Religious Liberalism and Theology: August 2006 Archives

Lizard Eater advises us to learn to give testimony, to share the story of our experience with liberal religious community.  She advises:

1. Make it personal-Don't preach. Tell what involvement in your church has done for you. Use the pronouns "I", "me", and "mine".

2. Make it short-Three or four minutes should be enough time to deal with the essential facts.

3. Keep your church central-Always highlight what belonging there has done for you.

LT at TheLivelyTradition wonders [is it] the church that saves[?]  I don't want to repeat the argument that "religious community" is insufficient as a source of transcendence. Some agree and some disagree.

As I understand LT's point, to be saved requires a transcendent source.  The religious community is of this world, a product of human interrelationship.  How then can it be sufficient for salvation? 

Lizard Eater may object, but I wasn't speaking of salvation, I was speaking of why I have found the church to be meaningful, even transformative.  And a chorus of Unitarian Universalists could sing, we are already saved.  The Unitarians and Universalists have been singing that song with various lyrics since Murray got of the boat in New Jersey.  I will not touch on the question as to whether Murray intended his audience to hear the message in such a facile form, but that many did can not be denied.

But that doesn't stop a small but determined collection of Unitarian Universalists from thinking about salvation.  We point out that the testimony exercise that Lizard Eater has creatively modified for our use was originally about the saving power of Jesus.  I continue to insist that any religion worth practicing is about "salvation."*  I further insist that despite our longs standing neglect of this central question of religion, that few of us can claim that our salvation is complete, and that our sanctification is irreversible.  I think Channing was on the right track about salvation through the development of character, it is a failure of the Unitarian side of our tradition that we didn't develop that idea, settling instead on the nonsense that we were too good to be damned.

For me salvation is about relationship with the source of being, to be saved is to be in right relationship with that which generations of people have called God.  For me, Salvation means wholeness, right relationship with that " transcending mystery and wonder affirmed in [many] cultures, that moves us to a renewal of the spirit and an openness to the the forces that creates and uphold life."  Many people come to  churches because they hope that perhaps that community will help them with relationship development "with something beyond me,"  lately we have been calling this seeking after "spirituality."  The God that people have been taught is dead (for them,) and they wish to renew their relationship with that _________which lives.

It strikes me that what people are saying is that they are experiencing religious community as a means to grace, that participation in a church is similar to participating in a sacrament.  I agree with LT, the idea of the church saving souls (fully realizing the souls relationship with the divine) seems to make the church itself the object of our devotion, our ultimate commitment.  But if participation in eucharist, matrimony, holy orders, baptism,confirmation, confession, and extreme unction are considered to be means to grace in the road to salvation in the Catholic tradition, I am not sure why we can't consider participation in religious community to be a blessing, instituted among us to aid in our growth toward wholeness to rephrase the idea of sacrament for our use.

Read all of the TheLivelyTradition post to see how LT develops his thinking about the problem of salvation within religious community in a throughly Protestant way, with its emphasis on decision.

*Each religion has an idea about what it means for human beings to be whole, or to realize their full potential, or to be fully Aware, or if this world is hostile to God, to leave this world and go to a perfect world.  This idea that religion is about salvation I owe to the Rev. Scott Alexander - whose Universalism includes brokeness and incompletion, and whose humanism includes Transcending Wonder and healing grace.

Quotations out of context by the Protestant Theologian Reinhold Niebuhr(1892-1971) are often employed by neo-conservatives to justify their foreign policy of violence and great power hegemony. But Niebuhr was sharply critical of nationalism and an advocate of genuine democracy, which meant that people would participate in making the decisions that affect their lives. Todays neo conservatives use the words democracy and freedom as code words for rule by the corporations and trade without restrictions such as labor standards and ecological safeguards. And Niebuhr spoke out against the great power chauvinism of the United States and the tendency of American Protestants to justify this misuse of power. Niebuhr wrote:

If the ministers of our great urban churches become again the simple priests and chaplains of this American idolatry, subtly compounded with a few stray Christian emphases, they will merely add one more dismal proof in the pages of history that a religiously sanctified self-idolatry is more grievous than its secular variety. This is how the gospel becomes a salt that has lost its savor.

The gospel cannot be preached with truth and power if it does not challenge the pretensions and pride, not only of individuals, but of nations, cultures, civilizations, economic and political systems. The good fortune of America and its power place it under the most grievous temptations to self-adulation. If there is no power and grace in the Christian church "to bring down every high thing which exalteth itself against the knowledge of God," the church becomes not merely useless but dangerous.

We Protestants speak critical words about the idolatrous pretensions of the Roman Church. But some of these pretensions are actually more plausible than this miserable identification of the "laws of God" with a particular form of democracy....

Christianity and Society, Spring 1950, in Love and Justice, p. 97.

