"You have seen how a man was made a slave; you shall see how a slave was made a man."
- Frederick Douglass
In my post on Monday, I proposed that it would be a good idea for the Commission on Appraisal to examine our social justice work including our witnessing in the form of resolutions, etc. because it is a source of some controversy amongst us.
When I was an undergraduate, a long time ago, my English professor related a story about a famous colleague. His intent was to help us understand the life of the mind. In an interview this famous professor was asked what he did at the University, and he answered "I read Joyce." It was as I had been served up a parable. I came back to that story again and again. I read Joyce myself, but by god, there was a limit! To spend a life reading Joyce! I couldn't get my brain around that.
I first read I and Thou in 1964, probably the same year I heard the above story. Buber was difficult then, and Buber continues to be difficult. I have read Buber a many times. I am beginning to understand that professor, but unlike me, I am sure he understood Joyce for all his efforts. Buber's work influences my thinking, but how can I explain it! Perhaps to explain Buber is not what I am called to do. I am beginning to think based on my latest read of Buber, that I am called to apply Buber.
I was just in high school. The Presidential election was dominating the media attention, and attracting my attention. Who would win, Kennedy or Nixon? I asked my mother who she would vote for, she indicated that she might not vote at all! What? It seemed a contradiction to my Unitarian understanding. Well, she explained, my Father was a Democrat and she was a Republican, and if they voted they would just cancel each other out, and so they decided not to bother.
Later it occurred to me that my Mother was not excited about Nixon and my father was not excited about Kennedy, and their no vote pack would not last until November. They did vote, and the result indicated that the country was just as divided and nearly as uncommitted as my parents. I grew up in a Unitarian Universalism that was politically diverse, my congregation was made up of good religious liberals who expressed themselves as Republicans and Democrats. Several years later as a first time voter, I voted in the Republican primary against Goldwater, and ended up voting for LBJ. Then, I demonstrated against LBJ's on the day of his inauguration. My political orientation was becoming independent and critical to the politicians of both political parties. I am not now and never have I been a Democrat. I was a registered Republican for a few months. That was a long time ago.
This is the thirty-fifth anniversary of the annual Day of Mourning on Coles Hill overlooking Plymouth Rock, Massachusetts, one of the early sites of the European invasion of the Americas. I was there in 1970, and while I have returned on many occasions, I have been there in spirit and solidarity every year. It is hard to witness the fact of genocide in face of the national ritual of self congratulations and privilege. But there are signs that more and more dominant culture people are willing to look at there past to help them understand the violence and arrogance of the present regime. If one wants to understand Bush and Cheney one must look back to opening chapters of the European settlement of the Americas. What was the first act of those who arrived on the Mayflower? Upon arriving at what is now Provincetown at the tip of Cape Cod, a boat of armed men was sent ashore who stole the entire winter food supply of the village of Native people. Then they proceeded to what is now Plymouth where the people of God founded their armed and aggressive Bible commonwealth. The children of the Mayflower (joined by those who aspire to that heritage) now use their power to steal the natural resources of the entire world.
Robert Jensen writes: "Thanksgiving is the day when the dominant white culture (and, sadly, most of the rest of the non-white but non-indigenous population) celebrates the beginning of a genocide that was, in fact, blessed by the men we hold up as our heroic founding fathers.
The first president, George Washington, in 1783 said he preferred buying Indians' land rather than driving them off it because that was like driving "wild beasts" from the forest. He compared Indians to wolves, "both being beasts of prey, tho' they differ in shape."
Thomas Jefferson -- president #3 and author of the Declaration of Independence, which refers to Indians as the "merciless Indian Savages" -- was known to romanticize Indians and their culture, but that didn't stop him in 1807 from writing to his secretary of war that in a coming conflict with certain tribes, "[W]e shall destroy all of them."
As the genocide was winding down in the early 20th century, Theodore Roosevelt (president #26) defended the expansion of whites across the continent as an inevitable process "due solely to the power of the mighty civilized races which have not lost the fighting instinct, and which by their expansion are gradually bringing peace into the red wastes where the barbarian peoples of the world hold sway." Roosevelt also once said, "I don't go so far as to think that the only good Indians are dead Indians, but I believe nine out of ten are, and I shouldn't like to inquire too closely into the case of the tenth."
So let us celebrate and feast, with awareness of our history and a commitment to transformation.
Its a scandal that our science teachers have become rigid, teaching only evolution theory, when they could be teaching the alternative theory that a divining intelligence preordained things just the way they are in this most perfect of worlds. The movement to turn old fashioned one-paradigm-at-time science classes into forums for discussion of every interest groups favorite theories is only beginning.
from the Institute for Stork Research and Science
Two different theories exist concerning the origin of children: the
theory of sexual reproduction, and the theory of the stork. Many
people believe in the theory of sexual reproduction because they have
been taught this theory at school. In reality, however, many of the
world's leading scientists are in favor of the theory of the stork.
