These notes are addressed to my fellow Unitarian Universalists, although they may be of some interest to other liberal religious persons. I’ve been thinking about this question: Where do we draw our theological boundaries? Having some sense of where our boundaries are will help us to answer another questions: whom do we keep out, and whom should we be seeking out to welcome in? Mind you, these are just notes — which means your thoughts, reactions, and comments will be most welcome. Continue reading
Category Archives: Liberal religion
25,000 for Peace — 100,000 for Peace
Rev. Bill Sinkford, the president of the Unitarian Universalist Association (UUA), and Rev. John H. Thomas, the president of the United Church of Christ (UCC), will be headed to Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C. on October 10. They’ll be visiting the offices of elected representatives to deliver the message that religious liberals want to end the war in Iraq. Continue reading
Of tug boats, birds, and quahoggers
On my afternoon walk yesterday, I was heading along Route 6 towards Fairhaven when I faintly heard someone yelling at me over the traffic: “Hey, Dan!” I looked down, and there was Carol near the future site of the Fish Island Yacht Club, standing and talking with the Tugboat Captain.
I slipped down past a fence or two, and Carol introduced me to the Tugboat Captain. Here’s the back story:
The Tugboat Captain is from Barbados originally, and he and his Haitian business partner came up to New Bedford to buy a tugboat and a barge to use down in the West Indies, for such things as hauling fill from Haiti to some of the smaller islands. Carol met the Tugboat Captain when she was looking in to renting office and storage space on Fish Island: an office for her writing, and storage for the composting toilets she imports from Sweden.
Tugboat Captain’s business partner has run into difficulties moving money from Haiti to the United States, and so Tugboat Captain has been stuck here for two months (so far), keeping an eye on the tugboat they bought. Carol got friendly with him, and as the weather got cold, we found him a hat and some other warmer clothing. Carol also got Tugboat Captain some work weeding at an organic farm in South Dartmouth, which gets him a little cash and (more to the point) a chance to get away from the tug for awhile, and which also gets some much needed help for Carol’s friend the organic farmer.
Thus ends the back story.
So there we were standing there, chatting about this and that, when the Ornithologist’s small orange boat appeared in the distance, coming up the harbor. The Tugboat Captain turned to watch them critically as they came in. “You see their radar,” he said, in his soft Barbados accent, “You know how radar goes around like this…” — he demonstrates, and we nod — “Well, his can go like this…” — he showed us the axis of rotation tilting until it’s parallel to the ground — “so that he can point it straight up, and track birds.”
“Where is he working?” I asked.
“Out the harbor, to the port,” Tugboat Captain said, still watching the boat come in, “about ten miles.” In other words, out in the middle of Buzzard’s Bay.
Carol and Tugboat Captain discussed who was piloting the boat today, and at last they figured out which one of the two men it was who work with the Ornithologist (it was the one they don’t know as well). The Tugboat Captain continued watching as the small orange boat slipped in beside the tugboat, the Ornithologist standing at the bow with a rope ready to tie up. “You see,” he said, turning to us to explain, “most people would bring the bow in first, tie up, and then swing the stern over. But not him. He likes to bring the stern in first, and then swing the bow over.”
The two men from the small orange boat tied up, walked across the tug and onto the little wharf, and came up to say hello. The Tugboat Captain introduced us all around. It turns out the Ornithologist, who lives in Maine, makes his living by working for engineering firms, researching whether wind power installations will damage bird life. He left academia, he said, because he didn’t care for teaching. Carol got into a long discussion with him about the relative merits of various offshore wind power projects.
I turned to the other conversation, between the Tugboat Captain and the pilot of the small orange boat. The swing span bridge was opening to allow one of the deep-sea quahogging boats [*see note below] to pass through and up to the North Terminal. Even I could see that the quahogger was sitting poorly in the water, wallowing as it tried to come about and head up the harbor once the bridge opened. The whole boat tilted towards the bow, and there wasn’t much freeboard. The Tugboat Captain and the pilot were shaking their heads. One of them said something like, “Either you have to be lucky, or you have to have a really good skipper.”
“What’s with that boat?” I asked curiously.
The pilot said, “It looks like the boat was built for something else, and modified for quahogging.”
“He’s got a full load of clams,” said the Tugboat Captain, to clarify further.
“Geez,” I said, “I don’t know anything about boats, but even I can see that’s one boat I wouldn’t want to set foot on.”
They both shook their heads.
I’m always fascinated how people in different professions see the world. All I saw was a boat that looked kind of funny, but they could see far more than I. The Ornithologist and Carol, sunk deep in their conversations of alternative energy and environmental impacts, didn’t even notice the quahogger. As for me, really the main reason I noticed the quahogger is that as a minister, I’ve been trained to watch people — I didn’t see the quahogger per se; I actually saw that the Tugboat Captain and the pilot were seriously interested in something, and followed their gaze.
