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.
____________
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!
This is the seventh 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, First Church of Riverside, focuses on the universality of Christhood as explained in the Gospel of John. The “Name” of God, understood not as a puff of air in the mouth of a humans but as a Divine theological entity, is key to this verse. Promises to be an interesting sermon.
January 12th is John Hancock Day for American Unitarian Reform, the 6th Day of Defiance on the AUR Interval Season liturgical calendar.
Not only was John Hancock a prominent Unitarian, but he has become iconic in American culture for a single, famous act that has out-shined (or over-shadowed, depending on your point-of-view) everything else he did during the Revolution: he signed his name almost absurdly large on the Declaration of Independence.
He has become so iconic, in fact, that his name has become slang for signature.
The moral lesson to be drawn from the icon of Hancock is the importance of committing oneself publicly to a good cause, regardless of the consequences. At the time, Hancock’s signature was an act of treason, and he was putting his own life at risk. By making his decision known in such a public and non-repudiable manner, he was enacting a sort of ritual, the same sort we see at weddings, confirmations, and in oath-taking like that in presidential inaugurations. Continue reading
Today is the first of the 12 Days of Defiance that begin the Winterval Season, the feast day of St. Lucian. Lucian was the teacher of both St. Arius and St. Eusebius, the bishop who baptized Constantine, finally Christianizing the Emperor after a lifetime of religious ambiguity.
He was also the subject of a Notional Reform Unitarian Church image here at the AUR blog.
Not only was Lucian tortured and persecuted by the Romans for years, but his teachings were corrupted after his death by conflationist heretics attempting to reshape the honored Church Father in the mold of Trinitarianism. He was martyred on this day in 312 CE.
New Year’s Day is a day for resolutions, often taking the form of freeing ourselves from slavery to addictions, obsessions, and other bad habits. This renewal through promises to be stronger, healthier, and wiser celebrates one of the cornerstones of American Unitarian Reform: commitment of character.
AUR strives not to promote false salvation, moral justification, and consolation on the cheap, whether its the sort of “bow to dogma and your soul will be spared” comfort of many conservative churches or the “I’m okay, you’re okay, nothing we believe really matters” comfort of many liberal churches.
Spiritual peace and strength are not won by reciting a confession or catechism as if they were magic spells, or by impulsively tossing your life over to God like a hot potato for which you can abdicate all responsibility.
Nor is spiritual peace achieved through conflict-averse relativism or laissez-faire creedlessness, what Unitarian theologian James Luther Adams described unflatteringly as religion you can’t flunk.
Peace, strength, and freedom are achieved only through a resolute struggle, by committing of one’s character to moral growth and accepting a higher Good beyond one’s desires and instincts. New Year’s Day, what AUR calls Resolution Day, provides a unique opportunity to stamp these commitments into our memory at the turning of the calendar.
Continue reading
A new graphic depicting the American Unitarian Reform liturgical calendar has been added to AUR’s LC page. The chart shows the 10-Day Gap, and the rough dates for the Four Great Thursdays: Harvest (or Thanksgiving) Thursday, Garden (or Gethsemane) Thursday, Ascension Thursday, and Declaration Thursday.
Please note, of course, that the seasons from Carnival through Pentecost can vary broadly from year to year.
A rough depiction of the liturgical calender; note that many seasons move from year to year.
On this day in 1830 was born in Amherst, Massachussetts, a girl named Emily Dickinson, raised Unitarian, confirmed Christian as a teenager, and a veritable prophet who gave us a collection of poems that could rightfully be called America’s book of Psalms.
Her simple yet profound spirituality — and her legendary reputation as a mysterious, ghostly personage that people referred to as “The Myth” — place her prominently among the figures revered by the Reform.
Below are reproduced some of her insightful lines, followed by perhaps her most inspired poem: Continue reading
