Author: Daniel Harper

ARkstorms

We Californians always worry about The Big One, the next big earthquake.

Apparently what we should really worry about is ARkstorms. These storms come along every couple of centuries. During the last ARkstorm, in the winter of 1861-1862, it rained for 43 days straight, and the subsequent flooding turned California’s Central Valley into an inland sea 300 miles long. If such a storm happened today, some scientists estimate that it would cause three times the amount of death and destruction of a magnitude 7.8 earthquake.

Just wanted to give you something else to worry about….

Making organized religion look bad

Warren Throckmorton has been watching prominent evangelical Christian pastors and leaders during this election cycle, documenting how these “court evangelicals” support Donald Trump. Two days ago, Throckmorton wrote a blog post asking, “Trump’s Denial of Election Reality: Will Court Evangelicals Play Along?”

The answer, of course, is “yes.” Many prominent white evangelical pastors continue to support Trump, and are now issuing statements accusing Joe Biden of stealing the election.

While these pastors doubtless think they are doing the Lord’s work, sadly what they are really doing is undermining organized religion. The many American citizens who are not white evangelicals are going to watch this kind of behavior — tweets that undermine democratic process, statements that deny reality — and begin to wonder about Christian churches. And by extension, wonder about the purpose of all organized religion — read the comments, and you’ll find someone calling for an end to tax-exempt status for religious organizations.

I’m a bit resentful because even though I’m about as far from these white evangelical pastors as you can possibly be (OK, I am white, too, but there aren’t many other similarities), as a minister I’m going to experience an erosion of trust because of the way they come across as hypocritical (Christians implicitly inciting violence), violating the separation of church and state, and out of touch with reality.

Sadly, these “court evangelicals” will not drive away the white evangelicals who fill their churches — but they will reduce the overall number of people who are willing to have anything to do with organized religion. So I predict an upwards tick in the “nones,” those with no religious affiliation, following this election.

Equally sadly, I’m increasingly convinced that what these “court evangelicals” do is really politics, not religion. So they’re destroying organized religion, but not actually doing religion themselves.

A Khan Academy for religious education

In one of the “lightning talks” in today’s session of the Religious Education Association annual meeting, Dr. Eileen Daily of Boston University’s School of Theology posed some questions about how the pandemic is going to change religious education. One of the questions she asked is whether this is an opportunity to reach out to the “nones,” those who are not affiliated with organized religion (remembering that many of the “nones” are “spiritual but not religious”).

A few hours later, I was in a small group conversation with some scholars and practitioners, and we wound up talking about online learning — not surprising given that the pandemic has driven both the academics and those of us working in congregations to doing all our teaching using distance education techniques. I posed the idea that a nonprofit structured like Khan Academy, but devoted to religious education, could be a worthwhile project. Then the conversation moved on….

But I’ve been thinking about that idea since then. What if there were a Khan Academy for online religious education? I could envision three main curricular areas such an entity could address: (1) religious literacy, including resources to introduce young people to the wide variety of religious expression in their community and in the wider world; (2) skills associated with the practice of organized religion including leadership in nonprofit membership organizations (voluntary associations), social justice organizing, group singing, etc.; and (3) building community including building both interpersonal skills (social skills) and intrapersonal skills (self awareness).

I’m leaving out a fourth major curricular area: the kind of “faith formation” that is instruction on how to participate within a specific religious or denominational tradition. Should a nonprofit producing interreligious learning material produce this kind of faith formation? Well, no — if we’re trying to serve the “nones” as well as though affiliated with organized religion, denominational faith formation will not be a central concern. But what if we think big? If this nonprofit is designed from the beginning to scale up (think: Khan Academy), and if this nonprofit builds expertise in delivering online religious education, then when it grows in size and expertise the nonprofit will eventually becomes able to enter into partnerships with various religious groups to produce this kind of faith formation material.

So what are the funding sources for this nonprofit going to be? I think at the beginning, this nonprofit is either going to be the brainchild of someone like Sal Khan, and inspired charismatic leader with the skills to create content and then bring other people into the project — in this first case, the project is self-funded until it gets big enough to scale up — either that, or it could be hosted by a university that has both experts in religious education and some level of IT support (but if such an organization starts in the academy, I would hope that the plan is to quickly spin it off as a separate nonprofit). Then as the nonprofit grows, because it’s not tied to a specific religious organization, I would expect that a substantial part of the funding would be grants from philanthropic organizations. And why not target Big Tech for grants? — using research that shows that religious literacy can reduce religious bullying and religious violence, you could make a pretty compelling case that this kind of education is important and worth funding.

I’m sure others have already come up with the same idea. And who knows, maybe there’s already such an organization out there….

Pelicans

We’re all dealing with election stress in our own ways. I took an hour away from work to go birding.

Brown Pelicans flying over Charleston Slough, with the hills on the eastern side of San Francisco Bay in the background.

