Book Displays: New Skinner House Books

An engaging and timely guide to preaching with passion from minister and professor Lucas Hergert. Done well, preaching engages mind and heart, soul and body. Passionate preaching offers more than discussion about topics held at a distance; it claims a stake in them. This is especially true right now, as progressive preachers must address today's social issues with power and conviction. But how does a preacher ensure the congregation not only receives but also feels the message? In Impassioned, minister and professor Lucas Hergert provides practical and detailed advice on how to craft and deliver passionate sermons, including changing the way one selects topics, structuring the sermon, understanding the centrality of emotion, and attending to embodiment and delivery. Hergert draws on resources that are religious and secular, artistic and dramatic, psychological and philosophical, to offer a range of techniques and inspiration to help each preacher find their path forward. And while Impassioned will be a powerful resource for working clergy, busy seminary students, and interested lay leaders, it also provides seasoned preachers with a different angle on the craft. Rethinking the sermon in this way will help preachers offer a heartfelt word as they work to create change in the lives of their community members and their broader social context. Hergert shows exactly how progressives can--and why they should--preach with feeling and force. [from publisher]

A powerful and necessary collection of rituals centering the African American experience and the African Diaspora. As American society becomes increasingly diverse, people are seeking spiritual inspiration from an expanding array of sources. Unitarian Universalist congregations must be culturally pluralistic to become a religious home to all who cross their threshold. Imani (Swahili for faith) Rituals centers the African American experience and the African Diaspora as the inspiration for rituals to enrich religious and spiritual life for Unitarian Universalists and other liberal denominations. Intended for individual, family, congregational, and community use, the practices in this book offer a creative and contemporary approach to rituals that are grounded in heritage and tradition, creating connection with ancestors and ancient wisdom while responding to the present moment. The rituals include individual practices to promote transcendence, healing, and acceptance; family rituals that honor elders; and community rituals that honor holidays and promote action for social justice, among many others.

Given everything our world faces today, having faith in love is no small thing." --Rev. Dr. Sofía Betancourt. Unitarian Universalists as a progressive religious community hold a humbling expectation to periodically re-evaluate the freely chosen covenant that holds us together. While this work impacts the bylaws that define our governance structures, it also gives life to the values we express in common cause. We do this work to live into the Unitarian Universalism of the future. In response to the Article II Study Commission and the final adopted language of Article II outlining our shared values, it is clear that the value most describe as central to their faith, to their living, and to the mission of their congregations is love itself. We are a people guided by, and centered in, our engagement with all that love requires. Our pressing task now is to ask ourselves and each other how this understanding calls us forward, individually and collectively. We may agree that love is central, but what does that mean to us and what does it require of us? It is in that spirit that we asked more than two dozen leaders in our movement the question of what it means to put love at the center of our faith. In these pages, you'll find personal testimony to love's power, reminders of the centrality of love throughout the long histories of Universalism and Unitarianism, and theologies of love drawn from many different expressions of Unitarian Universalism--from the natural world to the justice rally, to a loved one's deathbed, to the quiet moment before a worship service begins. May Love at the Center serve as an invitation to deepen your own understanding and practices of love. (Description from back cover)

As humans, we grow and we change, we grieve and we celebrate. Let Blessing It All be your guide to foster meaning and community as you mark the moments in your life. Our personal lives and the lives of our communities are marked by moments of transition and transformation. As individuals, we grow up, we move, we start new schools and new jobs, we begin and end relationships, we have children and if we are lucky we get to watch them grow, we lose people we love, and we discover more about who we are. As communities, we honor people entering new life stages, we reckon with natural disasters and national traumas, and year after year we mark the cycles of the seasons. Traditionally, we often mark birth, marriage, and death, and yet these are not the only moments that touch our lives and shape who we are. In this stunning collection, editors and ministers Heather Concannon and Allison Palm and contributors invite you to bless it all--moments that are ordinary and profound, tender and heartbreaking, joyful and celebratory, and everything in between. An expansive collection, the rituals in Blessing It All foster community, joy, and healing in moments like the joining of a blended family, changing names and pronouns, honoring Pride Month, having an abortion, getting a prosthesis, surviving sexual assault, ending a marriage, and so many others. The rituals--written by a diverse array of contributors with lived experiences that add depth and authenticity to each offering--are designed to be led by anyone inspired to do so, with clear instructions and additional insights and guidance. They are suitable for communities, congregations, family, and individual use. And they can happen anywhere our lives happen, wherever people or families or communities gather, because that is where we encounter the holy. May you find connection and commitment, inspiration and invitation, a blessing and a balm in these rituals.

