Monthly Archives: December 2009

Old Joy, old Hark

At the Christmas Eve candlelight service, we’ll be singing “Joy to the World.” We decided to keep the words as they appear in the 1937 Unitarian Universalist hymnal, Hymns of the Spirit, substituting only “Let us our songs employ” for “Let men their songs employ” (that is, using inclusive language for all humanity, but retaining the masculine gender for Jesus and God). I made up sheet music with all four parts of the traditional Lowell Mason harmonization, sized to fit a typical 5-1/2×8-1/2 inch order of service. I’m including links to the PDF below, in case someone else might find it useful. Also included is “Hark! the Herald Angels Sing” as it appeared in Hymns of the Spirit (and which is not in either of the current hymnals). We substituted “Born to raise up those on earth” for “Born to raise the men of earth”; and in the second verse, we kept the Unitarian “Sun” instead of the more orthodox Christian “Son” found in other denomination’s hymnals.

PDF of “Joy to the World”
PDF of “Hark the Herald Angels Sing” 

Overheard

On the train this morning, I was trying to read an article about recent research on adolescent brain development. In a seat somewhere behind me, a cell phone rang. A woman answered the phone. “I’m going to change my phone number,” she said, “I’m serious. I don’t want to talk with you any more. I’m done with you.” It sounded as though this woman had just dumped a man, someone she thought of as no good. “I go off to work, and you just go out on the streets, having fun, getting drugs, doing whatever. I sick and tired of it.” She talked to him for a while, then ended the conversation — I was cheering her on in my mind, even though I was only hearing her side of the conversation, even though I didn’t know either one of them. A minute after she ended the conversation, her phone rang again. She delayed picking it up, but at last she answered. She was less polite to him this time. After a short time, she ended the call. A moment later, her phone rang again. Don’t answer it, I said to myself. She answered it, but barely let him get a word in edgewise. At last she told him why his mother didn’t want him around either: “That’s why she doesn’t want you there, you’re always disrespecting her, if you can’t respect your mom, I don’t want to deal you. Good bye.” She hung up. Her cell phone rang again. She talked to him, and ended the call quickly. By this time, I was just tuning out the conversation — she had to know that you can’t have a private conversation on the train, but I still didn’t want to listen. I’d guess that her cell phone rang a few more times, but I wasn’t paying attention. Then it was quiet behind me, and I realized that she was gone.

He’s another Unitarian Universalist

In an article dated December 11, with a Raleigh, N.C., dateline, the Associated Press reported on a ruckus surrounding a local election: “Asheville City Councilman Cecil Bothwell believes in ending the death penalty, conserving water and reforming government — but he doesn’t believe in God. His political opponents say that’s a sin that makes him unworthy of serving in office, and they’ve got the North Carolina Constitution on their side.”

Opponents are threatening a lawsuit, saying that the North Carolina state constitution requires political office holders to believe in God. Of course, the U.S. Constitution does not permit religious tests of any kind for elected officials. As is so often the case, it seems that there is very little religion in this political battle:– “Bothwell said a legal challenge to his appointment would be ‘fun,’ but believes his opponents’ efforts have more to do with politics than religious beliefs.”

You will not be surprised to learn that Bothwell is a Unitarian Universalist. Bothwell’s home town newspaper, the Asheville [N.C.] Citizen-Times provides more details about Bothwell’s precise theological position than the Associate Press report. As it turns out, Bothwell is not exactly an atheist…. Continue reading →

Feast day

Our Lady of Guadalupe is both the Catholic patron saint of all the Americas and a symbol of Mexico; today is her feast day. (She is also beloved of many feminists, who make some interesting interpretations of the aura which is always depicted as surrounding her.) Our downstairs neighbors put a little statue of Our Lady of Guadalupe under the little orange tree that’s between the garage and the house. In between rain showers, I made a photograph of her yesterday afternoon:

No oranges were harmed for this photograph.

Country Joe, a UU?

A ten-year-old thread on the Mudcat folk music Web site* claims that both Country Joe MacDonald and Melanie belonged to Liberal Religious Youth, the old Unitarian Universalist youth organization.

Can any of you out there confirm that this is true? I’m sure neither one is still a Unitarian Universalist, but it would still be fun if they were in LRY.

