I wanted to know more about the author of the prayer in the last post — R. Crompton Jones — there’s very little about him online, but he seems to have been in poor health towards the end of his life, around 1885. One of the few references I found was a post I wrote eleven years ago about a service book for Unitarian “lay centers”. The collection of prayers mentioned there must be Jones’s Book of Prayer. W. Copeland Bowie, compiler of Seven Services for Public Worship (London, 1900) points out the three prayers in service 28 as being his, and worth including in that work. Tender and contemplative, they remain worthy representatives of a Unitarian public piety now all but forgotten.
An old prayer for the moment
I saw this prayer many years ago and it’s been rolling in my mind the last couple of days.
O Lord, the eternal Life-giver, who liftest out of death and shame all faithful sufferers for the truth, setting their humanity on high, and making it glorious in the might of thy Spirit; give us grace always to contend for the right, and, if need be, to suffer for it; and give us not over to the death of the soul, but raise us up into newness of life, that we may abide in thy love forever. Amen.
From A Book of Prayer (Robert Crompton Jones), later used in Orders of Worship (Lindsay Press) and in the service for Easter in Services of Religion, prepended to the Hymns of the Spirit (Beacon Press /Murray Press)
One month on
It’s no secret that I’m politically liberal and like many of you have been stunned and disheartened by the first month of the current administration in the United States. But my role on this site is more pastoral than political, and besides there are others who can speak more eloquently and with greater detail than I can about what might come and how it may be responded to. What then is a faithful Christian response to the current situation?
First, I’ve made peace knowing that I cannot come up with a comprehensive solution and don’t expect you to have one either. Good ideas can quickly become fossils, and the moment requires nimbleness and discernment or else each of us will come overwhelmed, and then defeated. (We also have to be comfortable with language of conflict, or else we will delude ourselves about what is happening.)
That’s why — above all else — I remind myself of my core convictions. I need to know what I’m defending: not only the standards of American democracy, but social compact based on decency and mutual respect, characteristics the incumbent president sorely lacks. This is congruent with my faith, and beneficial to decent people of any faith or none. So I don’t have to hold myself to some pious and self-defeating false standard about what Christians should or should not do; I just need to know what I want at the end of this process. The common good, I suppose, above all else. That’s a work in progress, but it will be neither what we have now or what we have had recently.
Discernment like this is one tool on the path towards wisdom, and I’ve been thinking a lot about Jesus is saying in Matthew: “Be ye therefore wise as serpents and harmless as doves.” (10:16) I’ve seen enough debilitating and catastrophizing rhetoric on the Left — sometimes with unproductive rage towards political opponents — to know that harmlessness or gentleness is necessary for an eventual solution to this crisis. Why? Because there are a lot of people with whom I might agree politically who have a spiritual knife in the hand, pointed towards their own hearts. This is misplaced energy: fear or rage taking the place of constructive action, even so simple as listening to those in Federal service or dependent upon Federal funding for their livelihoods, or preparing for the destruction of programs which may or may not be legitimately in the president’s purview. The performance of outrage benefits no one, including the performer.
The tone is this post is not accidental. If the president wishes his enemies destroyed, there is no easier path for him than they destroy themselves: emotionally, morally or spiritually. With Christians in all times, we bear the strain with humility and grace, relying on the prayers and example of those whose suffering is and was immeasurably greater. We will not increase our suffering by debasing ourselves, but rather uplifting one another. Christian vocation prepares us for stressful and painful moments, and it is a blessing and opportunity we might share with others who struggle deeply and without relief. If we should find ourselves better persons at the end of the current crisis, let us count it as specks of gold mixed with the ashes.
More “Universalist Leader” issues online
Last night after midnight, more intellectual property entered the public domain. In the United States, generally speaking these are items published in 1929. As in other years, I will see if there any new Universalist works of interest. (More about that later.) But while looking at the Internet Archive, I see that issues of the main Universalist denominational magazine, variously entitled The Christian Leader or The Universalist Leader were posted there earlier in 2024.
Click here to see the issues from 1926 to 1952. Earlier issues are in the public domain and are available elsewhere, and later issues — leading to the consolidation with the Unitarian Register are available online at the Harvard-Andover Library. I wrote about these in 2023.
The big gain, of course, are the years during the Great Depression and World War Two. These were difficult for the Universalist General Convention/Universalist Church in America, and there is remarkably little online about then. Or there was until now; Universalists communicated policy focus and decisions through these magazines, not to mention the changing tone in theological and social matters. These issues will make an interesting read.
Want to know what else is available to share and reuse freely? See this helpful review at Duke Law’s Center for the Study of the Public Domain.
Request: ministers, do you have your own “book”?
This is a request of readers who are themselves ministers. Do you have, or have you had, a ring-bound binder where you keep the liturgical material you use?
Last week, I pulled out an old six-ring memo book to take notes and keep a calendar at work. These were more commonly used decades ago, but correspond to personal-sized Filofax or compact-sized Franklin-Covey planners. The pages are 3.75 by 6.75 inches, and the slimmer memo book slips perfectly into a inside suit jacket pocket. And are hard to find today.
That got me to thinking about the same memo book (and the larger “junior” or half-letter-size three-ring binders) that at least a couple of generations of ministers used to use for services. I still use the larger kind for sermons, weddings and funerals, while the memo size might be for a graveside committal. (I wrote about this in 2016 and this is the book I still use.) I had to put together my own “book” thirty years ago for my internship. Back then, they were as likely to be typed, but revised with ink, or made of clipping taped onto hole-punched pages. They would bear the marks of their maker.
By contrast, I’ve found ministers manuals with these same services, usually used by Baptists and Methodists. I have some in my personal collection: also marked up, and with bits pasted in, but coming from a denominational press. The ring-bound book you made up seems to be more of a Unitarian Universalist thing, but that just may be to whom I was exposed, and both a reflection of changing liturgical norms as well as the small numbers of UU ministers who could not support a common printed volume. When I asked minister-friends if they still have a “book” some say they’ve moved it over to a tablet, which makes since — if you trust batteries.
Maybe this is my own odd interest — I do like the material culture of Protestantism — but I was wondering if this rang a bell.
Twenty-five years on
Twenty-five years ago today, I was ordained to the “ministry of the Gospel” by Canon Universalist Church, Canon, Georgia. I published the ordination service five years ago, and here’s a picture from the day when my beard was much darker.
I could not have imagined then what would later happen, but I have been grateful for the opportunities and consoled in my disappointments. But most unexpected is that a new stream of Universalists have come forth. A quarter-century ago I worried I was at the end of those who preached and believed in God’s complete salvation, but now I know I am not.
My thanks to those who taught me, supported me, ministered with me and walked along the way.
Helpful for small churches
I got word today that the British Unitarians have published a toolkit to help with various needs like communications, safeguarding, finances, legal status and contracting. These resources are not universally useful, and some tools or information would only be useful for comparison or illustration in the United States context. But for those outside the British Unitarians “it’s the thought that counts” — the thought that useful resources (including those already existing) can be collated and attractively presented for easy access and with room to grow.
Universalist card files from the 1940s
My recent post about using more appropriate methods and resources in small churches comes from my own adoption — re-adoption, really — of older, simpler methods in the rest of my life. I’ll write more about this later, but suffice it to say now that I use plain text files and paper files more often and more intentionally.
I was tickled to see that Anna Havron, the author of one of the paper-files blogs I read is also a member of the clergy. She recently wrote about her prayer schedule at AnalogOffice.net
She cites a 1950 card filing reference, and that reminded me of three pages from Robert Cummins’s 1946 Parish Practice in Universalist Churches: Manual of Organization and Administration. At the time, Cummins was the General Superintendent of the Universalist Church of America and faced his own crisis of resources and organization.
Surely, Parish Practice is an “orphan work” — one that probably fell into public domain because its copyright wasn’t renewed, but one so little loved that nobody’s likely to challenge a claim. Little loved, and scarce. It took years to find my own copy.
So I’ll take the modest risk of putting up those three pages from chapter 9 (“Church of Office and Records”) related to card files in the interest of modest church administration. In particular, think the idea of having church members indexed spatially — I’ve seen this in church manuals from the 1920s — deserves reconsideration.
Pages 122 to 124 from Parish Practice (PDF, 231 kb)
Sunday-only calendar 2025
It’s not just Christmas that seems to come earlier every year! It’s August and I recently got a request for next year’s Sunday-only calendar.
Will I do it? Of course: after seventeen years, it’s the most popular thing I’ve ever published, a fact that puts my other writing into a humbling context.
Get your copy of next year’s — and this year’s if you have a need for next three months — at the original page from 2008.
“Link love” for a more humane web
Parallels exist between a more sustainable church, and a more sustainable web: one that not only takes less electricity and fewer resources to run, but allow more privacy and portability of data. And are less addicting by their nature. Some solutions mean looking back — to blogs like this, and to “link love” that highlights good ideas in place of an algorithm — and other point (uncertainly) to options like federation.
Kris De Decker is my favorite writer about finding low-tech solutions for current problems, and I eagerly read new articles at his Low-Tech Magazine when they appear. He recently appeared in presentation “Back To The Future Of The Internet” where he and others deal with the sustainable (environmentally and personally) web. It’s linked from his more frequently updated side project, No Tech Magazine:
https://www.notechmagazine.com/2024/08/back-to-the-future-of-the-internet.html
And if you want to reach me (and get updates of this blog) through the federated web, follow me at @Wells.