“Queen of the Prairie”  (Dave & Linda’s house)Summer is a busy time in Houlton. Sometimes it seems like there are more things going on than there are dates to schedule them. For example, this weekend is the Houlton Agricultural Fair, the Houlton Golf Course celebrates its 100th anniversary, The Southern Aroostook Agricultural Museum has a BBQ chicken supper, The Cup Cafe hosts Nirvana Tribute Night, and those are just a few of the happenings. We have selected a date for our Woodstock day trip to the Connell House and Old County Courthouse. It is on Friday, August 9th. We will meet at the church around 10AM to organize a carpool with the tour starting at 11AM (Eastern Standard Time) in Woodstock. After the tour we plan to have lunch in Woodstock at The River Restaurant. There is a sign up list in the coffee room if you would like to join us. You can also register by sending me an email dave@backwoodsblog.com or Steve Kinney skinney4467@gmail.com

There is a change in this week’s Sunday Service. Bill White was originally scheduled to lead the service but he will lead the service on August 18 instead. The change has been noted on the calendar. Adjusting to circumstances, we will have another open pulpit service (like we did last week) so we invite you to bring a reading, poem, a show and tell object or a personal observation to share with the group. Again, there is no specific theme or topic for the service, we’ll consider it “summer reflections.”  We hope you can join us for one of the services online or in-person.

Enjoy summer.

In Ministry,

Dave
NIRVANA TRIBUTE NIGHT
July 20,  Saturday Evening             7-9 PMThe Cup Cafe,   61 Military Street, Houlton, ME 

If you’re a fan of Nirvana then you don’t want to miss the Nirvana Tribute Night at The Cup Cafe! Be ready to experience the era of the 90’s and enjoy a night of live rock music. Food and drinks will available for purchase provided by the Cup Cafe and the floor will be cleared for dancing. Certainly a night not to be missed. $5 cover charge at the door.
Band Members
Simon Pritchard: Guitar and vocalsNikki Cartee: BassCharles Sweeney: Drums

The Cup has slushies for Nirvana Tribute Night! Nothing beats the summer heat like a refreshing smooth slushy. We have electric blue raspberry, wild cherry, grape and more…
Espresso bar is open too and fizz bar 

See you at The Cup.Feel the buzz…

Organ Concert July 28,  Sunday Afternoon @4PMHoulton United Methodist Church 57 Military Street  (right next door)
Ryan Slocum

Dear Friends,
I am pleased to be writing to let you know about an organ concert scheduled for Sunday, July 28, from 4:00 p.m. – 5:00 p.m. at the Houlton United Methodist Church. 

The organist is Ryan Slocum, a senior at the University of Southern Maine Osher School of Music. Ryan will be presenting a program of sacred music, including favorite hymns, arranged for organ and piano. He is a very talented keyboardist and arranger. Jacob Hotham, a freshman at USM Osher School of Music, will also be playing a few hymns on the organ, and I will join Ryan for the organ and piano duets. 

I would be grateful if you would share the poster and concert information with your networks and anyone you think might be interested. The concert is free and a goodwill offering will be taken to support these wonderful, talented, and earnest music students. 

Kind regards,
Susan Laurence 

THIS WEEK’S YOUTUBE SERVICE:

HERE IS THE SERVICE LINK FOR THIS WEEK’S YOUTUBE SERVICE

(Please note it won’t be active until 10AM on Sunday morning)

HERE IS THE ZOOM LINK FOR SUNDAY COFFEE HOUR:

Topic: UUHoulton zoom coffee hourTime: Jul 21, 2024 11:00 AM Eastern Time (US and Canada)
Join Zoom Meetinghttps://us06web.zoom.us/j/87201599041?pwd=hon9Fb9YanmSn66Ya6thubiGDFdU9R.1
Meeting ID: 872 0159 9041Passcode: 066387

Calendar of Events @UUHoulton

July 20 Nirvana Tribute Night  7PM    (Cup Cafe)

July 21 Sunday Service:  Open-Pulpit Service

July 28 Sunday Service:  David Hutchinson

Aug 4 Sunday Service: Stephen Kinney

Aug 9 Woodstock Day Trip    10 AM 

Aug 11 Sunday Service:  David Hutchinson

Aug 17 LGBTQ+ luncheon  12 Noon

Aug 17 Summer Concert at Cafe   7-9PM Mark Mandeville and Raiaane Richards

 Aug 18 Sunday Service: Bill White

Aug 20 Meditation Group  4PM  (online)

