Category: Practical religion

Learning experience

At this morning’s meeting of the South Shore UU ministers, one of the topics we discussed was elder abuse. It turns out that in Massachusetts are not mandated by law to report elder abuse, though we are mandated reporters of child abuse. We do have the option of reporting elder abuse, though people who are not mandated to report elder abuse must use a different reporting method from mandated reporters. After the meeting, I tried to find out what exactly constitutes elder abuse. I was hoping for some kind of online training, similar to the excellent online training for reporting child abuse, but I wasn’t able to find a thing. I found a couple of generalized lists on the state’s website, but nothing that explained in detail.

All in all, this was a real learning experience. Mostly what I learned is that elder abuse is not taken as seriously as child abuse.

Eyes wide open

Conventional American Christianity tells that when we pray in groups, we are supposed to bow our heads with our eyes squeezed shut. I understand why people insist on bowing their heads: the conventional Christian God is supposed to require this gesture of obedience and submission. But why must our eyes be shut tight? I understand why we’re not supposed to plug our ears: if we did, then we couldn’t hear the words of the person who is offering the prayer. But why does public prayer require lack of vision?

Whenever I see people squeezing their eyes tight shut during prayer — because I don’t close my eyes during public prayers — I’m reminded of what Jesus says in the Christian scriptures: Do not be like the hypocrites who stand and pray on the street corners, making sure their act of piety is seen by others. Do not be like them. Do not bow your head in prayer, for if you do the only reward you will receive is the knowledge that you conformed to the conventions. Do not close your eyes: the eyes are the lamp of the self: open your eyes and your ears and your whole being and let your body be filled with light. Don’t stop when the person saying the words of prayer stops: pray without ceasing, that’s what the Christian scriptures actually say, pray without ceasing, pray without ceasing.

In conventional American Christianity, once the prayer stops — that is, once the person saying the prayer stops saying words — people open their eyes, and the praying stops. I, heretic that I am, didn’t listen to the words of the prayer and didn’t close my eyes. In the eyes of the conventional Christians I didn’t pray, and if that’s all there is to prayer, I have no interest in praying.

“AI” generated writing

Neil Clarke, editor of a respected science fiction magazine, reports on his blog that numbers of spammy short fiction submissions are way up for his publication. He says that spammy submissions first started increasing during the pandemic, and “were almost entirely cases of  plagiarism, first by replacing the author’s name and then later by use of programs designed to ‘make it your own.'”

Helpfully, he gives an example of what you get with one of the programs to “make it your own.” First he gives a paragraph from the spam submission, which sounds a little…odd. Then he provides the paragraph from the original short story on which the spam submission was based. However, Clarke says: “These cases were often easy to spot and infrequent enough that they were only a minor nuisance.”

Then in January and February, spammy submissions have skyrocketed. Clarke says: “Towards the end of 2022, there was another spike in plagiarism and then ‘AI’ chatbots started gaining some attention, putting a new tool in their arsenal…. It quickly got out of hand.” It’s gotten so bad that now 38% of his short fiction submissions are spammy, either “AI” generated,* or generated with one of those programs to “make it your own.”

38%. Wow.

Clarke concludes: “”It’s not just going to go away on its own and I don’t have a solution. … If [editors] can’t find a way to address this situation, things will begin to break….”

This trend is sure to come to a sermon near you. As commenters on the post point out, writers are already using chatbots to deal with the “blank page struggle,” just trying to get words on the paper. (To which Neil Clarke responds that his magazine has a policy that writers should not use AI at any stage in the process of writing a story for submission.) No doubt, some minister or lay preacher who is under stress and time pressure will do (or has done) the same thing — used ChatGPT or some other bot to generate an initial idea, then cleaned it up and made it their own.

And then “AI” generated writing tools will improve, so that soon some preachers will use “AI” generated sermons. For UU ministers, it may take longer. There are so few of us, and it may take a while for the “AI” tools to catch on to Unitarian Universalism. But I fully expect to hear within the next decade that some UU minister has gotten fired for passing off an “AI” generated sermon as their own.

My opinion? If you’re stressed out or desperate and don’t have time to write a fresh sermon, here’s what you do. You re-use an old sermon, and tell the congregation that you’re doing it, and why — I’ve done this once or twice, ministers I have high regard for have done this, and it’s OK, and people understand when you’re stressed and desperate. Or, if you don’t have a big reservoir of old sermons that you wrote, find someone else’s sermon online, get their permission to use it, and again, tell the congregation that you’re doing it, and why. Over the years, I’ve had a few lay preachers ask to use one of my sermons (the same is true of every minister I know who puts their sermons online), and it’s OK, and people understand what’s it like when you’re stressed and desperate and just don’t have time to finish writing your own sermon.

