Tag: Unitarian Universalism

Free or Human?

.Reading time 11 minutes.

A Call for Real Change in Unitarian Universalist Religious Expression

There is no pendulum.  Donald Trump has more in common with the worst ethical qualities of Thomas Jefferson than most of the presidents of the previous 100 years.  This is exactly who the United States has always been.

The new Unitarian Universalist “values” are primarily concerned with what it means to be “free” and less concerned with spelling out a religious commitment to being “human” in plain language.  In UU space, the priority is always assuring that one has the freedom to interpret, to pick and choose and to apply values as one sees fit.  One also has the freedom to opt out entirely as evidenced by the number of congregations and leaders who still insist on using the “old” Seven Principles.  This obsession with freedom goes back to some of the history of liberal Christianity and the “free church” where the primary concerns for leaders in the early 19th century was establishing a religious expression that mirrored the still recently liberated United States.  The hallmark of early Unitarianism that survives in modern Unitarian Universalism today is this centering of freedom and how freedom is assumed to be an essential element to participation in society.

Unless you were/are black.  It is not my intention to leave anyone out of this initial framing, it is simply that my research focuses explicitly on the exchange between blackness and whiteness.   My research demonstrates that it is an unquestionable, historical fact that “freedom” in the United States has always been and continues to be more accessible to someone if they possess some combination or confidence of whiteness, maleness, (see the recent pardons of January 6 criminals), heterosexuality and a fully able body.  But the unique tension between blackness and whiteness, while representing only one tension among many in the United States, informs all the other tensions because of its global breadth, economic impact, and model for violence.  Case in point, the N-word (a word that originated as violence in the Americas[1]) exists in every language on this planet.

Unless you were/are black…while many Unitarian Universalist scholars are quick to point to antebellum abolitionists and Civil Rights Era allies, the vast majority of Unitarians and first gen Unitarian Universalists in congregations were not marching or protesting or in the streets.  They sat and listened to their highly educated ministers in their comfortable paid-for pews and de-facto segregated communities.  This was true even with Black Lives Matter in 2015; the overwhelming response was to hang signs…not to put bodies on the line.  To be clear, this way of being was not because people didn’t care.  Many people in UU congregations have cared deeply and passionately throughout all the struggles between whiteness and blackness for a few centuries.  But UUs were always free to express their solidarity, rage and compassion only as far as they felt comfortable doing.  They had agency.  The way they expressed caring about the bodies of black people being enslaved, lynched, mauled by dogs, or beaten by police for peacefully protesting, has always had to be processed through the great organizational expression of Unitarian freedom: congregational polity.  Freedom in process has regularly taken center stage before action.  Because Unitarian Universalists are always looking through a freedom lens, freedom is also projected as the priority on to those being oppressed.  Neither Unitarians nor Unitarian Universalists will dictate that people show up or believe in a certain way, or idea because when Unitarians moved, creed, dogma, Jesus and God out of the building, they gave those seats to the lofty goal of “universal freedom.”

Unitarian Universalism needs to stop operating from a place of intellectual safety and find itself in the vulnerable spots between harm and the actual bodies who are most in danger.

But Unitarian Universalists do not understand the complexity of what it means to speak of “freedom” beyond a patriotic, liberal label.  The Unitarian Universalist focus on freedom makes the same assumption and speaks a shockingly similar language to the most conservative ideologue: that “everyone” has access to freedom.  Freedom is the foundation of the meritocracy argument.  No one wants to argue with freedom as a principle.  This means that the foundational assumption behind UU “values” is the same assumption that is cancelling DEI.  But sadly, making an assumption about a universality of freedom as either a reality or a goal, has the potential in our current climate to be more than just naïve…it could be lethal.

