Category Archives: Uncategorized

Tell Newt What Jesus Would Do, Bernie Sanders.

Posted on
3

There’s a photo of Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) accompanied by a quote from a statement he made last week in the Senate budget hearings that is presently starting to go a bit viral around Facebook.  Here it is.

Senator Sanders basically gives a statement about balancing the federal budget, but insists that it not be balanced on the backs of the poor and the most vulnerable in our society.

Sen. Sanders’ statement is pure Gospel. It’s a world transforming message, if only others in Congress would hear it and heed it.  It is, in fact, as best as we can tell, what Jesus would do.

That’s an interesting little saying, What Would Jesus Do? It’s usually thrown around by overly pious and overly moralistic folk who want people to stop and think about matters of personal piety, especially matters related to sexuality.  Like many people, I associated the phrase with the rise of the fundamentalist religious right.  It conjures up for me those rubber wrist bracelets or string bracelets with beads stenciled with WWJD?  Mostly used to remind students and young adults to practice abstinence or not cheat on their homework assignments. The phrase has a much more progressive and world transforming history.

This week’s episode of On Being with Krista Tippet has some fascinating insight into this phrase.  Her interview is with Paul Brandeis Raushenbush, the religion editor of the Huffington Post and the grandson of Social Gospel theologian Walter Rauschenbusch.

“What Would Jesus Do?” dates back to an 1893 novel by Kansas preacher Charles Monroe Sheldon.  The phrase became associated with the Social Gospel movement, a movement in American Christianity that emphasized the social welfare implications of the teachings of Jesus.

Walter Rauschenbusch, considered the most important theologian of the Social Gospel, in the early twentieth century insisted that, of course, there is no such thing as the Social Gospel, there is just the Gospel. The Gospel as it is promotes care for the powerless, the forgotten, the left-out and the despised.  It doesn’t need a modifier. That the Gospel should need a special name only means people have forgotten the world transforming message that is grace and inclusion, equity and justice.

Yet, it appears too many people have forgotten about grace, inclusion, equity and justice, especially Christians.  Many politicians pander to the religious right who have an overly pietistic view of both Jesus and Christianity.  When someone like Newt Gingrich says the left is trying to drive traditional religion out of existence and that Christianity is an oppressed religion he is both wrong and ignorant.  Traditional religion valued the Gospel, the world transforming message that lifted up the lowly, included everyone in the human family, and asked “What Would Jesus Do” to make sure people had enough to eat, a place to live, and someone to care for them when they were sick.  Yesterday, in a presidential primary forum, Gingrinch quipped that Occupy protesters should “get a job” but should “take a bath first”.  Had Gringrich been around in Palestine in the first century, make no mistake, he would have had the same opinion of wandering Jewish preacher and his followers and would have encouraged the Roman authorities to do away with him.  Now, he hides behind the religion that has grown up in this preacher’s name to oppress the people that preacher defended.

The religion that has become Christianity has little to do with this world transforming message. Rather what calls itself Christianity today is about supporting the rich and the powerful, hating those who are different, sowing fear and division and dismissing the cries of the poor as the whining of the lazy.  None of this is part of the world transforming message of Jesus.  It’s not what Jesus would do. If you want that, listen to Bernie Sanders, not Newt.

Is Congregational Polity Killing the Liberal Church?

Posted on
8

Successful missional churches make some fundamental assumptions about how they operate. Perhaps the biggest one is: mission is the reason the church exists. This controls everything from how worship is done to what leadership is and how decisions are made.

For example, before the 40 members of Fort McKinley United Methodist Church voted to be assimilated by the Ginghamsburg Church, a Q&A sheet was sent out by Fort McKinley Pastor Dave Hood to the members of Fort McKinley. It consisted of the 20 most common questions he was getting about what will happen if they voted yes to be received by Ginghamsburg.  Here are couple of interesting questions and responses.

Q: Will there be a Christmas decorating party and a Christmas pageant?

A: At Ginghamsburg there is a core value that “Christmas is NOT your birthday.’ For the last several years there has been an intentional focus on the Darfur mission (Ginghamsburg has sent over 5$ million to Darfur relief) during Christmas to focus people away from the attitudes of selfishness and consumerism and towards justice and mission…”

In response to how people will have a voice in their church after the merger, the answer was something that would turn not a few mainline church heads.