But using “AI” to write your sermons? Nope. No way. Using “AI” at any stage of writing a sermon is not OK. Not even to overcome the “blank page struggle.” Not even if you acknowledge that you’ve done it. It’s spiritually dishonest, and it disrespects the congregation.

* Note: I’m putting the abbreviation “AI” in quotes because “artificial intelligence” is considered by many to be a misnomer — “machine learning” is a more accurate term.

The failures of mandated reporting

In October of last year, ProPublica and NBC News investigated whether mandated reporter laws work. Their conclusion: in some states, mandated reporter laws have not led to increased safety for children. In fact, they allege that in Pennsylvania, when additional people were mandated to report child abuse, this increased increased false reporting, which in turn overwhelmed already strained child protective services.

I can tell you from my own experience that badly written laws can cause an increase in mandated reports that are not worth pursuing. In 2014, California updated its mandated reporting law, adding many specifics to a list of reportable offenses. One specific that was added: in an effort to reduce children being forced to perform oral sex on an abuser, mandated reporters were required to report if a foreign object were inserted into a child’s mouth. However, this meant that if two teenagers under age 18 were seen French kissing, they had to be reported. I knew a woman who worked with at-risk youth, and she was making weekly calls to Child Protective services to report that two of the teens in her program had been French kissing. Even though the people who fielded the calls would simply file her reports, it still used up their valuable time. For my own part, after 2014 I had to tell teens in my congregation’s youth programs that they could never let me see them kissing, because I would have to report them to the state.

More insidious is the problem that because of vague laws, mandated reporters often don’t know exactly what to report. I’m one of those mandated reporters. I’ve taken trainings and read online materials. But too often there are no clearly defined criteria. None of the trainings ever tells you — If you see this then you must report. The training materials always say — If you think you’ve seen signs of abuse that kind of look like this, then you must report. This is why I like the last five videos on Virtual Lab School’s “Child Abuse Prevention, Identification, and Reporting” webpage — the teachers who talk on the videos on that page make it clear that they are not always sure what constitutes abuse. Yet they still have to report. They work hard to document a pattern of behavior, and they share that documentation with state workers. But sometimes they worry that the pattern of behaviors they observed might be, for example, the result of poverty instead of neglect — e.g., not having a hot meal once a day might be neglect, or it could be the family doesn’t have the money to give anyone a hot meal. And the ProPublica / NBC News report also makes it clear that African American children are overrepresented in reports from mandated reporters. Without well-defined criteria on what constitutes abuse, of course we’re going to see systemic prejudices coming into play.

Furthermore, I don’t advocate making everyone a mandated report, which some U.S. states have done. In my view, mandated reporters should be professionals who already have significant training in some kind of human services (health care, education, social work, emergency response, ministry, etc.). In addition, as a part of their job mandated reporters should receive regular training on abuse recognition and reporting, as part of their paid duties. I would also say that any professional working in a setting where it is possible to abuse children (including schools, churches, health care settings, etc.) needs to be able to safely report abuse that is perpetrated by other professionals, especially when that other professional is your supervisor or some other senior colleague.

So it’s clear to me that mandated reporting laws need reform. Legislators have think through the real-world effects of mandated reporting laws, and revise laws that are not producing the intended effects. Legislators also have to bite the bullet and pony up the money to create really good training on abuse recognition. A mandated reporting law that requires people to report abuse, but then doesn’t adequately tell people what abuse must be reported, is an empty law. Legislators need to be held accountable when they have not done their job.

Yet even with all the problems in existing mandated reporting laws, I still think clergy should be mandated reporters. Congregations of all types remain major targets for sexual predators (one insurance company representative told me that his nationwide company receives on average one new claim per week from religious congregations where child sexual abuse happened). If clergy are legally mandated reporters, this sends a message to sexual predators that congregations are at least doing an absolute bare minimum to watch for child sexual abuse.

Clergy as mandated reporters

In the state of New York, clergy are still not mandated reporters. That is, clergy are not mandated by law to report the physical, emotional, or sexual abuse of minors, if they become aware of such abuse. A bill currently being considered by the New York state legislature would change that state of affairs, making clergy mandated reporters. I don’t want to tell New Yorkers what to do. It’s their state, they need to figure it out themselves.

But I feel I’m lucky I’m in Massachusetts. In this state, as a clergyperson I am a mandated reporter. As a mandated reporter, I cannot be pressured by my congregation or by my denomination to suppress evidence of child abuse. As a mandated reporter, the law places great responsibility on me but it also exempts me from liability if I report in good faith but the state later finds no evidence of abuse. And because of the added responsibility of being a mandated reporter, I feel compelled to educate myself about child abuse and neglect.

