Top ten best things about liberal religion in 2011, pt. 5

The new year is getting close, and to finish this top ten list before the end of the old year, I’m going to have to

6. I’m not sure this has really been happening, but it seems to me there has been decreasing tolerance within Unitarian Universalism for anti-Christian bias. You know what I mean by anti-Christian bias: the willingness to explore any major world’s religion except Christianity; a fear of acknowledging that we once came out of Christianity; a willful blindness towards our Christian past and the associated refusal to use certain words (“God,” “worship,” “Jesus,” etc.) that remind of us whence we came.

We Unitarian Universalists have good reason to be anti-Christian: from our beginnings we got called heretics by other Christians, and a hundred years ago we got kicked out of various Christian clubs like the National Council of Churches, and in the middle of the twentieth century the Neo-Orthodox dismissed us. Even today, a scholar like Gary Dorrien can’t quite keep the scorn out of his authorial voice when he writes about nineteenth century Unitarians in his histories. So we got in the habit of thinking: Hey, if the Christians don’t want us in their club, why should we want anything to do with Christianity?

Yet though we have grown into something that is no longer a Christian denomination but something else (we’re not quite sure what), we still carry grew out of the fertile ground of the Radical Reformation, and of the English free church movement, and of American freethinking Christians. The roots of our commitment to social justice, the roots of our use of reason in religion, the roots of our belief that love is the most powerful force in the universe, all go back to that fertile ground.

Thus I have been pleased to see what I believe is a growing respect both for our Christian past, and for those among us who still claim the name “Christian.” Maybe we have gotten so far from Christianity, maybe we are so obviously no longer a Christian sect, that we can relax a little bit.

5. We have definitely made some real progress in preventing clergy sexual misconduct this year. Most of this progress has been made by the UU Ministers Association (UUMA), which is remarkable in of itself: ministers have generally been woefully bad at policing themselves when it comes to sexual misconduct. But the UUMA has begun to make some real progress.

In one example of progress, Rev. Deborah Pope-Lance was invited to give this year’s Berry Street Lecture, she spoke on clergy sexual misconduct, and hundreds of ministers sat and listened to her in rapt silence. Mind you, Deborah has been speaking out for years on the evils of clergy sexual misconduct, but it has too often seemed as though other ministers were not particularly willing to listen to her — what was remarkable was seeing so many ministers watching with apparent approval and interest.

In another example of progress, the members of the UUMA voted in June to approve a new amendment to the professional guidelines — but there was a sense that even the new amendment wasn’t strong enough, and so a committee has already drafted a new, stricter, amendment. One could be cynical and say that by telling clergy that they can’t have sexual contact with anyone they serve in their ministries, the UUMA is merely catching up with what is already the law in 27 states in the U.S. But I’m not cynical, because it would be very easy to ignore those state laws; and besides, my impressions is that the new amendment will be even stricter than those state laws.

Obviously, there is still lots of work to be done. I would love it if the Unitarian Universalist Association didn’t take quite such mushy stands on clergy sexual misconduct. I would love it if some of the Unitarian Universalists who work on legislative action would start actively pushing for laws against clergy having sex with congregants in the 23 states without such laws. But after years of very little progress in this area, I’ll take what I can get.

Rosy-fingered dawn
appeared in the east
to find neither bird
nor beast yet awake.
Last night’s candle still
burned, small and steady,
in the window, there
to guide something home.
I yawned, listened
to the holiday
stillness, felt the cold,
put on the teapot.
I’m pessimistic:
I don’t believe that
peace on earth, good will,
or even much love
will ever come to
this generation,
nor to their children;
just wars and hatred.
But still it happens:
Rosy-fingered dawn
comes again, starts us
on another day.

Dry

It’s winter; it’s supposed to be the rainy season; but it’s so dry that according to today’s San Francisco Chronicle, five Bay area counties have instituted outdoor burning. Not only have we had about half our normal rainfall so far this season, but the days have been sunny and the air has been drier than usual.

The soil in our garden is nearly as dry as it is in the summer time. When I water the broccoli and greens we have growing, the water quickly sinks out of sight. We try to water our garden with the clean run-off water from the shower, but the soil was so dry last week that the bucket of water from the shower was not enough for the broccoli; I had to fill up the bucket twice more from the hose.

Not working on Christmas? C’mon

I was talking with a friend of mine who’s a music director at a mainline Protestant church (no, not at a Unitarian Universalist congregation). “So do you have to work Christmas day?” I asked.

“Nope,” he said. “They’re not having services on Christmas day.”

“You’re kidding,” I said.

He was not kidding. “We’re not have services on January first either,” he said.

“I don’t understand churches that don’t have services when Christmas falls on a Sunday,” I said. “It’s the sabbath day, of course you have services.”

He nodded tolerantly at my ranting.

“You know,” I continued, “shutting down a church on Christmas day usually has nothing to do with theology, or with the liturgical calendar. It mostly has to do with the senior pastor’s convenience.”

He just grinned. “Maybe, but I’m just as glad,” he said. “It means I get to have two Sundays off in a row.”

“There is that,” I said. Though for my part, I like working when Christmas falls on a Sunday — the people who come to services really want to be there, and it’s always fun. (And yes, we are having services in Palo Alto at 9:30 and 11:00 a.m. on Christmas day, with the Forum at 9:00 and brunch at 10:30. Stop by if you’re in the area.)

