Big government, or big business? Neither.

This morning, Carol was reading aloud from an opinion piece in which the author took the Occupy Wall Street protesters to task because they didn’t criticize big government enough.

“That means he’s a right-winger,” I said. “Right-wingers all believe that big government is the problem. Left-wingers all believe that big business is the problem.”

Carol laughed, and the conversation moved on to something else.

But it’s true: in the U.S., as soon as a commentator reviles big business, you can bet that person is sympathetic with the Democratic Party, or the Green Party, or some other leftist organization. And as soon as a commentator reviles big government, you can bet that person sympathizes with, or is a member of, the Republican Party. Political differences in the United States have been reduced to that level.

This may be why I feel uneasy with both the left-wingers and the right-wingers in the United States. Even though most people would call me a leftist, I am skeptical of both big government and big business, especially since both devote little attention or energy to helping persons who happen to be poor. As a religious liberal, I want a society that is grounded in strong moral and ethical values. I maintain that, in these days of consumer capitalism, big business has given up all pretense of moral and ethical values, because it looks only to quarterly profits; while big government still clings to at least some pretense of adhering to moral and ethical values. Thus, because I revile big business more than big government, I must be a leftist.

At this point, I feel more comfortable with Occupiers than with the Republicans or the Democrats. The big problem in our society at this moment is neither big business nor big government: the real problem is that too many powerful people have abandoned moral and ethical precepts in favor of naked greed. As long as at least some of the Occupiers are willing to say that in public — as long as they are willing to excoriate naked greed — I consider that they are doing good work in the world. They still haven’t gone far enough in articulating a set of moral and ethical values I can affirm, but they’ve gone farther than anyone else.

Paying the bookstore tax

I went over to Berkeley to meet my friend Mike for lunch today. He told me about his forthcoming academic book. After we ate, we went to Dark Carnival, a bookstore in Oakland. As we were walking from the car to the bookstore, I told Mike that I now proudly claim my geekhood. “Geek pride,” I said. “I’m too f&$%ing old to be bothered hiding it any more.”

Claiming my geekhood means admitting — no, bragging about the fact that browsing in bookstores is one of my favorite activities. After a stressful week, I lower my blood pressure by going to bookstores. I probably read as much online as I read in books these days, but I still love going to bookstores. Bookstores are one of the few places where geeks and intellectuals still congregate in public, places where reading books is still a public and even social activity.

But bookstores are an endangered species, and I always make a point of paying the bookstore tax: you walk into a bookstore, you have to buy at least one book. Since I haven’t been to Dark Carnival in months, I bought four books, which was my way of paying back taxes. Despite the threat of the evil Amazombie, I want to be able to keep going to bookstores for a long, long time.

Um, “MC Yogi”?

Driving home late at night, I was flipping through the radio stations at the low end of the dial, and happened to hear an interview with a yoga teacher who calls himself “MC Yogi,” and who has issued a yogi hip hop album called “Elephant Power” (after Ganesh, natch). Here’s a video “MC Yogi” has released on Youtube:

In a way, it’s kind of fun that someone is using hip hop as a medium to talk about Hindu gods and goddesses. But it also makes me uncomfortable. If you check out some of the live videos of MC Yogi on Youtube, you’ll see a bunch of fit white people in expensive yoga togs shaking their yoga bodies at a retreat center somewhere far from the inner city predominantly black neighborhoods where hip hop was born. That cultural dissonance makes me pause; then throw in comic-book stories about Haruman and Ganesh, and I’m beyond pausing and into discomfort.

Dan McKanan on Tavis Smiley

Dan McKanan, the Ralph Waldo Emerson professor of Unitarian Universalist studies at Harvard, gets interviewed by Tavis Smiley, talking about McKanan’s new book Prophetic Encounters: Religion and the American Radical Tradition. It’s a good eight minute interview.

The book comes out in November from Beacon Press. You can pre-order it from the independent Seminary Coop Bookstore.

Tense standoff at Occupy Oakland

Occupy Oakland was broken up early this morning. Citing allegations of drunkenness, sexual assault, and health violations, the city sent in the police at 4:30 a.m. to take down the camp. Given the timing of the police action, it’s hard to believe that drunkenness and health violations constituted a real part of the reason for eviction, and one sexual assault had been reported several days before. Nevertheless, the police broke up the encampment, and city workers removed all tents and equipment, presumably destroying the garden that Everett and I saw yesterday.

The Oakland Tribune has been liveblogging the events today, and as of 6:30 p.m. (20 minutes ago), about a thousand protesters are in front of city hall at the site of the encampment. Police have demanded the protesters disperse, but the protesters aren’t going:

The protesters, possibly as many as 1,000 people, are all gathered at 14th street and Broadway. Over the last 30 minutes, police have launched wooden dowls and some concussion gernades into the crowds. It was not immediately known how many protesters, if any, were hit. An Oakland Tribune news photographer was hit with something launched by police. At least two people have been arrested since the rally and march kicked off at 4 p.m. Many in the crowd are wearing bandanas, possibly to protect themselve if the police use tear gas. Sirens are sounding, motorcycle police from many agencies are in downtown and there is general chaos as police try and clear out the massive amount of people.

I talked with Everett a couple of hours ago, and we agreed that we were glad we had seen the encampment — more of a village, really — before the city destroyed it; and from what had had seen of the occupiers, we also agreed that we would not be surprised if they returned. But what will happen tonight is anyone’s guess.

