Author: Rev. Adam Lawrence Dyer

Lead Minister at First Parish in Cambridge Unitarian Universalist, author, educator, LGBT Activist. Unitarian Universalist Chaplain at Harvard. A believer in bodies and liberated religion.

This Is Who You Are, America

.Reading time 12 minutes.

Beginning

The only time the United States went to war with itself was over the basic idea of what it meant to be and have rights as an American.  The Civil War (even within its name) indicates that it was a conflict over civilization and the ability of people to be people with one another.  The slave holding south felt that the non-slaveholding north had encroached upon its “ordained” rights to self determination by creating a political climate hostile to the institution of slave-holding:

Those States have assume [sic] the right of deciding upon the propriety of our domestic institutions; and have denied the rights of property established in fifteen of the States and recognized by the Constitution; they have denounced as sinful the institution of slavery; they have permitted open establishment among them of societies, whose avowed object is to disturb the peace and to eloign the property of the citizens of other States. They have encouraged and assisted thousands of our slaves to leave their homes; and those who remain, have been incited by emissaries, books and pictures to servile insurrection.[1]

The result was this first official act of secession:

We, therefore, the People of South Carolina, by our delegates in Convention assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, have solemnly declared that the Union heretofore existing between this State and the other States of North America, is dissolved, and that the State of South Carolina has resumed her position among the nations of the world, as a separate and independent State; with full power to levy war, conclude peace, contract alliances, establish commerce, and to do all other acts and things which independent States may of right do.

Adopted December 24, 1860[2]

At the founding of the United States, and in the best reflection of Enlightenment thinking, the “state” was the direct extension of the individual “man”.  Of course, underlying both the concept of “state” and “man” is the basic premise that only specific men could have rights while others were merely non-rights holding (non-human) “property”.  Indeed, the Civil War was entirely an argument among white men about having the agency to be white men of a certain kind.  It was a conflict about honor among white men…which is part of the reason people hold so dearly to the legacies of the conflict today.  Up to nearly three-quarters of a million people died over the struggle between white men trying to define the ethics of white manhood and the role of those ethics in the governing mechanism of the United States.

There are those who will strenuously object to this framing.  They want to see the non-slaveholding part of the country as heroes.  But it was the South that was willing to fight. It was the South that seceded and the South that fired the first shots while the North was only politically and legislatively “aggressive” and Lincoln and others were loathe to do battle over the differences.  Still, some will attempt to make the case that the abolitionist north altruistically and nobly waged war “on behalf” of enslaved people and against the “peculiar institution”.  My research into attitudes of some of the most vocal abolitionists, some of whom were Unitarians or aligned with Unitarianism paints a very different picture.  While Unitarian minister Theodore Parker was aligned personally with blacks seeking freedom and invested in the work of John Brown and author and activist Lydia Maria Child wrote a deeply researched and comprehensive book about the full humanity of black people[3], others such as William Ellery Channing[4], Ralph Waldo Emerson[5] and Thomas Wentworth Higginson[6] held reserved, fetishistic and sometimes outright bigoted supremacist attitudes toward blacks.  Their investment in abolition was not about black humanity; it was about how the institution of slavery reflected poorly on white (male) morality and how emancipation could be framed as a philanthropic gesture of white goodness and charity.  A significant part of the abolitionist movement in the 19th century was a project (at least among Unitarians) to perfect white manhood.

The result of the 2024 presidential election demonstrates that this is exactly who Americans are today.  We have just witnessed a majority, racing to the defense and alignment with white manhood as the center and dominant symbol of American identity.

The agenda that has played out from the beginning of the American experiment, based on the words and thoughts of Thomas Jefferson, are still prioritizing his social location: wealthy, white, male, property owner.  This is literally who just won the presidential election…again.  The institutional systems of reward respond immediately to scratching this one itch, not because of some detached and individual “concept” of supremacy, or racism, or bias.  The markets jump, like a fetus in the womb because this is the nourishment that allows that social location to be born and reborn into the world.  It is the only being that is recognized by the American system as having full humanity.  The United States is designed to function as the birthing chair for white maleness.

If this sounds rash, and before you throw me on the heap of “wokeness” or “trash” (thank you Ron DeSantis and JD Vance), ask yourself how invested in white maleness you are.  Do you, or are you forced to measure yourself on a scale based on your proximity to white maleness?  Has your professional life, family life, economic life, etc. been shaped by whether or not you could get a “typical” American job, in a “nice” American neighborhood and attend or send your kids to “good” American schools.  Then ask yourself what makes them “typical”, “nice”, or “good”?  In your minds-eye are your co-workers female?  Are your neighbors trans?  Are the teachers black?  How have you been trained to assume and aspire first to white maleness and then had to retrofit yourself to reflect that way of being in the world?  And if you are a white male, have you ever had to think about it other than when someone like me reminds you of it?

Reflection

The vast majority of homicides among trans people in the United States are transgender women of color[7].  As a reflection of the Jeffersonian ideal of what it means to be “American”, this makes perfect sense.  If white, cisgender, maleness is the baseline assumption of being, then Black, Latin-x or Indigenous transgender femaleness is the ultimate defiance of that norm.  In the factory dedicated to birthing white maleness, non-white trans-ness is only seen as a deformity against “nature” and therefore the least worthy of survival.  The lack of attention to the rates of transgender murder and suicide, not to mention proposed restrictions on gender appropriate medical access and services is the same white male motivated eugenic solution that we’ve seen in previous generations whenever white maleness is threatened by being moved from the center.

When I look in a mirror and ask myself what I will do with this current situation, I first wonder: how am I complicit?  How have I reinforced the white-cisgender-male-as “normal” paradigm?  How have I, even as a black gay man, been invested in propping up the thing that wants to see me and my world silenced, put in a closet or maybe even dead?  What might I do to work outside of that self-denying psychology? What is my alternative truth?

Go, look in a mirror.  Regardless of how you voted, think about the election and admit that who the country elected is a direct reflection of what it means to be an “American”.  Own it…own your role in it.  It belongs to you.  You participate in it economically, socially, creatively, intellectually, ethically and politically.  If you don’t like the way those words stick in your throat, or clog your brain, then change it.  There are alternatives.

It’s time the rest of us stopped dying for the ongoing war between white men.

–ALD

Notes:

[1] “Avalon Project – Confederate States of America – Declaration of the Immediate Causes Which Induce and Justify the Secession of South Carolina from the Federal Union,” accessed November 7, 2024, https://avalon.law.yale.edu/19th_century/csa_scarsec.asp.

[2] “Avalon Project – Confederate States of America – Declaration of the Immediate Causes Which Induce and Justify the Secession of South Carolina from the Federal Union.”

[3] Lydia Maria Child, An Appeal in Favor of That Class of Americans Called Africans (Allen and Ticknor, 1833).

[4] Channing, William Ellery, Slavery, 1836.

[5] Nell Irvin Painter, “Ralph Waldo Emerson’s Saxons,” The Journal of American History 95, no. 4 (2009): 977–85, https://doi.org/10.2307/27694556.

[6] Christopher Looby, “‘As Thoroughly Black as the Most Faithful Philanthropist Could Desire’: Erotics of Race in Higginson’s Army Life in a Black Regiment,” January 1, 1997, https://doi.org/10.1215/9780822397748-004.

[7] “Everytown for Gun Safety Transgender Homicide Tracker – EveryStat,” Airtable, accessed November 7, 2024, https://airtable.com/appPLAJ5mUFwndPkQ/shrkgUrJPmtGxHZ0m/tblEhXLsohkNldLZp.

Process or Love? – A Reflection on Article II

.Reading time 11 minutes.

I’m wading in…

Mostly because I have brought up the concern about Unitarian Universalist values and specifically the Seven Principles having no reflection of “love” since I first started seminary in 2012. I’ve been yammering on about it ever since.  I’ve consistently preached about this deficiency and ministered from a place of needing to address what feels to me like an emotional vacuum.

While I have great respect for the individuals of the Commission, their intellect, their labor and intentions, from my perspective, Article II still misses the mark.  To be clear, this is not about their work as much as it is about the structure of Unitarian Universalism.  For the uninitiated: “Article II of the Unitarian Universalist Association (UUA) Bylaws, Principles and Purposes, is the foundation for all of the work of our UUA and its member congregations and covenanted communities”[1].  Article II contains the Seven Principles and Six Sources and according to the provision for amending the bylaws (ARTICLE XV Section C-15.1. Amendment of Bylaws – 6) the Association is due for an update.  The update in graphic form looks like this, with love at the center:

Yes, this is pretty, but I wonder if in this ambitious project, Unitarian Universalists may have missed the opportunity to think deeply or wrestle with what we truly mean by “love”.  Are Unitarian Universalists afraid of love?  The parallel that comes to mind is the UU approach to racial justice where we are very good at and quick to point out what whiteness does in the world (supremacy, exclusivity, historical oppression, etc.) but we are less willing to unpack what whiteness is.