An essential resource for anyone who wants to enter the next stage of their antiracist journey--recognizing, analyzing, and confronting the perpetuation of racism in our visual world. Images in the news, social media, advertisements, memes, websites, and selfies shape how we understand ourselves, our society, and our world. Even the images we don't see have an impact on our daily lives. But images are not innocent. And we don't have to be passive consumers. Our racial identities, assumptions, histories, and biases filter the images we absorb and affect how we interpret them. Are they problematic? How can you tell? Why should you care? Situated at the intersection of critical whiteness theory and visual culture, Through the Lens of Whiteness: Challenging Racialized Imagery in Pop Culture teaches readers visual literacy tools that expose racist messages, conventions, and symbols in images. Authors Diane S. Grimes and Liz Cooney help readers understand these patterns more deeply with detailed analysis of vivid image examples and personal stories to dismantle existing biases and develop an antiracist perspective. Grimes and Cooney are guided by the principle that white people bear the responsibility for dismantling racist structures and so primarily address white readers, but also offer this book in the hope that it will be a powerful tool of resistance for all readers.

Groundbreaking in its depictions of joy and community, Authentic Selves celebrates trans and nonbinary people and their families in stunning photographs and their own words. Foreword by transgender activist Jazz Jennings and her mom and fellow activist, Jeanette Jennings. So often trans and nonbinary people's stories are told only through the lens of their struggles and challenges, including their political battles for legal rights, but trans and nonbinary people live rich and fulfilling lives full of joy and community too. Authentic Selves: Celebrating Trans and Nonbinary People and Their Families is a sweeping compilation of life stories and portraits of trans and nonbinary people, as well as their partners, parents, children, siblings, and chosen family members. The compelling stories in Authentic Selves provide a glimpse into the real lives, both the challenges and the triumphs, of these remarkable people and their families--people like Senator Sarah McBride, disability justice advocate Parker Glick, drag entertainer TAYLOR ALXNDR, September 11th first responder Jozeppi Angelo Morelli, model Lana Patel, youth activist Elliott Bertrand, and so many others--all of whom are working to create a more just, diverse, and compassionate world. Developed in collaboration with PFLAG National and Transgender Legal Defense & Education Fund.

A firsthand account of two colonial pipelines and their resistance: the Dakota Access Pipeline at Standing Rock and the Line 3 pipeline on Anishinaabe lands. This is a story of becoming and un-becoming. When the living waters that crisscrossed the Standing Rock reservation came under threat, minister of the nearby Unitarian Universalist congregation Karen Van Fossan asked herself what it means, as a descendent of colonialism, to resist her own colonial culture. When another pipeline, Line 3, came to threaten Anishinaabe ways of life, the question became even more resounding. In A Fire at the Center, Van Fossan takes readers behind the scenes of the Dakota Access Pipeline conflict, to penitentiaries where prisoners of war have carried the movement onward, to the jail cell where she was held for protesting Line 3, to a reimagining of decolonized family constellations, and to moments of collective hope and strength. With penetrating insight, she blends memoir, history, and cultural critique. Guided by the generous teachings of Oceti Sakowin Camp near Standing Rock, she investigates layers of colonialism--extractive industries, mass incarceration, broken treaties, disappearances of Indigenous people--and the boundaries of imperial whiteness. For all those striving for liberation and meaningful allyship, Van Fossan's learnings and practices of genuine, mutual solidarity and her thoughtful critique of whiteness will be transformational.