Being a mandated reporter is a serious responsibility. Now that I’m back in Massachusetts, I’m using this state’s material to learn my responsibilities all over again. I read the Mass. Department of Children and Families webpage on “Warning Signs of Child Abuse and Neglect.” I also read “Child Abuse and Neglect Reporting: A Guide for Mandated Reporters.” Next, I will complete the 51A Online Mandated Reporter Training offered by Middlesex Children’s Advocacy Center. I’m taking my responsibility seriously.

Regarding the responsibility involved in being a mandated reporter, I found several of the videos on the Virtual Lab School’s “Child Abuse Prevention, Identification, and Reporting” webpage to be very helpful. There are five videos of preschool teachers talking about how they dealt with making reports as a mandated reporter, and recognizing signs of problems. These videos do not have happy storybook endings; the videos make it clear that when you make a report, it is not going to be easy, there may be real-world consequences, and sometimes you will never know what happened because of your report.

I’ve never had to report abuse myself. Once I was talking with another minister about a difficult situation we both knew about from doing denominational youth ministry together. This other minister said something about the situation, to which I replied: “You realize that as a mandated reporter you have to report that.” The other minister immediately ended the call with me and immediately called the state. That’s as close as I’ve come to making a report.

As I said, I don’t want to tell New Yorkers what to do about their laws. But honestly, I’m glad I’m in Massachusetts where clergy are mandated reporters. It makes things clear-cut for me. I know what my responsibilities are, I know what training I need to seek out, and so does my congregation and my denomination.

Additional resource: When I was in California, I came across the services of MinistrySafe, a law firm that specializes in child abuse prevention for congregations. One of the services they offer is abuse recognition training, at $10 per person. This is worth mentioning because their abuse training helps California congregations comply with the new law AB506.

Stressed out

When a minister is removed from fellowship, or resigns from fellowship with the Unitarian Universalist Association, the Ministerial Fellowship Committee sends out email announcing the minister’s name, and the reason for removal from fellowship, or the reason for resignation. These emails go out to all other ministers, and also, I believe, to key congregational lay leaders such as Board presidents.

Starting last year, the Ministerial Fellowship Committee finally began maintaining a list of these ministers online at this web page: “UUA Clergy Removed or Resigned from Fellowship with Completed or Pending Misconduct Investigations.” This list goes back to the 1960s, although there is a specific warning that the list “is in no way a complete historic record.” I would assume it is fairly complete for about the last twenty years.

So I just received another email notice of a minister removed from fellowship. That makes four ministers out of fellowship since September. This seemed like a high number to me. But is it?

According to the online list, in the period from 2000 to 2020, twenty ministers either resigned from fellowship rather than face misconduct charges, or were removed from fellowship on misconduct charges, averaging one per year. (The list has not been updated for 2022.) Thus four ministers out of fellowship in six months is a high number compared to the historical average. However, four ministers went out of fellowship in 2019, the highest number in any one year. So having a high number of ministers out of fellowship cannot be blamed solely on the COVID pandemic.

Nevertheless, four ministers out of fellowship within six month is still a high number. I believe the pandemic has contributed to this historically high number. Which makes sense. We know that people in other helping professions are feeling burned out by the pandemic, so we should expect ministers and key volunteers to be feeling burned-out and tender. We also know that emotions are high in all workplaces, and “rage quitting” is a thing, another symptom of workplaces stress. I’m thinking the common thread running through all this is pretty obvious: both lay people and ministers are feeling stressed out after almost three years of pandemic.

What can we do to address all this stress?

Well, many ministers would probably benefit from talking with a mental health professional, to get an outside opinion about their emotional well-being (that is, if you can find a mental health professional to talk with, since there is a shortage of such people). I’ll be talking with a therapist myself in a week or so.

Congregational leaders, for their part, would probably benefit from talking with denominational officials or congregational consultants. Again, the point would be to get an outside perspective: How stressed out is the congregation? And where there is a lot of stress, then start thinking about how to reduce that stress.

To help reduce stress, I would also heed the advice of Scott Thumma, director of the Hartford Institute for Religion Research at Hartford International University, from a recent Religion New Service article. “Everything has to be hyper-intentional now,” Thumma said. “The focus should be, how can we become a better church — rather than, how do we re-create what we used to have?” In other words, let’s shift expectations away from what we used to do, and instead set expectations about what we can realistically do now. That should lower stress on lay people and ministers alike.

“Healthy Congregations”

Pam, the minister at the Unitarian Universalist congregation just down the street in Scituate, told me about “Healthy Congregations,” a nonprofit that carries on the work of Rabbi Edwin Friedman and Peter Steinke. Friedman applied Murray Bowen’s family systems theory to congregational life, which is outlined in his book Generation to Generation. Beginning in the 1990s, Steinke developed workshops to train workshop facilitators in systems theory.

I read Friedman’s book years ago. Family systems theory really does provide good insight into how congregations work. (I feel it also provides insight into how any face-to-face membership organization works.) Somehow I’m going to have to figure out how to fit one of their online workshops into my schedule….

