the name of the church opened a medical-services-at-cost enterprise in a makeshift “attic” section of the “church building,” divided into a small laboratory, a small waiting room, and a somewhat larger consultation and treatment room, the whole comprising a space of about ten by fifteen feet. (Their original plan to build up the enterprise on a cooperative “shares” basis was prohibited by the police authorities.) For over a year Dr. Pak worked without salary patiently building the work. In August of ‘37, however, he resigned to take up a private practice in Manchukuo among Koreans there. Another young doctor was procured on a salary basis, and the work is going forward with steadily increasing numbers of patients daily and an ever-widening scope of influence in the city. In some months the average number of patients served has been as high as 40 to 50 daily. Last autumn, in answer to the need of an in-patient department for slight operation cases such as for trachoma, which is very wide-spread in Korea. Mr. Jio turned his house over to this work and took up a rented dwelling some twenty minutes’ walk from the “church.”

Handicapped by extremely limited equipment this “church and hospital” enterprise goes forward steadily.

Mrs. Onjun Pak, the first Korean to be trained at the Blackmer Home, has started a Sewing School for Women and Girls in connection with Mr. Jio’s work. Very little equipment was available, but it is hoped that interested groups in America may be able to contribute towards the purchase of a few machines and some necessary supplies. Until that time Mrs. Pak is carrying on with what is at hand and is making a real contribution to the people she serves. A portion of the International Friendship Offering received in Universalist Church Schools in November, 1937, has been a sign for this work of Mrs. Pak.

Wulchon

A church was soon started at Wulchon, some six miles from Taikyu, but owing to the persecution by another sect, it had to be suspended. But this misfortune has not followed another enterprise in Wulchon.

Some years ago people in the immediate vicinity of this small town faced a desperate unemployment situation. Mr. Jio resolved to do something about it. With his church group as a nucleus and on borrowed money, he purchased materials and begin a fibre-slipper manufacture, his own special service being the finding of markets for the goods manufactured goods during the long cold season when the ground cannot be worked. Today the Guild thus started has spread beyond this first group, gives employment to over eighteen hundred and manufactures over two hundred thousand pairs of slippers a year, selling some as far afield as Chicago and points farther east. This industry has become second in importance—after silk—in the district which Taikyu is the center.

Kumpo

A dozen miles beyond Wulchon is Kumpo, a small rural village of two hundred or more. Here, after some evangelistic meetings, a church of thirty odd members was formed. But it as was the case in Wulchon, was forced to suspend activities due to persecution from another sect.

Sendung

After Dr. Cary’s address of the Buffalo convention in 1931, Rev. G. H. Leining and Rev. Ellsworth C. Reamon conducted a swift impromptu campaign for funds which resulted in enough to purchase a farm of some one hundred and sixteen thousand tsubo (a tsubo is 36 square feet) or over 98 acres—a very large farm for the Orient. Upwards of fifty families rent and work this farm, which has extensive rice cultivation possibilities as well as being in a good position for fruit. In the summer of ‘34 a great flood swept down and buried large portions of the farm under six feet of water, but it was reconditioned—at considerable expense (with money borrowed of the government on very easy terms). What was necessary was done and the slow process of making the land valuable by annually putting all returns back from it back into it was taken up again. More fruit trees are planted, more poplars about the edges to hold off sand and future floods. In August of 1936 an even worst flood came, wrecking property throughout the southern part of Korea. Once again the work of reconditioning was taken up but it was too expensive to do it as completely as was desirable. Nevertheless, more planting of fruit trees and protective poplars, which are pruned short, was done. A goodly number of the thousands of trees planted before the ‘36 flood, lived through it.

In the nearby town, Mr. Jio holds occasional meetings whenever an opportunity presents itself.

Other interests

Mr. Jio maintains a constant communication with liberal groups of Koreans in Japan proper, especially among theological students to keep him exceedingly busy every time he visits Tokyo and Kyoto, where his alma mater, Doshisha, is.

He sees great opportunity for influence through a liberal magazine, but is compelled for lack of funds to postpone any independent action of this nature, submitting articles for publication in other magazines whenever opportunity permits.

Mr. Jio and the work he and his people undertake is financially aided by the General Convention and in constant affiliation with the General Convention representatives and the Japan Council.

…no, not one of mine. Read @EOrthodoxy (and the associated blog, Eclectic Orthodoxy.)

A single prayer in the services before Hymns of the Spirit beginning “Almighty God grant that the words” comes from a book identified in the index as the Theistic Prayer Book. What is this and where did it come from?

It comes from the Theistic Church in London, that lasts from 1870 or 1871 until shortly after the 1912 death of its founder and minister, Charles Vorsey, who was driven out of the Church of England. (He’s the father of the famous architech of the same name, if your mind goes to the Arts and Crafts.) At the church, the book was known as The Revised Prayer Book, and ran through three (1871, 1875, 1892) editions.

In both Hymns of the Spirit (p. 146) and The Revised Prayer Book, the prayer appears in a section for additional prayers (in the third edition); it appears, slightly re-arranged as prayer for the “close of worship” in Hymns of the Spirit.

Cross-posted at Hymns of the Spirit.

The services before the Hymns of the Spirit include prayers and litanies from various sources, including the 1903 Devotional Services for Public Worship, by John Hunter. He was the minister of King’s Weigh House Church, then a Congregational church, in Mayfair, London.

You can read it at Archives.org.

I’ll see if there’s any commonalities, and if so I’ll note them below.

Crossposted at HymnsoftheSpirit.org.

There’s a shortage of historic works — Unitarian or Universalist — on the preparation and exercise of the ministry. So — while researching — I was happy to see a printed set of lectures by William Phillip Tilden (1811-1890) to the Meadville Theological School, in June 1889. So we can consider these the mature words of a respected pastor.

I’ve not read this, but will put them on the list. Thought you might like to read it, too.

The Work of the Ministry: Lectures Given to the Meadville Theological School

I had some site problems this last week. My old main blog, BoyintheBands.com, was badly hacked and in the process of hardening the other sites against attack, I ruined the WordPress install for my homage site to the 1937 “red hymnal” HymnsoftheSpirit.org.

I had to trash the old system and completely reinstalled it. Easy, but I misplaced the theme (no great loss) in the process. So the site is there, if plain.

I have the domain Unitarianchurch.info for sale. Please send me a note if you’re interested in buying it.

@SaucySisTah Moment of Silence today - 11:55 AM to 12:00 PM. @SideofLove @AttorneyCrump #BlackLivesMatterpic.twitter.com/vBeWo8G0SS

Back in 2008, I knocked together a Sunday-only calendar as a planning tool for church worship leaders. It has been evergreen at by old blog, Boy in the Bands. And so when I got a request to update it, I couldn’t do other than bring it up to date.

And so I’m crossposting it here. Enjoy.

You can also edit the OSD file in LibreOffice and (so it seems) newer versions of Microsoft Office. I included December 2016 and January 2018.

• 2017 Sunday-only calendar (PDF)
• 2017 Sunday-only calendar (ODS)

So, on August 20, swarms of Esperantists all over North America will meet for day-long gatherings “enjoying each other’s company while taking part in a celebration of the international language.” (suggested press release language)

It’s called Paralela Universo, which even to non-Esperantists should easily read as “parallel universe.” Parallel to what? Diffrerent places at the same time, sure. But also keep in mind that Esperanto events (especially in Europe) are days-long affairs, bolstered no doubt by long vacations, short travel distances and a critical mass of Esperantists to organize such things. North American Esperantists have none of these; surely an alternative is called for, and so much better if it calls to mind the endless possibilities of science fiction, which I bet appeals to (other) Esperantists.

So far, there are twenty sites, and counting. And what’s noteworthy is that there is no central organizing body, and no tickets. You pay for your transportation to and from the gathering, and your meals. It’s an idea, a format and coordination by Facebook and a Google group. That’s all.

Mi okazos la Paralelan Universon ĉi tie.

Let this be an inspiration for other groups who could benefit by low-effort, low-cost ad-hoc gatherings.

I know today is the feast of St. Mary Magdalene, equal-to-the-apostles, but you’ll forgive me if Iook back two days to St. Margaret of Antioch, a fourth century virgin-martyr who is reputed to have been disengorged by Satan, in the form of a dragon, or said to have beaten a devil (lye can variety) with hammer.

A hammer.

Nothing says "feast day of St Margaret of Antioch" quite like fighting a demon with a hammer. #stop #hammertime pic.twitter.com/izIshAJ1iW

— All About History (@AboutHistoryMag) July 20, 2016

I hadn’t known much about her until I saw a number of tweets, and was too distracted by the fortieth anniversary of the Viking landing on Mars to make anything of then.

To repeat. Disengorged by a Satan-dragon. Beat a demon with a hammer. And people have problems with women being Ghostbusters.

