Modernity and PostmodernityUUMA Seminar

Renewing Ministry for the 21st Century

Rev. Dr. Rebecca Ann ParkerRev. Dr. Susan Ritchie

January 2013

Muslim Prayer Rug, Ottoman Turkish, One example of many found in Transylvanian Unitarian Churches

Mixity

Pure Identities Unveiled as Hybrids!

Locality and Immediacy

Metanarratives andThe Hard Arrow of Time Give way to local stories

Spiral timeImmediate locations in time and space

Complicit Agency

Creative Embodiment

Our Religious Communities Can Be….

• Sanctuaries of Beauty • Communities of Recovery and Resistance• Schools for the Transformation of Society• Crossroads or Meeting Points for Creative

Multireligious Interchange • Embodiments of Just and Abundant Life

Sanctuaries of Beauty

• Ministry creates places that call people to “taste and see” what is worthy of our devotion and praise

Communities of Recovery and Resistance

• Ministry offers a community of spiritual support, rituals, and practices, that enable people to recover from and resist the harm of war, injustice, abuse, addictions…the “demons” of our society that alienate us from abundant life and one another

Schools for the Transformation of Society

• Ministry brings communities into being that connect people to sacred texts and traditions, that form critical analyses of current conditions and ways of life, that develop ethical imagination and creative agency in the midst of here and now

Crossroads for Multireligious Life

• Ministry invites creative interchange among people of diverse religious traditions, bringing new expressions spiritual community into being

Ministry Embodies Just and Abundant Life