Anyone who has reading suggestions for members of UFMBoro may send them to your faithful Web Goddess at epondillo@aol.com and I will get them in as quickly as possible.  Remember, we have fiction lovers as well as nonfiction lovers!

A Long Overdue Conversation About Race

March 24, 2008

By Rev. William G. Sinkford, President, Unitarian Universalist Association

A commentator on CNN yesterday expressed what I imagine is the feeling of many white Americans in response to Barack Obama's speech about race last week: "Why can't we just go back to being color blind?" In our hearts, most Americans will acknowledge that racism is still at work in the body politic and in our individual lives, regardless of our race or cultural identity. But most would also acknowledge that we haven't yet found a way to move forward to redress the impact of racism, or even a way to productively talk about race in our society or in our lives. We have been stuck for far too long.

Much of the conversation about race is so filled with political correctness that truth is hard to come by. Whites move so easily to denial, citing the progress that has been made in recent decades and glossing over the glaring disparities in opportunity, income, even incarceration that remain. African Americans and people of color generally, including myself, show up defensive, afraid that the reality of our lives will, yet again, be deemed unimportant, that we will, yet again, be made invisible. Honesty has been simply too hard to come by, at least in mixed company.

Obama's speech, by naming the honest concerns and fears on both sides of the racial divide, presents us with that rarest of opportunities, an invitation to re-engage with an issue many people would prefer to ignore. I hope and pray that we have the courage to take advantage of this gift.

The religious community has an important role to play. Forty-five years ago, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. observed that 11:00 a.m. Sunday morning was the most segregated hour in America. It was true when Dr. King said it, and it is still true today. But the religious community knows something about confession, reconciliation, and forgiveness. At least we say we do.  

Although thoughtful statements from national religious bodies are a start, the real work needs to be done closer to home, in our families and in our congregations. If we can be both honest and open-hearted, there is a chance that we can move beyond the impasse that blocks our path into a place where true reconciliation may be possible. There are excellent resources to help Unitarian Universalist congregations and families in having this conversation. The Episcopal Church, the United Church of Christ, the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America, and many others have their own resources as well.

This message is not a political endorsement of Senator Obama, but it is support for his courage and leadership in calling us to a long overdue conversation about race. That conversation needs to move forward regardless of who is elected to our national leadership in November.

For more information contact president-assist @ uua.org.

Last updated on Wednesday, March 26, 2008.

An article from The Nation, suggested by Gretchen Webber:

Morning in America:

A Letter From Feminists on the Election

The Nation Posted February 27, 2008 (March 17, 2008
issue)
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20080317/feminists

Two days after the Texas debate between Hillary Clinton
and Barack Obama, a group of old friends broke out the
good china for a light breakfast of strong coffee,
blueberry muffins and fresh-squeezed orange juice. We
were there to hash out a split that threatened our
friendship and the various movements with which we are
affiliated. In some ways it was a kaffeeklatch like a
million others across America early on a Saturday
morning - but for the fact that this particular group
included Gloria Steinem, a co-founder of the National
Women's Political Caucus; Beverly Guy-Sheftall,
director of the Women's Research and Resource Center at
Spelman College; Johnnetta Cole, chair of the board of
the JBC Global Diversity and Inclusion Institute;
British-born radio journalist Laura Flanders; Kimberl=C3=A9
Crenshaw, professor of law at Columbia and UCLA; Carol
Jenkins, head of the Women's Media Center; Farah
Griffin, professor of English and comparative
literature at Columbia; Eleanor Smeal, president of the
Feminist Majority; author Mab Segrest; Kenyan
anthropologist Achola Pala Okeyo; management consultant
and policy strategist Janet Dewart Bell; and Patricia
Williams, Columbia law professor and Nation columnist.

