We have a new extended deadline of July 30 to try to raise the still needed $100 from 80 people, or $50 from 160 people, etc. goal to make the Miracle Among the Ruins happen. Become a part of this groundbreaking, literally, community renewal project here where both community and hope is much needed. Removing the abandoned properties, transforming a full city block overlooking downtown Tulsa, into a community garden and kitchen and green space, here where we have the lowest income lowest life expectancy will have ripple effects not only here but elsewhere. The Welcome Table Community Kitchen Garden project is worthy of your investment, and passing it on to others so they too can experience the miracle. Go to http://www.turleyok.blogspot.com/ for all the links and to easily and safely Donate, Don't Wait.
Below is an additional update on all the news lately about this project, about our group, and about our upcoming activities.
Hi all from Minneapolis where I have been working this past week.
Our A Third Place Community Center has been much in the news lately. See below. Many good things happening, but our current major project is stalled and needs your help. But, first some inspiring news from here.
Had a fascinating talk, among all the other good things here, with a community renewal group Hope Community here that was very inspiring; of course they have been around for 30 years and for the first 20 years they said they were operating out of one place, doing good work, but then all at once things began to happen exponentially for them and they have been buying and renovating housing expecially for those without and building social services and community into the fabric of the housing in this lowest income area of Minneapolis. So I am reminded to take the long perspective, to see setbacks as new opportunities for connecting deeper, and to live in all the blessings of so much wonderful healing stuff that is going on in our small abandoned part of the Empire all with volunteers. I also presented a couple of workshops and discussions here in Minneapolis about our transformational work and the feedback was very positive and seeds were sown as others were talking about attempting similar projects in their areas and about forming a Missional and Progressive Network to help support one another.
Now back to the local front and our media stories.
If you haven't already seen our television news story that was done about us and our specific Welcome Table transformational project here, you can see the video on our blog at http://turleyok.blogspot.com/2010/06/channel-six-news-story-on-our-miracle.html. Watch and please pass it on to others. That blogpost also has links to all the other documents and videos about this project to reclaim one block of abandoned rundown property turning it into community space here in the zipcode with the lowest life expectancy lowest income and a shooting every day. I had a conversation with a woman at our Turley Free Festival we threw for the whole community back before I left; she at first was reluctant to support the project because of the very reason it is needed where it is needed; she said she would be scared to take her children there to use it. That is one of the many catch 22s from the folks here and about our neighborhood. But I told her it would be as safe as any place can be made safe, and that we have to start somewhere or else, as history has shown us, the unsafe places will continue to take over more and more area block by block. We can reverse it only block by block. This block, overlooking downtown Tulsa, and bridging two diverse equally endangered neighborhoods, is both a symbolic block to start with, and a practical one. We can get it for a relatively inexpensive price of $15,000 for the 12 city lots, an acre, and we have the volunteer support and other resources to get the project growing once we are able to buy it and get it going.
After the local tv news show aired, one evening and most of the rest of the next day, we still did not get a single contribution online in response to it. In fact the only contribution we got after it, and throughout the Turley Free Festival, was $40 that actually came from the very woman who had expressed those safety concerns about taking her family to the park; she came around, and I believe others can also.
We also had a good article in the Tulsa World on Sunday, June 20, about our community renewal efforts as a grassroots dedicated group of local missional minded folks who have formed a partnership between campus and community with various departments at the University of Oklahoma which have been so meaningful to our residents. You can read that article here http://www.tulsaworld.com/news/article.aspx?subjectid=11&articleid=20100620_11_A18_TheRev414018&archive=yes.
And we have launched our foodjustice program into a new realm with the start of our partnership with the Food Bank, augmenting our local donations and local home grown donations. We have had some 1300 pounds of food for our residents just in the past week and a half. Not to mention feeding the community with our community meals during the Free Festival, and with our Sunday common meals after worship.
Still after the Tulsa World article about us, we still received not a single contribution online. Since I have been away I am not sure, and am hopeful, about some contributions that might have come in by mail.
We applied for the Gardens For Good contest grant through http://www.justmeans.com/ and promoted it online but didn't get enough votes for our project to make it into the finals of the contest.
We do have a means now to handle stock donations toward us and our project, so if you would like to join with one who is doing that please contact me for details.
This coming month we will have partnership work with OU medical students today, and on Fridays July 9 and 16 and we will be partnering with OU social work students on projects in the community again this coming weekend on July 2 and 3; and also we are helping to do a big anti poverty education program at OBrien Park with OU on July 23. We are also meeting during the month to begin partnerships with the Y in racial justice work. And we are continuing to work during the summer toward ways to be a helping presence with McLain High School and the other schools in our area. The bookmobile will continue its return to our area thanks to our presence here....And we will soon be the only OU community health clinic north of Admiral due to cutbacks; our own contract with them has been reduced to one year, but we are ever hopeful that funding will be found so we can continue offering health care so needed here in our zipcodes of much need. The fact that we are here and providing space to allow the clinic to be here says a lot about our vision and our mission.
So the work goes on, and we still have about a week left, unless there are some changes that will extend our deadline, to simply (!) find 80 more people who will give $100 (or something equivalent to it; maybe your churches can take up a collection?) so we can buy that land and change the landscape. Thank you so much to those of you who have made a donation, and who have even gone without eating out once or twice or more during the month so they could send that money to us, or you who have passed my emails or blog links here or on facebook on to others with a note that you have given and you hope they will too. It makes all the difference. Donations are easy to make online at http://www.turleyok.blogspot.com/.
I will give more updates upon my return back to Oklahoma. Keep us all in your prayers, as we keep you in ours, blessings, thanks, and more soon, Ron
Monday, June 28, 2010
If you are finding this website after the General Assembly Missional Workshop...
...Welcome. The workshop just barely scratched the surface of challenging our thinking about how our images and ideas of church limit our transformational possibilities. Hope you will browse the titles on the right and dip into the exciting world of being both missional and progressive.
Also on the handout that I gave out, on the back there was a chance to support our group and our work here in one very important project, the Miracle Among the Ruins project. Please consider contributing to this and becoming a part of our work here. Go to www.turleyok.blogspot for more and to contribute easily and safely.
And above all, be ready to respond when we put out our calling to form the Missional and Progressive Network; in the meantime, pass on in this space your own dreams, your plans, your questions, and carrying on the conversation.
If you didn't go to GA, you can read the handout below that went with it; I just augmented it with the Small Talk essays which have been linked to here, plus some of the latest updates on our work in this part of Tulsa, and an order of service for our common worship liturgy.
Thanks and blessings and more soon, Ron
PS. You can also order a CD of the GA workshop by going to the www.uua.org/ga site and looking for Friday program 3014, Turning Your Congregation Inside Out.
Also on the handout that I gave out, on the back there was a chance to support our group and our work here in one very important project, the Miracle Among the Ruins project. Please consider contributing to this and becoming a part of our work here. Go to www.turleyok.blogspot for more and to contribute easily and safely.
And above all, be ready to respond when we put out our calling to form the Missional and Progressive Network; in the meantime, pass on in this space your own dreams, your plans, your questions, and carrying on the conversation.
If you didn't go to GA, you can read the handout below that went with it; I just augmented it with the Small Talk essays which have been linked to here, plus some of the latest updates on our work in this part of Tulsa, and an order of service for our common worship liturgy.
Thanks and blessings and more soon, Ron
PS. You can also order a CD of the GA workshop by going to the www.uua.org/ga site and looking for Friday program 3014, Turning Your Congregation Inside Out.
Sunday, June 20, 2010
The Handout for The Growing Missional Communities GA Workshop
Turning Your Congregation Inside Out: Growing Missional Communities
GA 2010, Minneapolis
Ron Robinson, www.progressivechurchplanting.blogspot.com
I. Introduction of Speakers and Workshop
II. The Big Picture: Joel Miller and Michael Durall
III. A Third Place Community in TulsaNorth/Turley, OK: Ron Robinson
IV. Responses from Panelists and Questions from Audience
See Handouts on Resources in General, and Sample Materials from the Oklahoma church
Understanding Difference of Terms: Missionary, Missions, Mission, Missional
Missio: Greek for sending.
Missionary: traditional frame connotes one who is sent to claim someone else and make them like oneself.
Missions: traditional frame connotes what is done for others often at a distance.
Mission: traditional frame is another word for purpose or reason for one’s existence, as in mission statement.
Missional: Being Sent as a people into the world in order to serve with others especially for those in need in order to meet one’s own needs for growth and transformation from encountering and learning from others. It is NOT another community outreach program.
The Church Does Not Have A Mission. The Mission Has A Church. Church is Created in Response to Mission. The mission doesn’t change. The church changes to bring itself into better right relationship with the Mission that is responsible for its creation. Mission is not to “attend a church” but to “become the church wherever you, and at least another, live out the mission”.
“If your church disappeared, would the average person in your community even notice, much less be affected in their daily life?”
Telling Story of Church at A Third Place by Seeing Shifting Along The Spectrums From:
“Come to us” to “Go to them”, Attractional to Incarnational
Internal to External, Program to People, Church to Community Leadership
Anxious to Abundant, the “Enough Church”
Organizational to Organic, Fixed to Flexible
“a church” to “the church”, institution to movement
Service with others for others precedes and takes priority over the Worship Service as central act, and worship becomes a still vital gathering to refresh for service, to deepen spirit of leaders, focused more for leaders than visitors whose primary contact is work in the community. Renewing historic congregationalist relationship of church and parish.
Growing Smaller To Do Bigger Things
Complex to Simple: Gather for Conversation, Launch Experiments, Plot Goodness
Members to “Participants/Partners/Leaders”
Building/Budget/Bylaws/ to DNA Mission Culture
Paid Staff to Volunteer, bi/tri vocational ministry
One group to many groups, regional to very local focus
Denominational to Missional Networked
Believe/Belong/Behave to Belong/Behave/Believe
Spectator Spirituality to Life Transformation Group
One Hour Together to “New Monasticism”
Shift From Places Wealthy in “Affluence, Appearance and Achievement” to “The Abandoned Places of Empire” For 3Rs of Relocation, Redistribution, Reconciliation
No/Low Commitment to Covenanted Discipline of daily prayer/blessing and random acts of kindness and beauty, weekly worship, monthly accountability check, annual retreat, lifetime pilgrimage; goal to work toward of 80 percent of finances going to others, 10 percent savings, 10 percent to live on personally.
Tensions We Face As Missional Community: strengths can become weaknesses
Relationship of Church Planter/Minister and Church: strong planter creates mission-focused group, but can become still clergy/starting leader –focused.
Bi/tri-vocational minister, no paid minister, accountability issues?
How to transition as we grow as a core group? How reproduce?
Focus on missional activities with others is spiritual development, but intentional personal and community spiritual practice can be out of balance.
Missional Communities Come In Different Manifestations and Possibilities:
1. Starting New Groups As a Strategy of Planting Church-Planting Churches, for the survival of the Association
2. Taking Established “Church” dividing into smaller “churches” and seeding into different areas, strength and health spreading
3. Transforming a Struggling Anxious Church by Redefining its “smallness” as strength and blessing in order to begin the process of shifting and becoming something different
4. Existing Sending Church Remains Virtually the same but equips and sends out “mission teams” of 5-7 people to begin serving/living/worshipping in different areas, ways.