Albert Schweitzer observed that each generation projects their own theological understanding onto Jesus, and he gave up the search for the historical Jesus. I respect his observation but cannot follow to his conclusion. If one respects that Jesus was a second Temple Jew who spoke in the metaphors of his time, and responded to the violence and oppressions of his time, then we can "meet Jesus" and gain some insight from his wisdom. It may not be the wisdom we would have him speak, but it is wisdom nevertheless and we can learn from him. If his culture had set up a religion that worshipped the Buddha, I suppose Schweitzer could have given up on the search for the historical Siddhārtha Gautama as well.c

Peacebang observes Unitarian Universalist ministers quote Buddhist sources a lot, I confess to doing that myself. But does that make me a Buddhist? No, It makes me a Unitarian Universalist who is quoting Buddhist sources when they help illustrate a Unitarian Universalist sermon. I have observed that Catholics quote scripture to preach Catholicism, and Baptists quote scripture and come to Baptist conclusions. The original meaning of these scriptures are not impossible to discern, but teaching the wisdom of a Second Century Jew doesn't interest Baptists or Catholics, any more than it does to the average wisdom borrowing Unitarian Universalist trying to be inclusive. We have learned to quote just about anything that helps us make the point we want to make, and we don't become Taoists, Buddhists, Jews, or even Christians by our choice of readings or sermon illustrations.


Many Unitarian Universalists share in a faith tradition that has a humanist orientation and is informed both by liberal Protestantism on the one hand and Transcendentalism on the other. This tradition has taught us to be open to the wisdom of the world's religions, but from what I observed that means retelling some stories, holding up some compatible ideas and maintaining our distance from some of the "harder" teachings of these religions. I have heard many a Buddhist story in our churches and very few mentions of hungry ghosts, and the miraculous birth narratives of the Buddha. We love the Dalai Lama but we don't want to talk about the feudal hell hole that his monks ran in Tibet.


I don't think we are vague humanists because we don't tow the American Humanist Association line. Our humanist orientation includes James Luther Adams, who reminded us that God wasn't God's name, but was our ultimate commitment nevertheless. Our humanist orientation was informed by Emerson, who insisted that we would worship something and what we are worshipping we are becoming (which this Christian humanist took to mean I should worship something enduring.) Our humanist orientation was deepened by Hartshorne and Weiman who in different ways attempted to understand God as part of the cosmos and experienced in our ordinary lives. The impact of process thinking and empirical approaches to the divine on our movement can not be underestimated, and is reflected in the World magazine and our devotional materials. Our humanist orientation includes non theistic theologians like Sharon Welch and William Jones whose contributions to our movements theologies of transformation is ongoing and profound. They both claim humanism but are hardly classical Humanists.


From my vantage point our ministers are reading these thinkers, as well as other varieties of humanist thought including existentialism, critical theory, and varieties of feminism. That none of these thinkers are part of the classical Humanist canon is more a commentary on the limits of the Humanist canonizers than the death of humanist thinking among us.

Does Hafidha Sofia Acuay see something that many of us have been trained not to see?
She experiences our worship is "a show." In a post in which the presenting problem is an incident of "cultural appropriation" there she also shares an insight into worship, and what she says about worship is important for us to see as well. (I will write about her insights relative to cultural appropriation (and misappropriation) at another time.)
At first I found her suggestion that Unitarian Universalist worship was constructed as entertainment disturbing. I have defended the idea of congregation as "worshipping community" so many times to the skeptics and rationalists that I have the arguments down pat - we come together to give expression those values we hold in common, to aspire to that which is worthy. I have preached that sermon! I have explained that worship is shaping worth ( a usage idiomatic to Old English.)
Theology arises from embodied beings, and reflects personal perspectives and experiences. So two observations, then I will explain why I think she is seeing something that we need to look at.
1. Personally I am accustomed to the way we have done worship. I strive to create worship services that have coherence. So does my spouse, The Rev. Marjorie Bowens-Wheatley but she has different approach than I do. So when we talk about our upcoming worship services together we are challenged to explain why we use certain elements and why we arrange them as we do. We do not think of the format we use as consisting of slots to fill, but rather I see the whole service as consisting of interrelated parts. Still, after the order of service has been constructed for a particular congregation and has been used with that congregation for a long time, I know I fall into a routine. I start with the form that has become our worship format. I search for opening words, or I write them. I write my prayerful meditation. I think about readings, and how the offering fits into the whole. Those who join in worship in churches I have served have told me that it "all works together." But I am sure many young adults find my worship services somewhat old fashioned, or as one observed "contemporary content trapped in a Protestant form."
2. Hafidha's specific observations arise out of her experiences with a committee's attempt to create a ceremonial occasion in a big ugly convention hall. That space wasn't designed for the kind of worship that we do. Our worship culture was developed to be done in Protestant meeting houses, and its function was to teach a lesson. We have expanded our definition of worship to include various seasonal celebrations and community building rituals, but most people continue to see the sermon as a teaching event, framed by edifying music and readings. Most of the clergy at this point in our history will offer public prayer, and many lay people find public prayers and meditative readings meaningful, but it would be over the top to assert that Unitarian Universalists come to church to pray together. A few might do that, but most people indicate that they come to be with their community as they ponder a theme, or topic together. They want good music and they would think it is a good thing when the music works with the theme. That is our practice as "worshipping communities."
Many of our congregations meet in halls and auditoriums that facilitate performances for audiences rather than congregational engagement in shaping community worth, or praising God, or re-creating the cosmos or whatever your idea of the purpose of common worship may be. But we are not always sensitive to the space. Appropriate activity given the space is one of those lessons we learn from experience. What works in a chapel doesn't work in a cathedral, we can't do Quaker silent worship in a convention hall, nor can we do Protestant meeting house worship in one either.
For me, and for many others who plan worship, we think of worship as planned event that happens in a certain space, and at a certain time. I dare say this assumption Hafidha is questioning. She writes:

