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Losing youth
At Chalice Spark, religious educator Kari Kopnick responded to the Fall 2012 cover story (“Obama’s Religious Roots”): “Why did Barack Obama attend a Unitarian Universalist church as a child but settle in a United Church of Christ congregation as an adult? Why do many children follow the same path, or follow no path at all? There are many reasons, many influences, but if the question is to be asked, it should be asked of those who are the closest to the question. The religious educators.” (October 9)
Responses to the news
In a series of posts for HuffPost Religion, the Rev. Meg Riley offered an insider’s perspective on the campaign against Minnesota’s marriage amendment; in her final post, she reported, “Of everything I loved about this campaign . . . my favorite thing is this: It was completely positive. It was a campaign for love.” (November 9)
At Rev. Who, the Rev. Jude Geiger wrote about living through Hurricane Sandy in New York City: “In our community, neighbors and resident staff were taking turns visiting each of the 30,000+ homes without power to make sure folks were all right. Letters were circulated asking us to check on our neighbors who were elders—who had no hope of climbing down, let alone up, ten flights of stairs.” (November 4)
At Ordinary Days, the Rev. Christana Wille McKnight celebrated the sendoff of a truck filled with Hurricane Sandy donations: “Through connections in the community and the goodness of people’s hearts, one idea from one loving person grew into something greater than any one of us could ever be on our own.” (December 12)
The Rev. Dr. Cynthia Landrum, writing at Rev. Cyn, provided a UU theological perspective on the Newtown tragedy: “God is there in the lights we light in the darkness. God is there in the touch of a friendly hand. God is in the love we create. God is in our response.” (December 20)
Kim Hampton, in a series of posts at East of Midnight, challenged the difference between media coverage of the Newtown tragedy and media coverage of other gun deaths: “117 children have been killed in Chicago this year (so far . . .) through gun violence. If twenty children aren’t supposed to die at a school in Connecticut, were those 117 children in Chicago supposed to die? . . . I am not saying that the deaths of these twenty-eight people don’t merit attention. I am asking why the almost 500 people who have died in Chicago through violence don’t deserve the same attention.” (December 15)
Sources of Faith
Walter Clark wrote at Lack of a Clever Title that the UU youth he teaches have become less hostile toward Christianity: “I overheard one of my youth chatting with a youth from a different church. His new friend was claiming Christians were closed-minded, intolerant, and idiotic. My youth turned to him, seeing I was there and said, ‘Hey, Walt’s a Christian, they aren’t all bad.’” (October 15)
On Free and Responsible Search, Doug Muder wrote about finding meaning in life: “Every solution to the problem of meaninglessness requires some kind of faith. But I would rather look into my soul, find the faith I have, and build on that, rather than accept some external authority’s description of the faith I’m supposed to have, and try to talk myself into it.” (October 11)
Moving UUA HQ
At The New UU, June Herold challenged the UUA to move its headquarters out of New England and invest the savings in congregational growth: “Until we are aggressively growing in attendance nationwide, I question why we would continue to spend down on assets to fund buildings and property and not the survival of our congregations and faith.” (October 14)
The Rev. Elizabeth Curtiss, writing at Politywonk, argued that the UUA’s Boston headquarters ties us to a particular historical perspective: “It doesn’t get mentioned a lot, but the number one problem with having our denominational headquarters . . . in Boston is that city’s long association with a particular view of religion and civilization, namely the City Shining on a Hill.” (October 31)
This article appeared in the Spring 2013 issue of UU World (pages 60–61).