5. Designating part of your existing space/programs/staff for the needs of wider community
6. Find ways to relocate central worship on a regular basis, start new worship in a different location
7. Eat together more often and with other groups more often and in other spaces more often. Potluck in Parks and Places with Those who are Hungry.
8. Partner with other churches who also are doing or wanting to experiment going missional
9. Combinations of the Above.
Missional Communities Resources: A Sample List
Books: The Almost Church Revitalized by Michael Durall; Missional Renaissance by Reggie McNeal; The Shaping of Things To Come by Michael Frost and Alan Hirsch; Exiles by Michael Frost; The Forgotten Ways by Alan Hirsch, ReJesus by Frost and Hirsch, Jesus The Fool by Michael Frost; Christianity Rediscovered by Vincent Donovan (most of the books on this list are very contemporary; Donovan’s pivotal book is from the 70s); Welcoming Justice by John Perkins, Let Justice Roll Down by John Perkins, Follow Me To Freedom by John Perkins and Shane Claiborne, The Irresistible Revolution by Shane Claiborne, Houses That Change The World, Wolfgang Simson, Emerging Church by Ryan Bolger and Eddie Gibbs, The Organic Church and Search and Rescue, both by Neil Cole, Life of the Beloved by Henri Nouwen, The New Conspirators by Tom Sine, The New Friars by Scott Bessenecker, The Tangible Kingdom by Hugh Halter and Matt Smay; The New Monasticism and School(s) for Conversion, both by Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove, Church Morph by Eddie Gibbs, Reimagine The World by Bernard Brandon Scott, Revolution by George Barna, Pagan Christianity by Frank Viola, UnChristian by David Kinnamon; The Secret Message of Jesus, especially appendix, by Brian McLaren, Under The Radar by Bill Easum, An Altar in the World by Barbara Brown Taylor, Planting Missional Churches by Ed Stetzer, Inside The Organic Church by Bob Whitesel. Lyle Schaller’s books especially The New Contexts For Ministry, and What We Have Learned, and From Geography to Affinity, and for cultural work see the work Postmodern Pilgrims by Leonard Sweet and his other books, and the other books by Bill Easum and Tom Bandy, and The House Church Manual by William Tenny-Brittain, and The Small Church At Large by Robin Trebilcock.
Films: Entertaining Angels: The Dorothy Day story; Romero; The Least of These; Briars in the Cotton Patch: Koinonia; Places in the Heart, The Spitfire Grill, Chocolat, Babette’s Feast, Man on Wire, The Blind Side, The Shawshank Redemption, The Blues Brothers
Websites: www.progressivechurchplanting.blogspot.com, www.msainfo.org, http://www.shenango.org/PDF/PMC/Missional%20Church%20bibliography%20_2_.pdf, www.thesimpleway.org, www.theooze.com, www.emergentvillage.com, www.cmaresources.org, www.vitalcongregations.com, http://revthom.blogspot.com/2010/04/sermon-abandoned-places-of-empire.html
GA 2010, Minneapolis
Ron Robinson, www.progressivechurchplanting.blogspot.com
I. Introduction of Speakers and Workshop
II. The Big Picture: Joel Miller and Michael Durall
III. A Third Place Community in TulsaNorth/Turley, OK: Ron Robinson
IV. Responses from Panelists and Questions from Audience
See Handouts on Resources in General, and Sample Materials from the Oklahoma church
Understanding Difference of Terms: Missionary, Missions, Mission, Missional
Missio: Greek for sending.
Missionary: traditional frame connotes one who is sent to claim someone else and make them like oneself.
Missions: traditional frame connotes what is done for others often at a distance.
Mission: traditional frame is another word for purpose or reason for one’s existence, as in mission statement.
Missional: Being Sent as a people into the world in order to serve with others especially for those in need in order to meet one’s own needs for growth and transformation from encountering and learning from others. It is NOT another community outreach program.
The Church Does Not Have A Mission. The Mission Has A Church. Church is Created in Response to Mission. The mission doesn’t change. The church changes to bring itself into better right relationship with the Mission that is responsible for its creation. Mission is not to “attend a church” but to “become the church wherever you, and at least another, live out the mission”.
“If your church disappeared, would the average person in your community even notice, much less be affected in their daily life?”
Telling Story of Church at A Third Place by Seeing Shifting Along The Spectrums From:
“Come to us” to “Go to them”, Attractional to Incarnational
Internal to External, Program to People, Church to Community Leadership
Anxious to Abundant, the “Enough Church”
Organizational to Organic, Fixed to Flexible
“a church” to “the church”, institution to movement
Service with others for others precedes and takes priority over the Worship Service as central act, and worship becomes a still vital gathering to refresh for service, to deepen spirit of leaders, focused more for leaders than visitors whose primary contact is work in the community. Renewing historic congregationalist relationship of church and parish.
Growing Smaller To Do Bigger Things
Complex to Simple: Gather for Conversation, Launch Experiments, Plot Goodness
Members to “Participants/Partners/Leaders”
Building/Budget/Bylaws/ to DNA Mission Culture
Paid Staff to Volunteer, bi/tri vocational ministry
One group to many groups, regional to very local focus
Denominational to Missional Networked
Believe/Belong/Behave to Belong/Behave/Believe
Spectator Spirituality to Life Transformation Group
One Hour Together to “New Monasticism”
Shift From Places Wealthy in “Affluence, Appearance and Achievement” to “The Abandoned Places of Empire” For 3Rs of Relocation, Redistribution, Reconciliation
No/Low Commitment to Covenanted Discipline of daily prayer/blessing and random acts of kindness and beauty, weekly worship, monthly accountability check, annual retreat, lifetime pilgrimage; goal to work toward of 80 percent of finances going to others, 10 percent savings, 10 percent to live on personally.
Tensions We Face As Missional Community: strengths can become weaknesses
Relationship of Church Planter/Minister and Church: strong planter creates mission-focused group, but can become still clergy/starting leader –focused.
Bi/tri-vocational minister, no paid minister, accountability issues?
How to transition as we grow as a core group? How reproduce?
Focus on missional activities with others is spiritual development, but intentional personal and community spiritual practice can be out of balance.
Missional Communities Come In Different Manifestations and Possibilities:
1. Starting New Groups As a Strategy of Planting Church-Planting Churches, for the survival of the Association
2. Taking Established “Church” dividing into smaller “churches” and seeding into different areas, strength and health spreading
3. Transforming a Struggling Anxious Church by Redefining its “smallness” as strength and blessing in order to begin the process of shifting and becoming something different
4. Existing Sending Church Remains Virtually the same but equips and sends out “mission teams” of 5-7 people to begin serving/living/worshipping in different areas, ways.
5. Designating part of your existing space/programs/staff for the needs of wider community
6. Find ways to relocate central worship on a regular basis, start new worship in a different location
7. Eat together more often and with other groups more often and in other spaces more often. Potluck in Parks and Places with Those who are Hungry.
8. Partner with other churches who also are doing or wanting to experiment going missional
9. Combinations of the Above.
Missional Communities Resources: A Sample List
Books: The Almost Church Revitalized by Michael Durall; Missional Renaissance by Reggie McNeal; The Shaping of Things To Come by Michael Frost and Alan Hirsch; Exiles by Michael Frost; The Forgotten Ways by Alan Hirsch, ReJesus by Frost and Hirsch, Jesus The Fool by Michael Frost; Christianity Rediscovered by Vincent Donovan (most of the books on this list are very contemporary; Donovan’s pivotal book is from the 70s); Welcoming Justice by John Perkins, Let Justice Roll Down by John Perkins, Follow Me To Freedom by John Perkins and Shane Claiborne, The Irresistible Revolution by Shane Claiborne, Houses That Change The World, Wolfgang Simson, Emerging Church by Ryan Bolger and Eddie Gibbs, The Organic Church and Search and Rescue, both by Neil Cole, Life of the Beloved by Henri Nouwen, The New Conspirators by Tom Sine, The New Friars by Scott Bessenecker, The Tangible Kingdom by Hugh Halter and Matt Smay; The New Monasticism and School(s) for Conversion, both by Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove, Church Morph by Eddie Gibbs, Reimagine The World by Bernard Brandon Scott, Revolution by George Barna, Pagan Christianity by Frank Viola, UnChristian by David Kinnamon; The Secret Message of Jesus, especially appendix, by Brian McLaren, Under The Radar by Bill Easum, An Altar in the World by Barbara Brown Taylor, Planting Missional Churches by Ed Stetzer, Inside The Organic Church by Bob Whitesel. Lyle Schaller’s books especially The New Contexts For Ministry, and What We Have Learned, and From Geography to Affinity, and for cultural work see the work Postmodern Pilgrims by Leonard Sweet and his other books, and the other books by Bill Easum and Tom Bandy, and The House Church Manual by William Tenny-Brittain, and The Small Church At Large by Robin Trebilcock.
Films: Entertaining Angels: The Dorothy Day story; Romero; The Least of These; Briars in the Cotton Patch: Koinonia; Places in the Heart, The Spitfire Grill, Chocolat, Babette’s Feast, Man on Wire, The Blind Side, The Shawshank Redemption, The Blues Brothers
Websites: www.progressivechurchplanting.blogspot.com, www.msainfo.org, http://www.shenango.org/PDF/PMC/Missional%20Church%20bibliography%20_2_.pdf, www.thesimpleway.org, www.theooze.com, www.emergentvillage.com, www.cmaresources.org, www.vitalcongregations.com, http://revthom.blogspot.com/2010/04/sermon-abandoned-places-of-empire.html
Monday, June 14, 2010
The Blessings of Going Small To Do Great Things
Such a privilege to be doing church with a great small group. Yesterday we had one of our most numerous Sunday worship gatherings and we were still, by the time you count everyone who was there for worship, conversation, or common meal or one part of those (we say worship is a party not a program), close but under 20. That's fewer then the number we had at our very first Easter worship in a hotel room in Owasso in 2003. But oh how we have grown.
Yesterday also we used the UUCF Revival hymnbook for morning song time during worship and talked about the depth of the old hymns and how to find meaning and comfort there and new understandings of the old words by tapping into the experience that gave rise to the hymns and their power over time.
Communion was all about companionship, being with bread literally, and being a church that is "put together" and puts people together, candle time and prayers touched on so many, especially for the tragedy in Arkansas.
Then we had Spiritual Stump The Chump, apologies to the Car Talk brothers; I gave an introduction to the construcive theological map and general terms or touchstones on it, then they paired up and chose one of the theological terms, or bible or praxis as a possible subject, and came up with questions for me to field.
Like...How does God keep His people safe in the world of real hazards? Did God create life on other planets, and if so what would their religion be like? What about the inconsistencies between the image of God and the attributes of the universe? Is there an ultimate authority on ethical matters of human conduct or is everything simply social constructs? What does it mean to be saved? Can everyone be saved? Can non-Christians be saved? And I think memory is missing a few of them.
We will definitely be revisiting some of these, as I like to turn the tables on them and ask questions like these and others back.
