After I wrap up this series on “The Gadfly Papers” I’ll turn to writing what I had intended this week: an exploration of the Independent Sacramental Movement.
What it is; what distinguishes its approach(es) to Christianity; the unexpected ways it overlaps with Unitarian Universalism; and what we have to learn and appreciate from them.
I am a slow reader with a day job. So I am less than a third of the way done reading The Gadfly Papers, but do have some general observations both of the book and the three letters denouncing it.
First, I never intended to read it. My very first instinct was “not again.” Itchy political analysis of the UUA was common fifteen to twenty years ago, created “more heat than light” and inspired me to be more strategic and analytic whenever I met something in the UUA that seemed like a bad idea. I spiked a lot of my own stories. The table of contents reminded me of the old days. It was the denouncing letters that prompted me to buy and read the book.
Why? The letters were sure of their reasons, were very confident but gave no examples. (The UUMA POCI letter cited an Christina Rivera as an injured party, but not what in the book caused the injury.) And the lists grew so fast, that I thought “surely they didn’t read it yet,” which raised a red flag. So whatever the motives of the signatories — which I trust as a matter of principle was based on conscience, duty or both — the letters read to me as a pile-on. For example, does being “intentionally provocative” (white ministers letter) merit hundreds of signatures against a single colleague?
I took it both as a matter of conscience and duty to not be swayed by numbers and see for myself. And for this I was criticized and chided for buying the book. By ministers. It is currently the #1 and #2 books (Kindle and paperback respectively) about Unitarian Universalism on Amazon, despite an attempt to displace it by strategic purchasing of another book. Clearly, others want to read it, too.
You can quietly ask someone to stop writing. You can make a reasoned, convincing argument why someone is wrong. You cannot make forceful, public demands, and then expect people to not start Google-ing.
As for the book, so far it’s not great literature. It could use a copy editor and is a bit self-conscious of its place in history and the weight of criticism that did, in fact, come. Even the “white ministers letter” calls it a treatise, and I think that’s the right genre. The interpretation of Unitarian history, in my opinion, is not good. But it is exactly the kind of folk-history, transmitted through sermons and pamphlets, that built the long dominant idea that Unitarianism is the “faith of the free.”
I will provide examples of some recent embarrassing Unitarian Universalist episodes later, but again I’m a slow reader trying to read for comprehension and the meaning of the controversy. So far, I do not see in Eklof’s book a narrative equal to the outrage.
Thou shalt neither vex a stranger, nor oppress him: for ye were strangers in the land of Egypt.
Like others who look to the Bible for a revelation of God’s character, and sure of God’s nature, which is Love, this is my witness: the migrant concentration camps cannot stand.
Christians ought to band with whomever seeks the just treatment of migrants and demand of civil authorities the immediate relief of all who suffer inhumane conditions (especially children and vulnerable adults) and a prompt investigation in the cause of this cruel and unnecessary crisis.
Just to close the loop. The measure passed with the friendly amendment and now goes to the UUMA membership for a year of study. I’ll keep the documents up for the record, since I’ve heard some rather outrageous interpretations of them and of the motives of those who signed.
I still stand by them, but the moment has passed, so moving on….
Let’s take a moment a pray for safe travels for those heading to Spokane for Ministry Days and General Assembly, for productive meetings and good-spirited companionship.
The Rev. Sarah Stewart has written a proposed amendment to the UUMA guidelines proposal. I hope this helps shape the discussion in conjuction with A UUMA Guidelines Proposal Response which I posted earlier. Further, she is in conversation with UUMA leaders about the best way to bring it forward.
Reprinted with permission.
UUMA Annual meeting
Wednesday, June 19, 2019
Brought by Sarah Stewart
Whereas the current Code of Conduct of the UUMA does not recognize differences of identity and social location among ministers, and whereas UU ministers have engaged in conduct unbecoming of a minister which our current guidelines have not been adequate to address,
Be it resolved that the membership of the UUMA shall study the proposed changes to the UUMA Code of Conduct published on May 1, 2019;
Be it further resolved that the following process shall be observed for the study period:
The UUMA exec shall provide a process for the 2020-21 year of study. A final vote to adopt or not adopt the final draft changes shall be in order at Ministry Days 2021;
And be it further resolved that while major revisions to the Code of Conduct are under consideration for the study period of one or two years, the UUMA shall not recommend any changes on the connection between fellowship and membership in the UUMA.
I am a signatory to this letter, issued yesterday. You can read the document referenced here.
Ministry occurs in a complex landscape of diverse perspectives. We applaud all who are engaged in the vital work of articulating professional ethical standards, including collegial relations; we understand that our polity makes holding each other accountable to those standards particularly challenging. That said, having read and studied the current proposed revisions to the UUMA guidelines, we are moved to respond.
There are several problems we see with the proposed changes to the UUMA guidelines. We are concerned with the subjectivity of what constitutes “harm,” and the entirety of the “accountability” section. Perhaps most significantly: we, the undersigned, believe there should be a clear boundary between the important work of the UUMA to serve as a resource for improving our skills in ministry, and the important work of the community of congregations (otherwise known as the UUA), which credentials ministers through fellowship.
We know that credentialing serves important purposes. It vets people for psychological wellbeing. It assesses quality of connection and commitment to tradition. It provides external confirmation of vocational call. It assesses potential for spiritual maturity. Credentialing requires people to articulate the call and why they want to pursue leadership. It requires instruction and training in a particular body of knowledge (ie. ethics, scripture, etc.) Credentialing carries accountability to an authorizing body and is the basis for consequences. It carries endorsement from the community of congregations through the UUA, and it allows for portability of professional standing from one community to another. The UUMA does not relate materially to any of these processes.
The UUA is in the process of trying to create a single path for ethical complaints against ministers (and possibly other religious professionals). We would like to see that work continue and develop without the UUMA’s intervention. We would also like congregations to get more training on their responsibilities as employers, including non-discrimination and non-harassment.
The UUMA is not charged with saving congregations from their own weaknesses, but rather with upholding and supporting the standards of excellence of our professional ministry so that we may effectively and responsibly serve congregations and communities.
Here are the principles we see as vital to uphold:
1. Congregational independence and authority are core values of Unitarian Universalist congregations and have been since our traditions’ founding.
2. Congregational interdependence is equally ancient and is now most clearly expressed through membership in the UUA.
3. Every UU, including every minister, has a responsibility to serve the sacred as they understand it.
4. Every minister has a responsibility to speak the truth, in covenant with the congregation or community they serve.
5. The congregation has the sole authority to affirm or reject the call of a particular minister in that location;
6. Ordination is the acknowledgment and solemnization of an individual’s sacred call to ministry, performed by a congregation. Fellowship is the affirmation by tasked and trusted representatives of the Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations, including but not limited to ministers, that an individual is deemed ready and acceptable for ordination, and for serving a call to professional ministry.
In summary: The UUA is an association of congregations. The UUMA is an association of ministers. The UUA advocates for congregations and the UUMA for ministers.
While recognizing that ministers have engaged and will engage in acts of gross or criminal misconduct, the vast majority of ministers are doing good, ethical work. The accountability language in the proposed guidelines is so broad as to make ethical colleagues wary of ordinary behavior and communication.
In order to fulfill their call, ministers must be free to speak the truth as they understand it, in covenant with the congregation or community they serve. Sometimes this will involve unskillful communication. Sometimes folks will need to work through their own biases or failings and be called back into covenant.
Many of the missteps of ministry are easily resolved in healthy systems by simply engaging in good-faith conversation or seeking and offering apology or reconciliation as a matter of course. The breadth of the proposed language threatens to override this healthy form of accountability and replace it with a much more dramatic and anxiety-driven process than is necessary.
We believe that in most circumstances, colleagues are able to work out disagreements between themselves as they see fit. In the vast majority of cases, a minister should be required to speak directly with a colleague with whom they have a disagreement as a first step toward resolving the conflict.
We appreciate the caveat in Footnote 2 regarding egregious misconduct. However, much of the language in this section is confusing at best, and seems to indicate a breathtaking level of overreach. Lines 122-196 outline a process that includes deliberate triangulation with regional staff, congregational staff members and lay leaders, clusters, and “accountabila-buddies.” That such a right relations process can be forced on a colleague for conduct as broad as covenant that is “broken, violated or even bent” is punitive and unreasonable.
We are concerned that this section of the proposal is not only problematic, but possibly illegal:
185 14. “The restoration of our covenant is a collegial process, not a legal one. Using legal counsel, insurance
186 agents, or similar outside bodies to prevent repair or frustrate accountability is itself a violation of this code.12
187 If a member employs these tactics to avoid accountability and healing the RRG may refer the
188 matter to the Common Ethics Panel for review and appropriate action, which may include removal or
189 suspension from membership and/or fellowship.”
In many union contracts there is an agreement to work through legally binding arbitration, or to pursue mediation as a first course. But those are both within legal practices. What we find deeply problematic about this section is surrendering our legal rights, and signing ourselves over to volunteer-run processes that have no established codes.
Many ministers are called by the congregations they serve to be staff supervisors within their congregational structure. It is wholly possible for these organizational models to express healthy collaboration while not exactly reflecting the UUMA’s preferred culture. We are concerned that the proposed guidelines would put an undue burden on ministers to serve a UUMA culture that may be in direct opposition to congregational expectations and established employment practices.
If a minister is unable to function as a collaborative, respectful, good supervisor then the onus is on the congregation, not the UUMA, to address the minister’s professional deficiencies and to deal with any fall-out from their bad behaviors — just as it is the congregational leadership’s role to address any fall-out from other staff’s misconduct or professional failures.
The Right Relations Guides, as conceived, are a large group (“we may need 25-50 of these RRGs”, Accountability Guidelines Team Report, page 16) and a significant change in the collegial ecosystem. At first glance, they appear to hold a parallel role to the long-existing Good Officer program, which already helps mediate conflicts between colleagues as well as between our colleagues and other religious professionals and congregations. Good Officers often help their colleagues discern whether a conflict with a colleague needs one-to-one conversation, a mediated conversation, or if the conflict rises to the level of a formal complaint.
However, unlike Good Officers, Right Relations Guides would hold considerable power to recommend the suspension of UUMA membership which, if required for fellowship, presents a credible and predictable risk of abuse. This has the potential to create within the ministerial college an atmosphere of suspicion, effectively chilling relationships between colleagues.
We have witnessed colleagues and non-colleagues in social media settings, often in mixed groups, attempt to insert themselves into what we see as simple differences of opinions between adults. With this proposal, if these interlocutors were RRGs, they would be empowered to initiate processes that are disproportionately strong, even coercive, and threatening to the professional standing and livelihoods of colleagues.
Compelling participation in a process under threat of loss of professional standing by definition takes away the possibility of it being voluntary. Instead, it will likely bring some participants to the table with resentment, under duress, and utterly lacking the kind of goodwill upon which an effective reconciliation process must depend.
We appreciate the reasons why the guidelines committee has proposed a common ethics panel. But we submit that the UUA already has a common ethics panel: the Ministerial Fellowship Committee. The MFC has members appointed by the UUA and UUMA. It has lay people, UUA staff, ministers, DREs, psychological professionals and student liaisons. The MFC is accountable to the UUA board, and staffed by the Department of Ministry and Professional Leadership.
The MFC should be supported with additional staffing and resources to do effective work, rather than creating a new group to do their work for them. The UUMA can offer volunteers, ideas, and encouragement to the Ministerial Fellowship Committee, but we should not create a separate team that decides who is accountable to whom while being accountable to no one.
Complaints against all religious professionals for egregious misconduct should continue to go through the appropriate UUA channels (which definitely can be improved). There should also be a way for religious professionals to report egregiously misconducting congregations to hold them accountable and let it be known to ministers and others that they have a record of abusive treatment of religious professionals.
We understand that these guidelines are partly proposed to mitigate situations in which a colleague offends against another colleague, and is therefore out of the bounds of the congregation’s reach and scope. A mature resolution would look like the offended and offender talking one-on-one to each other, and/or offer options for supporting engagement with one another with a skilled facilitator if needed, allowing for an outcome that acknowledged the complexity of the situation, and responsibility all around. If egregious misconduct has occurred, it should be referred to the Ministerial Fellowship Committee.
A professional association expects its members to nurture a growing awareness of complex interpersonal dynamics; the ability to listen and speak openly and mindfully; and the regulation of one’s anxiety. These practices promote the ability to make thoughtful, principled choices. These expectations are expressed through equally clear and principled guidelines that depend on its members’ robust support.
The history of Unitarian, Universalist, and Unitarian Universalist ministry is replete with stories of fierce disagreements between colleagues. With a modern eye, we look back at some of these disagreements with disdain for opinions that no longer would be considered acceptable. But we always are in a present position of seeing through a glass dimly. Those who were most reviled in their time by their colleagues are often the ones whom time has shown to be most prescient and wise. We dare not silence the prophetic voices of those in our time, it is through their uncomfortable (and even painful) conversations that we may grow. A humility is needed for us to listen to each other, and bear the difficulties of withstanding opinions which we may most vehemently disagree with, affirming that freedom of conscience is still a supreme value of our ministry association.
We appreciate the hard, painful work of our dear colleagues on the guidelines proposal team, but we cannot support the proposed UUMA guidelines as written.
Yours in faith,
Rev. Neal Anderson, Senior Minister Elect, UU Church of Greater Lansing, MI
Rev. Robin W. Bartlett, Senior Pastor, The First Church in Sterling, MA
Rev. Chris Bell, Senior Minister, Unitarian Universalist Congregation, Santa Rosa
Rev. Wendy L. Bell, Interim Minister, Unitarian Church of Sharon, MA
Rev. Peter Boullata, Unitarian Fellowship of London, London, ON
Rev. Tricia Brennan, Interim Minister, First Parish Dorchester, MA
Rev. John A. Buehrens, retired, San Francisco, CA
Rev. Dr. Andy Burnette, Senior Minister, Valley Unitarian Universalist Congregation, Chandler, AZ
Rev. Roger Butts, Staff Chaplain, Penrose St Francis Health Services, Colorado Springs, CO
Rev. Cynthia Cain, in transition, Mackville, KY
Rev. Frank Clarkson, Minister, Universalist Unitarian Church of Haverhill, MA
Rev. Dr. Leon Dunkley, Minister, North Chapel, Woodstock, VT
Rev. Dr. Todd F. Eklof, Unitarian Universalist Church of Spokane, WA
Rev. Joanna Fontaine Crawford, Minister, Live Oak Unitarian Universalist Church, Cedar Park, TX
Rev. John T. Crestwell, Jr., Minister, Unitarian Universalist Church of Annapolis, MD
Rev. Gregory DuBow, Captain, Chaplain Corps, United States Air Force
Rev. Claire Feingold Thoryn, Minister, Follen Church, Lexington, MA
Rev. Emily Gage, Minister of Faith Development, Unity Temple Unitarian Universalist Congregation, Oak Park, Illinois
Rev. Daniel Gregoire, Minister, Unitarian Universalist Society of Grafton & Upton, MA
Rev. Michael F. Hall, Minister, Keene Unitarian Universalist Church, Keene, NH
Rev. Lara Hoke, Minister, First Church Unitarian, Littleton, MA
Rev. Richard Hoyt-McDaniels, Interim Minister, Long Beach, CA
Rev. Stefan M. Jonasson, Gimli Unitarian Church, Gimli, MB
Rev. Cynthia L. G. Kane, Commander, Chaplain Corps, United States Navy
Rev. Dr. Daniel C. Kanter, Senior Minister/CEO, First Unitarian Church of Dallas, TX
Rev. Elea Kemler, Minister, First Parish Church of Groton, MA
Rev. Dr. Maureen Killoran, Minister Emerita, Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Asheville, NC
Rev. Tera Klein, Pastor, Throop Unitarian Universalist, Pasadena, CA
Rev. Sadie Lansdale, Minister, Unitarian Universalist Church of Greensboro, NC
Rev. Gerald E. “Jay” Libby, Melrose, MA
Rev. Anthony F. Lorenzen, Hopedale Unitarian Parish
Rev. Brian Mason, Minister, First Universalist Unitarian Church of Wausau, WI
Rev. Dr. Kelly Murphy Mason, Senior Minister, Unitarian Universalist Society of Wellesley Hills, Wellesley, MA
Rev. Robert W. McKetchnie, Minister, First Parish in Cohasset, MA
Rev. Diane Miller, Minister Emerita, First Church in Belmont, MA. Retired, Salina KS
Rev. Mary Katherine Morn, Unitarian Universalist Service Committee
Rev. Craig Moro, Minister, Wy’east UU Congregation, Portland, OR
Rev. Jake Morrill, Lead Minister, Oak Ridge Unitarian Universalist Church, Oak Ridge, TN
Rev. Janet Newton, Minister, First Parish Church of Berlin, MA
Rev. Dr. John H. Nichols, Minister Emeritus, Unitarian Universalist Society of Wellesley Hills, MA
Rev. Parisa Parsa, Cortico Local Voices Network, Arlington, MA
Rev. Carolyn Patierno, Sr. Minister, All Souls UU Congregation, New London, CT
Rev. Hank Peirce, Minister, Unitarian Universalist Church of Reading, MA
Rev. Sue Phillips, How We Gather/Harvard Divinity School, Tacoma, WA
Rev. Oscar Sinclair, Minister, Unitarian Church of Lincoln, Lincoln NE
Rev. Erin Splaine, Minister, First Unitarian Universalist Society in Newton, MA
Rev. Ellen Spero, Minister, First Parish of Chelmsford, MA
Rev. Sarah Stewart, Minister, First Unitarian Church in Worcester, MA
Rev. Dr. Adam Tierney-Eliot, Pastor, The Eliot Church (UUA/UCC), Natick, MA
Chaplain (Major) George Tyger, United States Army, Fort Bragg, NC
Rev. Rali M. Weaver, Minister, First Church and Parish, Dedham, MA
Rev. Dr. Victoria Weinstein, Minister, Unitarian Universalist Church of Greater Lynn, Swampscott, MA
Rev. Margaret L. Weis, Minister, First Unitarian Society of Ithaca, NY
Rev. Scott Wells, Washington, DC
Rev. Aaron White, Associate Minister, First Unitarian Church of Dallas, TX
One thing I didn’t get into today was Zamenhof’s ideas about an neutral auxiliary religion, which he first called Hilelismo (after the Jewish sage, Hillel) and later called Homaranismo: a philosophy of humanity. I mentioned this to a minister friend this afternoon and regretted that there’s so little about it in English. Now that my Esperanto reading is getting better, I can at least survey what’s available.
I’m going to spend the long weekend not writing about the Unitarian Universalist Ministers Association (UUMA) and the Unitarian Universalist Association (UUA).
After all,
I won’t be writing about the following, which is in no way exhaustive:
I will write about the UUMA and the UUA proposals next week, and in weeks to come. Unless other ministers speak my mind before me, in which case I’ll link from here.
I’m convinced that God is not done with the Universalists when I find Christian of differing traditions and charisms professing God’s complete to us. Tonight, I came across another.
The Universalism, as a theological point, comes through a bit clearer in what appears to be an earlier version of the jurisdiction’s website, and in any case I may be misreading it. The inclusion and leadership of LGBT persons is front and center.
It’s a young (coming together in 2016) jurisdiction, and small with two or three parishes (one the cathedral) and falls with the Independent Sacramental Movement, which I think has a lot of lessons to teach the rest of us. I pray them and their Archbishop Olga many blessings.
I preached this sermon at Universalist National Memorial Church, on May 5, 2019 with the lectionary texts from the Revelation of John and the Gospel of John.
I extemporize parts of the service, which are not present here apart from my opening aside, which I reconstructed from memory. The title, drawn from John, was meant to have a meaning, but didn’t in the final writing.
I would like to thank Pastor Gatton for having me back this rainy Eastertide morning and thank you for welcoming me back.
[I’m going to break from my notes a moment and point out a few things in this church. It preaches though silent. There’s an inscription on the back of the wall of the chancel. It’s hard to read but has a version of one of the lines in today’s responsive reading: “God is love, and he that dwelleth in love, dwelleth in God and God in him.” (1 John 4:16). Along the chancel rail, you have images of the four “living creatures” which are customarily associated with the four gospel-writers, and you’ll find these four on the chancel-wall cross and in the archway over the front door of the church. The furthest stained glass window on the pulpit side — the one with the gold ring and the sprig of leaves — is associated with the text from the Revelation of John, “the leaves of the tree of life are for the healing of the nations.” (22:2). That was the text I preached here the Sunday after 9/11, a word of hope.
So if you find yourself tuning out, let the building preach.]
Today’s lessons from the Gospel of John and the Revelation of John have in common — as you might guess — John. Or, it’s more accurate to say they share a theological outlook.
But the closer I got to them, the more I realized there was something about them that both excited and bothered me.
And I realized that this was not my specialty, and that it’s been twenty-five years since I took my New Testament course in seminary, and I have to continually got my head around this.
So let’s start with basics. (Everybody who knows this has to learn this at one time.)
The New Testament is a set of twenty-seven documents written roughly between the 50s and about the 120s, so in the two generations after Jesus’ life and ministry. The four gospels are the longest and best known of these documents; they’re not biographies or histories as we know them, but rather a kind of hero tale that would have been familiar in the time of the Roman Empire. They concern the life, ministry, death and post-death experience of Jesus. The Acts of the Apostles, conventionally read in this Easter season, is essentially a sequel to the Gospel of Luke and continues the story in the experience of the earliest Church. The documents are in the form of letters, either true letters from one person to a particular community, or “general” or public letters. The Revelation of John is written is if it were a letter to the seven churches of Asia Minor, in today’s Turkey.
Early Christians wrote many documents, including many gospels; that is, works is the gospel genre, but later influential Christians considered four “canonical” or worthy of being a rule of faith. There’s long been a whiff of conspiracy around these other Gospels, and sometimes they’re described as being hidden or suppressed. but I think they’re hidden or suppressed in the same way those ugly dishes or scratchy blankets that a dear relative once gave you: you know they’re there and you just don’t want to have to deal with them.
In fact, apart from the Gospel of Thomas — which is really a collection of sayings of Jesus — most are pretty loopy. Others are very late, and do not represent an authentic tradition of the apostle, Jesus’ core appointed leaders. It’s hard to take a gospel seriously when you know who wrote it. Because he’s, like, over there.
The Infancy Gospel of Thomas — not to be confused with the Gospel of Thomas — is an extreme example. It’s the one where Jesus make clay birds come to life and then kills other children because they bothered him but it’s OK because he brings them back to life. You know: normal Jesus stuff.
The gospels and other texts we have were chosen early on because the have the voice of authenticity and authority to them. Besides those wild gospels, other practical but later works didn’t make the cut. If you look online for New Testament Apocrypha you can find all you could ever want.
But it’s not like the four gospels are mirror images of one another. They are four versions, often of the same events, with different focuses. Mark is the shortest and probably the oldest. It’s missing events we take for granted, like Jesus’ birth. Luke focuses on secret knowledge, while Matthew is the most tied to Jewish concepts. But despite these differences, there’s enough overlap between these three that they look on the same events, and are not wholly dissimilar. Indeed, Matthew and Luke seem to depend on Mark; for this reason the first three gospels are known as the Synopics, meaning they “look together.”
The Gospel of John is not like that. It’s about 90% unlike the others (though perversely our passage today seems to depend on Luke.) So, for example, instead of Christmas narrative it has a theological prologue: “In the beginning was the word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God.”
The Gospel of John tracks its own path, with the three letters of John and the Revelation of John are collectively known as Johannine literature, which is where we started. This is not to say they are all written by the same person, and hat’s not controversial: Christians since the second century have figured that out. But there are similarities of outlook that holds them together, and we’ll get to that later.
But like the apostle Paul with his emphasis on sin, the Gospel of John has a bad reputation in liberal churches.
I think there’s two reasons for this. First, the synoptic gospels are earlier. Being a closer witness to Jesus and his ministry matters. It’s that same attitude that the early church applied to post-apostolic writings, and I get that. John is later and different. It’s also less practical. With the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew, for instance, you get a sense of what you should do. “Blessed are the peacemakers.” Be a peacemaker. It’s practical and approachable in its own way. John is less about doing and more about being, and its meaning isn’t clear.
But there’s another reason we might be uncomfortable with John: we might sense that we’re reaching a limit of what’s acceptable. And a lot of that problem is what we bring to the reading of these text as our cultural inheritance.
Let’s also be plain about Christians for century have made targets of Jews, and have very often used texts from John to justify terrible violence. The community that produced these material were probably expelled from their synagogues, and might have been bitter and hurt for it. The relationship between Judaism and Christianity isn’t the same then as now. Both were periods of rapid transition. From its own perspective, the separation from a Jewish identity was not anti Jewish, much like a much less anti-Semitic in our modern use of the word.
But a lot of Christians who followed in the generations to our own have used the Gospel of John as a blunt weapon against Jews. And so we have to be very careful when we introduce these texts in our worship do so carefully. I’m unapologetic that I will remove or trim ratings in order to take out a phrase that means something very different to us today than it did when it was written.
The text is associated with Holy Week just passed or some of the hardest to deal with, and that’s why in place of the usual Good Friday text from John, I was glad to see Pastor Gatton use the text from Luke instead. It’s reading aloud is less likely to put casual readers on edge when emotions are prone to be high.
Another problem with Johannine literature is much older: it’s association with, and approval by, Gnostics. in these tolerant and pluralistic days is easy to overlook how dangerous Gnostic seemed. I think it’s because we’ve lost the sense of how powerful ideas can be, although that hasn’t really changed. Ideas are as powerful as ever, which means that some ideas are necessarily harmful.
Gnostics fall into that category. They have strong dualistic view of existence. Light and darkness are real, separate and irreconcilable. Spirit and matter are real, separate and irreconcilable. And the spirit is good in the matter is evil. The Gnostic views our physical bodies, our material world and the created order itself is something tragic. What Gnostics are described as having an equal regard for men and women, it’s because physical existence of self is equally bad I’m so how could you distinguish between them? It doesn’t read like approval to me, indeed when I think of Gnostics I think of the great sadness they must be towards the world. Any beauty or comfort or desire would have to be a delusion, or worse something misleading and diabolical.
Their hatred (or fear or rejection) of the material world. Not being able to love trees or mountains; birds or beasts; their hunger or their food; the sky and the stars; their bodies and their growth, even aging and dying. They hate the non-spiritual, and hate living itself, subordinating everything to the spiritual. And that moves me to tears.
I’ve come to love the Revelation of John, who is not fashionable in the liberal tradition. It’s wild, erratic, based on visions, is full of wild imagery and (most of all) is apocalyptic. Liberal Christian grows well in better-tended garden, one less wild and without the threat of sudden and inextricable change. But who doesn’t? Even the early church wasn’t sure the book — framed as letter — belonged in the canon of the New Testament.
It was probably a coded taketown of the Roman empire exactly at the time when it was most dangerous to do so. In the nineteenth century, it became
But it’s precisely that wild visionary view that gives the words of the Revelation their power. It was probably a coded taketown of the Roman empire exactly at the time when it was most dangerous to do so.
It’s this otherworldiness found in Revelation that helps us understand the Gospel of John. They belong to the same “school of writing” if not the same author, and are known collectively as Johannine literature.
Be careful in your dealings with people, yourself included. Be wise in your dealings with people, yourself included. Above all, be loving in your dealings with people, yourself included.
Seek that spirit that goes where it will, and be conscious of where it is taking you, for just because it seems to be of God, doesn’t mean that it is.
And lastly, look that the opportunities that God has given you with a questioning mind. What is the truth in this moment? What details am I missing? What other perspectives might there be? Does your understanding of our shared experience differ? Maybe my understanding or your understanding has a greater portion of the truth, and with wise discernment we can try to tell the difference.
I preached this sermon at Universalist National Memorial Church, on May 5, 2019 with the lectionary texts from the Revelation of John and the Gospel of John.
I extemporize parts of the service, which are not present here apart from my opening aside, which I reconstructed from memory. The title, drawn from John, was meant to have a meaning, but didn’t in the final writing.
I would like to thank Pastor Gatton for having me back this rainy Eastertide morning and thank you for welcoming me back.
[I’m going to break from my notes a moment and point out a few things in this church. It preaches though silent. There’s an inscription on the back of the wall of the chancel. It’s hard to read but has a version of one of the lines in today’s responsive reading: “God is love, and he that dwelleth in love, dwelleth in God and God in him.” (1 John 4:16). Along the chancel rail, you have images of the four “living creatures” which are customarily associated with the four gospel-writers, and you’ll find these four on the chancel-wall cross and in the archway over the front door of the church. The furthest stained glass window on the pulpit side — the one with the gold ring and the sprig of leaves — is associated with the text from the Revelation of John, “the leaves of the tree of life are for the healing of the nations.” (22:2). That was the text I preached here the Sunday after 9/11, a word of hope.
So if you find yourself tuning out, let the building preach.]
Today’s lessons from the Gospel of John and the Revelation of John have in common — as you might guess — John. Or, it’s more accurate to say they share a theological outlook.
But the closer I got to them, the more I realized there was something about them that both excited and bothered me.
And I realized that this was not my specialty, and that it’s been twenty-five years since I took my New Testament course in seminary, and I have to continually got my head around this.
So let’s start with basics. (Everybody who knows this has to learn this at one time.)
The New Testament is a set of twenty-seven documents written roughly between the 50s and about the 120s, so in the two generations after Jesus’ life and ministry. The four gospels are the longest and best known of these documents; they’re not biographies or histories as we know them, but rather a kind of hero tale that would have been familiar in the time of the Roman Empire. They concern the life, ministry, death and post-death experience of Jesus. The Acts of the Apostles, conventionally read in this Easter season, is essentially a sequel to the Gospel of Luke and continues the story in the experience of the earliest Church. The documents are in the form of letters, either true letters from one person to a particular community, or “general” or public letters. The Revelation of John is written is if it were a letter to the seven churches of Asia Minor, in today’s Turkey.
Early Christians wrote many documents, including many gospels; that is, works is the gospel genre, but later influential Christians considered four “canonical” or worthy of being a rule of faith. There’s long been a whiff of conspiracy around these other Gospels, and sometimes they’re described as being hidden or suppressed. but I think they’re hidden or suppressed in the same way those ugly dishes or scratchy blankets that a dear relative once gave you: you know they’re there and you just don’t want to have to deal with them.
In fact, apart from the Gospel of Thomas — which is really a collection of sayings of Jesus — most are pretty loopy. Others are very late, and do not represent an authentic tradition of the apostle, Jesus’ core appointed leaders. It’s hard to take a gospel seriously when you know who wrote it. Because he’s, like, over there.
The Infancy Gospel of Thomas — not to be confused with the Gospel of Thomas — is an extreme example. It’s the one where Jesus make clay birds come to life and then kills other children because they bothered him but it’s OK because he brings them back to life. You know: normal Jesus stuff.
The gospels and other texts we have were chosen early on because the have the voice of authenticity and authority to them. Besides those wild gospels, other practical but later works didn’t make the cut. If you look online for New Testament Apocrypha you can find all you could ever want.
But it’s not like the four gospels are mirror images of one another. They are four versions, often of the same events, with different focuses. Mark is the shortest and probably the oldest. It’s missing events we take for granted, like Jesus’ birth. Luke focuses on secret knowledge, while Matthew is the most tied to Jewish concepts. But despite these differences, there’s enough overlap between these three that they look on the same events, and are not wholly dissimilar. Indeed, Matthew and Luke seem to depend on Mark; for this reason the first three gospels are known as the Synopics, meaning they “look together.”
The Gospel of John is not like that. It’s about 90% unlike the others (though perversely our passage today seems to depend on Luke.) So, for example, instead of Christmas narrative it has a theological prologue: “In the beginning was the word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God.”
The Gospel of John tracks its own path, with the three letters of John and the Revelation of John are collectively known as Johannine literature, which is where we started. This is not to say they are all written by the same person, and hat’s not controversial: Christians since the second century have figured that out. But there are similarities of outlook that holds them together, and we’ll get to that later.
But like the apostle Paul with his emphasis on sin, the Gospel of John has a bad reputation in liberal churches.
I think there’s two reasons for this. First, the synoptic gospels are earlier. Being a closer witness to Jesus and his ministry matters. It’s that same attitude that the early church applied to post-apostolic writings, and I get that. John is later and different. It’s also less practical. With the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew, for instance, you get a sense of what you should do. “Blessed are the peacemakers.” Be a peacemaker. It’s practical and approachable in its own way. John is less about doing and more about being, and its meaning isn’t clear.
But there’s another reason we might be uncomfortable with John: we might sense that we’re reaching a limit of what’s acceptable. And a lot of that problem is what we bring to the reading of these text as our cultural inheritance.
Let’s also be plain about Christians for century have made targets of Jews, and have very often used texts from John to justify terrible violence. The community that produced these material were probably expelled from their synagogues, and might have been bitter and hurt for it. The relationship between Judaism and Christianity isn’t the same then as now. Both were periods of rapid transition. From its own perspective, the separation from a Jewish identity was not anti Jewish, much like a much less anti-Semitic in our modern use of the word.
But a lot of Christians who followed in the generations to our own have used the Gospel of John as a blunt weapon against Jews. And so we have to be very careful when we introduce these texts in our worship do so carefully. I’m unapologetic that I will remove or trim ratings in order to take out a phrase that means something very different to us today than it did when it was written.
The text is associated with Holy Week just passed or some of the hardest to deal with, and that’s why in place of the usual Good Friday text from John, I was glad to see Pastor Gatton use the text from Luke instead. It’s reading aloud is less likely to put casual readers on edge when emotions are prone to be high.
Another problem with Johannine literature is much older: it’s association with, and approval by, Gnostics. in these tolerant and pluralistic days is easy to overlook how dangerous Gnostic seemed. I think it’s because we’ve lost the sense of how powerful ideas can be, although that hasn’t really changed. Ideas are as powerful as ever, which means that some ideas are necessarily harmful.
Gnostics fall into that category. They have strong dualistic view of existence. Light and darkness are real, separate and irreconcilable. Spirit and matter are real, separate and irreconcilable. And the spirit is good in the matter is evil. The Gnostic views our physical bodies, our material world and the created order itself is something tragic. What Gnostics are described as having an equal regard for men and women, it’s because physical existence of self is equally bad I’m so how could you distinguish between them? It doesn’t read like approval to me, indeed when I think of Gnostics I think of the great sadness they must be towards the world. Any beauty or comfort or desire would have to be a delusion, or worse something misleading and diabolical.
Their hatred (or fear or rejection) of the material world. Not being able to love trees or mountains; birds or beasts; their hunger or their food; the sky and the stars; their bodies and their growth, even aging and dying. They hate the non-spiritual, and hate living itself, subordinating everything to the spiritual. And that moves me to tears.
