Services Archive

Democracy in Danger

Download the Morning Program HERE … or read it below.

ABOUT THIS MORNING’S ASSEMBLY: An exploration of proactive practices for peace in a world ripe for conflict.

INTRODUCING OUR GUEST MINISTER: Leading today’s morning assembly is the Rev. Dr. Mark Y.A. Davies. Mark is the Wimberly Professor of Social and Ecological Ethics at Oklahoma City University where he has worked in both teaching and administration for 25 years. He is an ordained elder in the Oklahoma Conference of the United Methodist Church.

Mark’s Ph.D. is from Boston University in the area of Social Ethics, and he has served Boston University School of Theology as a member of its Dean’s Advisory Board and as the alumnus representative their Green Team as part of the Green Seminary Initiative.

Mark engages in advocacy and activism in the areas of peace, social justice, and ecological sustainability. Locally this is expressed through his work with the Human Community Network, which works to create non-violent systemic change for a just and flourishing human and ecological community through collaboration, education, innovation, and action. See www.humancommunitynetwork.org.

He and his wife Kristin live in Edmond, OK in the United States, and they have two daughters who attend Oklahoma City University.

TMP 03-20

What If I Had Only 30 Days to Love? Siding With Love Sunday

Spring ahead! Daylight Savings Time Starts Today.

Download The Morning Program here … OR read it below

What If I Had Only 30 Days to Love

Side With Love Sunday

This year’s Side with Love Sunday focuses on Love, featuring stirring music, deep-hearted discourse, and moving testimonies from a range of UU leaders.

TMP 03-13

Waging Peace in a Climate of Conflict

Download The Morning Program here – or read it w/o downloading below.

ABOUT THIS MORNING’S ASSEMBLY: An exploration of proactive practices for peace in a world ripe for conflict.

INTRODUCING OUR GUEST MINISTER: Leading today’s morning assembly is the Rev. Dr. Mark Y.A. Davies. Mark is the Wimberly Professor of Social and Ecological Ethics at Oklahoma City University where he has worked in both teaching and administration for 25 years. He is an ordained elder in the Oklahoma Conference of the United Methodist Church.

Mark’s Ph.D. is from Boston University in the area of Social Ethics, and he has served Boston University School of Theology as a member of its Dean’s Advisory Board and as the alumnus representative their Green Team as part of the Green Seminary Initiative.

Mark engages in advocacy and activism in the areas of peace, social justice, and ecological sustainability. Locally this is expressed through his work with the Human Community Network, which works to create non-violent systemic change for a just and flourishing human and ecological community through collaboration, education, innovation, and action. See www.humancommunitynetwork.org.

He and his wife Kristin live in Edmond, OK in the United States, and they have two daughters who attend Oklahoma City University.

TMP 03-06 - FINAL

Love After Love – Rev Dr Thandeka – (video message)

THE MORNING PROGRAM

Many of today’s “spiritual but not religious” people – one in four US adults – have found the access point to spiritual experience that Western Christianity lost: unconditional love. Thandeka sees in the emergence of the “spiritual but not religious” community a great potential for her goal of “love beyond belief.” She has demonstrated in practice how, by paying close attention to the affects, dying established churches can come alive. She hopes that those who are alienated from these churches, often for excellent reasons, can develop community activities that will lead them to experience love beyond belief.

ABOUT OUR SUNDAY SPEAKER:

Thandeka is the creator of the Love Beyond Belief™ initiative for moderate, liberal, and progressive congregations and the founder of Contemporary Affect Theology, which is designed to explain emotional development in religious settings and terms. Polebridge Press published her new book, Love Beyond Belief: Finding the Access Point to Spiritual Awareness, in 2018.

Thandeka, Affect Theologian and President of Love Beyond Belief, Inc., is author of The Embodied Self: Friedrich Schleiermacher’s Solution to Kant’s Problem of the Empirical Self (1995), Learning to be White: Money, Race and God in America (1999, German edition 2009), and Love Beyond Belief: Finding the Access Point to Spiritual Awareness (2018). Her essays include work in The Oxford University Handbook on Feminist Theology and Globalization (2011), and The Cambridge Companion to Schleiermacher (2005).

Her books and essays have helped secure her place as a “major figure in American liberal theology,” as Gary Dorrien notes in The Making of American Liberal Theology: Crisis, Irony, and Postmodernity, 1950-2005 (John Knox Press, 2006).

Jaak Panksepp, the founder of affective neuroscience, commends Thandeka’s “decisive historical-philosophical analysis” as work that can provide “a universal substrate for nondenominational religious experience” (The Archeology of the Mind, 391).

Thandeka received her Ph.D. in philosophy of religion and theology from Claremont Graduate University. She was given the Xhosa name Thandeka, which means “beloved,” by Archbishop Desmond Tutu in 1984. She is an ordained Unitarian Universalist minister and congregation consultant, and formerly an Emmy award-winning television producer.

Thandeka has taught at Andover Newton Theological School, Harvard Divinity School, Lancaster Theological Seminary, Meadville Lombard Theological School, Williams College, and she was a Fellow at Stanford University’s Humanities Center, a Visiting Scholar at the Center for Process Studies at Claremont School of Theology in California, and Union Theological Seminary in New York City. She is a Fellow at Westar Institute.

Reactions to her book Love Beyond Belief

“When I met Thandeka 34 years ago and gave her a Xhosa name, apartheid was still the law of the land in South Africa. I reminded Thandeka that it was easy to be cynical, but takes great courage to have hope. Love Beyond Belief is a hope-filled book reminding us in historical and contemporary terms that we are loved always, even when we feel lost and alone.”
–Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu

“Thandeka has written an exciting and important book. After a lucid exposition of Schleiermacher’s affective base for liberal religion, which is illuminating and promising to save that formation from the torpor into which it has fallen, she also provides a thrilling new possibility for understanding Paul on the basis of affective theology … I have no doubt of the significance of this book for future work in the field.”
–Daniel Boyarin, University of California, Berkeley

The Power of Justice: The Life and Legacy of Desmond Tutu

Reflections on the life of one of the most important leaders for racial and social justice of our time and the gifts he left us to address the urgent challenge for social justice in the present and future.

THE MORNING PROGRAM

With Amazement & Admiration

Our Annual Thanks
and Appreciation Gathering

On Sunday, Feb. 20
Immediately After
The Morning Assembly
In the Chapel and via Zoom
Meeting ID 989 0789 7878

FULL DETAILS are listed on the church calender – go the now by clicking/tapping HERE

ABOUT OUR GUEST MINISTER: Leading today’s morning assembly is the Rev. Dr. Mark Y.A. Davies. Mark is the Wimberly Professor of Social and Ecological Ethics at Oklahoma City University where he has worked in both teaching and administration for 25 years. He is an ordained elder in the Oklahoma Conference of the United Methodist Church.

Mark’s Ph.D. is from Boston University in the area of Social Ethics, and he has served Boston University School of Theology as a member of its Dean’s Advisory Board and as the alumnus representative their Green Team as part of the Green Seminary Initiative.

Mark engages in advocacy and activism in the areas of peace, social justice, and ecological sustainability. Locally this is expressed through his work with the Human Community Network, which works to create non-violent systemic change for a just and flourishing human and ecological community through collaboration, education, innovation, and action. See www.humancommunitynetwork.org.

He and his wife Kristin live in Edmond, OK in the United States, and they have two daughters who attend Oklahoma City University.

Side With Love – Reproductive Justice

THHE MORNING PROGRAM

This year’s Thirty Days of Love is focusing on four themes from the recently published report called Widening the Circle of Concern, which was developed by the Commission on Institutional Change, a UUA Board commissioned group charged with researching, reporting, and making recommendations for transforming white supremacy and other oppressions in the institutional history and practices of the UUA and its 1,000-plus congregations and covenanted communities.

