I don’t think anyone has asked yet who might take our place in Phoenix if we do decide to boycott. Just for the sake of argument, what if the Tea Party or some nativist organization took our spot and showed up with 4,000 conventioneers, 500 of whom turned out for a demonstration at the state capitol in favor of SB 1070 on a hot weekday afternoon?

Not that we have any control over who takes our place, but will the boycott have been worth it if something awful like this happened in our absence?  The thing about unintended consequences is they don’t care if your heart was in the right place.

I say all this not to put a boogey man in the room but to point out that there will be a cost to our not being in Phoenix advocating in person for our values.  Even if we’re replaced by some harmless trade show, their conventioneers won’t be out demonstrating against SB 1070.  We know part of the cost of our absence now, but a lot of the cost we won’t know until well after the fact.

Even if only a small fraction of GA attendees show up for a demonstration—which is the norm, as many have gone to pains to point out—it’s still better than nobody showing up to demonstrate.  It’s not the only cost to account for, but it should be added into the mix with all the others.

The rhetoric is starting to get a little heated, and one blogger has already apologized for stepping over the line.  There’s going to be more and more temptation to bring out weapons of rhetorical mass destruction as we get closer and closer to GA.

I’m not a delegate, but if I were, I would be sorely tempted to vote against whoever pulled any of the following, regardless of their position:

• Saying that UUs on the other side are paying mere “lip service” to our ideals.
• Saying that our ideals, or especially any of the P&Ps, “clearly” indicate we must take one course or another.
• Saying, or even implying, that UUs on the other side are racist, deluded, ignorant, or any other insult favored by liberals.

The toughest ethical problems aren’t a choice between a good alternative and a bad alternative.  The tough ones are when you have to figure out which is the better of several goods, or even the better of several bads.

The hard reality is that GA in Phoenix in 2012 is exactly one of those tough ethical problems.  All the rhetoric needs to start with the assumption that this is a tough one, and that there isn’t a clear cut answer.  We’re a pretty bright and a pretty well intentioned bunch, and if this was an easy one, we’d have reached consensus about it from the get go.

I’ll be teaching a new member class here in a bit, and one of the things I always talk about during that class is pledging.

I mention some numbers. Our pledge drive team asks all the members of the congregation to move toward a 5% pledge, starting where they can. And I tell them what our average pledge needs to be to make budget.

One of the other things I’ve learned to point out is that the congregation doesn’t provide any consumer services. A pledge is not a purchase, and there’s no customer service desk. Outside our walls, the purchase economy is in full swing. But inside our walls, we have a different economy at work, an economy not of purchase but of gift.

Everything that happens at a congregation happens because someone gave a gift, which was made possible by someone else’s gift, which was made possible by still someone else’s gift—gifts of time, talent, and treasure, as the phrase goes.

I go out of my way to point this out in class because it’s important to keep in mind that, because of our UU values, we practice a different economy when we’re together.

The problem with consumerism isn’t buying things—I have an iPhone as evidence that I’m a dutiful consumer the same as anyone else. The problem is when purchase becomes the primary frame of reference for our lives. Relationships can’t be purchased. Hope can’t be purchased. Stuff that can help you build relationships and that connects you to sources of hope can be purchased, but those same things can also alienate.

Consumerism is a poor substitute for hope and good relationships. It’s a good thing we have congregations to go to, places where we can put aside consumer pressures and focus on what’s most important in our lives.

Facebook has been getting some bad press lately for its handling of what was at one time private user information. Or at least information that users could keep private easily, if they chose to.  There have been so many changes lately, it’s hard to keep track.

It’s time to rethink Facebook. And I don’t just mean rethinking our personal use of Facebook, even to the point of deleting our accounts, which some high profile users have done recently. I mean it’s time to start rethinking congregational use of Facebook.

Facebook can do some good things for congregations. It connects us in new ways, draws us closer together, and helps us stay in touch. That’s at the heart of any congregation’s mission.

