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Rev. Aaron McEmrys (in stole,) Minister of the Unitarian Society of Santa Barbara joined in prayer with the Republic Windows workers.

I was pleased to see that among those supporting the United Electrical Workers (UE) in their occupation of the Republic Windows and Doors plant in Chicago were Unitarian Universalists.  Rev. Aaron McEmrys of the Unitarian Society of Santa Barbara was in Chicago this week as a UU member of Interfaith Worker Justice board of directors.  Board members were invited to join the workers in prayer on Tuesday.  His powerful account of the experience can be found on Inspired Faith, Effective Action, the blog of the Advocacy and Witness staff of the UUA.

The 2008 Unitarian Universalist Association General Assembly (GA) got underway in Ft. Lauderdale Wednesday evening.  Pointedly sub-titled A Meeting of Congregations to set itself apart from the atmosphere of a movement convention of individual devotees that critics have charged annual GAs had become, the meeting has been racked with controversy for months.

The main convention hall is “inside the security perimeter” of the Port of Ft. Lauderdale. As a result, Department of Homeland Security regulations required that government approved picture identification has to be presented to authorities each time individuals accessed the building.  Convention credentials will not suffice.  Permissible IDs include driver’s licenses; state issued picture IDs, passports, and military IDs.  Not acceptable would be things like school and employment IDs or tickets in-lieu of licenses.  The announcement of these restrictions set up a howls of protests, including calls to relocate the meeting.

Critics were particularly concerned that UUA youth, who might not possess the required ID would be harasses as perhaps would some non-driving elderly.  Undocumented immigrants, more of a theoretical component than an actual presence at most GAs, would also be affected.  Others objected loudly on civil liberties grounds.  When the Board of Trustees, faced with enormous financial penalties for canceling the event in Ft. Lauderdale and even greater logistical headaches in trying to find a suitable alternative site on six months notice, voted to keep the GA in Florida while negotiating accommodations with local authorities,  some UUs, including well known ministers and lay leaders, announced that they would boycott this years meeting. 

Meanwhile the Board was also taking sweeping actions aimed, in their point of view, at reorienting the UAA as a pure “association of congregations.”  Gone in the seeming blinking of an eye was the entire UUA youth structure, Young Religious Unitarian Universalists (YRUU), with vague promises to recreate a replacement based on Congregational participation.  The whole semi-autonomous youth movement, based on the con culture was snuffed out. 

Equally as dramatic was the chopping block offered to the scores of officially recognized Affiliate Organizations.  Interest groups ranging from the theological (Christians, Humanists, Buddhists, Pagans, etc), to the issue oriented (peace, civil liberties, animal rights, vegetarianism, etc.), to cultural (history, music), to professional and technical suddenly found themselves  “disaffiliated” and without a range of UUA support ranging including web-page links,  discounts for advertising in the UUWorld magazine, and access to time slots for programs and presentations at GAs.  Although the ensuing uproar caused the reinstatement of some access, bitterness remained as critics—I among them—accused the Board of being carried away by the movement of Congregational Polity Purists—or more harshly, fundamentalists.

Perhaps not directly related, but just as controversial were moves to strip the UUA’s two remaining official theological schools, Meadville-Lombard in Chicago and Star King in California of direct Association support in favor of and aid to students approach.  The argument was that a majority of students destined for the UUA ministry now study at unaffiliated schools and seminaries and that they should have equal access to UUA support.  Supporters of the existing schools predicted that the move could be a crippling blow that could force the closing of one—or maybe both—institutions.  It was also argued that only affiliated schools could offer the in-depth theological, philosophical, historical and cultural contexts unique to liberal ministry in the UUA.

As controversy swirled, two other concerns worked against the Ft. Lauderdale meeting.  First was the simple fact that a lot of people were simply not eager to go to south Florida in Mid-Summer.  Let’s face it, it is unbearably hot and humid for too many Yankees.  Secondly the soaring cost of fuel—which has nearly quadrupled air fares, for instance—has put the meeting economically out of reach of more potential delegates than ever.

For whatever reason, attendance at this year’s GA is dramatically down to about 3,000.  As a result the UUA stands to loose $200,000 to $300,000 dollars on the meeting.

If energy costs remain high—as is universally expected—and the economy remains weak, future GAs may need to be scaled back as well.  This could fit into the plans who would like to restore the annual meeting to a central role in policy governance for the UAA by converting it to a meeting of congregational officers and ministers.  In recent years the high costs of attendance have meant that many delegates were essentially self-selecting—the members of any congregation who could get away from work and family and self-fund the not inconsiderable costs.  Critics have charged that this has skewed the meetings.  Conservatives and others who object to the “politicization” of the UUA blame that trend for streams of activist, left leaning resolutions—now called Actions of Immediate Witness—and broader policy statements evolved in the multi-year Study Action Issue process.