We didn't get the whole theological map covered in the questions, of course; everyone of them is a seminary semester course, but it is fun to field them on the fly and, as one of our running mottos was yesterday, embrace our "chumpiness" embrace our suckiness, embrace what we don't know or can't know for sure.
That and they seemed to like the shorthand tagline for us as "a christian church where you don't have to be christian" because it gets people to thinking and seeing so many things in a new light, but of course it raises up its whole new set of questions, which we will take up as we continue our holy conversations each week in one place or another.
Then we had our common meal and planned our Juneteenth Turley and Area Fourth Annual Free Festival for this coming Friday and Saturday, and scheduled a worktime for Wednesday at 6 pm to set up.
What a blessing, and what energy I get from being with the folks who come companion with one another and create a place for those we don't yet know. Hope to see you sometime with us too, especially in mission first and then--in gratitude for being called into mission, and for sustanenance for the missional life--in worship.
Yesterday also we used the UUCF Revival hymnbook for morning song time during worship and talked about the depth of the old hymns and how to find meaning and comfort there and new understandings of the old words by tapping into the experience that gave rise to the hymns and their power over time.
Communion was all about companionship, being with bread literally, and being a church that is "put together" and puts people together, candle time and prayers touched on so many, especially for the tragedy in Arkansas.
Then we had Spiritual Stump The Chump, apologies to the Car Talk brothers; I gave an introduction to the construcive theological map and general terms or touchstones on it, then they paired up and chose one of the theological terms, or bible or praxis as a possible subject, and came up with questions for me to field.
Like...How does God keep His people safe in the world of real hazards? Did God create life on other planets, and if so what would their religion be like? What about the inconsistencies between the image of God and the attributes of the universe? Is there an ultimate authority on ethical matters of human conduct or is everything simply social constructs? What does it mean to be saved? Can everyone be saved? Can non-Christians be saved? And I think memory is missing a few of them.
We will definitely be revisiting some of these, as I like to turn the tables on them and ask questions like these and others back.
We didn't get the whole theological map covered in the questions, of course; everyone of them is a seminary semester course, but it is fun to field them on the fly and, as one of our running mottos was yesterday, embrace our "chumpiness" embrace our suckiness, embrace what we don't know or can't know for sure.
That and they seemed to like the shorthand tagline for us as "a christian church where you don't have to be christian" because it gets people to thinking and seeing so many things in a new light, but of course it raises up its whole new set of questions, which we will take up as we continue our holy conversations each week in one place or another.
Then we had our common meal and planned our Juneteenth Turley and Area Fourth Annual Free Festival for this coming Friday and Saturday, and scheduled a worktime for Wednesday at 6 pm to set up.
What a blessing, and what energy I get from being with the folks who come companion with one another and create a place for those we don't yet know. Hope to see you sometime with us too, especially in mission first and then--in gratitude for being called into mission, and for sustanenance for the missional life--in worship.
Sunday, June 13, 2010
TV News Story on Us, and Putting that "story" into the bigger perspective of "The Story"
http://turleyok.blogspot.com/2010/06/channel-six-news-story-on-our-miracle.html Above is the link to a Channel 6 in Tulsa news story about our missional center and one of the latest big project we have going on, our miracle among the ruins, The Welcome Table Community Kitchen Garden Park project.
That link above also has all the other links about the project, some corrections from the news report, updates, and posts that put it into the bigger picture of what we are doing in community renewal and why.
But I want here to say a short word that also puts even the TV news story into perspective, into missional perspective. As I was telling a seminarian colleague, you know, in the missional way, the segment on the news itself is the seed that may count the most. Most people who watch the clip from around here will shake their head in wise cynicism or find some way to complain, etc., that's just the way it is with folks hurting. But somewhere there was one person watching it who said to themselves or a partner or their kid, I or we can help, or we can do that, or we can do that even better, and that makes all the rest worthwhile.
That mission thing again: it is not even about how much it, the news story, brings to our missional project but about how much the project itself can spur on mission elsewhere in ways we will never know. That is the most important thing of all. Hard to always remember, because we do so much want to see this project and all of our efforts bear fruit as intended. But we lose our way if we forget that it is not even about this or that project, but it is about The Mission, and that is always making Jesus visible in the world. And, and, the beauty of a God-thing is that while something might not be visible to us (and in fact what might be visible to us is something that fails), it is helping something even grander to become visible to someone else somewhere else. This I do believe.
That link above also has all the other links about the project, some corrections from the news report, updates, and posts that put it into the bigger picture of what we are doing in community renewal and why.
But I want here to say a short word that also puts even the TV news story into perspective, into missional perspective. As I was telling a seminarian colleague, you know, in the missional way, the segment on the news itself is the seed that may count the most. Most people who watch the clip from around here will shake their head in wise cynicism or find some way to complain, etc., that's just the way it is with folks hurting. But somewhere there was one person watching it who said to themselves or a partner or their kid, I or we can help, or we can do that, or we can do that even better, and that makes all the rest worthwhile.
That mission thing again: it is not even about how much it, the news story, brings to our missional project but about how much the project itself can spur on mission elsewhere in ways we will never know. That is the most important thing of all. Hard to always remember, because we do so much want to see this project and all of our efforts bear fruit as intended. But we lose our way if we forget that it is not even about this or that project, but it is about The Mission, and that is always making Jesus visible in the world. And, and, the beauty of a God-thing is that while something might not be visible to us (and in fact what might be visible to us is something that fails), it is helping something even grander to become visible to someone else somewhere else. This I do believe.
Friday, June 11, 2010
"Church of Reconciliation", celebrating three years of missional community
Three years ago in June of 2007 we held our Grand Opening of A Third Place Community Center, 6514 N. Peoria Ave., beginning the transformation of being "a church" into being "a missional community of faith expression of 'the church'" and creating the new non-profit foundation to guide our wider community work; in other words three years ago this month we turned ourselves inside out and we gave ourselves away for others. We launched into being the Church of the Three R's, affirming the need for relocation, redistribution, and reconciliation.
In June of 2010, here are a few of the new or ongoing ways we live into this vision, living as if the world were already changed in order to help make it so:
---Today, Saturday, June 12, from 8 to 10 am we will hold a community Pancake Breakfast, all you care to eat for $5, benefit to the Center. We have picked up this monthly event inheriting it from the local Odd Fellows who had been doing it for several years but decided to stop after they had inherited it originally from the Lions Club who had done it for several years before they closed. We seek to make it a time of renewal for community leaders who do so much during the month, a chance to share what is going on in their lives and organizations, and to connect with one another, a nod to the history of our area and with an eye to new partners in the future. We follow the breakfast with our monthly Random Acts of Kindness, Justice, and Beauty. Tomorrow we will be brainstorming and planning how to address the transportation needs of our most vulnerable neighbors, with one of our new emerging partners, Sarah's Residential Living Center located in the neighborhood just north of Tulsa McLain High School. Come commune with us.
---Today also Saturday, watch the news shows on Channel Six in Tulsa to see the news story about us and our Miracle Among the Ruins fundraising drive to turn a city block of abandoned homes and neglected properties into a community kitchen garden park in our area. Our July 2 deadline of raising a final almost $8,500 is getting closer and we hope the news show will help motivate enough people to help us make it a reality; all it takes is 85 people, or groups of people going in together, giving $100 each; but every $5 or $50 or $500 counts; some are forgoing going out during the month, or even for one week, in order to fit it into their budget....And you can also vote for our project, and help get others to do so, in the Gardens For Good contest for a $50,000 grant by going to http://www.justmeans.com/contestidea?ideaid=NzIx. Voting Ends June 15.
---Thursday, June 17, at 3 pm we will hold a Celebration and Blessing Ceremony for our Food Pantry. Although we have created and maintained it for some time now with our own contributions and those of our neighbors themelves, we will be marking the arrival that day of our first food to distribute from the area Food Bank. We will be unloading and stocking the pantry with almost 1000 pounds of food, and we know it will go quickly, but we are excited about growing this part of our overall food justice work. Come celebrate with us.
---Friday, June 18 and Saturday June 19, we will hold our Fourth Annual Turley and Area Free Community Festival, this year for Juneteenth and for Local/Whole Foods Week, where we offer free live music from a diversity of groups, free food, programs on our past, present and future as a healthy community, art and tye-dye, board games and wii games and great book and clothing giveaway, children's activities, the arrival of the bookmobile into our community after a generation of being away, and community and volunteer opportunity information. Free swimming will be offered at O'Brien Park for all who bring at least two cans for our food pantry. For all the details see www.turleyok.blogspot.com. We are working with OU Social Work this summer and at the Festival weekend to do quality of life community health surveys of residents in our area in order to better focus our own future work.
---Saturday June 19 at 2 pm at the Center during the Festival we will pause to hold a ceremony to honor the partnership between A Third Place, the Turley and Far North Tulsa area, and OU. State Rep. Seneca Scott will present an official proclamation from the State House of Representatives to OU for their work with us over the past three years especially in community health, social work, and design. We will also be presenting community residents with certificates of completion of the Community Academy program at the Center this spring.
---Recently we have helped with others to launch the first ever Tulsa McLain High School Foundation. We are coordinating the summer free feeding lunch program at Cherokee School. We are continuing our Let Turley Bloom projects; the roadside wildflowers in our area which were one of our first projects are looking good. We showed the "One Peace At A Time" movie and discussion as part of our sustainability monthly movies. We have hosted the federal Census workers gathering daily. And we continue to operate our ongoing projects and partnerships that have sprung up in the past three years with their daily surprises and new beginnings.
---Through it all "the church" has continued to worship and work and play together as well. Last Sunday we held communion on the lakeside at Skiatook Lake. We will be going other places for communion in the summer months as well. This Sunday we will be at the Center for a kind of "Spiritual Stump The Chump" conversation coming up with questions for me to respond to and lead conversation about. Come participate at 10 am. We will be in the coming weeks visiting with other progressive Christian churches in our area, going to the Tallgrass Prairie Preserve and other spots around the state, cookouts at the lake and park, going on the road the way Jesus did, sharing meal and prayers and blessings with whomever was close at hand. Follow more on some of the worship life at www.progressivechurchplanting.blogspot.com and feel free to follow me on www.facebook.com.
And all by putting all our resources as an all volunteer group into mission, into the 3R's.
We have done a great job the past three years in relocating ourselves to be with others, helping others to relocate their services and spirit here with us and others in our endangered area, and we have done a good job of redistributing things for the body mind and soul to those most in need. But we aren't complete without the sometimes more difficult task of reconciliation, especially among racial and ethnic cultures changing around us, among people divided in so many ways in our world today. Especially with the emancipation liberation theme of Juneteenth, and with the recent launch of the John Hope Franklin Center For Reconciliation near us in the Greenwood area of Tulsa North, we need to intentionally become a Church of The Third R, of Reconciliation, and this coming year will be the year to do so. We will be partnering with others of our neighbors, especially the YWCA, and with OU and the O'Brien Park and the Tulsa Schools and will be sponsoring our own programs to weave this into all we do and to make it a special focus. Stay tuned and better still, come bring your ideas and passions for this. It is hard work but none more important, and no matter what we accomplish with the other two R's even our small group won't be living "as if the world were changed in order to make it so" if we don't.
