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David Hines © 2 June 2019
I got this sermon idea from my doctor.
When I saw her a couple of weeks ago, she said you need to take it easy.
She was talking about the heart attack I had last July.
And of me often being exhausted with legal campaigning.
Continue reading My doctor told me to take it easyRead below or download the PDF
Clay Nelson © 26 May 2019
The answer to whether or not racism is curable is “maybe”. Scientists are working on it, but they aren’t there yet. But they do know a few prerequisites. Racism is what Rudyard Kipling coined as “the white man’s burden.” Not just for Trump supporters and people who dress up in bedsheets but all white people, even for Unitarians in their predominantly white faith movement with their first three principles which are the antidote to racism.
If you’re white you are subject to white consciousness, what Unitarian Charles Alexander describes as moderate white supremacy. “Moderate White Supremacy is systemic, invasive, and self-perpetuating, continually prioritising White cultural values and interests above those of marginalised people of colour. It permeates and corrupts our practices, systems and institutions, even corrupting the reforms we institute to bring about equality.” As a black man Alexander points out that it is the white people’s burden to cure themselves.
Continue reading Is racism curable?with Rev. Clay Nelson
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Clay Nelson © 19 May 2019
Continue reading When did immigration become a bad word?A meeting in Dunedin presided over by the mayor unanimously called for a ban on further Chinese migrants.
New Zealand in the 19th century strived to be a ‘Britain of the South Seas’ and Pākehā saw non-white migrants as undesirable. The discovery of gold in California, Canada, Australia and later New Zealand attracted many Chinese men wanting to make their fortunes before returning home.
In the 1860s the Dunedin Chamber of Commerce sought to replace European miners who had left Otago for the new West Coast fields. Chinese were seen as hard-working and law-abiding, and they were also willing to rework abandoned claims. The first 12 men arrived from Victoria in 1866; 2000 more had followed by late 1869. Chinese women seldom migrated to New Zealand. In 1881 there were only nine women to 4995 men, raising fears that white women were at risk from Chinese men.
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Clay Nelson © 12 May 2019
When the man stopped for the amber light as he legally should instead of gunning through the intersection trying to beat the red light, the woman behind him laid on her horn, opened her window screaming abuse at him while giving him the universal finger of outrage for preventing her from running the light. While waiting for the light to change there was a knock at her window. It was a constable inviting her out of the car. He put her under arrest. At the station she was finger-printed and put in a holding cell.
Continue reading The need for identityRead below, or download the PDF
Clay Nelson © 5 May 2019
If you live in Aotearoa New Zealand there are a few positives that have resulted from the horror of March 15, which doesn’t mean the price wasn’t way too high. New gun laws passed nearly unanimously within a couple weeks that have banned automatic and semiautomatic weapons. National and international efforts are ongoing to reign in social media as platforms for hate speech. In depth debates to distinguish free speech from hate speech fill public discourse. And in my mind, a greater recognition by non-Muslims that Muslims are not the threat they have been painted to be since 9/11 and continue to be by Trump and other politicians. They are more often the victims of violence than its perpetrators. They need protection from every religion’s far right fundamentalists as much as anybody else. The outpouring of support for the victims and the Muslim community shown at vigils, burying the local mosques with flowers of condolence, the raising of money for the victims’ families, concerts in support of the Muslim community, the government’s paying for the funerals and fast-tracking visa applications, non-Muslim women wearing hijabs in solidarity with their sisters, and mosques opening their doors to their non-Muslim neighbours to share their faith to build bridges have been transforming acts. We are not who we used to be. From my perspective, we are better than we used to be before March 15.
Continue reading Revisiting RamadanRead below or download the PDF
Clay Nelson © 28 April 2019
Last Sunday we focused on the Easter Story. This Sunday we focus on the ANZAC story.
You can be forgiven if you are experiencing spiritual whiplash, for they are oppositional narratives. While I’m sure it is only coincidence that they are juxtaposed so closely to each other, it is a helpful reminder of our human condition and our predilection for redemptive violence. For one is a white poppy story and the other a red poppy one.
Continue reading ANZAC — the other side of the storyRead below or download the PDF
Opening Words are We Don’t Know What Happened
by Unitarian minister Daniel Budd.
Clay Nelson © 21 April 2019
I may have told this story on Easter before, but the Easter story has been recounted a couple of thousand times. So, I have precedents.
My daughter had little choice when she was young about being active in church. She went to a church kindy. She went to an Episcopal School for girls her first two years in primary while I finished seminary. She went to Sunday School. She sang in the choir and earned awards as her skills improved. She was an acolyte when girls were first allowed to serve at the altar. She was active in the church youth group. As she was showered with love, affection and attention by the congregations I served, she didn’t seem to mind her life as a PK (a preacher’s kid).
Continue reading Can a Unitarian be resurrected?Read below or download the PDF
Jonathan Mason © 14 April 2019
Thank you, Clay. I’m Jonathan Mason, a long time member of the church and the head of the 2019 Pledge Drive and I am happy to come to you today to talk about the state of the congregation and the formal kick-off of our 2019-2020 pledge drive.
It’s been three years since I addressed the congregation and before we get to the canvass issue at hand, I’d like to give a quick summary of my history as a Unitarian and the ongoing development of my Unitarian theology.
Continue reading Pledge SundayRead below, or download the PDF.
Clay Nelson © 7 April 2019
Sometimes a sermon just won’t behave. It refuses to accept its fifteen minutes of fame are over and go quietly into that dark night with a whimper. Last week’s sermon insists on being chewed on and savoured but never swallowed. It prefers to haunt the recesses of my mind demanding, not closure so I can move on unchanged, but discomfort, daring me to move forward into a deeper understanding of who I am. I want to scream at it to go to its room, “bang the door if you like, but go.” I need some respite from all the uncomfortable questions the tragedy in Christchurch has wrought like a snow globe vigorously shaken. “Too bad,” the cheeky sermon taunts me. “You will have no peace of mind until I give you a piece of mine.” And so, it goes. I relent. Last week’s sermon has reclimbed the pulpit, to tell us, “Ahem, let us do go on.”
Continue reading Being “Othered”Read below, or download the PDF
Clay Nelson © 31 March 2019
When I was about six (that would’ve been about 1955) something happened that had a profound effect on me. We were visiting for the summer with my grandparents. One evening at the dinner table, my grandfather (born in 1895) went into a tirade about anyone who was not a white straight person, using every reprehensible, but common smear to describe each. Since I had not learned what that hate language even meant yet, I was not shocked. What shocked me was the fury my mother (born in 1925) directed at her father. She made it perfectly clear he was never to use such language in front of her children again. I doubt if it changed his 19th century views, but it left an indelible mark on me.
Continue reading Maintaining Unitarian principles when we can’t agree on the facts