Occupy SF, Occupy Oakland

Everett Hoagland and I went down to the Interfaith Clergy Solidarity with Occupy Wall Street San Francisco today. We walked to various banks where two dancers, labeled “Equality” and “Justice,” set up a golden calf, representing the idolatry of money, and ritually covered the idol with a cloth:

A poem started bubbling up for Everett, so he dropped out of the march to do some writing. I kept walking. There were something on the order of 150 to 200 clergy and other faith leaders marching; I counted ten Unitarian Universalist ministers, and half a dozen of our seminarians. TV news coverage of today’s event: Rev. Jeremiah Kalendae of the Unitarian Unviersalist church in San Francisco is quoted in the text portion of Channel 5’s (CBS) coverage. Link to ABC’s live coverage. Radio coverage on KQED (story begins 0:37).

In the afternoon, Everett and I went over to Occupy Oakland, and spent an hour or two there, talking to some people, and just trying to lend our support. I was impressed that the occupiers have a children’s program during the day, a library, classes and committee meetings, and they have started a garden:

The city of Oakland keeps threatening to arrest all the occupiers — nevertheless, with accommodations for children, and a garden, they are planning for the long term. More on the Oakland occupation: From KALW today, “A Day in the Life of Occupy Oakland” (audio with transcript).

Happy 375th birthday

My home congregation, First Parish in Concord, Massachusetts, the Unitarian Universalist church I grew up in, just celebrated its 375th birthday. My dad, who is still a member of that congregation, attended the festivities. In fact, he was one of the honored guests at the birthday banquet last night:— he was one of 16 people who have been members of the congregation for 50 or more years. He and my mother joined First Parish not long after I was born, and there’s a story behind that.

My mother had grown up Unitarian, had been the Superintendent of the Junior Department of the Sunday school of the Wilmington, Delaware, Unitarian church back in the 1950s when they had something like 600 kids in their Sunday school, but when she and my father moved to Concord, she did not go to church. The minister at that time called on her to find out why she wasn’t coming to church, and she told him it was because she had an infant (me) and a toddler (my older sister Jean), and there was no child care during the Sunday services. So the minister recruited a woman named Betsy Connelley, along with some other people, to serve as volunteer staff in a child care service they called “Pooh Corner” (and before the wiseacres in the audience ask, it was named after Winnie the Pooh, and the name had nothing to do with the diapering process). Once there was child care, my parents could attend Sunday services, and 50 years later, my dad is still a member there. Moral of the story: provide great child care in your congregation.

Dad told me that one of the honored guests sitting with him last night was none other than Betsy Connelley. She still remembers me, and asked me dad to say hi. One of the best things about congregations is the sense of continuity they can provide; they are communities in which human connections can be held for generations.

So here’s to First Parish in Concord on its 375th birthday!

The Book of Revelation

“I have stolen more quotes and thoughts and purely elegant little starbursts of writing from the Book of Revelation than anything else in the English language. I love the wild power of the language and the purity of the madness that governs it and makes it music.”

Hunter S. Thompson, author of Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail ’72 and other books, in his Generation of Swine (New York: Summit Books, 1988), p. 9; quoted in William McKeen, Outlaw Journalist: The Life and Times of Hunter S. Thompson (New York: Norton, 2008), pp. 311-312.

Politics and Mr. Crankypants

Transciber’s note: This afternoon, Dan conducted an interview with Mr. Crankypants, his evil alter ego, and political commentator for this blog. A complete transcript of the recording of the interview follows.

Dan: Mr. Crankypants, you’ve been wandering around the apartment all day muttering strange predictions about the presidential race. I’m wondering if you could sum up your political predictions for our readers.

Mr. C.: We’re screwed.

Dan: That’s it? That’s all you have to say? Continue reading “Politics and Mr. Crankypants”

“The coming death tsunami”

The Ministry Matters blog has a good post on how a projected increase in U.S. death rates could affect congregations. Here’s a graph of the projected rise in death rates:

The post is an excerpt from the book Focus: The Real Challenges that Face the United Methodist Church by Lovett Weems. While the United Methodists have been declining faster and for a longer period than have Unitarian Universalists, the predicted rise in U.S. death rates could have a similar effect on both congregations: older members, who are the biggest givers, will be dying off more quickly than we can replace them by younger people. And this will have serious financial implications:

Countless churches have fewer worshipers today than they did ten or twenty years ago. Most of them, however, have budgets as large as or larger than they did when they had more constituents, even after adjusting for inflation. Such a congregation manages in the early years of decline by the greater giving of their fewer participants. As things get tighter, the lowering of expenditures combined with greater per capita giving maintains financial stability.

A church then gets to a point at which attendance has declined so much that making the budget each year becomes the preoccupation of the church and its leadership. Each year they search for that one new source of income or cut in spending so they can manage to make their plan. They also realize that even these yearly heroic efforts will not be enough going forward as they note the high percentage of their annual giving that now comes from those over age 70.

Weems advocates making budget cuts now to increase financial viability for the future; you can read the whole post here. From my point of view, the most important point is to get away from putting the budget at the center of a congregation’s reason for existence: if a congregation is really focused on “making the budget,” you might just as well close the doors now, and save everyone the heartache of decline; for it will be, not the imperceptible decline that’s going on right now in many congregations, but a heartstopping avalanche of decline.