In June of 2010, here are a few of the new or ongoing ways we live into this vision, living as if the world were already changed in order to help make it so:
---Today, Saturday, June 12, from 8 to 10 am we will hold a community Pancake Breakfast, all you care to eat for $5, benefit to the Center. We have picked up this monthly event inheriting it from the local Odd Fellows who had been doing it for several years but decided to stop after they had inherited it originally from the Lions Club who had done it for several years before they closed. We seek to make it a time of renewal for community leaders who do so much during the month, a chance to share what is going on in their lives and organizations, and to connect with one another, a nod to the history of our area and with an eye to new partners in the future. We follow the breakfast with our monthly Random Acts of Kindness, Justice, and Beauty. Tomorrow we will be brainstorming and planning how to address the transportation needs of our most vulnerable neighbors, with one of our new emerging partners, Sarah's Residential Living Center located in the neighborhood just north of Tulsa McLain High School. Come commune with us.
---Today also Saturday, watch the news shows on Channel Six in Tulsa to see the news story about us and our Miracle Among the Ruins fundraising drive to turn a city block of abandoned homes and neglected properties into a community kitchen garden park in our area. Our July 2 deadline of raising a final almost $8,500 is getting closer and we hope the news show will help motivate enough people to help us make it a reality; all it takes is 85 people, or groups of people going in together, giving $100 each; but every $5 or $50 or $500 counts; some are forgoing going out during the month, or even for one week, in order to fit it into their budget....And you can also vote for our project, and help get others to do so, in the Gardens For Good contest for a $50,000 grant by going to http://www.justmeans.com/contestidea?ideaid=NzIx. Voting Ends June 15.
---Thursday, June 17, at 3 pm we will hold a Celebration and Blessing Ceremony for our Food Pantry. Although we have created and maintained it for some time now with our own contributions and those of our neighbors themelves, we will be marking the arrival that day of our first food to distribute from the area Food Bank. We will be unloading and stocking the pantry with almost 1000 pounds of food, and we know it will go quickly, but we are excited about growing this part of our overall food justice work. Come celebrate with us.
---Friday, June 18 and Saturday June 19, we will hold our Fourth Annual Turley and Area Free Community Festival, this year for Juneteenth and for Local/Whole Foods Week, where we offer free live music from a diversity of groups, free food, programs on our past, present and future as a healthy community, art and tye-dye, board games and wii games and great book and clothing giveaway, children's activities, the arrival of the bookmobile into our community after a generation of being away, and community and volunteer opportunity information. Free swimming will be offered at O'Brien Park for all who bring at least two cans for our food pantry. For all the details see www.turleyok.blogspot.com. We are working with OU Social Work this summer and at the Festival weekend to do quality of life community health surveys of residents in our area in order to better focus our own future work.
---Saturday June 19 at 2 pm at the Center during the Festival we will pause to hold a ceremony to honor the partnership between A Third Place, the Turley and Far North Tulsa area, and OU. State Rep. Seneca Scott will present an official proclamation from the State House of Representatives to OU for their work with us over the past three years especially in community health, social work, and design. We will also be presenting community residents with certificates of completion of the Community Academy program at the Center this spring.
---Recently we have helped with others to launch the first ever Tulsa McLain High School Foundation. We are coordinating the summer free feeding lunch program at Cherokee School. We are continuing our Let Turley Bloom projects; the roadside wildflowers in our area which were one of our first projects are looking good. We showed the "One Peace At A Time" movie and discussion as part of our sustainability monthly movies. We have hosted the federal Census workers gathering daily. And we continue to operate our ongoing projects and partnerships that have sprung up in the past three years with their daily surprises and new beginnings.
---Through it all "the church" has continued to worship and work and play together as well. Last Sunday we held communion on the lakeside at Skiatook Lake. We will be going other places for communion in the summer months as well. This Sunday we will be at the Center for a kind of "Spiritual Stump The Chump" conversation coming up with questions for me to respond to and lead conversation about. Come participate at 10 am. We will be in the coming weeks visiting with other progressive Christian churches in our area, going to the Tallgrass Prairie Preserve and other spots around the state, cookouts at the lake and park, going on the road the way Jesus did, sharing meal and prayers and blessings with whomever was close at hand. Follow more on some of the worship life at www.progressivechurchplanting.blogspot.com and feel free to follow me on www.facebook.com.
And all by putting all our resources as an all volunteer group into mission, into the 3R's.
We have done a great job the past three years in relocating ourselves to be with others, helping others to relocate their services and spirit here with us and others in our endangered area, and we have done a good job of redistributing things for the body mind and soul to those most in need. But we aren't complete without the sometimes more difficult task of reconciliation, especially among racial and ethnic cultures changing around us, among people divided in so many ways in our world today. Especially with the emancipation liberation theme of Juneteenth, and with the recent launch of the John Hope Franklin Center For Reconciliation near us in the Greenwood area of Tulsa North, we need to intentionally become a Church of The Third R, of Reconciliation, and this coming year will be the year to do so. We will be partnering with others of our neighbors, especially the YWCA, and with OU and the O'Brien Park and the Tulsa Schools and will be sponsoring our own programs to weave this into all we do and to make it a special focus. Stay tuned and better still, come bring your ideas and passions for this. It is hard work but none more important, and no matter what we accomplish with the other two R's even our small group won't be living "as if the world were changed in order to make it so" if we don't.
Thursday, June 03, 2010
Hear. Pray. Affirm. Three Essentials For Liberal Christians. The Decalogue. The Lord's Prayer. The Apostles' Creed. Newest issue of "UU Christian"
http://uuchristianfellowship.blogspot.com/2010/06/newest-uu-christian-journal-special.html
Go to the link above for the full first look inside at the newest issue of The UU Christian Journal, vol. 62 of our 65 year old organization. The complete table of contents, the foreword by the Rev. Kathleen Rolenz, the Introduction by the Rev. Tom Wintle.
Go to www.uuchristian.org to join to receive the issue for free plus the Good News periodical and more.
Go to the link above for the full first look inside at the newest issue of The UU Christian Journal, vol. 62 of our 65 year old organization. The complete table of contents, the foreword by the Rev. Kathleen Rolenz, the Introduction by the Rev. Tom Wintle.
Go to www.uuchristian.org to join to receive the issue for free plus the Good News periodical and more.
Tuesday, June 01, 2010
The Almost Church Revitalized, and a digression on the word missional
http://www.uuabookstore.org/productdetails.cfm?PC=1050
Good stuff through and through. His term public church is pretty much what we use for missional community.
Reminds me that I had a conversation with a friend and colleague about the word "missional" and "mission" and they were saying they had been warned by seminary faculty member against using the term because it evokes colonial imperialism and all that bad stuff that missionaries did/do. They wondered if I ever thought about things like that in using the term.
I vaguely remember having a second thought about it once upon a time; but immersed in the language just didn't give it much of a second thought. And then I was at a meeting where a minister said pretty much the same thing that she was American Indian and couldn't stand the word mission because of all that baggage it carried with it.
I guess coming from Oklahoma I just don't think about the word that way because being in and around the American Indian culture for so long it seems like someone else's issue, though I can certainly see an alternative phrase like the serving church or community, etc. since that is the way the term missional has come to be used in the movement; it is in fact the opposite of the old way of doing mission work; see Vincent Donovan's Christianity Reconsidered for a classic text on all this back in the day before the missional church became a thing unto itself.
Mostly though when I speak the word missional I am thinking first and foremost of its Greek roots; that is what comes to mind. Missio. To be sent. It is not the church of come to us, but the church of being sent into the world, to love the world, and help unleash the transformation of love and justice in the world. Missio, going forth without staff to serve, to be a holy fool, to make good things happen wherever and whenever you are.
I guess the word missional might scare some progressives for another, perhaps deeper reason, than imperialism though; it might evoke serious committment to the world right outside your comfort zone; evoke depth of purpose, mission and missional echoing back to the core that it is The Mission that calls the church into being itself, not the other way around with the church trying to find and name and proclaim its own mission.
The good thing is that we can help words heal themselves. The best way to undo the damage of the word, if damage there is in the word missional, is to so use the word until its original and truer sense is the one most thought of again. It is like how I say that the best way to help someone heal who has been hurt in the name of Jesus is for a healing understanding relationship from someone else in the name of Jesus.
What does all this have to do with the wonderful work by Michael Durall? Not much I suppose. I will try to blog later on his 5 Heresies. Or go to the link and check it out there and elsewhere. And though it is geared to the UU culture; my friends in mainline churches will find much to resonate with them as well.
Good stuff through and through. His term public church is pretty much what we use for missional community.
Reminds me that I had a conversation with a friend and colleague about the word "missional" and "mission" and they were saying they had been warned by seminary faculty member against using the term because it evokes colonial imperialism and all that bad stuff that missionaries did/do. They wondered if I ever thought about things like that in using the term.
I vaguely remember having a second thought about it once upon a time; but immersed in the language just didn't give it much of a second thought. And then I was at a meeting where a minister said pretty much the same thing that she was American Indian and couldn't stand the word mission because of all that baggage it carried with it.
I guess coming from Oklahoma I just don't think about the word that way because being in and around the American Indian culture for so long it seems like someone else's issue, though I can certainly see an alternative phrase like the serving church or community, etc. since that is the way the term missional has come to be used in the movement; it is in fact the opposite of the old way of doing mission work; see Vincent Donovan's Christianity Reconsidered for a classic text on all this back in the day before the missional church became a thing unto itself.
Mostly though when I speak the word missional I am thinking first and foremost of its Greek roots; that is what comes to mind. Missio. To be sent. It is not the church of come to us, but the church of being sent into the world, to love the world, and help unleash the transformation of love and justice in the world. Missio, going forth without staff to serve, to be a holy fool, to make good things happen wherever and whenever you are.
I guess the word missional might scare some progressives for another, perhaps deeper reason, than imperialism though; it might evoke serious committment to the world right outside your comfort zone; evoke depth of purpose, mission and missional echoing back to the core that it is The Mission that calls the church into being itself, not the other way around with the church trying to find and name and proclaim its own mission.
The good thing is that we can help words heal themselves. The best way to undo the damage of the word, if damage there is in the word missional, is to so use the word until its original and truer sense is the one most thought of again. It is like how I say that the best way to help someone heal who has been hurt in the name of Jesus is for a healing understanding relationship from someone else in the name of Jesus.
What does all this have to do with the wonderful work by Michael Durall? Not much I suppose. I will try to blog later on his 5 Heresies. Or go to the link and check it out there and elsewhere. And though it is geared to the UU culture; my friends in mainline churches will find much to resonate with them as well.
Wednesday, May 26, 2010
"A Cast Of Emancipated Characters" aka Church ala Brueggemann
In the latest issue of Sojourners www.sojo.net biblical scholar Walter Brueggemann captures the great essence of what the church should be, as he brings the lectionary reflections for the first several weeks of the Pentecost Season. I liked his focus on "Pentecost is a time to re-enact the church as a movement unrestrained by fear of authorities." And how he summed up the church in this way:
"These texts, taken in sum, imagine the church. It is not an institution, but rather a community of folk who are propelled by God's own spirit, situated in Jesus' own narrative, and alive in the world in alternative ways."
