thelivelytradition

I argue that liberals suffer from 40 years of conservative vilification and mockery.  We second-guess ourselves, doubt our own legitimacy, try to appease our critics and speak and act with caution.

Commentator Clyde suggests that I might be talking about what oppressed people called internalized oppression.
I am reluctant to use those words; being demonized and scapegoated by your political opponents is not really oppression.  Oppression is much more serious; let's not make that word too thin, but making it cover too much ground.
But it is internalized something.
A synergy between right and left works to make liberals doubt themselves.  
Take, for example, the charge that the anti-Vietnam war movement was motivated simply by middle-class students' fear of the draft.  It came first from the leftwing of the antiwar movement, as a challenge for us to look more deeply at the war. The war wasn't wrong because it relied on the draft, but because it was an imperialist war, being …

I have made a simple call that Unitarian Universalists move to express solidarity with low-wage workers, the working poor and poor people. To be clear, I meant solidarity in a fairly conventional political sense: expressing support for, and organizing support for, reformist proposals to improve the economic circumstances of the working poor. I did use the word solidarity deliberately, because I think that the capacity to feel solidarity with others is an essential virtue of the liberal character, and one that we ought to encourage.  But I don't mean mind-melding, or thinking that we are who we are not, or telling people on the front lines how to conduct their struggle.

The pushback from some of my friends and colleagues has been to question whether Unitarian Universalists are really capable of solidarity.  Are we locked instead into our privileges?

Let's look at the situation.

UU's are mostly Democrats these days.  By what percentage do you believe Obama carried UU congre…

I have made a call that UU's (and other religious liberals) make a commitment to solidarity with the working poor.  I have called for us to work for a higher minimum wage, for medicaid expansion, for increased social security benefits.  We should publicly oppose food stamp cuts, unemployment benefit cuts, public sector worker layoffs.  We should publicly support fast food workers and retail workers efforts to unionize.  We should be for anything that improves the standards of living of the poor and working poor.  We should be visibly against every form of austerity that inflicts pain on them.

I am inspired by Pope Francis, I admit.  I don't think that he objects.

My fellow UU's raise objections, though.  And from what I perceive as the "left" side of the spectrum.  (I had expected to hear from the "right" side of the spectrum: people who thought that such public ministry would be partisan and make Republicans feel unwelcome and from Libertarians who cla…

The working poor, the low-wage workers, the occasionally unemployed, the disabled, the food stamp beneficiary, the welfare recipient, the two-job part-time workers, the boomerang child who returns home, the early retired who couldn't find another job, the undocumented working without legal protection: these are Unitarian Universalism's Past, Present and Future.

Many UU's have these experiences in their Pasts: some as the persistent condition of their childhoods and some as temporary situations on their life's journey.

Some UU's are in these circumstances in the Present, or they have family members who are, and they live in communities in which low-wage workers are all around them everyday.

And for many UU's, these positions are their Future, as retirement savings turn out to be inadequate, as full employment gets redefined as 6%, as misguided austerity shreds the safety nets, as the rich get richer and the poor get poorer and the middling classes get forgotten.…

My hope for 2014 is that Unitarian Universalist congregations move from service to solidarity. 
Service and charity fundraising is great, but it reinforces some problematic mental habits of the kinds of folks UU's tend to be.   They feed the illusions of power, wealth and privilege, being used with wisdom and judgment to help people who are far away, economically and socially.  
What this country needs right now is a movement of middle class people committed to standing with the working poor.  Unitarian Universalists should be in the forefront of that movement in 2014.  I hope for more ministers, with or without their collars, showing up to support fast food workers when they strike.  Some "Standing on the Side of Love" banners encouraging Walmart workers.  More congregational statements calling for Medicaid expansion in the states that are resisting it.  More ministers who read Rev. Morales' statement calling for minimum wage increase to their congregation.  We sho…

The Red Pill Brethren talked about UU ministers wearing clerical collars.  Go look at the record of
the conversation.  

I don't have any deeper insight than these colleagues.

I have been resistant to the whole collar business.   It has always felt inauthentic to me, as though we were picking and choosing how to relate to Christianity, adopting it opportunistically.  More than once, I pronounced, as is my way sometimes, that a UU minister who wouldn't wear a clerical collar to church on Sunday shouldn't wear one on Saturday down at the Federal building.

But I recognize now that I long had a little Christ-shaped chip on my shoulder.  I saw everything through the lens of the Unitarian Universalist failure to acknowledge its relationship to Christianity. Given that perspective, I saw the collar as a misappropriation, not much different that chocolate communions.

Recently, I have been more persuaded by the logic of the collar that says it has social power which we should wield …

The Unitarian Universalist clergy is now discussing the perceived differences between parish and community ministry.  Pope Francis, however, seems to think that parish ministry is community ministry, or, at least, it should be.

Pope Francis:
28. The parishis not an outdated institution; precisely because it possesses great flexibility, it can assume quite different contours depending on the openness and missionary creativity of the pastor and the community. While certainly not the only institution which evangelizes, if the parish proves capable of self-renewal and constant adaptivity, it continues to be “the Church living in the midst of the homes of her sons and daughters”.[26] This presumes that it really is in contact with the homes and the lives of its people, and does not become a useless structure out of touch with people or a self-absorbed group made up of a chosen few. The parish is the presence of the Church in a given territory, an environment for hearing God’s word, for grow…

I opined on Facebook that articles like this make me despair of Christianity. And I said I would explain why.

