Surviving the Workday

I usually think of China as the great exporter (possibly The Great Exporter), but China is encouraging Malayasian companies to export halal food to the (more than) 18 million Muslims who live in China.

Via The Islamic Workplace

This ruling seems a bit absurd to me. Let’s see if I can summarize:

Georgia Tech, a public university, has a university-affiliated group called Safe Space, which distributed literature describing some religious traditions and their relationships with gayness. A federal judge ruled that these materials favored some religions over others and are therefore unconstitutional

The details:

The case was filed on behalf of two Georgia Tech students, assisted by the Alliance Defense Fund, a legal group that has sued many public colleges accusing them of violating the rights of religious students. The portion of the suit about Safe Space argued that materials at the public university were effectively religious in that they endorsed some faiths over others — and that these materials were as a result unconstitutional. Judge J. Owen Forrester agreed.

The materials in question dealt with issues that may be faced by religious gay students, or by gay students challenged about the sexuality by people from different faiths. One passage cited in the ruling says that “historically, Biblical passages taken out of context have been used to justify such things as slavery, the inferior status of women, and the persecution of religious minorities.” Such attitudes have led some religious groups to declare “that homosexuality is immoral,” the group’s materials state, while others “have begun to look at sexual relationships in terms of the love, mutual support, commitments and the responsibility of the partners rather than the sex of the individuals involved.”

In another section, the materials discuss specific faiths, noting which faiths recognize same-sex unions, and the conditions under which some faiths will ordain gay clergy. While the Episcopal Church is praised as “more receptive to gay worshipers than many other Christian denominations,” the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is described as having “the most anti-gay policies of any religion widely practiced in the United States.” The section on Roman Catholic belief also notes that some theologians have argued, “much to the embarrassment of the Vatican,” that the medieval church recognized unions for same-sex couples.

Those passages seem pretty darn factual to me though they are generalizations. In any case, the materials are no longer used. A small case, but the implications for public institutions are big.

Via Inside Higher Ed

This is just one of those stories that makes you shake your head. I’m not sure what this woman could have done differently to change the outcome, but it seems like a great tragedy: Critics Cost Muslim Educator Her Dream

History Will Not Absolve Us by George Hunsinger

10 Books on Judaism and Environmentalism

Why Jeremiah is Wright by Marlin Lavanhar and via the RadicalHapa

Getting Divorced? Lose Job too  Ken Gramm, a faculty member at Wheaton in Illinois, is getting a divorce and chose to voluntarily leave Wheaton rather than be terminated:

Wheaton, a non-denominational evangelical Protestant college, maintains a strong commitment to its statement of faith and community covenant, the latter a social compact based on biblical standards for Christian character and behavior. Wheaton’s long-standing policy on divorced employees stems directly from those two documents, the provost, Stan Jones, says.

“The college has uniformly emphasized the biblical expectation of marriage to be permanent, a picture of our relationship (the bride) to Christ (the bridegroom),” Wheaton’s policy reads.

I am surprised Wheaton can actually staff a campus with such policies. But perhaps I know more divorced people than most.

Seabury-Western Theological Seminary Lays Off Tenured Faculty  So much for tenure, eh? That pretty much says it all. Apparently the residential MDiv program is no more. Not a lot of good news recently in the land of cash-strapped Episcopal seminaries.

The Workplace Prof Blog Ponders the Supposed Abuse of FMLA  I’ve been wondering about this too. It’s unpaid leave. I suppose it could be abused, but I find it hard to believe it’s abused as much as employers say it is.

Possibly the greatest thing I read all day: The Liberation of Adjuncts Theology:

The author of the memo, Daniel C. Maguire, a professor of theology, said he found himself thinking about the treatment of part-time faculty members after discussing with his students the Biblical teachings about the powerful and the powerless.

“I teach ethics, and I was just recently talking about what the Bible says to us about how every society builds up royalty-slave syndromes, and royals let the slaves do their work for them,” he said. It happens in the business world, he said. It happened in ancient societies, he said. “And I told them that it happens here.” He explained: “I have tenure. I have good benefits, and there are people doing as much work as I am. And they don’t have health insurance. They are covering most of our courses so we can have these leisurely 3-2 schedules,” he said.

Read one woman’s account of her life in the Fundamental Latter Day Saints. The refrain to “keep sweet” becomes utterly poignant as you read her story.

There’s some new research from the Barna Institute on tithing. Not too many surprises here. The more conservative, evangelical, regular Bible-reader/church attender you are, the more you give to your church approaching the 10% of your income, which is the formal definition used here for tithing.

