Monthly Archives: March 2005

An international perspective

One of the characteristics of Unitarian Universalists over the years is that we have striven to maintain an international perspective. (I have heard rumors that a bunch of Unitarian Universalists were instrumental in starting the United Nations, but I have not been able to substantiate this.) Taking a broad international perspective, rather than a narrow nationalistic perspective, seems to fit in with our religious sense that the fate of all persons is linked, and with our religious attitude of tolerance and acceptance.

(Don’t think I’m promoting partisan politics! In my experience, both Republican and Democratic Unitarian Universalists tend to take an international perspective — to say nothing of those of us who are to the left of the Democrats.)

As a confirmed internationalist, I find my preferred news source has become the BBC Web site. I still look at the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal for U.S. coverage, but find them too narrowly focused on the U.S. (and both too partisan for my tastes).

One especially useful feature of the BBC site is the section on country profiles. BBC offers nice capsule summaries of most countries around the world, with links to recent news stories. I have found this useful recently as I continue to follow the deepening crisis in Nepal. Where the BBC has no recent coverage — for example, for Micronesia, another country my partner and I are interested in — BBC at least provides links to local news sources or government Web sites, and a timeline of recent key events.

BBC does not have the depth of coverage I could hope for. But as a confirmed UU internationalist, I find it does provide a useful corrective to the usual U.S.-based news sources.

Spring equinox blues

Transcendentalist that I am, I suppose I should be writing a paean to the season, on this the first full day of spring. But I’m feeling crankier than usual today. I was reading the most recent issue of Christian Century at lunch today, and found more disturbing facts about child care. What really bugged me was hearing about the study that showed (no surprise) that very young children need good to excellent day care, yet only about 8% of day care centers qualify as good to excellent.

More annoying is the fact that Unitarian Universalist congregations are not setting a good example when it comes to child care. We’re all feminists, right? We all support the “7 Principles,” which grew out of the Women and Religion movement, right? One thing I learned from feminist theology — caring for our children cannot be dismissed as “mere women’s work” and therefore unimportant — instead, caring for and nurturing children must be at the center of what we do as human beings. Yet we are all too willing to pay our child care workers less than high school kids get for babysitting.

So let me throw down the gauntlet here. I believe that if Unitarian Universalist congregations truly valued child care, we would consistently pay our child care workers a starting wage of $20 an hour, going up to $30 an hour for experienced workers. (And spare me your budget woes — since most child care workers in our congregations work only 2 to 4 hours a week, this is really a small amount of money). We would pay them to get infant and child CPR training annually, and we would pay for additional in-service training opportunities at least twice a year.

I’d go further than that — all business meetings should provide child care, especially Board meetings and annual congregational meetings. Not to provide child care at such meetings effectively disenfranchises parents with babies and younger children. Which clearly violates our democratic principles.

Funny thing about providing decent child care. Most studies of church growth say that having excellent child care during worship services is one of the keys to congregational growth. When parents, and parents-to-be, first arrive they check out the nursery and the child care workers, and these parents make up a large percentage of newcomers. Want to keep your congregation small? — simply provide inadequate child care by poorly paid workers in a dingy room — and even people without babies will be turned off by your selfish attitude towards those without power. If you wonder why Unitarian Universalism isn’t growing, I contend part of the reason is the way we treat babies and their parents.

One last small rant-and-rave, and I’ll climb down off my soap box. One way you can find out how a congregation really feels about “the inherent worth and dignity of all persons” is to watch how the congregation treats persons who can’t advocate for themselves, people who don’t have any power or money — people like babies. Watch how your congregation treats babies, and you’ll know if your people walk the walk, or if they just talk the talk.

OK, done now. Spring is here — woo, hoo! Maybe the longer days will make me less cranky.

Nature and a creator

Liu Zongyuan (773-819) is considered one of the great prose writers in Chinese. I was in an odd little bookstore over the weekend and happened to find a paperback titled Poetry and Prose of the Tang and Song (translated by Yang Xianyi and Gladys Yang, published in 1984 by Panda Books, the English-language publishing arm of the Chinese government). In this book is a wonderful short essay by Liu Zongyuan, in which he describes climbing Stone Town Mount, past a small stream, scrambling up rocks that “look like a city wall,” and arriving at the top to be greeted with a view into the far distance. But more fascinating than the distant view is the summit itself:

“Although there is not soil, the fine trees and slender bamboos which grow there are more curiously shaped and firmly rooted than most. Some are high, some are low; some grow in clumps, and others stand apart as if planted by a skilful hand.

