I’ll be teaching a new member class here in a bit, and one of the things I always talk about during that class is pledging.

I mention some numbers. Our pledge drive team asks all the members of the congregation to move toward a 5% pledge, starting where they can. And I tell them what our average pledge needs to be to make budget.

One of the other things I’ve learned to point out is that the congregation doesn’t provide any consumer services. A pledge is not a purchase, and there’s no customer service desk. Outside our walls, the purchase economy is in full swing. But inside our walls, we have a different economy at work, an economy not of purchase but of gift.

Everything that happens at a congregation happens because someone gave a gift, which was made possible by someone else’s gift, which was made possible by still someone else’s gift—gifts of time, talent, and treasure, as the phrase goes.

I go out of my way to point this out in class because it’s important to keep in mind that, because of our UU values, we practice a different economy when we’re together.

The problem with consumerism isn’t buying things—I have an iPhone as evidence that I’m a dutiful consumer the same as anyone else. The problem is when purchase becomes the primary frame of reference for our lives. Relationships can’t be purchased. Hope can’t be purchased. Stuff that can help you build relationships and that connects you to sources of hope can be purchased, but those same things can also alienate.

Consumerism is a poor substitute for hope and good relationships. It’s a good thing we have congregations to go to, places where we can put aside consumer pressures and focus on what’s most important in our lives.

Facebook has been getting some bad press lately for its handling of what was at one time private user information. Or at least information that users could keep private easily, if they chose to.  There have been so many changes lately, it’s hard to keep track.

It’s time to rethink Facebook. And I don’t just mean rethinking our personal use of Facebook, even to the point of deleting our accounts, which some high profile users have done recently. I mean it’s time to start rethinking congregational use of Facebook.

Facebook can do some good things for congregations. It connects us in new ways, draws us closer together, and helps us stay in touch. That’s at the heart of any congregation’s mission.

But as Facebook proves itself less and less trustworthy, should we be encouraging congregational life to happen in Facebook? At what point does Facebook cross a line that violates our values so egregiously that we take down our congregations’ pages? At what point does it become irresponsible to encourage people in our congregations to join Facebook so they can be a part of our congregational groups and pages, especially those who aren’t very web savvy and who won’t understand Facebook’s increasingly labyrinthine privacy controls?

I’m encouraged by the Diaspora project, a project to build a “privacy aware, personally controlled, do-it-all distributed open source social network.” They’ve gotten all sorts of great press coverage lately, including the New York Times. They’ve already raised over ten times what they were hoping to to finance this as a summer project. (They’re all in college or just graduating.) I threw them a few bucks myself.  (A warm hat tip to Yet Another UU for clueing me in to Dispora!)

I don’t have any answers on this one, just questions.  But if Facebook keeps going down this path, we might all find ourselves having to make some tough decisions about our congregational Facebook presences.

The author of the His Dark Materials trilogy has rewritten the Gospels. That’s right, Philip Pullman has a new novel out.

Called The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ, the premise is that Jesus and Christ are brothers, one with a talent for egalitarian teaching and the other for miracles and PR. The Guardian has an excerpt up, but Slate posted a warm review with Pullman’s rewrite of the Lord’s Prayer:

This is how you should pray. You should say: Father in heaven, your name is holy. Your Kingdom is coming, and your will shall be done on earth as it’s done in heaven. Give us today the bread we need. And forgive our debts, as we shall forgive those who are indebted to us. And don’t let the evil one tempt us more than we can resist. Because the Kingdom and the power and the glory belong to you for ever. So be it.

The new book’s premise reminds me of the pseudo-Gnostic Thomas tradition in early Christianity, which sometimes portrays Thomas as Jesus’ twin. I know Pullman identifies as an atheist, but he sure writes like a Gnostic. I thought that after reading His Dark Materials, and this new book would seem to only underscore that.

A friend pointed me to a great article by Boston University prof Stephen Prothero on why religions are not all really the same when you get down to it. And why it’s dangerous to say otherwise.

I’ll leave to Prothero the argument as to why this soft sort of inclusivism—a “religions are really all the same” doctrine—is dangerous. I don’t know if it’s dangerous or not, but I do know that it’s rude.

Think about it. Who does UU inclusivism put in power? Why, UU inclusivists, of course! They’re the lucky religious liberals who are smart enough to figure out that all the world’s religions aren’t really about what they say they’re about—they’re about what smart lucky religious liberals are about: tolerance and abstract democratic ideals. Dumb religious particularists! If only they were smarter, they’d be UUs!

Not that religions don’t have stuff in common, as Prothero points out. Religion scholar Karen Armstrong—who Prothero skewers—does a great job pointing out the commonalities: a personal sense of connection to a greater transcendent reality and the need for practical acts of compassion. But folks, that’s pretty abstract stuff, and most religious people aren’t about abstraction. They’re about concrete rituals, beliefs, stories, and, yes, even hierarchical power structures that sometimes abuse people.