And because it is Barna, there are some strange turns of phrase within the article:

Strangely, tithing is a Jewish practice….

Strangely it’s Jewish! Oh my God! Like…um…Jesus….

When the DC Metro put together a commercial involving a bobblehead Pope riding the Green Line and advising people to ride the train during the papal visit next week, a lot of people thought it was funny, and a great plug.

The Catholic Church? Not so much. Not only was the BobblePope unauthorized merchandize, but he was wearing the wrong color skull cap and cape. It was, in their words, a “misdressed Pope.” The Church didn’t ask them to pull it from YouTube distribution, but the Metro line pulled it anyway.

I would insert some sort of snide joke here, but frankly, I’m scared of the new Pope. And BobblePope manages to look like a cross between Satan and Jimmy Carter. I’m not messing with that.

I’m watching the first part of 3-part ideas for Growth, which addressing welcoming guests to church (or repelling fewer visitors). Oddly enough one of the hospitality exercises suggested is similar to one that I suggested, which is simply to visit a church you don’t know and see how you are received (they suggest pretending to be a visitor in your own church). This is something I’ve done a lot, and mostly experienced being ignored, but occasionally welcomed so heartily I become convinced that they think I’m someone else. So take a view at the video on welcoming, because I’d love to discuss it.

Part of what strikes me is how important it is to welcome the visitor in a way that she is comfortable with. For example, according to the video, if I visit this church, I first greet the minister outside, and then a volunteer table coordinator, and possibly another greeter or two, before sitting down (possibly accompanied by one of these volunteers), and then I get to introduce myself outloud to the whole church (I could provide an entire commentary on this practice, but it simply won’t die), make small talk with my seat neighbors in a formal time during the service, and then there’s coffee hour (Please no red cups). These folks are trying very hard, and believe what they’re doing is really important hospitality ministry and have experienced real growth, but I have to say that as it’s described, it would be too much for me. Jim and I’ve been welcomed this way, and it feels overbearing to us. Greet us once or twice, and we’re good; just don’t ignore us completely or try to become our new best friend. I’m not sure we’re that unusual.

Now there is a lengthy disclaimer at the beginning of the video that these are things that worked for this church, and may not work for your church. But how to reconcile the welcoming church model presented in the video, the important thinking behind it, and its success with the research that suggests that an overwhelming number of people surveyed prefer to slip in anonymously to a church the first time? Do they not know what’s good for them!? Do the survey results misrepresent their real wishes? I wonder what’s going on here. Thoughts?

I’m going to see if I can come at the issue of church attendance and church non-attendance from a broader perspective as I think I’ve exhausted the personal approach (and the few implications of my laziness and entitlement for having “needs” at church really made me not want to go personal anymore). You’ll recall this is part of a larger discussion on the fact that 76% of the people who identify as Unitarian Universalist don’t attend church regularly.

In this post, we are talking about the unchurched in a broad sense, the people who don’t attend any sort of religious group meeting regularly, not just Unitarian Universalists. And they are about 75 million of these folks, including me, in the United States. This figure has doubled since 1991, so it’s a source of concern in some circles. In fact, more than 1 in 5 (22%) never attend (never ever ever!) church.

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I’ve been reading the large number of comments that have been appearing on my church-related posts, but haven’t responded individually. I hope that’s something we can live with as I appreciate the comments but don’t seem to have the time or energy to respond comment by comment.  It’s me,  not you. :) 

However, there are some really thought-provoking comments on the Why I Don’t Go to Church Post, some of which I’m going to call out here.

Kel, after a lifetime of work in church and church organizations, including being a pastor’s kid, says,

“Yeah sure, church might be a good place to serve people, but after many years of it, you wonder when it’s your turn to be served . . . but because you don’t have kids that never happens.”

That is exactly how I feel. And I think that attending seminary, working in a church, and training to be a minister sort of made this feeling worse. It seems a bit harder for me to be a congregant again and I have to curb the urge to jump at every leadership opportunity. There is a place of balance between service to others and others providing some service to you.

Chuck asks,

“If your church had a series of social events in connection with other UU churches in the region that was geared not toward just families, but had families in mind would you go? I’m thinking of annual jamboree’s or the like where you could meet other UU singles to just hang with.”

Your question is a good one as I think there is always room for UUs to connect across communities. However, for me, I’m not interested in social events as church functions. I have enough social stuff going on.

