Category Archives: Liberal religion

Cleaning house

What could be better than house cleaning? You answer: just about anything. But I think you’re wrong.

Yes, house cleaning is drudgery. Yes, cleaning house can be overwhelming, especially I would think for families with young children where the adult or adults have to work full time. Yes, house cleaning is associated with the worst excesses of sexism. Yes, all these things are true.

Thich Nhat Hanh says: “There are two ways to wash the dishes. The first is to wash the dishes in order to have clean dishes and the second is to wash the dishes in order to wash the dishes.” This is true as far as it goes: any task, no matter how mundane — perhaps even, no matter how degrading — any task can be turned into an act of mindfulness. But I don’t think Thich Nhat Hanh goes far enough.

This winter, I got bronchitis. I wasn’t that sick — I didn’t have to go to the hospital — but I was sick enough that about all I had energy to do was to go to work, and to come home and sleep. This went on for months. At the same time, Carol’s work overwhelmed her life, and between the two of us we didn’t have much or any time to devote to house cleaning. Dirty dishes piled up in our sink, and — well, you don’t need to hear the details.

Finally this week I have been feeling more energetic, and I have been house cleaning. I have not been house cleaning in order to house-clean; I have been house cleaning in order to have a clean house. Thich Nhat Hanh has his perspective, and I have mine: he is full of mindfulness and he is far more spiritual than I; I’m happy just having a clean house.

An alternate definition of religion

Amazingly enough, the battle between the atheists and the theists is still going strong. Someday, perhaps the atheists will realize that all they are doing is playing the Christian game, by letting the dominant Christian tradition define what religion is. So here’s an alternate definition of religion, from the introduction to The Twenty-first Century Confronts Its Gods: Globalization, Technology, and War, a collection of scholarly essays edited by David J. Hawkin (SUNY Press, 2004):

It is difficult to define what religion is. It seems easy enough at first: most would say that religion entails belief in a god or gods, involves ritual and worship, and has a system of beliefs…. Yet this definition does not include, for example, Theravada Buddhism, which does not have a transcendental being in its belief system. Nor does this definition reflect that in popular usage the term “religion” is used very broadly (as in, for example, references to New Age “religion”). Paul Tillich recognized this when, in Dynamics of Faith, he defined religion as being grasped by an “ultimate concern.” What Tillich meant was that for most people all other concerns are preliminary to a main concern that supplies the answer tot he question, “What is the meaning of my life?” What makes this primary concern religious is that it is the primary motivating concern of one’s life: it makes an absolute demand on one’s allegiance and promises ultimate fulfillment. Using this definition, we may distinguish three types of religion. First, theistic religions, in which the object of ultimate concern is a transcendental being (as in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam). Second, non-theistic religions, in which the object of ultimate concern is some higher principle or abstract power (as in Theravada Buddhism and some types of Hinduism). Third, secular or quasi-religions, where the object of ultimate concern is such that it resembles theistic or non-theistic religions. What the person holds as ultimate concern gives that person’s belief a character (often unintentional) similar to that found in more traditional religions.

I’m not sure that my own faith community, Unitarian Universalism, fits neatly into this broad-brush typology of religions, since we have both theists and non-theists. You could argue that what holds Unitarian Universalism together (if indeed something is holding us together) is a higher principle, thus plunking us into the category of non-theistic religions. I’d be more likely to argue for a fourth category that mixes theistic and non-theistic approaches to religion. In any case, the real point is that the atheist/theist debates only work within the context of the first type of religion, the theistic religions; and we’re not a theistic religion; therefore the atheist/theist debate is a waste of time within Unitarian Universalism.

Surviving General Assembly

I’ve begun planning for General Assembly, the annual convention of U.S. Unitarian Universalists. The key question to ask before going to any convention is where to find cheap food — no one wants to eat the expensive crap they dish out in convention centers. And when you’re at a convention in Fort Lauderdale in the summer, you really want to know how far you’re going to have to walk in the hot humid Florida air before you get to a restaurant.

