“I will pray for you” and its secularized version “I’m thinking of you” are still lively expressions of concern, and often deeply valued by the person thought of or prayed for. Friends have approached me, asking for prayer, only last week.

“Of course,” I said. And I mean it, and I have a plan to fulfil that request. I will pray for you.

There’s a technique to adding petitions to collects. To review, collects (accent on the first syllable) are a variety of prayer with a particular structure, and they are typically prayed in a set series, with special collects added for particular occasions. In the morning and evening prayer the Universalists historically used, the collects come at the end. The collect “for all Conditions of Men” is a good place to add petitions, so I’ll show it as printed, and then as I pray it. Prayers for clergy and congregations (I always pray for my ministers and church, for what it’s worth), for this and other nations, for special occasions, and my blessings in this life come in other places.

As printed:

O God, the Creator and Preserver of all mankind, we humbly beseech thee for all sorts and conditions of men; that thou wouldest be pleased to make thy ways known unto them, thy saving health unto all nations. More especially we pray for the good estate of the Church Universal; that it may be so guided and governed by thy good Spirit, that all who profess and call themselves Christians may be led into the way of truth, and hold the faith in unity of spirit, in the bond of peace, and in righteousness of life. Finally, we commend to thy fatherly goodness all those who are any ways afflicted or distressed, in mind, body, or estate; that it may please thee to comfort and relieve them according to their several necessities, giving them patience under their sufferings, and a happy issue out of all their afflictions. And this we beg for thy mercy’s sake in Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

How I pray it today:

O God, the Creator and Preserver of all mankind, we humbly beseech thee for all sorts and conditions of men; that thou wouldest be pleased to make thy ways known unto them, thy saving health unto all nations. More especially we pray for the good estate of the Church Universal; and in particular the churches in Iraq, that it may be so guided and governed by thy good Spirit, that all who profess and call themselves Christians may be led into the way of truth, and hold the faith in unity of spirit, in the bond of peace, and in righteousness of life. Finally, we commend to thy fatherly goodness all those who are any ways afflicted or distressed, in mind, body, or estate; particularly Anna, Bailey and Carter; the refugees in Syria and Gaza; and people suffering with bulimia that it may please thee to comfort and relieve them according to their several necessities, giving them patience under their sufferings, and a happy issue out of all their afflictions. And this we beg for thy mercy’s sake in Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

The semicolons are your friends. Added petitions seem to fit there naturally, or at the end of sentences. I’ll later share some resources about finding additional, particular (“proper”) collects.

For decades, perhaps generations, Universalists applied the honorific term father and mother to honored elders. The most obvious use is Father and Mother Murray — John and Judith — but there are others, none recent.

So I wondered: how did one earn the honor, to whom was it applied (generally, for it was surely not ministers only, and, which particular persons were so called) and when did the practice fade? I know the term brother, to describe a minister, has survived into living memory. I recall Brother (Leonard) Prater, for instance; he died in the 1990s. And the translation of honored and beloved siblinghood can easily be transferred to parenthood.

I’ll post or link future findings from here.

Each evening, for vespers, I “sing” the Bonum Est Confiteri, Prasm 92:1-4 as it read in the rubrics, and included in the Coverdale version:

¶ Then shall be sang the following Psalm:

Bonum Est Confiteri.

It is a good thing to give thanks unto the Lord: and to sing praises unto thy name, O Most Highest;
To tell of thy loving-kindness early in the morning: and of thy truth in the night-season;
Upon an instrument of ten strings, and upon the lute: upon a loud instrument, and upon the harp.
For thou, Lord, hast made me glad through thy works: and I will rejoice in giving praise for the operations of thy hands.

Do I sing it? No. But there a different ways congregations can use this (and other psalms and canticles):

1. Read in in unison.
2. Read in by alternating verses or half verses; alternating between a worship leader and congregation, or between halves of the congregation.
3. Read in unison, but book-ended with a sung antiphon. More often seen in newer hymnals.
4. Chanted: plainsong or Anglican chant being two options.
5. A metrical version sung to a psalm tune — “Old 100th” was the tune for an early metrical version of Psalm 100.
6. A hymn based closely on the psalm.

The Sternhold and Hopkins metrical psalter is the likely choice for option 5, giving us, in common meter:

It is a thing both good and meet
to praise the highest Lord,
And to thy Name, O thou most High,
to sing with one accord:

To shew the kindness of the Lord,
before the day be light,
And to declare his truth abroad,
when it doth draw to night;

On a ten-string’ed instrument,
on lute and harp so sweet,
With all the mirth you can invent
of instruments most meet.

An assortment of hymns evoking Psalm 92 may be found here.

The point: a rubric and a text may be used in more than the literal way.

I’m a vegetarian, and have been for (what?) a year or two. Not for health reasons, or ecological ones, but for ethical and religious reasons. More about that later, maybe.

And when you read personal  narratives of vegetarianism, there comes that assumption that there must be a reason, other than simply not liking to eat meat. There has to be some higher purpose, as if the cuisine isn’t enough. It’s not just a diet, but a diet that calls for an apologia and even a meta-narrative. Others do this — oh, ye paleo or raw food people — but most people don’t, and probably wonder why. And as someone who used to make wicked jokes about vegetarianism, I know that “eating on purpose” can be annoying.

But here’s the thing. All else being true,  it’s cheaper (overall) to be a vegetarian, and especially about a century or more ago when vegetarians were organizing into groups. Meat was expensive — heck! food was expensive. So for some diners — this is where proper history helps — simple vegetarian fare was (first and foremost) affordable, served with a side of moral uplift and resolve.

So what?

Think about churches. There are true believers and people who are in vested in the institutions. The “churchiness” of it. The theology. But  many will care about the stained glass or the organ. A kind word over coffee. Or learning in a class with other oddballs. “Unchurchy” reasons. One reason that you can find non-Christians in all kinds of Christian churches; a liberal approach to participation.

The secret lesson of the vegetarians is that the high — no, not high, but particular, formal and sacrificial — commitment approach to church life, which works for “churchy” people like me, is a turn-off for people who want to make their own experience in our shared setting. There’s room for all kinds of people, including those who are “churched” for their own needs and own convenience.

[Later. Title fixed.]

One of the oldest Internet communities for Unitarian Universalist Christians is the UUCF-MIN list. But as email has lost some of its cachet, and Facebook and Twitter have taken over some of its utility, the list has had less and less traffic, and now is more often quiet than not.

I sent an email to check in: to see if the mailing list is live, and to see if its former participants were still present and interested. They are. Some people, after all, just don’t like Facebook or Twitter or any other social network.

If you are interested, and are a Unitarian Universalist and kindred Christian ministers or seminarians,in the United States or anywhere in the world, you are welcome to ask the moderators to join. (I think there was a provision for non-fellowshipped ministers who served denominational churches, but I cannot find any note of that now.) But don’t ask me: I’m not one of them now!

Summer is at its peak. It’s hot. And for reasons outside your control, the otherwise-reliable power supply has been cut. No air conditioning, and since you don’t know when it’s going to come back (it will come back, right?) you don’t dare pillage the fridge, so to preserve the chilled food you have left.

What do you do to stay feeling cool? These make my list

• keep the curtains closed when the sun is up
• try to draw a breeze by opening two or more windows
• keep meals light and cold, or at least uncooked
• keep the lights out, even if modern lights don’t produce much heat any more
• take frequent, light showers (or at least make good use of a damp wash cloth)
• drink as much cold water as possible
• air the bedclothes before sleeping
• wear modern fibers, which wick sweat, dry quickly and minimize feeling sticky

Of these, all but the last was common in my grandparents’ day, and perhaps their grandparents’.

When we read about — heck, know — about highly educated (and deeply indebted) ministers who are unemployed or under-employed in church work, it’s not hard to sense that times are changing, and are very unlikely to return to the go-go days of postwar Protestantism. The power is going out: short stoppages now, but there may be a day when the grid fails completely. We need to prepare for this risk, and be grateful that we still have choices (if not always happy one) and that these are not fundamentally life and death issues.

And, looking back on that hot weather solutions list, I’d like us to consider the wisdom of an earlier time that faced some of the same problems and had to cope. Relying on a practical ministerial education more, say, than an academic model. Forming more parish yokes. Making ministerial fellowship more flexible for dip in and out of (better paying, one would hope) secular work. Revisiting credentialed lay ministry, an inheritance from the Universalists, was only formally laid down a few years ago. Not to mention making conference attendance and professional development less of a financial burden.

There is surely room for modern technology, but I bet we already know and have known the essential steps to making necessary changes. The will is another matter. Until then, the heat is on.

Twice a day now, I pray for the President of the United States and others “in civil authority” as part of my morning and evening prayer practice. It is not only a hallowed practice, but one that gets its warrant in the same breath as a testimony made for universal salvation, namely 1 Timothy 2:1-4:

I exhort therefore, that, first of all, supplications, prayers, intercessions, and giving of thanks, be made for all men; For kings, and for all that are in authority; that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and honesty. For this is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Saviour; Who will have all men to be saved, and to come unto the knowledge of the truth.

(Reading on in the same chapter, I’m not so fond about the part about women teaching; the author of this letter makes a hash out of his Genesis prooftext, too. I digress.)

But the prayer appointed in the evening is increasingly problematic. I’ve given a good try, but I need to find a replacement. It reads:

Almighty God, whose kingdom is everlasting and power infinite; Have mercy upon this whole land; and so rule the hearts of thy servants, The President of the United States, The Governor of this State, and all others in authority, that they, knowing whose ministers they are, may above all things seek thine honor and glory; and that we and all the people, duly considering whose authority they bear, may faithfully and obediently honor them, in thee and for thee, according to thy blessed Word and Ordinance; through Jesus Christ our Lord who, with thee and the Holy Ghost, liveth and reigneth, world without end. Amen.

Close versions of this prayer have been in use in the United States in a number of different prayer books for two hundred years. Also, if you were saying Evening Prayer among traditionalists in the Church of England, you would note it is in the place of the state prayers (particularly “Prayer for the Queen’s Majesty”). Which is by way of saying this prayer bears more of the markings of a prayer for a Christian ruler than a prayer Christians would make for their elected leaders in a secular democracy. And while the author to Timothy had no imagining of our modern democracy, neither were the powers prayed-for either Christian or particularly sympathetic, so the tone of this prayer seems unnecessarily deferential.

We can do better.

So, my husband and I rode to the eastern terminus of the Washington Metro Silver Line on opening day yesterday. This is the first new subway — really, an elevated line — since 1991, and it goes through and past Tysons Corner, a local byword for big shopping malls, wide highways and mammoth office blocks. And until now, access by car or difficult bus connections. The plans for the future include more residents, and replacing an old-style suburban built environment with one more urban. But that’ll take many years.

As, indeed the rest of the planned, but not yet built, Phase 2 of the Silver Line. At least that’s scheduled for 2018, and not decades away. But the reason I suspect most in-town Washingtonians want to ride the Silver Line is to reach Dulles Airport, but that station is in Phase 2.

But the options to Dulles have improved.

The old “medium cheap” brown Washington Flyer bus — that only came in as far as East Falls Church Metro station — has been replaced by a blue Silver Line Express, to the Wiehle-Reston East station, the current terminus. It’s a shorter run, and also cheaper at $5.

Here are some notes:

When you arrive at Wiehle-Rest East, well, you’re really in a parking and bus transfer center. The station is in the median of the major arterial Dulles Toll Road, and so there’s no direct access.  Go up the adjacent escalator, turn right out the enclosed vestibule. You’re now in an open-air plaza; turn right again. About thirty feet or so ahead is a path; look left. You will see a covered foot bridge over the Dulles Toll Road to the station ticketing area. There you can buy your fare; I’d recommend getting a SmarTrip card from one of the sales machine. You’ll save the cost of the card almost immediately, and spare yourself the trouble of fiddling with a paper fare card (for which there’s a $1 surcharge) and money. And there are discounts for using one.

Proceed though the gates, and down to the platform. and take any train.

Stand behind the bumpy edge on the platform.

When using escalators, stand on the right and walk on the left, unless it’s just packed solid.

On the return trip, just get on the bus. You’ll pay at the airport.

It’s been a hard week in the news. Central American children in the borderlands. The deaths in Gaza. The Malaysian flight downing. Frightening news — let’s hope not all true — from ISIS/ISIL. You’d be forgiven for being overwhelmed.

But please spare a prayer for the Christian minority of Iraq, and particularly of Mosul, an ancient community that’s been extirpated. Remember them, as they take refuge, mainly in Iraqi Kurdistan.

This interview on Religion and Ethics Newsweekly is of Syrian Catholic (that is, in union with Rome) Patriarch Ignatius Youssef III Younan.

Another advertisement from the 1912 Universalist Register was for the “Cross and Crown” system of pins and accessories, to award Sunday School participation. You still see these for sale in old-fashioned church supply stores, but while there used to be named versions for all major denominations, you hardly see any other than Baptists today; the generic “attendance” variety prevail today. And they’re not nearly so refined as the one I saw some years ago: the treasured possessions of elder Universalists, kept from childhood.

Back in 2002, I bought up the last of the Universalist “Cross and Crown” pins from Whittemore’s, a much loved but now defunct New England church supply house.

The Optimist’s Good Morning is a book of prayers and written selections, published by Little, Brown in 1907 but it’s also a Universalist Publishing House title, and so not-surprisingly full of Universalist authors (and a few who aren’t, like Confucius.)

Florence Hobart Perin, the compiler, was herself a Universalist leader, and presumably the same Florence Hobart who was the clerk of the old Boston Association in the late 1890s.

George L. Perin (link to picture), is the most cited author, was something of a denominational celebrity and former missionaries to Japan. (I’ve had a devilish time connecting Florence and George.) You might recognize some of the other names in it, like Quillen Shinn, Henry Nehemiah Dodge, Mary Livermore, Charles R. Tenney, Edwin C. Sweetser, Frederick A. Bisbee, Frederic Perkins and Wilburn D. Potter.

It speaks to an upbeat kind of Universalism that I’ve seen little written about, but for which each of these Perins were long-time proponents, if the print record is correct.

I wrote about a New Testament with psalter I ordered; it arrived last Wednesday.