I’ve come to love the Revelation of John, who is not fashionable in the liberal tradition. It’s wild, erratic, based on visions, is full of wild imagery and (most of all) is apocalyptic. Liberal Christian grows well in better-tended garden, one less wild and without the threat of sudden and inextricable change. But who doesn’t? Even the early church wasn’t sure the book — framed as letter — belonged in the canon of the New Testament.
It was probably a coded taketown of the Roman empire exactly at the time when it was most dangerous to do so. In the nineteenth century, it became
But it’s precisely that wild visionary view that gives the words of the Revelation their power. It was probably a coded taketown of the Roman empire exactly at the time when it was most dangerous to do so.
It’s this otherworldiness found in Revelation that helps us understand the Gospel of John. They belong to the same “school of writing” if not the same author, and are known collectively as Johannine literature.
Be careful in your dealings with people, yourself included. Be wise in your dealings with people, yourself included. Above all, be loving in your dealings with people, yourself included.
Seek that spirit that goes where it will, and be conscious of where it is taking you, for just because it seems to be of God, doesn’t mean that it is.
And lastly, look that the opportunities that God has given you with a questioning mind. What is the truth in this moment? What details am I missing? What other perspectives might there be? Does your understanding of our shared experience differ? Maybe my understanding or your understanding has a greater portion of the truth, and with wise discernment we can try to tell the difference.
Twenty years ago this September, Canon Universalist Church, Canon, Georgia ordained me to the Ministry of the Gospel. That day I made this pledge:
Friends: With a deep sense of responsibility, trusting not in my own strength, but in the grace and power of God, I take up the ministry to which you ordain me. I do pledge myself, so far as in me lies, to maintain the freedom of this pulpit; to speak the truth in love, both publicly and privately, without fear of persons; diligently to fulfill the several offices of worship, instruction and administration, according to the customs of this congregation and fellowship; and in all things so to live as to promote piety and righteousness, peace and love among this people and with all humanity.
I’ve thought quite a bit about that pledge and my responsibilities, not the least of which to our religious traditions and the ministerial college. A vague comment, I admit, but one that will be more clear in the next couple of weeks as start working some things out in public.
As is my Holy Saturday custom, I’m reading Old English poem, The Dream of the Rood. I’m not committed to a particular translation, so this year using this version from Rutgers (presumably by Aaron K. Hostetter.)
Until the Resurrection morning, God bless!
As is my Holy Saturday custom, I’m reading Old English poem, The Dream of the Rood. I’m not committed to a particular translation, so this year using this version from Rutgers (presumably by Aaron K. Hostetter.)
Until the Resurrection morning, God bless!
The April UUA Board meeting packet was published today and the changes in congregational status report was longer than usual. Apart from name changes and two congregations becoming “covenanted communities” (it’s never been clear what that means) there’s this news:
NEW CONGREGATION:
Tapestry UU (Cong ID #7817), Houston, TX, … Separated from 1stUU Church of Houston multisite and became an independent congregation.
DISSOLVED CONGREGATIONS:
Original Blessings, Brooklyn, NY dissolved 3/17/2019.
All Souls UU Community, WA dissolved 9/10/2018.
It’s more accurate to say that the Tapestry Unitarian Universalist Church of Houston has re-asserted its independence by recently coming out of a federation, even if we usually think of federations as being across denominations; after all, according to its own site, it was
originally founded in 1995 as Northwest Community Unitarian Universalist Church (NWCUUC). In December 2011, the Church merged with First Unitarian Universalist Church of Houston (First UU), and its name was changed to the Copperfield Campus, and later the Tapestry Campus, of First UU.
As for those congregations that disbanded — I don’t have the heart to say dissolved, as if they were dropped in a vat of acid — let’s pause to note what’s gone.
I wrote about Original Blessing (not Blessings) just before it joined the UUA five years ago, and without belaboring the point, it’s disturbing to see one of the very few new congregations to organize in recent years disband. Their charming website is gone but — if you go to Archive.org — is not forgotten.
Founded in 1999, the All Souls Unitarian Universalist Community was until recently one of two Unitarian Universalist churches in Olympia, Washington (or in the nearby suburb of Lacey), and by far the smaller of the two. In 2009, for instance, it reported 24 members. Here’s an archive of their site from 2013; by 2014, the site’s domain had become a site for unrelated advertising.
Best wishes to all involved in what the future holds.
The April UUA Board meeting packet was published today and the changes in congregational status report was longer than usual. Apart from name changes and two congregations becoming “covenanted communities” (it’s never been clear what that means) there’s this news:
NEW CONGREGATION:
Tapestry UU (Cong ID #7817), Houston, TX, … Separated from 1stUU Church of Houston multisite and became an independent congregation.
DISSOLVED CONGREGATIONS:
Original Blessings, Brooklyn, NY dissolved 3/17/2019.
All Souls UU Community, WA dissolved 9/10/2018.
It’s more accurate to say that the Tapestry Unitarian Universalist Church of Houston has re-asserted its independence by recently coming out of a federation, even if we usually think of federations as being across denominations; after all, according to its own site, it was
originally founded in 1995 as Northwest Community Unitarian Universalist Church (NWCUUC). In December 2011, the Church merged with First Unitarian Universalist Church of Houston (First UU), and its name was changed to the Copperfield Campus, and later the Tapestry Campus, of First UU.
As for those congregations that disbanded — I don’t have the heart to say dissolved, as if they were dropped in a vat of acid — let’s pause to note what’s gone.
I wrote about Original Blessing (not Blessings) just before it joined the UUA five years ago, and without belaboring the point, it’s disturbing to see one of the very few new congregations to organize in recent years disband. Their charming website is gone but — if you go to Archive.org — is not forgotten.
Founded in 1999, the All Souls Unitarian Universalist Community was until recently one of two Unitarian Universalist churches in Olympia, Washington (or in the nearby suburb of Lacey), and by far the smaller of the two. In 2009, for instance, it reported 24 members. Here’s an archive of their site from 2013; by 2014, the site’s domain had become a site for unrelated advertising.
Best wishes to all involved in what the future holds.
Just boosting a post by David Steers, a Non-Subscribing Presbyterian minister and the editor of two journals, Faith and Freedom and the Transactions of the Unitarian Historical Society. When he promotes two collections of papers on Unitarian theology, I listen; you may also download PDFs of them there.
The papers were presented at conferences in 2016 and 2017. Why the conferences? Answered in the introduction of the first volume by convener Jim Corrigall:
The idea for a Unitarian Theology Conference arose out of discussions among ministers-in-training and newer ministers, who were all concerned by the lack of serious theological discourse within our Unitarian and Free Christian denomination. It’s fair to say we felt frustration over the inability of our faith community to give a coherent answer to such basic questions as: who are we as a faith community? and: what is our purpose?
The papers may also be seen as videos at ukunitarian.tv.
I look forward to reading those, and wonder aloud why our larger denomination on this side of the Atlantic hasn’t done something so useful.
Just boosting a post by David Steers, a Non-Subscribing Presbyterian minister and the editor of two journals, Faith and Freedom and the Transactions of the Unitarian Historical Society. When he promotes two collections of papers on Unitarian theology, I listen; you may also download PDFs of them there.
The papers were presented at conferences in 2016 and 2017. Why the conferences? Answered in the introduction of the first volume by convener Jim Corrigall:
The idea for a Unitarian Theology Conference arose out of discussions among ministers-in-training and newer ministers, who were all concerned by the lack of serious theological discourse within our Unitarian and Free Christian denomination. It’s fair to say we felt frustration over the inability of our faith community to give a coherent answer to such basic questions as: who are we as a faith community? and: what is our purpose?
The papers may also be seen as videos at ukunitarian.tv.
I look forward to reading those, and wonder aloud why our larger denomination on this side of the Atlantic hasn’t done something so useful.
I preached this sermon at Universalist National Memorial Church, on March 17, 2019 with the lectionary texts from Genesis and Philippians.
I’d like to thank Pastor Gatton for inviting me into the pulpit this morning, and to you for welcoming me again.
I want to continue the theme of journey that he started last week and so keeping with the season of Lent. Let’s not lose momentum.
In today’s first lesson, the journey is both literal movement and spiritual development, even if the direct verbal communication with God and the animal sacrifice makes it seem very strange and very remote. Literal movement in the sense that Abram and his family were migrants. Figurative, in the sense that his relationship with God was tested and changed over time. That should feel familiar and very close to many, if not all of us.
In the second lesson, the apostle Paul writes to a young church about overcoming evil, and the effects of evil, though imitating him; this leads to a reward which he expresses in both cosmic and personal terms.
So we have two interesting lessons to consider this morning.
First, I’ll talk about how we should interpret scripture. Next, I’ll talk about the themes that these two lessons present us. Lastly, I’ll talk about what these themes have to do with us today and our lives in general.
I want to be as plain and straightforward as possible, because whenever we deal with a text as complicated and rich in meaning as the one from Genesis, difficulty is bound to follow. It is distant in time and culture; we have to go deep in order to find those human bonds — us to him — and those bonds that we share with God.
Now, about interpretation. Some basic principles. I think it goes without saying that we should know something about the passages that surround the ones we read, for context. We should know something about the writer (if we can) and something about the subjects of the passage. We should know something of the political context, geography and language. But it’s also important not to get so hung up on the facts around a reading that we miss the meaning, which isn’t always, or even often the literal reading.
We meet Abram, his wife Sarai and her handmaid Hagar in the first book of the Bible, Genesis. Later, they would take on the more familiar names of Abraham and Sarah, but that’s for another sermon.
Abraham is also the common root to the Abrahamic religions: Judaism, Christianity and Islam because at least these three religions have analogous relationships with the same God, with a personal relationship with the figure of Abraham, and connected in analogous ways in prayer, congregational life and revealed scripture.
Genesis is the first of five books collectively known in Jewish worship as the Torah, and so is foundational both in Jewish religious life and Christian religious life. Culturally, even if you don’t know anything else about the Torah, you will have probably heard about the creation of the world (“In the beginning”), Noah and his ark and perhaps the tower of Babel. Around Easter and Passover, you can watch that Technicolor interpretation of the Exodus, The Ten Commandments, on your televisions. But that story comes much later than the one about Abraham and Sarah.
Seen as a work of literature, the Torah is a library of myths, histories, stories, genealogies and censuses that speak of God’s relationship with the world and particularly with a group of people which became the nation Israel. But as a work of faith, its depths cannot be exhausted in a lifetime. And that doesn’t even include the other works of history, wisdom, poetry, songs and prophecies that make up the rest of the Hebrew Bible, which we commonly call the Old Testament. Collectively, these works were gathered, written and edited over centuries, millennia ago. On the one hand, it’s not a simple handbook with answers that correspond to our daily lives on a one-to-one basis. On the other, it’s not a work of magic, no matter what others say. It is meant to be read and understood. Again, it’s about the relationship between God and human beings, written in a human language if at times in an obscure way. The Bible is for human beings, not angel, and understanding takes work.
But that’s more than getting a good translation or an academic commentary. What we need is an interpretive system.
Reading the Bible as a faithful person asking, “where is God in that moment?” “how did the people respond?” “Where might I find myself in a similar situation?” “How can I adapt my life in a similar way.” You may come up with new and different questions. Interpretive systems matter. Just as people see the world in different ways, people see the Bible and its role in different ways.
I’m guessing that some of you have heard the news about the United Methodist Church. A few weeks ago, in a special session of their General Conference, the global body of the United Methodist Church, passed a conservative reading and harsher implementation of their code of conduct, the Book of Discipline. This means that GLBT persons who have have been ordained, including at least one bishop, risk expulsion, while their ministers who perform weddings for same sex couples face a year’s suspension without pay. The winning, traditionalist side declared their loyalty to scripture, implying that the opposition was only following the whims of culture and politics. Of course, conveniently not applying their same standard to divorce.
So when the liberal wing says they’re being faithful to scripture, it’s not a slogan or an evasion, but rather they’re using an interesting model and through it have seen God’s action in the world move in the direction of more inclusion. We can better identify truth from the general thrust of scripture, and not from counting this number of passages which suggest one thing as opposed to that number of passages that suggest another. We’re looking for bigger arcs in the story. That’s why I believe that God will save all, even though there are verses that talk about wrath and punishment. These are rocks and eddies in a river of God’s lovingkindess and compassion.
So when I hear that God accounted God’s faith as righteousness, I hear that in the wider context that God’s blessing is not earned by deeds; that we are not defined by our usefulness; and that dedication is a source of strength, and its own reward. It encourages me to be more faithful.
One thing that stands out for me is that he seems more like a historical person than the people before him. Before the section of Genesis about Abram, we had a genealogy that reaches back nine generations to story of the tower of Babel. Before that we had Noah and his ark, and of course all the way back to Adam and Eve. These seem more like mythological understandings of how certain realities of the world came to be. Perhaps pre-existing stories — certainly with Noah — with a special spin to make them fit with these people’s understanding of how God related to them.
But Abram was different; he seems more like a real person with a past; he was from Ur of the Chaldees, probably a site now in southern Iraq, along the River Euphrates, settled about twenty-nine centuries ago.
He had his own ideas and ways and volition. Abram was faithful, but not God’s puppet. He made some big mistakes and you can wince at his action and reasons. Abram is faithful, but flawed and that makes him believable.
What about his life can we appreciate for ourselves?
To me, one thing about the Abram/Abraham story stands out as obvious, but is so plain that we’re bound to miss. Something so basic that we’re prone to take it for granted, but shouldn’t.
Abram is conscious of his future. The future is where we human beings plot out our lives, make plans for change, plans for redemption, plans for future generations. The eternal God needs no future. God is eternal: the past and present and future are the same; with all possibilities. So God comes to us as a god of history — within time, and working though history — for we mortal people cannot leap into eternity ourselves.
And through the promises God made to Abram, he had a future in three senses.
As Universalists, we naturally care about the human future. God promised Abram that through his descendants all the world would be blessed, and our forebears used that as evidence of the final harmony of all souls with God.
But our own personal and family stories are also important. The future is important, but nothing is more fragile and tentative. In it, all things are possible, which can either be a relief or a threat. A relief if the present isn’t so good: the future might be better. Or it could be worse, and so frightening and threatening. Think about the 2020 elections and whether they bring promise or dread.
The hope of the future is not the same as watching one day pass into the next. My grandmother said “don’t wish your life away” but some people today are doing just that. The future — the active, changing, living future — can be so much of a threat that the past can look better in comparison. And so much of a threat that it might be more appealing to live perpetually in the past.
Timothy Snyder, writing in The Road to Unfreedom and elsewhere has defined a double process where our ideas of the past, present and future can be manipulated to shut down democratic norms and create perpetual authoritarian states. Russian leadership being the force behind the manipulation in the United States and the United Kingdom, following the success they had at home. Snyder’s point is that Russia seems better comparatively if the US, the UK and other western powers and institutions, like the European Union and NATO, are weakened.
He writes at length about “the politics of eternity” — the situation following the end of the Cold War — where (to make the matter brief of the sake of this sermon) the United States remained the sole superpower and assumption that the hard crises of the past were over. This is sometimes also called “the end of history.” Which is news to me, and perhaps to you, having lived through it. But lacking obvious alternative futures, it’s easy enough for the powers that be to focus our attention on the past. There can be no change and thus no future; just old victories and old grudges and no progress.
Little wonder that the proponents of Brexit use Word War Two imagery, as if the UK were still at war with Germany, and that there’s still an Empire with which to do business. It’s a way to escape from the future and recall a rose-colored version of the nation overcoming an existential threat. The President does the same thing; when exactly was America great? Since he says “again” it has to be in the past. Snyder points out that the President’s “again” like more like the 1930s than anything else. And for the racist, terroristic murders in Christchurch, the message: turn back the clock to when people knew their place, silent, elsewhere or nowhere.
We cannot live like that and need not. We, too can have a future; must have a future.
St. Paul, writing to the Ephesians, offers a way to be brave for our own futures. That is, to be set apart from those whose “god is the belly; and their glory is in their shame; their minds are set on earthly things.” In other words, living for themselves, turned inwards, and unattuned to what life with God is like.
The faithful, on writes:
He [that is, Jesus Christ] will transform the body of our humiliation that it may be conformed to the body of his glory, by the power that also enables him to make all things subject to himself.
This is a promise of life with God. We must choose who we live for: the one who cares for us, or the many who care only what they can get from us.
The “body of humiliation” Paul talks about is one that diminishes itself by only caring for its own needs. This is the opposite of humility, which is a gift we can give to others by being present but not dominating. It’s certainly not the same thing as loving the world and those who live in it. If we care about what we have so much that we can’t get over ourselves, can’t look past ourselves, then we will not have that same kind of integration that Jesus had.
And if we cannot care, we cannot hope and if we do not hope, there will be no future.
Because the approach I suggested towards scripture applies equally well when interpreting our own lives: not to focus on particular episodes of failure; not to let them veto the good that you do or attempt; and not to draw your focus away from examining your whole lives, and rejoicing in who you are. You are set on heavenly things, and those are first seen here among the living.
So love, care, think, use good judgment. Be not afraid. Extend kindness and understanding. Pray energetically. Live within the deep story that God has set among us; that story will lead you far.
May the eternal God bless our lives and bless our homes. And may God continue to bless the peoples of the earth, to every corner, and until the close of days. Amen.
I preached this sermon at Universalist National Memorial Church, on March 17, 2019 with the lectionary texts from Genesis and Philippians.
I’d like to thank Pastor Gatton for inviting me into the pulpit this morning, and to you for welcoming me again.
I want to continue the theme of journey that he started last week and so keeping with the season of Lent. Let’s not lose momentum.
