PeaceBang

NOW IS THE TIME Strong-Arming

Friends,
I am not trying to be a trouble-maker here, but since there are so few forums for Unitarian Universalist laymen and women and ministers to speak frankly together about Associational issues of concern, I thought it worthy to pull this comment from “Rev E” from the previous post and to invite further reflections on her experience:

I don’t see many comments about PeaceBang’s lead-in, which was the tremendous pressure put on us clergy last year to hold an “Association Sunday,” and help raise funds for the UUA’s “Now Is the Time” campaign.

Although it’s slightly off-topic, I’d like to weigh in as a minister who *did* designate the UUA as the recipient of our regular “half basket” giveaway (in October), but who bitterly resented the UUA’s process & tone during its campaign, for the following reasons:

1. It’s not an exaggeration to say that I felt downright harassed by the UUA, and in particular by Stephan Papa’s team (whom I’ve dubbed the “Papa Posse”). They literally chased me down the corridors of Portland’s convention center, left many high-pressure voice mails for me at the office, and otherwise insinuated the primacy of their project into the fabric of my congregation. I don’t think my experience was unique; many of us were virtually strong-armed into either holding an Association Sunday, or defending our (unpopular) decision not to.

2. UUA material crowed about the need for money for “growth” and “advertising.” Like PeaceBang, I’m not thrilled with the content of our TIME magazine ads, but I’m satisfied enough with the sheer publicity. When I received detailed information about the funds raised, however, only in the small print was it mentioned that 25% of those monies would be given to congregations with ministers of color. Ministers of color? FINE. Admirable, even, for an Association with a commitment to anti-racism & multiculturalism. But it’s the *process*, people! Don’t tell me that 25% of a stated goal of one million dollars (!) falls under the category of “publicity.” I still feel misled by the UUA’s lack of transparency around the use of those funds.

3. Call me a fool, but I honestly thought that Association Sunday was a one-time deal. Perhaps I just wasn’t paying attention. Now that I understand that the UUA expects this to be an annual event, I just feel weary. The only silver lining in this gray cloud of disappointment is that my District has chosen to distribute its “Now Is the Time” payout back to us, the congregations, in the form of grants.

Thanks to all in the PeaceBang community for your thought-provoking comments, and all that I learn from you.

Thank you for your honest critique, Rev. E, wherever you are. I echo your sentiments. I was also very put off by the strong-armed tactics used by “the Papa Posse,” and will not fall prey to them again. “Fool me once…” and so on. I must also be naive, because I assumed that NOW IS THE TIME/Association Sunday was a one-shot deal, and will have to speak with my lay leaders about the implications of an annual expectation that we do this. I personally don’t intend to support a second big additional gift to the UUA for advertising or anything else in the coming fiscal year. I want to know much more about how the monies raised last year were/are being spent, and to what good end.

And in case I wasn’t clear about this: I think it truly offensive for the UUA to leave messages on any minister’s private study line requesting that we call a UUA staffer to discuss our participation in a fund-raising campaign for them. The barrage of e-mails and mailings we also received were overkill and thoroughly obnoxious (and how much did they cost??)

Again, if this sort of campaign happens on a rare occasion and has clearly exciting outcomes, I’ll tolerate it with little grumbling. But to hear that “Association Sunday” may be an annual expectation is not only exhausting, it is very upsetting (perhaps we’d like to vote as congregations on this? How many of us want to pay for what amounts to piles of junk mail generated by NOW IS THE TIME?), and I hope it’s not true. Our congregations serve the good of the Association by being strong, well-regarded local congregations, by giving our fair share in dues for the services we receive from HQ, and by sending a team of committed delegates to our General Assembly. Requests for gifts above and beyond these should be few, far-between, and made with far more respect and less pushy, cheerleadery, “All the cool kids are doing it! CMON, quit worryin’ about all those pesky details about how we’ll spend the money” fervor. Like I said, fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, not gonna happen.