It could be worse. I can imagine furtive looks about the “faith sharing” helps, and I might agree with you. But they’re moderate evangelical and are easy enough to ignore, in part because they assume a particular insider’s attitude to scripture and the Christian faith. Nothing offensive (if you accept that Christianity is an evangelizing religion) but I may use those pages to paste my prayers.

The bigger problem is the combination of a soft (non-leather) cover and thin India paper, typical for Bibles. The binding slumps in my day bag, and the thin corners dog-ear.

The translation in NRSV, which is a decently middle-of-the-road. The type is slightly larger and more legible than I feared, so that’s good and the price was good. It weighs 165 grams — less than 6 ounces — and fits easily in the hand.

A modest endorsement.

The 1912 copy of the Universalist Register I wrote about had illustrations and advertising in the back. Such fun. One of the images was of one of the locations of the Universalist Publishing House, then on Boylston Street, very close to the Arlington Street Church.

The building is still there, perhaps incorporated into the building next door, thus throwing off the street numbers. And I gather the street-front cafe is this restaurant: Parish Cafe.

Can any Boston readers confirm? Have any eaten there?

Ann Lee Bressler’s The Universalist Movement in America is an important resource in understanding Universalist history — and it’s incredibly expensive. A hard copy is now $90. (I got a reader’s copy ages ago.)

The good news is that you can read a “Free sample” — the introduction and chapter one; which are incredibly important — in Google Play, to help you decide if you want to buy the epub ($68!) or rent it ($34!) … or read it at a theological library.

Another passage from Elbridge Gerry Brooks’s Our New Departure, pages 74 and 75.

Although the language sounds like ransom theory, this is an exposition of the moral influence view of atonement (also loved in antiquity), and a modern view of sin in human relationships. For this reason, it’s worth muscling past language that would place this in another, inaccesible time. (The race bit, for instance; but since it’s at the end of a widening band of human relationships, I assume he means “human race”. But the idea that God has an ownership claim on us might be harder to digest.)

Even in our mere human relations, considering the vast net-work in which we are woven, we are not our own. We belong to the Past, as the heirs of its blessings; to the Present, as the stewards of its responsibilities; to the Future, as the guardians of its welfare. We belong to our parents; to our brothers and sisters, if we have them; to our families and homes; to our associates and friends; to every human being who has done us a kindness, or who needs our aid; to our country; to our race. How much more, then, to Christ and to God! We have not a faculty — of body or of mind, we have not a gift. This is the central fact of which God, through Christianity, is seeking to make us aware. This is the meaning of His Fatherhood. It is equally the meaning of our Brotherhood. The cross is the consummate proclamation of this fact, in concrete. It is God’s sense of ownership and His great consequent interest in us, — it is Christ’s marvellous love, willing at any price to gain possession of us, put into sensible form; and in whomsoever its power is at all felt, self-assertion is so far vanquished, and the will of God, as expressed in Christ, becomes supreme.

Last night, the Unitarian Universalist ministerial college openly lamented the death of Unitarian Universalist minister Jennifer Slade, who died on Tuesday and who was discovered Thursday.

I want to express my sympathy to her family, and to her congregations. I am praying for you and her, and for others — including a number of ministers — shaken and feeling vulnerable by her death. I trust the “better angels” to mutual care and the communion of the churches to help.

The news of her death was reported by the Unitarian Church of Norfolk (Virginia) (Unitarian Universalist), where she was the development minister for about a year. There are, to date, few details and none about any service.

Before that, she served ministries in Clinton, North Carolina and (for more than a decade) at Greenville, S.C. I knew her, or rather of her, in passing and by reputation when I lived and ministered in the South.

Be good to one another.

There are many years of the Universalist Register, the denominational directory, on either side of the turn of the twentieth century available from Google Books. But there’s a catch. The most useful part (I think) is the set of charts identifying the location of parishes and churches, their membership, minister, clerk and how often they meet for worship. These are printed at ninety degrees to the running text, and the Google’s scanning treated them like images, and lifted them out of the text. Not helpful.

I found a single issue of the Register — the 1912 edition — scanned by and from the Library of Congress. A touch of irony: the charts are printed right way up, so it wouldn’t have mattered.

Lots of fun things therein.

Ah, I let my subscription to the Universalist Herald, “The Oldest Continuously Published Liberal Religious Periodical in North America” lapse, but I corrected that before General Assembly. Since then I’ve gotten an issue — and I’m so glad I’m back!

You should get yours, too, here.

For the last week or so I’ve been praying an abridged version of Universalist morning and evening prayer (evening prayer, rather than the morning prayer and vespers PDF I posted) at home. Abridged in that I don’t read out the dialogues, opening words or anything to direct the congregation. No hymns and obviously no sermon.

A psalm or two, a reading, and the usual prayers. I add a collect for the day, and I’m slowly working through various resources to find these, and collects for special occasions.

I’m getting used to the rhythms of grammar of the prayers, and I add to specific petitions more naturally each day. I started using small sticky notes to remember particular people places or situations in my prayers. Some elements are showing their age; others provide timeless comfort.

Even after a few days, I can feel something changing my direction towards God, and I look for new discoveries in the days and years to come.

When we look at the norms of Christian worship, there is a standard of time, however frequently it’s broken. (Non-Christian Unitarian Universalists note this, too, considering where we get our worship habits.)

To put it so briefly as to risk being misleading, daily prayer should go up morning and night each day, and we should attend to the Table each Sunday, and that’s excluding duplicated services on Sunday morning. Two times seven is fourteen, plus one equals fifteen. So ideally a congregation should have at least fifteen worship services a week, if not more. But who does that? Some Episcopal cathedrals, if you’re lucky. And the occasional parish in Advent or Lent. But a leaner schedule is more customary, considering staffing costs or parishioner demand. Even a few decades ago, mainline Protestants would commonly have two services outside Sunday morning (Sunday evening and a midweek evening service, often on Wednesday) and communion once a month. This create a roughly the same ideal-weekly proportion of worship services over the course of a month. In short, a more appropriate rhythm developed, and one that seemed appropriately scaled. Some small town churches — we certainly see this among Universalists — take that to an even smaller scale. A service a month or so and communion once a year (if ever) based on the ability to secure a minister’s services. (How many of us have preached on a circuit?) Indeed, include too-cold or too-hot weather, and I suspect you find the UUA’s ten-services-a-year minimum. And now the ideal-weekly schedule gets pulled out over a year. But perhaps that’s appropriate, given the size and resources of the congregation, and the size of the community. The rhythms adjust to fit the capacity of the congregation, which might have a much (or more) to do with leadership as money.

And so, if this is true of worship, it is surely also true of mission and education, to name two other key functions of a church. And sometimes, particularly in small churches, one function will exist to the practical exclusion of the others. We all know of churches that struggle to stage a Sunday service. And how some Fellowship-era congregations existed primarily at first as Sunday schools. Some can even exist only as mission, or at least at their mission arm. Here I’m thinking of little Universalist churches that closed, leaving a women’s  organization — sometimes for decades — is a group dedicated to fellowship and possibly for service not a valid expression of the church?

And so to my point. A church may not have the expected size or scope of activity and yet may be a genuine expression of church. It may start small, grow in size and complexity, and then later contract and simplify. The right goal needn’t be continued and progressive development, but graceful adaptation to new conditions and the good sense to make the most of it.

In case you wanted to see the printed services used at First Universalist Church, Providence, held over General Assembly, please download this PDF (4.2 Mb). I created this not out of the 1941 edition of A Book of Prayer for the Churches that First Universalist, Providence, uses, but the 1957 edition printed by the recently defunct First Universalist Church, Woonsocket, Rhode Island. (I got it on eBay.) Just to be clear that the tradition isn’t a nineteenth-century re-enactment, but long-held. And there’s a difference.

But the text for morning prayer and vespers in the two editions is the same. Note: we prayed vespers and not evening prayer. Evening prayer developed from vespers (the evening service) and compline (the service before bed) so that raises the question: why does the book have both? I don’t know, except to think that some churches used one and some the other. I’ll have to analyze their differences.

A word about how they ran. The pastor of First Universalist, Providence, lead the services making “micro-alterations” and applying local, customary ceremonial. We were supported in our singing and chanting by organ and organist. With readings (Old Testament and Gospel in the morning; New Testament epistle for vespers), sung responses, psalm, a brief address, and a hymn (vespers only) the services ran about 20-25 minutes in the morning and fifteen for vespers.

One feature of the opening ceremony at General Assembly is the welcoming new congregations. Normally — and perhaps I’m dating myself — there are several welcomed into membership. Except this year there was only one congregation, the lowest I’ve ever seen. Congratulations to Original Blessing, Brooklyn. But when I asked the question does it matter? The answer is undoubtedly yes.

Not all young congregations survive. Not all young congregations encourage the ministerial college by providing employment. Not all young congregations contribute talent for common work, or funds. Not all young congregations reflect well on the common fellowship, or add to mutual encouragement.

But all congregations do depend on the strength that new growth provides. Some congregations have gotten larger over the last few years, and some have gotten smaller. But nothing lives forever. To keep from shrinking, we need new congregations, and one isn’t enough. We need leaders with experience to foster new congregations, and one isn’t enough to found them.

So, again, I’m happy for Original Blessing. I only wish it had some cradle mates.

I went ahead and orderod what seemed to be the most practical New Testament with Psalter; it arrives on Wednesday. Not in love with the theme and it seems to be (non-leather) softback, but the size, translation and price are right. And I can use the “helps” as a substrate to paste on prayer material.

Faith-Sharing NRSV New Testament with Psalms (Cokesbury)

If that doesn’t do, I’ll go for one of these.

Bring your prayerbook! I’ll grow out my beard! Portland, ho! (An earlier video, possibly NSFW, for context.)

Unitarian Universalist Christians have no mission society or support base to help new Christian churches organize. And while that would probably be helpful, you have to work with what you have. Better to build from attainable work than to plan and plan fruitlessly.

So I commend to my readers six projects or habits that Unitarian Universalist Christians could undertake to make the work of starting new churches that much easier:

1. Talk up funding, whether it be by Faithify, some other crowdfunding platform. private pledge or Chalice Lighters. Stand ready to give.
2. If you preach, be willing to license sermon texts to be read in the new congregation.
3. Be available to attend worship of a new congregation, if one gathers within a reasonable travel distance.
4. Commit to praying for the new congregation regularly.
5. Research online for meeting locations for the new congregation. Prepare a spreadsheet with the map coordinates.
6. Survey what talents you already have that might be useful to a congregation — copy editing, digital image processing, sewing, contract review  come to mind quickly — and offer your services. Be prepared to decline graciously.

I dashed these out in less than fifteen minutes. I bet you can think of more.

This quotation from Elbridge Gerry Brooks’s Our New Departure (page 14) sticks with me. Again, this has an echo of familiarity.

Has not our effort been to convince the head that ‘orthodoxy’ is not true, and that God is good, and that all men are to be saved, rather than so to present the fact of God’s persistent and pleading love, and of the ultimate repentance and obedience of all, as to convict the heart of sin, to quicken the conscience to a sense of guilt, and to bring the people, in penitence and a confession of personal need and obligation, to their knees? In a word, has not our labor been theological more than experimental, aiming to make Christian Universalists, and to build and consolidate a Universalist denomination, rather than to make Universalist Christians, compacted and consecrated in the Universalist Church?

The deepest and most interior meanings of Christ’s work have never been wholly overlooked among us; but, as the rule, we have given more attention to the fact that he is to save, than to the question, How ?

The oldest known melody…

A hymn to Nikkal, a Ugarit and Caananite goddess of fruit and wife of the moon god, Yarikh (and namesake of Jericho.)

All I know from memory about the Ugarit language is that it’s an ancient Semitic language that you could learn in the religion department at my alma mater, UGA (University of Georgia) and the co-incidence made me laugh.

But no youthful trifles here. This is a beautiful work, and fitting at high summer. If I only had grapes and figs and apricots. I am entranced by this music, nearly three and a half millenia on. (Thanks to hymnologist and Esperatist Leland “Haruo” Ross for posting this on Facebook.)

Dear readers: I’m looking for a New Testament and Psalter. A very specific kind, for daily prayer, and I want to know if you’ve seen what I want. This is a bleg: a blog beg.

It ought to be:

1. Compact, say smaller than 4×6 inches
2. Hard-bound to survive a book bag, and not leather bound (as I’m a vegetarian)
3. Ideally a modern but literary translation
4. Loosely bound a plus, so I can paste in prayers in the covers

I suppose a Bible on my phone would work, but that’s a depressing, fiddly thought. Second best so far is a little KJV Gideon New Testament and Psalter, but they’re more portable than useful.

Any ideas? Any suggestion much appreciated.

So much happened to General Assembly this year that I forgot to mention the new issue of satirical magazine, The Beacon, appeared. Whatever you do, do not repeat to the activities printed therein at home.

Download it here: http://www.pdf-archive.com/2014/06/26/beacon-ga-2014/

I don’t have much love for Facebook, so why do I use it so much? Because other people use it, and I use it to attract people to this blog. But revelations about post manipulation and human social experimentation is coaxing me to try alternatives. I could use some, er, independence.

I’m revisiting the Disapora* social network, a decentralized and more privacy focused alternative. But its strength is its weakness. Personal privacy means its hard to find your friends, and if your friends aren’t there, you be back to Facebook to find them. It would be hopeless and dispiriting, unless you remember that AOL was once king of the hill…

So, I’ll use both and encourage you to reach out to me there.

Later. See https://joindiaspora.com/ to learn more. To sign up: You’ll need a “pod” — a node on the decentralized network — and the link I previously shared may not work, since it seem in the time I drafted this post, my pod has stopped taking registrations.

Here is a list of other nodes. Some people choose them based on the country they’re hosted in; others favor uptime or the version of Diaspora used.

I’m bitb on the joindiaspora.com node.

It was a good General Assembly, but for (me, anyway) the soft relationships defy programming. Trust and relationship building, arts of the ministry, stories that shape identity. Evidence about strength and weakness, and a willingness to address both. There was a spirit, and I don’t want to crush it with explanation. It was so good that I didn’t finish this thought on-site!

So, what’s the takeaway? Unclear. Perhaps we can experiment by spinning up some projects. Experimentation is also in the air. I mentioned Faithify for those that need funding, but sometimes there’s an itch that needs scratching at no cost than the doing.

