Coffee Hour

New UU blogger Dan Harper kicks of Yet another UU Blog by doing nothing special, just taking on the Seven Principles. I like him already.

At Ministrare, Sean has nice things to say about the Rev. Sinkford.
Prophet Motive has some cool stuff to say about the church's role in politics.
Unity rocks.

Greg has put up his last post from Iraq

And finally, for those of you who believe atheists are frequently minstreated in UU churches, Dr. Rieux has something to say on the topic.

In the ongoing war with comment and trackback spam, the company that hosts this site has inadvertently broken the comments and trackback here at Coffee Hour. I only just realized the company had tweaked the script at Philocrites (where everything is working just fine), breaking links here in the process. I'll see if I can fix things here without much trouble. Sorry for the interruption in service!

Update: Fixed. Resume conversation!

First off, a quick correction. David from Facilitating Paradox somehow became “Rich” a couple of weeks ago.

CC goes back and forth on Rebecca Parker. Bu she thinks the Rebecca Parker poem that Left Cost Unitarian posted is really good. Also LCU is Talkin' Tillich

As a cranky humanist, I fully identify with the girl whose vision quest Sean describes in Ministrare And Sean writes about it very very well.

UUs who write about Ash Wednesday are pretty rare, I think. But we knew Peacebang is a rare bird. (OK, Adam is a rare bird, too)

Phil's Little Blog on the Prarie had an awesome but on what makes a mature person of faith. That's a must-read kids.

Shadow of Diogenes is talking about people who blame America first for problems in the world.

The Socinian still rocks.

This is especially to ministers, but I'm happy for anyone to respond.

A close friend of CC's is giving a lay sermon in his UU church next Sunday and has sent CC what he plans to say.

It's a very fine speech for the rotary club, but it's not a sermon. It doesn't really connect personally with the reader/listener it doens't really even mention spirituality.

This person has had his lay-lead sermons criticized by CC before for not being sermons, and what he has written this time does represent improvement. But it's still not there.

It might help if I explained better what differentiates a sermon from a rotary club speech, but I'm having troujble articulating it.

Thoughts?

Articulations?

CC

This was a week of lots of vigorous discussions.

After lots of vigorous discussion the votes are in and we have winners in the UU blog awards.

There’s a vigorous discussion about rejection of organized religion going on at peacebang Oh, yeah, and Philocrites gets its ads read.

Meanwhile, at Phil's Little Blog on the Prarie Phil is solving some of the problems that the folks at Peacebang are talking about.

At Boy in the Bands , Scott Wells seems to be trying to inspire vigorous discussion on churches that haven't registered in the last few years.

Checking out the statistics, I found that Katy-the-Wise has a nice big church. As well she should.

Ibeth is being profound again.

At MyIrony, Chutney is trying to start a well-deserved vigorous discussion on the fate of the King center. The place of a legacy is always a strange question. Is Martin Luther King's legacy his family's? Ours?

Take it up with Chutney.

Let's keep Sean from Ministrare and his congregation in our thoughts and prayers.

Now, go and discuss! Vigorously!

The deadline has passed at the UUA's on-line certification of congregations. By my count, 889 US congregations have certified. (I think I've missed 2 so I'll need to go back and check that out.)

Here are the numbers:
# of Congregations: 889
# of UUs: 143,887
Net change: +2397
Percentage change: +1.69%

So, where do we go from here? There are an additional 120 congregations that did not certify. (You can find out which congregations didn't at the UUA website.) By the end of the week, I'd expect some of these congregations to report their membership. Meanwhile, over the next couple of weeks, I'll be "analyzing" the data and posting some of my reflections. I will also post my answers to ChaliceChick's question about geographical areas and Philocrites' question about the proportion of UUA membership in various sized churches.

Let the trumpets sound! The people have spoken, and we have winners in the first annual Unitarian Universalist Blog Awards. Thanks to everyone who helped make the Interdependent Web such an exciting place to visit in 2004 — and thanks to all the new UU bloggers who have jumped in and who promise to make 2005 even more interesting. Here are the winners, selected by you and your fellow readers:

Best Religious Writing or Theological Commentary
Advent Series in four parts — Adam Tierney-Eliot (Unity)
41.9% of 31 votes

Best Review or Cultural Commentary — tie!
Liberalism Reframed — Guest blogger Jake (Philocrites)
28.6% of 21 votes
Life in Privatopia — Beth Young (iBeth)
28.6% of 21 votes

Best Anecdote or Narrative
Single-entry winner: Round Robin — allpoints23 et al. (Beliefnet UU Discussion)
20.6% of 34 votes
Best of class: My Irony, who competed against himself, and tied not only himself but iBeth for second place — giving Chutney a whopping 35.2% of the vote!

Best Design or Use of Visuals — tie!
El Cáliz Azul — Enrique
32.1% of 28 votes
My Irony — Chutney
32.1% of 28 votes

Best Links
Philocrites — Chris Walton
48.3% of 29 votes

Best Writing
A Virginia UU in King George's War — Gregory
70.6% of 109 votes

Best Online Community or Group Blog
FUUSE.com — "The Voice of the RevolUUtion!"
62.9% of 70 votes

Best Non-UU-Themed Blog
Respectful of Otters — Rivka
41.4% of 29 votes

Best UU-Themed Blog
Philocrites — Chris Walton
53.7% of 41 votes

Congratulations to everyone!