Category: Religion

Transparency check

I feel like such a grouch. I keep writing blog posts about ways the Unitarian Universalist Association (UUA) could be more transparent in the ways it handles clergy misconduct. But I’m not one of those people who post criticism of the UUA but who aren’t looking for actual improvement, they just want to badmouth the UUA. My purpose is different. I actually like the UUA. But like all human institutions, the UUA could be better, and I’d like to contribute in some small way to making it better. Since I have no skills for committee work or denominational governance, what I do is write about possibilities for improving the UUA.

So I’m really not a grouch. I hope.

Anyway, I’ve been thinking about ways the UUA could be more transparent in its handling of clergy misconduct. And I’d like to point out three other religious groups who inspire me with their attempts to be more transparent.

First, I’d like to point out the website of the Episcopal Church here in the U.S. Take a look at the screenshot below that shows the front page of their website:

Screen grab of a website

It’s a little hard to see in my screen grab, but in the upper right hand corner there’s a prominent button that reads “Report Misconduct.” If you click on that button, you are taken to another webpage with detailed and (to my mind) confusing instructions about how to report misconduct by clergy. Indeed, there has been criticism from within the Episcopal Church about how their actual processes are not especially transparent.

But forget about their problems with their internal processes for a moment. I applaud their decision to post a prominent link on the very front page of their website that takes you right to instructions on how to initiate a complaint about clergy misconduct. Contrast that with the UUA website, which has no such prominent link. I find it very difficult to locate any information on the UUA website about how to initiate a complaint regarding clergy misconduct.

One final point — given all the publicity around clergy sexual misconduct in the past twenty years, it seems to me to be a smart marketing move by the Episcopal Church to have that prominent link on their front page. It says to people who are looking for a religious home — “We’re serious about stopping clergy misconduct.” It signals that they might be a safer religious home than, say, Unitarian Universalism.

Second, I’d like to point out this webpage from the Rabbinical Assembly, the organization for Conservative Jews in the U.S. The webpage is titled “Rabbis Expelled or Suspended from the Rabbinical Assembly for Ethical Violations”:

Screen grab from a website

On this page, freely visible to anyone visiting their website, the Rabbinical assembly lists the names of seven rabbis who were expelled from the Rabbinical Assembly since 2004. This is exactly what should happen — if a clergy is expelled from a denomination of association of congregations, then the denomination-level website should make their names freely accessible in the interests of transparency.

The UUA tried doing this for a while, beginning in 2021. Then, a couple of years ago, that list was hidden from public view. You can still see a webpage titled “UUA Credentialed Religious Professionals Resigned or Removed from Status Due to Misconduct” on the UUA website — but when you get to that page, you are instructed: “To access the list of ministers removed from fellowship by the Ministerial Fellowship Committee, Ministers who resigned fellowship pending misconduct reviews, and religious educators whose credential was terminated by the Religious Education Credentialing Committee, you must log in or register.” You can just about read these instructions on the screen grab below:

Text-heavy screen grab from a website

I can understand why this page has been restricted —I imagine that in an era of increasing violence, the UUA has the admirable goal of keeping names and personal information hidden. But there are several names that do not need to be hidden, such as ministers who have been convicted of sex offenses, so that their misconduct is a matter of public record. Examples include David Kohlmeier, Ron Robinson, and Mack Mitchell. In addition, this webpage should clearly state why access to the list is restricted — I’ve imagined a charitable reason why the UUA has hidden this page, but someone else could imagine the UUA has hidden the list for nefarious reasons.

Third, the Presbyterian Church USA actually has a phone hotline that you can use to report abuse, as shown on this screen grab:

Screen grab of a website

Admittedly, there are all kinds of potential problems with this helpline. Most obviously, who is the “trained professional” who answers the helpline? If it’s a denominational staffer, someone paid by the denomination, I’m going to be skeptical of their ability to remain neutral; I’d hope the “trained professional” is actually employed by their insurance carrier (which seems to be implied here), because an insurance carrier is somewhat more likely to take misconduct allegations seriously. Also, I could wish that the helpline would offer both voice calls and texting (I hate talking on the phone, but I love texting). And finally, I would like to see a guarantee of confidentiality — please tell me that if I call, and I feel uncomfortable with the “trained professional,” that you’re not going to track me down through my phone number.