If the theory of sexual reproduction is taught in schools, it must
only be taught as a theory and not as the truth. Alternative
theories, such as the theory of the stork, must also be taught.
Evidence supporting the theory of the stork includes the following:
1. It is a scientifically established fact that the stork does exist.
This can be confirmed by every ornithologist.
2. The alleged human fetal development contains several features that
the theory of sexual reproduction is unable to explain.
3. The theory of sexual reproduction implies that a child is
approximately nine months old at birth. This is an absurd claim.
Everyone knows that a newborn child is newborn.
4. According to the theory of sexual reproduction, children are a
result of sexual intercourse. There are, however, several well
documented cases where sexual intercourse has not led to the birth of
a child.
5. Statistical studies in the Netherlands have indicated a positive
correlation between the birth rate and the number of storks. Both are
decreasing.
6. The theory of the stork can be investigated by rigorous scientific
methods. The only assumption involved is that children are delivered
by the stork.
submitted by Linda Sherry to the open UUMA Huumor List.
On Friday, the Republican leadership in the House of Representatives attempted to shore up the crumbling facade of "support" for the continuing U.S. invasion of Iraq with a phony resolution calling for immediate withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq. The day before Rep. John Murtha, a hawkish Democrat and Vietnam veteran had denounced the U.S. occupation as not winnable and introduced a resolution calling for a repositioning of U.S. troops outside Iraq's borders. A furious debate ensued over the Republican resolution, during which Representative Schmidt (R) of Ohio announced "a telephone call" from a Marine denouncing Murtha which she reported said "Stay the course. He also asked me to send Congressman Murtha a message, that cowards cut and run. Marines never do." This transparent cheap shot was met immediate boos, and denunciation of Schmidt. But who was this Marine that the Congresswoman quoted? Read and weep.
Schmidt is not alone in the use of this tactic. But it raises some interesting questions for Unitarian Universalists. Some would argue that commenting on this political hack's conduct is political, and Unitarian Universalists should be about religious questions and some how ignore these contentious questions. Yet, there is a whole history of criticism of the transgressions of political leaders going back to the ancient Hebrew prophets, Chinese sages, and indigenous shamans. But Unitarian Universalism in recent years has been infected with the notion that religion is a personal, subjective thing, and our congregations are organized to supply spiritual services to seekers.
That this "religion is about me" orientation is a departure from the liberal religious tradition should go without saying, we should simply ask our consumers to look at the history of religious liberalism. But I think it points to a bigger problem, the Commission on Appraisal beat around the bush trying to define what holds us together, commenting on our lack of a common theology. I have expressed my opinion on our common framework in earlier posts: we are not an religion light; we have a framework that arises from religious humanism and Protestantism; and we share a consensus on what is and what are not sources of authority for our religious positions. I am not sure we need a common theology, so much as a common understanding of what we are committed to do this world. This common understanding of our commitments must be theologically grounded, but why can't liberal Christians, liberationists of marginalized peoples, pagan revivalists, and humanists of various kinds all contribute their own theological understandings to that common commitment?
My political theology argues that human communities thrive under conditions of authentic relationship, relationships grounded in recognition of the creative and transformative nature of being in process. The story systems of Judaism, Christianity, the liberal humanist tradition and the Cherokee people inform my thinking and ethical perspectives. Therefore Schmidt has violated right relation, and is a contagion on the body politic.
But I can imagine a Unitarian Universalist coming to the conclusion that character assassination is violation from other political theologies.. Given my commitment that religious liberalism must be defined by a common public commitment to this world, I would be disappointed in a Unitarian Universalist who has no political theology, and seeks only personal religious meanings, or a Unitarian Universalist who has reduced their religious understanding to justify this kind of conduct from either Republicans or Democrats.
I was serving an historical Universalist church, and I was visiting shut-ins. The widows that I would visit that afternoon had been Universalists all their lives, and their parents and grandparents before them. Universalism was part of their heritage going back to the Green Mountain Revolution. They loved the church, which their families had raised and finished in three days after a mass meeting and songfest (rallye) led by Quillen Hamilton Shinn (1845-1907).
Both loved it when I came a visiting, and both always apologized that they hadn't gotten dressed up for the Pastor.
There is an aspect of the minister/congregant relationship which I have never fully accepted. Blame it on John Calvin. Seems the Reformer of Geneva instructed his clergy to visit every citizen of Geneva in their homes once a year. The purpose: to check up on the morals of the parish.
