The Clarendon Connection

News of Clarendon Hill Presbyterian Church August 2007

Sunday Schedule

Choir rehearsal 9:45 a.m.

Worship 10:30 a.m.

Refreshments and fellowship 11:30 a.m.

Communion will be celebrated on August 5th.

August Calendar

Show for “leave the light on” at the Nave Gallery continues through August 5th (for more info, see page 2)

Orders for Equal Exchange items will be taken at church on August 5th (for more info, see page 1)

On Wednesday, August 8th, there will be a light supper beginning at 6:00 p.m. and then further conversations on our spring retreat topics (for more info, see page 3)

Peace, Justice and Mission committee will meet at 7:30 p.m. on Thursday, August 9^th.

Project MUM, on Saturday, August 18^th, beginning at 9:00 p.m. (for more info, see page 2)

Yoga, after the service on Sunday, August 19th (for more info, see page 4)

Parish News

We pray for the family of Paul Ebai, who passed away on June 28th. His funeral service was held at the church on July 14th. His body was taken home for burial on July 22^nd, and his family hopes to be back by the middle of August. May God’s love, healing, and peace surround his wife Evelyn, and his children Jim, Grace, and Paul Jr. as they grieve.

The Presbyterian Coffee Project

Orders will be taken for Equal Exchange COFFEE (drip or whole bean) and TEA (English Breakfast, Earl Grey, Green, Rooibos) and CRANBERRIES, at church on Sunday, August 5th. You can send orders to Katherine no later than August 5th by phone (617-628-6716) or email (kgkg@gis.net). Delivery will be August 12th. Remember that for all products we purchase through the Presbyterian Coffee project, Equal Exchange makes a contribution to the Presbyterian Hunger Program.

Please note that chocolate bars will NOT be available during the summer months.

What is EQUAL EXCHANGE? In 1991, Equal Exchange became the first U.S. company to adopt international fair trade standards as guiding principles on 100% of their products. By working with democratic farmer cooperatives around the world and paying a fair price, Equal Exchange supports efforts to improve local communities, putting more control and greater income in the hands of impoverished, small-scale farmers in developing nations. We also serve freshly made Equal Exchange coffee at Clarendon Hill’s coffee hours!

The Nave Gallery

The current show, “leave the light on”, runs through August 5^th

Artists include Maria Davis, Kristen Day, Beth Driscoll, Rebecca Hesketh, Briana Horrigan, Joe Keinberger, Alethea Roy, cerebot and PRINCESSdie.

About the show

Curator: Beth Driscoll

Light n., adj. something that makes things visible or affords illumination,

The sense that we’re making it up as we go along both challenges and inspires most of the artists that I know. Our search for sustainable ways to be inspired and productive is just one part of our job description. The markers along this path can take every kind of form including those of: places, ideas and people.

As artists we can serve as beacons to one another at that intersection where our paths cross. The motley crew organized before you represents just such an intersection. The point on the map that we’ve organized around is the little house studios, a tiny studio building in Somerville, Mass. from which we’ve all worked in one capacity or another over the past year.

The structured influences of the collaborative groups; the Lady cougars all girl art gang. The miracle 5 and the olde ghosts are all well represented here as well as the less deliberate ways that artist’s work cross-pollinates.

As an organizing principle we’ve chosen to work in portraiture for this show in order to provide the viewer a means to better tease out the connections and influences between the artists represented.

This group of artists has left the light on for one another through their collective generosity in sharing their time, space, work and energy. Thank you for coming to our show we’ll leave the light on for you.

Project MUM will take place on Saturday, August 18^th, from 9:00 p.m. to 1:00 a.m.

It’s back! Project MUM, a unique and unforgettable open-air dance party, could only take place in Somerville, a city known for its innovative use of art space. This year's event pays tribute to the glorious 1970s and features four hours of music spun by DJs flack, Axel Foley and pace, with lighting by Todd Sargent/VDA Productions that provide the perfect backdrop for your fabulous dance moves. Eye-popping video and light sculptures will include a psychedelic slideshow flashback featuring your own authentic 70s photos. Special guest video artist jackbackrack and celebrity dance stages organized by Alissa Cardone of Kinodance Company, an internationally known intermedia performance and dance troupe based in Somerville.