“Indeed, I have long been curious to know whether or not a Creator exists; and this sight made me feel that there must surely be one. It seems strange, though, that such wonders are set not in the heart of the country but in barbarous regions like this, where hundreds of years may pass before anyone comes along to appreciate them. This is labor in vain, which hardly befits a god, so perhaps there is none after all!”

In this short passge, I think Liu Zongyuan raises some good issues for those of us trying to do ecological theology. Liu says we can probably neither prove nor disprove the existence of a creator from Nature. We like to think Nature is set up for our especial benefit, but that is open to question. We like to think whatever a god does is for our especial benefit, but that too is open to question. Liu goes one to finish his essay thus:

“Some say, ‘This [the beauty of the summit] is done to comfort good men [sic] who are sent here in disgrace.’

“Others say, ‘This climate does not produce great men, but only freaks of nature. That is why there are few men south of Chu, but many rocks.’

“I do not hold, however, with either view.”

In other words, Nature does not exist for the pleasure of human beings. Nor can we judge Nature solely by human standards.

More on C’thulhu

Ever stopped to wonder what might happen if Hello Kitty met up with the wicked elder god C’thulhu? C’mon, ‘fess up, I’ll bet you have!

And why do bother with such silliness on this minister’s blog? Silly stuff like this is a way to play around with ideas. Imagining C’thulhu makes us ask: What if all Western culture’s assumptions about God were utterly wrong? Imagining Hello Kitty as the embodiment of goodness is a little harder to justify, except as a reminder to have a sense of humor when it comes to religion. Frankly, Unitarian Universalism (and Unitarian Universalist blogs in particular) need a strong dose of humor — we take ourselves too seriously.

(By the way, ever notice how Hello Kitty doesn’t have a mouth? How does she talk or eat? Chu!)

Conflict and theology

My favorite branch of theology has become ecclesiology, which I define as the study of how congregations should work ideally, how they do work in reality, and how individual congregations cooperate together. I also contend that too many of us Unitarian Universalists reduce theology to ontological theology, or the study of the nature of ultimate reality (i.e., whether God exists or not, etc.) — which I actually find fairly pointless because no one ever seems to get anywhere with ontological theology. Ecclesiology, on the other hand, is something that you can actually experience, and observe, and experiment with.

More and more, I’ve been reading up on the sociology of congregations to try to gain some insight into how congregations work in reality. I don’t want to oversimplify, but one of the biggest realities in most congregations is conflict — conflict is a fact of life. I found a great resource online for understanding conflict in congregations — a concise summary of “Levels of Conflict” — Alban Institute’s model for conflict management in congregations.

If you haven’t run into this model before, click on that link above and scan the summary. If you have run into the model before, this is the best summary I’ve run across

An ecstatic Unitarian Universalist

Transcendentalism was one of the main theological threads in the fabric of American Unitarianism in the 19th C. I’m one of those people who still think of themselves as a transcendentalists. I was, therefore, fascinated to find an excellent article on transcendentalist poet Jones Very online.

Nothing brand new in this article, but if you don’t know about Very it’s an excellent introduction to him.

Jones Very was ordained a Unitarian minister and one of the transcendentalists. In 1838 he had a spiritual opening or awakening, where he seems to have pretty completely eradicated his sense of self in an overwhelming experience of oneness with the universe.

Jones Very wrote quite a lot of poetry while in this transcendent state. You’ll find some good samples of his poems on the above Web site, or in “The New Oxford Book of English Poetry.” Eventually he got Ralph Waldo Emerson to edit his poems for publication. Emerson, so it is said, suggested some changes to the poems.

No, said Very, these are how I received the poems from god.

And Emerson is reported to have replied, Surely god knows how to spell and punctuate properly.

