Author: Scott Wells

Universalist minister in Washington, D.C.
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Old Dunker-Universalist Cemetery

Here are some pictures from 2002 of the Dunker-Universalist Cemetery (aka Chapman-Summers cemetery, aka Paysinger cemetery) near Newberry, South Carolina. There was a meetinghouse in the middle of it, but it was abandoned by the Civil War, and all that remains (I believe) is a square footprint. A former Universalist church — a child of this one — has been converted to a house, and is about a mile closer to town on the same road. The Clayton Memorial Church (a few miles away) would be a “grandchild” church, I’m guessing.

Another page about this cemetery

I’ll get to the TofUUism reply later.

From the road, into the cemetery

Continue reading “Old Dunker-Universalist Cemetery”

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MFC questions blog

Nate Walker, an M.Div. (Union) and intern at White Plains, has started a new blog with past questions dreaded by ministerial fellowship candidates in their interview with the Ministerial Fellowship Committee. He’s posting a few a week and looking for comments and discussion.

Perhaps this would be a good time for those of us in fellowship who vowed that we would make sure it was different for those followed us to go and add some wisdom to the questions.

I rather pity the candidates, as the questions, in toto, reflect an academic form of TofUUism. That is, representing a religion that takes on the flavor of the (loudest) congregants and other religions, but has nothing to say for itself. (And the reason I think the “I’m not hyphenated, I’m just a Unitarian Universalist” crowd/majority is so full of bunk.)

UUMins2B 

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Rockwell Universalist Church, Winder, Ga.

Rockwell Universalist Church, Winder, Georgia

I’m using my Christmas scanner to digitize hundreds of photos. Found this photo of the interior of Rockwell Universalist Church, Winder, Georgia. The church is extant, but no longer in the UUA. The photo is from the late 1990s.

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UUA Bookstore uses open-source software, and more

Without blurring the boundaries I make between this blog and Day Job, I have to say I know a few things about a national non-profit organization operating a mail-order bookstore. That said, I went to the UUA Bookstore site with the express purpose of seeing what software they use.

They use osCommerce — an open-source solution. “Cool,” I thought. I know the UUA uses a number of open-source products, providing data security and stability and perhaps cost savings.
Even better, and above and beyond the call of duty, there’s a page within the bookstore suite describing the alterations they made, some hints making up for shoddy documentation, and a file with the patches.  That’s the spirit, and will be a help to others needing a more mature online bookstore.

Good going, UUA Bookstore.

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In what way can technology help ministers and church staff?

Here’s an open post in which you may vent. I don’t ordinarily allow anonymous posting, but if you want to obscure your name, that’s OK. (Do leave a real email address, though. They aren’t seen, and I don’t share or give them.) Non-Unitarian Universalists are welcome, but if your polity isn’t congregational do note that. And in all cases, the rough average Sunday attendance.
If you are a minister, church staff member, or a high-committment volunteer in a church that lacks either of the others, let me know what tasks or tasks suck the most time out of your schedules with the least return. Stuff you can’t avoid, but wish you could.

Other commenters take a look and let’s see if we can come up with some solutions.

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Pagans, Christians, and the cost of temple administration

The 1998 PBS series, From Jesus to Christ: The First Christians continues to impress me, and I’ll still point people to the legacy website. Good to keep bookmarked if you study theology, teach in church, or preach.
A particular page called Why Did Christianity Succeed? The Rise of Christianity: A Sociologist Considers History — excerpted from Rodney Stark’s 1996 The Rise of Christianity — stands out because he questions the wisdom that Christianity became dominant over pagan cultus because of Constantine’s establishment. Rather, Christianity seems to have won a popular place that Constantine consolidated. Also, Stark contends it wasn’t miracles or martyrs that made people Christians but a kind of administration that people could up hold (he cites the ruinous costs of pagan religious exercises), a leadership that was close to the common people, and the claims that Christianity (and Judaism) made towards conversion rather than mere adherence (itself a product of how deity is understood.)

It don’t lift the article up in a “look at those silly Pagans; their religion fell apart” way, but because the same thing could very easily happen to Christianity as we know it in the United States. When the faith takes on a corporate (as in business) gloss, a reputation for high costs and endless fund-raising, and a pandering uncertainty about where it stands, the future doesn’t look good.

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Universalist churches unseen

2014-02-05 update: A new link to replace the one within the blog post: http://www.christianuniversalist.org/ministries-and-ordination/churches/

Sometimes I lament the loss of nearly all the Universalist Christian churches to the winds of history, fortune, theological fights, and mergers (with Unitarians and others.) There were days I would Google in new and different ways to try and find the “lost tribes” of Universalists I thought must be out there under a different guise. I’ve stopped looking but that doesn’t mean that there aren’t little bands of those who believe in the world’s full and final restoration to God.
Eric Stetson at Christian-Universalism.org (whom I first mentioned last July) is compiling a list of churches that are Universalist Christian, whatever their denomination. Perhaps I should put Universalist in lower case, but if John Murray could start in Independency, I’m not going to deny others the name (or require the use it.) Not that these would be confused with the Unitarian Fellowship on the corner.

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Any five-year-old knows

Gen X warning. The following refers 1970s educational animated shorts that ran between the cartoons Saturday morning on ABC. My non-US readers might be tickled that a better part of a generation (probably) can still sing the preamble to the federal Constitution.
In Schoolhouse Rock! terms, I was more of a Verb: That’s What’s Happening, Naughty Number Nine or Sufferin’ Till Suffrage (“Lucretia! Lucretia Mott!”) kid. Or even the esoteric romp into base twelve math, Little Twelvetoes.

Hubby bought me the two-DVD omnibus for Christmas. Even now I’m singing along to Unpack Your Adjectives. 

But the one that keeps running through my head is No More Kings, a little ditty about American self-determination in the face of a tyrannical and unrepresentative government. Not the strongest tune, but it just seems so right right now. Surely that little lesson in liberty was planted widely . . . .
The official — ugh, get a designer — page on No More Kings with song download 

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Plow ahead, wash, rinse, repeat

Philocrites wrote

What if we simply decided to plow ahead and, for once, simply ignored protestations of hurt feelings and creeping credalism? Here we are, attempting to do liberal theology; deal with it.

I’ve been trying to do that for a few years now, and at the worst times have been subjected to trifling “are you really a UU” questions. Fie!

I don’t agree with chutney’s cooperative action and categorization schema, though. Seems too much like committee work and, having been in the position of electronically herding UUs (mailing lists) before, can tell you it is a thankless task, and more time consuming than it ought to be. Group blogs, as we have seen, either don’t work or overwork in an atmosphere of controversy or crisis. Good group blogging (I suspect) needs extraordinary discipline and good boundaries, and a crackerjack editor. Both are hard to acquire, but the later is slightly easier to come by, but takes resources that might be better put in writing. Also, what do I need with a second blog, unrelated to the one I have? The unblogged have access to blogger.com if mere space is all that’s desired.

I think bloggers should continue to blog, encourage one another to step up to more substantive work, allow guest blogging opportunities to those uncommitted to the blogging life, open or fix trackbacks, and find a mutually agreeable tagging scheme for their postings.

Aggregation, more than collaboration, I feel is the key to success.