What ever happens, future GAs may rely more on possible distant, electronic participation.  More of the the cultural and education aspects of the annual meeting might be made up in District Assemblies, or perhaps in super-regional conventions held in alternate years to GAs.

Meanwhile, pre-GA meeting held earlier in the week have been providing some fireworks of their own

On Tuesday the Board of Trustees met.  Among the topics up for discussion was the Congregations Come First initiative, which has provided the theoretical underpinning of recent board actions.  According to Jane Greer, in the UUA General Assembly Blog of the UUWorld:

“UUA President William G. Sinkford expressed doubt about the Congregations Come First initiative, which has been a basis for much UUA decision-making, including the rigorous new rules for organizations wishing to become independent affiliates and the reorganization of the international office. "I was one of the early voices calling for an emphasis on congregations," Sinkford said. "However, I am becoming increasingly uncomfortable with that trajectory." He said that he had become much more aware of "trans-congregational" populations, especially among UU youth and young adults and the community of color. The idea of having only one way of being Unitarian Universalist (by being a member of a UU congregation) sounds fundamentalist, he said. "Fundamentalism doesn't fit our theology or religious culture." While Sinkford declared continued support for Congregations Come First, he did call for increased recognition of those Unitarian Universalists who fall outside congregational boundaries”

Sinkford is entering the last year of his presidency.  His words of caution were welcome to many of us.  He is however, faced with an unprecidently activist Board under the leadership of Moderator Ginny Courter.  As an essential lame duck, he will have a hard time reining in the board unless he can rally support from the delegates at the GA.  It is unclear if he is willing to challenge his old friend and close support Couter and the board in any really overt way.

On a second front, the annual pre-GA meeting of ministers heard the widely respected Rev. Christine Robinson  preach the annual Berry Street Sermon (named for the very adress given annually at the very first loose association of Unitarian ministers in early 19th Century Boston.)  According to the blog Jess’s Journal:

“Her basic premise is that Unitarian Universalism as a whole is crying out for a greater spiritual depth, a depth that has not been seen within living memory, a depth that begins with the personal spiritual life of the minister. She wants to see our denomination work to enable our ministers to be “Imagineers of the Soul,” able to teach our people, and help them heal from whatever spiritual shame and hurt they have experienced, and then to feed them what they need to grow as spiritual beings…

“…The other point Christine made today that resonates with me is how easy it is for those who have been deeply shamed about their spiritual experiences to do the exact same thing to those around them, but in the other direction — say if someone wants to talk about god or prayer in one of our congregations. And, ‘in the spiritual community,’ she said, ‘scorn is deadly.’

Whatever the impulses, this is likely to send up warning rockets to Humanists, agnostics and atheists, who have been feeling put upon and shunned since Sinkford announced his call for the restoration of “the language of reverence” early in his tenure as president.  Humanists dominated the old American Unitarian Association (AUA) and the early decades of the UUA to the point that Christians and theists often felt persecuted.  But over the last two decades, their influence has dwindled as congregations began to reflect a general cultural yearning for greater spirituality.  This tendency has been accelerated as ministers graduating from seminaries have been increasingly theist, just as the flood of Humanist ministers changed the Unitarians in the post-war period. 

Robinson reflects that shift.  She herself has moved from “largely atheistic” to agnostic to “a more traditional definition of God.”  Although not traditionally Christian, her recent sermons have extolled a spirituality that draws on pagan traditions as well as American Transcendentalism.  Yet her call for ministers to be allowed to express spirituality without being “shamed” or “scorned” will undoubtedly be seen by some unhappy humanists as a call to “sit down and shut up.”

Looking ahead to the GA, all of these issues will undoubtedly play out one way or another.  I wish I could be there to participated.  But like so many others, GAs have become far to expensive to attend.  I will be keeping track of developments on the UUA web site and encourage others to do the same.

The lively discussion on the UU History Chat List has provided fodder for yet another post.

No mid-Twentieth Century Unitarian minister reached more hearts and minds, save perhaps A. Powell Davies, than did Preston Bradley.  Among our contemporaries only Forrest Church—albeit in a more scholarly way—comes even close.  Yet outside of Chicago, Bradley has been largely forgotten when he is not scorned. 

Years ago when the list was being compiled for eventual inclusion in the Dictionary of Unitarian Universalist Biography I noted his name was omitted.  Some of our leading scholars—concentrating  mostly on either New England centered Unitarianism or on Universalism—only dimly recognized the name. 

Some that are aware of him hardly hold him in high regard.  They reflect a deep disdain felt by many of his contemporaries, particularly in the East.  Bradley was regarded a something of a huckster, charlatan and egotist—sort of a Unitarian Elmer Gantry.  And I suppose it's true as far as it goes.  A man of supreme self-confidence with a showman's flair, Bradley took everything he learned at Moody Bible Institute, threw away the conservative dogma and applied the techniques to liberal religion.  Some regard his Peoples Church as the first true mega church—drawing from a wide geographic area, centered on a charismatic preacher, rich in programming, and availing itself of every modern tool of mass communication available to it.  Nothing could have been more shocking to the learned, rational, and subdued ministers back east who presided over cozy white churches on the village green. 