[I] personally loathe to plan worships. You must know that I have never known Muslims to "plan" worships; we got together and we prayed, basta!

and then again she describes a worship service she helped lead at an anti racist training:

I'm a strong believer in spirituality, but I hate the idea of telling people that it's time to feel holy now. My co-trainer, Toph, felt the same way I did, yet we managed to put together two very decent worships, one of which actually made me cry. But what?! We didn't do anything! The youth and the sponsors present brought their spirits into that space and made it powerful and worshipful. I was in awe that first night - of them and the community they created. I do not think we would have had the same conference without that.

The youth experienced a ritualized interaction that was personally transformative, I doubt whether the space was designed for worship, and I suppose that the time was whenever it was convenient for the participants. Our tradition has taught us to spend a lot of money to build sanctuaries designed for Protestant worship with Unitarian Universalist content that will be filled with people for an couple of hours once a week. The participants in our services are listeners, singers, and again listeners, save for silent prayers and ritualized sharing. The service that Hafidha and Toph "planned" was spatially transient and temporally ad hoc and open to facilitate participant interaction. The clergy, whether that clergy is Unitarian Universalist, mainstream Protestant, Catholic, or Jewish - because they have been narrowly trained in worship arts - experience such youth services as formless and too dependent on spontaneity. For the youth and young adults that may be a feature, rather than a fault. I often have this conversation with classically trained musicians, who argue that jazz is too free form, too ad hoc, too form less. Can an artist trained in one musical discipline appreciate an art that breaks out and defies the forms and conventions of that discipline? Can a liturgist? Yes, but it requires being comfortable with your own embodied self, and then transcending its limitations to appreciate the other point of view.
As I struggled with Hafidha's observation, it prompted me to ask these questions
First, is the form of worship that we continue in most Unitarian Universalist congregations a product of a different time and a different social set up?
Second, has society changed in such a way that the way our spiritual ancestors organized "worshipping communities" will become increasingly irrelevant to the way that new generations will "support each other in spiritual growth" and build covenant community?
And finally, what does it mean to be a worshipping community in a networked and high tech world?
I will continue these probings in future postings. This is the second essay on this subject, the first is here.

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What is adult religious education?  Many of our programs seem like watered down college courses, we have UU history courses and Bible study courses.  Some of our programs are designed to enable congregational transformation, such as Weaving the Fabric of Diversity, or Welcoming Congregation.  I have taught Spiritual Autobiography Courses, and quite a few new UU workshops.    I think I have taught Adult RE on and off for forty years, beginning as a young adult, then a lay leader, and more recently as a clergy person.
Most adults want education that helps them solve pressing problems in their life, and so while there are people who want to study UU history, and some others who want to take a course writing a sermon, the married couples with children don't come out for adult religious education classes.  It isn't a high priority for them.  So my students have been mainly young adults, and older single adults, with a few empty nesters.  But when I have co-taught marriage enrichment workshops, the committed couples made arrangements to attend.  It was so important to them, that they organized child care, or in one case the church provided child care. 
But where to find a couples enrichment program aimed at Unitarian Universalists that functioned to build both relational skills and spiritual values.  We have a new curriculum (in field test stage) and it is downloadable from the UUA Web Site.  It is designed to be inclusive of all couples, it does not assume marriage or holy union or other formal commitment.  I haven't fully examined it yet, but I will.  I am impressed with what I have looked at. 
  Marjorie and I have received training and were certified by the Association for Couple's Enrichment and worked with a peer group of trainers associated with Andover Newton Theological School.  It will be good to see a Unitarian Universalist resource for this work.
From the web site describing the new curriculum: 
Principled Commitment [has been designed to] enhance and support long-term, committed relationships that reflect the values of Unitarian Universalist Principles. Unitarian Universalist congregations can provide a nurturing environment for interpersonal relationships, and our basic Principles provide an excellent framework to support and enrich marriages and other blessed unions between loving partners.
Principled Commitment seeks to deepen participants' ethical, spiritual, faith, and Unitarian Universalist identity development. This is accomplished through the theme and activities of each workshop. In addition, each workshop includes a guided meditation and suggested readings from Singing the Living Tradition. Facilitators are welcome to incorporate meditations and readings from other sources or to invite workshop participants to share poems and readings relating to each workshop's theme.