Thus "parish calling" was originally related to "the police" function of the clergy. (Does enforcer have a kinder ring to your ears.) And while we might love to think of pastoral care as a loving ministry of care, there are congregants who would be horrified to show any of their weaknesses, confess any of their sins, or share their problems. The Pastor might judge them "not righteous Unitarian Universalist!"
Not that Unitarian Universalist ministers are not called upon to enforce the rules, to guard the congregation against predators and disruptors. We are expected to be guardians of the community's covenant. But when a congregant feels called to put on the best face, and get dressing up for the Pastor (literally or metaphorically) I feel they have the wrong guy. Not my role! Not me! But it happens again and again.
I have witnessed the easy going, accepting style of liberal clergy all my life, and so this idea of Pastor as cop seems incongruous, but the ghost of Calvin's parlor spies goes on and on.
Gordon McKeeman. wrote: Universalism is not faith in the inevitability of heaven which supports me as I face death but faith in the reality of love. The old Universalist heresy claimed that God's love knew no limits and would find the sinner no matter how far from holiness she or he strayed. The fundamental nature of reality is love.
Universalism as it is commonly understood is the "everybody is saved no matter what" religion rather than the "God is boundless love" religion.
At the time of the rise of Universalism, the Calvinists and Methodists utilized the threat of hell to scare listeners into accepting Christ, and thus the Universalist emphasis on "no hell" was popular counter to deformed practice. But when Universalism came to be understood as assuring a positive result for our soul's final destination it had less appeal, especially among liberals. Liberals didn't imagine themselves as candidates for hell.
But the power of love, fundamental to reality and surpassing our willfulness is a gospel whose time is always now. To preach the larger hope, and boundless love, Universalism for our time.
It is so easy to shift away from this central message for our gospel, to preach greater understanding, and more inclusive ways of being, to preach justice and fidelity to truth. All these things are good, but they lack transformative power without the renewing the message of boundless love at the heart of the cosmos.
Richard Rohr writes: "There are two ways of being a prophet. One is to tell the enslaved that they can be free. It is the difficult path of Moses. The second is to tell those who think they are free that they are in fact enslaved. That is the even more difficult path of Jesus."
Most religious liberal congregations consist of people who think they are free, but are bound by consumerism, conformity to social norms, and "the demands of the work ethic." Inviting these free agents to a consideration that they might be enslaved to these "systems" is hard work, but necessary for transformation. It does not lend itself to proclamation, and scolding.
And what if the prophet is successful? Through the medium of prophetic ministry, a person arrives at the point of recognition, comes to understand that indeed he or she is in fact bound to "principles and powers of this present era" - what then? How does one achieve authentic freedom in a society of sham freedom?
What is nature of the freedom that the prophet proclaims?
Is it freedom from? Freedom from poverty, tyranny, violence, and abuse? Freedom from sexism, racism, and classist presumptions?
Or is it freedom to? Freedom to learn, travel, achieve ones goals. Freedom to live in dignity, in love, and in justice?
To achieve freedom from, one must be liberated from an external tyranny, To achieve freedom to, one must be empowered.
The Jesus of history can be read as inviting his listeners into a new relationship, a community in the presence of the divine (kingdom of God) which was within us, between us, and all around us.
Is this a way of understanding freedom? If this is a way of understanding freedom, we might call it the freedom of profound relationship, and renewed personhood. And it promises to be both liberating and empowering!
Every hour, someone commits a hate crime. Every day, at least eight blacks, three whites, three gays, three Jews and one Latino become hate crime victims. Every week, a cross is burned.
What can you do to prevent hate crimes? Tolerance. org has resources for you. This site contains action plans for campus groups, community groups, public school students and teachers, parents. Churches working to become multi cultural and welcoming congregations especially need to look at these materials, let us make every community a hate free zone.
U.U. Enforcer wrote "I skipped J. Sparks' grave since he is best known for a sermon someone else did at his ordination." Funny thing what historians do to a man's reputation, they give prominence to some people and obscurity to others, and Jared Sparks should know this, he was a historian. Let us see what Britannica Online has to tell us about the good Doctor Sparks.
American publisher and editor of the North American Review, biographer, and president of Harvard College.
Educated at Phillips Exeter Academy and Harvard College, Sparks served as minister of the First Independent Church (Unitarian) from 1819 to 1823. From then until 1830, under his ownership and editorship, the North American Review became the arbiter of literature in New England. He was appointed the first professor of secular history at Harvard and served as president of the college from 1849 to 1853.
He was the author of biographies of Benjamin Franklin, George Washington, and Gouverneur Morris. He edited The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, 12 vol. (1829€“30) and 25 volumes of The Library of American Biography (1834€“48). Sparks believed that patriotism obliged him, when editing source materials, to omit passages likely to cause international ill will, and he sometimes embellished what the Founding Fathers had actually written. The exacting scholarly standards of a later age rendered much of his work obsolete.