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* This was a thread on folk musicians with a Unitarian Universalist connection who used their music to promote social justice. The obvious names came up: Pete Seeger, Malvina Reynolds, Utah Phillips, Ric Masten, Fred Small, along with other less well-known folkies. They missed Daryl Anger, but he only started attending a UU church in 2004.

“If my God hates those who hate him, I ought to do as my God does, and I will hate them too.”

I was driving to work this morning, listening to the local liberal talk radio program on KQED. One of the guests this morning was a conservative Christian of some kind, who was involved with some “Christian social group” on the campus of UC Hastings. The host, Michael Krasny, mentioned that this Christian social group did not allow gay and lesbian members.

The Christian fellow, whose name I did not catch, hastened to correct him. He said something like this: We do allow gays and lesbians; this is not about orientation, it is about behaviors. We do not allow our members to have sex outside of marriage, and we do not allow them to have homosexual sex; but if a gay or lesbian was willing to abide by our traditional Christian views of sex and marriage, then they are welcome to join our group. We want everyone to experience what it is to live in Christ, etc. etc.

I listened to this fellow’s tone of voice as he was talking, rather than the standard conservative-Christian content of what he was saying. His tone of voice was defensive, as was only natural, given that he was on a liberal talk radio program. But I also heard smugness, and complacency, and sanctimoniousness, and rigidity. I realized I have heard that exact same tone of voice hundreds of times, and when I hear that tone of voice it always makes me want to insist that I am not a Christian, that I do not believe in that God, and that while I am a follower of Jesus of Nazareth, my Jesus has nothing whatever to do with their Christ.

And then I remembered something written by Hosea Ballou in 1805 that applies to people like this Christian fellow on the radio. Ballou writes:

“Idolatry is the sin of worshipping that which is not, in reality, the true God…. An Almighty [God], omnipresent, infinitely wise and good, may be talked of; but his wisdom, power and goodness must be denied; and he must be a great many millions of miles off, fixed to a certain place, yet everywhere present; infinitely wise, and powerful, yet suffers an everlasting violation of his will;… loves some of his creatures, and hates others; is pleased and displeased with the conduct of his creatures; is perfectly unchangeable, yet loves at one time, and, at another, hates the same object. Such an idol will answer for thousands. Now what are the consequences? Answer, one nation supposes itself the only favorite of God; other people are haters of him, and hated by him. If my God hates those who hate him, I ought to do as my God does, and I will hate them too…. Reader, turn over the pages of history, calculate the rivers of blood which have been shed on account of religious disputes, and ask yourself the question, Is this religion worthy of a Supreme Being?”

[excerpted from A Treatise on Atonement, chapter 3.]

And, dear religious liberals, before you get too smug….

So we religious liberals have let the conservative Christians set up their idol here in America, their false God, a God who hates the majority of humanity, teaches his followers to hate, teaches his followers to start wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and who condemns billions of people to eternal torture. And in response to this false idol, this false God, what do we religious liberals do? In our turn, too often we hate all gods, refuse to let anyone mention the word “God,” hate the conservative Christians, and when we talk about religion we use a tone of voice that is defensive, smug, complacent, sanctimonious, and rigid, all at the same time.

Hosea Ballou offers us another path: We can engage critically with the Bible and the Christian tradition that is so much a part of Western culture. We can use reason, humor, and good common sense to come to our own understanding of the Bible, one of the central books of our Western tradition. We can follow truth, instead of letting others impose their false idols on us.

Heavy frost in San Mateo

Carol burst into the bathroom when I was taking a shower. “It looks like it snowed!” she said. We went to the door of our second story porch to look out at the white fuzzy stuff on the roofs of nearby houses. It turned out to be a very heavy frost, the result of last night’s below-freezing temperatures and nearly 100% relative humidity. The sun was melting it quickly, so I grabbed a camera and stood just inside the back door, still starkers from the shower, and took a couple of pictures of the last remaining white frozen stuff, with two palm trees in the background.

Post-Boomer spiritualities

On his UU Growth blog, Peter Bowden provides a link to a couple of interesting essays on “Faith Formation in 2020” on the “Lifelong Faith” Web site, with links to one essay on “Thirteen Trends and Forces Influencing the Future of Faith Formation in a Changing Church and World,” and to another essay on “Four Scenarios for the Future of Faith Formation in 2020.” I’ve done a preliminary reading of these two articles, and while I have my doubts about some of the material I also found plenty to think about.