On August 7, 1964,  after an alleged incident with a North Vietnam gun boat  the Congress of the United States passed the Tonkin Gulf Resolution:

The resolution gave President Lyndon Johnson broad powers in dealing with North Vietnam, including sending U.S. troops.  News coverage relied almost entirely on official U.S. government sources so Americans assumed the North had launched an unprovoked attack. Two courageous senators, Wayne Morse (D-OR) and Ernest Gruening (D-AK), provided the only "no" votes. (peacebutton.info)

The incident never occurred. The President lied to the people of the United States. *

What concerns me is the liberal's capacity to forget the lessons of history.  People continue to experience shock and outrage that Bush lied about Iraq's nuclear weapon's program.  The Weapon of Mass Destruction rationale was a hoax, and that hoax was exposed by the weapon's inspectors before the invasion - Bush, Rice and Powell's lies were demolished by solid evidence by scores of independent sources.  It seems to me that if one is outraged now that may indicate that you refused to look at the evidence before the invasion.

But what concerns me is that after the liberal becomes outraged, "we were lied to",  they go in search of a Democrat that will replace him.  Lying to the citizenry is a characteristic of the entire political culture.  We must go beyond consumer politics, we must stop enabling a process by which "we chose" a pre selected candidate who tells us the lies we want to hear during his (or her) campaign.  To learn from history is to demand accountability,  to engage critically and assume that they are lying until they prove to you that they care about truth.

The Tonkin Gulf resolution was passed by Congress 42 years ago, the United States sent teen agers into Vietnam and they came back in body bags.  I knew too many of those soldiers to forgive and forget.  They were misused by a corrupt political process.  If we would only learn from history we would learn that "Power tends to corrupt, absolute power corrupts absolutely." The arrogance of Presidents is because of the power we give them with no accountability, and the result has been absolute corruption.  Those envisioned this federal republic were afraid that that would happen, and they tried to build checks and balances into the structure of the republic.  But they also assumed an informed and critical citizenry.  Perhaps we need to reconsider the building blocks of procedural democracy in our times, how can we hold power accountable?  A liberal religious political theology must take our experience with politicians that distort the truth seriously.    To be a prophetic religion we must address the corruption of our time.

*For those who believe lying to mislead people into supporting a war is a characteristic of the Republicans, Johnson was a Democrat.  We can document the lies of Carter and Clinton to justify military misadventures as well.  Lying to the public is a bi-partisan activity. Based on long observation of the American Presidents, Native Americans  would observe that lying seems to be part of the job description.  Now some citizens might resist the Native claim, even though the facts show deliberate falsehoods were spoken by President after President,  those who identify as "white"  seem to think that the "savages" weren't real Americans.

The Rev. William Sinkford, President of the Unitarian Universalist Association recently wrote about worship, the following is a selection:

In many congregations I visit, the sense of awe, the sense of reverence, are growing with the sense of celebration. And my sense of excitement is growing as our worshiping communities live out the promise of what our faith can be.
Sinkford refers to Unitarian Universalist communities as worshipping communities, and we often think of our congregations from that frame of reference. In this essay, he is arguing that there is a revival in the quality and excitement of the worship experience in many of our congregations, and change makes us stronger as worshipping communities.
Has religious community always been this way? Is this a permanent fact of religious community. Sinkford asserts:
Worship is the central act of the religious community-not committee meetings or coffee hour, despite jokes to the contrary. The root of the word worship is the Anglo Saxon for worth, and worship is the way we celebrate what we hold worthy. We UUs together hold many values worthy, so the emerging common elements in our worship may simply be the way we express our faith community's common ground.
Is our common worship actually the way we express our common ground? Is that why Sinkford asserts that it is the central act of our religious community? We are living in a time of unprecedented social and cultural change. Will worship continue to be the central act of religious community in the world that is emerging?
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Organizing worship as an activity is not a universal characteristic of all human communities. Native American scholars agree that Eastern Woods indigenous peoples had no worship services before the conquest (before 1492.) The villages had rites of passages and celebrations, but no time was set aside to praise God, or celebrate that which is worthy. There are plenty of stories of Native people finding the notion of sitting down for an couple hours on a special day to relate the Holy absurd. "We live with the Holy," they replied, "every day and every activity is spirit filled."
Young men and young women were expected to have "original revelations of the divine" as part of becoming adults. The rite of passage that the conquerors culture has chosen to call "the vision quest" was not a search for a personal spirituality. It was a way of knowing essential for participation in the common life of the community. To be a wise woman or man was to be a spirit-filled person. Those who were not spirit-filled were not to be trusted--not trusted with the hunt, not trusted with care of the household, not trusted with community governance, not trusted with relations with other communities, not trusted in war.
Worship was the not the central act of the various communities of Eastern Woods indigenous peoples, but they were not less "religious" for their lack of worship ... at least not as we intuitively use the word €˜religion.'
However, the indigenous peoples of the Eastern Woods lived in societies that were not divided into rich elites and impoverished laborers, and which did not distinguish between sacred and profane. These societies knew no patriarchy. (All of these innovations the native peoples came to know after 1492, and it was then that they began to set aside time and places for worship.)
Let us think about the long history of the homo sapiens. I would suggest that for most of that history the spiritual life of human beings in community has had more in common with the indigenous peoples of this land than with peoples who organized "religious communities" separate and apart from the society as a whole.
Religious communities organized as voluntary organizations separate from society as a whole assume societies in which religion is contention with secularity, and/or with alternative ways of being religious.