In today’s first lesson, the journey is both literal movement and spiritual development, even if the direct verbal communication with God and the animal sacrifice makes it seem very strange and very remote. Literal movement in the sense that Abram and his family were migrants. Figurative, in the sense that his relationship with God was tested and changed over time. That should feel familiar and very close to many, if not all of us.
In the second lesson, the apostle Paul writes to a young church about overcoming evil, and the effects of evil, though imitating him; this leads to a reward which he expresses in both cosmic and personal terms.
So we have two interesting lessons to consider this morning.
First, I’ll talk about how we should interpret scripture. Next, I’ll talk about the themes that these two lessons present us. Lastly, I’ll talk about what these themes have to do with us today and our lives in general.
I want to be as plain and straightforward as possible, because whenever we deal with a text as complicated and rich in meaning as the one from Genesis, difficulty is bound to follow. It is distant in time and culture; we have to go deep in order to find those human bonds — us to him — and those bonds that we share with God.
Now, about interpretation. Some basic principles. I think it goes without saying that we should know something about the passages that surround the ones we read, for context. We should know something about the writer (if we can) and something about the subjects of the passage. We should know something of the political context, geography and language. But it’s also important not to get so hung up on the facts around a reading that we miss the meaning, which isn’t always, or even often the literal reading.
We meet Abram, his wife Sarai and her handmaid Hagar in the first book of the Bible, Genesis. Later, they would take on the more familiar names of Abraham and Sarah, but that’s for another sermon.
Abraham is also the common root to the Abrahamic religions: Judaism, Christianity and Islam because at least these three religions have analogous relationships with the same God, with a personal relationship with the figure of Abraham, and connected in analogous ways in prayer, congregational life and revealed scripture.
Genesis is the first of five books collectively known in Jewish worship as the Torah, and so is foundational both in Jewish religious life and Christian religious life. Culturally, even if you don’t know anything else about the Torah, you will have probably heard about the creation of the world (“In the beginning”), Noah and his ark and perhaps the tower of Babel. Around Easter and Passover, you can watch that Technicolor interpretation of the Exodus, The Ten Commandments, on your televisions. But that story comes much later than the one about Abraham and Sarah.
Seen as a work of literature, the Torah is a library of myths, histories, stories, genealogies and censuses that speak of God’s relationship with the world and particularly with a group of people which became the nation Israel. But as a work of faith, its depths cannot be exhausted in a lifetime. And that doesn’t even include the other works of history, wisdom, poetry, songs and prophecies that make up the rest of the Hebrew Bible, which we commonly call the Old Testament. Collectively, these works were gathered, written and edited over centuries, millennia ago. On the one hand, it’s not a simple handbook with answers that correspond to our daily lives on a one-to-one basis. On the other, it’s not a work of magic, no matter what others say. It is meant to be read and understood. Again, it’s about the relationship between God and human beings, written in a human language if at times in an obscure way. The Bible is for human beings, not angel, and understanding takes work.
But that’s more than getting a good translation or an academic commentary. What we need is an interpretive system.
Reading the Bible as a faithful person asking, “where is God in that moment?” “how did the people respond?” “Where might I find myself in a similar situation?” “How can I adapt my life in a similar way.” You may come up with new and different questions. Interpretive systems matter. Just as people see the world in different ways, people see the Bible and its role in different ways.
I’m guessing that some of you have heard the news about the United Methodist Church. A few weeks ago, in a special session of their General Conference, the global body of the United Methodist Church, passed a conservative reading and harsher implementation of their code of conduct, the Book of Discipline. This means that GLBT persons who have have been ordained, including at least one bishop, risk expulsion, while their ministers who perform weddings for same sex couples face a year’s suspension without pay. The winning, traditionalist side declared their loyalty to scripture, implying that the opposition was only following the whims of culture and politics. Of course, conveniently not applying their same standard to divorce.
So when the liberal wing says they’re being faithful to scripture, it’s not a slogan or an evasion, but rather they’re using an interesting model and through it have seen God’s action in the world move in the direction of more inclusion. We can better identify truth from the general thrust of scripture, and not from counting this number of passages which suggest one thing as opposed to that number of passages that suggest another. We’re looking for bigger arcs in the story. That’s why I believe that God will save all, even though there are verses that talk about wrath and punishment. These are rocks and eddies in a river of God’s lovingkindess and compassion.
So when I hear that God accounted God’s faith as righteousness, I hear that in the wider context that God’s blessing is not earned by deeds; that we are not defined by our usefulness; and that dedication is a source of strength, and its own reward. It encourages me to be more faithful.
One thing that stands out for me is that he seems more like a historical person than the people before him. Before the section of Genesis about Abram, we had a genealogy that reaches back nine generations to story of the tower of Babel. Before that we had Noah and his ark, and of course all the way back to Adam and Eve. These seem more like mythological understandings of how certain realities of the world came to be. Perhaps pre-existing stories — certainly with Noah — with a special spin to make them fit with these people’s understanding of how God related to them.
But Abram was different; he seems more like a real person with a past; he was from Ur of the Chaldees, probably a site now in southern Iraq, along the River Euphrates, settled about twenty-nine centuries ago.
He had his own ideas and ways and volition. Abram was faithful, but not God’s puppet. He made some big mistakes and you can wince at his action and reasons. Abram is faithful, but flawed and that makes him believable.
What about his life can we appreciate for ourselves?
To me, one thing about the Abram/Abraham story stands out as obvious, but is so plain that we’re bound to miss. Something so basic that we’re prone to take it for granted, but shouldn’t.
Abram is conscious of his future. The future is where we human beings plot out our lives, make plans for change, plans for redemption, plans for future generations. The eternal God needs no future. God is eternal: the past and present and future are the same; with all possibilities. So God comes to us as a god of history — within time, and working though history — for we mortal people cannot leap into eternity ourselves.
And through the promises God made to Abram, he had a future in three senses.
As Universalists, we naturally care about the human future. God promised Abram that through his descendants all the world would be blessed, and our forebears used that as evidence of the final harmony of all souls with God.
But our own personal and family stories are also important. The future is important, but nothing is more fragile and tentative. In it, all things are possible, which can either be a relief or a threat. A relief if the present isn’t so good: the future might be better. Or it could be worse, and so frightening and threatening. Think about the 2020 elections and whether they bring promise or dread.
The hope of the future is not the same as watching one day pass into the next. My grandmother said “don’t wish your life away” but some people today are doing just that. The future — the active, changing, living future — can be so much of a threat that the past can look better in comparison. And so much of a threat that it might be more appealing to live perpetually in the past.
Timothy Snyder, writing in The Road to Unfreedom and elsewhere has defined a double process where our ideas of the past, present and future can be manipulated to shut down democratic norms and create perpetual authoritarian states. Russian leadership being the force behind the manipulation in the United States and the United Kingdom, following the success they had at home. Snyder’s point is that Russia seems better comparatively if the US, the UK and other western powers and institutions, like the European Union and NATO, are weakened.
He writes at length about “the politics of eternity” — the situation following the end of the Cold War — where (to make the matter brief of the sake of this sermon) the United States remained the sole superpower and assumption that the hard crises of the past were over. This is sometimes also called “the end of history.” Which is news to me, and perhaps to you, having lived through it. But lacking obvious alternative futures, it’s easy enough for the powers that be to focus our attention on the past. There can be no change and thus no future; just old victories and old grudges and no progress.
Little wonder that the proponents of Brexit use Word War Two imagery, as if the UK were still at war with Germany, and that there’s still an Empire with which to do business. It’s a way to escape from the future and recall a rose-colored version of the nation overcoming an existential threat. The President does the same thing; when exactly was America great? Since he says “again” it has to be in the past. Snyder points out that the President’s “again” like more like the 1930s than anything else. And for the racist, terroristic murders in Christchurch, the message: turn back the clock to when people knew their place, silent, elsewhere or nowhere.
We cannot live like that and need not. We, too can have a future; must have a future.
St. Paul, writing to the Ephesians, offers a way to be brave for our own futures. That is, to be set apart from those whose “god is the belly; and their glory is in their shame; their minds are set on earthly things.” In other words, living for themselves, turned inwards, and unattuned to what life with God is like.
The faithful, on writes:
He [that is, Jesus Christ] will transform the body of our humiliation that it may be conformed to the body of his glory, by the power that also enables him to make all things subject to himself.
This is a promise of life with God. We must choose who we live for: the one who cares for us, or the many who care only what they can get from us.
The “body of humiliation” Paul talks about is one that diminishes itself by only caring for its own needs. This is the opposite of humility, which is a gift we can give to others by being present but not dominating. It’s certainly not the same thing as loving the world and those who live in it. If we care about what we have so much that we can’t get over ourselves, can’t look past ourselves, then we will not have that same kind of integration that Jesus had.
And if we cannot care, we cannot hope and if we do not hope, there will be no future.
Because the approach I suggested towards scripture applies equally well when interpreting our own lives: not to focus on particular episodes of failure; not to let them veto the good that you do or attempt; and not to draw your focus away from examining your whole lives, and rejoicing in who you are. You are set on heavenly things, and those are first seen here among the living.
So love, care, think, use good judgment. Be not afraid. Extend kindness and understanding. Pray energetically. Live within the deep story that God has set among us; that story will lead you far.
May the eternal God bless our lives and bless our homes. And may God continue to bless the peoples of the earth, to every corner, and until the close of days. Amen.
I’ve been building websites since 1996: some have been lost to time, others I have taken down because they’re so behind the times. But then this Twitter conversation with Stephen Lingwood, the minister of the Unitarian church in Cardiff, Wales. He posted, and has been quoting parts of William Ellery Channing’s 1819 Unitarian Christianity, also known as “the Baltimore Sermon.” And as you can count, this is its bicentennial.
We had this chat:
“Now all books, and all conversation, require in the reader or hearer the constant exercise of reason; or their true import is only to be obtained by continual comparison and inference.”#UnitarianChristianity https://t.co/WUFxHmH7jY
— Stephen Lingwood (@SJLingwood) February 23, 2019
Funny. I was the first to put it on the Internet — for Gopher, pre-WWW — having typed out myself. How early was that? I wonder if I have my original file around here.
— Scott Wells (@bitb) February 24, 2019
Wow. That’s amazing.
— Stephen Lingwood (@SJLingwood) February 24, 2019
I found one file of the sermon unchanged since 1994. I used to have a Channing site — many years ago — with that and other titles, and maybe I will remount it. I do own the https://t.co/vTvTPuZ8xJ domain.
— Scott Wells (@bitb) February 24, 2019
Be great to have a lot of historical stuff online.
— Stephen Lingwood (@SJLingwood) February 24, 2019
So, I dusted off the version of the site from 2003; I know because the files hadn’t been changed since. I re-purposed unitarianchristian.org, and created a channing folder for the files. I lightly cleaned up the Channing entry (index) page and knocked together a page for the domain. I know that if I didn’t just do it, I wouldn’t.
So. your blast from the past: William Ellery Channing Center
(I might fix it when I have the time. Maybe a bit by bit.)
I wasn’t going to write about the certification of UUA congregations because I didn’t think it would do any good. But one thing stuck out when I looked at the certification list — which closed on February 1 — so a few words.
I was struck by how many congregations gave no money to the UUA.
There are always some: very small or fragile ones, for instance, and I’ve noticed that Christian and Pagan congregations are over-represented. I read that as alienation, discontent with services provided or not provided and perhaps more. Non-contributing is one of the things that keeps you from having voting representation at General Assembly (big deal) so, the UUA isn’t truly being punitive for publishing this list. But I’m sure peer pressure plays into the calculus (good luck with that) — and besides, showing displeasure goes both ways.
What makes this year different is the number of non-fragile, non-tiny, middle-of-the-road congregations on the list. More than I’ve ever seen before. Not that the UUA has been the easiest to defend lately, at least on financial grounds. I can imagine the calculus of giving nothing to the UUA as opposed to planning for strategic spending or making up for losses. The UUA is a hard sell, especially as it becomes harder and harder to identify what one gets for the money. Who might be emboldened by that list, rather than embarrassed?
Many people I know have fallen for Marie Kondo’s method of de-cluttering, and her signal question, “Does it spark joy?” The list suggests that, for some at least, the UUA doesn’t.
Come hear me preach this Sunday at the 11 am service at Universalist National Memorial Church, Washington D.C. Since the church website is down for repairs, I’m putting the details here.
I’ll be drawing from passages from Nehemiah and Luke will question whether ordained ministers — indeed, even churches themselves — are necessary or even desirable as society changes. And if not these, what will take their place?
My thanks to Connor Cosenza, who will be liturgist.
Universalist National Memorial Church is a liberal Christian Universalist church.
It is at 1810 16th Street, N.W., within walking distance of Dupont Circle Metro (Q Street exit) and U Street Metro (13th Street exit.) The S2 and S4 buses stop in front of the church. There is parking behind the Masonic House of the Temple, catty-corner from the church; drive down the alley for access.
I look forward to seeing you.
About five years ago, I stood up a site about the joint 1937 Unitarian-Universalist hymnal and service book, The Hymns of the Spirit. It was built on WordPress and for some reason attracted a lot of bot traffic. The last thing I needed was for it to be taken over. So I moved it over to a simpler Jekyll site. It’s clean and quick to load; I’ll be fixing some gremlins but it’s ready to use. But there’s no place to leave a comment: comment through this site or email me about it at wells@universalistchristian.org.
So, I was trapped in an elevator this morning with my dog, so I thought I’d dash out a few good reasons why you’d want a short, structured service if that’s not your usual practice.
Other suggestions?
I preached this sermon — in fact, I jettisoned a part in the middle for time — at Universalist National Memorial Church, on September 30, 2018 with the lectionary texts from Numbers and James.
I would like to thank Pastor Gatton for inviting me into the pulpit his morning, and to you, for welcoming me to the pulpit today.
A couple of weeks ago I got a partial root canal. It turns out that I’ve been grinding my teeth and eventually a cracked one of them. I may end up still losing the tooth. I might lose other teeth besides, because I keep gritting and grinding my teeth. Lately, I’ve been grinding my teeth every day. Perhaps you understand.
The last two times I preached in this pulpit, the president had done something awful and I thought it was my responsibility to address that in theological terms. The hearings of the Senate last week, including the harrowing testimony we heard, also counts as something awful. But I want to continue with my prepared remarks, and hope that what I have to say might spare me some teeth, and spare you some pain, by giving you strength and resources that the Executive, Legislature and the Judiciary can neither give nor take away.
I looked at the texts assigned for today in the Revised Common Lectionary, an ecumenical readings calendar that breaks up the bulk of the Bible into a three-year cycle. It’s online; you can search for it. You might be interested in the scope of readings, what thoughts and feelings they evoke and how the readings relate to one another. (It’s also a point of pride. The committee that produced the Revised Common Lectionary included Unitarian Universalist Christians, and we don’t often have a place at the ecumenical table.)
So, we have for today a lesson from Esther, about her daringly exposing Haman as the plotting enemy of the Jews, with a psalm to match, used today in the opening words. There’s a gospel reading from Mark, with teachings from Jesus, including the well-known phrase “Whoever is not against us is for us.” But to be frank, Esther’s passage ended in violent death for the baddy and Jesus teaches one of those passages that makes Universalists itch, and I did that last time. And I saw something the other two had in common: teaching about the practice of faith itself.
So, I’d like to visit some of the practical and pastoral guidance the Bible has passed down the generations, and pull out some parts that apply to us today. And while I already have the curtain pulled back, and looking at how the sausage is made, let’s be clear about about what we might find in scripture.
Despite how some big-platform preachers might act, there’s not a one-to-one correlation between what the Bible records and what people do, much less what people ought to do. The Bible, in this sense, does not speak. It is not a guide book, instruction manual or cookbook. When I was a youth in Georgia, there was a popular bumper sticker that read “The Bible says it. I believe it. That settles it” which is entirely the wrong approach, because that all too easily becomes “I believe it. I will show that the Bible backs me. Don’t you dare cross me.” We have to be continuously on guard against self-validating appeals to divine power: self-validation that empowers bullies and fanatics, and builds walls between us and where God might lead us. The world is loud and scripture whispers.
There’s another risk. Take the current political moment. I find it intensely frustrating and often frightening. It would be all too easy to withdraw from awkward conversations, rigorous engagement and public participation and enjoy a private life. That’s what the Amish did; they are descended from one of the most radical Christian traditions of the Reformation and were so brutally persecuted that they withdrew from society.
And one last thing. And if we’re honest, we know these works have been compiled and edited within a particular historical and cultural contexts. This human hand does not distract from its divine origin, but reminds us that while they were lived in the Iron Age, we do not. We have to interpret these words for our time. We have to figure out what these words meant in their time, and hear that anew. This is what distinguishes the liberal approach.
Now, let’s review the reading book of Numbers (Numbers 11:4-6, 10-16, 24-29).
Numbers is the fourth book of the Bible, and in the Torah, the heart of scripture, so shared by Jews and Christians. The Hebrew name translates to “in the Wilderness” and the English name refers to the censuses recorded in it. On the whole, it can be drowsy reading; this is practically an action scene, so it does take special care to uncover its meaning.
If you have not read Numbers — there was no homework — have not read it, or heard much about it, the “storyline” follows much what we find in the second half of that monumental film, “The Ten Commandments.” The Hebrew people had been released from captivity in Egypt through God’s action. Numbers covers the time from God’s self-revelation to Moses on Mount Sinai to the entrance of the people Israel into the land of Canaan.
But what’s this “mixed multitude” really forty years in the wilderness? At least one English Baptist scholar (Harold Henry Rowley; see note in Plaut’s Torah, p. 1011.) thinks that the Exile in the wilderness was only 2 years long: the 2 years that are mentioned in Numbers as the first and last year. The other 38 years were slotted in between.