I’m so excited about the soft launch of the Universalist Christian Initiative, and if you’re interested and haven’t yet signed up for the newsletter please follow this link.

I publish an update twice a month, and promise not to spam you. And I would appreciate you spreading the word to interested.

I’m spending part of my summer clearing out books. Duplicates. Those I’ll never read, or never read again. Those that hae a marginal interest to me but might mean more to others.

If you read this blog, and live in the U.S., drop me a note through the contact form stating that you’d like to browse the list of books I’m offering, once it’s done. Note if you’re a seminarian (and where) — I’ll give you first dibs.

My mobile phone of three years showed signs of instability after General Assembly, so rather than waiting for it to fail, I decided to get a new one. It arrived today.

There’s a custom of photographing the unwrapping — “unboxing” — esteemed electronics and then sharing the photos and thus the experience. This is considered normal behavior among Apple goods owners (I am not one) but it still strikes me as a bit precious, even ostentatious.  After all, what does it show, other than the ability to buy things?

I suppose it shows this: how lovely the thing is in itself, and more, how lovely it comes to the new owner. It is worth having, and cherishing. Since, I’ve seen beautifully packaged clothes, snack foods and charitable solicitation appeals that have the same attention to presentation. And, to be honest, they do seem better than the alternative, and so make me feel better about myself. I look forward to the moment of acquiring something, and not just the having (and so take pains to not shop for this thrill, but that another story.)

So, we turn to churches. In this culture where even a knockoff laptop battery (bought before GA) is carefully wrapped, how do we change how we prepare our churches for worship? Or present certificates and awards (when we do so) or arrange candles or implements of worship? Or share refreshments, or post signs?

Or any of a thousand ways we can say, “this house of worship is special, and beautiful, and you are welcome” — or not.

“They aren’t victims, you know. Once, I was beat up by a bunch of black kids coming home and I wasn’t doing anything to them. I almost died. People have to be held responsible for their actions. Black people are responsible for what happened to me!”

“Yes, I whole heartedly agree. Each race must be held responsible for their crimes. I want whites to be held responsible for every lynching and for the entire Ku Klux Klan. Would you join me in being a responsible and accountable white person for the crimes we’ve committed? All the people of color we’ve killed?”

The man, now in his 60′s and nursing a childhood wound that justified his prejudice for his entire life gave pause. He could no longer meet my eyes. He looked down and drifted away into another room. I don’t know how long the moment of cognitive dissonance lasted. I do know that he only felt emboldened to reveal his pain because I was another white person.

It should be obvious yet it is grim to think about: people will vote based on their hate and against their own self-interest. Racists are good organizers, and racism brings people out. Especially in an atmosphere that validates those who aren’t afraid to “tell it like it is” and be openly racist. It is more difficult to get people who are exploited to the polls and engage in a democracy that could function for all of us. And the system isn’t broken, it was designed this way.

I graduated with a Bachelor’s of Science in Political Science six years ago. My master’s thesis theorized that racist politicians, who organized on overt and covert racism, would have shorter careers. I thought that hate, while exciting, would wear people down after a while once they realized policies based on bigotry do not serve the community.

Statistically, the theory was wrong. Politicians who campaigned based on racism and intolerance, as identified by the Southern Law Poverty Center, had long, successful careers spanning thirty years or more. They did slightly better than other politicians in the same area with roughly the same demographics. (I didn’t publish because I didn’t think my standard of defining who is a hateful politician by the Southern Law Poverty Law Center was objective enough.)

It is past time for us to confront our system that benefits racism, that allows marginalized whites to hook onto racism instead of holding those in power accountable. We have to act as though our lives depend it. We can’t assume that people who suffer and find their bitterness soothed by the snake oil of racism will realize they’ve been duped and act in their own self-interest. People sacrifice for ideals, and most whites don’t know that the ideal of racism comforts many more people than you’d think. The movement needs you to root out false promises that benefit the few and find true comfort in a society in which we are all free.

Now that this blog supports interests aside from those feature on my main blog, RevScottWells.com, I don’t write for it so much. And at some point, the individual pages links became corrupt. You could see posts on the front page, but couldn’t click through.

I’ve now fixed this and regret the disruption to would-be readers.

So, any blogging after the UUA General Assembly will be at my other blog, RevScottWells.com, but I couldn’t help but share a picture of this bahn mi (Vietnamese sandwich) made with vegetarian ham, from a stall at the North Market, a source of many delicious lacto-vegetarian meals and treats.

Thursday, June 23: State of Emergence Rally for #RacialJustice at the Statehouse http://columbusfreepress.com/article/thursday-june-23-state-emergence-rally-racial-justice-statehouse … @UUA @SideofLove #BlackLivesMatter

I’m soft-launching my new project, the Universalist Christian Initiative at the Unitarian Universalist Association General Assembly, which begins today in Columbus, Ohio.

It’s mainly about creating resources and finding direction for Universalist Christians, and at this point I’m looking for people interested in this work.

Please join the newsletter list here, and follow our Twitter account (@universalistci) here.

If you’ll be at GA, meet me at the UU Christian Fellowship booth (#115 in the exhibit hall)

• Thursday, Jun 23 from 1 p.m. to 2 p.m.
• Friday, June 24 from 11 a.m. to 12 noon

… or send a direct message to the @universalistci Twitter account if you’d like to talk.

In Dupont Circle, on this hard day.

I hope it gets better. But no false sweetness right now.

(My husband Jonathan Padget took this photo.)

This is a first thought, because it will make my next blog post — about communion ware — make more sense.

When we think about what it means to be “churchy” we’re often — but not exclusively — talking about tastes and norms set by “the Ecclesiologists,” meaning that medieval-focused, Romantic movement that overwhelmed the Church of England in the nineteenth century. For them, there was one correct style appropriate for Christian churches — in a word, Gothic — whether that meant fully expressed in stonework, or vernacularized into the carpenter style. Think of pointed stained-glass windows. Why did this style cross the Atlantic and denominational lines? The prevailing taste, keeping-up-with-the-Joneses and the perhaps nothing so pedestrian as who the church architects and suppiers were. (This isn’t an original thought, and I’ve seen it in a few places, most recently in chapter two, “Capital Ideas: Building American Churches, 1750-1860.” of James Hudnut-Beumler’s In the Pursuit of the Almighty’s Dollar.)

There are noteworthy examples of Gothic Unitarian and Universalist church buildings, but so as not to lose the point: the creation of a common vocabularly of taste that’s hard to buck, save with variations, like the engrossed domestic style the Universalists seemed to favor, or the (later favored) colonial revival the Unitarians of Boston imposed on the Western churches who wanted financial support. And the less said about the post-war community centers hiding in their own private parksor forests — the  newer UU norm — the better.

Of course, those days may be declining: not a particular style or fashion, but the ability of churches to chose the shape of their buildings at all. I can all to easily imagine borrowed, rented or shared spaces being a part of the survival strategies of Unitarian Universalist (and other) churches in the all-too-soon future. Consider how many newer congregations meet in office parks or retail space.

Is short, design will have to be expressed in ways other than the building, and without the influence of an eccumenical community of tastemakers. It will be interesting what we come up with, and if we appeal to older and more humble models.

So, I saw a reference tos James Hudnut-Beumler’s In Pursuit of the Almighty’s Dollar: A History of Money and American Protestantism (2007, University of North Carolina Press)  and was interested, so ordered a copy. It arrived yesterday, and began reading. The reasons that interested me might apply to you, too.

1. The money we raise and spend on churches is really important, but we don’t give it due consideration. (But it’s much better than it was a generation ago.)
2. The eighteenth- and nineteenth-century transition to the voluntary support of the church affected Unitarians and Universalists, but in very different ways.
3. Traces of what we expect from a church persist from those days.
4. And because our funding models do change, it’s a reminder not to apply sacred weight to something like the offering.

I look forward to the read.

The title says it all. If you are attending the Unitarian Universalist Association General Assembly in Columbus, Ohio and would like to meet and speak with me — say, about approaches to Universalism or church devolopment — I’d be happy to set aside some time.

Be sure to contact me through this page, or follow me on Twitter @bitb.

It didn’t take a lot to start a Universalist society in the early days; that is, even as late as 1866, and perhaps a bit later. There aren’t many accounts of how they got started, but reading between the lines, you can tell they organized around a core, perhaps an individual, who discovered the faint by reading, and organized to “have preaching” from a minister, often on a large circuit.

They rose up, and many failed. In time, those that survived built buildings and established ministries, but the ministerial shortage was chronic and — given that so many of those volunteer churches organized in remote rural areas — unsolvable. Financially vulnerable, most of them perished by the end of the Great Depression, though rural depopulation would have surely accomplished much the same.

But it’s easy to be romantic about this easy-going start-up culture. At least they organized churches — the papers had constant announcements — and that’s not what we have today.