* If you’re unfamiliar with the term “quahog,” it refers to a species of clam, known in the kitchen as littlenecks, cherrystones, steamers, etc., depending on their size. Here in New Bedford, they pronounce it “ko-hog,” but my mother, whose family was from Nantucket, always said “kwa-hog.” Wikipedia on quahogs.
What do you think of this?
Recently, our tiny little youth group here at First Unitarian in New Bedford has been adding one or two new people, who have come at the invitation of a regular attender of the youth group. These newcomers have no prior affiliation with our church.
Now, in the evangelical church world, this would be considered normal. Indeed, youth groups and youth ministries are often used by evangelical churches to promote rapid growth. Willow Creek Community Church outside Chicago was founded in 1975 as a youth ministry, and now boasts an average worship attendance of 20,000 people each week (Wikipedia on Willow Creek).
By contrast, in the Unitarian Universalist church world — or indeed, in many liberal churches — we may become quite uncomfortable if “outsiders” begin to attend our youth groups. I have heard various reasons for this discomfort, and I’ll give you three such reasons (these are fictional reasons, but based on actual conversations I’ve had):– (1) The church is not able to expend human resources (volunteer or paid) or financial resources on “outside” youth; (2) The church faces legal and/or insurance trouble if “outside” youth are allowed to participate in church activities without written permission, and/or with parents/guardians present on church grounds; (3) The church cannot guarantee that “outside” youth will behave appropriately. That’s what some people say.
Personally, I’ve always supported the right of “outsiders” of any age to participate in the activities of any liberal church, although I do feel that children under 12 should be accompanied by parents or guardians during Sunday school because I think it’s better for the children to have parent involvement at that age. In previous churches I have served, we welcomed “outside” youth, about half of whom became pledging church members — and of course I am continuing that practice here in New Bedford. But I know there’s debate on the topic, and I’d love to hear from you — I’d like both your opinions on if and how your congregation should allow “outsiders” to participate, and whether you think youth ministry could or should be a way for liberal congregations to grow.
September 20 in Jena, Louisiana
Meg Riley, Board President for Faith in Public Life and Director of Advocacy and Witness at the Unitarian Universalist Association, was in Jena, Louisiana, on Thursday for the big demonstration in support of the Jena Six. A letter from Riley describing the demonstration is on the Faith in Public Life blog here.
Riley brought her eleven year old daughter, which sounds like some of the best religious education you could give.
Local theology
Let’s see if I can make some loose connections between a few things — just sort of thinking out loud….
In the past forty years, the main stream of conversation for academics and intellectuals interested in the humanities has meandered away from the narrow confines of the established Western canon, and gone off on multiple tangents. Those of us who are willing to admit to being intellectuals are no longer satisfied with reading books by DWMs (Dead White Men) — we’ve gotten fascinated by books written by women and persons of color, we’re reading books that were once only of local interest, and we’re looking in to folk literature and oral history and other, less fixed, media.
We’re meandering through a tremendously exciting intellectual landscape. Instead of just reading Walden, Nature, and The Scarlet Letter, we can read Frederick Douglass’s Narrative and discover that it is just as good a book as those old standbys from the old American Renaissance canon. Instead of just reading Henry James, we find out that Sarah Orne Jewett was pretty darn good in her own right, and less ponderous than James. We still keep an eye on the great classics — Shakespeare and the King James Bible still tower above the rest of the literary landscape as the tallest mountains — but we’ve discovered that we don’t need to spend all our time climbing Mount Everest when there are many other equally interesting mountains and hills right in our own backyards (as it were) to explore.
And somehow this all connects with what I’ve been feeling about Western theology. I know I should be interested in reading Thomas Aquinas and Kant and (because I’m a religious liberal) Schleiermacher. But I’m far more interested in learning about Mary Rotch, a New Light Quaker who was read out of New Bedford Friends Meeting in the 1820’s for her liberal views, who joined the New Bedford Unitarian church, and who apparently had a profound influence of Emerson. As a Quaker, she didn’t prepare written sermons, but some of her vocal ministry apparently was recorded, and now I’m trying to track that down. She was no Thomas Aquinas, she wasn’t even a George Fox, but what she had to say deeply influenced many people here in New Bedford, and through her influence on Emerson her ideas spread even farther afield.
It’s a truism in certain circles to say that all theology is local theology. Local theology is the intersection of a religious tradition in on elocality, its local history, its place in a wider religious community or network, and the lives of the people in that religious community along with the lives of others in that region. Schleiermacher natters away to the cultured despisers of religion (read: upper middle class) about how religion is just symbolic; Aquinas and Kant spin their ontological fantasies about the nature of God and the ground of morals; and all the while, other people are actually living out religion and creating theology through the way they live their lives. I’m much more interested in local theology than the theology of academics and DWMs.
