Say what?…

The IMF has warned of a possible global “meltdown” — and they’re not referring to global warming, they’re referring to the global economy. In the midst of this tragedy — and if the global economy does “melt down,” it will be an epic tragedy, with a high human cost among the most vulnerable people — in the midst of all this, there have been moments approaching comedy. Like this:

“Late on Friday, US Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson said the US planned to invest directly in banks for the first since the 1930s, following a similar UK programme of partial bank nationalisation.” [BBC Web site, 11 October 2008]

Yes, the Republican advocates of small government are going to partially nationalize the U.S. banking industry. For years, political conservatives have joked that a conservative is a liberal who had been mugged; now the political liberals are joking that a liberal is a conservative who has money in a U.S. bank.

An extinct Unitarian church of New Bedford

Extinct churches fascinate me that way some people are fascinated by ghost towns. Today I discovered that there was a second Unitarian church here in New Bedford for a short time in the mid-19th C. This account of the church comes from History of Bristol County, Massachusetts: With Biographical Sketches of Many of Its Pioneers and Prominent Men [Duane Hamilton Hurd (J. W. Lewis & Co., 1883), p. 94]:

“THE CENTRE CHURCH was organized Feb. 12, 1845. The following were some of the original members: James H. Collins, William H. Stowell, Isaac Bly, David Ilsley, Prentiss W. Cobb, Benjamin G. Wilson, Robert Luscomb, William Bly, Rutli Bly, Deborah Simmons, and Eliza Tubbs. It was at first attempted to form a church of the Christian denomination, but the clergymen invited to do this declining, invitations were extended to Rev. Messrs. Ephraim Peabody, Davis, and E. B. Hall, of Providence, by whom the society was organized. Rev. Charles Morgridge was the first pastor; he preached until March, 1845. The next was Rev. Jonathan Brown, of Naples, N. Y., who officiated about three years without much success. The church then voted not to employ any but Unitarian ministers. In October, 1848, Rev. Moses G. Thomas was installed. His pastorship continued until 1854, when the financial affairs of the church became so full of embarrassment that it was voted to disband.”

Notice how the author makes the distinction between a “church of the Christian denomination,” and Unitarianism. Also notice that the congregation invited Ephraim Peabody, formerly minister at First Unitarian, then minister of King’s Chapel, to help them organize their new congregation.

After the dissolution of Centre Church, Thomas became a minister-at-large under the auspices of First Unitarian Church in New Bedford (note that what we now call First Unitarian Church of New Bedford was then called First Congregational Society). Here’s a brief account of the first community ministry here in New Bedford, from The First Congregational Society in New Bedford, Massachusetts: Its History as Illustrative of Ecclesiastical Evolution [William J. Potter (First Congregational Society, 1889), p. 150]:

“It is proper too, to recall that, within the time of Mr. [John] Weiss’s pastorate, a ministry-at-large was sustained for several years for service among the poor, Rev. Moses G. Thomas being the minister. After the severance of his relationship to the Society, he was continued for many years by the beneficence of those honored members, James and Sarah Rotch Arnold, of whose charities he became to a large degree the trusted bearer.”

Moses Thomas sounded like a fascinating person in his own right, so with the help of Google Books, I did a little more research on him…. Continue reading →

Can we talk about the issues? Please? Pretty please?…

Rolling Stone magazine is not known for the depth of their political insight, but they are pretty good on cultural commentary. In an October 2, 2008, article, Stone writer Matt Taibbi has this insight about the cultural implications of choosing presidential and vice-presidential candidates:

“The great insight of the Palin VP choice is that huge chunks of American voters no longer even demand that their candidates actually have policy positions; they simply consume them as media entertainment, rooting for or against them according to the reflexive prejudices of their demographic, as they would for reality-show contestants or sitcom characters. [Link]”

U.S. national political discourse now has essentially no relation to issues. It’s all about manipulating the polls. It’s like TV shows which get put on the air, not because they’re good, but because they’ll get good Neilsen ratings and sell ads. It’s like the “recording artists” who get Grammy awards for musically-poor recordings that get aggressively marketed.

The sorry state of U.S. politics goes hand-in-hand with what’s going on in our larger culture. Consumerist greed has combined with anti-intellectualism in the U.S., which is why the presidential race has been degraded to nothing more than a crummy TV show, another episode of “Survivor.” For someone like me whose religious convictions condemn greed and honor the use of reason, all this consumerist greed and anti-intellectualism is, well, sinful. I wish my man Isaiah (you know, the prophet Isaiah) were alive today…

  “Thy silver is become dross, thy wine mixed with water:
   Thy princes are rebellious, and companions of thieves: they all loveth lobbyists’ gifts, and followeth after rewards: they defend not the orphan, neither doth the cause of the widow come unto them.
   Therefore saith the Lord, the Lord of hosts, the mighty One of Israel, Ah, I will ease me of mine adversaries, and avenge me of mine enemies:
   And I will turn my hand upon thee, and purely purge away thy dross, and take away all thy tin:
   And I will restore thy honest judges as at the first, and thy true statesmen as at the beginning: afterward thou shalt be called, The city of righteousness, the faithful city.
   Zion shall be redeemed with judgment, and her people with righteousness.
   And the destruction of the transgressors and of the sinners shall be together, and they that sin shall be consumed.”

[Isaiah 1.22-28, KJV, slightly modified]

Gotta love those old prophets.

Autumn watch

The fruit flies came in with some batch of fruit we got, probably the slightly damaged half-price fruit from the supermarket. They quickly multiplied. We had some apples from the farmers market sitting on the kitchen counter, but once they started swarming around that we had to put the apples in the refrigerator. They swarm around the bowl full of scraps destined for the compost pile, which means we have to put the compost out immediately, instead of waiting until the end of the day.

