Month: November 2022

Alt text

“Alt tet”Alt text” is text that you add to images on your website, so that people who are blind or have impaired vision can use their screen reader to tell them what the image is. I’ve been very bad about adding alt text to images on this blog, partly because I was unsure how much detail I should go into.

Well, someone on Mastodon pointed out this guide to writing alt text on the UX Collective website: “How to write an image description.” The author, Alex Chen, suggests a model format he calls “object-action-context.”

Then Chen provides examples of alt text using his object-action-context model. He goes into details like how long alt text descriptions should be (it varies depending on the image). He also points out that any image description is better than none at all.

Chen has inspired me to add alt text to all images on my websites, and (more importantly) on our congregation’s website.

UUA politics: Article II revision, pt. 2

Once again, I’ll say that I’m critical of the present Article II, and since at least 2005 I’ve been advocating revision. And while I criticized the current draft revision in a previous post, I think the revision is headed in the right direction — towards a complete rewrite.

But.

In a conversation on Mastodon, Peter Bowden said something that made sense to me: This is not the time to revise Article II.

All the UU congregations that I know are still reeling from the effects of the pandemic. We are in survival mode. (As an aside, I’m predicting that in the next few years, as many as a third of all UU congregations are going to go under.)

And for many UU congregations, the old “Principles and Purposes” are woven throughout their congregational life. Many, maybe most, UU congregations have the old “Principles and Purposes” posted somewhere in their buildings, maybe as a framed poster, sometimes even painted right on the walls. UU congregations have incorporated the old “Principles and Purposes” into their bylaws, on their websites, in their Sunday school curriculums, in their worship services, everywhere. When congregations are still reeling from the pandemic, we’re asking a lot of them to remove this central part of their identity.

Does Article II need to be revised? Heck yeah.

Is now the time to revise Article II? Mm, no.

In that Mastodon conversation, Peter Bowden suggested maybe by 2030. At first I thought he was exaggerating, but as I thought about my current congregation I think that might be a realistic time frame for when we will have the bandwidth to take this on.

UUA politics: Article II revision

It’s long past time for the Unitarian Universalist Association (UUA) to revise the Principles and Purposes section of the UUA Bylaws. The first post on this blog — way back in 2005, when this blog was hosted on AOL — was a critique of the seven principles. So I’m glad that the Article II Commission is working on a revision of the principles and purposes.

With that in mind, I’ll take a look at the draft version of the new Article II, and point out the things that drew my attention.

Section C-2.1 ends with this sentence: “We will transform the world by our liberating love.” I’m not sure what it means, especially the phrase “liberating love.” For me, using the word “love” implies a kind of post-Christian liberation theology. I’m fine with liberation theology. But as a Universalist myself, I’d prefer the phrase “universal love.”

Section C-2.2 begins by stating, “Love is the enduring force that holds us together.” I tend to agree with that, since I trace my religious roots back to the teachings of Jesus. However, I wonder what UU Buddhists think of this — Buddhist teachings tend to be centered more on compassion than love. And what about UU Hindus, and UU Jews, and UU Pagans — does this seem Christian-centric? I don’t know.

Section C-2.2, second paragraph continues with the assumption that covenant is central to Unitarian Universalism. This was a grounding assumption of the old Principle and Purposes as well. But the importance of covenant is a fairly recent historical interpretation, promulgated by historian Conrad Wright in the mid-twentieth century. As history, Wright’s arguments are problematic. So I read Wright’s arguments for the centrality of covenant, not as history, but as mid-twentieth century theology. I feel that covenant-as-theology is showing its age, and needs rethinking.

Section C-2.2, third paragraph includes a diagram. If you want to include a visual, it should be at least as well crafted as the text. This is not a well-crafted visual (using Microsoft Word to create a graphic does not constitute a high level of craft). I used to have a side-hustle as a graphic artist, so I find poorly-done visuals especially annoying. Before this draft goes any further, someone who has some actual visual training needs to create a decent graphic.

Section C-2.2 statement on justice: I’m glad that racism is named explicitly. I’m troubled that sexism isn’t explicitly named, given that clergy sexual misconduct and sexual harassment in our congregations continues to be a major problem. Nor is ableism named, nor is heteronormativity named, nor is… well, you get the idea.

Section C-2.2 statement on generosity: I’m not against this in principle. But the statement as it is worded comes off sounding like the UUA is softening people up to give more money. Needs to be rewritten.

