There’s a colleague of mine who occasionally alludes to the 60s and 70s as Unitarian Universalism’s “Babylonian Exile.” What she’s referring to is the extreme secularism that held sway over the Association during that period. It was the time of the Humanist Manifesto II, which was signed by seven UU ministers and one seminarian who would eventually become president of the UUA. It was also a time when the UUA’s “education wing” developed curricula that were “not UU-specific in content and…were shaped and marketed for the secular world” (see Essex Conversations).The most famous (or infamous) of those curricula was About Your Sexuality, which lives on as Our Whole Lives.
The curriculum from that time period I find the most intriguing, however, was something called Man the Meaning Maker:
“A guide for teachers to help children ages 9-14 come to expect and accept differences in the perceptions people have and the meanings they ascribe to them.” With its “40 slides, 3 books, 3 pictures, 1 chart, 2 postcards, 4 tablets of worksheets, and guide,” Man the Meaning Maker was the epitome of the UUA’s multimedia curricula era. Well, the marketing ploy was a bust. Those multimedia kits didn’t fill the associations coffers. But they did change lives (check out Suzelle Lynch’s “Growing Up UU” sermon). Whether you call yourself a Humanist, Theist, or a Pastafarianist, we Unitarian Universalists, along with the rest of humanity, are still trying to make meaning in our lives. It is, after all, our fourth principle! Here, then, is a Small Group Ministry session on the subject, based on resources from SpiritualityandPracitce.com.
Chalice/Candle Lighting
Opening Words:
Meaning does not come to us in finished form, ready-made; it must be found, created, received, constructed. We grow our way toward it.
— Ann Bedford Ulanov quoted in Dear Heart, Come Home by Joyce Rupp
Check-in/Sharing
Topic:
An Excerpt from In Speech and in Silence: The Jewish Quest for God by David J. Wolpe
In this book, David J. Wolpe writes about speech and silence as alternating currents in spirituality. Here is an excerpt on meaning.
In many traditional Jewish communities when a child entered cheder, religious school, for the first time, that child was greeted by a curious sight: a chart of letters smeared with honey. The new student licked off the honey from the letters, one by one, thus learning a critical lesson: learning is sweet, and the very letters of the words carry the sweetness.
Study is so sweet because it is wresting meaning from the world. Making things yield their sense in language is the aim of study. One seeks to understand, always to understand, whether it is the intricate talmudic argument or the idea behind a lovely legend. The words explain, and conceal. One can view the world as a work of art, as a pageant, as a tragedy, as a comedy, as a farce; all of these may be true, but the Jewish tradition also sees the world in another light — the world is a riddle. And the aim of this earth’s inhabitants is to figure it out.
That is why there is such intense concentration on the transmission of tradition from one generation to the next. There are answers for each generation to work out on its own, but if it loses the accumulated answers of all previous generations, then it must start at the beginning. Why work to arrive at the same point as those who preceded us? The goal is to build, to expand the net of language until it takes in more and more of the world, until we snare more bits of meaning in the grillwork of our concepts. There is tearing down to be done as well as building up, but even in tearing down it is well to keep the shattered fragments on hand; one never knows when more material will be required for the new structure.
Questions: Describe a recent situation where you consciously asked yourself, what is the meaning of this? What did you learn?
Check-out/Likes and Wishes
Closing Words:
What we are looking for on earth and in earth and in our lives is the process that can unlock for us the mystery of meaningfulness in our daily lives. It has been the best-kept secret down through the ages because it is so simple. Truly, the last place it would ever occur to most of us to find the sacred would be in the commonplace of our everyday lives and all about us in nature and in simple things.
— Alice O. Howell in The Dove in the Stone
To Practice This Thought: Scan the headlines online or in today’s newspaper. What do they tell you about yourself, your world, and God?
Group Session Plan based on resources on Meaning from www.spiritualityandpractice.com.
For a PDF version of this small group ministry session, click here: Meaning.
For more information on small group ministry, visit the UU Small Group Ministry Network.
Phil's Little Blog on the Prairie 
6 comments
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July 10, 2011 at 9:54 am
Robin Edgar
“There’s a colleague of mine who occasionally alludes to the 60s and 70s as Unitarian Universalism’s “Babylonian Exile.” What she’s referring to is the extreme secularism that held sway over the Association during that period.”
Right. . .
Thank you for so publicly acknowledging that “extreme secularism” “held sway” over the Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations aka the UUA during the 1960s and 1970s Phil, but what makes you and/or your colleague, or anybody else, so sure that “extreme secularism” did not *still* hold sway over the UUA in the 1980s, the 1990s, and even first decade of this millennium? Do you and other U*Us *really* believe that “extreme secularism” holds little or no “sway” over “the Association” and/or numerous U*U “churches” today?
