Getting Tough
So, the president responded to news of North Korean missile testing by tweeting that they will be “met with fire and fury and frankly power, the likes of which this world has never seen before,” which is not necessarily the most prudent response to a volatile dictator who is aiming nuclear weapons in your direction. I would put it in the category of “not a great plan.” It is, however, entirely unsurprising. It’s the only thing DJT knows how to do—get tough. Whatever the circumstances, domination and punishment are the only tools in his toolbox. Read more →
162: Movement Building
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In this episode, Scot Nakagawa talks about how storytelling has been effectively used by conservatives and the religious right to move power. He goes deep into explaining why all politics is identity politics. He talks about the need to build both the popular front and the united front.
Scot is a senior partner with ChangeLab, a grassroots racial justice laboratory. He’s a long-time activist, community organizer and provocative thinker.
The VUU is hosted by Meg Riley, Joanna Fontaine Crawford, Aisha Hauser, Hank Peirce, and Alicia Forde, with production support provided by Terri Burnor. The VUU streams live on Thursdays at 11 am ET. This episode aired on December 8, 2016.
Note: The audio above has been slightly edited for a better listening experience. View the live original recording on YouTube.
Reps of God: Christian Triumphalism and the DIY Future of Unitarian Universalism
LITE
The future of Unitarian Universalism does not lie in Christianity Lite any more than the future of Anheuser-Busch lies in Bud Light.
Oh, wait: Anheuser-Busch doesn’t have a future: it was bought out . . . by a European corporation that makes tasty beer.
In our consumerist religious landscape, the mainstream Christian denominations are scrambling to survive. I don’t doubt that they will do a fine job of brewing the new Christianity. A much better job than can Unitarian Universalism, except in very specific locations and boutiques.
Yes, as in beer, so in religion: the future for a small movement such as Unitarian Universalism lies not with Lite but with Hevy. The Godzilla of brewers, InBev, and the Presbyterians and United Church of Christ, and United Methodists et alia will do a fine job with the Lite. I think the future of Unitarian Universalism lies in micro-breweries. Boutique congregations, each with a recipe of their own.
Hevy
Keeping the church doors open after the Boomers are dead is the question. I’m not trying to be a controversialist. Like many ministers, I’m betting millions of dollars of other people’s money on a way to keep the church doors open into the future.
How?
A new book by Thomas Moore points to a possible way. In A Religion of One’s Own: A guide to Creating a Personal Spirituality in a Secular World, Moore makes a strong case for do-it-yourself (DIY) religion.
Aren’t Unitarian Universalist congregations uniquely suited to facilitate DIY?
We do well to draw a sharp line between the subjectivity of religious experience and the objectivity of a congregational, corporate life together. Where I get my personal religious jolt is up to me—Hinduism, Christianity, Buddhism, paganism, pantheism, atheism, all of the above . . . Up to me. DIY. Where I find my meaning is up to me.
Where I go for my religious, corporate, home is up to us.
For those who will be following Moore’s advice on DIY religion, one of the best homes is a Unitarian Universalist congregation . . . If . . . we can awaken to how big the tent must be.
This is the wisdom of the idea of covenant embedded so deeply in Unitarian tradition. “We need not think alike to live alike,” is the sentiment, even if no one famous ever actually said it.
Treating others as we would have them treat us—or, better, treating others as they would wish to be treated—isn’t so easy. The challenge is subjective: how the heck do we know how someone wishes to be treated?
Well, there is that thing called compassion.
In the Unitarian Universalist tradition we say that everyone has “inherent worth and dignity.” I would propose that this is how we treat our neighbor (and fellow congregants): as if that person has inherent worth and dignity. Then, we may go a step further and learn what that worthy and dignified person wants and needs.
But . . . What if I know better? I mean, really—what if I know darn well that I know better than my neighbor what my neighbor needs?
Party Foul! What you or me or anyone knows is always and only our subjectivity. Where you get your religious jolt. How you do your DIY religion.
You don’t know about your neighbor in the pew until you ask.
Furthermore, words matter. For example, for many people the word “family” does not have a warm and fuzzy feel to it. We do well to use care when we call a congregation a family.
And, no, “Amazing Grace” did not “save a wretch like me.” The apparatus that produced “Amazing Grace” enslaved my forebears for generations. And Jesus? His incarnation as “the body of Christ” in the church has been cruel to many of us. Not warm and fuzzy at all.
That’s two for instances. There are more . . . . More instances of oppression and exclusion.
Monarchy, Malarky
Unitarian minister John Dietrich, the founder of religious humanism, believed that a democratic society would create a democratic religion. After all, evidence suggests that religions reproduce in their structures and theologies the political and social structures in which they develop.
To see this, we only need go so far as a comparison of Judaism and Christianity. As anyone familiar with the Hebrew book of Judges or 1 Samuel knows, the ancient Hebrew tribes were highly suspicious of monarchy. Hebrew tradition reveals that mistrust, even though the Hebrews flirted with monarchy in the time of King David and the subsequent temple at Jerusalem. (Speaking of disasters!)
Christianity, the child of Judaism, early fell in thrall to the structures and attitudes of the Roman empire. The bowing and hierarchy that is so much a part of European monarchy and much of Christian worship is foreign to the Jewish tradition. And it feels less and less OK to many of us living in liberal democracies.
John Dietrich, and other humanists of the 1930s, thought that the monarchical model of the Christian tradition would disappear in the democratic age.