In the “Thirteen Trends” essay, some of the usual trends are mentioned — the drift away from organized religion in the U.S., the increasing diversity in the U.S. population, the growing willingness to identify young adulthood as a separate developmental stage, etc. It’s nice to see all these trends collected together in one place, but mostly I didn’t see anything really new. However, the section on “The Rise of a Distinctive Post-Boomer Faith and Spirituality” was quite good, drawing on research by Robert Wuthnow, and work by Richard Flory and Donald E. Miller. Flory and Miller define “four emerging forms of the post-Boomer spiritual quest”:

Innovators are those who represent a constantly evolving, or innovating, approach to religious and spiritual beliefs and practices. Many of these are newer, less established groups that are affiliated with the “emerging church” movement, while others are established churches and ministries that are innovating within their own traditions. Innovators demonstrate a desire for embracing the emerging postmodern culture, and within that context are engaging in a spiritual quest that by definition is one that must change and adapt — innovate — to meet the changing culture currents.

Appropriators refer to those churches and ministries that seek to provide a compelling and “relevant” experience for participants, both for those in the audience and for those who are performing in the service or event. In this, both churches and independent ministries seek to create these experiences through imitating, or appropriating, trends found in the larger culture and ultimately popularizing these through their networks into a particular form of pop-Christianity primarily oriented toward an individual spiritual experience.

Resisters refer to what are primarily Boomer-initiated efforts intended to appeal to Post-Boomers by focusing on the “recovery of reason” and resisting postmodern culture within Christianity. They hoping to reestablish the place of the written text and rational belief as the dominant source for Post-Boomer spirituality and practice.

Reclaimers are seeking to renew their experiences of Christianity through the history, symbolism and practices of ancient forms of the faith, such as those still found in the liturgical traditions, thus reclaiming the ancient symbols, rituals and practices of these traditions for their own spiritual quest. Reclaimers demonstrate a quest that takes them on a journey to ancient Christian traditions in small, family-oriented congregations through which they pursue their desire for spiritual development.

Obviously, this has been written for a Christian audience. But you can find these four trends within Unitarian Universalism:–

There are a few Innovators within Unitarian Universalism, though they mostly get forced out of the mainstream of our methodologically and liturgically conservative congregations. We have a few Appropriators within Unitarian Universalism, although most of them are trying to appropriate white middle class Boomer culture (e.g., the new hymnal supplement), which means that they really don’t represent post-Boomer spirituality. There are a few Reclaimers, who often meet in smaller groups for worship and service — UU neo-pagan groups meeting for rituals, UU Christian groups meeting for lectio divina or communion, UU Jewish groups, etc. There are also the Resisters — Post-Boomers who are being encouraged by older humanists to adopt an agenda of strong rationalism, with a heavy reliance on written texts (not scriptures, mind you, but rational texts), as opposed to visual arts, music, movement, etc.

The question is whether or not we Unitarian Universalists have really engaged with post-Boomer spirituality at all. What do you think? Outside of the Sunday school and youth group, is your Unitarian Universalist congregation engaging with post-Boomer spiritualities in any significant way?

Winter, blah

For us, one of the attractions of moving to the San Francisco Bay Area was the weather. Sure, we knew that there are usually a couple of days a year when temperatures dip below freezing, but we could handle that.

The National Weather Service has issued a hazardous weather warning for the Bay area. For tonight, they say “the coldest air of the season so far is expected. Snow levels will lower to 500 feet….” Since we live well below the 500 foot level, that is fine with me. It might be charming to see a little white on the tops of the coastal range.

The forecast continues: “Areas of frost are possible late Monday night into Tuesday morning.” That is still within the range of acceptable weather. In fact, it would be fun to see some frost: last time we lived in the Bay area, it was faintly amusing to see people trying to scrape frost off their car windshields with credit cards (I made sure to keep our ice scrapers in the glove compartment). But then the forecast continues with something is is quite unacceptable: “Monday through Saturday. Colder with rain and snow showers….”

Snow showers, even if mixed with rain, are completely unacceptable, and will not be tolerated.