This is the ninth in a series of light-hearted signs for hypothetical American Unitarian Reform churches, created using an online image generator. We hope to show a range of attitudes and ideas all possible within the scope of AUR.
Today’s notional church is the Reformed Unitarian Church of the Apocalyptic Saints, appropriately promising a homily on the spiritual perils of partisanship.
As happens roughly once every four years or so in Reform Unitarianism, Candlemas is falling on Carnival Thursday.
In most Christian churches, Candlemas celebrates only the presentation of Jesus at the Temple as a baby by Mary and Joseph. However, AUR also celebrates another Temple-related event on this day: the Disputation, when a 12-year-old Jesus debated the Torah with Jewish elders.
In this way, both biblical narratives of the life of Jesus between the Nativity and Ministry are brought together on one day, the first Thursday in February. Candlemas is a special day for celebrating children and childhood, and particularly for recognizing the maturation from helpless infancy to the assertive character of youth.
Carnival, on the other hand, has traditionally been for revelry of a more exuberant and adolescent nature, and in AUR a moment of respite between the Winterval fast starting on Resolution Day and the Lenten fast beginning Ash Wednesday.
Candlemas-Carnival Conjunct!
From the canonical scriptures, we know nothing of Jesus’ youth after the Disputation.* But, there are clues in his later ministry as to how he spent his youth, clues that bring Christian meaning to Carnival … and a little Carnival spirit to an often-staid and dry Christianity.
In the Gospel of Matthew (11:18-19), Jesus is recorded as saying:
John came neither eating nor drinking, and they say, ‘He has a demon!’ The Son of Man came eating and drinking, and they say, ‘Look, a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners!’ Yet Wisdom is vindicated by Her deeds.
Jesus clearly liked good drink, good food, and interesting company!
This is, of course, not to endorse the vicious extremes of drunkenness or alcoholism, but as part of a general celebration of the pleasures of God’s Creation, including food, music, and the company of our neighbors, Carnival certainly has Christian meaning with a liturgical connection to the life of Jesus himself.
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NOTE: Carnival celebrations for Reform Unitarians should not start (or continue, in years when Carnival begins before Candlemas) until after 6 p.m. that on Candlemas Thursday.
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* Non-canonical “infancy” Gospels, however, contain some interesting (if dubious) tales.
This is the eighth in a series of light-hearted signs for hypothetical American Unitarian Reform churches, created using an online image generator. We hope to show a range of attitudes and ideas all possible within the scope of AUR.
The sign for today’s notional church, St. Arius of Africa, presents an interesting take on the martyr Arius, likely a Berber, and thus of North African descent. The hypothetical sermon refers to Isaac Newton, who wrote a treatise in defense of Arius and indicting his persecutors. Unfortunately, Newton had some very harsh things to say about Catholics, and honoring him is therefore a tricky matter for Reform Unitarians.
The American Unitarian Reform blog has added two new variations of the Two Trees symbol, using a more modernist graphic style suited to educational materials for kids and teens. The first is a general Unitarian Reform image, the second a specifically American Unitarian Reform version.
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The Action Thursday entry yesterday elicited email responses concerning the mixing of politics and religion. One reader quoted a popular bumper sticker: “The last time we mixed politics and religion, people were burned at the stake!”
Which makes us wonder if they’ve ever heard of Martin Luther King.
Granted, religion was also in the mouths of white supremacists who opposed Dr. King. This fact, however, simply strengthens the argument that the good should not shy away from pressing the politics of justice with religious reasoning.
The real question about mixing politics and religion is not whether you do, but how you do it, and to what end. As with the Divine Right of Kings discussed yesterday, the unjust will mix them whether the just do or not, and if you fail to address religious arguments laid forth in service to injustice, you’ve ceded the contest to evil.
To paraphrase a quote attributed to Edmund Burke, the only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good people to fail to engage evil where it actually wages war.
Saturday will be the Day of the Spark, the 12th Day of Action and end of the Winter Interval Season.
The subject of this Ultimate Thursday’s posting will be “The Spark” itself: a story of inspiration for those who seek justice and truth in matters where politics and religion are already inextricably intertwined.
Readership of the American Unitarian Reform outreach blog has been growing month by month, and January is set to be the fourth month in a row of broken records! Readers who contact us seem to fall into three broad groups based on their attraction to the movement.
Some are mainline Christians anxious about the implications of biblical scholarship for their religion, and find Unitarian Reform’s reverent but measured attitude toward scripture a comforting alternative to abandoning their faith or surrendering it to the fraud of biblical inerrancy .
Some who identify as Unitarian Universalists are looking for deeper meaning and structure, or relief from what they feel is an aggressive undercurrent of atheist, anti-religious prejudice in some parts of the UU community.
Other readers who fall into the “spiritual not religious” category say they would like greater structure in their spiritual life without the exclusionist condemnation so typical of organized religion.
None of these readers are converting or organizing new congregations, but they are helping to boost our readership and our spirits! Thanks again!
Genseric, meaning Spear King, leader of the much-maligned Vandals, was one of the last Unitarian Christian leaders in the ancient world. Why AUR would want to celebrate the life of a man who sacked Rome, persecuted other Christians, and whose people gave us the word “vandalize”?
The bad reputation of Genseric and his Vandals is a good example of history being written by the victors. This is not to say that they were saints, particularly by the moral standards of the 21st Century. However, compared to the “ecclesiastical mafia” of Trinitarian saint Athanasius* or the cultic totalitarianism of Theodosius “The Great” who declared Nicene Christianity the only allowable religion in the Empire, Genseric was a bleeding-heart liberal.
Henry Knox was the son of a ship’s captain who died when the boy was nine. Henry began working as a bookstore clerk at 12 to support his mother, and later opened his own bookstore. If Knox’s story ended there, it would be a remarkable tale of trial, strength, survival, and ingenuity.
But, Henry Knox was also a soldier during the American Revolution, commissioned a Colonel by George Washington and tasked with bringing 60 tons of artillery from Crown Point and Ticonderoga in upstate New York to the Seige of Boston, a journey of 300 miles over unimproved terrain.
To make Knox’s mission even worse, snow began covering the ground. Knox refused to see the heavy snowfall as a hindrance, instead seeking in it some opportunity. Rather than plowing through the snow, he put the cannon on sleds and slid them over it.
Although it may seem out of place to celebrate a military maneuver as an act of piety, by accomodating providence rather than resisting it Henry Knox exemplified the spirit of “Thy Will Be Done.” The arrival of these cannon in Boston a mere 56 days after their departure has been described as miraculous, but it was in fact the wise action of Henry Knox that achieved what many believed could not be achieved, by applying his God-given reason to a God-given blessing that others might have seen as a curse.
Today, on the 6th Day of Action, we celebrate Knox’s achievement.
Today is the First of the 12 Days of Action, also known in AUR as International Family Day in honor of Saints Maris and Martha, a married couple from the Persian aristocracy, and their sons Audifax and Abakhum. According to legend, this family immigrated to Rome to give aid to persecuted Christians, including providing proper burial for those martyred.
For this offense, they were tortured and, when they refused to turn away from Christianity, executed: the men were beheaded and burned while Martha was drowned in a well.
This holiday is particularly celebrated for bringing together peoples of different cultures, nationalities, and social circumstances, for commemorating a marriage based on a mutual sense of mission, and for exemplifying (in the fire/water imagery of their martyrdom) the symbology of complementary virtues so central to “Tap Root” Christianity’s moral system, yet usually glossed over in Shallow Root and even Deep Root churches.
Remember this day their bravery in the face of oppression, and their devotion to each other, to their convictions, and to universal justice.