Of course, like Theodore Parker before him, Bradley’s church shriveled with his passing.  This is regarded as evidence enough of his failure to build Unitarianism as an institution.  Fair enough.

Another complaint about Bradley was much more business oriented.  He was accused of "counting anyone who ever sent a nickel to his radio ministry" as a full member of the Peoples Church.  It is true that even when he packed the commodious auditorium every Sunday, thousands of "members" never set foot in the building.  When attendance dropped of considerably in his latter years as the Uptown neighborhood became the North Side's poorest community and Bradley skills deteriorated somewhat, membership figures reported to the AUA and latter the UUA never reflected that.  As a result Bradley was able to go to May Meetings, as the Unitarian annual meetings were know before consolidation with the Universalists in 1961, and later UUA General Assemblies with an enormous block of votes that others felt he did not deserve.

But Bradley was not only a popular preacher—he was sometimes called "the Protestant Pope of Chicago"—he was by far the most influential minister in the Midwest of any denomination.  In a heavily Catholic city, where neighborhoods were routinely identified by the name of the local parish, Bradley often rivaled even the sitting Cardinal for influence.

He used that popularity to promote a uniformly progressive social agenda even when the opinions he advanced were unpopular.  His first great crusade was launched in cooperation with Dr. Ben Reitman, Emma Goldman's sometime lover and lecture agent.  Together they defied obscenity laws that banned basic hygienic education to prevent the spread of venereal disease.  You can imagine how popular that was.  But after ten years of effort, incidents of syphilis and gonorrhea in the city plummeted by half.

That was just the beginning.  He allied himself with labor.  He was an outspoken and "premature anti-fascist" in the City that Col. Robert R. McCormick’s CHICAGO TRIBUNE made the virtual capital of isolationism.  He battled anti-Semitism and racism.  Some say his strong support of local civil rights efforts; especially open housing, contributed greatly to the fall off of attendance at Peoples Church.  Yet Bradley would not be dissuaded from speaking out on the air ways, in his regular CHICAGO SUN-TIMES newspaper column and even facing down hostile audiences in ethnic neighborhoods.  There was no where he was afraid to go.  He lived to be an early and strong critic of the Vietnam War.  On the whole it was a record that fans of the "speak truth to power" strain of Unitarianism should be proud.  And one that those who believe Unitarian Universalists should be less “political” might lament.

Then there was the positive thinking side of his ministry.  This was derided as shallow theology by some.  It shared elements made popular by Norman Vincent Peale and Dale Carnegie.  But he made it uniquely his own.  It was a predecessor to the "self help" revolution that took off in the '70's and shows no signs of abating.  The Chicago insurance millionaire and philanthropist W. Clement Stone—he of the black shoe polish hair and silly pencil moustache—adopted  it as his own in seminars offered to business and community leaders.  He became a benefactor to Bradley and Bradley helped steer his generosity in unexpected ways--to the West Side Black street gang the Vice Lords, for instance, who Stone and Bradley hoped to turn to community service and legitimate business.  It is kindest to note that this experiment did not turn out as planned.  The Vice Lords took the money and set up a very successful and sophisticated drug operation based on the cash and Stone's business philosophy.

Bradley was a complex and contradictory figure at once old fashioned—he may have been the last preacher regularly to don a frock coat—and far sighted; supremely egotistical with yet the most generous and genuine identification with the day to day struggles of ordinary folks. Rogue or hero, think what you may of him, but he should no longer be a forgotten figure in Unitarian history.

This Sunday was Flower Communion at the Congregational Unitarian Church in Woodstock.  Flower communion is one of the few rituals unique to Unitarianism around the world.  It was originated in 1922 by the Rev. Norbert Capek of the Unitarian Church in Prague, Czechoslovakia.

Capek led a flock of religious liberals of widely varied backgrounds—Jews and Humanists, former Catholics, and Protestants of different stripes.  Many were rebelling against their traditions and were suspicious of rituals that evoked the rigid doctrines from which they had escaped.  And there were few, if any common practices to unite them.  Worship services led by Capek were stripped of all “ornamentation”—ritual, music, candles, incense, and the like.  The heart of the service were Capek’s brilliant sermons—more like lectures really—focusing on ethics, religious liberty, and social justice.

Capek knew that any congregation’s spiritual life required some sort of community bonding.  It also required some kind of acknowledgement of a connection to a wider and greater Source.  Capek gradually introduced music, mostly hymns of his own composition with lyrics that reflected the themes of his sermons.  The congregation accepted them eventually, albeit with some reluctance. 

