So why is it such a shocker that the insurgents are fighting like insurgents?

Donald Rumsfeld is saying that it was a big surprise that the insurgency is so tough. This shock all basically comes down to the fact that the insurgents are fighting very much like the PLO.

It seems to me that this begs the question: should figuring out that the insurgents would fight like the PLO really have been all that hard?

Honestly, how would YOU fight an urban war in an Arab country? Even I would know to look at some people who have been doing it more or less sucessfully for decades and try to do what they're doing.

The whole situation is reminding me of the 2002 Millenium Challenge war game where Lt. General Van Riper, the guy leading the "terrorist" team, applied those sorts of tactics on a large scale and won doing things like landing his planes with lights when the US took out his communications.

The US got it's butt kicked by exactly the sorts of jury-rigged approaches that the insurgents are using today.

Did we think about it? Did we change the way we would approach the war and work on doing something that would make these tactics less effective?

No, the US team whined that he wasn't playing fair by being competant. So they changed the rules of the game and forced Van Riper to allow the US to destroy some of his stuff so the US would win and it would look good in the papers.

Then we applied exactly the tactics that screwed up the war game to this real war, and watched people start to die.
I'm sorry, asking for the army to have predicted that the insurgents would fight like insurgents is not a lot. I'm no military strategist, but the whole "Well, yes we knew they had booze and rags. But we had NO IDEA they had the capability to put those two things together and make molotov cocktails. We can't think of everything! How dare those liberals expect us to be compentent!" argument really cheeses me off.

CC

Ps. Here's another good article on the Millenium Challenge and what it should have meant to us.

Pps. I knew Mark Foley was gay and have known since my time working as a fundraiser for Republican members of congress. If *I* knew, lots of people knew. But nobody really talked about it. I knew he was somewhat indiscreet in his invitations, but I didn't know his tastes ran to teenage boys. (Though they don't ONLY run to teenage boys, judging by the other person he hit on.) Washington is weird like this. I can't imagine what gay Republican politicians go through.

CC hasn't left the lovesac all morning

OK so my blog design is still a work in progress. Google analytics tells me that a huge proportion of y'all use internet explorer, so I am keeping an eye on how it looks there, too. Right now, Firefox makes the copper header disappear, which I could live with if only one could really see the name of the blog when that happened. IE throws my sidebars down to the bottom of the page.

I actually have my own header designed and ready to go and this design is very close to what I want. In a perfect world, I could replace the copper header with mine and somehow make the sidebars stop jumping down, but that would mean I would be a lot better with CSS than I am. Ah well.

I am not teaching YRUU this Sunday so I'm taking the day off until TheCSO wakes up and makes me work on the basement. So I am lazing around on the LoveSac TheCSO got for my birthday to replace the FuglyCouch.

The New York Times Magazine has a scary photo of Howard Dean on the cover, labeled "It's His Party?" Now I know what Republicans feel like when they see John McCain referred to that way. Shudder.

So have any Chalicesseurs used "Second Life?" I tried it once and found it hard to move in and the people sort of annoying. I think I was on for an hour a day for a couple of days and gave it up. I'm not at all averse to a different form of online presence, but was unimpressed. That said, the NYT magazine has an article about how corporate products are showing again and Former VA Governor Mark Warner gave a much ballyhooed speech there. Maybe I should give it another shot.

I really enjoy the Sims and have meant to give their online world a shot, but I hear it's not very good.

Ah well. I guess I'll have to stick to space invaders for now.

CC
Amazed at what is filling the gap in her head where worrying about the LSAT used to be.

"Justice Sunday" started with us.

A few days ago, in the midst of the earlier discussion of the proper role the UUA should take in politics, a guy or girl named "UUWonk" put up a response to one of my other UUs in politics posts where he/she wrote:

The religious right loves UUs because they see us as proof that liberals don't really believe in separation of church and state.

For example, a while back a broad coalition of mainline church leaders criticized an anti-abortion event called "Justice Sunday" as mixing church and state. Family Research Council leader Tony Perkins issued a press release claiming that his group had gotten the idea and name for "Justice Sunday" from the UUs.

