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Unitarian Universalism

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December 2022

December 05, 2022

Peak Spiritual Experiences, Psychedelics, & Consciousness Research

John Kaag is a philosophy professor who published a book a few years ago with...

November 2015

November 05, 2015

“How the Founding Fathers Became Infallible and Our Politics Inflexible”

This past Tuesday was Election Day. But overshadowing any voting this week is the countdown to...

October 2015

October 30, 2015

Vampires, Witches, & NPR: The Legacy of Margot Adler

I first heard Margot Adler’s voice on the radio — along with Lourdes Garcia-Navarro, Lakshmi...

October 01, 2015

“Do You Really Want to Know?” From Pope Francis & Kim Davis to Copernicus, Darwin, & Marx

The singer-songwriter Peter Mayer’s tune, “Do You Really Want to Know” traces two monumental paradigm...

September 2015

September 17, 2015

“Unsanctifying Human Life”: Wrestling with Peter Singer’s Ethics

Our human population has septupled (increased sevenfold) in a mere two centuries — from approximately 1 billion...

August 2015

August 20, 2015

Equal Access: The Ongoing Struggle for Disability Rights

This year marks the 25th anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). The ADA...

August 18, 2015

“The Peabody Sisters”

What stood out to me most from reading Megan Marshall's The Peabody Sisters (a finalist for the 2006...

August 11, 2015

Letting Go of Fear & Celebrating Differences: Insights from Intersectionality

This past Sunday was the 70th anniversary of the United States dropping an atomic bomb on...

March 2015

March 31, 2015

What Do We Mean We When Say, “Building the Beloved Community”?

In progressive religious circles, you will often hear calls to “build the Beloved Community,” but I’m...

March 19, 2015

The Transient and the Permanent in Christianity: Theodore Parker and the Transcendentalist Revolt

“[I invite you to] imagine you are in Boston some summer Sunday morning in the...

March 09, 2015

“The Selma Awakening”

I have posted previously on “Seneca Falls, Selma, Stonewall: Claiming Our Social Justice Story” in which...

January 2015

January 28, 2015

An Honest Heretic: Religion, Science, & Dr. Joseph Priestley

The future free-thinking minister-scientist Joseph Priestley was born in 1733 to a strict Calvinist family, but by his early...

December 2014

December 22, 2014

Winter Solstice Spirituality: “Learning to Walk in the Dark”

My favorite season is summer, but I aspire to love the winter. Winter and I are...

November 2014

November 10, 2014

Deeds Not Creeds, Behavior Is Believable

Each year the congregation I serve as minister holds an auction. As is customary, I...

November 03, 2014

Can You Be Both a Religious Liberal and a Political Conservative?

Religious Liberals (sometimes called "Religious Progressives") are open to growing, changing, and evolving based on new...

August 2014

August 28, 2014

Eve Was Framed, the Serpent Was Right!

On August 13, 1971, the cover of LIFE Magazine featured an image of two women...

August 12, 2014

Why Does Unitarian Universalism Have Such a Long Name?

This post is the final entry in a four-part series on Unitarian Universalist history. In part one,...

July 2014

July 31, 2014

Why Universalism? “Loving the Hell Out of the World?”

Last week I posted my response to the question “Why Unitarianism?” This week, I will explore...

July 24, 2014

Why Unitarianism?

This post is the first in a two-part series reflecting on Unitarian Universalism. Next week,...

July 08, 2014

“Find Out How Much Love the World Can Hold”

The singer-songwriter Dar Williams has a song called “After All.” (If you aren’t familiar with...

June 2014

June 19, 2014

“Fast Future: How the Millennial Generation Is Shaping Our World”

“Seventh-Generation Thinking” means considering the longterm impact of our actions even to the seventh generation...

June 18, 2014

Margaret Fuller: The Stories We Tell Matter

The stories we tell matter. The stories that we choose to tell can be used...

May 2014

May 09, 2014

Mother’s Day for All

Julia Ward Howe is most famous for writing the Battle Hymn of the Republic in...

April 2014

April 22, 2014

Ehrman’s “How Did Jesus Become God?” and What Does Resurrection Mean Today?

I suspect that some people might be surprised to learn that in many Unitarian Universalist...

March 2014

March 31, 2014

Religious Mystic & Rational Humanist: The Mystical Humanism of Jeffrey Kripal

For days, I had been participating in the annual Bengali celebration of the goddess Kali...

March 18, 2014

The Life Tradition versus the Death Tradition in Christianity

A man died. The people who knew him gathered to share memories. Finally, a portrait...

February 2014

February 17, 2014

“Atheism for Lent”: The Spiritual Practice of Doubt

A few months ago, I wrote a post on “Poetically Dwelling on the Earth as...

February 10, 2014

Evolutionary Religion

A tradition has arisen in many progressive congregations of having a worship service near Charles...

February 03, 2014

“Seneca Falls, Selma, Stonewall”: Claiming Our Social Justice Story

Monday, January 21, 2013 was a High Holy Day in our nation’s "civil religion.” The...

January 2014

January 27, 2014

Why Jung Threw the Yijing (or I Ching) and Why Might You?

This year the Chinese New Year will begin on what we call January 31st on...