PRELUDE, May 2002



FROM THE EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR:

Doubt-Based Organizations

Over the past year or so, I've been asked to speak many times about how government should relate to faith-based organizations, and I've been glad to oblige, but I sometimes wonder if they are asking the right person. I belong, you see, to a doubt-based organization.

The founder of my denomination, John Wesley, like many other reformers, doubted much of the received wisdom of his time. He doubted, for example, that God cared much about fine points of doctrine or that Catholics and Protestants would remain forever estranged. He doubted that the American colonists needed to take up arms against the Mother Country to gain their rights--they did anyway, but our neighbors to the north achieved independence and liberty without warfare. He doubted that renewal of the Church required another denomination--but his followers created one anyway.

Most denominations and faith communities began with doubts about the beliefs expressed by their predecessors, which often lead to tension between denominations and faith communities: the celebration of one tradition often seems to be a repudiation of others. Jews can easily resent Christianity, Christians may resent Islam, Muslims resent Bahais, etc., etc., ad infinitum, ad nauseam. I would be surprised if some Episcopalians were not a bit miffed that Methodists left the Mother Church--or perhaps looked at their theological offspring and uttered a sigh of "good riddance!"

We often forget, too, that most denominations and faith communities arose out of the personal doubts of their founders. Wesley was profoundly shaken by his failures as a missionary priest in Georgia and by the fears of marriage he found within himself, and this personal crisis ultimately made him available to God to serve in radically new ways. Most great religious leaders passed through the "via negativa" and the "dark night of the soul" on their way to sanctity. The way to a Yes often begins with a No.

Perhaps we Christians would get along with one another more easily, and might come to better understand non-Christians, if we were honest about our doubts as well as our faith and if we admitted that the heroes of our faith community were so often people of doubt as well as people of faith.

Shalom/Salaam/Shanti/Pax,
Tom



IDEAS YOU CAN USE

Invite a Community Choir to Sing

Many communities have local choirs not affiliated with any single congregation. You can foster ecumenical and/or interfaith relationships by inviting them to sing in your sanctuary. The Unitarian Universalist Congregation at Shelter Rock (48 Shelter Rock Rd. In Manhasset), for example, in conjunction with the Interfaith Alliance, is hosting a concert by the LI Community Youth Choir on Saturday, May 11, at 7:30 p.m. The choir is directed by Niggel Gretton and Elizabeth Sander. Admission is $15 and all proceeds will go to support the choir. All are welcome and refreshments will be served.

Pentecost/Founders Day

Many churches celebrate annually those who founded their congregation, denomination, or religious movement, and nearly the whole church commemorates Pentecost (May 19 this year) as the "birthday of the church," the day the Holy Spirit turned cowering disciples into brave witnesses to what they had seen, heard, and experienced themselves. These celebrations often become a bit piously repetitious over the years, however, and may even fuel conflict and misunderstanding through sins of omission and sins of commission:

So here's a way to spice up that sermon, Sunday School lesson, or fellowship group devotions on Founders Day or Pentecost worship service: thank your spiritual ancestors for what they gave you and your community.

Who knows? You might end up with the most interesting church anniversary in years....



How to Shorten a Hymn

One of the benefits of visiting churches of varied denominations is that you pick up clues on solving common problems--and to see which approaches you'll try to avoid next time. Everyone who plans or leads worship eventually confronts one of these:

What do you do?

Don't Try This at Home:
The organist puts in the bulletin "We'll sing verses 1, 2, and 5." Or the preacher says "Let's sing the first and last verse." Invariably, a goodly number of the assembled flock are so busy looking for the hymn in the hymnal that they forget their instructions and belt out the verse they were supposed to skip. Or they do not hear what their pastor said and spend the next few minutes wondering--or asking one another--"What did he say?" Or they mumble the words softly and uncertainly listening for a clue from those around them as to which verse is correct--and end up following someone who is singing the wrong words with great confidence. Within minutes, a nicely planned liturgy descends into chaos and nobody paid any attention whatsoever to the lyrics some poet spent hours composing.

Better Approaches:
If you want to use just one or two verses, print the words in the bulletin or on an overhead projection screen. Provided that the tune is easy and that you are not violating a copyright, most people will find it easier to follow.
Don't shorten hymns which require all the verses to get the gist of the story they tell. Some wonderful texts, such as "O Come, Thou Traveler Unknown" should be left intact: cut something else out of the service instead.
Sing the first verse, the first two, the first three, or the first four rather than skipping verses. Nearly everyone will stop singing when the musicians stop playing, and this way you'll all end up singing the same lines, if not the same tune.


NEEDED/OFFERED

Needed:

Offered:

Help responding to trauma and terror
The LICC has compiled much information on resources available to help you and your congregation cope with our current crisis, with support groups for those who lost a loved one, training sessions for those in the helping professions, and agencies (including the LICC) that can help those who have lost their jobs. You can find these at the LICC Web Site: www.ncccusa.org/ecmin/licc.


THE PARSON'S PICKS:

"Let There Be Life"

This new book by Robert Fripp, is exactly what its subtitle says: "A Scientific and Poetic Retelling of the Genesis Creation Story." It is also, as the novelist John Fowles describes it in his foreword, "a literary curiosity, but I have long been in favor of literary curiosities."

Fripp wonders how the book of Genesis might be rewritten today, incorporating what is known now about the expanding universe, evolution of life on earth, and the consequences of our failure to be responsible stewards of creation. He has given us an eloquent summary of both what science knows about our origins and how we are confronted today with our human limitations.

Couched in the style of the Kings James Version of the Bible, Fripp offers 62 new verses and a short commentary on each. "Thus were the Devonian and the Carboniferous times like unto the morning and the evening of the fourth day," he writes, and then comments on our new understanding of how early life reshaped the earth eons ago. "Even as the dinosaurs sent he them forth in many and diverse forms both great and small upon the land. . . " he writes, and then comments on the remarkable diversity of creatures during the Age of Reptiles.

The original text of Genesis, he insists, was meant to be interpreted in the Jewish midrashic tradition, not accepted at face value as summary of how Creation occurred. Thus Fripp feels free to reinterpret hubris and human sin in terms of our ecological offenses against God's good creation: "But man heeded not the word of God that in wisdom he should have dominion over the Earth, but rather subdued it that it should be according to his will. So man set himself over the spirit of God, even above the spirit of Creation which had brought him forth upon the earth."

"Let There Be Life" is bound to offend some readers, with its rather casual assumption that nearly all educated people accept evolutionary theory and reject literal readings of Scripture, but it has much to give to people of faith, both information and inspiration. There is a growing movement afoot to bring science and religion into dialogue, with physicists writing theology and theologians such as Matthew Fox being inspired by science. "Let There Be Life" is a small but significant contribution to this courtship.



JOB OPENINGS:



NEED A SPEAKER?



DID YOU KNOW?

...that a junior high youth group can be taped to a wall with duct tape and will "hang around" for more than half an hour? So reports the Rev. Jeff Geary of Setauket Presbyterian Church. Jeff seems to suggest this sometimes might be a good idea!