A Vision for Liberal Religion

2025 May 19 | NAUA Academy, News

Ralph Waldo Emerson decried the Unitarianism of his day as “corpse-cold” and urged the religion to evolve with new understandings of the contemporary world. Those understandings are still with us today, but our Living Tradition asks us to continue evolving with the times. Dr. Matthew Shear will share with us a positive view of what a liberal religion for the 21st century could look like.

Dr. Matthew Shear is a 1980 graduate of the New England College of Optometry, and completed a post-graduate program from the Baltimore Academy for Behavioral Optometry in 2002. He has also trained as a peer counselor, eventually teaching the technique to others. His particular interest is in the effects of misperception on our understanding of ourselves and the world, and how that affects our behaviors. This focus eventually led him from clinical practice to becoming a religious professional. He began preaching lay led services in 2007, and in 2018 was engaged by Channing Church in Rockland, MA as their full time Preacher, where he served for two years. A former Board member of UUMUAC, he is still an occasional preacher of their 3rd Wednesday Vesper services and elsewhere.

 

The Role of Faith Communities in Abolishing Nuclear Weapons

2025 May 8 | NAUA Academy, News

Discussions about nuclear weapons are often framed as security, legal, political or military issues. Yet equally important are moral and ethical perspectives, and faith communities play a critical role in bringing in such dimensions to discourses about nuclear weapons, which poses existential threats to humanity and our planet. In this talk, Anna Ikeda of Soka Gakkai International will discuss efforts of the people of faith in advancing nuclear disarmament and abolition, both at the United Nations and grassroots levels.

Feb. 11, 2025 – Boom Or Doom? Is Unleashing AI Intelligent or Wise?

2025 May 6 | NAUA Academy, News

For decades, Artificial Intelligence was one of those “maybe someday” dreams. Seemingly out of nowhere, ChatGPT exploded on the scene in early 2023. The clock is now ticking – the capabilities of A.I. are going to improve exponentially, and very quickly. As with almost every technological advancement in our lifetime, we find it easy to imagine the beneficial uses, but have distressingly little imagination about what the unintended consequences could be. This talk will mostly be based on a collection of newspaper and magazine articles that give us glimpses of reasons that we could very well regret ever opening up this Pandora’s box.

Ken has a lso provided “points to ponder” document with links to some of the issues raised in his talk

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Bio: In September of 2023 Ken Ing presented “Left versus Left: What’s Happening Here Ain’t Exactly Clear”, then in March of 2024 he presented “I Before We Except Overseas: Tracing The Roots Of Our Multi-Century Identity Crisis”.

Ken retired in 2019 from a career in IT and lives in the Puget Sound area in Washington State.

Jan. 14, 2025 – When we Almost Got it Right – Societies that Worked

2025 Jan 12 | NAUA Academy, News

As we hear distressing stories of violence and oppression from around the world, we may benefit from reminding ourselves of times and places when human beings did organize themselves into durable just societies.

In this talk Dr. Reimers discusses some of these times and places: from the world’s first cities in 4000 BCE, to  the Indus Valley civilization, widely revered as the most advanced society of 2000 BCE, to the small democratic city states in Central America, which held off the encroachments of the Aztec empire for centuries, to the peaceful coexistence among Christians, Jews and Muslims in 12th-century Andalusia  which lit the spark for the European Renaissance a century later.

Dr. Reimers further discusses what principles and strategies they used to organize their societies, how they ended, and how their experience may inform our ideas of justice today.

Dr. Mark Reimers is a quantitative neuroscientist who has worked at the National Institutes of Health, the Karolinska Institute in Sweden, and Michigan State University. He was the leader of the Richmond Humanists in Virginia and UU forum in Lansing Michigan. He has lectured on a wide variety of scientific, humanist, religious, and behavioral subjects.

Liberal Religion—Is It Time for Hospice?

2024 Dec 12 | NAUA Academy, News

Religious participation is plummeting. “Church” has become a bad brand. Should we resign ourselves to palliative care for our aging congregations?
Can we find ways to feed the hunger for meaning and community?
 
One thing is certain: We cannot church the way we always have and hope for different results. 

Speaker: Rev Peter Morales is the former president of the UUA. Before becoming UUA president he was senior minister at Jefferson Unitarian Church in Colorado. Jefferson was one of the UUA’s fastest growing congregations during his tenure. Before entering the ministry he was editor and publisher of a community newspaper in Oregon. He has lived abroad as a Fulbright lecturer in Spain and a Knight International Press fellow in Peru. Peter lives in Sequim, WA with his wife Phyllis.

 

Nov. 12, 2024 – Overcoming Identity Politics in America: The Organization FAIR

2024 Nov 13 | NAUA Academy

Previously, Ken Ing traced the roots of the identity centric movement that dominates the UUA, and influences institutions throughout North America. As a follow-up, Sunil Wijeyesekera describes the work of The Foundation Against Intolerance and Racism (FAIR), an organization that counters identity politics. FAIR is a non-partisan civil rights organization based on universal principles of Fairness (not discriminating based on skin color or other immutable characteristics), Understanding (being willing to listen to other points of view) and our Common Humanity. Sunil

Wijeyesekera retired in 2020 after a career in material science/engineering. He has been a UU for 38 years. Sunil is currently a member of the NAUA Hayward Fellowship, as well as a Chapter Leader for FAIR. In describing the work of FAIR, Sunil Wijeyesekera simulates a discussion of how we can apply our NAUA values in the larger society. Download his slides: FAIR Slide deck