Perkins wrote supportively, "In fact, as far as we can determine, the Unitarian Church was the first to apply the term Justice Sunday to a public policy initiative discussed from pulpits on a designated day. No one involved in our Justice Sunday II objects to these efforts of liberal religious bodies, in principle."

UUwonk provided a link, but the link didn't work. At the time, I said to myself "Geez, I hope that isn't true, though admittedly 'Justice Sunday' sure as hell SOUNDS like something UUs would think of." Then I went back to studying for the LSAT.

Now, post-LSAT, I looked into it, and yes, a google cache of the page UUWonk linked to remains and is still here.

Here's the full paragraph UUWonk quoted from: The hypocritical concern is evident in the detailed public policy agenda of the religious bodies that have held press events to lambaste Justice Sunday II. The Interfaith Alliance and the Unitarian Universalist Association, to name just two of the activist critics, advocate, from a religious basis, a variety of public policy positions on everything from abortion, to human rights, to anti-poverty programs. In fact, as far as we can determine, the Unitarian Church was the first to apply the term Justice Sunday to a public policy initiative discussed from pulpits on a designated day. No one involved in our Justice Sunday II objects to these efforts of liberal religious bodies, in principle. Church bodies have a long history of engagement on moral and social questions. If disagreements exist, they flow from the substance of the policy positions, not the religious character of those who hold them.

Sigh.

Of course, both sides were 100 percent wrong to take a stand on this issue. Nothing says "We're the religious arm of the Democratic party" like holding a candlelight vigil over a PROCEDURAL ISSUE. I expect the religious right to be the Republican Party's bitch, but if the UUAWO is going to talk about politics and steamroll over any non-liberal UUs who disagree, can they at least confine themselves to talking about actual issues rather than a procedural vote?

A procedural vote that was ultimately unnecessary, of course, because moderates in both parties, came together and talked for the greater good.

I'll ask again, why couldn't we have been among the people asking for a moderate solution, rather than the people who encouraged our ministers to preach on judicial nominations and encouraged our congregations to pass resolutions?

At the time, I recall liberal UUs were all about calling Justice Sunday "Just Us Sunday" because they felt that the religious right was cloaking themselves in religion to win political advantage. I wish those liberal UUs understood that some of us see them the same way. I find myself thinking over and over of when Joel at CUUMBAYA wrote "I don’t believe that having no creeds means having no morals, but we’re afraid to have the debate for fear of offending members and having some leave. That’s a strange one to me, for we have no fear of offending people over political issues and driving them from the church."

When UUA President Sinkford wrote about Justice Sunday, he even put in his letter "Perhaps the filibuster rule should be changed some day, but not in this superheated atmosphere and not with a false and demagogic claim of anti-religious bias being used as the hammer to change the rule."

For those of you who aren't as used to polticians as I am, that means he is setting himself up to be able to non-hypocritically argue AGAINST the filibuster when the tables turn and the Republicans start using it on us.

I never said the UUA's political types were stupid.

CC

Saturday night after the LSAT

The LSAT went well. Reading Comprehension was tough and according to Kaplan's Test Day Blog the logic games section that I felt was the harder of the two ended up being the real section while the easy section was the experimental. Given how heavily the LSAT is curved, that's probably a good thing for me as I'm pretty good at logic games.

I think I did well enough. And I rocked the writing sample.

As I waited for the test to begin, I found myself thinking about Happy Feminist and PG, both of whom did the law school applications thing not too terribly long ago and have offered valuable advice and more valuable support.

In other news, I feel like messing with the Chaliceblog's design again. We will see if I can ever find a design I really like. I don't have the cash to have one designed just yet, but we will see if I can get the Chaliceblog looking a little better.

CC

PS. I've notived that my sidebar sometimes jumps to the bottom in Internet Explorer. Anybody know how to fix that?

At the testing center

Wearing my YRUU shirt for luck.

The world gets a tiny bit weirder.

This sign was on one of the closed stores in my local mall.

If it's a joke, somebody had to print it out from somewhere and bring it to the mall. That's a lot of trouble for a pretty minor prank.

But I can't believe it's real either.

Personal Statements

I’m finding writing a personal statement really difficult, which is really odd given that some might argue I write them in another form just about every day right here.

