Half of Guarding Religious Liberty Is Showing Up.

This evening Rev. Mary and Susan Davis sent out an email alert. The Richfield Village Board of Zoning Appeals was hearing an appeal regarding the proposed Sree Venkateswara Hindu temple. The proposed temple on Brecksville Road just off 77 has generated considerable controversy among some residents of Richfield. They claim it will generate traffic, noise and "the influx of strangers into the residential neighborhood." Stop me if you've heard this before.

Last month the Richfield Planning and Zoning Commission granted the temple a preliminary permit. Temple developers are working on tweaking the plans to ultimately get what's called a conditional use permit that would allow them to proceed with construction. Our congregation has been following the issue through our involvement with the Akron Area Interfaith Council, with special interest, given our own history with zoning and church construction.

We learned tonight that a group of residents styling themselves Concerned Richfield Homeowners is seeking to overturn the decision of the PZC. They simultaneously filed appeals with the Court of Common Pleas and the Board of Zoning Appeals.

That set up tonight's hearing. Happily, on a couple of hours noticed, between 12 and 15 members of UUCA showed up to offer support. Even more happily, our support was not necessary. The BZA dismissed the appeal based on an opinion of their law director that they do not have jurisdiction. Instead, the proper route to appeal the decision of the PZC is to the Court of Common Pleas, which the unhappy homeowners have done.

It should be noted that the issues are different in this case than in our case. In our case we had a nonconforming use -- that is our church is not a use permitted under the current zoning code, but was permissible at the time it was built. Expanding a nonconforming use is always a contentious issue and offers opportunities for decision makers to make judgement calls. Not so the Temple's case. As I read the accounts, it appears they are in conformance with the zoning code, so the only question is whether the Commission can put reasonable conditions on (things like landscaping and drainage) to ensure the facility doesn't disrupt surrounding properties.

What absolutely is not at issue, at least at this point, is any constitutional question. The court first has to decide if the Temple fits into the zoning scheme. If it does, the case is done and construction proceeds. If not, then the Temple may raise some Constitutional questions.

But I digress into legalisms. The big story here is our little church doing our part to ensure that everyone has freedom to worship as they see fit. It was a night well spent.

Gun Violence Program Reminder

Remember that our church is co-sponsoring a program about gun violence.

Gun activist Toby Hoover will speak on gun violence as part of a speech and panel presentation titled Reducing Gun Violence to be presented at the Akron - Summit County Library Auditorium at 6:30 pm on October 10th, at 60 South High St., Akron. Admission is free.

Toby Hoover, Executive Director of the Ohio Coalition Against Gun Violence, has worked over thirty years at a state and national level to reduce gun violence. She has received many awards for her activism, including the Sue Kingsley Memorial Volunteer Award presented to her by James Brady in 1999. Toby’s understanding of gun violence is particularly clear, having suffered the loss of an immediate family member to gun violence.

Ms. Hoover’s talk will be followed by a panel discussion by Judge Linda Teodosio - Summit County Juvenile Court, Officer Schismenos - head of the Akron Police Gang Unit, Judy Joice - President of Greenleaf Family Center, and University of Akron School of Communication Professor N. J. Brown - an expert on media affect on violence.

Guns are the second leading cause of injury death in Ohio; 1,036 firearm deaths were recorded in 2004––only 20 of those deaths were unintentional. Only 8% of the people killed by guns are killed in felony crimes.

A question and answer period will follow the presentations.

This program is presented by the Social Action Committee of the Unitarian Universalist Church of Akron in partnership with the Akron Area Association of Churches, Akron Area Interfaith Council, American Friends Service Committee, Catholic Commission and the Coalition for a Safe Community.

Also, a programming note: Sen. Tom Sawyer, once on the bill, is unable to attend. Susie, the Social Action Committee and the co-sponsors have put great effort into putting this together. And it looks like a great program. If you can make it, to support the work of the church and learn more on this timely topic, please be there.

Evangelicals Unite Against Slavery

From Reuters:

U.S. evangelical Christians are divided on global warming, the minimum wage and other issues, but they are united behind a new campaign to end modern slavery around the world.

The article is just OK, but worth a click-thru and read. Also odd that they don't make the obvious tie-in to the beginning of Passover.

A couple thoughts. First, understand that one reason evangelicals are is . . . abortion. Anti-choice conservative Christians see links between their work against abortion and the abolition movement against slavery. They also argue that the Roe v. Wade decision was flawed in the same way the Dred Scott decision was. I don't agree with the abortion/slavery link and their reading of Dred Scott is entirely off base (for reasons that would constitute an entire post by themselves.) Not to say that the link to abortion invalidates the campaign, but we should keep it in mind moving forward.

So what are UU's doing about international slavery? Browsing around I found a World article from '04 announcing the formation of a UUs Against Slavery organization. Unfortunately, the website looks pretty much dead.

What UU's Believe About God

Our 7th and 8th grade RE class did a survey of members during coffee hour. We asked people to check the beliefs below that pertained to them. We allowed the respondents to check as many as they felt fit for them. We got the list of statements from Compass Points by Gaia Brown and Michelle Richards, the curriculum for our class. After people responded (48 people), we classified the statements in the categories shown on the pie graph and determined the percentage of responses in each area.

Almost everyone agreed with the statement that "There are as many ideas about God as there are people", so we used that for the title of our graph instead of including it in our pie graph.
Here are the statements and the way we classified them. We would be interested in finding out what others in our congregation and other UU's on the Internet think about the findings of our survey.

Statements and Classification
Theist-
God cares for us and listens to our prayers.-9
God is present in the relationships among people.-30

Pantheist-
There is a spark of divinity in each of us.-43
God and the Universe are the same- God is in everything and everyone-30
God is inside, around us and with us wherever we are-8

Pagan-
I find God in Nature-43
God is like a loving mother who sustains us and all life-11

Humanist-
God is my conscience calling me to make the world a better place-19
We can use science and reason to make the world a better place-46

Agnostic-
There is no way we can know whether or not there is a God-20

Atheist-
There is no such thing as God, and even the word is meaningless-5

Deist-
God created the universe and left it to run itself.-6

Some Questions We Have:

* Do you think this is a true representation of the diverse beliefs in our congregation?

* Is this representative of UU's in general?

* Would you classify the statements the same way we did or make changes?

* Are there other beliefs that are not represented here?

Please leave your comments.
Thanks,
7th and 8th Grade RE Class

Unitarians on Anderson Cooper

I watched this Anderson Cooper special on TV about, "What is a Christian?" and was glad to see that they included a clip about Unitarian Universalism. You can watch it on YouTube.

Thanks to UU World for publishing this link to the clip. The minister and the couple they interviewed did a good job of explaining many of the good qualities of our denomination.

For another view of this special go to Faith In Public Life.

There are more clips from it there.