The Unitarian Universalist Blog Carnival is once again being celebrated on the blogosphere. This time over at The Chalice Blog.

Being a Unitarian Universalist minister I felt compelled to look up the origin of the word Carnival. Well it is a Roman Catholic religious festival involving parades, and games and feasting. This is all done in preparation for fasting or "giving up meat." Thus the word carnival is Latin for the farewell to meat.

No this Blog Festival is not a vegetarian plot. While I do recommend giving up meat, to participate in this carnival one simply has to post an entry in ones blog which is related in some mysterious way to the topic that the community is exploring.* The parade is virtual.

For you history buffs, UU Blog Carnival has its origins in a ancient Unitarian Universalist practice that began last month. Tradition has related that the saintly CK herself had a blessed vision, and when the good news spread among the faithful, pilgrims were seen in many lands bending in prayerful keyboard work.


*This flexibility is important for People So Bold since I have a hard time writing answers to direct questions.

I wrote of the farmers and townspeople who contributed to endowment of the St. Lawrence Theological School,  that endowment having been converted into a fund that supports Unitarian Universalist theological education today.  Scott Wells of Boys in the Bands comments: "I wonder how many sold church buildings went, ultimately, into that fund too."

The law requires that not-for-profit corporations that are going out of business transfer their funds to another not-for-profit corporation with a compatible mission.  This prevents a group of "trustees" from driving all the members out of a church so that they can sell the property to Walmart and retire to the Gold Coast (that is the one in Florida not the one in Africa.)

Local congregations that vote to dissolve have in recent times ceded their assets directly to the Unitarian Universalist Association.  I know of congregations that have been the beneficiaries of funds held by the UUA, because the UUA puts aside such liquidation funds for future church starts in the same general geographic area.  Sometimes the liquidated church transfers its assets to another church.  I am sure that some failing Universalist churches in upstate New York gave their assets to St. Lawrence Theological School, as well as the Universalist State Convention.

But this is People So Bold!    So my readers expect just a little prophetic crying out at the powers of privilege and their abuses (without making any one feel guilty or bad about themselves.)

There were three Universalist Churches in an industrial city in the Northeast.  There was also a Unitarian Church.  The Universalist Churches served the workers and small business people of this city, while the Unitarians served the teachers and the owners of some of the larger businesses.  About forty years ago the mysterious panic known as "white flight" struck this city and each of the churches began to lose members.  In response to their losses the leaders of these four congregations decided to consolidate and sold their real estate in the industrial city and moved to a beautiful little hill in a suburb by the sea.  There they built a lovely campus and had enough money left over from the sale of the former inner city buildings to have what is now a sixteen million dollar endowment.  While ministers and members have proposed that given the source of their wealth they might return something to the nearby city (which is ten times larger than the suburb by the sea) in the form of a community ministry, or even a new church start, the "owners" of this endowment have declined these invitations to restorative justice, instead spending their inheritance on themselves and cultural uplift programs in their lovely little suburb.

Again I ask, what was the intention of the original donors?  What was the mission of the people who founded and endowed those Universalist Churches?  When they contributed their tithe from working in a mill were they thinking that one day their small contributions would roll into big fund and establish a new congregation - a little "city on a hill" that would witness to white middle class arrogance and self indulgence?  The law tells a failing congregation to turn its assets over to a not-for-profit with the compatible mission.  Does that just mean a self involved club that will celebrate "our Universalist heritage" with two named Sunday school rooms; one named for Ballou and one for Dix.

Scott,

lots of Universalist buildings (as well as Unitarian buildings) were sold and  the money realized now contributes to our present funds.  Some of that money went to the UUA, some to State Conventions, and a hell of a lot to consolidated congregations that are supposed to being carrying on their mission.

This is a true story, it is about one city and one suburb,  but it is so similar to other stories, that it might seem like I am constructing an archetype for a story with a moral.  No this story is not an allegory, there is no sweeping generalizations in this story, no moral for the kiddies.  Those were real workers and real shop keepers who just believed in Universalism.  What does that mean to us?  What is our mission? Who do we serve?

I have read that the Unitarian Universalist Association (UUA) gives 250 thousand each to Meadville Lombard and Starr King. When one hears the statement that UUA gives money to these schools one gets the impression that it people like you and me who are supporting these schools through our contributions to the UUA's annual program fund.

As I understand it a substantial portion of this money is income from the St. Lawrence Education Trust, the endowment of a Universalist theological school that the Unitarian dominated UUA closed in an effort to consolidate our students into the Unitarian schools Harvard, Meadville, and Starr King. I was a Crane Theological School when the decision was made to close the schools, and there were not that many students preparing for UU ministry in any of our schools (and hardly any in non UU schools.)

Now the people who gave money to endow Universalist education at St. Lawrence had a vision for what they giving money for, and I wonder what they would think of the present set up. The people who graduated from St. Lawrence were evangelical about sharing their Universalism, and they went out and started new churches in any village or town or city where they could get an audience.

