Filed under: International, Religious Studies: History, Travels, Trends in Religion, UU Denomination and Pacific Central District News and Views | Tags: ICUU, international Unitarian Universalism
Greetings from another day of the biennial meeting of the International Council of Unitarians and Universalists, in Dumaguete City, Philippines.
Make your own guesses before reading further. The answers are buried in the paragraph below.
Each member group to the International Council of Unitarians and Universalists has voting delegates depending on how large its membership is. Each group also pays annual dues to the ICUU based on the group’s own count of its members. Groups from developed countries pay 50 cents (US currency) per member. Groups from less developed countries pay 5 cents per member. The Unitarian Universalist Association (USA) pays the largest share of support, about $60,000 a year. This is less than our calculated dues, which would be about $20,000 more. The answers to the above question: The USA has the largest number of adult members, 163,000. The second largest denomination is the 450-year old Unitarian Church of Transylvania (which is a Hungarian speaking province of Romania), with 45,000 members. The third largest is the church in Hungary, with 25,000. I understand that the Hungarians and Transylvanians will merge into one Hungarian-speaking Unitarian denomination in the near future, returning to their historic relationship. India (mostly in the Khasi Hills of the far Northeast Indian state of Meghalaya) has 10,000. Canada has 5,000 adult Unitarians. The liberal religious community of the Netherlands, recognized as our newest member at the February 7 ICUU Council meeting, has 4,300 members. United Kingdom has 3,700, but some great old church buildings.
UU Church of the Philippines has 2,000 adult members (and tons of kids!) Our newest “emerging group,” the UUs from Kenya, counts itself with 476 members. For now, I’m leaving off other. smaller or emerging groups from the developing world (and some of the shrinking European groups).
To read more about the council meeting, visit the Faith without Borders weblog: http://uuwithoutborders.blogspot.com/
Filed under: International, Travels, UU Denomination and Pacific Central District News and Views | Tags: Earthquake, ICUU, Philippines, UUCP
This is what Lee Boeke Burke, US Partner Church networker for the UU Church of the Philippines (UUCP), wrote this from Wisconsin:
News is coming in of a large earthquake which hit Negros Island late morning their time.. A 6.8, give or take a tenth, quake had an epicenter about 70 km. north of Dumaguete. There have been several aftershocks and for a while there was a tsunami warning issued, but it has been lifted now. On Negros there have been landslides, fallen structures and at least 13 deaths reported in the early news reports. Here is one link: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/46276699/ns/world_news/
Cathy Cordes and Bob Guerrero have posted on facebook from Dumaguete. Cathy says that the quake hit while she and many others on route to ICUU were in the air between Manila and Dumaguete. They felt an aftershock when they arrived but there was no damage to the resort where they are staying. All the cooks fled to the hills following the quake, though. Bob sent a photo of the sea by Dumaguete looking calm enough.
About an half hour ago I skyped with Rebecca Siennes who said that there have been several scary experiences related to the quake and aftershocks, but all the UUCP folk and ICUU delegates are fine. Due to several bridges coming down, a couple UUCP leaders from elsewhere on Negros are unable to get to the conference and Silliman University closed down so the ICUU activities happening there had to be relocated to higher ground. No news yet about conditions in the villages with UU churches.
Julie Steinbach emailed a report of some long aftershocks, but there has been very little damage in Dumaguete and our ICUU friends from around the world are “keeping calm and carrying on.” And no doubt having a good time and developing some excellent stories to share when they come home.
THIS IS WHAT ONE OF OUR ICUU CONFERENCE ATTENDEES HAS POSTED MORE RECENTLY
in part to reassure those attendees who are on their way here:
How lucky are we to have a geological physicist in our group? But does he know how to swim?
Dear Council Meeting Attendees,
Some of you who have not yet arrived in Dumaguete may have heard news about earthquakes on Negros Island, and may be concerned about coming here. There was a magnitude 6.7 quake at 11:30 local time this morning followed by aftershocks of magnitude 4-6, most recently at 8:30 pm. Several of us have experienced moderate shaking here at Dumaguete. The epicenters of these quakes are 50-70 km away, along the coast of Negros Island, northeast of Dumaguete. The only damage that has been reported is in the area near the epicentre.