Jim says,

“Why pick on folk dancing? Did you have a traumatic folk dance experience as a child? Were you frightened by a freilekh? Did a square dance make you squeamish? I’ve attended several UU churches and have not yet been to one that hosts folk dances, but, if one of them did, I hope I wouldn’t hold it against them.   I can relate to the “what’s in it for me?” stuff, but it also frustrates and disappoints me. Being a part of any community requires a certain amount of inconvenience and discomfort, right?”

I mostly mentioned folk dancing because it started with an “f” and so did “family game night” and I like alliteration (as do you!). The UU church I grew up in had folk dancing, and it was very popular. My parents went as did all their UU friends. My point, which apparently was obscured by alliteration and my sense of humor, is that these don’t represent programming that will draw me in as a 35-year-old child-free adult.

Since writing the original post, I’ve scoured roughly 50 UU church calendars looking for programming and have come up with the UU bible study, meditation, and prayer groups, but I actually think specific programs that interest me are beside the point. I had four reasons for not going to church anymore and my own disinterest in current programming was only one of them.

Marmota asks the next logical question,

“Whose responsibility is it to make your local UU congregation fulfill you?”

I feel like the discussion shifted at some point from my reasons for not going to church (any church, mind you, not just the closest UU one)  to trying to label programs that will bring me in or fulfill me. I may have caused that shift by mentioning folk dancing and disinterest, and for that I apologize. What I was trying to do in my original post is describe why I ended up in the 76% of Unitarian Universalists who affiliate as such and don’t attend church. And for the record, I’ve also written about when UU church and UU groups worked well for me and I was of service to them here and here and here.

In response to your specific query, I suppose it’s my own responsibility to make my UU church fulfill me, and I admire how you were able to do that in your own church. However, after say 10 years of leadership positions (formal and informal) in UU churches plus attending seminary, all of which was mainly about serving others to build a better church, I’ve decided that I don’t want to attend only in order to serve. I’ve done that.

Terri left a related comment on Lessons from a local church,

“When I moved away from Rochester, and talked about how disappointed I was in the available UU options, and how my solution was to become a leader and “give, give, give”, I remember a UU minister saying to me– “Yes, but you need to be fed too.”

That’s a good point. I think I’d need to be fed too as part of the service-served balance. But here’s the rub for me. I’m already fed. It’s just not at church. It’s at a half dozen other places, including my own home.  And that’s okay, but it’s also why I don’t go to church at this time.

I’m not asking churches to change to accomodate me; I’m simply explaining why I no longer go.

I just received a glossy brochure in the mail from a local Christian church, and thought it was doing some interesting things. First, there’s no denomination listed. It’s a “community” church and meets in a high school gymnasium and has three Sunday services. I assume it’s non-denominational, but leaning toward the conservative and evangelical side of the spectrum (but that’s just my best guess and gut instinct based on where I live).

Second, I noticed that the theme of the brochure is the church bringing “harmony to your home” and that there are six sermons in March and April based around family harmony. In case you’re curious (and I was), those are: 1. How to build winning relationships; 2 Avoiding a Financial Collapse; 3. Building a Great Marriage; 4. Raising Great Kids; 5. How to Fight Fair; and 6. Making Time for Each Other.

Here’s what strongly appeals to me from this brochure:

1. Admittance of Struggle This church and ministry appear to admit that there is actual struggling going on in our middle class town. I like that. I relate to that. And that feels different to me than churches I’ve been to where it would have been s-h-o-c-k-i-n-g to talk about financial problems or marital woes right up until a bankruptcy or divorce was announced. We might whisper about those issues during coffee hour, but we wouldn’t hear about it from the pulpit. And yet we all have these problems periodically. Why aren’t we preaching about them regularly?  

2. Practical Theology  Although the sermon titles are self-helpy, I’d bet the house that the sermons are full of Jesus, and that interests me. I just want to see these discusssions from a Unitarian Universalist point of view because my gut sense is this church is way too conservative for me to attend. Now in the comments for my most popular post ever, Why I Don’t Go to Church, someone asked what sort of programming would be of interest to me since I made fun of folk dancing at Unitarian Universalist Churches and someone else seemed frustrated with my What’s in it for me? attitude (funny in that I was going to basically give my career to ministry, and now, actually want something from my church, how dare I). I thought about all of this for a while as two weeks passed in which I was in Utah hiking for one Sunday morning and out to brunch with friends for another Sunday morning. Truth be told, those sermons highly interest me. They would be enough to drag me to church and rearrange my life in order to hear the message. And what else in terms of programming?  I’m interested in a UU Bible study. I’m interested in a prayer group to deepen my practice. I’m interested in a meditation group. I’m interested in social justice work. The more I think about it, the more I think I’m looking to church for actual religion. Imagine that.

