Since 2010, the WordPress blogging and content management platform has released a special, eponymous theme for the year. Why is this important? WordPress is easy to stand up, free for the cost of your hosting and domain registration, easy to add content to and easy to integrate with some other services. I’ve used it for this blog for years; organizations great and small use it for their webpage. Including Unitarian Universalist churches.

These are only the ones who use a featured “annual” default theme. And if you can get a good (or good-enough) website without a lot of fuss, why not?

So what themes do congregations use? What features do they leave untapped? What’s best for mobile devices? All of those questions can wait for later; for now, see the congregational sites that use one of these default themes. (I’ve put the membership count in parentheses; quite a nice range.) See how each makes the theme their own.

Twenty Ten (a sample version of the template)

1. Auckland (New Zealand) Unitarian Church (38)
2. Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Paris (66)
3. Unitarian Universalists of Petaluma, California (86)
4. Pagosa Unitarian Universalist Fellowship, Pagosa Springs, Colorado (36)
5. Magic Valley Unitarian Universalist Fellowship, Twin Falls, Idaho (24)
6. Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Madison County, Richmond, Kentucky (36)
7. All Souls Unitarian Universalist Church of Shreveport, Louisiana (109)
8. Unitarian Universalist Congregational Society of Westborough, Massachusetts (111)
9. Red Hill Universalist Church, Clinton, North Carolina (16)
10. The Unitarian Universalist Congregation of the Sandhills, Whispering Pines, North Carolina (emerging)
11. Durham (New Hampshire) Unitarian Universalist Fellowship (52)
12. Unitarian Universalist Congregation, Franklin, New Hampshire (35)
13. Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Otero County, Alamogordo, New Mexico (28)
14. Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Klamath Falls, Oregon (33)
15. Unitarian Universalist Church of the North Hills, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania (210)
16. Unitarian Universalist Church of Chattanooga, Tennessee (133)
17. First Unitarian Universalist Church of San Antonio, Texas (407)
18. Washington, Vermont Universalist (UU) Church (19)
19. North Chapel, a Universalist Congregation located in Woodstock, Vermont (162) (Twenty Ten variant)
20. Olympia Brown Unitarian Universalist Church, Racine Wisconsin (319)
21. Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Charleston, West Virginia (105)

Twenty Eleven (sample version of the template)

1. Marquette (Michigan) Unitarian Universalist Congregation (53)
2. Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Duluth, Minnesota (225)
3. Unitarian Universalist Congregation of the Upper Valley, Norwich, Vermont (79) (Twenty Eleven variant)

Twenty Twelve (sample version of the template)

1. Unitarian Universalist Church, West Lafayette, Indiana (176)
2. Unitarian Universalist Church of Roanoke, Virginia (195)

The Council of Christian Churches Within the Unitarian Universalist Association site, which I manage, and my universalistchurch.net also uses this theme.

Twenty Fourteen (sample version of the template)

1. All Souls UU Church, Brownville, Texas (5)

You may ask about thu Twenty Thirteen theme; you’re looking at it. I haven’t found a church that uses it for their main site; and I don’t think it’s best suited for it anyway.

For the last three days, I’ve made quick-and-dirty survey of all Unitarian Universalist congregational websites. Most are acceptable, if improvable. Some very good. But too many are homely, underpowered or just plain ugly. About 18 are down or broken, at least right now. Two or three have let their domains expire. And some congregations have no web presence at all. And what about mobile devices?

As I go through the hundreds of websites — getting an impression of the front pages — I’m sorting some of them into the following categories:

• The very basic (though not necessarily bad)

• The shockingly ugly (though perhaps technologically serviceable)

• Those which use very slightly altered WordPress default templates

• Lost or non-loading sites

In addition I’ve been taking notes; I’ve found three examples of the new UUA logo already in use, in case anyone was curious. One. Two. Three.

Without embarrassing any particular congregation (but I might praise a couple) I’ll report on what I found later. An actionable step away our too-common culture of shabbiness.

Along with a (partial?) rollout of the new identity at UUA.org, you can download the new logos at the following page: http://uua.org/communications/art/uuachalice/index.shtml

I wish the permitted usage was clearer. A copy of the identity standard would be helpful, too.

Here’s a (there are others) monochrome version, in case you’re curious, scaled at 20%

Something for your enjoyment. Who says you can have it both ways?

A few days I commented on Twitter about some UUA statistics and that led British Unitarian minister Stephen Lingwood to look for himself. I’m copying our Twitter discussion with his permission.

@bitb Interesting to see how many 50ish-member churches there are. From over here it’s easier to get the impression they’re all 500+ in UUA

@SJLingwood Ran 2013 numbers; 374 UU congregations reported avg 50 or fewer in worship. 41, 300+ in worship. 10, 500+ Not what you thought?

— Scott Wells (@bitb) February 5, 2014

— Stephen Lingwood (@SJLingwood) February 4, 2014

 

@bitb It’s interesting the UUMA always send us Ministers of very large congregations to our UK ministers meetings.

— Stephen Lingwood (@SJLingwood) February 5, 2014

 

@bitb I'd be more interested in meeting US ministers of congregations nearer our own sizes in the UK. More useful.

— Stephen Lingwood (@SJLingwood) February 5, 2014

So, might there be a small (or smaller) church Unitarian Universalist minister — or several — in a dynamic congregational ministry who might be available to help? It sounds like a case for self-nomination, and perhaps self-started bridge-building.

I didn’t plan to write about the Mass Moral March, (also known as HKonJ) which took place this last weekend in Raleigh, North Carolina. But I was chided by another minister for tweeting about the Olympics opening ceremony, when the Raleigh march was surely more weighty and deserving material. I demurred, but I thought I should look further into it.

I watched some videos, looked at a bunch of pictures taken by participants (good to see what’s valued) and read news reports, blog posts and official organizing material.

To be clear: I don’t dispute that tens of thousands of people participated and that many (perhaps most) found it personally meaningful and vitally enriching. Also, that North Carolina’s political climate has pushed far to the right. But if the Unitarian Universalist part — I’ve heard there were a thousand or so present — is any sign of what Movementarianism might be (or become), we should fold our tents up now and save our heirs the bother. Not only must we be careful to cultivate a sensitive and responsive character, but also cultivate shrewd and effective methods for what we must be. What must be, not just doing what we desire.

I’ll state up front that I’m not impressed by the politics of the mass march. For one, I live in Washington, D.C., where they used to be common, and have seen them deflate in numbers and influence for years. Today, they border on performance art. (See also, “Getting arrested to make a point.”) So the New York Times didn’t cover it? It wasn’t a national story. (It was well covered in the North Carolina press.)

And even when I took part in marches as a younger man, though the 90s, it was clear that their best days and staunchest advocates predated me. So the Raleigh march’s tag — “Most massive moral rally in the South since Selma!” — is a tell: wistful Boomers, here’s your second chance. And so while there are some people who honestly think they’re doing some good by marching, I can’t help but spy some Civil War Rights Era re-enacting going on. Fine if that’s your goal, but that’s not what’s needed.

This march had three problems, for which there’s no easy answer except substituting another action.

First, there’s a name for New Englanders who come South to score political points; two actually. Carpetbagger is one; legislator is another. (Did you notice how some of the marchers made their North Carolina-ness plain on their T-shirts or signs?) It’s no secret that some of quite conservative members of Southern legislatures are about as Southern as a Moxie or a lobster roll. This is not 1964; the politics have changed, and Bull Connor is dead. (But you still need to live in North Carolina to vote there. Solidarity without power isn’t worth return postage.)

Second, can anyone for the life of me describe the desired and actionable outcomes of the march, in 25 words or less? The agenda was a long menu. Easy to imagine a fence-sitting legislator to say no to all of it, rather than having to defend parts of it. (I’ve read about legislation being introduced by HKonJ but — guessing at a few titles — don’t see anything that made it to committee.)

Third, the march went to such effort to be moral and “non-partisan” (as described in the organizing documents) yet looked both under-powered and coded as Democratic. Were there advocacy trainings? Legislator visits (by actual North Carolinians)? If so, I’ll withdraw some of my objections.

The various goals of the march organizers are quite noble and praiseworthy, and so perhaps that’s all the reason some out-of-state Unitarian Universalists needed to show up. But I’d have sent cash to pay c4s to organize North Carolinians instead.

The task of Universalist saints was to actualize the potential for perfection made available to humans by Christ the creator, former, and restorer. Each soul received its own unique form of the truth and individually grew towards sanctification. The communion of saints, therefore, did not exist to provide a means of grace or a standard of authority. Rather, it was a pilgrim community that enabled those who knew the truth to identify one another in gospel liberty and to aid one another in the travel towards sanctity.

Stephen A. Marini’s Radical Sects in Revolutionary New England, p. 147. Citing Hosea Ballou’s Treatise on Atonement, 1805 ed., p.220.

I’m laid up with a bad back so I’m not keen to be my usual chatty and irenic self.

But there’s been enough said behind the walled garden of Facebook and on other blogs about statements made at the last UUA Board of Trustees meeting to not make a response.

It’s about finding (and doing) a common mission through a movement lens. I will not speak to whether a mission this way is a good idea; if there are better options (such as communities of mutual care); or such a change benefits certain persons and congregations at the expense of others. (After all, people often choose disruptions that benefit them.)

All I care about right now is whether or not the UUA is itself the right vehicle to execute such a change.

First, I believe the UUA lacks the capacity to organize such a change. This is the same association that is incapable of organizing more than a smattering of new congregations, has produced diminishingly few resources for congregations, and went out of its way to undercut an organic network of support organizations. And then there’s the district staff, or what’s left of them in the new regions. I’ll believe the tales of new, grand design once you can show me you are able to fix the foundation. Peter Morales’s president’s report (PDF) doesn’t convince me otherwise.

Second, local organizations and coalitions are more likely vehicles to congregations, for those that want to make life-changing participation the priority. And there’s plenty of evidence — I read a lot of websites — that congregations do initiate the work, and also work with partner organizations. Local partners. The big churches do a lot and the small ones do a little. Again the geographic contraction of UUA staff makes it a poor choice for intensive organizing, and certainly not with homegrown competition.

Third, a gung-ho spirit won’t overcome these lacks without a bald sectarian appeal, and then it still won’t mean it’ll be successful. The UUA lacks the base of AARP, the zeal or consistent messaging of PETA, or the visual and aesthetic appeal of the Sierra Club. In a world where you can’t swing a hula hoop without hitting a Theory of Change, a UUA-led movement for change seems like ill-fated wishful thinking. And besides, for God’s sake, why relinquish the ground of religious liberal community and threaten to weaken its organic nature when success seems so unlikely? That’s our irreplaceable value, and what we have to offer coalitions.

But I don’t need to say much about this. In my experience, Unitarian Universalists are too polite to say no, and too willful to accept ideas that undercut the communities that brought them together in the first place. Congregations as the local franchisee of a UUA movement? Really?

Bluster about “idolatry” (fighting words themselves) reminds me of the fashionable denunciation of the Fellowship Movement (there’s that word again) that was both a pain in the ass and the most successful evangelism model in living memory. Institution building is hard, often unglamourous work. It’s what we need the UUA for, if anything, but if the leadership decides to follow its own bliss and upend the power relationship of the UUA, the member congregations have a moral right to ignore, substitute and defund it.

Later: Small edits to correct the typos caused by dictation.

[countdown date=2014/02/03-21:00:00]
Just [timer] until certification closes.
[/countdown]

I’ve been noodling on UUA statistics; it’s the season, as it’s also the time Unitarian Universalist Association-member congregations need to certify, if they are to send voting delegates to General Assembly this summer.