It was a casual gathering, but one that settled down to
business quickly. We were all progressives but diverse
nonetheless. We differed in our opinions of whether to
vote for Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama - our goal was
not an endorsement. Rather, the concern that united us
all was the "race-gender split" playing out nationally,
in which the one is relentlessly pitted against the
other. We did not want to see a repeat of the ugly
history of the nineteenth century, when the failure of
the women's movement to bring about universal adult
suffrage metastasized into racial resentment and rift
that weakened feminism throughout much of the twentieth
century.

How, we wondered, did a historic breakthrough moment
for which we have all longed and worked hard, suddenly
risk becoming marred by having to choose between "race
cards" and "gender cards"? By petty competitiveness
about who endures more slings and arrows? By media
depictions of white women as the sole inheritors of the
feminist movement and black men as the sole
beneficiaries of the civil rights movement? By
renderings of black women as having to split themselves
right down the center with Solomon's sword in order to
vote for either candidate? What happened, we wondered,
to the last four decades of discussion about tokenism
and multiple identities and the complex intersections
of race, gender, sexuality, ethnicity and class?

We all worried that the feminist movement's real
message is not being heard, and we thought about how to
redirect attention to those coalitions that form the
bedrock of feminist concern: that wide range of civil
rights groups dedicated to fighting discrimination,
domestic violence, the disruptions of war,
international sex and labor trafficking, child poverty
and a tattered economy that threatens to increase the
number of homeless families significantly.

We thought of all that has happened in just seven short
but disastrous years of the Bush Administration, and we
asked: how might we position ourselves so we're not
fighting one another? Our issues are greater than any
disagreement about either candidate. We all know that
there is simply too much at stake.

On the one hand, we celebrate the unprecedented moment
in which a black person and a female person have risen
to the lead in the Democratic race for President of the
United States. On the other hand, both of them are
constantly pressed to deny their race or gender, to
"transcend" it, to prove by their very existence that
misogyny and racism no longer exist. This, even as both
are popularly and reductively caricatured in
perniciously stereotypical ways. Clinton as a woman
with balls, Obama as "unqualified" and "grandiose,"
Chelsea Clinton being "pimped" by her mother while Bill
O'Reilly declares that Michelle Obama should be
"lynched."

How do we resist such a toxic Punch and Judy show of
embattled identity, to the degree that many women feel
that a vote for Obama "cheats" Clinton of her chance to
break the glass ceiling, and many blacks feel that a
vote for Clinton is a betrayal of the chance to break
the race barrier?

We agreed that everyone needs to refocus on the big
picture. All of us know that another Republican
presidency would effectively bury the gains of both the
civil rights and the feminist movements of the past
fifty years. Judicial nominations alone could upend
decades of hard work.

How, therefore, to reclaim a common purpose, a truly
democratic "we": we women of all races, we blacks of
all genders, we Americans of all languages, we
immigrants of all classes, we Latinas of all colors, we
Southerners of all regions, we families of all ages, we
parents working three jobs without healthcare, we poor
who sleep on the streets, we single mothers whose homes
are being repossessed, we displaced New Orleanians
whose neo-Arcadian epic of displacement has yet to be
resolved.

"Can't we all just get along?" could have been the
mantra of this power breakfast - though certainly not
forever, nor for all purposes. Just long enough to
roust the Republican rascals: the oil barons and Enron
fraudsters and pre-emptive warmongers and sadistic
torture-masters and trigger-happy antiabortionists and
Blackwater mercenaries and the tribal extremists of
various religious stripes who seem to look forward to
Armageddon finally segregating humanity into true
believers and recalcitrant, disposable trash.

In the confusion of this triumphalist but precarious
moment, therefore, it is important that the alliance
between a now global feminism and a now global civil
rights movement not be turned against itself and
ultimately defeated. Obama and Clinton, each a
complexly archetypal "role model," represent, at their
best, a new kind of American possibility. If we could
get over our fixation on a fantasy that many of us
hoped to see realized in our lifetimes, maybe we could
finally turn to the issues that each of them brings to
the table. We cannot remain tangled by stereotypes that
demean with their sweeping divisiveness and historical
clich=C3=A9.

