Touchstones Project
a theme-based ministry program
for Unitarian Universalist congregations
For Your Consideration
An Intriguing Way
of Doing Church
A Unitarian Universalist congregation can transform the people it serves, inspiring them to help transform the world. This requires an intentional, sustained, integrated, holistic process of deepening that informs, nurtures, and challenges.
Developed over eleven years, this theme-based ministry project has been dramatically expanded to make a meaningful difference in people's lives within your congregation.
We invite you:
1. To browse our website to learn how
what we offer can transform
your programming.
2. To request our materials for the
theme of beauty to facilitate a
comprehensive review by your staff and key volunteers.
3. To schedule a call with us so that we
can answer any questions that you
may have.
4. To order a trial-subscription for
three months to implement and
evaluate our program.
5. To extend your subscription for the
balance of the program year, which
ends in August of each year.
Click here for information about subscriptions.
November Theme
Reflections on Nonviolence
Universalist and Unitarian minister Adin Ballou’s and Unitarian Henry David Thoreau’s writings influenced Leo Tolstoy’s, Mahatma Gandhi’s, and Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King’s philosophy and practice of non-violence. The commitment to non-violence is essential to oppose and subvert a culture of violence that is so damaging. Non-violence is an essential tool in the work to repair the world.
Video
The Secret to Effective
Non-Violent Resistance
Jamila Raqib (8:57)
“‘We’re not going to end violence by telling people that it’s morally wrong,' says Jamila Raqib, executive director of the Albert Einstein Institution. Instead, we must offer them a tool that’s at least as powerful and as effective as violence’. For 13 years, she’s been teaching people in intensely difficult situations across the world how to use nonviolent struggle to protest against the tyranny they are living under.”
Link to Video:
Monthly Themes
for 2021-2022
Our theme-year begins in
September 2021. Please click on
the pdf icon to access a flyer for
the themes for the year.
Annual theme for 2021-2022
Repairing the World
Themes for 2022-23 & 2023-24 are now being selected. Email us. We would love to see your suggestions!
Jesus and Nonviolence
Walter Wink
“You have heard that it was said, ‘An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.’ But I say to you, Do not resist one who is evil. But if anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also; and if anyone would sue you and take your coat, let him have your cloak as well; and if anyone forces you to go one mile, go with him two miles.” (Matthew 5:38-41, RSV)
Many who have committed their lives to working for change and justice in the world simply dismiss Jesus’ teachings about nonviolence as impractical idealism. And with good reason. “Turn the other cheek” suggests the passive, Christian doormat quality that has made so many Christians cowardly and complicit in the face of injustice…. Rather than fostering structural change, such attitudes encourage collaboration with the oppressor.
Jesus never behaved in such ways. Whatever the source of the misunderstanding, it is neither Jesus nor his teaching, which, when given a fair hearing in its original social context, is arguably one of the most revolutionary political statements ever uttered.
When the court translators working in the hire of King James chose to translate antistenai as “resist not evil,” they were doing something more than rendering Greek into English. They were translating non-violent resistance into docility. The Greek word means more than simply to “stand against” or “resist.” It means to resist violently, to revolt or rebel, to engage in an insurrection. Jesus did not tell his oppressed hearers not to resist evil. His entire ministry is at odds with such a preposterous idea. He is, rather, warning against responding to evil in kind by letting the oppressor set the terms of our opposition.
A proper translation of Jesus’ teaching would then be, “Do not retaliate against violence with violence.”
Source: https://37371.thankyou4caring.org/file/justice-promoter/Walter-Wink---Jesus-and-Alinsky.pdf