But as Facebook proves itself less and less trustworthy, should we be encouraging congregational life to happen in Facebook? At what point does Facebook cross a line that violates our values so egregiously that we take down our congregations’ pages? At what point does it become irresponsible to encourage people in our congregations to join Facebook so they can be a part of our congregational groups and pages, especially those who aren’t very web savvy and who won’t understand Facebook’s increasingly labyrinthine privacy controls?

I’m encouraged by the Diaspora project, a project to build a “privacy aware, personally controlled, do-it-all distributed open source social network.” They’ve gotten all sorts of great press coverage lately, including the New York Times. They’ve already raised over ten times what they were hoping to to finance this as a summer project. (They’re all in college or just graduating.) I threw them a few bucks myself.  (A warm hat tip to Yet Another UU for clueing me in to Dispora!)

I don’t have any answers on this one, just questions.  But if Facebook keeps going down this path, we might all find ourselves having to make some tough decisions about our congregational Facebook presences.

The author of the His Dark Materials trilogy has rewritten the Gospels. That’s right, Philip Pullman has a new novel out.

Called The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ, the premise is that Jesus and Christ are brothers, one with a talent for egalitarian teaching and the other for miracles and PR. The Guardian has an excerpt up, but Slate posted a warm review with Pullman’s rewrite of the Lord’s Prayer:

This is how you should pray. You should say: Father in heaven, your name is holy. Your Kingdom is coming, and your will shall be done on earth as it’s done in heaven. Give us today the bread we need. And forgive our debts, as we shall forgive those who are indebted to us. And don’t let the evil one tempt us more than we can resist. Because the Kingdom and the power and the glory belong to you for ever. So be it.

The new book’s premise reminds me of the pseudo-Gnostic Thomas tradition in early Christianity, which sometimes portrays Thomas as Jesus’ twin. I know Pullman identifies as an atheist, but he sure writes like a Gnostic. I thought that after reading His Dark Materials, and this new book would seem to only underscore that.

A friend pointed me to a great article by Boston University prof Stephen Prothero on why religions are not all really the same when you get down to it. And why it’s dangerous to say otherwise.

I’ll leave to Prothero the argument as to why this soft sort of inclusivism—a “religions are really all the same” doctrine—is dangerous. I don’t know if it’s dangerous or not, but I do know that it’s rude.

Think about it. Who does UU inclusivism put in power? Why, UU inclusivists, of course! They’re the lucky religious liberals who are smart enough to figure out that all the world’s religions aren’t really about what they say they’re about—they’re about what smart lucky religious liberals are about: tolerance and abstract democratic ideals. Dumb religious particularists! If only they were smarter, they’d be UUs!

Not that religions don’t have stuff in common, as Prothero points out. Religion scholar Karen Armstrong—who Prothero skewers—does a great job pointing out the commonalities: a personal sense of connection to a greater transcendent reality and the need for practical acts of compassion. But folks, that’s pretty abstract stuff, and most religious people aren’t about abstraction. They’re about concrete rituals, beliefs, stories, and, yes, even hierarchical power structures that sometimes abuse people.

No, that’s not pretty, but we don’t get to pretend other people’s religions are what we wish they would be. And we don’t get to tell people of other religions that their religions aren’t really about what they think they’re about, but what we’re about instead. Go ahead, be inspired by this and that piece of this and that religion, but don’t consign the vast majority of real religious practices and beliefs—practices and beliefs which give people meaning, direction and purpose in life, even if they don’t work for you—to the dust bin of history just so you can have a warm liberal moment.

Because that’s what you’re doing when you say they’re all really UUs, if only they would wise up to the fact.

Put it this way: How do you feel when Christian inclusivists say that you’re really just an “anonymous Christian” who would be better off if you would only soften your heart and be humble and acknowledge all the myriad ways Jesus Christ is working in your life every day? If only you would be more Christian, you would be more Christian!

Or if you’re too liberal to be bothered by that, how would you feel about being thought an “anonymous Scientologist?”