I was lunching with a couple of colleagues in Christian churches who preach from the Revised Common Lectionary. We identified a need to share notes: ideas, themes, resources. Something simple.

Is this something you could use? Be interested in participating in? If so, please say so in the comments.

Horrible for Daisy the Dog! Some of her favorite sniffing places at the little, angular park in our neighborhood are trapped behind chain link fencing and barbed wire. The park has no formal name, but its impossible to not call it Schevchenko, for the large monument to Taras Shevchenko, “bard of Ukraine” in the middle of it. It has also been the site of rallies and demonstrations since the Russian-prompted annexations of Ukraine. Someone tucked a Ukrainian flag under Schevchenko’s right arm.

Not that you can get to the monument now. The fence went up yesterday, and when I walked Daisy last night, the plaza had been plowed up to the concrete slab.

Putin’s doing? More likely the National Park Service. Many of the plaza’s concrete tiles had come loose or eroded to reveal sharp reinforcing wire. The fountain hasn’t worked in our time in the neighborhood. Time for restoration. If Daisy can cope.

So, I made it to church Sunday, was greeted and then asked: how you seen the new church website. I had seen a preview, but not the release.

Seeing as I was the lead on the last revision a decade ago, I knew it was overdue for a refresh. And a new breeze is blowing…

I’m glad to point to Universalist National Memorial Church’s site at universalist.org.

A few weeks ago, I mentioned a set of nicely-formatted orders of service/bulletins from First Church (Unitarian), Boston, that I found in the archives at the Andover-Harvard library. They were preserved in a file about coordinated opposition to the consolidation of the Unitarians and the Universalists because the minister’s message in them. But I recognized its good taste and yet was hesitant to post the photos of the order of service. Unless something is plainly public — websites and reported statistics come to mind — or of historic interest, I won’t discuss the business of a congregation. Is this too recent? We are talking about 1960: the matter is old (and decided) news and it’s very clear that I’m not going to get around to making a mockup of it.

So here are the photos. Click through to see enlargements. Lean but elegant stuff, this.

In the last generation, I’ve seen a revolting amount of ecclesiastic “mansplaining”: condescending depictions of Universalism, out of a Unitarian lens, to re-cast my tradition as something sweet, loving, emotive, poor, rural and homey. The whole thing reeks of Victorian sexual politics. Something like this: Universalism was a country girl who, smitten by a Boston Brahmin, is “ruined” by him and destined to be his bride and subordinate. Today, a doting Mrs. Unitarian (neé Universalist) gets brought out for special occasions to be told how sweet she is, but nobody asks her anything. (If there is truth in any of it, it is outsized admiration of the Unitarians.)

The whole idea is offensive, and you would have a reason to be angry with my metaphor if I didn’t hear Universalism described in gendered, female terms in the 1990s and early 2000s. Times are changing, I hope, with a renewed interest in Universalism on its own terms. So, it is to correct the previous misconception, and to offer a cautionary tale for today’s Universalists that I share this passage from Elbridge Gerry Brooks’s 1874 Our New Departure, a manifesto to help bring Universalism to its new phase in mission. (I’ll be quoting heavily from Brooks as I read his book.)

In addition to giving us a contemporary frame, this passage from his chapter “A Survey of the Field” helps explain how fragile Universalism was when, a few decades later, the foundations collapsed. This passage begins at page 43, but engaged readers will want to read on, or even read the whole chapter. It’s not a happy review — the sweet revisionism would be more pleasant — but it explains more than a fable and (perversely) makes me feel closer to Universalists now almost 150 years past.

And looking within the lines of our organization, while we can truthfully say that no church shows a higher average of people upright in business, kind to the poor, every way reputable, it cannot be said that devout affections and a religious conscience are by any means general among us. We are not a praying people — that is, in the sense in which this phrase is commonly employed. Praying Universalists, in this sense, there are, many of them; how many there are who pray in the voiceless secrecy of their communion with God, it is for no human pen to assume to say. But the custom of family, social, or stated private prayer does not, to any considerable extent, prevail among us, because there is no prevailing sense of duty in these directions; and how rare it is to find those in our congregations who can be called to lead in public prayer, we all know. We have opinion rather than faith; more nominal assent than spiritual impulse or purpose. Our parishes far outnumber our churches; and where churches exist, they, as the rule, are very small, with a male membership lamentably disproportionate to that of the congregations. And then look abroad: what mean the so-called Universalist societies — alas, so many of them! — dead or dormant? What mean the Universalist meeting-houses sold, or rented, or standing unused, given up to decay, monuments to our dishonor? And last, but not least, what mean the fields where for years Universalism — or what has borne that name — has been preached to no visible effect in the spiritual vitality of the people, [44] and only to result in a sickly and struggling life for the congregations, or in final wreck and dispersion? For two successive years, not long since, I spent several vacation Sundays with one of our oldest parishes in New England, trying to make the dead bones live. The community is a thriving one, and the Universalists, so-called, have all the advantage of numbers, wealth, and position. But having sold their house of worship, the most of them first allowed themselves to be bodily transferred to an attempt to build up a Unitarian society; and this experiment having failed, they have since sunk into comparative apathy, and though having occasional preaching, seemed, the last I heard of them, to be dying of spiritual inanition. Nor, unfortunately, is this a solitary case — so far as the substantive facts of apathy and inanition are concerned. The question presses, then, What mean these things? And still further, how are we to account for the religious deadness and the indisposition to do anything for the organization of parishes, or the support of public worship, in so many sections where a nominal Universalism widely prevails? There are counties in my native state (New Hampshire), where what is called Universalism may almost be said to be the prevalent form of religious thought, and where there is no lack of pecuniary ability, which are complete wastes as regards any active Christian effort, save as an occasional Sunday’s preaching may intermit the dearth. Other states show similar districts.

So, Faithify, the Unitarian Universalist crowdfunding platform, launched at General Assembly, with some fanfare and with a raft of inaugural projects.

And http://t.co/KjPlZtqyvK launches pic.twitter.com/CdF5wKwsQs

— Scott Wells (@bitb) June 25, 2014

This is how it works in a nutshell: entities put forward fundable projects, and the general (Unitarian Universalist) public votes with its dollars. It uses technology to simplify the “elite function” of vetting projects and managing funds. If donors pledge enough to reach the project goal, the pledges get called in and the project gets funded. If not, the pledges aren’t called in and the project gets no funding.

I have a couple of structural misgivings about Faithify, but I’ll keep these to myself, at least until the the first round of projects’ deadlines pass. (I’d be happy to be proved wrong.)

So no thoughts about Faithify for now, except:

1. if one “elite function” can be usefully distributed — ideas that have been bubbling away while I consider open government projects — what about others? Sometimes the ecosystem creates a gap that can be filled organically, such as bloggers filling in (partially) for an independent denominational press. Faithify, if successful, could challenge how programs get funded, and thus prioritized: the reverse of the current system. And if funding projects, then what? LinkedIn for settlement?
2. Pledge, of course. I made mine to the “Miracle Among The Ruins Project Two: Missional Community Room” project of the A Third Place Community Foundation/The Welcome Table Church of Turley, Oklahoma.

I’ve been to First Universalist Church in Providence a few times over the years, but never so long as over General Assembly, when the church hosted morning prayer and vespers, and the usual Sunday service with a special observance of Holy Communion.

Here are a mix of photos, taken after the services in the sanctuary, lounge and dining room, with a focus on interesing tidbits. You know I’m going to make something of that Universalist Comrades (men’s group) emblem.

I’m getting back into the swing of blogging, and I’m working on posts that focus on particular subjects brought up at the General Assembly of the Unitarian Universalist Association. But I thought I’d say something first about this year’s General Assembly as a whole.

First, I go to General Assembly to meet friends and to network a bit; I’m not a delegate and not on any UUA committee. I don’t have any formal role, and this is true of about a half of the people who show up. But despite my best effort, the official work of General Assembly usually gets in the  way of my emotions. So, I prepare myself to come back home tired, frustrated and even angry. It’s not that I want to have a bad time, but forewarned is forearmed.

Something was different about General Assembly 2014, and I’m not quite sure what or why. Admittedly, I have a partial view of the thing.  I only registered for two days, and so did not attend many workshops. And I didn’t attend Ministry Days so, my experience was shorter and some others. There’s nothing like getting older to provide some prospective. But some of the people I spoke to on-site experienced the same thing.

The General Assembly felt calm. True, I bookended my days with morning and evening prayer at First Universalist Church, Providence, and it was centering. I will write about this later, but I don’t think that’s why GA felt calm. Perhaps because there was no big protest action, either at our host city or internal to General Assembly. Perhaps it was because there was enough food at different price points, the lack of which has been a problem as past General Assemblies. And there was no election.

I didn’t see people crying in the hallways. I didn’t hear edgy tones of voice. I didn’t see young people running in the hallways. (Indeed, they were pros.)

So, I’m looking for feedback. If you were at General Assembly, is this your sense?

If you were at the 2014 General Assembly, or watched it by streaming video, you would have seen in the opening ceremony — the one with the banner parade, greetings, adoption of the rules and the first worship service — a prayer from Hymns of the Spirit, and you may have wondered “how did that happen”? It’s not exactly in the daily consciousness of Unitarian Universalists. 

The prayer hits at about 1:35:20, read by service leader and Unitarian Universalist minister Erika Hewitt. You’ll have to listen in; it’s not printed in the prepared printed document.

The prayer, a confession, is from a Hymns of the Spirit, or more accurately, the Services of Religion that usually prepended it. A composite and adaptation of the prayer of confession from Service Eleven (which I began to muse on here) and the second prayer of aspiration from Service Eight.

So who wrote them?

• “O Thou unseen source of peace and holiness…” by Von Ogden Vogt.
• “Into this house of light we come…” by (don’t be shocked) Von Ogden Vogt.

The Unitarian Universalist Association’s General Assembly wasn’t the only meeting last week. Note that the Supreme Council of the Hungarian Unitarian Church — that’s an ethno-linguistic denominator, as it includes the larger part of the church in Transylvanian Romania — met June 27 and 28 in Koloszvar (Cluj).

Unlike General Assembly today, it seems to be a more purely deliberative body and less a convocation. But what little I know comes thanks to Google Translate and the large set of photos.

A version of the Religion & Ethics Newsweekly report about trafficked women — into forced marriage or prostitution — from Vietnam into China was repeated tonight on the PBS Newshour.

A good review of a bitter case of modern slavery, with a few hopeful signs, which you may view or review here.

It’s clear that I’m not going to get much conventional blogging done. The tone of this General Assembly — and I’m not been to one since Charlotte — has seemed particularly warm and sensible. Not frantic, not want you. Might be a little smaller than recent GAs, but the credentials report will speak to that soon enough. A good feeling; I welcome comments at GA, and questions from without.

Follow me at @bitb and GA related tweets with hashtag #uuaga.

Currently watching Ron Robinson (who is also the Executive Director of the Unitarian Universalist Christian Fellowship) about his work work in Turley, Oklahoma.

No blog posts pre-written from now to the end of General Assembly. Heading out today and hope to see many of the attendees today.

Blogging rontinues from Providence!

Last night, in the Cheshire town of Stalybridge, a new fellowship launched publicly: the Fellowship of Non-Subscribing Christians.

“Non-Subscribing” in the sense of not subscribing the Westminster Confession of Faith, and thus shorthand for a particularly Irish form of liberal Christianity, distinct from (but co-operative with) British Unitarianism. Nevertheless, this new fellowship isn’t formally linked to the Non-Subscribing Presbyterian Church of Ireland, and the fellowship extends its work over Ireland and Great Britain. Alas, nothing said about the United States or Canada!

 July 2. They have photos of their event up on Flickr.

I was reading the 1960 edition of well-known Unitarian minister and liturgist Von Ogden Vogt’s Art and Religion that explained his vision of the opening part of worship. This is his chapter “The Order of Liturgy” — so influential that it’s cited as a such here. The following chapter “Introit and Antiphons” anticipated a revival of that liturgical use among mainline Protestants, but which have little purchase among Unitarian Universalists.

The book’s in copyright, but the original 1921 edition is in the public domain: that’s what follows. And if there’s any difference between 1921 and 1960 in these two chapters (there is an appendix) it has escaped my attention.

Von Ogden Vogt is important for understanding the influential — if now little used — Services of Religion that prepend the joint Unitarian and Universalist red Hymns of the Spirit. There’s no doubt in my mind that he’s behind making an introit an option for the services, though, as he explains in Art and Religion, these ought to be composed afresh. What he doesn’t write about is the sequence, particular to Unitarians so far as I’ve seen, of

• Opening words
• Exhortation
• Invocation
• Confession (sometimes broadly conceived)

The exhortation (which also sets the tone of worship) is the innovative part, and fills the role of the introit.

Cover from a “getting ready for General Convention 1915” newsletter. On the special train that took delegates to California!

But where does the name come from? My guess:

• UGC: Universalist General Convention
• WUMA: Women’s Universalist Missionary Association (I’m guessing. The organization tended to change names. A precursor to the UU Women’s Federation.)
• YPCU: Young People’s Christian Union
• SS: probably Sunday School (Union)

A couple of blog posts about worship before we dive into General Assembly. If you’re attending in Providence, perhaps we can meet?

The problem. There are at least two basic problems when you meet a liturgical text:

1. if there are directions (rubrics), deciding how you make the right decisions among various choices, and
2. understanding the intent of the liturgy-creator when you want to add in extra resources or make a substitution.

Without this understanding, it’s easy to get into a rut, confusing to make exceptions for special occasions, hard to correct eccentricies — those useages that have crept into worship that feel wrong, but you can’t put your finger on why — and almost impossible to add something new. Or, just as bad, hard to justify removing something that fills an emotional need for some, but just doesn’t work well in worship.  (I’m looking at you, Joys and Concerns.)

And, without knowing what the purpose of the words, actions and artifacts of worship are, it almost surely means the depth of worship is left undelved.

Also, what may work for a congregation of 20, may not work for a congregation of 64, which may not work for a congregation of 147. (These are the real, reported 10th percentile, 50th percentile and 80th percentile for United States Unitarian Universalist congregations.) Worship needs to be flexible enought to grow and shrink in scale, to reflect the capacity of the congregation.

It’s a daunting task if you have an education in worship, and must seem wickedly arcane and arbitrary if you don’t. And there’s a shortage of explanatory and theoretical material. So I try to surface what I can.

