2009 in review: Trends and possibilities I’ll be watching in 2010

As the new year approaches, here are some trends and possibilities that I think may have an effect on liberal religious organizations:

  • Obviously, I’ll be watching the 2010 national census carefully. We won’t be getting real results from the census for a while; nevertheless, I’ll be watching the news about the changing demographics of the United States. How multicultural are we now, and how big is the disparity between the people in our congregations, and the wider population? Where are the population growth areas, and where is population declining?
  • I’ll be paying close attention to the economic news; in particular, I’ll be watching the unemployment figures and the level of charitable giving. In tandem with the economic news, I will be watching to see how many local congregations do one or more of the following: cut total staff; move to part-time ministry or eliminate paid ministry; reduce or eliminate paid religious educator positions. I’d love to be able to know how much maintenance will be deferred, as local congregations delay necessary expenditures on their physical plants, thus forcing future generations to deal with exponentially increasing problems. Finally, I’ll be looking for success stories, congregations that manage to improve their financial position — and trying to figure out how they do it.
  • I’ll be looking at the numbers of children both nationally and locally. Birth rates were predicted to go down last year due to the economic situation, but we’re still in the middle of a baby boomlet: there are large numbers of babies and young children in the U.S. right now. At the Palo Alto church we’re seeing a small uptick in average Sunday school attendance this fall. I’ll be watching to see if other local congregations manage to attract larger numbers of children — and again, trying to figure out how they do it.
  • Thanks to Terry here in the Palo Alto church, I’ve been learning about ISO 9000 (Wikipedia has a short introduction to this set of standards). This is a set of standards for quality management: ideally, ISO 9000 provides ways to monitor processes and procedures in an organization, checking actual outcomes against desired results. Terry assures me that ISO 9000 standards have been usefully applied to nonprofits; she is currently working on implementing some ISO 9000 principles at our church. I don’t foresee local congregations seeking out ISO 9000 certification (although it’s an interesting possibility for denomination headquarters), but I do think we can learn from the principles behind the standards.
  • I’ll be paying close attention to new and existing social media, and to the ways nonprofits and churches use social media. Along with that, I’ll be watching to see if there are changes in social interactions as more and more people try out new social media. Will the tyranny of email finally be broken? — and will it simply be replaced with a new tyranny, e.g., the tyranny of Facebook?

I’ll continue this list in a later post….

2009 in review: Liberal religion in the news

In 2009, the mainline Christian denominations continued to be drawn into conflicts around wedge issues such as same-sex marriage and ordination of women. These conflicts over wedge issues may be exacerbated by religious conservative activists, including the misnamed “Institute on Religion and Democracy” (IRD), and overseas groups such as the conservative Anglican bishops in Africa who continue to intervene in the U.S. Episcopal Church. Indeed, according to some observers, groupslike the IRD use wedge issues to deliberately sabotage mainline and liberal Christian denominations.

2009 saw growing rifts in the Episcopal Church, and ongoing conflict in the United Methodist Church, the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), etc. I was unable to determine if the United Church of Christ continued to face the problem of conservative individuals funded by outside groups taking over local congregations. Back in 2006, in an interview with Dan Wakefield, theologian Harvey Cox said, “The energy of mainline Protestant churches has been absorbed by the battles over abortion, and over gay rights and gay marriage that’s divided entire denominations in recent years. There’s nothing left over for the kind of battles that were fought in the past for peace and justice in the nation and the world.” (The Hijacking of Jesus, p. 102) Three years later, the situation has not changed.

Unitarian Universalism, closely related as we are theologically and historically to the mainline churches, has been affected in different ways by the continuing conflicts over wedge issues. Because we embrace same-sex marriage, women’s right to choice, and ordination of women, Unitarian Universalism has become marginal in U.S. political culture; it is difficult to believe that any Unitarian Universalist could become president of the United States. We Unitarian Universalists seem to have embraced our politically marginal status to the point where many Unitarian Universalists automatically stake out politically liberal positions — without ever determining if political liberalism and the Democratic party can be equated with religious liberalism. This peculiar politico-religious orthodoxy continued to hamper open conversations about, and honest critiques of: second-wave feminist theology; identity politics; and the way we are beholden to consumer capitalism. Yet second-wave feminism primarily benefits upper middle class white women; identity politics forces the kind of binary identity choices that we say we deplore in theology; and consumer capitalism directly contradicts several of those “seven principles” that we tout.