What Unitarian Universalists continue to miss is that freedom in the United States context is the ultimate “master’s tool”[2]; freedom is embedded in and fueled by the assumption of whiteness.  This is what the history of Western “liberalism” tells us.  Freedom within the nascent “liberal” United States was never about inclusion or difference.  It was about the freedom to be considered “normal”, and in the case of the United States, the measures of normality were established as one having a proximity to whiteness, maleness, wealth and Christianness.  The legacies of the last 250 years of immigration policy are the most striking examples of this.  The United States has always been hostile to anyone or any group that was perceived as being incapable of assimilation…even within whiteness.  This is why we speak of an amalgamating melting pot and not a stew.

Unless you were/are black…

Right now, and going forward, Unitarian Universalism needs to be more than a pseudo-theological representation of a (not-so) invisible whiteness empowered by universal freedom.  Even the rhetoric about “liberation” is failing us.  Unitarian Universalism needs to stop operating from a place of intellectual safety and find itself in the vulnerable spots between harm and the actual bodies who are most in danger.  Unitarian Universalism can do this by adopting an Embodiment and Humanity Agenda as part of its religious framework.  Ironically, because of the same polity that obscures decision making behind white freedoms, the congregations and organizations of the Unitarian Universalist Association have the power to tell each other that they are willing to declare that it is impossible to have freedom without first having humanity.  Again, to the example of blackness as the canary in the coal mine, the greatest crime of African enslavement and segregation and the extrajudicial killing and imprisonment of black people over centuries has been that before any freedom was/is usurped, the affirmation of black people as fully human beings has been constantly denied.  Before any kind of liberation, black humanity must be acknowledged.  Liberation frameworks, while useful, can also reinforced the power of oppressors.  Black people, women, people with disabilities…and yes, white people…are first and foremost fully human.  It is humanity that becomes free…not freedom that becomes human.  It may seem like foolishness that this needs to be said, but in a world that is literally willing to attempt to erase the fact of transgender humanity, obviously, it does.

This is a crisis moment where bold actions could save lives.  As a religious institution, with all the rights and privileges of such an institution in the United States, Unitarian Universalists have the ability to make human embodiment (woman, trans, black, disabled, etc.) a non-negotiable and explicit part of our religion. As was trying to be done with the 8th Principle, language needs to be focused; Unitarian Universalists need to state their commitment to human embodiment plainly without the shroud of academic, word salads and over-intellectual jargon.  If it is what we are thinking, now is time to say it plain:

Unitarian Universalist religious belief begins with the full and unquestionable humanity of all people regardless and inclusive of how they are embodied.

As an institution with roots in the colonial founding of the United States, no one can question the religious pedigree of Unitarian Universalism.  Clarifying the religious commitment to embodied humanity gives Unitarian Universalism a way to make any anti-embodiment legislation a violation of religious rights.  If a high school can put in place a policy based on the “religious freedom” of an instructor to not use someone’s given pronouns, it needs to be made crystal clear that misgendering someone can be an even more direct violation of the student’s and parents’ religious freedom.  Above all, it is a violation of that child’s right to humanity.  This should be the work of Unitarian Universalism today.

–ALD

 

[1] Randall Kennedy, Ni**er: The Strange Career of a Troublesome Word, Revised edition. Twentieth-anniversary edition (New York: Pantheon Books, 2022).

[2] Audre Lorde, Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches, Crossing Press Feminist Series (Berkeley: Crossing Press, 2007).

The Work

.Reading time 8 minutes.
Image by Oleksandr Pidvalnyi from Pixabay

Can we please stop branding what white Unitarian Universalists do in an effort to be anti-racist as “the work”?