As we gathered up the empty plates, we recommitted
ourselves to further joint discussions about how to
attain that collective better future, however many
early mornings, late nights and urns of coffee into the
future that may take. We hope women across America will
choose to do the same.

____

Book suggestions from members:

Misquoting Jesus: The Story behind who changed the gospel and why

by Bart D. Ehrman - suggested reading by Rick Bennett

http://www.amazon.com/Misquoting-Jesus-Story-Behind-Changed/dp/0060738170

• In Misquoting Jesus  Ehrman reveals that:
• The King James Bible was based on corrupted and inferior manuscripts that in many cases do not accurately represent the meaning of the original text.
• The favorite Bible story of Jesus’s forgiving the woman caught in adultery (John 8:3-11) doesn’t belong in the Bible
• Scribal errors were so common in antiquity that the authore of the Beook of Reveleation threatened damnation to anyone who “adds to” or “taking words from the text.

 Engaging and fascinating. . . . [Ehrman’s] absording story, fresh and live phose, and seasoned insight into the challgenges of recreating the texts of the New Testament ensure that readers might never read the Gospels or Pauyl’s letters the same way again.” – Publishers Weekly (starred review)

 
The Jefferson Bible- Wes Henley often mentions this Thomas Jefferson-revised Bible.

The Zen Teachings of Jesus 

The Gospel of Jesus: According to the Jesus Seminar
 
The Jesus Seminar and Its Critics
 

Diane Scearce recommends the following titles and says, "Even though most are fiction, they encouraged me to seek my own answers by researching unfamiliar topics further, which is valuable by itself."

Feeling Good

Drive Yourself Sane: Using the Uncommon Sense of General Semantics

Three Junes, by Julia Glass

Saving Fish from Drowning, by Amy Tan

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, by Barbara Kingsolver (Non-Fiction)

A Thousand Splendid Suns, by Khaled Hosseini

The Kite Runner, by Khaled Hosseini

The Alchemist, by Paulo Coelho

Under a Sickle Moon, by Peregrine Hodson (Non-Fiction)

Man’s Search for Meaning, by Viktor Frankl (Non-Fiction)

Gilead, by Marilynne Robinson Hawaii, by James Michener

Books from the Chair:
Titles for those of us who love great non-fiction!
I really enjoy this stuff so I recommend all of them – if you’re up for only one or two “good ones, “ I’d suggest you go with the first two titles! Happy reading!
Bob Pondillo

**Jesus for the Non-Religious by John Shelby Spong
 http://www.amazon.com/Jesus-Non-Religious-John-Shelby-Spong/dp/0060762071/ref=pd_bbs_1/102-9954097-4024148?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1182710943&sr=1-1+ 
   Spong, the iconoclastic former Episcopal bishop of Newark, details in this impassioned work both his "deep commitment to Jesus of Nazareth" and his "deep alienation from the traditional symbols" that surround Jesus. 
   For Spong, scholarship on the Bible and a modern scientific worldview demonstrates that traditional teachings like the Trinity and prayer for divine intervention must be debunked as the mythological trappings of a primitive worldview. These are so much "religion," which was devised by our evolutionary forebears to head off existential anxiety in the face of death.
   What's left? The power of the "Christ experience," in which Jesus transcends tribal notions of the deity and reaches out to all people. Spong says Jesus had such great "energy" and "integrity" about him that his followers inflated to the point of describing him as a deity masquerading in human form; however, we can still get at the historical origin of these myths by returning to Jesus' humanity, especially his Jewishness. – Publishers Weekly

**Christianity without God by Lloyd Geering
 http://www.amazon.com/Christianity-without-God-Lloyd-Geering/dp/0944344925/ref=pd_bxgy_b_text_b/102-9954097-4024148?ie=UTF8&qid=1182711857&sr=1-2+ 
   Belief in God — understood as a supernatural spiritual being who created the universe and continues to sustain it — has long been assumed to be the irreplaceable foundation of the three monotheistic religions. But just as the bible ceased, in the nineteenth century, to be convincing as the repository of divinely revealed knowledge, so the twentieth century witnessed the death of the conventional image of God. 
   Lloyd Geering asks whether this "death of God" spells the imminent death of the whole Christian tradition or simply means the end of conventional Christian doctrine.

