Tag: Unitarian Universalist Association

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

A Failure of My Faith

.Reading time 8 minutes.
white wooden boat adrift at shore under grey cloudy sky
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I have now watched the date that marks 400 years since Africans were first displaced to this continent in bondage come and go with no substantial acknowledgment by the Unitarian Universalist Association (well, we rang bells…that’s nice.)  I serve this denomination as one of all too few African American ministers and this lack of action is yet another reminder that in many ways, this is not my faith.  But I am not deterred.  In fact, I am determined that because of this minimal action, I will not let the same thing happen next year with regard to marking 400 years since the start of the aggressive and pre-meditated displacement in 1620 of Native people from the place that we now call Massachusetts.

I believe that the Unitarian Universalist Association and the United Church of Christ as the modern-day religious descendants of the Puritans who arrived here in 1620 must make a public acknowledgement of their role in initiating the devastation of Native people.  I also believe that as the religious body that formed and structured what would become the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, the modern government of the commonwealth must join these two denominations in a public act of witness.

By 1620, Native tribes had already been poisoned by European disease.  But it was the Puritans who were then able to take advantage of this weakened position to squat on villages that had been previously cleared by dying tribes and to wield firearms (somethings never change) as a threat of lethal force to build their precious “city on a hill.”  Native people did not lay down without a fight (Pequot War, King Phillip’s War, etc.) but they were ultimately repressed by the English colonizers who had little or no interest in the original inhabitants’ continuing to survive according to their own customs let alone thrive.

…talk is cheap; repentance is dear.

There are those who will hear this call to action and resist any effort to acknowledge this history as a crime of humanity; and they may simply chalk it up to “progress”.  They may ask, how can we do this without then taking account of every one of the conflicts posed by European settlers to Native people.  They  may also retort with “but there was violence from both sides.” Frankly, I don’t give a damn because I’m tired of accommodating white fragility around this history.  I also know that if these three powerful (and supposedly liberal) entities continue to tacitly accept the forced removal, enslavement and genocide of the original inhabitants of this land as “progress” we will never get to a place of true progress; we will never truly recognize or resolve the ongoing violence of the Atlantic slave trade or the troublingly persistent second-class status of women.  In order to accomplish anything at all, we must begin at a beginning.

New England talks a good game on liberal values.  But talk is cheap; repentance is dear.  It is time for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and the descended religious bodies of the Puritans (UUA & UCC) to pay up.

Inspired in this moment by the Jewish High Holy Days and the season of atonement, and the actions of the Collegiate Church of New York in 2009, the following is my imagination of what a joint declaration from the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, the United Church of Christ and the Unitarian Universalist Association addressing their role in Native displacement and murder might look like. Just to be clear, I am not Native or Indigenous identified and I cannot express the specific needs of those communities and I don’t intend to represent myself in that way.  But I am a minister in the lineage of the leaders who created this devastation and it is my obligation to call that legacy to account if my faith is ever to live up to my standards of racial, social and cultural equity:

A Declaration for 1620 Atonement

May it be understood:

The early colonizers of the region now known as the Commonwealth of Massachusetts intentionally sought to displace the original inhabitants of this land.

Motivated by their Christian faith, the colonizers approached their project of settlement with an assumption that their “work” was ordained by God.

The religious basis for the colonizers’ social and political organization was foundational to their efforts and created a justification of entitlement to their actions in peacetime and in war.

The Puritan movement created the principle social and political order for the colonizers.

May it be resolved:

The Commonwealth of Massachusetts, the United Church of Christ and the Unitarian Universalist Association (primary descendants and chief beneficiaries of the Puritan colonial project) recognize the year 2020 as a year of mourning and the beginning of atonement for the loss of life, the destruction of a way of life and for the stolen cultural autonomy of the Native people in this region.

The Commonwealth of Massachusetts, the United Church of Christ and the Unitarian Universalist Association acknowledge their direct connection to the brutality inflicted on the Native people of this region.

The Commonwealth of Massachusetts, the United Church of Christ and the Unitarian Universalist Association will seek reconciliation with the descendants of the displaced, enslaved and murdered original inhabitants of this land, but there will be no expectation of or obligation for this reconciliation to be accepted by the modern tribes.

The Commonwealth of Massachusetts, the United Church of Christ and the Unitarian Universalist Association will collectively explore in consultation with Native people a system of full enfranchisement based on the needs and wants of the Native people.  This system may include but is not limited to financial, land and or educational reparations.

The Commonwealth of Massachusetts, the United Church of Christ and the Unitarian Universalist Association will incorporate in their respective governing and spiritual documents an acknowledgement of this unrepayable debt owed to the Native inhabitants and moving forward will approach their efforts of government and faith development with humility and recognition of their role in the near destruction of the original people of this region.

-ALD

PDF Version: A Declaration for 1620 Atonement