(I have some Von Ogen Vogt that I need to digest; that’ll be first.)

This segment, from this week’s Religion and Ethics Newsweekly, pushes one my buttons: the experience that churches with just enough space are the ones that tend to survive. A recession following a big building campaign, or a congregation with unaffordable maintainance costs often leads to closure.

That, and once a religious building is lost in an expensive, built-out city (New York, Washington and Boston come to mind) it is very hard to build one later.

Innovation and mixed use is one answer.

I’ll probably be very tired at GA this year; I have been each year I’ve been. But I intend to attend it differently this year.

I have helped plan, worked and attended Sunlight Foundation’s hybrid-unconference TransparencyCamp for several years, and have attended at least one other unconference, not to mention a bunch of meetings built off of an unconference ethic — well let’s just say that conventionally-managed conferences pale now. You know: big speakers, a presumption of one-way participation in workshops, and low energy. Occasionally, sometimes or often a desire to be elsewhere or do something else. Neat and orderly, but the mind wanders.

Often enough, the General Assembly of the Unitarian Universalist Association functions like this. I know others do very well by it, and others who are willing to treat the whole thing primarily as a networking experience. But GA is too important an opportunity for that. It can be a market, not a product.

Certain unconference habits can and should be introduced by attendees.

•  Use Twitter to identify high points. Make a running commentary. Take and share pictures. Follow up with people commenting on what interests you. Use the hashtag #uuaga and any other the presenter appoints.
• Share notes. Blog your notes, or share them in a Google Doc. Ask people interested in the same topic to public Etherpad if you’re feeling adventuresome.
• Vote with your feet. If the workshop or other gathering is not for you, leave quietly.
• “Go rogue.” Is there a missing workshop? Organize one. That’s hardly a new idea — Twelve-step, reunion and social groups have done this for years. But it would be good to see them organize on the fly, and for a programmatic outcome, or to stage post-GA work.

I’ll be leaving for General Assembly on Wednesday, and I like to pack early. Some will be leaving early for professional development events, so I’ll note this resource now.

Shrunken carry-on sizes will make packing a bigger challenge, and this after I invested a bundle on a buy-it-once bag. That and I hurt my back earlier this year and don’t want to risk a repeat.

But if I don’t overstuff it will fit — 9 inches wide! — and the maker’s site has various suggested directions for packing. (And I really, really like my Air Boss Red Oxx bag.)

This may help you.
Packing for Air Travel: One Bag Part 2

A liturgical thought for Unitarian Universalists and, by extension, not a small number of Christians.

Why do we have long readings — often two, sometimes three — in our services?

• Almost everone in worship is literate; that is, worshippers can read long passages for themselves.
• These books are in print, Bibles or otherwise. The Mary Jones days are behind us.
• Too often, they have no other purpose than to source a sermon. Why not embed the important parts — that will like be repeated anyway — in the sermon?
• A long reading, not to mention plural readings, are hard to remember and are rarely a delight, even when declamed well, which is rare. And in many Unitarian Universalist congregations they function as a spoken anthem, or a pre-sermon.

Perhaps that’s a side effect — both on the Unitarian and Universalist side — of publishing sermons and commending them to be read in mission churches where a preacher could not go, or go regularly. (Unitarians tended towards pamphlets; Universalists, in newspapers.) On the other hand, Protestant responses to the Liturgical Movement — to which Unitarian Universalists are not immune; stoles, anyone? — have tended towards longer and more readings, a tendency I think of as the cod liver oil approach.  (Get as much down their throats as they can bear.)

So it may shock some of you — I use the Revised Common Lectionary for preaching texts after all — but I’m about ready to suggest we dispense with the reading of the lessons, unless some reason can be found to maintain them where they are.

If you’re presenting at General Assembly, please consider posting your notes, slides or other media in a place online where others can find them later, and announce or post the URL.

Need a place? Google Drive seems to be a popular option. (One congregation drops its newsletters there; a link to show my point.)  Flickr is good if the media is images.

But I mention it because there’re going to be a lot of interesting options at General Assembly, and little time to absorb them. For those who attend, a link is easier to carry and share than a paper handout. (For you, too.) For those who cannot attend your session, your note are necessary substitute.

One last request, please create and announce a second session- or theme-specific hashtag (besides #uuaga; say #newchurch or #crisis) for people to mark their own tweets on Twitter. Easier to continue the conversation, find leaders and gather thoughts after the workshop is over.

Go ahead and download “Mission Planter’s Resource Kit” (PDF) from the Orthodox Church in America’s Department of Evangelism page.

You may ask why. Despite the obvious historical, liturgical, theological and polity differences, the OCA and the UUA are functionally the same size, both have congregations that end to serve as regional hubs, each has a decided regional bias (though very different regions) and both take a lot of understanding in order to be acultured to how each does religion. We are close to a common understanding of what a new parish should do and how big it should be. (I won’t use the term “full service” which is better suited for an old-fashioned gas station.) We could learn something.

This guide deals with the phenomena of organizing a new church. It thinks in terms of phases, and recognizes that certain phases have different needs than others. Do download and review.

So, one of the matters I wanted to address before the Starr King news was missology, particularly since I ran across by old photocopy of S.J. McMorris’s 1858 “Fifteen Reasons for Preaching Universalism.” So I decided to reprint it as a cleaned up PDF. In researching it, I discovered I had typed it out years ago!

The over-short answer: Universalism makes Christian faith make sense, and so it should be preached.

So now you can take your pick of format: HTML above, or PDF here. (17.5 Mb)

I looked at the June meeting Unitarian Universalist Association Board packet, but couldn’t find any reference to any congregations being proposed for admission. That would be unusual for the pre-GA meeting. Are there any, or have you see where they would be?

Perhaps I’m looking in the wrong place, or that report isn’t out or available. That’s possible because I don’t see name changes or district moves either. I’ll admit to not reading it closely, both for time and as Carver model jargon makes my eyes glaze over.

I’d welcome some insights.

Getting ready for General Assembly in Providence, the first hosted in the city since the 1961 Unitarian-Universalist consolidation? But the pre-consolidation Universalists met there several times. Let’s see what the Universalists in 1858.

There’s this little tidbit from the report on the State of the Church, referencing the Panic of 1857.

Then came the great financial revulsion, in which the sharp-sighted wisdom of the keenest and shrewdest devotees of mammon was turned to nought, and many an air-built castle tottered to its fall. Derangement entered into the business of the world, and men who had imagined they were rich found themselves poor. The people opened their eyes to see what phantoms and shadows they had been chasing, and naturally enough, turned their attention to the long neglected subject of religion.

Seem too remote? So unlike unlike today?

How about a resolution condemning a Big Social Ill, but stumbling on a matter of internal polity. Slavery and a system for organization and discipline, that rumbled for years, respectively in this case. Here’s that slavery resolution. (The policy matter takes some unknotting and may be fodder for later blogging.)

Rev. J. P. Atkinson offered the following Resolutions which, after a brief discussion by Rev. Dr. Sawyer, and Rev. J. O. Skinner, were unanimously adopted: —

Resolved: That this Convention views with alarm the continued claims of the American slave power to the right of holding in perpetual bondage the children of Africa; that all such claims are contrary to the spirit of the gospel of Jesus Christ; and that we deplore the public demoralization which could originate such demands.

Resolved: That in the present attitude of the conflict between American freedom and American despotism, we feel called upon to reiterate our unqualified condemnation of slavery, and to re-assert our determination to labor for the maintenance of free institutions.

British Unitarian minister and blogger Stephen Lingwood has been going over the numbers within the General Assembly of Unitarian and Free Christian Churches, in Great Britain.  Do click through; I found myself holding my breath when I read these…

• 3,384 or 3,900 and why “visibility” is not the answer
• Growing Unitarian congregations 2013

I wasn’t quite sure how to put the title — “Unitarian Universalists are more regional than we’d like to say” — and I’m still not satisfied. Our New Englandish habits come out and surely some people — probably in New England — like it that way. Or maybe it’s just me.

I thought about this blog post at the Sunlight Foundation TransparencyCamp a couple of weeks ago, in a session about mapping, and particularly how misleading bad maps can be. And that sometimes the best data map isn’t a map at all. And Dan Harper has recenly blogged about membership distribution.

One takeaway is obvious, but should be stated: of course, California (and New York and Illinois and Texas) is big.  So, take a look at the demographic map of the UUA, dating back to the printed directory days. There are a lot of Unitarian Universalists in California, but of course there are; it’s the largest state.

I thought a plain ol’ bar graph would be better than a map to show relative density of Unitarian Universalists. The sources of information: most recent Unitarian Universalist membership, sorted by state, and 2012 US Census population of those aged 18 and greater, via Kidscount.org. The best mapping of adult membership I could manage. The figure on the right axis and on each bar is number of Unitarian Universalists per 100,000 adults. The United States average is in orange.

I knew that New England was the “homeland” and you are more likely to find a small-town churches there; I was still shocked to see the disparity between New England states and everywhere else. I had thought earlier Universalist missions,  the Fellowship movement and subsequent population drifts had smoothed out the distribution.

The Delaware and District of Columbia numbers are the exceptions that prove the rule, each being very small jurisdictions with a single church much larger that its peers. If All Souls, Washington (982) had 550 members (the entry point for the large church class in the UUA)  D.C. would drop to 141.73 per 100,000: still high, but behind New Hampshire. If First Unitarian, Wilmington (425) was as big as the second-largest Delaware congregation, the UU Fellowship of Newark (203), Delaware would drop to 100.42 per 100,000, more like neighboring Maryland. And Connecticut is the New England outlier: too far out for the colonial and Federal-era church growth, and too big, due to its proximity to New York.

As for the other states, it’s harder to comment with certainty, except this: if every state in U.S. had the density of Massachusetts, the UUA would have an aggregate membership of over a million and we’d have different problems today.

No solutions here, but just another lens to see our situation through.

Click the chart to see it in its legible glory!

I was excited to see an article about a “dinner church” in Brooklyn passed around last week. St. Lydia’s is a new model (good) and makes careful use of a “micro-space” (another blog post, that) in a high-rent area (also good) but then founding pastor Emily M. D. Scott said something that made me stop short.

Not just small church, but micro-church, in reference to her church, a “gathering of 30 or so folks.” To be fair, the undefined term micro-church attracted me to the article since in the current resource-poor Unitarian Universalist mission climate, I’m looking for models that can be bootstraped. (One of the reasons I’ve looked over the fence at unprogramed Quakers and various Eastern Orthodox groups.)

Gott im Himmel. If an attendance of thirty makes a micro-church, what does that make Unitarian Universalists? A fellowship with a large proportion of small congregations, that’s what.

Using most recent data, 199 United States congregations have an average attendance of 30 or fewer. That’s 246 at 35 or fewer, and 294 at 40 or fewer. And that doesn’t even count the 27 congregations that report no attendance, but have fewer than 50 members. So I think it’s fair to say that at least a quarter of all United States Unitarian Universalist congregations are “micro” by the scale above. And while we talk about large congregations — and these are much larger than “micro” — there is only one (First Unitarian, Portland, Oregon) that reports a Sunday attendance of more than 1,000. Our large isn’t others’ large.

And since new congregations these days (no grand pulpiteers handy) start small, I think we need to own that experience and use it to encourage new congregations, no matter their setting or how big they eventually end up. A part of the mission long-game is to build church-planting talent.

And While you’re at it, consider donating to the UUA’s newest member congregation, Original Blessing, about the same size and also in Brooklyn. Their $30k crowdfunding appeal just ended with more than $15k in donations with the last $15k donated on the last day, but there’s always their website…

I was thinking about past General Assemblies, and what has changed over the years. The timing in the week, the relative number of workshops and the use of technology come to mind. And as an extension of the technology piece, how much can be accomplished on a smart phone that formerly relied on the message boards and roving reporters.

Insofar as I can, I plan to blog and tweet from GA, if signal-inhibiting walls at the Dunk Center don’t have other plans. That’s one problem with convention centers; another is a lack of electrical power to surreptitiously siphon. Phones run down. So I’m bringing my own electricity.

If you don’t have a back-up battery, consider getting one. They’ve gotten lighter and cheaper than when first introduced. I got this 5v, 1000 mA battery on Amazon for about $8.

You see how it fits in my hand, and it weighs a bit less than a roll of pennies. I wish it were a bit more powerful — I used it to recharge my phone last night but only went from about 20% to 85% — but the size in right and it has a flashlight built in. (I’ll try recharging it again later with wifi turned off and without playing with the flashlight to get a full charge on the phone.)

Later: I charged my phone from 19% to 87% while turned off and it exhausted the battery. So I assume that’s as good as it gets. I have a Moto X.

Using this file, generated from this source.

Last report of a Universalist minister dying young, for a while. Also from the 1901 Universalist Register:

Robert Bermie Wetmore, born in Fredonia, N.Y., in 1867, died in Newport, N.Y., February 13, 1900. Graduating from the State Normal School in his native village, he was several years engaged in school teaching. Becoming interested in the varieties of religion brought to his notice, his mind found satisfaction and rest in Universalism, and he entered the Canton Theological School, from which he graduated with the class of 1898, and entered on his work as a Christian minister in charge of the Newport and Middleville, N.Y., churches receiving ordination in the latter, September 21, 1898. He threw himself into his work with great energy,– “even with reckless disregard of his own limitations of health and strength. He literally undertook everything. Besides his large responsibilities in his own churches, he gave himself freely to the calls from without. The result was inevitable” His pastorates were eminently successful.

Another early death. Note that the 120th anniversary of his ordination is coming up.

From the 1901 Universalist Register:

Omer Genere Petrie, born in Eldorado, Ohio, January 26, 1870, died in Palmer, Mass., April 28, 1900. Becoming a member of the Universalist Church in his native town at the age of sixteen, he received his special training for the ministry at Tufts College Divinity School, from which he graduated in 1894 with the highest honors. His first pastorate was at Canton, Mass. where he was ordained June 18, 1894. After a successful pastorate at Canton, he was called to Palmer, Mass. in 1896. He was greatly interested in the “Young People’s Christian Union,” in which he from time to time, held offices of responsibility and trust. “As man and minister it can be said in all moderation, he was without reproach. Large-minded, pure-hearted, gentle of disposition, yet a tower of strength for every right cause, his ministry has been that of a true disciple of the Master. His instincts were scholarly, his preaching exceptionally able, his personal influence always uplifting, his interest in public affairs unfailing, and he was not far removed from the ideal pastor.”

