Bible – Yet Another Unitarian Universalist

Songs and signs — Isaiah 13:15-16 and Genesis 19:6-8

“If you’re an exvangelical who has been scrolling through TikTok lately, you may have stumbled across a duo singing what sounds suspiciously like evangelical worship music. Until you hear the lyrics. ‘Anyone who is captured will be cut down and run through with a sword,’ they sing in harmony, guitar strums in sync. ‘Their little children will be dashed to death before their eyes.'” [They’re quoting Isaiah 13:15-16 from the Bible.]

I recommend watching the TikTok video. It’s quite well done. And it makes you think.

It reminds me of some Unitarian Universalist teens I knew twenty years ago, long before the days of TikTok. Their eyes had been caught by the fans at sports events who held up signs reading “John 3:16.” This Bible verse is the favorite of traditional Christians: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” It is supposed to entice nonbelievers into becoming Christians.

In response, these Unitarian Universalist teens decided that they were going to make a sign that read “Genesis 19:6-8” and hold it up during a Red Sox game. That’s the Bible passage where a mob besieges Lot’s house, because he’s hiding some angels from God. The mob demands that Lot throw the angels out to them, so they can lynch them. But instead Lots offers to throw his virgin daughters out to the mob to be raped by them. He’d rather sacrifice his daughters than betray the angels.

The Bible is a complex book. It contains some good ethical writing, it has some profound mystical moments, but it also contains passages that are difficult to interpret, and it has icky bits as well. You can’t just pick out the dozen verses you especially enjoy, and ignore the difficult parts and the icky bits.

Gender-balanced kids’ book of Bible stories

An interesting new children’s book of Bible stories is being funded on Kickstarter. The goal: a kid’s book that’s gender-balanced. Why? Because for the majority of children’s Bible story books, “female characters are vastly underrepresented in both the stories and the illustrations.” The illustrations are also going to show racially diverse characters. Admirable, and I look forward to seeing the book — which sadly won’t be published till 2023.

The old Unitarian Universalist “Timeless Themes” stories, while not completely gender-balanced, had pretty good representation of women. It would be fun to update that with some multi-racial illustrations. And wouldn’t it be nice if we had a UU children’s book of Bible stories that recognizes that God is non-binary gender? Uh huh, that’s what it says in Genesis 1:27: “So God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.” Ignore the pronouns (nobody remembers ask ask God what their pronouns are), and it’s pretty clear that all genders are created in God’s image.

Sacred myths of Abrahamic religions, parts 1-3

Three video lecturettes on the shared myths of Abrahamic religions. I’ll include links to all three videos below the fold, followed by texts of the talks.

Some of the books referenced in this video series:
“Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a World of Strangers,” Kwame Anthony Apiah (W. W. Norton, 2006)
“J.B.: A Play in Verse,” Archibald MacLeish (Houghton Mifflin, 1958)
The children’s story books are:
“Bible Stories of Jewish Children: Joshua to Queen Esther,” Ruth Samuels (Ktav Publishing, 1973)
“The Pilgrim Book of Bible Stories,” Mark Water (Pilgrim Press, 2003) “Goodnight Stories from the Quran,” Saniyasnain Khan (Goodword Books, 2005)

Exodus: The Card Game

A few months ago, I wrote about prototyping “Exodus: The Card Game,” a game based on the wanderings of the Israelites. After lots of play with both kids and adults (and lots of changes to the rules), prototyping is finally done. I made 6 decks using the online printer Board Games Maker; the printing quality is excellent, and here’s what a deck looks like:

One of our curriculum goals in our Sunday school is to play more games. “Exodus: The Card Game” is designed to supplement an upper elementary or middle school unit on the Hebrew Bible. Once you learn the rules, play takes about 15-20 minutes, so it fits nicely into a typical Sunday school class time. And the rules are fairly simple and straightforward; I’m including them below the fold so you can get an idea of the game.

The only problem with this game is the price. I bought 6 decks, and the price including shipping and handling came out to just under $25 per deck — pricey for a card game. (If I printed 1000 decks the price would drop to about $6 per deck, but what would I do with 1,000 copies of this game?)

If you’d like to buy a copy of the game, email me and I can get you a single copy for about $27. (There’s a price break at 6 copies, which knocks approximately $2 off the price; next price break is at 30 copies.) If you’re going to the Pot of Gold religious education conference in Sacramento on Sept. 29, I’ll have a few extra copies of the game to sell.

Continue reading “Exodus: The Card Game”

Catherine Keller on “Ecologies of Diversity”

Catherine Keller, author of From a Broken Web, was the keynote speaker at the opening session of the 2016 Sacred Texts and Human Contexts conference at Nazareth College, Rochester, New York. This year’s conference theme is “Nature and Environment in World Religions.”