There you have it all: a loose trinitarian allusion (God/Jesus/World), a shift from organization to organic movement, and a simplicity of Spirit and Story above all else. I like Shane Claiborne's shorter calling of the church as "a people of God making Jesus visible in the world", but Brueggemann's captures the importance of story, of mission movement, and the goal of living in alternative ways to the dominant cultural powers and values that be.
"These texts, taken in sum, imagine the church. It is not an institution, but rather a community of folk who are propelled by God's own spirit, situated in Jesus' own narrative, and alive in the world in alternative ways."
There you have it all: a loose trinitarian allusion (God/Jesus/World), a shift from organization to organic movement, and a simplicity of Spirit and Story above all else. I like Shane Claiborne's shorter calling of the church as "a people of God making Jesus visible in the world", but Brueggemann's captures the importance of story, of mission movement, and the goal of living in alternative ways to the dominant cultural powers and values that be.
"Beyond Channing and Church" by Carl Scovel
I just love this lecture/essay by the Rev. Carl Scovel, minister emeritus of Kings Chapel in Boston, and receipient of the Distinguished Service Award by the UUA. The present theological state of UUism; The Historical Path to the Present; The UU Christian Misdirection; His response.
I. The Present Theological State of Unitarian Universalism
If I understand UU-ism correctly, it is institutionalized Transcendentalism.
Transcendentalism, you may recall, is the belief that each single person's intuition of the divine (the ultimate, the holy, truth itself) precedes all cultural, societal and institutional forms of religion. That is, the person alone, before and beyond all communities and institutions, knows the basic truth which he or she needs to live by, and that all traditions, teachings, doctrines and counsels of religious communities are important only as guides, supports and challenges, but not as final authorities.
The Transcendentalist theologian is Ralph Waldo Emerson, and his great quote comes from the 1838 Divinity School Address: "Yourself a newborn bard of the Holy Spirit, cast behind you all conformity and acquaint men (and women) at first hand with Divinity."
The UUA embodies this sentiment. The first of its seven principles is “the inherent worth and dignity of every person,” and the first named source of authority in the seven principles is “direct experience.” Time and again our members tell us that they joined our churches because UUism affirmed their freedom to believe what they individually valued.
UU’s embody the American intuition that the person is the first order of reality, that community is a secondary order created by a social contract made between individuals. This is what sociologist Robert Bellah calls “ontological individualism.”
Even the new interest in spirituality in this country and in the UUA is an individual quest in which one chooses from a wide array of physical and mental practices and philosophies. Beneath this new interest is an aversion to community and tradition, evident in the oft-repeated phrase, "I want spirituality not religion." We see this also in the frequent hostility to Christianity, Judaism and any tradition which appears as if it might define the worship of a congregation. It's OK to sample, but next Sunday let's have something different.
Now if the UUA is institutionalized Transcendentalism, what holds local societies together in an association and what keeps members within a society? If I am correct, I think we supply a lack of theological consensus with the force of institutional forms — a name, a logo, district and continental meetings, a powerful ministers’ association, national licensing procedures, the seven principles, and subtle, but at times very strong, pressures toward conformity.
For supposedly-unique churches, there is a fairly predictable Sunday liturgy inherited from the Protestant preaching service. There are common worship practices, such as lighting the chalice, joys and concerns, flower communion, water communion, a common hymnal which serves as a de facto prayerbook, and "Spirit of Life," which has become a distinctive chant. UU sermons - to my ear - also have a surprising consistency in content, though considerable variety in expression. These forms hold UU’s together and define them.
UU’s have, I think, become that which Emerson left, Parker ignored and Channing dreaded - a denomination. They are institutionalized Transcendentalism.
This is clearly not a problem for the great majority of UU clergy and members. This is what supports them, what they enjoy, what they see as the fruition of their history. Others find something substantial missing. Many leave and some hang on. In either case, it behooves us to ask how UU-ism evolved into its current state.
II. The Historical Path to the Present
Unitarianism began as an unnamed and undefined reaction against the determinism, pessimism and judgmentalism of traditional New England theology. When Congregational ministers began to question these themes, their conservative colleagues refused to exchange pulpits with them or take part in their ordinations. Within local churches liberal and conservative members began to argue over the their pastor's beliefs. In 1819 the members of The First Parish of Dedham took their differences to a state court which awarded the building, grounds and monies to the more liberal parish organization, leaving the conservative members to found a new church.
In that same year (1819) William Ellery Channing defined and named the new movement in a sermon, entitled "Unitarian Christianity," which he preached at Jared Sparks's ordination in Baltimore. In this sermon he rejected four premises:
1. God's existence as Trinity (as defined at the Council of Nicea in 325 AD)
2. God's right to absolute judgment over human salvation.
3. The doctrine of Christ's two natures, human and divine (as defined at the Council of Chalcedon in 451 AD)
4. The doctrine of salvation by Christ's vicarious atonement as defined by Anselm.
In contrast, Channing affirmed five propositions which he said characterized the new movement among the Congregational churches:
1. The simple unity of God
2. The absolute morality of God
3. The simple unity, namely the humanity, of Jesus
4. The moral and spiritual leadership of Jesus
5. Human salvation by moral and spiritual character.
And how do we know these to be true? Because, said Channing: 1. We find them confirmed in scripture if we read scripture with the eyes of reason, and 2. We find them confirmed in our own God-given sense of morality.
For example, Channing described God as "infinitely good, kind, benevolent,” for "we respect nothing but excellence whether in heaven or on earth. We venerate not the loftiness of God's throne, but the equity and justice with which it is established." (p. 70) In other words, we believe in God because God represents the highest good which we can conceive. Again, Jesus "was sent to effect a moral and spiritual deliverance." (P. 74) "We regard him as Saviour, chiefly as he is the light, physician and guide of the dark, diseased and wandering mind." (p.79)
Now when I read Channing's indictments of the old theology, I heartily assent. And when I read his affirmations, I assent but less heartily. Why? Not because of what he says but because of what he does not say. I hear nothing of God's mystery, God's dynamism, God's judgment, God's creativity and our own distance from that all-perfect source and being.
I hear nothing of a Christ who was judge, rebel and embodiment of holiness. No, in his place Channing speaks of "the mild precepts" of Jesus. Mild, my eye! Are we reading the same Bible? I hear nothing from Channing of our human capacity for evil, indifference, greed, self-centeredness and corruption, which has destroyed the lives and happiness of millions throughout history and in this century, and which now threatens our existence as a species. My experience and observation is that it takes more than mild precepts, education and good will to correct the evil which threatens us from within as from without. In the words of a Trappist preacher, "Sins are not water soluble."
But furthermore I do not hear Channing telling us that we need the church as the imperfect bearer of God's revelation. I do not hear him telling us of tradition as the medium for God's disclosure, nor of the collective faith once given to the saints and renewed in us if we receive it. No, in Channing religion is essentially a matter between the reasonable individual and a benevolent deity with Jesus as teacher and guide.
I am saying that the seeds of the dissolution of Unitarian Christianity were sown in its initial definition and defense. For, when the conflict arose between the first Transcendentalists and the Unitarian Christians, the latter—Channing, Andrews Norton and Henry Ware—tried to defend Christianity on the basis of reason—reason, that is, as they understood it. Christianity, they claimed, was both true and unique because Christ had empirically proved his authority through his power to work miracles. But the Transcendentalists, armed with American pragmatism and Enlightenment skepticism, tore that argument to shreds, and Unitarian Christianity was left with only its dubious claims to a superior morality.
In 1838, less than twenty years after Channing's Baltimore sermon, Ralph Waldo Emerson addressed the senior class in the chapel of Harvard Divinity School and challenged the authority of Christian faith with these words: "The word Miracle, as pronounced by Christian churches, ... is Monster. It is not one with the blowing clover and the falling rain." Where then is truth, he asked? In the soul, the individual soul which, as the prophet Jesus taught, is the law to itself. Emerson concluded, "We have contrasted the Church with the Soul. In the soul, then, let the redemption be sought."
Nowhere do we see this debate more clearly focused than in the differences over Holy Communion. Emerson left his ministry at Second Church because the congregation would not agree to drop communion. Theodore Parker never even held communion at the Twenty-eighth Congregational Society. Of the rite he said, "The Lord's Supper ... is a heathenish rite and means very little, I think. Let all who will come into a parlor and have a social and religious meeting, and eat bread (wine if you like), or curds and cream— baked apples if you will, and have a conversation, free and cheerful, on moral questions ... only let all be rational and real." (Atlantic Monthly October 1860, p.451)
You see, Parker and Emerson were challenging not just Christian ritual and teaching, but tradition itself in any form, and in time the later Transcendentalists, the Free Religious Association and the American humanists took up their cause. Indeed, by the 1930's generations of Unitarian Christians had already substituted intuition for revelation, reason for ritual and the individual soul for the church. When I entered seminary almost fifty years ago, the crosses had come down in most New England meetinghouses, Holy Communion was a sparsely-attended annual event in the few churches that still held it, the Lord's Prayer and the reading of the Bible had been dropped, and many assumed that in time most Christians and theists would simply disappear.
At the time of merger in 1961 we stepped out of our Unitarian and Universalist heritages to create institutionalized Transcendentalism. The Unitarians set aside the unity of God for the free and responsible search for truth. The Universalists set aside God's all-embracing love for inclusivism, an ideal which one can live with insofar as one does not see how one has failed to live it.
For the UUA’s first few years the UU logo was two intersecting circles, representing the two traditions. Then that unitive symbol was set aside for the flaming chalice, taken from the UU Service Committee, as one more act of Unitarian exclusion of the Universalist component.
We rebaptized Channing, Emerson, Parker, Hosea Ballou, Henry Whitney Bellows, James Freeman Clarke and all the fathers and mothers of our faith as "Unitarian Universalists" —in a vain attempt, I think, to show that we are their fulfillment. Anyone who knows history, and thus Emerson’s anti-institutionalism, Parker's solo career, Channing's refusal of the first AUA presidency and his disappointment at its founding, will also know that we are not what they had in mind. For, we have almost lost our institutional interest in history. Our whole understanding of how we evolved into what we are was defined by Earl Morse Wilbur, who wrote a detailed, minutely-documented and, I believe, flawed, account of Unitarianism as essentially anti-Trinitarianism. Wilbur told our story as the familiar pilgrimage from Trinitarian dogma to enlightenment, concluding with (and in the words of Dave Barry, I am not making this up) a new trinity, namely: freedom, reason and tolerance. These were the Unitarian watchwords when I entered seminary in 1954. At least Wilbur had a passion for history. Now we have to require our seminarians to read Unitarian and Universalist history, and that means we have essentially lost our sense of its importance. That too is part of our legacy from Emerson.
III. The UU Christian Misdirection
When I began to attend meetings of the Unitarian Christian Fellowship in Boston (and they were only in Boston in those days), it was clear that the founding members felt they'd been betrayed and that humanists had "taken over" the denomination with the connivance or consent of the AUA president Frederick May Eliot, himself an ardent theist. But I found their own form of Christianity ambiguous.
The early members of the Christian Fellowship believed that they believed in the teachings of Jesus, not the teachings about Jesus, but while they were good people, good citizens, good church members, I wasn't sure that their lives reflected the teachings of Jesus any more than other Christians, or even non-Christians.
