Religion – Yet Another Unitarian Universalist

Updated Greek Myths curriculum

I spent the last two days doing an update of the Greek Myths curriculum on my curriculum website.

Tessa Swartz, then 12 years old, and I developed this curriculum back in 2014. Teachers at the UU Church of Palo Alto did a field test in 2015, and I did a quick revision that year incorporating field test feedback. I was supposed to do a final edit the following year (2016), but that was the year my father died and I wound up dropping the project. Nevertheless, the curriculum continued in use at the Palo Alto church right up through the pandemic.

This final revision retains the same stories originally curated by Tessa and me in 2014. But the following changes were made: revised the lesson plans (some quite heavily); added more illustrations; upgraded existing illustrations; rewrote the introduction; and did an overall edit.

If you have any comments on the curriculum, please leave them here or email me.

A woman chained to a rack cliff, with a sea monster below her and a man hovering above her. — A new illustration just added to the Greek Myths curriculum: Andromeda chained to the rock. This is a detail from a Roman wall painting of the first century BCE, from the Boscotrecase, Italy (public domain image).

How the 18th C. British establishment perceived Unitarians

James Boswell, in his Life of Johnson, described how one “Reverend Mr. Palmer, Fellow of Queen’s College, Cambridge,” dined with Boswell and Johnson in 1781. Boswell appended a footnote with some more information about Palmer:

“This unfortunate person, whose full name was Thomas Fysche Palmer, afterwards went to Dundee, in Scotland, where he officiated as minister to a congregation of the sect who called themselves Unitarians, from a notion that they distinctively worship one God, because they deny the mysterious doctrine of the Trinity. They do not advert that the great body of the Christian Church, in maintaining that mystery, maintain also the Unity of the God-head; the ‘Trinity in Unity! — three persons and one God.’ The Church humbly adores the Divinity as exhibited in the holy Scriptures. The Unitarian sect vainly presumes to comprehend and define the Almighty. Mr. Palmer having heated his mind with political speculations, became so much dissatisfied with our excellent Constitution, as to compose, publish, and circulate writings, which were found to be so seditious and dangerous, that upon being found guilty by a Jury, the Court of Justiciary in Scotland sentenced him to transportation for fourteen years. A loud clamour against this sentence was made by some Members of both Houses of Parliament; but both Houses approved of it by a great majority; and he was conveyed to the settlement for convicts in New South Wales. “

In other words, promoting Unitarianism in late eighteenth century Britain was sometimes considered illegal. Further, you could be sent to the penal colony in Australia for that crime. I guess Unitarianism was perceived as a threat to the establishment — not just to the established Church of England, but to the political establishment as well.

More on land acknowledgements

A recent news story got me thinking about land acknowledgements.

On Friday 15 November, Brown University transferred possession of 255 acres of land in Bristol, Rhode Island, to a preservation trust established by the Pokanoket Indian Tribe. The land was the ancestral home of Metacom, known by English settlers in the 17th century as King Phillip; it was he whom King Phillip’s War was named after. This transfer of land had its origins in a 2017 encampment by people who were descended from the 17th century Pokanoket village.

There are some details that make this land transfer especially interesting.

First, the land is being transferred to a preservation trust, not to a specific tribal entity. The agreement specifically states that the land “shall at all times and in perpetuity provide and maintain access to the lands and waters of the Property to all members of all Tribes historically part of the Pokanoket Nation/Confederacy, and to all members of the Wampanoag Tribe of Gay Head (Aquinnah), the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe, the Assonet Band of the Wampanoag Nation, the Herring Pond Wampanoag Tribe and the Pocasset Tribe of the Pokanoket Nation.”

Second, the Pokanoket Tribe is not recognized by the federal government, nor by the state of Rhode Island. A Providence Journal article from 2017, written right after the 2017 encampment, pointed out that even other Indian tribes don’t necessarily recognize the Pokanoket Indians: “It is not just the U.S. government that doesn’t recognize the Pokanokets. The Narragansett Indian Tribe, the only federally-recognized tribe in Rhode Island, also maintains that the Pokanokets lack any standing under the law.” And other Wampanoag tribes apparently remain skeptical; not surprising, given that the territory claimed by the Pokanokets seems to include some lands currently administered by other Wampanoag groups.