Yet Capek knew there had to me more.  Eventually, he looked to the beauty and power of nature for inspiration and the Flower Communion was born.  In the simple ritual Capek devised, members brought flowers and put them in vases in the church.  Later, they would be asked simply to select a flower different from the one they brought to take home with them.  The variety of the flowers would represent the uniqueness of every individual, the vases the community of the church.  The exchange of flowers would represent the giving and receiving of spiritual gifts in community.

The simple ceremony was a success.  It slowly spread across European Unitarian communities.  In 1940 Capek’s wife Maja V. Capek introduced the ritual to American Unitarians at the First Church in Cambridge (Unitarian) in Massachusetts.  She was in America as a refugee from the Nazis.  Her husband and daughter were still in Prague.   She never saw them again.

Capek, an outspoken anti-fascist, was arrested with his daughter by the Gestapo and died a martyr at Dachau in 1942.  After the war Flower Communion spread to Unitarian Churches across the country.  After the creation of the Unitarian Universalist Association     in 1961 it became almost universally observed.

There is still no set ritual.  Each congregation adapts Flower Communion in its own way.  There is no set date, although most congregations celebrate it in the spring.

At Woodstock, children from the Church School distribute the flowers which were laid in baskets by the pulpit by members and friend before the service.

This is what it looked like this Sunday.

Flanked by baskets of flowers, Religious Education Director Sue McCowin, tell the story of Flower Communion to Church School students before they distribute the blossoms. 

The children collect the flowers.

A young man gets his flowers to distribute.


In the words of an old song, “Love is something if you give it away, give it away, give it away, You end up having more.”

From left to right Whit and D.D. Sears and Sue and Ray Eberhardt enjoy their flowers and the children.

                       
SOUTHERN BAPTIST Logo.                                         Real helfire--GLOBAL WARMING . 

It does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods or no God.  It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.

--THOMAS JEFFERSON

That’s Jefferson at his pithiest in defense of religious liberty.  It is one of my favorite quotes, and a mantra I intone to myself when ever religious zealotry—and bigotry—annoy me.  And there has been plenty of occasion for that lately.

I also like it because it puts a practical limit on toleration—worship what you must, believe what you will, but don’t harm me, mine, or—by extension—any one else who does not share your peccadilloes.   I might also add human sacrifice, enslavement, and child abuse as religious practices I am not prepared to ignore.

But that still leaves plenty of wiggle room.  Do What Thou Wilt—and so will I. This idea of religious liberty—and mutual respect—has been essential in keeping a religiously diverse, ethnically and racially polyglot (mostly) at peace with each other for more than two hundred years.

But it has been getting harder whistling past the grave yard every year when the SOUTHERN BAPTIST CONVENTION (SBC) gathers.  The thing is, they are very hard to ignore. 

Last week, meeting in SAN ANTONIO, they were at it again.  This time they were tackling the topic of global warming.  SBC leaders have been seething since Evangelical heavy weights including RICK WARREN, got together earlier this year to proclaim global warming a human created threat and calling Christians to work to reverse it as a matter of stewardship.  SBC honcho want none of it.  They oppose action on global warming because it might detract attention from “the fundamental moral issues of the day including abortion and homosexual marriage.”  Translation:  “We’re agin’ it cause them damn Lib-ur-uls are for it.”  They also make a feeble claim that action on global warming will “hurt the poor” by interfering with a “market economy.”  Translation:  “Hey, we made a deal with the rich to watch their backs if they would help us snuff out faggots.”

So the SBC big-wigs engineered a vote on a RESOLUTION opposing any governmental action to reduce green house gasses or act in any way to intervene.  The leadership even succeeded in striping a mild provision in the original resolution that would have called on government to continue to “monitor” the situation.  It might encourage actual action down the line.  While they acknowledge global warming is occurring and even that humanity may contribute its acceleration, they basically regard it as an “act of God.”  

The SBC has become the largest American Protestant denomination--16,300,000 members according (probably somewhat inflated) figures provided by the Convention its self in 2005.  They are the dominant religious voice—in some areas almost monolithic—across the historic CONDFEERACY. While state conventions in TEXAS and VIRGINIA, alarmed by the subversion of traditional Baptist values by the national leadership have disaffiliated with the SBC, large rumps in both states have organized in fealty to the national group and many individual congregations support both factions.

The SBC is also aggressively expanding beyond it traditional regional base.  SBC churches—many of them suburban mega churches—thrive in every state and often aggressively challenge liberal and moderate Baptists from the AMERICAN BAPTISTS CHURCHES and other Baptist bodies in the North.  Growth has been particularly strong in the Mid West, Mountain, and Southwest states and in vast suburban sprawl of Southern California.  In some of these northern areas it has even attracted some middle class Blacks from the Afro-American NATIONAL BAPTISTS, despite the historically racist attitude of the SBC, which only grudgingly admitted slavery was an error a few years ago.