FUNDRAISER FOR THE ARTS:

$10 suggested donation

Proceeds will support ARTSomerville, the Somerville Arts Council, Mudflat Pottery Studio, inc., Brickbottom Artist Association, Somerville Community Access Television, Joy Street Studios, and Kinodance Company.

MYSpace

Be Project MUM's MYSPACE friend!

CALL FOR PHOTOS:

If you were stylin’ in the 70s and have the pix to prove it, send them in. Photos will be made into a psychedelic slide show projected the night of MUM and may used on the ARTSomerville website and press.

Digital images at least 4”x6” 300 dpi should be emailed to: mum@artsomerville.org

HISTORY:

On August 25, 2006, hundreds of people gathered for the first Project MUM, a unique outdoor dance event under McGrath Highway. A fundraiser for 5 local Somerville arts organizations, MUM06 featured music by DJ Brother Cleve and spectacular lighting (and mirror ball) courtesy of Todd Sargent and the crew at VDA Productions. Did you know the proper name for a disco ball is a mirror ball as they existed long before the advent of disco? The world’s largest mirror ball is in Glasgow, Scotland.

To see a schedule of events, which is updated often, please look at the website: www.artsomerville.org/upcoming.html

The Nave Gallery is a project of ARTSomerville in collaboration with the Clarendon Hill Presbyterian Church. Run and staffed completely by volunteers, the Nave provides an important exhibition space for both local and regional artists.

Light Supper and Conversation

Please join us for a light potluck supper and conversation on Wednesday, August 8^th at the church, beginning at 6:00 p.m. Please bring a potluck dish to share (salad [main or side], cold soup, beverage, dessert, fruit, light appetizers, sandwiches, etc.) your smile, and an open mind! We had a wonderful conversation in July, formulated some great ideas, and look forward to another productive talk and important time for fellowship.

Introduction to Yoga

Come join our small, half-hour class during coffee hour (12:00 noon, on Sunday, August 19th) to practice mindful breathing and gentle yoga postures. Great for stress release, improved flexibility and strength. If interested, please email Liz at cavatorta1@hotmail.com for more info.

Calling all teachers…..

We need you to help teach our children’s Sunday school class. You generally sign up for a month at a time. (Classes run from September to June.) You can teach solo, or recruit a friend to teach with you. The curriculum is excellent, and there are plenty of ideas for interesting activities and much more material than can be used in the 45 minutes or so that the class meets. If you are interested in helping, please see Karl right away.

Welcome to our seminarian!

Sarah Glass will be joining us in the fall as our seminarian, although she has been worshipping with us for several months now. Here is a short biography. Please welcome her officially to Clarendon Hill!

My name is Sarah Glass and I am beginning my second year of studies at Harvard Divinity School. I have been attending Clarendon Hill since February and am excited for the opportunity to serve as an intern. I grew up in the Bay Area in San Jose and am under care with the San Jose Presbytery. I felt God calling me to ministry when I was in high school, and after a few years of denial mixed with terror at the weight of such a responsibility, I finally accepting the work that God was doing in me and applied to Divinity School. My experiences at HDS have shown me that I have a strong passion for community building and spiritual development within community. It is my hope that my time as an intern at Clarendon Hill will provide a safe and supportive space for exploring our faith and our relationship to God together.

Help Needed…..

Thanks to those of you who have contacted me about helping out on Sundays. We are always looking for new people, so if you haven’t had a chance to respond, please let me know. We really need folks to help us with our fellowship time after church. If you don’t feel that you can or want to take it up on your own, you can always find someone else to share the responsibilities with you. You would only be asked to do the coffee hour about every 6 weeks (and if have more folks sign up, it would be even less often!)

Would you be interested in reading scripture on Sunday mornings? Do you have a passion about a mission project that you would like to introduce to the congregation? Could you help by bringing food and setting up the coffee for our fellowship time after Sunday morning services? Are you willing to be a backup for our childcare person? If you are interested in helping out with one or more of these things, please contact Ellen.