Honestly, this kind of thing should be expected here in southern New England. We have a legacy of four hundred years of erasing Indian presence here. This has been well documented, e.g. in Jean O’Brien’s scholarly book First and Lasting: Writing Indians Out of Existence in New England (Univ. of Minnesota Press, 2010).

But this also raises challenges to Unitarian Universalist congregations in our area who would like to adopt a land acknowledgement. Here in Cohasset, we could offer land acknowledgements to at least three tribal entities. We’re probably in the historic lands of the Massachusett, so perhaps it would make sense to acknowledge the Massachusett Tribe at Ponkapoag, based in Bridgewater. However, there’s another Massachusett group, the Praying Indians of Natick and Ponkapoag, based in Stoughton; and since we’re pretty sure that an Indian woman who became a member of the Cohasset church in 1736 later settled in Natick, maybe it makes sense for us to acknowledge this tribal entity. Or maybe we should acknowledge both. And now that I’ve learned from researching the land transfer initiated by the Pokanoket Tribe that they identify Cohasset as being part of their traditional lands, maybe we should acknowledge them, too.

I suspect many people facing this kind of challenge would simply ignore the current tribal entities, and go with the historic record at the moment of European contact. If we did that here, we’d acknowledge Cohasset belonged to the Massachusett Indians in 1620 (probably; there’s some debate among historians). But in this part of the world, that kind of land acknowledgement can result in writing Indians out of existence, because it glosses over the fact that Indians continued to live on these lands for the past four hundred years, and continue to live here today.

This brings me back to the land transfer that Brown is undertaking. The home of Metacomet has significance for all Indians in southeastern New England. Four hundred years of colonialism make it difficult to know who — which tribal entity — should be the appropriate stewards of the land. Thus the university chose to set up a permanent trust that allows access to more than one tribal entity. This is by no means an ideal solution, but given the history of our region, it does make sense. The university did not try to adjudicate which are the “real” Indians who should have access to the land.

If we’re going to do land acknowledgements, maybe that’s the kind of thing we need to do in our region. We don’t want to erase today’s Indians from the New England landscape. We do want to recognize that descendants of those seventeenth century Indians are still living around here (some of them may even come into our congregations now and again), and they may have their own opinions about whose land it is. Above all, we don’t want to pretend that we get to adjudicate who are the “real” Indians in our area.

Catchphrase

Recently, I’ve noticed a new catchphrase in mass correspondence that comes from both the Unitarian Universalist Association (UUA) and the Unitarian Universalist Ministers Association (UUMA). Instead of addressing us recipients as “friends” or “colleagues,” or something similar, some of the people sending us this correspondence address us as “Beloveds.” (And yes, this word always seems to be capitalized.)

I’ve spent most of my career in Unitarian Universalist congregations cleaning up after misconduct by professional staff. Most of that misconduct was sexual misconduct, and most of the people perpetrating sexual misconduct were men. I never heard those perpetrators say “Beloved,” but some of them talked rather freely about how much they “loved” “their” congregations, and “their” congregants. (I’m putting the word “their” between quotation marks because that in my experience that sense of possession was also characteristic of sexual misconductors; and unfortunately, the word “Beloved” also carries connotations of possession.)

Now, I understand the intent behind addressing me as a “Beloved.” At least I think I do. I think the person calling me a “Beloved” intends to include me in a “Beloved Community”? Or maybe they just want to signal that love is at the core of Unitarian Universalism? Actually, I’m not real clear on the intent behind calling me a “Beloved.”

But it creeps me out. Yes I know, maybe I have a little bit of secondary trauma from dealing with a number of religious communities that have been traumatized by sexual misconduct. Yes I know, the word “love” in the English language incorporates a whole range of meanings and I don’t need to interpret that word as necessarily creepy. And yes, OK, maybe I’m being oversensitive.

