Category Archives: Liberal religion

Leading up to Palm Sunday

Twenty-odd years ago, I was in the Harvard Bookstore buying a philosophy book when I saw, there on a little stand next to the cash register, a bright red pamphlet with the provocative title “Legal Education and the Reproduction of Hierarchy.” Even though I wasn’t in law school (and had no intention of subjecting myself to that experience), I was a young left intellectual trying to make sense of the fast rightward drift of the Reagan years. On an impulse, I bought the pamphlet. I think I paid three dollars for it.

Within a few months, I had given the pamphlet to a friend of mine who was actually in law school. She needed it more than I did. But I remembered the pamphlet’s advice that students should form study groups. Stand up at the end of class, the pamphlet advised, and say that you will be forming a study group at such-and-such a time, at such-and-such a place. When I found myself in graduate school for creative writing, in 1990, I did exactly that. Not that I tried to form a left-leaning study group — by that time, almost no one leaned left in public any more — but I found that participating in any kind of small study group turned out to be a good way to fend off the crushing anonymity of graduate study. (Analogies to small group ministries in congregations would be well-taken.)

As the years went by, I drifted away from left politics, and drifted into religion. I felt that Jesus (and Buddha, and a few other religious geniuses) did a better job of articulating egalitarianism and the essential worth of all persons, than did the Frankfurt School or the New Left.

So there I was yesterday, back in the Harvard Bookstore, when I saw a trade paperback published by New York University Press titled Legal Education and the Reproduction of Hierarchy: A Polemic against the System: A Critical Edition:– a critical edition of the little bright red pamphlet I had bought twenty years earlier. I had forgotten how turgid the prose had been, how simplistic the political analysis. But that little red pamphlet still offers good advice:

Because hierarchy is constituted as much through ideology as through physical violence, it is meaningful to oppose it by talking, by joking and refusing to laugh at jokes, through the elaboration of fantasies as well as through the elaboration of concrete plans for struggle.

Let me hasten to affirm, O Reader, that not all resistance is equally heroic, or equally successful, or equally well-conceived, or equally adapted to an overall strategy for turning resistance into something more. I propose in the next chapter that law students and teachers should take relatively minor professional risks. All over the world, workers and peasants and political activists have risked and lost their lives. There is a gulf between these two kinds of action, and I have no desire to minimize it.

But they are nonetheless parts of the same universe, and we possess no grand theory telling us that actions of one kind or the other are bound always and everywhere to be futile, any more than we can no that the most heroic behavior will be always successful.

Tomorrow, those of us who are spiritual followers of Jesus of Nazareth will remember his triumphant entry into Jerusalem. That’s always the occasion for me to wonder whether Jesus’s acts of resistance in Jerusalem were well-conceived and adequately adapted to an overall strategy for turning resistance into something more. It’s also the occasion for me to think about how far I want to go with my own resistance to the inhumanity of hierarchy, with my own personal work to promote egalitarianism.

Not that I have a final answer to that question, but it’s something to think about.

It’s not about belief

Recently, I’ve been bothered by ill-informed commentators and pundits like Richard Dawkins who assume that all religion is defined by some belief in a supernatural God. Those of us who are Unitarian Universalists encounter this attitude frequently;– I’ve had people say to me, “Well, you don’t belong to a real religion, ’cause you don’t even have to believe in anything.” Even some Unitarian Universalists worry about coming up with a statement of what they believe.

But belief is not the single most important defining characteristic of religion. Today I happened to be reading Introduction to World Religions, edited by Christopher Partridge, and I found some powerful examples of religions in which belief is not particularly important. For example, Hinduism:

Hinduism has no historical founder, no unified system of belief, no single doctrine of salvation, and no centralized authority.

And what about Confucianism:

Neither Confucianism nor Taoism is like Judaism, Christianity, or Islam — monotheistic religions with God at the centre. Confucianism, especially, became a religion without any great speculation on the nature and function of God. For this reason it was often not even considered a religion [by Westerners]. However, it clear that Confucianism is a religion, and that it was the dominant tradition of pre-modern China.

And this interesting bit about Judaism:

From biblical times Jews have subscribed to a wide range of beliefs about the nature of God and his action in the world… Reconstructionist and Humanistic Judaism rejected the supernaturalism of the past, calling for a radical revision of Jewish theology for the contemporary age. In more recent times, the Holocaust has raised fundamental questions about the belief in a supernatural God who watches over his chosen people….

Yes, Christianity is somewhat obsessed with belief in God. But it is wise to remember that outside a Christian context (e.g., as a post-Christian, or as a non-Christian), you can be perfectly religious without worrying one way or the other about belief in God.