He was born May 10, 1789, Willington, Conn., U.S. He died March 14, 1866, Cambridge, Mass.
Those exacting standards of a later day! The idea that history writing serves a political purpose, and that historian is advised not to upset to many established opinions is still standard operating procedure. Historians who point out the flaws in the official story are labeled revisionists, and "controversial."
But in his own time Jared Sparks was the model of the public intellectual. The Dial was founded by the Transcendentalist Club to overcome the power of The North American Review.
While he was at the Baltimore Church, he was also chaplain to the U.S. House of Representatives. Before he was ordained he was a published and well regarded author of Unitarian theological writings. Thomas Jefferson apparently appreciated his Unitarian Miscellany as the following letter from Jefferson attests.
To The Reverend Jared Sparks
MONTICELLO, NOVEMBER 4, 1820.
SIR, -- YOUR favor of September 18th is just received, with the book accompanying it. Its delay was owing to that of the box of books from Mr. Guegan, in which it was packed. Being just setting out on a journey I have time only to look over the summary of contents. In this I see nothing in which I am likely to differ materially from you. I hold the precepts of Jesus, as delivered by Himself, to be the most pure, benevolent, and sublime which have ever been preached to man. I adhere to the principles of the first age; and consider all subsequent innovations as corruptions of His religion, having no foundation in what came from Him. The metaphysical insanities of Athanasius, of Loyola, and of Calvin, are, to my understanding, mere relapses into polytheism, differing from paganism only by being more unintelligible. The religion of Jesus is founded in the Unity of God, and this principle chiefly, gave it triumph over the rabble of heathen gods then acknowledged. Thinking men of all nations rallied readily to the doctrine of one only God, and embraced it with the pure-morals which Jesus inculcated. If the freedom of religion, guaranteed to us by law in theory, can ever rise in practice under the overbearing inquisition of public opinion, truth will prevail over fanaticism, and the genuine doctrines of Jesus, so long perverted by His pseudo priests, will again be restored to their original purity. This reformation will advance with the other improvements of the human mind, but too late for me to witness it. Accept my thanks for your book, in which I shall read with pleasure your developments of the subject, and with them the assurance of my high respect.
"And this day shall become a memorial for you, and you shall observe it as a festival for the LORD, for your generations, as an eternal decree shall you observe it. For seven days you shall eat unleavened bread, but on the first day you shall remove the leaven from your homes ... you shall guard the unleavened bread, because on this very day I will take you out of the land of Egypt; you shall observe this day for your generations as an eternal decree. - Exodus 12:14-17
Religions mark rituals of reference. remembering events that define the identity of the people. Often these rituals of reference mark memories of suffering, enslavement, humiliation, and then liberation and renewal. Christianity has the Passion which is answered by the Resurrection marked by Good Friday and Easter. Judaism has an ancient memory of slavery and a subsequent passing over to freedom, ritually celebrated at Passover. Judaism returns to this theme again and again in other rituals of reference such as Purim and Chanukah.
Many Native American communities recall the long marches of forced removals with rituals of reference. It is a scandal among indigenous peoples that dominant culture spiritual seekers come to celebrate Native American spirituality, because they seem in such a rush to be one with nature, and one with the dance, but clueless about the suffering and brokenness that the rituals seek to address.
The spirituals of the African American people arose to address terror and degradation. Slavery and after emancipation Lynch Law are the context for these songs of freedom. When religious liberals sing these songs, what suffering are they addressing? When we sing that we will let our light shine, what long nights of terror are we defying. What horrors do we wish to overcome? If we sing these songs with out deep congregational reflection on the context of their origins, and recognition that for the community of origin they are rituals of reference are we not celebrating cheap grace?
When questions of cultural misappropriation are raised around the singing of African American spirituals, it is not simply a concern that "white people don't clap on the right beat" or "y'all don't sing with gusto and passion" - the concern is taking a song that has context in community memories and represents a ritual of reference in the African American community, and seems to be used for some other purpose in the liberal congregation. Much of the writing on this subject by dominant culture ministers and musicians appears to be defensive and more concerned with rights, than with responsibilities.
Appropriate use requires communicating the context under which the song arose and the meaning in depth for the community of origin. In that context that the singing of such music would contribute toward our common struggle for wholeness and right relations.
Mark Twain retorted that he was still alive, contradicting learned commentators who were reporting his death. It has been reported that Unitarian Universalism is dying. Apparently based on the way congregations report their voting membership to the UUA we are averaging a growth rate of 1% per annum, and this is smaller than the national growth rate. Thus the argument goes that we are losing "market share," and therefore experiencing relative decline. While this an area of concern for those of us who cherish the future of liberal religion, quantitative measurements do not necessarily lend themselves to uncontroversial judgments.