Nevertheless, this makes it really easy to report misconduct, and I applaud this attempt at making the reporting process as transparent as possible. (I also applaud the fact that the “trained professional” can also provide information about abuse prevention resources — great idea.)

How might this apply to the UUA? Here are three practical suggestions — and the first two are actually very easy to implement.

First, the UUA should have a prominent link on the landing page of their website that with one click provides specific, actionable instructions on how to report misconduct.

Second, at least a partial list of ministers removed from fellowship should be publicly accessible on the UUA website without requiring registration — and there should be a clear explanation of why seeing the full list requires registration.

Third, ideally the UUA would provide an easily accessible service for reporting misconduct. And ideally, this service will be provided by an independent contractor, not by a denominational employee.

Obscure Unitarians: Ora Boring

Another excerpt from my long-delayed book on people who belonged to the Unitarian Church of Palo Alto between 1895 and 1934.

Oramanda Boring

An educator and field biologist, Oramanda (Ora) A. Boring was born October 12, 1854, in Carlinville, Illinois. Little is known about her younger years except a few bare facts in the public record. In 1860, she was living in Carlinville with her father John, a carpenter, her mother Mary, her older sister Mary E., and younger siblings Mary Myrtle and William. The family was still in Carlinville in 1870, living close to Blackburn University (called Blackburn College today), a co-educational college affiliated with the Presbyterian church. By this time, Mary E. had died, leaving Ora as the oldest child. By 1880, Ora was working a school teacher, now living with her parents and younger siblings Mary Myrtle (now age 23), William A., Ella L., Lewis H., Blanche M., Frank P., and Florence A. (age 4) in Greenfield, Ill., an unincorporated town just to the west of Carlinville.

After teaching high school in Greenfield, she moved to California in 1881. She was granted a provisional teaching certificate in Los Angeles in January, 1882; the State Board of Education granted her a “life diploma” (or permanent teaching certificate) in 1884. She probably taught in the Los Angeles schools for the next few years.

Ora met David Starr Jordan, the president of newly founded Stanford University, at a conference in Coronado, and he persuaded her to enter college at age 36. She began studying biology at Stanford University as a special student in 1891, the year the university opened, and was reportedly the first woman student. She participated in the first summer session of the Hopkins Seaside Laboratory in 1892.

After a year at Stanford, she returned to teaching school. She had gained enough experience, and enough of a reputation, that she was an instructor in the summer session of the “California School of [Teaching] Methods” in 1892, teaching other teachers about the history of education. After teaching school until about 1896, she then studied at Stanford again more or less full time from 1897 to 1899. In 1899, she returned to teaching school once again, and finally received her A.B. in zoology from Stanford in 1900, at age 46.

Ora had expertise in a wide range of subjects. In the biological sciences, she pursued both ornithology and botany. She became a member of the Cooper Ornithological Club, an early association of field ornithologists. She was also a serious botanist, and Harvard University Herbaria still has her collections of California plants. Although her degree was in biology, Ora taught several other subjects in her long career as a teacher and educator. In the 1893-1894 school year, she taught English, Latin, zoology, and history in the Coronado, Calif., high school. From 1894 to 1896, she was a supervisor in “primary and grammar grade work” in Stockton, in addition to teaching biology at Stockton High School.

Through the 1890s and into 1900s, she published a number of articles in the field of education. To give an idea of her range of interests, her article titled “Nature Study” was published in School Education in 1895; and “Theological Life of a California Child,” co-written with professor Earl Barnes of Stanford, was published in Pedagogical Seminary in 1892.

In her memoir of life at Stanford University, Ellen Coit Elliott witnessed Ora’s field methods for her educational studies:

“Dear Ora Boring appeared about that time. I saw her first at my front door, notebook in hand, asking modestly, like the gentlewoman she was, if she might make a few notes on my children’s reactions to the color element: she was taking one of Professor Barnes’ education courses. Oh, certainly! Louis and Christabel (little guinea pigs) were brought in from the sandpile and stood, big-eyed, in front of the strange lady on the lounge. She showed them strips of colored paper and asked them which they liked best. Christabel preferred bright red. Louis preferred bright red. The reactions were written down. Ora thanked me for the loan of my offspring and returned to her class. Dear Ora! Her lovely life and friendship were with us through the years.”