It’s possible to do better — since we’re essentially starting missions from scratch — with an estabished model; that is, dependent missions, that I think get lumped in with the current rave, multi-site ministry. The model is old (think: minster) but I keep running into it, particularly among traditions that are only a generation or two old in the United States.

In each case, the dependent community receives services — paricularly worship and ceremonial leadership from clergy — from an established parish, rather than from a more central body. They are geographically clustered. I’ve runinto two lately.

1. Most of the Christian Communities (the North American branch of the Christengemeinschaft) have “affiliate communities”
   

   Affiliate Communities do not have a priest working full time, however the sacraments are celebrated at a somewhat regular interval by a priest visiting from one of the established communites. The link is to the community from whence the priest visits.

2. The Coptic Orthodox Church has had a church presence in the United States only about fifty years, but Diocese (one of three) of the Southern States has thirty-eight churches and twenty-eight communities.

I know there’s the joke about the Unitarian Universalists being the Democratic party at prayer, but I just learned that there was an actual Democratic convention held at the (now extinct) Universalist church in Baltimore, in 1848. The convention that nominated Lewis Cass for president. Yeah, there are a couple of reasons there I didn’t know this until now…

For details, see this page from Reminiscences of Baltimore

Years ago, I learned that the best way for me to read an obscure bit of Universalist theology or history was to transcribe it for the web, thus my twenty years of creating web sites. Following on my last post, about Universalist distinctives, I decided to revisit Richard Eddy’s landmark series “Universalist Conventions and Creeds“, an institutional history of early American Universalism. Though I first found parts of it (on microfilm) in the 1990s, I had never found (thus never read) all of it.

Recently, too, I wrote a page that posted the locations of all know copies of the journal Universalist Quarterly and General Review in which Eddy had published this work. Since then, I discovered this index that is complete. Ignore my list.

Now I can read all of “Universalist Conventions and Creeds” — which means I’ll transcribe it. Full circle. I’m about two-thirds the way of an initial clean up, but the extensive footnotes make a challenge for web publishing. So, I’ll probably make a PDF too. I’ll be over a hundred pages long…

But one more thing. In Google-ing around about the Philadelphia Convention (1790-c.1809), I discovered no only that the documents that Eddy quotes still exist, but that they are at Harvard, but that they too have been digitized and may be read online. I nearly swooned.

So, what makes Universalist worship Universalist? What keys do we have, if we want to build on a tradition?

It turns out that it’s harder to say than in other denominational traditions, including the Unitarian. The problem may date to the beginning, by which I mean the 1790 Philadelphia Convention, where the assembled delegates claimed, “as we have no rules laid down in the word of God to direct us in our choice of a mode or form of public worship, it is recommended to each Church to use such modes and forms of prayer, and to sing such psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs, as to them shall appear most agreeable to the word of God, or best suited to promote order, and spiritual edification.” Not a sense shared by many of their contemporaries! Whether this was an act of liberality, or a politic act of evasion, I will leave for you to decide.

Universalism was made up of different streams, united by a common hope in a common salvation. Other doctrines were a matter of liberty — one reason theological unitarianism had a place — and so much for liturgy, too. As such, the various hymnals and worship books had denominational sponsorship and could be widely adopted and still be entirely optional.

After the Civil War, institutional Universalism congealed around a common program and denominational governance. The theologial schools and denomintational press were growing in influence, and yet there was little discussion about how this new structure applied to worship. Prayerbooks could go out without a preface; liturgists, like Charles Hall Leonard, could write the works, but scarcely say what they intended.

So, where to look for clues? Private papers? Articles in the weekly papers, as yet little digitized? But it may be as subtle as examining the more popular texts themselves, and see what was used, discern what the source documents were — the Episcopal Church’s Book of Common Prayer and the prayerbooks of James Martineau, surely — and see what they thought to change…

So, I was talking with some friends about what I to see in a Christian church conference, and opined, I’d like to see it

• coffee
• morning prayer and communion with sermon
• a good lecture [with a home-grown lecturer]
• a (re-)introduction to unconference meetings (people will need to be prep-ed ahead of time)
• one workshop session
• lunch
• two more sessions
• evening prayer
• dinner out

And after a moment’s thought added.

If I got that kind of day twice a year, with a cheery Christmas and Easter service, I’d be set.

OK, perhaps add a the odd social event and a good, encouraging and informational monthly or biweekly email and I’d be set. Most of the time. It may not be church as we’ve known it, and indeed it might not even be governed as a church as we’ve had it — but I bet a religious option like this would appeal to people not currently served, and with fewer resources thanit takes to run a church.

I have two closely-named domains that I’m trying to make better use of. Here’s an update.

1. UniversalistChristian.net started out as a mirror of the historical documents I kept at UniversalistChurch.net — I’ve been having problem with that domain; to be fixed — and thus is the clearest continuation of the websites I started in 1996. I’ve made it a bit cleaner, and, in time, want to give it a better typographical presence as outlined by Matthew Butterick. I’ll also be cleaning up typos in the worship section and adding new content.
2. UniversalistChristian.org was most recently (and until yesterday) a sandbox for the new UU WordPress theme. But that’s a waste of the domain, so I’ve taken it down and am reserving it for a companion project to UniversalistChristian.net, and in so doing, will give them proper names.

I’m working on some Universalist liturgy projects and have been keenly feeling both the generations of lost ecumenical interchange, and the lost reasoning that lead to the texts we do have. So I decided to read some older works to fill in the missing pieces with the goal of working towards the present.

I happened across “The Reform of Liturgical Worship Perspectives and Prospects” (The Bohlen Lectures 1959) by Massey Hamilton Shepherd, Jr.

This gave me a sense of the development of American Episcopalian liturgical development from the Ritualists to his own time, halfway between the prayer book revisions of 1928 and 1979.

And it it, I found a reference to the 1867 The Book of Common Prayer: as amended by the Westminster Divines, A.D. 1661, also known as the Presbyterian Book of Common Prayer by Charles W. Shields, but particularly the appended essay Liturgia Expurgata which fills in for that work a lineage that I wished the contemporary (1866) Universalist A Book of Prayer for the Church and the Home had. Indeed, I wonder if it was on the desks of those Universalists, especially Charles Hall Leonard, who developed the longer-lasting tradition of Universalist prayer books that ran in successive editions and abridgments through the 1950s.

I do love census data. I’m no geographer, but it helps me understand something of a place, when I look its demographics. A few days ago, I mentioned one tool, and tweeted about it.

@bitb @jalbertbowdenii related project that I worked on: https://t.co/jP5f4Dwafw

— Ian Dees (@iandees) April 12, 2016

That led a participant in another not altogether different project point out his: Census Reporter. Which is funny, because I had run across it at Day Job before, and really liked it then. So thanks to Ian for reminding me, and now I’m sharing it with you.

And (fun fact) you can embed it’s charts. Here, for example, is commuting data — a proxy for how and how far people will go to get to church — for Ocean County, New Jersey, where Universalist pioneer John Murray landed in the New World.

There are lots of reasons named for why churches are changing, such a more secular culture, wider social options and the rise of the Internet. But reasons related to resources make the most sense to me. Is this thing — an organized religious life — worth money to me? And time… is it worth my time? Increasingly, the answer is no.

Time to attend services — and commute to them. That’s a problem for Unitarian Universalists outside Massachusetts, who are usually organized at the municipal or multi-country level. And it means that the volunteer time we ask of people should be valued very highly. Perhaps so highly that some labor-intensive activities need to vanish.

They can be retired, left to starve from disinterest or (worse) be resented for the precious labor they demand. Volunteers deserve to be treated as scarce and valuable resource; if not, others will do a better job tending to them and the churches will really be strapped.

“Value of Volunteer Time Up 49 Cents in 2015” (Philanthropy News Digest)

Remember those expensive demographic surveys — Precept, Proscript, something — that the districts provided for church planting, say, 15 years ago.

OK: perhaps not. After all, they were expensive.

Well, I learned today that ESRI — and no particular endorsement for ESRI, by the way — has a map-based zip code look-up tool. Not the same thing, but it does suggest where you might want to target in-person (or postal ?) outreach activity, and what the people who live in that zip code likely value.

Oh, I’m sure it’s a gateway to more refined data, at a cost, I’m sure. But we’re hardly ready for that kind of granular data (for new churches, anyway) yet —

In the meantime, here is a link to the demographic profiles and segmentation overview.

Did you know there’s a Hosea Ballou hymn still in current use? Of course, not among us. It’s kept alive by shape-note singers.

Come, let us raise our voices high,
And form a sacred song,
To Him who rules the earth and sky,
And does our days prolong.
Who through the night gave us to rest,
This morning cheered our eyes;
And with the thousands of the blest,
In health made us to rise.

Early to God we’ll send our prayer,
Make haste to pray and praise,
That He may make our good His care,
And guide us all our days.
And when the night of death comes on,
And we shall end our days;
May His rich grace the theme prolong
Of His eternal praise.

