Category: Arts & culture

Test your religious knowledge

Think you know a lot about religion? Well, the Pew Research Center has developed a “U.S. Religious Knowledge Quiz” where you can find out. The fifteen questions on the quiz test your knowledge of the Bible and of world religions. The online quiz is here.

After you take the online quiz (and find out how much you really do know), you’ll want to go on to read about the survey from which this quiz was extracted, the “U.S. Religious Knowledge Survey.” Pew Research Center did a telephone survey in which they asked 32 religious knowledge questions of a random sample of U.S. residents. The average number of correct responses was 16 out of 32. Jews, atheists/agnostics, and Mormons scored best on this longer quiz. Scoring below average were white mainline Protestants, black Protestants, Hispanic Catholics, and “nothing in particular.”

There were so few Unitarian Universalists included in the sample that they are not included in the statistical analysis. How well would we perform? Sometime I’d like to administer either the shorter quiz, or the longer set of survey questions, to young people who have gone through a UU religious education program. How well have we done at teaching our children basic religious literacy? Since religious literacy is not the goal of most UU religious education programs, my guess is that our kids would only do well if their day school taught them this information. And how about us professional religious educators, how would we do on this quiz? I scored 100% on the quiz, but I’ve been working in UU congregations for two decades, during which time I earned my M.Div. degree — back in 1994, when I started working as a religious educator, my guess is that I would have scored between 50-75%. Finally, how about our ministers?

Do we care? — that is, should religious literacy be a goal of Unitarian Universalist religious education (and should it be a goal for our ministers and religious educators)? I’d argue that in order to be good U.S. and world citizens, we do need a basic level of religious literacy, and that Unitarian Universalists have always aimed to produce good citizens; yet there are very good reasons to disagree with making religious literacy an educational goal.

What do you think?

Secure video chat

Deborah, another UU minister, told me about VSee, a video chat service with 256-bit encryption. VSee is designed as a “telehealth” app, for use by doctors and other medical professionals; the company claims that it is the first such application that complies with HIPAA.

Clergypersons working in congregations do not have to comply with HIPAA, and certainly HIPAA would not be the right set of standards for congregational work. But maybe we should be thinking more about how to protect the privacy of congregants. Email is far from secure, yet I find myself doing pastoral car via email. I don’t know that VSee is an appropriate product for me to use (I’ll have to experiment with it), but maybe it’s time to research options like this.

Today’s lesson plan on Ferguson

Here’s today’s lesson plan, as taught in the summer Sunday school program at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Palo Alto (UUCPA), Calif. We had about a dozen children in gr. K-8. The lesson plan was written to engage the older children (gr. 5-8), in the expectation that the younger kids would do their best to follow the lead of the older kids; this worked quite well, so even though the conversation was over the heads of the kindergarteners, they followed along as best they could, and at least understood that we were talking about something very important.

One unexpected benefit of this lesson plan: While most of the children knew what “Ferguson” was, they were pretty hazy on the details of the events of August 9, 2014. Going over the story three different times helped reinforce details of that day in their memory.

Lesson plan
Credits
Goals and objectives
Theological background
Notes and resources
Thoughts for teachers
Why isn’t —— in this lesson plan?

Continue reading “Today’s lesson plan on Ferguson”

Poems as theology

I have a tough time reading academic theology, and prefer to get my theological fix from poetry. I’m promiscuous in my theological tastes when it comes to poetry — how can I resist the cranky Buddhism of Gary Snyder? or the strange pacifistic Roman Catholicism of Denise Levertov? or the Black humanism of James Weldon Johnson?

Of course, sometimes it’s good to be parochial, and engage with one’s co-religionists. When I started listing some of the poems by Unitarian Universalist poets which have most influenced my theology, I realized that I prefer poets who are mystics and Transcendentalists. Since mystics and Transcendentalists are theologically suspect, I further realized that I shouldn’t be wasting my time getting theology from poetry rather than from works of academic theology.

Yet I’ll bet there are other people out there who get their theology in poetry. If you’re one of them, which poems have most influenced your theological thinking? If you happen to be a Unitarian Universalist, which poems by Unitarian Universalists are your theological mainstays?

And in the interests of full disclosure, below I’ll list some of the poems by UU poets that influenced me. Continue reading “Poems as theology”

How to fail sex ed

One of the wonderful people who teaches comprehensive sexuality education in our church sent along a link to a post on Imgur headed: “Two years ago today, my then 14 year old sister got suspended for submitting these answers for her sex-ed class. I’m so proud of her.” Then there’s a photo of a worksheet titled “Objections to Condoms.” Kids were supposed to come up with possible responses to various excuses for not using condoms.

So, for example, one of the excuses for not using a condom was: “Condoms are gross; they’re messy; I hate them.” To which this creative girl replied: “So are babies.”

Condoms are messy -- So are babies

Mind you, a couple of the replies are just plain unconvincing, e.g. — Excuse: “I’d be embarrassed to use one”; reply: “Look at all the fucks I give.” Yeah, whatever.