Q: How will I have a voice in what happens after the merger?
A: Members are encouraged to share their input, feedback, and wisdom with the pastoral staff and Leadership Board through a variety of forums. for example, each spring and fall, Senior Pastor Mike Slaughter meets with the “Kingdom Investors” of the church to deliver a “state of the union” address, cast a vision for the future and solicit feedback. However, decisions about ministry and mission are made by the leadership team as directed by the Holy Spirit. Decisions are not made by consensus, majority rule or committee vote.

My initial reaction to the Ginghamsburg answer was, “Ew, how undemocratic.”  The longer I reflected on it, however, the process described above provides as much or more input than some democratically run congregations I’ve experienced.  I’ve experienced congregations, congregational in polity, where the congregation as an assembly has the final say on important matters, but do not go through the listening, feedback, and wisdom forums. I’ve known congregations that do both,but certainly didn’t consider their decision making process a spiritual discernment practice.

I’m interested in hearing your thoughts, dear readers, as I am sure I am not alone among Gen X (or younger) ministers who feel there is little place for visionary and missional ministry in the Unitarian Universalist Association or other mainline churches. I see few if any examples where ministers are allowed to cast a vision. I see many examples where ministers are the scapegoat, the point of blame or the identified patient in a system, but few places in congregational polity settings where ministers are allowed to cast a bold vision and call the people to a mission of great service.  Is a form of polity, once so democratic and participatory in its inception as a reaction against episcopal hierarchy now preventing bold new ways of being religious community among liberal congregations because it locks out the spiritual process of discernment and the requirement that people buy into mission before being part of the discernment process? Is that a good thing?

Senior Pastor of the Ginghamsburg Church, Mike Slaughter, believes that the ordination process is another thing hurting the church and church growth.  I can’t say that I disagree.  Like most professional processes, it is about minimizing liability for the body responsible for credentialing, not about promoting creativity and innovation and  passion and energy for what works and what meets people’s needs.

Slaughter says “I’d rather have 40 people committed to missional church  than being spiritual hospice chaplains in a codependent congregation.”  How familiar does this sound, my mainline friends? Where are our most energized, creative, mission-oriented souls? Doing paper-work for their credentialing bodies or creating disciples and sending people on mission to heal a hurting world and fight social and economic injustice?

It’s hard to question Ginghamsburg’s results. They have 1,200 members and 5000 attendance on Sunday. Fort McKinley has 250 attendance on Sunday and 500 members. Ginghamsburg runs a huge 501c3 non profit and they’ve given $5 million to Darfur relief among other efforts.

Perhaps  congregational polity is getting in the way of our liberal theology in terms of changing the world?

Translocal Church (or Quitting is not the same as Giving Up)

Posted on
Reply

Quitting is not the same as giving up. In fact sometimes you need to give up in order to succeed.  Sometimes you need to give up in order to lead.  Sometimes you need to get up and walk out in order to walk on,  make real progress and affect real change.   Have you ever felt that the educational system, the government, society in general, even church is so dysfunctional that it really is time to drop out and start over?  Not a sit on the couch and eventually let someone else support you and the fact that you’ve quit on life – yours as well as the world’s kind of dropping out, but a dropping out that takes the courage to start something of your own from the bottom up and make it on your own in a parallel existence.  A real in the world, but not of it type of life?  Well there’s a name for you and people are already doing it.

According to Margaret Wheatley and Deborah Frieze in their new book, Walk Out, Walk On, you are a “walk out.”  What’s a walk out? According to Wheatley and Frieze Walk Outs learn quickly, take greater risks, and support one another in pioneering work. New Systems are born from their efforts. They find each other and connect, such as on UU Growth Lab, or that cluster of people you meet who are ready to chuck it all and start their own new congregation.
(Are you a Walk Out? – find out here.)


Early in Wheatley and Frieze’s  book Walk Out, Walk On they present a list from the Harvard Business Review on how to “Scale up” what we call growth in church work:

“There are five steps for successful replication. 1. Make sure you have something that can be copied and that is worth copying. 2. Work from a single template. It provides proof of success, performance measurements, a tactical approach, and a reference for when problems arise. 3. Copy the example exactly. 4. Make changes only after you achieve acceptable results. 5. Don’t throw away the template.”