In seminary as I learned more about the transition into Transcendentalism, I was struck with three things:
1. First, the Unitarian Christians were really preaching an Emersonian version of Christianity, that is that they too believed that religion was first of all a transaction between God and the person. Jesus, the Bible and the church were all invaluable guides in this transaction but when push came to shove it was God and the soul, as the bard of Concord had proclaimed in 1838.
2. The transition from Emersonian Christianity to institutionalized Transcendentalism was relatively easy. A few theists and Christians objected, and some even left for other churches, but even supposedly-conservative New England churches dropped Christian symbols, texts and practices without losing many members. Indeed, most congregations embraced with enthusiasm the Beacon church school curriculum, the new hymnal, Sunday readings from science and philosophy, and young ministers preached a tradition-less religion. Most Unitarians found the change not only painless, but positive.
3. History has shown that the liberal Christianity of William Ellery Channing and Andrews Norton was no match for the Transcendentalism of Emerson, Parker and the Free Religious Association. Indeed, Unitarian Christianity had already given away the essentials and thus prepared the way.
Let me put my point this way:
If Jesus is a human teacher of divine truths, why should we not listen to others whom we deem to be teachers of divine truth?
If the scriptures are a book of divine wisdom, why should we not study other books of divine wisdom?
If Christianity is only one religion among others, whose only superiority lies in the reports of Christ's miracles, then why should we not learn from other religions?
Indeed, fifty years ago the proponents of the new Unitarianism, later to become Unitarian Universalism, were not so much denying Christian truth as to claim that they were "more than Christian." They believed their thinking included more truth than Christianity, indeed, that it included all the essentials in all religions. Donald Harrington at the UUA merger ceremony held in Symphony Hall proclaimed that we were a new faith, and the world was waiting to hear our gospel.
These reflections have led me to reconsider two doctrines which Unitarians, Universalists and Unitarian Universalists have long since set aside: 1. the Trinity and 2. the two-fold nature of Christ.
I realize that you may scarcely believe your ears, as I say this. These doctrines have lain for centuries beyond the pale of acceptable discourse within our ranks, but I too am searching for the truth in, I hope, “a free and responsible” way, so I hope you will hear me out. I'll take the Trinity first. I said that Earl Morse Wilbur defined Unitarianism as anti-Trinitarianism. (We are incidentally not the only Unitarians. Doukhabors, Jehovah's Witnesses, Christian Scientists, United Pentecostals, Quakers and not a few Baptists worship God undivided as to person.)
An understanding of God, such as Channing's, as a pure moral spirit with the best qualities of a humane, dedicated citizen is in the long run a limited class-based view of God. Channing's biographer, David Edgell, says, "His function was to translate and make available to a dominant middle class culture a synthesis of ideas ... which helped to solidify and express American social and religious liberalism." (Page 229, William Ellery Channing, Beacon Press, 1955) (Again, "He reflected the intellectual cross-currents that swirled about him." (p.233)
This God, who had to earn the respect of Channing's generation in order to be credible, was kindly and benevolent to a generation on its way up the socio-economic ladder. Although I prefer such a God to the capricious deity of late Congregationalism, such a God does not meet me in the world where I live—a world of genocide, a world where one generation of victims become oppressors of the next, a world of power and privilege run amok, conflicting isms, danger at every turn, unforgivable wealth and abject poverty, death and affluence living side by side. I do not find in Channing's God the righteous word of the prophets or the voice of the Nazarene who claims God's kingdom was coming - ready or not. I find in this God no mystery, no judgment, and therefore - for me - no hope. And yet I do not blame Channing. He was a child of his time, as I am of mine, and if I am ever noticed, I will probably be judged more wanting in my time than he in his.
Although I cannot accept the Nicean definition of God as tri-personed, I believe that God defined primarily as spirit, eventually floats into the upper stratosphere, that if God is not somehow incarnate in this world and in our lives in all His, or Her, or Its, inherent power, many-facedness and mystery, then God becomes an abstraction and inevitably lesser gods take up His place.
Let me put it this way. Trinitarian thinking is necessary to counter a monistic definition of God as unmoved and unmoving. Trinitarian thinking says that there are distinctions and dynamism within God, and without this kind of understanding we lose relationship to and interest in God. Small wonder that humanism became more attractive than Unitarian Christianity. I recall a formidable threat from a humanist colleague early in my ministry: “If you Christians don’t come up with something more interesting, we’ll just yawn you out of the denomination.”
Alright. Let's look at the second point: the two natures of Christ. This was defined at the Council of Chalcedon in 451 AD, namely that in the one person of Christ there were two natures: unconfused, indivisible, unchangeable and inseparable.
Now what does this mean for us? Why should we even be discussing matters like this, long since dismissed by our colleagues? Why is the teaching about the two natures of Christ important?
Let's try to understand what those bishops at Chalcedon were trying to do. I think they were trying to preserve an understanding of Jesus as God's presence to humanity and God's power for humanity, who were caught in a swamp of personal and collective sins and evil. Christ, in order to save us, had to be both part of us and more than us. To be savior, Christ had to be both of God and of humanity, both without compromising either, thus the delicate and essential balance between his humanity and divinity.
If we emphasizes Christ’s divinity to the exclusion of his humanity, we get a divine being who has nothing to do with us, as Channing so aptly said. But if we emphasize his humanity to the exclusion of his divinity, we get another great teacher or prophet.
This I think was the Unitarian error. Eventually Jesus became a great teacher and prophet; but in time we discovered other teachers and prophets, some of whom seemed more relevant, accessible, contemporary than Jesus. And then even Jesus the teacher and prophet became irrelevant.
To be a Christian is to trust that Christ is and has what we need in order to live God’s will and find our way through this world. There is no substitute for this act of faith, as Paul, Augustine, Luther, Theresa of Avila and Dorothy Day knew. Without this risk, one ends up following one’s own preferences, and that is a life without chart or direction.
We see how hard it is to trust in the popular search for what is called the historical Jesus. Robert Funk and the members of the Jesus seminar, Marcus Borg, John Crossan and others, are attempting to construct a model of a historical Jesus based on archaeological and historical findings, contemporaneous documents and critical analysis of the gospels. The aim of this enterprise is to discover a Jesus whom seeking Christians can intellectually believe in. Some of you have read and studied their writing.
I believe that this effort fails on two counts.
First, on the historical. From my reading of 19th century and current literature of this sort, including works by Funk, Borg and Crossan, and from my understanding of the gospels, I simply do not see how the historical data we have on Jesus can yield what a critical historian would call even a likely guess. The gospel writers were writing a proclamation, not history or biography, and I don't see how massaging the existing texts can produce even historical probability. Schweitzer in his doctoral thesis in theology, The Quest for the Historical Jesus, laid this effort to rest when he said, "The Jesus of history emerges from his own time and advances toward us, but then he passes us by and returns to his own time there to remain." We can never find enough evidence to give us even a semi-credible picture of the historical Jesus. When a jury after watching a video of the Los Angeles police arresting Rodney King split on whether or not the police were brutal in their treatment of him, I wonder what kind of data will give us certainty?
Secondly, history is not the issue. Certainty does not lie in historical data, even if we had the data. Empirical evidence does not increase our faith. In fact, the quest for historical certainty distracts us from the essential task of trusting Jesus. The earthly life of Jesus, the fact and facts of his existence, is the seed dropped into the earth of human experience, but it is not the full flowering plant, nor is it the church, the weathering of history, the fertilization given by saints, martyrs, scholars and servants — these all together create the plant of religion and the harvest of faith.
But to receive the harvest, to know the meaning of Jesus requires a giving of one's mind, one's heart, one's will in an act of surrender, always without sufficient evidence and data. This leap of faith, as Kierkegaard knew so well, is the essential act of becoming a Christian. There simply is no substitute.
IV. My Own Response
Given this situation, what are the Christian and the theist to do? I find that I cannot prescribe for another, since my own path has been so often and remains unclear. After 42 years in parish ministry, reflecting on my own experience and observing churches today as I see them, realizing the variety of viewpoints and experiences among my UU friends, parishioners and colleagues, I find the parish church both essential and inadequate. That is why I titled this "Beyond Channing and Church."
As a Christian, I live out of the church. If God is my source, the church is my conduit. I must worship with my fellows. I must read and reflect on the wisdom of my predecessors and contemporaries. I must be upheld by their faith. The Christ in my heart is often weaker than the Christ in the heart of my brother and sister; I need their Christ to strengthen mine. Indeed, I am a Christian because I believe that what we believe is greater and more true than what I believe.
But while I believe that the church is essential, it cannot do my work for me. In his last talk, Thomas Merton told his audience of monks and nuns that their orders, their monastic houses, and even their traditions were not sufficient. "From now on," said Merton, "it's every man (and woman) for himself." I think I know what that means. Being a dedicated, loyal church member is not enough. Having the right opinions about Jesus is not enough. Being a UU or Methodist or Catholic or Orthodox, is not enough because, although the church is the essential conduit and celebrant of faith, it is not the agent for completing God's work. That is our work.
In a godless culture and in a dangerous world, it's every one for themself, and the work of achieving our own salvation is also the act of working for the salvation of others. There is no distinction between self-interest and altruism at this point.
Therefore, as a Christian my task is to try to live as a disciple and live in fellowship with other would-be disciples. This is primarily not a matter of thinking right things about Jesus, or believing certain doctrines, or celebrating certain liturgies, and not celebrating others, or obeying certain authorities without question. It means knowing that if the rest of my life, however long it may be, is to have any significance for me or others, any validity, any integrity, I must live as one who is trying to be a disciple of Jesus, that is, as best I can, trying to live his teachings, love my fellows, learn from and help my fellow disciples, but above all trusting this one who in the words of Paul reflects to us God's glory — trusting his promises, trusting his pardon, trusting his power, trusting his peace, trusting his judgment, trusting his teachings and trusting the one who is uniquely both human and divine.
For me, Christ's command to love my fellows is also a command to stay in communication with and in relationship with the men, women and children of the Unitarian Universalist fellowship. It seems that God has called me to be here. As long as I am sustained and nourished by Christian thought, worship and experience that I need, I must attend to those who befriended me when I was a nonbeliever and who have been the context for my ministry for over four decades.
I would gain nothing by trotting off to another denomination where I could doubtless find a place, but it would not be my place with my people. And even though the UU world at times drives me nuts, I'm sure at times I dismay my fellows.
In other words, I choose to stand within both the community of Christian revelation and the community of Unitarian Universalist seekers and individualists.
What does this mean for my non-Christian confreres and consoeurs? For those who are happy with mainline UU-ism, who believe in the enlightenment myth of our progress toward a more universal faith, in ontological individualism and in our being the fulfillment of our mothers and fathers in faith, I doubt that I have much to say. For those who feel that we have lost something, that our present stasis in membership and funding reflects some fundamental fault, that we lack depth and direction, I can only say that one must search indeed, but at some point one must make a non-rational commitment to some one, some faith, some revelation and ultimately some faith community, if one is to grow in depth. One must choose at some point to move beyond the limits of one's own choice and stand within a community which is an arena of both instruction and exploration.