After her father died in 1893, her mother Mary moved from San Diego to Palo Alto. In 1897, Ora was living in Palo Alto with her mother, her sisters Blanche and Florence, and her brother Frank; both Blanche and Ora were studying at Stanford at this time. Her mother was an active member of the Methodist church; there is no record of Ora’s religious affiliation at this time. Her mother was an invalid by the time she died in 1901, and Ora may have been providing care for her. By 1910, Ora lived at 101 Waverly St. in Palo Alto with her sister Blanche, brother-in-law William Snow, and their children; Ora was working as a high school teacher.

Ora taught in many different school systems across California, so many that it proved impossible to trace them all. In 1899, she was teaching zoology at Palo Alto High School. She was one of the first teachers at the Clear Lake Union High School District in 1901. In 1903, she was teaching in the high school in Riverside. In 1910, she was living in Palo Alto, though it’s not clear where she taught. From April, 1912, to June, 1914, she taught in the Yosemite Valley School, a one room schoolhouse; the school year ran from April through December, and she may have lived elsewhere when the school was not in session, although as a biologist perhaps she chose to live in the Yosemite Valley year round.

Middle aged woman in early twentieth century dress sitting under a tree
Ora Boring in Yosemite, 1913 (included in “Sunland: A Scrapbook”)

In autumn, 1914, at age 60, Ora began teaching school in Sunland, Calif., then a remote town in the mountains outside of Los Angeles. An unattributed typescript memory of Ora’s tenure in Sunland appears in “Sunland: A Scrapbook,” assembled by Enid A. Larson in 1983:

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An unknown Unitarian minister

We hear a lot about the Unitarian and Universalist ministers who stayed in ministry for decades — people like Hosea Ballou and William Ellery Channing. But what about the people who served as Unitarian or Universalist ministers for just a short while, then moved on to something else?

Here is one such person.

William E. Short Jr.

William E. Short, Jr., served as a Unitarian minister for just two years, from 1915 to 1917, primarily at the Unitarian Church of Palo Alto. He left the ministry for radical politics, then became a building contractor and later a realtor.

He was born on September 6, 1888, in Jackson, Miss. Short’s father was an Episcopalian minister, who moved the family to St. Louis, Mo., in 1889. William Short, Sr., died on October 27, 1905, when William, Jr., was 17 years old. After his father’s death, William, Jr., completed high school at the University School, St. Louis, Mo., and went on to attend Trinity College, Hartford, Conn., his father’s alma mater, receiving his B.A. there in 1912.

As an Episcopalian lay reader, William had charge of a few “missions,” or what we now might call church plants or emerging congregations. He received his B.D. from the Episcopal Theological School, Cambridge, Mass., in 1915. Beginning in the fall of 1914, he became interested in Unitarianism, and made contact with the American Unitarian Association (A.U.A.). In the summer of 1915, he served the Unitarian church in Walpole, Mass. At the end of the summer, he was accepted into Unitarian fellowship. The A.U.A. recommended him to the Unitarian Church of Palo Alto, and the congregation called him in November, 1915. It appears that the Palo Alto church never regularly ordained him, due to his feelings about ordination, though he was recognized as a minister by the congregation and denomination.

Initially, he was quite happy in Palo Alto, and wrote to the A.U.A.: “I am more pleased than ever over the fact that I left the Episcopal Church and became a Unitarian.” However, he avoided contact with the denomination, going so far as to resist meeting with other Unitarian ministers. Even though the A.U.A. paid much of his salary, Short consistently neglected to submit to them the monthly reports they required of him.

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The afterlife, according to Socrates

Another in a series of stories for liberal religious kids.

The great philosopher Socrates, who lived two thousand five hundred years ago, once had a long conversation with another philosopher named Gorgias. And during that long conversation, he told a story about what happens to human beings after we die.

