Last spring, I started a D.Min program at Wesley Theological Seminary. Attached is a paper I submitted for DM609 - Contemporary Ecclesiology
Institutional Change as Contemporary Unitarian Universalist Ecclesiology: Engaging Jürgen Moltmann
We Are Made For These Times
My engagement with Unitarian Universalism began in a time of upheaval. Fifteen years ago (I can't believe it's been that long), two things happened around the same time: My family started attending a Unitarian Universalist Congregation in Upstate New York, and September 11 fundamentally changed the course of American civil life.
Those two events are tied for me because I learned what it meant for faith to be counter-cultural. Members of that congregation spoke out against the Patriot act, as it was passing the Senate 98-1. Congregants spoke out against indefinite detentions and extraordinary rendition even as we were told that these were necessary actions to keep us 'safe.' I learned to protest in the runup to the invasion of Iraq, and how to deal respectfully but firmly with counter-protesters. Members of that congregation were removed from then Senator Clinton's office for protesting the war.
I'm working on my first post-election sermon, and this is what is on my mind: we as a faith have been here before. Some of our finest moments, from John Sigismund's early attempts at pluralism, to Holms' and Skinner's pacifism during the world wars, to Beacon Press publishing the Pentagon Papers, have come in times of upheaval when it felt like the values of pluralism and universal love that are so central to our faith were under siege. We've been here before, and that experience gives me hope for what comes next.
We are made for these times.
Except for All the Others
UUCSR Newsletter Article, June 2016
Several years ago I was serving as the co-chair of a congregational vision and strategic planning process in Baltimore. As we left our fifth or sixth meeting of a single week, without any progress or end in sight, the other chair (the Vice President of the congregation), leaned over to me and whispered: “I think I understand now how dictatorships get started.”
One of the principles of Unitarian Universalism is a commitment to the democratic process, “within our congregations and the society at large.” June is the season of congregational meetings, and between congregational democracy and a fraught election year in the society at large the commitment to the democratic process can feel strained, at times.
Our movement’s commitment to the democratic process far predates the publication of the 7 Principles in 1985. Unitarian and Universalist theology evolved in parallel with American democracy. Universalist optimism about human nature and the Unitarian emphasis on rational inquiry and debate are intertwined with early American ideas about developing a republic as a form of government new in the world. And just as our society at large has struggled to expand who is allowed to participate in the democratic process, Unitarian Universalism has continually asked and questioned how wide the circle can be drawn, how we can invite all people into the process.
It is easy to get caught up in the view of democracy as a kind of national civic sport, with daily updates on candidates and the horserace for the White House. I am certainly guilty of looking up the latest poll numbers in swing states just before I check how the Orioles are doing in the AL East (very well this year). But democracy is more than what we see on CNN.
We are committed to the democratic process because we value that a group of individuals, with their own motivations and a commitment to the collective good, can come together and make decisions; that there is more wisdom in all of us than in any one of us. Town boards, zoning hearings, congregational meetings: far from being secondary to the democratic process we see in the news, these are the places where the democratic process is most vibrant and visible.
Maybe Winston Churchill was right when he wrote that “democracy is the worst form of government except for all those other forms that have been tried,” but to me it is a beautiful process. Even in the fifth committee meeting in a week, there is something wonderful about the optimism and trust it calls us to have in each other. May that call continue.
What's in a name?
When I was in high school, I read a lot of science fiction, and read Orson Scott Card's Ender's Game a dozen times. Setting aside that Card and I probably disagree on most things these days, I loved that his characters took on alter-egos for online discussion. Locke, Demosthenes, names that implied a specific philosophical viewpoint. When I ventured online in the early 2000s, it was under the moniker 'Epictetus,' a Greek Stoic who I loved.
Epictetus is still on my shelf. His best known work is the 'handbook,' a text of practical advice on how to live in the world, rather than the abstract philosophy so many stoics fell into. Handbook, in Greek, is Enchiridion.