Why would someone do that?
The Exodus narrative here and in the book of Exodus show how the people stopped being slaves, went out of Egypt and became a people in their own right, seeking a new homeland. But that it was a challenge and a process, and that they failed to hear and mind God along the way.
It’s easier to believe this idea of a nation developed over the course of generations, and not a single trip through the scorching and hostile desert, however long. What the point of the story is to say that one generation died that another generation and people would live.
And the number 40 is important to suggest a long duration. Where else do we see this number? The 40 days of the flood. Jesus’s 40 days in the wilderness. A number which suggests a long time, and not to be understood literally. But the meaning is clear enough, once you understand the intent. It’s not a matter of deception or exaggeration, but coding the story with extra meaning. Which is fair, if you know what the code is.
One way to understand scripture is to understand where you are in the story. In this view, you have to think of yourself as being a part of the story rather than it happening to someone else. This way, we grow in empathy and see if there are parallels in how those people found God in their lives to see if we can find God in our own. A borrowed life lesson that provides a common language.
And also a link that provides context for other parts of the Bible. For example, Jesus would have known this passage, of course, and alludes to the manna in the sixth chapter of the gospel of John:
Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that believeth hath eternal life. I am the bread of life. Your fathers did eat the manna in the wilderness, and they died. This is the bread which cometh down out of heaven, that a man may eat thereof, and not die. (vv. 47-50, Revised Version)
This changes our understanding of John: that Jesus was the renewal of promise, provision for the liberated, and reward for the wandering. It makes comments about pride or cannibalism seem silly and doctrinaire.
So, a few passages before today’s reading, we headed out into the wilderness with the people Israel, from the mountain of the Eternal, following the cloud that rose from the Ark of the Covenant. They went out in ranks, like an army. The people moved, and encamped, and grumbled. A mixed crowd; a little bit of everyone. A “motley crew” long before that became the name of a metal band.
What makes this telling of the story different from the one in Exodus (or Cecil B. DeMille) is how it was edited and what it focuses on.
Also, since we ascribe great worth to the Bible, it’s worth knowing how it came to be. The usual, pious understanding is that the first five books of the Bible — the Torah — were written by Moses personally. But there have also been serious and faithful questions for hundreds of years. But a simple reading of scripture should throw that into doubt. For one thing, how could Moses be the author if it records his death?
The work of “lower criticism” looks at the books, their structure and vocabulary, and try to understand the sources that we were developed to make these works as we know them. Written works don’t last forever. We don’t have a “first edition” or manuscript of any part of the Bible, and until the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls in the 1940s and 1950, the oldest portions of the standard Masoretic version of the Torah we have is about eleven centuries old. The oldest biblical text we have today — say, 26 centuries old — is a in a rolled up silver amulet, so fragile that it had to be read with modern imaging technology: a part of the priestly blessing, from Numbers.
According to lower theory, there are four main sources for the Torah. Two — known as the E and the J sources, based on how God in named in the text. A D source, for Deuteronomy, which seems to be its own thing, and a P, or “priestly” source.
(We see a similar kind of development in play in the the four Gospels.) So where critics of scripture see contradictions and foolishness we see development, versions and alternatives.
Numbers relies on the priestly source, suggesting the book is about 25 or 26 centuries old, and based on the older E and J sources. That is, the underlying question in Numbers is “what is the role of priests in the community?” That doesn’t mean so much for us today, but it means there’s an editorial viewpoint that means the text cannot be read at face value, leading us to the historical or “higher” criticism.
This is where we pick up our lesson. Our passage skips over the manna. This strange, monotonous food; I imagine it would be like eating nothing but chia seeds. And, what do we have now? What is this? But, oh, remember the food in Egypt! he people are on their last nerve, “the Lord was very angry, and Moses was distressed.” (11:10, Plaut trans.) Then the Eternal God bid Moses bring seventy of the “elders and officers” of the people to the presence of the Eternal God, with Moses so that he would not bear the responsibility of leadership alone. (10:17) Those gathered with Moses spoke in an ecstatic voice when the spirit of the Eternal God came upon them, but not those leaders alone. Two others, named Eldad and Medad, did too: Moses would not restrain them. And then the feast of quail come down — maybe 50, 100 bushels full. The people were hit with a plague, and the motley crew, having buried their dead at the place named “graves of craving” set out again.
And perhaps the hunger for meat meant a return the familiar life of Egyptian captivity. One of relative ease and luxury; something more than literal meat, and something manna couldn’t feed.
Dear friends, we have the ability to be a great blessing to ourselves and to others. We have within ourselves the seed of greatness; “the kingdom of God is within you.” This is not an escapist fantasy. It however does take imagination. An imagination that resists the deadening pall of convention and the limitations of second guessing: an imagination and a direction that bubbles up possibilities inside us, and that God has set before us. Possibilities that create a hunger for something different, and before you know it, this faith has us wanting something better and seeking to make it real. I believe that there is a Divine path that we can take — one that we have no monopoly over — and welcomes companions. A way described in our passage from James:
Are any among you suffering? They should pray. Are any cheerful? They should sing songs of praise.
Now, none of us alone can make the world right, but each of us can do our part to make it better.
As we proceed, we must ask ourselves: in what way do we mean better? A thin 51% control over the other 49%? Luxuries that we enjoy that others could not possibly also have? Sympathy that stops at the D.C. line or some other border? Lip service to full participation in the economic, moral, political and spiritual matters but acquiescence to the various systems that make this participation impossible? Not any of these, of course.
So taking the love of God, a humble and prayerful heart and a great deal of hard work; we must pray God to raise up scouts and guides for the journey, wherever they may come from; to apply ourselves to prayer and praise; confession and healing; guidance and counsel; and no less than all of these to use our minds and good sense to “prove all things; hold fast that which is good.” (1 Thes. 5:21)
This is what we may enjoy and offer future generations. May God bless us now and forever.
The Non-Subscribing Presbyterian Church of Ireland is an interesting church of 4,000 or more souls in Ireland (the island), mostly in Northern Ireland (that part of the United Kingdom) but one that’s hard to get a lot of current information about. I’m sure its status contributes to this: “kindred” to Unitarians (as the formula went a century ago) but distinct from the Unitarians found across the Irish Sea. But some good news today.
Davis Steers, a NSPCI minister and writer, has put together a site about the church’s history and I look forward to reading it.
My UniversalistChristian.net site — one of the places I stash Universalist Christian documents — got infected and so rather trying to clean it, I have completely take it down.
I’m really long past giving my documents sites a collective scrub, so I plan on doing that, with other security updates besides. I’ll appreciate your patience.
Returning to the Service and Hymn Book for the Unitarian League of Lay Centers, I wanted to share my process of understanding it. I think that starts with getting the texts of this hard-to-find book public. A searchable text also makes it easier to annotate, which then gets us closer to understanding how these early twentieth-century Unitarians viewed the liturgy, and from that their religion.
The “services” are really opening sequences, with a pastoral prayer: in a sense an abbreviated morning prayer before the hymn-framed sermon. It’s a familiar format. There are two forms here: the first two services are more elaborate, and for general use. The last three — Righteousness and Peace, A Service of Thanksgiving and a Commemorative Service — outside the sequence of numbered services are more elaborate, perhaps for use on civil holidays … or civil crisis.
The ten numbered services in the middle are an exended responsive reading matched to what might be called a “pastoral prayer.” That is, that kind of page-long, non-topical general prayer so often found in print in that era, and which continues as the most common genre of prayer in Unitarian Universalism (and elsewhere I bet.) A good period Universalist source of this genre, is Charles Hall Leonard’s 1915 Light and Peace and I bet many of my readers will also think of Rauschenbusch’s Prayers of the Social Awakening. My point is this: even without composing new prayers, it would have been easy for a local lay leader to match up extra prayers and extra responsive reading (they were commonly published in their own volumes, too) and club together new opening sequences, even if that meant obliging the members to buy a second book, or using a job printer. An appealing thought that.
Back to our text:
I thought it would be easier to dictate the text — around 9,500 words — into Google Drive and edit it from there, than to try and straighten all the photos of the pages and OCR them. I’ve included links to the page photos, and the “before” and “after” of the text editing below. (When I publish this page, I will not have started on the editing.)
Photos of the first (liturgical) part of the Lay Centers book
I’m looking to find liturgical elements in Service and Hymn Book for the Unitarian League of Lay Centers drawn from contemporary Unitarian works — and there were several. I thought it would be helpful to see what family of resources and what influences were in play.
The American Unitarian Association Book of Common Worship (1913) — only responsive readings — begins with, of all things, the late antique hymn of praise, the Te Deum, under the appropriate title “Praise to God.” It’s unusual because it’s hardly the most unitarian of texts, and so I include it here.
We praise thee, O God; we acknowledge thee to be the Lord.
All the earth doth worship thee, the Father everlasting.To thee all creatures cry aloud, the heavens and all the powers therein;
The vast array of thy creation continually doth worship thee, holy, holy, holy. Lord, God of the universe;Heaven and earth are full of the majesty of thy glory.
The glorious company of the apostles praise thee;The goodly fellowship of the prophets praise thee;
The noble army of martyrs praise thee;The holy church throughout all the world doth acknowledge thee, the Father of an infinite majesty:
The everlasting Light of all that live, Spirit of grace and truth, the Comforter.Thou art the King of glory, O Lord; thou art the ever blessed God our Father.
When thou lookest upon us in our low estate, thou dost not despise our humble prayer.Thou settest us free from the bondage of sin, and dost open the kingdom of heaven unto all the faithful.
Thou callest upon us to enter in and to dwell with thee for ever.We believe that thou art Judge of all the earth.
We therefore pray thee, help thy children, to whom thou hiast revealed the knowledge of thy love;May we be found faithful in the keeping of thy law.
O Lord, save thy people, and bless thy heritage.Govern them, and lift them up for ever.
Day by day we magnify thee, and we worship thy name ever, world without end.Vouchsafe, O Lord, to keep us this day without sin.
O Lord, have mercy upon us, have mercy upon us.O Lord, let thy mercy lighten upon us, as our trust is in thee.
O Lord, in thee have we trusted; let us never be confounded.
More than three years ago, I wrote about a Unitarian effort about 110 years past for the creation of “lay centers” that in many ways anticipated the post-WWII Fellowship Movement. (This was itself called for ten years prior.)
There’s little said about this episode, and little evidence of it apart from a few articles and a small worship guide. I intended to say more about the book — famous last words — but it is fragile and rare enough that I did not want to subject it to a flatbed scanner.
So I’ll pick up where I left off, and using my phone camera hope to find some efficiencies in bringing the contents of this book to light.
In the meantime, review those past articles:
I was going through notes and files on my computer, and see that I received fellowship with the Unitarian Universalist Association, through its Ministerial Fellowship Committee, twenty years ago two days ago; that is on July 7, 1997.
It’s a nostalgic week for several reasons — some personal — but seeing old classmates report on Facebook their experience of the General Assembly of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) and this anniversary are particularly poignant. (I went to Brite Divinity School, a Disciples seminary, and also graduated in 1997.)
Would I do it all over again? Probably, because my happy life would be so much different without it. I met my husband while serving in my last pastorate, so we would have never met without this journey in ministry. My character has been improved in ways I can’t fully express by it, and have many good friends in the ministry without whom my life would be poorer. But those are not the usual reasons for entering and continuing in the ministry, and hardly good ones seen from the outside and all the costs counted. So much of my writing and secular non-profit work is to put flesh on dry bones,
But this is not a complaint or lament, but rather a word of thanks for those I have served with and near, and who have helped me put some context into what ministry means in these fast-moving two decades.
For reasons too long to go into now, I was tracking down threads in the Classic Reform tradition of Reform Jewish liturgics a couple of weeks ago. Suffice it to say that it was in parallel with some of the liturgical developments in Unitarian churches in the late nineteenth century. There were some friendships crossing the divide, or at least cooperative parterships. It’s hard to tell how far or wide without a deep dive.
So, I was reading the Adoration ending sequence from the Sabbath evening service in the Union Prayer Book, in wide use in Reform temples through the early 1970s. This is the Aleinu, for those familiar with the traditional Hebrew name. I thought, “this looks familiar.”
As well it should. Capitalization aside, the first part of the Aleinu was dropped in almost verbatim as the Exhortation — that is, a beginning sequence — of the First Service of the Services of Religion, the services prepended to the 1937 joint Unitarian-Universalist Hymns of the Spirit.
So, it reads:
Let us adore the ever-living God, and render praise unto him who spread out the heavens and established the earth; whose glory is revealed in the heavens above and whose majesty is manifested throughout the earth. He is our God and there is none else; wherefore in awe and wonder we bow the head and magnify the Eternal, the Holy One, the Ever Blest.
That’s the same hymnal that has the Jewish text translated by a Unitarian minister, “Praise to the Living God” as its first hymn.
And if you’ve read this far and are at the UUA General Assembly in New Orleans, you may be interested in Shabbat Worship, presented by Unitarian Universalists for Jewish Awareness on Friday, June 23, 5:00 pm in the Hilton Riverside Windsor Room.
Cross-posted to HymnsoftheSpririt.org
This brief blog post exists to frame the one that will follow in a day or two. It will be a tutorial to use newly-released features in some free software to make print items — I’m thinking orders of service and newsletters — more attractive and professional-looking.
I’ll do this because there’s so little cost (time or materials) difference between something that looks ratty and something we can be proud of, and this tool can make one step closer to pride.
But ratty too often wins. I can’t do anything about over-long announcements or pointless minister’s columns written out of necessity on deadline. Or grammatical errors that appear seemingly out of nowhere. (Actually, I could have, because I have done all of these.) But when a task needs to be done, sometimes the only good thing you can say about it is that “it’s done now.”
As churches have to make do with less money, fewer people and less cachet in the community, this tension between “must do” and “it’s not great” will become more pronounced and painful. Surely, some customs may vanish, perhaps the print newsletter. Others may be helped by outsourcing and automation. (Churches are not immune to this, and volunteer time has value.) And some will be improved by better tools and training to use them.
But the goal is not so much the better appearance, say, for print pieces; but greater pride for those who produce and read them.
A version of this post was originally created as for the June 10 newsletter for the Universalist Christian Initiative.
I don’t think it is a spoiler to state the the film Wonder Woman (link plays audio) has been re-set to take place in World War One, and that is has scenes of wartime fighting. (She’s been around seventy-five years as a heroic Amazon warrior-princess and was introduced in the Second World War.)
I like the film very much, and if you like action films you should see it; it includes themes that I can’t discuss without giving away the plot. It was it in mind that I afterwards started reading John van Schaick’s The Little Corner Never Conquered, an account of the work of the American Red Cross in Belgium in World War One, and immediately thereafter. It’s available at Archive.org here.
The “little corner” refers to that part of northwest Belgium unoccupied by the Germans, west of the Western Front, but though unoccupied was still atacked, creating refugees, and maiming and killing countless numbers of people. Van Schaick (pronounced “van skoik”) was a Universalist minister, and indeed a ministerial predecessor of mine in the Washington parish, known since 1930 as Universalist National Memorial Church. Even now, the parish parlor is named for him, his wife Julia and her parents. But van Schaick was not there in a ministerial role — he took a leave of absence — serving with the American Red Cross; he and Julia and the others were there to help those who could not help themselves, and did so with humility worth emulating. They accepted constraints (still not universally held); they did what was needed by taking the lead and cue from Belgians. They were there to support, not to control. All of this starting a hundred years a few weeks ago…
It’s a thrilling read, but not an adventure story; understatement hides horrors. John repeats Julia’s work as a nurse’s aide — a matter-of-fact list, from a day book? — caring for wounded American soldiers behind the lines:
Took down records of the wounded American soldiers, four papers for each. Collected patients’ letters, took them to censor, who was a wounded officer on top floor. Translated a letter written in Italian into English, so censor could pass on it. Got the passes for the slightly wounded going out. Fed soldiers helpless through wounds in hands or arms, or very ill. Gave out newspapers, fruit, matches, cigarettes and writing paper. Handed out uniforms for men going out for the day and other clothing like socks and underwear. Washed feet. Prepared special soup on alcohol lamp. Bathed very ill men on head and hands with cologne. Put into English lists of surgical appliances and material the French surgeons were asking of the American Red Cross. Attended funerals of the boys who died and was the only woman at the grave of some of them. Got the wreaths for these funerals, tied them with our colors and put them on the casket. Brought back the American flag from the grave. Wrote to families of the dead boys. Prepared little boxes in which boys could keep bullets or pieces of shell taken out of them. Helped an American sergeant entertain his French sweet-heart and her mother who had come to visit him. Telephoned. Sorted, counted and sent out dirty linen. Got men ready to take motor rides. Wrote letters for men. Interpreted for doctors, nurses and patients. Mended clothes. Picked up trash. (p. 52)
How horribly maimed must have the “very ill” been? The thought of Julia Romaine van Schaick’s care, as an stand-in for all those who risked health, safety and life humbles me. She was not there in a religious capacity, but her humanitarian care looks a lot like the soul of ministry to me. Remember them, too, in these centennial years — and remember those who put themselves at risk today in your charitable giving and, if the opportunity opens, with your talents. And remember: stories like these call us to higher service, if we would listen.
Want more? Yesterday I visited the National Postal Museum. A new exhibit on World War One opened. If you can’t make it to Washington, D.C., see highlights on their website.