Clean Your Desk Campaign

Thank you for your donations to our campaign. They will be packed up and shipped shortly, and arrive in Nicaragua in a few months time. We know that the families of the children who will receive the school supplies will be grateful!

Introducing Soniyoga

Soni and David Anderson have opened a yoga studio in Cambridge, on the corner of Concord Ave and Walden Street. (290 Concord Avenue.) There are classes in Kundalini, Hatha, and 5 Rites. There are morning and evening classes.

Soni was born into yoga in the Fiji Islands, having been yoga massaged as a baby by her grandmother and taught yoga as play by her grandfather. In her teaching , Soni strives to bring the same sense of joy and playfulness that her grandfather shared with her.

Check out the schedule, pictures of the studio, and more at their website:

http://www.soniyoga.com/cm/Home.html

Podcasts!

Even as I am composing this newsletter, I am listening to a podcast of a Sunday morning service at Clarendon Hill that I missed. You can listen to the podcasts on your computer, or you can download them to your MP3 player.

We hope that when you are away on vacation that you take the time to visit and worship at a church or churches where you are. (And we would love to hear about your impressions, and if there are any worship ideas that we can incorporate into our services!) But if you would like to know what was spoken, heard, sung and played on Sunday morning at Clarendon Hill, go to http://www.clarendonhillchurch.org/podcasts.

You can also listen to podcasts of concerts or other musical events that have occurred at the church.

In Memory of Audrey Wright

These memories of Audrey Wright are from Doris Fisher. Audrey died in June at the age of 105. We thank Doris for her ability to connect the many generations at Clarendon Hill.

We met Audrey Browne Wright through her husband, Ed Wright. Ed went to school in Musquodibit, Nova Scotia with Dean. (Dean Fisher was Doris’s husband.) They were married in 1950 at the United Methodist Church on College Avenue. She was widow with three children. She was a teacher at the Cutler School (elementary) in Somerville.

She left her church and became a Presbyterian, and she was a great leader. She was an elder as well as Edward. She was the head of the women’s group. They were a committee that raised $2,000.00 a year. They did that by putting on dinners, teas, bake sales and church fairs. Dinners were served on china plates, with glassware and silverware. The tables would fill the whole downstairs. Pot Roast and Ham and Bean dinners were a favorite.

Audrey was my neighbor on Piggott Road, when the three children were small. They owned a Sunoco Station on Broadway and later lived on Broadway, near Clarendon Hill cemetery.

She loved flowers and when they were on Piggott Road they had a black lab named Skippy. Audrey loved clothes and was a classy lady. She was very personable and always had a smile.

When Lauraly Fisher (Doris and Dean’s daughter) was married in October 1967, Audrey put on the reception. The church was filled to capacity. It was probably the largest wedding held at Clarendon Hill.

They sold the house on Broadway and moved to the Gables in Winchester while Eddie was still alive.

Keynote Speakers Announced for National Welcoming & Affirming Presbyterian Conference

Friday, August 31 – Sunday, September 2^nd, Atlanta, GA

The Rev. Dr. Jack Rogers, Moderator of the 213th General Assembly, Presbyterian minister, Professor Emeritus of Theology at San Francisco Theological Seminary & Fuller Theological Seminary, and author of the best-selling JESUS, THE BIBLE & HOMOSEXUALITY, EXPLODE THE MYTHS, HEAL THE CHURCH. Jack is traveling the country & world with this book tour.

We are thrilled and grateful to announce that Erin Swenson and Jack Rogers will serve as two of our keynote speakers at your National More Light Presbyterians Conference. Erin and Jack will also offer thought-provoking educational workshops.

Register Now!

North Decatur Presbyterian Church, Decatur is the host church this Labor Day weekend. A new tradition has begun with the National MLP Conference offered every other year, on the "off-General Assembly year." Liberating Love, Celebrating Hope! is the 2007 Conference theme.