The Universalists raised money for their theological school by asking local churches to raise funds. And it is that money that subsidizes our present schools. When one reads the recruiting propaganda from Meadville and Starr King does it say "come and learn how to share our liberating faith among all people?" When one attends a fundraising event is that what we hear? What I read from both of these schools are blurbs about how Meadville and Starr King students do better than some unnamed other school at the revolutionary task of serving our present congregations.

The is  an old Zen story,
that tells of an Emperor who wanted to understand
the Buddhist teaching,  the Diamond Sutra in particular.
So he sent for a old wise monk.

In his own good time
the wise old monk appeared before the Emperor,
he climbed the platform in front of the throne,
and rapped once on the table that stood on the platform.
He then descended from the platform and left.
The Emperor sat motionless for a few moments,
and then one of his courtiers decided to speak.

Excuse me"  inquired the courtier,
"may I ask you whether you understood?

The Emperor nodded his head "NO"

What a pity.... replied the servant
for the wise one has never been more eloquent....

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It may be true,  you know, a single rap on a table  may be more eloquent than all the words.  It is possible that you might come to deeper religious insight in meditation on that rap,  than listening to the best of orators.

But that is not our tradition,Unitarianism and Universalism arise out of Protestantism and Protestants put the pulpits in the middle of the chancel, and the altar......if that table could be called an altar was put over on the side. Does our furniture express ideas, concepts, does its arrangement assume a grammar, are we not talking, but nevertheless communicating without words?  Our tradition put the teaching and preaching function in the center and the ritual that gave form to the community in communion was put on the side.

Now there are many, many Unitarian Universalists who believe that we need more rituals, more ceremonies that celebrate the sacred stories and the rhtymns of our lives.

We may find ways to express reverence without non verbal languages.  We may find more and more ceremonies that express our religious values, and perhaps those rituals will communicate to us deeply and that communication will not be through words but movements of the body, through sight,  and touch,  and taste,  and smell, and even silence.

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This little reflection on the non verbal aspects of religious language is more suggestive than analytic.  There are many scholars who have commented on the role of instrumental music, art, dance, and other languages that contribute to public worship.  We can all think of examples from private devotion and rituals that give our family lives meaning.  What is the language that the angel at the top of the Humanist Christmas Tree speaks?  What does that Buddha on my book shelf say to me?

LT has some important things to say in his comment to this post,  he argues that our understanding of ritual is formed by words that have been spoken.  But he also points out that there are words that still must be said if we are to have meaningful rituals in common.

I think of a Eastern Woods Native Peoples ritual, the Corn Dance.  The whole people dance to renew the cosmos, the join their energies to sun and soil to inspire the corn to grow.  It is non verbal,  there is a language of reverence inherent in this dance, but words are not spoken.  But every child is told the stories, they know how Corn mother gave her gift and how the people join the earth in the enterprise of renewal.  Story time is not part of the dance, and the dance is not part of story time.  Yes, the meaning is expressed with dance and drums rather than words, but stories with words have informed the understanding of the dancers.

Martin Luther King recounted his theological journey to a realistic pro peace stance. He recounts his encounter with the works of Niebuhr who had developed an rationale for religious people to utilize violence in pursuit of their perceived moral ends. King who was not an absolute pacifist came to recognize that pursuing peace requires a commitment to non violent ends and a preference for non violent means. He supported the use appropriate force by police both in civil society and in keeping peace by international bodies.

Given the misuse of Niebuhr to justify pre-emptive violence, let us look at King's critique of Niebuhr and begin to construct a political theology for world community that covenants to pursue peace and justice. Reinhold Niebhur's later writings actually provide some important building blocks for constructing a program for peace.

But this is about King's struggle with Niebhur's thoughts that violence and non violence were both problematic. King writes:

But my intellectual odyssey to nonviolence did not end here. During my last year in theological school, I began to read the works of Reinhold Niebuhr. The prophetic and realistic elements in Niebuhr's passionate style and profound thought were appealing to me, and I became so enamored of his social ethics that I almost fell into the trap of accepting uncritically everything he wrote.

About this time I read Niebuhr's critique of the pacifist position. Niebuhr had himself once been a member of the pacifist ranks. For several years, he had been national chairman of the Fellowship of Reconciliation.* His break with pacifism came in the early thirties, and the first full statement of his criticism of pacifism was in Moral Man and Immoral Society. Here he argued that there was no intrinsic moral difference between violent and nonviolent resistance. The social consequences of the two methods were different, he contended, but the differences were in degree rather than kind. Later Niebuhr began emphasizing the irresponsibility of relying on nonviolent resistance when there was no ground for believing that it would be successful in preventing the spread of totalitarian tyranny. It could only be successful, he argued, if the groups against whom the resistance was taking place had some degree of moral conscience, as was the case in Gandhi's struggle against the British. Niebuhr's ultimate rejection of pacifism was based primarily on the doctrine of man. He argued that pacifism failed to do justice to the reformation doctrine of justification by faith, substituting for it a sectarian perfectionism which believes "that divine grace actually lifts man out of the sinful contradictions of history and establishes him above the sins of the world."

