Paul Wilczynski's Observations

Should UUs accomodate every idea and every person?

John Keohane writes in a Unitarian Universalist Association mailing list posting ...

"The attempt, variously to accomodate everyone, no matter what intellect, no matter what interest in learning, no matter what interest in religion, is a weak tea, that won't and does not work. It is part of why membership in the UUA is down to about the numbers (less than 157,000 adult and youth members), that one of the two organizations which merged to become the UUA, the American Unitarian Association, had as its membership at the time of merger, in 1961. Meanwhile, the United States has increased by approximately 100 million in population. The UUA is becoming a spec on the horizon."

At the risk of becoming very personal, here are some of my own reflections on what is wrong with the UUA, and what can be done to right it.

1. We need to have a focus, beyond what we are not. Years ago, as students at Meadville, we talked about the revolving door. People would leave orthodoxy for Unitarianism, then decompress, then go to nothing. That still happens. That is still PART of our role. But we need to add the priestly role.

2. The prisetly role includes real care and feeding of people. It does not require "God" language. It can be done well, and poetically, in quite humanist language, as the late Von Ogden Vogt and A. Powell Davies both Unitarian ministers of the 20th c., made clear. Vogt's "The Primacy of Worship", is a little book 1965, Starr King Press. It is only a little over 100 pages long, and needs to discovered, and republished (yes, I own a copy), along with some of Vogt's and other orders of service.

3. We need to differentiate between being open to everyone's ideas and input, and to the "post-modern" illogic that states that everyone's ideas and input are equally valuable. They're not. When we have people in the pulpit, we should go for excellence, not for just anyone, or everyone. When we have discussions of politics, or religion, we should let everyone participate, but should use our most expert discussion leaders to lead.

4. We need to say who we are, and not in terms of the "Seven Principles", which, as UUA President Bill Sinkford suggests, no one can remember. We're for individual freedom of belief, discipleship to advancing truth, the democratic process in human relations. We're for worship of the good the true, the beautiful (read Vogt's book). We're for living values in our lives (the Good Samaritan is our self-image).

5. We live in a predominately Christian culture, or one that thinks about itself as "Christian", so we best be knowledgable about the Bible, and about church history. I was dismayed to read the musings of a UU minister here in Texas a few years ago, who wrote in his newsletter that the Catholic church had been abusing women for thousands and thousands of years. I pointed out that that the Catholic church did not even claim to have existed for as much as two thousand years. He modified his remarks to say "two thousand", which was still inaccurate, and pulled from the air. He was a graduate of one of our UU institutions, the Starr King School for the Ministry, and this minister had been on the planning committee for GA! Egads. What might be relevant might be classes in real Bible study. It's hard to have a fundamentalist view of the Bible if one actually looks at the two stories of creation in Genesis, in one of which he rests before he makes man, and in the other he makes man, then rests. I can explain this quite easily by the difference between the E and J strains making up Genesis, but then, I have taken courses in Bible at the University of Chicago.

6. Get away from having as "Adult Education" courses stuff the local community college might offer as well, or better in its own "Continuing Education" courses, or which might be offerred commercially easily and well, such as the "yoga" which my wife took recently (commercially, not at a UU church). Skip the "yoga", the horoscope, the miscellaneous trivia stuff. Get into the politics with a continuing colloquy, where no topic is cut off prematurely, and no topic is put on artificial life-support, but where discussion flows, and yet no one can dominate (I've led this kind of thing, years ago, at a UU church, and can add how to do it in this forum). Discuss the Bible. Do that, not just with reading passages, including contradictory passages, but also by reference to E and J strains in Genesis, "Higher criticism, literary and historical analysis. There are lots of published materials for this. Let's get with it, to be particularly relevant to people in our culture in this country where we live (if we were in India, I would be pushing getting more into Hindu writings).Learn about Christian church history. It's exciting, though at times bloody, stuff. Learn about Unitarian heros and heroines. Our local UU minister said to me, that "the Catholics have much better heros". He had never heard of Sen. Paul H. Douglas, Emily Taft Douglas, Dr. Maurice B. Visscher. Read about all these on www.famousuus.com Learn about our history, and our people.

7. Focus worship. Don't just give off different Sundays to this or that. Don't have screaming babies in for church service (First UU in Austin does that right, with a separate, sound-proof gallery if one is bringing small infants). Do have an order of service which makes sense psychologically. Do get some singable hymns (Singing--The Living Tradition, our current, and I hope not much longer, UUA hymnal is a living disaster). Don't put up with the kind of low-quality, personalistic or academically erudite but obscure homilies that sometimes pass for sermons.

8. Evangelize. Get out the good word, about what we are about, to visitors at our churches, and to others at our churches, and in our communities. Years ago, the Unitarian Laymens League had advertisements saying "Are you a Unitarian without Knowing It". They had a focus. They were effective. Another way to be effective is to revive, and give support to the fellowship movement. Some of those fellowships later died, some never got large, but many grew into some of our larger churches (the largest church in Colorado, for one, churches around DC, for others).

This is a short list, and just a beginning. I look forward to continuing the e-dialogue with all of you.

Best regards,
John Keohane
Austin, TX

posted by Paul Wilczynski @ 2:44 PM