A longer, warmer (but no more informative) obituary may be seen in the YPCU magazine, Onward, volume 7, page 148 in the May 12, 1900 issue.

Then and now. The old Messiah Universalist Home, a Philadelphia retirement home, dedicated in 1902, today houses a Chinese grocery.

View Larger Map

But no wistful tears. If memory of the successor institutions serves, it survives today — and probably more practically — as UUH Outreach.

Yesterday’s remembered obituary led Oak Ridge, Tennessee Unitarian Universalist minister Jake Morrill to recall (on Facebook) another early death: the one with the boat. I’d read about this years ago, but had been unable to find the citation. Thanks to him for supplying the name: Veazey.

For this reason, I’ve opened two now categories: Ministers (some technical problem) (for more general posts) and Died Young under it (for those like these).

That minister, formerly settled in Harriman, Tennesssee, is Harry Lawrence Veazey and he died in a boating accident with his fiance, Nellie Calhoun. Both were leaders in the denominational Young People’s Christian Union, and so were both remembered in print and in resolutions. Indeed, the Harriman mission was a project of the YPCU. (The YPCU paper noted that the money Nellie Calhoun brought on her trip — $5 — was given to the Atlanta church building fund.)

Such a loss.

Starting on page 110 of the 1900 Universalist Register

Harry Lawrence Veazey was born in Haverhill, Mass., July 25, 1870 and died by drowning in Caspian Lake, Greensboro, Vt., August 16, 1899. The public schools of Brentwood, N.H. and the Academy at Kingston, N.H., were attended by him, his precocious mind retaining and comprehending at once all that these could teach him. He was associated for several years with his father, a builder and contractor, and in this capacity they went to and assisted in building up the town of Harriman, Tenn. Joining the Universalist church in that place soon after it was organized, he was induced by his pastor, Rev. Dr. McGlauflin, to prepare for the ministry and for this purpose became a student at the Canton Theological School. He had his first settlement at Harriman, where he was ordained July 25, 1897, Subsequently he supplied the pulpit at Woodsville, N.H. during the temporary absence of the pastor in the army. In December last, he became pastor at St Johnsbury, Vt. The local paper in a notice of his death says “Though Mr Veazey has been here less than a year he has endeared himself to all his parishioners and was active in all lines of church work. He had began to get well acquainted outside his parish and there are many who will long remember this scholarly preacher, and his death at a time when he was doing such excellent work in this community, is one of those events which no mortal can explain. He had already secured a reputation outside the borders of the parish by his public addresses.” Mr. Veazey was spending his vacation with his mother and sister, in a cottage at Caspian Lake having as their guest, Miss Ellen Frances Calhoun, of Chicago to whom he was engaged in marriage. In company with her he left the cottage on the evening of August 16th for a moonlight row upon the lake. In some unexplained manner they fall from the boat and were drowned. It was a sad ending so far as earth is concerned, of two estimable and talented lives.

From Onward, the YPCU magazine on July 28, 1900 about the YPCU convention in Atlanta.

Sunday’s Memorial

Sunday, July 15, was ushered in by a beautiful memorial service, under direction of Miss Grace L. White of New York. The friends who have passed on to the larger and better life since our last Convention were tenderly and affectionately called to remembrance by loving testimonies from those who had known them long and well. The list is not long, but many, many hearts have been bereaved. Faith will not allow our selfish desires to wish them back, for our loss is their gain; but we must ever long for “the touch of a vanished hand, and the sound of a voice that is still” until we find ourselves again in their presence never more to go away. Our cherished risen friends include Rev. Harry L. Veazey, Rev. R. B. Wetmore, Rev. Omer G. Petrie, S. W. Straub, Miss Ellen F. Calhoun, Mrs. George L. Perin.

The sermon of the morning “The Call to Christian Service” by Rev. F. C. Priest of Chicago, was an eloquent presentation of the truth, and was gratefully received by the large congregation filling every available seat.

I’ll publish the full obituary of Omer G. Petrie, who died age 30, a native of Eldorado, Ohio.

A few years ago, I found the obituaries of two Universalist ministers (1, 2) who died young. To these, I add a third and each makes me sad. The Mount Pleasant church federated with a Congregationalist church at some point, and while it was not a member of the UUA, continued on the roles of the National Association of Congregational Christian Churches though the 1990s, and perhaps a bit later.

Prudy LeClerc Haskell, in Oxford, O., December 27, 1878, aged 34; ordained in 1869. Miss LeClerc was a native of Louisville, Ky., was brought up a Universalist, and at the age of 23 turned her thoughts toward the ministry. She had settlements in Madison, Ind., and Mount Pleasant, Iowa, and supplied more or less regularly at Jeffersonville, Newtown, Mount Carmel and Oxford, O., and Mount Carmel and Union Church, Indiana. She was united in marriage with Rev. C. L. Haskell, March 28, 1878. Her life was consecrated to the work of the ministry, she was universally esteemed and loved, and her influence for our faith and humanity was fine and great.

ELECTED BISHOP OF THE UNIVERSALISTS

LOS ANGELES, May 14.— The most important action during the recent Universalist State Convention in Pasadena was the election of a state superintendent of churches, or what in other denominations would be called a bishop. The convention having created the office, Rev. L. M. Andrews of Santa Paula was by vote elevated to the position. According to the records. Rev. Mr. Andrews is the first Universalist bishop of California.

So, General Assembly is this month. I thought I’d begin my preparations by looking back to the last time we were in Providence. Not the Unitarian Universalist Association, of course. This is our first General Assembly there. But the Universalist General Convention met in Providence in 1842, 1858, 1868, 1878 and 1923.

So I’m looking for interesting mementos — I’ve already found a sermon — from those meetings. And I’ll post (or link) what I find here.
(Alas, I’ll probably also prove my point that very few people read this kind of thing.)

My recent “This blog post is not about Starr King” post is the most read (or at least, clicked) item I’ve ever written here — at least that I have records for, to some point in 2013. (Earlier records lost.)

Below are the top twenty blog posts, as opposed to people who land on the front page. Suggests that “if it bleeds it leads” works for niche blogs, too. That and long-posted niche resources.

My point is not to aggravate people, but our little fellowship within the Unitarian Universalist Association has some bad habits that need correcting. So I’ll write tougher items and not be shocked when people read them. (An inexhaustive list includes clannishness, conflict avoidance, “terminal uniqueness” as Victoria Weinstein puts it, valuing internal conformity and minimizing poor people. One of the reasons I’m such an advocate of new church planting is that it might give us a project we can be proud of, and convert some of this restless energy.) If I wasn’t happy with my friends and congregation, I’d be happy to go alone. But I am otherwise happy and so I won’t be quiet. I’m also grateful for all the kind private messages I got this last week.

Now, on to the list.

1. http://boyinthebands.com/archives/this-blog-post-is-not-about-starr-king-school-for-the-ministry/
2. http://boyinthebands.com/archives/the-sunday-only-calendar/
3. http://boyinthebands.com/archives/christian-emblems-not-a-cross-the-seven-pointed-star/
4. http://boyinthebands.com/archives/heres-where-i-lay-out-my-problems-with-the-uua/
5. http://boyinthebands.com/archives/dawn-of-the-movementarians/
6. http://boyinthebands.com/archives/why-starr-king/
7. http://boyinthebands.com/archives/fred-phelps-1929-2014/
8. http://boyinthebands.com/archives/what-hymns-are-distinctive-for-unitarian-and-universalist-christians-lists-proffered/
9. http://boyinthebands.com/archives/why-take-your-punishment-falls-flat/
10. http://boyinthebands.com/archives/churches-merged-disaffiliated-and-dead/
11. http://boyinthebands.com/archives/gnucash-for-a-nonprofit-organization/
12. http://boyinthebands.com/archives/universalist-churches-unseen/
13. http://boyinthebands.com/archives/bold-experiment-in-ministry/
14. http://boyinthebands.com/archives/data-check-on-the-emerging-churches-in-the-uua/
15. http://boyinthebands.com/archives/say-no-fiv-times-sure-to-irritate-everyone/
16. http://boyinthebands.com/archives/giving-up-unitarian-universalism-for-lent/
17. http://boyinthebands.com/archives/reviewing-unitarian-universalist-websites/
18. http://boyinthebands.com/archives/on-the-moral-march/
19. http://boyinthebands.com/archives/what-do-these-unitarian-universalist-websites-have-in-common/
20. http://boyinthebands.com/archives/its-not-polity-larping-or-worship-re-enacting/

Some good news, this morning! Happy Pentecost!

Per Kenneth Claus, their minister:

All Souls Miami votes unanimously to re boot…..some of the people who attended this AM…Wild Lime Center….UUA affiliation also unanimously reaffirmed

The flip side of churches with an unreported web presence is those church sites, as congregations report to the Unitarian Universalist Association for uua.org, that no longer exist. But that’s not the same as saying they don’t have one.

Seven congregational websites have thrown a 404 or other error on three occasions in recent days, and have never worked. In two cases, it was as simple as the servers don’t support secure HTTPS, but use HTTP. One letter difference. I found Facebook pages for others. That leaves two congregations unaccounted for.

[table]

Website on recond,Congregation,City,State,Use this one
“http://uufellowship. homestead.com/ UUFellowship.html”,UU Fellowship of Porterville Inc.,Porterville,CA,https://www.facebook.com/ pages /Unitarian-Universalist-Fellowship-of-Porterville/ 162339087121352
http://macomb.com/~uuf,UU Fellowship of Macomb ,Macomb,IL,
http://www.uubrockton.org/,UU Church ,Brockton,MA,http://uubrockton.com/
“http://www.uuum.org/ 567683”,UU Congregation at First Church in Roxbury,Roxbury,MA,
https://www.littlefallsuu.org/,St Paul’s Universalist Church,Little Falls,NY,http://www.littlefallsuu.org/
http://www.nfuuf.org/,North Fork UU Fellowship,Jamesport,NY,https://www.facebook.com/ pages /North-Fork-Unitarian-Universalist-Fellowship-NFUUF /89653344099
https://www.newriveruu.org/,New River UU Fellowship,Beckley,WV,http://www.newriveruu.org/
[/table]

In my post yesterday, I said that there are 36 Unitarian Universalist Association-member congregations that reported no website.

1. But some do have one, including a couple of WordPress.com blogs, but it isn’t noted at uua.org (for whatever reason)
2. And others use a Facebook like a church site, which I count as long as it’s reasonably up to date and has details that a visitor would want to see.
3. I looked for Google+ and other like paces, but didn’t find any. Facebook has a lock on this.
4. One church uses a Google Sites site primarily as a data store for its newsletters.

That leaves 17 churches on this list that have no website or like. (NA means I couldn’t find a site.) Interestingly, the median size is still 11. Next time: dead sites.

[table]
Church ID,Name,City,State,UU Members,URL
9012,The Unitarian Church of South Australia Inc.,NORWOOD,SA,111,http://www.adelaideunitarians.org.au/
8912,Brussels UU Fellowship ,Brussels,,20,http://uupuertorico.org/E/belgium/contact.htm
2036,UU Fellowship of Mountain Home AR,Mountain Home,AR,12,http://www.uufmtnhome.org/
2022,UU Fellowship of Yuma,Yuma,AZ,20,http://yuma-unitarian.org/
2535,UU Congregation of Whittier,Whittier,CA,11,na
2911,UU Congregation of Cocoa,Cocoa,FL,10,http://www.uucocoa.org/
3211,The Federated Church,Avon,IL,11,na
3215,UU Fellowship Eastern Illinois,Charleston,IL,6,https://www.facebook.com/uueasternillinois
3223,All Souls Free Religious Fellowship,Chicago,IL,14,https://www.facebook.com/pages/All-Souls-Free-Religious-Fellowship/316985258439
3517,Circle UU Fellowship,Indianapolis,IN,10,https://www.facebook.com/pages/Circle-UU-Fellowship-of-Indianapolis/509816002382146
4531,First Universalist Church of Hardwick Preservation Trust,Hardwick,MA,12,na
4833,Congregational Parish in Norton (Unitarian),Norton,MA,13,na
4835,First Universalist Church of Assinippi,Norwell,MA,8,na
4911,First Universalist Church,Orange,MA,15,na
5113,First Church of Templeton,Templeton,MA,10,https://www.facebook.com/pages/First-Church-of-Templeton/231571968510
3924,All Souls Universalist Church,Belgrade,ME,10,na
3833,First Congregational Society (Unitarian) of Eastport,Eastport,ME,6,https://www.facebook.com/pages/Unitarian-Meetinghouse-of-Eastport-Maine/131265246901834
3911,First Universalist Society,Hiram,ME,4,na
4018,The UU Church of Sangerville & Dover Foxcroft,Sangerville,ME,26,https://www.facebook.com/pages/First-Universalist-Church-of-Sangerville-Dover-Foxcroft/130890050306834
4013,First Universalist Church of South Paris,South Paris,ME,30,na
4022,First Universalist Church ,West Paris,ME,24,https://www.facebook.com/FirstUniversalistChurchOfWestParis
5236,Ann Arbor Unitarian Fellowship,Ann Arbor,MI,10,na
5514,Unitarian Fellowship of Grand Rapids,Grand Rapids,MN,22,na
5735,Kearney UU Fellowship,Kearney,NE,10,https://www.facebook.com/UnitarianUniversalistKearneyNE
5811,South Parish Unitarian Church,Charlestown,NH,26,na
5911,Newfields Community Church,Newfields,NH,1,http://newfieldscommunitychurch.wordpress.com/
6129,Hornell Alfred UU Society,Hornell,NY,13,http://hauus.wordpress.com/
6524,First Universalist Society,Salisbury Center,NY,14,na
7022,UU Fellowship ,Warren,OH,7,na
7214,First Universalist Church,Kingsley,PA,68,https://www.facebook.com/pages/The-First-Universalist-Church/1443588049208622
7435,First Universalist Church of Burrillville,Harrisville,RI,6,na
7512,Church of the Mediator,Providence,RI,11,https://www.facebook.com/Mediatorfellowship
8012,First Universalist Society ,Northfield,VT,6,http://www.unitedchurchofnorthfield.org/
8026,Universalist Society of West Burke,West Burke,VT,7,https://www.facebook.com/pages/Universalist-Society-of-West-Burke/121850654556564
8413,UU Fellowship,Marshfield,WI,8,na
8416,Unitarian Fellowship of Milwaukee,Milwaukee,WI,9,na
[/table]

Blog improvements in the hopper. Hope to have them done by General Assembly.