Doesn’t this sound familiar?  Make sure you have something worth copying. Well,dang it, we can stop right there. What are we copying when we do “UU church growth”?  Are we copying a particular congregation? Are we copying Unitarian Universalism in general? Our nonexistent creed? Our principles? A vague and mysterious “healthy congregation”?  All of the above?  Whenever I’ve been at a church growth seminar or workshop it’s usually some combination of the above, that is then presented as if it were #2- a single template that could provide proof of success, performance measurements, and various tactical approaches and just like looking it up in the Alban Institute online search database-a reference for when problems arise.  Ordained and lay leaders are asked to copy this mythical congregational example exactly (and of course feel frustrated and discouraged when they can’t come close to it, and this causes more stress and anxiety requiring more workshops and more consultants).  Few real adaptive changes are ever made because few congregations ever achieve acceptable results and the feel free to break the template or throw it away.  The UU Growth Lab is conversation largely being had by Walk Outs.
Here’s to breaking and throwing away the template because, among other things, it’s no longer seems worth copying and no one seems to be willing to admit it.  In the UUA it seems our biggest, healthiest congregations have more in common structurally and/or in style with non-denominational campus churches than they do with traditional UU congregational churches.  The old model and system of individual stand alone congregations is dying, dysfunctional and economically unsustainable.

Wheatley and Frieze contrast scaling up with scaling across.  Scaling across is being done locally in many types of religious communities today. Emergent communities, missional communities, and new monastic communities, all reach across local boundaries to connect with others doing the same type of work in other locations, but still retain their own specific local focus.
I’m not saying there aren’t best practices and skills and tools that are good to know,but they are not the same for everybody and they can differ, sometimes drastically, given the local situation and culture.   What if our mission in each congregation and as an association was not “to grow,” but to develop individuals and communities spiritually? What if our mission was to serve our individual local communities?  How would each of our translocal churches do that given the economic, personnel, membership, and spiritual realities in each translocal location?  (Remember this is a different question than how can each community be like a bigger successful UU Church?) That would be a new way to be a church community.  It sure would make the annual report to the UUA look different. It may even make it completely unnecessary.

Bringing it All Back Home

Posted on
1

My son and I followed our yearly summer trip to the Southwest Unitarian Universalist Summer Institute (SWUUSI) with a pilgrimage to A Third Place Community Center in Turley, OK.  We got a grand tour of the ministry happening at A Third Place and I helped out a bit with some of the work being done that afternoon at the center.  The day we spent in Turley with Rev. Ron Robinson and his wife Dr. Bonnie Ashling was a spirit filled experience that emphatically confirmed the transformation a missional outlook has had on my life.

I had spent my SWUUSI afternoons with Rev. Ron at his Missional Church workshop and having been previously catechized in missional, I was primed for my baptismal visit to Turley.  Turley is a northern, unincorporated suburb of Tulsa, OK and in the last couple of months, the 2 mile radius served by A Third Place has been notified that it will be losing its neighborhood elementary school and its local Post Office.  Missional Church means relocating to abandoned places of empire but it’s something else altogether to see the empire abandoning them around you quite literally as you set up shop.

A Third Place was the feature cover story in the SPRING 2011 issue of  UU World magazine, ( “Cultivating an Abandoned Place” by Donald E. Skinner), but as informational and complimentary as that UU World feature is, the article doesn’t – can’t – do justice to the simple power of A Third Place Community Center and the ministers of grace who are Rev. Ron Robinson and Dr. Bonnie Ashing.  I learned that you have to experience the mission yourself.  Being in solidarity helps, it always helps, but as with most singular things, you just have to be there and FEEL it.

