A few weeks ago, Rev. Colin Bossen asked people to self-identify as clergy, lay person, or academic, then answer these three questions:
- Who are the five most influential Unitarian Universalist or liberal religious thinkers today?
- What magazines, academic journals, and blogs most impact your work?
- What is the most important issue for Unitarian Universalist scholars to address?
It’s not my story to tell, but I’ll add my two cents worth.
I was one of the dozen lay respondents out of seventy-four total, also including eight academics.
I was unsurprised to see Rebecca Parker was one of the common choices; i was a little surprised to hear more than half named her. I wasn’t surprised to see Mark Morrison-Reed or Sharon Welch, either, and had I thought of Anthony Pinn, he’d’ve been on my list.
(Note to self: Try again to get Paul Rasor’s book.)
There’s much more in the survey, so here are my questions, most of which could be resolved by having the raw data or something like it.
- Were there significant differences among the three groups of respondents?
- Which of the scholars named are Unitarian Universalists? Which ones aren’t? Are any not easily classifiable? Does it matter?
- Can our congregations develop and support more scholar-ministers?
Okay, the answer to that last one isn’t in the data, but the others?