The Rev. Dr. Erin K. Swenson, Presbyterian minister, pastoral counselor, transgender educator and inspirational speaker. Erin was the first minister in mainline Christianity to maintain pastoral credentials after gender transition. Erin is Co-Founder of SAGE, the Southern Association for Gender Education, and recently served as Co-Moderator, National MLP Board of Directors.

Liberating Love, Celebrating Hope! 2007

Imagine and experience sanctuary and celebration for persons of all sexual orientations and gender identities. Imagine and experience inspiring worship, spiritual nurture, solidarity, friendship and community.

You will want to be part of this extraordinary conference and gathering of justice-seeking, peace-making, fun-loving Presbyterians!

Registration with group discounts, early-registration discount, scholarships for LGBT youth, college and seminary students, community housing and conference housing options available online at http://www.mlp.org/mlp2007.

For more information about the Conference, you may also contact Vikki Dearing, Chair, Conferences & Events, National MLP Board at dearbunt@aol.com or by phone at (405) 203-2929.

Pope Benedict’s mistake

This appeared in The Boston Globe on July 16^th, and was written by James Carroll.

When the likes of Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, or Christopher Hitchens, citing insights of science or the rise of sectarian violence, denounce the very idea of God, fundamentalists strike back by attacking pillars on which such modern criticism stands. In this mode, Pope Benedict XVI last week issued two unexpected decrees, restoring the atavistic Mass of the Council of Trent and resuscitating an outmoded Catholic exclusivism – the notion of a pope-centered Catholicism as the only authentic way to God.

In these reactionary initiatives, Pope Benedict inadvertently shows that he shares a basic conviction with Dawkins et al. – that religion is a primitive impulse, unable to withstand the challenge of contemporary thought.

Yet, instead of feeling intimidated by secular or “scientific” criticisms of religion, a believer can insist that faith in God is a fulfillment of all that fully modern people affirm when they assent to science – or object to violence. At the same time, a believer can advance the Dawkins-Harris-Hitchens critique to say that most articulations of traditional religion of all stripes fall far short of doing “God” justice.

The God whom atheists aggressively deny (the all-powerful, all-knowing, unmoved Mover; the God of damnation, supernatural intervention, salvation-thorough-appeasement, patriarchy, puritanism, war, etc.) is indeed the God enshrined in propositions of the Council of Trent, and in its liturgy. But this God is also one whom more and more believers, including Catholics, simply do not recognize as the God we worship.

Such people regard the fact that God is unknowable as the most important thing to know about God. Traditional propositions of the creed, therefore, must be affirmed neither rigidly nor as if they are meaningless, but with thoughtful modesty about all religious language, allowing for doubt, as well as respect for different creeds – and for no creed.

This is not an entirely new way of being religious. One sees hints of it in the wisdom of many thinkers, from Augustine in ancient times to Nicholas of Cusa in the Renaissance to Kierkegaard in the modern era. But, in fact, the contemporary religious imagination has been transformed by understanding born of science. Once a believer has learned to think historically and critically, it is impossible any longer to think mythically.

Pope Benedict, in last week’s denigration of Christian traditions that lack the unbroken “apostolic succession” of Catholicism, for example, was seeking to protect the “deposit of faith,” those core beliefs that were established by the Apostles themselves. But such literalist reading of apostolic succession goes out the window when one learns that none of the actual Apostles thought that they themselves were establishing a “church” in our sense, independent of Judaism. Similarly, the New Testament is “inspired,” but what does that mean for appeals to “apostolic” authority when one learns that its 27 books were not “canonized” until three centuries after Jesus?

Once we realize that doctrines of orthodoxy evolved over time, we stop treating them as timeless. Indeed, once we understand ourselves as belonging to one religious tradition among many, we lose the innocent ability to regard it as absolute. Once our internal geography recognizes that, however much we are a center, we are not the only one, we have no choice but to affirm the positions of others not as “marginal to our centers,” in a phrase of theologian David Tracy, “but as centers of their own.”