This is a messy election. As we all know, the pandemic means far more people mailed their ballots in than ever before, so the counting is going to continue for days. This gives both presidential candidates lots of time to badmouth each other.

Enough of that. That’s what I went birding to get away from. Sometimes denial is a fruitful way to deal with a stressful situation, especially a situation where you really can’t do anything to alter it. And look at birds; birds don’t care who wins the election. Sort of puts things in perspective.

Mushroom

When I was walking around the cemetery this evening, I saw some spectacular shelf fungus growing on the side of a eucalyptus stump.

Sulphur Shelf (Laetiporus. gilbertsonii)

David Arora, in his comprehensive 1986 book Mushrooms Demystified, identifies this as Laetiporus sulphures, but the more recent book Mushrooms of the Redwood Coast (2016) by Noah Seigel and Christian Schwarz identify it as L. gilbertsonii — turns out L. sulphures was split into three species in 2001.

Close-up photo of the underside of L. gilbertsonii showing pores

Common names for L. gilbertsonii include Sulphur Shelf and Chicken of the Woods. As you’d guess with a name like “Chicken of the Woods,” you can eat it, and supposedly if it’s cooked correctly it does taste something like chicken. However, in a few individuals it can cause vomiting. (This apparently happens more often with the two western species, L. gilbertsonii and L. conifericola; not so much with the eastern species, L. sulphures.) I have a weak stomach, and I’m not an experienced mushroom hunter to begin with, so I didn’t try to eat it.

But it is beautiful, and finding it made my day.

Possum presents: Halloween costumes for stuffies

Possum, Packrat, and Dr. Sharpie — er, Queen Sharpie — present photos from UUCPA kids showing their stuffies in Halloween costumes. Whose costume is best? Queen Sharpie has an answer…. (Updated version of the video, with three more stuffie costumes.)

Click on the image above to view the video on Youtube.

Complete text of the video is below the fold….

Continue reading “Possum presents: Halloween costumes for stuffies”

Flipgrid

This year, the Religious Education Association (REA) invited anyone who’s going to participate in their online annual meeting to post a video response on Flipgrid, answering the question, “Why REA?”

Of course I had to try it. I’m always a sucker for trying out new forms of social media, especially when they’re designed for educators. And Flipgrid advertises itself as a video making Web site that can be used from preK to PhD — how cool is that?

But then I logged in — you can log in using your Google account — and Flipgrid told me it only supports Google Chrome and Microsoft Edge. Seriously? no support for Firefox or Safari? Oh, right, it’s a Microsoft company. At least they allow video uploads, so I recorded a quick-and-dirty video and uploaded it. But I won’t be using Flipgrid with kids, because what about that kid who doesn’t have Chrome or Edge….

Aside from that fatal flaw, Flipgrid seems like it has potential. You as teacher can post a video, kids can respond to it, Flipgrid gives you a QR code that you can send to parents so they see the video responses. Although, uh oh, what about media releases to show videos of legal minors? Given the safety policies in our congregation, that’s another fatal flaw if I want to use it with kids.

Even though Microsoft has incorporated at least two fatal flaws in Flipgrid, the basic idea still has potential. And it still could work with adult programs.

Downside to decline

The report by the Unitarian Universalist Association’s Commission on Institutional Change puts it starkly: if Unitarian Universalists don’t figure out how to become less white, we will die out (because: demographics).

Fair enough. But we’re seeing rise of the “nones,” people who have no religious affiliation, and so maybe it’s time for organized religion to die. If it’s time for organized religion to die, why should we care?

In a recent article titled “White Christian America built a faith-based safety net. What happens when it’s gone?”, Religion News Service has an answer to this question:

“The growth of the so-called nones doesn’t mean that belief is disappearing, but ‘loosely organized spirituality’ among people who have few ties to each other lacks precisely the organization that can marshal thousands of key volunteers.

“‘They don’t congregate,’ [Brad] Fulton [associate professor of nonprofit management at Indiana University] said. ‘And that is the key thing.’

“Religious congregations, on the other hand, he said, ‘ask people to give once a week, week after week. They tell people about volunteer opportunities once a week, week after week. There is no other social institution like them.’

“In some ways, the infrastructure of religion matters more than the spiritual part. The so-called nones, at least for now, can’t replace that.

“‘There is some upside to organized religion that has very little to do with religion,’ he said. ‘They have a great mechanism to bring people together. It is really hard to identify an organized secular equivalent.'”

This is not far from what Unitarian theologian and sociologist James Luther Adams said in the mid-twentieth century: congregations function as voluntary associations. And congregations provide real and tangible benefits to society.

Another point worth noticing here: Fulton, a scholar of management, says that what congregations do — that no one else does — is to congregate, “week after week.” The loose networks created by social media (so far at least) don’t do this, so unfortunately we can’t expect social media networks like Black Lives Matter to fill this void.