Here’s a video, from a singing convention in Ireland.

The Board of Trustees of the Unitarian Universalist Association posted the packet for its forthcoming (April 15-16) meeting — and the April meeting is always the best. Why? It’s when you’re most likely to see applications for membership, and the most applications — and this is no exception. [Fixed typos.]

So I will presumptively congratulate the forty-two members of the (PDF link) Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Benton County, Bentonville, Arkansas, and wish them well and many years of prosperity and ministry.

But the summary memo (PDF) that announced the Bentonville congregation application also noted that two other churches — All Souls Church (Belgrade and Oakland, Maine) and the Hattiesburg (Miss.) Unitarian Universalist Fellowship — had disbanded, and that the Redding, California congregation has applied to re-classed as a “covenenting community” which by definition  (PDF) is not a member congregation. So not all good news.

Christ is risen!
Khristós anésti!
Kristo leviĝis!

I would love it if we adopted the Paschal troparion, but we can, of course, hear it in another voice…

And sing, chant or recite an anthem found in our traditionEaster.

Rom. vi. 9, and 1 Cor. xv. 20.

Christ, being raised from the dead, dieth no more : death hath no more dominion over him.

For in that he died, he died unto sin once : but in that he liveth, he liveth unto God.

Likewise reckon ye also yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin : but alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Christ is risen from the dead: and become the first-fruits of them that slept.

For since by man came death : by man came also the resurrection of the dead.

For as in Adam all die: even so in Christ shall all be made alive.

Now unto the God of grace : for the might of his Spirit and the love of Christ;

Be glory in the Church throughout all ages: worid without end. Amen.

Happy Easter!
Alleluia!

I was reading a part of Ann Lee Bressler’s The Universalist Movement in America, 1770-1880, when I ran across this:

Until it ceased publication in 1891, the Universalist Quarterly supplied a forum for those thinkers who, like the neo-orthodox theologians several decades later, objected to the increasingly pervasive theme of continuity between the present world and the divine, “the major positive principle of the liberal mind.” (p. 144)

I have long read the Universalist Quarterly and General Review, first for background for my never-written master’s thesis, and later for Richard Eddy’s multi-part “Universalist Conventions and Creeds.” But you don’t have to read them on microfilm any more. Several volumes have been scanned and may be read online or downloaded. It’s a good read, and is a counter to the oft-repeated trope that Universalists were unsophisticated.

Note: some of these are misnumbered. This is not the scanner’s fault, but the original publisher’s.

Alsos, not all volumes are online, but I’ll keep looking and filling in missing volumes.

• 1844
• 1845, vol. 2
• 1846, vol. 3
• 1847, vol. 4
• 1848, vol. 5
• 1849, vol. 6; also here but mistitled
• 1850, vol. 7
• 1851, vol. 8; also here but mistitled
• 1852
• 1853, vol. 10; also here
• 1854, vol. 11; also here
• 1855, vol. 12
• 1856, vol. 13
• 1857
• 1858
• 1859
• 1860
• 1861, vol. 18
• 1862
• 1863, vol. 20; also here but mistitled
• 1864, new series vol. 1
• 1865
• 1866
• 1867
• 1868, new series vol. 5
• 1869
• 1870
• 1871, new series vol. 8
• 1872, new series vol. 9
• 1873
• 1874
• 1875, new series vol. 12
• 1876
• 1877, new series vol. 14
• 1878
• 1879
• 1880
• 1881; new series vol. 18; mistitled
• 1882, new series vol. 19; mistitled
• 1883
• 1884, new series vol. 21; also here but mislabled
• 1885
• 1886
• 1887, new series vol. 24; mistitled
• 1888
• 1889
• 1890, new series vol. 27; mistitled
• 1891

So, can you count the ways you use a smart phone? Here’s another for you: as the working end of an inexpensive DIY image “scanner” for religious texts. This setup, depicted with a workflow, at the Open Siddur Project, might be just the thing for recording church archives or other documents that shouldn’t be lain on a flatbed scanner.

“Text Imaging” (Open Siddur Project)

I thought I’d share this picture of the Palm Sunday window at Universalist National Memorial Church, Washington, D.C.

A handy set of links for those researching Universalists.

The Universalist register and almanac

• 1840.

The Universalist Companion, with Almanac and Register

• 1858.
• 1859.
• 1860.
• 1861.
• 1862.
• 1863.
• 1864.
• 1865.
• 1866.

The Universalist Companion, with an Almanac and Register

• 1867. lower quality copy.
• 1868.
• 1869.
• 1870.
• 1871.
• 1872.

The Universalist Register

• 1875. (“No. XL.”)
• 1876.
• 1877.
• 1878.
• 1879.
• 1880.
• 1881.
• 1882.

• 1884.
• 1885.
• 1886.
• 1887.
• 1888.
• 1889.
• 1890.
• 1891.
• 1892.
• 1893.
• 1894.
• 1895.
• 1896.
• 1897.
• 1898.
• 1899.
• 1900.
• 1901.
• 1902.
• 1903.
• 1904.
• 1905.
• 1906.
• 1907.
• 1908. (subtitled, “The Yearbook of the Universalist Church”)
• 1912. (subtitled, “The Yearbook for 1912.”)

Well, the housing block for General Assembly opened this week, and althought there was a false start that allowed some people to register on February 29, I can’t complain because I got a room!

I will attend Columbus, Ohio General Assembly of the Unitarian Universalist Association this year.

It’s long been my opinion that you can get a lot done at General Assembly — so long as you don’t rely on the formal agenda. I treat the experience as an opportunity: the people who are likely to help you get something done are more likely to be in that one place, so here’s an easy way to build the relationships and dream big. I intend to meet a lot of people for coffee and lunch and beer.

But the area around the convention center doesn’t look great for easy dining, so I’ll review by notes from the Disciple of Christ, who had their General Assemly there last year. Posts and maps forthcoming.

And if you’re interested in taking to me at GA, please get in touch.

It’s funny — I am, quite deliberately, not a member of the Unitarian Universalist Ministers Association, but its Guidelines continually affect me, and all Unitarian Universalists. In particular, there is a troubling culture that has grown up around one of the expectations of conduct:

I will not speak scornfully or in derogation of any colleague in public. In any private conversation concerning a colleague, I will speak responsibly and temperately. I will not solicit or encourage negative comments about a colleague or their ministry.

These Expectations of Conduct apply to all forms of public or private media including electronic and internet communications.

Which is fine, as written, and a bit embarrassing that it needs to be spelled out.

But the rule, as applied, has grown legs and can run. Too often, it claims the power of “covenant,” which so far as I can tell means “because I said so” and which really comes from our Unitarian and New England-ish approach to interpersonal power.

That power gave us strength — in the past. The kind of principled, theological debate that once marked our traditions is long gone. So, there’s a decided chill to not only not “speak scornfully or in derogation” but to not speak negatively about another minister, his or her thoughts or behavior or conduct in the ministry. Or really say anything that could be read negatively. I’ve spoken to several ministers over the years who have decided to self-censor and not criticize or challenge bad ideas for fear of being hauled up on charges of unprofessional conduct. There’s no reason someone’s reputation should be menaced by a fragile personality, yet our system allows it.

And we are the more bland, insular and stupid for it.

We are at the beginning of an over-long campaign for the presidency of the Unitarian Universalist Association, a position that (for the life of me) I can’t imagine anyone wanting. Two ministers were nominated, one has since dropped out. Another candidate, almost certainly a minister, will be presented by the same nominating committee to be run though an ersatz grassroots nomination by petition. I suspect others will see the opportunity and run. The process is in tatters, but where is the analysis? Ministers are candidates, nominators, campaign supporters, whips, funders and voters. What, in our subdued culture, is right to say?  I suspect we can demand little from ministers, and get less. How is that leadership? What can we demand of the candidates in public, however nominated?

I add in public because when there’s a pressure not to speak candidly, back-channels and coded language takes its place, in this election and in all our business.

So, first, let’s look at this rule and not over-function. To “speak scornfully or in derogation” assumes the application of emotion over reason, and presumably to speak against the person — ad hominem — and not the ideas, prospect, record or plans. It means to use the rhetorical skills associated with the ministry carefully, and the care means asking those tough questions — in public — among the ministerial college.  Apply the rule as written.

Our heritage, dignity and reputation demand nothing less.

This is another one of those notes-to-self for later, and perhaps to inspire others to try. Putting the log back into blog. While I’d love to learn enough Python or what-have-you to scrape the data from a website, the following tools got the job done.

• Import.io to do the heavy lifting of scraping. The best option I found in an exhaustive half hour of searching and testing.
• Open Refine to split columns where I wanted, though that’s only a part of its power
• Using a spreadsheet as a crowbar to make sure the data was in the right columns. Open Refine probably is the right tool, but good ol’ LibreOffice Calc got the job done.