Top ten best things about liberal religion in 2011, pt. 4

7. This year, for the first time, I feel as though Unitarian Universalism has made some real progress towards figuring out how to be a religion that’s not totally dominated by white folks. (Notice how I’ve qualified that statement: the progress we’re making is towards figuring out how to be less white.)

What progress have we made?

First of all, we’ve begun talking as though racism within Unitarian Universalism means more than just the white folks dominating the few black folks. After a couple of years of having a president of the denomination who is Latino, we’ve finally figured out that there are Unitarian Universalist Latinos, too. We have gotten to a point where we finally seem to understand that our efforts at eradicating racism have to go beyond the binary white/black racial divide.

Secondly, our collective anxiety seems to have gone down somewhat. It used to be that as soon as you started talking about race within a group of Unitarian Universalists, everyone would get so anxious that everyone would freeze up, and the conversation would either end or devolve into ideology and blame games. But this year, I’ve been at several public meeting where white Unitarian Universalists could talk openly about race and racism. (I credit Rev. Mark Morrison-Reed for much of this progress: he has an amazing pastoral ability to get people to talk openly and genuinely about race and racism without freezing up or getting strident.)

Those two things may not seem like much, but they represent some progress. And that’s both amazing, and worth celebrating.

It’s beginning to look a lot like…

Having grown up a New England Yankee in the Puritan heartland, there’s always a part of me that feels Christmas to be an abomination. It was my Puritan ancestors who made Christmas illegal for a short time in the Massachusetts Bay Colony. And the Puritan strain in me thinks there should be only one holy day, and that’s the sabbath, and adding any other holy day is idolatry or worse.

But I’m also the product of several generations of New England Unitarians. Unitarian Louisa May Alcott created the ideal for a liberal religious Christmas in her book Little Women: a home-based family celebration devoted to selfless giving, guilt, and helping others. Unitarian Edmund Hamilton Sears created the ideal for a liberal religious Christmas carol in “It Came Upon a Midnight Clear”: a song where the Christmas story is really a story about peace, social justice, and a twinge of guilt upon feeling that you’re not doing enough to make the world a better place.

So I both hate Christmas, and like Christmas. It’s no wonder that when Christmas Day rolls around, I’m ready to ignore the holiday and go out for Chinese food.

Occupella

Carol sent me a link to the Web site for Occupella, a Bay area a capella singing group. Occupella describes themselves as follows:

Occupella organizes informal public singing at Bay Area occupation sites, marches and at BART stations. We sing to promote peace, justice, and an end to corporate domination, especially in support of the Occupy movement. Music has the power to build spirit, foster a sense of unity, convey messages and emotions, spread information, and bring joy to participants and audience alike.

There’s a link to their Facebook page, where various people have posted tons of lyrics, videos of songs, etc.

If there’s so much singing going on, why is it that at every protest march we have to endure the interminable protest chants in 2/4 time? You know those stupid protest chants: Hey ho, We won’t go, etc. — which repeat over and over and over again ad nauseum, and which make me want to chant in response:

Hey ho, let’s not chant
Those tired old political rants.
And hey ho, the drummers suck,
I mean to say, WTF?
And hey ho, let’s sing instead,
These protest chants are tired and dead.

Music tends to deflate and subvert boring ideological lyrics, so even the most didactic protest song is always better than protest chants. Therefore Occupella gets my full support (for what little my support is worth):

More joy,
Less ranting,
Sing real loud
And drown out chanting!

Shameless promotion

If you’re looking for the perfect last minute-Christmas gift, there’s this great book by Carol Steinfeld called Liquid Gold: The Lore and Logic of Using Urine To Grow Plants. Perfect for bathroom reading, the first half of the book has all kinds of bizarre and funny tidbits about how people have used urine over the centuries — as well as tidbits about the current state of peeing, including urinal video games. The second half of the book gives you serious information about how you can make your garden greener using urine.

So this is the perfect gift for the twelve-year-old boy on your gift list who likes pee jokes (and every adult American male is actually a twelve-year-old boy who likes pee jokes). It is also the perfect gift for the gardener on your list. And if you order by Wednesday, Carol can ship it to you via priority mail so you get it in time for Christmas (for an extra $4 in postage over the special Internet price of $12).

To get it in time for Christmas, call the phone number on Carol’s Web site. If you want it signed, she can sign it for you. And of course I think this is a great book, my sweetheart wrote it.

Top ten best things about liberal religion in 2011, pt. 3

8. You know how people keep saying that young adults don’t want to go to church any more? You know those surveys that say young adults are drifting away from religion? Maybe that’s true considered across the vast mass of population of the United States, but I’m seeing something else going on. In spite of what the Baby Boomers are saying, I’m seeing twenty-somethings coming to our Unitarian Universalist church and liking it.

However, the twenty-somethings are doing church a little differently than the Baby Boomers and older generations. They don’t necessarily come every single week (though quite a few do). They like to use social media to relate to church, and to each other. Since many of them grew up without much or any religion, they don’t all have the same desperate angst about religion that many older Unitarian Universalists do. They seem a lot more relaxed about religion than older folks.

I admit I’m biased: I really like the current twenty-something generation. Taken as a whole, they’re pleasant, quite interested in exploring religion and spirituality, and very committed to social justice work. I hope they come into our churches and droves and take over.