As for Article II, “love” feels like a bystander.  There is a sweeping assumption here that everyone shares a common understanding of what love is.  This is far from the case.  The current rework of “values” seeks to literally center love within 6 distinct values: Justice, Equity, Transformation, Pluralism, Interdependence, and Generosity. Creatively, Unitarian Universalist Religious Educators have adopted “Jet Pig” (the first letter of each value) as an acronym to teach and operationalize the newly organized values.  But what about accountability?  Where is loyalty?  Where is repair?  What about forgiveness? What about ingenuity and understanding?  The properties that Jet Pig names are all well and good if you live in a world where you don’t have to actively fight for your identity every day; where you aren’t struggling to eat; where you don’t have to argue with the government to get them to understand that someone really does need access to Medicaid…or that you are a whole and legitimate human being.  With all due respect, love, that is, the real world love that is necessary for an intentional community that is committed to one another through the real struggles of human life, must have more muscle than plush toys, platitudes, slogans and songs.

Starting with governance, and not trusting love as an organizing principle unto itself bows to the very “white supremacy culture” that UUs say they are determined to dismantle.

What is Needed

Because of the complexity, and frankly the real lived importance of love, I firmly believe that the bylaws are the wrong place for what Unitarian Universalism requires in this crucial moment.  What UUs need in order to be the transformational place that our rhetoric says we are, is to make the statement of our values a stand alone commitment.  Having principles, values, or whatever as part of the bylaws prioritizes democratic process over content…and THIS is the problem.  Bylaws are a bit like Roberts Rules that way; they tell you how to do things regardless of what is being done.  But shouldn’t what Unitarian Universalists do first and foremost be love? Shouldn’t the bylaws be created out of love? Are we saving lives or running meetings? A faith community needs for things to be in a different priority order than we currently have them.  We can’t place love at the center after cherry picking what we think is non-offending and lofty enough for everyone to agree on.  Love needs to point the way toward everything we do…including creating bylaws.

Starting with governance, and not trusting love as an organizing principle unto itself bows to the very “white supremacy culture” that UUs say they are determined to dismantle. The organizational commitment to bylaws and process structures goes directly back to the 1961 merger and the focus on documentation, committees and legalities.  Historically it goes back further.  One, if not the most important value to proto Unitarians and Universalists who largely came from places of privilege and or cultural homogeneity was “liberty”.  “Liberal religion” was always first about the individual right to an expression of belief.  The resistance to coercion and having the tools to resist that coercion runs deep.  But in a modern and truly diverse world, individual liberty is only one concern. By sublimating our values to the structure of bylaws, we are challenged to hold love as a functional overarching priority.  Instead, individual rights and expressions of freedom emerge as a true Unitarian Universalist creed.

Recently, Rep. Byron Donalds (R-FL) made statements that claimed that black people during Jim Crow held stronger more conservative aligned values which he claims was a good thing.  Regardless of what one may think of black conservatives, this repackaging of violent history requires a response.  Outside of the fact that black people were blocked from voting because of Jim Crow policies (oh the irony!) he and the rest of his cronies like Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC) are invested in rewriting black history to tell black conservatives that “really…pre-Civil Rights Movement racism wasn’t that bad” and “we overcame!”  They are willing to trade on the lives of the people who died for the right to vote, the right to be housed, the right to education, the right to not be raped and the right to not be lynched simply to put a someone who has shown himself to be a dangerous bigot in the white house.  How does Jet Pig respond to that?

In addition to the Article II Commission members, I have immense respect for Unitarian Universalist Religious Educators.  Religious Educators are asked to carry the maximum burden of laying moral building blocks for our culture while being provided with the minimum tools and often the minimum of pay and resources (something in dire need of correction).  I am beholden to them for being willing to literally put lipstick on a pig, but we can and must do better for and by them.  By doing better for Religious Education in Unitarian Universalism, we will do better for all of us.  Religious Educators have been saying for years that we need a stronger statement and position on our moral and ethical positions as part of what we teach.  Why not listen to them and just do it as opposed to forcing them to once again, be the most creative people in our communities with the least amount of support because of our fetish for bureaucracy.

Unitarian Universalists have the opportunity to do something no other faith community does: we can start with a “Statement of Love”.  Because we are not bound by creed, doctrine or dogma, we can put love FIRST…not at the center, not at the side but FIRST.  Love can be our motivation and our destination.  But that will require talking about love, wrestling with what love expressed in the lived actions and felt hearts of a truly diverse world actually means.  This is the tough work ahead of Unitarian Universalists.  It is a challenge that cannot sit comfortably on its long held assumptions about individual liberty.  Considering what the world currently is, and what some would like it to become (see Project 2025), it may be the most important call to action that we have ever received.  The time is now.  My only worry is that we will be too averse to the messiness of actually loving one another and too tied up in the process of processes to answer the call.

–ALD