Easter

Strange Attractor ponders how to experience Easter from a non-Christian perspective, and both her remarks and the comments that follow make for interesting reading.

As it happens, DairyStateMom and I both attended her church this Easter, and I found the entire service very moving, notwithstanding my non-orthodox interpretation and belief around the resurrection. Spectacular music (they bring in timpani to accompany the organ on this day) was one reason, but not the only one.

A special feature of the morning was an anthem based on the Emily Dickinson poem "Hope is the thing with feathers" -- a completely new setting for the poem, with a soaring soprano solo at the end, that had its world premiere on that day and in that place. The senior pastor's sermon began with Dickinson's story, focusing with great empathy on how Dickinson was viewed as a failure religiously in her adolescence, admitted to Mount Holyoke Seminar for Girls as one "without hope" for salvation:

From the Emily Dickinson Museum's Web site:

Mount Holyoke also believed that students’ moral and religious lives were part of its responsibility and conducted revivals that encouraged students to profess their faith. Students were organized into one of three groups: those who professed, those who hoped to and those who were without hope. Dickinson was among eighty without hope when she entered and was among twenty-nine who remained so by the end of the year.

The sermon then made a segue to note the anniversary of Martin Luther King's last speech, and quoted extensively from King's sermons over some 20 years in which he called upon hope for the future and for justice.

And that, she said, summed up the Easter message: hope for the future and in the justice of the universe.

It was a message that I found resonated very deeply with me. One in which the supernatural miracle of Easter was muted in favor of Easter as a state of mind--yet one that I think someone for whom the Resurrection story as a more literal event could still feel at home with.

A week later I'm still turning it over in my mind. (In fact, I delayed publishing this, having begun the draft of it a couple of days ago, in hopes I could write something a bit more definitive and complete here.)

I am very much a pluralist and very much a Unitarian Universalist. I'm a skeptic, at best, on the supernatural elements that have traditionally been a part of Christian belief. I emphatically reject the traditional atonement theology that requires me to believe Jesus died for the sins of the world in order to ransom us from eternal damnation.

But in recent years, owing in part to sharing in some of DairyStateMom's faith life, and driven by that to do the reading I've been doing of late, I do find myself reconnecting with Christianity. Not Christianity as traditionally defined, mind you. But one in which I see a deep and inspiring meaning in the life and words ascribed to Jesus.

And I find myself taking great comfort in that turn of events, even as it challenges me in my day-to-day life.

Emergent/Postmodern Modern Liberal

Thanks to Kay, I have now taken the quizfarm quiz on "Theological Worldview" twice.

The first time I took it, I got:

You are a Modern Liberal. Science and historical study have shown so much of the Bible to be unreliable and that conservative faith has made Jesus out to be a much bigger deal than he actually was. Discipleship involves continuing to preach and practice Jesus’ measure of love and acceptance, and dogma is not important in today’s world. You are influenced by thinkers like Bultmann and Bishop Spong.

Well, I’ve never heard of Bultmann and I’ve heard of but never actually read Spong. But the basic characterization I have no quarrel with.

I didn't save the data on individual percentages for each point on the list. So tonight I took it again.

This time I got:

You Scored as Emergent/Postmodern

You are Emergent/Postmodern in your theology. You feel alienated from older forms of church, you don't think they connect to modern culture very well. No one knows the whole truth about God, and we have much to learn from each other, and so learning takes place in dialogue. Evangelism should take place in relationships rather than through crusades and altar-calls. People are interested in spirituality and want to ask questions, so the church should help them to do this.

Emergent/Postmodern 89%
Modern Liberal 86%
Classical Liberal 68%
Roman Catholic 43%
Neo orthodox 36%
Evangelical Holiness/Wesleyan 29%
Charismatic/Pentecostal 29%
Reformed Evangelical 4%
Fundamentalist 0%

But that "Modern Liberal" is pretty close behind. Maybe some of my answers were just a bit more theistic this evening, vs. this afternoon.

Certainly it fits. I'm pretty sure the picture on the "emergent" page is of Marcus Borg, whom I've been reading voraciously and very much like.

Anyhow, I'm just getting this down for the record now. Perhaps I'll have more to say about this anon.

Raising Children in an Interfaith Context

On Being Both is a blog I very much appreciate and enjoy reading.

To be honest, its issues are largely an abstraction for me: DSM and I have an interfaith (Christian/UU) marriage, but we married after my sons were already well-established in UU church life, so we have never felt a need to try to expose them equally to DSM's Christian church (even though I attend whenever I can and consider myself very much a friend of and even at home in her congregation). We have brought DSK#2 to her church twice, but that was to include him in church outings that followed the service.

Still, if our children were the product of our marriage from the start, I would want to follow an Interfaith template. I've written before about Rabbi Marc Gellman's "God Squad" column, which I generally find supportive of religious pluralism. My biggest difference with him, however, is his notion that trying to live as an Interfaith couple or family is somehow a bad idea. (I also think he tends to limit Christian doctrine largely to the traditional terms of Catholicism and Evangelical Christianity, giving short shrift to some of the more progressive interpretations. But that's another story.)

So I think Susan Katz Miller's latest blog post offers a strong and sensible rebuttal to the prejudice against raising children to be part of both parents' faith traditions.

Speechless

I cannot summon the words to express my sadness and outrage at this particular news development.

Juneau County DA warns districts on sex ed law
Teaching curriculum could lead to criminal charges against teachers, he writes

Plus: Debra Haffner puts this disturbing story in a larger, even more disturbing context, but also offers a bracing response.

Faith, Choice, and Happiness

Unitarian Universalists are well-known for the way in which we not only permit, but sanctify the right of free choice in following a spiritual path. Evidence from social science suggests that an abundance of choices may correlate with a deficit of happiness. Martin Marty explores.

Simplifying your work life

I could learn from this.

via it's all one thing

Weird Al is a genius

Even if DairyStateMom does think that assessment is a little over the top:



Here's the kicker: I didn't even know until yesterday that it was a parody of this: