My paper “With Two Lamps to Guide Me; Staughton Lynd as Theologian” has been accepted by the Unitarian Universalist Collegium: An Association for Liberal Religious Studies for presentation at their November 19-22, 2014 conference. Here’s my proposal:

Staughton Lynd is an American historian, social justice activist, labor lawyer, and, I argue, theologian. He was the only significant white organizer of the Mississippi Freedom Summer Project, was deeply involved in protests against the Vietnam War, and has played an important role in theorizing the problems and potentials of the contemporary American labor movement. Despite his own profession of faith as a religious person, and frequent deployment of religious tropes, little scholarly attention has been paid to how he proceeds as religious thinker. In this paper I track Lynd’s development from his childhood involvement in Ethical Culture through his work as a Quaker prison abolitionist in Youngstown, Ohio.

I suggest that Lynd functions as what Sallie McFague calls a parabolic theologian. As McFague presents it, parabolic theology “is not a theory to be applied to literary genres of the Christian tradition but a kind of reflection that arises from them.” It resides primarily in works of literature, stories, poems, autobiographies and, most importantly, parables. Parabolic theology is “embodied thinking, thought which cannot finally abstract from the person who is doing the thinking.” Parabolic theologians are not known, primarily, by what they say but rather how they live and what they do. Lynd is a parabolic theologian exemplar. Throughout his career his consistent emphasis has been on pairing what he terms “exemplary action” with theoretical reflection.

Lynd’s own theological interests center on the Latin American tradition of liberation theology. He pays particular attention to the liberation theology concepts of the preferential option for the poor and accompaniment. He has found these two concepts to be essential for his own work as an activist and has theorized how they can help other activists engage in more authentic and effective work.

The paper is built around the discussion of some of Lynd’s key parables, how they relate to his activism and what they suggest about an important religious concern of his, the kingdom of God. In sharing it at Collegium I hope to prompt Unitarian Universalists to see the work of this religious humanist as a resource in our own strivings to create a justice filled world.

Tomorrow I am preaching at First Parish in Lexington on reparations for slavery (services start at 10:30 a.m.). My sermon is titled “The River May Not Be Turned Aside.” I am using two texts. The first is from Deuteronomy and the second is from Frederick Douglass’s “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?” 

Deuteronomy 15:12-15

If your brother, a Hebrew man or a Hebrew woman, is sold to you, he shall serve you for six years, and in the seventh year you shall send him forth free from you. And when you send him forth free from you, you shall not send him forth empty-handed. You shall surely provide him from your flock, from your threshing floor, and from your vat, you shall give him from what the Lord, your God, has blessed you. And you shall remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the Lord, your God, redeemed you; therefore, I am commanding you this thing today.

from “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?”

What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? I answer; a day that reveals to him, more than all the other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him, your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciation of tyrants, brass fronted impudence; your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, with all your religious parade and solemnity, are, to Him, mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy–not a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages. There is not a nation on the earth guilty of practices more shocking and bloody than are the people of the United States, at this very hour.

This summer I will be serving the First Parish in Lexington as their summer preacher. They have me leading services seven Sundays in July and August. Two of the highlights that I have planned are an avant garde service featuring the musical stylings of DC house and funk great DJ Lokee (click here for a mix) and another inviting labor into the pulpit. I am particularly excited about my July 6th service, celebrating the Fourth of July, which will include reflections on the continuing relevance of Frederick Douglass’s magnificent speech “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July.”

I am pleased to announce that I will be preaching at the Starr King Fellowship, Plymouth, NH on March 23 and at the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Wilmington, NC on August 3. I hope to have further announcements about my summer preaching schedule soon.

Two members of the Russian punk group Pussy Riot are currently on an international tour. Their recent stop has gotten a lot of press. Wednesday they appeared at a Amnesty International Benefit concert in New York alongside a host of celebrities. Their tour has provided them with an opportunity to criticize the Russian government under Vladimir Putin and its intolerance of dissent and GLBT rights. 

I am glad that they are bringing attention to the lack of freedom in Russia. But I am afraid that the laudatory celebration of them by the news media in the United States is serving another purpose. It suggests that somehow the United States is a bastion of free speech and tolerant of dissent. This is not true. Obama’s America does not tolerate dissent, not real dissent anyway. Since 2012 multiple anarchists, four in Seattle and one in New York, have been jailed for refusing to cooperate with grand juries. In echoes of the McCarthy era, the anarchists have been asked to provide the names other activists and then thrown in jail when they have refused to do so. And, of course, there is the well publicized case of Edward Snowden who, after exposing the sweeping extent of illegal government spying, had to seek asylum in Putin’s Russia.

The attention that Pussy Riot is receiving should then be a reminder that governments are most inclined to tolerate dissent when it appears elsewhere. It is politically convenient for Putin to provide Snowden with asylum. It makes him appear more tolerant of dissent. And the same is true with Obama. It is politically convenient for the United States to welcome Pussy Riot. It strengthens the myth that this country is a haven for free thought and freedom of speech. That is not true of Obama’s America, just as it is not true of Putin’s Russia. 

On Sunday January 5 I begin a two month term as the sabbatical minister of the First Religious Society in Carlisle. I will be preaching January 5th, 12th, and 19th and February 2nd, 9th, and 16th. This Sunday’s sermon is entitled “Let’s Have a Jubilee” and calls for the elimination of debt based upon the biblical concepts of sabbatical and jubilee. 

Yesterday Cambridge police arrested and assaulted Jason Freedman during the course of a legal IWW picket in Harvard Square. There was a march against police brutality today that I wasn’t able to go to. So, I wrote a letter to the Mayor and Police Commissioner instead. I’m posting it here in case anyone wants to use it as a template for writing their own letter.

Dear Mayor Davis and Commissioner Haas:

I am writing to protest last night’s outrageous actions by the Cambridge Police Department. As you know, yesterday evening’s legal picket against the union busting Insomnia Cookies was broken up by Cambridge police. Video footage from the picket suggests that while the police attempted to disburse the protestors they assaulted Jason Freedman in the process of arresting him. Freedman has since been charged with disorderly conduct, resisting arrest and assaulting a police officer. This despite the fact that he was the one assaulted! Such disgraceful behavior on the part of the police cannot be tolerated. The police are supposed to protect the community not, as appears to be the case, intervene on the side of management during a labor dispute.

You have the power to right this wrong. All charges against Freedman should be dropped immediately. The police officers involved should be suspended pending investigation. Police brutality is simply unacceptable. Cambridge can do better than this.

Sincerely,

Rev. Colin Bossen

cc: Boston Globe, Boston Herald, Harvard Crimson, Boston IWW

I will be preaching at the First Parish in Dorchester tomorrow, Sunday, November 3. The title of the service is “Unknown Visions of Love.” Service starts at 11:00 a.m. 

I am excited to announce that I will be preaching at the Theodore Parker Unitarian Universalist Church in West Roxbury, MA on December 1, 2013. Theodore Parker has long been one of my heroes and I am delighted to have the opportunity to fill the pulpit where he first made a name for himself as a preacher.

I will be preaching and presiding at the October 18 service of the Harvard Unitarian Universalist Ministry for Students. The service is at noon in Andover Hall. It is open to the public so if you’re on campus please consider yourself invited.