1. A good way for readers to subscribe to new posts by email. By request.
2. A new, non-generic header image.
3. A new body text that supports Esperanto. (So you don’t see question marks in anta?en or ali?ilo.)
4. A way — widget, workflow? — to promote older best-of content.

Unitarian Universalists were early adopters of websites, and even in the late 90s I remember more than 300 or 400 congregations hosting their own site. These earliest available archive is from 1996, with 234 sites and more coming on line all the time.

I also recall — and thinking it wrong then — that someone-in-the-know opined that it was unlikely that many more churches would bother with one. That must have been around 1998 or 1999. (I wish I had written these predictions down. It was, of course, pre-blog.)

Today, only 36 of the 1045 member congregations of the Unitarian Universalist Association report no website. Most of these are very small (median membership = 11) and are overwhelmingly in New England.

The largest one listed (111 members) is The Unitarian Church of South Australia, but it does have a site, apparently for years.

But that’s not to say these other congregations don’t have a web presence, and that their choice isn’t the best one. But that — and a table! — is for next time.

Heeding God’s Call is a “a faith-based movement to prevent gun violence.” It has put out 176 t-shirts as a movable memorial for those dead from gun violence in metro D.C. in 2013. In June, it is installed at Church of the Pilgrims, Presbyterian, in my neighborhood.

Disclosures! Principled disobedience! Angry words! Someone in hiding! Legal threats! Not coming forward!

Starr King School for the Ministry? No, Edward Snowden, of course.

This article, “Is Snowden Obliged to Accept Punishment?” (Just Security) by Michael J. Glennon, Professor of International Law at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University — you know, a college founded by Universalists — takes apart the presumption that Snowdon has a duty to hand himself over for punishment. In short, the presumption of a punishment-accepting civil disobedient is not a uniform or customary behavior; that it was often unavoidable (rather than a choice); and there are good reasons — unjust state power — to reject it. Really worth a read.

But it gives me an excuse to flag a few things in the current SKSM scandal:

• It shows how small we are as a religious fellowship, and dependent upon personalities and friendships to manage our organizational relationships.
• We still haven’t heard the version of a single student, in public. Do they feel as free to speak as the leadership?
• Nobody so far has challenged the holding-documents=theft claim, with the follow-on threat of criminal penalty. I’d love to see how far that would go. Especially in the Bay Area.
• Nobody has said a word, apart from the unspecified fear of lost donations, about money: the UUA’s grant, for one, or the cost of litigation, if it goes that far.
• That the affair, in the national climate, will become a Rorschach test for our political opinions, perhaps losing the meat of the crisis. If the general public ever learns it…
• Unitarian Universalist will have to re-assess how culturally exceptional we (think we) are.
• We’ve not heard much from the laity in the pews: what opinions come out of their experiences? Will anyone care if they do?

Heaven, help us!

The General Assembly of the Unitarian Universalist Association has the twin powers of drawing a lot of interested people and at the same time stretching budgets past their breaking points.

One of the pain points is food. (I recall first-hand the problem of scavenging for food at GA when I was younger.)

This is an open blog post; please feel free to share those tips you have for eating economically in downtown Providence, Rhode Island. Please include groceries that can be easily reached by public transportation. Nobody wants to eat at the CVS for a week.

Particular knowledge about specialized food requirements such as vegan or gluten-free food is especially welcome.

Something lighter today. In some old Universalist baptism rites, we hear this traditional question with Satan taking on a new guise.

Renouncing, therefore, the fellowship of evil, will you endeavor to learn of Jesus Christ, and co­operate in the study and practice of his religion?

Fellowship of Evil? Sure I’ll renounce it, especially if it means I don’t have to move folding chairs. Members of fellowships will get that one.

I hate folding chairs. I hate moving them and having them bang my shins. I hate the noise the metal ones make. I hate time it takes. I hate how uncomfortable they are. But they’re pretty darn common for new churches (and some old ones) and I want to make operating a new (and probably small) church as easy as possible.

Here’s a radical thought. Do without them and stand. OK, a few chairs for those (no judgements) who need to sit; perhaps already in the borrowed room. A few wingbacks or the like in the Garden Club room the congregation rents, say.  Plus prime reserved space for wheelchair users. Cushions for small, collapsing children? (No need to wrestle with strollers!) Everyone else, up.

Not so strange a thought. In my experience, people often stand for an hour or more after the service to enjoy one another’s company and a cup of coffee. And we Protestantish types do have standing services, though we don’t often think of them as such: graveside services, small weddings, devotions at campgrounds.

But we think of church and we think of seats, if not pews. Why? Many Orthodox Christians don’t, of course, so perhaps that’s the influence of reading Orthodox missological works lately. (More about that soon.)  But as I’ve written before, it was only a few generations back that owning or renting “a sitting” was highly identified with church membership itself. And those days are over. Of course, you would grow weary in the second or third hour of worship, and would want a rest, but again those days (for Unitarian Universalists) are past.

Provided people are warned, a standing service has some advantages:

• a wider variety of meeting space available
• time and volunteer labor saved moving chairs; perhaps a saving of fees, too.
• standing worshippers take less space
• freedom of movement fights fatigue
• standing worshippers can, as a group, better shift to accommodate newcomers. (Think of how people self-organize in an elevator.)
• likewise, they can better shift to focus attention away from how few there are in a large space

It is, however, strange. And there would be pressure to keep the services briefer than usual. (Is this bad?) But it’s worth an experiment. And I’d like to hear if anyone has tried this.

January 17, 2015. I’m not writing a new post about the Starr King School for the Ministry crises, but the newest blowup has driven traffic to this article, first published on June 2, 2014.  I do have some added questions:

• Who benefits from the status quo?
• What is the role of money — paid out, raised and possibly withheld — play in these crises?
• What named, tangible benefits, other than the emotional, does Starr King provide to the Unitarian Universalist community?
• What is the role of SKSM’s prior reputation? The role of a (possibly) over-professionalized ministry? The different approaches to ministry in different generations? West coast vs. East coast vs. “North coast”? 

Feel free to comment.

So, the Unitarian Universalist-o-sphere is blowing up around a crisis at Starr King School for the Ministry, a Unitarian Universalist-related graduate seminary in Berkeley, California.

I would go into detail about the crisis, but there aren’t many details to be had, and much of the commentary — including an appeal letter from incoming president, Rosemary Bray McNatt, lately the minister of Fourth Universalist, New York — takes place on Facebook, and that’s hardly a reliable archive.

The nut is, or seems to be, this: someone gave confidential documents about the presidential search process to those outside the process, including other Unitarian Universalists, the press and the theological seminaries accrediting board. (I have no idea what these documents say.) The Starr King board has made an inquiry. Two graduating Starr King students have not been graduated (a contingent graduation) pending further investigation. Unsubstantiated reports tell of two board members resigning. Past UUA moderator Gini Courter has established a legal defense fund for the students, who are being represented by lawyers. Talk of ethics, boundaries and leadership abound, with a predicable amount of expressed horror and people supporting their friends.

Rosemary Bray McNatt’s open letter is here. A statement from the lawyers representing the students is here.

Not suprizingly, web searches have brought readers to a post I wrote about Starr King in 2007. My basic opinion about the school hasn’t changed, and (plainly) I have a hard time caring if it prospers or dies. This blog post is not about Starr King School for the Ministry. It’s about Unitarian Universalist self-conception.

• This is the second time in a year (or so) that an unnamed consultant has been brought in to handle major Unitarian Universalist institutional conflict. Who is the consultant? A forthcoming introduction would go far to instill confidence that the consultant is qualified and has no conflict of interest.
• The lawyers refer to ‘an investigator for the board’s law firm’ which, if true, is alarming. But is very much in character with Unitarian Universalist culture which claims to create bold leaders yet makes the formation process a gauntlet of circumspection, wildly uneven power arrangements and keeping your head down. You have to pass to play. But you can’t build bravery though fear. (So no points to Gini Couter for “doing the right thing.” I’ve never seen so many good people sigh relief as when she stopped being Moderator. For some reason, people are afraid of her. If this is Unitarian Universalism, you can keep it. But she’s out of office and the rest of us are still here.)
• Which is, I believe, why Unitarian Universalist ministers are so deeply conformist, at least in public, and why ministers close ranks with the speed and force of a bear trap. Can you think of another denomination that avoids public fights so hard? It’s particularly bitter when you consider the brave souls we lionize, say, like John Haynes Holmes.
• When you spend all you time being “revolutionary” expect revolutionary justice. As in, innocent blood on the guillotine. But we aren’t that revolutionary, and weirdness is not a substitute. I’ll take sober, thoughtful leadership any day. Our rhetoric doesn’t match our reality, even a reasonable aspiration.
• There’s a Yiddish word you should learn if you don’t know it. Mishigas. Crazy-nonsense. Boy, do we have it. Good, self-differentiated people smell it and they stay away or leave. Remember that the next time you hear someone mew about the Millenials being our future.

As I said, this is far past a Starr King issue, but it is a test for Unitarian Universalist leadership, and we should all be watching.

As I wrote yesterday, one of the UUA backends has — if you know how to look — references to churches that are “not constituent[s]” though I suppose they must have all been thus at one time.

Since the larger list includes Canadian congregations (not listed here) that departed around Canadian Unitarian Council autonomy in 2003, this list has to be at least that old.

Which is also to reinforce that not all of these are dead. I see at least one Universalist church (Rockwell, Windsor) that has come and gone over the years. So also I can image a couple of community or federated churches doing fine outside the UUA.

But the rural and small-town Universalist churches and the marginally placed Unitarian fellowships are surely gone. Two were intentionally African-American-focused starts. (T.H.E., Atlanta and Sojourner Truth, Washington, D.C., which was long gome before I moved to D.C. in 2000.) The hardest to see is Epiphany, Fenton: the hoped-for firstfruits of a new age of Christian church planting. Others surely feel the same way about Panthea Pagan, Hoffman Estates. I’ll miss Muttontown’s sheep banner at General Assembly.

But many more are simply mergers. I recall the two in Flushing, Queens continue as one. Two in Minnesota. Saugus recently merged with First Parish, Malden. Oregon City’s merger even has a note online. Perhaps, too, the references to Dayton, San Diego and San Antonio?

Comments (and clarifications) welcome.

[table]
“‘Not a Constituent Congregation'”,City,State
Guadalajara Unit. Univ. Fellowship,Guadalajara,Jalisco
Seward UUs,Seward,Alaska
Coronado UU Church,Coronado,California
UU Fellowship of the Mendocino Coast,Mendocino,California
U. U. Fellowship Southern Marin,Mill Valley,California
Aliso Creek Church,Mission Viejo,California
U U Fellowship of the Ojai Valley,Ojai,California
Channing Society of Orange County,Orange County,California
The Chalice Unit. Univ. Church,Poway,California
U. U. Inland North County Fellowship,San Diego,California
Unit. Univ. Fellowship of Friends,San Diego,California
All Souls Unitarian Church,San Juan Capo,California
UU Fellowship of Leisure World,Seal Beach,California
UU Fellowship of Aspen,Aspen,Colorado
Darien-New Canaan Unit. Society,New Canaan,Connecticut
UU Fellowship of the Farmington Valley,Simsbury,Connecticut
Sojourner Truth Congregation of UUs,Washington,D.C.
U. U. Fellowship of South Dade,Homestead,Florida
Eastside UU Church,Miami,Florida
Thurman Hamer Ellington UU Fellowship & Ministry,Atlanta,Georgia
Rockwell Universalist Church,Winder,Georgia
Glenview Unitarian Fellowship,Glenview,Illinois
“Panthea Pagan Fellowship, UUA”,Hoffman Estates,Illinois
Universalist Church,Waltonville,Illinois
Sauk Trail Unit. Univ. Fellowship,Crown Point,Indiana
UUs of Northern Kentucky,Lawrenceburg,Indiana
UU Fellowship Johnson County,Prairie Village,Kansas
UU Church of Hopkinsville,Hopkinsville,Kentucky
Unitarian Universalist Fellowship,Ruston,Louisiana
First Universalist Society,Brownfield,Maine
Seneca Valley U. U. Fellowship,Gaithersburg,Maryland
First Federated Church,Beverly,Massachusetts
First Parish Unitarian Church,East Bridgewater,Massachusetts
UUs of Lowell,Lowell,Massachusetts
First Parish UU Church in Saugus,Saugus,Massachusetts
U U Fellowship Northern Berkshire,N Adams,Massachusetts
Church of the United Community,Roxbury,Massachusetts
First Unitarian Church,Stoneham,Massachusetts
First Unitarian Church,Ware,Massachusetts
U. U. Fellowship of Saginaw,Bridgeport,Michigan
First Universalist Church,Concord,Michigan
Epiphany Community Church UU,Fenton,Michigan
First Unitarian Church,Virginia,Minnesota
Burruss Memorial Universalist Church,Ellisville,Mississippi
Universalist Church of Westbrook,Concord,New Hampshire
Community Church,Dublin,New Hampshire
Dorothea Dix U. U. Community,Groveville,New Jersey
U U Gloucester County Congregation,Turnersville,New Jersey
Unit. Univ. Fellowship of Burlington County,Willingboro,New Jersey
First Universalist Church,Dexter,New York
Hollis UU Congregation,Flushing,New York
Unitarian Universalist Church of Flushing,Flushing,New York
Universalist Church of the Messiah,Fort Plain,New York
First Universalist Church,Henderson,New York
Unitarian Universalist Church,Lockport,New York
Muttontown UU Fellowship,Muttontown,New York
First Univ. Church Schuyler Lake,Schuyler Lake,New York
U. U. Fellowship of Fayetteville,Fayetteville,North Carolina
First Unitarian Church,Dayton,Ohio
Miami Valley Unitarian Fellowship,Dayton,Ohio
U. U. Society Western Reserve,Kirtland,Ohio
Community UU Congregation,Tulsa,Oklahoma
Unit. Univ. Community of Cottage Grove,Cottage Grove,Oregon
Valley Community U. U. Fellowship,Newberg,Oregon
Atkinson Memorial Church (merged),Oregon City,Oregon
Boones Ferry U. U. Congregation,Oregon City,Oregon
Unitarian Fellowship of Bucks County,Fountainville,Pennsylvania
Venango Unit. Univ. Fellowship,Franklin,Pennsylvania
First Universalist Church,Woonsocket,Rhode Island
Brookings Unit. Univ. Fellowship,Brookings,South Dakota
First U U Fellowship Hunt County,Greenville,Texas
Community UU Church,San Antonio,Texas
Unitarian Universalist Fellowship,San Antonio,Texas
The Old Brick Church,East Montpelier,Vermont
Jenkins Unit. Univ. Fellowship,Chesterfield,Virginia
Lewis Clark Unitarian Fellowship,Clarkston,Washington
UU Congregation of Grays Harbor,Hoquiam,Washington
Fork Ridge Universalist Church,Moundsville,West Virginia
UU Fellowship,Buenos Aires,
Tokyo Unitarian Fellowship,Tokyo 106-0032,
[/table]

My day job (Sunlight Foundation) colleague, Jeremy Carbaugh, has written a thrilling blog post about the technology Sunlight uses to run our annual big event/unconference, TransparencyCamp, a.k.a. TCamp. Along with masterful planning and execution, engaged group process and careful attention to design, TCamp is a sight to behold.

