Category Archives: Liberal religion

Unsystematic theology: Sin

First in an occasional series of essays in unsystematic liberal theology, in which I assume theology is a literary genre more than a science, a conversation more than a monologue, descriptive rather than prescriptive.

The very notion of personal sin causes problems for many religious liberals. We religious liberals tend to be optimistic folks who believe human beings are mostly good. Rather than say that someone is sinful, we are more likely to say that someone has been forced by circumstances to act in a certain way. We are usually careful to separate the behavior labeled “sin” from the person who engaged in that behavior. We like to give individuals the benefit of a doubt. Even if we reluctantly conclude that someone has been sinful, we hope for the possibility that person might be reformed. We generally think of personal sin as something that’s done intentionally. An accident is an accident; an error is an error; personal sin requires a certain amount of free choice, and you have to choose to engage in sin.

On the other hand, we religious liberals are generally willing to talk about social sins. Even religious liberals who dislike to use the word “sin,” which seems to them old-fashioned and overly punitive, might be convinced to call racism or sexism a “social sin.” The word “sin” seems to carry too large an emotional impact to be applied to individual persons; but for most of us the vast amount of damage done by racism or sexism warrants the use of such a powerful word.

But who is it that is sinning when we’re talking about broad social ills? Take racism, for example: we know racism is social sin, we know that individuals engage in racism, but is it the individual racist who is committing the sin? We are much more likely to talk about personal sin when an individual has participated in broader social ills, but even then we tend to assume that an individual can be educated out of their sexism or racism (or other social sin). We imagine that sin is too big to be carried out by one individual; sin is so big we imagine it as being carried out by groups of people. Continue reading →

Web site = front door

Because I don’t have any duties at the Palo Alto church this Sunday, I checked the Web for worship services at other Bay area Unitarian Universalist congregations. I did not feel welcomed by several Web pages.

One congregation’s Web site made me click through the home page and still other page before I found Sunday morning information, and even that page didn’t tell me how long the service lasted, what else might be happening on Sunday morning, what most people wear, what kind of music I might hear, etc. Another congregation prominently displayed information from last Sunday morning, including a reminder to set my clock ahead. Another congregation’s Web site didn’t display properly on my just-updated Firefox browser; I eventually found Sunday service information in the monthly newsletter, which was a huge PDF file.

Then I found the Oakland Unitarian Universalist church’s Web site. Right at the top, it tells me that I’m welcome. There’s a prominent link for newcomers to plan their first visit to the church. There’s a big picture of Sunday’s preacher smiling, and a short description of what the worship service will be. (Please note that the San Mateo Unitarian Universalist church, just a few blocks from our house, also has a good Web site, but I wanted to check out one of the other congregations in the Bay area.)

Peter Bowden likes to say that a congregation’s front door is not the door at the front of your physical building, it’s the front page of your Web site. Your Web front door doesn’t have to be snazzy, but it does have to be open and welcoming to all. Homework assignment: go check out the front page of your congregation’s Web site. Come back and tell us if your congregation’s front door is open and welcoming to newcomers or not.

Field test version: “Tales from Near and Far”

We’ve been developing a story-based mixed-age Sunday school program here at UUCPA. I finally collected nearly all the stories we’ve been using, or will be using, and put them into a small paperback book which I’m publishing using Lulu.com. Total cost for each paperback is only $4.02 + shipping — cheap! — so I purchased a copy to give to every family that’s enrolled in the program. That way, parents/guardians will have a better idea of what’s going on in the class, be ablet o catch up on stories their kids have missed, and have an opportunity to read these stories to their kids and talk about them together.

This book is a field test version of these stories (most of the stories have appeared on this blog). There are typos, some of the stories are a little rough, the final version will have a guide for parents/guardians. I’m embedding a full preview of the book in this post (the third button from the right puts the preview into full screen mode, so you can read the book comfortably).

 

 

If you purchase the book and use it in your congregation, please give me feedback, and tell me what age group you used it with, and in what setting (Sunday school class, children’s chapel, worship service, etc.)

Two hot stoves

Tomorrow at noon — that’s when congregations which choose to use the search process of the the Unitarian Universalist Association (UUA) can invite a minister to be the final candidate for an open ministry job. This is when we all gather ’round the old-fashioned hot stove, waiting to find out which club snapped up which ball player’s contr… — er — which congregation has snapped up which minister. Or as Hank Peirce puts it: “Who is being invited to be the candidate at what church? Where will those couple of big name ministers who have been sweet talking so many churches actually end up? Who will hire the young minister with little track record? What church is brave enough to call someone they need, and not just someone who makes them look good?”

You can gather round the hot stove in two places this year. Christine Robinson’s hot stove is on her blog. Hank Peirce’s hot stove is on its own Facebook page.

There are rules for decorum whilst sitting around the hot stoves. No fair using insider knowledge to announce a congregation’s candidate before the congregation has made its own official announcement. No bad-mouthing anyone, no ad hominem attacks. However, if a young freewheeling minister gets picked by a big corporate church that will require him/her to cut his/her hair, you may call out “Johnny Damon!” If a minister over 70 snags a plum congregation, you may call out “Phil Niekro!” or “Knuckleballer!” If you think a pick is going to result in a decades-long match with lots of home runs with no steroid use, you may call out “Hank Aaron!”

How To Feed Five Thousand People

Another in a work-in-progress, stories for liberal religious kids.

Once upon a time, Jesus and his disciples (that is, his closest followers) were trying to take a day off. Jesus had become very popular, and people just wouldn’t leave him alone. Jesus and the disciples wanted a little time away from the crowds that followed them everywhere, so they rented a boat and went to a lonely place, far from any village.