Killing Off the Independent Affiliate Organizations of the UUA: PeaceBang Finally Yaps Her Flap

When the UUA board decided to KO the Independent Affiliate Organizations last year, I kept my blogging mouth closed about it. I beefed about it with colleagues and laypeople, and I recognize that a residual bit of fall-out was that I did not enthusiastically participate in the UUA’s big “NOW IS THE TIME” campaign. My laypeople were as lukewarm as I — mostly wondering how, exactly, all this money would be spent in a way that would undeniably strengthen Unitarian Universalist life — and we folded in “NOW IS THE TIME” with our regularly scheduled General Assembly service, declining to make it a special worship service. This decision, and our skepticism about the specific goals and vision of NOW IS THE TIME may have drastically limited the amount of money my unusually generous congregation raised for the effort.

(I am always offended to the ends of my hair when any UUA organization expects congregations to have a special “Something Sunday” to promote a cause or program and take up an offering. First of all, we have a liturgical tradition to respect and although we are committed to thematic worship, we are not committed to Theme Sundays, which are too often as inauthentic and contrived as theme parks. “This and That Sunday” smacks of boosterism and presumes that the worshiping congregation is a captive audience to be exploited for the purpose of “education” — as in “you need to be ‘educated’ about our pet issue/organization so that we can pry open your wallets”– as opposed to ministered unto and challenged to become more conscious and responsible human beings in general. It is for the local church to decide when and shall it is worthy to take up a special offering for the relief of suffering people or for the support of organizations deemed worthy by a trusted committee of the congregation charged to discern such things. When appeals for “Give Me Money” Sundays come to us in the mail, my Worship Chair and I gnash our teeth and then promptly relegate them to the recycling bin.)

I was personally disgusted by the dissolution of the Independent Affiliate Organizations. It seemed a lazy, unnecessary, ignorant and cavalier decision by the UUA board. I have not said so in public until now. Today, however, I received a letter from an esteemed elder colleague who has eloquently put into words what I would like to now endorse with my own, “TELL IT, Brother!” With his permission, here is the Rev. Dick Fewkes’ letter to the UUA leadership about his distress regarding their decision, and his own subsequent decision to refrain from sending financial support to 25 Beacon Street in the future.

Dear Bill,

This is to let you know why I have decided I can no longer make any more
personal contributions to the UUA. The reason is because of my deep and intense
disapproval of the UUA Board action to remove Independent Affiliate Status from
the overwhelming majority of such organizations. Among others I am a member of the UU Christian Fellowship, the UU Buddhist Fellowship, the UU’s For Jewish
Awareness, the UU Psi Symposium (of which I am President), the UU Historical
Society, the UU Retired Ministers & Partners Association, plus I have been a
supporter of Project Harvest Hope, Uniquest, UU Women and Religion, UUs for
Ethical Treatment of Animals, and UUs for Justice in the Middle East.

It hardly needs to be noted that these fine IA organizations have provided
programs, guidance and inspiration for hundreds of individual UUs as well as to
countless UU churches, congregational leaders, educators, ministers and GA
delegates for so very many years. More than a hundred and sixty years ago
Theodore Parker complained to his fellow Unitarian colleagues that they had
struck his name out of their Almanac and asked him to resign from their Boston
Association because of disagreement over his theological views. I wonder what he
would think about the removal from the pages of our UUA Directory of any
reference to these former IA organizations and denial of their previous right to
sponsor lectures and programs at the General Assembly under their own auspices.