At first, Niebuhr's critique of pacifism left me in a state of confusion. As I continued to read, however, I came to see more and more the shortcomings of his position. For instance, many of his statements revealed that he interpreted pacifism as a sort of passive nonresistance to evil expressing naive trust in the power of love. But this was a serious distortion. My study of Gandhi convinced me that true pacifism is not nonresistance to evil, but nonviolent resistance to evil. Between the two positions, there is a world of difference. Gandhi resisted evil with as much vigor and power as the violent resister, but he resisted with love instead of hate. True pacifism is not unrealistic submission to evil power, as Niebuhr contends. It is rather a courageous confrontation of evil by the power of love, in the faith that it is better to be the recipient of violence than the inflicter of it, since the latter only multiplies the existence of violence and bitterness in the universe, while the former may develop a sense of shame in the opponent, and thereby bring about a transformation and change of heart.

In spite of the fact that I found many things to be desired in Niebuhr's philosophy, there were several points at which he constructively influenced my thinking. Niebuhr's great contribution to contemporary theology is that he has refuted the false optimism characteristic of a great segment of Protestant liberalism, without falling into the anti-rationalism of the continental theologian Karl Barth, or the semi-fundamentalism of other dialectical theologians. Moreover, Niebuhr has extraordinary insight into human nature, especially the behavior of nations and social groups. He is keenly aware of the complexity of human motives and of the relation between morality and power. His theology is a persistent reminder of the reality of sin on every level of man's existence. These elements in Niebuhr's thinking helped me to recognize the illusions of a superficial optimism concerning human nature and the dangers of a false idealism. While I still believed in man=s potential for good, Niebuhr made me realize his potential for evil as well. Moreover, Niebuhr helped me to recognize the complexity of man=s social involvement and the glaring reality of collective evil.

Many pacifists, I felt, failed to see this. All too many had an unwarranted optimism concerning man and leaned unconsciously toward self-righteousness. It was my revolt against these attitudes under the influence of Niebuhr that accounts for the fact that in spite of my strong leaning toward pacifism, I never joined a pacifist organization. After reading Niebuhr, I tried to arrive at a realistic pacifism. In other words, I came to see the pacifist position not as sinless but as the lesser evil in the circumstances. I felt then, and I feel now, that the pacifist would have a greater appeal if he did not claim to be free from the moral dilemmas that the Christian nonpacifist confronts.

The next stage of my intellectual pilgrimage to nonviolence came during my doctoral studies at Boston University. Here I had the opportunity to talk to many exponents of nonviolence, both students and visitors to the campus. Boston University School of Theology, under the influence of Dean Walter Muelder and Professor Allen Knight Chalmers, had a deep sympathy for pacifism. Both Dean Muelder and Dr. Chalmers had a passion for social justice that stemmed, not from a superficial optimism, but from a deep faith in the possibilities of human beings when they allowed themselves to become co-workers with God. It was at Boston University that I came to see that Niebuhr had overemphasized the corruption of human nature. His pessimism concerning human nature was not balanced by an optimism concerning divine nature. He was so involved in diagnosing man's sickness of sin that he overlooked the cure of grace.

Chutney has again advanced certain ideas about ministry,  and again I find that his observations miss the mark as far as Unitarian Universalist ministry is concerned.  His ideas may hold true for Methodists and Charismatics, but the order of ministry that exists in our Association of Congregations has its roots in the Reform tradition of Protestant Christianity.  We do now and have always aspired to be a learned profession.

The definitions that Chutney advances relative to professions come from the observations of sociologists, a 20th academic enterprise known for sweeping generalizations and for its trying to make facts fit into theories.  I find most sociology suffers from lack of historical perspective.  There is an economy of human effort, we are more likely to take yesterday's institutions and renew them, than we are to start from scratch.  As I have confessed on this weblog before, if another life I was trained as a social historian.  I can appreciate sweeping generalizations when they are helpful, but I try to see them in the context of concrete societies as they evolve over time.  So indulge me as I do a little social history.

To understand Unitarian Universalist ministry we must return to those days of before sociology was invented, let us look at Europe on the eve of the conquest of North America.  That was a time when theology was the discipline that informed the definitions, not sociology.  Elizabethans and their grandchildren believed that a professional was one who "professed."  And God called people "to profess." A professional had a vocation,  a vocation means "to speak."  Clergy professed "ministry."  Physicians professed "healing."  Lawyers professed "justice."  Military officers professed "order."  Interesting the world profess is the same root as  the word Protestant.

In 17th century usage and practice, "professors" or professionals usually had a University education, but not always, professional military officers were narrowly trained.  But professionals were trained by those already in the profession, usually by a combination of apprenticeship and peer review.

Professionals were accountable to other members of their own profession.  The professional association elaborated standards, and ethics, not as formally as a contemporary board of surgeons or a bar association, but nevertheless standards were articulated.  James Luther Adams would help us understand that these "voluntary organization" made a contribution to particular kind of democracy that emerged in England and the British North American Colonies.  Instead of the State regulating the profession, the profession policed itself.  Were these guilds, those medieval institution of artisans that latter day free market liberals loved to accuse of restraint of trade.  Perhaps, if we looked hard we could find self protection in some professional association conduct,  but primarily they were also organizations that created standards of practice, and supported aspirants.