Listen, then (said Socrates), as story-tellers say, to a very pretty tale, which I dare say that you may be disposed to regard as a fable only. But I believe this is a true tale, for I mean to speak the truth.

The poet Homer tells us in his immortal poem The Iliad, how the gods Zeus and Poseidon and Pluto divided the empire which they inherited from their father. Poseidon ruled the oceans, Hades ruled the underworld, while Zeus ruled over everything, including over the other gods and goddesses.

Now in the days of Cronos there had existed a law about what happens to human beings after we die. This law has been in force since the beginning and remains so today. The law decrees that human beings who have lived their whole lives in justice and holiness shall go, after they die, to the Islands of the Blessed, where they will dwell in perfect happiness. On the other hand, human beings who have lived unjust and irreverent lives have to go to Tartaros, the house of vengeance and punishment.

In the time of Cronos, and even into the early days of Zeus’s reign, the judgement was given on the very day on which people were to die — the judges were alive, and the people were alive — and the consequence was that the judgements were not well given. So Hades and the authorities from the Islands of the Blessed came to Zeus, and said that some of the people who had died had found their way to the wrong places.

“Well, first of all,” Zeus said, “we must put a stop to human beings knowing the time of their death; for this they at present do know. However, Prometheus, the god of foresight, has already been given the word to stop this in them.

“Next,” said Zeus, “human beings must be stripped of their clothing and indeed of their very bodies, and stripped of everything else before they are judged. In other words, the human beings must be fully dead when they are judged, and not alive as they currently are. Furthermore, whoever judges them also must be dead and covered over with no clothing nor a body, nor with their wealth and families or other fine array. In this way, the judge’s naked soul will be able to perceive the truth of the other naked souls. If the judgment is carried out in this way, then it will be just.”

Zeus then decreed that three of his own human children should become judges, once they died. These three were Minos and Rhadamanthus from Asia, and Aeacus from Europe. When they died, they were assigned to stay in the “meadow at the parting of the ways.” Two roads left this meadow: one road went to the Islands of the Blessed, and the other road went to Tartaros. Rhadamanthus judged all the humans who died in Asia. Aeacus judged all the humans who died in Europe. And Minos served as the final court of appeal, if either of the others had any doubt about a human being who came before them.

Brief commentary

[A couple of points you might want to mention if you talk about this story with actual children:] This “fable” was written nearly half a millennium before the Christian era. And it’s worth remembering that Socrates spoke a different language from us, and his word for truth — aletheia — meant something more like “revealing” or “disclosing.” Aletheia was not the opposite of falsehood, but rather the opposite of forgetfulness. Aletheia was also a goddess.

Source:

Plato, Gorgias 523a – 524a, trans. Benjamin Jowett (1871), with reference to the translation by W. R. M. Lamb (1925).

Obscure UUs: Leila Violet Lasley Thompson

Another in a long-running series of brief biographies of obscure Unitarian Universalists. This is a chapter from my long-delayed book on Unitarians in Palo Alto from 1895 to 1934.

Out of poverty

Assistant minister, then settled minister, of the Unitarian Church of Palo Alto in 1926-1927, she was born at Larned, Kansas, on October 18, 1888, the first child of Fred Newton Lasley and Leura Auretta Davis. Times were hard in Kansas, and not long after Leila was born, Fred scraped together enough money to take the train to Portland, Oregon, where his brother and half-sister lived, in hopes of finding work. He found work as a carpenter, and saved enough money to send to Leura so that she could join him in Portland. Leura was just twenty years old when she took that five day journey by rail, carrying a baby in diapers, and with no one to help her.

After a year in Portland, Fred found work managing a farm in Springdale, east of Portland. He and Leura felt financially secure enough to have more children, and Leila’s younger sisters Weltha Evadna Lasley, and Gladys Mable Lasley, were born in Springdale; a brother Clarence, born in 1890, died young. By 1896, when Leila was 8 years old, the family had saved enough money to purchase their own farm in what is now Corbett, Ore. On the side of a hill, Fred built a two room shack using rough lumber he purchased, with a root cellar underneath. Fred built a trough that ran from a nearby spring to the house, so that they would have running water in the house. Leila’s sister Clara Belle Lasley was born on the farm the next year, in 1897. Leila’s younger brother Walter was born there in 1905.

