In praise of factions, UU 'Good Ole Boys,' and Twitter

A few posts on theology

Paul Oakley is blogging about his experiences as a seminarian at Meadville Lombard Theological School at "Inner Light, Radiant Life." He's an engaging blogger, and you can follow along starting with this post:

I've finished my first class at Meadville Lombard Theological School: an intensive preaching course. There were 16 students, and each of us gave 2 sermons. So, including the sermon preached by our teacher, we were inundated with 33 sermons over the course of 5 afternoons. Wah...! (July 11)

Reflecting on a local billboard that says "Imagine No Religion," the Rev. Fred L Hammond writes at "A Unitarian Universalist Minister in the South":

The right to free speech is a quirky right. It means that dissenting minority opinions have the right to be expressed. It does not mean that everyone must agree with the message being presented. It’s quirky because speech when given free reign is bound to offend even when it is given as an invitation to debate. (July 14)

Kim Hampton at "East of Midnight" proposes that atheists have a theology (July 15). David Pyle at "Celestial Lands" writes about the Creation as the Word of God (July 19).

ChaliceChick at "The Chaliceblog" doesn't want the Seven Principles used as a creed:

Given that people are going to treat the seven principles as a creed anyway and that a change to them would effect everybody at least in the sense that we'd need new bookmarks and RE materials, shouldn't we have more than a bunch of GA junkies voting for them? (July 14)

Which brings us back to the recent UUA elections. The Rev. Tom Schade at "The Lively Tradition" has had a lively week, including several posts proposing different mechanisms for selecting the UUA presdient, culiminating in a post calling for the creation of factions within Unitarian Universalism in order to increase democratic process.

Factions orient voters to the overall situation. What I hear is that most UU's think that there are really just two factions: the insiders and the outsiders, and you can't tell one from the other. Actually, I would suspect that there are several groupings of people who have different priorities for the UUA. (July 17)

What it means to be a UU

The Rev. Victoria Weinstein worries at "PeaceBang" about scrubbing the membership rolls:

I want to say how frustrating it is to have to “clean the books” so frequently in order to have accurate numbers to report to the UUA.

Part of me is in favor of accurate numbers.

But another part of me thinks that if someone joins a church and thinks of it as their church, even if they don’t attend regularly (or ever), and if it was their grandparents’ church, or even if they’re just holding a place so that they have somewhere to be memorialized when they die, we should keep them on the rolls. (July 19)

The scholar of religious studies who blogs at "Transient and Permanent" reflects that "Most religions have no concept of congregational membership." He adds: "Let’s recall also for a moment that families used to literally own or lease the pews in Unitarian and Universalist churches, and that this practice only died out in the 20th century." (July 20)

Lizard Eater at "The Journey" describes her corner of UU culture in Texas:

What? You thought Good Ole Boys were only uneducated bigots? Then you don't know Good Ole Boys, my friend. There were Good Ole Boys at Selma, too -- and they were walking with the protestors. (July 16)

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