So when someone says to me, “Do you believe in God?” I want to respond flippantly, “Depends on where I am,” or more seriously, “Do you mean the God of the academics, or the God which may or may not manifest in the lives of people living in New Bedford?” Because when people talk about God in New Bedford, they tend to mean something different than the God I heard talked about in Geneva, Illinois (in Geneva, God does not bless the fishing fleet each year) — to say nothing of the fact that those who disbelieve in God in New Bedford disbelieve in a different God than those who disbelieve in God in Geneva, Illinois. And we can distinguish an even finer grain than that, for Unitarian Universalists in New Bedford believe or disbelieve in God in different ways than Unitarian Universalists in Geneva, Illinois.
As I said, I’m just thinking out loud here. Maybe some day I’ll make some sense out of what I’m trying to say.
The right thing to do
I missed the phone call, but I got the message: “Hi, this is Dr. ——, and I’m just calling to se how you’re doing….” It was the periodontist. He said that if I had any problems, I could call him at a phone number that I knew was not his office number (it was a different area code); perhaps a cell phone or home phone. It was not a mechanical or rote phone call; he sounded genuinely concerned, and if I was having problems this evening (I’m not, everything is fine) I would have had not hesitation in calling him.
Did I feel good about that call? You bet. The two hours I had spent in his office that morning had not been exactly pleasant. It was very nice to get a phone call tacitly acknowledging the unpleasantness. It’s tempting to say that it’s “good customer service,” but I’m not a customer, I’m a patient who had some minor outpatient surgery. So let’s say that the phone call was the right thing to do.
It occurs to me that much of what I tend to call “church marketing” isn’t marketing at all; it’s just the right thing to do. Of course you write a handwritten note to someone who signs the church guest book; it’s the right thing to do. Of course you welcome any all visitors to your church, treating them like honored guests; it’s the right thing to do. You don’t do it to grow your church, you just do it.
Email [curse | blessing], part four
The fourth installment in an occasional series where I think out loud about using email effectively. First installment.
Anarticle in today’s New York Times unequivocally answers the question that is the title of this post:– email is a curse. A front-page article by Brad Stone titled “Tell-All PCs and Phones Transforming Divorce: In the Digital Age, It’s Growing Hard to Hide Dirty Secrets” tells all about how email is changing divorce proceedings.
One man, suspecting his wife of cheating, installed a piece of software on her computer that took a screenshot of whatever was on her monitor every 15 seconds, and sent it back to him via email. She thought no one was watching; he discovered that she was having an affair, and that she and her lover were seeking sex from strangers via the Internet. Another woman checked her doctor husband’s email account — he had shared his password with her — and discovered that he was having an affair with a much younger medical resident, and that he bought a three million dollar condo so he could tryst in style. By the way, it turns out both these strategies for gaining access to email are perfectly legal.
The Times reporter quotes divorce lawyer David Levy as saying, “I do not like to put things on e-mail…. There’s no way it’s private. Nothing is fully protected once you hit the send button.” Actually, nothing is private once you type it into your computer. The Times reporter also quotes a private investigator, James Mulvaney, as saying, “Every keystroke on your computer is there, forever and ever.” Mulvaney claims that the only way you can erase data from your hard drive is to “throw your computer into the air and play skeet with it.” [Commercially available neodymium-boron-iron magnet can erase floppy disks and the magnetic stripes from credit cards; one would imagine that a strong neodymium magnet could erase the contents of a hard drive if placed directly against the disk; but I digress.]
This brings us back to the single most important rule for email: Do not write anything in an email message unless you would feel comfortable seeing it on the front page of the local newspaper. Or in court, for that matter.
Avarice and inhumanity
While researching today’s sermon, I found excerpts from a 1774 sermon by Elhanan Winchester, who was preaching Universalism in the 1770’s here in New England. This 1774 sermon was on the evils of the slave trade, and I would have expected that a Universalist preacher would emphasize the radical egalitarian aspects of Universalism, i.e., that God loves all persons equally, that all persons share in the same final destiny, and therefore allowing slavery goes against God’s intentions for humankind.
Perhaps Winchester makes that argument elsewhere in his sermon, but in the excerpt I read, he condemns slavery because it is founded on the “base and ignoble” principle of avarice. And, says Winchester, “avarice tends to harden the heart, to render the mind callous to the feelings of humanity, indisposes the soul to every virtue, and renders it prey to every vice.” Since Winchester did believe in some future punishment for sin, perhaps he is warning us that falling prey to avarice could result in punishment after death (up to fifty thousand year’s worth, in his theological system).
I’m an Ultra-Universalist myself (that is, I reject the idea of any punishment for sin after death), but I can draw a somewhat more subtle theological point from this. Any action that causes us to do evil, any action that “hardens the heart, renders the mind callous to the feelings of humanity,” makes us less human — it drives us further from God, if you prefer traditional theological language; or if you don’t like traditional theological language, it drives us away from love and loving relationships and so makes us less than human.
And if Winchester is correct, that avarice is one of the most base and ignoble of human sins — or to put it another way, that avarice quickly makes us less than human — this would imply that a free-market economic system based on self-centered interest could slip easily into avarice, which does not bode well for the morals or humanity of a people living under such an economic system.
(I’ve included more of Winchester’s words below….) Continue reading