In commemoration of the anniversary of Roe vs. Wade and the ongoing fight for reproductive health, rights, and justice, the Worship Team decided to have us join UU congregations across the country for a Sunday of solidarity, support, and reflection. Most of the worship elements this morning are come Side with Love – Reproductive Justice Worship. You are invited to visit their website for more information.

Mindful Peacemaking: The Life and Legacy of Thich Nhat Hanh

Reflections on the life of one of the most important peacemakers of our time and the gifts he left us to address the urgent challenge of peacemaking in the present and future.

THE MORNING PROGRAM (also available below)

Leading today’s morning assembly is the Rev. Dr. Mark Y.A. Davies. Mark is the Wimberly Professor of Social and Ecological Ethics at Oklahoma City University where he has worked in both teaching and administration for 25 years. He is an ordained elder in the Oklahoma Conference of the United Methodist Church.

Mark’s Ph.D. is from Boston University in the area of Social Ethics, and he has served Boston University School of Theology as a member of its Dean’s Advisory Board and as the alumnus representative their Green Team as part of the Green Seminary Initiative.

Mark engages in advocacy and activism in the areas of peace, social justice, and ecological sustainability. Locally this is expressed through his work with the Human Community Network, which works to create non-violent systemic change for a just and flourishing human and ecological community through collaboration, education, innovation, and action. See www.humancommunitynetwork.org.

He and his wife Kristin live in Edmond, OK in the United States, and they have two daughters who attend Oklahoma City University.

TMP 02-06 - final

One True Thing –

Finding Your One True Thing

Download the Morning Program here

The Morning ProgramTMP 01-30

We share a faith that claims to value questions over answers. Nevertheless, UUs are as vulnerable as everyone else to all the ways humans leap to judgment and even dogmatism. In a complicated, angry country lining up to take rigid sides, is there a way to discover what is true … and truly important?

Elena Westbrook was formerly the worship chair for Community UU Church of Plano, where she has been a regular guest speaker. Now semi-retired, she has also been a marketing writer, a proposal manager, a medical copyeditor, an environmental consultant, and a radio DJ. She lives in Fairview with her husband, Paul.

You can find Elena’s meditations and prayers on the UU Worship Web.

The Sin of Nicaea

The Sin of Nicaea
The Rev. Dr. Mark Y.A. Davies, leading

You can read the Morning Program at the bottom of this post, or you can download the Morning Program to your device.

An exploration of problematic relationships between church and state, especially when the power of the state is used to enforce adherence to religious beliefs and doctrines.

Leading today’s morning assembly is the Rev. Dr. Mark Y.A. Davies. Mark is the Wimberly Professor of Social and Ecological Ethics at Oklahoma City University where he has worked in both teaching and administration for 25 years. He is an ordained elder in the Oklahoma Conference of the United Methodist Church.

Mark’s Ph.D. is from Boston University in the area of Social Ethics, and he has served Boston University School of Theology as a member of its Dean’s Advisory Board and as the alumnus representative their Green Team as part of the Green Seminary Initiative.

Mark engages in advocacy and activism in the areas of peace, social justice, and ecological sustainability. Locally this is expressed through his work with the Human Community Network, which works to create non-violent systemic change for a just and flourishing human and ecological community through collaboration, education, innovation, and action. See www.humancommunitynetwork.org.

He and his wife Kristin live in Edmond, OK in the United States, and they have two daughters who attend Oklahoma City University.