Finally I thought we had everything under control. Except now I notice that they’re swarming the pumpkins we have for decoration. Pumpkins! I thought to myself, why would fruit flies swarm around a vegetable, they’re fruit flies! But I quickly realized that pumpkins have seeds in them, which means they’re fruit. Fruit flies do not pay attention to the culinary distinctions that human beings make about certain kinds of food; they just look for fruit.

Finances

After a church committee meeting today, Jorge and I were talking about the current financial crisis.

“…then I felt really bad when I looked at my pension plan,” Jorge said.

“You know what the solution to that problem is,” I said.

“Yeah,” said Jorge. “Don’t look at your pension plan.”

At this point, that’s about all we can do.

The only good news is that people who work on Wall Street are no longer considered folk heroes.

Oh, and Richard fuld, the former president of Lehman Brothers who got over three hundred million dollars over the past eight years (yes, that’s over thirty seven million a year), told Congress today, “I don’t expect you to feel sorry for me.” No, we don’t feel sorry for you, we just think you’re greedy and morally despicable.

Asking the right question

Researching today’s sermon, I came across an undated typescript by Duncan Howlett in our church’s archives. This typescript appears to date from between 1938 and 1946, when Howlett was minister in New Bedford, and in it Howlett anticipates some of the points he made a few years later in a pamphlet he wrote for the Pamphlet Commission of the American Unitarian Association. What makes this typescript interesting is that Howlett makes an explicit reference to process theology, and he links process theology with his assertion that Unitarianism is concerned with the process of thinking, not with determining correct belief. Here’s an excerpt from the typescript:

“No really satisfying answer to the question, ‘What is Unitarianism?’, is possible because of the assumptions that are implicit in the question itself. Alfred North Whitehead used to say, and I’m quoting, ‘If you cannot agree with a man’s conclusions, but cannot find anything wrong with the argument by which he reaches them, look at his premises — spoken or unspoken — admitted or unadmitted — and there you will find the answer to your question.’ I believe the difficulties we encounter [in] describing Unitarianism are found in the assumptions that we bring to the question itself….

“Our error lies in the fact that we, like the orthodox [Christians], have always taken the creed structure of Christendom for granted. We have tried to explain ourselves in terms of it and apparently it has never occurred to us to do otherwise…. [But] You don’t say anything really significant about a Unitarian when you give a summary of the theological opinions he happens to hold….”

And later in the typescript, Howlett continues:

“Unitarians, rejecting fixed creeds and confessions of faith, hold that the task of religion is to state its first principles, constantly to test the validity of those principles in open encounter where every voice may be heard, and to be ready to restate them whenever clarity requires. The Unitarians believe that truth in religion, as in all things, lies at the end of the process of inquiring. Every possible facet of humane xperience must be brought to bear upon such an inquiry if any approximation of truth is to be acheived as a result of it. Unitarians believe that religious differences between men [sic] ought to be measured by their belief in this process or by their lack of it.”

Autumn watch

A long drive up to Walpole, New Hampshire, today to sing with the New England Sacred Harp Convention. Walpole sits down in the Connecticut River valley, with the river on one side and steep hills on the other side. After the singing, K—- and I decided to stretch our legs before the long drive home. We walked up a side road to the height of land behind the town, and looked down into the river valley, and across at the hills of Vermont on the other side of the river.

“Looks like the trees are almost at peak color,” K—- said. The view of the Vermont hills was framed by one big sugar maple that was glorious in its red, orange, yellow, and green leaves. We started driving, mostly downhill, and by the time we got to the Boston suburbs, we noticed a distinct difference:– the trees were mostly green, except for the red maples in the low-lying swamps.

We should discuss creationism in the classroom?!

That’s what Michael Reiss says. He’s a former teacher with PhD in evolutionary biology, now director of education at the Royal Society in the U.K.: “What Reiss believes is that when the issue of creationism or intelligent design is raised in the class room (and he expects it to be raised increasingly frequently) the teacher should discuss it as an alternative ‘worldview’ but show why it is not a scientific theory and why evolution is a scientific theory.”

More at the Nature Web site.

Phillip Pullman on banning books, and religion

What with all the allegations that Sarah Palin wants to ban books (not true, by the way, according to Librarian.net), it’s worth hearing what Phillip Pullman has to say about book banning in a recent opinion piece in the U.K. Guardian:

“…They never learn. The inevitable result of trying to ban something — book, film, play, pop song, whatever — is that far more people want to get hold of it than would ever have done if it were left alone. Why don’t the censors realise this?”

Pullman’s book The Golden Compass a.k.a. Northern Lights was one of the top five books in the American Library Association’s most-challenged books of 2007 — and his experience has been that when people want to ban his books, his book sales go up.

Interestingly, Pullman points out that the American Library Association reports that people challenged or banned his books for religious reasons. Pullman goes on to say this about religion in general:

“Religion, uncontaminated by power, can be the source of a great deal of private solace, artistic inspiration, and moral wisdom. But when it gets its hands on the levers of political or social authority, it goes rotten very quickly indeed…. Destroying intellectual freedom is always evil, but only religion makes doing evil feel quite so good.”

I think Pullman goes too far in the direction of calling for religious quietism — after all, quietist religion too often gets co-opted by authoritarian regimes which then use it to keep the masses in line. I’d put it this way:– religion should promote intellectual freedom in part by staying in a critical, adversarial relationship with civil government and civil authority. For example, from my religious point of view that adversarial relationship might well include actively promoting books that politicians might prefer went away. You know, actively promoting books like the Bible which actively challenges U.S. government policies in Iraq, because the Bible tells us to be peacemakers, which means we should not be at war in Iraq. Stuff like that.

Thanks to.