And pen and index cards, to note what I did so before I try and scrape data from another site, I’ll do a better job.

I don’t have time to write about it now, but Sue Phillips announced this morning that she is withdrawing from the race for the presidency of the Unitarian Universalist Association. This is bad news for her and for the UUA, and it sets up a crisis for the new and untested process for selecting a new president.

It also creates an unequal power relationship for any candidate that may now come forward, and privileges established power centers that might want to put forward a candidate.

I’ll be writing more on this subject later, and as the news develops.

So, Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia has died, and I’ve seen how careful ministers have been to keep a neutral, even upbeat tone. Variations on this theme are calls to “stay classy” or “remember that he was a child of God” or that he had “inherent worth and dignity,” the last quoting the Principles and Purposes of the Unitarian Universalist Association. Note the forms of these admonitions; I certainly did. I’d call the tone “policing.”

Let’s review. Scalia had a lifetime appointment to one of the world’s most powerful institutions, and in his time made decisions with the majority that were harmful to the nation, and others, had he been in the majority, would have harmed more. Like many other gay people, I recall with disgust his minority opinion on Lawrence v. Texas, made just days before my church wedding with my husband. This is not ancient history. Had he retired from the bench, I probably would not care so much, but had he continue to live, he could have continued to act. Remember that at the next billionaire-bought election, if indeed you’ll be able to vote. His death is both the end of his life, and the end of this work.

Still, I am worried about the actions of the living to minimize over Scalia’s record, and emphasize the private man. This looks like an attempt to play nice and minimize conflict, and that’s dishonest. The people he hurt have to pay for this dishonest accounting of his life’s work. How is that fair?

Since I write theologically, I’d like to focus on ministers and their responses. I’ve seen not one “well, thank God, that’s over” though that’s arguably a biblical response. Or even a “the less said, the better” which is reasonably diplomatic. There have been, I note, plenty of comments about his colleague and opera buddy Ruth Bader Ginsburg, like their friendship is supposed to make it all OK. Or his intellect, like smart or charming people can’t be rogues. Or in consideration of his family, like the rest of us don’t have them, but indeed, thanks to the Windsor decision (again Scalia going out of his way in his dissent) my family is safer.

When ministers defend the powerful in death — particularly those who were equally repulsed by the decedent — it tells me a lot about what side they’re on. It’s the side of authority itself, and telegraphs the power of authority over justice, the power of niceness over goodness. Perhaps it’s a fear of stirring up trouble in the church, and so again those who are hurt stay hurt. Some people will praise you for your temperate words, but others will remember that your judgment cannot be trusted when it matters. And that our behavior, the behavior of everyday people, must be managed because someone more powerful than we has died. Genteel coverups happen — though I hope it happens less — when misconducting ministers die, for instance.

“But Scott, you’re a Universalist. Isn’t God’s nature love?” You bet. Love, but not everything-goes, and I stand in our tradition here. There are two main streams of Universalist thought, but in mature (post-Civil War) Universalism, the restorationist stream was by far the stronger and, I think, the more compelling. That is, through our acts, including repentance, we are restored to God. The process may be slow and faltering, and (this is where Universalists differ from other Christians) does not end with death. God’s salvation will be complete, but surely not immediate. There’s no need to re-write Scalia into a fictional, better man before he’s cremated. God won’t be fooled; there’s no need to try and fool ourselves, either.

As a Universalist, I believe in a continuity between this life and the next. Death does not seal one’s fate. Death is not more powerful than God’s care. But it does break human relationships. Dead people cannot heal the harm they cause, and they cannot further harm the living. That’s good news to anyone who’s been hurt by someone who has since died. Nor should you be pressured into a hasty forgiveness. The work of reconciliation is between the dead and God, to be resolved and cured in time. Death doesn’t seal one’s fate, and doesn’t make them good either.

I would caution people to not forgive Scalia because it’s the nice thing to do, or expected of them. He did not repent of his action, nor seek your forgiveness. Quite the opposite. It is the way of the powerful to expect rules to apply to you and not to them. Do not comply. You are not the unreconciled party. And now that he’s gone, Scalia will have to manage with God’s docket; you do not have to plead to him, or for him.

Over the years, I’ve run across smallish, say 8×10 posters, with the Universalist “Five Principles” (click the link to download a copy) on them, clearly intended for domestic use and personal inspiration. And I know the Universalists were not opposed to the use of religious art in the home, and particularly with children, and particularly if the art was was sufficient quality. But more that this, apart from t-shirts, we lack the elements of material culture — the stuff — that develop a sense of belonging.

But this was an expensive endeavor, and I can imagine a publications manager, some decades ago, having masses of unsold, faded and dog-eared prints hauled to the landfill. Inspirational poster art has withered away among the Unitarian Universalists, probably everywhere else, too. But there’s no excuse for it.

Anyone on Facebook knows there’s a market for it, it’s never been cheaper or easier to create the images, and print it. Or, for the first time, practically ask people to have it printed locally.

NASA just released a set of imaginative retro-futurist travel posters which could act as a model for a revived poster project. Or at least as an inspiration…

This is one of those blog posts that act as a note-to-self. and, I hope help others in the same boat. If you have a SnapScan 1300 portable and want to use it on Ubuntu Linux 14.04 LTS, follow these directions. They worked for me. (I found that from this page, so thanks all around.)

Wednesday, February 3. The deadline was pushed back, so today is the last day to certify, if you’re in one of the 148 remaining congregations!

I’m fond of certification time for the UUA. It’s when I get new data to analyze. But for congregations, it’s an important annual task. Without it, no voting representation at General Assembly. And I’ve noticed that churches that don’t tend to register are often not long for this world. Don’t tempt fate; certify.

All congregations must have filed for certification by 5 p.m. PST on February 1, 2016, in order to be certified for GA. Only certified congregations may send voting delegates to the 2016 General Assembly.

There are 383 uncertified congregations right now. I know many will certify over the weekend. Don’t let yours be left out.

So, an interesting bit of news: that a Unitarian Universalist House of Studies is opening at the Methodist Theological School in Ohio “early in 2016.” This was announced yesterday.

No, at first I thought this an audacious move. There are two Christian Church (Disciples of Christ)-related houses of study, respectively affiliated at Vanderbilt and the University of Chicago. These have buildings, including student housing, a developed program and formal denominational recognition. Likewise, the “General Convention” Swedenborgians transformed its freestanding seminary, taking from a small Cambridge, Massachusetts institution and embedded itself into Pacific School of Religion in Berkeley. These are seminaries in miniature, and the UU program at MTSO isn’t that. And that’s worth noting in case it’s written off as a pale imitation.

But Duke Divinity School has two “houses of study” (for Baptists and Episcopalians/Anglicans respectively) that’s more of a student nexus with an academic track. Something more programmatic than institutional, and that may be the model Dean Lisa Withrow and Susan Ritchie, the house of studies director, who the announcement describes as the minister of her church and “immediate past trustee and secretary on the national board of the Unitarian Universalist Association.” Nothing about her role at the Starr King School for the Ministry, which is itself strange and noticeable. But as a program with in a school, rather than alongside a school is quite reasonable.

In this light, perhaps this house of studies will be seen as a rival of Starr King, or even the much closer Meadville Lombard. But aren’t all schools that aren’t one of these — I didn’t go to either for what it’s worth — and the house of studies still functionally in the experimental phase. I am concerned that MTSO is one of the smaller contributors to the Unitarian Universalist ministerial college. If I were to develop one strategically, perhaps Boston University or Wesley here in D.C., where there are a significant number of congregations for field education. (There are only five UU congregations within 50 miles of MTSO, and only one has more than a 150 members. Field education needs field supervision.)

Which brings me to my point: this looks less like an alternative to Starr King or Meadville Lombard than an alternative to the fading option of Andover Newton. And its role in forming Unitarian Universalist ministers will be hard to replace, so good luck to the UU house of studies. It’ll be interesting to see how it develops.

The first two installments (1, 2) of this review series makes the third very easy — and satisfying. Until we have a chance to sample more vegan hams, Lam Sheng Kee Vegetarian Ham (Bacon Flavor) will be the one we will buy for hot and cold ham eating.

But to be clear, I mean “ham lunch meat” substitute, not country ham or honey-spiral-thingy. It’s not as sweet as the chicken flavored ham, but not as smoky as breakfast bacon either. Just think ham lunch meat. It’s chewy without being gummy, flavorful but not cloying and — in one hot preparation — made a delicious fried rice. Fine, as long as you don’t oversell it. $10 for the kilogram log.

If you find it (or the chicken flavor ham) please note it in the comments.

Let me start by saying I really like this product. Even if it has about two too many words in its name. I think “vegetarian ham” is easier to understand than a “chicken ham.” After all, a vegetarian analog is like the meaty original, but made without animals. But is a vegetarian chicken ham a now-meat-free version of a ham, but originally made with bird flesh? Or pork, made like bird, but now made with soy?