TMP 01-23

The Great Depression: Pain and Relief

The Great Depression: Pain and Relief
Dr. Glenn Melancon from Southeastern will be our guest speaker

The Morning Program

Of his discourse, our visiting speaking writes:

The Great Depression caused an incredible amount of physical and psychological pain. Conservative economics believed the pain necessary for a return to normal. Pain taught people the cost of failure and motivated them to recover. To remove the pain was to remove the moral hazard. The New Deal rejected this orthodoxy. The New Deal relieved the pain by putting money in the hands of consumers. Consumers spent money in housing, food and clothing. Consumer spending jumped started the economy and gave Americans hope.

About our Sunday speaker:

As an “Army Brat” Glenn Melançon [pronounced Mel-LAWN-sawn] learned the value of public service. He was born in Heidelberg, Germany, on January 24, 1966, and is the youngest of four children. His parents, Yves “Buster” and Anna Mae Melançon, had committed to a career in the US military, Buster as a combat engineer and Anna Mae as a military wife. Their sacrifices and examples provided the foundation for Glenn’s firm belief that serving others can make the world better one day at a time.

Glenn and his wife Jackie moved to Sherman in 1995 after he completed a Ph.D. in History from Louisiana State University. He had accepted an appointment to teach history at Southeastern Oklahoma State University, while Jackie became a special education teacher at Denison ISD. They are proud of their two sons, Christopher and Alexandre. Christopher is following in his grandfather’s footsteps as a combat engineer. Alex attended Sherman High School and the University of Louisiana–Lafayette. He is now a proud member of the United States Airforce. While Glenn advanced in rank to become a Full Professor in July 2005, he made time to serve the local community. He served as the Cubmaster and Committee Chair for Pack 9, Wakefield Elementary School. He is also a volunteer at St. Mary’s Catholic Church.

Democracy in Danger

Download the Morning Program HERE … or read it below.

ABOUT THIS MORNING’S ASSEMBLY: An exploration of proactive practices for peace in a world ripe for conflict.

Mark’s Ph.D. is from Boston University in the area of Social Ethics, and he has served Boston University School of Theology as a member of its Dean’s Advisory Board and as the alumnus representative their Green Team as part of the Green Seminary Initiative.

He and his wife Kristin live in Edmond, OK in the United States, and they have two daughters who attend Oklahoma City University.

What If I Had Only 30 Days to Love? Siding With Love Sunday

Waging Peace in a Climate of Conflict

Download The Morning Program here – or read it w/o downloading below.

ABOUT THIS MORNING’S ASSEMBLY: An exploration of proactive practices for peace in a world ripe for conflict.

Mark’s Ph.D. is from Boston University in the area of Social Ethics, and he has served Boston University School of Theology as a member of its Dean’s Advisory Board and as the alumnus representative their Green Team as part of the Green Seminary Initiative.

He and his wife Kristin live in Edmond, OK in the United States, and they have two daughters who attend Oklahoma City University.

Love After Love – Rev Dr Thandeka – (video message)

Reactions to her book Love Beyond Belief

The Power of Justice: The Life and Legacy of Desmond Tutu

Reflections on the life of one of the most important leaders for racial and social justice of our time and the gifts he left us to address the urgent challenge for social justice in the present and future.

With Amazement & Admiration

Our Annual Thanks
and Appreciation Gathering

Mark’s Ph.D. is from Boston University in the area of Social Ethics, and he has served Boston University School of Theology as a member of its Dean’s Advisory Board and as the alumnus representative their Green Team as part of the Green Seminary Initiative.

He and his wife Kristin live in Edmond, OK in the United States, and they have two daughters who attend Oklahoma City University.

Side With Love – Reproductive Justice

THHE MORNING PROGRAM

Mindful Peacemaking: The Life and Legacy of Thich Nhat Hanh

Reflections on the life of one of the most important peacemakers of our time and the gifts he left us to address the urgent challenge of peacemaking in the present and future.

Mark’s Ph.D. is from Boston University in the area of Social Ethics, and he has served Boston University School of Theology as a member of its Dean’s Advisory Board and as the alumnus representative their Green Team as part of the Green Seminary Initiative.

