What's this got to do with Unitarian Universalism? Isn't Unitarian Universalism about reciting our principles and purposes and congratulating ourselves on our liberalism? Do we have to make a difference?
This last January was the warmest year in several millennia, and the last decade was the warmest in a thousand years. The polar ice is melting, and the snow isn't falling in North America or Europe. Say goodbye to Maple Syrup.
We will run out of easily attainable petroleum in a decade or two, and the costs of gasoline will sky rocket. It has already started to go up and up and up.
The automobile has distorted our urban areas, over half of the land surface of most of our cities is dedicated to parking, highways, and sprawling single family housing.
Our children are driven to school, because the streets are too dangerous for them to walk or bike to school. After school they are driven to after school activities. Mothers who never heard of Betty Friedan do this driving, and experience a nagging anxiety that this is not what life is supposed to be like.
Network news organizations run documentary series on television about obesity and treat this epidemic as if it were a personal life style issue. We experience a rise in chronic illnesses and treat those illnesses with pharmaceuticals.
Most people in the United States in two decades will be people of color. Most of Unitarian Universalist churches fled to the suburbs in the 40s and 50s as part of the white flight, and most of our new starts have been located away from the city centers. And we wonder why it is so hard for our congregations to achieve "diversity." And we wonder why our prophetic voice is diminished.
We spend money on slick advertising and folks come to church. Some join. We are not changed.
Growth for religious liberalism does not consist of counting voting members in self absorbed suburban congregations, nor does it have any thing to do with the self promotion of the UUA HQ staff. Real growth means being deeply relational to our country and its people and that kind of growth will commence when we find our voice and our courage. Then we will begin to speak to our country once again.
Amen ... a serious, hearty, amen.
I'm sitting through a weekend of Michael Durall bull$h!# as I read this. You have no idea how much I needed these words right now. Thank you.
I remember in the 80s when they said fossil fuels would be gone before the end of the century.
For a long time i quit watching nature shows because I got sick of the constant complaining about deforestation.
Constantly reminding people how bad they are and how they are ruining the world is not, in my opinion, a good way to grow our churches either.