Posts belonging to Category Defining Religious Langauge
Posted by Rev. David on September 14, 2012
Freedom is one of the most misunderstood concepts in the United States, and perhaps in the world. Be it Religious Freedom, or Freedom of Speech, or the Freedom of the Press, the Freedom of Association, or any of the common conceptions of freedom that we experience in the United States, I believe that we as [...]
Categories: Defining Religious Langauge, Patriotism, politics, Prophetic Voice
| 
Tags: American freedom, attack, embassy, free, freedom, freedom of association, freedom of religion, Freedom of Speech, freedom of the press, History, Islam, liberal, liberalism, politics, Prophetic Voice, protests, relationship, religion, responsibility, violence
| 
7 comments
Posted by Rev. David on March 27, 2011
I always know I’m onto something when I can get a congregant to look at me cross-eyed. A few months ago I was having a conversation with a dear congregant from a corporate background about how our Fellowship here in Midland “did things”. How our committees and teams function, how members relate to staff, how [...]
Categories: Defining Religious Langauge, Ministry, Spiritual Practice, UUFOM
| Tags: adaptive leadership, anxiety, anxiety management, change, church administration, church efficiency, congregation, David Pyle, disequilibrium, efficiency, growth, liberal, liberal faith, Military, Ministry, relationship, responsibility, societal transformation, spiritual growth, Spiritual Practice, theology, transformation, transformative change, unitairan, Unitarian, Unitarian Universalism, Unitarian Universalist, Universalism, use of anxiety, UU Principles
| No comments
Posted by Rev. David on March 4, 2011
One of the earliest articles I wrote here at Celestial Lands is one where I seek to define, for myself, the meaning of faith (that faith is not belief, it is “sacred trust”). I sometimes think we Unitarian Universalists and others of Liberal Religion have a harder time coping with the word faith than we [...]
Categories: Defining Religious Langauge, liberal faith, Ministry, theology, UU Movement
| Tags: Evangelism, faith, faith filled, faithful, faithfulness, God, hope, lack of faith, liberal, liberal faith, liberal faith blogging, liberal faithfulness, liberalism, liberals lack faith, meaning of faith, mission, peace, Prophetic Voice, relationship, religion, religious left, theology, unitairan, Unitarian, Unitarian Universalism, Unitarian Universalist, Universalism, UU, UU Principles
| 3 comments
Posted by Rev. David on March 13, 2010
At around 18 years old I decided I was no longer a Southern Baptist. There were many reasons for that decision. At the time I would have said that I just could no longer accept the contradictions inherent in accepting the Bible as literal truth, or that the hypocrisy I found in that faith did [...]
Categories: Defining Religious Langauge, Military, Ministry, Religious Freedom, theology, UU Movement
| Tags: asatru, atheist, choose faith, Deist, differentiate, differentiation, faith choice, humanist, military religion, religion, religious choice, religious identity, teen identity, unitairan, Unitairan young adult, Unitarian teen, Unitarian Universalist, Universalist, Universalist teen, Universalist young adult, UU, UU teen, UU young adult, wicca, young adult religion
| 3 comments
Posted by Rev. David on February 28, 2010
I have spent the last five years in the occasional study of a religious system that I believe has always existed, but has never been academically defined (except perhaps in secret by some graduate engineering students). My interest in this religious system is that my wife is an adherent, and in order to better understand [...]
Categories: Defining Religious Langauge, God, Humor, theology
| Tags: anything that can go wrong, god murphy, murphy, murphy's law, Murphy's religion, murphyism, murphyist, religious pessimism, will go wrong
| 5 comments
Posted by Rev. David on August 29, 2009
In the five years of my formal study for the UU Ministry, one of the most passionate topics has been the growing idea of Covenant in Unitarian Universalism… second in passion only to arguing about having young children in worship. Recently, the debate about covenant has become passionate in the UU Blogosphere again, beginning with [...]
Categories: Blogging, Defining Religious Langauge, History, Principles and Purposes, Prophetic Voice, Social Engagement, theology, UU Movement
| Tags: covenant, faith, hope, passion, peacebang, place of covenant, purpose of covenant, unitairan, Unitarian covenant, Unitarian Universalism, Universalism, Universalist, Universalist covenant, UU covenant, UU Principles, UU vision, vertical covenant, vision, vision of Unitarian Universalism, visionary
| 4 comments
Posted by Rev. David on May 4, 2009
Whenever I begin thinking and writing about issues relating to what we conceive of as reality, I always know that I’m going to catch “push-back”, and yet in theology, cosmology, and philosophy I do not think there is a more important topic. The issue of what constitutes reality is, at its core, an issue about [...]
Categories: Defining Religious Langauge, Reflection on Quotes, theology
| Tags: cosmology, define reality, meaning making, objective, post-modernism, postmodernism, power, reality, what is reality
| No comments
Posted by Rev. David on March 2, 2009
I remember a conversation with a religiously and politically conservative U.S. Army Chaplain while I was at the Brook Army Medical Center in San Antonio. This Chaplain had found Celestial Lands, and had specifically read the article entitled “Unitarian Universalism and Military Chaplaincy“. About two days into the two-week course, he asked me if I [...]
Categories: Defining Religious Langauge, Patriotism, politics, Prophetic Voice
| Tags: conservative, conservativism, defining, liberal, liberal faith, liberalism, progressive, progressive faith, progressivism
| 22 comments
Posted by Rev. David on February 9, 2009
It is surprising to me when someone one asks me whether or not I believe in evil. I can see how someone can begin to learn about my theology and come to that question, but it surprises me every time. It is surprising to me because I know exactly how much evil I have seen [...]
Categories: Defining Religious Langauge, Prophetic Voice, theology
| Tags: Bosnia, damnation, Escobar, evil, faith, FARC, FMLN, good, hell, hope, Latin America, responsibility, satan, theology, theology of evil
| 6 comments
Posted by Rev. David on May 8, 2008
Tolerance is a word that gets used a lot, often by people who have not thought through the implications of the word. When we say that we are tolerant of someone, or that we practice tolerance, or that we believe in religious tolerance… what we are really doing is reinforcing our own dominate position over [...]
Categories: Defining Religious Langauge, Equality, Interfaith
| Tags: church, engagement, Equality, tolerance
| 3 comments
Comments in the Celestial Lands