The term scripture usually means the sacred texts of a given religious tradition. Such texts are often viewed as having divine origin and/or inspiration. I have been thinking recently about whether or not Unitarian Universalist have a scripture or scriptures. We clearly draw upon on the scriptures from the worlds religious traditions including, but not limited to the Bible (both the Hebrew and Christian New Testament portions). But do we have texts that are foundational to our tradition that we draw upon more than others? I think we might. I would suggest that several of Emerson’s essays and addresses, some of Channing’s sermons, some of Parker’s writings, the principles and sources of the UUA, the first Humanist Manifesto and, oddly enough, the text from the Women and Religion resolution at General Assembly in 1977 and the Cambridge Platform have all influenced Unitarian Universalism significantly. I don’t know if that makes them scripture but I think that they afforded some sort of special status–maybe simply the special status of being important texts. Here’s a list of Emerson’s, Channing’s and Parker’s writings that I use frequently (and hear my colleagues use):

Emerson

The Over-Soul
Self Reliance
The Divinity School Address

Channing

Unitarian Christianity
Likeness to God
Self Culture

Parker
The Transient and Permanent in Christianity

What other writings might be considered central to our tradition? I think that Hosea Ballou’s Treatise on Atonement is probably fairly central, but personally don’t use it that often. Given that Unitarian Universalism is an evolving tradition in which revelation is not sealed how recent a person might be included on a list of foundational figures? Could you include people like A. Powell Davies, Clarence Skinner, John H. Holmes and Kenneth Patton who were alive within the memory of many now living? What about people like Thandeka, William Schulz and Forrest Church whose writings and teachings have a lot influence of contemporary ministers? Or living people like Barbara Pescan and Mark Belletini whose works have made it into our hymn books? Also, what about women like Margaret Fuller and Elizabeth Cady Staton who wrote theological texts, were clearly affiliated with Unitarianism but were not clergy or necessarily writing for a Unitarian or Universalist audience?

Perhaps this a little muddled but I would be interested in whatever responses people might have.

Long time family friend Marketa Luskacova was in the LA Times today. They compared her pictures of the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia during the Prague Spring of 1968 with images that have recently come out of Georgia. Here are the two photographs that the newspaper ran:

Kenneth Knabb’s web-site the Bureau of Public Secrets just turn 10. Bopsecrets is one of the best sites on the internet. It includes the complete text of his Situationist International Anthology which collects many of the major Situationist texts including a number from the May 1968 uprising in France. Also found on the site is the Kenneth Rexroth Archive. Rexroth has influenced my thinking enormously. The archive includes the complete text of his book on the libertarian tradition Communalism which helped shape my politics; selections from Rexroth’s extensive translations of Greek, Latin, Italian, Spanish, French, Japanese and Chinese poetry; and many of Rexroth’s own poems. The site also contains a number of Rexroth’s essays and literary criticism including his previously uncollected newspaper columns.

The site also collects a lot of wonderful radical texts and also including Knabb’s own writings, and some random comics suffering from détournement.

My sermons from June 8, June 15, August 10 and August 17 are now on-line. My August 10 sermon, "Rejecting a Culture of Violence", is my response to the attack on the UU congregation in Knoxville.

There’s an interesting article in today’s Washington Post by Kathleen Parker on the recent forum that Rick Warren held with John McCain and Barack Obama. The article is highly critical of the forum because, Parker argues, having a minister publicly interview presidential candidates is a violation of the separation between church and state. Parker writes, "…higher principles…are compromised every time we pretend we’re not applying a religious test when we’re really applying a religious test." I think that is certainly a true statement.

And I also think it is true that there is a religious test for higher political office in the United States. The people that have the highest negatives in public opinion polls are always atheists. In other words, you can’t be President if you don’t profess to believe in God. Personally, every time politicians start talking about their religious beliefs I can’t but help think of Machiavelli’s The Prince in which he argued that it was important for politicians to be thought of as Christians but that it was equally important that they followed the logic of power rather than the logic of ethics to remain in control.

 

I haven’t had a chance to go mushroom hunting for a couple of months so I’ve taken to looking around the neighborhood on my morning walks. This morning I cut what appears to be a pound and a half chicken mushroom. Chicken mushrooms are one of my favorite wild mushrooms. Fried with garlic and olive oil and the braised with white wine they taste quite a bit like, well, chicken–sweet and a little musty.

My find got me to thinking… How much food do I walk past on a regular basis? My neighborhood contains plum trees, wild mint and walnut and hickory trees. There are also dandelions and nettles, which most people consider weeds, and a bunch of different mushrooms–some of which I know and others of which I do not. It’d be an interesting experiment to try and figure out what sort of meal one could make from the available goodies. It’s also interesting to think about how many plants produce things that we generally eat today but which once formed part of various indigenous communities staple diets–acorns, for example.

PS In case anyone is concerned, I am taking the mushroom to be identified by an expert before I eat. It’s always a good idea to get a second opinion, especially if you’re kind of novice mushroom hunter…

There’s an interesting debate in the UU blogosphere going on right now about whether or not Unitarian Universalism is Post-Christian. The most activity seems to be on Radical Hapa and Boys in the Band. The whole debate started because of this Washington post article about the recent events in Knoxville.

