I’ve begun to hear more talk about what happens to kids who grew up as Unitarian Universalists, and then left our congregations. My older sister is one of those people, and in response to my series of posts on “Lovemarks,” she sent this long comment about the “new Unitarian Unviersalism”:
Your comments about the new Unitarian Universalism (UU) nailed it for me: I find UU largely offputting now. The jargon — seven principles? — the stuff — the chalice? — the almost lockstep political correctness — these elements of UU now are not the thoughtful, considering, curious UU I grew up with. UU has become a brand, and the brand is not one I particularly connect to, nor feel welcomed by. There was a certain mystery to the UU we grew up with, and I don’t think this came simply from being a wide-eyed child; for me the mystery was embodied in the amazing things we learned in Sunday school about art and science and our pal Jesus. In UU as I remember it, Jesus too had some mystery — not of the religious sort, but of the kind of mystery embedded in any very passionate person who believes in doing right, asking hard questions, teaching a new way of looking at the world, and then with clarity acts on those beliefs.
I look at UU now and I see a rather cookie-cutter multiculturalism, as if indeed we all are one big family, loving everyone everywhere. Really? What really gets me, and I’m thinking about particular upper-class communities here [in Indiana], is that all the do-goodingness seems to happen somewhere else. Instead of going to the other side of town, well-meaning Unitarian Universalists go to the inner city. Instead of interacting genuinely with people of different socioeconomic classes in the ordinary transactions of life, there is a dramatic intentionality to interactions: find someone noticeable, different, clearly other, and “help” them.
Clearly I’m focusing on class issues; it seems that caring about class, especially lower class white folks, is not cool in UU — race and ethnicity and sexual orientation are. I would argue that class issues are one of the most important things we can focus on right now. The split between those who have and those who do not is growing wider and wider. Yes it’s interwoven with race and ethnicity and sexual orientation, but at the heart of the great divide in this country is socioeconomic privilege, or lack thereof.
I will qualify this by saying I don’t think this willful blindness to class is unique to UU’s. I am seeing it right now in the institution where I work [part of the state university system]. An alternative spring break is planned here, as I imagine it is in innumerable places, to go “help” the “victims” of Katrina by working for Habitat for Humanity. This is worthy, of course, and who knows, I may even go myself. But I also think that projects like this are not enough. They are showy, contained, and somewhere else. After a week of doing good then we all come home, safe, back to life as usual. What if, I wonder, we spent a day every week “doing good”? There are houses here, in this town, that are riddled with lead paint, asbestos in the basement, mold in the walls. What about them? What if we spent an hour every day working on that? An hour a day simply “doing good”? Or every damn minute of every day no matter where we are or who we meet? Jesus did. That’s kinda why we liked him. And if I recall correctly, he loved everyone. Equally.
But, what do I know. I’m just a grumpy English professor.
Love, Jean
Yup. Just remember, the key point of my series of posts on “Lovemarks” was actually quite subversive. OK, Unitarian Universalism has been turned into a kind of brand name. So take that a step further, apply the latest thinking in marketing, and turn Unitarian Universalism into a “Lovemark.” With a lovemark, the consumer owns it, not the big corporation. This means we own Unitarian Universalism. Us. Not them.
(Can you imagine if Jean, or my younger sister Abby, lived near my church? I’d make them come and teach Sunday school, infecting another generation of kids with mystery, stories of our pal Jesus, and those impossibly high ideals we learned as Unitarian Universalist kids. Bwah-hah-hah-hah-hah!)
Yay Jean! I agree whole-heartedly with your criticisms of
today’s Unitarian Universalism. I feel as though “my” UUism,
the one that I was instilled with as a child, has been co-opted
by the politically correct. I truly feel like I don’t belong in
church anymore.
And Dan, you bet that I would teach Sunday School in your church
if it were closer!! (though I must confess that I’m considering
signing up to teach in the church we all grew up in)
love,
the other sister :)
This is a very powerful statement, and a welcome one. I only wish that your sisters were willing to work from the inside of Unitarian Universalism to bring those values back to the forefront – their voices are sorely needed!
As my husband goes through seminary, I find I feel more and more that the emphasis on anti-racism anti-oppression work is more about feeling good about “doing good” than about making any real changes. Socio-economic class issues are mentioned in passing as symptoms of a systematically racist society that will go away once we have eradicated racism – something I’m not convinced is any kind of realistic goal given basic human nature. Personally, I’d like to see us do more for our immediate neighbors than pontificate over why we don’t have more persons of color in our pews in the rural Midwest. By lifting up the people around us, we enable them to lift up the people around them, and so on. Traveling thousands of miles to work for Habitat for Humanity is a great thing – but what about the guy begging for change ten feet away from my front door?
I have this image in my mind of groups from Chicago traveling to, say Atlanta, to work for Habitat, while groups from Atlanta organize to go to Houston and groups from Houston go to Los Angeles, and groups from Los Angeles go to Chicago. Seems like they’d get more done in their own communities if they didn’t have to spend the resources to travel.
I suppose, if I think about it openly enough, one reason to send people to
areas in desperate need — New Orleans, any inner ciy, the impoverished
hill towns of Appalachia — is that the help and tools and skills and
man/woman power to get the job done, whatever the job might be,
is simply not there. So, we go and help because we can. I’m not arguing
against doing this, of course, but I am arguing against doing this and
only or largely this. It’s imperative that we work in our own backyards, however
we might consider them. At a faculty meeting today we talked about the
intractable problems our students face. We’re de facto open enrollment,
at least half nontraditional students, most first generation, most with
profoundly complicated social, economic, emotional, and even physical lives.
Sometimes just getting to class is nearly impossible. I would rather spend
my energy on this problem, a web of problems really, and as Jess suggests,
lift up my students, watch them lift up others up, etc. There is that,
sorry for the cheesy reference, “butterfly effect.”
Still, I don’t want to suggest that any good deed is wrong. In and of itself
it’s not. Yet, we must not overlook our own communities. We get our hands
dirtier that way, but perhaps we should.
The funny thing is, in education, we don’t talk about the spiritual component
of all this. We talk about assessment and curriculum and pedagogic
strategies. Hmm. Dangerous ground this, but what if we did talk about the
spiritual needs of our students. I suppose, at the state schools, we technically
can’t. But what if we did?
Jean: And here I was, wishing that some of my colleagues would talk about assessment, curriculum planning, and pedagogic strategies — just attended a session on adult religious education where there was only talk about spiritual matters, with very little understanding of how to implement the lofty spiritual goals.
But I digress….
Dan
I agree, Jean, no good deed is wrong, and intentions are almost always in the right place. But, indeed we should get our hands dirtier than we typically do! When we focus on these, for lack of a better term, mission trips, it’s easy to leave the work behind when we come home – almost like a vacation, though a virtuous one.
I think what happens specifically to UUs and to other spiritual progressives is that we see so much wrong with the world that we don’t know where to start with it all. We’re bombarded with petitions, and we call our elected representatives almost daily for this, that and the other thing, we buy fair-trade coffee and chocolate, go to lectures and make donations and on and on. These are good things, but I’d love to see deeper, more effective work.
I think the developing community ministry trend in tandem with work in our congregations will do a lot to help individuals focus on places they can make a difference, right now rather than feel bombarded and run for shelter. And, I hope, those ministries will also reach beyond our rather insulated UU communities into the greater community. I especially hope that these projects will start to reach more deeply into the schools, so many of which are struggling in so many ways.
John had the idea at the beginning of this internship year of running a donation drive for school supplies (which he has yet to implement, but I hope he will!), but I’d love to see more direct teacher support happen, too. What do you see as some specific areas in which outside groups could help schools – beyond fundraisers or in addition to?
I go to the theology group at our Church. People worry about a fundamentalist takeover.
Rail on about Jerry Fawell and Pat Robertson.
I volunter for our Church as night supervisor at the homeless shelter on Sat nights. Sunday
AM the Christian Evangelical motor cyclists do a service. If you feel like staying you can.
A few homeless do. The UU’s shun this. I stay. We read a bible story. We pray a little.
People talk about their booze and drug problems. No one worries about whether God created
the world in seven days and literal truth…. It’s all happening at a much deeper level
than that and for some reason my fellow UUs can’t get that… don’t want to stick around
for it… and get lost in an intellectual war no one else is really fighting I think.
My problem with the Evangelicals is they become more therapists than theologians…