Tag Archives: unitarian

02/11/10

Music Thursday – Celebrate in Song!

Today is Music Thursday, the 8th Day of Carnival, a day for celebrating life in song!   Music has a strong role in Carnival traditions, particularly in the Americas.

But, that music, and Carnival celebrations in general, often have sexually aggressive content that might make some uncomfortable, or be inappropriate for family Carnival parties with children present.

Sexual expression is a touchy issue at any time, but during holidays when sex tends to come out in to the open, it creates unnecessary tensions between folks who might otherwise get along nicely.

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02/5/10

Notional American Unitarian Reform Church No. 9

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.

02/2/10

Candlemas and Carnival

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.

01/29/10

Response to Yesterday’s Topic

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. 

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01/28/10

The Day Of The Spark

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.

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01/25/10

AUR Influence is Growing, Step by Step

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!

01/25/10

Spear King Day

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.

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01/12/10

Notional American Unitarian Reform Church No. 7

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.

01/11/10

John Hancock Day – The 6th Day of Defiance

john_hancock_signature_civicsJanuary 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 →