Here’s the notice:

Congregations must log in and submit their membership/statistical data by 5:00 p.m. Pacific Time on February 3, 2014 to be certified for General Assembly. No extensions to this deadline can be offered unless your congregation petitions to the Secretary of the UUA and receives approval for additional time in the case of extenuating circumstances.

[countdown date=2014/02/03-21:00:00]
Just [timer] until certification closes.
[/countdown]

That’s longer than usual, because of the weekend. And in the the time of to write this (and walk the dog) certifications have gone from 699 to 710. But that’s far from everyone.

• Authorized to file for your congregation? File here: http://dyn.uua.org/congregation/index.php
• List of certified congregations: http://dyn.uua.org/congregation/certlist.php

I think my next step for mapping United States Unitarian Universalist congregations is to assign each congregation to a commuting zone. Three years ago, I identified Unitarian Universalist congregations by micropolitan area — where appropriate. But commuting zones cover the whole United States, and since they “are geographic units of analysis intended to more closely reflect the local economy where people live and work” (source, USDA Economic Research Service), they are more likely the show the organic relationships congregations do or could make. (Outside of eastern Massachusetts anyway, given its particular history. And how traces of seventeenth century boundaries survive.)

Might also show what’s the “natural” core of a rural outreach; say, one that’s legitimately too small, remote or both to expect a congregation to spontaneously gather.

It may be worth analyzing some of the assumptions I made. I don’t like them all, but I think this is where we Unitarian Universalists are.

A couple of years ago I ordered a book called Typography for Lawyers in order to improve the quality of office communications. And it really helped, until I misplaced it. (I’m sure I’ll find it which behind a bookcase one day.)

Bitstream Charter seems to do a decent job of keeping the layout of documents I made with Cambria http://t.co/9inAjzqas2

— Andrew Berger (@andrewjbtw) January 25, 2014

 

Today I saw this tweet which pointed me to Practical Typography, an abridged version of the book, now as an online publication. This is a wonderful development.

So now I would like you to do two things

1. Read the section “Typography in ten minutes.”
2. And give some money to the author. (He recommends $5–$10, so I’ll give $7.50.) It may be the best money you spend all day.

I’ll be referring to this book (and what I do with it) in coming weeks.

So I was trolling for Universalism in digitized newspapers (as one does) and I found a short article from 1913, entitled with lurid lettering: “Clergyman Turns Actor.“

Frederick A. Wilmot, a Tufts grad and assisting (presumably licensed) minister at the Church of the Divine Paternity, New York (now called Fourth Universalist) gave notice and left to tread the boards.

“The humdrum of parish life bored me stiff.” That is the real why, the real wherefore of the transformation of Frederick A. Wilmot from parson to actor…”Why should I devote my life to becoming a fair preacher when all my inclinations point to my becoming a good actor?”

Little did he know then; the Broadway stage wasn’t his future. The Daughter of Heaven was his only credit and it closed after 98 poorly-reviewed performances.

But later that year, he was ordained and installed as the minister of the West (Third) Somerville (Mass.) Universalist Church serving until 1916, and later pastoring in New Bedford. Later references point to a Fitchburg, Mass. pastorate (until 1940), writing the religion beat in Providence, and active participation in Christian ecumenicism. Indeed, it looks like he had a successful ministry.

He died July 22, 1952 in Providence and is buried in the Locust Grove Cemetery there. Shall we visit his grave during General Assembly and give thanks for his ministry: the one that began with such doubt?

Good for him Google (or Facebook) didn’t exist then. And good for him the call reappeared.

“Clergyman Turns Actor,” The San Francisco Call, April 13, 1913.

Be sure to see the comments, below.

The group of Unitarian Universalist bloggers on Facebook have been meditating on a common questions, one of which is “why do you blog?”

Some of the reasons I blog are predictable: to muse aloud, to keep notes for later use or to promote something-or-other. It is not a systematic work, and its focus has changed over time.

I started blogging because of an aphorism about Universalist newspapers: one I came across when I was writing my unfinished thesis on antebellum Universalist history in the South. He — John C. Burruss, I think — wrote and edited his newspaper because the printed word would go where “the living evangel” could not go, and it would survive after he was long dead. Both assertions proved true. And it was the bit of folk wisdom I learned from a living minister: that if you wrote and published, anything would be forgiven you. I hope I’ve never done anything in such a need of such overwhelming forgiveness, but it’s clear, in Unitarian Universalist circles, where the power is. Public writing is important.

But more recently I’ve decided on another reason to blog. It’s far more effective to blog your little bit, and hope that it’s effective in some small way, then to be lost in bureaucratic committees. I read the agenda and minutes of the Unitarian Universalist Association Board of Trustees with a mixture of sadness and pity. So much work, so much responsibility, so much process, so little return.

Blogging, and by extension, shared or distributed, self-initiated online work seem to be better use of my little time.

While I’m prone to talk about worship resources, the details of church polity or the importance of church history, I don’t think that any of these things are the most important resources to start or sustain new churches.

Rather I would think that an assortment of the following documents — expressing a variety of well-crafted and tested views — would go a long way in helping. Something overburdened evangelists needn’t create from scratch, but liberally-licensed so that he or she might adapt them for local use. (I’m a believer that you should learn the rules before you break them.) Each of these would be a theoretical document with a brief synopsis useful for explaining our intentions to the general public.

• A good answer to the question, “What is a church?”
• A good answer to the question, “Why the church and not some other entity?”
• A good answer to the question, “Why do we worship?”
• What we can do, what we cannot do and how this changes with different levels of people, money and interest.

Thoughts? Additions?

This is about theory; I have some ideas about the nut and bolts which I’ll keep for another post.

 

I’ve finished two more books — not on my list — since I last checked in. Relatively shorter and less difficult than what (I think) appeals to me, so I read them without discouragement!

1. William L. Barclay. The Lord’s Supper. (2001, of 1965 ed.)
   Brief review of the history and meaning of the sacrament, useful (if gently dated) for ecumenically-minded mainline Protestant churches.
2. Anya von Bremzen. Mastering the Art of Soviet Cooking. (2013)
   Fascinating family memoir usung food to unpack 20th and 21st century Soviet and Russian history.

Those who follow international news know that Romanians and Bulgarians are now able to enter the United Kingdom legally.

Hateful and xenophobic screeds notwithstanding, little has changed no far, except those who have taken advantage of undocumented labor can no longer abuse workers with impunity. London is not swimming in people from southeastern Europe. But that’s not to say there’s not a critical mass.

Surely my dear readers know that most of the Unitarians in Europe are Hungarian-speaking Transylvanians; that is, Romanian citizens.

So I wonder has there ever been, or has anyone ever intend to (or hoped to) create a ministry to accommodate our religious kindred, should they come to the United Kingdom? And if so is there any plan for the larger community to help?

These are honest questions. I would love to hear from someone who knows.

Well I was a little surprised I was able to finish my first book on my 2014 book list so quickly. Less a review to follow than a few notes.

Daniel Sack’s 2000 Whitebread Protestants: Food and Religion in American Culture — despite the title — is a quick but academic review of mainline Protestant food-related practices and politics. If you are looking for a cute book about Protestant food folk ways — Jello and casseroles recipes — you’ll be disappointed.

Its topics include the politics about how communion is served; the role of food in church socializing; the appropriate response to local and global food relief; and how we should live our with respect to food; indeed, I would’ve loved to see each of these chapters its own full length treatment, but if that happened I would have never finish the combined series. Of the chapters, the last one on food reform was the frustratingly thinnest. And I’d love to see how Sack would bring it up to date.

Unitarian Universalists will be particularly interested in chapters on local and global food relief and its politics, keeping in mind the postwar Universalist Service Committee work with the starving Dutch. Interesting pages on the Church World Service and CROP. And I wonder if Unitarian Universalists in the 1970s also used vegetarian-focused “lifestyle” curricula that stirred the mainline. Note to self: see if UUA General Assemblies from 1973 to 1980 took on hunger in general resolutions.

Worth a read.

Like most Southerners, I want black-eyed peas on New Year’s Day. My husband and I thought this was the right time to inaugurate my late grandmother’s West Bend Slo-Cooker.

My father discovered it years ago when he was cleaning out his mother’s house. And wonders of wonders: the cooker, a bank account premium — if you’re old enough to remember those — had never been used. From 1976, no less.

It worked like a charm, and the peas are tasty and vegan. (I used olive oil, salt, pepper, onion powder, garlic powder, smoked paprika and dried basil to taste.)

Happy New Year!

 

Here’s one way to end the year: to review yearbooks of the National Association of Congregational Christian Churches, deposited at the Internet Archives.

Why the NACCC, or “continuing Congregationalists,” here?

1. Like the Unitarian Universalists, they are part of the New England Way of churches.
2. Two UUA-member churches (First Parish, Plymouth and Universalist National Memorial Church) are honorary members.
3. The Council of Christian Churches within the Unitarian Universalist Association has “fraternal relations” with the NACCC. (Years ago, I once delivered greetings on behalf of the Council.)
4. Some Universalist churches that opted-out of the UUA consolidation found their way to the NACCC.
5. I can think of at least two ministers in fellowship with the UUA who at one time served a NACCC church. (I’m sure there are more.)

 

I was getting excited about talking about ministry with poor and working-class people that I worked on this and another thought.

But I won’t. The discussion has become too theoretical. The same poor and working-class people seem more like a object of discussion, and the real, perennial subject — richer-people’s anxiety — is percolating.

It’s not a discussion I want to foster.

I’m a notoriously slow reader, so what follows maybe a few weeks, months or the whole year’s worth of reading. In any case, I’ve cleared of my bedside table, called a jubilee for lost reading opportunities, and have replaced them with the following:

1. Dorothy C. Bass, editor. Practising the faith. 1997.
2. Douglas John Hall. Thinking the faith. 1991.
3. Michael P. Katz. The undeserving poor. 2nd edition. 2013.
4. Daniel Sack. Whitebread Protestants: food and religion in American culture. 2000. Read.
5. Slavoj Žižek. The year of dreaming dangerously. 2012.

 

Better to make this short and get it out and write again if need be. The issue of class and Unitarian Universalism is one that won’t be solved by this or any thread on blogs, but I am responding to some of the blog posts written by Unitarian Universalist minister and blogger Tom Schade.

In the South, there’s a joke that an Episcopalian is a Methodist with an education, and variations on the joke “descend” from there to the Baptists and Pentecostals. In other words, it’s all together possible to “trade up” when choosing one’s church. And, of course, part of the fantasy is that you belong there, that you have always belonged there and there was never a time when you and your family wasn’t so status-full. Which is to say it’s a lie.

The Unitarians, surely, and Universalists, to a more Presbyterian level, had status churches, but today the conventional status is more remembered than actual. The number of bona fide WASPs in our congregations, particularly outside New England, seems vanishingly small but as others have observed, there’s little cachet in the WASP brand anymore.

Instead, the status value Unitarian Universalist congregations have comes their contrarian role in conservative areas, and as a venue of self-reinvention everywhere.

We’re in the season (until the end of January) when Unitarian Universalist Association-member congregations certify their statistics (like membership) to have a vote at the next General Assembly. It’s the great statistical roundup, and I’ve seen it as part of the holiday season! Numbers!

Three things to start:

1. One can download CSVs of UUA certification numbers from 2013 back to 2004. Don’t know how long the CVS facility has been in place, but it made it easy (only a few hours) to normalize the 10 years of data, so I can see reported changes. I blame my Sunlight Foundation colleagues for making data normalization and analysis a recreational activity.
2. One can see which congregations have risen and shut down. No easy way to identify mergers, and my memory doesn’t always work. Queens, N.Y. and Marietta, Ga. to be sure. Because of the moratorium on admitting new non-U.S. congregations and the 2002 independence of Canadian Unitarian Council, I’ll be focusing on U.S. congregations.
3. Are you interested in this activity? Say yes in the comments.