I went to one of my favorite Web site, Walk Score, and typed in the address of the convention center: 1950 EISENHOWER BOULEVARD, FORT LAUDERDALE, FL 33316

The Walk Score Web site spit back its usual comprehensive list of nearby restaurants, stores, etc. Bad news: there aren’t that many restaurants near the convention center; only half a dozen restaurants and a couple of coffee shops within a third of a mile; and there’s a supermarket four-tenths of a mile away. More bad news: the nearest book store is half a mile away. Looks like we’ll have to choose between staying cool and eating yucky convention center food, or getting hot and sweaty walking in the Florida sunshine. On the other hand, it’s not as bad as it could be — the convention center gets a “walk score” of 66 out of 100, which is not as bad as it could be.

The good news is that Broward County bus #40 stops at the convention center — bus system map — schedule. The bus will take us to the downtown where there are lots more restaurants (and book stores and movie theatres) — or heading the opposite direction it will take us to the beach (South Beach Park).

From the comments: Scott M. has a Web site with basic General Assembly info up and posted here — thanks, Scott!!

Churches as over-55 communities

Mr. Crankypants loves Julius Lester. On his blog, he wrote this delightfully snarky post that sounds like it’s about politics, but is really about generational differences. Writing about Hillary Clinton, Lester points out that “her ideas are old.” In of itself this is not an original thought, but Lester goes on to add: “She’s 60, and she sounds like she hasn’t had a new thought in the past 40 years. I say this as someone who is 9 years older than she is, so I know an old idea when I hear it.”

Mr. Crankypants smells a new generation gap. The Baby Boom generation is so doggone big that they wind up spending most of their time talking to one another, not to younger people, and avoiding new ideas. And because they are such a big market, capitalist culture caters to their every whim to the point where they can pretty much insulate themselves from many new ideas in the world. As someone who lives at the tail end of the Baby Boom (being a few months older than Barack Obama), Mr. Crankypants knows this to be true — if he wanted to, he could spend all his time hanging out with people a few years older than himself and talking about the great music of the 1960s and the great literature of the 1960s and the great political movements of the 1960s, etc., none of which have ever been equaled, blah blah blah. (Actually, Mr. C. hates the 1960s, but you get the idea.) Baby Boomers tend to be full of old ideas, even when they think they are full of new ideas.

Not that anyone at this blog is much of a supporter of Barack Obama. It’s tough to get thrilled about a rhetorician who is further to the right than, and probably just as authoritarian as, Richard Nixon; and who doesn’t seem to understand what it means to be a member of a church to boot. But this isn’t a post about politics, this is a post that uses politics as an example of this new generation gap.

For another example of how how this new generation gap seems to work, we need look no further than racism. Julius Lester has this to say about Hillary Clinton: “Even worse, however, is her pandering to white racism has made us a far more racially divided nation than we were before her march to the White House was stopped by Barack Obama. I cannot ever forgive her for that.” But it’s not Hillary Clinton alone who tends to pander to racist tendencies — the Baby Boom generation as a whole tends to do the same thing. It seems to Mr. Crnakypants that many Baby Boomers (of all skin colors) believe that American racism got solved in the 1960s, between the Civil Rights movement (if they’re white) or the Black Power movement (if they’re black). Those old ideas tend to miss the fact that since 1980 racism has mutated and gotten more virulent, and it no longer responds to the old cures. Thus in Unitarian Universalism, Baby Boomers are still using second wave feminist techniques to try to fight racism, without seeing that second wave feminist techniques like consciousness-raising and identity groups were designed for a racism that no longer exists (nor do they see the class bias inherent in those techniques, but that’s another conversation).

And don’t assume this new generation gap (no capitals) is like the old Generation Gap of the 1960s, because they’re utterly different. The younger generations today aren’t bothering with open rebellion, as allegedly happened in the 1960s, they’re just creating new forms and ideas without bothering to talk much to the Baby Boomers.

So how is this new generation gap playing out in liberal churches? The Baby Boomers are in firm control of our local churches and our denomination, now that the GI Generation has started dying off. Baby Boomers are setting up the churches to suit their needs and their worldview, with the result that younger generations are staying away in droves. Our churches are starting to look like those over-55 communities where children and younger adults are allowed to visit but not stay for very long. This is perhaps most obviously manifested in the intensive efforts to create “young adult programming,” which sounds good on paper but in practice functions pretty much like those restrictive covenants in over-55 communities.