The Lasleys were “poor as church mice.” They had few toys, and their clothes were often faded and patched. But their mother kept them looking neat and tidy, and encouraged them with homey moral sayings. If the children felt discouraged and unable to do something, their mother would say, “Mr. Can’t just fell off the fence and broke his neck — now you girls get back to work.” If their mother heard something that sounded like gossip, she would say, “That doesn’t concern you, so don’t publish it.” What Leura lacked in schooling, she made up for in common sense. Leura also had pride: she wanted her daughters “to be brought up decent.”

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Noted without comment: White evangelical gun culture

Religion News Service reporter Kathryn Post has an interview with William J. Kole about his new book, “In Guns We Trust,” to report on White evangelical gun culture. In the interview, titled “‘In Guns We Trust’ challenges white evangelicals to rethink their alliance with firearms,” Kole says that he was a part of White evangelical churches, but has been “deconstructing” his Christian faith over his perception that gun culture (and its ally, Christian nationalism) has nothing to do with Christianity:

“…I feel like the historical Jesus is objectively nonviolent. I understand that evangelicals will cherry-pick Scripture to find a few verses to help them feel more comfortable with gun culture, but I find it completely unbiblical. The churches that are embracing gun culture now were almost entirely pacifist up until the late ’60s and early ’70s, when a shift began. Even the Assemblies of God, where I served as a lay missionary for three years in Europe, was officially pacifist in its constitution and bylaws. So, they’ve had to pivot, and it’s a perplexing pivot for me. I just don’t see how weapons have anything to do with a faith tradition that is rooted in nonviolence.”

Kole also says that he’s now “reconstructing” his Christian faith, adding: “I just can’t, in good conscience, continue in the evangelical tradition.”

Noted with too much comment: the price of ignoring economic inequality

A couple of weeks ago on the Patriotic Millionaires site, Emily McCloskey posted a rant — sorry, a well-reasoned essay — laying out why, when Trump has a national approval rating of just 43%, the Democratic party approval rating is just 27%:

“Trump and Republicans have offered a story to voters to explain their financial woes. They’ve blamed immigrants, racial and ethnic minorities, LGBTQIA people, government bureaucrats, and more. And while they are morally, historically, and economically wrong to do this, unfortunately, Democrats have not strongly pushed back on these assertions in a way that resonates and sticks with voters.

“If Democrats want to win back the affections of voters, particularly those of working people, the solution is simple: they need to start telling a story. More specifically, they need to tell the RIGHT story about why working people are struggling so much while a handful of millionaires like us are doing so ridiculously well. That story involves ruthless corporations, C-suite executives, Wall Street financiers, and compliant politicians from the past and present. It’s not as simple and straightforward as ‘Immigrants are stealing your jobs,’ but it’s also not that complicated to explain.

“But they can’t stop at telling a story to explain people’s economic problems. They also have to offer a solution to them. And that solution is so uncomplicated that it’s almost painful for us to write: adopt an economic populist platform for people to rally around. An economic populist platform will involve policies that are simple, straightforward, and effective at reducing inequality….”

These days, it can seem as though the leadership of the Unitarian Universalist Association has basically adopted the Democratic party line. I especially notice this as someone who is proudly registered as an independent voter, someone whose political views (such as they are) could be called something like “Jesus socialism.” Not Christian socialism — most Christians in the world would not recognize me as Christian; and for my part, given what Christianity has become here in the United States, I don’t want to be a US Christian. Yet while there’s no way you can call me a Christian, I’ve been deeply influenced by the teachings and philosophy of Jesus. I think Bernard Loomer got it right when he argued that Jesus should be recognized for a major contribution to Western thought, his conception of the universe which places the interdependent web of all existence at the center of everything. Sometimes Jesus called that interdependent web “the Kingdom of Heaven,” sometimes maybe he refers to it obliquely as “God,” sometimes he didn’t really give it a name. However you name it, once you acknowledge the centrality of the interdependent web of all existence, the first thing you’re going to notice is….