A thought about worship technique. Too many times I’ve heard a reader or preacher speak too quickly, too indistinctly or both to be easily understood. A large room and poor (or missing) amplification and you can give it up.

If this is your problem to overcome, I’d like to commend listening to the Voice of America’s Learning English (formerly Special English) broadcasts. They are spoken slowly, clearly and in a simplified vocabulary. It’s really quite easy to listen to, and this particularly notable when an interview subject mumbles, speeds or makes verbal curlicue. The pacing isn’t always right for worship, but the price is.

Last time, I mentioned I took my prayerbook to the South African embassy to pay my respects after the death of Nelson Mandela; I used it too, reading part of the funeral office near the embassy.

On my walk back I thought of all of the public calamities and thanksgivings and losses a church might face, and thought of the problems it would have putting on such an observance. Not that a church should have an act of worship at such times, but the very practical issue of how. Sitting and hearing a sermon thoughtful words isn’t gong to cut it.

I think a procession would be a good way for a small church or pair of churches to hold such an observance. With a single church, the participants could meet near the front door making a statement of purpose rallied around some relevant artifact, like the photo of the deceased or basket to collect goods for some disaster plagued area. The group then could process to the front of the church with their artifacts and hold the ceremonial parts of service. With two adjacent churches, the joint congregation could start at one, process to the other, and there end the service. If the commemoration is likely to spread past the particular congregation(s), and the buildings are not hidden, then an outside garden is the better place.

And what to say, sing? It can — indeed, should — be simple: movements make up the heart of the service. After the statement of purpose, the participants draw close to focal point. The leader may pray in commemoration of the event, then lead the people in their procession. If there is a suitable prayer, hymn or chant, let it be sung. It should be simple and rhythmic. At the destination, be it an altar-like space at the one church, or at the second church if there are two. A brief passage of praise, but if there’s a sung anthem it should be stirring and short. We have participants here, not an audience. And let the participants make their offerings — flowers, food. candles. notes. A blessing may follow, at which the leader should withhdraw. But keep the space open for silent prayer and — as may happen — tears.

I live about a 20 minute walk from the South African embassy, so I went this afternoon to pay my respects following the death of former SA president Nelson Mandela.

My feelings are hard to put into words; he belongs to the ages. The world is so much better for his life and labor. The proof? Those who once denounced now try to claim him as a friend in death.

Walking up Massachusetts Avenue, a.k.a. Embassy Row, I noted how many embassies had their national flags at half-staff. At least a quarter; perhaps a third. I was not alone; there were enough people in foot — there’s no place to park, even if you have a car — to justify crossing guards.

Ongoing construction at the South African embassy made for a tight shrine. I got there just in time to sign the condolance book (inside the lobby) and then joined the small crowd, many of whom took photos or left flowers at the newly-dedicated statue of Mandela out front.

You have to do something when you make what — let’s call it what it is — a pilgrimage. You leave your signature, your thoughts (in the book, or on cards or with gifts) and a tribute of flowers. I brought my prayerbook.

I’m left thinking of Mandela’s legacy, but also how churches observe something like the death of a great figure, or a great and lamentable disaster for that matter. And what do you do when there’s no obvious focus of the outpouring? The South African embassy is obvious in Washington, but “how does in play in Peoria?”

This week one of the eleven surviving copies of the 1640 Bay Psalm Book, the first book printed in English North America, sold at auction.

The owner was Old South Church, Boston, and the sale reminded me of all the old Unitarian communion plate that was sold to keep the staff paid, the furnace stoked or the roof on.

Though I respect our history, I respect the institutions more. And there’s something sad when a communion cup or psalter becomes so valuable as an artifact that it loses its intended use; it’s like the Velveteen Rabbit in reverse. As treasure, the silver and the printed pages become less real. They were real because they were instruments of praise and thanksgiving. Better then, I think that they can be sold, conserved and placed on display, as indeed the new Psalm Book’s owner, David Rubenstein, intends to do. (He owns two of the eleven.)

Better still to keep the Great Thanksgiving at table, and our praises in song. And if you want to pray from the Bay Psalm Book… well, then thank God: you can read it online, in this 1903 facsimile reprint.

The interfaith Thanksgiving service was on its last legs more than a decade ago when I was the pastor at Universalist National Memorial Church (UNMC), in Washington, D.C. It was one of those liberal Jewish-Protestant events that was far more common two generations before, but it’s hard to maintain a tradition when that was your sole surviving point of contact.

I hadn’t thought about it in years when, a few months ago while studying the Classical Reform Jewish tradition I ran across a reference to it in the persan of Washington Hebrew Congregation‘s (WHC) then-senior rabbi Norman Gerstenfeld. WHC was traditionally a participant in the Thanksgiving service with UNMC.

Even in 1963. Six days after President Kennedy was killed, the nation celebrated Thanksgiving.

President Johnston attended the morning interfaith Thanksgiving service at Mount Vernon Place United Methodist Church, which included UNMC (then pastored by the long-tenured Seth Brooks) and WHC.

The other congregations taking place were Congregation Adas Israel, Calvary Baptist Church, and National City Christian Church (Disciples of Christ; President Johnston’s church). All are extant.

For reportage, and notes of Johnston’s participation, see
“Johnson’s Thanksgiving Address Asks Nation to ‘Banish Rancor’ and Move On to ‘New Greatness’” by Tom Wicker (New York Times)

Does anyone still bookmark sites? (I rarely do since I got Pinboard.in, worth every penny of the one-time fee. You can also set it up to automatically save the links you ‘favorite’ from Twitter.)

Either way, keep a hold of this link:

Princeton Theological Seminary’s Theological Commons

As some of you have noticed, when I post a public-domain book, I link to the read-in-browser version, hosted at the Internet Archive. Internet Archives worked with Princeton Theological Seminary to scan and host more than 33,000 items. (A recent fire at their scanning plant cost $600,000 in damage; give if you can.) You can read these at Internet Archive, but I think the search feature at the Theological Commons, and since I seek out theologial works, that improved experience — including searching within books — is a big help. (You then get forwarded to Internet Archive.) And there are plenty of interesting works there.

A call out for Unitarian Universalists and kindred: do you use Github? Asking for noodling a proof of concept. And you can follow me (bitb) here. (There’s not much there. Yet.)

If you’re thinking about giving money for Philippines storm relief, please seriously consider giving money to the World Food Program USA. Perhaps you’ve heard about rations — “high energy biscuits” — being flown in. The WFP provides these, and that’s the kind of practical we-need-that-now help needed now. More info about the high energy biscuits here, and what they contain.

And a video about a similar relief effort in 2009. But this last cyclone was much bigger.

Give here.

Don’t bother telling me it’s too early to think about Christmas Eve. As an ordained minister (though not one serving a parish) I know Christmas needs to be planned well in advance. And while the ideas I’ll be blogging about are not (for me) actionable, they’re not too early. I do hope they’re useful for a stressed small-church leader, lay or ordained.

For one: the 5-pound bag of clementines you can get at Trader Joe’s (at least in Washington, D.C.) has 61 of the little citrus fruit in it. For refreshment planning. But I’m also thinking about the service…

This graphic, from the November 1, 1916 issue of Onward, the journal of the Young People’s Christian Union (Universalist) is too good to pass up.

November 2 is All Souls Day in the Western Christian calendar, and dispite the obvious theological, pastoral and personal reasons, it was a late — post-Civil War certainly — addition to Universalist consciousness and possibly as late as 1880, when its observation (with other holidays) was considered by the Universalist General Convention for approval.

(Also, most All Souls-named churches in the Unitarian Universalist Association today rest on Unitarian, not Universalist, foundations.)

And the Universalist General Convention did commend it:

It is recommended that the First Sunday of November, in each year, be set apart as All-souls Sunday, for a special celebration of our distinguishing doctrine, the Scriptural truth that all souls are God’s children and that finally, by His grace attending them, they will all be saved from the power of sin and will live and reign with Him forever in holiness and happiness.

Perhaps, in this spirit we can recall in prayer the 100 billion or so human beings who have ever lived, the vast majority of whom are now dead.

Since I suspect influential minister Charles H. Leonard had a hand in the commendation resolution, I’ll link to the All Souls Day service in the prayerbook from his former parish, the (defunct) Church of the Redeemer, Chelsea, Mass.

Peace to us all.

A Unitarian Universalist Association Board report summary, by Moderator Jim Key, for the Octobor 2013 meeting, came out yesterday.

It includes this interesting paragraph:

The Board welcomed Original Blessing, a Unitarian Universalist congregation in Brooklyn, New York. We also learned that there are 55 emerging Unitarian Universalist communities across the country, which are finding new ways to express and live out our faith. Three of these innovative efforts were briefly presented to give us a sense of the range of possibilities.

First, congratulations to Original Blessing.

Next, without seeing the presentation, I have to wonder if there’s a known and structural reason emerging congregations never get past “emerging.” And is this a problem? It may not be.

And lastly, I wonder what the three “innovative efforts” were, and what made them noteworthy. But it seems misguided to leave our congregational development ethos and program in such an under-resourced and ad hoc state.

Read this: “What are you afraid to admit at a UU church?” (TallahaseeUU)

I live in Washington, D.C., and I care deeply about my city. In particular, I hate when it becomes an eponym for political misdeeds or a focus of scorn. Remember: the 600,000-plus people of the District of Columbia don’t even get voting representation in Congress. And the Congress reserves for itself the power of our purse. And one part of one party has made a hostage of the budget, and with it he livelihoods of many friends and neighbors in the greater Washington metropolis and worldwide.

Despite the jokes of the lazy civil servant, many of these workers are not particularly well-paid (even in the Congress staff itself) and furlough days have taken a bite. How long will it be when some of these same civil servants will need food assistance, even as the programs are on ice? That members of military qualify for SNAP (food stamps) is itself a shame, lest anyone forget.

Baked into the conflict is what the proper role of government should be, and even if the current impasse is quickly resolved, it’s hard to imagine a happy outcome when that one part of one party is dedicated no less to anti-government than anything else. Which makes me question the natural churchly impulse to private, charitable solutions to social harms, like hunger. Isn’t that just playing into an anti-government script? Especially since churches can barely keep their doors open. The same can be said of many secular non-profits. There’s just not enough labor, leadership and plain old money to restore public needs to charity.

But there’s also the difference between a regularly-operating government and a crisis. Today we have a crisis and so today we have a responsibility to give more to charities that pick up where government initiatives fail. (Our task tomorrow is to push the vandals out of office.)

OK: let’s look at a couple of good ideas that other places could emulate.

1. The DC Food Finder a “project of Healthy Affordable Food For All” maps meal programs, food distribution sites, mutual aid, market alternatives and the like.
2. One of the market alternatives is the Healthy Corners program, which supplies produce to corner markets in poorer parts of the District. See the video, too.
3. SHARE DC (SHARE Food Network) provides set packages of low-cost groceries; participants subdivide and package the food. It’s managed by Catholic Charities and operated through neighborhood churches.

One of the most proud institutional accomplishments from the UUA in the past decade or so was the creation of a health plan that a half-time-plus Unitarian Universalist pro could join. But it was and is quite expensive, and it always seemed like the coverage of last resort to me. (I was covered by my husband’s plan in my last pastorate, about a decade ago.)

But now — well, for plans beginning January 1 — Americans don’t risk uninsurability. We can go to the exchanges. So will this mean the accomplishment and the real tangibile benefit of the UUA providing a health plan will end? And does it mean it should end? I know that, if I were in a parish and buying coverage (and I manage the employee health insurance plan at work) I would go with D.C.’s exchange. That’s a basic economic decision, and not a close call.