Moreover, their removal was based on an overemphasis of a few lines at the end
of our principles and purposes in the UUA By-Laws about “serving the needs of
member congregations”, while forgetting that the IA’s were the institutional and
organizational embodiments of the sources of our living tradition: words and
deeds of prophetic women and men—wisdom from the world’s religions—Jewish,
Christian, Humanist and Earth Centered teachings, etc.—all of them excellent
examples of “the religious pluralism which enriches and ennobles our faith.” It
seems that the UUA Board was “proof texting” one part of the principles and
purposes while ignoring the far greater significance of what many of us consider
the heart and soul of our multi-faith religious tradition. “That transcending
mystery and wonder” needs to be incarnated in specific UU related groups and
organizations in order for individual UU’s and our various member congregations
to be informed as to who we are and what we stand for in
our many forms of faith and ethical action. You have taken these sources of
faith away from us and denied us the right to be informed of their existence.

A bumper sticker slogan expresses my sentiments about this unfortunate action on
the part of the UUA Board: TO QUESTION IS THE ANSWER. I for one question the
right and authority and wisdom of the Board in taking this action without the
debate and approval of the General Assembly and its member churches and
delegates. [emphasis mine - PB] Moreover, I respectfully request that the Board seriously consider
reversing or rectifying its action so as to restore IA status (or something
comparable) to the organizations cited above. Not to do so is to forfeit my
financial support to a denomination and religious institution that I hold dear.

Sincerely,
The Rev. Richard M. Fewkes, Minister Emeritus, First Parish of Norwell, Mass.

Religion Helps Me: Is That A Bad Thing?

In a recent comment about the new UUA ad, Mars Girls says,

This ad wouldnt appeal to me. When I found UUism, I was looking for spirituality that I could swallow. I wanted to find religion because I needed it (still do) to deal with some rough things in my life.

So here’s my question: have we grown up enough in this era to CELEBRATE that religious practice, religious reflection and religious community help us deal with “rough things in life?” Or will we, fifty years from now in UU congregations, still be claiming that WE’RE not like those OTHER people who NEED religion, quoting Marx with our cups of Equal Exchange coffee in our hands, still not getting that the root word in the whole “interdependent web” concept is DEPENDENT?

I’m raising my hand over here to testify, brothers and sisters! On my own, I’m not the person I can be when in religious community. I’m lonelier, angrier, much more self-centered, limited to my own perspective and to that of the people I hand-pick to fortify that limited perspective (aka, friends), more hopeless, more often depressed, and very seldom challenged on my own sh**. If that’s the opiate of the masses, honey, pass the hookah pipe, and keep passing it all my life long. Praise God.

“When In Doubt, Pray. When In Prayer, Have an Existential Crisis.”

Oh for heaven’s sake, what new nonsense is this?

Yet again the Unitarian Universalists are choosing to market themselves as the “faith” for those who are totally ambivalent about whether or not intelligent people should have any faith, and playing the old “we’re not led by creed or doctrine” bit, which is getting SO TIRED. How many 21st century religious individuals mindlessly obey their religious tradition’s doctrines in the first place? Hello, post-modernist angst about the validity of religious institutions and broad eclecticism in personal spiritual practice: not just for unchurched seekers anymore! WHEN will the UUA stop marketing trumpeting unique aspects of our tradition that are incredibly un-unique?

It’s the old definition-by-negation business again, and it assumes that we have no doctrinal, dogmatic attitudes or creedal practices or individuals among us, which of COURSE we do. Just look at how we treat the precious Seven Principles, which have been lifted to quasi-creedal status by many serious UUs (and maybe that’s not such a bad thing). Ech. More terminal uniqueness. Quippy, cutesy crap. Clever wordplay instead of a warm and loving invitation to find us and worship with us.

It would be so much less offensive if Unitarian Universalists weren’t notoriously uncomfortable with the mere notion of prayer and famous for using a long, comma-separated series of euphemisms to introduce That Portion of the Sunday Service During Which We Come Into the Place of Honesty, Or Join Our Spirits In Openness and Compassion, Or Meditate, Or Muse Or Think Good Thoughts Or Even Perhaps Join In (The Spirit Of) Prayer (Because You Musn’t Say ‘Let Us Pray’ For Fear Of Being Run Out Of Town After Coffee Hour, That Is, If You Make It Alive To Coffee Hour).

