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We are grateful to the Dickens' Festival for the annual opportunity to participate in an event bringing people from all over Southern California and around the US. Check out their website here for information on past and future festivals.
Below you'll find our press release and our photos from our part of Dickens' Fest.
Below you'll find our press release and our photos from our part of Dickens' Fest.
"Church to Usher in Victorian Era"
Press Enterprise, January 30, 2013
by the Rev. Matthew Crary
The Universalist Unitarian Church congregation will transform itself into an alternative history of the Victorian era during the 20th Anniversary Dickens Festival in Riverside from Feb. 1 to 3. In addition to sporting colorful and steam-powered Victorian era costumes, they are hosting the Phileas Fogg Costume Ball, the Great Y Youth Circus, sponsoring a Steampunk art show at Division 9 Art Gallery and leading a Steampunk themed worship service.
Steampunk, a multigenre alternative, transmogrifies the Victorian era with a revolutionary replay of the Industrial Revolution and the British Age of Empire. In the place of the soul-crushing classism, racism and colonialism, Steampunk re-envisions that period as one of equality, multiculturalism and exploration.
“We Unitarian Universalists have so much in common with Steampunk; when you know us both the connection is obvious,” said the Rev. Matthew Crary, minister of UUCR. “Our faith envisions a radically different way of living in the midst of the information revolution and global consumerism. We are called to craft relationships based on the inherent worth and dignity of every person within a great web of interdependence. That's a shared vision with Steampunk,” he said.
This shared vision isn't happenstance. Inspired by the early science fiction of Jules Verne and H.G. Wells, Steampunk comes by its social vision through Unitarian roots. “There's no getting away from the man who invented Steampunk: Charles Dickens,” said literary critic John Clute.
Dickens, a Unitarian, saw with their socially conscious eyes the despair and tyranny of his age. As Clute said, “For Dickens, that nightmare may be a prophetic vision of humanity knotted into the subterranean entrails of the city machine...”
by the Rev. Matthew Crary
The Universalist Unitarian Church congregation will transform itself into an alternative history of the Victorian era during the 20th Anniversary Dickens Festival in Riverside from Feb. 1 to 3. In addition to sporting colorful and steam-powered Victorian era costumes, they are hosting the Phileas Fogg Costume Ball, the Great Y Youth Circus, sponsoring a Steampunk art show at Division 9 Art Gallery and leading a Steampunk themed worship service.
Steampunk, a multigenre alternative, transmogrifies the Victorian era with a revolutionary replay of the Industrial Revolution and the British Age of Empire. In the place of the soul-crushing classism, racism and colonialism, Steampunk re-envisions that period as one of equality, multiculturalism and exploration.
“We Unitarian Universalists have so much in common with Steampunk; when you know us both the connection is obvious,” said the Rev. Matthew Crary, minister of UUCR. “Our faith envisions a radically different way of living in the midst of the information revolution and global consumerism. We are called to craft relationships based on the inherent worth and dignity of every person within a great web of interdependence. That's a shared vision with Steampunk,” he said.
This shared vision isn't happenstance. Inspired by the early science fiction of Jules Verne and H.G. Wells, Steampunk comes by its social vision through Unitarian roots. “There's no getting away from the man who invented Steampunk: Charles Dickens,” said literary critic John Clute.
Dickens, a Unitarian, saw with their socially conscious eyes the despair and tyranny of his age. As Clute said, “For Dickens, that nightmare may be a prophetic vision of humanity knotted into the subterranean entrails of the city machine...”
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Photos by Ameena Silva and Tammy Trowbridge, church members.