 Since a take over of the SBC by Fundamentalists with financial support from political reactionaries in 1979, they have marched stridently and resolutely to the extreme right, both theologically and politically.  To make that take-over effective the conservatives had to erase traditional Baptist CONGREGEGATIONAL POLITY and give the denomination authority to discipline members, ministers and church’s which dare dissent from the every narrower orthodoxy laid down nationally.  That’s right, Baptists share with CONGREGATIONALSITS (now the UNITED CHURCH OF CHRIST) and UNITARIANS (now part of the UNITARIAN UNIVERSALIST ASSOCIATION) the tradition of independent, self-governing churches bound together voluntarily for mutual support.  But independent, self-governing churches have a tendency to wander off the proscribed path doing things like—gasp—ordaining women (once accepted by the SBC, but now opposed), or taking a less than absolutist position on abortion (the SBC was once neutral on the subject) so they have to be brought under control.

For that matter, Baptists were once considered a backbone of democracy, brining the democratic impetus of the congregational meeting to the frontier and offering an alternative to neo-aristocratic rule (by the largely EPISCOPAL planter cast.  And—race issues aside—Southern Baptist congregations were often sensitive to social justice issues.  They worked and played well with others in advancing reforms ranging from prohibition to child labor laws.  They were considered as “mainstream” as METHODISTS, PRESBYTERIANS, or LUTHERANS.The insurgent conservative SBC leadership has swept all of that aside in less than a generation

 And despite the fact that “Separation of Church and State” has been a basic traditional Baptist doctrine, the modern leaders of the SBC openly aspire to recasting government along “Christian,” i.e. Baptist lines.  While not open advocates of DOMINIONISM (the belief that Christians must rule the state as agents of Christ), the SBC of recent years seems to be sliding in that direction.
            The Convention, which enjoyed a sycophantic telephone visit by KING GEORGE W, it seriously means to use all means at its disposal to keep any one from taking action.

And that is where it threatens to “pick my pocket and break my bones.”

Justine Urbikas

            The CENTRAL MIDWEST DISTRICT  (CMwD) of the UNITARIAN UNIVERSALIST ASSOCIATION (UUA) made history on Saturday when delegates to the District  Conference, meeting at a hotel in the Chicago suburb of Oak Brook elected 20 year old JUSTINE URBIKAS as the District's Trustee on the UUA Board.

            Although a special youth representative has sat on the Board in recent years, this marks the first time that a young adult has been elected by a District.  And not just any District. The CMwD is the second largest (by membership) District in the UUA and one of the most vigorous. 

            Urbikas won a rare contested election for the position.  In an “instant run-off” election she beat DAVID GROSS, an experienced lay leader from downstate Illinois who ran a sophisticated campaign complete with multi-color literature, buttons and full scale “floor operation” at the meeting.  The REV GEORGETTE WONDERS, who serves the BRADFORD COMMUNITY CHURCH, UNITARIAN UNIVERSALIST in Kenosha, Wisconsin.  Rev. Wonders enjoyed the united support of most Wisconsin congregations and many of the ministerial delegates. 

            Under the “instant run-off” system delegates had to rank their choices 1, 2, or 3.  When no candidate received a clear majority on the first round, the third place candidates was disqualified and his/her votes assigned to the delegates second choice.

            The delegates stood and cheered when Urbikas, who has already served a three year term as a Youth member of the CMwD Board of Trustees, as announced as the winner.

            Poised, confident and articulate, she accepted the challenges ahead of her.

Urbikas will take the seat held by retiring Trustee SUE STUKEY, one of the most respected and influential  members of the board.  She will take her seat not as a Youth member, but empowered by election by the representatives of the assembled congregations.  And she was not anointed by a nominating committee to run un-opposed, but had to convince the delegates that she was the right person for the job.   As such she cannot be marginalized or turned to only when youth questions come up.

As newly elected CMwD President REV.  DANNIEL O’CONNELL of ELIOT UNITARIAN CHAPEL in Kirkwood, Missouri observed in conversation, “She will be able to see with fresh eyes and even ask the 'emperor has no clothes' questions that trustees with years of organizational involvement would never dream of.”  Another delegate noted that the nature of her election will make it impossible to dismiss her as “some sort of token or feel-good gesture to age diversity.”

Urbikas has a big job ahead of her, but I, for one, am excited for her the CMwD and the UUA.

KURT VONNEGUT

            KURT VONNEGUT, iconic novelist, satirist, social critic and moralist, died in New York yesterday.  He was 84 years old.  His death was, as he predicted, not an emphatic period at the end of a long life, but a mere semi-colon (he despised semi-colons.)  He died of a brain injury sustained after slipping and falling in his Manhattan apartment several days earlier.  It was the kind of comic, anti-heroic departure he could have written himself.

            And Vonnegut would have noted the connection to the announcement in Washington the same day that all American troops in Iraq and Afghanistan were having their tours in the war zones extended by another 120 days.  He despised the war and the men who started it.  Leaving behind such brutal stupidity would have been a pleasure for him.