Faced with such difficult recognitions, religious people can retreat into fundamentalism or throw out religious faith altogether. Or we can quite deliberately embrace what the philosopher Paul Ricoeur called a “second naivete.” This implies a movement through criticism to a renewed appetite for the sacred tradition out of which we come, even while implying that we are alive to its meaning in a radically different way. Pope Benedict is attempting to restore, by fiat, the first naivete of “one true church.” In an age of global pluralism, this is simply not tenable.

The Council of Trent, whose Mass and theology (including its anti-Judaism) Benedict wants to reestablish, was summoned about the time Copernicus published his “On the Revolutions of Heavenly Bodies” – the beginning of the scientific age. The Roman Catholic Church made a terrible mistake in rejecting Copernicus, one from which it has only lately been recovering. Pope Benedict is repeating that mistake, as Dawkins and company think religious people are bound to do. But believers need not follow. Indeed, many of us, including Catholics, have moved on from such thinking, if you can call it thinking.

Joy returns when a son is out of harm’s way

This was written by Beverly Beckham and appeared in The Boston Globe in July.

It’s the first time in a year I’ve seen Rosemary happy.

The strain is gone from her face. The tension in her neck, her eyes, the way she held herself tight, the way she was braced for tragedy – all vanished, like a soul exorcised, like night dispelled by day.

Relief has done this. Her son, Mark, is safe, back in the US, out of Iraq.

And Rosemary is back, too.

I didn’t even know she’d been gone. I didn’t know until I saw her last week, walking across the lawn, that for a whole year she’d been weighed down, trudging, afraid of the next step, the next minute, the next day.

I knew she was always worried, and sometimes terrified. I knew her fears were incessant. But she functioned. She showed up. She participated. She smiled. She even listened.

But always, always, my best friend Rose was hearing other things. What ifs. Death counts. Bomb exploding.

Her husband, Richard, is back, too. There is a spring in his step again, his smile is genuine, talking, laughing; the future, not just the past, in his eyes.

Mark is in Texas, they said, relief in every word. Mark is with his wife. Mark and Amy would be flying to North Carolina on Monday night. And Rose and Richard were flying to North Carolina to be at the airport when they arrived.

They waited a year for this. They waited longer for Mark to return to them than for him to be born.

I remember when they were young, what they waited for then: glimpses of each other, Saturday nights, a place to be alone, time to be together. “Richard asked me to the prom,” Rose said way back when we were girls and love was all about proms and phone calls and glimpses of each other.

The dance was at Thayer Academy and I drove there after work to see Rose and Richard dressed up. They walk off the dance floor and out into the night, holding hands under the stars, to see me. Rose, a wisp of a girl, her hair dark and shiny; Richard, a boy still, his face smooth. Both of them happy because though they could imagine tragedy, they didn’t believe in it yet.

They believe in it now. And yet, I saw the boy and girl in them last week, lighthearted and joyful.

A friend who lost her 11-year-old daughter to cystic fibrosis many year ago sums it up this way: “All my son has to do for me to be happy is stay alive.” There isn’t a moment, never mind a day, when she isn’t grateful just because he is.

War does this. It make you grateful when someone comes home. And illness does this. It makes you grateful when there’s a treatment, when someone survives.

And other people’s tragedies do this, too. They make you count your blessings and be grateful for what you have.

Rose and Richard have their son back. It’s no small miracle. It’s a reason for joy.

But joy is short-lived in this world because it’s not all miracles and starlit nights. It’s work and competition and disappointments and struggles and responsibilities and setbacks. And many, many tragedies. So many sons and daughters going off to war and coming home broken. And not coming home at all.

But there are some nights that are all stars. And some days that are all miracle. And they’re to be acknowledged and celebrated, and after they’re over, they’re to be remembered.

I lost the pictures of Rose and Richard I took the night of their prom. But I never lost the memory. Rose was in love. Rose was happy. And I was happy for her.

I feel the same way now. After a year of anguish, Rose and Richard are, for the moment, happy, and almost young again.

The peril of valuing celebrity over history

This appeared in The Boston Globe on July 30^th and was written by James Carroll.

As we entered the stately house in the tony suburb of New York, we commented on what an impressive place it was. Our host looked around with satisfaction. He had a lot of new money, and had only recently acquired the place. It had a slightly Moorish feel, more west coast than east.

“Yes, plus the house has history,” he said. “It used to belong to Upton Sinclair.” As his gaze moved across the high space of the foyer, he added absently, “Or Sinclair Lewis. One of them.” His shrug said “What’s the dif?”

Not even George Babbitt, out of the 1922 Sinclair Lewis novel that sent up petit bourgeois pretension, would have said such a thing. Understand that I, myself, am perfectly capable of confusing well-known authors, especially if they have an overlap of names. No one would mistake Joyce Kilmer for James Joyce, but I did once. So I do not write this smugly.

What my host was displaying though, went beyond such thickheadedness. He loved his house precisely for its association with generalized celebrity, not a particular authorial achievement. Fame, detached from what generates it, is its own value. An obsessive deference to such fame, and an all-consuming preoccupation with it, has become the defining mark of our culture. But why?

The difference between Sinclair Lewis and Upton Sinclair matters. Both were acclaimed novelists, setting much of the literary style of American letters in the first half of the 20^th century. Upton Sinclair’s “The Jungle,” published in 1906 and exposing abuses in the meat packing industry, was the progenitor of muckraking, but as late as 1943 his “Dragon’s Teeth” won the Pulitzer Prize. He was a socialist and frequently ran for political office.

Among the many people who were inspired by him was the young Sinclair Lewis, who joined a short-lived utopian community that Upton Sinclair founded in 1907. But Lewis became famous for “Main Street” and “Babbitt” in the early 1920s and in 1930, became the first American writer to win the Nobel Prize. Like Upton Sinclair, Sinclair Lewis was profoundly counter-cultural, but he was an omni-directional satirist, and his 1935 forecast of American fascism, “It Can’t Happen Here,” included a portrait of Upton Sinclair as a political nutcase.

It was my host’s house that “had history,” but not my host. The shallowness of contemporary public discourse, devoid of history, is everywhere visible – from the “eternal now” of celebrity journalism to the absurdity of an “antiwar” rhetoric that assumes, in fact, a permanent US war machine in Iraq. In the emerging Democratic consensus, forged by Congressional leaders and presidential front-runners, supposedly in opposition to Bush’s war, “out now” is becoming “out when conditions permit” – which is, of course, Bush’s exact position. Such conditions will never come; therefore – Garrison Forever.

Yet, speaking of history, this conjuring of the appearance of opposition where none actually exits has been mandated by the American political system since the onset of the Cold War. The quadrennial political puppet show, highlighting not opposition but its appearance, is essential to keeping the captive-taking war machine running and to inoculating the American people from the viral knowledge that they themselves were first to be captured.

A minimal acquaintance with history, including dissections of American culture already performed by both Sinclairs, would undermine our national complacency. Upton Sinclair, for example, showed the rapaciousness of capitalism, the vampire-like appetite with which it feeds on the blood of human beings. Even with “reforms” (“The Jungle” led to the establishment of the Food and Drug Administration), the profit-worshipping economy to this day eludes controls that would protect majorities of citizens in this country and across the world. Sinclair Lewis, for his part, showed how the simultaneously banalizing methods of capitalist enterprise (false advertising, consumerism, pieties of affluence, amoral bureaucracy) are exactly what that enterprise created to keep from being criticized. Then inhale the crack cocaine of celebrity.

The US conflagration in the oil well of the globe was ignited without attention to history, which is why it flares out of control. But that war, fought by Gis, mercenaries, and proxies, will continue indefinitely, because, under the martial law that implicitly governs the United States, history can never be invoked except for its celebrity value – not even history in the making. Therefore, it is certain that the staggering failures of Washington’s current policy, so evident today, will be forgotten tomorrow, even as that policy is reaffirmed. Or, as they say, what’s the dif?