I’m sorry I used the word “crap” to describe this ad; that’s strong condemnation. But I’m not editing it out. I’m sick and bloody tired of insulting Baptists, Methodists, Muslims, Episcopalians, Catholics, Presbyterians, Mennonites, Orthodox Jews and others whose religious traditions are creedal and doctrinal and who often manage, nevertheless, to have wonderful ministries, whose communities are welcoming and even rebelliously so (how many of you know of renegade Catholic, Episcopal, Presby or Lutheran individuals or parishes that openly welcome and advocate for the g/b/l/t community, for example? I thought so…), and whose life together is a thing of beauty that draws more seekers to find, and stay with them, every year. Those doctrinal, creedal congregations are not necessarily any more dysfunctional or even close-minded than our own non-creedal, non-doctrinal ones. We must stop advertising these aspects of our tradition as if they confer upon us some magical ability to love, to minister, and to support an individual or a family’s search for truth and meaning. They do not.

“When in doubt, pray??” How about,

“All our lives we are in need, and others are in need of us.”*
Join a Unitarian Universalist congregation near you for Sunday worship. We are waiting to welcome you, and to include you in our circle of caring.

“The Unitarian Universalists welcome you to worship with us, and to join in the great work of loving the world.”

“Unitarian Universalism: The search for truth in the spirit of freedom. Don’t walk the path alone: come for Sunday morning worship and stay for community.”

I mean, these aren’t genius or anything, but they took me fifteen seconds to think up and I’m not getting paid for them, if you know what I’m saying.

The best advertising for our tradition, or any tradition, is for our congregations to be healthy communities full of individuals who have a strong sense of ministry and are guided by an ethic of love and covenantal relationship. They should make the news for doing good works in the community, and when people walk through their doors (as they will if they are guided there by spiritual need, not prompted by an ad in Time magazine), they should encounter powerful worship services, quality religious education, well-organized, inclusive pastoral and prophetic ministries, and people with authentic welcome on their lips and in their hearts.

And when they are invited to pray, it should be in the spirit of hope and faith, because why the HELL would anyone who understands the first thing about the Unitarian or the Universalist traditions suggest that prayer and doubt are a wise pairing in the search for truth and meaning?

All right. Rant over. I have a sermon to finish. I’ll leave the rest of the rant or the BangBack to you, my friends.

* quote by George Odell

The Living Tradition Fund

I remember when I graduated from Harvard Divinity School with $60K in debt and my first job in ministry. I was offered a package of around $42K by my first congregation and I thought I was rich, rich, rich!! That was until I realized that rents in the area were astronomical, that my debt was a stone around my neck, and that I’d be paying a huge amount of taxes paid quarterly with fear, trembling and a churning stomach full of worry. I lived very close to the bone during those years.

During those first years I received a few debt reduction grants from the UUA, made possible by the Living Tradition Fund. Receiving them was a true life line, and I got teary when I opened the first envelope with a check in it. Every year at General Assembly at the Service of the Living Tradition, the Rev. Ralph Mero would make an impassioned plea for all those gathered (usually between three and six thousand folks) to consider the amount they had planned to contribute, and then to double it. The first time I wrote a $100 check back to the LTA during General Assembly was the moment I most truly understood the joy of giving. “The Lord loves a cheerful giver” indeed.

Although my student debt is still in the high twenty-thousands of dollars, I expect it to be gone in 7-10 years, and well worth it. Meanwhile, my retirement account is healthy with Fidelity Investments and I have decided to change my beneficiaries. I am leaving 25% of my assets to the Living Tradition Fund, which, if I die before retirement age, will make a very nice gift. I have decided that should I live long enough to need my retirement assets (and there’s no reason to assume that I won’t — but no reason to assume that long life is a certainty, either), I vow to make a significant bequest to the Living Tradition Fund no matter how long I live.

