Self-differentiate! Trace your genogram! Do your family of origin work! De-triangulate! Thus reads the modern guide to ministry.

If your seminary training was anything like mine, family systems theory played a big part of it. It came up in pastoral care and administration, and ministers I worked for recommended Edwin Friedman and Virginia Satir with an enthusiasm that was almost creepy.

I ate it up. Sure, Friedman was a little too mechanistic and Peter Steinke a little too optimistic, but family systems theory explains things. It teaches you that unhealthy behavior is a symptom of an unhealthy congregational family system, not an unhealthy congregant. (Never call them jerks, not even if they’re assholes.) It puts you on the lookout for that staple of committee meetings and coffee hours—triangulation—and it names a new spiritual ecstasy for the minister to aspire to—non-anxious presence.

I don’t know if family systems theory is true, but it works where it needs to work, namely, in the heads of ministers and church staff. It gives us a somewhat predictable playbook for the chaos that is congregational life. And when most of us can’t expect to be at a congregation for more than five years, it gives techniques for treating the congregation when there isn’t a way, or time, to treat individuals.

I use family systems theory from the relative safety of my office all the time. I am the king of not being triangulated. (Except for when I’m not. And then, hoo boy.) I can throw up a non-anxious presence with the best of them too. But I need to take a step back today to ask a hard question: Do congregants deserve it?

Are congregants worth the constant gut wrenching I see my minister and church staff friends across several states and denominations put themselves through? Do congregants deserve these unacknowledged substitute parent figures known as religious professionals, who must always be available, always be open hearted, a task every mature adult will admit no one is capable of even with their own children? Do congregants have a right to ask others to run themselves through the family systems theory hamster wheel on their behalf, and, if so, on what grounds?

Or to turn the question around: What right do you have to a minister?

Internet Monk has a great series going on how evangelicalism pushes its own out the door.  It’s very hard hitting, and I highly recommend it. I hope to find time to write some about it.

Part I: Disillusionment with the Biblical Worldview
Part II: Disillusionment with God-Proving Religious Experience
Part III: Disillusionment with Christian Community
Part IV: Abandoning Christian Commitment Itself
Part V: Summary Reflections to Come

US Roman Catholic bishops have been ordered to quit saying “Yahweh,” one of the common pronuncations of the Hebrew name of God.  (“Jehovah” is another common pronunciation of the vowel-less Hebrew name.)

Should UUs follow suit?

I say “Yahweh” fairly often, or at least as often as it comes up.  When I talk about him, it’s usually about the biblical character as interpreted by the likes Harold Bloom and Jack Miles, or else as the god of the J Writer as opposed to the god portrayed by other biblical traditions.

Using the name allows me to signal, without going into so many words, that “Yahweh” is a specific, inspiring take on God but not one I can call my own.  He’s probably the most influential literary character in history, in ways obvious and subtle. But he’s not my god.

Should I consider myself bound by politeness to not say his name, in the same way that I wouldn’t, out of politeness, take the host—that is, the body of Christ—from a Catholic mass, even though I don’t believe it’s the body of Christ?

Or is this akin to not keeping kosher, something that observant Jews do but that has nothing at all to do with me?

Or is this a case of cultural misappropriation, the UU sin de jure?

Digg it, diggers.

So CNN put up a compare and contrast list between Joe Biden and Sarah Palin.  It listed his religion as Catholic and hers as Christian.

WTF?

Putting aside the implication that Catholics are somehow different from, I can only assume, real Christians, I looked Palin up to see exactly what flavor of Christian she is.

Wikipedia lists Palin as being Assemblies of God, the world’s largest Pentecostal denomination.  AGs  practice speaking in tongues and faith healing.  (Chutney went to a couple of AG churches in high school.)

So I can’t help but wonder: Does she speak in tongues or not?

I was grateful to see Meg Barnhouse’s article in UUWorld this morning. I’ve been sitting on an angry blog post for several days now, and she has said many things about the Knoxville shotting that I wanted to say, but far more gracefully.

Addkison meant to kill UUs. He knows who we are and what we stand for. And that’s why he set out to kill us.

Whatever advantages and disadvantages he started with, he participated with his sovereign free will in making himself what he is today. I think this is more respectful of him and his inherent worth than to imply that he couldn’t help what he did, that he was on some kind of predestined track to disaster.

It’s not yet time to forgive. It’s still time to be outraged. And not in the bullshit way we get outraged via our bumper stickers.

Another article about the fragmentation and decline of the evangelical movement and the arguments about how to fix it. This is the first one I’ve read that showcases universalists (besides Carlton Pearson) speaking up for themselves.

Some of them believe that instead of calling their reading of the Bible “the truth,” they need to admit that their doctrines are merely their understanding. They need to be humble before God and humanity. They need to stop selling Christianity and engage nonbelievers in open, non-dogmatic and respectful friendships that don’t have scalp-collecting agendas.

Some of their pastors are adopting universalist ideas even from the pulpit.