There have been rumours that a tsunami warning was issued, and many local people have taken these seriously. I monitor the Pacific-wide tsunami warning sites, and have seen no warnings, only information statements. It is very rare for a 6.7 magnitude earthquake to produce a damaging tsunami. In the case of this morning’s quake, if there had been a tsunami, it should have passed Dumaguete before about 1:30 pm. There have been no reports that a tsunami was actually generated.
I will continue to monitor both the earthquake and tsunami monitoring networks and will pass on any further information that I learn.
Please do not change your plans to attend the Council Meeting! We who are already here look forward to welcoming you here.
By the way, although you may know me as an active UU and as a nominee for Treasurer of the ICUU, in my other life I am a research professor at Physics of Geological Processes, University of Oslo, and have done research on tsunamis for many years. But I can’t predict the future.
No one can rule out that a major tsunami-generation earthquake could occur here, as it could on any other coastline in the world. But there is no particular reason to be alarmed about the current situation on Negros Island. Tsunamis in the Philippines are rare.
Your best source of real-time information about tsunamis in this area is http://ptwc.weather.gov/. For earthquakes, the site is http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/recenteqsww/Quakes/quakes_all.html.
If a significant earthquake occurs, prepare to head for higher ground (the upper storeys of a strong building are good enough) or inland. If you see either a receding shoreline, or what appears to be a strong tide, move quickly to safety. Under no circumstance should you approach the shore until after the danger has passed.
Best wishes and safe travels!
Filed under: International, Travels, UU Denomination and Pacific Central District News and Views | Tags: ICUU, Philippines
On my way to the meeting of the International Council of Unitarians and Universalists.
The flights to Tokyo and then Manila were uneventful. A bit of a delay as I realized that a rendezvous with Cathy C. was not going to be easy, since her airline uses a different terminal, and waiting for a shuttle seemed even longer than the shuttle ride would have been. It was after 10 PM Sunday when I got to the Lotus Garden Hotel. Many other visitors had arrived the day before and spent the day at museums and attending worship at the only UU congregation in Metro Manila, in the poor neighborhood of Bicutan. Rev. Brian, from Canada, is president of the ICUU. There’s a short video of him at worship, showing some of the international crowd and the 20 women and 30 kids of the Bicutan congregation, at this YouTube link. That night the group visited a biweekly UU discussion group—not quite a congregation–in the liberal suburb of Quezon City. As I recall from last year, it includes young adult professionals, including some expats.
After checking in I went out in the street to change some money—at a “money changer,” all of which are small store fronts, all Muslim-run. Some of them have a can for donations to support a mosque. 42.70 Philippine pesos to $1 US was the best rate I found.
The buffet breakfast looked more like American dinner—chicken a la king, rice, soup, etc. Next to it was the “Filipino Corner” with some fried fish and other items. But lots of fruit, a young chef making omelets, and bread for toasting—the whitest slices, with white crust, that I’ve ever seen.
After breakfast, we went back to the airport and flew Cebu Pacific airways to Dumaguete City, on Negros Island. Cebu Pacific makes Southwest Airlines look like luxury service. On its website, after you buy your cheap airfare, you pay for your choice of seats, and pay for your luggage. Still, the total cost was cheap.
As we were on our way, an earthquake struck north of Negros Island—6.8 on the Richter scale, followed by an aftershock. Nihal told us this after we landed and got in the vans to come to the South Sea Hotel Resort. We had a buffet lunch on the patio near the ocean at 1 PM. Fortunately, the cooks had prepared it before the quake, as they had all run away from their posts. (For dinner, we learned, hotel would solve this problem by taking us to a restaurant in town that it owned.)
Lunch conversation centered on whether the water just over the wall would turn into a tsunami. A local UU had posted notice of a tsunami warning on Facebook. A scientist in our group from Norway looked up the quake at the U. S. Geological Survey website, and told us its epicenter was about 70 kilometers north of our island.
I asked if my second-floor room would be high enough if we needed to run for it. One said yes and asked how much I’d charge to let others in. I said: “$50 now, and $100 to get in.”