Very is an example of the ecstatic tradition within Unitarian Universalism — and he raises some interesting questions within our predominately rationalistic faith tradition. Was he simply insane? — or did he actually come open to the universe? Would you like to have him as your minister? — or even in your congregation? Questions to ponder….

Who should do theology?

Got a message from jfield of Left Coast Unitarian about doing Unitarian Universalist theology. He, too, thinks it is important, but in thinking about going and getting a degree in theology he finds himself less than enthusiastic.

Getting a doctorate isn’t the only way to do theology, I contend. I believe the person who had the most influence on Unitarian Universalist theology in the past century was… Sophia Fahs. Her excellent series of church school curriculum books helped to shape a theology of naturalistic theism that was also receptive to humanism. I was in church school a little past the height of the Sophia Fahs curriculum, but when I look at her books now, it’s clear how her curriculum books shaped me. Jesus the Carpenter’s Son helped me think of Jesus as a fully human political and religious thinker. The Church across the Street shaped my understanding of how I should relate to other faith traditions. Martin and Judy (which my mother taught when she taught Sunday school in the 50’s) has me seeing religion growing out of everyday experiences.

I might put Kenneth Patton second to Sophia Fahs in terms of theological influence. Patton was a humanist who believed in the power of symbols and liturgy. He developed exciting new ways of doing worship services without needing a reference to God, Goddess, C’thulhu, or whatever. You could argue that his experimentation with high-church humanism laid the groundwork for contemporary UU theology. His use of American folk tunes for hymns has, I believe, profoundly shaped the way we conceive of worship — after Kenneth Patton, we have to go beyond music composed by “dead white men” in the high Western tradition. If we would pay more attention, I think we’d see that Patton opened us to amazing possibilities in multiculturalism (even if his personal approach had a whiff of colonialism).

Oh, and forget trying to base theology on the “Seven Principles.” While Christian theologians do tend to ground their theology in interpretations of their sacred texts, the “Seven Principles” are excerpts from the UUA’s bylaws, and — alas — lack the poetry and human depth of the Christian and Hebrew scriptures. The “Seven Principles” function fairly well as a profession of faith (thought I still prefer the old Universalist Winchester Profession for sheer poetry, even though I pretty much disagree with it) — but the “SevenPrinciples” are definitely not theology.

Indeed, I sometimes wonder if one of the things keeping Unitarian Universalists from doing theology in our local congregations is that we make the false assumption that the “Seven Principles” are sufficient. They aren’t. They say “what,” but not “why” or “how” or “when.”

To answer the question in the title: Yes, Virginia, you should be doing theology, too.

The Don Skinner Fan Club

he most recent issue of Interconnections (March, 2005) arrived in my mailbox yesterday. If you don’t yet know about it, Interconnections is a newsletter published by the Unitarian Universalist Association (UUA) for lay leaders of Unitarian Universalist congregations (it’s also published online — just click the link above). And long-time journalist Don Skinner, the person who reports and writes all the stories in it, deserves a fan club.

Why? I think Interconnections is the single best resource the UUA offers congregations. The current issue alone has a number of excellent articles. One example: the article on membership titled “Church Exit Interviews Measure Programs, Appeals.” Somehow, Don Skinner found out about Linda Laskowski, chair of the Membership Committee at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Berkeley. Linda has been doing top-notch work at understanding why people stay in her church, and why people drift away — I was fortunate enough to work with her last year when I was at the Berkeley church.

Or this article: “Orientation a Vital Part of Church Board Experience.” Here in Geneva, it seems to me the Board does a pretty good job of orienting new members, but this article offers still more ways to orient Board members so they can start being productive immediately. Beyond the major articles, Don Skinner scatters lots of little short tidbits of news and information which by themselves make Interconnections worth reading. For example, in the “Questions and Answers” section of the current issue, there’s a quick update on the Green Sanctuary program, and a suggestion or resources to reactivate Social Justice Committees — both topics of immediate interest here in Geneva.

So I’m starting the Don Skinner fan club. He deserves a fan club. He does almost the whole newsletter himself. His writing is clear and straightforward. Anyone who cares about Unitarian Universalist congregations will find his newsletter a goldmine of helpful information (I know I’ve learned more tips about making congregations function well from his reporting than from any other source).

Who else wants to be a charter member of the Don Skinner Fan Club?