Category Archives: UUA politics

Mr. Crankypants at GA

Generally speaking, Mr. Crankypants hates General Assembly:– too many Unitarian Universalists in too small a space; too much denominational politics; too much lousy food.

But this General Assembly is made worse by the fact that the Fort Lauderdale Convention Center is just sad. Forget the fact that the Broward County sheriffs check your I.D. when you walk in, which is demeaning and stupid and outraging, but it is not sad. No, Mr. Crankypants will tell you what is sad about this convention center. It is sad that most of the meeting rooms smell of mold. It is sad that they charge three dollars for a smallish cup of bad iced tea. It is sad that the projection screens in the meeting rooms are those old-fashioned pull-down screens on those little fold-up tripods, and they all look like they were purchased second-hand about thirty years ago.

Mr. Crankypants wants to slip gently out of the convention center and skip the rest of General Assembly and go lie on Fort Lauderdale’s beautiful beaches. Unfortunately, Mr. Crankypants is so white that even with SPF 153 sunscreen, he would burn to a crisp under the South Florida sun in about ten seconds.

Sigh.

Another view of GA

Lance, one of the other Web workers here at General Assembly, gives his impression of General Assembly, saying in part: “Too. Damn. Hot.” Read Lance’s post.

Are you blogging General Assembly? Don’t forget to tag all your posts with “uuaga08” — and if you want, give us links to your GA posts in the comments section of this post!

Leaving for General Assembly

Tomorrow I have to get up at four in the morning so I can catch my train. I’m headed off to General Assembly, the annual denominational meeting. Every year I ask myself: Why do I do this? As I get ready to leave (that means right now), I realize that I hate packing my bags, I hate the thought that I’ve forgotten something (and I always, always do forget something). Once I leave, I hate traveling long distances, I hate crowds of people, I hate staying in hotels and eating lousy restaurant food. And on top of that, I hate denominational politics. Yet every year I head off to General Assembly, like some kind of perverse swallow flying to San Juan Capistrano or whatever that place is that swallows fly to. Well, I know why I go:– I go so I can volunteer for the denominational Web staff; the Web staff is made up of fun, talented people that I enjoy spending time with, and I always learn something from them. That pretty much makes up for the miseries of traveling.

Anyway, this blog will be dominated by General Assembly for the next week….

Again this year, I will be video-blogging General Assembly, and I plan to post a short video to this blog every day. I’ll also try to micro-blog via Twitter — if Twitter posts are not visible in the sidebar, go here for my Twitter feed. I’ll be on the train for the next two days, and will post from the train via Twitter.

If you’re blogging from General Assembly, or if you’re blogging about General Assembly, don’t forget to tag your posts with “uuaga08” so it’s easy to find all General Assembly posts. And if you’re following from home, don’t hesitate to use the comments to communicate with me — if you want me to video-blog something, I’ll try to oblige!

Generation gap

I’ve been interested in the generational wars that we have seen in the presidential primaries. Hillary Clinton, like George W. Bush and Bill Clinton, is a product of the 1960s; culturally she is a Baby Boomer. Barack Obama, although demographically a member of the post-war “baby boom,” is a product of the 1970s and 1980s; culturally he is a Gen-Xer. A big part of Obama’s political strategy has been to cast Clinton as the out-of-touch Baby Boomer who doesn’t understand a post-racial, post-protest, post-New-Left, postmodern world.

I will be curious to see if Obama follows the same strategy with John McCain, who is not a Baby Boomer. McCain is a product of the late 1940s and 1950s; culturally, he is a member of the generation who dressed in gray flannel suits. I’d be tempted to call McCain a member of the Older Generation. How will Obama deal with the older generation? The Baby Boomer strategy of dealing with elders involved open warfare and ad hominem attacks. But I expect Obama to deal with McCain the same way he dealt with Jeremiah Wright: dismiss him as out of touch and out-dated, and be vaguely patronizing.

I’m willing to bet that other Gen-Xers will copy this strategy in their own lives. For example, in churches I expect that Gen-Xers will start being dismissive of the Baby Boomers who run most churches these days. I expect them to look pityingly at the Boomers, but not engage in direct conflict with the Boomer power structure. I expect them to start talking about what it might mean to be a post-racial church and a post-protest church. I expect all this will drive the Boomers crazy. Indeed, some of this is happening now.

The culture of presidential politics tends to have influence in the wider culture. When Bill Clinton insisted that fellatio wasn’t really sex, I was doing a lot of youth ministry, and I was very aware that more and more kids got involved in fellatio at a younger and younger age. With George W. Bush’s tendency to authoritarianism, I see many young people willing to accept a large degree of authoritarianism in their lives. So where else might the Obama/Gen-X trend play out?…

For example, if Barack Obama wins the presidential election in November — if he even runs a close race — what might that mean for the 2009 election for a new president of the Unitarian Universalist Association (UUA)? Right now, we have two declared candidates, both of whom are Baby Boomers, and both of whom are pretty much indistinguishable. If a Gen-X candidate were to emerge in the next few months, I’d be willing to bet that s/he could easily win the UUA election. I can think of three or four possible Gen-Xers whom I would vote for. So if you happen to know a viable Gen-X candidate for UUA president, encourage him/her to make some connections at General Assembly….