While Rev. Ron was giving me a tour of the grounds, I told him, “I feel so at home here.”  It had nothing to do with Turley or Oklahoma specifically.  I am from Massachusetts and I miss New England terribly.  My grandmother lived 100 yards from the water in a small town on Buzzard’s Bay and I have seaside New England in my blood, yet I felt a sense of deep connection to A Third Place and its lonely neighborhood.  It was all about the spirit of the place.  The defining spirit is hung on the wall, in a hand lettered sign.  The sign spells out not only the mission of A Third Place, but the philosophy and theology of missional church:

The three R’s of the Welcome Table are a primer on missional church and missional living.  1. Relocation to abandoned places is first. The economic engine of empire chews up and spits out both rural and urban communities that are no longer of any profit making value to the machine.  People, places, lives, hopes and dreams are left behind.  When you set up your church or your life or your ministry in an abandoned place you join together with others who have relocated there and work together with those who have remained there as well with those who have returned.  Rev. Ron and Dr. Bonnie are both Turley natives whose life journeys took them away from Turley and whose lives and ministry have brought them back.   2.  Redistribution of Goods (and the Common Good).  While I was at A Third Place, I made a sign for their Sharing Center (a stewardship table) encouraging people to “take what you need, give what you can.”  A Third Place redistributes church.  The focus isn’t on Sunday morning worship or religious education, but on service.  How can we bring food to those who need food, clothing to those who need clothing, medical care to those who need medical care, community and fellowship to those who need community and fellowship? It is nothing short of a place where Jesus’ teachings to serve those in need are the root of the church.  3. Reconciliation  between and among peoples and communities is the end and goal of the spiritual journey here.   All are welcome, none are judged.  The religious language is that of what the community knows – Christianity, but a Christianity without condemnation and hell, guilt and rebuking.  It is a Christianity that seeks first to be understand rather than be understood.  It is religion that walks with and shares, not a religion of having power over.

A long time ago I felt a tug, a pull, a call to follow a path of love and justice called ministry.  I didn’t fully understand it at the time and the truth is I still don’t.  I uncover the calling bit by bit, piece by piece as I go along.  I remember, however, when it first grabbed me and didn’t let go. It reached out to me from these words of Isaiah read by Jesus in the Gospel of Luke:

“The spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind; to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”

It was these words that I had read at my ordination. It was these words that keep calling me back again and again. It was these words that I heard in Turley, OK that could make it feel so much like home, even though I was only passing through.

Sitting at home now, I am reflecting  on the missional church workshop and conversations I had with some of other participants.  How can you do missional church work in the suburbs?  Can everyone just up and leave their lives and commitments and relocate to abandoned places?  Where are the abandoned places closest to me? How do I begin the redistribution of goods here and now?How I do I begin all the reconciliation there is in front of me and help others to do so?  I have some ideas and the rest, I trust, will be revealed.  I will write about it all here in this space I am sure.  This October I will travel to the Ginghamsburg Church in Tipp City, Ohio to attend a conference called Change the World.  Ginghamsburg calls out to me as a congregation that started small in a suburb of Dayton, Ohio.  Taking up missional work, they’ve grown to be a huge campus congregation and their ministry reaches other continents in addition to having a profound influence through various 501 c 3 organizations they’ve set up in their own community.  I can’t wait to see what they have to teach.

I will also be leading others in pilgrimage back to Turley.

A Unitarian Universalism of Inclusion

Posted on
1

Unitarian Universalism prides itself on being tolerant and inclusive, but like most people and institutions the reality doesn’t live up to the vision.  Unitarian Universalsim talks big talk about being more multicultral and open to everyone, yet the reality is that Unitarian Universalism is a mostly white, mostly middle class, or even upper middle class religious movement, with its own set of values and its own culture.  Rev. Rosemary Bray McNatt spoke to this in her response to this year’s Berry Street Lecture at the UU ministers’ professional days gathering before General Assembly in Salt Lake City.  She basically said the reason our congregations are not more racially diverse is that becoming more diverse means changing our UU culture and when it gets right down to it, we’re really uncomfortable with that.

The current UU World cover story, “The Gospel of Inclusion,” is a story I wish more people were familar with both inside and outside Unitarian Universalist circles.  The story of how African American Pentecostal Bishop Carlton Pearson discovered Universalism, lost his mega church ministry because he was too accepting in his theology, met Rev. Marlin Lavanhar and landed his Higher Dimensions (later called New Dimensions) ministry at All Souls Unitarian Church in  Tulsa, where Pearson and what’s left of his congregation are now members holds many lessons.

