DanceLessons: Congregational Polity - durable for 400 years

Cyperspace Reading

CrossCurrents magazine: the best thought and writing on religion and the world. Crosscurrents. Cross Currents.
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Radical Hospitality
Much of the copy is from Alban's Congregations. Great way to see what you have been missing.
Spirituality & Practice: Resources for Spiritual Journeys
Wonderful ideas and spiritual practices shared by the ever so wonderful Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat
Other Impediments to Growth:
Rev. Thom Belote 4 December 2005 How Reliance on a Learned Clergy Keeps Us Small and Non-ambitious – A personal and institutional essay
Salvation Inflation
"Salvation Inflation?" A Conversation with Alan Wolfe By Michael Cromartie, John Wilson Posted: Monday, March 15, 2004 BOOK REVIEW Books & Culture, March/April 2004 (Carol Stream, Illinois) Publication Date: March 1, 2004 Alan Wolfe is professor of political science and director of the Boisi Center for Religion and Public Life at Boston College. He is the author most recently of An Intellectual in Public (Univ. of Michigan Press), a collection of his essays and reviews from The New Republic and elsewhere, and The Transformation of American Religion: How We Actually Live Our Faith (Free Press). Many readers of Books & Culture will have seen his October 2000 Atlantic Monthly cover story, "The Opening of the Evangelical Mind." Michael Cromartie spoke with Wolfe in Washington, D.C, last November; John Wilson joined the conversation.

May 17, 2007

Congregational Polity - durable for 400 years

Congregational polity is not the most efficient style of governance. But it does provide the ability to adapt, something needed still today. Conrad Wright, reminds us: So it is a fact of no small consequence that Unitarian Universalists stand in a traditionof congregational polity that is almost four centuries old;… , their congregationalism has proved to be more durable and adaptable [my emphasis] to changing times than any of the doctrinal formulations— whether of God, or human nature, or human destiny—that dominate accounts of the history of liberal religion.[i] Interestingly, Roozen’s research confirms that such structures that optimize “the participatory and relational work of working across diversity are more adaptive than structures that optimize efficiency and control” [ii] So perhaps the very disorganization and inefficiency experience in our congregations and at our national headquarters makes us healthier and more adaptive.