Humanism

Caspar Responds: Humanist Religion IS a No-no

By |

Over at the New Humanist blog, Caspar Melville writes:
That nice Dave Belden over at Tikkun magazine has paid me the compliment of disagreeing with a piece I wrote for the Guardian’s Comment is Free site, in which I argue against Dave’s notion that humanists need to organise themselves like religious communities, have services, rituals, build a community that sort of thing. Dave thinks I am too individualistic and we will never heal the world if we can’t build a strong ‘base’. He may well be right. His perspective, I think, would be that being a humanist implies a desire to improve the world – for humans and other animals – it’s a commitment to a kind of activist attitude. (This is well expressed in Tikkun’s strapline, they want to ‘mend, repair and transform the world’).

Humanism

Why Is Humanist Religion a No No?

By |

I am happy to find myself being quoted on the Guardian website by Casper Melville, editor of the New Humanist. Belden (who is now managing editor at the non-denominational spiritual US magazine Tikkun), in a piece entitled Is it time for humanists to start holding services? wrote that while humanism had done well to meet the philosophical challenges set by religion, it did less well reproducing the kind of “vibrant social connections” that religion provides. He was rather stirring, in fact… Caspar has a go at demolishing my argument–that humanists need to build congregations–in the kindest way, intelligently and entertainingly.

Christianity

A New Black/White Religious Mix

By |

As a Unitarian Universalist (UU) who loves to go to Christian services in the black gospel tradition–for their emotional depth and warmth, even though I am pretty allergic to Christian theology–it was a delight to read this article about the largest UU congregation in the country teaming up with a black (universalist Christian) congregation. First, who would believe that the largest UU congregation–in a religion that is so identified in people’s minds with its New England origins–would be in Tulsa, Oklahoma? Maybe they need it more and know they do, while New England itself is going increasingly post-religion altogether. Second, just contemplate the courage of the Rev. Carlton Pearson. This man was a rising star in the evangelical world, charismatic, successful on the ground (he built the Tulsa church he founded to 0ver 6,000 members) and on TV, making a lot of money and garnering adulation.

Health

Spiritual Progressives vs. Liberals vs. Conservatives

By |

When I first heard about the Network of Spiritual Progressives back in 2005 one of the things that most impressed and pleased me was a document in which they laid out their agenda and on each point contrasted their view with the typical liberal and conservative views. Here’s one of them. Pretty succinct, I think:
5. We will seek a single-payer national health care plan and also broaden the public’s understanding of health care. Our physical health cannot be divorced from environmental, social, spiritual, and psychological realities – and the entire medical system has to be reshaped in light of that understanding to focus on prevention, encourage alternative forms of health practice along with traditional Western forms, and insist that because human beings have many levels of reality, health care must reflect that rather than seek to reduce the human to the merely material.

Gender and Sexuality

Love and power, they go together like a horse and…

By |

A memorable moment in my education as a straight man and a writer happened for me back in the 1970s at a Gay Sweatshop production of Noel Greig’s Dear Love of Comrades, a play about the upper class British socialist Edward Carpenter and his working class lover(s) in the 1890s. After the play others remarked on how the challenges of gay relationships were so similar then and now. But what had struck me was not how different but how similar Carpenter’s issues were to my own in my relationships with feminist women: the power dynamics between two lovers, the issues of class, of relating our own lives to the political struggles of the day. By washing Carpenter’s dirty laundry in public, as it were, instead of trying to portray gay relationships in some more idealized way, the playwright had brought out the universality of the human problems involved: love, power, desire, neediness. If the play hadn’t convincingly portrayed the particulars of the people involved–British, gay, upper and working class, and so on–it wouldn’t have worked half as well to tell a universal story.

Environment

Biomimicry and getting through our evolutionary bottleneck

By |

Here’s a fascinating article in The Sun about science and technology that imitates nature (only part of it is available online – they want you to buy their magazine so it stays alive – I know the feeling). If you have a design problem of any kind you can go to askNature.org and find out how nature does it. Nature has developed much more subtle and clever ways than our brute methods:
For the most part life operates on very small amounts of energy. When you look at the natural world, you see that organisms do not use high heats or high pressures or toxic chemicals to achieve their ends. A few do use toxins, such as venoms, in small amounts, but none heat anything with explosive force.

Gender and Sexuality

How to Raise A Feminist

By |

On my desk at Tikkun I have a photo of three girls, two boys and me, and the van I used to drive them and my son to school in every day in the Hudson Valley, an hour’s trip. I miss those kids and the wonderful thing that happens to a parent on the school run when you become invisible and they just talk their usual talk with each other. These were such decent and enjoyable young people, it was the thing that kept me going to my not so perfect job near their school. One of them, Eliza Reynolds, just graduated and her mother, Sil, sent me a link to an article they wrote together in Feministing. Here’s Sil’s take, and to get Eliza’s, go visit Feministing, which is well worth checking out:
1.

General News

Zella Brown and Helga Mueller

By |

Zella and Helga are best friends, middle-aged women, traveling together, talking about children and grandchildren, very normal. But some have difficulty accepting their friendship. Zella Brown is daughter of Holocaust survivors Wolf and Barbara Kaplansky. Seventy five members of her family died… Helga’s father was a Gestapo chief responsible for the deaths of 40,000 people.

Politics & Society

Experience and Vision from Writers Under 25

By |

We advertised an Under 25 youth writing contest on the back cover of our May/June 2009 issue and had no idea what quality of writing we would receive. We were blown away by quality of the essays. It was pretty much impossible to select the five we promised to put in the print edition, since there was little to choose between the top entries. We had over 40 entries altogether. We promised free subscriptions to the top twenty.