I seem to recall having been subjected to the intolerant and abusive “sway” of a Secular Extremist aka Fundamentalist Atheist U*U minister in the 1990s and having the UUA and MFC Executive make a ruling to the effect that his deeply insulting and outright defamatory intolerant and abusive behavior was “within the appropriate guidelines of ministerial leadership.” The last time I checked, the UUA and MFC have yet to freely and responsibly overturn that unjust ruling which all but officially endorsed Secular Extremist “sway” over your’s truly, to say nothing of other people. . .
Why is it that, even today, I keep hearing stories about Secular Extremist “sway” occurring in various U*U “churches” be that “sway” anti-Christian, anti-Pagan or otherwise anti-religious?
July 11, 2011 at 7:28 am
Phil on the Prairie
While what your call “Secular Extremists” may still hold sway in some Unitarian Universalist congregations, I think the tide has come in regarding spirituality on the national level. Even though I have nothing against public prayer, all of the praying at this year’s GA was making me feel a little uncomfortable, especially when I considered how some of my more hardcore humanist friends feel about the practice.
July 11, 2011 at 9:20 am
Robin Edgar
I am not convinced that putting on a big show of “public prayer” at the 2011 UUA GA means that “hardcore humanists” have little or no “sway” left in the UUA. I could be mistaken Phil but I got the distinct impression that a good number of top level UUA leaders are still what you call “hardcore humanists” and I have come to call “fundamentalist atheists” and they still hold no shortage of “sway” in the UUA. . .
Forgive me for being somewhat skeptical of recent shows of “public prayer” at UUA GAs etc. Empty posturing and cynical grandstanding come to mind when I see them. So I guess we both “feel a little uncomfortable” about U*U “public prayer”. . . Can you articulate your own reasons for your discomfort with GA public prayer?
For the record,the only reason I used the term “Secular Extremists” here was becau you had used the term “secular extremism” in your post.
July 11, 2011 at 9:43 am
Phil on the Prairie
Hmmm. Never been asked to articulate why I’m uncomfortable with public prayer. Let’s see…I’m okay with some standard liturgical things, invocations, benedictions, etc. Praise and thanksgiving are okay, too. But beyond that, intercessory prayer asking The Deity Formerly Known as God to bless a particular enterprise, no matter how noble we might think it may be, reminds me of high school football team prayer huddles asking TDFKAG to help them beat the opponents. I’d prefer a moment of silence and self-reflection. Not saying that those were the kind of prayers at GA, but it kind of felt like there were a lot of ’em. Re: secular extremists at the top, I do believe their days are numbered. Too many theist (or theist-friendly) young adult leaders in the pipeline.
July 12, 2011 at 11:38 am
Robert
In my limited experience of UUism, I have observed that:
(1) The extreme secularists tend to be about as open to other points of view as Christian Fundamentalists and
(2) UUs who espouse a believe in Deity, just not wanting to have a formulaic view of Deity forced on them, tend to present much, much easier social interactions.
I’ve found that when someone introduces herself as “My name is —–, and I am an atheist,” a few sentences later I am likely to hear “We aren’t giving you that cardboard folder with the New Member information. Folders are expensive. Be sure to drop by the church office during the week and bring it back.”
Or the sermon might be on the lines of “Only people who don’t understand the sociology of the First Century of the Common Era would ever believe in the need for a resurrection myth. The poor, unenlightened followers of Jesus,” one assumes the minister did a telephone survey of unenlightened followers of Jesus via time machine to find out, “had a deep psychological need to comfort themselves after the death of Jesus, who is dead, dead, dead, I scream to you this Easter day.”
Uh-huh. There are enough people instilled with UU principles at my church I am more than happy to tolerate the extreme secularists. But isn’t it time to turn the page on the 1950’s? Or the 1850’s, as the case may be? I think it’s fine for the UU to provide a home for people who don’t believe traditional dogma. I don’t, myself. But cynicism is not a form of intelligence.
July 12, 2011 at 1:11 pm
Phil on the Prairie
Good points, Robert. I’ve heard the minister of a very humanist congregation (with declining membership) say, “What comes around, goes around,” referring to the increasing number of people who claim they are atheist with no religious affiliation. I think the hope here is that those folks might find their way to our congregations. But I doubt they’re going to even consider checking out a UU congregation because church going is just not as important to Americans as it was in the 1950s. What is coming around, however, is an increased interest in spirituality, etc., which is being driven by the increased flow of information available via the internet. Those are the people who may be interested in checking out a UU congregation. And receiving the kind of treatment you mention in your comment is just going to turn them away.