Wednesday, July 30, 2008
Hello? Blogging Tories? Dead Unitarians? Anyone home?
Curiously, the outrage is less than palpable. Fancy that.
P.S. I really miss the BT search box where I could embarrass the entire Blogging Tory groupthink collective with a single mouse click. Do you think that if I ask Stephen Taylor nicely, he'd bring it back?
Me neither.
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6 comments:
I've been hearing some buzz about this dude hating "Christians" and attacking "Christians"
Apparently the idiots parroting this meme aren't aware that UU's aren't Christians.
Went to the UU service last night at the local sanctuary with my wife, which is a little bit of a stretch given that I'm an Atheist. I don't believe in waiting around for invisible sky fairies of any sort to come save you. I was impressed by the fact that the UUs in Knoxville didn't cower or plead. They jumped on a man armed with a shotgun, disarmed him and ( by some reports ) broke his arm in the process. That takes courage.
Yet the UU's welcome everybody and believe that everybody has something to offer even us "strength comes from within" types. They had a candlelight vigil to honor the fallen and celebrate the courage of the congregants who jumped Adkisson. But they never once named him, referring to him only as 'the gunman' and it wasn't because they didn't know his name.
The UU congregants are a bit shaken but they aren't going to let this act of intimidation, murder and terror* change their ideals or their resolve.
Through the entire service the front and back doors to the sanctuary remained wide open ( which was good since it was hot as a twelve pack of balls in there ). There we no armed guards. No gun waving. No tough talking. No condemnation of anybody ( not even the gunman). No calls to go murder anyone in retaliation. Just a bunch of people who were trying to get over an unprovoked attack on their very way of life and were drawing on the strength of their community and fellowship to do it.
One of the things they mentioned is that because of their lack of a creed or dogma people see them as weak and indecisive. Much like how the right wingers see all liberals. Yet I'd say that jumping a shotgun wielding asshole who might have a bomb is pretty much the antithesis of weak and indecisive.
Reverend Lisa also asked of the group "Why continue our support of civil marriage and social justice if we are to be targeted because of it?". The answer was essentially "Because it is the right thing to do."
Ultimately I can agree with that. There are always going to be hateful, desperate people who do hateful, desperate things even when not prompted by a hateful ideology.
One of the things I learned from 9/11 is that you could be targeted by some nutjob at any time for any reason in any place. Even giving up your beliefs isn't going to save you from nutjobs like this guy who showed up at a play put on my children with the intend of murdering people. So giving your belief system up is a pointless act of cowardice that serves no purpose.
So much for the neo-con contention that Liberals are weak and cowardly.
* Note that I am intentionally not using the word 'terrorism' here as based on what I've read he wasn't trying to affect political change by using murder, intimidation and violence. He was trying to punish a certain group of people (liberals) for the failings and desperation in his own life. That's hate crime but it's not terrorism.
Well said, E.
giving your belief system up is a pointless act of cowardice that serves no purpose.
Which is in sharp relief with, say, hacking your constitution to pieces to be able to arrest and spy on brown people more easily.
I hope Americans in general wake up soon to the fact that being "strong on terror" is being weak in every other conceivable way.
Unitarians include Christians, just not Christians that believe in god/spirit/son combos (unitarians vs trinitarians). Some of them don't believe in Christ's divinity, but that he was a great teacher and role model. But they're unrepentantly progressive and were staunch movers and shakers behind the separation of church and state in the Americas. IOW, the kind of folks the usual suspects would be frothing Inquisitionally about if they gave two nanoseconds of rational thinking to the matter. But rational thinking is not exactly prized by the crowd desperately trying to rework this into 'woe is us Christians being hated on by the product of Liberalism'.
Although, I do have to wonder if the membership in Unitarian churches will go up because of the publicity. A lot of progressive, spiritually comforted folks have been looking for new places to gather. That congregation's actions pre-attack and during are shining a very positive light on them, an energy some American Christian sects are trying hard to co-opt.
Unitarian Universalists include all kinds of religious and non-religious backgrounds.
Our "church" (some members do not like that word) has many humanists (secular and religious) as well as a few atheists.
Check out the 7 Principles and 6 Sources for more information on UUs (there is some much mis-information flying around out there).
In Canada: www.cuc.ca
In US: www.ua.org
(Not advertising, just informing)
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