A call to anyone who thought they were alone on the journey, Incantations for Rest is for kindred spirits: neurodivergent folks, parents up late past bedtime nursing resentment, Black people in predominantly white spaces--anyone who has found themselves at the edges of Beloved Community. Incantations for Rest is an invitation to slow down and explore every kind of rest, providing sacred space for those exhausted by the demands of a racist, ableist society. This stunning collection of poems, meditations, and magic by poet-activist Atena O. Danner is an examination of spiritual spaces, a love letter to Black well-being, and medicine for BIPOC people. Within these pages you are invited to savor connection, question assumptions, admit to complicated feelings, and still make room for joy. It is a beacon of affirmation and a vital tool for ritual and reflection.

Why is this happening? How do you care for yourself and your family? If you are struggling with a loved one's addiction you are not alone. A compassionate resource for anyone stuck between a rock and a hard place. When Rev. Nathan Detering shared the story of his brother's death from a drug overdose with the members of his congregation, many of them shared their own addiction stories with him. Realizing the healing power of sharing stories and questions in community, Rev. Detering conducted interviews to identify and address the common questions that haunt us when we love someone with addiction. In conversations both within and outside his community, he heard the palpable need for those struggling with a loved one's addictions to know they are not alone. Weaving together his own and others' deeply felt experiences of addiction, Why Can't I Fix It? responds to sometimes desperate questions such as: Why is this happening? What can you do? What can't you do? How do you care for yourself and the rest of your family? Can you trust your community to support you and your family? While the answers to these questions aren't easily found, Why Can't I Fix It? encourages those of us who are struggling with a loved one's addictions to practice self-care and self-compassion, understand the cultural context for emotional responses and expectations of ourselves and others, and reach out for support.

"Ranging from prison abolition to tax preparation support, this collection of essays explores some of the community-based ministries of Unitarian Universalists"

Minister and award-winning author of Writing to Wake the Soul Karen Hering invites readers on the cusp of great change--which is all of us today--to explore the new possibilities emerging in our times. Whether you are living through significant personal transitions or navigating a world reshaping itself faster than ever, the book offers ten skills for living on the threshold as well as spiritual practices and inspiration for connecting with your own inner wisdom. From the first page, you'll find a storytelling companion ready to journey with you through uncertainty and change. Hering does not pretend that change is simple. But she offers reassurance that it becomes easier to trust the more we participate in it. Sharing wisdom found in the body, in nature, and in metaphors, these reflections include creative and embodied exercises that invite readers into a larger story of change. With suggestions for using the book alone and with others, Hering reminds us that trusting change is made possible by sharing its challenges and its possibilities with others. This book is a conversation with the reader meant to also stir conversations between readers as we learn to live into and through our transformative times together.

An inclusive anthology of reflections on the spiritual gifts and challenges of raising young people. Inspired by the pandemic and her own teenage daughter's upcoming departure from home, editor Vanessa Rush Southern set out to collect an anthology of reflections on the spiritual gifts and challenges of raising young people. In reflecting with others, she found an array of life experiences, choices, struggles, and insights. She found joy and deep meaning pressed up against all the hard parts, tumbling out between diapers and carpool runs, breaking in like fireworks in the midst of casual conversations, in an email from a birth mother that turns the world on its end. She found that the young lives that intersect or get invited into relationship with our own, however we make or made our way to each other, have the power to change us, all of us, in ways both startling and universal. This inclusive and diverse anthology includes all kinds of families: chosen and biological, extended families, single parents, divorced parents, and more--a beautiful spectrum of people reflecting on the role children and young people have played in their lives and in their larger search for meaning. Little Did I Know goes well beyond the sentimental to an honest reckoning with the vulnerability and beauty of parenting and caregiving.

