If
you’ve read my book, Political Frugality,
and the odds are you haven’t, you know that when that book came out in 2005 I
had just joined a Unitarian Universalist church. I was enthusiastic. Back then
we had a minister who was down to earth and, well, human. And he had a sense of
humor. Once when he invited Dan to visit the church, Dan, who grew up Catholic,
said he was not into organized religion. The minister said, “That’s OK. We’re
not organized.” It helped, I think, that his wife was a Methodist minister. The
church offered courses such as the History of Unitarian Universalism, Thoreau,
Emerson, and so on. I loved it.
Alas,
all good things come to an end. Our minister moved, and the church moved on to
a series of humorless dogmatic ministers who reminded me of the reason I left
the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod I grew up in. There was one exception, but she was only
temporary. There was even a purge of staff who no longer “fit in.” Courses
these days tend to be along the lines of “Concepts of White Supremacy,” which
is the actual title of one of the courses. It’s estimated more than 90% of all
Unitarian Universalists are white. Interestingly, we used to have a Protestant
predominantly African-American sister church. We’d get together for a picnic on
Labor Day. That, too is no more. Too much fun, I suppose.
I’ll be
among the first to agree we all need to learn about white privilege. I just
finished reading The Warmth of Other
Suns,” by Isabel Wilkerson. The book is about the Great Migration of blacks
from the south starting roughly during World War I and continuing to 1970 or
so. I had no idea how bad conditions were in the south, and to what lengths,
after the migration had begun and there was an increasing shortage of black
labor in the south, southern whites would go in order to keep people from
leaving. Amazingly, treating their help better and maybe not lynching so many
never occurred to white southerners. This is one book I’d highly recommend. I’m
now reading Ira Katznelson’s When
Affirmative Action Was White, which is interesting and mercifully short,
but he’s nowhere near the writer Ms. Wilkerson is. At any rate, yes, we need to
be aware of white privilege, but even dog trainers recommend against rubbing
puppies’ noses in their mistakes. And couldn’t we have some history of the
church classes, too? And maybe—just maybe—could we have a sense of humor?
Earlier
this year the church made the news when a vacancy occurred in the church’s
southern region. A white man was selected to fill the position, and the shit
hit the fan. One of the finalists for the position was a Latina who criticized
the selection. This led in rapid succession to the resignations of the
President of the church (its first Hispanic) and some of his staff. A woman was
eventually chosen to replace the President.
This
has all been written up within the church as a positive step toward more
inclusion and sensitivity, and it may well be. But I’d like to know why the
white guy was selected. How likely is it a church so bent on inclusion would
select a white male if he were not the most qualified? I doubt we’ll ever know.
Just
when I thought things could not get stranger, I read an article in the latest UUWorld about Standing on the Side of Love, a song written in 2004 by a Unitarian
Universalist minister to protest marriage discrimination. Thirteen years later
it occurred to some people that the song discriminated against the handicapped.
They can’t stand, you see. And I guess it didn’t occur to anyone to look up the
word “metaphor.” The song’s being reworked.
In the
1960s Li’l Abner creator Al Capp invented a group that satirized campus
protesters. The group was called S. W. I. N. E., or Students Wildly Indignant
About Nearly Everything. At the time I didn’t think it was funny because I was
young and agreed with many things students were protesting--civil rights,
Vietnam, and so on. But things have changed, and I’ve grown up. Being wildly
indignant about nearly everything wears me out, and looking for innocuous things
to be wildly indignant about strikes me as ludicrously unproductive.
Last
year the Lutheran church near me had a breakfast. Dan and I went. I was
extremely impressed with the minister, who reminds me a lot of the Unitarian
Universalist minister who moved.
He didn’t look askance at Dan and
me—even though he is Missouri Synod, and they’re not officially too accepting
of gays. The church runs a thrift shop and food bank. It occurred to me this
church is actually doing something to help the poor rather than just holding
classes on white privilege. And they have classes on Martin Luther.
As part of a class on becoming
Unitarian Universalist, we wrote our credos—what we believed. Part of my credo,
from 2004, is:
“I believe, when it comes to
churches, fellowship, not the official teachings of the church, is what’s
important. I believe that each of us develops our own beliefs, that no two
people believe exactly the same things, and that it is more important to be
with people I enjoy but with whom I do not agree than it is to be around people
with whom I agree but do not enjoy.”
Given how polarized the country has
become since I wrote that, I’d say it’s even more important that we spend time
with and listen to those we don’t agree with if for no other reason than to
avoid sequestering ourselves in an echo chamber.
I doubt I’ll ever care about
Transubstantiation or a host of other doctrines, but I’m going to pay a visit
to that Lutheran church soon.
If it’s
possible to be a lapsed Unitarian, I am one.
© 2017 Larry Roth
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