They are a particularly troublesome yet ephemeral part of life. Most of the lawyers I’ve talked to about law school haven’t even remembered what they wrote about. Yet for a somewhat borderline student (quite low GPA as first tier law school applicants go, nice-looking LSATs even as first tier law school applicants go) admissions officers say a good personal statement can make all the difference.

I have an idea that I know I will never get around to accomplishing that somebody should put together one of those “Essays that got people into law school” books for lower-first tier and second tier schools. I’ve bought several books of successful personal statements and the are all from folks who went to Ivy Leagues. Thus most of them have a certain “and then when I got out of the peace corps, I decided to go for a master’s degree in math…” quality. My life just hasn’t been that impressive and when I write a statement along the same lines as those, I feel I sound like a poor man’s version of a real law school applicant.

I can’t write about my current planned legal direction because I am interested in working for legal aid as a divorce lawyer for the poor. I don’t know how or why I got interested in divorce law, but I did. At least part of it is seeing that badly-done divorces can ruin in some cases both parties’ finances, even more so for the poor. That, and divorce law is an unusual but quite valid argument for gay marriage. And yes, a lot of it is growing up in a house where taking care of society’s less fortunate and doing it yourself was a focus of life. (CC’s mom is in the low-income housing business, theChalicerelative has worked for the Presby church or for the poor for most of her life. The ChaliceDad admittedly doesn’t care about anything but music and perhaps not that at this point. Every family has one...) But my advice books by law school admissions officers are unanimous that admissions officers are pretty cynical about people who want to work for the poor and you’re usually best off not writing about the law unless asked to because you can’t help but come off as naive.

I think that I have a comparatively successful blog is a pretty interesting thing about me, but writing about your religion is an admissions no-no and my blog does focus around my religion.

I have a month and a half to solve this one, so I’m nor particularly worried about it. But it is odd to see that the writing is so far the most difficult part of the admissions process for me.

Comforting the afflicted, etc

Riddle me this:

If we send around a few meaningless petitions and perhaps have a candlelight vigil, and then go home, smug that we have done our religious duty and that as proud UUs who are saving the world, we're a lot better than those Vanilla protestants who are just building Habitat for Humanity treehouses...

Who are the comfortable?

CC

Ps. I owe a big apology to Kim, who has told me about the impressive amount of charity work her church does, I'd forgotten. As Joel notes, this does give them a certain amount of street cred on social justice issues, street cred that UU churches that follow the "Have thirty committes where we talk at each other and MAYBE raise a little money, but never get our nails dirty" model do not.

Linguist Friend has told me (and written on this blog) about housing homeless people after an earthquake in his old church in California.

Apparently there are some California UU churches who are really doing it right.

If I weren't so proud, I'd go back and work at the soup kitchen my parents' presby church runs. During the winter, they drive around to the steam grates in the city and bring hot food to the people people who gather there to get warm.

Meanwhile, I found a homeless shelter I could cook for since the once a year my church supplies a homeless shelter wasn't enough for me.

It really makes me cynical to think about how my parents live out their religion, but people live out mine mostly by talking. And feeling proud of themselves.

If you've been wondering who this chap Cory Maye who CC keeps talking about is...

You can read all about him in an Reason Magazine artivle posted here.

CC

Were you a "bought lunch kid" or a "sandwich for home" kid?

So after the Renn Faire last night, I ate dinner with theCSO and six of our friends. Still thinking about PB's post about a Lunchables commercial, I brought up the subject to our table.

"So, y'all remember lunchables? Were they a rich kid or poor kid thing?"

FWIW, the answers came out as follows:

CC and someone else thought of them as a rich kid thing.

Two people thought of them as a poor kid thing, explaining that the rich kids bought their lunches. (Ironically, I'm almost certain school lunches would have been less expensive, which doesn't at all mean those people weren't right.)

Oddly enough, the four people who were cleanly divided on the issue all went to school in the same county within a few years of each other.

Two people were too old and were out of school when they came out.

TheCSO said they were a "lucky kid thing" because they looked better than a regular lunch. Various people around the table concurred. CC recalled, as she did on the thread following Peacebang's post, that Lunchables always looked sophisticated and adult to her when she was a child.

