After reading the several replies to my post on Unitarian Universalist liturgy, I now know that there is stuff out there, and stuff is still being written. I’m going to chalk my ignorance up to being a (relatively) new UU.
But I’ve also realized that what I miss (now that I’m Unitarian Universalist) are the image-rich lectionary and lectionary-based collects, not just “liturgy in general.” I miss the weekly art that’s possible, the changing colors, the changing focus. When I was in the ministry, the discipline of moving week to week from one set of texts to another was fulfilling. I miss writing a worship service around them.
Scott Wells raises some important concerns about my call for a UU lectionary.
1) Scott is completely right that the Purposes & Principles are not intended to represent any UU “theological core.” We do not, after all, have a creed. And we shouldn’t.
But I suspect I am not alone in finding the P&P a deeply meaningful document. It was key, in fact, to my becoming UU most of three years ago now. As Scott notes, the P&P have grown to be something more than “a census of competing factions.” If Scott is right, doesn’t this represent a sea change in Unitarian Universalism? If so, UUs should be having a large-scale conversation about what this means. Perhaps Philocrites can help us out.
Like Scott (but, I trust, for different reasons), I am not interested in canonizing the “self-selecting, materialistic atheist or wide theist, world religion-ism” that is so common among UUs today. I judge the nuances and caveats of the P&P to be a counterweight to what as an evangelical I would have called “cheap grace.”
2) The formative nature of the process of putting together a lectionary is one thing I’d be after. Perhaps something of that easy “world religion-ism” and cheap individualism would fall by the wayside as specific candidate texts were cussed and discussed. I’d hope that the end result world actually represent the full diversity of UU beliefs, and that those beliefs would not be forced into a false consensus.
3) One pastor I used to work with was setting out to write his own “Lectionary D” to include the Gospel of John when we last crossed paths. So I have no illusions about the staying power of alternative lectionaries. For my own purposes, alternative lectionaries are a study tool and a spiritual discipline. And I wouldn’t want to impose my own spiritual needs on others.
But adult religious education seems to be sorely lacking in UU circles, at least to this recovering fundamentalist. Is it any wonder then that the movement is troubled by easy world religion-ism and cheap individualism? A good, diverse lectionary could help counter those trends as it cycled through the seasons and years. UUs would start to get acquainted with ideas and texts that did not easily affirm what they already understood themselves to believe. Perhaps that easy world religion-ism would become an informed world religion-ism, in the least.
(Since the lectionary and lectionary-based collect are what I’m missing, I’m going to challenge myself to write a collect a week based on one of John Beverly Butcher’s lectionaries, without resorting to traditional God™-talk. If I’m somewhat happy with them, I’ll start posting them here under a new category.)
Not lectionary, but calendar?
Chutney makes clear what Chutney (I’d use a pronoun, but I don’t know what gender the writer is) is missing, and that doesn’t jerk my chain so much. If I were making a thematic calendar with readings — with an…
You’ve launched an important conversation, which I wish I had enough time to think about properly. Resources worth finding in a library, however, are the works of Von Ogden Vogt and John F. Hayward, especially Hayward’s mid-1960s book Existentialism and Religious Liberalism, which includes a provocative chapter on what a liberal liturgical year, rooted in tradition, could look like. (A recent collection of Hayward’s essays has also been published by Skinner House Books, but it doesn’t draw so much on the earlier book.)
Vogt was the leading theorist of liturgy in the liberal tradition in the first half of the century, and his work (while weak in some areas) still presents the most thought-through model for us. It provided the model for the last “denominational” liturgical resources in Hymns of the Spirit and Services of Religion (1937).
My last bit of comprehensive work on this was editing the UUA’s still under-developed WorshipWeb site. It includes a revised 20-year-old but still very helpful document on Unitarian Universalist worship theory. Check out Common Worship: How and Why. Vogt’s model is described and illustrated, along with several more recent models.
None of these helps with the lectionary idea, however. I’m partial to the UU churches that don’t allergic to biblical readings, and when I preach I often do refer to the Revised Common Lectionary. What I would find extremely useful is a companion volume of modern readings that could refract the biblical material in ways that UUs could hear.
The Bible Workbench curriculum is one model for such a companion volume.
As it happens, at Universalist National Memorial Church, we do use an non-biblical reading about half the time, but — with one or two execptions, and in these cases, I’m not in the pulpit — always at least one biblical reading.
Finding apt non-biblical readings — akin the the monastic vespers “third reading,” which was usually from the lives of the saints or a theological treatise — is hard. I often go to the Church Fathers (who often had an uncanny way of getting to the heart of a matter) and especially the Cappadocians.
It also begs the question: does the reading inspire (convey God) or does it teach, in which case it is something of a demi-sermon. I tend to think the later, so I’m less worried about diminishing the stature of the Bible as sacred scripture.
Of course, others won’t have this worry, but I share it for the sake of understanding.
I would like to comment on item #1. There have been some who have spoken out on the UUA’s own discussion forum against the P&P’s current somewhat-creedal standing. I may even be guilty of using it as something more than a census. It is indeed inspiring, but should not become a creed.
Agreed. But what if it already has become a creed? What then?
Isn’t there something in the bylaws that says it must be reviewed and reevaluated every so many years?
I found it: Article XIV, Section C-14.1 (c)…
(4) If no review and study process of Article II has occurred for a period of fifteen years, the Board of Trustees shall appoint a commission to review and study Article II [the P&P] and to recommend appropriate revisions, if any, thereto to the Board of Trustees.
Now the only question is when was the last time they were reviewed? Philocrites?
About the bylaw review process: The section of the UUA’s bylaws that includes the “Principles,” “Sources,” and “Purposes” (which, unlike the Principles and Sources, I never actually hear anyone quote), has never been reviewed in the manner described here. But the amendment that calls for a review was rather more recently added. The review language was added after the “Sixth Source” amendment in the mid-1990s. I believe the UUA Board has had some discussion about when the “fifteen years” begins, and what form a review should take, but has not called for an independent review.
Of course, without referring to this amendment, the Commission on Appraisal has launched a three-year study of “unity within our diversity” — and President Sinkford has independently launched the “vocabulary of reverence” debate. So we may end up with our review in a bit of a round-about way.
On a totally side comment.
Jack Hayward lives in my hometown of Carbondale Illinois and him and his wife are still very active participants in the Carbondale Unitarian Fellowship. We had a spirituality and academia dinner series at the local campus ministries where Hayward gave a talk on process, God, and the like.
Not lectionary, but calendar?
Chutney makes clear what Chutney (I’d use a pronoun, but I don’t know what gender the writer is) is missing, and that doesn’t jerk my chain so much. If I were making a thematic calendar with readings — with an…