The flow of Tenety's article is this: "People think Francis is cool for some good reasons. But I am here to tell you that Francis is cool because FRANCIS IS A CHRISTIAN and that is what is important. (Even though the Roman Catholic church does some yucky things, there are still lots of cool things that go on.) So don't go around thinking that Francis is cool because he agrees with you; he's not as cool as you think because HE IS A CHRISTIAN and that is what is important."

The flow of the article flows uphill, away from the present and away from real life.

I ask the question: what is the relationship between Francis' coolness, Christianity and me? What is the point? Francis is providing a clear voice for change. The challenge to me is do I lend my voice and hands to that effort? Am I inspired by Francis? I should hope so. But that is not eno…

Time magazine chose Pope Francis as the Person of the Year.  I like it.


Francis shows why we need religious leaders.  He condemns the stranglehold that global capital has on the day to day lives of the world's people.  He is becoming the global spokesperson for the poor. That role -- the prophetic voice of the global poor -- has not been filled in quite a while.

Only a religious leader can play that role.

So much of the hopes of the people of the world have been invested in Barack Obama, this
somewhat younger man of color who is, improbably, the head of state of the Empire.  President Obama, though, is circumscribed by his position.  He is, after all, the commander in chief of the imperial stormtroopers and drone operatives. He is also an executive fighting a constant political battle with determined opponents in the legislature.  He must fight hard even for halfway measures and watered-down compromises.  He is also under relentless criticism from a conservative propaganda machin…

One year, I retold the story of Jesus as a secret prince story, just to indulge my inner 12 year old. I have posted part of it here this year.  Maybe your inner 12 year old would enjoy it.  It's under the Pages column, or here.

We live by grace. We live in grace.

Amid the buzz and rattle of all that is, there is joy.  The joy is not constant, and there are pains and terrors that almost outweigh it, but joy still persists.

There is a rough grace at work. There is a grace that we can experience in ourselves. It is present in our relationships, in the pleasure that we have in beauty, in the marvel of natural world, in the ingenuity of the environments people have created.

Does it seem far away and inaccessible to you? If you never experience joy and grace, please seek help.  Constant pain and suffering is not the human condition, no matter the circumstances.

But grace hidden behind routine, behind the habit of boredom, or buried beneath our ambitions and objectives?  That we know.

To have more grace and joy in your life, cultivate the habits of reverence and awe.  It is simple: slow down, use your senses, stay in the moment, remember that everything that is does not need to be.  And yet, here it is.  Cultivate…

I suggested recently that modern Unitarian Universalism's big bang of beginning was the explosive collision of liberal Protestantism and Humanism in the early to mid 20th Century.

Liberal Protestantism since the Enlightenment had become increasingly soft on the truth claims of Christianity.  Historical criticism of the Bible and Darwinism had made it clear that the biblical accounts, long accepted as historical fact, were not, in fact, true.  Turn of the century Fundamentalism had retreated to a position which asserted that the Biblical accounts were true, modern knowledge be damned.

Humanism brought a theologically realist critique to liberal Protestantism.  Everything that was not true per modern science was really not true.  Theology had to be about truth if it was about anything; after all, it is the truth that sets us free.

Humanism was a purifying fire to liberal Protestantism, burning away everything that was being preserved out of habit, out of a desire to maintain respec…

Expanding on a response to a comment on the "Equations" post.

19th Century Protestantism developed in a few parallel streams as it responded to the historical situation.  We all know what was happening: the Civil War, industrialization, Darwin, Marxism, Freudianism, feminism, etc.  Protestantism became different streams: Fundamentalism, Pentecostalism, Evangelicalism, the Mainline. Unitarianism and Universalism were two of those streams of Protestantism, quite distinct from the othes.

What gives the Uni's their unique character was their willing confrontation with secularism and humanism.  Instead of trying to repel them, or protect the historic faith from them, they embraced humanism.  The mainline Protestants, on the other hand, did not embrace humanism, but onlyaccommodated skepticism.  That is why they have this two-tone quality -- on the surface, they are still orthodox, but in practice and in the pews and in the pastor's study, they are much more liberal.

The …

A recent Facebook interaction caught my eye.

Robin Bartlett Also, if the top ten factors that millennials cite that help make up their spiritual identities include prayer, the Bible, and their relationships with Jesus, perhaps it is time we started including prayer, scripture, and ways to have a stronger relationship with Jesus in our UU churches.
Aimee Stubbs Goodson For me, "prayer, the Bible, and their relationships with Jesus" would translate into UU terms as ritual or spiritual practice, our multiples sources of wisdom, and opportunities for spiritual deepening, like small group ministry. (To be clear, I know Robin,  but don't know Aimee personally.)

What struck me was this process of "translating".  Prayer, the Bible and relationship with Jesus "translate" into UU terms as ritual etc.

Translation is something done with words and at its most primitive level is assumes a set of equivalences: "this equates to that".   
My impression is tha…

I have been plowing through Francis's Evangelii Gaudium, his "APOSTOLIC EXHORTATION ...
ON THE PROCLAMATION OF THE GOSPEL IN TODAY’S WORLD".

It is an appealing document; many have been attracted by his condemnation of contemporary capitalism and his call to a mission-oriented church.

But the title is something like "The Joys of Evangelism," not "The Joys of Mission".  He grounds the mission in evangelism.  That connection is hard for our Unitarian Universalist movement, given our reluctance to take up matters of what we believe.

Take for example, a statement given to me by leaders of a group planning worship at General Assembly in Providence this year.
A core purpose of our faith is to help people grow in spirit and in service. We believe that our faith provides a path for each of us to unlock our transformational capacity to serve the world with love. We want to expand our faith not just to grow Unitarian Universalism, but also to better achieve thi…