When God Goes to the Office is one of these bizarre little articles that tries to summarize a huge social movement with a couple of anecdotes and experts. I know. I’ve written the same sort of pieces. The big issue that often comes up when employers and employees sing the praises of religion in the office is that often they are talking about One Religion (Christianity) and a particular brand of that religion (the conservative evangelical brand). That’s not really bringing religion to the office. That’s creating a workplace centered around one religion. Not so comfortable for many of us.

I’ve been thinking of church experiences that seemed to work for me (and for the church), and have one more story spanning three years. Post-college, at a Unitarian Universalist church way away from home, I attended more than a few services, some lay-led in the summer, some minister-led in the school year, but didn’t really sense any place for me to participate. The services were certainly adequate, but I wasn’t moved (though I’m willing to live with that some of the time). I wasn’t particularly interested in the activities that the church offered, most of which seemed social (e.g., Women’s Club, Men’s Club, Senior Lunches). There were a fair number of abbreviations for things that I couldn’t figure out both in worship and in the calendar. I was on the church mailing list for a month, but then taken off despite still attending services. People seemed very interested in talking to their friends at coffee hour afterwards (not a bad thing in and of itself), though I managed to bring out my inner extrovert for a few conversations.

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George Barna proposed some categories for traditional and non-traditional church goers:

unattached - adults who have not attended congregations or house churches within the last year

intermittents - adults who attended congregations or house churches, but not during the last month

homebodies - adults who attended house churches within the last month

blenders - adults who attended congregations and house churches within the last month

conventionals - adults who attend congregations within the last month

While I’m clearly not in step with George Barna, I thought those were interesting distinctions to make.

So, here is the third in a series of posts of when Unitarian Universalism church-related stuff has worked for me (First post: YRUU; Second post: in college at Smith).

Quite a while, back in college, I transferred to Wesleyan from Smith. Now for some bizarre unknown reason to me, Wesleyan had no official UU student group. This is really odd, because Wesleyan is like the most Unitarian Universalist university in spirit in the country. But no UU group. So this guy and I started a small informal fellowship group that met Sunday nights. We lit some candles, checked in, said some stuff (this is sounding like a date, but there were more people than us), and later had a potluck. 

This little group met throughout my junior year of college and provided one of those opportunities for broadening my perspective beyond the Mineralogy lab, and broadening my sense of Unitarian Universalism beyond church meetings. Yet the experience itself is totally off the record, not counting toward any statistics of UU activity, and as far as I know it, no one who participated was a member of a UU congregation during that time.

If you’re one of these people who wonders why more of the unaffiliated Unitarian Universalists (UU) aren’t joining UU churches (or your church in particular), let me suggest an experiment:

1. Leave your safe UU church, of which you are a member, one Sunday morning.

2. Visit a UU church a distance away where you know no one.

3. See what happens.

It’s that simple. Just see how you feel as a visitor to an unknown church. I’m willing to bet that some people have great experiences as the visitor (Kudos to the Meet and Greet committee) and some people are basically ignored (No Kudos).

I’ve played this game quite a bit both in Boston and in Southern California, and I think as a denomination we have a long way to go toward becoming welcoming toward all (and I don’t mean that in a Welcoming Congregation way, but in a Theology of the Stranger way in terms of how we treat people we don’t know). Yes, your church may be great for you when you know lots of people. I’ve read lots of great blog posts this week about how rewarding church is. And I don’t doubt it because I’ve found it really rewarding in the past too when I went regularly for years. But how is it for the stranger and potential new member? Do we greet her? Do we ignore her? Do we overwhelm her with attention? Do we corner her and not let her leave?

And, please note, this isn’t to say that other religious groups do a better job with this either. At a midnight Mass, Jim and I weren’t allowed to sit down in a pew in a famous Catholic church in Santa Fe unless we swore we would stay for the entire 3 hour service. That’s a big commitment to make a church usher at midnight.

Now you can continue this game with a few visits to that unknown church and see what happens. Are you recognized as a repeat visitor? Or treated as if you are brand new? And what happens if you ask about membership? And another kettle of fish entirely is to make the visit with and without a partner. I’ve found that seems to make a ton of difference in how I’m treated. But if you’re wondering why people who affiliate as UUs don’t join congregations, this is a simple way to experience what it would be like to be them as non-members.