It’s none of these, I gather. It’s light, savory, lightly spiced vegetarian product that I’d call “imitation chicken lunch meat”– which I think gets the point across, even if that might not pass regulatory muster, and again suffers for having two too many words in it. And to be clear, it’s like a processed chicken product, like the inner part of a chicken nugget, so don’t expect long fibers of imitation meat.

A confession. I don’t think I ate this one hot, but it has probably enough flavor to stand up in a soup. Indeed, next time I hope to make a pot pie with it. But it’s so delicious cold that this is how we plowed through it. Often in strips on a plate with other food, or sandwiches. I think this is the same product that my go-to Vietnamese Buddhist restaurant serves in slivers in a cold lotus root salad (Gỏi ngó sen). Both the restaurant and the supermarket where we got the Lam Sheng Kee Vegetarian Ham (Chicken Flavor) is at the Eden Center, in Falls Church, in the suburbs of Washington, D.C. It comes frozen, in a 1 kilogram log for about $10 at the Good Fortune Supermarket.

My mother used to make a perfect-to-spread “blender chicken salad” and I think this product would be ideal for it. Other ingredients to buy would be the vegan Just Mayo (at Target) and vegan Worcestershire sauce. This used to be easy to find: just get the cheapest brand. But now they all have anchovies. The same supermarket has large, cheap bottles of vegan Worcestershire sauce, from Taiwan, with the soy sauce — a bit thinner than I like, but it’s not that you use much, right?

In any case, this vegan ham is a winner, and I’ll buy it again. But what if you wanted ham ham? That’s for next time.

At the risk of dissuading all of you from trying a vegan ham, Hubby and I started on the one we had never seen before and which — to be fair — didn’t even describe itself as ham or any kind of meat.

Introducing the Chef Bowl Frz. Soy Protein Food.

It weighs 1050 grams, so slightly larger than the others to be reviewed, which are 1000 grams. All cost pennies less than $10, and we bought them at the Good Fortune Supermarket, at the Eden Center in Falls Church, Virginia.

It’s slightly chewy, slightly spongy and eraser pink all the way through and so a better comparable might be cheap bologna (though not so fatty) than ham. Like bologna, it didn’t have much flavor and what flavor it did have wasn’t quite what you’d call ham-like. It was insipid in black-eyed peas.

The two things that it has going for it is that you can buy a half-sized log and that if it’s your only option it is better than nothing. I might bake it to warm through and serve it with a sweet-sour condiment like fried apples or pineapple, or cube it for fried rice. But we have better options and so I’ll buy those — and later review them — instead. It also had fewer ingredients than other vegan hams, but given its other failings, I’ll not call that a plus.

Nutritional info from My Fitness Pal

Nothing seems to attract so much derision in a vegetarian diet as the prospect of a vegetarian ham.

Some, more serious vegetarians object to mock meats, and I’ve heard enough non-vegetarians dismiss the idea with disgust. “Why not eat the real thing?” But nobody looks at a sausage and asks, “why don’t you eat real snake?”

The fact is I liked ham before, and just because I don’t eat animals, it doesn’t mean I don’t tidbits of something chewy, smoky and savory in a hot or cold dish. That’s good enough to call it ham. Or even Spam. I liked it fried, in sandwiches, after all. If I can have that in a format I’m willing to eat, I will.

And they exist, in several different brands. But they’re almost all imported from Taiwan frozen, in one kilogram logs so large they can be fairly mistaken as a weapon. They’re not particulary easy to get, and a kilogram is a lot if you don’t like it. But I’ve never seen reviews (in English anyway, and the only other language I read is Esperanto.)

I want to help other would-be vegetarian ham eaters. My husband Jonathan and I bought three of these frozen ham logs — all vegan; be warned, some exist with egg white — over the Christmas holiday. As we eat them, I’ll review them.

Continuing the long-dormant transcription project of lessons and propers from A Free Church Book of Common Prayer (1929). The Universalist A book of prayer for the church and the home (1866) does not have these occasions.

Saint Stephen.

December 26th.

Collect.

GRANT, O Lord, that, in all our suffering here upon the earth for the testimony of the truth, we make steadfastly look up to heaven, and by faith behold the glory that shall be revealed; and, being filled with the Holy Ghost, may learn to love and bless our persecutors by the example of thy first martyr Saint Stephen, who prayed for his murderers, O blessed Jesus, standest at the right hand of God to succour all those that suffer for thee, our only Mediator and Advocate. Amen.

¶ One or more of the collects for Christmas Day maybe may also be said.

For Epistle: Acts vii, 55-60 (end).
Gospel: Matt. xxiii, 34-39 (end).

Saint John the Evangelist

December 27th.

Collect.

MERCIFUL LORD, we beseech thee to cast thy bright beams of light upon thy Church, that it being enlightened by the doctrine of thy blessed apostle and evangelist Saint John may so walk in the light of thy truth, that it may at length attain to the light of the everlasting life; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

¶ One or more of the collects for Christmas Day maybe may also be said.

Epistle: 1 John i, 1-10 (end), or, Ecclus, xv, 1-6.
Gospel: John xxi, 20-25 (end).

The Holy Innocents.

December 28th.

Collect.

O ALMIGHTY GOD, who out of the mouths of babes and sucklings hast ordained strength, and madest infants to glorify thee by their deaths; mortify and kill all the vices in us, and so strengthen us by thy grace, that by the innocency of our lives, and constancy of our faith even after death, we make glorify thy holy Name; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

¶ One or more of the collects for Christmas Day maybe may also be said.

For Epistle: Rev. xiv, 1-5.
Gospel: Matt. ii, 13-21.

About three years ago, I started a project where I compared the one-year lectionaries, with accompanying collects (prayers), of a nineteenth-century Universalist prayerbook and an English twentieth-century work that tried to restore liturgial worship to historic dissenter churches, project that reminds me of the work of James Martineau.

And here’s a direct link to that.

It is largely complete, but I realized that in moving the content from Boy in the Bands to this domain, I let the links to this and other liturgical resources vanish. I’ve fixed that, and this week will fill in the missing propers for the days after Christmas.

I’ve been thinking about Christmas Eve and Christmas Day services, as one does at Christmas.

I’ve long thought that a model 40-minute long service could be a helpful resource for churches to have, and have thought about what it might include, but haven’t made the case out loud of why 40 minutes. After all, it made a lot of sense to me but I wasn’t trying to convince anyone of it.

But if 40 minutes, then why not 20 or 10? Well, those could make sense too, but for different reasons, and that made me think of use cases. So before working out what those services might include, I wanted to think of adequate occasions for having them.

The 40-minute service might make sense:

• For Christmas Day in a congregation wanting to develop a custom, but with few resources or committed attendees.
• For an additional Christmas eve service: perhaps one more lean and more subdued for an adult audience who does want to be left out of the season, but doesn’t want the full blowout. Or doesn’t want to be left out of dinner reservations!
• For a smaller church that shares a minister with another congregation, and needs to keep the liturgy short. Or uses borrowed or rented meeting space and can’t run long.

If the 40-minute service is to make the most of the available options, a 20-minute service might be needed when there are no other options.

• An opt-in service at a workplace where the staff cannot attend a service at a church. In the breakroom, with people eating a meal as it goes on?
• Before a group sets out on a trip or service project.
• In very remote places, or in places where the language of worship is a minority language in the community, under the heading “it’s better than nothing at all.”

To those used to “the worship hour” this may seen lean, but morning or evening prayer can certainly be said within 20 minutes, and I attended a minor saint’s day communion service once many years ago that I timed to exactly 17 minutes.

It’s easier to imagine these led by a trained or experienced lay person.

A 10-minute service make sense for the benefit of one person, or a small group of people. Someone sick or near the end of life, for whom not only is there no option of going to church, but may only have a limited capacity to participate. The service may be at bedside; communion comes to mind. This suggests a less casual approach and pastoral direction, or at least pastoral support, and may be some other time than December 24 or 25.

So, dear readers, do these seem like approximately correct use cases?

Thanks for returning to the pulpit

My thanks to UNMC pastors Crystal Lewis and Dave Gatton for having me return to the pulpit this morning, and thanks to you as we mark this third Sunday in Advent.

"Sing praises"

As we heard a few minutes ago, Isaiah said:

"Sing praises to the LORD, for he has done gloriously; let this be known in all the earth. Shout aloud and sing for joy, O royal Zion, for great in your midst, is the Holy One of Israel." (Isaiah 12:5-6)

Let this be known in all the earth…

But how, friends, shall we sing praises, among ourselves, much less all the earth?