The last person had gone to school in a town that she described as the "Welfare Capital of Idaho" she said nobody ate lunchables because everyone got their lunches for free.

The results of the survey are pretty inconclusive, IHMO. But other aspects of the conversation interested me.

One of the more conservative people at the table (NOT CC) started a discussion about how the kids who got free and reduced price lunches got the same lunches as the kids who paid full price and that as a kid he didn't think that was fair.

Various people expressed their disagreement with various levels of enthusiasm, but it's safe to say he was alone on that one.

Everybody recalled knowing from a very young age who the rich kids were and who the poor kids were and how what you had for lunch was pretty important. Various people recalled stories of good and bad school lunches from yesteryear. CC packed her own lunch and tended to bring weird stuff like a deli carton of leftover cole slaw. One guy reported taking a peanut butter and strawberry jelly sandwich to school every day for six years.

There was a lot of significance to that 45 minutes a day.

CC

If the Methodists jumped of a cliff, would we?

PB asked CC, given your recent call to disband the Washington office, how do you feel about the fact that most mainstream religious groups in America have an equivalent office?

I don't believe I've ever directly called for disbanding the Washington office. I do wish we could change its focus. Longtime readers know that the UUA Washington Office has pretty much been dead to me since they sent me an email telling me I should should rally to protect the filibuster because a filibuster was crucial in "protecting the rights of the minority to speak on issues that effect all Americans"*

At the very least anything written in our names should have a disclaimer that as we are non-creedal, we don't all necessarily agree. (I realize this sounds weak to some people, but it shouldn't. The ACLU includes that disclaimer on everything, and nobody accuses them of being shrinking violets.) No, thank you, putting that disclaimer on the version of the statement that goes to the congregations, but leaving it off the version that goes to the press and to Congress isn't good enough. (If you can't tell, these minor instances of weaselhood REALLY get to me. My thoughts on the subject tend to begin with "Where the hell do they get off thinking that they can pull crap like that…" and go on from there for quite awhile.)

When I read the question about the other mainstream religious groups, the first answer to pop into my head was "Well, the Southern Baptists are the largest protestant denomination so that must be mainstream, how do you think I feel about the fact that the Southern Baptist Convention has it's own Washington Office, working hard to quite effectively push issues politically that are pretty much the opposite of what I believe and paying no taxes for doing so?"

Seeing as how other religions' leaders rarely get themselves arrested, the only other denomination's Washington office I'm particularly aware of is, of course, the Presbyterian one. The rather earnest but much beloved Chalicerelative did work for them for a period of time, but even having lived with someone who'd worked there, my impression is that the political decrees the Presbyterian church puts out are on the whole cheerfully ignored by actual Presbyterians.

At least once, my family ate dinner at Taco Bell, then asked each other if we were supposed to all be boycotting Taco Bell because the presbytery had sent out an email to that effect. The PCUSA divesting from Israel was a tremendous shock to my parents, especially when it made actual newspapers. Didn't the newspapers know that nobody pays attention to the political stuff that the PCUSA puts out, even if it's voted on at the Presbyterian General Assembly?

Basically, other churches DO have such offices. But my impression has never been that other churches have UUism's impression that passing a resolution is actually DOING something. My fellow UUs seem to honestly believe that passing a resolution about global warming equates in some way making the global warming situation better.

With all apologies to Kim, whom y'all know I love, she wrote today that making sandwiches for the homeless is "putting out fires while not trying to find the arsonist."
This is the voice of someone whom I think actually believes that all these statements and protests and petitions we put out actually do something to end poverty.

I’m afraid the only solution to poverty I know is one sandwich, one set of new clothes, one job training program at a time.

CC


ADDED LATER: Joel does believe in disbanding the UU Washington Office and defends the idea well in the comments to this post.

*Problems with them doing that:
-To say that filibustering is exercising free speech is at best stretching the truth, as anyone who had high school civics knows. (Did they really think a bunch of people in Washington DC wouldn't know what "filibuster" means?)
-When they sponsor a rally over a procedural vote, they are straight up carrying the water of the Democratic party.
-That situation was resolved by, not a bunch of hippies holding one more candelight vigil, but moderates in both parties being able to talk to each other and work out a deal.