After lunch and a nap, I found out how to walk into town. Many of the stores were shuttered, and I couldn’t find a tee-shirt that said Philippines on it—plenty of other things, though. Someone told me the closings were a result of the quakes and tsunami fear.
At dinner I sat next to Rev. Fred, who had been at a UU Women’s Conference at the campus of Silliman University. He said that after the earthquake the Negros Oriental provincial governor had declared a Level 2 tsunami warning. Everyone fled, and the streets and roads were packed and chaotic.
Dinner at Kri restaurant was a bit loud, and more of us showed up than the owner had expected, so a few of us had to wait for more food to come out.
Last March in Dumaguete, my group stayed in a hotel in town. I had conversations with the night security guard, a young Filipino who told me he had gone to the UU church with a parent, but later he began attending a more conservative church. His name was Emerson. Today, before I headed into town, I passed a group of young people at the resort, and one of them stopped and called me by name “Mr. Roger?” It was Emerson. He pulled out my business card, on which I had written Ralph Waldo Emerson and the essay title “Self-Reliance.” He was happy to be a security guard no longer, but to be assistant cook at Kri restaurant. So I saw him again after dinner tonight.
I’m finishing this blog post in the resort’s bar, with a lot of European and British UUs. I’m turning in now, hoping to get on a regular sleep schedule.
Filed under: Becoming and Being Part of a UU Congregation, Comparative Religion, Comparative Religion, Family Ministry, Graduate Theological school/PSR, Inspiration, International, Religious Studies: History, Travels, Trends in Religion, UU Denomination and Pacific Central District News and Views
Appendix II: Partner Church History—UU Church of the Philippines and North America[1]
| Philippine Church Location | Partner Church Relationship | Year |
| Ulay, Negros Occidental | Partnered with UU church in San Mateo, California | 2001 |
| Calapayan, Negros Oriental | Partnered with UU church in Montclair, California | 2007 |
| Caican, Negros Oriental | Partnered with UU church in Honolulu, Hawaii | 2001 |
| Banaybanay, N. Oriental | Partnered with UU church in Appleton, Wisconsin | 2011 |
| Cansayan-Aquino, N. Oriental | Partnered with UU church in Castine, Maine | 2009 |
| Malingin, Negros Occidental | Partnered with UU church San Diego, California | 2007 |
| Doldol, Negros Occidental | Involved with UU women’s group, Annapolis, Maryland | 2006 |
| Nagbinlod, Negros Oriental | Seeking partner; in conversation: Adelaide (Australia) | |
| Nataban, Negros Occidental | Seeking partner; in conversation: Sacramento | |
| Dumaguete City, N. Oriental | Seeking partner | |
| BagongSilang, N. Occidental | Seeking partner | |
| Bicutan, Metro Manila | Seeking partner | |
| Samayao, Negros Oriental | Partnership lapsed in 2007 with Hayward, California | 2001 |
[1] Lee Boeke Burke, UU Partner Church Council, in an email correspondence with author, December 10, 2011.
Filed under: Becoming and Being Part of a UU Congregation, International, Religious Studies: History, Sermon Archives and Excerpts, Special Events, Travels, UU Denomination and Pacific Central District News and Views | Tags: Philippines, UU Partner Church Pilgrimage
Eric reported about 70 folks showed up for the Roy Zimmerman concert, even with short notice! On Sunday, a number of people were slowed down or dissuaded by the International Marathon’s obstacles. Even I was slowed down, waiting to turn from Fulton right onto Sierra. Thanks to those who made the extra effort. For those who gave up, you can read more on my blog and hear the sermon on http://www.uuss.org.
On Friday I took him to the annual theater/musical Filipino cultural revue of Singa-tala at Luther Burbank High School. We enjoyed it, but only Nihal could understand the lyrics!
Saturday, in the chilly air and bright sun, I walked him around the State Capitol grounds, showing him the Vietnam Veterans’ and Firefighters’ memorials, among others, and the statues of the Sisters of Mercy and Father Junipero Serra, and of course our own apostle of liberty, Thomas Starr King! (It was moved here from the U.S. Capitol in 2009. I take visiting UUs by that statue without announcing it in advance, because I enjoy their surprise when they discover it!).