The Once & Future Faith by Don Cupitt et al., Karen Armstrong, editor http://www.amazon.com/Once-Future-Faith-Don-Cupitt/dp/0944344852/ref=sr_1_2/102-9954097-4024148?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1182711857&sr=1-2+ 
   Scientific knowledge has stripped Christianity of the mythical matrix in which the creeds were conceived. The historical study of the Bible and the quest for the historical Jesus have raised the future of the faith to crisis level. At its Once & Future Faith conference in March 2001, four world class thinkers - Don Cupitt, Karen Armstrong, John Shelby Spong, and Lloyd Geering - joined Robert Funk and the Fellows of the Jesus Seminar to sort through the issues and attempt to form an agenda for the reinvention of Christianity. 
   Their suggestions - on questions such as life after death, the meaning of God, apocalypticism, and the significance of Jesus' death - fill the pages of this book.

What’s It All About? A Guide to Life’s Basic Questions and Answers by Richard de la Chaumiere
 http://www.amazon.com/Whats-About-Guide-Questions-Answers/dp/097257770X/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/102-9954097-4024148?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1182712843&sr=1-1 
   An engaging and impartial guide for readers who want to make up their own minds about some of the big questions of life, and would like to learn many of the diverse answers from philosophy, science, psychology, and Eastern and Western spiritual traditions. Lucid and lively, the book is written in a style understandable and appealing to the general reader.

Age of Betrayal: The Triumph of Money in America, 1865-1900 by Jack Beatty
 http://www.amazon.com/Age-Betrayal-Triumph-America-1865-1900/dp/1400040280/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/102-9954097-4024148?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1182712648&sr=1-1 
   "Having redeemed democracy in the Civil War," laments Jack Beatty, "America betrayed it in the Gilded Age." These opening words neatly capture the premise and promise of Age of Betrayal, an ambitious and politically charged work that spans far more terrain than its subtitle suggests. The redemption, of course, is the demise of American slavery. The betrayal, however, is the rise of rapacious industrial corporations in the decades immediately following the war -- a rise Beatty believes merely distributed inequality and injustice more equitably. 
   The ascent of such business interests, he contends, was enabled by corrupt governments, a pliant judiciary and a malleable populace that, with the exception of the Populist movement, remained too traumatized and divided by the war to put up much of a fight. -- The Washington Post's Book World

The Many Faces of God: Science's 400-Year Quest for Images of the Divine by Jeremy Campbell
http://www.amazon.com/Many-Faces-God-Sciences-400-Year/dp/0393061795/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/102-9954097-4024148?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1182712442&sr=1-1 
   A grand work of philosophy and history, The Many Faces of God shows how our religious conceptions have been shaped by advances in technology and science. Beginning his narrative in the 1600s and concluding with the fervor of the millennium, Jeremy Campbell shows how Isaac Newton and his generation altered the medieval definition of God from one interpreted through divine messengers to an all-knowing, autocratic God who watched over the scientific wonders of the universe. Arguing that religions harbor a secret fear that science may one day explain God away, Campbell masterfully shows how twentieth-century technology and theology have become intertwined, often to the detriment of both disciplines. 
   Illuminating the writings of such intellectual luminaries as Calvin, Luther, and Einstein, all the way up to John Updike, The Many Faces of God is a sweeping history of religious and scientific thought in the Western world.

