Category: Core ideas

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The language of faith cries to be free

In the open-source software world, advocates make a distinction between “free as in beer” and “free as in freedom.” While free (of cost) beer is nice, the freedom to share, modify, extract and even profit from (depending on the license) is truly precious, and has allowed an ecosystem to develop around not only software but cultural and (a favorite) other projects. Even beer.

But Christians I’ve read, looking towards the same phenomenon have used another similie: “free as in grace.” This suggests an alternative to free in economic, practical, intellectual or utilitarian terms. If something is compellingly true, and has its origins apart from human initiative — let me put that out there tentatively — then that truth demands cooperation of those who hear it to liberate it for the sake of liberation. So, I think of evangelistic tracts which long before free culture movements have been distributed “free as the Lord provides.” (Free here being largely financial, but the fact the sponsor comes from the Free Churches isn’t lost on me.)

But see also of the Jewish liturgical Open Siddur movement. Or the DVD I picked up yesterday at a Chinese grocery — and is the proximate reason for this blog post — from a Buddhist mission. (Alas, the videos seem to be of a monk speaking one language I don’t understand, and subtitled with a different language I don’t understand.)

There’s not much English on the case. But I can read “For Free Distribution — No Copyright.”  And that’s a good enough reason for me to take it back so someone else can profit by it.

I’ve written on this subject several times, please consider reading

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The prospect of appealing humanism

It’s become quite the rage for non-theist, anti-theist and (so-called) freethought movements to use public advertising — say, on buses or in the subway system; this is certainly true here in Washington — to make their case.

I just wish it was a better case, which to my Christian ears sounds a lot like “You can be good without having an adolescent’s view of God.” Far from edgy or patently true, these ads seem — well — smug or petulant, as if the image of the cranky, smug, petulant atheist didn’t get enough play.

And that’s all well and good if your goal is stronger church-state separation, say, but if the goal is to be an appealing option to inherited religiosity or brunch culture, it needs to have a story and a way for persons to identify with it.

In short, dust off a copy of the long version of Cosmos. While it’s three decades old, Carl Sagan et alia has done a better job than anyone I can think of to sidestep the question of God — the right approach — and posit the idea of being human in the “forty thousand generations” of human development, and then to place our world in the context of a fascinating and almost unimaginably large universe.

It’s still quite thrilling — and a meaningful humanism — and available through the instant view service of Netflix, if you’re a subscriber.

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How to make a radical Christian

A fair point, with the fearmongering about radical Muslims in full tilt.

You could start by reading Leo Tolstoy’s The Kingdom of God Is Within You. (text, Project Gutenberg) It stands in a thread of radical Christian discipleship that reaches before Tolstoy to Universalist minister Adin Ballou — a point of pride — and afterwards to Gandhi and Martin Luther King, who each made non-violent resistance a household word. (Well, a household compound word.)

And it takes some cool, deliberate, principled and sacrificial action when you think of what went on in Congress today. Millions of American Muslims are pilloried for actions of a tiny handful. Such grim attention —  a cultivated double-standard — persons of other faiths don’t have to suffer.

Pilloried by Representative Peter King, a man who has defended terrorist organizations when it suited him. For shame.

Good Muslim friends: others can see through this cruel folly.

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Giving up Unitarian Universalism for Lent

I wrote this three years ago, and on March 1, 2014 — for some reason, perhaps Google searches — it was the number one item read here. So I thought I’d give it some attention.

I’ll keep this short.

I have a maxim I live by: if something you desire or rely-on continues to fail you, hurt you or inhibit you, get rid of it. The initial pain is nothing like the eventual relief. A collorary: you can’t change some situations, and eventually you’ll wonder why you thought you could.

I keep running into this phenomenon with Unitarian Universalists, in no small part because there’s so little choice. Most areas have a single Unitarian Universalist church. There’s only one functioning denomination (and a few independent movements, which I shall discuss in coming weeks) and its theological breadth seems narrower than when I joined my first church some quarter-century ago. There’s an implied bargain: accept the status quo, or leave. But don’t you dare make a fuss on the way out. Certainly, on the Christian end, the United Church of Christ has been the winner in that bargain.

I was a member of the Unitarian Universalist Christian Fellowship — and this is the first time I’ve mentioned this in public — because it was the only game and I had fond memories and friendships, but I let my membership lapse because its offerings were skimpy and quietist, and its direction haphazard. I let my membership in the Unitarian Universalist Ministers Association lapse because its programming was never directed toward my professional needs or station, never offered meaningful services, not to mention being shockingly expensive. And I’m more-than-usually weary of the Unitarian Universalist Association itself because it confuses busyness with services, and the current leadership — well, some — is engaged in a power-centralizing campaign. Monopoly, with appeals to emotional and professional dependence (perhaps not so much with the UUCF), makes for a bad bargain at the grassroots. If I hear covenant used as a coded message to clam up and step back in line, I’ll scream so loud that Cotton Mather will rise from his grave. I didn’t come to Unitarianism or Universalism for its threadbare institutions or the opportunity to conform.

I still think we can do better. But not if there’s some existential fear that, without current Unitarian Universalist institutions — I’m thinking of the appeals surrounding Meadville-Lombard, but not exclusively — the whole movement will drift into the Void. Indeed, I think we would fare well without some. Call it a Lenten meditation on self-reliance, and to a degree, self-respect. We can do better.

And I gather some people have figured this out, when I read Bill Baar’s comment in a recent blog post where he states that “I’m aware [that some districts] are contemplating a life post UUA.” Or when I read Unitarian Universalist minister and blogger Elz Curtiss in the comment following or at her blog, Politywonk, lay out the moral and historical situation from the Unitarian side.

