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America's religious roots

By: ๏ผu๏ผJAWVMM โ€”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qXptmBE3QFo

Ken Burns and Kristina Tippett, shared by a member of our congregation. At about 18:40, they start talking about the role of religion needing to be reclaimed, and I think that what UU has tried and failed to do in the last few decades, and still needs to, is in there somewhere.
I think we have a long road to figuring out, to summoning a kind of common moral vocabulary, not just for being religious, but for being alive, being human beings in this century. I will say that I have never in my lifetime felt that overtly theological language, or let's say spiritual technologies, that our great traditions have carried forward like contemplation, that those things have never been more relevant than they are before. Just language, like language which has practices attached, which is true of our, you know, lamentation, confession, repentance, redemption. Those are words and actions that come to us from this part of the human enterprise, nowhere else, and I see people reaching for those. I see young people reaching for what those things represent for, you know, being drawn to that language, being drawn to communities of service for example. Even without this upbringing, I think a lot, I have thought a lot in these recent years about Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the German theologian. Bonhoeffer's situation was that, in Nazi Germany, the church had been absolutely co-opted by fascism. It had fallen away completely. And he began to speak of something called religionist Christianity. And what he was saying is that Christianity had brought truths into the world which would survive even if the institutions failed. And he said the institutions will always fail. I don't think you can make a one to one comparison of Bonhoeffer's Germany and 21st century America, but this notion of religionless Christianity or religionless religion feels resonant to me. And not just in the fact that we are religionless, you know, compared to previous generations, but what that means is that we are inside this project of looking again at what those truths are that we need, and those, really, those moral muscles, and again, those spiritual technologies.
There is also a transcript if like me you would rather read than listen.

submitted by /u/JAWVMM
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