But some of the replies, while very snarky, just might actually work in the real world, e.g. — excuse: “I don’t have a condom with me”; reply: “I don’t have my vagina with me.” This is not a good response to put on a worksheet that a public school teacher has to read; but a snarky early adolescent girl who needs to use a little humor to get through to a boy might find that reply useful.

This brings up an interesting point of educational philosophy. A core element of my educational philosophy is to start where the learner is. Some early adolescents learning about sex and sexuality may be most comfortable using snark and f-bombs to talk about sex. Of course we want to move them to a more reasoned form of discourse, a way of speaking that will allow them to talk about sex with potential partners openly, humanely, and with emotional intelligence. But we may have to listen to their f-bombs for a while before we get them there.

Ancient Greek marriage laws and same-sex marriage

During the Supreme Court argument session on Obergefell v. Hodges, according to the transcription, Justice Alito had the following exchange with Mary Bonauto, Esq., representing the petitioners:

JUSTICE ALITO: But there have been cultures that did not frown on homosexuality. That is not a universal opinion throughout history and across all cultures. Ancient Greece is an example. It was ­­– it was well accepted within certain bounds. But did they have same-­sex marriage in ancient Greece?
MS. BONAUTO: Yeah. They don’t ­­– I don’t believe they had anything comparable to what we have, Your Honor. You know, and we’re talking about —
JUSTICE ALITO: Well, they had marriage, didn’t they?
MS. BONAUTO: Yeah, they had ­­– yes. They had some sort of marriage.
[p. 14 of the official transcript]

I have some interest in ancient Greek thought, and so I’d like to stop right there for a moment. What sort of concept of marriage did the ancient Greeks have, and is it something we would look to as analogous to our present-day concept of marriage? Continue reading “Ancient Greek marriage laws and same-sex marriage”

Old news

I lose consciousness of ugly bestial raid
and repetitive affront as when they tell me
18 cops in order to subdue one man
18 strangled him to death in the ensuing scuffle (don’t
you idolize the diction of the powerful: subdue and
scuffle my oh my) and that the murder
that the killing of Arthur Miller on a Brooklyn
street was just a “justifiable accident” again
(again)

That’s from June Jordan’s “Poem about Police Violence,” from way back in 1980. The poets have been telling about this for at least thirty five years, longer than a lot of you have been alive. And if we forgot (because who reads poetry any more), there was Oscar Grant. And Eric Garner. And now Freddie Gray.

June Jordan said:

People have been having accidents all over the globe
so long like that I reckon that the only
suitable insurance is a gun
I’m saying war is not to understand or rerun
war is to be fought and won

Didn’t Malcolm X say that back around 1960? And — OK, I hear you, violence is not the answer, and I agree with you on that one. But then what is the answer? Because we seem to be hearing the same old news again.

Ceremonial deity, Phillippines

Ceremonial Deity, Philippines

Above: Sketch of a “ceremonial deity,” Philippines, c. 1930. Wood and shell. Asian Museum of Art.

One of delights of going to the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco is seeing the diversity of depictions of deities. Today I particularly noticed the unnamed deities — like this sculpture of an unnamed ceremonial deity, made in the Philippines around 1930. Why do we not know the name of this deity? Is it because it is a minor deity, and thus not widely identifiable (though perhaps readily identifiable by a devotee)? Did it never have a name that could be spoken by humans? Or was this a deity like the Roman Lares familiares, the household gods, who don’t seem to have had names, or whose power was so geographically restricted that their names perhaps were known only to the household they protected?

I think that the end of Christendom is allowing us to see such minor deities more clearly. In the worldview of Christendom, only the major deities — the wildly transcendent deities, Jehovah’s direct competition — were worthy of serious attention. Now maybe we can pay a little more attention to the many minor deities who inhabit the metaphorical space between those distant transcendent deities and mortal creatures.

John Renbourn

Once upon a time, I had a copy of John Renbourn’s recording “A Maid in Bedlam” on cassette tape. I used to play that cassette tape while driving up to the White Mountains to go hiking. I think this was before I had a car with a cassette player — I have a vague memory of Gary, one of my hiking partners, playing this tape on his boom box in my beat-up Chevy Celebrity. The point is that this was a while ago.

This recording captured me with its mix of musical influences. This was a time when early music was still something new; Renbourn’s band performed tunes by Renaissance composers Hans Neusidler and Tielman Susato on recorders, steel-string guitar, and tabla. Was this folk music, or early music, or world music? Or, given the strange harmonic direction they took in the medley of tunes by Neusidler, were they dabbling in new music? And they did strange things to traditional tunes from the British Isles as well: the traditional “A Maid in Bedlam” had that non-traditional the tabla, and the recorders, and the steel-string guitar, and a little bit of rock and roll. “A Maid in Bedlam,” though a traditional song, had a flavor of contemporary folk. The medley “The Battle Of Augrham / Five In A Line” definitely slipped into rock and blues territory. As for “Reynardine,” it was as sexy and crazed in its own understated way as the punk rock that I listened to obsessively.