"In Beyond Welcome: Building Communities of Love, editor Linnea Nelson and contributors dream of a future Unitarian Universalism that upholds abundant love and universal justice within every community. The lived experiences of these hopeful Unitarian Universalists-ministers, religious professionals, and laypeople alike-illuminate the relevancy of liberation in each and every one of our communities. Examining both the joys of community and the responsibilities we have to one another, Beyond Welcome provides clarity about current structures and behaviors that create barriers to equity in our faith communities as a passageway to building foundational structures of love and liberation" (Description from publisher)

"Black Lives of Unitarian Universalism (BLUU), both as an organization and as a growing spiritual family, offers BLUU Notes as an exploration of Unitarian Universalism as an orientation toward love and self-love, toward justice and liberation, and toward a call to relationship building that is grounded in accountability and care, all centered in Blackness and all with a belief in the power and possibility of Unitarian Universalism living up to the very best parts of itself" (Description from publisher)

In Breaking and Blessing, the 2020 volume of the inSpirit Series, Rev. Sean Parker Dennison imagines letters from angels, draws on the natural world, and reflects on love and calling. They chart a path, moving here and there, as if across a constellation—connecting mathematics to love, stars to saplings, and breaking to blessing. Rev. Dennison’s striking debut will serve as both solace and flame to readers looking for them in equal measure.

For more than two hundred years, Unitarian and then Unitarian Universalist ministers have gathered to hear one of their own deliver an essay of reflection and critique on their profession. The Ministerial Conference at Berry Street, or as it’s more commonly known, the Berry Street lecture, was started in 1820 by famed Unitarian minister William Ellery Channing. It is believed this essay series is the longest running of its kind in the United States.
In this powerful collection, Berry Street scribe and editor Kate R. Walker and contributors look back over the essays on record and offer analysis on what was said and the historical context surrounding them; selected essays have also been included in this volume. The voices and ministry of thundering preachers, inspiring activists, and dedicated academics point toward a compelling future. When examined as a whole, their threads weave a rich and complex pattern. (Description from publisher)

A beautiful and powerful memoir of coming of age and coming out bisexual, Swinging on the Garden Gate describes a period of time in award-winning writer and teacher Elizabeth Jarrett Andrew's life where she came to know her bisexuality as an embodied manifestation of divinity. Every story begins with a word. As a young woman, Elizabeth Jarrett Andrew carried a word within her so potent that it spread through every artery and vein. But she carried it in secret until she was shown a different way and the word inside her turned restless and eager. A beautiful and powerful memoir of coming of age and coming out bisexual, Swinging on the Garden Gate: A Memoir of Bisexuality and Spirit describes a period of time in award-winning writer and teacher Elizabeth Jarrett Andrew's life where she came to know her bisexuality as an embodied manifestation of divinity. Andrew not only reconciles her Methodist faith with her sexuality but realizes that her body is holy, her sexuality is holy, and the word she carried within her has always been holy. The spark of spirit Andrew identifies in her body she also finds throughout the solid matter of life--in childhood, nature, creativity, loss, death, and especially the coming out process. In addition to being a personal journey through memory, Andrew brings a distinctly queer feminist lens to Christian teachings and answers the question hundreds of young people have posed to her over the years, "Is it possible to be both queer and spiritual?" The act of bringing hidden, personal truths to light is transformational, and for Andrew, a universal calling. This stunning second edition includes a new note from Andrew as she looks back on its twenty-year history.

Books about religion and the law tend to be highly technical or aimed primarily at religious conservatives. In Faith on Trial: Religion and the Law in the United States, legal scholar and Unitarian Universalist minister Mark J. T. Caggiano argues that concerns about separation of church and state often serve to silence the viewpoints of religious progressives, many of whom exit the conversation in the hope of protecting important social issues from religious infighting. But it is impossible to win a debate that you never join, and as Caggiano writes, it is paramount in these times that “religious liberals and progressives cultivate and refine an ability to articulate the need for moral changes within the political system. That goal will require an understanding of the law as well as a moral vision for the world.”
Complete with historical context, legal analysis, and specific examples of cases and statutes, Faith on Trial is an invitation to religious progressives and moderates to help put social progress and inclusion at the center of the national conversation about religion and the law. (Description from pblisher)