CC is a big geek.

Hanging out with her amigos at the Maryland Renaissance festival.

One CAN be too inclusive, though

It makes me smile when we're included

Even when it is by a woodcutter in tights.

More on the role of politics in UUism.

Hafida asked:

For example, are Muslims in a mosque acting spiritually or politically when they attempt to respond collectively to a piece of legislation that disproportionately negatively impacts them? Were black folks mixing church and state when they organized in churches to march against Jim Crow laws?

Maybe it is that it's 7:30am, but I'm having trouble applying the first situation to UUism. As for the second situation, the crucial difference to me was that often the black church was usually the only place people who wanted to work on Jim Crow laws COULD get together.

I will admit a certain degree of leniance when reasonable people feel that the church is the ONLY place they can express their political views. When I went to church in South Carolina, there was a lady who worked in the public school system who every year did a political speech for a lay sermon. When she said the church was the ONLY place she could discuss gay rights without facing potential retribution, I felt that she had to be cut a bit of slack.

That said, after the first time I never again went to church on the Sunday of her lay service. Hearing Bush criticized doesn't feed my soul.

So yes, I'm willing to look past some organizing in places where liberals pretty much can't get together anywhere else. Especially if they can keep it mostly out of Sunday morning, though in my experience, they pretty much never can. My experience, over and over, has been that the people who talk politics at church and the people who tal about religion are rarely the same people.

But, this woman's service aside, in South Carolina I never felt like the political element was treated as the most important reason to go to church. I do feel like some people here and in UUism's leadership treat it that way.

I like moderation too, but not of things that are destructive. I don't want a moderate number of termites in my house, I don't want my church cited by the Federal Election Commission a moderate number of times.


Responses to Shelby:


Christian congregations promoting abstinence-only education should be criticized not because they are mixing religion and politics, but because they want inaccurate and incomplete information taught in public schools. UU’s can engage on the merits of the issue; we want accurate and complete information taught in schools.

Well, I am certain that many Christian congregations regard such sentiments as "masturbation is ok" and "homosexuality is normal" inaccurate and incomplete. When we argue with such statements on secular grounds (e.g. Scientists say homosexuality shows up all the time in the animal kingdom and is probably biological to some degree,) we don't really have to deal with this issue.

Once we're saying "Scientists agree with us AND our view is morally right" by arguing on religious grounds, we make their arguments more powerful by letting them bring in their moral issues.

"Let's keep religion out of it and teach the facts" is a far more defensible position and far more consistent position with our usual pleas to keep religion out of school.

(((If we have a peaceful mechanism for making society more just, who are we not to use it?)))

1. Because we are too small to be particularly effective at it, especially on a national level.

2. Because there are other groups already working on such issues and usually more effectively so. We can use it more effectively by joining these groups as individuals. Reinventing the wheel just so we can have a UU group is silly.

3. Because we're not MoveOn. We're a church. There are many ways of improving the world. Perhaps preaching about goodness and mercy is a more subtle way, but that doesn't make it less powerful.

4. Because it's obnoxious when other churches do it, yet for some reason we can't smell our own stink on the issue.

5. Because as a creedless religion, we don't have a mechanism for making sure what we're doing is something that people agree with. Republicans usually leave very political congregations because they get sick of the money they donate going to fight for things they don't believe in. When we make our church only for people who agree with us politically, we decrease our diversity and we contribute to a polarized society. William Ellery Channing was a social conservative. Wouldn't you want him to feel comfortable in your church?

6. Because the Federal Election Commission is getting really sick of the "Two days before the presidential election, we're going to preach about how Jesus wouldn't have liked George Bush. But it's a religious thing, not a political one. We totally swear" stuff. If the FEC decides to start pulling the tax-exempt status of churches, the churhc without a creed will be the first to go.

7. Because in many churches, political activity takes the place of charitable activity just about entirely. Political activity lets us feel like we are helping people without requiring us to really do all that much. Why clean up a stream when you can hand around a petition without breaking your nails?