Unitarianism in Nigeria

On Monday, I wrote a post about new and emerging Unitarian and Universalist congregations in central Africa [link]. Janice Brunson, member of the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Phoenix, has given me permission to reprint her account of her recent visit to a 90-year-old Unitarian congregation in Nigeria.

Her (fairly long) story appears after the jump….

Continue reading →

Just saying…

The string section of the New Bedford Symphony Orchestra needed a place to rehearse tonight, and we arranged to have them come to First Unitarian. I said I’d volunteer to serve as sexton for them, which meant I had to be up at the church from six to eleven tonight.

Carol brought her laptop down to the church to keep me company, and a woman from the South Coast Sustainability Network arranged to drop by so I could show her how to administer the Network’s Web site. Showing her the Web site didn’t take long, and she and Carol and I wound up talking for a couple of hours.

Now as it happens, this woman, a grad student at U Mass., is about twenty years younger than Carol and I. We had a great conversation, the three of us. In one sense, the age difference between us made no difference at all; but at the same time she really is in a different stage of life than we are, and she is part of a different generational cohort.

I like talking with people who are in a different stage of life, or a different generational cohort, than I am — it can be fun and even exciting (and once in a while frustrating) to get that different perspective. Which is my selfish reason why any congregation I belong to has to include people all ages:– it’s because I get bored just hanging out with middle aged folks like me.

Unitarian Universalism emerging in Africa

My cousin Nancy, another lifelong Unitarian Universalist, is currently based in Nairobi, Kenya, doing research. About a month ago I got an email message from Nancy asking if I knew of any resources for people wanting to start a Unitarian Universalist congregation. While living in Nairobi, she had met some Kenyans who were interested in our liberal faith.

I did some quick research for Nancy and discovered that the International Council of Unitarians and Universalists (ICUU) was already making connections with emerging Unitarian Universalist groups in Africa:

In recent years there has been a growing interest in Unitarianism in… African countries. New fellowships have been established in Bujumbura, Burundi and Brazzaville, Congo…. More recently there has been a growing interest in Unitarianism in Kenya and Uganda.

With these factors in mind, the ICUU Executive Committee decided recently that ICUU President, Rev. Gordon Oliver of Cape Town, South Africa, should visit Central Africa to meet with Unitarians and Universalists in Nigeria, Uganda, Kenya, Burundi and Congo (Brazzaville). This visit is scheduled to take place from 19th March to 5th April 2007.

The purpose of this visit is to explore the culture and vigour of Unitarian and Universalist groups in Africa, to explore with them their needs and goals, and to move toward development of strategies for support, self-sustainability, and growth.

Link to full notice. Even as I write this, Gordon Oliver is touring central Africa meeting with these groups.

Now I find myself engaged in email correspondence with Nancy and ICUU officers, and learning quite a bit about emerging Unitarian Universalist congregations in Africa. As you would expect of our liberal faith, these emerging congregations are not the result of proselytizing, but the result of Africans discovering liberal religion on their own.

If you’d like to read more about the emerging Unitarian congregations in the Kenya countryside, click the link below to read a report by Janice Brunson, a United States Unitarian Universalist who has recently visited Africa. In a few days, I plan to post another report from Janice about her contact with the two Unitarian congregations in Nigeria, one of which has been in existence since 1915.

If your congregation is looking for a unique partner church relationship, you will be especially interested in reading more.

Continue reading →

Welcome news on marriage in Mass.

I just got the news update below from Mass. Equality. A little background information:– Robert Travaglini was the fellow who forced a vote on the anti-gay marriage constitutional amendment here in Massachusetts back on January 2. He claimed that the people of Massachusetts should have a right to vote on marriage equality, even though there were other ballot amendments that he refused to let the Massachusetts legislature vote on. So now he’s gone:

This afternoon the Senate elected pro-equality Senator Therese Murray (D-Plymouth and Barnstable) as its next leader. This follows the resignation of Senate President Robert Travaglini.

This is terrific news. Senator Murray is a long-time friend of the gay community and a strong supporter of equality. With her at the helm, we are one step closer to defeating this discriminatory effort to take away marriage rights from gay and lesbian couples.

Please email Senate President Murray today congratulating her on her historic victory (she is the first woman to lead either branch of the legislature). Please thank her for her opposition to the discriminatory, anti-marriage Constitutional amendmentand ask her to use her new leadership position to defeat this amendment once and for all.

You can be sure that our opponents will be putting relentless pressure on her to advance the meanspirited amendment to the ballot. So it is critically important that she hear from pro-equality voices from all over the state. Tell her how much you appreciate her past votes, and let her know that you believe it is WRONG to vote on rights. Please email Senate President Murray today!