But people figured out where they were going, and by the time Jesus and his friends landed the boat, there were five thousand people waiting there for them. So Jesus started to teach them, and he talked to them for hours.

It started getting late, and the disciples of Jesus pulled him aside and said, “We need to send these people to one of the nearby villages to get some food.”

“No,” said Jesus. “The villages around here are too small to feed five thousand people. You will have to get them something to eat.”

“What do you mean?” his disciples said. “We don’t have enough money to go buy enough bread for all these people, and even if we did, how would we bring it all back here?”

“No, no,” said Jesus. “I don’t want you to go buy bread. Look, how many loaves of bread have we got right here?” Continue reading →

Sean says it’s a revolution

A few minutes ago, I was talking with Sean of the blog Ministrare — he’s here at the Palo Alto church while Amy, our senior minister, is on sabbatical — and he showed me a video that he likes. He put the video up on his blog, and I’ll embed it here, so you can watch it, too:

 

 

Over on his blog, Sean says that he believes we religious liberals are not ready for the social media revolution. I think Sean is mostly right.

But I can find some bright spots, places where we do use social media well. Here in Palo Alto, we’ve been piloting a podcast for Sunday school teachers, and the teachers tell us they love this venture into online learning. And although I write my blog on my own time, I find that some people in the congregation do read it, and what I have written here has sparked some very interesting conversations in the face-to-face congregation. When we do use social media, what we do online strengthens and reinforces what happens in our face-to-face congregation.

So I’m ready to embrace the social media revolution. I think it will make congregational life that much better. What do you think?

Finding bright spots

Carol and I are reading Switch: How To Change Things When Change Is Hard, by two brothers, Chip Heath and Dan Heath; we both have jobs that call on us to implement social change, we both know how hard it can be to implement change, so we are both interested in new approaches to making change happen.

Switch starts with some basic human psychology: human beings are governed by both emotions and rational thought; human beings respond to the situations they find themselves in. Therefore, say the brothers Heath, to implement change we have to use both thoughts and feelings, and we have to create situations where change is easier rather than harder.

The second chapter of the book is titled “Find the Bright Spots” — but, they warn, finding bright spots is harder than it might seem. Human beings tend to focus on the negative aspects of life. To demonstrate this, they give a wonderful case study.

A pharmaceuticals company is having difficulty selling a new allergy drug. The company hires a consultant to help them figure out what’s going on. The consultant finds three saleswomen who are selling twenty times as much of the new drug as salespeople elsewhere. The consultant says to himself, “Ah, ha! there’s a bright spot. I’ll investigate that, and maybe I’ll learn how to improve sales elsewhere.” The consultant goes to investigate. He finds that these three saleswomen are teaching doctors and allergists how to administer the drug — it has to be administered intravenously, which is very unusual for allergy drugs. So he takes this finding back to the pharmaceutical company, and tells them that if they have their sale force start teaching doctors and allergists how to administer the drub, they’ll increase sales. And what does headquarters do? They refuse to believe in the bright spot, and they investigate the three saleswomen to find out why they have an unfair advantage over the other salespeople.

Recently, I discovered a bright spot in our congregational life here in the Palo Alto church. We are an introverted congregation; there are plenty of extroverts here, but the majority of us are introverts. But if I make public this bright spot (as I am, in fact, doing right now), I had better take into account the tendency of human beings to focus on the negative aspects of life. Like this imaginary conversation:

Ordinarily Negative Human Being: “What, we’re an introverted congregation?! That means no one will ever talk to newcomers!” Me: “Actually, that’s not true. We introverts excel at one-on-one conversations. We also do very well in structured social settings such as congregations.” ONHB: “We’re all introverts, no wonder we tend to be quiet in worship services!” Me: “Which means our quiet, mellow worship services well feel welcoming and calming to people whose lives are too crazy busy. Which is most everyone in Silicon Valley.” ONHB: “People will think we’re all geeks!” Me: “Umm, we are in Silicon Valley, half the population is geeks.” ONHB: “Oh yeah. Well, maybe it’s good we’re an introverted church.” Me: “I think so. I like our calm, peaceful church, where people have really interesting conversations, and where our worship style is calm and low-key. I like the fact that there are other geeks like me, including engineer geeks, science geeks, theology geeks, finance geeks, and many other kinds of people who are quietly passionate about things.”

Visakha’s Sorrow

Another children’s story from a work-in-progress of stories for liberal religious kids. This story comes from the Udana, viii.8. I used Eugene Watson Burlingame, Buddhist Parables, pp. 107-108; as well as The Udana: or the Solemn Utterances of the Buddha, trans. from the Pali by Dawsonne Melanchthon Strong (Luzac/ India Company: London, 1902), pp. 126-127. I’m not sure what I think about this story; not sure I much like it. But it does seem to get at something central to Buddhism. (Update: a few typos fixed.)

Once upon a time, the Buddha was staying in the city of Savatthi, in the Eastern Grove. He was staying as a guest in the mansion owned by Visakha. Now Visakha had a granddaughter whom she loved very much; this granddaughter was her darling and her delight. While Buddha was staying in her mansion, Visakha’s granddaughter died after a long illness. When Visakha heard that her granddaughter had at long last died, it was very early in the morning. Visakha was overwhelmed with grief when she heard the news. Even though it was very early in the morning, she went to see the Buddha.

She approached the Buddha, greeted him politely, and went to sit down at his side. The Buddha looked at her, and could see she had been crying. He said quietly, “Well, Visakha, what is it that brings you here at a very early hour, with your hands and hair all wet from tears?” Continue reading →