Category: Religion

Visit to another congregation

Written on Sunday, March 25, but not posted right away due to press of events.

Carol and I went to the Sunday service this morning at the Open Circle Unitarian Universalist (UU) Fellowship in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin. Carol’s dad went to services there before he died, and was warmly welcomed, so it seemed like a good place to go.

I was impressed by the congregation, and by some of the innovative things they’re doing. So here’s a quick summary of my impressions.

Open Circle share a minister with the UU fellowships in Green Bay and Stevens Point. The minister was present in person in Fond du Lac this week, while the Stevens Point and Green Bay folks watched him via livestream. In addition, several Fond du Lac members joined the service via Zoom. (Presumably some Green Bay and Stevens Point folks joined their congregations via Zoom as well, but I only happened to notice what happened in Fond du Lac.) Thus there were six groups of people joining in: in-person and Zoom participants from each of three congregations. I believe there were three people managing the tech in Fond du Lac: someone to operate the camera and sound board; someone to manage the Zoom meeting; and the minister managed the PowerPoint slides.

I noticed a few other technical points. Only the sermon was recorded, thus doing away with copyright problems for the music and readings. Both announcements, and joys and concerns, were done at the end of the service, after the Zoom session had split into three breakout rooms (one for each congregation), so no one had to worry about making announcements, or stating joys and concerns, that didn’t apply to the other two congregations. The children’s story was a video of a reading of a children’s book taken from the internet — this was probably the low point of the service for me, since the audio quality of that video was poor (needed EQ), and the background “music” was more repetitious than a video game. However, using such a video did away with possible copyright conflicts. All in all, I felt the video and audio technology was handled extremely well.

The whole service was very well done: smooth and competent, without going too far in the direction of the overly polished feel of glitzy mega-church worship services.

I wondered if coffee hour would live up to the high standards of the worship service. It did. People started talking with us from the moment we stood up at the end of the service. There was good conversation, fair trade coffee, and good snacks. Before we knew it, an hour had gone by. You learn a lot about a congregation from coffee hour, and clearly this was a congregation where people liked each other, and cared for one another.

In short, we both felt welcomed, both service and social hour were good, and I learned a lot watching how Fond du Lac handled multiplatform multicongregation worship services.

Learning experience

At this morning’s meeting of the South Shore UU ministers, one of the topics we discussed was elder abuse. It turns out that in Massachusetts are not mandated by law to report elder abuse, though we are mandated reporters of child abuse. We do have the option of reporting elder abuse, though people who are not mandated to report elder abuse must use a different reporting method from mandated reporters. After the meeting, I tried to find out what exactly constitutes elder abuse. I was hoping for some kind of online training, similar to the excellent online training for reporting child abuse, but I wasn’t able to find a thing. I found a couple of generalized lists on the state’s website, but nothing that explained in detail.

All in all, this was a real learning experience. Mostly what I learned is that elder abuse is not taken as seriously as child abuse.

Perceptions of religious affiliations

According to a recent Pew survey, Americans perceive Jews more favorably than any other religion: 35% have a very or somewhat favorable view of Jews, 58% have no opinion, and 6% have an unfavorable opinion. That’s a 28 point “balance of opinion” between favorable and unfavorable. Mainline Protestants ranked second, with a 20 point balance of opinion.

Evangelical Christians had a 2 point balance of opinion in favor. However, most religious persons have a positive perception of their own religious group. If you remove the opinions evangelical Christians had of themselves, then they wound up with a negative 14 point balance of opinion.

Finally, people apparently tend to have a higher opinion of religious groups where they know someone that belongs to that group. Thus, Muslims and atheists fared poorly on this survey, probably in large part because so few Americans know an actual Muslim, or a real live atheist. However, atheists tend to have negative views of other religious viewpoints.

Link to the survey on the Pew website

Link to Religion News Service summary of the survey results

General Assembly: to go, or not to go

I’ve gone back and forth about whether to attend General Assembly this year.