Ministers have so many other stomach-churning realities to contend with. Finances should not so regularly be among them. Fair and generous compensation is something none of us should take for granted, as so many of our sisters and brothers of the cloth in all traditions are not fairly or generously compensated. Making gifts to the Living Tradition Fund while I am alive and after my death is my way of reaching out to clergy in my tradition in fellowship and collegial solidarity. I encourage other UU ministers and those who want to support our ministers to consider doing the same, if you haven’t done so already.

UUA Living Tradition Fund
PO Box 843154
Boston, MA 02284-3154

God Is NOT Optional: Another Perspective

Terri Pahucki contributed this to the comments on the “God is Optional, You Are Not” banner that is displayed in front of the UU congregation in San Francisco,

I don’t know that UU’s should have any sign relating to our theology; it’s just too diverse in language, and slogans cheapen it’s depth. My church has a “Standing on the Side of Love” equal marriage banner on the side of the church. (This banner was vandalized when it was first hung–so it definitely made a statement, and got attention). But it was a statement based on principle and action, not theology. Attempts to sloganize our theology only end up focusing on what we are NOT, rather than what we ARE, I think. Our beliefs–and the language we use to describe them– are just too diverse. It is important that people experience God (or transcendence and holiness) when they come to church– but I don’t think that experience can be sloganized.

I think this is an excellent reflection, and was very happy to see that Terri expounds on it further over at her own blog, UU Intersections. I had never seen this blog until today and I am very moved by Terri’s beautiful writing. Her Easter season posts are exquisite, and I am very interested in her opinions on strengthening Unitarian Universalism through more shared spiritual practices and experiences. She reminds me of the old joke: Unitarian Universalists are those who, when they die and reach the afterlife, see two doors. One is marked “Heaven” and the other “A Lecture About Heaven.” The Unitarian Universalist goes through the door marked “A Lecture About Heaven.”

“God Is Optional. You Are Not.”

Ian Lynch writes in the recent comments on this post,

“So if the UCC says that God is still speaking and you are suggesting that the UUA is still speaking does that mean via the transitive property that the UUA is God?”

Although I think my friend Ian probably asks this question with his tongue-in-cheek (since he calls himself a “closet UU,” we can assume that he’s a fan and a friend of our movement), I think a legitimate question to ask Unitarian Universalists is: What or whom are you worshiping? I have heard Unitarian Universalists of many different theological stripes answer this question beautifully, but I feel like asking it again because I just heard about a California congregation that has a big sign outside its doors stating,
GOD IS OPTIONAL. YOU ARE NOT.”

What an interesting claim.
Does it sound inviting to you, or inane? Provocative or puerile? Or something in between that you’d like to share with the rest of us? I am still mulling it over. As a theist and a Christian, I would certainly find it an attention-getter if I was walking down the street looking for somewhere to attend Sunday services, but I would also find it a definite deterrent to attending worship. God is optional everywhere in the secular world. On Sunday, I’m looking for a place that affirms that the presence of something beyond the human community; something that my colleague Barbara Pescan called “The Unnameable Magnificent Intensity.”

The “you are not optional” message is good, though. Because as I say to my folks on a fairly regular basis, the church is the people. And whether or not the sermon topic sounds sexy enough to get one out of bed that morning, Church doesn’t happen until the congregation gathers. I could stand in the pulpit and give all the prayers and sermons that I wanted to, and that might please God and the spirits of our venerable congregation, but it wouldn’t be church.

Here, the affable Rev. Greg Stewart invites folks to visit the congregation. I love the line, “We are a living, loving faith for the 21st century and we’re holding a place just for you.”

Still Speaking!

I just loved this ad campaign that came out from the UCC a few years ago, based on Gracie Allen’s marvelous quote, “Never place a period where God has placed a comma.”

Some of us were wondering the other night what the Unitarian Universalist version would look like, since we’re not overly enamored of the current ad campaign:

(With apologies to Joyce Poley, whose music I love. This is not my design, but it was too good not to share with you all. If we can’t laugh at ourselves…!)