Even so — when I’m addressed in correspondence as “Beloved,” it does creep me out. Once I hit that word, I find I rarely read any further. It just sounds so yucky, and it stops me dead.

Updated curriculum

I just finished an update of an 8-session curriculum (with an additional ninth alternate session) titled “From Long Ago.” This curriculum is based on stories from the old Sophia Fahs book From Long Ago and Many Lands. To avoid some of the biases Fahs had, I went back to the original sources she used, and referred to other translations and sources, to completely rewrite all the stories.

Version 2.0 of the curriculum has now been released — see it here. In addition to cosmetic changes and light editing throughout, I’ve added more illustrations. I also added several stories; version 1 of the curriculum required access to the 1948 Fahs book, but with the addition of these stories, Version 2 is now completely independent of the Fahs book.

I’m planning to release additional over the next few months. These new releases will be numbered as Version 2.x. I’ve already rewritten some other stories from the Fahs book, and am working on new session plans for those stories.

To allow for updates, this is an online-only curriculum for now. Someday if I have time, I may create a print-on-demand version, for those who prefer a hard copy (it’ll be expensive, though, due to the numerous color illustrations).

Early birth control activist

An excerpt from a book I’m writing about early Unitarian congregations in Palo Alto, Calif., 1895-1934. It’s also part of my series of posts on obscure Unitarians. The first biography is of Sylvie Thygeson, an early birth control activist. Birth control activists in the early twentieth century deserve greater attention, and hopefully her biography helps expand the amount of information in this area. Sylvie’s daughter Ruth was also a birth control activist, but since her life was short and outside the scope of my main research, I only have a brief biography of her.

N.B.: This supersedes an earlier post on Thygeson, and includes substantial additional research.

Sylvie Thygeson and her daughter Ruth

Sylvie Grace Thompson Thygeson

An advocate for woman suffrage, and an early birth control activist, she was born June 27, 1868, in the small town Forreston, in north central Illinois. Progressive activism had a long history in her family. Even her name “Sylvie,” a French name, came from the family’s activism. Her paternal grandfather, a Presbyterian minister, and her grandmother were abolitionists and conductors on the Underground Railroad. When Sylvie’s father was a boy, he met an African American girl named Sylvie who was part of a family of fugitive African Americans escaping from slavery in Louisiana. When his own daughter was born, he named her after that African American girl.

Late in her life, Sylvie told the story that even though her paternal grandfather had been a Presbyterian minister, in the town she grew up in “we were the only family that were atheists.” Although their precise beliefs about the non-existence of God are unclear, they apparently had no formal religious affiliation.

She entered high school at age twelve and graduated at sixteen, after which she taught in a country school. But her teaching career only lasted for a month, until her father died. After his death, she was sent to live with an uncle in St. Louis, Mo. Her uncle, an appellate judge, gave her a job as a stenographer. She later recalled her time in St. Louis as a broadening experience, one that made up in part for her family’s inability to send her to college. As it happened, her uncle also gave her the beginnings of a solid legal education, and she learned enough about law in her two years in St. Louis to later gain her admission to law school as a second-year student.

Online resource for practical theology

Practical Theology Hub is a website that says it’s “a space for anyone with an interest in practical theology to share their reflections and explore new ideas.” It’s “not an academic website” but rather publishes short articles from partitioners, academics, students, and “retirees.”

Here are some of the titles of recent articles that caught my eye: “Growing closer to God through stained-glass windows: A dyslexic autistic perspective” (Christianity); “Neoliberalism, Social Inequality, and Christianity of Liberation” (Christian); “Food and interdependence: Responsibility in food donation” (Buddhist); “Avatar Discipleship – Who am I engaging with the avatar or the person?” (Christian); “My Friend, Siddhartha” (Indic religions); “Two Peoples Living in This Land” (Judaism); “Armed Resistance, Islam, and the Limits of Secular Approaches” (Islam).