Mr. Crankypants is thinking about making stickers that say, “This Church Is An Over-55 Community,” the idea being that you could buy such a sticker and slap it on your church’s sign when no one is looking. Truth in advertising, don’t you know.

A matter of simple dislike

An astute reader points out that there are any number of Web sites devoted to giving advice on what to do if you don’t like the minister of your congregation. But these Web sites are all written from an evangelical Christian point of view, and may be summed up as follows: if your minister cannot be accused of heresy or unorthodoxy, then it is your duty to stay in the congregation. This advice is useless to Unitarian Universalists, who are by definition unorthodox and heretical.

So here’s my advice on what to do if you don’t like the minister of your Unitarian Universalist congregation.

First of all, let’s assume that you simply don’t like your minister. If you know your minister is engaging in misconduct, that’s an entirely different conversation; or if you can prove gross incompetence, that would also be an entirely different conversation. Let’s assume that you just don’t like your minister. There are some people whom we just don’t like, and there’s not much we can do about it. (My Unitarian mother used to say this sort of thing was based on sense of smell — some people just smell wrong to us — and while it sounds a little kooky I think there’s some truth in it.) Given that assumption, what would you do?

When I was in my teens and early twenties, I didn’t much like the senior minister at my UU church. I respected him, and he was obviously competent and clearly ethical — but I didn’t like him. So when I was in my teens, the assistant minister became my primary minister — I got to know him because he led the youth group, and I really liked him. After he left, when I was in my twenties, I’d just go to church and sit up in the balcony where I could hear the organist better, and I’d pretty much ignore the sermon. Sometimes I’d be one of the ushers, and I’d slip out of church after we took the offering and go downstairs to talk with the sexton or one of the other ushers.

I suppose this will sounds horrible to some people — here I am, a minister talking about how I avoided my minister. It will sound even worse when I tell you that the minister I avoided was Dana Greeley, one of the truly great UU ministers of the 20th century. In partial defense, I will say that I have never been a strong auditory learner, so that listening to sermons has always been a struggle for me; I will also say that I knew the problem was mine, not Dr. Greeley’s, and I dealt with it in non-destructive ways. I don’t know if Dr. Greeley ever noticed that I never paid attention to his sermons, but if he did he was far too gracious and far too much the compassionate minister to let that bother him.

And I think this is a fairly common phenomenon. In my ten years as a religious educator, there were lots of good Sunday school teachers who were the people who either couldn’t stand the senior minister, or who couldn’t sit still through a sermon. There is no cosmic rule that says you have to like the minister in your church. And let’s face it, the church is far more than the one human being who happens to be the minister, so there is no earthly reason why anyone should feel compelled to like any given minister.

Therefore, my advice on what to do if you don’t like the minister of your church is quite simple: do what you have to do to avoid the minister, without making a big deal out of it. Go to worship services and enjoy the music; or teach Sunday school; or join the men’s group or the Women’s Alliance; or go to the Sunday morning forum and then drink coffee instead of attending worship; whatever you can do without being destructive.

Because ultimately I believe church is not about the minister, and it’s not about your relationship with the minister. Church is a spiritual practice, and no one said spiritual practices are easy; in fact, any good spiritual practice should make you confront parts of yourself that you don’t really want to confront; so if you dislike the minister, fold that into your spiritual practice of going to church. Church is a covenanted community in our tradition, and you don’t step out of a covenant just because you dislike someone, and there’s always someone in a covenanted community whom you will not like.

(Actually, maybe I need to write another post on church-going as a spiritual practice. It’s funny how lots of people are willing to suffer the agonies of sitting in the lotus position while meditating for hours, but don’t make the connection between that kind of pain and the pain that inevitably comes through regular church-going in a covenanted community. But some other time for that….)