Section C-2.2 statement on evolution: I completely disagree that this should be included as a value. Evolution is more properly a scientific concept. As a value, evolution is a product of European colonialism, where the scientific concept was perverted to mean that European civilization was higher and better than all the non-European “savage” and “heathen” cultures. So any application of “evolution” to social science concepts is, to me, immediately suspect.

Section C-2.2 statement on pluralism: This is not bad for a draft statement. It’s perhaps the best thing in the whole document.

Section C-2.2 statement on equity: I’m not sure how this adds much to the statement on justice. There’s probably something important here, but revision is needed.

Section C-2.2 statement on interdependence: This is not too bad. As is typical with Unitarian Universalists, however, this statement makes humans seem somehow separate from the interdependent web. There’s an easy fix for that, though — reword the statement something like this: “We honor the sacred interdependent web of all existence, which includes all human relationships, the relationships of all living beings, and the relationship of living beings to non-living matter.”

Section C-2.3 is a vast improvement on the so-called “six sources” of the present principles and purposes. I would however remove the phrase “we draw upon, and are inspired by, the full depth and breadth of sacred understandings,” for two reasons. First, there are sacred understandings that we as Unitarian Universalists find reprehensible. Second, this smacks of colonialism, where colonial powers felt they could appropriate any religious tradition for their own uses; I feel this phrase gives tacit permission to Unitarian Universalists to do that kind of religious misappropriation. The second sentence is all that’s needed here.

Section C-2.4 is quite good. It could replace the statements on justice and equity in Section C-2.2.

Section C-2.5 is half good. The last sentence should be dropped. This is the kind of sentence that can too easily be warped and weaponized. Plus, it simply isn’t necessary, given all that has gone before.

What’s missing: The big thing that’s missing in this draft of Article II is any statement in support of democracy. This, when many parts of the world seems to be heading in the direction of fascism.

This is a deal-breaker for me. I can put up with poorly-drawn diagrams, I can put up with outdated mid-twentieth century covenant theology — but I could not, in good conscience, vote for a statement that does not explicitly support democracy.

Update 1/22: In this comment on another post, Susan wishes that the Article II revision specifically named patriarchy as something we oppose.

Marketing for congregations

When I arrived at First Parish in Cohasset in August, I started watching for newcomers. Of course, I didn’t know most of the people, but each Sunday I would ask the long-time members if there were any newcomers.

We had no newcomers in August. One in September. None in October. Then two so far in November.

As a former salesperson, when I see so few newcomers I immediately assume that there’s no marketing going on. That’s what marketing does — it reaches people who are new to your business (and a small nonprofit organization like a congregation is a business). The primary form of marketing for most Unitarian Universalist congregations is a website. So I decided to take a look at the First Parish website. I found that since the COVID pandemic had started, there had been very little new material added to the website (no surprise there, people were busy doing other things). The administrator and I started adding content to the website at least weekly, beginning in October. Sure enough, we got a couple of newcomers stopping by in November.

I’d like to believe the tiny uptick in newcomers is a result of our markting efforts. Of course I know this is the worst kind of evidence — it’s all anecdotal, there’s no way of proving a causal relationship, etc., etc. I know that I could simply be deluded by confirmation bias here — I see something that confirms what I already believe, and continue to believe what I believe.

But I still think marketing works. If your website is your only form of marketing, then paying attention to your website should yield dividends.

Casablanca with Link Hogthrob

Someone on Mastodon wondered what it would be like if Muppet characters took the place of a human actors in a romantic movie. Then she came up with a series of movie stills to show what it might have looked like.

So I began to think about my favorite movie, Casablanca, and how a Muppet character might fit in. Instead of Humphrey Bogart, what if Link Hogthrob played the part of Rick Blaine… and this is what my imagination came up with:

Muppet character Black and white photo of Link Hogthrob dressed in a white dinner jacket standing behind Ingrid Bergman.

Radical Bird Club

Some people in Scotland have started a Radical Bird Club. Here is part of their manifesto:

“RBC strives to be inclusive* to adults** of any age, class, sexuality, race & ability. you don’t even have to know anything about birds. it’s just walking, talking, observing, listening & being with other people who want to appreciate the natural bounty around us – whether you’ve been doing it for years or are just realising that it’s kind of your thing.
*does not include bigots, fascists, sexists, racists, homophobes or ableists
**must be okay with general sweariness, so not recommended for anyone under 16″

I like this idea. I’ve been shying away from joining local bird clubs because too many of them feel too competitive to me. The competition can include macho posturing around who has seen the most birds, to wealth posturing around who has the most expensive birding gear. A Radical Bird Club focused on “walking, talking, observing, listening & being with other people” seems like a good idea.

They want to turn this into a global phenomenon. RBCs around the world!

I haven’t time or energy to organize anything at this point in my life. But if someone else organizes an RB near me, I’d check it out.

Borrowing vs. appropriation

In an interview with Religion News Service, author Liz Bucar talks about the difference between religious (mis)appropriation, and religious borrowing:

“Religious borrowing has always existed. It’s certainly a big part of the way religion in America is experienced and consumed, especially if you think about the spiritual but not religious or the nones. Some forms of cross-tradition borrowing are positive. For me, borrowing is the bigger category and appropriation is the problematic form. And the reason it’s problematic, for me, is when the borrowing happens in conditions of injustice, oppression and power inequities. That’s what generates harm.”

In fact, we might say that syncretic religions (and most religions have at least some syncretic elements in them) depend on religious borrowing.

But it’s religious misappropriation that we have to be concerned with. And I believe Unitarian Universalists are particularly prone to religious misappropriation. Here’s Liz Bucar again:

“I think that progressive secularists, a community which the academy is full of and which I’d probably identify with, haven’t always been understanding of religious communities or thought of them as a source for what human flourishing can look like. They often think about religious communities as problems to be solved, or as people ruled by hierarchical institutions or arcane rules and doctrines. This position sets them up for maybe not being as respectful or deferential to religious claims as they could be.”

Honestly, this sounds like Unitarian Universalists. We look a lot like progressive secularists. Many of us treat religion as a problem to be solved, rather than a source of human flourishing. We set ourselves up to be less than respectful to other religions — even perhaps less than respectful to our own religion.

Recent web browsing

Some links from my recent web browsing:

Are We Allies?

Foluke Ifejola Adebisi has an excellent blog post on “the concept of allyship against injustice.” In other words, what does it mean to be a “white ally,” or any other kind of ally? Adebisi makes an intersting disctintion between allyship as being, and allyship as doing:

“I think what is important is that we move away from thinking of allyship as something we are, but instead think of it as something we do, each time we do something. Each time we want to contribute to a particular struggle for justice, we must decide what must be done in the moment, irrespective of what we have done before or what type of person we think we are.”

I came away from this blog post thinking that if I hear someone saying they are an ally, this may not mean much. I’m going to watch what they do instead of listen to what they say they are.

Jew or Judean?

Marginalia hosts a scholarly debate on how to translate ioudaioi in texts from the last centuries BCE and the first few centuries CE. Does it mean Jew or Judean? While this may seem like a big argument over a trivial detail, the scholars involved claim the stakes are higher than you’d think.

For example, if you translate ioudaioi in the Gospel of John as “Jew,” then that could reinforce one of the foundations of Christian anti-Semitism. The ioudaioi, the Jews, killed Jesus. Whereas if you translate ioudaioi as “Judean,” someone from the land of Judea, maybe you can undermine that foundation of anti-Semitism.

But other scholars argue that in some texts, ioudaioi is better translated into modern English as “Jew,” sometimes as “Judean.” It all depends on the context. And we don’t want to inject anachronisms into translations.

Another point comes up: Is it anachronistic to talk about Judaism as a religion in this era? Was Judaism more of an ethnic identity than a religion? (In a related story, Haaretz reports on archaelogist Yonatan Adler’s new book that advances the claim that the archaelogical record does not show evidence for Jusdaism as a religion before the 2nd century BCE.)

Dare You Fight?

Editor Neal caren is creating an online collection of W. E. B. DuBois’s articles for The Crisis. These articles were written between 1914 and 1934, and many have not been collected previously.

DuBois’s essays are fascinating to read. His articles for The Crisis sounds radical even by today’s standards.

Invasion

Australian librarian Hugh Rundle writes about the exodus of people from Twitter to Mastodon. He titles his blog post “Home invasion: Mastodon’s Eternal September begins.” As a Mastodon user of fairly long standing, he describes how he has experienced the influx of Twitterers:

“It’s not entirely the Twitter people’s fault. They’ve been taught to behave in certain ways. To chase likes and retweets/boosts. To promote themselves. To perform. All of that sort of thing is anathema to most of the people who were on Mastodon a week ago…. To the Mastodon locals it feels like a busload of Kontiki tourists just arrived, blundering around yelling at each other and complaining that they don’t know how to order room service.”

Although I’m most emphatically not a Twitter user (I left Twitter in 2014, not in 2022), I am a new Mastodon user. I hope the Mastodon users don’t see me as behaving badly….

“The quarrel is with the organized part…”

Religion New Service reports on religiosity trends in the US, as found in the 2021 General Social Survey (GSS). The GSS concluded that religious participation declined rapidly during the COVID pandemic. But Michael Hout, professor of sociology at New York University, and two colleagues raise questions about that conclusion. Participation in organized religion may have declined, but in their interpretation of the data, religiosity did not decline as much.

The article raises questions of survey methodology, which are fascinating in themselves. For example, in-person surveys and online surveys have different strengths, and produce different results. And people are less likely to want to participate in surveys these days, because social media allows a better outlet for people’s opinions.

As fascinating as the discussion of methodology was, I was more interested in a couple of Hout’s conclusions.

First, that the decline in participation in organized religion has come mostly among occasional attenders — what I call “CEO Christians” or “Christmas and Easter Only Christians.”

Second, according to Hout, “Atheism is not what’s happening. If we think of organized religion as a conjoined thing, the quarrel is with the organized part, not the religion.”

Both these conclusions sound correct to me. So I’d be interested in a survey that attempted to find out why people “quarrel with the organized part, not the religion.” Are people turned off because of abuse scandals? because organized religion doesn’t feel authentic any more? because of trends outlined by Robert Putnam in Bowling Alone? because people have more choices with their leisure time? because of trends towards hyper-individualism? because religions are organizing in new ways (e.g., network Christianity) not found by surveys? because surveys have a biased understanding of “religiosity” that is not keeping up with the way people are living their religion?

Buildings of religious communities in Oshkosh

As we went around Oshkosh this afternoon, I stopped to photograph six buildings that house religious communities.

It was strange to see how deserted most of these buildings looked on Sunday afternoon. The Christian churches presumably had a lot of activity this morning, but by afternoon the building were dark, the parking lots empty. Even the yoga studio was dark and empty. The masjid was the only building with life: a handful of men using leaf blowers; they were clearly volunteers, because they worked at a relaxed pace and weren’t wearing work clothes.

I like the way the shape of Immanuel Lutheran Church echos the flat midwestern landscape.

Suburban streetscape with modernist church building from the late twentieth century.
Immanuel Lutheran Church, 338 N. Eagle St., Oshkosh

The masjid of Ahmadiyya Muslim Community has the most attractive site of any of the buildings I photographed today, with the lovely trees surrounding it. I’m fond of the white fence on the left hand side, which appears to enclose a playground; it balances the minaret on the other side.

Suburban streetscape, modest one story brick building with white portico and a small minaret on one end.
Ahmadiyya Muslim Community, 300 N. Eagle St., Oshkosh

Visually, the most striking aspect of Zion Lutheran Church is the large white cross. It is about as tall as the utility poles along the street. The bright digital sign provides a welcome spot of color on a gray Wisconsin day.

Suburban streetscape, large one story building with low brick wall and gently sloping undulating roof. A large freestanding white cross is as tall as nearby utility poles
Zion Lutheran Church, 400 N. Sawyer St., Oshkosh

The Algome Boulevard Methodist Church, built in 1870, is on the National Register of Historic Places. It is an imposing but friendly building. The siting is lovely: the building sits between two streets that meet at about a 60 degree angle, adding drama to an already dramatic building.

Older suburban or urban streetscape, large stone building with an imposing steeple
Algoma Boulevard United Methodist Church, 174 Algome Blvd., Oshkosh. This building is on the National Register of Historic Places.

I interpret the word “religious” in a broad sense; from my perspective, yoga studios look and act a lot like religious communities. Embody Yoga & Pilates occupies a storefront in the old downtown section of Oshkosh. The bright and cheerful sign on the window livens up the streetscape.

Urban streetscape, two story brick building with two storefronts on the first floor, one of which has a sign for a yoga studio
Embody Yoga & Pilates, 579 N. Main St., Oshkosh

The imposing mass of the High Ave. location of Most Blessed Sacrament Parish sits on a sloping lot. I like the way the red sign anchors the lot at the lower end (there’s a matching red sign on the upper side of the lot, not visible in the photograph). The somewhat austere building is softened by the trees and bushes planted around it.

A modernist building viewed across an empty parking lot.
Most Blessed Sacrament Parish (Roman Catholic), 435 High Ave., Oshkosh

Each of these buildings uses a muted color palette consisting mostly of earth colors, with occasional bright accents. Most of these building echo the flatness of the Wisconsin landscape. The two Lutheran churches send up nothing more than delicate crosses into the sky; the masjid has a modest minaret lower than the surrounding trees; the yoga studio maintains its modest presence in the first floor only; the Catholic church, though surprisingly large, still fits into the flat landscape. Only the Algoma Boulevard Methodist church rises up in a large mass, though its gray color keeps it from standing out too much.