8. Because we were discussing this issue at my church retreat and a bunch of people were asking questions like "How can a Christian believe in the death penalty?" and I said "Why don't you find a conservative you know and ask that person? The reasonableness of the answer might surprise you."

And a lady haughtily looked at me and said, "All of my friends are liberals, I work with only liberals and a conservative wouldn't make it very long in our church. I don't KNOW any conservatives!"

I think more than one more voice for liberalism, we need to have a place that brings people together on neutral ground where they can talk and start to understand each other.

"You're technically welcome in our church, but we're going to say nasty things about politicians you might like whenever we feel like it and we're going to give some of the money you give to the church away to a group that's fighting for something you don't want and pay the salary of some full-time lobbyist in Washington DC who will lie to you and try to get congress to do things you don't believe are right" is not welcoming.

"We disagree on the politics, but we agree that we all want the highest and best. Let's talk about it while we make sandwiches for the homeless, because that sermon on poverty really inspired me to go out and help somebody" sounds better to me.

CC

Followup on my post about plagarism software

I wrote this morning about how my high school made the front page of the Washington Post with student objections to a new plagarism program.

Joel commented "What I find interesting is the student's complaint that it violates their copywrite and their worry about their intellectual property. That sounds like an admission that they intend to sell their papers to other students!"

I didn't know what the deal with that was either, and y'all know me and leaving well enough alone. I called someone I know who is in a position to know about such things. She explained that the copyright issue is that once you submit a paper to this program, the program keeps a copy of the paper in its database forever.

Thus, if you use your sister's paper from two years ago, the database will catch it. The problem is, they are taking your paper and keeping it in their database and making a lot of money selling access to their database.

At best it's shaky, IMHO. At least until schools start making you sign away the rights to all your high school papers over to this company.

TheCSO made the point that it is probably pretty foolhardy to be trying this in a neighborhood that is probably a contender for the highest number of intellectual property lawyers per capita in the country.

CC

Now THIS is a produce section

CC hearts Wegmans

Where CC draws the line between religious and political activities

Obviously, this line can be drawn lots of places.

As a general principle: If it’s about YOU doing something for someone else, it’s fine. If it about you trying to get the government to do something for someone else, it’s political. If you are educating people on an issue, the focus should be on what the people can do themselves, not what the people can force the government to do. And such education should not be a lay service.

Political Activities-- All of which are just fine if done as individuals. Please try not to do these as/within congregations or in the name of UUism. (e.g. Your banner that says "Unitarians for Peace" will not be nearly as effective as the same group marching with a banner that says something more like "Mainstream folks for peace.")

Handing out petitions at Coffee Hour

Speculating about what religious figures would think about politics today, especially from the pulpit

Organizing trips to protest marches or letter writing campaigns.

Donating money to political groups lobbying for specific legislation (yes, there are shades of gray here, but be reasonable. The Sierra Club does some lobbying but is probably fine. MoveOn does some charity work but we both know it isn't.)

Talking about specific legislation or candidates from the pulpit.

Forming a group so that the Unitarians can work on an political issue that dozens of other groups are already working on, almost always more effectively.



Spiritual Activities -These are fine

Preaching about general principles (taking care of the poor, the sanctity of freedom) without mentioning specific legislation or specific candidates.

Raising money to help people in need (or food, medicine, clothing, school supplies, it’s all fine.)

Building habitat homes

Educating people about what they can do to protect the environment and cleaning up a stream yourself.

Forming a group so the Unitarians can take care of some people in need who aren't being taken care of.




Recall Joel's story about how while the hippies protested that the government should clean up a certain stream, his ROTC guys went and cleaned up the stream.

Don't be the hippies in that story. Be the ROTC guys.

CC

More on keeping (even my) religion out of the schools

A followup to this post.

A very nice lady from a UU-run organization called "Promise the Children" wrote a response to my post about Sinkford's new political stand for us. I think this is a discussion worth having where people can see it, so I'm making my response a new post. You can read her response to me here.

(((UU congregations' advocacy efforts advance the profile of our denomination and attract congregants.)))

This is a really common opinion among people who want politics to be a huge part of who we are. But I've never understood it. Why would people who come to UUism for the politics rather than coming for the religion make good congregants?

