Jane Fonda, Obama's Sunday school, and Flower Communion

UU influences on Jane Fonda and Barack Obama?

The actress and political activist Jane Fonda, whose spiritual odyssey generated considerable commentary when she embraced evangelical Christianity in 2001, writes about her faith as a "work in progress" and credits the Rev. Forrest Church, a Unitarian Universalist minister, for the observation that "God is not God's name" ("Jane Fonda," June 10).

The conservative "American Thinker" blog tars President Barack Obama's support for U.S. veterans by describing the Unitarian Universalist church in Honolulu, where Obama attended Sunday school in the early '70s, as a sanctuary for military deserters (June 14).

Meanwhile, UU military chaplain-in-training David Pyle explains why he is reluctant to support congregational outreach to military veterans: "[M]any of our congregations are not ready to receive these veterans in the way they need to be received by a faith community" ("Celestial Lands," June 14).

Affirmation and judgment, Flower Communion, ministerial culture

In a long post about the UUA Principle that affirms and promotes "acceptance of one another and encouragement to spiritual growth in our congregations," the Rev. Fred L. Hammond writes that this means "I cannot judge your experiences as false. I cannot joke about people reading 'Conversations with God' or 'The Secret' or 'The Tibetan Book of the Dead' or 'The Course in Miracles' or even 'The King James Bible red letter edition'" ("A Unitarian Universalist Minister in the South," June 12).

Elizabeth ponders how she could embrace a form of Christianity within the context of her Unitarian Universalism ("Elizabeth's Little Blog," June 13).

The UUA is collecting stories about how Unitarian Universalism has blessed people's lives (UUA.org, June 8).

Paul Oakley's four-year-old UU congregation holds its first Flower Communion, prompting thoughts about how UUs "do" ritual ("Inner Light, Radiant Light," June 9). The Rev. Andrew James Brown tries to avoid sentimentality in the Flower Communion at his congregation in Cambridge, England ("CAUTE," June 7).

Seminarian Erik Resley responds to the Rev. Kenneth Collier's UU World essay about integrating the ego and the spirit by observing, "We must also strive for connection with the more-than-human" ("Embodied Fragments," June 8).

The Rev. Tony Lorenzen examines UU "ministerial culture," and observes that the UUA provides very little guidance for would-be ministers. "People need pastoral care on this journey, but we as a religious association don’t provide it. Instead we have a bureaucratic process" ("Sunflower Chalice," June 12).

UUA presidential election commentary

The website of DRUUMM (Diverse Revolutionary Unitarian Universalist Multicultural Ministries) posts four questions the organization posed to the two UUA presidential candidates and publishes the responses they received (June 5).

The Real Anonymous explains why she wishes the Rev. Rosemary Bray McNatt were running for the UUA presidency ("It's 5 O'Clock Somewhere," June 12).

The Rev. Thomas Perchlik, responding to comments in several articles in the the Summer UU World, writes: "[E]ven if a candidate for the UUA Presidency tells us 'We are the religion for our time,' the fact is that most of us do not think we are a religion, but either a smorgasboard of religions, or something that enhances the flavor of religion cooked up somewhere else" (June 8).

UU responses to political violence

Sara Robinson, who has been writing about the apparently politically motivated murders of a Kansas abortion doctor and a black security guard at the U.S. Holocaust Museum, posts a letter to "Conservatives" that asks, "Are you deliberately trying to start a civil war?" ("Orcinus," June 11, 12).

Pondering UU reactions to right-wing violence, the Rev. Victoria Weinstein voices skepticism about the potential of reason to overcome hate: "I don’t believe—have never believed—that what will heal the world of hateful fundamentalisms is rationalism, but humility and reverence" ("PeaceBang," June 11).

The Rev. Mary Wellemeyer urges liberals to reach out to fearful and apocalyptically minded conservatives. "There is no way to tell how many degrees of separation there are between us in our liberal cocoons and them in their right-wing ones, but to have any hope at all of reaching the next potential shooter before he (or she) shoots, we have to move toward them with courage, love, patience, and hope" ("A Larger Faith," June 13).

Bill Baar, meanwhile, is keeping an eye on the tumult in Iran following the contested election for president ("Pfarrer Streccius").