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”:<\/p>\n
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. <\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
But, what do I know. I’m just a grumpy English professor.<\/p>\n
Love, Jean<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
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<\/em> own Unitarian Universalism. Us. Not them.<\/p>\n
(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!)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[178],"class_list":["post-380","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-marketing-church","tag-jesus-of-nazareth"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/380","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=380"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/380\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=380"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=380"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=380"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}