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Monday, November 20, 2006

This week at uuworld.org: Pilgrims' progress.

by Philocrites

Perhaps you've heard that many of New England's old Puritan churches of gradually evolved into Unitarian churches. But did you know that the congregation founded by the Pilgrims in Scrooby, England, way back in 1606 and transported to Plymouth (via the Netherlands) in 1620 is also the ancestor of a Unitarian Universalist congregation? Just in time for Thanksgiving, Kimberly French writes that the Plymouth UUs are celebrating the 400th anniversary of their Pilgrim past.

In the news this week, Don Skinner reports on some of the races in which Unitarian Universalists ran for elected office. The number of UUs in Congress is down to two — Sen. Kent Conrad was reelected in North Dakota; Rep. Pete Stark was reelected in California — but UUs also won secretary of state races in California and Minnesota. Meanwhile, Sonja Cohen tracks other Unitarian Universalists in the media.

Finally, a technical note: Last week, users of the newly released Windows web browser Internet Explorer 7 reported that they couldn't see uuworld.org articles. Argh! Sure enough, IE7 rendered big blank spaces where the headlines and articles were supposed to be. Unfortunately, the only simple way we could find to fix the problem for IE7 creates an annoying but more minor problem in the rendering of the advertising column for Firefox and Safari users. Everyone should now be able to read the site, but my colleagues and I are looking for a more satisfying long-term solution.

Copyright © 2006 by Philocrites | Posted 20 November 2006 at 7:31 AM

Previous: My name is Philocrites and I love LEGO.
Next: History Channel's engrossing Pilgrim docudrama.

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7 comments:

Jaume:

November 20, 2006 09:02 AM | Permalink for this comment

Congratulations to the Plymouth church for their anniversary and for their long theological evolution that led them to leave behind their Puritan beliefs and identity (retaining only the basic principle of the congregational polity, although reformed and expanded later to embrace the non-elect) and become Unitarians, just like other Protestant churches turned Unitarian in Europe. Those who remained faithful to their Puritan past then joined other Protestant churches to form the UCC and also evolved toward Christian Liberalism. Therefore we can rejoice that old Puritanism is extinct now.

Kenneth:

November 20, 2006 09:31 AM | Permalink for this comment

Speaking of css and layout glitches, in Firefox 2.0 Mac, the torture ad in your sidebar aligns on the left with the other elements in the sidebar, but is actually just as wide as the sidebar max-width, and therefore juts out into the dark background on the right. (In a narrower window, of course, the width of the sidebar becomes narrower, and the same thing happens with all the advertising.)

fausto:

November 20, 2006 09:41 AM | Permalink for this comment

Hey, are you cribbing my stuff?

Philocrites:

November 20, 2006 10:26 AM | Permalink for this comment

Kenneth, how odd. I'll have to check that out. Of course, the CSS on Philocrites uses both ems and percentages, and fudges a little bit on the sidebar to come close to always allowing enough space for the ads, but I'm not entirely surprised that there are instances where things float. Do you have your default text size set smaller?

Fausto, how fortuitous!

publia:

November 20, 2006 04:59 PM | Permalink for this comment

We are blogging on the Pilgrims all week, so do stop by at
http://wilmette.blogspot.com/

Clyde Grubbs:

November 21, 2006 09:39 AM | Permalink for this comment

Running OSX Safari and Firefox the sidebars are a little off, but not enough to ruin my visit to UUWorld.

Will Explorer ever be standards compliant?

uuwonk:

November 21, 2006 02:45 PM | Permalink for this comment

Jaume's point is well taken but raises an existential issue for UUs. If we have won our argument with the UCC, why are we still arguing? Why is it necessary to have a separate denomination?

As a practical matter, we are a church for people who are allergic to the word "Jesus". But I don't think that particular allergy is widespread in the leadership. Schultz's Berry Street lecture advocates basing morality on public opinion. If one thinks that way, what is the logic of our separatism? If we are not upholding some natural or divine law which the UCC violates, why can't we share a meeting with them?

This isn't just about the Dedham silver is it?



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