The notes I used when I preached at Universalist National Memorial Church on Rally Sunday, September 8, 2013.

Rally Sunday marks a new year, therefore marks change.

Let me be clear, this is a new-year sermon.

You may hear another new year’s sermon in January, or at the beginning of Advent, but today is Rally Sunday and in our corner of Protestantism, it’s when the churches come back to full activity. It coincides with the new school year – back when the schools opened after Labor Day.

It has distant echoes of successful summer work at the farm. A change like harvest; with mixed images to life and death.

Of course, it’s easy to take the metaphor too far, but there’s a value – even joy, even a blessing – in marking New Years. The world’s Jews have just observed Rosh Hashanah, for instance.

But a new year is also an implied threat. A new start means change, and as we know, not all change is good. Birthdays can remind us about loose skin and loose teeth and lost ideals.

Change happens. I hate change.

This important fact cannot be understated. I’m happy in my marriage, work and home life, and I have a string of settled habits to prove it. There’s my favorite brand of tea, and a familiar path to work. I have a go-to place to order my clothes and shoes, when they need to be replaced. My husband Jonathan and I have the same basic order at our favorite Sichuan restaurant; being regulars, the waitress anticipates our order.

This might sound like boring routine to some of you, and perhaps it is. But stability allows for growth, contentment and happiness. I don’t have to think about some things that don’t need to be thought about. What can be wrong with that?

And I’m not averse to a risk, not afraid of a bit of experimentation – but I have standards for acceptable risk, and don’t stray from them. I used to think I was adventuresome, but that’s simply not true, and I’m OK with that.

I’m happy. Crises are few, resources are sufficient and I’ve lived long enough to know – or to think I know – what’s important and what’s not.

Not to brag, but to simply recognize (with a dose of thanksgiving) that I think my life is going pretty well right now, and perhaps I shouldn’t say any more. I don’t want to press my luck with you. I only want to set a scene.

Perhaps you, too, feel this way about your life. Or you did at one time.

If people live in an accustomed equilibrium, and it has its own rewards you can see why change need to prove its worth. It can even be a threat. After all, a comfortable, convenient seasons of life can be very short, and remembering harder times can wake them still feel very fragile.

Looking back, through my mind’s eye, to some of the people I’ve known – some still with us and some now gone – and I know they would have given anything for ordinary, boring, stable, peaceful happiness.

And perhaps that’s your story now because there too much – well, too much life going on right now.

Uncontented people may welcome change more, if the prospects are good.

Revolutionaries in every age know that, if you want to change the government, you need to appeal to those who have the most to grain in the new regime.

And if the current situation is really bad, anything will seem better. Even the unthinkably costly – one’s freedom, one’s home, one’s life — has the merit of being different than what exists now.

But it needn’t go that far. Like other important parts of our life — being born, falling in love, experiencing loss, approaching death – coping with the changes of life welcomes a theological response. And finding a healthy theological response in one of the reason’s this church exists.

Which brings us to that plain and obvious truth: Change is inevitable.

Whether desired or not, change is inevitable.

It comes for individuals and communities alike. We respond to changes outside us, and our responses change how we act. Even refusing to change makes us change.

The rent goes up: we move or economize, for instance. Family members get sick: we change our plans and routine to accommodate then. Government policy shifts: we rally supporters or re-frame further action.

This new year, in the autumn, is less about the endless possibilities of new life, and more about gathering harvests and taking stock of what we have done, and how far we have gone. How far we have gone, and what we hope to do or be, and how much time and energy we may have to accomplish it.

And for many of us who live in Washington, whose lives connect and revolve around issues of public policy, we know all-too-well that the product of our life work can be eroded or even swept away by powers and circumstances we cannot control, and may not even understand.

Everything that’s born must some day die. Willful passivity is no escape.

But we do have resources to make the best of it? And what about those challenges from scripture?

How we interpret change.

These are some of the images that speak to us from scripture. The two big images that pop out of the lessons today are (first) that God is like a potter who can choose to work on us, or discard the work put into us, and (second) that the basis of relationship an ideal follower of Jesus should have is as a student – “disciple” literally means “student” – who disowns family.

If you want to empty a church, start with this passage from the Gospel of Luke. In the beginning of the passage, Jesus was speaking to “large crowds” – and not like a celebrity motivational speaker. The gospel says these large crowds traveled with him. They were a community, and Jesus’ threatening message was about the basis and limits of that community.

But we hear these words differently than the first hearers would. The potter’s transforming art surely was more like we’d see an architect or engineer today. And the requirements of family unit then must have made Jesus’ demands particularly threatening, perhaps as a test or lesson.

Let’s consider the part of today’s gospel reading that causes the most heartburn:

Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple.

But the direct way’s not how I think that should be read. It certainly isn’t the way it has been lived among faithful Christians for millenia. So, what do we do?

The approach to scripture in the liberal churches requires us to inquire broadly, even using our imagination and personal experience. Sometimes, we need to look at scripture sideways. If we don’t or won’t approach scripture broadly, it’s too easy to treat the Bible as a cookbook for lunatics – easy to discard as irrelevant – and we’d all be poorer for that.

Let’s take a slightly less alarming line from the same passage:

So therefore, none of you can become my disciple if you do not give up all your possessions.

Of course, some people have given up all their possessions, retired from the world and followed Christ. Or they gave up all and dedicated themselves to lives of perfect service. The early ascetics in the desert come to mind in the first case; Mother Theresa, say, in the second.

But they are so far in the minority that if these alone are Christian than there are nearly none in the world. (Some would agree with that assessment.)

In any case, we can change what acceptable behavior means. Slavery was once accepted; now it’s viewed with horror. The same goes for infanticide. Growing, if imperfect consensus, worldwide is for cooperative action in international conflict, democratic participation and accountability in government and access to basic education. And if the realization of these goals seems laughably far off, think about the state of affairs 50 years ago. Or 500 years. Or 5,000 years. The hard work is changing behavior in a way that means more blessing for more people.

I say this to remind us that we do not live in the same moral worlds that Jeremiah or Jesus lived in. I think we’re in a bigger, and in many ways better world than then.

Jeremiah’s ministry ended 2,600 years ago; Jesus’s about 2,000.

We do not just live in the same world as they do. Times changed.

For people new to Universalism, know that the affirmation of faith we read together a few minutes ago descends from one more than 200 year ago – I’ll link to it in the web version of this sermon, to be found later this week at the church website: universalist.org.

It ended on this high note:

“holiness and true happiness are inseparably connected, and… believers ought to be careful to maintain order and practice good works; for these things are good and profitable unto men.”

Holiness is a closeness and likeness to God, perfected in our behavior. We cannot be God, but we can can respond to life in God-imagining ways, and enjoy the true happiness that results from it. We can be wise and constant, a source of blessing, seeking and active. And minding God’s arc of time: expectant yet patient.

Jeremiah’s parable of the potter and Jesus’ call to follow him are both challenges – and not subtle challenges – that this closeness and likeness to God requires definitive and deliberate action.

Now, how do we put this into practice?

For one thing, we rely on other people to gauge what’s important and valuable – sometimes as a good example, sometimes bad.

The collective experience informs our personal experience, and – and this is a hallmark of the liberal church — our personal experiences – plural – inform our collective experience. The flow of influence is both ways.

Adaptability is key

The first response to change – wanted or not – is adaptability.

Adaptability for each of us personally. Adaptability in our households and family life. Adaptability in this church. Adaptability in this city and the nation. Together, this will make the world better than if we let the ages wash over us, helplessly.

That means looking to the various specialties we know in other parts of our lives – organizing, project management, communication, art, business, medicine, and others – with what they have to teach, not only how we run our church but about how we identify what’s important.

Theology in plain, living language

Another response is expressing what we believe in a plain, direct and lively way. This seems pretty basic, but like any developed culture, high-level theology has a specialized and often very technical language that can hide and confuse understanding instead of bringing clearer insight. If we talk about God, if we talk about our relationships, if we talk about our worship, if we talk about our lives, if we talk about our fears in a specialized language, it’s easy to believe that the answers we develop here are profoundly different than found in other
parts of our lives.

Speaking clearly and meaningfully about God and Jesus, human nature, the world and the future, sin, community and the future is longhand for the work of theology. It’s not short, but it’s something each of us can understand.

And we can use this voice as a tool for better theological life.

As I said at the start, I hate change, but that itself may change. A new day will come – a new day always comes – and we need to be ready for it.

Faithful and eager, prepared and awake.

Ready to be rallied for flexible and practical and public expressions of how faith should be lived. Join me, join me this Rally Sunday.

There’s been a bit of agita in the Unitarian Universalist blogophere about the propagation of The Sunday Assembly, an atheist church (or church-like experience) that’s getting a lot of buzz.

I wrote about The Sunday Assembly in March, and don’t have more to say on the subject. But whiff of impinged ownership I hear from some Unitarian Universalists — that the Assembly should align with us, or that Assembly-goers should go to Unitarian Universalist congregations instead — makes me chuckle. As Unitarian Universalists, I’ve noticed that we lack the capacity to make a grand, new religious expression — Humanist, Christian, Plural, something else — and even create practical and ideological barriers to success, but then get bent out of shape when anyone else does what we could or should be doing. Or simply pretend that the other effort is a clone of what we do (or think we do.) The flourish of theological universalism among Christian Evangelicals comes to mind. So does alternate Unitarian and Universalist jurisdictions.

The Sunday Assembly will have its own problems. It lacks generations of accumulated wealth churches have. Lacks the experience of managing crisis, and developing leaders. And popular movements often rise and fall as fast as they rise. But what they do is their accomplishment or failure. Some Unitarian Universalists might offer help, but the Sunday Assembly is its own thing and displays of jealously don’t help.

So, Hubby and I sometimes imagine a version of Washington, D.C. according to an alternative historical timeline, on a planet we call Earth 2. With today’s realities a bit different, changed by what-could-have-been. The garden variety stuff of science fiction.

And somehow this thought brings me to the thought of Jewish liturgics. OK: I watched several hours of Yom Kippur services from Reform temples on streaming video, but I’ll address that later. Now, I’m going to wade out into the liturgical habits and controversies of another religion, and that’s usually a bad idea, so I ask your indulgence for a moment. Let it be granted that the liturgical innovations of the earlier Reform Jewish generations are commonly portrayed (fairly or not) today as imitating Protestant worship, particularly in predominant use of English, hymn singing; sometimes, rabbinical dress. Reform worship has, in succeeding generations, become more traditional in custom, particularly in its use of Hebrew. (There’s a countervailing movement I’ll try to get back to; again, later.)

But, being Protestant, I’m curious to see what they came up with.

And what did I find? A Reform hymnal contemporary to the 1937 joint Unitarian and Universalist Hymns of the Spirit (“the red hymnal”). Thus my Earth 2 moment. Really, it’s also a parallel to the old Beacon Song and Tune Book: they both include fully-worked services for children. It’s the Union Hymnal.

I’ve round references to the Union Hymnal in print until the 1950s. The one linked here, despite the earlier bibliographical information is from 1936.

It’s not so unlikely a parallel development. There was a time (before this) when the most progressive Unitarians and Reform Jews made goo-goo eyes at each other. (Not sure off-hand if any Universalists joined in.) The 1937 joint Unitarian and Universalist Hymns of the Spirit (“the red hymnal”) starts with a Jewish hymn: “Praise to the Living God”, co-translated by Unitarian minister Newton Mann and Reform rabbi Max Landsberg. It’s also found in the most recent Unitarian Universalist hymnal, Singing the Living Tradition at 215.