And it has, to a great extent. If it hadn’t, there wouldn’t be any DIY religion.
The only religion that will ever make sense to you—when you’re not going along to get along—is that one that you have arrived at by choice, in your own thoughts and your own integrity.
Religious experience is subjective. Personal. Forcing it on others is a party foul and a Golden Rule violation.
The Short Shelf Life of European Christianity
Reflect on this: of the people in the United States today, how many had Christianity forced upon their forebears?
Answer: Nearly everyone who lived outside of the Mediterranean basin in the 300-500s CE.
Reflect on this: how many of those who became Christian outside of the Mediterranean basin had a choice in the matter?
Did the British? Did the Irish or Welsh? Did the Germans or Norwegians or Poles or Swedes or Swiss or . . . ?
Nope. Most of the population in Europe had no choice. The choice was made for them by the ruling elites.
How about the Africans brought forcibly into the Western Hemisphere?
Nope.
The native peoples of the Western Hemisphere?
Nope. No choice.
For millions upon millions of people, Christianity was not a choice. Should we wonder then that so many of their children abandon an imposed religion as soon as secular governments and social expectations allow?
For most of us living in the Western Hemisphere, Christianity is an overlay, not a deep tradition. A Mediterranean imposition, not a value system that matches the flora and fauna and mores that most of us were born into.
Malcolm X taught this, but his words have not been heeded.
Pagans in the UU movement have been pointing this out for some time. In my congregation, the Jews, Hindus, pagans, and Muslims and atheists and others and more cry out . . . when will we be free?
When will we build that land, that inclusive place that is actually inclusive, the includes not just Christians but others?
Despite Liberation Theology, the Social Gospel, and the Emergent Church, Christian ritual and theology is the theology and ritual of oppression for many of us.
Yes, those lively spirituals subvert the dominant paradigm and reveal the ugly truth of oppression. But isn’t it time we sing a new freedom song? Isn’t it time we subvert the most dominant of paradigms—Christianity itself?
And then there is the inclusion of Christians too.
Think hevy. Think micro-brew. And DIY.
What if Unitarian Universalist congregations were actually, truly, a big tent where all are welcome, not just the Christians? Not just the humanists?
Can I have an “ameen”?
Some of us will not worship any prophet or any god, no matter what the cost. Where might we find a home?
How about a really big tent for the future?
Photo credit: The copyright on this image is owned by Simon Johnston and is licensed for reuse under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 license.
Guns: Relationship Status: “It’s complicated.”
I first held a gun when I was eight years old. One of my uncles let me fire his new pistol. I still remember the strain of trying to hold the heavy gun steady so he wouldn’t think I was too weak to try it. All these years later, I vividly remember the incredible rush of power that washed over me as I fired that pistol.
I was eight years old and I held in my hand a tool that could spit fire and knock a beer can off a fence several yards away. I was eight years old and I held in my hand a tool that could have ended the life of the uncle who handed it to me. It is difficult to articulate how much power surged through my little being. I swear I heard the Scots heritage in my mutt-blood swim screaming to the surface with a mighty roar…
Nine years later, the older brother of the uncle who first handed me a gun died after being shot by another family member. Not long after that, the father of my classmate was killed while responding to a domestic violence call. The man who killed him was devastated to realize, once he descended from his pain-killer induced high, that he had killed not only a police officer, but a friend.
Four years ago, my partner called me at the hospital where I was working as a chaplain to let me know that he was not one of the two white men shot to death a block away from my house (where a heroin deal apparently turned deadly). Shortly before that, I had watched an ambulance come claim the body of a sixteen year old boy, victim of a drive by shooting at the other end of my street.
I have lived in the rural life and the urban life and what each had in common was:
- a sense of powerlessness about how the world is run and
- deaths by firearms.
Our country (and colonial powers around the world) has a history of taking away a population’s weapons and property (i.e. indigenous peoples, Japanese-American relocation camps, mass incarceration through a government-created drug war…) when people in power decide to do so. How then, to trust that you really will be safer by giving up your guns?
Christian social justice activist and writer Jim Wallis proclaims:
Former assumptions and shared notions about fairness, agreements, reciprocity, mutual benefits, social values, and expected futures have all but disappeared. The collapse of financial systems and the resulting economic crisis not only have caused instability, insecurity, and human pain; they have also generated a growing disbelief and fundamental distrust in the way things operate and how decisions are made.
I confess that I am grateful to finally live in a gun-free home, I freak out just a bit when even toy guns are pointed at me or anyone I love, and I would love to trust that I could walk through my neighborhood at night without hearing gunfire. But I was also here in New Orleans when the National Guard rolled through with their Humvees and their guns and I know what it feels like to be occupied by a military force – first denied access to my home and property, then patrolled and subject to interrogation once home again.
My faith and my lived experience teaches that life is rarely an either/or proposition. In this interdependent web of all existence, we are all connected, tangled together in a tapestry of history and mystery. It’s complicated.
It is hazardous to talk glibly about gun control unless we talk about creating a nation that is welcoming, safe, and empowering for all people. This conversation is complex and deserves real discernment, not sound bites and bullet points.
Guns do not provide actual safety. They provide a sense of power. [Bear witness: our government is not at all ready to give up its guns, its sense of power.]
I suspect that if we are going to end gun violence, we will have to address the collective needs of all – urban and rural, white and people of color, individuals and institutions – who feel powerless without their guns.