Personally, I tend to agree with those who argue that Unitarian Universalists are Post-Christian. I imagine that most sociologists of religion would place us in that category. I would challenge those who don’t like the term Post-Christian to come up with another that they find satisfying and that doesn’t suggest that all Unitarian Universalists are Christian, because I do not believe that we are.

There was a great quorum piece from the New York Times Freakanomics blog yesterday on the future of suburbia. The commentators opinions range from doom and gloom from James Kunstler to somewhat more optimistic prognosis from John Archer and Alan Berube. Pretty much everyone seems to agree that the suburbs will be totally different in 2050 than they are today. Rising energy costs and, to a lesser extent, shifting societal values seem to ensure this. Kunstler, whose book The Geography of Nowhere I read in my early twenties, has some wonderful vitriol:

…American suburbia requires an infinite supply of cheap energy in order to function and we have now entered a permanent global energy crisis that will change the whole equation of daily life. Having poured a half-century of our national wealth into a living arrangement with no future — and linked our very identity with it — we have provoked a powerful psychology of previous investment that will make it difficult for us to let go, change our behavior, and make other arrangements…

The suburbs have three destinies, none of them exclusive: as materials salvage, as slums, and as ruins. In any case, the suburbs will lose value dramatically, both in terms of usefulness and financial investment. Most of the fabric of suburbia will not be “fixed” or retrofitted, in particular the residential subdivisions. They were built badly in the wrong places.

These days, an awful lot of people — the production builders, the realtors — are waiting for the “bottom” in the real-estate industry with hopes that the suburban house-building orgy will resume. They are waiting in vain. The project of suburbia is over. We will build no more of it. Now we’re stuck with what’s there. Sometimes whole societies make unfortunate decisions or go down tragic pathways. Suburbia was ours.

As someone who’s a real believer in urbanism I have to admit I love Kunstler’s dystopian vision for suburbia. I like walkable communities, public transit and population density high enough to sustain interesting neighborhoods and vibrant arts scenes. I also like rural landscapes, camping/hiking and farming communities. Suburbia has seemed to me to be at odds with both of these.

Archer and Berube suggest that suburbia will change but that its future is less bleak than Kunstler predicts. Both seem to believe that in the future suburbia will more-or-less look like a mid-density city. It will be walkable and built around mass transit hubs. It will be increasingly economically and racially diverse. No matter who is right I imagine that the American urban and suburban areas of the next 40 years will be very different than they were in the last 40.

My sermon from this past week, which will be on-line by Thursday, focused on recent Knoxville shootings and the broader culture of violence in which we live. While researching my sermon I spent sometime with the works of Adin Ballou. Ballou was a minister who served Universalist and Unitarian congregations in the mid-19th century, an active abolitionist and early theorist of non-violence. Reading some of his shorter pieces and excerpts of his longer ones reminded me of just what a profound thinker Ballou was. Unlike the more abstract Leo Tolstoy, Ballou actually spent a lot of time thinking about how a society might be organized along non-violent lines and how the mentally unstable and others prone to violence met be rendered harmless in such a society. For those interested in exploring his thought I recommend his book Christian Non-Resistance, especially Chapter 1, and the tracts "The Superiority of Moral over Political Power" and "Christian Non-Resistance in Extreme Cases."

The Friends of Adin Ballou is an organization devoted to keeping his legacy and thought alive. Friends of Adin Ballou holds an annual lecture. This year’s talk was by activist and scholar Michael True and places Ballou within the broader context of non-violent theorists.

I don’t know how many people out there have seen this yet but the site www.freedetainees.org recently released photographs of "segregation boxes" that detaineees are kept in Iraq. They can be viewed at “Prisoner Boxes” in Iraq. I don’t know how placing someone in a 3x3x6 box can be considered anything other than torture. My Oxford American Dictionary defines torture as "the action or practice of inflicting severe pain on someone as a punishment or to force them to do or say something, or for the pleasure of the person inflicting the pain." Being isolated in a wooden box in extreme heat is both psychological and physical torture.

I struggle with how to respond to these images and the others that have come out of Iraq and Guantanamo Bay. They evoke in me both a sense of outrage and a sense of powerlessness. I am outraged that the government of the United States is torturing people. Torture is morally repugnant. It is also illegal under both national and international law. I feel powerless to stop the torture. Truth be told it might be possibly to force the government to stop the torture–both the House on UnAmerica Activities Committee and COINTELPRO were ultimately defeated–but I don’t really know how one would go about doing so. Replace the current administration with another? Most likely the next administration will continue to torture people, they will just be more circumspect about it. Speak out against it? After people know what is going on how do you convince them to act? How can you convince them that their actions can change things? The government regularly tries to convince us that it does not pay attention to protesters. Take legal recourse? So far the court cases against the current administration have mostly resulted in semantic shuffling. The actions remain the same but the words for them change.

Ultimately, one must have hope. We live in a time in human history where many struggles for human rights, dignity and economic justice have been won. There is no reason to think that a struggle to end torture would not also ultimately be successful. It is hard to imagine all of the unnecessary suffering in the interim. 

In case you can’t visit www.freedetainees.org here’s a picture of one of the boxes: