I\u2019m not going to post everything I say as part of my President\u2019s Welcome and Announcements on Sunday mornings, but sometimes I will. Here\u2019s what I had to say this morning:<\/p>\n
Robert Wuthnow is Director of the Center for the Study of American Religion at Princeton University and author of the book Christianity in the 21st Century: Reflections on the Challenges Ahead<\/em>. In that book, he said \u201cInstead of being a reaction to fundamentalism, liberal religion needs to become a counterculture to secularism. [Liberal religion] should present itself as a third way.\u201d<\/p>\n It\u2019s easy for us to be a reaction to fundamentalism. We like being a reaction to fundamentalism. We\u2019re too smart to fall for their claims of Biblical inerrancy, and we\u2019re too ethical to threaten people with eternal damnation to get them to support our church.<\/p>\n But it\u2019s a lot harder to present a practical alternative to the wider culture \u2013 the culture that says your value depends on how you look, how much money you have, what kind of car you drive, or how much education you have. It\u2019s more difficult to challenge the culture that says faith doesn\u2019t really matter and that communities aren\u2019t worth the effort unless they\u2019re giving me what I want.<\/p>\n Reacting to fundamentalism is easy \u2013 it lets us feel superior. Becoming a counterculture to secularism \u2013 now that requires some work.<\/p>\n But what good is a religion that doesn\u2019t encourage you to examine your life and dare you to live up to your highest principles? As practitioners of liberal religion, we UUs need to challenge each other to reject secularism, materialism, and cynicism, and to truly embrace compassion, community, and the inherent worth of every person \u2013 including the fundamentalists.<\/p>\n Free religion isn\u2019t easy religion, but it\u2019s honest religion. I hope you\u2019ll join us in building that \u201cthird way\u201d here at the Denton Unitarian Universalist Fellowship.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I\u2019m not going to post everything I say as part of my President\u2019s Welcome and Announcements on Sunday mornings, but sometimes I will. Here\u2019s what I had to say this morning: Robert Wuthnow is Director of the Center for the Study of American Religion at Princeton University and author of the book Christianity in the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1129,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-533","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n