In brief, the Desert Mothers were third- and fourth-centry acetic, monastic women who took to the Egyptian desert. They, and the Desert Fathers, often developed a reputation as spiritual teachers. Their wisdom continued as an oral tradition and later set down.
Here are two sayings from particulary well-regarded Mother Syncletica:
Do not let yourself be seduced by the delights of the riches of the world, as though they contained something useful on account of vain pleasure. Worldly people esteem the culinary art, but you, through fasting and thanks to cheap food, go beyond their abundance of food. It is written: “He who is sated loathes honey.” (Prov. 27.7) Do not fill yourself with bread and you will not desire wine.’
She also said, ‘Those who have endured the labours and dangers of the sea and then amass material riches, even when they have gained much desire to gain yet more and they consider what they have at present as nothing and reach out for what they have not got. We, who have nothing of that which we desire, wish to acquire everything through the fear of God.
(Apophthegmata Patrum: The Sayings Of The Desert Fathers, Sr. Benedicta translation)
I was telling some friends that I thought the biggest un-talked-about story in Unitarianland is the discussion of Neoliberalism that came up during the Annual General Meeting (AGM) of the General Assembly of Unitarian and Free Christian Churches early in Holy Week — not the best time for ministers overseas to take note, to be sure.
Andrew Brown, the minister to the Cambridge church, wrote about this at the time (“Neoliberalism’s Destructive Influence Both Inside and Outside the Modern Unitarian Movement, ” April 13, Caute) and so I would recommend you read that; I’m running down the links he suggests and going to find that George Monbiot book I bought and never got around to reading. (We’ve all done that, right?)
What made me think this was important was the how sungly most of us are within a Neoliberal worldview and how that undercuts our faithfulness; limits our ability to use it effectively where appropriate; and (getting back to the issues that were captivating American Unitarian Universalists this Holy Week) distorts the ways we speak with one another.
I was going to write up this beautiful analysis, but by the time I did that (if I ever did that) the moment would be lost. Instead, I recommend the above article — and that we keep it on our radar.
Later: I’ve already made one fix to a note, and created a pretty hacky PDF of the book — ignore the title page and how the chapters are numbered at the top — by request. Again, better asthetics later.
Download the PDF at http://universalistchristian.org/books/ancient-history/ancient-history.pdf.
I’ve also created an ePub — to download at http://universalistchristian.org/books/ancient-history/ancient-history.epub — and I’d appreciate feedback on its readability.
Two days ago, I mentioned how I was processing the Ancient History of Universalism for the web. I’ve gotten to a good stopping place and would like to share the work with you.
It’s on the site I use for my Universalist Christian Initiative, at http://universalistchristian.org/books/ancient-history/.
A fascinating read, but a slow start so you may want to jump into the middle. Chapter nine is a story of intrigue with a vivid mental picture of what is now the West Bank. I imagine it would have been thrilling to those who would have had no other way to “see” it.
And be sure to dig into the footnotes, which in several places show the progress of scholarship in the generations after Hosea Ballou, II, particularly this note on whether Theodoret was a Universalist and whether Universalism was condemned at the Fifth Ecumenical Council. Other notes, apologies from Ballou, for works he could not afford to buy or borrow to consult leave a twinge, particularly since they can be looked up online in scanned reproduction today.
Like this … 
As you may note, it’s a very basic design; the whole book with notes and index (no internal links, I’m afraid) is a mere 162 kb. My goal is to make bulky resources like these easy to download on the fly, with aesthetic improvements later. If you see typos — I couldn’t have gotten them all — send me a note and I’ll make periodic fixes.
Some process notes. I got the messy text from https://archive.org/details/ancienthistoryof1872ball, I edited the text with the Atom editor, in Markdown, and processed it with pandoc. (If you’re comfortable with the command line.)
pandoc -s -S --toc -c basic.css inputtext.md -o output.html
I was inspired by a set of very vulgarly-named and written websites promoting simple web design, the names of which are outside the standards of this blog. Search for the most vulgar words you know, plus “website” and you’ll surely find one, but there’s a competition of imitators. I also consulted Practical Typography’s section on websites for confirmation.
I’ve worked up the outline of a style guide for this book, which I learned years ago helps maintain consistancy and easy for modern readers. I really should type that up.
I’ve been writing a blog since 2003, and this is post #4,000. I saw this coming and thought it deserved a little something extra.
Earlier this week I was speaking with a friend and colleague about Universalism and Eastern Orthodoxy, and recalled to him Hosea Ballou II’s 1828 Ancient History of Universalism, which traced the doctrine from the period from the end of the writing of the New Testament to thhe Fifth Ecumenical Council, particularly in the East. Among other things, the work positions Universalism within the entirety of Christian history and not as an innovation then a scant two or three generations old. And given the role Hosea Ballou II played within the denomination, his influence would have been important in his lifetime. I thought to read it, and knowing from my early (1990s) transcription projects that the best way to read one of these old works — and retain any memory of it — is to edit it for web publication, and that’s what I am doing to celebrate post #4,000.
It’s not the first edition nor the second, but the 1872 edition, with added notes. I’m about half-way through, and will post it online as a web page and intend to create an epub edition, suitable for most book readers. (If you want a print reproduction copy of the first edition, get one here.)
And what value is it today? Among other things, to see how a leading and influential Universalist saw his faith and contrasted with others (allegory is silly; reason, good) and to have handy access to those texts (including biblical texts) that early Universalists used to support the faith. And perhaps past both of these, to enjoy a grand piece of period scholarship and to inspire new studies; I’ve since ordered a modern history of Origen to take me where HB2 couldn’t.
I’ll post afresh when and where the files go up.
No sooner did I beg off following news from the UUA Board than a couple of people kindly noted news in the Board packet for the meeting this weekend. There was — with a gigantic and startling packet of recent Board correpondence — the news, that the First Universalist Society, Hiram, Maine had “dissolved.” (I prefer the term “disbands” as it seems less like it was dropped in a barrel of acid.)
The Hiram church was not large. In my copy of the 2001 UUA directory, it reported four members. Even in 1878 (a quick look at the registers online) only show 28 families in the parish. The inland town has also never been large, and while in a beautiful setting that doesn’t mean that any church could keep residents, or attract ministers. Its existance, in any form, was its accomplishment.
It was listed as federated. I don’t know what it’s federation partners were, but if they continue I hope they have long years of ministry ahead. (Perhaps this community church, converted last year to a cultural center?) If not, I hope the people of Hiram find and create ministry where they can.
A friend asked if the church in the header was Universalist. Indeed it is, or was. That is Universalist Meeting House, Hingham, Massachusetts. The image, now in the public domain, was extracted and hosted a Flickr.
This is the original source, The History of the Town of Hingham, Massachusetts.
Phoebe Hanaford was one of its pastors. The church disbanded in 1929 — so many disbanded in that decade — and the building, which still stands, has been converted to a private house. Its papers are in the Unitarian Universalist archive at Harvard-Andover Library.
A couple of centuries ago, had I been a General Baptist — a group later folded with the Unitarians — I might be at the annual conference, held in London each Easter Monday. This Easter Monday I want to revisit my relationship with the Unitarian Universalist Association. You may see your experience in my words.
First, I’m not storming off in a huff, but hasn’t this last week been a challenge? Or is that the last year? Last decade? But there is this malaise, and it’s only improved by not thinking about the UUA.
In fact, not being in a pastorate since 2003, I’ve had little functional connection to the central institutions of the UUA, but had thought it better to stay as engaged as possible. I felt that was my responsibility. Even now I have some forms on my desk to fill out. So I follow the programs, read the Board minutes, stay informed and attend General Assembly when possible. But even though there aren’t fewer words, there’s less to read. Theological conversations? Engaging with counterparts overseas? A new hymnal? (New churches for that matter?) I look at the work of the UUA that appealed to me twenty years ago, and see less every year. Much of what continues has been sourced outside the UUA (or dropped), and with unseating of the independent affiliates (and the undermining of the Commission on Appraisal) that “outside” is also sidelined. GA workshops, save the UUCF communion service, are worthless to me. (Lunch is always an option.) If I seem farther away from the center, maybe it’s because the scope of the UUA has shrunk, and I’ve spoken to others who feel the same way.
Instead, so much of the work of the UUA seems invested in maintaining the UUA itself. And the language of “your UUA” and “our saving faith” (definition forthcoming) seems to replace program with identity. But as Universalist Christian, that’s a non-starter. I could use programs, but the majority identity, itself under stress from demographic changes that all the old mainline churches face, actually makes it harder to make a claim a place in a theological federation.
So, what’s left that mostly works? Ministerial credentialing, the retirement plan, and (for those in search) settlement. I read the UUWorld, and I really like Elaine McArdle‘s writing. If everything else magically vanished, I might notice, but might not care. (Others will have other lists, of course.) If the other work is meaningful, it would find a new home anyway.
There are, of course, friends and colleagues who do good work, and I want to support them; I can do this directly. There’s a vacuum (vacUUm?) that will needed to be filled. But there’s no reason I should examine UUA membership data if it’s clear from the outset that the outcome is “smaller.” If the UUA does not make communal religious life easier and richer, then others will find a way to do it better. Maybe the next president — I have no opinion about who that should be — will improve things, and if that happens I hope someone will tell me. In the meantime, I will focus on the innovators, the activity at the fringes, co-workers in the ecumenical world and my personal friends. I don’t have time to worry about the UUA, and so that’ll be the last I have to say on the subject.
A couple of weeks ago, I found the online archive of the Unitarian Universalist Church, in Muncie, Indiana, and found the summary order of service from April 18, 1954: Easter Sunday.
Here it is:
This was First Universalist Church, as it was know then, and just renamed from St. John’s Universalist Church. Let’s decode the service.
The “tell” is from the first line. The service is the Easter service from Services of Religion, prepended to the “red hymnal,” The Hymns of the Spirit.
This makes the hymns (483) “Fairest Lord Jesus” and (192) Charles Wesley’s famous “Christ the Lord Is Risen Today.” The doxology (500) begins “Praise God the love we all may share.”
Responsive Reading 72, entitled “Easter,” is mainly drawn from the third and fourth chapter apocryphal Wisdom of Solomon (the citations in the index should read verses 1-9, not verse 19; it’s a mix of KJV and RV, with some heavy edits) and reads:
The souls of the righteous are in the hand of God,
And there shall no torment touch them.
In the sight of the unwise they seemed to die,
And their departure is taken for misery,
And their going from us to be utter destruction:
But they are in peace: and their hope full of immortality.
And having borne a little chastening, they shall receive great good:
For God proved them, and found them worthy for himself.
And in the time of their visitation they shall shine forth,
And the Lord shall reign over them for ever.
The faithful shall abide with him in love:
Because grace and mercy are to his chosen.
For in the memory of virtue is immortality:
Because it is recognized both before God and before men.
But a righteous man, though he die before his time, shall be at rest.
For honorable old age is not that which standeth in length of time,
Nor is its measure given by length of years:
But understanding is gray hairs unto men,
And an unspotted life is ripe old age.
Being made perfect in a little while,
he fulfilled long years;
For his soul was pleasing unto the Lord:
And they that be wise shall shine
As the brightness of the firmament,
And they that turn many to righteousness
As the stars for ever and ever.
For the path of the just is as a shining light
That shineth more and more unto the perfect day.
It’s interesting that the anthems proceed thematically from Thursday to Sunday. I tried to track down the organ music and anthems, but none of the titles are distinct enough to shake anything useful out of Google.
And the preacher? The Rev. Sidney Esten (1892-1965) was not the church’s pastor. (That was the famous Russell Lockwood, would be installed that fall; perhaps he hadn’t arrived yet?) After studying at St. Lawrence, Esten was ordained and served at the long-gone Anderson, Indiana Universalist church; he also taught school. Money was tight, and — per his obituary from the Indiana Academy of Science (PDF) — it seems Anderson was his only pastorate. But he married people and supplies pulpits for years. (Sounds familiar.) He later got a graduate degree and taught science in an Indianapolis high school. He was a “noted authority on birds” — indeed, feeding birds when he died suddenly.
I would have been happy to have been there. Can you image the flowers? Happy Easter to you, when it comes!
The Unitarian Universalist church in Muncie, Indiana has a Universalist foundation, and so I was happy to find a digitized archive online today while I was casting around for citations for today’s Universalist Christian Initiative newsletter.
Haven’t dug much into it. Enjoy!
http://libx.bsu.edu/cdm/landingpage/collection/UUCRec
Seen now on Twitter, that swastikas were scratched on the doors of Fourth Universalist, in the Upper West Side of NewYork.
Here are some of the tweets that speak about it.
2 swastikas were scratched into the wooden doors of the Unitarian Universalist Church on Central Park west#1010wins pic.twitter.com/Bz1enTxHmp
— Carol D'Auria (@CarolDAuria) March 1, 2017
A hate crime being investigated at a Universalist congregation on the UWS. Why the reverend believes they were… https://t.co/pgaMuwozZ4
— Alice Gainer (@GainerTV) March 1, 2017
UWS Universalist Church Vandalized With Swastikas https://t.co/jdYm8IO3OP via @Gothamist
— Nulla dies sine line (@moodylonerphile) March 1, 2017
Over the years, troves of images have been released into the public domain or under liberal licences. The most recent release is from the Metropolitan Museum of Art. (Search page)
Here is “The Church at Gloucester“by Childe Hassam (1918) and now in the public domain. The church is, of course, the Universalist church — the first in the Americas. John Murray was its pastor; Judith Murray, a founder, was an author and leading figure in Gloucester.
A small blog administration note. I like this theme, but that header image needs to change. And I’ll try out the extra features.
The UUA Board packet went online on January 20 for the meeting this week. (I must have been occupied by something else then.)
See https://www.uua.org/uuagovernance/board/packets/board-packet-january-2017
Skimming through, so far:
From time to time, I consult Percy Dearmer‘s The Parson’s Handbook to test the standards of liturgical norms. I don’t always agree with him — little wonder as we come from very different places within Christianity — but you can’t fault him for his thoroughness and style. (To tell you the truth, I read it for pleasure, as I do travel guides and cookbooks.)
The book went through twelve editions in his lifetime, with a thirteenth (heavily altered, I gather) thereafter. Some are in the public domain, and I’m making a list below as a directory.
So, ministers: how many of you, particularly in the free traditions, have your own “book” — often a three-ring binder — where you keep sermon and service texts, and perhaps a calendar and other flat items? (I keep Geneva bands in mine.)
I’ve written about this subject before and have bought several of these books myself but they tend to be utilitarian and covered in vinyl, and the best-looking of these are perversely the ones that fall apart the fastest.
Cloth-covered board and glazed paper covers are sometimes available. There’s one book I’ve had for years, with a textured surface looking more like leather, but made of paper; it’s falling apart, and no longer for public use.
A few weeks ago I found this binder from the Martha Stewart collection. I got it on Amazon for $6 and the red color seem suitably ecclesiastic. (There is also a teal version.)
The description wasn’t clear but it’s the same kind of pebbled paper that my old standby has and seems sturdy, if a bit stiff. I think it’s going to be a favorite.
There’s been a flood of new Bootstrap-y sites for churches made over the last couple of years, and I’m sure that’s the kind of thing that some other churches would want and cannot afford.
I’m looking at the new default business-minded WordPress theme — Twenty Seventeen — and it pushes some of the same buttons that those other sites push. Cutting edge design? Hardly? But it might what a church needs to refresh its look, and it has features that should make it easy to manage by non-pros.
For a week or so, I’ll have the default Twenty Seventeen theme up. (I’m not selling plants now.)
This is (almost) what I preached today at Universalist National Memorial Church, Washington, D.C. from the lessons from Titus and Luke.
I’d like to think Pastor Dave Gatton for inviting me back into the pulpit this morning.
Merry Christmas to you all.
The Christmas story, as accounted in the Gospel of Luke, is so familiar that we might not hear the words. Even if you were not brought up in a church and are, say, under 50 years of age, there’s a good chance you learned this passage from Luke off television, from A Charlie Brown Christmas, in Linus’s staggering but guileless spotlight speech.
Mary and Joseph on to Bethlehem. No room in the inn. The manger. The angels and the shepherds: these are familiar and friendly.
But this year, it’s hard not to hear the words with renewed meaning, starting at the beginning of the passage from Luke:
In those days a decree went out from Emperor Augustus that all the world should be registered. This was the first registration and was taken while Quirinius was governor of Syria. All went to their own towns to be registered.
This was no simple census. It was a foreign intrusion and assertion of power from Rome. Resented, sparking the political movement of Zealots we would meet later, in Jesus’ ministry. Judea, his home, was then administered from Syria, the eastern reach of the Roman Empire, and later united with it. The holy family were vulnerable, and then threatened under Herod’s murderous rage.
The name Syria leaps up from this passage. Aleppo, an ancient city, existed then under another name, so with our new focus on Aleppo, it’s possible to imagine how it was for Jesus’ family in those days, or others like them. The terror and the dying. The wanderings and hunger. Living just beyond the reach of help, but shaped by powerful forces.
That was a time in Judea of religious and political radicalization which ultimately led within a matter of decades to the end of the temple, a radical transformation of Judaism and the end of an independent Israel until living memory. I need not tell you the state of the world today In this telling, the gospel crashes into today.
But, apart from a historical curiosity, what does that show us? That there is suffering always? Are we stuck with endless violence and suffering. If so, what joy is there in Christmas then? Or, put another way, apart from the celebrating, what gospel is there in Christmas.