Thanks so much for your leadership. Together, we will prevail.

Massachusetts residents may wish to send email to Senate President Murray at Therese.Murray AT state.ma.us

A koan?

One of my favorite religious blogs is “Speaking Truth to Power,” in which blogger “uugrrl” talks about clergy sexual misconduct. She writes with deep insight both because she’s naturally a thoughtful person, and because she herself is a survivor of clergy sexual misconduct (and yes, the perpetrator was a Unitarian Universalist minister). In an especially good post late last week, uugrrl quotes Thich Naht Hanh on sexual misconduct:

Responsibility’ is the key word in the Third Precept. In a community of practice, if there is no sexual misconduct, if the community practices this precept well, there will be stability and peace. This precept should be practiced by everyone…. If you don’t practice this precept, you may become irresponsible and create trouble in the community at large. We have all seen this. If a teacher cannot refrain from sleeping with one of his or her students, he or she will destroy everything, possibly for several generations.

Then uugrrl goes on to comment:

I once read of a Zen survivor of abuse who made the abuse her koan. It seemed a perfect fit to me. Perhaps this is why I still care about this subject so many years later.

I’m still working on how suffering sexual abuse could be a koan — I guess that will be a koan for me to work on. Anyway, read the whole post:

Link.

Re-entry

Yesterday morning, the Sunday sexton called in to say he would be out with a bad case of the flu so the ushers and I had to remember to do everything he usually does (unlocking the front gate, turning on lights, etc. etc.) — of course we forgot a few things. The sanctuary hadn’t been put back together again after the wedding the night before, and the Board chair and I had to scramble around moving furniture. The treasurer came up from the basement to tell us that the sump pumps had stopped working and we had four inches of water down there. Of course I had a meeting before and after the worship service. Spent the afternoon wading through some of the scores of email messages that had accumulated in my absence. Youth group in the evening. Long day.

It’s like when you go swimming in a cold lake. You know if you try to wade in and slowly get acclimated to the water, you’ll never make it in, and you’ll just get cold. So you dive right and and immediately begin swimming as hard as you can to get warmed up.

Friday video: Peace witness for Iraq

Although this was originally posted on Monday, March 19, I’m backdating this post to Friday, March 16, so you can find the video by looking for the date of the event. This “street videography” gives my take on the Christian Peace Witness for Iraq that took place on March 16. The video is maybe a little too impressionistic, but I wanted to try to capture the feeling of what it was like to actually be there — boredom and all.

Screenshot from the video, showing demonstrators at night.

Quicktime video — Click link, and where it says “Select a format” choose “Source — Quicktime”. Wait until the file downloads to your computer, and then click play. This should work for dial-up connections, and offers higher-resolution for all connections.

Update: Lots of links to blog and media coverage of the Peace Witness at the Faith in Public Life blog.

Update: Coverage from the Washington Post, Saturday, March 17, 2007 (front page of Metro section):

Rousing emotional start for war protest
Arrests made at White House…

by Steve Vogel and Clarence Williams

Dozens of demonstrators, many of the Christian peace activists, were arrested outside the White House late last night and early this morning as a part of a protest against teh war in Iraq.

About 11:30 p.m., police began handcuffing the first of about 100 protesters who had assembled on the White House sidewalk to pray in a planned act of civili disobedience. [Note: arrests continued after reporters left, and over 200 people were eventually arrested.]

The protesters were part of a larger group that had assembled at the Washington National Cathedral for a service on the fourth anniversary of the start of the war. From the service, demonstrators marched through the wind, cold, and dampness to the White House.

The demonstration began a weekend of protest that is to include a march on the Pentagon today. Last night’s event, which was sponsored by more than two dozen religious groups, was not part of today’s antiwar rally at the Pentagon.

Those who were arrested had been among almost 3,000 people who assembled at the cathedral at 7 p.m. for a rousing, emotional service that lasted more than 90 minutes. [The reporters apparently missed the fact that there were between 500-700 people gathered at N.Y. Ave. Presbyterian Church who were also worshipping.]

Participants, whom the cathedral staff numbered at 2,825, heard speakers including Celeste Zappala of Philidelphia, whose son was killed in Iraq in 2004.

“I am here tonight as a witness to the true cost of war,” she said, “the betrayal and madness that is the war in Iraq.”

“We lay before God the sorrow that lives in all of us because of the war,” she said.

Last night’s procession was sponsored by Christian Peace Witness for Iraq….

The rest of the article (more than half of it) goes on to preview the ANSWER coalition action scheduled for Saturday.