Ecological board games

The Religious Education Association is holding an online talk this evening. One of the presenters will be on ecological board games:

“Paul H. Van Straten, Memorial University of Newfoundland: ‘Anticipating the Opportunities and Challenges of Using Commercial-off-the-Shelf Games to Educate People on Environmental Sustainability in a Christian Context.’ Some studies show that digital games and board games can be used to facilitate religious learning in Christian post-secondary settings. Would game-based learning be a viable option for educating Christians on environmental sustainability in a congregational church environment? This paper analyzes several commercially-available ecological digital games and board games to explore potential learning opportunities and challenges for integrating such games in a Christian small-group study environment.”

Although the paper will tell about games in Christian communities, I imagine the findings will be applicable to Unitarian Universalist communities as well (perhaps with some tweaking and language changes).

This is actually a topic that I’ve been working for some years now. I’ve used various ecological games in Unitarian Universalist religious education for children and teens since at least 2006. Recently, I’ve been working on ecology games for adults. To this end, I recently attended an online talk by Thomas Maiorana, professor of design at U.C. Davis, where he introduced a board game he’s developing that’s intended to promote wildfire resiliency in local communities. (You can watch a recording of the talk here.)

Local congregations and faith communities should be ideal settings for ecology board games. So I’m looking forward to tonight’s presentation, in hopes that I’ll learn about some new games, and more importantly learn about implementation strategies.

For the record, some of the ecology board games I’ve used in UU settings include:

Wildcraft: A Cooperative Herbal Adventure Game teaches players about some common wild herbs. It plays well with mixed age groups, and in my experience kids up through middle school have fun with it. At approx. $50, it’s expensive.
NOAA’s Carbon Cycle Game shows how burning fossil fuels affects the carbon cycle. You can play this as a tabletop game, or as a run-around game.
Family Pastimes publishes several board games with ecological themes. I’ve played three of their games — A Beautiful Place, Earthquake, and Dragonfly with young children, and all three were fun and well-designed. Better yet, they were inexpensive, just $12-15 each. (But these aren’t adult-friendly games.)
Promoting Wildfire Resilience. Thomas Maiorana hasn’t yet made the board game publicly available, but will do so soon on this website.

In addition, the following are run-around games, not board games, but worth playing:

Lynxes, Hares, and Leaves is an active run-around game I got from environmental educator Steve van Matre’s book Acclimatizing. I’ve played this successfully with mixed age groups including adults and kids. Here’s an old version of my adaptation of this game. Someday I’ll get around to posting my updated rules.
The Food Chain Game is another run-around game that I’ve played successfully with mixed age groups. This is my heavily adapted version of a game from the old Project WILD curriculum. Again, one of these days I’ll post my rules.

Other games I’m intrigued by, but haven’t yet played, include the following:

Several ecology games in this listicle on the Edge Effects website
Wildfire: A Learning Game, a free game which you download and print yourself
Two adult-friendly games from Family Pastimes: Climate Crisis and Somewhere Everywhere Water Rising

Another one

Well, sadly the Ministerial Fellowship Committee (MFC) of the Unitarian Universalist Association (UUA) just sent out another notice of a minister removed from fellowship.

I keep on posting these notices here, just so there’s more of an online record of these events. By posting this, I’m not making any judgement about the minister in question, nor about the MFC’s decision. Since I’m not privy to the facts of the case, there’s no way I could make a judgement. My only purpose in posting this is to hopefully increase transparency just a teeny bit when ministers are removed from fellowship.

Here’s what the email from the MFC said: “The Ministerial Fellowship Committee voted recently to remove the Rev. Kelly Spahr from fellowship for violation of MFC Rule 26, which requires ministers to notify the MFC immediately of any complaint of abuse and/or neglect of a child or any other person brought against the minister, and/or any complaint of domestic violence, harassment or request for a restraining order brought against the minister.”

Of course, the UUA immediately took down Rev. Spahr’s information from the online directory. But the following summary came up when I did a web search, in the summary provided by the search engine: “Ms. Kelly Spahr. Current Positions. 2021 Chaplain Strong Memorial Hospital. 2019 Affiliated Community Minister The First Universalist Church of Rochester … First UU Society of Syracuse Syracuse, NY.” A little more searching showed that Spahr is a Board Certified Chaplain with the Spiritual Care Association, has served as a chaplain with the Rochester (N.Y.) Police Department; inpatient chaplain at Strong Memorial Hospital; outpatient chaplain at the URMC NeuroPalliative Clinic; and has worked in hospice.