For me to live, not in, but out of Christian community is to know the one of whom Schweitzer spoke in the last paragraph of his Quest for the Historical Jesus. He said (and I have added a few phrases to the last sentence): "He comes to us as one unknown as of old, by the lakeside he came to those who knew him not. He speaks to us the same words, 'Follow thou me,' and sets us to work at tasks which he must complete in our times. He commands, and those who obey, whether they be rich or poor, wise or simple, shall find his peace, and as an ineffable mystery they shall know in their own lives who he is." And I would add, "Who they are, where they are and where they are going." That at least is our partial experience and our hope as Christians.
I. The Present Theological State of Unitarian Universalism
If I understand UU-ism correctly, it is institutionalized Transcendentalism.
Transcendentalism, you may recall, is the belief that each single person's intuition of the divine (the ultimate, the holy, truth itself) precedes all cultural, societal and institutional forms of religion. That is, the person alone, before and beyond all communities and institutions, knows the basic truth which he or she needs to live by, and that all traditions, teachings, doctrines and counsels of religious communities are important only as guides, supports and challenges, but not as final authorities.
The Transcendentalist theologian is Ralph Waldo Emerson, and his great quote comes from the 1838 Divinity School Address: "Yourself a newborn bard of the Holy Spirit, cast behind you all conformity and acquaint men (and women) at first hand with Divinity."
The UUA embodies this sentiment. The first of its seven principles is “the inherent worth and dignity of every person,” and the first named source of authority in the seven principles is “direct experience.” Time and again our members tell us that they joined our churches because UUism affirmed their freedom to believe what they individually valued.
UU’s embody the American intuition that the person is the first order of reality, that community is a secondary order created by a social contract made between individuals. This is what sociologist Robert Bellah calls “ontological individualism.”
Even the new interest in spirituality in this country and in the UUA is an individual quest in which one chooses from a wide array of physical and mental practices and philosophies. Beneath this new interest is an aversion to community and tradition, evident in the oft-repeated phrase, "I want spirituality not religion." We see this also in the frequent hostility to Christianity, Judaism and any tradition which appears as if it might define the worship of a congregation. It's OK to sample, but next Sunday let's have something different.
Now if the UUA is institutionalized Transcendentalism, what holds local societies together in an association and what keeps members within a society? If I am correct, I think we supply a lack of theological consensus with the force of institutional forms — a name, a logo, district and continental meetings, a powerful ministers’ association, national licensing procedures, the seven principles, and subtle, but at times very strong, pressures toward conformity.
For supposedly-unique churches, there is a fairly predictable Sunday liturgy inherited from the Protestant preaching service. There are common worship practices, such as lighting the chalice, joys and concerns, flower communion, water communion, a common hymnal which serves as a de facto prayerbook, and "Spirit of Life," which has become a distinctive chant. UU sermons - to my ear - also have a surprising consistency in content, though considerable variety in expression. These forms hold UU’s together and define them.
UU’s have, I think, become that which Emerson left, Parker ignored and Channing dreaded - a denomination. They are institutionalized Transcendentalism.
This is clearly not a problem for the great majority of UU clergy and members. This is what supports them, what they enjoy, what they see as the fruition of their history. Others find something substantial missing. Many leave and some hang on. In either case, it behooves us to ask how UU-ism evolved into its current state.
II. The Historical Path to the Present
Unitarianism began as an unnamed and undefined reaction against the determinism, pessimism and judgmentalism of traditional New England theology. When Congregational ministers began to question these themes, their conservative colleagues refused to exchange pulpits with them or take part in their ordinations. Within local churches liberal and conservative members began to argue over the their pastor's beliefs. In 1819 the members of The First Parish of Dedham took their differences to a state court which awarded the building, grounds and monies to the more liberal parish organization, leaving the conservative members to found a new church.
In that same year (1819) William Ellery Channing defined and named the new movement in a sermon, entitled "Unitarian Christianity," which he preached at Jared Sparks's ordination in Baltimore. In this sermon he rejected four premises:
1. God's existence as Trinity (as defined at the Council of Nicea in 325 AD)
2. God's right to absolute judgment over human salvation.
3. The doctrine of Christ's two natures, human and divine (as defined at the Council of Chalcedon in 451 AD)
4. The doctrine of salvation by Christ's vicarious atonement as defined by Anselm.
In contrast, Channing affirmed five propositions which he said characterized the new movement among the Congregational churches:
1. The simple unity of God
2. The absolute morality of God
3. The simple unity, namely the humanity, of Jesus
4. The moral and spiritual leadership of Jesus
5. Human salvation by moral and spiritual character.
And how do we know these to be true? Because, said Channing: 1. We find them confirmed in scripture if we read scripture with the eyes of reason, and 2. We find them confirmed in our own God-given sense of morality.
For example, Channing described God as "infinitely good, kind, benevolent,” for "we respect nothing but excellence whether in heaven or on earth. We venerate not the loftiness of God's throne, but the equity and justice with which it is established." (p. 70) In other words, we believe in God because God represents the highest good which we can conceive. Again, Jesus "was sent to effect a moral and spiritual deliverance." (P. 74) "We regard him as Saviour, chiefly as he is the light, physician and guide of the dark, diseased and wandering mind." (p.79)
Now when I read Channing's indictments of the old theology, I heartily assent. And when I read his affirmations, I assent but less heartily. Why? Not because of what he says but because of what he does not say. I hear nothing of God's mystery, God's dynamism, God's judgment, God's creativity and our own distance from that all-perfect source and being.
I hear nothing of a Christ who was judge, rebel and embodiment of holiness. No, in his place Channing speaks of "the mild precepts" of Jesus. Mild, my eye! Are we reading the same Bible? I hear nothing from Channing of our human capacity for evil, indifference, greed, self-centeredness and corruption, which has destroyed the lives and happiness of millions throughout history and in this century, and which now threatens our existence as a species. My experience and observation is that it takes more than mild precepts, education and good will to correct the evil which threatens us from within as from without. In the words of a Trappist preacher, "Sins are not water soluble."
But furthermore I do not hear Channing telling us that we need the church as the imperfect bearer of God's revelation. I do not hear him telling us of tradition as the medium for God's disclosure, nor of the collective faith once given to the saints and renewed in us if we receive it. No, in Channing religion is essentially a matter between the reasonable individual and a benevolent deity with Jesus as teacher and guide.
I am saying that the seeds of the dissolution of Unitarian Christianity were sown in its initial definition and defense. For, when the conflict arose between the first Transcendentalists and the Unitarian Christians, the latter—Channing, Andrews Norton and Henry Ware—tried to defend Christianity on the basis of reason—reason, that is, as they understood it. Christianity, they claimed, was both true and unique because Christ had empirically proved his authority through his power to work miracles. But the Transcendentalists, armed with American pragmatism and Enlightenment skepticism, tore that argument to shreds, and Unitarian Christianity was left with only its dubious claims to a superior morality.
In 1838, less than twenty years after Channing's Baltimore sermon, Ralph Waldo Emerson addressed the senior class in the chapel of Harvard Divinity School and challenged the authority of Christian faith with these words: "The word Miracle, as pronounced by Christian churches, ... is Monster. It is not one with the blowing clover and the falling rain." Where then is truth, he asked? In the soul, the individual soul which, as the prophet Jesus taught, is the law to itself. Emerson concluded, "We have contrasted the Church with the Soul. In the soul, then, let the redemption be sought."
Nowhere do we see this debate more clearly focused than in the differences over Holy Communion. Emerson left his ministry at Second Church because the congregation would not agree to drop communion. Theodore Parker never even held communion at the Twenty-eighth Congregational Society. Of the rite he said, "The Lord's Supper ... is a heathenish rite and means very little, I think. Let all who will come into a parlor and have a social and religious meeting, and eat bread (wine if you like), or curds and cream— baked apples if you will, and have a conversation, free and cheerful, on moral questions ... only let all be rational and real." (Atlantic Monthly October 1860, p.451)
You see, Parker and Emerson were challenging not just Christian ritual and teaching, but tradition itself in any form, and in time the later Transcendentalists, the Free Religious Association and the American humanists took up their cause. Indeed, by the 1930's generations of Unitarian Christians had already substituted intuition for revelation, reason for ritual and the individual soul for the church. When I entered seminary almost fifty years ago, the crosses had come down in most New England meetinghouses, Holy Communion was a sparsely-attended annual event in the few churches that still held it, the Lord's Prayer and the reading of the Bible had been dropped, and many assumed that in time most Christians and theists would simply disappear.
At the time of merger in 1961 we stepped out of our Unitarian and Universalist heritages to create institutionalized Transcendentalism. The Unitarians set aside the unity of God for the free and responsible search for truth. The Universalists set aside God's all-embracing love for inclusivism, an ideal which one can live with insofar as one does not see how one has failed to live it.
For the UUA’s first few years the UU logo was two intersecting circles, representing the two traditions. Then that unitive symbol was set aside for the flaming chalice, taken from the UU Service Committee, as one more act of Unitarian exclusion of the Universalist component.
We rebaptized Channing, Emerson, Parker, Hosea Ballou, Henry Whitney Bellows, James Freeman Clarke and all the fathers and mothers of our faith as "Unitarian Universalists" —in a vain attempt, I think, to show that we are their fulfillment. Anyone who knows history, and thus Emerson’s anti-institutionalism, Parker's solo career, Channing's refusal of the first AUA presidency and his disappointment at its founding, will also know that we are not what they had in mind. For, we have almost lost our institutional interest in history. Our whole understanding of how we evolved into what we are was defined by Earl Morse Wilbur, who wrote a detailed, minutely-documented and, I believe, flawed, account of Unitarianism as essentially anti-Trinitarianism. Wilbur told our story as the familiar pilgrimage from Trinitarian dogma to enlightenment, concluding with (and in the words of Dave Barry, I am not making this up) a new trinity, namely: freedom, reason and tolerance. These were the Unitarian watchwords when I entered seminary in 1954. At least Wilbur had a passion for history. Now we have to require our seminarians to read Unitarian and Universalist history, and that means we have essentially lost our sense of its importance. That too is part of our legacy from Emerson.
III. The UU Christian Misdirection
When I began to attend meetings of the Unitarian Christian Fellowship in Boston (and they were only in Boston in those days), it was clear that the founding members felt they'd been betrayed and that humanists had "taken over" the denomination with the connivance or consent of the AUA president Frederick May Eliot, himself an ardent theist. But I found their own form of Christianity ambiguous.
The early members of the Christian Fellowship believed that they believed in the teachings of Jesus, not the teachings about Jesus, but while they were good people, good citizens, good church members, I wasn't sure that their lives reflected the teachings of Jesus any more than other Christians, or even non-Christians.
In seminary as I learned more about the transition into Transcendentalism, I was struck with three things:
1. First, the Unitarian Christians were really preaching an Emersonian version of Christianity, that is that they too believed that religion was first of all a transaction between God and the person. Jesus, the Bible and the church were all invaluable guides in this transaction but when push came to shove it was God and the soul, as the bard of Concord had proclaimed in 1838.
