Religious Liberalism and Theology: January 2006 Archives

This is a true story.  The new minister is introducing himself to the congregation.  He is telling the children about himself, and gives a few concrete examples of what a minister does.  A little girl is puzzled and shouts out.
"You can't be a minister!  You are a boy!

That congregation had had twenty one male ministers since the boats landed in the 1630s, and one female minister.  That one woman had been the minister that had christened that little girl, and told her stories during stories for all ages, and she was what a minister looked like for that little girl.

Doug Muder writes about the ways that the feminization of the churches based on his personal response to a sermon by a student minister.  Anecdotal evidence has its power, but I am not convinced that Unitarian Universalist churches have completed the overthrow of patriarchy and established a hegemony based on the ways of women.

Not too long ago a young woman who attends our services came up to me about 10 minutes before the service, she indicated that she had left her boyfriend, and she was now homeless.  Her presenting situation was that she needed to get her stuff at her old apartment and was much afraid.  I was about the do opening words, I hugged her and said we would help, could she sit wait in my office.  I asked a male high school teacher if he could help.  He had no information to go on, but I choose him for his non anxious compassionate way with people.  He worked with the young woman and the sheriff and by the end of the service she had experienced the caring community.  I can give other examples.  I don't know how our response would have been different if my school teacher congregant and I had been embodied female, but the kind of incident that Doug's student minister spoke about is part of being church, and has been since we all just gathered by a river.

While some of us may experience some growing pains being called upon to talk about our feelings does not make us "feminine,"  men have been trained to suppress feelings and there is considerable clinical evidence to indicate that such inhibitions are not healthy emotionally, relationally, or in terms of spiritual growth.  Women have worked to overcome many of the less empowering aspects of their social formation and so should men.  We are engaged in transformation,  some will experience it as feminization of our churches, and if men refuse to engage this new manifestation perhaps we will experience a withdrawal of men.  But we can create communities where women are encouraged to assert their ideas and celebrate the creative side of conflict, and men are encouraged to talk about feelings and listen to others when they are upset and need hug.

In an entry entitled Onward Christian Tee Shirts, Healing Hagar takes note of some brutal art work. They didn't include this one, which has horrified me for decades and which is my fully illustrated answer to how Unitarian Universalists Christians differ with the more orthodox.

For those among my readers who want more insight into the social agenda of vicarious atonement theology (which Channing called that "monster") there are more bumper stickers on this site. There is a logic in that madness.

Christian churches in their majority witness for peace and justice, and stand for enduring values in contrast to the intrigues of power politics. A prominent evangelical Christian theologian argues that American evangelicals have entered into an unprincipled alliance with power and violence by supporting the unjust war against Iraq. Christian just war theology makes it clear that war can only be fought as a last resort, and if fought must never target civilians, must make its aims clear and limited, and must observe ethical standards in treatment of prisoners. The United States has abandoned all pretense to adherence to just war standards and has resorted to the immoral "our ends are good, and they justify our means" rational.

Some religious communities including Unitarian Universalists have remained independent of the dominant culture and the powers that be, and witnessed for peace and justice instead of exclusive privilege and triumphalism.

Check out Wayward Christian Soldiers by Charles Marsh.

I've read nearly all of King's writings.
I've listened to twenty of his sermons.
I want to suggest that based on what I have read and heard
that the power of King's preaching -
and the power of his moral leadership -
was that it was rooted in his appeal
to the most insistent of all human desires,
the desire for justice. . .
and his own struggle to keep hope alive
in the face of a hard, hard struggle.

Preachers make a distinction between topical sermons,
prophetic sermons, and pastoral sermons.

Topical sermons are sermons about something,
about religious education,
about why it is good to join a church,
about how reason is a good thing.
Topical sermons arise from the role of the preacher as teacher.

Then there is prophetic sermons,
Prophetic sermons denounce the wrong doing in some public situation,
and inspire the congregation to rise up and do something about it.

or for preachers like me, who are little less in to denouncing things,
I might tell a story about somebody who breaks through prejudice
and obstactles
to be the kind of person that makes a difference.
to witness justice and peace.
I call that the prophetic story sermon.