An expert look back at the pandemic

STAT News takes a look at what most surprised experts about the COVID pandemic. STAT senior writer Helen Branswell’s article is well worth reading.

The point that I found most interesting: “How long the damn thing has lasted.” Branswell reports:

“[In the past,] the pandemics that have been recorded have mainly been caused by flu. And in the recorded flu pandemics, there was generally a wave or two — sometimes, in some places three — and then humans and the new virus reached a detente. The new flu virus settled into causing seasonal flu activity, not pandemic flu.

“A lot of people STAT spoke to thought that was the way this pandemic would play out. They didn’t anticipate that we’d be where we are now, with waves of transmission still occurring at various points in the year, rather than during the winter, as is the way of most respiratory pathogens.

“‘I never would have imagined that three years later we would still be dealing with this in the way that it’s ever-present in our conversations and in our society,’ said Messonnier, the former CDC official….”

As a layperson, I never dreamed that after three years, we’d still be dealing with high levels of virus transmission, and serious health consequences. I’m glad to know that the experts are equally flummoxed.

And the second most interesting point, from my point of view: “The ripple effect.” Branswell summarizes what one expert said:

“…Hatchett, for all his studying of previous pandemics, wasn’t anticipating the geopolitical impacts of this one. He likens it to a meteor strike. [emphasis added]

“In addition to the crushing waves of illness, the lives lost, the swamping of hospitals, and the disruption to routine health care, he points to the economic disruption of the past couple of years, the onset of inflation, the spike in energy prices, and the upheaval in supply chains as all being of a piece….”

Another ripple effect not mentioned in the article, but which I see every day: the COVID pandemic has changed the shape of religion in the U.S. permanently. The pandemic accelerated the ongoing trend of disaffiliation from religious organizations. The pandemic is finishing off a fair number of congregations already weakened by the Great Recession in 2008. The pandemic deepened the divide between the conservative Christians who were vaccine deniers, and everyone else who was religious (and who had to explain that yes they were religious, but they were vaccinated). The pandemic advanced livestreaming acceptance incredibly rapidly. The pandemic is causing quite a few religious professionals to seek other lines of work….

The list goes on. Yes, it was like a meteor strike. Organized religion in the U.S. will never be the same.

Marketing for congregations

When I arrived at First Parish in Cohasset in August, I started watching for newcomers. Of course, I didn’t know most of the people, but each Sunday I would ask the long-time members if there were any newcomers.

We had no newcomers in August. One in September. None in October. Then two so far in November.

As a former salesperson, when I see so few newcomers I immediately assume that there’s no marketing going on. That’s what marketing does — it reaches people who are new to your business (and a small nonprofit organization like a congregation is a business). The primary form of marketing for most Unitarian Universalist congregations is a website. So I decided to take a look at the First Parish website. I found that since the COVID pandemic had started, there had been very little new material added to the website (no surprise there, people were busy doing other things). The administrator and I started adding content to the website at least weekly, beginning in October. Sure enough, we got a couple of newcomers stopping by in November.

I’d like to believe the tiny uptick in newcomers is a result of our markting efforts. Of course I know this is the worst kind of evidence — it’s all anecdotal, there’s no way of proving a causal relationship, etc., etc. I know that I could simply be deluded by confirmation bias here — I see something that confirms what I already believe, and continue to believe what I believe.

But I still think marketing works. If your website is your only form of marketing, then paying attention to your website should yield dividends.

Borrowing vs. appropriation

In an interview with Religion News Service, author Liz Bucar talks about the difference between religious (mis)appropriation, and religious borrowing:

“Religious borrowing has always existed. It’s certainly a big part of the way religion in America is experienced and consumed, especially if you think about the spiritual but not religious or the nones. Some forms of cross-tradition borrowing are positive. For me, borrowing is the bigger category and appropriation is the problematic form. And the reason it’s problematic, for me, is when the borrowing happens in conditions of injustice, oppression and power inequities. That’s what generates harm.”

In fact, we might say that syncretic religions (and most religions have at least some syncretic elements in them) depend on religious borrowing.

But it’s religious misappropriation that we have to be concerned with. And I believe Unitarian Universalists are particularly prone to religious misappropriation. Here’s Liz Bucar again:

“I think that progressive secularists, a community which the academy is full of and which I’d probably identify with, haven’t always been understanding of religious communities or thought of them as a source for what human flourishing can look like. They often think about religious communities as problems to be solved, or as people ruled by hierarchical institutions or arcane rules and doctrines. This position sets them up for maybe not being as respectful or deferential to religious claims as they could be.”

Honestly, this sounds like Unitarian Universalists. We look a lot like progressive secularists. Many of us treat religion as a problem to be solved, rather than a source of human flourishing. We set ourselves up to be less than respectful to other religions — even perhaps less than respectful to our own religion.