The first lesson is that of Universalism.  It’s a grand lesson to revisit for Unitarian Universalists and a great idea for non-UU’s to be introduced to for the first time.  A loving God doesn’t send people to hell. Forever. Doesn’t make sense. It isn’t reasonable.

The second is the point made by Rev. McNatt at the Berry Street Lecture (and I paraphrase): UU Culture is keeping us from being multicultural.  From the UU World article, All Souls Tulsa before the influx of New Dimensions members:

The only problem: Everybody at this liberal church, with its hearty mix of humanists and theists, was really, really white. There were one or two brave souls of color, a few multiracial adoptive families, and periodically visitors who liked the message and the values but, after a few visits, said, “I’m just not sure my family is going to feel comfortable here.” All Souls just couldn’t seem to reach that critical mass of racial diversity.

In the spring of 2008 an opinion survey asked members what change they’d most like to see in the church. More than 90 percent said they wanted the church to be more diverse and multicultural, but there was no real plan to make it happen.

Here’s the reaction, according to the article, after the 11:30 a.m. Sunday service (the second of two services every Sunday) at All Souls incorporated the New Dimensions praise choir and band, and African American worship style, including a woman who welcomes people to worship with “Welcome to All Souls, the friendliest, trendiest, most radically inclusive church experience in Tulsa.” :

“The only hard thing for me is having the drum set and the God music,” says Julie Skye, an eleven-year All Souls member. “But I just change the words: I love the earth, the garden. There couldn’t be cooler people joining the church. But there’s something about the drums I just don’t like.”

But Brigid Kelley, a mother of six who grew up in the church and now teaches in the religious education program, thinks it’s great: “With all us young people, we need the power of the beat to bring us back to the energy of the earth. All this inclusion, I love it. We can’t be like a rock over here. We need to soften up, let some new ideas in.”

Lavanhar acknowledges that a portion of the congregation, mostly long-term members who are uncomfortable with the overtly theistic language of the music, may never embrace the new musical style at the 11 o’clock service. About seven people have told the board they are reducing or withdrawing their pledges because of the changes, he reports. And some people have stopped coming.

At the same time, about 125 new members have joined since last September, mostly younger people intrigued by the second service, and about one-quarter are people of color. Neighbors are complaining about a 17 percent increase in Sunday morning traffic over the past year, and the church has added two additional lots, because of all the visitors checking out All Souls.

Over the year, All Souls has fine-tuned the praise music: putting a sound-buffering tube on the drum set, working more UU songs into the praise mix, and paying attention to the God language.

At one point, Lavanhar mentioned to new associate music director Smith, “You know, the word Lord is going to be a little hard here.”

Smith looked puzzled. “You guys are so funny.” After all, services often start with “This is indeed a day which God has made” and end with a musical benediction, “May the Lord bless you and keep you.” The congregation sang “Jesus Christ Is Risen Today” out of the hymnal on Easter. The church’s statement of purpose, printed in the order of service each week, references “love of God” and “the essential gospel of Jesus.”

Another lesson I see reinforced in the All Souls/New Dimensions story is the importance of covenant over creed as the basis for forming religious communities.  When religious communities are formed on the basis of what people must agree to believe, it easy to damn others, to hell or otherwise, and set your group up as the holy righteous.  When communities are formed on the basis of right relationship and how they will treat each other and behave toward each other, and how they will restore relationship when and if broken, it is possible to disagree on matters of the spirit without being disagreeable.   This comes to light in the stories of real pain that surfaced for some people at All Souls when their UU church started looking like and feeling like a Christian church from their past that they left behind for the safety of Unitarian Universalism.

But behind the apparent contradiction, he discovered, was a very real pain and an opportunity for spiritual growth. Since last September, every week, a steady stream of men and women have come to talk with him about being abused—emotionally, sexually, or spiritually—as children in a Christian church. When they heard praise music sung, and saw the upraised hands, the trauma was reignited.

Over and over, he has heard his members say, “I came to All Souls to get away from all that.”

Each time he asks: What is the “that”?

