Category Archives: Theology

Sustainable living, Theology, Universalism

Reading roundup: August 16

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Whew — five days without a blog post. I’ve been ill and Hubby and I are buying a condo, so you’ll excuse my absence. Working on a couple of larger posts, but I’ve also been reading widely and found a few things of interest on the ‘net worth sharing in the meantime.

I don’t follow 304 blog- and news-feeds for nothing. (And if you use Google Reader and would like to share your finds with me, let me know. And then there’s Delicious, where I keep my links (rather than storing bookmarks in the browser.)

Now on for the highlights:

  • Ben Myers (Faith and Theology) quotes Rowan Williams, in a way that makes him sound universalist. Worth a look at the source, and a reminder that he was a brilliant theologian before being such a disappointing Archbishop of Canterbury.
  • Church Marketing Sucks lauds a church for abandoning its weekly bulletin. (But I can’t help think how generations managed with hymnals and hymn boards, plus announcements.)
  • Treehugger reports how Western e-waste — ostensibly second-hand electronics — ends up dumped in Ghana, causing ecological mayhem. Another reason to carefully consider that upgrade, and to reconsider repurposing old electronics. Or at the very least to dispose of electronics through your local collection procedures, so their hazardous materials may be recovered.
  • Oh, and the August 10 front page of Anglicans Online — one of the few Anglican/Episcopalian resources I can manage any more — argues for stewardship (“thrift even!”) in our nonlocal meetings. Gives us Unitarian Universalists room to think before the next round of district meetings and General Assembly.

And two blogs you should read:

  1. Love libraries (librarians?) media and data? See Jessamyn West’s librarian.net.
  2. Love under-appreciated design. Then Dinosaurs and Robots.
Mission and Polity, Theology, Unitarian Universalists

Unitarian Universalism is a Christian religion

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At least for me it is.

The aspects of Universalism and Unitarianism that inform my religious life are Christian and my Christian faith is distinguished by Universalism (and to a lesser degree, the ethos of Unitarianism.) If you’ve read my blog much, you’ve gathered that. Yes, of course, I know that most Unitarian Universalist aren’t Christian and perhaps don’t want to be. But if so many people are pining for the hundreds of thousands of “lost” Unitarian Universalists that the recent Pew study suggests live in the United States — of which we know almost nothing — then who’s to say that there’s not a significant corpus of silent and unknown Unitarian and Universalist Christians out there, perhaps even a majority? Or more to the point, I’m hacked off that it’s acceptable to verbally minimize the import of Unitarian and Universalist Christians and not expect pushback.

Which brings me back the all-to-familiar refrain, following by Fred L. Hammond, the eponymous author of A Unitarian Universalist Minister in Mississippi, who wrote

If we see ourselves as a denomination that means that we are a denomination of a specific faith tradition such as Christianity. Yet, we no longer identify as a Christian faith. We may have people who honor their Christian heritage and identify as Christian but Unitarian Universalism is not a Christian faith.

I think this is fundamentally an error, and he’s only the most recent — and far from the most grating — to make it. Rather, it is that the Unitarian Universalist Association is not a Christian organization. But the UUA and Unitarian Universalism are not the same thing.

The Unitarian Universalist Association is essentially a service and coordinating body, not an ecclesiastical organization. Consider this: if the UUA Board of Trustees — even the General Assembly itself — adopted a resolution which defined what a Unitarian Universalist is, how would we collectively act? I suspect there’d be howling from the rooftops. And before the howling, quick calls from many quarters that their particular constituencies not be excluded. Basic questions of membership and leadership are invested in the congregation and that’s detailed in the UUA bylaws. Doctrinal teaching, too? A particular church can make that call; the UUA can’t. (Which, for instance, is why I flinch when the president of the UUA gets deliberately “pastoral.” Bill Sinkford isn’t my pastor.)

But informally, because it has had the coordinating power and bridged congregations, ministers, schools and other institutions including the independent/cast-off affiliates, the UUA has had more power to shape congregational internal identity than it could ever hope to acquire. That’s going to change. The promise of distributed social networks — welcome to this blog! — and a deliberate constriction of role by the UUA means that the constellation of Unitarian Universalism is going to get bigger.

Even if we weren’t liberal, and generally comfortable with pluralism, we would still have to describe ourselves — inasmuch as that’s possible — in a plural way. If someone asks, we’ll have to continue to hedge and give caveats and realize that the dreaded “elevator speech” can’t mean anything more than a dictionary definition or a personal testimony. In other words, I don’t expect to say you’re a Christian if you’re not, and I demand you not write me out because you prefer to paint in broad strokes.

Theology

On Hauerwas

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In seminary, I learned not to say anything negative about Stanley Hauerwas, the theologian: his legions of rabid devotees will never give you a moment’s rest. This, with Hauerwas’s high-handed brand of Quietism, was enough to make me lose interest in him instantly, even if was all the rage.

Priest and blogger Chris Tessone (Even the Devils Believe) isn’t so timid — he and I had lunch today; nice to speak with someone in shorthand liturgese — and laid into the great S.H. in a Independence Day post called “The Church and the Fourth“. Tell him Scott sent you.

Church administration, Ministerial formation, Theology

Single-book ministry, church admin, theology?

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There’s a thread at MetaFilter entitled “What single book is the best introduction to your field (or specialization within your field) for laypeople?” It concerns the hard sciences and mathematics in the main, but the same question is fair for the ministry, church administration or even theology.