            “But I myself feel that our Country, for whose Constitution I fought in a just war, might as well have been invaded by Martians and body snatchers.  Sometimes I wish it had been. What has happened instead is that it was taken over by means of the sleaziest, low-comedy, Keystone Cops-style coup d’état imaginable.”  (From the chapter “Do Unto Others,” A MAN WITHOUT A COUNTRY.)

            Unitarians Universalists, in our insecurity, are always making lists of “greats.”  Having dominated 19^th Century American literature, there is often a kind of desperately wide net thrown to haul in contemporary writers so as to keep up our cultural bona fides.  Vonnegut shows up on these lists. 

            He was, after all, very publicly avowed Humanist, the successor to another science fiction writer,  ISAAC ASIMOV, as honorary chair of the AMERICAN HUMANIST ASSOCIATION.  The aforementioned A MAN WITHOUT A COUNTRY, his last book, was something of a Humanist scream in a world corrupted by fake Christianity.  It was largely assembled from his essays in the Chicago based socialist magazine IN THESE TIMES.  Yet we all know that Humanism has also found a home in Unitarian Universalism.

            Vonnegut was proud to claim descent from generations of German-American free thinkers, just the sort of folks who found a congenial home with the radical brand of Unitarianism espoused by JENKIN LLOYD JONES and the old WESTERN UNITARIAN CONFERENCE  at the turn of the Twentieth Century.  Vonnegut’s parents were married by a Unitarian minister and the family belonged to the church in Indianapolis.  Architect KURT, Sr. even designed a building for the congregation.  Although not much of church goer later in life, he liked to tell of visiting a Unitarian congregation and hearing the minister joke about the bells peeling “No Hell! No Hell!” (surely a Universalist sentiment.)  He sometimes referred to himself as a Unitarian and was glad to be called to give the prestigious WARE LECTURE at the 1986 UUA General Assembly.  He was also asked to speak on the occasion of WILLIAM ELLERY CHANNING’S 200 birthday at First Parish in Cambridge, Massachusetts.  See WESLEY HROMATKO’S SERMON on Vonnegut for details of his connections and a wonderful exploration of his beliefs.

            But Vonnegut was hard to pin down—and idealist and a cynic, a humorist who’s satire was tinged with the deepest melancholy of man who had been brought up to believe in human progress “onward and upward forever” only to witness the gravest savageries of the 20^th Century.  He genuinely believed in the pieties of civics lessons learned at James Whitcomb Riley School in Indianapolis.  Yet he saw his father, a sensitive and creative architect, ruined by the Depression, and his mother sink into mental illness and suicide.

            Then it was off to war as an infantry scout for Patton’s 3rd Army.  In the confusion of the BATTLE OF THE BULGE Vonnegut was separated from his unit and wandered for several days behind German lines before being captured.  As a prisoner of war, in the defining moment of his life, he survived the allied fire bombing of the historic city of DRESDEN and was put to work collecting and disposing of the incinerated corpses of the old city.  This was the central event of one of his most famous novels, SLAUGHTER HOUSE-FIVE, named for the actual facility in which he and his fellow prisoners rode out the fire storm.  The incident also figures in at least 5 other novels.

            In post-war America he participated in the rush to corporate security when he took a public relations job with GE in Troy, New York.  The job didn’t last long, but the bitter experience of corporate corruption, power, and arrogance lingered.  Troy became the Illium of several Vonnegut novels beginning with his first novel PLAYER PIANO, a savage corporate dystopia.  The book was a publishing failure in 1952, but slowly gained a cult following as paper back editions followed.

            Many of his novels involved organized religion on one hand and a drive for spiritual honesty on the other.  In SIRENS OF TITAN he gave us “The Church of God the Utterly Indifferent.”  In CAT’S CRADLE it was the transparently fraudulent, but serenely comforting—and perhaps actually saving—Bokononism.  GOD BLESS YOU, MR. ROSEWATER even distills what might be called a theology of atonement, forgiveness and kindness.  In it Eliot Rosewater says “Hello, babies, welcome to Earth.  It’s hot in the summer and cold in the winter.  It’s round and wet and crowded.  At the outside, babies, you’ve go about a hundred years here.  There only one rule that I know of, babies—‘God damn it, you’ve got to be kind.’ ”

            Vonnegut thought so much of that last passage he repeated it in his swan song A MAN WITHOUT A COUNTRY.

            He had his heroes.  His fright-wig hair and droopy moustache were surely homage to MARK TWAIN  (for whom he named a son) and ALBERT EINSTEIN.  He admired ABRAHAM LINCOLN of whose speech attacking the Mexican War he wrote “Holy shit! And I thought I was a writer!” He paired JESUS and Socialist EUGENE V. DEBS—not a bad combination.  He liked to quote Debs, “As long as there is a lower class, I am in it.  As long as there is a criminal element, I am of it.  As long as there is a soul in prison, I am not free,” and follow up with the BEATITUDES.