Book Review

Christianity for the Rest of Us: How the Neighborhood Church Is Transforming the Faith

by Diana Butler Bass

ISBN13: 9780060836948

ISBN10: 0060836946

Publisher Comments

For decades the accepted wisdom has been that America's mainline Protestant churches are in decline, eclipsed by evangelical mega-churches. Church and religion expert Diana Butler Bass wondered if this was true, and this book is the result of her extensive, three-year study of centrist and progressive churches across the country. Her surprising findings reveal just the opposite—that many of the churches are flourishing, and they are doing so without resorting to mimicking the mega-church, evangelical style.

Christianity for the Rest of Us describes this phenomenon and offers a how-to approach for Protestants eager to remain faithful to their tradition while becoming a vital spiritual community. As Butler Bass delved into the rich spiritual life of various Episcopal, United Methodist, Disciples of Christ, Presbyterian, United Church of Christ, and Lutheran churches, certain consistent practices—such as hospitality, contemplation, diversity, justice, discernment, and worship—emerged as core expressions of congregations seeking to rediscover authentic Christian faith and witness today.

This hopeful book, which includes a study guide for groups and individuals, reveals the practical steps that leaders and laypeople alike are taking to proclaim an alternative message about an emerging Christianity that strives for greater spiritual depth and proactively engages the needs of the world.

Review:

"Most pundits will tell you that the mainline churches — Presbyterians, Methodists, Lutherans, Episcopalians, Congregationalists and Disciples of Christ — are in decline: it is now commonplace to assume that liberal churches are doomed and only evangelical churches are growing. Think again, says Butler Bass (The Practicing Congregation) in this challenging and hopeful book, which summarizes the findings of a three-year study funded by the Lilly Endowment. Yes, many mainline churches are struggling, but not because liberal Christianity is a contradiction in terms. Rather, the old neighborhood Protestant church has fallen on hard times because the old neighborhood has been replaced by a strip mall. And many mainline churches are thriving. Butler Bass showcases 10 of them, including Redeemer UCC in New Haven, Conn., and Saint Mark (Lutheran) in Yorktown, Va. She then examines 10 practices, from hospitality to worship to vigorous theological discussion, and posits that these practices are the heartbeat of vital mainline churches. Her provocative conclusions include the observation that today's mainliners have redefined politics by favoring bottom-up acts of service over structural change. And, she says, the thriving congregations are neither red nor blue, but purple — a mix of Democrats and Republicans. This is Bass's best book yet.”

The Clarendon Connection is edited by Ellen D. Schemerhorn.

Clarendon Hill Presbyterian Church

155 Powder House Boulevard

West Somerville, Massachusetts 02144-1613

Telephone: 617-625-4823

www.clarendonhillchurch.org

The Rev. Karl Gustafson, Minister…………………………..John Adams, Music Director

Augustus Kwaa, Parish Associate/Evangelist……………………….. Arnie James, Sexton

Sarah Glass, Seminarian

LECTIONARY TEXTS

Aug. 5: Hos. 11: 1-11; Ps. 107: 1-9, 43; Col. 3: 1-11; Luke 12: 13-21

Aug. 12: Isa. 1: 1, 10-20; Ps. 50: 1-8, 22-23; Heb. 11: 1-3, 8-16; Luke 12: 32-40

Aug. 19: Isa. 5: 1-7; Ps. 80: 1-2, 8-19; Heb. 11: 29-12:2; Luke 12: 49-56

Aug. 26: Jer. 1: 4-10; Ps. 71: 1-6; Heb. 12: 18-29; Luke 13: 10-17

Sept. 2: Jer. 2: 4-13; Ps. 81: 10-16; Heb. 13: 1-8, 15-16; Luke 14: 1, 7-14

Sept. 9: Jer. 18: 1-11; Ps. 139: 1-6, 13 – 18; Philem. 1-21; Luke 14: 25-33

Sept. 16: Jer. 4: 11-22, 22-28; Ps. 14; 1 Tim. 1: 12-17; Luke 15: 1-10

Sept. 23: Jer. 8: 18 – 9:1; Ps. 79: 1-9; 1Tim. 2: 1-7; Luke 16: 1-13

Sept. 30: Jer. 32: 1-3a, 6-15; Ps. 91: 1-6, 14-16; 1 Tim. 6: 6-19; Luke 16: 19-31

Church Assignments