Quiz time: If the interdependent web of all existence is your central reality, as it was for Jesus, what’s the first thing you’re going to notice?

Nope, not environmentalism. The first thing Jesus noticed was human beings living in poverty.

Environmentalism is not a bad guess. It’s true that we’re connected to all living things, and Jesus did indeed speak about how his God would know when even a small insignificant animal like a sparrow dies. So we should be concerned with all living beings, and indeed with the non-living world (air, rocks, and so on) as well.

But mostly, it appears that Jesus focused on poor people. In the fragmentary records we have of Jesus’s teachings, sparrows are mentioned once, but he talks about poor people any number of times. Unfortunately, Jesus’s thinking and philosophy have been somewhat obscured by later religiosity, and even atheists tend to think of Jesus as somehow divine. When you think of Jesus as a human being, as a human animal (Homo sapiens), however, then it makes sense that in his widening circles of concern, he begins with human beings.

Then when Jesus looks at what damages human animals, he acknowledges the damage done by what we now call racism (this is the point of the story of the Good Samaritan, as Dr. King made clear), and sexism, and all the isms we like to talk about these days. But Jesus starts with people who are poor — people who don’t have enough to eat, people who struggle to find the basic necessities of shelter and physical safety. So reducing poverty is going to be the starting point for anyone who wants to follow Jesus’s moral example. (Both Pope Francis and now Pope Leo get this; Pope Leo’s first official “exhortation” calls on Catholics to care for the poor.)

Dr. William J. Barber II, one of the few public US Christians whom I respect, has pointed out that poverty cuts across the lines of race, sexual orientation, and all the other isms. Barber, who is Black, reminds us that while it’s true that a greater percentage of Black people than White people live in poverty in the US, in terms of absolute numbers there are more White people than Black people living in poverty. As a result, Barber says, we can’t fall into the trap of believing the myth that poverty in the US is a Black problem — poverty is a White problem, a Black problem, and a problem for every racial group.

This brings me back to the Unitarian Universalist Association (UUA). On the national level, Unitarian Universalism does not spend much time worrying about poverty. When you look through the denominational magazine, UUWorld, you will find lots of articles about environmentalism, LGBTQIA+ rights, anti-racism initiatives, feminism, and other worthy causes. I’m glad that the UUA promotes anti-racism, feminism, LGBTQIA+ rights, environmentalism, and so on, and I’m proud to be associated with those causes. But I rarely see articles in UUWorld about poverty. Looking beyond the denominational magazine, here’s another example: at the most recent General Assembly, the annual meeting of the UUA, delegates chose between three Congregational Study Action Issues (CSAIs) to serve as a focus of our social justice efforts. Of the three, only one CSAI touched even remotely on poverty — the CSAI on housing justice — and, not surprisingly, it did not win. I’m glad housing justice made it on the ballot, but I’m not surprised that it did not win.

My take on all this is that the UUA has the same problem as the Democratic party. Like the Democratic party, the UUA supports many worthy causes and initiatives. But, like the Democratic party, the UUA does not spend much time or energy on addressing poverty. Yet William J. Barber II points out that by some measures, nearly half of all US residents are poor (where poor is defined as: a household for which one major expense, e.g. a $1000 car repair, would push that household over the economic edge). Nearly half the US is poor. That’s just astonishing in a so-called First World country. That’s an issue that deserves our full attention.

I’m one of the 73% of US residents who don’t give their full approval to the Democratic party. Unfortunately, I’m starting to feel that way about the UUA. I’m seeing poverty everywhere in the US. Even here in Cohasset, Mass., a supposedly wealthy town, I’m seeing people with their economic backs to the wall. They range from a few people who are homeless to quite a few people who are just one unexpected expense away from economic disaster.

So I’ll repeat that advice that Emily McCloskey of Patriotic Millionaires gave to the Democratic party — but I’m going to direct that advice to Unitarian Universalists (UUs) in the US. We US UUs need to “adopt an economic populist platform for people to rally around [with] policies that are simple, straightforward, and effective at reducing inequality.” Or to put it more bluntly: US UUs, we need to stop ignoring poor people.