            Vonnegut was a fearless opponent of war and injustice—any war and all injustice.  He despised hypocrisy.  He despaired for humanity.  People like that are hard to come by.  He will be missed.

                            
                        DR. SAMI AL ARIAN                     ATTORNEY GENERAL ALBERTO GONZALEZ

I have written before of my somewhat distressing tendency to occasionally  respond to requests for letters to this or that government functionary or member of Congress that daily flood my e-mail inbox  not with the calm, reasoned laying out of carefully marshaled arguments that the organizers of the campaign hope for, but with a full throated rant, an existential scream of outrage.  I try to be good.  I really do.  Most of the time I succeed and send missives so damned reasonable and even charming that no one could possibly take offence. 

But every once in a while an appeal puts a burr under my saddle and I proceed to buck six ways to old Cheyenne.  The perfectly nice and oh-so-respectable folks from FAITHFUL AMERICA, an advocacy arm of the NATIONAL COUNCIL OF CHURCHES allied with other religious organizations including the UNITARIAN UNIVERSALIST ASSOCIATION,  asked that letters be sent to ATTORNEY GENERAL ALBERTO GONZALEZ  in regard to the case of DR. SAMI AL ARIAN.

Briefly, Dr. Al Arian was a well known Florida State University professor and advocate for the Palestinian cause.  He was arrested in connection with violations of the PATRIOT ACT, primarily for raising funds for charities that were alleged to support ISLAMIC JIHAD, a Palestinian organization identified as Terrorist for its activities against ISREAL, including bombings.  It was one of the highest profile of all of the “terrorist” cases brought by the DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE.

Despite a vigorous prosecution at jury acquitted Dr. Al Arian on all of the most serious charges, convicting him on minor technical violations.   He should have been freed then for time served.  The Justice Department decided to press for a new trial, despite little prospect of success.  By refusing to release Al Arian on appeal while awaiting a new trial, the Feds could effectively keep him incarcerated for years.  So Dr. Al Arian struck a plea deal to one count—a count that did not admit to knowingly supporting any violent or terrorist organization.  Under the plea deal he would have been released this April.  Then he would have been deported, but at least he would be re-united with his family.

The Justice Department, however, found new ways to keep Dr. Al Arian behind bars.  All they had to do was list him as a witness to cases before Federal Grand Juries.  He could be held as a “material witness” for as long as a Grand Jury was empanelled—18 months.  Then he could be subpoenaed as a witness to yet another Grand Jury and held another 18 months.  This could be repeated to the end of time and the Professor would never see the light of day.

In January Al Arian began a hunger strike to protest his detention.  He has now lost more than 45 pounds and has been transferred to a Federal Prison hospital.

Enter Faithful America asking for letter on his behalf to Alberto Gonzalez.

I don’t know what it was that over took me this morning.  Gonzalez has done worse and done worse with depressing regularity.  Just this past Sunday he told a TV talking head program that he was too busy to be bothered to answer questions about his detention policy from mere Congressmen or even to “answer a subpoena” on the subject.

So I deleted all of the polite arguments in the canned letter and inserted the following.  Probably not a good idea.  If I suddenly disappear, look for me down by the Gulag, Gonzalez edition.

This is it:

Dear Attorney General Gonzalez: 
         The saga of Dr. SAMI AL ARIAN is beginning to resemble 19^th Century fiction—the PRISONER OF ZENDA, say, or THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK.  Under the misadministration of Justice which has become the hallmark of the Bush administration and your particular specialty, he has become a non-person who will be held, evidently indefinitely, at your whim by resorting to transparent legal chicanery.

There is virtually no chance of successfully appealing to your on humanitarian grounds.  You have shown repeatedly in this case and in dozens of other that you care not one whit for the suffering you cause as long as you can de-humanize the victim by casting him as a devil figure.

Neither can you be appealed to on legal or Constitutional grounds.  Your complete contempt for the ordinary procedures of law and especially for, in the words of you boss President Bush, “that damned old piece of paper,” the Constitution, is now too well established to be refuted.

So what do we have left?  What about good old wake-me-up-in-the-middle-of-the-night-sweating-and-screaming fear?  The day is fast approaching when the people of the United States, revolted by the pack of pin stripe gangsters of which you are a part, throws you out unceremoniously on the street.  They will do this by the quaint exercise of the ballot.  And when you are again a mere common citizen your actions will be scrutinized by new administrators of justice who may recognize you for the criminal you are in fact.

Perhaps they will give you Dr. Sami al Arian’s old cell and plenty of time to re-consider the value of Constitutional protections.  After all there will probably be dozens, if not more, Grand Juries convened at which your testimony will be essential.

PATRICK MURFIN,

Crystal Lake, Illinois

                             
Bruce Gordon out at NAACP                                       Chair Julian Bond eyes successor

   UUA President WILLIAM SINKFORD
on tap?
                  