He and his wife Kristin live in Edmond, OK in the United States, and they have two daughters who attend Oklahoma City University.

One True Thing –

The Sin of Nicaea

The Sin of Nicaea
The Rev. Dr. Mark Y.A. Davies, leading

You can read the Morning Program at the bottom of this post, or you can download the Morning Program to your device.

An exploration of problematic relationships between church and state, especially when the power of the state is used to enforce adherence to religious beliefs and doctrines.

Mark’s Ph.D. is from Boston University in the area of Social Ethics, and he has served Boston University School of Theology as a member of its Dean’s Advisory Board and as the alumnus representative their Green Team as part of the Green Seminary Initiative.

He and his wife Kristin live in Edmond, OK in the United States, and they have two daughters who attend Oklahoma City University.

The Great Depression: Pain and Relief

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Download the Morning Program HERE … or read it below.

ABOUT THIS MORNING’S ASSEMBLY: An exploration of proactive practices for peace in a world ripe for conflict.

Mark’s Ph.D. is from Boston University in the area of Social Ethics, and he has served Boston University School of Theology as a member of its Dean’s Advisory Board and as the alumnus representative their Green Team as part of the Green Seminary Initiative.

He and his wife Kristin live in Edmond, OK in the United States, and they have two daughters who attend Oklahoma City University.

Download The Morning Program here – or read it w/o downloading below.

ABOUT THIS MORNING’S ASSEMBLY: An exploration of proactive practices for peace in a world ripe for conflict.

Mark’s Ph.D. is from Boston University in the area of Social Ethics, and he has served Boston University School of Theology as a member of its Dean’s Advisory Board and as the alumnus representative their Green Team as part of the Green Seminary Initiative.

He and his wife Kristin live in Edmond, OK in the United States, and they have two daughters who attend Oklahoma City University.

Reactions to her book Love Beyond Belief

Reflections on the life of one of the most important leaders for racial and social justice of our time and the gifts he left us to address the urgent challenge for social justice in the present and future.​​

With Amazement & Admiration Our Annual Thanks and Appreciation Gathering

Mark’s Ph.D. is from Boston University in the area of Social Ethics, and he has served Boston University School of Theology as a member of its Dean’s Advisory Board and as the alumnus representative their Green Team as part of the Green Seminary Initiative.

He and his wife Kristin live in Edmond, OK in the United States, and they have two daughters who attend Oklahoma City University.

THHE MORNING PROGRAM

Reflections on the life of one of the most important peacemakers of our time and the gifts he left us to address the urgent challenge of peacemaking in the present and future.

Mark’s Ph.D. is from Boston University in the area of Social Ethics, and he has served Boston University School of Theology as a member of its Dean’s Advisory Board and as the alumnus representative their Green Team as part of the Green Seminary Initiative.

He and his wife Kristin live in Edmond, OK in the United States, and they have two daughters who attend Oklahoma City University.

The Sin of Nicaea The Rev. Dr. Mark Y.A. Davies, leading

You can read the Morning Program at the bottom of this post, or you can download the Morning Program to your device.

An exploration of problematic relationships between church and state, especially when the power of the state is used to enforce adherence to religious beliefs and doctrines.

Mark’s Ph.D. is from Boston University in the area of Social Ethics, and he has served Boston University School of Theology as a member of its Dean’s Advisory Board and as the alumnus representative their Green Team as part of the Green Seminary Initiative.

He and his wife Kristin live in Edmond, OK in the United States, and they have two daughters who attend Oklahoma City University.

Connect With Us

Red River Unitarian Universalist Church

Our Social Media

Find Us

Reflections on the life of one of the most important leaders for racial and social justice of our time and the gifts he left us to address the urgent challenge for social justice in the present and future.

With Amazement & Admiration

Our Annual Thanks
and Appreciation Gathering

The Sin of Nicaea
The Rev. Dr. Mark Y.A. Davies, leading