Finally there is the pastoral sermon,
The pastoral sermon addresses some spiritual issue
people might be struggling with.....
facing our losses, how to deal with difficult people,
forgiving ourselves for being human.

Sometimes the pastoral sermon has a story,
of someone is an example who recovers from addiction,
or someone who reconciles with a enemy.

When I listen to King,
he must have not taken notes in preaching class,
because he combines all three in one sermon...
in all sermons......

He will talk to his listeners about not be jealous,
not trying to keep up with the Jones,
not living beyond one's financial means,
by putting on a show,
and how we should care for one another,
and then start preaching about how caring for one another
means overcoming poverty,
and keeping hope alive.

His prophetic preaching was experienced as loving
because he did not simply denounce wrong doing,
he combined hope, and perserverence,
and forgiveness of others as well as yourself
in every sermon.

He would refer to the segregationists, as "our brothers"
King understood that this is the secret and the strength of all prophetic preaching
in every great religious tradition of all history.
Hope and justice are inseparably bound.

As Dr. King put it, "not the power of Pharaoh,
nor the cumulative power of all the legions ever assembled"
are mightier than hope and justice allied.

Religious liberalism arose not on the basis of abstract principles, but within a concrete social context. Unitarian Universalist church historian Conrad Wright probes how some of our principles reflected the historical conditions of the time (and place), and suggests that subsequent social changes challenge those principles. Conrad Wright writes in Walking Together:
"Liberal religion articulated a value system that derived its strength from the social arrangements made possible by the discovery of the resources of the New World. But those resources were not limitless. The infinity of the private individual was plausible enough on the shores of Walden Pond, when there was no closer than Concord Village a mile away: it is hollow rhetoric on the streets of Calcutta or in the barrios of Caracas. The progress of humankind onward and upward forever may have seemed an axiom grounded in history to James Freedman Clarke: it seems something less than that to the residents of Middletown, Pennsylvania. The principle of religious toleration was easy for Jefferson, who could not see that it did any injury to his neighbor to say there are twenty gods or no gods, but the principles of toleration takes on a sharper edge when the decisive differences are not in the realm of speculative theology, abut on the question of apartheid and what it is others should be forced, despite their opinions, to do about it."

So what is permanent and what is transient about liberal religion? Contemporary religious liberals assert that it is a religious principle to work to build a world of peace, democracy, equality and justice - we may disagree whether such a world can be attained, and just what such a world might look like, but social justice and overcoming violence and coercion have become foundational to our religious community. Our spiritual ancestors shared these values with us.

Yet Wright points out that their understandings of these principles were based on their peculiar social situation. He doesn't mention, but I will, that one particularity of that social situation of early American religious liberalism was that it rested on power, and privilege. That power and privilege was based on an accumulation of wealth that resulted from: the conquest of North America, and its peoples; the privatization of the land; the institution of slavery; and the exploitation of impoverished laborers in a rising industrial society. North America's economy today is the product of that historic accumulation.

So religious liberalism arose in a social context, and the social context was based on a history which many of us would describe as unjust, exploitative and contrary to the principles that we espouse. Our contemporary Unitarian Universalist movement exists in a social context as well, and many of us would argue that the social order in which we exist is contrary to our values, and principles. The difference between us and our spiritual ancestors may be that we are aware of the contraction, that we can understand that our religious values call upon us to transform our social situation.

The founders of religious liberalism saw the best hope for their values in their new republic, and its unfolding destiny. Today, Unitarian Universalists are much less optimistic about the wonders of an American future, than our spiritual ancestors.

One of the tasks of Unitarian Universalist theology is to articulate what is the basis for our optimism. We continue to articulate an optimistic theology and social vision. But what is the basis for that optimism. If not the republic, then have we really come to embrace a set of abstractions; such as the triumph of reason and science, the potential of human beings to do good, or love overcoming evil?

What does it mean to affirm the goal of a world community of peace and justice? And what are the means toward that end?

