An escape from tradition, a New Yorker story, and more

An escape from traditional religions
It isn't often that you get to read a UU elevator speech in the local paper. That's what makes this Michigan couple's explanation of Unitarian Universalism and why they chose to become UUs so interesting. (Battle Creek Enquirer - Battle Creek, MI 2.18.06)

Arguing against intelligent design
Activist Eugenie Scott--whose legal team at the National Center for Science Education in Oakland, California, recently advised Pennsylvania parents who took their local school board to court over teaching intelligent design--visited the Unitarian Universalist Church of Greensboro, North Carolina, to speak against the theory. (News and Record - Greensboro, NC 2.23.06)

And speaker Ellery Schempp warned the Greater Worcester Humanists at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Worcester, Massachusetts, that the Religious Right will continue its mission to get intelligent design and prayer in schools as part of its far-reaching agenda, which would ultimately have Christianity suffuse all aspects of American life. (Worcester Telegram - Worcester, MA 2.21.06)

See also: "A Victory for the Heretics" (UU World - January/February 2003)

'My Father's Tears'
John Updike's latest short story for the New Yorker is a memoir by a narrator whose father-in-law was a Unitarian minister. The narrator obviously didn't admire his father-in-law's religion:

"As for Unitarianism, it seemed so milky, so smugly vague and evasive . . . I had read enough Kierkegaard and Barth and Unamuno to know about the leap of faith, and Reverend Whitworth was not making that leap; he was taking naps and building stone walls instead. In his bedroom I spotted a paperback Tillich, The Courage to Be, probably, but I never caught him reading it, or The Master Works of World Philosophy, either. The only time I felt him as a holy man was when, speaking with deliberate tenderness to one of his three daughters, he slipped into a “thee” or “thou” from his Quaker boyhood."

(New Yorker - New York, NY 2.20.06)

Also in the media this week:
Author Nick Gier looks at the liberal religious values of George Washington and suggests, as did Bird Wilson in a famous 1831 sermon, that Washington may have been a Unitarian. (New West - Missoula, MT 2.20.06)

Two years after they became the first same-sex couple to be unofficially married in New Paltz, New York, Billiam vanRoestenberg and Jeffrey McGowan have announced their decision to divorce. (Mid-Hudson News - Newburgh, NY 2.18.06)

Fifteen same-sex couples in Texas participated in a mass wedding ceremony on February 18 officiated by an interfaith panel of clergy, including officials from a UU church. (Houstonvoice.com - Houston, TX 2.20.06)

Another UU congregation goes green by embracing geothermal power. (Quad City Times - Davenport, IA 2.20.06)