Much of the music from the late 1970s and 1980s that I used to listen to obsessively has not held up well; a lot of it now sounds heavy-handed, or poorly done, or just plain boring. Much of Renbourn’s music still sounds fresh and interesting, no doubt due in large part to his high level of musical intelligence and his virtuosity on his chosen instrument, the steel-string guitar. But perhaps most important was his ability to mix musics from different cultures and different times, have it make emotional and musical sense, and not leave you feeling as though he had simply been plundering other people’s music. How many musicians can cover five centuries and three continents, avoid pastiche and misappropriation, and still make musical sense? — not many.

Not that Renbourn’s entire career was so brilliant. In fact, most of his career was musically boring. Too often, Renbourn slid down into that musical performance realm inhabited by technical virtuosi who make their living impressing wanna-be guitarists with blistering fingerwork and fretboard hysterics. Renbourn’s topical songwriting was never particularly interesting; he was not a singer-songwriter worth paying attention to. His early forays into Renaissance music were wonderful, but the early music world kept evolving and I don’t feel he managed to keep up with that ongoing musical conversation. And then there was the 1990s reunion of the 1960s band Pentangle — like so many reunion bands, 1990s Pentangle just plowed the same musical ground over and over and over again.

But when he was good, John Renbourn was very, very good:— when his technical brilliance was in the service of his musical intelligence; and when he saw beyond the musical world of British folk and pop to an expanding world of cultural influences; then he was very, very good.

John Renbourn died of a heart attack on Thursday.

John Renbourn perfomring in New Bedford, Mass.

Above Renbourn at Customhouse Square, New Bedford, Massachusetts, July, 2005. We lived a block away at the time of this performance, but I was out of town at a conference. [Photo from Flickr by Thom C CC BY 2.0]

“Good Morning, Blues”

When the New York Times Book Review asked which literary figure was overdue for a biography, Ayana Mathis argued for Albert Murray. She was persuasive enough that I decided I had better read some Murray, and that led me to the book he co-wrote with Count Basie, Good Morning, Blues: The Autobiography of Count Basie: a book for which Basie supplied the reminiscences, and Murray wrote the text.

Good Morning, Blues reminds me of Anthony Trollope’s Autobiography: both books are, above all, a record of how one artist worked; Trollope was a writer and Basie was a bandleader, which makes for some significant differences, but both are really books about work. Just as Trollope’s autobiography is filled with details of how he came to write his various books, Basie’s autobiography is filled with details of the various bands and combos he put together. The most interesting part of both books comes early on, when the artist serves his apprenticeship; the least interesting part is the ending, but then, autobiographies can never come to a interesting ending because the ending of a life story that we really want to know about is how the person died.

Because Basie’s book is about his work, he avoids dishing dirt, fanning the flames of feuds, or talking much about his personal life. “I don’t want to get into all that,” Murray frequently has him say, and in fact I can just about hear Count Basie saying exactly those words. Basie passes lightly over his first experience of the South’s Jim Crow laws (though he says from his point of view, there wasn’t much in Jim Crow that he hadn’t already experienced in the North). He spends less than two pages on his wife’s death, and perhaps a paragraph on his daughter’s birth. He spends a couple more pages on his own heart attack, but then his heart attack meant he had to take time off from work.Aside from that, he talks about his work — though as Murray has him say: “But truthfully, playing music has never really been work.” Again, you can just about hear Basie saying exactly those words; Murray gets his voice just right, and makes it feel as though it’s Basie’s words you’re reading, even though you know that this book has been carefully writer by a master of American prose style.

I like his music, but I was never a big fan of Basie’s, and sometimes the book devolves into a jazz fanboy’s dream with a little too much minutiae about who played tenor at one specific recording session, and who “cut out” just before which gig at the Famous Door in New York City, and who filled in for them, and so on. But I tolerated all that, and even read it with interest because obviously Basie himself cared a great deal; as a bandleader, who played with him, who was in the band, which personalities were involved in making music at a certain point of time, is of critical importance.

When I finished reading, I had all sorts of unanswered questions about Basie’s life. What about all those hard feelings that are hinted at, then dismissed with, “I don’t want to get into all that”? What about the hints of tough times in his family life? What about the racial discrimination that — to use his phrase — “sepia performers” had to put up with? In the last few pages of the book, Murray has Basie address this last question:

“If I haven’t spent a lot of time complaining about all of these things, it’s not that I don’t want anybody to get the impression that all of that was not also a part of it. It was. So what? Life is a bitch, and if it’s not one damn thing, it’s going to be something else.”

For Basie, what was most important was his work. That’s what he wanted to tell about. And that’s what Albert Murray perfectly captures, making Basie’s words echo the jazz he played, so even the prose style is just what you’d want to hear from a bandleader who cared most about the work. So rather than bothering with trying to read up on Basie’s life, I went online and listened to a whole bunch of his music, from the 1930s right up to the 1980s. Nothing else I could read was going to be as good as Albert Murray’s book, anyway.

Count Basie at the piano in 1964

Above: Still from “Jazz Casual” television program, KQED, 1964 — looking over the shoulder of jazz guitar great Freddie Green, towards Basie at the piano. Clicking on the photo takes you to the half hour show on Youtube, which features Basie’s rhythm section in 1964: Basie on piano, Green on guitar, Sonny Payne on drums, and Norman Keenan on bass.