The amazing UUpdater has begun to get ready for the annual Unitarian Universalist (UU) blog awards, and you can follow the process at the UUpdater blog. Last year, I said that I was completely incompetent to vote for the best UU blog, and that goes double this year — not only are there more UU blogs out there this year, I have even less time to read all the blogs I’d like to read. But this year, I decided that in spite of the fact that my views are narrow and ill-informed, I’m going to tell you my choices for best UU blogs whether you want to hear them or not. Here goes nothing:
— I have long thought that Colleen at Arbitrary Marks offers the best theological writing out there. I don’t always agree with Colleen, but I consistently come away from reading her blog with challenging new insights and new ideas for challenging books I really want to read. If I need a sermon topic, this is the blog I read.
— Speaking of UU blogs which challenge me, most UU bloggers occupy a political position between John Edwards and Bill Richardson, which is to say, not very challenging really. But two UU bloggers do challenge me and make me think: Bill Baar on the right, and Will Shetterly far to the left. In the end, I have to give the nod for best UU political commentary to Will — sorry Bill, but after all Will is a professional writer and I promise it has nothing to do with the fact that I’m as far to the left as he is and agree with him about most everything except his analysis of racism and capitalism.
— When it comes to the “Best UU Themed Blog,” for me there is only one choice. Aside from being witty, urbane, and loving local food, Scott Wells at Boy in the Bands is the best UU blogger when it comes to Universalism. Universalism is what keeps me going when the going gets tough, and I often find myself turning to Scott for my Universalism fix.
— As for the best UU blog written by a minister, after all these years I still like Phil’s Little Blog on the Prairie. I like his ideas, I like his prose, and I like his emphasis on religious education.
— When it comes to best writing overall, I kinda wanted to vote for Henry David Thoreau’s blog. Except that you could argue convincingly that Thoreau wasn’t really a Unitarian, and he’s dead. Besides which, if I’m honest I have to say I read Hafidha Sofia at Never Say Never more often than I read Thoreau; I consistently enjoy reading her prose, no matter what she writes about.
— Can we do Best U.S. Presidential Campaign Blog by a UU? No? Oh well, I guess there wouldn’t be that many contestants.
— And my final vote is for The Blue Chalice / El Caliz Azul, in the category of The UU Blog I Will Miss the Most Now That It’s Gone. Thanks for a great four years, Enrique.
And there you have it: my narrow and ill-informed views on the best UU blogs for the past year, views which you would do well to ignore completely.
Thanks for the nomination!
I really do very little writing and the blog is really more of a notepad just to safe links…. I’ll be dropping out of it all together for a few months too…
Thanks for the thoughts! It is worth a lot to me that you would include el caliz azul. And for all that is worth, yes people should visit Hafidha’s Never say Never blog for some of the most thoughtful writing out there. And I will also keep track of what you have to say about the UU emergent movement in the next few months, as I have a thought of starting something up in the mountains where I am at. -Best Regards
Bill, ditto all that! (It’ll be interesting to see if you or I actually stop blogging.)
Dan, I can’t decide if I should write more about race. Some people think I’m one of the guys who think racism has gone away, which isn’t so. On the other hand, I just read someone who was saying that the gap between the races is widening, and I refrained from writing, “Tell that to Barack and Condi.”
I had no idea that HD Thoreau had a blog – thanks for mentioning that. And for mentioning me, too. I was touched because I have a great deal of respect for you and your blog.
Like you, I’ve noticed there are many more UU blogs (it seems every day there is another title I don’t recognize) than there were last year, and I don’t have time to read most of them. This year’s awards will be very interesting!
Dan, just wanted to say that my latest post about race was about 95% inspired by another friend’s comment. You’d only made me start wondering where we disagree on race and capitalism. Uh, not that we must share a mind, of course.
Will — I think I have a different analysis of racism’s role within capitalism. For me, racism has been an essential tool of capitalism’s colonial projects, and it is one of the chief ways that capitalism alienates workers from their labor in colonial and post-colonial capitalist societies. Thus, here in the United States (which is, confusingly, both post-colonial and simultaneously engaged in its own colonial projects), racism is not separable from capitalism. To critique capitalism is to critique racism, and vice versa. So where I differ from you is in your efforts to somehow separate racism and classism, saying that racism somehow grows out of the class divide, and that thus classism is somehow more primal than racism:– Whereas in my view, racism is an essential element of the American capitalist society in which there are also class divisions.
I think I would also say that it’s not entirely useful to speak of “classism,” a formulation which tends to define classism as a form of discrimination based on external socio-economic markers such accent, kinship ties, choices in clothing, etc. In my view, it is more useful to speak of the way capitalism exploits persons by commodifying them and their labor; this exploitation is accomplished by various means, including subjugation of women, subjugation of groups of persons grouped together using supposed racial markers (skin color, etc.), subjugation of so-called “sexual minorities,” and so on.
Here’s where I think you and I would agree — the specific techniques used to subjugate persons are less important than changing the system that requires subjugation in the first place.
Ah! Interesting. We do agree about racism as one of many tools of subjugation and alienation. I think I put more importance on tribalism than you do, and therefore I see racism as yet another of what you’re calling external markers–skin is a difference whose meaning is taught in each society. What’s interesting to me about all markers in capitalism is that they’re trumped by wealth, which is what gave us black slaveowners in early Virginia and Condi Rice today.
Do you think that racism and capitalism are so closely linked that they cannot survive without each other?
Will — Seems to me that historically capitalism has survived without the kind of institutionalized racism we see here in the United States. But within a U.S. context, I would definitely agree that racism and capitalism have become so closely linked that each seemingly cannot survive without the other — and exterminating racism seems unlikely to me without a significant change in our political/economic system.
Dan, our disagreement may be moot. I had thought US capitalism could make a peaceful transition from racism (thereby making it more insidious, not less). The latest economic news has me wondering if it’ll have time for the experiment.