“In most cases,” Lavanhar wrote in a recent issue of the church newsletter Simple Gifts, “people tell me it was authoritarian leadership, the dogma, the anti-intellectualism, the superstitious and magical thinking, the way women were treated, the homophobia, the guilt, the shame, the judgmentalism, the proselytizing, and the sense that their community was especially privileged with righteousness and truth, and the way that other traditions and ways of thinking were demonized. None of which, I point out, has been brought into All Souls.”

Unitarian Universalist churches do not have a test of belief. There is no creed, but a covenant, a way we behave toward one another.

“There is an African American experience of God,” Lavanhar has challenged members, “that has been molded and shaped by slavery, lynching, Jim Crow, and persistent racism. Many have an experience of God that involves Jesus. They don’t say it’s the only way. If we can’t accept that experience in our church, then we’re not living by what we say.

“Our history is filled with people rejected for their religious beliefs. That is something we share with them. We’re on this ship together. It’s full of excitement and possibility and also danger and risk. By living out our covenant and statement of purpose, it has forced us to change. It’s not forsaking Unitarian Universalism. It’s being Unitarian Universalist.”

There are many are lessons in this story including the every present, insidious, shape changing beast of racism, the can’t-be-overstated importance of being a welcoming congregation, and need to always, always practice radical hospitality.

No religious tradition  is perfect.  And yet, I am uplifted once again, and have hope again for the future of what Unitarian Universalism can be as I read about this story again.  This is a photograph of us in our Sunday best, a look at us being our best selves, and yet it’s so wonderful because it’s not air-brushed.

Listen to Heretics, an episode of the NPR program This American Life featuring Carlton Pearson.

Guess Who’s Coming to Worship General Assembly 2009 event with Marlin Lavanhar and Carlton Pearson.

All Souls Unitarian Church, Tulsa, OK

The Dallas Principles

Posted on
2

Like a lot of things these days, I learned about it through email even though it happened in my own backyard.  The Dallas Principles were drafted just over a week ago by activists from around the country here in Texas as a manifesto and call to action for GLBT rights without delay.  It’s time to put up or shut up, America.  Bold, decisive, is everyone equal or not? No religious reasons for inequality in the civic arena, no reasons about waiting until people can get used to the idea, just lay it on the line – it’s time once again for America to decide if it’s going to live up to its rhetoric. Nice.  I like it. I signed on as a supporter.  It was also pretty cool to see former Massachusetts State Senator Jarrett Barrios as one of the authors of this declaration.

Here are The Dallas Principles:

1.Full civil rights for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender individuals must be enacted now.  Delay and excuses are no longer acceptable.

2.We will not leave any part of our community behind.

3.Separate is never equal.

4.Religious beliefs are not a basis upon which to affirm or deny civil rights.

5.The establishment and guardianship of full civil rights is a non-partisan issue.

6.Individual involvement and grassroots action are paramount to success and must be encouraged.

7.Success is measured by the civil rights we all achieve, not by words, access or money raised.

8.Those who seek our support are expected to commit to these principles.

Support the Dallas Principles by signing the pledge here.


I don’t know when I first became such an advocate for GLBT rights. It was probably in divinity school, when I first came to understand the injustices faced by the GLBT community and realized the importance of being an ally.  Until all are equal, none are equal.  All injustices are intertwined.  Where I stand now, where I live now, and how I live now as a person of faith – I am called, invited, compelled to work and live in such a way that a world is created where there is no lesser person.

National Day of (Interfaith) Prayer

Posted on
Reply

This evening I will participate in the inaugural event of the North East Tarrant Interreligious Association.  We will hold a National Day of Prayer Service on Southlake Town Square in Southlake, TX. Many National Day of Prayer Events are related to the National Day of Prayer Task Force and associated with folks like fundamentalists such as Shirley Dobson and right wing groups such as Focus on the Family.  It is primarily a Christian event.

Our event seeks to be an interfaith event and have a broader theological and more inclusive scope.  Showing that prayers for our country and even concern for the military don’t just come from the right wing, our even will contain prayers for those concerns as well.

Because many events in our area are prayer breakfasts for the more widely known and conservative event, our event is in the evening.

Here is the program for the event.