And here it is; note there are more stanzas than we use.

The connection cuts both ways, with Unitarian-written texts in the Reform hymnal: here, here, here, here and doubly here. I’m sure there are more.

A resource to review, methinks.

This is Daisy, the new Boyinthebands.com sweetness consultant. She’s a seven-year-old Bichon mix, until yesterday at the Washington Animal Rescue League: a great place to make friends. Welcome!

Just a boy 36 fears ago when the Voyager spacecrafts went into space — and still a lad for the first Star Trek film and the Cosmos television series which made significant references to it — I was wistful to hear that it’s agreed that Voyager 1 has left the solar system.

Go, Voyager, and take your message of Earth, on the golden record, to the stars!

While I writing my blog post about Bible-quote wall hangings, I recalled a small “suitable for framing” poster of the 1899 Universalist “Five Principles” a former (now deceased) church member gave me.

I had made a scan of it to share, but can’t find that I had ever done. Over the years, the odd attack and data failure has taken it toll. Or I never put it up.

Let me remedy that.
Five principles poster (PDF, 4.4Mb)

Here’s the text:

Our Universalist Faith
The Universal Fatherhood of God; the Spiritual Authority and Leadership of His Son Jesus Christ; the Trustworthiness of the Bible as containing a Revelation from God; the Certainty of Just Retribution for Sin; the Final Harmony of All Souls with God…

I’ve set up a Google+ Community for Unitarian Universalist Christians, that is, “for Unitarian, Universalist, UU and kindred Christians”. There’s been a flurry of activity lately, and it seems ready for wider promotion.

(If you’re interested enough to ask “do I belong” you probably do.)

In case you missed it …

read “A Homeless Man and His BlackBerry” by Kat Ascharya.

For more on the subject, see “How Smartphones Throw the Homeless a Lifeline” by Margaret Rock.

I’m not a big fan of techo-utopianism, but these article make a good case for seeing that vulnerable and homeless people have access to powerful, modern phones.

I got an email offer today from a religious publisher for, among other things, religious wall art. Which made me think of

• framed flocked Victorian mottos
• eagle-emblazoned God-and-country plaques
• Jesus People Psychodelia from a Groovy God album covers
• 70s sentimental seagulls and flowing script framed schuff
• Hip paleo-orthodox Brotastic work riffed from corporate tropes

Absolutely nothing I would want non-ironically. But I would like an attractive word of encouragement framed and in sight.

• I wonder what style
• I wonder what it would say

“Why Won’t Obama Pay His Interns?” by Evan McMorris-Santoro (Buzzfeed) (Yes, there’s implied criticism of the Unitarian Universalist ministerial internship system.)

The last time I wrote about the Commission on Appraisal report, I was picked up by the UU World Interdependent Web blog roundup.  I asked where the PDF of the current report was, and got an answer: that an ebook version would be available after General Assembly.

And, indeed one is. Unlike the last several years where the report is available as a free PDF download, this one is a $10 epub.

Plainly I don’t understand the change of implied policy, but given that Tom Schade, Unitarian Universalist minister and blogger, has been taking the report a part in a series of blog posts starting here, I won’t bother to buy it now.

More evidence that the conversation has moved on. Once reserved to appointed authority out of (or under the cloak of) logistical necessity, discussions about polity are broader and free-form now. A pay wall is conterproductive and self-excluding.

Some sad news, the last surviving (and last serving; 1957-1961) General Superintendent of the Universalist Church of America, the Rev. Dr. Philip Randall Giles died on July 2 at the age 96.

The funeral home obituary omits this basic fact, but this biography by Mark Harris provides context.

May he rest in peace.

I’ve been thinking for a while that a new church than only meets to worship only serves its original constituency and is unlikely to prosper. The lost heritage of Universalist societies, based on occasional preaching, that quick rose and fell come to mind.

A successful church needs something else. (“Why” is too big a subject here.) Here are the basic options.

• Children’s religious education. The bedrock of the fellowship movement. Depends on there being kids; for me, a child-free resident in an area with few children, this would be a non-starter. Adequate facilities costly. Benefits to later church doubtful. May encourage “graduate from church” mentality.
• Social service. Needs facilities, labor a new church may not have. May be seen as dilettantes by the pros.
• Socializing. (May be) Interesting to new members, especially in an area with much social turnover.
• Mutual aid. More common in German-ethnic (Mennonites, Brethren, Lutherans) churches historically. Personal, spiritual and material support. Can be keyed to local needs. Probably housing in D.C., but food security, childcare, job seeking, and life skills acquisition are other options. Perhaps transportation. Many a synagogue started with a burial society, and congregational credit unions come from this impulse, so add end-of-life care and financial planning and resources.

I’ve thought mutual aid is probably the most appealing and practical for adults my age (44) and younger in growing urban centers. I’m also inspired by the mutual aid experiments in the economically-ravaged edges of the Spanish and Greek economies.

So, lo and behold, I was thrilled to see an emerging congregation (I do a scan every so often at UUA.org) that leans into it, by name, no less: Mutual Aid Carrboro (North Carolina), UU. Its founding minister is Nathan Alan (Nato) Hollister, but other details so far are scant. I hope to hear more news and offer them my best wishes.

If you’ve putting off that church website, there’s another, easy option. In the amateur-affirming, all-in style of the long-gone GeoCities, NeoCities gives space away to anonymous users. Not much space — 10 megabytes, now — but that’s plenty for a carefully crafted static church or project site.

I’ll be dabbling here: http://universalist.neocities.org/

Someone I met recently asked about the origins of the flaming chalice. He said that someone coming from a non-Unitarian Universalist background might think it had something to do with a cross. Indeed.

I pulled this very fragile 1946 poster out of my Big Box of Ephemera (Unitarian Section) and thought I’d share some pictures.

I’m reading up on the Society of United Christian Friends, an early branch of Univeralism and native to New York. It was founded in 1796 in New York City when three class leaders from the now-venerable John Street Methodist Church withdrew (before being expelled) for their Universalism. But this left them churchless and pastorless. From The Christian Universalist:

Thus situated, belonging to no church, we seriously considered what was our duty, as professors of religion, on the subject of worship. We knew that we could read the Scriptures together, pray to God for each other, sing the praise of God, our Saviour, and be helpers to each other in our common faith. We therefore determined to worship together, hoping for the enjoyment of the promise of Christ, that where two or three are gathered together in his name, he would be with them.

As it is necessary that wherever men associate for any permanent purpose, they should distinctly understand by what rules they would govern themselves in their associate character, so we thought it best to draw up these rules; and while we were engaged in this work, sundry persons who had previously belonged to the Methodist Society, and who, with us, hoped for the final happiness of all men, united with us, and among these, Barnet Mooney, a highly esteemed friend, whose sound good sense was of great service to us in the formation of our constitution; he was the writer of the preamble to it. By its title we find its date, for it is called Constitution of the Society of United Christian Friends, established at New-York, May, 1796.

Said Constitution had annually elected, non-renewable spiritual offices, and not a provision for a customarily ordained and settled pastor and deacons. This system lasted about twenty years, until Edward Mitchell (the author above) was selected its pastor. The congregation did not long survive his death in 1834.

Likewise it started in the rooms of one of the founders — a lay-led fellowship, meeting in the livivg room? — and ended up with a hall on Duane Street, later bought and converted to a Catholic Church, itself replaced on the same plot and still stands near City Hall.

But that’s not all. They had an interesting liturgical practice, too. For later.

I work with grants in my daily work: giving and getting them, the planning and execution.  I was on the board of a now-defunct Unitarian Universalist mission organization. I know a few things about modern administration and organization and the history of our polity, some learned the hard way. Like many others, I’ve also seen waves of Unitarian Universalist ideas approach, crest and break — but leave no mark — for a quarter century.

Three days ago, I wrote about several problems and questions around the emerging UUFund crowdfunding program. Few or none of these are really that hard to overcome, but I said there was one problem above all of these.

It will need a stream of good, fundable projects.

• Projects the can be planned, organized, fulfilled and reported upon.
• Projects that are neither too large nor too small, so they may attract attention but also enough funding to start.
• Projects that inspire and do not duplicate (closely, anyway) another project. (Keeping attention, again.)
• Projects that are ambitious, but can be completed.
• Projects that speak to a real need, but a need that’s not been addressed.

The balancing-act list continues, and on top of it: a project that will want to bother with any particular fund-raising process. The act of making a plan, drawing up a budget and  justifying one’s goals is wore than some — many? — people will want to do. “Leave me my hobbyist project,” they’ll say. “I’ll fund it myself, or find a few friends who’ll be interested.”

And I’ve not gotten to the back-biting: “That’s not really Unitarian Universalist…” “How is that multicultural?” “I could have done that for less…”  Heaven help those who come forward.

In sum:  Finding high-quality projects to fund that will excite the crowds and fulfill the mission will be the hardest problem for this crowdfunding program.

Tom Schade is musing on the idea, projected by outgoing UUA moderator Gini Courter, of a fifty-year vision for the UUA. Frankly, I can’t think of anything more oppressive. Well, perhaps a hundred-year vision.

Today’s my birthday, and so I can’t help but first thinking a 50-year vision would outlive me. And it would push young people into retirement. Is there anything about our internal self-conception of Unitarian Universalism, the role of the independent sector, the influence of religion, theories of change or organizational theory that is likely to make sense twenty years from now, much less fifty?

Even the desire simply to exist may be out of our hands. We often confess that goals and plans change; why not our goals and dreams? (The final stanza of “Rank by Rank” notwithstanding.) Or do we think this generation is as good as it gets? And that the identified leadership is as good as it gets?

Some years ago, I quoted Jane Jacobs on her view of a particular town planner. The words applies here:

His aim was the creation of self-sufficient small towns, really nice small towns if you were docile and had no plans of your own and did not mind spending your life among others with no plans of their own. As in all Utopias, the right to have plans of any significance belonged only to the planners in charge.

No single vision will work; it puts bottlenecks our imagination and demands a level of conformity ill fitting a free people. Consider this: perhaps one reason so many Unitarian Universalist Association initiatives fall flat is they are too monolithic. Take it or leave it, and the body leaves it. If this is true, no centrally-cast vision of any duration will prosper.

 

On the last day of the Unitarian Universalist Association General Assembly, outgoing moderator Gini Courter announced a new crowdfunding program: joint project of the Clara Barton and Massachesetts Bay districts, to raise money for Unitarian Universalist projects, in the spirit of Kickstarter and similar projects.

In as much as there’s been buzz about this, it’s been detail-light and affirming; and if there’s been any in any criticism it’s about the general unwillingness or inability for Unitarian Universalists to fund their own projects. I think it is only one chance to get this right. This project will probably attract most or all of the available persons interested in a robust crowd funding model, and if it fails willing it’s to get a second chance. And Unitarian Universalists aren’t the best about creative organizational diversity. (Or riffing off that old theological bromide: “One idea at most.”)

Some questions and observations:

• Will this fund a pool that a committee will then judge, or will the UUFund allow donors to vote with their dollars, like Kickstarter? If it’s a committee, who choses it? If the latter, what happens to money sent for projects that fail to secure enough donors?Will the funded projects be projects from churches or other nonprofits, or could individuals, collectives or (even) businesses apply?
• Will there be standards for what projects are acceptable? If so, who makes the standards and who enforces them?
• Will anyone follow up on the performance or quality of the work funded?
• If crowdfunding is a good idea, it makes more sense to test it with an established provider than build (and test and rebuild) a private platform. The reach would be farther (that is, to non-Unitarian Universalists), too.
• How much is the Mass Bay District, “Congregations & Beyond Program and the Unitarian Universalist Funding Program” putting in to this? What happens if the first $10,000 raised doesn’t cover the costs. (Web development doesn’t come cheap. Neither does grants management. This is my day job, by the way.)
• This proposal for the UUFund Crowdfunding Platform Project Management position, its time requirements and the proposed billable rate/salary are not plausible.
• By starting the campaign with a tribute fund to Gini Courter, you can be sure some people won’t give. It doesn’t take a lot of backchannel listening to know she wasn’t universally loved.

