Upcoming events

Switch to Calendar View

• July RET Book Club

  • When
    07/13/2025
  •  
    4:00 PM - 6:00 PM
  • Location
    Zoom

  Keeping the Faith: God, Democracy, and the Trial That Riveted a Nation

  Brenda Wineapple

  “No subject possesses the minds of men like religious bigotry and hate, and these fires are being lighted today in America.” So said legendary attorney Clarence Darrow as hundreds of people descended on the sleepy town of Dayton, Tennessee, for the trial of a schoolteacher named John T. Scopes, who was charged with breaking the law by teaching evolution to his biology class in a public school. Brenda Wineapple, the award-winning author of The Impeachers, explores how and why the Scopes trial quickly seemed a circus-like media sensation, drawing massive crowds and worldwide attention. Darrow, a brilliant and controversial lawyer, said in his electrifying defense of Scopes that people should be free to think, worship, and learn. William Jennings Bryan, three-time Democratic nominee for president, argued for the prosecution that evolution undermined the fundamental, literal truth of the Bible and created a society without morals, meaning, and hope. In Keeping the Faith, Wineapple takes us into the early years of the twentieth century—years of racism, intolerance, and world war—to illuminate, through this pivotal legal showdown, a seismic period in American history. At its heart, the Scopes trial dramatized conflicts over many of the fundamental values that define America, and that continue to divide Americans today. 544 pages.

  *********************************************************************

  Join Zoom Meeting

  https://us06web.zoom.us/j/82784641314?pwd=GWKzL2lpeQjWcfrENCs5VslDaeaKWd.1

  Meeting ID: 827 8464 1314

  Passcode: 144367

  ---

  One tap mobile

  +13017158592,,82784641314#,,,,*144367# US (Washington DC)

  +13052241968,,82784641314#,,,,*144367# US

  ---

  Dial by your location

  • +1 301 715 8592 US (Washington DC)
  • +1 305 224 1968 US
  • +1 309 205 3325 US
  • +1 312 626 6799 US (Chicago)
  • +1 646 931 3860 US
  • +1 929 205 6099 US (New York)
  • +1 719 359 4580 US
  • +1 253 205 0468 US
  • +1 253 215 8782 US (Tacoma)
  • +1 346 248 7799 US (Houston)
  • +1 360 209 5623 US
  • +1 386 347 5053 US
  • +1 507 473 4847 US
  • +1 564 217 2000 US
  • +1 669 444 9171 US
  • +1 669 900 6833 US (San Jose)
  • +1 689 278 1000 US

  Meeting ID: 827 8464 1314

  Passcode: 144367

  Find your local number: https://us06web.zoom.us/u/keDugo27FF

  Please disregard the message about forwarding below.

  
  

  Show details
• Katherine Stewart/Christian Nationalism IN PERSON

  • When
    07/20/2025
  •  
    7:00 PM - 9:00 PM
  • Location
    TVUUC, 2931 Kingston Pike Knoxville, TN 37919

  
  

  
  

  Katherine Stewart, author of Money, Lies and God will be speaking on this important book that exposes Christian Nationalism. 

  About Katherine:

  Katherine Stewart has been covering the rise of the anti-democratic movement for over 16 years. Her latest book, Money, Lies, and God: Inside the Movement to Destroy American Democracy (Bloomsbury 2025), is an instant New York Times bestseller. Her previous book, The Power Worshippers: Inside the Dangerous Rise of Religious Nationalism (Bloomsbury 2020), won First Place in the Nonfiction Books category from the Religion News Association, as well as a Morris B. Forkosch Best Book award. The Power Worshippers formed the basis of the documentary feature God & Country, produced by Rob Reiner and Michele Reiner; Stewart served as executive producer. Her 2012 book, The Good News Club: The Christian Right’s Stealth Assault on America’s Children, focused on the religious right’s efforts to undermine public education. Stewart’s writing appears in The New York Times op ed, New Republic, Religion News Service and others. Her substack is at katherinestewartbooks, and she is on Bluesky at katherinestewart.bsky.social.

  Her books will be available for sale at the presentation and there will be a light reception afterward along with book signing. 

  There will be no Third Sunday Morning Meeting in July because of this presentation Sunday evening. 