Noted without comment

On The India Philosophy Blog back on Sept. 28, Amod Lee wrote a post titled “Snakes wrongly grasped: on the psychedelic experiences of [Elon] Musk and [Charles] Manson.” Here’s a brief excerpt (I’ve changed the paragraphing slightly):

“…the transformation from self-centredness to Reality-centredness [following a transcendent experience from e.g. psychedelic drugs] is a fundamentally ethical one: to be far enough along it is to be a saint, one who has had ‘a transcendence of the ego point of view and its replacement by devotion to or centred concentration upon some manifestation of the Real, response to which produces compassion/love towards other human beings or towards all life’ (Interpretation of Religion 301). But I think we need to be very careful about that sort of claim. The point came up in my interview with Osheen Dayal of MAPS Canada, where I pointed to the example of tycoon Elon Musk.

“It is publicly documented that Musk has used psilocybin, LSD and more, and given his known involvement in psychedelic spaces like Burning Man, he’s probably done far more than the documents let on. He has almost certainly had multiple psychedelic experiences of self-transcendence in the face of a larger reality. And yet Musk is about as far as one could imagine from ‘compassion/love towards other human beings or towards all life.’ Rather, he is practically a caricature of a self-absorbed egoist, so confident in his own rightness that he used his brief time in government to destroy thousands of military veterans’ lifelong careers and end the lifelines of thousands of desperately poor people around the world in the name of saving a tiny fraction of money and sometimes nothing at all.

“Musk is to today’s generations what Charles Manson was to the baby boomers: a sobering reminder that psychedelic experiences can leave you a terrible person….”

Network religion for progressives?

Back in 2017, sociologists Brad Christerson and Richard Flory published a book titled “The Rise of Network Christianity: How Independent Leaders AreChanging the Religious Landscape.” In one of their central arguments, they said:

“We  argue that macrolevel social changes since the 1970s, including globalization and the digital revolution, have given competitive advantages to religious groups organized by networks rather than traditionally organized congregations and denominations.”

For Flory and Christerson, Independent Network Charismatic (INC) Christianity is the paradigm for this type of religious organization. INC Christianity is associated with a specific set of beliefs, including spiritual healing, confrontations with “demonic forces,” and social transformation on the far right side of the culture wars.

But why couldn’t other religious groups, with different sets of beliefs, organize themselves through networks? And I suspect that there are such religious groups, including those with sets of beliefs, and with political commitments, with which I’m somewhat more comfortable.

I suspect that it would be possible to identify what we might call Independent Network Westernized Buddhism. From what I’ve seen of Westernized Buddhist practitioners, there does appear to be a loose network that shares some of the attributes of INC Christianity, including “experimentation with controversial supernatural practices, innovative finance and marketing, and a highly participatory, unorthodox, experiential faith that is attractive in today’s pluralistic, unstable religious marketplace.” I’m sure many Westernized Buddhists would argue that they do not engage with “supernatural practices,” but the evolving science around meditation and mindfulness appear to downgrade some of the more extreme claims of that practice — a practice which, to my skeptical mind, is just as supernatural as prayer.

Another decentralized network that might qualify is Progressive Christianity. In a comment on a post I made earlier this week, Gabriele Simion drew my attention to this network, which features progressive Christian luminaries like Diana Butler Bass (thank you, Gabriele!). Progressive Christianity is not exactly a denomination — they don’t appear to ordain or credential clergy, they have minimal staff, they don’t plant new congregations, etc. — so maybe they’re a “network” in the sense that Christerson and Flory use the term?

I’ve begun to think that the Unitarian Universalist association might want to take on more attributes of networked religion. Funding for denominational work continues to plummet, congregations continue to fade away — the denomination is shrinking before our eyes. In spite of the shrinking of the denomination and the congregations, there are lots of individual Unitarian Universalists in the world who still want to connect with other Unitarian Universalists. My own tiny little congregation here in Cohasset has (we think) three regular viewers of our livestream who live far from Cohasset, have never been a part of the in-person congregation, yet who have been watching our livestreamed services most weeks, and donate money as well.

