Christian right to dismantle America’s open society

Interesting article on truthdig.com by Chris Hedges, former NYTImes Mideast Bureau chief. He writes that the radical Christian right is making great progress toward its goal of "co-opting the country’s military and law enforcement."

The drive by the Christian right to take control of military chaplaincies, which now sees radical Christians holding roughly 50 percent of chaplaincy appointments in the armed services and service academies, is part of a much larger effort to politicize the military and law enforcement. This effort signals the final and perhaps most deadly stage in the long campaign by the radical Christian right to dismantle America’s open society and build a theocratic state. A successful politicization of the military would signal the end of our democracy.

Chris Hedges is the author of American Fascists:The Christian Right and the War On America. Those of you opposed to the idea of America becoming a theocracy would do well to check out the Interfaith Alliance's FIRST FREEDOM FIRST campaign.

The interdependent web of all CLONED existence

We know its ALL connected. Everything. We are what we eat. So how does taking meat from cloned animals to market impact our health? What does cloning the best looking produce do to the genetic strength of our food supply?

I have no idea. But neither does the US government. I'm of the mind that it is better for us to know which foods are genetically engineered, cloned, and/or irradiated. How about we maintain the integrity of our food'gene pool, minimize the gamma radiation bombarding the meat in the US school lunch program. UUJERRI sent me an email with a link to the Center for Food Safety. They seem to have good information and offer a number of "Take Action" email campaigns you can use to let congress know what you think.

Check out the Organic Consumers Association's 2006 Genetic Engineering News.

Church Geek Heaven

To my fellow UU church geeks, I just set up a new bookstore. Check it out and please, recommend titles to me.

http://shop.uuplanet.com/books.html



As for book recommendations I am particularly interested in titles that are necessarily about church, but make you go AHA! that's what we should do... For me the book PURPLE COW is a great example of this.

Purple Alien "Save the Planet" video stats

For those of you interested in the Purple Alien "Save the Planet"video on Youtube.com, I've been tracking of the stats.

Date - Time Online - # Views
October 14, 2006 - New on YouTube.com
October 16, 2006 - 2 days - 200 views
October 28, 2006 - 2 weeks - 1,500 views
November 1,2006 - 2 1/2 weeks - 2,701 views
December 14, 2006 - 2 months - 5,025 views

Revolution Church - One Punk Under God

Have you heard about Revolution Church, Jay Bakker's church? I just heard about it on CNN. That's right, son of Jim and Tammy Faye has his own ministry and now TV show - One Punk Under God. It looks very cool. Check out some of these the slogans from their merchandise page:

"Equal Rights is a Moral Issue"
"Jesus Is The Saviour, Not Christianity"
"Religion Kills"

I love that Jay is working to move beyond whatever the church has been (and his parents) and is getting to the heart of Christian teaching. Can we UU's do that? Please pretty please? Oh wait. We don't need anyones permission. All we need is some institutional BS to cut through. Wow! We've got plenty.

I know. Peter, you say it over and over. True. But I'd still love for us to do a better job as UU's figuring out - bottom line - what we are about and go do it. And not only do it, but evaluate and measure our success. If more of our congregations new what they were trying to accomplish and how to evaluate THAT we would see a lot of changes.

What do you measure in your congregation? Anything? People and money? Make sure you keep the ones you got and get'em to give more? What? I'd love to know.

My favorite idea person and marketing guru is Seth Godin. In his book Purple Cow he talks about the importance of being remarkable. Good doesn't cut it these days. Life and time are short. Want to grow? Want to matter? If you aren't worth talking about why should any of us bother?

In the book Creating Community Andy Stanley shares that his church is focused on being a relational church. They KNOW what matters and focus. Specifically there are 3 relationships they focus on:

1) Connection or relationships within the congregation
2) Relationship with God
3) Influence outside the congregation

Maybe those are good things for us to do in our own little UU way. We can go with 1 and 3 as is. First, keep track of relationships - make sure everyones connected, caring for others and being cared for. Second, we help people learn to put their faith in action to help in the larger world and to be one more UU voice in the world. Bill Sinkford's voice isn't enough. As for #3, do you know what your equivalent is? Can you state it 50 words or less? If you can get it down to 50 please tell me. The fact that most can't is a stumbling block for us. The point, the objectives need to be clear.

Back to Revolution. Looking over this Revolution Church website I first felt annoyed that we didn't grab the name. I'd love Revolution to be a UU church. That name does more to communicate our values and ministry than anything I've seen. Even more than that little purple alien preaching the cosmic UU principles with a chipmunk voice.

Second, I started thinking about how close our churches are to what a church would look like if some of our younger ministers and/or members were to go out and start new churches. I've heard about the Church of the Younger Fellowship that CLF has. What would happen if that turned from a cyber church into a cyber church planting boot camp?

Tell me what you'd do if you were going to start your own UU Revolution Church. What would it look like? Contact info & anonymous feedback form here.

Check out Bakker's Revolution Church:
http://www.revolutionchurch.com/

Check out the show:
http://www.sundancechannel.com/onepunk