Most of these conditions can be resolved with simple answers, and it’s reasonable donors demand accountabily. But you’d be pressed to find these details on the current UUFund site. I couldn’t find them.

But none of these are the biggest problem. I’ll save that for next time. (Link added July 4, 2013.)

The talk about the new, emerging Unitarian Universalist crowdfunding project will lead to a series of posts here.

Let me start with a pic from my “pirate edition” copy of Hosea Ballou’s Treatise on Atonement. Why this 202-year-old book? (From my library; have I never written substantively aboutit?) Because in was crowdfunded, by the subcription model.

Variations of the model continue; indeed, I recently paid into a Kickstarter appeal that (cleverly) funds an internship for investigative reporting on internship abuse. (Do I see anthor Unitarian Universalist minister’s name in that list?) So it can do some good. But how? And is it the best way?

I didn’t attend the UUA General Assembly in person, but did follow along online as best as I could. Time to digest, and think of what happened. Also, I’m inspired to start a side project, but more about that later, too.

What about you: thoughts, observations?

So the Commission on Appraisal’s issued its new report, Who’s In Charge Here? The Complex Relationship Between Ministry and Authority. So where, as a responsible and engaged Unitarian Universalist, do you do download the report to read? Download like all the recent reports? Download, even like some pre-Internet reports which have been subsequently scanned? Even the first, from 1936 from the American Unitarian Association. (Worth a read, too.)

Well, you don’t download it. You may buy it, though. It may be read by dozens!

In 2013, the cost of printing is high enough, and the number of PDF-reading devices (good ol’ HTML might be even better) is higher still. And then there’s the budget crisis that, if I recall, recently threatened the running of the Commission on Appraisal itself.

Something’s screwy.

Or perhaps a free PDF is embarged against the sales of a print edition? You think you’d want to warn your buyer/sponsors against the “sucker factor” of simply waiting…

Sonething’s screwy, or ill-conceived.

A tribute site for the modernist hymn “God of Concrete, God of Steel” had been lost, but I got word today that the domain has been recovered from the, ahem, blue pill industry and is a single-serving site about this underappreciated hymn.

A seminary classmate, the Rev. Martha Brown, contacted me to reach out to North Carolina Unitarian Universalists about a television project she’s working on. If you have “first-person accounts from North Carolinians who participated in the legendary March on Washington” please keep reading and contact her to participate in the video production.

I removed the contact info. Leave a comment and I’ll send it to you — to help keep the spam at bay. Perhaps.

And please pass the word.

Calling All Who Marched

(May 31, 2013) On a hot Wednesday afternoon in August 1963, thousands of Americans from all parts of the nation converged on the Washington Mall, determined in mind and spirit, demonstrating collectively for jobs, freedom, and equality. This day would go down in history as the pivotal March on Washington and culminate in the delivery of the now famous “I Have A Dream” by the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. This summer will mark the 50th anniversary of that momentous event…were you there?

UNC-TV is seeking first-person accounts from North Carolinians who participated in the legendary March on Washington, which took place on Wednesday August 28, 1963. We want to know how you got there, what you experienced, was it life-changing or did it help you to make a difference in your community? From the child who was carried in her mother’s arms to the day’s young civil rights leaders and working class adults, every person present contributed to the overall spirit and energy of the movement, and it is important to acknowledge each one. Among those, however, are some very special stories.

Thanks to a PBS grant, UNC-TV has an opportunity to capture three of these special stories on video to share as local/national content online through the PBS Black Culture Connection hub and on-air.

If you participated in the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, please sign the North Carolina March on Washington Roll Book by submitting your first, middle and last name (including maiden name), city of residence at the time of the March, current age, race or ethnic affiliation, whether you attended as a child, college student, or adult, and your current age (optional).

To be considered for the video feature, please submit all the information outlined above as well as a working telephone number and email address to contact you and, if possible two to three sentences about your journey to the March, your experience there, and any lasting impact.

Ensure that the March on Washington—the people, the purpose, the lasting impact—will be remembered into time…share your story!

Deborah Holt Noel
Producer, UNC-TV
[contact info]

Martha Brown
Production Associate
[contact info]

While I focus on Universalist worship resources, the book digitization revolution has brought back to light Unitarian service books, too — by which I include comprehensive prayerbooks and other resources (often with hymns) that have service elements.

Here are some I’ve found recently, in chronological order; click through to download or read online. (There are others I’ve writtem about before.)

• The Altar at Home; selections and prayers for domestic worship (1869; 2nd series) by James Perkins Walker.
• Order of Morning Service and Selection of Psalms for Channing Church, Newton (1892) by George H. Ellis.
• Church worship: in readings, songs and prayers (1892) by Third Unitarian Church, Chicago (Google link)
• Five Services for Public Worship with Services for Special Occasions (1895) by American Unitarian Association.
• Services of Worship: Used at the Church of the Unity (Springfield, Mass.) (1895)
  
• Book of Common Worship (1913) by American Unitarian Association.

Or perhaps I should say, “quickly learn some tools because a part of the church website isn’t doing what it should and I can’t find help” or “I don’t want to sound like an idiot when meeting with the web person we got.” Or, “I want a hobby and jet aircraft are expensive.”

Don’t Fear the Internet is a charming series of seven short videos that outline the basics. It’s clearly a work in progress (or halted in its tracks) so don’t expect to use PHP and you won’t need the FTP program mentioned early on. But it describes some things that took me much more effort to learn the first time, and shows how less can be more.Prepare to use skills between each video before starting the next. But even with a bit of noodling, you can get through much or all of it in two hours. And how many learning experiences can you say that of?

 

Ten years ago, today I made my first blog post: a prayer. In the meantime, I have written more than 3,400 posts, developed some resources and welcomed more than 7,100 comments.

The last 10 years seen a lot of change to my attitude which church theology and the Unitarian Universalist Association. I’ve picked up some skills, and let others go. In the larger world, some old friends have gone and new people have risen up.

Thank to you, dear readers, who have made the experience rewarding and I appreciate the many readers in commenters to this blog. I don’t know what the next ten years will bring, but it will certainly be something new.

In one step, from the medieval to Modernism.

The Western Conference Unitarians — think of the middle third of the United States a hundred and more years ago — were known for a kind of bibical rationalism and a minimalist style of worship sometimes known as “fiddle and lecture”. And I’ve been looking for some simplified options.

Without directions, it’s hard to know what exactly this kind of worship looked like. Yesterday I found a piece of ephemera: an order of service from Jenkin Lloyd Jones’s All Souls Church in Chicago, from January 27, 1907. That should be a representative sample from one of that movement’s leading lights, maturely developed.

I. Organ Prelude.
II. Voluntary (with “From all that dwell below the skies…”)
III. Poem.
IV. Choral response.
V. “Prayer, ‘Our Father,’ chanted.”
VI. Scripture.VII. Hymn.
VIII. Sermon.
IX. Solo.
X. Offertory.
XI. Hymn.
XII. Benediction.
XIII. Organ Postlude.
XIV. Social Greeting.

I can confirm that the hymns map back to Unity Hymns and Chorales, so the “Choral reponse” was surely one from that book, too.

What strikes me is how little congregational repsonse there is. Little, perhaps nothing spoken in the pews — only hymns and chanting. Perhaps a small step from the Middle Ages, when the silent congregants would look devotionally upon the sacrament: here, the preaching.

Theological qualms aside, such a service can be sensible, even wholesome and devout in a large congregation — not unknown to “the Unity men.” In small congregations, the effect would surely be stilted, and with an unsteady preacher, deathly.

I’ll keep looking.

So, why is there a prayer from medieval Spain in the “old red hymnal” (Hymns of the Spirit) ? See page 139, under the heading “Prayers for Righteousness of Life”:

Grant us, O Lord, to pass this day in gladness and peace, without stumbling
and without stain; that, reaching the eventide victorious over all temptation, we may praise thee, the eternal God, who art blessed for evermore, and dost govern all things. Amen.

The index identifies it from the Mozarabic Rite — the dominant form of worship in Muslim Spain, as distinguished by the now-dominant Latin Rite — is a darling interest of students of liturgy, preserved in a single chapel among the Catholics, but revived by the Anglicans in Spain. A trial prayerbook in Mexico strongly commended by the United States Episcopalians also revived the Mozarabic rite. It didn’t take.

But this prayer in particular was widely antologized, found in ecumenical hymnals for youth and the armed forces, plus Episcopalian, Lutheran and Congregationalist formulations, from the Progressive Age to the Second World War — the era Hymns of the Spirit (1937) was composed. An Episcopal prayerbook for solders and saliors puts the prayer under a heading that typifies the time: “For victory over temptation.” Likewise one for scouts: “For purity”. (PDF)

So where does this bit of liturgical saltpeter appear in English translation?  Hard to say. I cannot yet find a reference earlier than 1913, and nothing quite like it appears in the studies the Episcopalians made for the Mexican church, this Collect for Grace being the closest (and perhaps the source) in Charles R. Hale’s Mozarabic Collects Translated and Arranged from the Ancient Liturgy of the Spanish Church (1881):

O Lord Jesus Christ, Who didst take upon Thee the weakness of our mortal nature; Grant that we may pass this day in safety, and without sin, resisting all the temptations of the enemy, and that at eventide we may joyfully praise Thee, O King Eternal; Through Thy mercy, O our God, Who art blessed, and dost live, and govern all things, world without end. Amen.

A good place to leave it.

Hubby and I are visiting Philadelphia. I consider visiting the National Museum of American Jewish History and when I looked at the website noticed a coin savings box. The two-cents-a-week rate remind me of the “two cents a day plan” the Universalists (PDF) once ran for missions.

Two cents a day (even in 1896) doesn’t sound like very much, but would that be today? (This resource to the rescue.)

About 56.24 cents a day, or more than $205 a year. Far more than the usual “chalice lighters” ask of $60. Food — and funds — for thought.

Last year I made a somewhat silly mapping thought exercise: locating the geographic center of the membership of the Unitarian Universalist Association. That’s one way to describe what holds us all together, I suppose.

This year, I’ve sought out and geocoded all the member churches of the General Assembly of Unitarian and Free Christian Churches, in Great Britain. I have some observations and a map like I made for the UUA, but there are some lingering choices for how to render the map. So instead, I’ll tell where the centerpoint — er, centrepoint — for UK Unitarians, based on the reported quota numbers. (With the understanding that this probably isn’t an adequate way to measure membership, much less participation.)

The proper location is on a farm south of Barton-under-Needwood, in Staffordshire, just off the A38. Hardly the place for 3,600-plus Unitarians and Free Christians, who’d about double the population. So let’s call it nearby Burton upon Trent, which has about 44,000 residents and at least has a train station on a main line.

To tell you the truth, I was hoping for Ashby-de-la-Zouch (for the name alone).

Free-culture and free software advocates easily identify art and technology as fields of interest. Software to share creates common tools for further creativity and interoperability. Riffing on existing films, photos and songs unlocks creativity. Drawing from the public domain preserves human accomplishment and refreshes it. These are easy to see, but worship?

