Tikkun Daily Blog Archive (https://www.tikkun.org/tikkundaily/category/religion-spirituality/christianity-religion-spirituality/page/29/)
That’s how Meredith Gould describes herself. The Pew people tell us that 28% of Americans have left the faith in which they were raised in favor of another religion – or no religion at all. If you count people shifting denominations within Protestantism it’s 44%. Who better than these people to teach their religion of choice how to avoid insulting their religion of origin? But I’m not sure how many do.
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.
I am left speechless by Senator Tom Coburn’s (R-OK) response to a sobbing woman, begging for help because her insurance company will not pay for a feeding tube for her brain-injured husband. Coburn instructs her to call his office, blames her situation on her neighbors, and then lectures that it is not appropriate for “the government” to intervene in her health care. (Hat Tip Jeffrey Feldman). [youtube: video=”e3jwhLcW_c8″]
I have several questions for the Senator:
You are a Christian and you align yourself with the Christian Right. Did your version of the Greek Scriptures not include the Sermon on the Mount?
This fall I’ll be teaching “Cakes for the Queen of Heaven” again. Shirley Ranck wrote this groundbreaking curriculum about women in Western religion in the late 1970s and early 1980s, but it was first published in 1986. The fact that it took the Unitarian Universalist Association (UUA) at least five years to put it out says a lot about this pioneering course. The UUA is notoriously liberal, even progressive. But this class pushed the buttons of Unitarian Universalist’s still largely male hierarchy, and they delayed publication.
I’ve been reading a fascinating book, Robert Wright’s The Evolution of God. Wright is the author of Nonzero and The Moral Animal, both of which have received great acclaim. I was led to The Evolution of God through an interview in Salon, which led me to the book’s website. The website serves as a wonderful teaser: Wright has the opening thousand words to each of the book’s twenty chapters, which are divided into four sections, one on the birth and growth of gods, and one on each of the Abrahamic religions. Be warned: by the time I finished the third, I knew I was going to buy the book.
Julia Dean and A. Jay Adler have been traveling across the country for the last eight months telling the story of life on Native American reservations through photography and writing. “It seems to us that Native Americans don’t get talked about a lot in America unless you live next to a reservation or have anything to do with Native Americans,” Dean says. “As journalists, we are just trying to do a little something about it.” You can read more about their project in my previous blog post on their work and on their blog, The Sad Red Earth. This week we’re featuring another of Dean’s photo essays, The Catholic Church.
I perform weddings as a lay minister at First Unitarian Society in Madison. Frank Lloyd Wright built our original church, so many non-members want to get married there — too many for our professional ministers to handle. As a result, I often have the opportunity to perform interfaith weddings where I put my Unitarian Universalist (UU) principles to work. UU’s believe in the “inherent worth and dignity of all people,” “acceptance of one another,” and “a free and responsible search for truth and meaning.” Instead of a creed or dogma, what holds us together is a set of seven principles, three of which I just listed for you.
The New York Times reported last week, in response to the Episcopal convention in Anaheim earlier this month, and in light of “profound rifts over sexual issues within Anglicanism,” that Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury, has released a statement addressing the issues of gay clergy and same-sex unions. The Archbishop here signals support for the human dignity and civil liberties of LGBT people. While suggesting that the Anglican Communion recognize “two styles of being Anglican,” however, he also argues that “a certain choice of lifestyle has certain consequences.” The Church, he writes, will only change its stance on the blessing of same-sex unions after they have been justified by “painstaking biblical exegesis” and subsequently widely accepted within the Communion. Until that point, a member of a homosexual couple will continue to be treated just as “a heterosexual person living in a sexual relationship outside the marriage bond.”
“Can sainthood be redefined in progressive terms? For the past decade, an artist named Mark Dukes has been demonstrating that it can.” So wrote Phillip Barcio in the May/June 2009 issue of Tikkun, as he introduced our readers to Dukes’s mural The Dancing Saints, which was commissioned by the St. Gregory of Nyssa Church in San Francisco. In the mural, ninety men and women from history dance hand-in-hand in a circle with Jesus.
Ray McGovern is one of my biggest heroes. In the crazy lead-up to the Iraq war he was one of the leading voices questioning the “intelligence” the Bush White House was using to justify invasion. He led an organization called “Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity” and his organization was right about virtually everything they said was wrong with the White House’s “evidence” against Iraq. In the photo to the left, he is holding the infamous “Torture Memos” from the Bush Justice Department, which he urged participants in a recent anti-torture conference to read, after which he assured those assembled, they would need to take a long shower or bath. McGovern was one of President Ronald Reagan’s intelligence briefers from 1981-85; he was in charge of preparing daily security briefs for Reagan, Vice President George H.W. Bush, the National Security Advisor, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the Cabinet.