I’m quite proud of it, and wanted to point out Jeremy’s notes in case you feel inspired. Can’t code? What better way to learn something than to find a project that needs doing? (I’ll point out other new how-we-did-it writings if and as they appear.)

It’s going on right now, learn more TCamp itself at the main page — or better, though the #tcamp14 Twitter hashtag.

Unitarian Universalists: we can make, at least, a hearty Twitter presence at General Assembly, right?

So, I wanted a list of Unitarian Universalist member congregations and the years they were organized.

Not just an idle curiosity, but to see what proportion is less than 30 years old, to see what era (other than the Fellowship Movement obviously) produced surviving churches, and which areas have a better recent experience of welcoming new congregations. (Culture and expectations matter.) I’m about three-quarters done with the list.

As a side-effect of my search, I discovered the UUA keeps information about former congregations online. The disbanded, disaffiliated, merged and mysterious. I don’t know how far it goes back, or if its complete within that unknown date range. But the reportage of ex-member-congregations has, in twenty years, gone from routine to almost nil.

And without this missing news, how can we mourn our dead? How can we be thankful for their ministry? This tribute matters. It shows that we respect the life cycle of congregations and, like trees in a forest, have to plant the new to replace deadwood. It shows we replace the connections. It shows we respect the work now finished, or at least finished with us or in their former incarnations.

We cannot let these lost congregations go silently, any more than we would let our own loved ones go unlamented and unpraised.

Ascension Day, which marks Jesus’ return to God in the heavens, should be more dear to Universalists.

Jesus’ disciples, at his departure, returned to Jerusalem, to the Temple, and praised God. Though hard labor, trials of discipline and persecution would follow, they — and we — have in Jesus’ ascension an idea of our future: not a divinized rocket launch, as so often depicted in art, but a return to the source which made us, and a path that calls us to be a blessing to others, even those who would curse us.

Amtrak is an affordable, appealing option for many Unitarian Universalists coming from out of town to Providence for General Assembly.

The tickets become much more expensive if you buy them within 21 days of travel. Other discounts exists, but it’s hard to be the convenience of a single passenger travelling. Companion fares which could be booked later really don’t see you that much by comparison. So get your tickets now.

Use this tool to find the cheapest tickets from your location to Providence.

Next up on the blog…

• A couple of more articles on morning prayer before I give the theme a rest (for a while)
• how to simplify the order of worship creation process
• getting ready for General Assembly

So, I spent much of the Memorial Day weekend cleaning up papers. Among them, I found this print out of a report I wrote of newly-admitted Unitarian Universalist Association congregations from 1992 and 1993.

Sheeh. I know I’d been following church growth statistics for a long time, but not that long.

Here is that table, updated with the current congregation name and places. Blank gaps mean a church has not survived, but since I didn’t record the original church ID, I can’t be sure the churches haven’t moved more than a few miles. Much less merged with another congregation.

A couple of notes. Thurman, Hamer, Ellington was intentionally majority African American, and I don’t think it lasted the 1990s. Note that the Augusta, Maine and Chapel Hill, N.C. churches weren’t founded in 1992 or 1993. Churches served by a New Congregation Minister are marked Y under the column NCM, a program that no longer exists.

[table]

where,zip,name,church ID,organized,members then,now,NCM
“Coeur D’Alene, Idaho”,83814,North Idaho UUs,3127,1992,34,35,N
“Augusta, Maine”,4332,UU Community Church,3810,1826,160,198,N
“Jefferson City, Missouri “,65102,UU Fellowship of Jefferson City,5632,1992,21,50,N
“Lockport, New York”,,UU Church,,,33,,N
“Tahlequah, Oklahoma”,74464,UU Congregation of Tahlequah,7037,1992,48,52,N
“Coos Bay, Oregon”,97459,South Coast U U Fellowship,7115,1992,30,32,N
“Newberg, Oregon”,,Valley Community UU Fellowship,,,23,,N
“Tudaltin, Oregon”,,Boones Ferry UU Congregation,,,64,,Y
“Northumberland, Pennsylvania”,17857,UU Congregation of Susquehanna Valley,7320,1992,68,101,N
“Cordova, Tennessee”,38018,Neshoba UU Church,7616,1992,100,142,Y
“Ogden, Utah”,84401,UU Church of Ogden,7917,1992,76,93,N
“Leesburg, Virginia”,20175,UU Church of Louden,8113,1992,25,73,N
“Hoquiam, Washington”,,UU Congregation of Grays Harbor,,,25,,N
“Woodinville, Washington”,98072,Woodinville UU Church,8312,1992,164,189,Y
“Green Bay, Wisconsin”,54313,Green Bay Area UU Fellowship,8337,1992,21,89,N
“Amado, Arizona”,85645,UU Congregation of Green Valley,2029,1993,51,104,N
“Coronado, California”,,UU Church,,,52,,N
“San Juan Capistrano, California”,,All Souls’ Unitarian,,,37,,N
“Littleton, Colorado”,80128,Columbine UU Church,2634,1993,57,91,Y
“Miami, Florida”,,Eastside UU Church,,,33,,Y
“Orlando, Florida”,32817,University UU Society of Seminole County,2920,1993,54,92,N
“Decatur, Georgia”,,”Thurman, Hamer, Ellington Church, UU”,,,20,,Y
“Covington, Kentucky”,,UUs of Northern Kentucky,,,32,,N
“Chesterton, Maryland”,21620,UUs of the Chester River,4039,1993,21,62,N
“Ellicott City, Maryland”,21042,”Channing Memorial Church, UU”,4040,1993,36,61,N
“Chapel Hill, North Carolina”,27514,The Community Church of Chapel Hill UU,6626,”1953, 1993 (associated)”,144,356,N
“Canton, Ohio”,44711,UU Congregation of Greater Canton,6813,1993,20,39,N
“Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania”,18360,UU Fellowship of the Poconos,7220,1993,36,50,N
“Peace Dale, Rhode Island”,2879,UU Congregation of South County,7510,1993,29,147,N
“Cedar Park, Texas”,78613,Live Oak UU Church,7714,1993,52,147,Y

[/table]

So, I understand that the HVAC systems at 24 Farnsworth Street, the new headquarters building of the Unitarian Universalist Association, aren’t quite callibrated or what-have-you and some of the staff are cold. Really cold. This happens.

As a large, well-insulated person, I tend to cope with a frosty office better than most, but I hate to think of the energy waste.

And more, I hate to think about people being cold at home or work in the winter because the cost of heating is too high. So I’m writing because of the UUA news, but as a tickler for those who face heating insecurity. The same goes in case of power outage, or simply desiring to be less dependent on limited natural resources.

This might be the right time of year for sales shopping for the goods you would need, too.

Two articles to get you on your way:

1. “Micro heaters cut 87% off my electric heat bill” by Paul Wheeler is a way to use an assortment of low-power devices to create a “heat bubble” around you in an office setting.
2. “Insulation: first the body, then the home” by Kris De Decker is a heavily-sourced review of the use of modern performance garments to make low domestic temperatures comfortable. Would a Geneva gown count?

But if the UUA staff work in conditions implied in the second article, I’d contact OSHA first!

I meant to make this post available well ahead of Memorial Day, but that obviously did not happen. There will always be another occasion for wreaths and tributes at monuments, though.

But it wasn’t a national holiday that made me think about this subject originally. I live in Washington D.C., and live near several memorials to foreign luminaries. Embassies and ex-pats will often leave flowers in tribute, so I see a lot of these. And then there are the wreaths and other flowers left at the military memorials. Florists must do well around here.

But not all choices are equally good. Here are some ideas if you intend to leave a wreath or make a floral  presentation at a public monument.

If I had to pick one action, plan for someone to clean up the wreath-remains within a few days. A pile of compost isn’t a tribute.

After that, choose the backing (and if needed, easel) well. The Ukrainian embassy left a wreath for the Schevchenko bicentennial earlier this year — in the context of a national crisis no less — but the flowers were attached to a plastic (think bread wrapper) covered foam hoop. Worse, it was too heavy for the wire easel, and with a slight breeze it toppled over and broke.

I found it broken I was out walking Daisy the Dog, but it was past re-staging.

Contrast this with a wreath the Slovak embassy left on the birthday of the first Czechoslovak president (and husband of American-born Unitarian, Charlotte Garrigue) Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk. The papier mache is stronger, so the wind did not destroy it, and the wooden easel adds dignity.

Or do without the easel, and mount the wreath with this tribute to the Madonna of the Trail, in suburban Bethesda. The coated wire provides a backing to hang the wreath. (And now I can imagine where the typical toothmarks of decay on old sandstone monuments comes from…)

They’ve been in for a while, truth be told. Not ready to review them, but each is larger that I thought it might be. There is the words-only edition of the United Church of Canada’s Voices United and the Church of Scotland’s Church Hymnary 4 (purple) with the words-only Unitarian and Free Christian Hymns of Faith and Freedom, Church Hymnary 3 (melody edition) and Church Hymnary Revised (pocket words-only) for size comparison.

Finally, a use for me for Foursquare. The Liberty Universalist church isn’t a member of the UUA, but has Universalist origins. And is active. I’d never seen it mapped before!

I was chatting with some parish ministers; one complained about having to go back to finish a newsletter column, to the moans and commiserations of the others. (The weekly newsletter-meditation implied by the order of service-themed blog post yesterday only raises the demand.)

I lightly chuckled, since I don’t have that responsibility anymore. And funny, as I was already blogging in my last pastorate, it was always easier and more pleasant to blog than write newsletter columns, so it isn’t the act of writing, per se. (The only thing worse was coming up with suitably vague but interesting blurbs for sermons I hadn’t written yet.)

So preachers,

• why is this task so awful?
• what can be done to make it less awful?
• would anyone notice if we stopped?

And by “we” I mean “you.” I’d love to hear from you. I’ll allow anonymous comments for this post, for obvious reasons.

My day at the Andover-Harvard Library archives was running out, so I wanted to see what I could as quickly as possible, including the files related to an ad hoc organization opposed to the creation of the Unitarian Universalist Association, from a minority of Universalists and Unitarians alike.

One of the opposing Unitarian churches was First Church, Boston, and the minister editorialized through orders of service, so these were included in the  file. The controversy aside, I thought it had value as a format.

The order was four pages: one leaf folded, and printed the usual way like a booklet. Since I don’t know the copyright status of the order of services, I won’t post them; it may be legitimate fair use, but the value is in the form (rather than the content) so I may replicate that later. A description will do.

Page one:

• Name of the church
• Names and title of the ministers
• Date and time
• Outline order of service with dialogues, responses and doxology printed out
• Name and title of organist

Page two:

• Responsive reading

Page three:

• A pastoral meditation (being the anti-consolidation opinion piece), signed with initials
• Staff list (or on page four)

Page four:

• Notices, in a mix of one and two columns
• Staff list and address (or on page three)

Not radical, but a some interesting features.

• tightly edited notices reduce or eliminate the need for a church newsletter
• the minister’s meditation provides another avenue for principled and educational communication; I wonder if it was used for pledging?
• bored with the service? you can read that meditation instead
• folded backwards, to expose pages 2 and 3, you have a welcome reminder of church to be extracted later in the week from your bag…
• …or a pleasing representation of the church to share with others
• one leaf means less paper and less cost, and extras can easily be printed on the fly

Of course, yours would be photocopied or laser printed, rather than job printing. That’s something you couldn’t do in 1959!

I was — and am — looking for a practical expostion on Universalist worship like the one from 1901 I found for the Unitarians a couple of weeks ago. In the process, I found the Tufts 1902-03 catalog, and its pages dedicated to its now-lost Divinity School.

A couple of items to note: one could enter as an undergraduate and study through, and option that died very recently in the United States with the closure of Bangor Theological Seminary. And that the curriculum included logic (for nongrads), economics, psychology and the “Biblical languages” of German, Hebrew and Greek. And PE for the men.

If you were approved, you would have gotten a generous scholarship — to imagine an early pastorate without student debt! — from the Universalist General Convention, though non-Universalists were admitted. Lodging “heated by steam and lighted by gas ” included, but you did have to provide your own “sheets, blankets, pillow cases, and towels.”

A fun read.

It’s 1920, and you’re in a large market town east of the Alleghenies. You’re looking for a church and your options include an Episcopal church and a Unitarian church. (Make it a small city or larger, and you might add the Universalists to this formula.) Ask the rector of St. Alban’s or the minister at First Unitarian if each has much in common with the other, and you would probably be told “no.” Different polity, different theology, different piety. The two have nothing in common.

But if you ask parishioners to describe how worship was worded, you might pick up on more similarities then you would have expected. Yes, Unitarian worship has changed, but so did Episcopalian worship, and in 1920 they were closer in style. These were the days before the Liturgical Movement, so an every-Sunday, main Eucharistic (Communion) service would be unlikely; Morning Prayer (with Sermon) would be more likely, and if it was old-fashioned, it may be followed in an odd rhythm by the Litany and then Ante-Communion; that is, the first half of the Communion service. And the Unitarians would have Morning Prayer and Sermon, by that or another name. A big litany would be an option, and if you’d shown up a generation or two before, even Ante-Communion.