Copyright and liturgy — literally, “work for the common good” — exist (for some sensitive souls) in tension. The bonds on what comes from God, or what is given to God, ought to be loose, if made at all. Since this attitude predates personal printing — think spirit duplicators in the pre-computer ago — little wonder the limits of liberal licensing extend to redistribution or free (that is, sponsored) distribution (one example) and not adaptation. In the United States, the public domain ascription of the Episcopal Church’s prayerbook is the exception that proves the rule: it has been widely adapted and modified. Unitarian Universalists could take this attitude to heart.

Gladly, I can point to one example that should still be effect and, for some, still useful. From the introduction to the 1937 Services of Religion prepended to Hymns of the Spirit (the red hymnal).

All of the services are intended to encourage a larger participation by the people than is sometimes to be found in what is called “Congregational worship,” but which too often is carried on only by the minister and choir with the people as silent auditors. To ensure full participation by the people the printed services should be in their hands, and they should be instructed to respond audibly in those parts assigned to them, which are printed in bold face type. In churches which lack the printed services or wish to follow a simpler form, it is suggested that the order of service, in a sense of the main sequence of events be printed on cards to be placed in the pews or hinged into the hymn books, the minister drawing upon such of the materials included in this book as he finds suitable for the occasion. Ministers wishing to reprint single services on leaflets for use in their own churches are liberty to do so but the words “Copyright by the Beacon Press” must appear in every such reprint and reprints may not be sold.

An imperfect license, but there are better ones today. Might I suggest, like the Open Siddur Project, a free/libre license using their license decision tree? (It refers to these licenses.)

The news about the recent Unitarian Universalist Association Board of Trustees meeting, in UUWorld online magazine (“Consultant to aid impasse between UUA board, administration“) deserves plenty of attention. And you are welcome to leave comments here.

I’m left wondering if the board is micromanaging, if the higher reaches of the management team is incompetent, or (what I think the real issue is) that the Association is governed by a corporate management style that is unsuitable to our policy, tradition and culture. And perhaps even good sense: if you’re given to self-punishment let me recommend you read the Board packets from the last several years. It’s impossible to think anyone not on the Board would have the time or stamina to be able to follow the process, and its product looks more like generating more process than say, new congregations, building loans, print or online publications, a new hymnal, religion education materials, etc. etc. etc. And need I remind anyone that the President is as much an elected official as the Moderator?

Performance metrics, however well-loved in the nonprofit sector today, can lead staff to “work to the test” and (at their worst) can become a kind of performance art which steer the work of the Association staff away from practical work.

Unlike Unitarian Universalist minister and blogger Tom Schade, I think the $100,000 the board reserved for a consultant is a valid point of discussion. (I agree about the high dudgeon, though.) $100,000 is unlikely to go very far in the world of organizational management consulting; and perhaps no do more than a few elections to change the dynamics in the board and administration. Do the remaining staff members, already with constrained budgets, wonder how seriously their work is taken? If I was one of the ten staff members who lost their jobs in the last round of layoffs the idea, that $100,000 worth of consulting would be a bitter bit of news. Congregational leaders, themselves under tight budgets, are asked to make the “fair share” to the Annual Program Fund, and I would wonder if it was being well used.

In short, the UUA acts like the kind of legacy organization or corporation that persons my age and younger than I mock. (TPS reports anyone?) Losing the old headquarters building and the new regional structure — belt-tightening dressed as progress — will lessen long-cultivated emotional warmth to the UUA. This latest performance will convince “the next generation” (younger than me) that the best place to lead, to serve and to share resource may well be some place different than the current structures of the Unitarian Universalist Association. If you don’t like what you see, vote with your feet and support new ways.

I hurt my wrist a few weeks ago, making typing difficult. It also makes blogging difficult. So I have started using a tool called Voice Note, available for the Chrome browser as a plugin. It transcribes what I read into a microphone and all it takes a little light editing for me to compose what you are reading now.

Boy in the Bands approved.

Google debuted Street View in Hungary and Romania today, and so I looked up…

View Larger Map

(Unitarian Headquarters, Budapest)

View Larger Map

(First Unitarian, Koloszvár)

The annual meeting of the General Assembly of Unitarian and Free Christian Churches took place recently, and (to mark the occasion) I have taken to reading the annual report (for 2012, PDF). Minister and blogger Stephen Lingwood referred to it in early March. Grim numbers. So little wonder I had a parallel concern with the persons interviewed in the UUWorld magazine (“British “Unitarians rally to save faith from extinction” by Donald E. Skinner) about the fate of British Unitarianism. I had already been putting together a map, not unlike the one I created for UUA member congregations last year.

And I discovered is how difficult it would be for a newcomer to find many Unitarian churches, based on their web sites. There’s often plenty of information about teas and their seventeenth-century history, too many lack basic directions, maps, visitor expectations, parking or transit information. So I hope my map in addition to being a visual tool for understanding prospect for new church development — see my earlier concern about a lack of a church in Milton Keynes — can also be useful in helping newcomers find a church that already exist. A good website isn’t everything, but why make it harder for vistors than it needs to be?

And because as was suggested in UUWorld article I believe what’s happening with the British Unitarians is a bellwether of what’s to come in the United States. We’re larger, but by no means large and the same thing can happen to us.

The map is quite a labor but I hope to have it up later this week.

Even before the explosions in Boston, I was thinking about the idea of sending prayers to another person. We often hear the expression “I’m sending you prayers” or the secularized version “I’m sending you my thoughts”, as if possible prayers or something that can be packaged and deliver like a letter or parcel. Group in too the often-heard “I’m praying for you.” And these were sent in earnest, if my Facebook or Twitter accounts were reliable. It happens any time something awful happens.

I thought about this again because I had been reading about medieval developments in with Christian worship as a way to better understand how and why we worship today. I think people on the liberal end of Christianity like to think that we have little in common with medieval worshippers, ascribing all of our traditions to the seventeenth century or later. The medieval worshiper would understand our attention to color, sound, and movement. They would get our candles and oil-lamps. But they might have a more difficult a time with how little we pray.

Ancient models a Christian prayer had overlapping cycles of the day weekend and year. While the monastics would pray seven or more times a day — every day — others might still pray twice a day. Add in a mass on Sunday and other devotions. Plenty of opportunity to get both the continuous rhythm of the life of Christ and the saints with other, special, topical occasions for prayer. Today’s Protestants are likely to see that whole week of devotion compressed into the Sunday service. The rhythm of our “faith history” — and with it, opportunities to learn through worship — is a rival for time with our special concerns. “Special concern” worship — votive worship — is largely seen in weddings and funerals, ordinations, and the occasional community Thanksgiving service and prayer breakfast. We see it in “candles of joy and concern” which our medieval ancestors would recognize — the original lighters of a votive candle — if perhaps without the public attention! We see it too in the vigils for the dead…

I think we Unitarian Universalists feel the tension between cyclical worship that teaches, and occasional worship that concentrates on particular themes. (Votive worship can address particular doctrines as well as particular people; for this, today, read worship in reference to a particular cause or movement.) We feel the tension, but may not have the language to describe the variety, which makes our worship look ad hoc or random. (Or simply be ad hoc or random.)

So Sunday — or today in your own private prayer or thoughts — consider that “sending prayer” is as core to the faithful life as the best-heard sermon or best-sung praise.

I’ve known for years that there was a Universalist Church in Harriman, Tennessee, and that it was proposed in 1890, Young People’s Christian Union (the Universalist young adult organization) as a domestic mission.

But why Harriman, Tennessee? Why not its larger neighbor, Knoxville? Indeed, why the then-stony soils for evangelism called Tennessee?

I found a clue in a guide for the YPCU 1896 Jersey City, New Jersey meeting. One of the sponsored events was a visit to a new development on Staten Island: Prohibition Park, a wholesome place for non-drinkers to live. Harriman, too, was established in 1898 as prohibition town with a national scope and an eye to honest industry. Universalist grain magnate Ferdinand Schumacher was an investor. So I’d think settlement utopianism was the attraction.

The church is long-gone, but understand that one of its windows survives in the United Methodist church in Winterville, Georgia, near Athens.

Sad news — not an April Fool’s joke — that the Unitarian Universalist Association has laid off ten staff members due to budget shortfalls. As an organization budget hacker, I know that making difficult decisions is, by definition, difficult. Not having the facts, I won’t opine about the cuts except to express my sympathy for those who have lost their jobs, and to those who will have to work harder by their absence.

On the other hand, the news came within a finger-wagging press release from UUA president Peter Morales, which includes,

We rely on the covenant between our member congregations and the Association to enable us to provide the services and support your congregation needs.

When our congregations, for a variety of reasons, do not fully contribute to the Association, we must work to decrease our expenditures while sustaining a high level of support for congregations and individuals.

And so once again, covenant is trotted out as a tool to scold. (When do you ever hear covenant described as a tool for happiness?)

And scold whom? The very congregations who create the UUA. And so if I’m going to give the UUA’s leadership council the benefit of the doubt, so much more will I give it to the hundreds of congregational decision-makers who have their own tough choices.

Theological language will only go so far. The institution of the UUA provides services for its members, though I’m often left wondering if the services provided are worth the money or trouble. There are other avenues for almost eveything the UUA provides, if you’re willing to look. (Ministerial fellowship might be an exception, but the ministerial “oversupply” blunts the power of the guild.) Emotional appeals will only got you so far, and with tight money and a culture that’s more connected, secular and tolerant, they won’t go very far.

On Sunday I re-joined Universalist National Memorial Church, where I was the pastor and a member in the early 2000s, on Sunday. I’m now ready to contribute where I’m needed — if I’m able. Perhaps that’s why I noticed this new financial valuation of volunteer service by Independent Sector. In D.C., the average dutiful soul is worth $34.04 an hour. Nationwide, the figure is $22.14. By this, the lesson geos, we are better able to appeciate the value of volunteers and thu impact they make.

From a churchly point-of-view, this also means that the generation-on-generation loss of homemakers’ time — long undervalued, until it was no longer there — as a steady workforce is particularly stinging. Paid work and other activities have proved deeply rivalous. Treating volunteers as a financial resource (even if you dispute Independent Sector’s numbers) can help frame how a congregation can deploy its resources or decide to put aside struggling church activities, like newsletters, “forum” series, thrift shops, bean suppers, certain kinds of fundraisers or what have you.

So, by this point anyone with an ear to Unitarian Universalist news knows that the headquarters and guesthouse buildings on Beacon Hill in Boston — four in all — are up for sale, to be replaced with a lease-to-own building just over in South Boston. Readers might be amazed to hear that I approve of this action; in my professional life, I have financial and facilities responsibilities for a nonprofit organization. A building with flat floors and potiential rental income — bring it! I’ll miss 25 Beacon Street, too, but my happiest thoughts are looking at in fron the outside. Just getting into the reception hall took an effort… I don’t recall the offices in good terms. The charms of Boston Conmmon aside, I’m glad I didn’t have to work there. (On the other hand, I think loose talk about moving cities is easy enough to refute. Unless you want to re-hire the whole staff. Cue death-knell.)

After all, this isn’t the first such change. That the current building is the second 25 Beacon Street is well-known. And that nearby 16 Beacon Street, a Unitarian building once used by Universalist General Convention, was long since sold. I’ve written about other Universalist office spaces in Boston before — all gone now. But I regret the loss of their work, not the buildings.

Scouting for other documents this week, I found this 1914 photo at Harvard University Library, of “Boylston St. Looking E. from Arlington St. Birdseye View from Universalist Bldg” not far from the soon-to-be-lost buildings, and presumably quite close to Arlington Street Church. Looking at the photo I noted the Hotel Thorndike, and — not finding anything about the Universalist Building — looked it up, imagining myself a century-ago visitor to Boston. I even found a dining room menu from 1907. But as strange as some of the offerings now seem odd or really quite interesting, that time has past, and we have enough work today to bother with time-consuming historic reconstruction.