I also walked him to the Japanese American Civil Liberties Monument. Nihal, a native Sri Lankan, had not known about the U. S internment of Japanese Americans. And I had forgotten that it was Pres. Reagan who signed the reparations and apology legislation… in 1988.
We had a nice Saturday evening dinner and conversation with the Rev. Nihal Attanayake, from the UU Church of the Philippines. Thanks to all who came, and those who brought food!
On Sunday, Dec. 4, Rev. Nihal preached, without notes, two significantly different sermons! (Not yet posted, but podcast will be at this link.) We had soup and a Congregational Conversation afterward. Four UUs from San Mateo came Saturday and Sunday to talk about the benefits of their participation as a Partner Church with a village congregation on Negros Island. As noted above, Monday is the deadline to reserve your spot for the March trip.
We presented Nihal with a size medium UUA Standing on the Side of Love tee-shirt to take back to the tropics. He presented UUSS with a lavender and black plaid hand-loom cloth (from the island of Mindanao) for tables or pulpit decoration. By the way, I still have some white or golden yellow Standing on the Side of Love shirts. I paid $22 for them last year. Just in time for the holidays. If I don’t have your size, go to the Zazzle link in the PS below.
Great news! Several UUSS folks spoke to me after the services with interest in helping UUSS connect and engage with a congregation in the Philippines. Of course, this is why Nihal made UUSS his stop #10 on a month-long visit.
Later I took him to the new airport terminal (with the big red rabbit sculpture) and we hugged as he began a two-day (and five-stop) journey back to Dumaguete City. Your Philippine travel won’t involve quite as many transfers, I’m confident.
I do hope to plan a January meeting for those with interest in pursing a deeper relationship with UUs in the Philippines. Let me know if that includes you!
Filed under: Comparative Religion, Graduate Theological school/PSR, International, Travels | Tags: Christian history in the Pacific Region, D. Min. classes, seminary
Monday morning (September 19) I got to campus at 7:40, before the GTU Library opened, so I went to PSR’s Chapel of the Great Commission to pray and meditate, then I studied for an hour before class.
The six of us in the Doctor or Ministry seminar class met with Prof. Boyung Lee. We talked about the difference between academic or systematic theology and practical or contextual theology. Contextual theology is formed in real life, rather than separate from it in the mind of a genius. It involves research, so we began talking about the various forms of qualitative (vs. quantitative) research, and how those can be applied to the world of religious communities and applied in varied contexts.
Each one of us turned in an 8-page paper giving a “thick” description of the context or setting of our intended research project (mine is the UU Church of the Philippines), with several questions and interests that arise for us about doing work on that context. We each summarized this with our classmates and heard questions and feedback.
I LOVE the dining hall at PSR. Chef Andy runs a great staff and provides a variety of options at every meal. After lunch and some errands I returned to the hall to do some reading for a few hours. Monday was quite hot in the East Bay, so I sat near an open door.
Tuesday morning I was back in the library, starting research on my term paper for the history of Christianity in the Pacific Region. Still trying to figure out what further history research I can do on the UU Church of the Philippines, and haven’t found many new primary sources online in books or periodicals.
I left in time to get to the 11:10 AM chapel service. (The first week we heard from the school’s president, Riess Potterveld. Last week we heard from the academic dean and professor of New Testament, Bennie Liew. He gave a great sermon about Jesus’ parable of the man who held a banquet and whose invitees didn’t show, so he punished them and then had his servants invite regular folks from the street. But one of the guests wasn’t dressed for a fancy occasion, and the host punished him as well.)
This week’s chapel was a hymn sing. Eight students or staffers introduced songs that were important to them from their tradition, and then we sang them. The range included “Gonna Lay Down My Sword and Shield” (an old African American spiritual), “Don’t Be Afraid” (a chantlike song from the Iona Community of Scotland), “When In Our Music God Is Glorified” (a newer hymn that appears in the United Methodist and UUA hymnals), “O Holy City, Seen of John” (a 1910 Social Gospel text set to a Protestant tune from 1848), and a rocking contemporary evangelical or Pentecostal hymn about being raised by the power of Jesus’ blood (introduced to us by an African American lesbian ministry student from Detroit).