Small-town Universalists, Western “fiddle and lecture” Unitarians and Anglo-Catholic Episcopalians would have fallen outside this spectrum, but Theist and even early Humanist Unitarians appreciated the rhythms and internal logic of Morning Prayer. You ask: so what?

In the next couple of weeks or more, I will blog on:

• what the contemporary changes Unitarians and Universalists made to common worship styles say about their assumptions then
• how traces of those forms persist, even in unlikely settings
• how these forms are based on centuries of developments
• how these forms can be the basis of lay theological education and mission
• how movement, habits and artifacts shape worship
• what adaptations and alterations by those who used those forms (Epiccopalians mainly) say about how these forms might be re-reformed and re-adopted

Should be fun! Thought? Please add them in the comments.

So, I was reading forms from the Church of England Diocese of Europe (as one does) and came across an “Application for the Authorisation of a Congregational Worship Leader.” (PDF)

As the diocese’s reach extends to Ulaanbataar and Vladivostok — not to mention parts in between — it makes sense there would be a provision for such leaders. And even more, a provision for non-Anglican leaders. After all, in some parts, the Church of England presence may be the only Anglophone option.  Non-Anglican but baptized Christians have to complete one more step: to “acknowledge the Church of England as part of the one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church” and “accept the teaching, discipline and authority of the Church of England.” That’s it.

Which reminds me of the pre-consolidation provisions for Universalist fellowship, for persons entering the ministry and presumably parishes: to accept the essential theological standard of the Universalist Church, and to abide by its laws.

Not so onerous a lift.

The discussions around these hymns and hymnal posts on that walled garden, Facebook, have been far more lively that the comments here might suggest. Thanks to commenters here and there.

A bit of alternative history. The Universalists didn’t have to be consolidated with the Unitarians. There was as an eleventh-hour attempt to stop it. (Which produced an interesting print artifact; I’ll talk about that later.) So the Universalists might have remained independent, or clubbed in with a Congregationalists — there were talks — and ended up with the United Church of Christ or the National Association of Congregational Christian Churches. Some Universalist churches that opted out of the UUA did end up joining the latter body — I recall the names in the 1990s — though I’m unsure if any are extant. (Universalist National Memorial Church is an honorary member.)

I’m not saying that such an outcome would be desirable, only possible. And they would have come up with their own ways and resources.

I had this in mind when I re-reviewed the 1992 Hymnal: A Worship Book, a Brethren and Mennonite book. I couldn’t help but think that in might be good for Christian Universalists, or a Universalist-federated church. On the one hand, it’s got ecumenical standards, Unitarian classics from the like of Barbould, Hosmer and Longfellow, and cheery Gospel songs like “God be with you till we meet again” (which ended worship at a church I used to supply.)

It just feels Universalist. And since the Universalists in the Southern states started as Brethren, I suppose that’s right. Alas, like Singing the Living Tradition, it’s entry at Hymnary.org is almost empty, so it’s hard to make a comparison with other hymnals.

It’s inexpensive ($15) and well-made, though I’ve heard that they warp if they stand up in a hymn rack. A nice selection of worship resources, too.

And that might be the end of it: a useful hymnal in certain restricted (unlikely, really) circumstances. But then there are the supplements.

Two more substantial works are Mennonite-specific, but the little ones have modern hymns and some Taize (it seems) plus “Gathered Here in the Mystery of This Hour,” “Siyahamba” and something called “Spirit of Life.”

A parallel development, in an alternate world, indeed…

This will be the last hymnal post until my ordered books show up; until then, I’ll turn to other matters, including worship theory.

Following up on the “Fifty Shades of Unitarian” post, here are the “The Unitarian faith set forth in fifty Unitarian hymns” affirmations or platforms: the faith each hymn supposedly upholds. And matching biblical passage, Conveniently, it plots out almost a year’s worth of sermons, too. (Or at least I can be forgiven what some preachers surely must have thought in 1914.) But if you do preach these, I offer no guarantee that your congregation will like them all. A few are worthy of salvage, but then again I’m a Universalist without a preaching ministry, so take that as you will.

[table]
Theme,Incipit,Scripture,,Author
Unitarians Worship The God Who Is Revealed In The Heavens Above And On The Earth Beneath,Lord of all being throned afar,Psalm 19: 1,,Oliver Wendell Holmes
Unitarians Affirm The Immediate And Constant Presence Of God,Thou Life within my life than self more near,Deuteronomy 33: 27,Psalm 90: 1,Eliza Scudder
Unitarians Affirm The Encompassing And Sustaining Guidance Of God,Whither midst falling dew,Isaiah 26: 3,,William Cullen Bryant
Unitarians Affirm The Unfailing Goodness And Mercy Of God,”Eternal One, thou living God”,Psalm 103: 17,,Samuel Longfellow
Unitarians Affirm The Continuous And Inexhaustible Revelation Of God To Men,From age to age how grandly rise,Revelation 21: 3,,Frederick Lucian Hosmer
Unitarians Affirm The Timeless And Boundless Revelation Of God To Men,Light of ages and of nations,Wisdom of Solomon 7: 27,,Samuel Longfellow
Unitarians Affirm The Revelation Of God In The Divine Order Of The World And In The Daily Faithfulness Of Men,We pray no more made lowly wise,Luke 27: 21,,Frederick Lucian Hosmer
Unitarians Find A Revelation Of God In Nature,Mysterious Presence source of all,Psalm 104: 24,,Seth Curtis Beach
Unitarians Find A Revelation Of God In The Consciences And Hearts Of Men,O Thou whose Spirit witness bears; Within our spirits free,Romans 8: 16,,Frederick Lucian Hosmer
Unitarians Affirm The Revelation Of God In The Human Soul,The Lord is in his Holy Place,1 Corinthians 3: 16,,William Channing Gannett
Unitarians Affirm The Validity Of The Things That Are Not Seen,Father thy wonders do not singly stand,2 Corinthians 4: 18,,Jones Very
Unitarian Affirm That The Purpose Of Worship Is The Communion Of The Souls Of Men With God,Father in thy mysterious presence kneeling,Romans 8: 15,,Samuel Johnson
Unitarians Affirm That Prayer Is The Aspiration Uttered Or Unexpressed Of The Human Soul Toward God,Nearer my God to thee,Psalm 25: 1,,Sarah Flowers Adams
Unitarians Affirm The Reality Of The Inner Light That Lighteth Every Man That Cometh Into The World,Go not my soul in search of him Thou wilt find him there,John 1: 9,,Frederick Lucian Hosmer
Unitarians In Spite Of The Inscrutable Tragedies Of Life Dare To Believe And To Trust In The Perfect Wisdom And Love Of God,Thou Grace Divine encircling all,Psalm 23: 6,,Eliza Scudder
Unitarians Affirm The Limitless And Ceaseless Incarnation Of God In Men,O prophet souls of all the years,Acts 14: 17,,Frederick Lucian Hosmer
Unitarians Affirm That Inspiration Is The Unbroken Communication Of The Life Of God To The Open Mind And Reverent Heart Of Man,Life of ages richly poured,Matthew 10: 20,,Samuel Johnson
Unitarians Affirm That Salvation Is Not A Matter Of Belief But A Way Of Life,Christian rise and act thy creed,Matthew 7: 21,,Francis Albert Rollo Russell
Unitarians Affirm The Leadership Of Jesus Christ,O Thou great friend to all the sons of men,John 14: 6,,Theodore Parker
Unitarians Affirm The Humanity Of Jesus Christ,Our Father while our hearts unlearn,John 8: 40,,Oliver Wendell Holmes
Unitarians Affirm That The Permanent Influence Of Jesus Christ Is In Quickening The Spiritual Life Of Men,Immortal by their deed and word; Like light around them shed,John 8: 12,John 1: 4,Frederick Lucian Hosmer
Unitarians Affirm That The Spirit Of Christianity Is The Spirit Of Service,Thou Lord of Hosts whose guiding hand,Ephesians 6: 2,,Octavius Brooks Frothingham
Unitarians Believe That The Christian Life Is Not A Matter Of Name Or Form But A Habit Of Obedience To The Precepts Of Jesus,”The clashing of creeds, and the strife”,Luke 17: 20-21,,Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Unitarians Affirm That Out Of Noble Memories Men May Build Their Finest Hopes,We come unto our fathers’ God ,Psalm 90: 1,,Thomas Hornblower Gill
Unitarians Cherish The Associations And Inspiring Traditions Of The Christian Life,O Light from age to age the same,Psalm 145: 4,,Frederick Lucian Hosmer
Unitarians Believe In Perpetuating The Sacred Usages And Institutions Of Religion,We love the venerable house Our fathers built to God,Genesis 28: 17,,Ralph Waldo Emerson
Unitarians Declare That The Rich Inspirations Of The Past Must Be Transmitted From Generation To Generation,Where ancient forests widely spread,Joel 1: 2-3,,Andrews Norton
Unitarians Value And Celebrate The Seasons Of The Christian Year (Christmas),Calm on the listening ear of night,Matthew 21: 9,,Edmund Hamilton Sears
Unitarians Value And Celebrate The Seasons Of The Christian Year (Christmas),It came upon the midnight clear,Matthew 21: 9,,Edmund Hamilton Sears
Unitarians Value And Celebrate The Seasons Of The Christian Year (Good Friday),In the cross of Christ I glory,John 12: 32,,John Bowering
Unitarians Value And Celebrate The Seasons Of The Christian Year (Easter),The Light along the ages Shines higher as it goes,Colossians 3: 1,,William George Tarrant
Unitarians Affirm That The Soul Of Man Is Prophetic Of A More Abundant Life,”Our God, our God thou shinest here”,Matthew 22: 32,Acts 17: 28,Thomas Hornblower Gill
Unitarians Affirm The Spiritual Idealism Which Is The Inspiration Of A Happy And Serviceable Life,O Lord of life thy kingdom is at hand,Galatians 5: 22,,Marion Franklin Ham
Unitarians Affirm That Religion Is The Consciousness Of The Presence Of God,O God whose presence glows in all,Micah 6: 8,,Nathaniel Langdon Frothingham
Unitarians Affirm The Brotherhood Of Man,”When thy heart, with joy o’erflowing”,1 John 4: 20,,Theodore Chickering Williams
Unitarians Desire To Establish On Earth The Divine Commonwealth Of Righteousness And Peace,Father let thy kingdom come,Romans 8: 19,,John Page Hopps
Unitarians Propose To Seek First Not Numbers Or Riches Or The Approval Of Majorities But The Kingdom Of God And His Righteousness,O Thou in lonely vigil led,Acts 24: 14,,Frederick Lucian Hosmer
Unitarians Affirm The Freedom Of The Truth And The Constant Renewal And Expansion Of Religious Thought And Life,O Life that maketh all things new,2 Corinthians 3: 17,,Samuel Longfellow
Unitarians Believe In The Promise Of The Coming Of The Kingdom Of God,”Thy kingdom come,—on bended knee”,Matthew 6: 33,,Frederick Lucian Hosmer
Unitarians Dedicate Themselves To The Cause Of Truth And Freedom,Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord,John 8: 32,Psalm 20: 5,Julia Ward Howe
Unitarians Welcome The Inspirations Of Patriotism,’O Beautiful my Country!’,Isaiah 54: 14,Isaiah 33: 6,Frederick Lucian Hosmer
Unitarians Believe In International Peace And Goodwill,God of the nations near and far,Matthew 5: 9,,John Haynes Holmes
Unitarians Believe In The Ultimate Triumph Of Right Over Wrong And Of Goodwill Over Fear And Hate,”Hear, hear, O ye nations, and hearing obey”,Luke 2: 14,,Frederick Lucian Hosmer
Unitarians Desire The Reunion Of Christendom In The Unity Of The Spirit Rather Than In Uniformity Of Belief,The ages one great minster seem,Romans 12: 5,,James Russell Lowell
Unitarians Believe In The Fellowship Of The Church Universal,One holy Church of God appears,1 Corinthians 12: 4-5,,Samuel Longfellow
Unitarians Believe That The Discipline Of Pain And Sorrow Is Part Of God’s Plan For The Upbuilding Of Character,My God I thank thee may no thought,Hebrews 12: 6,,Andrews Norton
Unitarians Believe That Through Sorrow And Bereavement The Soul May Be Purified And Faith Quickened,”O Love divine, that stooped to share”,Hebrews 12: 11,,Oliver Wendell Holmes
Unitarians Believe In The Immortal Life And In The Progress Of Mankind Onward And Upward Forever,I cannot think of them as dead,Psalm 23: 3-4,,Frederick Lucian Hosmer
Unitarians Believe In The Fellowship Of The Life Eternal,It singeth low in every heart,John 14: 2,,John White Chadwick
Unitarians Believe That The Life Of The Spirit Should Be A Progress From Good To Better From Mortality To Immortality,”This is the ship of pearl, which, poets feign”,Romans 8: 2,,Oliver Wendell Holmes

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While looking for the source of an obscure responsive reading, I came across this little service book: Mission hymnal of the Unitarian Laymen’s League. Despite it being undated, and Internet Archive dating it to 1900, it is in fact later. Unless the Unitarian Laymen’s League had the powers of time travel, as it includes a hymn dated August 9, 1929. (It predates Hymns of the Spirit, 1937, for closer dating.)

Its tone is serene yet vital: a religion of rest of dyspeptic captains of industry, I wouldn’t half guess. Its purpose: to help establish Unitarian preaching stations, and more spiritually developed men. Yet, at first glance doesn’t seem to suffer the excesses of “muscular Christianity” from the generation before.

Two interesting points:

1. It has a hymn by a Universalist. “We praise thee, God, for harvests earned” by John Coleman Adams. (A God-free version exists in Singing the Living Tradition as “Our praise we give for harvests earned,” #294.)
2. The directions for prayer have a certain Unitarian resonance:

You say, however, “I do not believe in prayer.” Even so, this does not obviate the necessity of daily spiritual exercise. Retire every day into the silence of your own thoughts, there commune with the highest you can possibly conceive.