  Please share this email with those who may be interested despite the notice below. 

  
  

  Show details
• Knox County Fourth Wednesday MEET-UP

  • When
    07/23/2025
  •  
    6:00 PM - 8:00 PM
  • Location
    Corner 16, 9637 Kroger Park Dr
Knoxville, TN 37922

  Come join an informal gathering for food and conversation at the Corner 16, 9637 Kroger Park Dr, Knoxville, TN 37922 near Pellissippi and Northshore.

  If you are interested in seeing the menu beforehand, you can check it out here. 

  Please note that this is NEW LOCATION. 

  Disregard the notice below about forwarding this email. Feel free to share with others who may be interested. 

  Show details
• July RET Reflections

  • When
    07/27/2025
  •  
    4:30 PM - 6:00 PM
  • Location
    Zoom

  Are You Going to Serve a New Lord?

  Many social philosophers seem to think we are heading toward a Techno-Feudal state.  They point to a society that is being led by a small elite that is increasingly hoarding all the wealth in society and dictating social norms and customs to the rest of us.  This encompasses both the right and left and is the top few percent of the population.  Social mobility is being reduced, and fewer people are able to rise above their class.  See:

  Our Neo-Feudal Future - First Things

  "America has only a limited feudal past, the plantation aristocracy of the antebellum South and the enormous class chasms of the Gilded Age being pretty much our only examples. Yet today—after decades of social mobility, a digital revolution that was supposed to empower individuals everywhere, and the construction of a vigorous anti-discrimination apparatus that putatively ensures equal rights and status—a rigid new social order with feudal elements has come into view."

  So, after serving your Lord, come and discuss with us your new future.  We may Knight you.

   **************************************************************

  Join Zoom Meeting

  https://us06web.zoom.us/j/85804805144?pwd=aOtLYv2BIH6DmIby1mdreTdQgHQAQg.1

  Meeting ID: 858 0480 5144

  Passcode: 245124

  ---

  One tap mobile

  +16469313860,,85804805144#,,,,*245124# US

  +19292056099,,85804805144#,,,,*245124# US (New York)

  ---

  Dial by your location

  • +1 646 931 3860 US
  • +1 929 205 6099 US (New York)
  • +1 301 715 8592 US (Washington DC)
  • +1 305 224 1968 US
  • +1 309 205 3325 US
  • +1 312 626 6799 US (Chicago)
  • +1 669 900 6833 US (San Jose)
  • +1 689 278 1000 US
  • +1 719 359 4580 US
  • +1 253 205 0468 US
  • +1 253 215 8782 US (Tacoma)
  • +1 346 248 7799 US (Houston)
  • +1 360 209 5623 US
  • +1 386 347 5053 US
  • +1 507 473 4847 US
  • +1 564 217 2000 US
  • +1 669 444 9171 US

  Meeting ID: 858 0480 5144

  Passcode: 245124

  Find your local number: https://us06web.zoom.us/u/ked4rLL5T1

  
  

  Please disregard the message about forwarding below.

  Show details
• August RET Book Club

  • When
    08/10/2025
  •  
    4:00 PM - 6:00 PM
  • Location
    Zoom

  Transformative Experience

  L.A. Paul

  As we live our lives, we repeatedly make decisions that shape our future circumstances and affect the sort of person we will be. When choosing whether to start a family, or deciding on a career, we often think we can assess the options by imagining what different experiences would be like for us. L. A. Paul argues that, for choices involving dramatically new experiences, we are confronted by the brute fact that we can know very little about our subjective futures. This has serious implications for our decisions. If we make life choices in the way we naturally and intuitively want to - by considering what we care about, and what our future selves will be like if we choose to have the experience -we only learn what we really need to know after we have already committed ourselves. If we try to escape the dilemma by avoiding an experience, we have still made a choice.

  Choosing rationally, then, may require us to regard big life decisions as choices to make discoveries, small and large, about the intrinsic nature of experience, and to recognize that part of the value of living authentically is to experience one's life and preferences in whatever way they may evolve in the wake of the choices one makes. Using classic philosophical examples about the nature of consciousness, and drawing on recent work in normative decision theory, cognitive science, epistemology, and the philosophy of mind, Paul develops a rigorous account of transformative experience that sheds light on how we should understand real-world experience and our capacity to rationally map our subjective futures. 202 pages.