No, that’s not pretty, but we don’t get to pretend other people’s religions are what we wish they would be. And we don’t get to tell people of other religions that their religions aren’t really about what they think they’re about, but what we’re about instead. Go ahead, be inspired by this and that piece of this and that religion, but don’t consign the vast majority of real religious practices and beliefs—practices and beliefs which give people meaning, direction and purpose in life, even if they don’t work for you—to the dust bin of history just so you can have a warm liberal moment.

Because that’s what you’re doing when you say they’re all really UUs, if only they would wise up to the fact.

Put it this way: How do you feel when Christian inclusivists say that you’re really just an “anonymous Christian” who would be better off if you would only soften your heart and be humble and acknowledge all the myriad ways Jesus Christ is working in your life every day? If only you would be more Christian, you would be more Christian!

Or if you’re too liberal to be bothered by that, how would you feel about being thought an “anonymous Scientologist?”

Fifteen years ago today, I was sleeping in, skipping class (as was known to happen). A loud boom—and I swore it shook me, but that couldn’t be right—woke me up. I think I was still living directly downstairs from Kristen Chenowith that year, and I added “dropping an anvil in the bathtub while I was sleeping” to her apartment’s offenses, which usually amounted to noise from practicing their dance routines. I tried to go back to sleep.

An hour later, my more dutiful roommate arrived home from class and asked me if I had heard it. “Heard what?” I asked, still not sure if I had heard what I thought I heard. “It sounded like a bomb went off,” he said. Then we turned on CNN and ended up glued to the tv what felt like days, aside from an unsuccessful trip to donate blood—the lines were so long that only the universal blood type was let in to donate.

The reports rolled in over the next couple of days. The Methodist church I was a member of was directly across the street from the Murrah Building (west of the blast), and though there was structural damage, no one was seriously hurt. A friend who worked in a building directly across from the blast had mercifully hit the snooze button just enough times so that he wasn’t there in time for the blast—several people in his office were killed that day.

We would all drive with our lights on, as though on our way to a funeral, for months. Years later, McVeigh would be executed, and I didn’t feel any better; I felt worse.

I’m jumping in the middle of a conversation, late to the dance as usual, but here are the two most recent bits of the conversation I’m aware of: Kinsi talking about bylaws and the COA and East of Midnight’s response.

The center of the controversy is East of Midnight’s saying that she feels sorry for congregational leadership when people don’t know the bylaws, and Kinsi’s saying that most UUs don’t care about the bylaws (and perhaps shouldn’t?).

Some scattered points:

1. It’s important for all members of a congregation to know how their congregation is run, even more so in a congregational tradition like ours.  Membership isn’t a fan club, of the congregation, of the denomination, or of the minister(s) and staff.  Membership carries with it certain responsibilities and privileges, and people who aren’t willing to carry those responsibilities and privileges shouldn’t join, no matter how neat they think UUism is. Come and participate, please, but don’t join yet.

2.  You should know how your congregation is run.  But you don’t have to read the bylaws to know, and it should have been covered in new member classes to begin with.  If people can’t be taught how things run without reading the bylaws, your congregation either runs things poorly or has bad bylaws, or both.

3.  Some people in a congregation have a gift for bylaws.  They should be relied upon and their advice trusted, even if the congregation ends up making different decisions than they would prefer.  Not everyone needs to have a gift for bylaws.

4.  Still, bylaws have absolutely critical importance in a congregational setting like ours.  That’s why I recommended a change to our bylaws that came up for a vote at our last congregational meeting.  Bylaws matter.  Bad bylaws eventually hurt people they should be helping, and untended bylaws encourage organizational mediocrity.

5. Bylaws are a way we “operationalize” our values. If you do read them, you should come away with the sense that this what UUism looks like in action when it comes to running the necessary officialdom of a congregation.

6. Over the last 25 years I’ve occasionally seen people use bylaws to bludgeon one another in at least three denominations.  Bylaws are meant to be a tool, not a weapon.  A congregation that is excessively focused on its bylaws is having problems that have nothing at all to do with the bylaws.  Over-focus on bylaws is a symptom of something else.  If the only people who know your bylaws are the ones who use them to defeat opponents in open congregational combat, you have a big problem on your hands.  And arguing about the bylaws more isn’t going to fix it.

7. To East of Midnight’s point, I’ll speak as a staff member in a large UU congregation.  What really aggravates me isn’t when someone doesn’t know who the Nominating Committee nominates, but when they ask why I didn’t tell anybody about something that was announced in the monthly newsletter, weekly bulletin insert, weekly email update, the announcement email list, on a bulletin board, in a direct email to all members, and mentioned by one of the ministers during a sermon.  I exaggerate, but not by much.

8.  Even more important on a week-to-week basis than bylaws is a good congregational covenant that the congregation has helped write and feels ownership over.  And just as important, having a clear path to follow, whether it’s in the bylaws or not, when somebody is having trouble living the covenant.

9.  Finally, bylaws are the legal foundation upon which our congregations are built.  Without bylaws, there will be no community building, religious education, worship, or anything else, not for long.  I dare you to run a congregation of any size without bylaws to rely on.  At some point during the first major conflict, someone will say, “Hey, we should figure out how we’re going to deal with this in the future so this disaster doesn’t happen again.”  Enter the bylaws.