Shopping For Religion

Ellen Goodman of the Boston Globe seems surprised — or maybe discomfited would be a better word– to learn that Americans these days go shopping for their religion.

She cites a recent study by the Pew Forum that reports that 44% of Americans have left their religion of origin and are presumably currently unaffiliated or out shopping for a better fit. Of course Unitarian Universalists have known this for a long time. The overwhelming majority of Unitarian Universalists are “come-outers” from other faith traditions and have been for decades. Both Philocrites and Dan at Yet Another Unitarian Universalist have more to say on the number of Americans identifying as UU. Do read Philocrites, and the comments. They’re very provocative and will lead you to the link for Dan’s blog, and to Ms. Theologian’s excellent (if depressing for this minister) entry about why she doesn’t go to church.

So where are the 400,000 Americans who identify as Unitarian Universalist but who never appear in our churches or fellowships? Out golfing or in bed reading the NY Times? Shopping, doing errands, catching up with family, cleaning house? Disappointed in our too often uninspiring, cliquish, self-congratulatory, sloppy worship services? Working their second job? Intimidated or put-off by our snobbery and haughty liberalism? Offended by the wide gap between who we claim to be on paper (or on the internet) and who we are in person? Sure. I have no doubt that we’re guilty of losing many, many members for our most besetting sins. But there’s also our laissez-faire attitude toward membership, joining, and commitment to spiritual growth that leaves us bereft of many folks who desire a deep and demanding religious life. We’re getting a lot better at lifting up the virtues of community along with the sanctity of the Individual, and that helps. Many of our congregations are putting membership processes in place that appeal to the “joiner” in people who find that, contrary to what they believed about themselves, they do crave a serious and intentional bond of fellowship with other seekers. Also good.

But since we’re still allergic to evangelism, and because our ad campaigns and too many of our members and our outdated promotional pamphlets and books still frame us as the alternative TO religion, we’re bound to stay teensy beensy. If there are so many interesting, intellectually provocative, or just relaxing alternatives to religion that I can do on my own, why in the world would I join a congregation or church so that I can pledge my money to, give my volunteer hours to, and send my children to Sunday School (or religious education) an institution that is still trying to convince the world that it’s a legitimate religious institution … but not really religious?

Is this, for example, really the best statement we can make to seekers who want to know who we are religiously? Why wouldn’t I just spend the afternoon at Barnes & Noble skimming through the religion section if that’s all these people are offering? I can sit in a comfy chair and sip coffee while I’m doing it, too!

Somewhere God is laughing.

Prayers for a Colleague

I got an e-mail from the Unitarian Universalist Minister’s Association Executive Committee today asking for prayers for our colleague, the Rev. Rosemary Bray McNatt, as she travels to Kenya to, in the words of the e-mail, “serve a larger love” as part of a three-person delegation representing the UUA and the UU Service Committee.

This e-mail touched me deeply not only because I love Rosie, but because in my eleven years of ordained ministry in this movement I don’t recall ever receiving a call for prayer from our collegial association. This is a first, and for me it represents a subtle but monumental shift away from careful, euphemistic language that for me often feels clinical and removed, to a heartfelt, unabashedly religious invitation. None of this, “Please hold in your thoughts and minds …” or “Let us join in the spirit of something that we might, if we believed in such things, refer to as ‘prayer’” or “Now let us turn our thoughts to that unity and interdependence that binds us,” — just finally, at long last, “Prayers For a Colleague.” The BODY of the e-mail uses more creative language, but it was the subject line that got me.

It’s as though we’re finally mature enough to understand that we’ll all be praying in our own fashion, and we don’t necessarily need to acknowledge that in the simple wording of one e-mail. How bloody refreshing.

I will be praying for Rosemary and the delegation’s safe travel and return in my own fashion, and hope you will add her to your good thoughts, meditation, prayers, or the good intentions you “put out” into the Universe.