At first, I was planning to attend in person. I have enough money in my professional expenses budget. I was looking forward to those informal interpersonal interactions that happen at conferences. On the other hand, it looks like it’s going to be expensive; I’m estimating a low-end cost of $2500 for five days, and I’m not sure that’s the best use of my congregation’s limited financial resources. I also admit that I’m still COVID-scared, and the thought of being cooped up with a couple thousand other people doesn’t sound good to me.

Of course I could attend General Assembly online. But the agony of sitting for hours in front of my computer screen for what promises to be a fairly low-quality experience does not seem appealing. Especially since it will be almost impossible to have any of the informal interactions that make in-person conferences interesting.

I feel like I should attend, one way or the other, just to be part of the business meeting where we will vote on the proposed revision to Article II. But at this point, it looks to me as though those revisions are going to pass regardless of what I vote. And my congregation has shown little or no interest in the Article II revisions, so my vote would only represent my personal opinion, not their collective opinion.

Probably my strongest feeling around General Assembly this year is cynicism. Which surprises me. But I haven’t been feeling good about the Article II revision process. I felt uninspired by both the draft versions I saw; and my congregation is still focused on recovering from the pandemic, with no time to spare for denominational politics. I don’t want to feel cynical. So my decision on whether to attend General Assembly will probably come down to this: which course of action will make me feel least cynical? I’ll let you know how that turns out….

Update: The board of my congregation would like me to attend, in order to vote on the proposed Article II revisions. Now I have to decide if I attend in person, or online.

Soundscapes and ecojustice

Yesterday’s post on the different ways white people, and people of color, respond to charismatic megafauna and mesafauna got me thinking about a recent post by Desireé Melonas at the Blog of the APA. She went to Africatown, in Mobile, Alabama, as part of a group that received a grant to develop environmental justice curriculum materials for students living and going to school in Africatown. Why environmental justice curriculum? Because Africatown is another example of how communities of color and working class communities find themselves dominated by polluting industries.

In this blog post, Desireé Melonas reflects on her first impressions upon visitng Africatown: “…both Vince and Roald [other members of her group] commented on Africatown’s distinct soundscape. In a sort of astonished tone, Vince told of how the community is blanketed by what felt like an eerie absence of sound; no birds could be heard, a sound many of us are perhaps so inured to hearing that we take for granted what about our communities their being there signifies. This sonic experience Vince described paradoxically as ‘suffocating,’ a fitting term given the connection here between the existential experience and the literal source of the sonic absence.”

The lack of birds and other wildlife is a direct result of the toxication of Africatown by the industrial plants sited there, operated by such major manufacturers as the Scott Paper Co., International Paper, etc. So not only are the residents of Africatown experiencing higher levels of cancer from the toxication, they also have to deal with a “suffocating” soundscape.

This reminds me of another aspect of toxication.

Lichens are sensitive to air pollution, and are actually an effective way to monitor air pollution. I experienced some of this when we lived in San Mateo. When we lived downtown next to the train station, in a white minority neighborhood, there were no lichens growing anywhere in our little yard; this should have been no surprise, since we lived two blocks from the train line, right next to a major bus route, a few block from Highway 101, and not far from the usual landing route for jets into SFO; while the air pollution wasn’t terrible (not as bad as in Africatown), it was omnipresent. Then we moved just two miles away, up the hill into the old caretaker’s cottage owned by a nonprofit cemetery (who rented to us at below market rates). The surrounding neighborhood was quite well-to-do, and quite white. Quite a few lichens grew in the cemetery, because the air was a lot cleaner; and, no surprise, I stopped getting bronchitis as often as before. Now we live in Cohasset (which is very white), where there are lots of lichens growing everywhere, and not only have I not gotten bronchitis this winter, but my allergies aren’t as bad as they were a couple of years ago.

So an area that lacks lichens will have enough air pollution to cause noticeable negative health effects. An area that lacks birds is seriously polluted, with major negative health effects. While we don’t need to be sentimental about charismatic megafauna and mesafauna, a lack of such animals in a residential area might be telling us something about the level of toxication there.