Aug 25 Sunday Service:  David Hutchinson 

Virtual Offering Plate
If you would like to send in your pledge or donation simply drop an envelope in the mail. The address is listed below.  You can also send your donation electronically with our new payment system on the church website.  Simply go to uuhoulton.org and click “Donate” on the menu and it will explain how the system works. You can set up a regular monthly payment plan or donate in single transactions.  Thank you for your generous support!  
UU Church of Houlton

61 Military Street

This is a recent op-ed by David Brooks of The New York Times. I include it here in our Support Page as a resource in upholding the democratic process during challenging times that undermine such pursuits. He also sees a vital role for religious progressivesin the process. 

The task, then, is to build a new cultural consensus that is democratic but also morally coherent. My guess, and it is only a guess, is that this work of cultural repair will be done by religious progressives, by a new generation of leaders who will build a modern social gospel around love of neighbor and hospitality for the marginalized.

David Brooks 

July 11, 2024

I’ve been trying to think through the deeper roots of our current dysfunction with the help of a new book by James Davison Hunter, titled “Democracy and Solidarity: On the Cultural Roots of America’s Political Crisis.” Hunter, a scholar at the University of Virginia, is (in my opinion) the nation’s leading cultural historian.

He reminds us that a nation’s political life rests upon cultural foundations. Each society has its own way of seeing the world, its own basic assumptions about what is right and wrong, its own vision of a better world that gives national life direction and purpose. Culture is the ocean of symbols and stories in which we swim.

American culture, Hunter argues, was formed within the tension between Enlightenment values and religious faith. America was founded at the high point of the Enlightenment and according to Enlightenment ideas: a belief in individual reason, that social differences should be settled through deliberation and democracy, that a free society depends on neutral institutions like the electoral system and the courts, which will be fair to all involved.

But over the centuries many Americans have also believed that America has a covenantal relationship with God — from Puritan leaders like John Winthrop on down. The Bible gave generations of Americans a bedrock set of moral values, the conviction that we live within an objective moral order, the faith that the arc of history bends toward justice. Religious fervor drove many of our social movements, like abolitionism. Religious fervor explains why America has always had big arguments over things like Prohibition and abortion, which don’t seem to rile other nations as much. As late as 1958, according to a Gallup poll, only 18 percent of Americans said they would be willing to vote for an atheist for president.

Each generation, Hunter continues, works out its own balance in the tension between Enlightenment liberty and moral authority. In the 20th century, for example, the philosopher John Dewey emerged as the great champion of Enlightenment values. He believed that religion had been discredited but that a public ethic could be built by human reason, on the basis of individual dignity and human rights. He had great faith in the power of education to train people to become moral citizens. (Dewey’s understanding of education remains influential in the United States.)

The theologian Reinhold Niebuhr thought this was naïve. He believed that Dewey underestimated the human capacity for sin. He believed that you can’t use science to answer questions about life’s ultimate purpose and meaning. He dismissed the idea that with just a little more schooling, we would be able to educate people out of their racism and selfishness or that secularism could address life’s deepest problems. “The religious ideal of forgiveness,” Niebuhr wrote, “is more profound and more difficult than the rational virtue of tolerance.”

Dewey and Niebuhr differed, but they both thought it was important to build a coherent moral order; they both believed there was a thing called the truth; they both believed that capitalism preyed on the vulnerable. In other words, across their differences they both operated within the cultural framework and tension that had long defined America.

And over the decades, most Americans lived with one ear attuned to the doctrine of Dewey and the other ear attuned to the doctrine of Niebuhr. If you want to see these two traditions within one person, look at Martin Luther King Jr. He used a Christian metaphysics to show how American democracy could live up to both Enlightenment and divine ideals.

Unfortunately, Hunter notes, this fruitful cultural tension died with King. Starting in the 1960s, America grew less religious. Those who remained religious were told to keep their faith to the private sphere. American public life became largely secular, especially among the highly educated classes, producing what the First Things editor Richard John Neuhaus called “the naked public square.” By 2020, 60 percent of Americans said they would vote for an atheist for president.

At the same time, science and reason failed to produce a substitute moral order that could hold the nation together. By 1981, in the famous first passage of his book “After Virtue,” the philosopher Alasdair Macintyre argued that we had inherited fragments of moral ideas, not a coherent moral system to give form to a communal life, not a solid set of moral foundations to use to settle disputes. Moral reasoning, he wrote, had been reduced to “emotivism.” If it feels right, do it. In 1987, Allan Bloom released his megaselling “The Closing of the American Mind,” arguing that moral relativism had become the dominant ethos of the era.

In other words, Americans lost faith in both sides of the great historical tension and, with it, the culture that had long held a diverse nation together. By the 21st century, it became clear that Americans were no longer just disagreeing with one another; they didn’t even perceive the same reality. You began to hear commencement speakers declare that each person has to live according to his or her own truth. Critics talked about living in a post-truth society. Hunter talks about cultural exhaustion, a loss of faith, a rising nihilism — the belief in nothing. As he puts it, “If there is little or no common political ground today, it is because there are few if any common assumptions about the nature of a good society that underwrite a shared political life.”

Was there anything that would fill this void of meaning? Was there anything that could give people a shared sense of right and wrong, a sense of purpose?

It turns out there was: identity politics. People on the right and the left began to identify themselves within a particular kind of moral story. This is the story in which my political group is the victim of oppression and other groups are the oppressors. For people who feel they are floating in a moral and social vacuum, this story provides a moral landscape — there are those bad guys over there and us good guys over here. The story provides a sense of belonging. It provides social recognition. By expressing my rage, I will earn your attention and respect.

In public discourse, identity politics is more associated with the left. Progressivism used to be oriented around how to make capitalism just, but now in its upper-middle-class form, it’s oriented around proper esteem for and inclusion of different identity groups.

But as Hunter notes, Donald Trump practices identity politics just as much as any progressive. He tells the story of how small-town, less-educated Christians are being oppressed by elites. He alone is their retribution. That story resonates with a lot of people. In the 1950s, Billy Graham assumed that his faith was central to American life. By the 2020s his son Franklin considered himself a warrior under siege in an anti-Christian culture.

The problem with this form of all-explaining identity politics is that it undermines democracy. If others are evil and out to get us, then persuasion is for suckers. If our beliefs are defined by our identities and not individual reason and personal experience, then different Americans are living in different universes, and there is no point in trying to engage in deliberative democracy. You just have to crush them. You have to grab power and control of the institutions and shove your answers down everybody else’s throats.

In this climate, Hunter argues, “the authoritarian impulse becomes impossible to restrain.” Authoritarianism imposes a social vision by force. If you can’t have social solidarity organically from the ground up, then you can impose it from top down using the power of the state. This is the menace of Trumpism. If you read my recent interview with Steve Bannon, you’ll see that he talks like a character straight out of Hunter’s book.

Democrats are not immune to this way of thinking. In a 2019 survey, Democrats were more likely than Republicans to admit to occasionally thinking that we’d be better off as a country “if large numbers of the opposing party in the public today just died.” Democrats were more likely than Republicans to believe that their opponents were “evil” and “un-American.”

But in this world, in which politics is seen as a form of total war, Biden looks obsolete. In a nihilistic pseudo-authoritarian world, he’s still one of those old-fashioned liberals who revere the Constitution and his Catholicism. The ideals that animate him and that he uses to give poetry and lift to his speeches fail to inspire millions of American voters. A plurality of voters believe that Biden’s age is a bigger problem than Trump’s authoritarianism because they just don’t see the latter as that big a problem.

The core question in Hunter’s book is: Can you have an Enlightenment political system atop a post-Enlightenment culture? I’d say the answer to that question is: over the long term, no.

The task, then, is to build a new cultural consensus that is democratic but also morally coherent. My guess, and it is only a guess, is that this work of cultural repair will be done by religious progressives, by a new generation of leaders who will build a modern social gospel around love of neighbor and hospitality for the marginalized.

But the work of building that culture will take decades. Until then, we, as a democracy, are on thin ice.

More Flowers…

Canadian Day Lilies  

Prayer List
For those working for social justice and societal changePray for peaceful action and democratic process in our nationThe war in Ukraine continuesPrayers for those in Palestine and Israel as the war continues into its seventh monthPrayers for the worsening humanitarian crisis in GazaPrayers for those affected by the ongoing heat waves (India, Pakistan, Middle East, Europe and North America) Prayers for those affected by the flash flooding in the Dakotas, Utah, Minnesota…Prayers for those affected by Hurricane Beryl 

The Four Limitless Ones Prayer

May all sentient beings enjoy happiness and the root of happiness.

May we be free from suffering and the root of suffering.

May we not be separated from the great happiness devoid of suffering.

May we dwell in the great equanimity free from anger, aggression and delusion.