Yet I suspect that most Unitarian Universalist leaders would not be very receptive to the idea of moving away from the traditional organizational structures of denomination and congregation. Back in 2004, evangelical Christian Brian McLaren pointed out that “[religious] conservatives tend to be rigid theologically and promiscuous pragmatically and [religious] liberals tend to be rigid methodologically and a lot more free theologically.”

Well, that’s still going on — the religious conservatives are being “promiscuous pragmatically” and they are dramatically out-competing the religious liberals. There is one group among Unitarian Universalists that might have a hope of competing with the INC Christians: the Church of the Larger Fellowship (CLF). They deliver their religious services primarily online, and have the potential for adopting the best organizational practices of network Christianity. However, they are pretty well locked into the traditional denominational financial structure of the UUA, which hampers their ability to innovate financially.

I suspect a great many religious progressives have mostly given up on religion, and just assume that secularization will do away with religion entirely. But the secularization hypothesis is just that — a hypothesis — and in any case, right now the INC Christians have become extremely adept at winning elections and pushing their agenda of social transformation. I wish religious progressives could find it in themselves to be as innovative as the INC Christians.

UU congregations with other religious affiliations

Back in 2010, Scott Wells came up with a list of congregations that claimed an affiliation with both Unitarian Universalism and some other religious tradition. 15 years later, we’ve seen many small congregations close, so I decided to revisit Scott’s list and see how many of the congregations in his post were still in existence.

Below is my list, grouped together by U.S. state, and in alphabetical order within each state grouping. Except where noted, I’ve given religious affiliations as garnered from congregational websites.

Update, 13 Oct. 2025: Thanks to commenter Gabriele Simion, added several congregations; cleaned up some typos, and fixed names of denominations / religious groups. Update, 23 Oct.: Added Free Congregation of Sauk City, thanks to Gabriele again.

The list

The list has all multi-religious congregations I was able to find that are formally affiliated with the UUA. I determined formal affiliation based on the congregation’s appearance in the UUA’s online directory. (N.B.: I haven’t included affiliations with the new North American Unitarian Association, because they don’t publicize a list of their member congregations.) If you know of multi-religious congregations formally affiliated with the UUA that I’ve missed, please mention them in the comments.

Key to religious affiliations: ABC = American Baptist Churches USA; AEU = American Ethical Union; CUA = Christian Universalist Association; DOC = Christian Church (Disciples of Christ); ProgC = Progressive Christianity; UCC = United Church of Christ; UMC = United Methodist Church; UUA = Unitarian Universalist Association.

District of Columbia

Georgia

Illinois

Massachusetts

New Hampshire

New York

Michigan

Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Flint — ProgC

Pennslyvania

First Universalist Church — Kingsley, PA — CUA, UUA

Rhode Island

First Universalist Church in Providence (their website isn’t working) — Providence, RI — CUA, UUA

Vermont

Wisconsin

Others

There are other congregations that may have had a Unitarian or Universalist affiliation in the past, but no longer do. Trying to research such congregations seems incredibly difficult, so I haven’t included them. But here are three examples from Scott’s 2010 blog post:

The Community Church of Pepperell, in Pepperell, MA, is formally affiliated solely with the UCC. On their website they say that they formed as a merger between the Unitarian church and the Congregationalist church in Pepperell.

First Church in Belfast, Maine, was formerly affiliated with the Unitarians and the Congregationalists, but is now solely affiliated with the UCC. (The history section of their website states that “Congregationalists believed in the complete autonomy of the local church; Unitarians did not”; this is incorrect, as both Congregationalists and Unitarians share the same polity).

The Federated Church of Hyannis is an “independent” (i.e., nondenominational) congregation that claims both Universalist and Congregationalist roots. It would be interesting to learn more specifics of their history; there were other Universalist churches which left the Universalist General Convention and affiliated with the Congregationalists in the first half of the twentieth century.

If you know of other multi-religious congregations with a Unitarian or Universalist history, please mention them in the comments. If possible, provide a link to their website or social media presence.