Legal personhood

Natalia Harrell shot and killed someone in Florida. She was six weeks pregnant. She was apprehended and put in prison. Now she has filed a petition with the Florida courts saying lack of prenatal care in prison is endangering the life of her fetus — or, to use Florida’s term for a fetus, her “unborn child.” In an interview, Harrell’s lawyer stated: “An unborn child has rights independent of its mother, even though it’s still in the womb. The unborn child has been deprived of due process of law in this incarceration.”

This is a logical outcome of the conservative Christian insistence that a fetus has rights. Of course we know what’s going to happen. The courts are going to twist things around so Florida does not have to provide prenatal care, nor in any way honor any putative rights the fetus has. In this conservative Christian ideology, a fetus is only considered a person when that serves to stop a woman’s right to abortion; but a fetus is not a person for any other purpose.

This makes me wonder if there are carpool lanes on some Florida highways. Because if there are, some pregnant woman should drive solo in a carpool lane, and if apprehended claim that there are actually two legal persons in the car: the woman herself, and the fetus. Of course, once again we know the Florida courts would rule that a fetus is not a person when it comes to carpool lanes. But I’m sure a lot of us would happily chip in to pay that woman’s traffic ticket and court costs, just to show up the hypocrisy of lawmakers who claim a fetus is an “unborn child” with full legal rights.

Eyes wide open

Conventional American Christianity tells that when we pray in groups, we are supposed to bow our heads with our eyes squeezed shut. I understand why people insist on bowing their heads: the conventional Christian God is supposed to require this gesture of obedience and submission. But why must our eyes be shut tight? I understand why we’re not supposed to plug our ears: if we did, then we couldn’t hear the words of the person who is offering the prayer. But why does public prayer require lack of vision?

Whenever I see people squeezing their eyes tight shut during prayer — because I don’t close my eyes during public prayers — I’m reminded of what Jesus says in the Christian scriptures: Do not be like the hypocrites who stand and pray on the street corners, making sure their act of piety is seen by others. Do not be like them. Do not bow your head in prayer, for if you do the only reward you will receive is the knowledge that you conformed to the conventions. Do not close your eyes: the eyes are the lamp of the self: open your eyes and your ears and your whole being and let your body be filled with light. Don’t stop when the person saying the words of prayer stops: pray without ceasing, that’s what the Christian scriptures actually say, pray without ceasing, pray without ceasing.

In conventional American Christianity, once the prayer stops — that is, once the person saying the prayer stops saying words — people open their eyes, and the praying stops. I, heretic that I am, didn’t listen to the words of the prayer and didn’t close my eyes. In the eyes of the conventional Christians I didn’t pray, and if that’s all there is to prayer, I have no interest in praying.

“AI” generated writing

Neil Clarke, editor of a respected science fiction magazine, reports on his blog that numbers of spammy short fiction submissions are way up for his publication. He says that spammy submissions first started increasing during the pandemic, and “were almost entirely cases of  plagiarism, first by replacing the author’s name and then later by use of programs designed to ‘make it your own.'”

Helpfully, he gives an example of what you get with one of the programs to “make it your own.” First he gives a paragraph from the spam submission, which sounds a little…odd. Then he provides the paragraph from the original short story on which the spam submission was based. However, Clarke says: “These cases were often easy to spot and infrequent enough that they were only a minor nuisance.”

Then in January and February, spammy submissions have skyrocketed. Clarke says: “Towards the end of 2022, there was another spike in plagiarism and then ‘AI’ chatbots started gaining some attention, putting a new tool in their arsenal…. It quickly got out of hand.” It’s gotten so bad that now 38% of his short fiction submissions are spammy, either “AI” generated,* or generated with one of those programs to “make it your own.”

38%. Wow.

Clarke concludes: “”It’s not just going to go away on its own and I don’t have a solution. … If [editors] can’t find a way to address this situation, things will begin to break….”