This book offers a short, daily experience to help bring readers back to their spiritual center in the daily moments of struggle and questioning. The editors have collected daily quotes, reflections, and questions for readers on their spiritual journey of recovery, with each month focusing on one of the 12 steps. (Description from publisher)

Too often in U.S. culture—and notably in faith communities—a culture of white supremacy is reinforced in damaging but unexamined ways. In The Darkness Divine, minister and poet Kristen L. Harper confronts and unpacks the language, imagery, buzzwords, and cultural touchstones that demean and dehumanize Black people but are so commonplace they can easily escape notice.
More importantly, in a brilliant arrangement of essays and poems in the vein of Claudia Rankine, Harper lifts up the strength, beauty, and resilience of Black people and outlines a path forward. She invites readers to explore what they have learned and assimilated so they might de-center whiteness and stretch their understanding and imagination to radically transform perceptions of blackness.
While directed at her own Unitarian Universalist tradition, The Darkness Divine is a powerful and loving challenge to all those committed to the work of dismantling white supremacy. (Description from publisher)

Bringing alive the heartfelt words and artwork contributed by creators diverse in spiritual perspective and identity, Conversations with the Sacred is a moving testimony to the power of prayer. Prayers of love, lamentation, justice, inspiration, and transcendence—all are here, thoughtfully selected by editors Manish Mishra-Marzetti and Jennifer Kelleher. Whatever your relationship to prayer, whether it comes naturally, you have a complicated history with it, or have never prayed before, Conversations with the Sacred is a powerful and accessible resource for anyone looking to explore or deepen a spiritual practice of reflection or prayer. (Description from publisher)

In The Stonewall Generation: LGBTQ Elders on Sex, Activism, and Aging, sexuality researcher Jane Fleishman shares the stories of fearless elders in the LGBTQ community who came of age around the time of the Stonewall Riots of 1969. In candid interviews, they lay bare their struggles, strengths, activism, and sexual liberation in the context of the political movements of the 1960s and 1970s and today. Each of these inspiring figures has spent a lifetime fighting for the right to live, love, and be free, facing challenges arising from their sexual orientation, gender, race, ethnicity, religion, politics, disabilities, kinkiness, non-monogamy, and other identities. These are the stories of those whose lives were changed forever by Stonewall and who in turn became agents of change themselves. A sex-positive and unapologetic depiction of LGBTQ culture and identity, The Stonewall Generation includes the voices of those frequently marginalized in mainstream tellings of LGBTQ history, lifting up the voices of people of color, transgender people, bisexual people, drag queens, and sex workers. We need to hear these voices, particularly at a time when our country is in the middle of a crisis that puts hard-won civil and human rights at risk, values we’ve fought for again and again in our nation’s history. For anyone committed to intersectional activism and social justice, The Stonewall Generation provides a much-needed resource for empowerment, education, and renewal. (Description from publisher)

Kate Landis grew up in the American Baptist Church—the child of a music director and a deacon—until she left the church in her late teens after surviving major depression and a handful of suicide attempts. She became an activist, feminist, punk, and self-described rabble rouser. And through activism she found a spiritual community with justice at its core and a faith that could hold it all—her mental illness, her fire, her spunk, and all of her questions—a loving, stubborn grace. With unflinching honesty and humor in the vein of Cheryl Strayed and David Sedaris but a raw tenderness all her own, Landis chronicles the hardest parts of her young adulthood as well as her poignant journey to faith and community. (Description from publisher)

In Held: Showing Up for Each Other’s Mental Health, community minister and mental health advocate Barbara F. Meyers illustrates how members of liberal religious congregations can be supportive to those living with mental health problems, and their loved ones, in our congregations and society at large. Meyers addresses the fundamental elements of spiritual support—truth, hope, presence, acceptance, encouragement, authenticity, public witness, and pastoral care—with stories from real life situations and suggestions for how parishioners can provide and advocate for support in their congregations. A study guide for congregations and a list of resources for more information round out this thoughtful and necessary resource. (Description from publisher)