First, what is the nature of the growth of population in the United States? If the composition of the United States relative to race, ethnicity, age distribution etc. was more or less the same as it was in 1970 (the high point of twentieth century dues payers to the UUA relative to the U.S. population) then the UUA statistical decline in market share would indicate decline relative to this static conception of population. It would tell us that we did not need a cultural change within Unitarian Universalism, but rather an organizational one. We would need to build more big suburban churches. Train more "boss" ministers. We would need to do what we have always done, but better.
But if the US population is growing among people that we have never attracted: among non white, non Protestant, and not "middle class" (in the mid twentieth century meaning of that term,) then perhaps Unitarian Universalist growth would require that we look at the limitations of our cultural and religious identity. By 2050 the population of the United States will be more than 50% non white. Diana Eck argues that we have become the most religiously pluralistic country in the world with growing numbers of Moslems, Buddhists, Hindus, earth centered traditions, and other ways of being religious not normative in America of just a few decades ago. In the 1970s, our members were typically highly credentialled employees of corporations and governments. The better paying of these jobs are disappearing, and now our employed U.U. membership often comes to us highly stressed and overworked, and we have many who are among the increasingly underpaid and under appreciated service functionaries (teachers, librarians, social workers, and technical level scientific workers.) The former often can't afford to live in the communities that they serve. Meanwhile we gaining a larger percentage of self employed professionals, artisans, and creative entrepreneurs who don't have to live in suburbia, and set up shop in small towns in the Mountains, and in the pine woods of the Southeast. Who will we grow among? What is the future of the suburb?
Dan Harper makes an argument that Unitarian Universalist ministers are educated to lead pastoral sized congregations, and if their leadership style was better suited for a larger church, then our Unitarian Universalist churches would grow. Perhaps, but it still leaves open the question, among whom would we grow?
There is considerable interest among Unitarian Universalists in the growth of large independent churches that serve the perceived needs of a consumer orientated population. These "market driven" churches are directed by staff, and the core supporters and power brokers are smaller core of committed evangelicals. They use innovative technologies to enhance the worship experience. It would be an interesting discussion if we could talk about the pluses and minuses of such an approach, and whether it could be adapted Unitarian Universalism. But we still need to ask, who joins these "mega-churches?" There is considerable evidence that they are the once upon a time constituents of the declining conservative and mainstream evangelical churches. Thus they are recycled UCCs, Episcopalians, Baptists, Disciples, Presbyterians and Methodists. These denominations are losing members, it isn't simply liberal Protestantism that is in decline, it is the old forms of denominational Protestantism.
Where are these mega-churches? They are located on sprawling campuses in the new growth suburbs fueled by white flight. Forty years ago we took that road ourselves, undermining our public ministry and turning us into a religion that serves individual seekers rather than a wounded world.
There is a second problem with the declining "market share statistic," by counting voting members of congregations are we really counting those who identify with Unitarian Universalism? No. we are simply counting those who a congregation chooses to report to the UUA as "voting members" for purposes of paying the annual program fund. Those of my readers who has been on a church board know that the number that is reported is an understatement of the size of the congregation. Thus, we need to distinguish between 1) those who identify as Unitarian Universalists, 2) the total constituency of Unitarian Universalist congregations, organizations, affiliate groups, and ministries, and 3) total number of voting members of Unitarian Universalist congregations. Is it possible that the first two could rise significantly while the third category would grow slower? I think that is not only possible, but we are experiencing that institutional dislocation at the present time. It is a fact that we have experienced rapid increases in paid staff in our congregations, and increases in attendance, yet slower increases in those who get reported to Boston. Perhaps this fact has more to do with the slow death of the form of historical Protestantism, than it does to the eminent death of the religious movement known as Unitarian Universalism.
Third, the growth of voting membership in congregations is uneven. Some congregations have experienced double digit growth, and some congregations have experienced absolute decline in membership. The Districts of the UUA in the Northeast of the United States have lost members or showed small increases, while the Districts in the other parts of the country have seen significant growth in total voting member registrations in the last decade. Why? Some of growth in the "sunbelt" has been fueled by rapid population growth, and some of the fall off in the "frost belt" is the result of declining and aging populations. But our "sun belt" congregations lack the endowments and capital funds to respond to population growth, while the "frost belt" congregations are often living off funds assembled by the generousity of Unitarians and Universalists in the nineteenth century.