And here is my prayer from near the beginning of the program on Respecting Differences:

Spirit of Life, we gather in this place at this hour to bear witness that love knows no lesser person. Gathered here in one strong body we are the living presence of a right and freedom of spirit as old as America, as ancient as the land, and still waiting to be born-the right for each soul to know and worship ultimate reality in its own way, the freedom of every heart to search for truth and meaning without fear of ridicule or reprisal. Source of compassion, open our hearts and minds, and help us create an even more diverse and tolerant tomorrow where sexual orientation is no barrier to love and acceptance, where theist and atheist work together for love and justice, where the dreams we dream together for a more peaceful future are more important than any religious, ethnic, racial or other difference.

Spirit of Community, help us to banish otherness, to look inside ourselves at what we fear in difference, to understand those fears and anxieties and to overcome them. Help us to overcome hatred based on ignorance. Foster in us a desire to genuinely know and understand our neighbors and to accept them as they are, not as we want them to be.

Bless us with kindness. Bless us with courage. Bless us with compassion. Bless us with community.

Bless us with the fire of commitment to walk through difficult times together, even when members of our own communities say we should not befriend others who are different.

This we ask in the name of all that is light and love, glorious and good. So may it be and Amen.

Born Again Americans

Posted on
1

This is interesting.  Check out Born Again American. It’s not about being a born again Christian American, although there is some slight of hand in the editing that leads you to believe so and I hope it gets corrected.

If you look through the Web Site, the lyrics read “My Bible is the The Bill of Rights,” but the sung version is “The Bible AND the Bill of Rights” which is makes the whole thing much more exclusive of non-Christian Americans, agnostic and atheist Americans, and that is very unfortunate because the other sentiments of the song and the effort are laudable.  It’s all about taking control of America back from the special interests, the privileged, and getting engaged in public life – reminiscent of the Obama campaign and transition team’s efforts to keep the electorate engaged.  Until the line about the The Bible AND the Bill of Rights gets fixed, though, it’s hard to jump enthusiastically on the band wagon, because right in the Bill of Rights, there’s this statement about Congress making no laws about religion.  It’s called Article I:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Yet, when you start mentioning the Bible with the Bill of Rights its as if the whole thing – America, the Bill of Rights, the Constitution, etc is a Christian endeavor – and IT IS NOT.  So I like the printed lyric you find on Born Again American much better, My bible IS the Bill of Rights.  Sad, they couldn’t have recorded that version.

Note the involvement and presence in the video of Unitarian Universalist minister, and no small critic of the Bible (he’s been a member of the Jesus Seminar) the Rev. Davidson Loehr of First Unitarian Universalist in Austin, TX, author of America, Fascism and God. Now, I’m going to guess, Loehrs was shown the lyric that said the My Bible is the Bill of Rights. (Listen to my interview with Rev. Loehr here – it’s episode #9).

The Born Again American project has also been featured on Bill Moyer’s Journal. There I learned that the project originated with Norman Lear’s Declaration of Independence Road Trip, an effort to refamliarize Americans with our founding documents and recommit them to the ideals contained therein.

Reveled

Posted on
Reply

My vacation is drawing to a close, as is my celebration of Christmas. Last night we went to see my friend Jim perform in the Revels at Sanders Theater at Harvard University.  After the show we had a lovely dinner with Grace Ross where we discussed the theological implications of faith, hope, and charity from a political perspective and why people are sometimes afraid of hope, afraid to have faith, afraid of caritas, and therefore react negatively and even act out negatively to those who offer light in darkness.

The Revels show, now performed in many cities across the country since its inception 38 years ago in Cambridge, traditionally ends with the Sussex Mummers Carol.  A fitting wish to you, readers as we end the year that brought the return of faith and hope to so many in our liberal religious heritage.

God bless the mistress of this house
With gold chain round her breast;
Where e’er her body sleeps or wakes,
Lord send her soul to rest,
Lord send her soul to rest.

God bless the master of this house
With happiness beside;
Where e’er his body rides or walks,
Lord Jesus be his guide.
Lord Jesus be his guide.

God bless your house, your children too,
Your cattle and your store;
The Lord increase you day by day,
And give you more and more.
And give you more and more.

(Listen to an MP3 version online here - not the Revels)