In another part of the region where liberal religion and politics intersect, the religious right has been doing a very good job or helping liberal Christians (and, to the extent they bother with us, helping Unitarian Universalists) stay on the margins. A very public example of this marginalization is Barack Obama. Religious conservatives forced Obama to repudiate his liberal Christian UCC church during the campaign, and since then the Obama family has not settled on a regular church to attend — I suspect that the Obamas can’t stand the theology of the politically acceptable churches, while Barack Obama can’t stand the political consequences of attending another UCC church, or any liberal Christian church for that matter. The situation has gotten bad enough that, to the best of my knowledge, the Obamas did not attend church on Christmas eve. (A BBC commentator has suggested that the Obamas would best fit in with Florida Street Friends Meeting [Quaker] in D.C., and I suspect he’s right — but such a church choice would be political suicide.) Obama is but one prominent example of the marginalization of liberal Christianity in U.S. political life.

As a religious educator, I can’t help adding that this is not good for the religious education of the Obama children. Their children need exposure to a living religious community in addition to whatever home-based religious education the Obamas may provide. Michelle, forget the political cost to Barack — take the kids to Florida Street Meeting!

———

One can only hope that in 2010 we religious liberals — especially we Unitarian Universalists — learn to start from liberal theology, rather than starting from liberal politics. Instead of toeing the politically liberal party line, let’s clearly articulate the religiously liberal party line: that individual salvation is not good enough because we have to save the whole world; that it’s most important to help those who are poor, those who are suffering, and those who have been pushed to the margins of society; that women are just as good as men; that consumer capitalism treats human beings as mere consumers, and falsely states that the highest good in life is buying more stuff. From a pragmatic point of view, maybe we’ll be doing many of the same things — but we’ll have religious, not political, reasons for doing them.

And if we can do that, we’ll really be newsworthy.

2009 in review: Graduating from college in a bad economy

2009 will probably be best remembered for the “Great Recession.” And for those who graduate from college this year, the recession may continue for many years.

Lisa Kahn, an economist at the Yale School of Management, believes that graduating from college in the middle of an economic downturn has serious long-term effects. In her paper, “The Long-Term Labor Market Consequences of Graduating from College in a Bad Economy,” she takes data from a longitudinal study of white males who graduated from college between 1979 and 1989, and analyzes the data to see what effect, if any, the serious recession of the early 1980s had on the job prospects of these people. Not surprisingly, she found immediate “negative wage effects” for those who graduated in the worst years of the recession — common sense dictates that when you enter the job market for the first time during a recession, you’re lucky to find a job at all, let alone find a job that pays well.

Kahn also found that those negative wage effects persisted through the entire period of the longitudinal study. The people who graduated from college during a recession never made as much money as those who graduated during better economic times. This does not augur well for those who just graduated from college — or for anyone just entering the job market for the first time during the Great Recession.

I worry about those entering the job market right now, because I was one of those who graduated from college during the recession of the early 80s. [Update: But see Jean’s comment below for another view.] To a large extent I fit that pattern that Kahn describes in her paper. I had great difficulty finding a job right after graduation, and I wound up spending more than a dozen years working in jobs that did not require a college diploma. For a few years during that time I had a decent salary, but at another time I could have qualified for food stamps. If my experience was at all representative, those who are graduating from college during the current recession may struggle financially, may experience feelings of personal failure, and may find it difficult to find a job related to their education or training.

If there’s one thing we remember about the Great Recession in the years to come, I hope we remember that those who entered the job market in these years may need extra moral and financial support from all of us.

The good dinner phenomenon

Carol and I have noticed this phenomenon many times in the past: I just get back from eating a huge Christmas dinner with some friends — pot roast, Yorkshire pudding, roasted vegetables, mashed potatoes, fried sweet potatoes, stollen, cookies — and even though I thought I couldn’t eat another bite while I was there, as soon as I got home I felt hungry and ate an apple. Is it merely that we associate arriving home with eating something? I don’t know, but I’m going to go make a jelly sandwich to eat with my tea.

Random stupid thoughts arise at odd moments

At tonight’s candlelight services, Amy, our parish minister, did the reading from the second chapter of the gospel of Luke. By the time the second service came around, my concentration was slipping a little.

“And it came to pass in those days,” said Amy, “that there went out a decree from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be texted.”

Oh, I thought to myself, great idea. Caesar could just text everyone in the Roman Empire to let them know that they had to go….

“And all went to be taxed,” said Amy, “every one into his own city.”

Taxed, I thought to myself, not texted; Caesar Augustus did not have a Twitter feed in 4 B.C.E.