First, it’s worth owning that we have a lot invested in Christmas, perhaps too much, which has little to do with that first Christmas. Christmas today is a magical, mysterious, otherworldly, amazing, terrifying, bewildering and perplexing time of the year. Its power is palpable and recognizable. I can’t think of another religious holiday in the United States that is so easily made emotionally and socially available to all whatever their religious beliefs. In some ways it is an all-purpose celebration of goodness and hope and that should be available to everybody.
This, on its own, has religious value. As Christians, we should look towards that time that in both now and not-yet, when will we be whole and God will be all-in-all. As with the Lord’s Supper, we share our feasting and happiness in thanksgiving and preparation for that Heavenly Feast before us.
But Christmas is the foundation of an even greater hope, if we can move past the conventions of the telling — the peppermint and snow-flecked trimmings — we see the world around us is not what it seems. The Gospel of Christmas is the direction, pointing us on the way we should go.
We already know in our hearts that the world is not as it should be, as it must be. The soul craves a world refreshed and transformed, and we must bear witness to it. This is the source of true and lasting gladness.
In the passage from Paul’s letter to Titus, we learn to grow in confidence, knowing that our relationship to God is not from what we can provide God, but because of the relationship that God has initiated with us and which is manifested through Jesus’s life which we celebrate today, “we might be made heirs according to the hope of eternal life.”
We have to remember that the Christmas story is not about one child who managed to attract God’s love and attention but as one child who leads us all back to God’s care. It’s also important how this happens.
The story itself is a story of a “reversal of Fortune”: a reversal of what is important.
Did God’s approved leader appear with strength and might, from a position of power, in a center of power to conquer? None of these happened.
Jesus was born to the Jewish nation, itself very small, and not in Rome, but far from the centers of power. And the promised savior appeared not as a political or military leader but as a newborn infant.
The hope of the ages is knowing that in our smallness, and our powerlessness, and our short lives, and that we might live richly and fully and yet without hurting or dominating one another.
(If you wonder why we gather in prayer the rest of the year, it’s to learn how.)
And yet we are not left alone. God dwells with us, another girt of Christmas. And so we live in hope, and with promises from God reflected in scripture and confirmed buy an inner voice of Truth.
If we are sad or distressed or perplexed or harassed, if we are troubled or menaced or persecuted or embarrassed remember that you are a child of the Living God and that God came to Earth to lead us through a child. And so we grow as children to adulthood with earnestness curiosity joyfulness and loving kindness.
So we celebrate Christmas, even if not in the conventional way. It’s not a prize for being good, but an orientation to how life should be, particularly when everything is going wrong.
The future does not belong to us. But it is before us. Let us approach it with a Christmas spirit: with kindness, love and boldness.
It’s not the most important thing in the world, but churches could do a better job with printed orders of service, which is keenly felt on Christmas Eve, when churches often get their largest congregations all year.
I’ve written about this over the years, and I’m far from convinced that that the two- or three-column theatrical program style is the best option, even when every last blessed word is printed out. (Such is the irony in too many Episcopal parishes, with an ignored prayerbook in the pew, and a veritable book published for each service.) And there’s unlikely to be one solution that works everywhere. And, as before, it’s not the most pressing problem…
But, in any case, I’m always glad to see others join in. Like David Schwartz, senior co-minister at First Unitarian, Chicago, a church with a long history of liturgical standard-raising, who presents the beginnings of order of service style guide. Good on him!
Read it on his own Tumblr blog. (Memory and Hope)
Time again to point out the Open Hymnal Project, which has a special PDF booklet of public domain Christmas hymns, (direct link) and a ZIP (archive) file GIF (image) files of individual files that should make it easier for you to put individual hymns in an order of service, downloadable from the main page.
See this page for an index of available hymns, Christmas or not, from which you can download related files, including single PDFs and GIFs.
If you are in Washington, D.C. on Christmas morning — it’s a Sunday this year — join me at the Universalist National Memorial Church, at 1810 Sixteenth Street, N.W. at 11 a.m. I’ll be preaching,using the second Revised Common Lectionary texts for Christmas, if you’re following along.
You’ll get a warm welcome, even if it’s cold outside.
Wipf and Stock publishes more theological works that deal with issues of universal salvation (if not institutional Universalism) than anyone else — and probably on a scale unrivaled since the heyday of the Universalist Publishing House. (They have a wide-ranging catalog.)
So when I learned that they are having a sale — 30% off list and free media mail shipping — I said “yes, thank you.” I got The Renewal of All Things: An Alternative Missiology by Waldron Byron Scott, and All Set Free: How God is Revealed in Jesus and Why That is Really Good News by Matthew J. Distefano.
Looking forward to Christmas reading.
Counter to the prevailing opinion, I’m not a fan of church banners that highlight social or political issues — they seem to soak up the energy and capital that might be applied directly to the need — but if you do put one up, make it big and out of reach.
In my neighborhood, at the Church of the Pilgrims (Presbyterian), Dupont Circle, Washington, D.C. It just went up.
If you saw Hillary Clinton’s concession speech today, you may have been touched by her quotation from scripture.
Let us not grow weary in doing good, for in due season we shall reap if we do not lose heart.
It drawn from Galatians 6:9, in case you wondered. It’s not a translation I know — perhaps “arranged” as one says in worship, but here’s the verse from King James Version: “And let us not be weary in well doing: for in due season we shall reap, if we faint not.”
Earlier this week, the UUWorld reported (Elaine McArdle, October 17) that the Unitarian Universalist Association Board of Trustees awarded a $300,000 grant to the Black Lives of Unitarian Universalists (BLUU), with a commitment to raise another $5 million, “guarantee[d] against the endowment.”
I have so many questions, not the least of which “why has there been no public commentary — apart from the immediate parties, and not much there — about this extraordinary step?”
And will there be room for an examination of what happened, or what this will mean to the Unitarian Universalist Association? There should be room; I’m not sure there will be.
Another story from the UUWorld is coming next week; perhaps then?
The story of the Universalist Korean mission is little discussed, surely because the Japan mission, on which it was institutionally dependent, is also little discussed and because there is no evidence that has come to light that it survived the Second World War. I’m hoping to add to the record, and follow up on the article I posted two years ago.
I was at the Library of Congress yesterday and scanned minutes and reports from the 1937 General Convention. This is from the section called International Church Extension. I’ve added links to outside resources for context.
Universalist General Convention. Universalist biennial reports and directory. Boston, Mass. : Universalist General Convention. (1938), p. 83-86.
Under the leadership of Mr. [Ryonki] Jio [or, Cho in the financial reports], graduate of Doshisha Theological Seminary, work was begun in Korea in 1929. Mr. Jio with another student from the seminary had done summer evangelistic work the two previous years. As he traveled all over the country he investigated possible centers for his future work. His final decision was in favor of Taikyu (Daigu—Korean pronunciation), a city the size of Rochester, New York.
In April, 1929, after his graduation from Doshisha, Mr. Jio rented a house and began his work. It was thought at first that no Sunday school could be conducted in such narrow quarters but on April 7th some 57 children came and three men and four women volunteered to help in teaching. What has come to be a very significant work was thus humbly begun.
There is a church building, and a pastor’s house on a small plot of land down a narrow alley building leading from one of the many wide streets in Taikyu. The buildings and land are being bought on the installment plan, with payments each month for something over two more years. The “church building” is an adapted ex-wrestling hall, now in quite bad condition, with uprights weakening and sinking to such an extent that the windows, which open horizontally, are immovable now, with the exception of one half of one window. A new building—one could almost say, a building—is needed badly, but the group is attempting this year a complete renovation with the limited resources these poverty-stricken people can manage to scrape together.
Here are all the usual meetings and some unusual ones —not only Church and Sunday School—but many other meetings throughout the week.
Mr. Jio has lived through some hard experiences since the start of 1929—experiences that would have embittered most men—but he has had his dream and has worked towards its realization steadily. To tabulate such activities as frequent preaching, Sunday School direction, prayer meetings, boys’ club work, Bible classes, does not begin to give one an idea of the work done. Mr. Jiu is fast becoming one of the best-known citizens of Taikyu.
In August of 1936, several months after his graduation from the Taikyu Government Medical School, Dr. Pak, who had for several years served as Sunday School superintendent, in cooperation with Mr. Jio and in the name of the church opened a medical-services-at-cost enterprise in a makeshift “attic” section of the “church building,” divided into a small laboratory, a small waiting room, and a somewhat larger consultation and treatment room, the whole comprising a space of about ten by fifteen feet. (Their original plan to build up the enterprise on a cooperative “shares” basis was prohibited by the police authorities.) For over a year Dr. Pak worked without salary patiently building the work. In August of ‘37, however, he resigned to take up a private practice in Manchukuo among Koreans there. Another young doctor was procured on a salary basis, and the work is going forward with steadily increasing numbers of patients daily and an ever-widening scope of influence in the city. In some months the average number of patients served has been as high as 40 to 50 daily. Last autumn, in answer to the need of an in-patient department for slight operation cases such as for trachoma, which is very wide-spread in Korea. Mr. Jio turned his house over to this work and took up a rented dwelling some twenty minutes’ walk from the “church.”
Handicapped by extremely limited equipment this “church and hospital” enterprise goes forward steadily.
Mrs. Onjun Pak, the first Korean to be trained at the Blackmer Home, has started a Sewing School for Women and Girls in connection with Mr. Jio’s work. Very little equipment was available, but it is hoped that interested groups in America may be able to contribute towards the purchase of a few machines and some necessary supplies. Until that time Mrs. Pak is carrying on with what is at hand and is making a real contribution to the people she serves. A portion of the International Friendship Offering received in Universalist Church Schools in November, 1937, has been a sign for this work of Mrs. Pak.
A church was soon started at Wulchon, some six miles from Taikyu, but owing to the persecution by another sect, it had to be suspended. But this misfortune has not followed another enterprise in Wulchon.
Some years ago people in the immediate vicinity of this small town faced a desperate unemployment situation. Mr. Jio resolved to do something about it. With his church group as a nucleus and on borrowed money, he purchased materials and begin a fibre-slipper manufacture, his own special service being the finding of markets for the goods manufactured goods during the long cold season when the ground cannot be worked. Today the Guild thus started has spread beyond this first group, gives employment to over eighteen hundred and manufactures over two hundred thousand pairs of slippers a year, selling some as far afield as Chicago and points farther east. This industry has become second in importance—after silk—in the district which Taikyu is the center.
A dozen miles beyond Wulchon is Kumpo, a small rural village of two hundred or more. Here, after some evangelistic meetings, a church of thirty odd members was formed. But it as was the case in Wulchon, was forced to suspend activities due to persecution from another sect.
After Dr. Cary’s address of the Buffalo convention in 1931, Rev. G. H. Leining and Rev. Ellsworth C. Reamon conducted a swift impromptu campaign for funds which resulted in enough to purchase a farm of some one hundred and sixteen thousand tsubo (a tsubo is 36 square feet) or over 98 acres—a very large farm for the Orient. Upwards of fifty families rent and work this farm, which has extensive rice cultivation possibilities as well as being in a good position for fruit. In the summer of ‘34 a great flood swept down and buried large portions of the farm under six feet of water, but it was reconditioned—at considerable expense (with money borrowed of the government on very easy terms). What was necessary was done and the slow process of making the land valuable by annually putting all returns back from it back into it was taken up again. More fruit trees are planted, more poplars about the edges to hold off sand and future floods. In August of 1936 an even worst flood came, wrecking property throughout the southern part of Korea. Once again the work of reconditioning was taken up but it was too expensive to do it as completely as was desirable. Nevertheless, more planting of fruit trees and protective poplars, which are pruned short, was done. A goodly number of the thousands of trees planted before the ‘36 flood, lived through it.
In the nearby town, Mr. Jio holds occasional meetings whenever an opportunity presents itself.
Mr. Jio maintains a constant communication with liberal groups of Koreans in Japan proper, especially among theological students to keep him exceedingly busy every time he visits Tokyo and Kyoto, where his alma mater, Doshisha, is.
He sees great opportunity for influence through a liberal magazine, but is compelled for lack of funds to postpone any independent action of this nature, submitting articles for publication in other magazines whenever opportunity permits.
Mr. Jio and the work he and his people undertake is financially aided by the General Convention and in constant affiliation with the General Convention representatives and the Japan Council.
…no, not one of mine. Read @EOrthodoxy (and the associated blog, Eclectic Orthodoxy.)
I asked a group of friends to review my newsletter post for the Universalist Christian Initiative and they asked me to share it generally, and so I oblige. If you would like to sign up for the twice-monthly newsletter, click here.
Fifteen years ago tomorrow, “the world changed” for many people, and through a particular lens, many people’s understanding of the United States and its position in the world changed, too. The hijackings that lead to the thousands of deaths in New York, suburban Washington, D.C. and in rural Pennsylvania were devastating, and even as I write this remembered how I felt that day. Such a low, grim day. I was the pastor of the Universalist National Memorial Church, in Washington, D.C. then. My apartment was on a hill and I could see a plume of dark smoke rising from the Pentagon. Living within walking distance of the church, I went down to open up the doors and try to support anyone who was confused, lost or upset. But the bewilderment was only planted that day.
While it is tempting to repeat the saying that the world changed on September 11, 2001, it is more correct to say that a large number of Americans began to know better the fear and uncertainty that others know before and since: that violence takes the innocent, that life is fragile and fleeting, and that it is far easier to destroy than construct. We would want the world to change and, in fact, on that day it didn’t. But that’s not to say that we are doomed to a past, present and future of violence and cruelty, whether “senseless” or “sensible,” by which I mean violence and cruelty we would be prone to defend or forget because it serves a stated national interest.
As Universalist Christians, we trust that God sees this and knows us apart from time and away from our biases and prescriptions. Where there is hurt and loss, we trust God is present to heal. And when we give ourselves over in ministry to this healing — “the ministry of reconciliation” as St. Paul put it — we must necessarily surrender ourselves to that part of God’s vision we can see, and do what God would have us do. We cannot, for one, weigh the lives of compatriots higher than other people. Not that everyone is equally little, but rather that each of us is equally great; that is, in the words of a Universalist profession also adopted in Washington, D.C., the “supreme worth of every human personality.” But this new way of living is not for us to build, but create with God’s direction and in God’s time. This last stricture is the more painful, but so much harm has come from those who have presumed to know more that they do, and act in ways that later prove harmful. It is enough to do good where can can, and to cultivate the ability to do more good than we thought possible. That is, we should step back from the a statement later in the Washington Declaration that we could “progressively establish the Kingdom of God.” The greatness in our lives does not extend that far. The change comes not by our own design, but from a force unseen. It will bloom when and where it will; let us be ready for it. Let us show this readiness in our love for one another.
A single prayer in the services before Hymns of the Spirit beginning “Almighty God grant that the words” comes from a book identified in the index as the Theistic Prayer Book. What is this and where did it come from?
It comes from the Theistic Church in London, that lasts from 1870 or 1871 until shortly after the 1912 death of its founder and minister, Charles Vorsey, who was driven out of the Church of England. (He’s the father of the famous architech of the same name, if your mind goes to the Arts and Crafts.) At the church, the book was known as The Revised Prayer Book, and ran through three (1871, 1875, 1892) editions.
In both Hymns of the Spirit (p. 146) and The Revised Prayer Book, the prayer appears in a section for additional prayers (in the third edition); it appears, slightly re-arranged as prayer for the “close of worship” in Hymns of the Spirit.
Cross-posted at Hymns of the Spirit.
The services before the Hymns of the Spirit include prayers and litanies from various sources, including the 1903 Devotional Services for Public Worship, by John Hunter. He was the minister of King’s Weigh House Church, then a Congregational church, in Mayfair, London.
You can read it at Archives.org.
I’ll see if there’s any commonalities, and if so I’ll note them below.
Crossposted at HymnsoftheSpirit.org.
There’s a shortage of historic works — Unitarian or Universalist — on the preparation and exercise of the ministry. So — while researching — I was happy to see a printed set of lectures by William Phillip Tilden (1811-1890) to the Meadville Theological School, in June 1889. So we can consider these the mature words of a respected pastor.
I’ve not read this, but will put them on the list. Thought you might like to read it, too.
The Work of the Ministry: Lectures Given to the Meadville Theological School
I had some site problems this last week. My old main blog, BoyintheBands.com, was badly hacked and in the process of hardening the other sites against attack, I ruined the WordPress install for my homage site to the 1937 “red hymnal” HymnsoftheSpirit.org.
I had to trash the old system and completely reinstalled it. Easy, but I misplaced the theme (no great loss) in the process. So the site is there, if plain.
I have the domain Unitarianchurch.info for sale. Please send me a note if you’re interested in buying it.
@SaucySisTah Moment of Silence today - 11:55 AM to 12:00 PM. @SideofLove @AttorneyCrump #BlackLivesMatter
pic.twitter.com/vBeWo8G0SS
Back in 2008, I knocked together a Sunday-only calendar as a planning tool for church worship leaders. It has been evergreen at by old blog, Boy in the Bands. And so when I got a request to update it, I couldn’t do other than bring it up to date.
And so I’m crossposting it here. Enjoy.
You can also edit the OSD file in LibreOffice and (so it seems) newer versions of Microsoft Office. I included December 2016 and January 2018.
So, on August 20, swarms of Esperantists all over North America will meet for day-long gatherings “enjoying each other’s company while taking part in a celebration of the international language.” (suggested press release language)
It’s called Paralela Universo, which even to non-Esperantists should easily read as “parallel universe.” Parallel to what? Diffrerent places at the same time, sure. But also keep in mind that Esperanto events (especially in Europe) are days-long affairs, bolstered no doubt by long vacations, short travel distances and a critical mass of Esperantists to organize such things. North American Esperantists have none of these; surely an alternative is called for, and so much better if it calls to mind the endless possibilities of science fiction, which I bet appeals to (other) Esperantists.