Sex and the Single Savior: Gender and Sexuality in Biblical Interpretation by Dale B. Martin
http://www.amazon.com/Sex-Single-Savior-Sexuality-Interpretation/dp/0664230466/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/102-9954097-4024148?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1182712157&sr=1-1 
   
   Probing into many questions about gender and sexuality, Dale Martin delves into biblical texts anew and unearths surprising findings. In all of these essays, however, Martin argues for engaging Scripture in a way that goes beyond the standard historical-critical questions and the assumptions of textual agency in order to find a faith that has no foundations other than Jesus Christ.

God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything by Christopher Hitchens
http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_ss_b/102-9954097-4024148?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=God+is+Not+Great&Go.x=0&Go.y=0&Go=Go 
   Hitchens, one of our great political pugilists, delivers the best of the recent rash of atheist manifestos. The same contrarian spirit that makes him delightful reading as a political commentator, even (or especially) when he's completely wrong, makes him an entertaining huckster prosecutor once he has God placed in the dock. And can he turn a phrase!: "monotheistic religion is a plagiarism of a plagiarism of a hearsay of a hearsay, of an illusion of an illusion, extending all the way back to a fabrication of a few nonevents." Hitchens's one-liners bear the marks of considerable sparring practice with believers. Yet few believers will recognize themselves as Hitchens associates all of them for all time with the worst of history's theocratic and inquisitional moments. All the same, this is salutary reading as a means of culling believers' weaker arguments: that faith offers comfort (false comfort is none at all), or has provided a historical hedge against fascism (it mostly hasn't), or that "Eastern" religions are better (nope)…. - Publishers Weekly

Jesus and the Lost Goddess: The Secret Teachings of the Original Christians by Timothy Freke and Peter Gandy
http://www.amazon.com/Jesus-Lost-Goddess-Teachings-Christians/dp/1400045940/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/102-9954097-4024148?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1182711276&sr=1-1 
   Why Were the Teachings of the Original Christians Brutally Suppressed by the Roman Church? • Because they portray Jesus and Mary Magdalene as mythic figures based on the Pagan Godman and Goddess • Because they show that the gospel story is a spiritual allegory encapsulating a profound philosophy that leads to mythical enlightenment • Because they have the power to turn the world inside out and transform life into an exploration of consciousness Drawing on modern scholarship, the authors of the international bestseller The Jesus Mysteries decode the secret teachings of the original Christians for the first time in almost two millennia and theorize about who the original Christians really were and what they actually taught. In addition, the book explores the many myths of Jesus and the Goddess and unlocks the lost secret teachings of Christian mysticism, which promise happiness and immortality to those who attain the state of Gnosis, or enlightenment. This daring and controversial book recovers the ancient wisdom of the original Christians and demonstrates its relevance to us today. - Inside the Flap Copy Reading

Judas: The Gospel of Judas and the Shaping of Christianity by Elaine Pagels and Karen L. King
http://www.amazon.com/Reading-Judas-Gospel-Shaping-Christianity/dp/0670038458/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/102-9954097-4024148?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1182710643&sr=1-1 
   In fall 2006, the National Geographic Society made quite a splash, bringing to light the discovery of a new gospel in the Gnostic tradition told from Judas' point of view. There have already been several books on the subject, including one by Bart Ehrman, The Lost Gospel of Judas Iscariot (2006), which provided an overview and placed the book in its historical and religious contexts. Now come two premier names in the field of religious writing to take a more intimate look at the gospel. Pagels, author of the classic Gnostic Gospels (2004), teams with translator extraordinaire King for a compact reader's guide into the heart of the new gospel. The Gospel of Judas can be a convoluted, even bizarre, reading experience, but the combination of King's translation, which appears at the end of the book, and Pagels' text will help general readers get past the difficulties and into the fascinating message, which emphasizes spiritual rather than physical resurrection for both Jesus and his followers. Pagels also shows why this message was so noxious to church leaders and explains how the gospel fits into the body of noncanonical literature. By showing how Judas' vision of life after death should be understood, this elegantly written book makes clear the relevance of a centuries-old text for a contemporary audience.