I’m sure many of you will disagree with the above, or will have very different advice to give on this topic. I hope you will comment, and let us know what you think about this — just remember that this is not a forum to talk about clergy misconduct or incompetence (see third paragraph) — also, be sure to be polite and thoughtful.

Loomer says: Web of life = Kingdom of heaven

When speaking of the “Web of Life,” most Unitarian Universalists today would not make an immediate connection to Jesus’s Kingdom of Heaven. But Bernard Loomer, a liberal theologian who taught at the University of Chicago and then at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, did make such a connection. Loomer said:

Jesus has been according many titles. He has been called Savior, Leader, Shepherd, Counselor, Son of God, Messiah. But his intellectual gifts have not been recognized (even when the term “intellectual” has been more carefully defined). It was he who discovered what he called the Kingdon of God — what I call the Web of Life — surely one of the great intellectual and religious ideas of the western world.

As I define it, the web is the world conceived of as an idefinitely extended complex of interrelated, inter-dependent events or units of reality. This includes human and non-human, the organic and inorganic levels of life and existence.

Jesus discovered the reality of the Web. He began his public ministry by announcing its presence and its fuller exemplification (the “coming kingdom”)…. [Unfoldings: Conversations from the Sunday morning seminars of Bernie Loomer, 1985, First Unitarian Church of Berkeley, pp. 1-2]

Thus Loomer connects the ecological concept of the Web of Life with the theological concept of the Kingdom of Heaven:– intellectually and religiously speaking, the two concepts are the same thing. And the moral and ethical challenges facing us have to do, not with getting into heaven in the future, but with a “fuller exemplification” of the Kingdom here and now.

However, says Loomer, conventional Christian theology has lost this intellectual insight of Jesus, partly by de-emphasizing the Synoptic Gospels (those three books that actually tell of Jesus’s life) in favor of later writings:

When you come to the Gospel of John and the writings of Paul something has changed. In the Synoptics, Jesus is not the central reality. The Kingdom is the central reality. He [Jesus] describes this reality, but the Kingdom does not exist for his sake. He serves the Kingdom and draws his power from it The Kingdom was not created because Jesus was of supernatural origin. The Kingdom was never created. The discovery was that the Kingdom is a given of life itself. It was not created by Jesus. It was not created at all. It is simply inherent in life itself. Its actuality is simultaneous with existence. [Unfoldings, p. 2]

At an ontological level, I believe what Loomer is trying to tell us is that the Web of Life, the Kingdom of Heaven, and God are identical in this way — each of these was not created, but always is and was and shall be. While the dogmatic humanists and the dogmatic liberal Christians among us may find this distasteful for their various reasons, I find this to be a very useful theological point, with profound moral and ethical implications. Loomer goes on to say:

Sin is a distortion of our relations to God and to each other. Forgiveness is a restoration to those relationships. In sinful acts we act against the Web of Life. In seeking repentance we open ourselves to the forgiveness that is already there, as a fundamental condition of life. We make ourselves accessible to it, or it accessible to us. We are related to each other through the Web. Those others have free choice as to whether they will accept our forgiveness or not. In all cases we are trapped with an inescapable web of connectedness. [Unfoldings, p.3]

Loomer goes on to add that it doesn’t matter whether or not you believe the Web of Life is impersonal, or whether you believe it is personal:– you still have to face up to the reality of the need for forgiveness. Furthermore, as social beings we humans also exist within a “social web” and thus forgiveness requires “at least one other.”

Loomer’s remarks interest me for two reasons. First, while many of us talk about the Web of Life, there’s not enough serious reflection on the moral implications of the Web (and saying something like “The Web of Life means we have to care for the planet Earth” is not a serious reflection, it is merely trite). Second, while I have sensed a strong connection between Jesus and ecological theology, Loomer articulates it better than I have heard it articulated elsewhere.