I recently made reference to this language in a sermon delivered at the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Charlottesville, Virginia, so I feel like some explanation might be in order.  Throughout my parish ministry, I know that my frequently expressed frustration with this phrase infuriated some of my congregation in Cambridge and I know that my thinking directly contradicts some of my close and valued colleagues of color, but hear me out…

First of all, at its heart, this phrase is offensive.  Really, this is the most racially removed and impersonal way one could refer to what actually needs to happen around racial equity in the world.  “The work” makes it sound like a curriculum, which admittedly for some people, that is all it is.  “The work” also makes it sound like something you get a vacation from (you don’t) or that you can put down at will (you can’t).  This phrase makes what needs to happen appear to be some kind of well-contained, defined and finite set of actions that can be approached like a checklist and voilá…anti-racist!  That ain’t it kids…

Second, referring to any efforts to be more cognizant of people of color and their perspectives as work, makes us (people of color) the work.  It problematizes non-whiteness.  Does this mean that every time you see, speak to or interact with a person of color it has to be work? Why would any non-white person want to be part of a community where being in relationship with them is publicly called work?  Holy crap…

Finally, the entire framework is wrong.  Why are white UUs eager to do “work” when they could be having fun, learning a new cultural sensitivity, making a friend,…cultivating the garden of their world?  None of this is work.  This is life.  Building community around shared values, demonstrated through spiritual expression should never, in any way be about work.  Put down the agenda and get to know a person.

The universal acceptance of this language may come from the settings in which the more probing conversations about race happen in UU congregations, which ultimately reinforces my point.  If someone can only feel safe questioning whether or not they are a racist by going into closed, invitation only back rooms…then chances are y’all know the answer to the question before the plastic wrap is off the deviled eggs.  The only way to truly “de-racist” ones self is by actually being in the world, being in relationships beyond a closed group.  For white Unitarian Universalists, this means getting to know and love (not be served by or simply acknowledge on the street) some non-white people and diving in to life.  Sure, there are resources and books to help unpack stuff, I’ve even created some myself.  But that can’t be where the journey begins or ends.  The only real work that needs to happen is opening the creaky old doors of ones heart, taking off the imaginary cloak of white safety, completely throwing away Peggy McIntosh’s knapsack and being in actual damned relationship with people who aren’t cookie cutter, mirror images of everything one already knows.  Here’s a novel idea: live with us (non-white people), play with us, laugh with us, be part of the world that we want to build together, don’t keep expecting us to acclimate to or be absorbed by yours.

In stark contrast, this is what every non-white person in the United States has to sustain everywhere they go.  In many places, particularly Unitarian Universalist settings, non-whites are outnumbered sometimes 10 or 20 or even 30 or more to 1.  We can’t be preoccupied with conceptualizing our interactions with those who are different than us as “work”.  There aren’t enough hours in a day or that much life force in a human body.  We are forced to find (or at least look for) real connections and to have actual reasons to speak to people and to put effort into building something akin to what we hope will be authentic relationships.  Again, this isn’t work, it is life.  But it is also a habit for non-white people because so many of us have earned advanced degrees in “whiteness survival” so that we can put more energy into thriving.

Outside of the bubble, being a Unitarian Universalist is regularly a meme…a cultural joke.  Often when it comes up in pop culture, being Unitarian Universalist is a placeholder for having no commitment to anything or any clarity on anything spiritual.  Above all it is considered code for being a wealthy white liberal.  Disturbingly, the echo chamber within Unitarian Universalism, doesn’t have the appetite to challenge the reality on which this public image is based and that in turn reinforces everything that the critics say.

Unitarian Universalism should not be satisfied with representing the performative suburban safety and social responsibility of a Toyota Prius.  In a world that is challenged by well funded and organized factions and political dogma, racialized violence, gendered erasure and skewed understandings of which lives have value, Unitarian Universalism could be a place that is not at all for the faint of heart.  It could be an incubator for real courage.  Radical acceptance also requires radical and ongoing self interrogation.  Being a warrior for equity, demands that one can be comfortable with being uncomfortable with what makes others comfortable.  Putting yourself on the line to change the world requires letting go of the world as you know it.  That is scary.  If you need confirmation, just ask any non-white UU about the experience of walking into a new UU congregation.

Better than referring to anything about how UU values can function in the world as “the work”, why not call it what we want it to be…a celebration of a generative future we can actively dare to live today.

–ALD