If they had to choose between funding worship activites and funding political activities, which would they pick?

If Bob joins the church because the church believes in gay marriage and is bugging their local legislative body to allow it, and the legislative body votes and settles the issue one way or another, why would Bob stay in the church? The reason he came is gone. If he's looking for politics rather than religion, won't he just move on?

I'm glad that some individuals at the grassroots level want to fight for comprehensive sexuality education. They should do that. As individuals or as members of the numerous non-religiously affiliated groups that exist for the purpose. As a church, we should be staying out of political issues. Don't you think the evangelicals who want creationism taught also view what they are doing as "reality-based" and "social justice work?" They might have different terms for it, but it's the same idea. My philosophy is that if we want religion out of the schools, we need to keep OUR religion out of the schools.

Honestly, the impression I get from the comments on my last post is that people think "Religions shouldn't have sway over what is taught in schools, except for when UUs want something, because UUs are correct. It's all those OTHER religions that have crazy ideas that should be kept out."

Y'all don't think the evangelicals and mormons are saying the same thing?

As for growth and politics not being mutually exclusive, the UUA has made headlines about politics for at least four decades at this point. My old church on the edge of New Orleans was formed when the downtown church was so overrun with hippies that the group of people who supported the Vietnam war felt they had to leave.

So how big has decades of activism made our church? (Answer:217,000 people in a country with circa 300 million people.) Is it the size we want it to be?

And if it isn't, why are we advocating doing the same thing we've been doing and saying that "this time" it will be effective?

And when was the last time Sinkford sent out a letter about growing the church rather than a letter about what we should be writing to our congressmen about?

(((Without UU social justice initiatives, many congregants would drift away, and the denomination would lose much of its vitality.)))

Wow. So you think social justice programs are propping up UUism because the religion isn't enough? Without politics, we would all "drift away?"

Sunday morning must not mean much to anyone for whom that is true.

People see me as a curmudgeon sometimes, but that is a far more cynical sentiment than anything I've ever said about UUism.

CC

One more on Rhode Island UUs

From the beliefnet thread about the Rhode Island UUs:

Normally, I wouldn't bite on a thread like this, but since this media tempest in a teapot involves my congregation, I feel obligated. The article was the result of one individual who felt it necessary to forward something critical of paganism to the media that they didn't even write. I agreed with some of the criticism and found it humorous, and that was supposed to be the end of it. I still feel a real dialogue is long overdue in UU about what our "theology" really is. After all, our forebears created this religion by rejecting "bad theology". We can't seem to say no ... anything goes. For the record, the original author is no "atheist fundamentalist" but more of a non-realist Christian.


So one Christian wrote a letter more or less making fun of the Pagan festival.

Someone else forwarded it to the media.

There was never an organized resistance to the festival or any real controversy. There was never any danger of the festival getting cancelled. And while some Humanists might have recieved the letter, there's nobody saying even that is the case.

IMHO, if you've ever written anything anywhere that is snarky about Christians or Huamnists, you are no less guilty of intolerance than these Rhode Island UUs. (FWIW, I have written things that were supposed to be funny and saw my work get passed around more widely than I meant it to. It's actually a really uncomfortable feeling.)

I'm sure the guy who wrote the beliefnet post will be written off as an intolerant bigot by some because of his concerns about "anything goes" theology. But I think it's reasonable for him to state such concerns, though I don't 100 percent agree with him as I tend to think everybody draws the line between "Liberal Religion" and "anything goes" at a different place, be it theism, biblical authority or the maypole.

All that aside, the fact remains that a Christian UU (albeit a non-realist Christian of the Don Cupitt school, but a Christian UU just the same) wrote this letter. Whether the bit about "superstition" sounded like something we imagine a humanist might say is immaterial.

I'd say everybody who looked at the letter and assumed that anyone who doesn't like a Pagan festival must be a humanist and assumed a humanist wrote it owes the humanists an apology.

I'll go first.

Though a humanist myself, I did assume that a humanist had written this note and I'm really sorry I did. I will, in the future, not be so quick to assume bigotry before I know the facts of the situation.

Can everyone else who assumed the writer was a humanist do the same?


CC