Pete and the red thread that sews it altogther.

Pete Seeger was a member of Community Church of New York (Unitarian Universalist.) He was a humanist who found God everywhere. He was an environmental activist. He was an anti racist. He was a fierce defender of the people's art, the artist as prophet. Pete Seeger was a Communist.

Today some are saying he was a great and multifacted man despite the fact that he was a Communist. But perhaps Pete was Pete because he was a Communist, because his engagement with the struggle for liberation from capitalism brought him to God, to beautiful music, to life long solidarity with the outcast and the despised. Perhaps the thread that holds Pete Seeger's multifacted life together was his youthful decision to join the Young Communist League and to keep struggling despite disillusionment with Stalin and Mao and all those who took the path of violence and coercion in the name of liberation. Pete kept going, never looking back. His attachment wasn't to the Party, (whose leaders real politic brought discredit on the goal), No, Pete Seeger's commitment remained inclusive and genuine democratic liberation for all.

Wondering about polity.

I was taught that there are three polities of the Church Universal.  Each has its strong points and its limits.  I have never experienced any polity but the Unitarian Universalist form of congregationalism (which most of my readers know I think is a bit eccentric.)  So I am imagining based on observation from my limited perspective.

Episcopal forms of polity seem to be have strengths in looking to the whole Church and being faithful to the poor among us.  Episcopal polity seems to have no problem authorizing leaders or missioning outside the box.  Not electing the Bishops for time limited terms is a bit of non starter for me, but hey, I am a congregationalist.  The Bishop is not just a minister ordained for life, but a part of magisterium, a decision maker.

Presbyterian forms of polity seem to have strengths in non clercial connections between congregations, and I observe in local missions held by more than one congregation.  I think most of what I have seen has been distorted by the councils being more about control than empowerment, but I understand that I have not fully seen the presbyterian way in its fullness.  Couldn't we call this polity the Council polity.  But some kind of council seems wise,  and councils suggest possibilities deep inside this way of polity.

Congregationalists can do what presbyterians do but the councils are ad hoc and more about common work than "doctrine."  (see what a congregationalists I am.) 

But congregationalism's strength is the holding the preisthood and prophethood of all believers in community, of empowering communities to discern their own way doing ministry and doing church.  But a weakness appears in our way of doing congregationalism in how do we become part of the Church Universal, and how do we call ourselves back to the  choice we must make to prioritize the poor.  (The preferencial option isn't really about an "option" to ignore the poor, it is about the choice to be humanely religious by embracing the disempowered "other."  We can choose not to be human, that is the choice.) 

And the weakness of congregationalism that we must solve now, how do we authorize ministry to respond outside our own little circle. 

Of course, congregationalism is the worse possible polity, till we consider the alternatives.

"Ministry is the vocation of every person of faith, [and] Unitarian Universalism, as a democratic faith, affirms the priesthood of all believers';

we are all lay ministers, whether or not we choose to be professional religious leaders."

UUA Commission on Appraisal "Our Professional Ministry: Structure, Support and Renewal," 1992 study, quoting Neil Shadle

Clyde's exegesis. Vocation is the work we called to do.

The word laity comes from a Greek word that means "the public of a polis" or the self aware collection of the people of a community. Thus even ordained professional clergy are part of the polis, and of the laos (people), and to put it another way clergy are part of the laity or the whole people of the church. The clergy are called out from the people to give leadership in certain areas, but remain part of the people. Again the whole people of a faith community are called to ministry.

Universalist? Doesn't being universalist lead to a non-violent vision of our world?

Singer and activist Harry Belafonte on Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s turn against the war in Southeast Asia and toward cross-racial, anti-poverty organizing:

'It was controversial, but controversy wasn't something he shunned; controversy became the system through which disagreement and debate could be heard. He was comfortable with that. He welcomed it. That aspect of his history is never really discussed.

'... The vested interests don't want us speaking of Dr. King in radical terms. The great tragedy and irony of it all is that the public hungers for voices that are driven more by these moral concerns.'






  Lyndon Johnson had already "declared unconditional war on poverty"  when King came out against the war and began talking about a poor people's campaign.   King's spoke about the war as a immoral policy that drained resources that could be used to assure a genuine democracy, inclusive and equitable.  King's radicalism was a advocacy of social and economic democracy, and it was consistently non-violent.  To argue, as King did, that violence was the way of the oppressor, and that the liberatory response was non-violent and required embodied love (a movement of millions) was an idea that could not be contained.  King could not advocate non-violence as a tactic of protest limited to assuring that African Americans could sit in the front of the bus.  For King,  non violence was a vision of a new way of living for us as a people, a people of this planet.  King's vision was necessarily universalist.

Fox Business News, 
Stuart Varney pushes back against Pope Francis:

“Capitalism, in my opinion, is a liberator,” he said. “The free choice of millions of people is the essence of freedom. In my opinion, society benefits most when people are free to pursue their own self-interest. I know that sounds like a contradiction, but it is not. When individuals are free, we collectively are better off in every way, financially and spiritually.”

Ah, but the Pope didn't criticize freedom! The Pope critized the systemic impoverishment of the multitudes. As Francis made clear that leads to the denial of the freedom to the many to live lives of dignity. The multitudes are denied freedom by powerful elites who hide their oppressive control by arguing that we must surrender to the blind adherence to "markets."

So who is for freedom? And who is just jiving?

Notions of justice and equality are based on worldviews.

Reading "Occupy Religion, Theology of the Multitudes" by Joerg Rieger and Kwok Pui-lan.  The authors argue that in the midst of the struggle new experiences and then new concepts of transcendence emerge among the activists.