Since the last time I was in this pulpit, the world — if anything — seems dimmer. Not only are there more people desperate to flee violence in the Middle East, South Asia, the Horn of Africa and elsewhere, but the violence in Paris and San Bernardino makes it seem that the most vulnerable people are the first to be blamed. Indeed, we have one presidential candidate who has gone farther to stir up viscousness that I thought possible — so far that xenophobic politicians can use him for cover.

And this says nothing about the older wounds fading from the news cycle, or the private hurts. The losses, the slights, the could-have-beens and what-never-will-bes at home, at work and in the wider world.

In short, there doesn’t seem to be very much to be happy about. And yet I feel a lot of expectation to be happy, with Christmas coming, and everything.

How can we look at our world and and hope that joy will follow?

We tend to chose the wrong frame

But I’m not ready for Christmas

I’ve not bought a single present for Christmas. I’ve not decided on what cards to send, or if we’re even sending cards from home. I’ve not even bought stamps.

Perhaps it’s the warm weather. It doesn’t feel like Christmas yet. And that’s not even taking into account how sad and miserable Christmas can be. Like when someone you love has died and won’t be here this Christmas. Or when you have to disappoint someone because the girt is wrong or the travel is too difficult. In those cases, it doesn’t feel like it’s time for joy.

But it’s not just Christmas. We are fixed to our calendars

We mark our whole lives with calendars. Even before we are born, our development is marked and measured in weeks. As children, our lives our tied to school calendars, and often, as adults, to quarterly reports and fiscal years.

This time of the year, we are particularly aware of our calendars. So much ends with December, and if you work in a nonprofit, for instance, you know that this is the time to bring donations in. And time to buy a new calendar for 2016. The predictability of calendars is part of the appeal, I suppose.

Calendars aren’t appropriate

But I think calendars, by simply existing can mislead us — mislead us into thinking that God’s desire for us can also be measured and scheduled.

If you can measure or schedule something — like joy — you risk acting like you have more control over than you really do. And I don’t mean a pink candle, a cross-country flight or a doctor’s appointment, as much as compartmentalizing our lives. Deferring everyday pleasures in hope of really enjoying something, somehow, sometime in the future.

But life is too short and too uncertain to be compartmentalized.

And I believe that we were made for happiness. And that we can and we should live our lives accordingly.

Joy, in particular, cannot be scheduled. It can be found or cultivated, but it cannot be scheduled.

So how can we find or cultivate it? We have some unlikely resources. Consider John the Baptist.

John the Baptist

According to the passage we heard this morning,

John said to the crowds that came out to be baptized by him, "You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?

This is not what I associate with joy, you? But then again, John’s an unlikely character. But he’s certainly not someone who was likely to compartmentalize his life. What you see is what you get.

Usually depicted as a liminal, almost wild figure. He was probably acetic, certainly an apocalyptic, and given his diet of locusts and wild honey — he was definitely Paleo.

His camel hair suit sounds scratchy (Matthew 3:4) and I suspect he smelled less than fresh.

But John was the forerunner, anticipating Jesus. When Mary spoke to Elizabeth, John — still in utero — John lept for joy. We’re supposed to see him as a part of God’s greater purpose, and that’s not a tragic role.

Joy is more than getting what you want and when you want it. I wouldn’t go so far as to say that John wasjolly, but he know what he was, know what he had to do, and saw it faithfully to the end.

How many of us can say that of our own lives? And what we do to know ourselves so deeply, to know what we must to fully, and saw it through completely? And if the outcome was goodness, in what was would that not be joy?

The Winchester Profession

Each week we recite the freewill declaration of faith that this church adopted in 2008. Before that, we recited the officially adopted declaration of faith that Universalists adopted in 1899.

But that was itself an interpretation — and not a replacement — for the cornerstone document of Universalist faith. It was adopted in 1803 in Winchester, New Hampshire, and so is commonly called the Winchester Profession. Its three articles are short enough to be printed on an index card. Here’s the whole thing:

1. We believe that the Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testament contain a revelation of the character of God, and of the duty, interest and final destination of mankind.

2. We believe that there is one God, whose nature is Love, revealed in one Lord Jesus Christ, by one Holy Spirit of Grace, who will finally restore the whole family of mankind to holiness and happiness.

3. We believe that holiness and true happiness are inseparably connected, and that believers ought to be careful to maintain order and practice good works; for these things are good and profitable unto men.

There’s a lot going on there.

The Winchester Profession isn’t just focused on the nature of God or human destiny, but on how we should live our faith, and not simply think about it.

First, while we as Universalists speak about a lot about "the final destination" of the human family, our heritage puts equal weight on discerning our "duty" from scripture. A duty that isn’t spelled out.

Second, that this final destination has a character derived not from chance or fortune or luck, but from God’s own nature, and that this nature is love. Universalists would quibble that it’s wrong to say we will be restored, as there was no factual Garden of Eden. Our common past might be mythic, but they agreed on the source of our hope for a common future.

Third, and this is the kicker…

Say, do you have a phrase that you go back to in times of stress. A quiet mantra that helps you frame difficult problem?

After the Lord’s Prayer, my go-to phrase comes from the Winchester Profession.

"Holiness and true happiness are inseparably connected."

This little phrase reminds me of something early Universalists wanted to remind themselves and others. Just because God is loving, and will save all — it doesn’t mean that you can do just what you want.

What is holiness?

For one thing, we have to face the idea of holiness, and that’s going to be hard. For many of us, holiness is tied up from childhood with an expectation that God has prepared a list of dos and don’ts. If that was the case, correct living is a simple as doing certain things and not doing others. Mostly the don’ts.

We saw this dynamic vividly this year in Kentucky. We remember Rowan County clerk Kim Davis, who famously defied federal court orders to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples. News coverage focused on the how, and less on the why.

But when I heard that she was a member of a Oneness Pentecostal church, it all made sense. Those churches practice what’s called outward holiness. Some unkind commentators pointed out her unfashionable clothes, unmade-up face and uncoiffed hair. But looking plain is as much as part of her Christian witness as her refusal to issue the marriage licenses. Presumably, she also avoids movie theaters and doesn’t wear jewelry, possibly not even a wedding ring. It’s a kind of rule-based separation from the world that at the same time identifies the believer with God and — here’s the problem — sets the believer over other people.

Kim Davis may not think so, but it’s not hard to see her setting herself over other people. Wearing her faith on her sleeve and lording her authority over others.

I can respect her response to discipleship, but not its form or its effect.

At its heart, it seems based in fear, and taking it beyond Kim Davis — because she’s hardly alone in this — that this kind of holiness is holiness in name only.

So, what should she — or we — do?

Holiness is…

Our Universalist tradition offers hints to a mode of holiness that is at the same time more life-affirming and more resonant with the Gospel.

The implication is that holiness is a way of life where we grow into closeness with God. Thus, there’s no checklist.

The result of this closeness is not fear, but joy.

This closeness opens us up to be new people, unafraid of the moment’s hardships.

This closeness slowly transforms us to see other people and the world around us a God would see it.

To grow closer to God is to hope that joy may follow.

Joy may, but not necessarily, follow

I don’t want to mislead you. A life of increasing holiness and happiness takes work, and some people never know it in this life.

This isn’t the kind of thing you receive in a flash, or that gets better over a fifteen minute sermon.

Not just personal holiness

And it’s not limited to personal self-cultivation.

There is not one mode of happiness

You will never be happy — truly happy — living through someone else’s dream. Just as a you are a particular person with likes and dislikes, your vocation in God — one that will lead you to happiness and holiness — cannot be copied in full from one person to another.

Tools for finding happiness

John, for all his wild manners, did not focus on doom and punishment, but in repentance; that is, for people to find to change their lives and to live in harmony with God.

This church is a school and hospital for people who want to grow into something new.

And here Joy may follow.

Readings

Isaiah 12:2-6

Surely God is my salvation; I will trust, and will not be afraid, for the LORD GOD is my strength and my might; he has become my salvation.

With joy you will draw water from the wells of salvation.

And you will say in that day: Give thanks to the LORD, call on his name; make known his deeds among the nations; proclaim that his name is exalted.

Sing praises to the LORD, for he has done gloriously; let this be known in all the earth.

Shout aloud and sing for joy, O royal Zion, for great in your midst is the Holy One of Israel.

Luke 3:7-18

John said to the crowds that came out to be baptized by him, "You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?

Bear fruits worthy of repentance. Do not begin to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our ancestor’; for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham.

Even now the ax is lying at the root of the trees; every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire."

And the crowds asked him, "What then should we do?"

In reply he said to them, "Whoever has two coats must share with anyone who has none; and whoever has food must do likewise."

Even tax collectors came to be baptized, and they asked him, "Teacher, what should we do?"

He said to them, "Collect no more than the amount prescribed for you."

Soldiers also asked him, "And we, what should we do?" He said to them, "Do not extort money from anyone by threats or false accusation, and be satisfied with your wages."