            The word from Baltimore where the venerable NAACP, the nation’s oldest and some say stodgiest civil rights organization, is concluding its annual meeting, is that PRESIDENT BRUCE S. GORDON has resigned and/or been forced out  of office.  He leaves after only 19 months on the job citing conflicting vissions with the organization’s Board of Directors headed by CHAIRMAN JULIAN BOND. 

            Gordon was hired to replace the high profile previous President, former Congressman KWEISI MFUMI, who served for 9 years.  Mfumi rescued an organization that was floundering, at odds with itself and in deep financial disarray.  Yet his own term was not without controversy as allegations of favoritism to female staff members with whom her reputedly had relationships surfaced.  And some activists felt that Mfumi’s high profile campaigns to increase African-American representation in the entertainment industry did little to better the life of the majority of Blacks still mired in poverty or living in emenent danger of falling out of the middle class.

            Gordon, whose bacground was not it activism or politics, but in buisness, was brought in to continue to rebuild the NAACP’s organizational infrastruture.  At first he had the support of Bond, the charismatic former Atlanta Mayor and civil rights veteran, whose public profile guerenteed that he eclipsed the president in prestige and recognition.  But Gordon’s corporate management style clashed with the old “movement” culture and his desire to shift the organization’s focus to social service  offended board members determined to maintain the NAACP’s status as a premier advocacy organization.  Bond obviously sided with the Board and likely muscled Gordon out.

            GENERAL COUNCIL DENNIS C. HAYES, will temporarily take over the administrative reins of the organization.  He played a similar caretaker roll following Mfumi’s resignation.  The question is:  Who will Bond and the Board tap for the permanent job?

            One candidate might very well be the UNITARIAN UNIVERSALIST ASSOCIATION’S very own PRESIDENT WILLIAM S. SINKFORD.  Sinkford has risen to national prominance as the first Black elected leader of a predominately White denomination and as an outspoken leader on important social issues.  Moreover, he enjoys a close and cordial relationship with Bond.  Sinkford personally selected Bond to give the 2003 WARE LECTURE at the UUA Geneneral Assembly.  This is the equivalent of a key note speaker and is among the most prestegious recognitions that the UUA can offer.     
            Sinkford offers an intreaging combinations of skills.  Like Gordon, he had extensive business experience and developed strong management skills.  But as a minister he is comfortable in the faith-based tradition of the African-American civil rights struggle.  As  UUA President, he has also shown an appetit for social activism that Gordon never evidenced and is a skilled and dynamic communicator on issues about which he cares deeply.  And, of course justice for African Americans is high on that list.  As the leader of a predomiately White organization, he has also shown he can work comfortably in the broader culture, an important asset for an organization which, unlike most civil rights organizations, has always welcome Whites to membership and even leadership rolls.  Like Bond himself and SENATOR BARAK OBAMA, he has shown that he can be an effective spokesperson for his race without alienating White America.

            Another plus is the long association of Unitarians and Unitarian Universalists with the NAACP.  Two of the leading founders of the organization were prominant Unitarians, MARY WHITE OVINGTON, and JOHN HAYNES HOLMES.  Long cordial relations grew even stronger as DANA McLEAN GREELY, first President of the UUA, committed the Association to the civil rights struggle culminating in the SELMA CAMPAIGN of 1965, which was not only the high water mark of the voter rights struggle in the South, but the defining moment for the as  yet infant UUA.

            Former UUA President WILLIAM F. SCHULZ, who became Executive Director of AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL upon retiring, demostrated that UUA leadership could be a fertile training ground for leadership of a major advocacy organization.

            On the other hand, Sinkford’s Unitarian Universalism could also work against him.  The NAACP still draws heavily from the clergy of the Black church for leadership.  Many of these  ministers may object to Sinkford as a “Non-Christian” despite his leadership in restoring “the language of reverence” to the UU lexicon.  Others might feel that the leader of a White church, even a Black leader of a liberal White church, cannot relate to the Black church culture so critical for the African-American community.  

But surely the UUA’s long standing commitment to the Gay, Lesbian and Transgender communities and Sinkford’s very high profile advocay for legalizing same gender marriage will be offensive to some in the black community where predjudice against Gays remains high.  Many also resent the identification of the struggle for Gay rights with the sacrifices of the civil rights movement.

            Sinkford has two more years left to go on his second term as UUA President, but it could take nearly that long for a comprehensive presidential search to be conducted by the Board.  Or if the search is expiditiously concluded and Sinkford is annointed, he could resign early and take the job.

A resignation would put long time UUA EXECUTIVE VICE PRESIDENT KAY MONTGOMERY, into leadership until the next election.  She could be a place holder for MODERATOR GINI COURTER,  a close Sinkford ally who may have the inside track to become the first woman and the first layperson to become President of the UUA.

            I am willing to bet that Sinkford remains on (and near the top) of Bond’s short list of candidates to lead the NAACP.