Philocrites alerts me to a new email list for UU theology. It has a decidedly international membership, and I will be the expat Okie voice. So in celebration of this new list, here are some early thoughts on what UU theology might/should be.

At the most basic level, theology is the stories we tell about the gods, whoever our "gods" might be. At the next level, theology attaches certain meanings to those stories. At a final level theology reflects on those stories and their meanings and asks critical questions about them.

As UUs we have meanings without stories. Certainly we have histories of our movements and, within those, stories we can tell. But we have no common "god stories," seeking to leap frog the first level entirely, or at least to keep those stories private and hidden. Yet stories by definition can be neither private or individual. For a story to exist it must have a story-teller and also a story-hearer, so that there must always be at least two persons for there to be a story at all.

At times the lack of common stories can be liberating for those of us who were told there is only one god story and only one way to tell it. Still, we should not abandon story entirely. But what story to tell?

I’m not able to answer that question yet. But I will suggest that, because every good story has a great bad guy, our story should have a great bad guy too. That bad guy should be The Market™. His modus operandi is the commodification of everything and everyone. He seeks to sentimentalize, package and sell every last person and particle on the planet, promising them to his followers in return for their obeisance. He seeks a new heaven and a new earth, where every knee will bow and every tongue confess that Market™ is Lord. Those who are not worthy—or who refuse obeisance—are punished with poverty, illiteracy, illness, and crime.

Make no mistake: Market™ is a powerful god. Guardians of the old religions pretend that they are not threatened, that he does not grow more powerful by the day, that they may defeat him or else reach some truce. But Market™ is a greedy god. He desires the throne of Olympus, and woe unto the old, feeble gods who would stand in his way. Soon they will fall the way of Kronos and Uranus.

Now, don’t you want to stick it to him?