Coffee Hour

Now leading tours of the Interdependent Web...

There was a time — ah, nostalgia! — when "blog" meant less than nothing to me. Back in those halcyon days, Unitarian Universalists fraternized on-line using such quaint technologies as newsgroups and e-mail lists, which is how I got my start back in 1994, staying after work at the University of Utah Marriott Library to write messages to UUS-L and soc.religion.unitarian-univ. (Wouldn't you know, many of those s.r.u-u messages are still lurking in far corners of the Web, although the UUS-L archives began after I took an extended hiatus from the Web to concentrate on divinity school. Most of my contributions to that forum have vanished into the ether, which is probably for the best.) But times have changed; the modes of online communication have evolved; the diversity of the Interdependent Web, you might say, has grown more glorious.

Among UU geeks, of course, there were all sorts of intriguing ways to organize information on the Web: Some learned HTML and made their own Web pages, but in many cases their sites, once constructed, just sat there — static as the unmoved Mover (but not nearly so generative). A few enterprising souls, like Jone Johnson, not only mastered the technical side of publishing on the Web but also generated new content and made the Web a genuine addition to UU publishing. But most of us had neither the time, talent, nor technical skill to bring significant Unitarian Universalist content to the Internet: We stuck with our e-mail lists and unvisited personal Web pages.

But something has shifted significantly in the last three years. I won't try to give a more comprehensive history of liberal religion on the 'net — I've almost exhausted my meager knowledge as it is! — but I do want to point to a handful of major developments. One is the rise of LiveJournal, which provided many people — especially young people — with easy-to-use on-line journals and yoked them together in communities of people with similar interests. The Unitarian Universalist LiveJournal community crackles with teenage and young adult energy in a way that soc.religion.unitarian-univ never did.

Another is the rise of blogging. Easy-to-use self-publishing services like Blogger brought all sorts of non-geeks onto the Web. Why, you hardly needed to know how to do more than log in to Blogger, type out an entry, and click post! I turned Philocrites, my unvisited on-line collection of sermons, essays, and hymns, into a blog using Blogger during my 2002-2003 Christmas vacation, and soon started looking for other Unitarian Universalist bloggers. At the time, John Rakestraw's onReligion.com was the only one I could find. Now there are dozens! I try to update the annotated guide at Philocrites and the list here at Coffee Hour, but blogs come — and go! — faster than I can keep up with them.

Which brings us to the point of this essay.

I am very pleased to welcome another contributor to Coffee Hour: our first official Blog Reviewer, Chalicechick! She comes to us not as a blog-keeper herself but as one of the most consistently interesting contributors to the Unitarian Universalist discussions at Beliefnet, the supersite of religion Web sites. The UU discussions at Beliefnet are essentially her blog, and she's been a regular there for years. (Here are my two favorite Chalicechick contributions: the truly hilarious "Fictional UUs" and the essayistic "Liberal Christian Convert," which asks whether UU converts from liberal mainline churches face distinctive issues.)

Beliefnet represents yet another on-line development: the rise of public community forums. Beliefnet is the best-known community of UUs on the Web, but younger UUs have also created their own distinctively UU community. FUUSE functions like a Web extension of a YRUU or C*UUYAN con. (If that sentence evokes deep feelings of joy in you, FUUSE is probably for you; if the string of acronyms and jargon mystifies you, you'll find the site exclusive and quite possibly strange. "YRUU" is the name of the Unitarian Universalist Association's denominational youth movement; "C*UUYAN" is the Continental UU Young Adult Network, a denominationally-affiliated network of 18-to-35-year-olds. A "con" is a conference.)

Chalicechick knows a thing or two about building an on-line community from her years as a gifted conversationalist at Beliefnet. One of my hopes for Coffee Hour is that we will grow it into a community center for UU bloggers, perhaps even an inspiration for you to add your voice to the Interdependent Web of which we bloggers are a part. Welcome to Coffee Hour, CC!