Time to greet 24 Farnworth Street, and move on.

An office-mate — for those who don’t know, I’ve worked for the past decade in the non-profit field, not in churches — pointed out a New York Times article about how hard it is to make congregations green. (“Solar Panels Rare Amid the Steeples” by Kath Galbraith. But what lept out was the management issue, not the technology.

Experts say that churches, like other houses of worship, face particular challenges in going green because of unusual architecture and an often slow decision-making culture.
…
One of the biggest barriers to going green may be the way churches are run. With many volunteers involved, meetings can be sporadic and budgeting processes slow, according to Ms. Moorhead. “Churches aren’t running on the same kind of cash-flow model as a business,” she said.

So when I saw the fun and quirky promotional video for the tea-positive, London-based “church for atheists” The Sunday Assembly, what lept out was the goal to help others extend their work “as soon as possible…” (1:08) I almost fell out of my chair. God bless ’em (or something like that.)

It’s Lent: the time when Christian churches put the focus on slowing down and reflecting. But I wonder when the speed-up-and-finish-the-job season will come; I have to think glacial behavior scares off good, patience-tested people.

The Growing Unitarian Universalism blog featured web-streaming worship services (also) last week, a subject I care about and wanted to add thought to.

The idea of a remote congregation isn’t new. Postal missions and radio churches (breadcast sermons) have a long history, both for Unitarians and Universalists and others.

Metro DC holds testimony to the potiental power of broadcasting worship. All but two Unitarian Universalist congregations in the area are children or grandchildren of All Souls (Unitarian) and the proximate cause of the expansion was the satellite services, driven by A. Powell Davies’s preaching. But the days of white-flight suburbanism and culturally reinforced worship attendance are over and we can’t lean on that model reflectively.

So, I think, the first thing to consider is what kind of participation is desired of, of even possible by, the person watching or listening.

There are (at least) two complementary ways to look at broadcast worship. One, implicitly knows that the broadcast experience is second-best, but simulates the experience of in-real-life worship, with the an opportunity to participate at some important part, say by watching the elevation and fraction of the host at a televised mass, or to pray for one’s own beloved dead at the Kaddish. “These experiences fill an obligation” is another way to look at it.

The other participation mode is to be a consumer of the aesthetics and information, and I’m plainly worried that as a function of our free-church mode of worship this is where the mainline of Unitarian Universalism is. It gets its value from being “the best show in town” or by being a rare conduit for some spiritual understanding. I think I can be forgiven by pointing out how unlikely the “best show” production values are, and that the more likely appeal is for those far from a Unitarian Universalist congregation. (Special spiritual understanding is possible, but let’s put that to one side for the moment.) That necessarily limits the appeal of webcast worship to the already convinced, but spatially inconvenienced.

(I’d better post this or I’ll never do it. But I do have some opinions of “how” based on what I’ve found online.)

My love-hate affair with Google continues. If you come across me in a Google search (say, for “Kandahar fellowship“) , you’ll now get my Google Plus profile because I registered my authorship. If you have a blog with your own domain, and you want to help drive traffic, you might want to do the same.

The UUWorld news about a Unitarian Universalist fellowship on the United States Air Force base in Kandahar in Afghanistan brought up two unrelated thoughts.

The first is bittersweet. New congregation development has ground as low as it ever has. Leave it to this “situational congregation” (I don’t get a sense that it’s intended to last past the deployment of US troops) to dredge up a much reviled mode of organization: the 10-member fellowship. (The branch church is another active model, but for another time.)

The second is more sensitive. The relative boom in Unitarian Universalist military chaplains doesn’t surprise me: military personnel and their families — and I grew up in a military family — need pastoral care; settlements are few; and there are surely affirming challenges and perks that the chaplaincy has that parish or other ministries don’t have. But it seems to me that Unitarian Univeraslists have followed the cultural rising tide with respect to the military, and with hardly a peep of introspection. More fodder to consider if Unitarian Universalism closely follows culture rather than speaking to it.

Thanks to Kay Montgomery, Executive Vice President of the Unitarian Universalist Association. She retires this year after thirty years of service. (HT uuworld.org)

I’ve been a Unitarian Universalist almost all of that time, and so she has seemed a part of the landscape. A verity. I appreciate her work (mostly, to be honset, through the experience of the others) and worry about the institution after her.

To mark the centennial of Stanton Coit’s “Social Worship”, I would like to read the whole thing and maybe even get it online. It was commonly cited in worship anthologies and resources of the early Humanist era. I know, per WorldCat, that it exists, but is not in not in Washington, D.C.

Can anyone suggest a source?

A fun clip (in English) from a 100-year old issue of Amerika Esperanisto, published here in Washington. The office building has been long replaced, but people still work on that corner, and buses (52,52; 42) still ply the old streetcar routes.

I think I know why I’ve had such a hard time getting back into blogging. I just can’t convince myself there’s much I can add that would help. I classify my various criticisms of Unitarian Universalism, liturgical tidbits and data ponderings in the same way: a foundation on which others can make some good. But I suspect the social forces are too strong for our religious fellowship’s poorly-resourced and gentilly not-hardly-countercultural ways. (And I don’t have much hope for most religious institutions, whatever their basis.)

And reading the UUA Board’s recent meeting agenda hardly filled me with hope. I might comment on that, if I thought it would do any good. When I have something to write, I’ll be back.

If you come up out the north side of the Dupont Circle Metro station, you are likely to notice (at least part of) an inscription than rings the stone wall at the top. It reads:

Thus in silence in dreams’ projections, Returning, resuming, I thread my way through the hospitals;
The hurt and wounded I pacify with soothing hand,
I sit by the restless all the dark night – some are so young;
Some suffer so much – I recall the experience sweet and sad,…

It’s from the last section sometime D.C.-resident Walt Whitman’s “The Wound Dresser” from Leaves of Grass — had there been more room we’d get the end…

(Many a soldier’s loving arms about this neck have cross’d and rested,
Many a soldier’s kiss dwells on these bearded lips.)

A few days ago, I got an email asking advise about entering the ministry. Here’s an edited version of my reply.

As a rule I don’t encourage people to enter the ministry. To make my
concern as plain as possible, the cost of preparing for the ministry
is more likely to leave you exposed to financial hardship than
provide a path to engaging pastoral ministry. There is too little help
and too few open churches. Little wonder you hear so much about
military chaplaincies and community ministry now.

My advice? Do as much as you can as a para-professional or a amateur
(in the best sense of the word). Work creatively with your
congregation (and minister, if you have one) to shape what you can to
apart from the formal fellowship preparation process. If that proves,
in time, to be insufficient, then you have your answer.

Let me go a bit further. A para-professional isn’t self-appointed and also needs formation, thought I can imagine informal or non-traditional ways to do so. And self-monitor zeal (or prepare to have it monitored for you.) I’ve heard enough cautionary tales about would-be ministerial cowboys who make trouble for those ministers who have the pastoral trust and authority of the parishes that called them. Don’t be one of these.

The main reason I’ve not been blogging is that I have the flu. Don’t get if, if you can. I’ve never had one this bad.

But here are two interesting (the first, alarming) resources about the flu. Take care.

• http://www.google.org/flutrends/
• http://flushot.healthmap.org/

This has been the longest lull in blogging I’ve had in years. But the end of the year was busy at work, and I had nothing original to add to the news about the shootings in Connecticut. A long over-Christmas trip followed.

Let we start by wishing you a happy New Year and seeing what 2013 brings

The Community of Christ, formerly the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints have as #253 in Hymns of the Saints keep alive an Advent hymn I like very much, “Heir of All the Waiting Ages” written in by Unitarian minister Marion Franklin Ham. (They have a new hymnal in the works, so who knows what the future holds.) Sung to the lovely tune Picardy, more often matched to “Let All Mortal Flesh Keep Silence.”

The 90s-era Quaker hymnal, Worship in Song has it too. I wish it was in a current Unitarian Universalist hymnal; the old red and blue hymnals have it.

Last month I read Unitarian biblical scholar Clayton R. Bowen’s “The Last Supper and the Lord’s Supper” “a lecture given at the Meadville Summer Institute on June 29, 1914.”

… Jesus be remembered, that the unswerving faith, the boundless hope, the sure hope, the boundless love, that made him our supreme Master and our supreme Servant, may somehow be kindled in us also, through this simple act that we do in remembrance of him.

I wonder if he wrote it in a self-consciously liturgical way. In any case, I’m going to hold on to it for possible later use.

The short version of the history is that Chicago was once the hub for a progressivist strain of non-Christian Unitarianism, identified at its peak for its intellectual rigor and argumentative flintiness. Those days are past, and while I would have opposed that movement if I had been born a century earlier, “Western Unitarianism” holds a soft spot in my heart.

So in keeping with the season I present for your consideration a song — or rather, two songs — by Sufjan Stevens, who is better known for his works with implicit Christian themes. Make that that songs, with allusions that western Unitarians, their heirs and even Universalists would recognize.

“Come On! Feel the Illinoise! (Part I: The World’s Columbian Exposition – Part II: Carl Sandburg Visits Me in a Dream)”

“Adlai Stevenson”

Another huge lottery purse out there. What would you do with a half-billion dollars? Where would you start?

When there’s no worry about your own needs, or those you love, it seems likely one would think of a legacy. A full time job that would be, too. And again I’m thinking of helping in a small way the same things I would be the grand patron of, were I the prize winner.

What are your imaginings?

I was drawn to the online Economist article about the admission of women to the episcopate in the Church of England by a tweet by British Unitarian and Free Christian Chief Officer Derek McAuley. It had a wry caption about Unitarian (do see) but I don’t care much about that, or an established church or the episcopal form of church government.

@robertawedge found it! economist.com/news/britain/2…

— Derek McAuley (@Derekunit) November 25, 2012

I do care about ministers being able to live with the necessities of life, and in not creating systems that keep poor people from exercising a ministry.

See the chart that shows the growing bulk of Church of England clergy working in unpaid settings. Which means those ministers are scraping by; have independent wealth, family support or a pension (a class issue, surely); or work part-time in another job. At which point I leave the Anglicans, lest I get too wrapped up in their ways. Indeed, Universalists were all but planted in this country by a purse-poor evangelist and a wealthy spouse (who later suffered deep poverty) … and many a cash-strapped minister who gave up so much for the spiritual welfare of others.

But when the costs are too high for too long and the burdens go unshared, eventually the system shrinks and collapses. Let that be a warning.

See 1:25. Not so flattering to the unstated Unitarian publishers of this paper, but there’s some comfort in knowing nineteenth-century Universalist papers were (as I remember from long-ago) generally respectful of Catholic immigrants. And promoted toleration of Mormons.

Not so theological, but as we approach winter in the Northern Hemisphere, it’s nice to know we have options to be warm, even if fuel isn’t as cheap (or undervalued) as it has been.

Here’s are two articles that draw on old knowledge, both from Low Tech Magazine.

• “Insulation: first the body, then the home” (more applicable immediately)
• “Sunbathing in the living room: oven stoves and heat walls“

Baha’i visitors came to Universalist National Memorial Church this morning, to mark the centennial of the visit of `Abdu’l-Bahá to the United States and to Washington specifically. He was the eldest son of Baha’i Faith’s founder, Bahá’u’lláh.

`Abdu’l-Bahá recited a prayer at the Church of Our Father (Universalist) the predecessor to Universalist National Memorial Church; the building is now demolished, so the Baha’is visits (and repeated the prayer) at UNMC because, as one of their number said, “the spirit” of the old church “is here.”