Just keep telling yourself we can do better and remember it needn’t be with what we have now.

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Open for comment: is there a place for racism-theory dissent in the UUA?

The more I follow stories about race in the Unitarian Universalist Association — and particularly the alphabet soup of policy-making at the highest elected levels — the more I (1) wonder what the real, heart-felt motive is and (2) fear that the UUA is locked into a uniform Boomer-driven worldview — not only about race, but wealth, institutions and status — that I certainly do not share.

I’m 40, with gray hair and bad knees, and have been a Unitarian Universalist for a quarter-century, so it’s not I’m new to his, or young. Yet I wonder if the last Unitarian Universalist generation is the one before me. Have we hit Peak Neo-Liberal?

At every time I turn, established racism theory is either the trump card, the unspoken anxiety or magic formula for, well, everything. Forget art, education, cooperation, mission, prayer, appeals for sacrifice, merry-making or the host of other avenues once tried, or rather, it seems they have been forgotten. Indeed, tolerance, independence and the principled minority stand seem to be quite out of favor. Forget, too, that non-white newcomers might not want to be a party to a proxy culture war. Or that there’s a personal benefit (power, self-esteem) for those who continue to raise the flag and keep the cause going.

So back to my question in the incipit: is there a place for racism-theory dissent in the UUA? More than just Will Shetterly’s witness, too. And if not, how can the situation be changed?

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Maundy Thursday alone

I am in a restaurant blogging after a failed visit to a Maundy Thursday service. (More about that later). And I am thinking about lonely Christians.

I would love to be in a functional church in the neighborhood of my own theology but even that seems a stretch. And after a while the communitarian appeals of liberal churches begin to pall. I know this is the part of the sermon where I say one should suck it up and discover the grace that comes from engaging deeply with other people. But I won’t.

The very premise sounds too much like a rationalization for liking the people you like, and I gave up my membership at St. Tautology years ago. James Martineau has a few words to solitary Christians who can’t put up with churches around them. I’ll dig them up and share.

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File under "why churches are losing their grip"

One of the reasons I’m not falling into despair after the passing of California Prop 8 is that I know the culture is changing very fast, and that in time it will fall. Religious, and particularly Christian, appeals to anti-gay hate and fear will appeal to fewer and fewer people. Two problems there:

  1. We will end up with two Americas: one somewhat backwards and religious; the other, somewhat progressive and secular.
  2. This is bad news for anyone progressive and religious.

Part of the problem is that religious institutions — whatever their operating theology — are conservative in practice. Take some hypothetical New England Unitarians who have a colonial building, a mid-20th-century working theology and a 1980s corporate-influenced governance structure. But “big box” Evangelicals can be just as stodgy, with cultural notes that remind me more of a Jimmy Buffett concert, an Amway pitch or a lost episode of Dynasty than “the faith which was once delivered unto the saints”. (That’s once reason I’m loathe to imitate them. A native cultural anachronism traded for an imported, ill-fiiting anachronism? Feh.)

Before I get into what those losing ways are, let me confess that I used to believe and defend them warmly. It’s time for the church to anticipate the needs of society and stop apeing them badly.

So for your enjoyment, please watch “What if Starbucks Marketed Like a Church? A Parable” by Beyond Relevance, which I shall start exploring shortly. (Hattip: Church Marketing Sucks) [Later. Ugh, perhaps not. But the video is still good.]

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Gygax, now Clarke, next whom?

As they say, deaths come in three. First Gary Gygax and now science fiction author Arthur C. Clarke, aged 90. I rather thought he would outlast all of us.

While Gygax informed by geeky childhood, Clarke tapped my imagination. Did anyone else read the short story “The Nine Million Names of God” (in an anthology of the same name) about a computer doing divine work in a Buddhist monastery? Inspired me as a young man.

So while out of courtesy I won’t opine about where Clarke is now — obviously I have my own ideas — I can still think of the geosynchronous satellites he first envisioned, looking down from on high. . . .

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Glossary: subsidiarity

Back about a year ago when I was without a Day Job, I twice interviewed with a Catholic political lobby; there I learned the concept of subsidiarity.

I’ll recycle the current Wikipedia article‘s content, since it wraps up the idea pretty well.

the principle which states that matters ought to be handled by the smallest (or, the lowest) competent authority.
. . .

The principle of subsidiarity holds that government should undertake only those initiatives which exceed the capacity of individuals or private groups acting independently. The principle is based upon the autonomy and dignity of the human individual, and holds that all other forms of society, from the family to the state and the international order, should be in the service of the human person.
. . .
The principle of subsidiarity was developed in the encyclical Rerum Novarum of 1891 by Pope Leo XIII, as an attempt to articulate a middle course between the excesses of laissez-faire capitalism on the one hand and the various forms of communism, which subordinate the individual to the state, on the other.

I think this is a missing piece in current Unitarian Universalist discussions about community, against which a subtle individualist rebuff seems to be brewing, most clearly (I think) in traditional Humanist circles. Echoes, too, in the debate about funding the theological schools. And the last thing we need is a proxy war in place of an open decision-making process about the role of central authority. Recent discussion about covenant and polity has become too smoky to be useful, especially by laypersons who might have contributions from other disciplines.

I bring it up because there’s an interesting article in today’s New York Times about Malawi’s resistance to external neo-liberal policies respecting fertilizer subsidies to the countries small farmers. Read the story to the end for an example of the good that can come when the central Malawian government devolves its own authority to local communities.

“Ending Famine, Simply by Ignoring the Experts” (by Celia W. Dugger, December 2, 2007)

With this post, I open the category Core ideas.