My husband is a Quaker at heart. His family roots in Quakerism extend back many centuries. While we do not attend Quaker services, we both know that when (or if) we have children, they will be raised in the Quaker faith. That is why this article caught my eye.

One of the tenets of Quakerism is that they do not swear oaths. They believe that the truth should be told at all times, thus swearing an oath implies a different standard under that oath. They are also non-violent; many conscientious objectors are from The Society of Friends, and they won the Nobel Prize in 1947.

Given that, I am actually kind of amused that a teacher at CSU East Bay was fired for altering a state-mandated oath to state her non-violent beliefs, and for circling that she “affirmed” rather than “swore” this oath (affirming is allowed in Quaker beliefs.)

Modifying oaths is open to different legal interpretations. Without commenting on the specific situation, a spokesman for state Attorney General Jerry Brown said that “as a general matter, oaths may be modified to conform with individual values.” For example, court oaths may be modified so that atheists don’t have to refer to a deity, said spokesman Gareth Lacy.

This woman had made similar alterations to two previous oaths she had signed. Yet, the CSU declared her changes “unacceptable.” Well, I personally find religious discrimination “unacceptable.”

So I’m still feeling sort of creepy about saying why I don’t currently go to church, because I fear it came off as if I was denigrating church-goers or was a lazy-ass yuppie, and I’m neither. So I’ll write briefly about times when church worked for me (and I worked for church).

When I was seventeen-years-old, I went to Smith, and attended the Unitarian Society of Northampton and Florence in Northampton regularly on Sunday mornings for two years while in school. The minister was Victoria Safford. Now of the four reasons I mentioned yesterday for not going to church, some of those were still issues, but played out differently:

1. Church was important to me. I’m not sure why it was important to me, but I felt absolutely compelled to go to church. I loved Victoria’s sermons, felt something always shift within me, and felt lighter afterward as if the world had broadened before me. I can remember specific phrases she used that moved me (and it’s almost two decades later). This was a time in my life when it was important to see women in their late twenties and early thirties as role models for work in ministry (and academia) and life in general beyond Smith and Victoria certainly served that role as did Carol Zaleski, a religion professor at Smith.

2. The time of day still sucked. When I attended church, I used to miss brunch at Smith, which was the biggest and most elaborate meal of the week, and more importantly, included in my meal plan and already paid for. So it was essentially giving up a $15 meal with my friends, and having to eat elsewhere at a time in my life when I earned money scrubbing toilets. But I did it.

3. I seemed to matter more.  I don’t think Victoria had any idea who I was, but she still greeted everyone as they entered and left the church. Other parishioners were really friendly to me and there were other people within my demographic in the church. I suppose that’s because Northampton is partially a college-town, and it wasn’t unusual for students to attend services. But I had the distinct sensation of mattering, and my intellectual and emotional needs for stimulation and connection were met.

4. I didn’t see petty dysfunctional shit. Now I was 17 when I started attending, and 19 when I transferred from Smith, so it’s possible there was tons of petty dysfunctional shit that I didn’t know about. But I also worked in the RE program, and was always treated well and respectfully as I was when I attended church.

I think it’s important to note here that even though I attended regularly, I was not a member. Now why wasn’t I a member during one of the best church experiences of my life? Two reasons: 1. No one ever asked me to join. 2. When I saw membership materials, the idea of having to scrub more toilets to give more money (other than the money I had to pay for my missing meal, and what I was giving in the offering) was probably too much for me.

I’m going to write more about other times church worked for me next week.

Last night, I dreamt that I was in a hell of my own making working at Noah’s Bagel Bakery in a strip mall in Stevenson Ranch with six women demons.

Sound strange? Not if you know that I watched a DVD on The Tibetan Book of the Bed before bedtime. This is the strangest religious DVD I have ever seen. Some notes:

a. The DVD is narrated by Leonard Cohen, which sounds much cooler in theory than it is in reality. He has a great voice, of course, but it sort of lulled us into apathy and lethargy despite seeing dead people on screen.

b. There are a few clips of the Dalai Lama, in which, I swear on all that is holy, he sounds exactly like Julia Child. Blame the low production values. This realization was enough to awaken us from the Cohen-induced-apathy into fits of glee.

c. Have you ever taken ’shrooms? Because you’ll enjoy Part 2 of the DVD and the demons.

Tibetan Book of the Dead. Read it. Don’t see the video unless you liked the ’shrooms.