This trend is sure to come to a sermon near you. As commenters on the post point out, writers are already using chatbots to deal with the “blank page struggle,” just trying to get words on the paper. (To which Neil Clarke responds that his magazine has a policy that writers should not use AI at any stage in the process of writing a story for submission.) No doubt, some minister or lay preacher who is under stress and time pressure will do (or has done) the same thing — used ChatGPT or some other bot to generate an initial idea, then cleaned it up and made it their own.

And then “AI” generated writing tools will improve, so that soon some preachers will use “AI” generated sermons. For UU ministers, it may take longer. There are so few of us, and it may take a while for the “AI” tools to catch on to Unitarian Universalism. But I fully expect to hear within the next decade that some UU minister has gotten fired for passing off an “AI” generated sermon as their own.

My opinion? If you’re stressed out or desperate and don’t have time to write a fresh sermon, here’s what you do. You re-use an old sermon, and tell the congregation that you’re doing it, and why — I’ve done this once or twice, ministers I have high regard for have done this, and it’s OK, and people understand when you’re stressed and desperate. Or, if you don’t have a big reservoir of old sermons that you wrote, find someone else’s sermon online, get their permission to use it, and again, tell the congregation that you’re doing it, and why. Over the years, I’ve had a few lay preachers ask to use one of my sermons (the same is true of every minister I know who puts their sermons online), and it’s OK, and people understand what’s it like when you’re stressed and desperate and just don’t have time to finish writing your own sermon.

But using “AI” to write your sermons? Nope. No way. Using “AI” at any stage of writing a sermon is not OK. Not even to overcome the “blank page struggle.” Not even if you acknowledge that you’ve done it. It’s spiritually dishonest, and it disrespects the congregation.

* Note: I’m putting the abbreviation “AI” in quotes because “artificial intelligence” is considered by many to be a misnomer — “machine learning” is a more accurate term.

Is it Theodore Parker, or not?

I was thinking about using the well-known Theodore Parker quote in this Sunday’s service, the one that reads:

“Be ours a religion which, like sunshine, goes everywhere; its temple, all space; its shrine, the good heart; its creed, all truth; its ritual, works of love; its profession of faith, divine living.”

It didn’t sound quite right somehow, so I thought I’d check up on it. Did Parker write it, or is it simply something attributed to him?

First I searched his collected works for the phrase “Be ours a religion like sunshine.” Nothing. Then I searched his collected works for “sunshine.” Finally I found what I was looking for in Rufus Leighton, editor, The World of Matter and the World of Man: Selected from Notes of Unpublished Sermons (Boston: Charles W. Slack, 1865). It’s the last sentence of a one-paragraph sermon note which bears the title “Man’s Spirit Reported in His Physical Condition”:

“A man’s soul presently reports itself in his body, and telegraphs in his flesh the result of his doings in spirit; so that the physical condition of the people is always a sign of their spiritual condition, whereof it is also a result. I mean the bodily health of men, the food they eat, the clothes they wear, the houses they live in, the average age they reach,— all these depend on the spiritual condition of the people, and are a witness to the state of their mind and conscience, their heart and their soul. True religion, like sunshine, goes everywhere; or a false form of religion, like night and darkness, penetrates into every crack and crevice of a man’s life.” (pp. 76-77)

Hmm. This actually has a quite different meaning than the well-known Parker quote. It’s about “true religion,” not about “our religion.” And it’s about how religion affects the physical body. And it’s really just notes towards a proposed sermon, so it’s not really an idea that has been fleshed out.

Now, where does the rest of that well-know Parker quote come from? It comes from the book Spiritualism, chapter four of which is titled “Of the Party That Are Neither Catholics Nor Protestants.” This chapter begins by saying, “This party has an Idea wider and deeper than that of the Catholic or Protestant, namely, that God still inspires men as much as ever; that he is immanent in spirit as in space. For the present purpose, and to avoid circumlocution, this doctrine may be called SPIRITUALISM.” It’s important to note that by “spiritualism,” Parker did not mean the spiritualism that involves seances, communicating with the dead, or the Spiritualist Church of America. I supposed he meant Transcendentalism, but a Spirit-filled version thereof; I suspect he means something like a religion that is moved by the Spirit directly intuited.