It would be a good thing if we could discuss with confidence a growth strategy for Unitarian Universalism based on firm knowledge of demographics and precise knowledge of who our members are, but I believe that such a project is much more complex than citing our favorite statistics to bolster our pet arguments. Nevertheless, I suggest my critique opens several new areas of discussion even if that discussion is somewhat speculative without more information: 1) Can we continue to be a religion of the declining (in relative size at least) privileged white anglo culture and not expect to experience decline relative to the population of the United States as a whole? 2) Does it make sense to mimic the mega-church if the mega-church is really a parasite on the declining Protestant form of organization? 3) Are we going to continue to accept the suburban captivity of our movement? 4) While we may need large churches in urban communities and large suburbs as bases for our public ministry, don't we also need small house churches to tap the energy of small group ministries as ways of reaching entirely new populations and generation life styles with new ways of being church. Perhaps some of our ministers should be trained to be enablers of other peoples lay ministries while others will be trained to be boss ministers in a large budget mega-church. Let God call ministers to ministries based on personal discernment that may or may not fit into the church growth current fad of choice.
If I haven't tested my readers patience with my radicalism let me advance one more critique. If we continue to think of ourselves as a "denomination" - a nineteenth century invention of middle class white Protestantism and if do not adopt to the demographic changes that our country is undergoing we will eventually die. But if we reframe our self conception and come to understand ourselves as a movement of religious liberals in which covenant communities are not necessarily housed in expensive campuses, and led by boss ministers, we might contribute to transformation of the American religious experience. Once again.
I read the seminarian's blogs, and I applaud their efforts to define a personal theology, to come to grips with a Unitarian Universalist identity, to develop skills, and to find their unique preaching voices. All of these are essential, and I feel confident that these writers will have wonderful ministries.
But there is one little thing I would like to add to the conversation. The society in which Unitarian Universalists do ministry is very stressful, and the social support systems for most people in our society are weak or non existent. Churches are places where people come who need help, and some of these needy people present "mental health" problems. In many of our churches as many of a quarter of the membership is clinically depressed, and a significant number will tell you that they are "borderline." Narcissism is our most common character disorder and it can present as a "right to express myself" with demands and tantrums. Narcissism denied takes the form of long term antagonism. Other clergy will point out that I haven't even mentioned passive aggressive styles among board members, and burnout among volunteers.
Many Unitarian Universalist parish ministers spend considerable time and energy doing pastoral care with people whose problems are complex and long lasting. Within a few years of parish ministry you will be called on to do a memorial service for a congregant who has committed suicide, and deal with person who is a perpetual disrupter and antagonist. You will experience members of your congregation who divorce and come to church and have fights at joys and sorrows. Or you may have the visitor who is carrying a weapon, or who makes unwanted sexual advances at other visitors or members, or who becomes so enraged by your sermon that (s)he threatens you with violence. All these events, and many others I have experienced and these and many others have been experienced by other ministers as well.
So what does this have to do ministerial formation?
Well there is the spiritual preparation. If you are dependent on the members of your congregation for support, or if you need their approval to do effective ministry you will be disappointed. Developing a strong sense of your pastoral self requires a few years of practice in ministry, but it begins with spiritual disciplines such as prayer, journaling and mediation and those can be formed in seminary.
You can't have too many units of Clinical Pastoral Education. One is required, but I would recommend a second unit. Or a field work experience in a mental health facility, or crisis center. Doing some "ministry with youth" is another good place to pick up some experience with yourself working with people in crisis. I am not sure that interns get as much experience with "themselves as pastor" while working with difficult people. It is hard to convey the radical difference between "being a pastor" and being a friend, social worker, youth worker, and even an intern. The transference that you will receive as a "spiritual leader" is powerful, potentially transformative, and also potentially demonic. Reflecting in evaluation forms on the process of becoming aware of "yourself as pastor" becomes a cliché after awhile, but will be a matter of professional survival when you become the object of everyones projections of what a person of God should do (for them.)
Courses in pastoral psychology are useful, but not not as helpful as clinical experience. And learning to work with "colleagues" is essential. I have tried to create a support group of other ministers who discuss pastoral care concerns several times. They usually last two or three years and then we need to reconstitute them. (Ministers move, so a group of six colleagues will have turnover in three years.) But they are invaluable, for the moral support, as a means of self care, and as way of gaining perspective on some very demanding pastoral situations.
Ministry formation is both a matter of head and heart. My maxim is from a back country Palestinian rabbi. "See, I send you out as sheep among wolves. Be then as wise as snakes, and as gentle as doves." Matthew 10.16
Classical theism presents a concept of "God" that is outside the "Creation" and is all knowing, all powerful, present everywhere, transcending our capacities to be comprehended. Yet this God is fully described by theologians who accept a special revelation as understood by a particular faith tradition.
