For once, Mr. Crankypants is somewhat proud of his stupid alter ego, Dan. Back on December 6, Dan wrote about the new Jewish independent minyanim as reported in a New York Times article (link). Dan commented on how some of us have noted the similarities between these minyanim and some of what was going on in the Unitarian Universalist young adult movement a dozen years ago, back when Dan was still a young adult (Mr. Crankypants refuses to admit that he will ever be anything but a young adult).

Turns out that back on November 26, the Jewish blog Synablog noted the same New York Times article, and drew the connection between the minyanim and the evangelical Christian emergent church movement (link). Synablog’s post is titled “Emergent — Yes It’s Happening Among Both Christians and Jews.”

It’s happening among the Jews and the evangelical Christians, but of course not among Unitarian Universalists — who are theologically liberal but methodologically rigid — who seem to be ignoring the fact that the world is changing rapidly around us;– rapid change which requires that Unitarian Universalist worship services and the very structure of all religious communities must change as well.

The radically inclusive theological stance of Unitarian Universalism has kept us growing, ever so slightly, in this postmodern world;– but we continue to aim our advertising and our worship services squarely at the people who are already here. We do religion as if it were still the 1950’s, when civic religion ruled, when everyone got the basics of religion from the surrounding culture, when a town could vote the town’s only Jew as “most Christian citizen,” when you didn’t have to market your church because the surrounding culture acted like a dumptruck that backed up to your front door each week and dumped off tons of potential church members (with no effort on your part). Today, Unitarian Universalists live in a 1950’s time warp: Let’s just forget about the postmodern generations, they don’t really belong here anyway (and besides, who wants all those young adults in our churches?).

Grrr.

Oh my. Has Mr. Crankypants been ranting again about the same old topics? Given how methodologically rigid Unitarian Universalists are, ranting would seem to be a waste of Mr. C.’s time, except that it is sooo satisfying. There’s something about throwing a good hissy-fit that just makes you feel good all over….