Dan Harper is the Directory of Religious Education at the UU Church of Palo Alto.  This is the text of his presentation about religious education and peacemaking. There are two things I’d like to hold up from it in particular. Here’s the first:

As the religious education committee and I reviewed all these various factors…we began to talk explicitly about feminist theology, which is a core theology in my denomination. Feminist theology reminds us that so-called women’s work is just as important as so-called men’s work. Feminist theology reminds us that children of any gender are at least as important as adult males. Feminist theology reminds us that we are embodied beings, and we need more than words and information, we need hands and bodies.

I’m going to go further than Dan Harper: If you have not spent any time studying feminism and feminist theology, you are almost certainly not competent to talk about Unitarian Universalism as it is practiced today.

And here’s the second:

…we realized what really made a difference was not trying to teach essentialist skills…

and yet

…we also included some activities that could come across as essentialist in orientation, because we had adults who were passionate…

Since you can’t buy passion at any price, some mindsets regard it as worthless and sell it as cheap or throw it away. Do you?