The explanations for theism raise problems of circularity, and many reject God as a result. Unless we make a serious and honest reckoning with the God of theism, attempts by religious liberals to deal seriously with divine - human encounter is associated with this problematic theism. The following is a passage from Paul's Tillich's The Courage To Be (1952) where he seeks to point toward the God above the God of theism.
"The God above the God of theism is present, although hidden, in every divine-human encounter. Biblical religion as well as Protestant theology are aware of the parodoxical character of this encounter. They are aware that if God encounters man God is neither the object nor the subject and is therefore above the scheme into which theism has forced him. They are aware that personalism with respect to God is balanced by a transpersonal presence of the divine. They are aware that forgiveness can be accepted only if the power of acceptance is effective in man. They are aware of the paradoxical character of every prayer, of speaking to somebody to whom you cannot speak because he is not "somebody," of asking somebody of whom you cannot ask anything because he gives or gives not before you ask, of saying "thou" to somebody who is nearer to the I than the I is to itself. Each of these paradoxes drives the religious consciousness toward a God above the God of theism.
The courage to be which is rooted in the experience of the God above the God of theism unites and transcends the courage to be as a part and the courage to be as oneself. It avoids both the loss of oneself by participation and the loss of one's world by individualization. The acceptance of the God above the God of theism makes us a part of that which not also a part but is the ground of the whole. Therefore our self is not lost in a larger whole, which submerges it in a life of a limited group. If the self participates in the power of being-itself it receives itself back. For the power of being acts through the power of the individual selves. It does not swallow them as every limited whole, every collectivism, and every conformism does. This why the Church, which stands for the power of being itself or for the God who transcends the God of religions, claims to be the mediator of the courage to be. A church which is based on the the authority of the God of theism cannot make such a claim. It inescapably develops into a collectivist or semi-collectivist system itself.
Paul Tillich, The Courage to Be.
Mircea Eliade wrote:
The process of the desacralization of the world, of life, and of history, which triumphs today is due above all to our inability to grasp the mystery of the camouflaging of the sacred in the profane.
The world in which we move, and live and have our being as sacred home, as Mother Earth, and Father Sky. The world as in which we relate to our extended family of fellow creatures. This has been lost by the modernist way of objectifying and manipulating nature, so that the world becomes a thing. And we become aliens to ourselves, to each other and the cosmos that is our source and sustains our lives.
Is it as simple as Eliade pronounces, an inability to grasp the hidden sacred in the ordinary? Perhaps.
We say desacralization, but the world is the same world that it always has been for us, it is we who have lost our way, and our ability "to grasp." it is interesting that Eliade uses the metaphor of tactile sense, rather than the metaphor of sight, or the metaphor of hearing.
It much of Western religious writing we "see" the truth, and "hear" the wisdom. But we also embrace, hold, and "grasp."
Gary Kowalski who serves the First Unitarian Universalist Church in Burlington, Vermont has written an important book for religious liberals, Science and the Search for God. The book provides its readers with a good introduction to relation between religion and genuine scientific inquiry, and helps its readers to make the distinction between the philosophical stance known as materialism and new findings of science. Materialism, a legacy of the ancient dualisms of heaven and earth, spirit and flesh, mind and matter has become merged in the minds of many with science. But Kowalski in a popular style and with excellent illustrations argues convincingly that contemporary science has moved beyond the limits of reductionism and materialism, and introduces liberal religious thinkers such as Charles Hartshorne who have developed theological approaches that are more compatible with science as it is actually done.
But materialism continues to have its adherents. Kowalski writes:
Like some slow-growing disease, the ideology of materialism has gradually infected the scientific world-view and then popular culture, slowly but surely taking over the senses, one by one. As defined by the dictionary, materialism is the "philosophical doctrine that matter is the only reality and that everything in the world, including thought, will and feeling can be explained in terms of matter alone."
Materialism robs us of our vitality and saps the will to change. And it's hard to imagine anyone crawling into such a mental straightjacket voluntarily. Naturally, it didn't happen all at once. The process began with the Copernican revolution as science addressed the question of where we are. Human beings learned that they were living in a universe much larger than they supposed, but hardly one in which our kind held ay special place or privileged position. In the nineteenth century came the Darwinian revolution, which examined the question of how we got here. The longstanding mystery of the origin of the species yielded to explanations based upon chance and necessity. Finally, materialism invaded the inner world of the personality -the question of who we are-as within the twentieth century advances in genetics and molecular biology seemed to unlook the ultimate secret of the mind and consciousness itself.