Keller’s address was titled “Ecologies of Diversity: Beyond Religious and Human Exceptionalism.”

To help address the global environmental crisis, Keller believes religions must move beyond human exceptionalism — that is, religions have to get over the notion that humans are somehow more privileged than other organisms. Furthermore, she believes that we must also move beyond religious exceptionalism.

She said she assumed that those of us attending the conference are participants in a faith that is “planetary.” “By talking together, we hope to get and give some hope,” she said, “Hope for the planetary future.” She added: “Those hopes come encoded in our sacred texts.”

Keller went on to make three main points:

First, the unprecedented planetary emergency should not be treated as exceptional, she said. The current ecological crisis is driven both by politics that use emergency powers to prolong the crisis, and by various types of exceptionalism. Instead, she said the planetary emergency can be understood as “an emergence.”

Second, Keller believes “an alternative politics” is needed. “The key to this alternative is, I believe, what might be called ‘entangled difference’.” Her 2015 book Cloud of the Impossible: Negative Theology and Planetary Entanglement goes into more detail on “entanglement,” which she relates to the concept of quantum entanglement.

“Difference is not a separation, but a relation,” she pointed out. Thus, difference and entanglement can go hand in hand. “And so while difference may exclude or ignore” that from which it is different, there is still a relationship between the things that are different.

Third, Keller said, “If we can turn catastrophe into catalyst, the answer is hope.” In fact, she said that “catastrophe must become a catalyst” in order for positive action to happen.

Continue reading “Catherine Keller on “Ecologies of Diversity””

Sabbatical

I’m taking sabbatical time this year — four non-consecutive months, plus three additional non-consecutive weeks — to work on a writing project.

November is the first month of my sabbatical. So of course I was up late last night, madly finishing of my list of things that Must Be Done Before The Sabbatical. I checked off the last item on my list at 11:28 p.m., and went to bed.

This morning I awoke feeling a little stunned: I was actually on sabbatical. In more than a decade as a minister, and two decades working in congregations, I’ve never had a sabbatical before. It’s a funny feeling knowing that the only thing I am supposed to do this month is — well, what am I supposed to do with a sabbatical?

In contemporary language, a sabbatical is a tool for sustainability. It is abased on the ancient Hebrew custom outlined in Leviticus 25.2-5:

“When ye come into the land which I give you, then shall the land keep a sabbath unto the Lord. Six years thou shalt sow thy field, and six years thou shalt prune thy vineyard, and gather in the fruit thereof; But in the seventh year shall be a sabbath of rest unto the land, a sabbath for the Lord: thou shalt neither sow thy field, nor prune thy vineyard. That which groweth of its own accord of thy harvest thou shalt not reap, neither gather the grapes of thy vine undressed: for it is a year of rest unto the land.”

So during my sabbatical time, I won’t sow or prune, nor will I answer email for four hours a day, nor run around like a chicken with my head cut off trying to catch up on administrative tasks. Instead, sayeth Elohim, I’m supposed to let my soul lie fallow.

Not only is a sabbatical about sustainability, it is also about social justice for workers, immigrants, and other sentient beings, according to Leviticus 25.6-7:

“And the sabbath of the land shall be meat for you; for thee, and for thy servant, and for thy maid, and for thy hired servant, and for thy stranger that sojourneth with thee. And for thy cattle, and for the beast that are in thy land, shall all the increase thereof be meat.”

I have not done so well in carrying out this part of taking a sabbatical. While I’m away, the Religious Education Assistant and members of the Religious Education Committee have to take care of some of the things I normally do, though I have tried to minimize what they have to do. Ideally, an entire community would all take a sabbatical together; everyone would stop work. However, in this ear of globalization and consumer capitalism, if everyone stopped working we would face economic ruin — the next version of the iPhone would be delayed by a year! there would be no fossil fuels to burn and send carbon into the atmosphere! — so I will just have to accept the fact that I am going to have to go on sabbatical by myself.

And what will I do while on sabbatical? How will I let my soul lie fallow? I’m going to write: writing seems to be good for my soul, and I’ve been too busy the past few years to write much; you may see some of that writing here on this blog. Maybe I’ll do some other things, too; I don’t really know; this sabbatical thing is new to me.

(I’ll include the official statement about my sabbatical below the fold — not that you care, but just so it’s here on my blog, in case someone is looking for it.)

Continue reading “Sabbatical”

Did God really say THAT?!

Chris Schriner has started writing a new blog titled “Did God Really Say THAT!? A Blog about the Bible.” Chris decided he wanted to take on Biblical literalism, so that’s what he’s writing about on his new blog. Chris is learned, funny, and provocative. He’s also a former psychotherapist, and a humanist who is sympathetic to theists. Who better to write such a blog? In his most recent posts, he’s been taking on capital punishment in the Bible, like the following words spoken by God in Exodus 20.15: “Whoever strikes his father or his mother shall be put to death.” Wait, did God really say that? If so, as Chris points out in one post, then there are going to be a lot of toddlers on death row.

