Atlanta Unitarian

Recently one of the minister's at my church has been focusing on putting our beliefs into action. She has been arguing that faith without works is not enough. She argues that we have a moral imperative to act on our beliefs. This is a complex and multi-layered issue, but on the whole I have to say that I disagree. I see action as the flowering that spontaenously occurs out of the seed of belief. We do not need to force our hand. If we have sufficient self-understanding, when the time is ripe, we will act with conviction and with courage. I think it is part of our culture is an obsessive focus on results, and I think that faith is a curative for this unhealthy obsession. If everything is only useful for the purpose it serves, then nothing is worthwhile in itself. I think the first and deepest spiritual lesson is that life is worthwhile in itself, and that we are worthwhile in ourselves. We should act not out of an anxiety to prove ourselves worthy, but from a graceful center...

Energy Indepedence Any idiot can see the problems that having no energy policy has gotten us into. No other issue has such deep implications for our economy, our environment, and our foreign policy. We do not need drastic measures, but we *do* need a steady reduction in the use of carbon-based fuels, an increase in alternatives like renewables and nuclear power, and new investments in transit across the country. And of course higher fuel standards for vehicles across the board. Universal Health Care I don't think it's a stretch to say the majority of Americans probably support universal health care. It just makes sense, and it's the right thing to do. More individuals, and businesses, are feeling the pinch of health care costs that are rising faster than incomes. The US spends a higher percentage of its GNP on health care than possibly any other nation, yet millions are left out of the system entirely. Hospitals are overloaded and non-profit hospitals are going bust ...

In recent years we have fretted over the rise of the religious and political right. In seeking to oppose them, we have appealed to secular principles of freedom and justice. We have argued that, despite recent setbacks, these principles are enduring in their broad appeal and merely need to be defended from an attack of the moment. Stepping back, perhaps the rise of the religious and political right can be seen in a different context. Perhaps the rise of the religious right is merely a reaction to an increasingly toxic mainstream culture – a culture that is vacuous and obsessed with the gross material rewards of money, sex, and power. In this context, the rise of the right is not the source of cultural sickness in itself, but rather a symptom of the broader cultural sickness of our time. People have gravitated to the religious right because it gives them a system of meaning and understanding the world that the secular mainstream culture does not. If this is the actual battleground...