…
But our opening hymn was “Enter, Rejoice, and Come In,” #361 from the gray UUA hymnal. It was accompanied by piano, accordion, and two tambourines. We’ve gotta try that at church! The woman who introduced it is an African American UU ministry student who has just transferred to PSR from a Methodist School in Washington, D.C. She told the group that she had been away from church for an extended time after her husband’s death, and this was the first song she sang on her first Sunday back, and she knew she was home. I thanked her later that day. She said she had joined the PSR choir to make sure that some UU songs get included in chapel. During the service we had a prayer of blessing for a stack of new Bibles donated for the chapel’s use by the last graduating class. The chaplain also said he hoped these would stay put in the chapel, and that over time a number of hymnals had gone walking, probably by innocent but neglectful borrowers. He proclaimed a “hymnal amnesty”–no questions asked, just bring them back.
Without fail I fall asleep after lunch, so it’s never good to have a class after lunch, but I do. I was going to skip lunch Tuesday but just couldn’t resist. It was freshly made Middle Eastern food and I had more than I should have, so I had extra coffee.
At my table was a young history classmate and her husband. They are from the Asian tribal group (i.e., non-Hindu) called Mizo, from the northeast Indian state of Mizoram, near Bangladesh and Burma. He is a Presbyterian minister, here getting a Ph. D., and she is taking special courses and maybe pursuing a D. Min., like me. Their church does not allow women to be ministers, however. They like their Presbyterian Mission Home housing and classes, and their two kids like the local school, but California life seems distracting. They are used to having people just drop in the house back home, whereas here folks need to plan a social occasion. When they learned that I stay over with friends on Monday night, they invited me to stay with them sometime. They introduced me to a young woman from Korea, also getting a Ph.D. She mentioned being in a class about Greek philosophy and needing to read Plato in the original, which was a challenge. The Korean woman asked the Indian man if he could help with the Greek (given its use in his Biblical studies). He said, “Maybe, but that’s Classical Greek” (and not Koine Greek). I grabbed more coffee, and the man’s wife and I headed to our history class.
…
We started by breaking into pairs to do an exegesis (exegetical analysis) of a 1521 account by a Spaniard of Magellan’s preaching about Christianity to a group of Filipinos and inviting them to convert if he could locate his priest. Most of us agreed that this was part of a colonialist plot. However, the professor pointed out that Magellan had stumbled on those Islands by accident, as he had been fleeing the Portuguese ships while on a spice-hunting mission and didn’t really know where he was. He was killed later that year in the Philippines.
…
Even with only 9 in the class, it’s a communication challenge to have an inter-cultural group. We have a Korean priest, a Korean evangelical/Weslyean man, a white Pagan woman, a male Samoan ministry student, my Indian friend, and another white guy. Plus an Asian American woman with us on a laptop computer, through Skype.
After our pairing up for the analysis of the 1521 account, we took a break, and I heard one of the Korean speakers asking the Indian woman about a word he hadn’t understood from the conversation. It was “exegesis,” which to the ear can sound as if it has something to do with Jesus. I tried to help by typing it into my laptop’s dictionary.
So… The linguistic differences take some time in making sure we are all on the same page, and make lectures and discussions a bit slower than they might be with an all-American crowd. Yet, given this historical topic, these differences add a dimension I rarely had in college days. And, I might add, that at the start of class, one of our fellows was missing for 15 minutes. It turns out it was the other white American guy. He had been sitting in the room right next door to us, mistakenly thinking that’s where the class met and wondering where we were.
So, it’s safe to say, everybody needs you to cut them some slack now and then.
Work back at church has been crazy since I returned from Berkeley, including the break-in of an office of two staff members, with the theft of two PCs and a flat-screen TV/DVD player (all new, since they had been replacements after a similar theft a year earlier). But this time the crooks sprayed a fire extinguisher all over the place, to cover their tracks and fingerprints. Looked like a war zone. So we’ve been moving staff offices around, and preparing to bring on new custodial help as well as restructure our administrative staffing. Thank goodness I didn’t have to write a sermon for Sunday!