The story of the Christmas candles

Here’s the story I’ll be telling to start off our Christmas Eve candlelighting services this evening….

Each year on Christmas Eve, we come together as Unitarian Universalists to hear the old, familiar Christmas story through words and songs. We also light candles together. It’s pretty obvious why we tell the Christmas story — because it’s Christmas time! But why do we light candles? For one answer this question, I would like to tell you the story of the Christmas candles as I heard it from Dana Greeley in the Unitarian Universalist church of my childhood.

We begin with a single light. This single candle stands for the light of the ages. The light of the ages is the truth and the light that is known to all peoples, in all times and places. Unlike the candle that symbolizes it, the true light of the ages never dies out. The true light of the ages is everywhere, and can be found by anyone, if we would but seek it out.

From the light of the ages, I’ll now light these next two big candles. These represent the prophets and sages. Every culture and every generation has at least one prophet and sage, men and women of exceptional wisdom and insight who bring the light of the ages to their generation. Jesus of Nazareth was one of those prophets and sages, and tonight we remember his wisdom and insight.

After we sing the first carol, we’ll light the flame in the chalice, which has become a symbol of Unitarian Universalism. That small flame will represent the prophets and sages in our religious tradition, many of whom have been inspired by Jesus — people like Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Hosea Ballou, and Eliza Tupper Wilkes, the woman who was the very first Unitarian minister in Palo Alto.

A little later on, I will light these candles here in front from the candles representing the prophets and sages (see if you notice when I do). These smaller candles represent the teachers, those who pass on the light of the ages to the rest of us. These teachers might be schoolteachers, but they are also mentors and friends and parents and grandparents, everyone who teaches us.

And finally, at the end of this Christmas Eve service, when we each receive a lit candle, we will symbolize the way the light of the ages comes to us, passed on to us from our teachers, who in turned received it from prophets and sages. And when we get done here tonight, it will be up to us to take our own light out into the world, to make our world a better place.

UU minister gets Scrooged by U.S. immigration authorities

Rev. George Buchanan, minister of religious education at First Unitarian Church of Cleveland, is stuck in Canada thanks to Scrooge-like U.S. immigration officials. George, a Canadian citizen, has been living and working in the United States since 2006. He tried to renew his R-1 religious workers visa this summer, only to find that suddenly the government required far more paperwork.

Apparently, the U.S. government has stiffened the requirements for religious workers. As WKYC reported on December 12:

In June, Buchanan applied to have his religious worker visa renewed. But Carrie Buchanan said the process dragged on into the fall with requests for additional paperwork. “They (even) had to have a picture of the fire code certificate for the church could hold,” Carrie Buchanan said. “It was if they thought we were a cult.”…

Immigration attorney Margaret Wong said immigration officals have recently tightened up the requirements for obtaining a religious work visa. “Nowadays, they do a site visit,” Wong said. “(Immigration workers) will come to your temple or church. And if you say that you are a choir director or a minister, they will see if you could actually perform that ministry.”

The Ottowa Citizen, in a December 16 story on George’s situation, was less sympathetic towards U.S. government officials:

Some of the questions suggested the authorities doubted the authenticity of Buchanan’s denomination, the Unitarian Universalist Association, even though the Cleveland congregation has been around since 1867.

If George had stayed in the United States, he probably would have been fine. But his dying father asked George to travel back to Canada. George’s lawyer applied for an expedited process for the visa on compassionate grounds, but U.S. immigration officials said it would take 45 days. George went back to Canada anyway — his father died three days after he arrived — and now he is stuck there. Immigration officials won’t let him return to work. He can’t be at church to help officiate at Christmas Eve services.

Update 12/24/09: Immigration officials have moved things along, and George should be coming home soon — not in time for Christmas, but probably within a few days.

Another new (UU) blog

Ken Mattsson is now writing at The Spirit/Work Connection. Great title for a blog, and I like his first few posts: Ken’s a career counselor (this new blog is connected with his professional practice), and he gives these nice little snippets of advice and counsel, along with some good questions to reflect on. Ken’s a member of First Parish (Unitarian Universalist) in Cambridge.

New UU blog

Amy Zucker Morgenstern, the parish minister here at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Palo Alto, has started a new blog called Sermons in Stones. Amy is a long-time forum moderator and blogger in other (non Unitarian Universalist) settings, and she has finally decided to come play in the UU blogging sandbox. Amy, it’s a little different here in the UU blogging sandbox — there’s no throwing sand in this sandbox unless you can blame it on someone else, or at least do it without getting caught.