As the people were filled with expectation, and all were questioning in their hearts concerning John, whether he might be the Messiah,

John answered all of them by saying, "I baptize you with water; but one who is more powerful than I is coming; I am not worthy to untie the thong of his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.

His winnowing fork is in his hand, to clear his threshing floor and to gather the wheat into his granary; but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire."

So, with many other exhortations, he proclaimed the good news to the people.

Benediction

Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice.

Let your gentleness be known to everyone. The Lord is near. Do not worry about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

Philippians 4:4-7

Derek McAuley, the Chief Officer of the General Assembly of Unitarian and Free Christian Churches, in Great Britain, cites an article in the current
Evening Standard

Is it true that "Away in a Manger" was first published in a Universalist hymnbook in #Boston as in tonight's ES #UU https://t.co/zdepzXBlJw

— Derek McAuley (@Derekunit) December 11, 2015

I replied:

@Derekunit Not a hymnal, but a #Universalist children's paper. The Myrtle, May 3, 1884, p. 6. pic.twitter.com/O05OKG9QDW

— Scott Wells ن (@bitb) December 11, 2015

I had never heard that connection before, and I thought I’d heard them all. I got the citation from the associated Wikipedia article, and here’s a link to that volume of The Myrtle.

So, it would be interesting to see if there is any earlier citation. It would also be interesting if the poetry of the carol compares with one of the known Univeralist poets in The Myrtle…

That said, the temperance songs on the next page are fun, if not so evergreen. Here’s the first three (of nine) stanzas of one.

I have a day off today and wanted to visit a church supply store, like I used to do. If I could only find one. There are a couple left in the inner metro D.C. area: dusty, shabby affairs featuring dubious Bible translations and sateen choir robes. That’s worse than nothing.

I thought about what’s been lost. Whittemore’s up near Boston — the grand go-to shop used by Unitarian and Universalists — has been closed for years. So too the home of a mix of practical goods (like clericals) and tcotchkes catering to Catholics up in suburban Wheaton. At some point, Ikon and Book Service, a great supplier of Eastern Christian goods near Catholic University vanished, taking my source of icons, candles, incense, even my butterlamb mold.

Not that I bought so much at any of these. But I did shop at Cokesbury at Wesley and Virginia Theological Seminary — until Cokesbury closed all of their retail stores. That hurt. And then, recently visiting the Episcopal cathedral’s once-fine bookshop (not even a supply store, per se) to discover it was little more than a souvenir stall… that was too much. There was, literally, more fudge for sale than prayer books. Make of that what you will.

This contraction predates the rise of internet bookselling — indeed, Washington, D.C. doesn’t have a single remaining mass-market bookstore left, either — and that can’t help, but I’m sure the lessening influence of churches are a problem, too. (There is the Potter House for Christian books, if not church supplies in D.C., I’ll try that tomorrow.)

So, what’s the solution? More exhibit and sales halls at church meetings? Discussion about repurposing or making church goods out of “secular” wares? Candid, independent reviews of online retailers? Asking vendors, who supply other religions’ needs, to expand their lines? (I’ve seen this in a Vietnamese shop.)

Perhaps all of these. But there’s something lost when you don’t have easy access to the material culture with which you “do” religion. Perhaps the focus on selling to the “pros” is an issue; after all, yarn and bead stores stay open, even it high-rent D.C., and those are hardly less niche.

I’m taking some time off work next week, and one of the things I’ll do is review the 100 data points I’m collecting. That is, 100 Sunday services for the four weeks of October 2015 from 25 congregations, five each from the five new UUA regions, distributed by size. This is my method.

I downloaded this year’s certification numbers. Now, this rules out the 41 congregations that did not certify, but since these tend to be overseas congregations (and not in any region anyway) and I’ve noticed before that non-registration is sometimes an early tell for congregations disbanding… well I think the certification list is a suitable list to take a sample from. The Church of the Larger Fellowship, also in no region, is an outlier and reasonably excluded.

So, I filtered by region, sorted by size, numbered the congregations and calculated how many congregation would be in the smallest 40%, the next larger 40% and the largest 20%. Then I generated a list of random numbers (YouTube video) from those three ranges. Looked up the congregations by the assigned number. Checked its website or Facebook page to see if I could find the Sunday services in October. No? Then I moved to the next on the list. Once I got two from the first group, two from the second group and one from the third group, I would move to the next region.

I collected as much information as was practical, including whether the congregation had its own minister and if the minister led the service, or a guest or affiliated minister, or a lay speaker or speaker. Plus the title or theme of the service, of course, and if there was a theme for the month.

So that’s the collection method. I’m almost done. Next, putting some numbers on the framework.

When one — say, me — complains about the failings of Unitarian Universalism, it’s easy to get hung up on national-level ministries. And that’s a problem.

For one, it’s a single point of attention, which can skew perceptions. Also, the national ministries attract participation, and that work also concentrates good and bad behavior; that might misrepresent effort. Plus, it’s in the nature of national organizanions to represent their interests as the interests of its participants, even if the participants in the provinces are in fact ignoring the national office. Lastly, if one did want to change the focus, it seems unfair to highlight the work of a particular congregation, because that means also pointing out its faults; that can be hurtful, which is itself unfair and counterproductive.

But Unitarian Universalism is (or ought to be) more than the work, though and opinion of the UUA, UUMA, the two recognized seminaries and a handful of other organizations that may or may not be functional.

I think an interesting test would be to see what people are hearing in Sunday services.

So I propose to find twenty-five congregations: five from each of the new regions, and distributed in size, chosen as randomly as possible. I will look at their October services and see what themes emerge, if any. I’ll also see how wany services are led by professional staff and what is led by visiting ministers or lay people. This might give us a clue about how congregations staff. October is good because it’s not the summer (when programs often become more informal), not “starting up the new church year” and not near Christmas or the other December holidays.

It’s the kind of survey that might take some time, and certainly one that will reveal failures in sampling part the way through. But this is informal, and still might be useful.

Is there anything you would like me to keep an eye on?

I took a course in hymnology during my Master of Divinity program at Brite Divinity School around 1996, when the Hymn Society will still housed on campus. The textbooks were written by esteemed hymnologist and minister Erik Routley (1917-1982) with the lectures supplemented by recorded lectures by Routley, helpful because hymns need to be heard and sung, and he was prone to sing fragments.

I loved that class, but I hadn’t heard the recordings again until a couple of days ago, when I discovered his Christian Hymnody series — originally issued on tape — playable online.

It covers the history of Christian hymnody though the end of the nineteenth century, and if you don’t have a background in hymnology it’ll probably help deeply. A bit of a caveat there, as I’ve not replayed it all: it runs about three hours.

Link to episode one

Later notes: It runs in a conversational style,like having dinner with a very knowledgeable person who dominates the conversation. But don’t expect to learn anything about the Eastern church. Or is it six hours? A tape has two sides, you know.

I imagine that many readers were horrified to see the news of Burundian Unitarian minister Fulgence Ndagijimana being arrested and held by police. (UUA International blog) The #ReleaseRevFulgence hashtag is laudable, but I have a bit more faith in interceding with God and the Burundian ambassador.

Here’s the letter I’m sending; you’re welcome to crib from it. And quickly.

His Excellency Ernest Ndabashinvze
Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the Republic of Burundi
2233 Wisconsin Avenue N.W., Suite 408
Washington, D.C. 20007

Your Excellency:

I learned today that a brother minister, the Rev. Fulgence Ndagijimana, of the Unitarian Church of Burundi (Eglise unitarienne du Burundi) in Bujumbura was taken into police custody around November 17, and also that members of his church are being harassed by police.

I was horrified to hear this news, and generally about the unrest in your country. Ours is a peace-loving religion, resting on a deep foundation of mutual respect. So, I respectfully ask that you do whatever you can to have the Rev. Fulgence Ndagijimana released from prison, and to have the police stop intimidating or harassing the Unitarians of Burundi.

I join hundreds of thousands of fellow believers around the word in petitioning you to help.

Sincerely yours,
(The Rev.) Scott Wells

http://www.uua.org/uuagovernance/board/packets

As much for me as for the readership. It takes me a little too long to drill down to this each time I want to see what’s in the UUA Board packet.

It has been three years since I’ve added anything to my plastic-use reduction blog, LowPlastic.com, and the domain expires today. I’ve woved the old content to here and will tagging it — if I can — “low plastic.”

If I write anything else on the subject, it will be there.

Cleaning up on a Sunday afternoon. I found one of a number of coated wire plate holders that I bought years ago at an icon shop, now gone. And while they are not a religious good per se, they are terribly useful in doing church.

The GH marks on the hinge identifies it as a Gibson Holders product, and they are still in business.

They’re good for displaying icons, framed pictures, books and the like. Think: special services, funeral. And they’re inexpensive. And they fold up nicely for easy storage.

Put a few of these on your shopping list.