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!!

Where did they go?!

Nine years ago, I served on the old Unitarian Universalist Association (UUA) Pamphlet Commission. We were the ones responsible for producing all the pamphlets for the denomination. Back then, the World Wide Web was still new and shiny and full of untapped potential. During my time on the Commission, I said we should offer the text of all pamphlets for free on the UUA Web site. This idea provoked strong opposition, both from other members of the Commission, and from UUA staff.

People said, “If we offered them for free, we wouldn’t be able to sell printed versions.” I said, “So what? The point of a pamphlet is to reach as many people as possible. We’ll reach more people online.” People said, “But if we offer them for free, congregations will print them up on their own printers.” I said, “So what if they do? Some small congregations can’t afford pamphlets any other way, and they’re the ones who need the pamphlets most. The congregations who can afford pamphlets will find that our printed versions look so much better that it will be worth it to purchase them.” People said, “But what about copyright?” I said, “Not a real issue. You retain copyright, but put a notice offering permission of any Unitarian Universalist congregation to print as many as needed.”

Finally, I tried to make my real point. I said, “This is not about printed materials at all! We should be concerned about making our pamphlets easily available on this shiny new medium, the World Wide Web.” But I was ignored.

Then the Pamphlet Commission was dissolved, and UUA staff took over producing pamphlets. And lo and behold, suddenly one day the full text of all the pamphlets was available online. Hooray! We did the right thing for once!

Well. Sort of….

Just now I went to the UUA Web site to try to find a pamphlet online so I could send the URL to a newcomer to our church who wanted to know more about Unitarian Universalism. But apparently the texts of most of our pamphlets are no longer available on the UUA Web site (or if available, so hard to find that they might as well be unavailable). And when the text of a pamphlet was available, said text was accompanied by a long and nasty-sounding copyright notice. (Update: Chris found the old pamphlets page archived here. Thanks, Chris!)

I’d love to be proved wrong on this (Update: Deb proves me wrong here — Deb has long been a strong advocate for making pamphlets freely available on the Web. Yay, Deb!). I’d love to have someone show me the easily accessible Web page where I can find texts for every current UUA pamphlet, so I can share those pamphlets with our newcomers. I’d love it if every UUA pamphlet came with a Creative Commons 3.0 (by-nd-nc) license, so I could freely reproduce the texts of pamphlets on our church Web site.

And if someone can’t prove me wrong — if UUA pamphlets are mostly available only as dead tree resources — then maybe it’s time to gather a group of people who actually understand new media, a group that would write and produce free online pamphlets (text, audio, video) under a Creative Commons license.

Mr. C. for prez

Mr. Crankypants is announcing his candidacy for presidency. No, silly, not the United States presidency, but the presidency of the Unitarian Universalist Association (UUA). Mr. Crankypants is running on the Complacency and Status Quo platform. Thus, you will vote for Mr. C. in 2009 if you believe that everything about Unitarian Universalism is just fine and doesn’t need to be changed.

Here’s a few specifics about the Complacency and Status Quo viewpoint to help you decide to vote for Mr. C.:

  • Children should be seen and not heard in our congregations. Let them be sent away to Sunday school where they will not bother the adults.
  • Teenagers should be forced into unproductive and overly anti-authoritarian behavior (the poor dears must rebel against something, why not their church?), and eventually convinced that they do not like church. Thereafter, they should be actively discouraged from attending church until they are earning a decent income and can afford a good-sized pledge.
  • We are religious liberals. By definition, we are not oppressing anyone. We do not need any anti-racism stuff and nonsense, nor do we need to do any anti-classism, anti-homophobia, anti-anything work. Mr. C. is wondering why you even thought there was a need to bring up the subject.
  • We must encourage continued mediocrity in ministry. We want more boring sermons, slip-shod liturgy, and poor religious leadership — and theological schools should continue to educate our ministers to this end.
  • We must encourage continued destructiveness in lay people. We want them to continue to undermine anyone in authority, and we want them to start bruising conflicts about meaningless issues. To this end, Mr. C.’s administration will offer conflict training (as in, how to create conflict).
  • We must discourage growth in our churches. If we let new people into our churches, we’ll just have to share resources with them. And if we let new congregations form, that means there will be less Veatch money for the rest of us. No growth!!
  • We don’t want to become some kind of New Age group, or some kind of pseudo-evangelical church. Therefore, we must actively and absolutely discourage any kind of spiritual vitality or relevance. Religion from the neck up!!

There are other fine candidates for UUA president, but they all seem to be advocating for change. You know everything about Unitarian Universalism is perfect — so instruct your congregation’s delegates to vote for Mr. Crankypants at the 2009 General Assembly.

Vote for Complacency and Status Quo!!

Children seen and not heard — Get rid of youth — No need for anti-oppression work — Mediocrity in ministry — Continued destructive conflict in congregations — No growth — Religion from the neck up.