2. The transition from Emersonian Christianity to institutionalized Transcendentalism was relatively easy. A few theists and Christians objected, and some even left for other churches, but even supposedly-conservative New England churches dropped Christian symbols, texts and practices without losing many members. Indeed, most congregations embraced with enthusiasm the Beacon church school curriculum, the new hymnal, Sunday readings from science and philosophy, and young ministers preached a tradition-less religion. Most Unitarians found the change not only painless, but positive.
3. History has shown that the liberal Christianity of William Ellery Channing and Andrews Norton was no match for the Transcendentalism of Emerson, Parker and the Free Religious Association. Indeed, Unitarian Christianity had already given away the essentials and thus prepared the way.
Let me put my point this way:
If Jesus is a human teacher of divine truths, why should we not listen to others whom we deem to be teachers of divine truth?
If the scriptures are a book of divine wisdom, why should we not study other books of divine wisdom?
If Christianity is only one religion among others, whose only superiority lies in the reports of Christ's miracles, then why should we not learn from other religions?
Indeed, fifty years ago the proponents of the new Unitarianism, later to become Unitarian Universalism, were not so much denying Christian truth as to claim that they were "more than Christian." They believed their thinking included more truth than Christianity, indeed, that it included all the essentials in all religions. Donald Harrington at the UUA merger ceremony held in Symphony Hall proclaimed that we were a new faith, and the world was waiting to hear our gospel.
These reflections have led me to reconsider two doctrines which Unitarians, Universalists and Unitarian Universalists have long since set aside: 1. the Trinity and 2. the two-fold nature of Christ.
I realize that you may scarcely believe your ears, as I say this. These doctrines have lain for centuries beyond the pale of acceptable discourse within our ranks, but I too am searching for the truth in, I hope, “a free and responsible” way, so I hope you will hear me out. I'll take the Trinity first. I said that Earl Morse Wilbur defined Unitarianism as anti-Trinitarianism. (We are incidentally not the only Unitarians. Doukhabors, Jehovah's Witnesses, Christian Scientists, United Pentecostals, Quakers and not a few Baptists worship God undivided as to person.)
An understanding of God, such as Channing's, as a pure moral spirit with the best qualities of a humane, dedicated citizen is in the long run a limited class-based view of God. Channing's biographer, David Edgell, says, "His function was to translate and make available to a dominant middle class culture a synthesis of ideas ... which helped to solidify and express American social and religious liberalism." (Page 229, William Ellery Channing, Beacon Press, 1955) (Again, "He reflected the intellectual cross-currents that swirled about him." (p.233)
This God, who had to earn the respect of Channing's generation in order to be credible, was kindly and benevolent to a generation on its way up the socio-economic ladder. Although I prefer such a God to the capricious deity of late Congregationalism, such a God does not meet me in the world where I live—a world of genocide, a world where one generation of victims become oppressors of the next, a world of power and privilege run amok, conflicting isms, danger at every turn, unforgivable wealth and abject poverty, death and affluence living side by side. I do not find in Channing's God the righteous word of the prophets or the voice of the Nazarene who claims God's kingdom was coming - ready or not. I find in this God no mystery, no judgment, and therefore - for me - no hope. And yet I do not blame Channing. He was a child of his time, as I am of mine, and if I am ever noticed, I will probably be judged more wanting in my time than he in his.
Although I cannot accept the Nicean definition of God as tri-personed, I believe that God defined primarily as spirit, eventually floats into the upper stratosphere, that if God is not somehow incarnate in this world and in our lives in all His, or Her, or Its, inherent power, many-facedness and mystery, then God becomes an abstraction and inevitably lesser gods take up His place.
Let me put it this way. Trinitarian thinking is necessary to counter a monistic definition of God as unmoved and unmoving. Trinitarian thinking says that there are distinctions and dynamism within God, and without this kind of understanding we lose relationship to and interest in God. Small wonder that humanism became more attractive than Unitarian Christianity. I recall a formidable threat from a humanist colleague early in my ministry: “If you Christians don’t come up with something more interesting, we’ll just yawn you out of the denomination.”
Alright. Let's look at the second point: the two natures of Christ. This was defined at the Council of Chalcedon in 451 AD, namely that in the one person of Christ there were two natures: unconfused, indivisible, unchangeable and inseparable.
Now what does this mean for us? Why should we even be discussing matters like this, long since dismissed by our colleagues? Why is the teaching about the two natures of Christ important?
Let's try to understand what those bishops at Chalcedon were trying to do. I think they were trying to preserve an understanding of Jesus as God's presence to humanity and God's power for humanity, who were caught in a swamp of personal and collective sins and evil. Christ, in order to save us, had to be both part of us and more than us. To be savior, Christ had to be both of God and of humanity, both without compromising either, thus the delicate and essential balance between his humanity and divinity.
If we emphasizes Christ’s divinity to the exclusion of his humanity, we get a divine being who has nothing to do with us, as Channing so aptly said. But if we emphasize his humanity to the exclusion of his divinity, we get another great teacher or prophet.
This I think was the Unitarian error. Eventually Jesus became a great teacher and prophet; but in time we discovered other teachers and prophets, some of whom seemed more relevant, accessible, contemporary than Jesus. And then even Jesus the teacher and prophet became irrelevant.
To be a Christian is to trust that Christ is and has what we need in order to live God’s will and find our way through this world. There is no substitute for this act of faith, as Paul, Augustine, Luther, Theresa of Avila and Dorothy Day knew. Without this risk, one ends up following one’s own preferences, and that is a life without chart or direction.
We see how hard it is to trust in the popular search for what is called the historical Jesus. Robert Funk and the members of the Jesus seminar, Marcus Borg, John Crossan and others, are attempting to construct a model of a historical Jesus based on archaeological and historical findings, contemporaneous documents and critical analysis of the gospels. The aim of this enterprise is to discover a Jesus whom seeking Christians can intellectually believe in. Some of you have read and studied their writing.
I believe that this effort fails on two counts.
First, on the historical. From my reading of 19th century and current literature of this sort, including works by Funk, Borg and Crossan, and from my understanding of the gospels, I simply do not see how the historical data we have on Jesus can yield what a critical historian would call even a likely guess. The gospel writers were writing a proclamation, not history or biography, and I don't see how massaging the existing texts can produce even historical probability. Schweitzer in his doctoral thesis in theology, The Quest for the Historical Jesus, laid this effort to rest when he said, "The Jesus of history emerges from his own time and advances toward us, but then he passes us by and returns to his own time there to remain." We can never find enough evidence to give us even a semi-credible picture of the historical Jesus. When a jury after watching a video of the Los Angeles police arresting Rodney King split on whether or not the police were brutal in their treatment of him, I wonder what kind of data will give us certainty?
Secondly, history is not the issue. Certainty does not lie in historical data, even if we had the data. Empirical evidence does not increase our faith. In fact, the quest for historical certainty distracts us from the essential task of trusting Jesus. The earthly life of Jesus, the fact and facts of his existence, is the seed dropped into the earth of human experience, but it is not the full flowering plant, nor is it the church, the weathering of history, the fertilization given by saints, martyrs, scholars and servants — these all together create the plant of religion and the harvest of faith.
But to receive the harvest, to know the meaning of Jesus requires a giving of one's mind, one's heart, one's will in an act of surrender, always without sufficient evidence and data. This leap of faith, as Kierkegaard knew so well, is the essential act of becoming a Christian. There simply is no substitute.
IV. My Own Response
Given this situation, what are the Christian and the theist to do? I find that I cannot prescribe for another, since my own path has been so often and remains unclear. After 42 years in parish ministry, reflecting on my own experience and observing churches today as I see them, realizing the variety of viewpoints and experiences among my UU friends, parishioners and colleagues, I find the parish church both essential and inadequate. That is why I titled this "Beyond Channing and Church."
As a Christian, I live out of the church. If God is my source, the church is my conduit. I must worship with my fellows. I must read and reflect on the wisdom of my predecessors and contemporaries. I must be upheld by their faith. The Christ in my heart is often weaker than the Christ in the heart of my brother and sister; I need their Christ to strengthen mine. Indeed, I am a Christian because I believe that what we believe is greater and more true than what I believe.
But while I believe that the church is essential, it cannot do my work for me. In his last talk, Thomas Merton told his audience of monks and nuns that their orders, their monastic houses, and even their traditions were not sufficient. "From now on," said Merton, "it's every man (and woman) for himself." I think I know what that means. Being a dedicated, loyal church member is not enough. Having the right opinions about Jesus is not enough. Being a UU or Methodist or Catholic or Orthodox, is not enough because, although the church is the essential conduit and celebrant of faith, it is not the agent for completing God's work. That is our work.
In a godless culture and in a dangerous world, it's every one for themself, and the work of achieving our own salvation is also the act of working for the salvation of others. There is no distinction between self-interest and altruism at this point.
Therefore, as a Christian my task is to try to live as a disciple and live in fellowship with other would-be disciples. This is primarily not a matter of thinking right things about Jesus, or believing certain doctrines, or celebrating certain liturgies, and not celebrating others, or obeying certain authorities without question. It means knowing that if the rest of my life, however long it may be, is to have any significance for me or others, any validity, any integrity, I must live as one who is trying to be a disciple of Jesus, that is, as best I can, trying to live his teachings, love my fellows, learn from and help my fellow disciples, but above all trusting this one who in the words of Paul reflects to us God's glory — trusting his promises, trusting his pardon, trusting his power, trusting his peace, trusting his judgment, trusting his teachings and trusting the one who is uniquely both human and divine.
For me, Christ's command to love my fellows is also a command to stay in communication with and in relationship with the men, women and children of the Unitarian Universalist fellowship. It seems that God has called me to be here. As long as I am sustained and nourished by Christian thought, worship and experience that I need, I must attend to those who befriended me when I was a nonbeliever and who have been the context for my ministry for over four decades.
I would gain nothing by trotting off to another denomination where I could doubtless find a place, but it would not be my place with my people. And even though the UU world at times drives me nuts, I'm sure at times I dismay my fellows.
In other words, I choose to stand within both the community of Christian revelation and the community of Unitarian Universalist seekers and individualists.
What does this mean for my non-Christian confreres and consoeurs? For those who are happy with mainline UU-ism, who believe in the enlightenment myth of our progress toward a more universal faith, in ontological individualism and in our being the fulfillment of our mothers and fathers in faith, I doubt that I have much to say. For those who feel that we have lost something, that our present stasis in membership and funding reflects some fundamental fault, that we lack depth and direction, I can only say that one must search indeed, but at some point one must make a non-rational commitment to some one, some faith, some revelation and ultimately some faith community, if one is to grow in depth. One must choose at some point to move beyond the limits of one's own choice and stand within a community which is an arena of both instruction and exploration.
For me to live, not in, but out of Christian community is to know the one of whom Schweitzer spoke in the last paragraph of his Quest for the Historical Jesus. He said (and I have added a few phrases to the last sentence): "He comes to us as one unknown as of old, by the lakeside he came to those who knew him not. He speaks to us the same words, 'Follow thou me,' and sets us to work at tasks which he must complete in our times. He commands, and those who obey, whether they be rich or poor, wise or simple, shall find his peace, and as an ineffable mystery they shall know in their own lives who he is." And I would add, "Who they are, where they are and where they are going." That at least is our partial experience and our hope as Christians.
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