Not that any one book would be perfect or comprehensive, but these questions help people find resources when they would otherwise risk failure, sunk under a wave of competing resources. Additionally, there is a traditional of Universalist practical manuals I wouldn’t mind seeing revived. These were 16mo pocket-sized books that had a little theology, spiritual guidance, history, statistical information and oftentimes polity justifications and model constitutions for forming churches and state conventions.

So, what single book would you give a layperson considering (lay?) ministry, church administration and theology respectively?

Christian Church, Theology, United Church of Christ

Mercersburg Society re-emerges

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Thanks to Jonathan Bonomo at Reformed Catholicism for noting the Mercersburg Society’s Web site, which has a new harbor — appropriately enough — with the Philip Schaff Library of the Lancaster Theological Seminary. (The library also hosts the Evangelical and Reformed Church — half of the present United Church of Christ — archives.)

In case you’re wondering, yes, there is a place for a Unitarian Universalist in the Mercersburg Society. I was a member and only let my membership lapse because they seemed to vanish. (I think the officer who had done their Web site moved churches and the Society’s site was a subset of his former parish’s site. Not a good idea.) Indeed, I note two ministers with fellowship with the UUA in the leadership roster.  [Psst. Throat clearing.]

I really need to read that Nevin biography Hubby got me for Christmas.

Theology

Shape of Unitarian Christology discussed

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Sometimes the comments is where all the fun is. At Chris Walton’s Philocrites blog, his article about Isaac Newton has morphed into a discussion about the possible future of Unitarian Christological thought. I won’t be chiming in there — I don’t have a horse in that race — except to note

  1.  The Universalists have many of the same issues, but Christian Universalists have kept independent, if fragile, modes of discourse open while the Unitarians haven’t.
  2. I’d tone down calls for meetings or symposia as premature.
  3. I disagree with Jaume de Marcos (whose comment is repeated at his The Hanif Blog) that the Unitarians have “never had a clear christology.” They have — indeed, have had several — but like most communions, do not have a consistent Christology over time. Nor should they or need they. Readers will note that in ecumenical theology, the question of the nature and operation of the Atonement are live questions. If anything, the problem is too much consistency, that is, a Unitarian low humanitarianism forcing out all other Christologies.
Ministerial practice, Theology, Unitarian Universalist Association

Can the UUA “recognize ordinations”?

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Obijuan (Returning . . . .) wrote about the Service of the Living Tradition and then threw this out

What an absolutely boneheaded thing to say in that context as: (1) Many of us already are ordained, and (2) [WARNING: POLITY GEEKING AHEAD] congregational polity means the UUA doesn’t recognize ordinations. Period. That is the job of the congregations. You can welcome us into fellowship, which you’ve just done. Leave it there.

Oh dear, time to say something. I started writing this as a comment, but I believe long, long, long comments by other bloggers are kinda rude, so I brought it home. Here goes, all cut-n-pasted.

I’ll see your geek and raise you a wonk. In short, your take on the polity is wrong and I will demonstrate why.

You’re confusing independency with congregationalism. In both, a congregation has sole power to ordain. Why? Because, in the church does not exist in some nebulous sense apart from the explicit covenanted community, or as the Cambridge Platform calls them, “visible saints by calling.” There just isn’t any body, apart from the congregation, that exists to ordain. For independent churches, the matter stops there.

Unitarians, Universalist and others who practice congregational polity recognize that there is a communion between the churches which does not undermine their autonomy. Congregational polity means something different for different bodies that hold it: even Unitarian and Universalists meant different things from each other, and the UUA practices something between the two. (Which is why I bristle when some people say “we’re becoming Presbyterian” when it seems to me that we’re following some historically-valid Universalist polity choices.) The main difference of application in congregational polity between the Unitarians and Universalists, historically, was whether or not a standing body could exist that could judge whether the basis of communion was being kept for all of the churches which share this mutual communion. Unitarians, no; Universalists, yes. Viscinage councils — still used in some congregational fellowships, with the practice just surviving among some Unitarians — for the Unitarians and state and the central fellowship committees for the Universalists.

On this point current practice favors the Universalists, though with consolidation the authority became far, far more centralized. Fellowship, however it is couched or explain, is more than a fitness vetting, though it certainly includes this; it is also a representation on behalf of all the congregations in fellowship. Though your fellowship standing, the member congregations of the UUA are represented in your ordination; upon this lines of mutual responsibilty follows. Very mutual and meta, to use the current slang.

So I’ll cut Bill Sinkford some slack. By the UUA, I read how he’s increasing using the identity not as the administrative secretariat, but as the fellowship of churches.  And if that’s the case: yes, it can recognize some ordinations — those ordained under fellowship of the UUA — and not recognize those who aren’t.

Bloggers, Theology

Women theology bloggers: a go-to list

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Michael L. Westmoreland-White (Levellers) — himself an academic theologian and Baptist minister’s husband — lists some women who blog academic theology. Or academic theology bloggers who are women. Or bloggers who happen to write about theology while being women in an academic way. Take your pick. (If you know of others, he’s taking additions to the list in his comments section.)

While I’m not a grand proponent of dividing academic and applied theology, it’s handy to have a list to broaden your reading. And if you are both a woman and a(n academic) theologian, but not a blogger, this might inspire you to jump in.

In any case, it’s more rewarding and dignified than worrying if your breasts are the right size for your career. (Surviving the Workplace)