In any case, Parker then goes on to tell us how his version of “spiritualism” may be defined. He says things like: “It relies on the divine presence in the Nature of Man”; and “It calls God Father and Mother, not King; Jesus, not brother; Heaven home; Religion nature.”

Parker then locates his version of “spiritualism” within what we today might call a post-Christian religion. He says, “The ‘Christianity’ it rests in is not the point Man goes through in his progress, as the Rationalist, not the point God goes through in his development, as the Supernaturalist maintains; but Absolute Religions, the point where Man’s will and God’s will are one and the same.” Now cone a series of further definitions, such as: “Its Source is absolute, its Aim absolute, its Method absolute. It lays down no creed; asks no symbol; reverences exclusively no time or place, and therefore can use all time and every place.” After a few of these defining sentences, we finally reach:

“Its Temple is all space; its Shrine the good heart; its Creed all truth; its Ritual works of love and utility; its Profession of faith a manly life, works without, faith within, love of God and man.”

Somehow phrases from this longer chapter got picked up and passed around, and mushed together. So in 1888, we get:

“One man may commune with God through the bread and wine, emblems of the body that was broken and the blood that was shed, in the cause of truth, another may commune through the moss and the violet, the mountain, ocean, or the scripture of the suns which God has writ in the sky. Its temple is all space; its shrine the good heart; its creed all truth; its Ritual works of love and utility, its Profession of Faith, a divine life.” (Everyday Helps: A Calendar of Rich Thought, compiled and arranged by L. J. and Nellie V. Anderson [Chicago: New Era Publishing Co, 1890], entry for May 24)

And gradually, over time, as different editors picked this up and altered it — and stuck on the bit about “be ours a religion” — we wind up with the familiar quotation. But that familiar quotation is really two quotations combined. Both of those quotations are taken out of context. The wording of both quotations has been substantially altered.

In short, I would no longer call this a Theodore Parker quotation. It’s Theodore Parker filtered through New Thought, and with much of the Transcendentalism removed. Or to put it in terms of a food metaphor, it’s Theodore Parker with much of the nourishment removed, and extra sugar added to make it more palatable; empty calories, in other words.

Final verdict: if you’re going to use this quote (and honestly, after finding all this out I’m hesitant to use it ever again), the best attribution would probably be “arranged from Theodore Parker.” Or maybe “based on Theodore Parker.”

Christian nationalists in the U.S.

Religion News Service (RNS) reports that a recent poll finds that 10% of United States residents are hard-core Christian nationalists, and another 19% are fellow travelers. On the other hand, 29% of U.S. residents reject Christian nationalism. Another 39% are skeptical of Christian nationalism. You can read a detailed report of the PRRI survey here.

Are you a Christian nationalist? If you’re reading this blog, I sincerely doubt you are. Nevertheless, if you strongly agree with all of the following statements, according to PRRI you are indeed a Christian nationalist:

  • U.S. laws should be based on Christian values.
  • If the U.S. moves away from our Christian foundations, we will not have a country anymore.
  • Being Christian is an important part of being truly American.
  • God has called Christians to exercise dominion over all areas of American society.

That last statement is the one that really creeps me out. Unitarians and Universalists got kicked out of the U.S. Christian club a century ago, when the National Council of Churches wouldn’t let us join. So even if you’re a Christian Unitarian Universalist, the Christian nationalists want to exercise dominion over you…tell you what to believe, probably.

This is worrying because the Republican party has become dominated by Christian nationalists. Last summer when RNS asked fifty prominent Republicans whether their party should become a Christian nationalist party, only two of them responded to say, contrary to Christian nationalist rhetoric, that they supported the separation of church and state (Senator James Lankford and Representative Nancy Mace). All the other Republicans refused to answer, probably because they were too scared to say anything.