(a) poet, (b) philosopher; pick one

This judgment of Ralph Waldo Emerson is reported by Julia Ward Howe in her Reminiscences: 1819-1899:

“Theodore Parker once said to me, ‘I do not consider Emerson a philosopher, but a poet lacking the accomplishment of rhyme.’ ”

Coming from Parker, who could at least pretend to be a philosopher/theologian, that’s a fairly harsh thing to say. After she reports Parker’s bon mot, Howe, who considered herself a poet, goes on to add her own judgment:

“This may not be altogether true, but it is worth remembering…. The deep intuitions, the original and startling combinations, the sometimes whimsical beauty of his illustrations,– all these belong rather to the domain of poetry than to that of philosophy…. Despite his rather defective sense of rhythm, his poems are divine snatches of melody….”

I think Howe and Parker are right: Emerson is more of a poet than a philosopher. Since Emerson remains the most important philosopher/theologian of North American Unitarianism, that has some interesting implications for who we are today.

Repertoire for a Folk Choir

We have a Folk Choir here at First Unitarian in New Bedford, and I’ve been searching out repertoire for this group. My general criteria: songs that are easily singable, songs that are good for untrained voices, songs that sound good when accompanied by guitar or other folk instrument, well-known songs by folkish singer-songwriters, and/or songs with robust folk harmonies.

So I scanned the current Unitarian Universalist (UU) hymnal, Singing the Living Tradition, and the UU hymnal supplement Singing the Journey, for folkish songs. I also went through Rise Up Singing, the popular group singing songbook, and found quite a few songs there that were worth considering for liberal religious worship services. Finally, I found shape note songs in Singing the Living Tradition that are also contained in The Sacred Harp, the widespread shape note hymnal, and/or contained in the online Southern Harmony, another easily-available shape note hymnal.

All told, I came up with more than a hundred folkish hymns, which are listed on three pages (links below). I value your corrections and additions — simply add a comment to one of the specific pages below. If you have suggestions of other folkish songs that would do well in a UU worship service, add them to the comments on this page.

Folkish hymns and songs in Singing the Living Tradition and Singing the Journey. 70+ songs that are also included in Rise Up Singing (which has guitar chords for most songs). Another dozen songs in SLT and STJ but not in RUS which are fairly folkish-sounding.

Rise Up Singing as a UU hymnal. 30+ songs from this songbook that are suitable for use in UU worship services. List includes songs by Bob Dylan and the Beatles, and classic songs like “Never Turning Back” and “All God’s Critters.” (Does not include the 70+ songs listed on the above page).

Shape note hymns in Singing the Living Tradition. With references to The Sacred Harp (1991 edition), and references and links to The Southern Harmony (online 1854 edition, with MIDI files and some live recordings of these tunes). In many cases, the tunes in Singing the Living Tradition have been slightly altered (often not for the better); and generally speaking, the arrangements in SLT pale in comparison to the robust harmonies of the shape note hymnals.

Other folkish songs suitable for use in worship: Songs not contained in any of the above sources, some including sheet music and/or lyrics.

Universalist composer

I’ve been looking through some shape-note hymnals, and came across this interesting tidbit in The Norumbega Harmony, in the introductory essay by Stephen Marini*:

“The greatest musical influence in Maine… was Supply Belcher…. Belcher’s primary successor was Abraham Maxim, a native of Plymouth County, Massachusetts, who settled during the 17090s in Turner [Maine], where he taught singing schools and converted to Universalism. Maxim’s Oriental Harmony (1802) and Northern Harmony (1805) reflect the [William] Billings-Belcher influence that thoroughly dominated Maine’s singing school tradition.”

Although he is little more than a footnote today, Maxim (b. 1773 – d. 1829 Palmyra, Somerset County, Maine) must be the earliest North American Universalist composer whose works survive today. The Norumbega Harmony contains two compositions by Maxim, settings of hymns by Isaac Watts. Both compositions are fuguing tunes (for the record, Buckfield, p. 166 is an L.M. tune; Machais, p. 169, is a P.M. tune), and a quick look reveals that both seem musically interesting. Universalist hymnodists and choirs, take note!

* Stephen Marini is the historian who wrote the ground-breaking Radical Sects of Revolutionary New England, a third of which book covered the indigenous Universalism of central New England; thus Marini knows his early New England Universalism. Marini’s other major scholarly publication is Sacred Song in America: Religion, Music, and Public Culture.