Unitarian Universalists

I gave an address a couple of week's back at the local Unitarian church that combined Terry Pratchett with Carl Sagan. You might enjoy it.

http://lightbringers.net/node/99

I am friends with a minister and congregation in Kenya (more info below). I am trying to find them some good materials (like sermons) that are not U.S. or western-culture specific, that could be printed from the web that we could get copyright permission for. I don't have time to look for all the specific ones that would be appropriate. In other words, universal stories.

I helped them create a web site here (there's a link to history from the About page): http://ruaiuuchurch.org/ Kenya is the country with the fastest growing UU congregations (~100 in less than 15 yrs.), but they need UU materials as they tend to use the Bible & Biblical stories a lot. They have won over some of the Maasai people, though, and have a congregation there and they have been averse to Christianity. The Kenyan UUs are trying to build unity, peace, and harmony among west African people.

My congregation is working with them and will send them books and pamphlets later and hopefully in the future we can also send them things (and funds) for their elementary and secondary schools, but we're starting with UU materials and a list of things they can print since they think it is affordable to them.

Any help in finding universal UU materials along with copyright permission to use them would be very much appreciated.

I just wanted to say that I stopped at First UU San Francisco while on vacation last week. I guess a lot of the congregation was at GA or on summer break so a couple of older white dudes gave a sermon on Christianity.

The bitching in the women's restroom after the service was HILARIOUS.

<3

Interesting article today in the Huffington Post - "The Theology of Unitarian Universalists," by Marilyn Sewell, UU minister and writer:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mari…

"... could our movement be said to have a theology? After all, our contemporary churches are populated with Christians, atheists, humanists of various stripes, Jews, Buddhists, and even Wiccans. Whoever will, may come. Nevertheless, when we look at our history and the practice of our faith, certain theological themes dominate, and so I will argue that, yes, we do have in fact a theology of sorts, a theology that has been relatively clear and consistent through time."

An interesting read about UUism as it stands today, and where UUism came from based on our history.

What are your favorite UU Facebook groups/pages? Is there a particularly good/active LGBT UU community there?

(Not to bleed even more people from LJ, but it's nice to connect everywhere we can.)

This is an address I gave at the Melbourne Unitarian Church last Sunday..

Initially I felt some unease when approached to present today's address on 'isocracy'. I do not particularly care for presentations here which are solely dedicated to political issues that do not refer to our liberal religious tradition, least of all by members of the church. If I want strictly social and political discussion there are these organisations called "political parties" where one's contributions are far more useful and effective. But then I was reminded of my very first encounter with Unitarian-Universalism, over twenty years ago through reading a book entitled "Legitimation Crisis" by Jürgen Habermas. This short, dense, carefully researched book of extraordinary scope was first published in 1973 is arguably the most important contributions to social theory in the last fifty years. The author, an extremely well-known as a "public intellectual" in Europe and in the academic world, is the main contemporary representative of a school of thought known as critical theory a body of intellectuals initially centered around the Frankfurt Institute of Social Research in Germany in the 1920s.

More at: http://isocracy.org/node/121

NPR has been doing pieces this week about the growing segment of the population that has no religious affiliation, and it's been an interesting listen. ("Losing Our Religion")

The piece on Tuesday included interviews with a group of young adults who came from various religious backgrounds but all of whom now either consider themselves without a religion, or atheist.

Here's the piece: "More Young People Are Moving Away From Religion, But Why?"

As I listened to this segment, all I kept thinking was, "OMG HIE THEE TO A UU CHURCH!" Seriously - we've got what you need. :)

Take a listen and see if you don't agree.

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