  *********************************************************************

  Join Zoom Meeting

  https://us06web.zoom.us/j/84055669501?pwd=vniR5kBSRfx2WIanLo3bnFTuZwXYsv.1

  Meeting ID: 840 5566 9501

  Passcode: 167517

  ---

  One tap mobile

  +19292056099,,84055669501#,,,,*167517# US (New York)

  +13017158592,,84055669501#,,,,*167517# US (Washington DC)

  ---

  Dial by your location

  • +1 929 205 6099 US (New York)
  • +1 301 715 8592 US (Washington DC)
  • +1 305 224 1968 US
  • +1 309 205 3325 US
  • +1 312 626 6799 US (Chicago)
  • +1 646 931 3860 US
  • +1 719 359 4580 US
  • +1 253 205 0468 US
  • +1 253 215 8782 US (Tacoma)
  • +1 346 248 7799 US (Houston)
  • +1 360 209 5623 US
  • +1 386 347 5053 US
  • +1 507 473 4847 US
  • +1 564 217 2000 US
  • +1 669 444 9171 US
  • +1 669 900 6833 US (San Jose)
  • +1 689 278 1000 US

  Meeting ID: 840 5566 9501

  Passcode: 167517

  Find your local number: https://us06web.zoom.us/u/kbbiXRfjeT

  
  

  Please disregard the message about forwarding below.

  
  

  Show details
• August RET Reflections

  • When
    08/24/2025
  •  
    4:30 PM - 6:00 PM
  • Location
    Zoom

  Are Negotiations Always Better than Force?

  Many of us feel that it is better to talk things through and work out a compromise rather than to use force.  But what if talking just leads to more talking while damage and even death occurs?  Is using force to set clear boundaries a moral option?   Do we sometimes get things wrong and engage in catastrophe thinking because of a strong bias toward "talking" and "compromise".   How do we know that compromise is even a solution?  For a deterrence through strength argument see:

  How the West got the Israel-Iran war so wrong
  

  The sentiment betrays the Western delusion: that process is always preferable to power. That negotiation, however one-sided, is morally superior to pre-emption. But pre-emption is not always a moral failing. When executed with precision, intelligence and legitimacy – as it was in this case – it prevents greater wars. It reinstates deterrence. And it spares civilians, infrastructure and economies the toll of prolonged conflict.
  

  This is the paradox many in the West struggle to accept: restrained power can be more humane than endless diplomacy. Especially when that diplomacy serves only to delay the inevitable, embolden aggressors and paralyze allies.
  

  So where does this put us?  Tip one way and we have endless war, tip the other way and we have instability and terrorism.  Peace through strength has been around a long time, but so has fear of escalation.

  What do you think?

   **************************************************************

  Join Zoom Meeting

  https://us06web.zoom.us/j/83710041855?pwd=kS2l7pKeieIBR5UTj6fX5t3v6RA8Fl.1

  Meeting ID: 837 1004 1855

  Passcode: 773855

  ---

  One tap mobile

  +13126266799,,83710041855#,,,,*773855# US (Chicago)

  +16469313860,,83710041855#,,,,*773855# US

  ---

  Dial by your location

  • +1 312 626 6799 US (Chicago)

  • +1 646 931 3860 US

  • +1 929 205 6099 US (New York)

  • +1 301 715 8592 US (Washington DC)

  • +1 305 224 1968 US

  • +1 309 205 3325 US

  • +1 253 205 0468 US

  • +1 253 215 8782 US (Tacoma)

  • +1 346 248 7799 US (Houston)

  • +1 360 209 5623 US

  • +1 386 347 5053 US

  • +1 507 473 4847 US

  • +1 564 217 2000 US

  • +1 669 444 9171 US

  • +1 669 900 6833 US (San Jose)

  • +1 689 278 1000 US

  • +1 719 359 4580 US

  Meeting ID: 837 1004 1855

  Passcode: 773855

  Find your local number: https://us06web.zoom.us/u/kzIysZZaH

  
  

  
  

  Please disregard the message about forwarding below.

  Show details