So what are you waiting for? Go join the fun by clicking here.

Women and organized religion

Last summer, Barna Research Group released a report in which they examined trends in 14 different religious variables for the period 1991-2011. One of their more interesting findings was that women, long the majority in many congregations, have been dropping out of organized religion:

Church attendance among women sank by 11 percentage points since 1991, declining to 44%. A majority of women no longer attend church services during a typical week. [Link to report.]

A year earlier, Jim Henderson, an evangelical Christian author and minister, had contracted with Barna Group to conduct a survey of how self-described “Christian” women who attended church regularly felt about their experience of church. The vast majority of those women felt satisfied with their church, with their church’s leadership, and with their church’s views of women.

It sure looks like the self-described Christian women who go to church regularly like their churches. But Henderson asked himself why so many other women were leaving church. According to a Washington Post report on his new book, The Resignation of Eve, Henderson came to a logical conclusion: women in Christian churches are getting increasingly disillusioned by the sexism that’s all too common in those churches:

In [The Resignation of Eve], the author, an evangelical minister named Jim Henderson, argues that unless the male leaders of conservative Christian churches do some serious soul-searching — pronto — the women who have always sustained those churches with their time, sweat and cash will leave. In droves. And they won’t come back. Their children, traditionally brought to church by their mothers, will thus join the growing numbers of Americans who call themselves “un-churched.”

Never mind that the Bible talks about women submitting to men and sitting silently in church, Henderson declaims. That’s ancient history. “Until those with power (men) decide to give it away to those who lack it (women), I believe we will continue to misrepresent Jesus’ heart and mar the beauty of his Kingdom,” Henderson writes.

Henderson bolsters his argument with data from the Barna Research Group…. And although the Barna data have been disputed by other researchers, Henderson goes further. Even those women who go to church regularly, he says, are really only half there: Their discontent keeps them from engaging fully with the project of being Christian. He calls this malaise among women “a spiritual brain drain.”

I wouldn’t expect many of those Christian women to transfer to their local Unitarian Universalist congregation. Instead, I would expect them to join the growing ranks of Americans who are “spiritual but not religious” — i.e., those who have religious leanings but who stay away from organized religion.

However, all this does lead me to believe that we need to continue the feminist revolution that has stalled within Unitarian Universalism. While most of our ministers are now women, men still get the majority of the prestigious, well-paid jobs in the biggest congregations; and while I can’t find any hard data to back this up, I’m inclined to believe the average female minister makes less than the average male minister. Furthermore, the vast majority of professional religious educators are women, who are most often part-time and poorly paid. I think it would be wise for us to correct the existing gender inequities within Unitarian Universalism before we start alienating Unitarian Universalist women and men.

REA conference, part five

During the Saturday afternoon breakout session of the Religious Education Association annual conference, I attended a workshop titled “Practical Neuroscience for the Pews”; it was led by Mary Cheng and Alan Weissenbacher, both doctoral candidates at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley.

Of the six people who participated in this workshop, three were full-time practitioners working in local congregations: a catechist serving a Roman Catholic parish outside Toronto, a pastor serving a Uniting Church congregation near Brisbane, Australia, and me, a minister of religious education from California. Another participant was associated with Fordham, but she also served in a local congregation, and I believe at least one other participant also served a Catholic parish. The workshop leaders encouraged full participation from the rest of us and allowed the conversation to range widely; as a result, this report may seem a little disjointed. However, the workshop seemed anything but disjointed: at the end, several of us agreed that it was by far the best presentation yet.

Goals and ends

Weissenbacher and Cheng began by asking us to consider what our goals are as religious educators, and to consider how brain science gets us to our goals. Then Weissenbacher asked a provocative question: If we use brain science to reach our religious education goals, how are we different from those who use brain science to practice mind control? Does what we are doing lay the foundation for more intrusive mind control techniques? He said that key difference is that religious educators (ethical ones, anyway) respect the agency of the people they are educating; furthermore, religious educators will be quite open about the techniques they are using. Continue reading “REA conference, part five”

A parable told by robots, signifying…

A robot tells the parable of the Gospel of Thomas, ch. 97. Here’s the text of the video:

The kingdom of heaven. The kingdom of heaven is like a woman who was carrying a jar full of flour. While she was walking along a distant road, the handle of the jar broke and the flour spilled out behind her along the road. She did not know it. She had not noticed a problem. When she reached her house, she put the jar down and discovered that it was empty.

A slightly different version of Thomas 97 will be the reading in the Sunday services tomorrow.

(Update, 11/22: video moved to Vimeo, audio improved a bit, and editing tightened up a bit.)