Not too long ago, it was still possible to believe that each person possessed an eternal soul, a divine spark, a sacred essence. The individual was seen as a moral agent and creative force within the unfolding drama of history, but breakthroughs in genetics have seemingly reduced ingenuity and daring, heroism and sacrifice, to nothing more than the chance combinations of chromosomes. As Francis Crick, the discover of DNA, has written, "the astonishing hypothesis is that €˜you,' your joys and your sorrows, your memories and your ambitions, your sense of personal identity and your freewill, are in fact no more than the behavior of a vast assembly of nerve cells, and their associated molecules.?
But what is modern physics saying about matter? Kowalski continues his critique of materialism: "Ernest Rutherford , first discovered the atomic nucleas almost a hundred years ago. When he was first asked to describe his discovery he replied to the effect that "Something - we don't know what - is doing something - we don't know how."
The bafflement among physicists that Rutherford expressed has only increased as the atom has revealed more and more of its workings, we have muons and mesons, which seem multiply geometrically, and even these subatomic particles have been analyzed and we find quarks and the quarks appear to be strings, not things at all. Our universe rests on a firm foundation of one dimensional strings of vibrating energy."
Matter? What matter? The fundamental building block of all material existence, mere flashes in the microsphere.
Is it possible? The Universe seems to be made up of nothing, nothing but pulsating waves of energy. How much to you weigh, how tall are you? Take away the empty space, and you and me would be reduced to sparks of energy no larger than grains of sand. But wait, a grain of sand is full of energy. Go to the beach, and get some. There is enough energy stored in that sands atoms, to drive a city for a week. A child's bucket full of sand if the energy could be released could power a hundred thousand automobiles for a year.
Energy / mass / matter /stuff.
Empty space isn't what it used to be....we are now told that space is charged with cross currents of wave fields, and these field are constantly giving birth to particles, energy taking form, becoming what we once called matter. And then disappearing again, in a fraction of a nanosecond.
So much for God created the heavens and the earth, and so much for the apocalypse, as well. The beginning of matter happens every moment of eternity, and the end of matter as well. A different theology is needed for a universe in constant flux, neither materialist nor theist. My stance is pan-en-theist, the universe is holy, creative, and conscious of itself.
To the people of this land - as well as to many contemporaries who commit to living deliberately, and who seek to be aware of the world that has been given to us all - the world is "alive with spirit."
Some "intellectuals" would tells us that this world understanding is something they call animism, and dismiss it as pre-modern and "superstitious." The more mechanical and arrogant "science" that was in vogue in the first half of the twentieth century lent authority to the imperiousness of modernist anthropologists of religion, whose own world view saw nature as an object to be manipulated, rather than the outward form of our mother earth and our father sky - that sacred realm in which we lived, and moved and had our being.
I am not in awe of "the science" of those who think of the cosmos as dead matter, devoid of consciousness and vitality - I find that way of thinking dangerous and if my readers might indulge me "unscientific." Materialism as an intellectual movement has impoverished thinking and created the dangerous ideologies of the capitalism and communism. Sometimes the materialists would have us believe that they are "naturalists." The more materialist of the humanists are fond of that dodge.
Naturalists are those who seek a explanation of all events based on explanations drawn the processes of nature, naturalists do not seek "supernatural" explanations. Why did the Hurricane come? The supernaturalist argues about a God that directs hurricanes, a naturalist would point toward warm water causing updrafts of air, and wind currents forming convection cooling, and stirring currents. But the naturalist is not compelled to the materialist conclusion that the earth is a mechanical system rather than a living ecology that learns and changes based on those learnings. A naturalist is not compelled to ascend into "human only" ethics, but may assert with Gary Kowalski that animals have souls, and should not be subjected to vicious treatment nor raised for slaughter.
Edward Abbey speaks to me and for me as a cosmic mystic, pan-en-theist, religious humanist when he writes:
"How strange and wonderful is our home, our earth,
With its swirling vaporous atmosphere,
Its flowing and frozen climbing creatures.
The croaking thing with wings that hang on rocks
And soar through fog, the furry grass, the scaly seas. . .
How utterly rich and wild
Yet some among us have the nerve,
The insolence, the brass, the gall to whine
About the limitations of earthbound fate
And yearn for some more perfect world beyond the sky.
We are none of us good enough
For the world we have."
Some have argued that religious humanist perspectives necessarily descend into "anthro-centric" points of view, incapable of self criticism directed at the hubris of modernism with its "humankind against nature" mythologies that provide the rationales for the ecological destruction that we witness. But religious humanism is not inherently modernist, nor is religious humanism incapable of transcending the dominant culture's technocratic corporatism and imperialism. A liberating, multicultural, anti-oppressive religious humanism that realizes that the earth does not belong to us, but rather that we belong to the earth is being born. A religious humanism that proclaims with ancient wisdom that our earth is sacred, we are part of nature, and we are connected intimately and passionately with the whole.