Before the 17th Century the experience of Christendom since the Romans had been established churches, the bishops had been state functionaries.  Ordination had for the previous millennia meant to be a member of a religious order, ordination is a word that means "to be under orders."  The Reformed tradition advanced the notion that the "order of ministry" was an lateral association of teachers and pastors of the gospel and they were to accountable to one another, thus to be "under orders" was to be accountable to autonomous community of fellow professors of religion and not to the state church's Bishop.

Sin happens. Yes sinning happens, even by professors of the noblest callings and the corruption of noble ideas happens. During the four hundred years in which professions have played a role in modern society and during which the order of ministry in the Reformed tradition has functioned as autonomous learned profession. we have witnessed more than a few corrupt practices.  We could talk about the ministers associations reacting to Theodore Parker, and we could talk about the coverups of abusive clergy (that has happened in the ranks of ordained Reformed ministers, Unitarian, Evangelical and Congregational and Presbyterian.)  But despite our many falls from grace, most ministers have maintained the historic meaning of "profession," most of us feel called to profess a practice beyond a self protection society.  We associate with one another to hold ourselves accountable to ethical standards, and we are disappointed when a colleague fails the order of ministry (betrays their ordination oath, violates the code.)

The twentieth century saw a corruption of the notion of the learned profession and a decline of learning in favor of technique.  Once the professional was called to profess a vocational discipline and do ministry (service) to the commonwealth. Today some of the things that Chutney's sociologists have observed are true about modern professionals.  Serving themselves and protecting their own kind.  But just as we say democracy is the worst form of governance until we consider the alternatives,  we could also say that voluntary association is the most self indulgent and insular way of regulating a profession until we consider the alternative.  The alternative is external control.  There are some "ministers" who think they do not need to be accountable to anything, save the holy spirit.  They scare me.

Unitarian Universalist ministry is not over regulated by a bureaucracy despite what Chutney asserts.  Ministers are accountable to their colleagues, and to the congregations. After the first few years of ministry, the work of the Ministerial Fellowship Committee has little or nothing to do with their ministry.  Yet they are constantly learning to do ministry.

The 1400 plus members of the Ministers Association (UUMA) constitutes a voluntary organization that holds ministers accountable and aids in formation through collegiality.  There is a constant dialogue between the ministers and the UUA and MFC about the standards for ministry.  There isn't a top down bureaucracy that has created the credentialing process, rather there are ongoing mutual consultations that create and recreate the process.  We are constantly working to reform the process.  Protestants believe in reform, reform and more reform.  At this point in our history, from my observation point I would argue that UUMA exerts more influence on the MFC than the MFC exerts over the ministers.

The Ministerial Fellowship Committee is a committee of 14 people, ministers and lay people who meet 3 times a year for a total of 10 days.  They do some work by email and phone.  There are 3 professional staff people and 3 support staff people who serve the MFC (they have other duties and report to the President of the UUA, but they serve as support staff for the MFC.  For years candidates and observers have agreed, the committee does everything they can to recognize a minister from among the candidates that present themselves for interview.  I see no evidence of the congregations demanding the tighter regulations  based their experience with unformed ministers, (if Chutney knows of cases among real and existing Unitarian Universalist congregations with real and existing Unitarian Universalist ministers then it would be helpful if he could find a way to share this information.)  Based on what I can see as a member of the UUMA executive committee, we meeti with the MFC on a regular basis and with the staff twice a year, the MFC develops policy based on its own experience, not congregational pressure.

Do some lay people believe that schools make ministers. I think that some do.  Do some ministers put on a show about their credentials.  I think that some do, I am always bemused at a young guy who feels the need to introduce himself as the Rev. Dr. so and so...in a room full of professors and surgeons. But many of us refrain from such credential dropping, rather we rely on the authenticity of the relationship and the power of our gospel.

So I am a "professor of ministry,"  my vocation is to articulate and institutionalize the gospel of transforming love, and I am accountable to a community of witnesses that goes back to an gathering in an upper room a long, long time ago.  Most of my formation has happened in service to congregants and in collegial relationship to other practitioners of this ancient profession of ministry.  I appreciate the ministers and scholars that professed when I sat as a student at Crane Theological School, Andover Newton Theological School, and occasionally for me at Harvard Divinity School, and while they didn't make me a minister, they helped me see connections, find better ways to give voice to my vocation, and appreciate other points of view.  A professional is formed not by schools, but by accountable practice of that profession.  The schools at best are an intensive introduction to that practice;  at worst they are a tuition grabbing corporation trying to survive by baby sitting spiritual seekers.

See also TheLivelyTradition which critiques Chutney's notion that congregations form the clergy and having failed to own this task they turn to bureaucracy.  See also the Cambridge Platform that introduces us to one relationship between the order of ministry and the whole people of God in the seventeenth century New England congregationalism, the clergy are given a lot of power, but that power is given by the congregation.  See also the charter of Harvard college founded so that the churches wouldn't have an ignorant clergy.