Note that Rule 26 doesn’t appear to mean that a minister has engaged in, or been convicted of, abuse, domestic violence, etc.; the rule merely says that a minister must notify the MFC if such a complaint is lodged against them; i.e., even if there’s a false accusation, a minister still has to notify the MFC. This makes sense. But this also makes me realize that I haven’t read the MFC rules in a couple of decades, and if I ever knew about this rule I’ve long since forgotten it. Now I feel ignorant. And it looks like I had better review the MFC rules in the very near future.

Update, 10/23: Another email from the MFC came in at 7:56 yesterday evening: “The Ministerial Fellowship Committee voted recently to remove the Rev. David Kohlmeier from fellowship for egregious violation of the MFC’s rules and UUMA Guidelines, as well as our fundamental Unitarian Universalist values.” Kohlmeier had already been suspended from fellowship in 2022. Online, you can find plenty of news stories about Kohlmeier, but here’s a quick summary: In September, 2022, he was arrested in a sting operation and charged with using social media to solicit sex from minors. In March, 2024, he pleaded guilty to “felony attempted involuntary deviate sexual intercourse with a child under 16.” To make an obvious point: in this case, the legal facts are clear. Kohlmeier worked at the Falmouth, Mass., UU congregation from 2017 to 2021, and at the Harrisburg, Penna., UU congregation from 2021 t0 September, 2022.

Jacob Flint’s history sermons

Below you’ll find the text of two sermons (with some annotations) published in 1822 by Rev. Jacob Flint of Cohasset, Massachusetts. While these sermons might appear to be of little interest to anyone except students of Cohasset history, they also contain some interesting theological content for those interested in the battles between the Unitarians and Trinitarians in 1820s Massachusetts.

Two years after Flint gave these two sermons, in December of 1823, he preached two sermons stating in no uncertain terms that trinitarian beliefs were supported neither by the Bible nor by human reason. The 1823 sermons precipitated a split in the Cohasset congregation. In the present sermons, preached in December of 1821, Flint claims that a couple of his predecessors were Unitarians in thought if not in name; in addition, he makes it clear that he agrees with his allegedly Unitarian predecessors. Anyone who heard the 1821 sermons could not have been surprised by the 1823 sermons.

Interestingly, the second of the 1821 sermons includes a long footnote in which Flint carefully outlines how the Cohasset congregation had lived in unanimity for most of a century. He must have been aware of the trinitarian leanings of some of his congregants; was this his way of trying to keep them from splitting the congregation?

I also noticed the way Flint erases the Indians from his account of Cohasset history, confining any mention of them to a short section labelled “Curiosities.” He never mentions how there were Indians who were members of the church in the mid-18th century. As it happens, I’ve just been reading Jean O’Brien’s book Firsting and Lasting: Writing Indians out of Existence in New England (Univ. of Minnesota: 2010), which examines the ways in which the authors of local histories in New England created the myth of the “vanishing Indian.” Flint’s sermons are early examples of that myth.

So there’s more going on in these two sermons than just boring local history!

Notes on the text: OCR-generated text found online was checked against a physical copy of the sermons in the archives of First Parish of Cohasset, and a number of corrections were made. Footnotes in the original have been numbered consecutively, with numbers enclosed in square brackets, and moved to the end of each section (Discourse I, Discourse II, and Geographical Sketch). A few editorial notes have been added, enclosed in square brackets. Pages breaks in the original have been indicated by enclosing “page X” in square brackets. One or two long quotations have been placed in separate paragraphs.

The 1823 sermons: Earlier this year, I put Flint’s 1823 Unitarian sermons (the ones which precipitated the split with Second Congregational Church) on this blog: the first sermon — the second sermon.

Facsimile of the title page; full text appears below.