If you’re swinging through Atlanta, swing on by. I’ll be preaching on the spirituality of welcome.

Since I talked about it ad infinitum, my own best explanation for human shittiness is that we’re pack animals who belong to too many packs. And then those packs belong to other, super-packs. And it’s hell trying to negotiate all that.

Before our species made that turn, aggression was rare and necessary when it happened, yet it rarely turned into out and out violence. (Stealing from Mary Midgley there.) We’re just not equipped to deal well with being in more than one pack. Our natural instincts, which work well inside the pack, quickly go bad once we start adding packs. We’re just good enough at it to do it badly.

But those same natural instincts move us toward good too. Compassion and healing are pack values. They can take place outside the pack too, but with the same limitations.

That’s the short version. And I haven’t shared how that rings true to my story, so I won’t give myself any points for that.

Okay, I’m going to weigh in on the big Brown Bag Controversy. I was on vacation when it blew up, and it was tapering off when I got back.

Chalicechick asked some good questions today. I just dropped off a comment there, but I want to offer a meta comment here.

It feels to me that the subtext for this whole debate is whether or not oppression is the defining fact of human experience, whether all other descriptions of our species’ life together are less important descriptions than oppression. What other descriptions? Descriptions like progress, enlightenment, tragedy, hubris, and more.

Why should oppression count more than than the others?

And then there’s the question of which oppression is worse. Racism? Sexism? Ableism? Heterosexism? The list of ways we’re shitty to each other goes on and on.

But why should oppression—whatever its iteration—count more? Why should oppression be the lens we use settle all debates?

It’s not a matter of fact that oppression should. Click to continue reading “My two cents on the Brown Bag Controversy”

[Parts one and two.] Say what you will about the irreligious, but they’re not us UUs. We’ve got atheists and agnostics to be sure, they aren’t irreligious. Otherwise they wouldn’t come to worship or sign the membership book.

Or perhaps we’re looking at the religious irreligious? I don’t know. I hate to contribute to our sense of terminal uniqueness, but it does seem like a one of a kind religious category.

Does anyone have the numbers on the numbers of (formerly) irreligious UUs? As opposed to, say, lifelong UUs or recovering Presbyterians? Seems like that would be an important benchmark of how we are doing.

I hear anecdotally that we now see more “unchurched” folks coming in the door for the first time than “recovering-x” folks. If so, that’s a good sign, drawing from the fastest growing religious group.

At work I get about one email a week from someone who is interested in our congregation but doesn’t know how to go about it. They are so radically unchurched that they don’t know whether they have to sign up before they can walk in the door! Their pursuing us like that is courageous, I think. I wonder how much the culture shock is.

What does UUism—as a practiced, organized religion—have to offer to the irreligious? And what do irreligious UUs have to offer to UUism?

I’m at a loss here. I need religion like a VFW hall needs bingo. Try as I may, I can’t imagine living without it. So I have a tough time wrapping my head around living irreligiously to begin with. I just can’t grok what that’s like.

Maybe I get it in the abstract; if you’re not religious you’re not religious. But what motivates people who grow up irreligious to pursue us? Maybe some of you irreligious UUs can help me out?

[Part one.] Saying these one billion people are “irreligious” is important. It seems doubtful to me that the one billion irreligious persons are actively atheists, agnostics, etc. They seem to be not atheists so much as apatheists. They don’t actively disbelieve; they simply don’t care or think about it. It just doesn’t matter to them.

That is what’s so curious about the Richard Dawkinses of the world. According to the numbers, it seems that irreligion is winning the battle of ideas, and winning handily, but without any concerted effort on anyone’s part. America’s irreligious are not rallying around the Falwells of anti-theism for leadership, even if they’re buying their books. And then they read other books. In the end, the Richard Dawkinses don’t matter.

But back to Paul and Zuckerman. After all the numbers and analysis, to what do they attribute the meteoric rise of irreligion? Healthcare. Click to continue reading “Why the gods are not winning #2: Jesus loves the unhealthy”

This time it’s about teenagers. According to a survey put out by an evangelical group, belief in heaven has declined six percent, to 69%, in just the last two years. And only a quarter of teens strongly believe that the evangelical path to heaven will get them there.

Adherence to traditional doctrines like sola fide is inconsistent at best. More than half believe in the “good works” path to heaven so maligned by evangelicals; less than a third believe in the traditional Jesus-only path to heaven. Click to continue reading “More evidence of the growth of irreligion”