So far, there are twenty sites, and counting. And what’s noteworthy is that there is no central organizing body, and no tickets. You pay for your transportation to and from the gathering, and your meals. It’s an idea, a format and coordination by Facebook and a Google group. That’s all.
Mi okazos la Paralelan Universon ĉi tie.
Let this be an inspiration for other groups who could benefit by low-effort, low-cost ad-hoc gatherings.
I know today is the feast of St. Mary Magdalene, equal-to-the-apostles, but you’ll forgive me if Iook back two days to St. Margaret of Antioch, a fourth century virgin-martyr who is reputed to have been disengorged by Satan, in the form of a dragon, or said to have beaten a devil (lye can variety) with hammer.
A hammer.
Nothing says "feast day of St Margaret of Antioch" quite like fighting a demon with a hammer. #stop #hammertime pic.twitter.com/izIshAJ1iW
— All About History (@AboutHistoryMag) July 20, 2016
I hadn’t known much about her until I saw a number of tweets, and was too distracted by the fortieth anniversary of the Viking landing on Mars to make anything of then.
To repeat. Disengorged by a Satan-dragon. Beat a demon with a hammer. And people have problems with women being Ghostbusters.
I’m so excited about the soft launch of the Universalist Christian Initiative, and if you’re interested and haven’t yet signed up for the newsletter please follow this link.
I publish an update twice a month, and promise not to spam you. And I would appreciate you spreading the word to interested.
I’m spending part of my summer clearing out books. Duplicates. Those I’ll never read, or never read again. Those that hae a marginal interest to me but might mean more to others.
If you read this blog, and live in the U.S., drop me a note through the contact form stating that you’d like to browse the list of books I’m offering, once it’s done. Note if you’re a seminarian (and where) — I’ll give you first dibs.
My mobile phone of three years showed signs of instability after General Assembly, so rather than waiting for it to fail, I decided to get a new one. It arrived today.
There’s a custom of photographing the unwrapping — “unboxing” — esteemed electronics and then sharing the photos and thus the experience. This is considered normal behavior among Apple goods owners (I am not one) but it still strikes me as a bit precious, even ostentatious. After all, what does it show, other than the ability to buy things?
I suppose it shows this: how lovely the thing is in itself, and more, how lovely it comes to the new owner. It is worth having, and cherishing. Since, I’ve seen beautifully packaged clothes, snack foods and charitable solicitation appeals that have the same attention to presentation. And, to be honest, they do seem better than the alternative, and so make me feel better about myself. I look forward to the moment of acquiring something, and not just the having (and so take pains to not shop for this thrill, but that another story.)
So, we turn to churches. In this culture where even a knockoff laptop battery (bought before GA) is carefully wrapped, how do we change how we prepare our churches for worship? Or present certificates and awards (when we do so) or arrange candles or implements of worship? Or share refreshments, or post signs?
Or any of a thousand ways we can say, “this house of worship is special, and beautiful, and you are welcome” — or not.
Thursday, June 23: State of Emergence Rally for #RacialJustice at the Statehouse http://columbusfreepress.com/article/thursday-june-23-state-emergence-rally-racial-justice-statehouse … @UUA @SideofLove #BlackLivesMatter
I’m soft-launching my new project, the Universalist Christian Initiative at the Unitarian Universalist Association General Assembly, which begins today in Columbus, Ohio.
It’s mainly about creating resources and finding direction for Universalist Christians, and at this point I’m looking for people interested in this work.
Please join the newsletter list here, and follow our Twitter account (@universalistci) here.
If you’ll be at GA, meet me at the UU Christian Fellowship booth (#115 in the exhibit hall)
… or send a direct message to the @universalistci Twitter account if you’d like to talk.
In Dupont Circle, on this hard day.
I hope it gets better. But no false sweetness right now.
(My husband Jonathan Padget took this photo.)
This is a first thought, because it will make my next blog post — about communion ware — make more sense.
When we think about what it means to be “churchy” we’re often — but not exclusively — talking about tastes and norms set by “the Ecclesiologists,” meaning that medieval-focused, Romantic movement that overwhelmed the Church of England in the nineteenth century. For them, there was one correct style appropriate for Christian churches — in a word, Gothic — whether that meant fully expressed in stonework, or vernacularized into the carpenter style. Think of pointed stained-glass windows. Why did this style cross the Atlantic and denominational lines? The prevailing taste, keeping-up-with-the-Joneses and the perhaps nothing so pedestrian as who the church architects and suppiers were. (This isn’t an original thought, and I’ve seen it in a few places, most recently in chapter two, “Capital Ideas: Building American Churches, 1750-1860.” of James Hudnut-Beumler’s In the Pursuit of the Almighty’s Dollar.)
There are noteworthy examples of Gothic Unitarian and Universalist church buildings, but so as not to lose the point: the creation of a common vocabularly of taste that’s hard to buck, save with variations, like the engrossed domestic style the Universalists seemed to favor, or the (later favored) colonial revival the Unitarians of Boston imposed on the Western churches who wanted financial support. And the less said about the post-war community centers hiding in their own private parksor forests — the newer UU norm — the better.
Of course, those days may be declining: not a particular style or fashion, but the ability of churches to chose the shape of their buildings at all. I can all to easily imagine borrowed, rented or shared spaces being a part of the survival strategies of Unitarian Universalist (and other) churches in the all-too-soon future. Consider how many newer congregations meet in office parks or retail space.
Is short, design will have to be expressed in ways other than the building, and without the influence of an eccumenical community of tastemakers. It will be interesting what we come up with, and if we appeal to older and more humble models.
Our Sikh friends are very concerned with the relationship between humanity and the environment. Sikhs believe that Waheguru created the world as a place where every type of plant and animal could live so that everything could have the chance to prove that it was good enough to achieve mukti, which is the word for liberation from the cycle of birth and death, reincarnation.
So, I saw a reference tos James Hudnut-Beumler’s In Pursuit of the Almighty’s Dollar: A History of Money and American Protestantism (2007, University of North Carolina Press) and was interested, so ordered a copy. It arrived yesterday, and began reading. The reasons that interested me might apply to you, too.
I look forward to the read.
The title says it all. If you are attending the Unitarian Universalist Association General Assembly in Columbus, Ohio and would like to meet and speak with me — say, about approaches to Universalism or church devolopment — I’d be happy to set aside some time.
Be sure to contact me through this page, or follow me on Twitter @bitb.
It didn’t take a lot to start a Universalist society in the early days; that is, even as late as 1866, and perhaps a bit later. There aren’t many accounts of how they got started, but reading between the lines, you can tell they organized around a core, perhaps an individual, who discovered the faint by reading, and organized to “have preaching” from a minister, often on a large circuit.
They rose up, and many failed. In time, those that survived built buildings and established ministries, but the ministerial shortage was chronic and — given that so many of those volunteer churches organized in remote rural areas — unsolvable. Financially vulnerable, most of them perished by the end of the Great Depression, though rural depopulation would have surely accomplished much the same.
But it’s easy to be romantic about this easy-going start-up culture. At least they organized churches — the papers had constant announcements — and that’s not what we have today.
It’s possible to do better — since we’re essentially starting missions from scratch — with an estabished model; that is, dependent missions, that I think get lumped in with the current rave, multi-site ministry. The model is old (think: minster) but I keep running into it, particularly among traditions that are only a generation or two old in the United States.
In each case, the dependent community receives services — paricularly worship and ceremonial leadership from clergy — from an established parish, rather than from a more central body. They are geographically clustered. I’ve runinto two lately.
Affiliate Communities do not have a priest working full time, however the sacraments are celebrated at a somewhat regular interval by a priest visiting from one of the established communites. The link is to the community from whence the priest visits.
I know there’s the joke about the Unitarian Universalists being the Democratic party at prayer, but I just learned that there was an actual Democratic convention held at the (now extinct) Universalist church in Baltimore, in 1848. The convention that nominated Lewis Cass for president. Yeah, there are a couple of reasons there I didn’t know this until now…
For details, see this page from Reminiscences of Baltimore
Years ago, I learned that the best way for me to read an obscure bit of Universalist theology or history was to transcribe it for the web, thus my twenty years of creating web sites. Following on my last post, about Universalist distinctives, I decided to revisit Richard Eddy’s landmark series “Universalist Conventions and Creeds“, an institutional history of early American Universalism. Though I first found parts of it (on microfilm) in the 1990s, I had never found (thus never read) all of it.
Recently, too, I wrote a page that posted the locations of all know copies of the journal Universalist Quarterly and General Review in which Eddy had published this work. Since then, I discovered this index that is complete. Ignore my list.
Now I can read all of “Universalist Conventions and Creeds” — which means I’ll transcribe it. Full circle. I’m about two-thirds the way of an initial clean up, but the extensive footnotes make a challenge for web publishing. So, I’ll probably make a PDF too. I’ll be over a hundred pages long…
But one more thing. In Google-ing around about the Philadelphia Convention (1790-c.1809), I discovered no only that the documents that Eddy quotes still exist, but that they are at Harvard, but that they too have been digitized and may be read online. I nearly swooned.
So, what makes Universalist worship Universalist? What keys do we have, if we want to build on a tradition?
It turns out that it’s harder to say than in other denominational traditions, including the Unitarian. The problem may date to the beginning, by which I mean the 1790 Philadelphia Convention, where the assembled delegates claimed, “as we have no rules laid down in the word of God to direct us in our choice of a mode or form of public worship, it is recommended to each Church to use such modes and forms of prayer, and to sing such psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs, as to them shall appear most agreeable to the word of God, or best suited to promote order, and spiritual edification.” Not a sense shared by many of their contemporaries! Whether this was an act of liberality, or a politic act of evasion, I will leave for you to decide.
Universalism was made up of different streams, united by a common hope in a common salvation. Other doctrines were a matter of liberty — one reason theological unitarianism had a place — and so much for liturgy, too. As such, the various hymnals and worship books had denominational sponsorship and could be widely adopted and still be entirely optional.
After the Civil War, institutional Universalism congealed around a common program and denominational governance. The theologial schools and denomintational press were growing in influence, and yet there was little discussion about how this new structure applied to worship. Prayerbooks could go out without a preface; liturgists, like Charles Hall Leonard, could write the works, but scarcely say what they intended.
So, where to look for clues? Private papers? Articles in the weekly papers, as yet little digitized? But it may be as subtle as examining the more popular texts themselves, and see what was used, discern what the source documents were — the Episcopal Church’s Book of Common Prayer and the prayerbooks of James Martineau, surely — and see what they thought to change…
So, I was talking with some friends about what I to see in a Christian church conference, and opined, I’d like to see it
- coffee
- morning prayer and communion with sermon
- a good lecture [with a home-grown lecturer]
- a (re-)introduction to unconference meetings (people will need to be prep-ed ahead of time)
- one workshop session
- lunch
- two more sessions
- evening prayer
- dinner out
And after a moment’s thought added.
If I got that kind of day twice a year, with a cheery Christmas and Easter service, I’d be set.
OK, perhaps add a the odd social event and a good, encouraging and informational monthly or biweekly email and I’d be set. Most of the time. It may not be church as we’ve known it, and indeed it might not even be governed as a church as we’ve had it — but I bet a religious option like this would appeal to people not currently served, and with fewer resources thanit takes to run a church.
I have two closely-named domains that I’m trying to make better use of. Here’s an update.
I’m working on some Universalist liturgy projects and have been keenly feeling both the generations of lost ecumenical interchange, and the lost reasoning that lead to the texts we do have. So I decided to read some older works to fill in the missing pieces with the goal of working towards the present.
I happened across “The Reform of Liturgical Worship Perspectives and Prospects” (The Bohlen Lectures 1959) by Massey Hamilton Shepherd, Jr.
This gave me a sense of the development of American Episcopalian liturgical development from the Ritualists to his own time, halfway between the prayer book revisions of 1928 and 1979.
And it it, I found a reference to the 1867 The Book of Common Prayer: as amended by the Westminster Divines, A.D. 1661, also known as the Presbyterian Book of Common Prayer by Charles W. Shields, but particularly the appended essay Liturgia Expurgata which fills in for that work a lineage that I wished the contemporary (1866) Universalist A Book of Prayer for the Church and the Home had. Indeed, I wonder if it was on the desks of those Universalists, especially Charles Hall Leonard, who developed the longer-lasting tradition of Universalist prayer books that ran in successive editions and abridgments through the 1950s.
I do love census data. I’m no geographer, but it helps me understand something of a place, when I look its demographics. A few days ago, I mentioned one tool, and tweeted about it.
@bitb @jalbertbowdenii related project that I worked on: https://t.co/jP5f4Dwafw
— Ian Dees (@iandees) April 12, 2016
That led a participant in another not altogether different project point out his: Census Reporter. Which is funny, because I had run across it at Day Job before, and really liked it then. So thanks to Ian for reminding me, and now I’m sharing it with you.
And (fun fact) you can embed it’s charts. Here, for example, is commuting data — a proxy for how and how far people will go to get to church — for Ocean County, New Jersey, where Universalist pioneer John Murray landed in the New World.
There are lots of reasons named for why churches are changing, such a more secular culture, wider social options and the rise of the Internet. But reasons related to resources make the most sense to me. Is this thing — an organized religious life — worth money to me? And time… is it worth my time? Increasingly, the answer is no.
Time to attend services — and commute to them. That’s a problem for Unitarian Universalists outside Massachusetts, who are usually organized at the municipal or multi-country level. And it means that the volunteer time we ask of people should be valued very highly. Perhaps so highly that some labor-intensive activities need to vanish.
They can be retired, left to starve from disinterest or (worse) be resented for the precious labor they demand. Volunteers deserve to be treated as scarce and valuable resource; if not, others will do a better job tending to them and the churches will really be strapped.
“Value of Volunteer Time Up 49 Cents in 2015” (Philanthropy News Digest)
Remember those expensive demographic surveys — Precept, Proscript, something — that the districts provided for church planting, say, 15 years ago.
OK: perhaps not. After all, they were expensive.
Well, I learned today that ESRI — and no particular endorsement for ESRI, by the way — has a map-based zip code look-up tool. Not the same thing, but it does suggest where you might want to target in-person (or postal ?) outreach activity, and what the people who live in that zip code likely value.
Oh, I’m sure it’s a gateway to more refined data, at a cost, I’m sure. But we’re hardly ready for that kind of granular data (for new churches, anyway) yet —
In the meantime, here is a link to the demographic profiles and segmentation overview.
Did you know there’s a Hosea Ballou hymn still in current use? Of course, not among us. It’s kept alive by shape-note singers.
Come, let us raise our voices high,
And form a sacred song,
To Him who rules the earth and sky,
And does our days prolong.
Who through the night gave us to rest,
This morning cheered our eyes;
And with the thousands of the blest,
In health made us to rise.Early to God we’ll send our prayer,
Make haste to pray and praise,
That He may make our good His care,
And guide us all our days.
And when the night of death comes on,
And we shall end our days;
May His rich grace the theme prolong
Of His eternal praise.
Here’s a video, from a singing convention in Ireland.
The Board of Trustees of the Unitarian Universalist Association posted the packet for its forthcoming (April 15-16) meeting — and the April meeting is always the best. Why? It’s when you’re most likely to see applications for membership, and the most applications — and this is no exception. [Fixed typos.]
So I will presumptively congratulate the forty-two members of the (PDF link) Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Benton County, Bentonville, Arkansas, and wish them well and many years of prosperity and ministry.
But the summary memo (PDF) that announced the Bentonville congregation application also noted that two other churches — All Souls Church (Belgrade and Oakland, Maine) and the Hattiesburg (Miss.) Unitarian Universalist Fellowship — had disbanded, and that the Redding, California congregation has applied to re-classed as a “covenenting community” which by definition (PDF) is not a member congregation. So not all good news.
Christ is risen!
Khristós anésti!
Kristo leviĝis!
I would love it if we adopted the Paschal troparion, but we can, of course, hear it in another voice…
And sing, chant or recite an anthem found in our traditionEaster.
Rom. vi. 9, and 1 Cor. xv. 20.
Christ, being raised from the dead, dieth no more : death hath no more dominion over him.
For in that he died, he died unto sin once : but in that he liveth, he liveth unto God.
Likewise reckon ye also yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin : but alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Christ is risen from the dead: and become the first-fruits of them that slept.
For since by man came death : by man came also the resurrection of the dead.
For as in Adam all die: even so in Christ shall all be made alive.
Now unto the God of grace : for the might of his Spirit and the love of Christ;
Be glory in the Church throughout all ages: worid without end. Amen.
Happy Easter!
Alleluia!
I was reading a part of Ann Lee Bressler’s The Universalist Movement in America, 1770-1880, when I ran across this:
Until it ceased publication in 1891, the Universalist Quarterly supplied a forum for those thinkers who, like the neo-orthodox theologians several decades later, objected to the increasingly pervasive theme of continuity between the present world and the divine, “the major positive principle of the liberal mind.” (p. 144)
I have long read the Universalist Quarterly and General Review, first for background for my never-written master’s thesis, and later for Richard Eddy’s multi-part “Universalist Conventions and Creeds.” But you don’t have to read them on microfilm any more. Several volumes have been scanned and may be read online or downloaded. It’s a good read, and is a counter to the oft-repeated trope that Universalists were unsophisticated.
Note: some of these are misnumbered. This is not the scanner’s fault, but the original publisher’s.
Alsos, not all volumes are online, but I’ll keep looking and filling in missing volumes.
WWUUD stream 