Is Micheal Moore's vision of a more democratic, more inclusive United States distorted by white privilege?  Kenyon Farrow & Kil Ja Kim seem to think so, they write:

"[W]e think Michael Moore is a white nationalist. . . .

Some will be confused by our use of white nationalism since it's a term usually reserved for "extremist" organizations. To the contrary, we consider white nationalism to be normalized in US social relations since by white nationalism we mean the project of nation building that is driven by the experiences and history of white people. White nationalism, however, is more than just being white-centric, per se. Rather, white nationalism is the project of maintaining or expanding the white nation-whether established along state lines or as socially created communities or both-in ways that reflect the anxieties, fears, dread and aspirations of white people. As such, in a white nationalist discourse, whiteness and US civil society as well as the racialized and sexualized project of citizenship that maintains both are not confronted. Instead the point of departure for a white nationalist approach is: what stands in white people's way of being able to claim the nation as rightfully theirs? A white nationalist project therefore is fixated with what government forces, "subversiveness" from below or shifts in the global economy threaten the rights of the white citizenry.

I find this critique of Moore challenging, because if he is engaged in revisioning the white nation state then Unitarian Universalists need to probe deeply into the vision behind our social justice statements and resolutions.  Does this critique extend to Unitarian Universalism?  Kenyon Farrow & Kil Ja Kim's complete critique of Moore can be found on

Model Minority: A Guide To Asian American Empowerment.

One of the threads that emerged in the recent conversation about theology that took place in and among Unitarian Universalist weblogs focused on the "big words" that theologians use. It was argued that words like eschatology, soteriology, and ecclesiology are words that indicate an advanced and specialized education, and so ordinary lay folk can not do theology.

Most of these words indicate concepts that people active in a religious communities have struggled with, for example ecclesiology refers to theological thinking about the nature of the church. What is the purpose of religious community? Is it to provide a sanctuary from a world of woe, or is it more like a filling station, which energizes its members so that they can function in the world? Does it deliver a message that informs us that our hope is in another world, or does it deliver a message about a vision for transformation of this world? Is it a model of the beloved community, or is it more realistic to think of it as a dysfunctional family where we learn the skills of family therapy and practice the spirituality of being non-anxious presence? I have heard all these ideas expressed about the purpose of church.

When we attend worship the opening words almost certainly contains a message about what the church thinks it is about, as do the hymns, the prayers and mediations, the sermon, and other service elements. Our theology of religious community is announced in pamphlets in the literature rack. It is also made manifest in the practice of the church, we ask just how welcoming is the church that says its mission is radical inclusion? and just how pluralistic is the church that claims to be informed by wisdom from the all the world's traditions?

We encounter ecclesiology, we reflect on what we hear and read, and we talk about it with others, and hopefully we practice our understandings about what religious community is supposed to be.

I believe lay members do theology "without knowing it." So how do we come to understand what we are doing, so that we can do it more intentionally?

I will explore this idea further in subsequent posts.

Rachel Neumann writes that "despite Bush's dismal approval ratings, the war of the frames -- how we talk about the big news and big ideas in the culture sphere -- was won by the conservatives in 2005. Think of the catch phrases of the year: The 'War on Terrorism,' 'Intelligent Design,' the 'War on Christmas,'even 'cut and run'"

Neuman zeros in on five issues that progressives can take the initiative around to help clarify the issues so that the real majority of democratic and fair minded people can defeat the theocratic coalition gathered around Bush.  One of the most interesting parts of her essay for Unitarian Universalists is her argument that in the debate between the frames "life" versus "choice" most people will choose life over the abstract freedom that the supporters of reproductive freedom have held up.  She points out "that  'choice' was not always the key factor in determining whether they have abortions; often economic, social, personal or other factors they didn't have control over forced their decisions. Yet despite a new urgency to protect reproductive rights, progressives still flounder when it comes to how to talk about it."

Religious liberals can make a contribution for democracy, and for our values by learning to communicate our vision for a fair and democratic society.