{"id":1041,"date":"2007-10-08T20:03:08","date_gmt":"2007-10-09T01:03:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/?p=1041"},"modified":"2007-11-20T19:53:41","modified_gmt":"2007-11-21T00:53:41","slug":"midwesterners-and-liberal-religion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/?p=1041","title":{"rendered":"Midwesterners and liberal religion"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I was out in Naperville, Illinois, for three days last week, co-leading a workshop of worship for religious educators. Most of the dozen people in the workshop were from the Midwest. I was reminded of a few regional differences between Midwestern religious liberals, and New England religious liberals.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Midwestern Unitarian Universalists are nice. They are friendly, courteous, and pleasant in a way that New Englanders just aren&#8217;t. (On the other hand, I do like the edginess of New Englanders.)<\/li>\n<li>Midwestern Unitarian Universalists do not take their religion for granted, the way many New England Unitarian Universalists seem to do.<\/li>\n<li>A related point: Midwestern Unitarian Universalists have a visceral understanding that they are a tiny minority of the population. Because of this, they don&#8217;t seem to have the sense of entitlement that New England Unitarian Universalists often suffer from (as if we&#8217;re God&#8217;s gift to New England, not that we believe in God).<\/li>\n<li>Maybe I didn&#8217;t see a representative sample of Midwestern Unitarian Universalists, but most of the people in this workshop came from growing congregations, and they were all committed to growth in a way that I just don&#8217;t see among most New England Unitarian Universalists.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>As much as I like our little church in New Bedford, and as much as I love New England and New England Unitarian Universalists, I did have a moment of nostalgia at this workshop, thinking about the year I spent serving in a Midwestern Unitarian Universalist church. New England Unitarian Universalists do have this tendency to make excuses about why New England Unitarian Universalist churches aren&#8217;t growing; we could learn from the Midwesterners who are just rolling up their sleeves and making growth happen.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I was out in Naperville, Illinois, for three days last week, co-leading a workshop of worship for religious educators. Most of the dozen people in the workshop were from the Midwest. I was reminded of a few regional differences between Midwestern religious liberals, and New England religious liberals. Midwestern Unitarian Universalists are nice. They are [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1041","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-marketing-church","category-sense-of-place"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1041","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1041"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1041\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1041"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1041"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1041"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}