Eyesight to the Blind

Goodness, weeks and months of silence, then two posts in one day...

Almost every week I take a look at the sermons of John Shuck, the progressive Presbyterian pastor whose church in Elizabethton, Tenn., is where I suspect I'd worship if I were living in the area.

I think his sermon yesterday on the story from the Gospel of John about Jesus healing a blind man is one of his best.

Martin Marty on 'Religion for Atheists' ...

I saw this item from Martin Marty this morning, whose twice-weekly newsletter I receive and usually read.

I haven't read either the book [Alain de Botton's Religion for Atheists: A Non-Believer's Guide to the Uses of Religion] nor the articles he references; they're going on a very long list of when-I-get-to-it stuff to peruse.

But for all who contemplate both the past and future of Unitarian Universalism, our recurrent debates over whether we can expect to really become, in the words of our president, "the religion for our times," and the perpetual sorting-out of whether we are too syncretic, too rootless, too vague, or too-whatever... the Marty essay and the issues as well as the readings to which he points seem highly relevant to the conversation.