Twenty years ago today, Timothy McVeigh blew up a truck bomb in front of the Murrah federal building in Oklahoma City, killing 168 people. I was in the middle of my ministerial internship not so far away in Tulsa, and I was getting ready to go to church when the news came over the television.… Continue reading A grim day twenty years ago
Category: History
Selected parts from “Universalist Momement in America” available gratis
Ann Lee Bressler’s The Universalist Movement in America is an important resource in understanding Universalist history — and it’s incredibly expensive. A hard copy is now $90. (I got a reader’s copy ages ago.) The good news is that you can read a “Free sample” — the introduction and chapter one; which are incredibly important… Continue reading Selected parts from “Universalist Momement in America” available gratis
The old Messiah Universalist Home
Then and now. The old Messiah Universalist Home, a Philadelphia retirement home, dedicated in 1902, today houses a Chinese grocery. View Larger Map But no wistful tears. If memory of the successor institutions serves, it survives today — and probably more practically — as UUH Outreach.
Unitarian worship resource for Union soldiers
This small 1865 American Unitarian Association assortment of rousing songs and Bible readings (arranged for unison or responsive reading, and with headings like “Those who turn from Holiness are condemned”) isn’t explicitly for Union soldiers, but songs like “Arise, New-England’s Sons!” and “The Massachusetts Line” weren’t likely to appeal to Johnny Reb. The Soldier’s Companion:… Continue reading Unitarian worship resource for Union soldiers
Why the Fellowship Movement will never come back
Following on yesterday’s post, we can talk about the Fellowship Movement with either praise or scorn, but either way, it will not come back. We have to understand what it was, good and bad, before deciding what we want. (Or what some of us want: I’m not suggesting Unitarian Universalists need to act as a… Continue reading Why the Fellowship Movement will never come back
It’s not polity LARPing or worship re-enacting
Here’s the word: Christians and the nameless group who appeal to accustomed polity standards (like plain congregationalism) not play-acting. We have something to say and something to offer. I’ve been in this game for a long time now. And so it’s not hard to tell when I’m being sidelined or even gently insulted, although I… Continue reading It’s not polity LARPing or worship re-enacting
Taras Shevchenko bicentennial
Thanks to Stefan Jonasson I learned that today is the 200th birthday of Ukrainian national hero and poet Taras Shevchenko. Since I live very close to the Shevchenko memorial here in Washington D.C. I took our dog Daisy for her morning walk to visit the memorial. After all, the Ukraine is much on our minds… Continue reading Taras Shevchenko bicentennial
If you don’t have millions to buy a Bay Psalm Book
This week one of the eleven surviving copies of the 1640 Bay Psalm Book, the first book printed in English North America, sold at auction. The owner was Old South Church, Boston, and the sale reminded me of all the old Unitarian communion plate that was sold to keep the staff paid, the furnace stoked… Continue reading If you don’t have millions to buy a Bay Psalm Book
Calling North Carolina Unitarian Universalists…
A seminary classmate, the Rev. Martha Brown, contacted me to reach out to North Carolina Unitarian Universalists about a television project she’s working on. If you have “first-person accounts from North Carolinians who participated in the legendary March on Washington” please keep reading and contact her to participate in the video production. I removed the… Continue reading Calling North Carolina Unitarian Universalists…
A fiddle-and-lecture order of service
In one step, from the medieval to Modernism. The Western Conference Unitarians — think of the middle third of the United States a hundred and more years ago — were known for a kind of bibical rationalism and a minimalist style of worship sometimes known as “fiddle and lecture”. And I’ve been looking for some… Continue reading A fiddle-and-lecture order of service