Yet Another Unitarian Universalist
A postmodern heretic's spiritual journey
It may not surprise you that the data show that people who regularly participate in faith communities are likely to live years longer than those who do no. People connected to communities of shared purpose are less lonely, more motivated, more hopeful, and more fulfilled. Even still, I don’t know anyone who ever joined a church because of advanced metrics.
— Rabbi Sharon Brous, The Amen Effect: Ancient Wisdom To Mend Our Broken Hearts and World (2024), p. 41.
Another story for liberal religious kids. This story comes from the Babylonian Talmud, Tractate Berakoth 61b.
Once upon a time, the wicked Roman government issued a decree: no more would the Jews be allowed to study the Torah and the law.
But Rabbi Akiva seemed to ignore the decree. He gathered people together quite openly, and taught them the Torah and the law. Pappas, the son of Judah, took him aside and said, “Rabbi Akiva, do know what could happen to you? Aren’t you afraid the Romans will punish you?”
“Let me tell you a story,” said Rabbi Akiva, and he told this story….
Once upon a time, there were many small fish who lived in a stream. One day, fox walked alongside the stream, and noticed that all the fish were darting to and fro, as if they were afraid of something.
“O fish, o fish,” said the fox, “why are you swimming around so? What is it that you are trying to escape?”
“We are trying to escape the nets that the humans have put in the stream to catch us,” said the fish.
“Oh, ho,” said the fox. “Then perhaps you should come up here and walk on dry land alongside me, just as your ancestors used to walk beside my ancestors years and years ago. That way you can escape from the nets of the humans.”
“What, go up on dry land!” said the fish indignantly. “You have a reputation for being smart, but that is a stupid thing to say. We may be afraid of what’s going on here in the water where we feel comfortable, but it would be much worse for us up in the thin air where we would surely die.” And so the fish stayed in the water, and did not try to walk beside the fox on dry land.
Rabbi Avika said, “Now you can see that we are just like the fish in the stream.”
Pappas asked the rabbi to explain.
“It’s like this,” said Rabbi Avika. “If we neglect the Torah, if we neglect what is central to our religion, we would be like fish out of water, and we would die. It is written in the Torah, ‘For that is your life and the length of your days.’ Perhaps we will suffer if we do study the Torah, but we know we will surely die if we don’t.”
Not long after that, the wicked Romans arrested Rabbi Akiva for teaching and studying the Torah. He was roughly thrown into the Roman prison, and there to his surprise he found Pappas.
“Pappas, what are you doing here?” asked Rabbi Akiva.
“O rabbi,” said Pappas, “you were right. I have been thrown into prison for nothing important. At least you have been thrown in prison for something worth dying for.”
And when Rabbi Akiva was killed by the Romans, he died in peace with the words of the Torah on his lips.
Today brought another news story about the ongoing Southern Baptist abuse crisis: “A Southern Baptist leader hid decades of abuse. Will his fall doom SBC abuse reforms?” Why should Unitarian Universalists pay attention to this? Because we can learn a great deal from what’s going on in the Southern Baptist Convention.
Like the Southern Baptists, we Unitarian Universalists (UUs) have a history of sex abuse. (Nor are we alone: nearly every American institution, from schools to sports to health care to entertainment, has its own history of abuse.) I’ve mostly heard allegations about male UU ministers and lay leaders targeting women over the age of 18. But I’ve also heard allegations about powerful men targeting legal minors.
And like the Southern Baptists, we have a decentralized structure. Each local congregation is theoretically autonomous. If a local congregation wants to hire a minister who’s known to have a history of abuse, there’s no way to stop them.
From today’s news story, it appears that the Southern Baptists have used their decentralized structure to avoid taking responsibility for dealing with their sex abuse crisis:
“…Southern Baptist leaders boast of their power to spread the gospel but take little responsibility when things go wrong. And local congregations have little power to fix things that are broken on a national level. ‘The beauty of SBC is that we’re local and autonomous,’ said Adam Wyatt, a Mississippi pastor and member of the SBC Executive Committee, recently. ‘The challenge is, we’re local and autonomous.”
A lawsuit against Paul Pressler, one of the most powerful Southern Baptist leaders over the past fifty years, alleges that Southern Baptist leaders might talk about local autonomy, but they have also been evading responsibility.
This is what we Unitarian Universalists can learn from the Southern Baptists. We, too, like to talk about the autonomy of local congregations. To what extent do we (and I mean all of us) use local autonomy as an excuse to evade our responsibility to protect against sex abuse?
I think we Unitarian Universalists have made more progress at dealing with sex abuse than have the Southern Baptists. But we have lots more work to do before we really address the problem. At least we can learn from the Southern Baptist debacle that local autonomy is no excuse.
An article in today’s Boston Globe by Dana Goldstein, “New school laws have unintended consequences in Fla.: bureaucracy,” reports on unintended consequences of Florida’s “Parental Rights in Education Act.” The Globe picked up this article from the New York Times, which ran it on Wed., Jan. 10 — here’s a free version of the article.
Under Florida’s new law, many school districts are now requiring permission slips for what used to be routine matters. For example, some school districts are now require permission forms for putting a band-aid on a child, because the new law requires that parents be able to opt out of health care services for their children.
The result, according to Goldstein, is increased paperwork: “Educators across the state say recent laws and regulations around parental consent have created an entirely new bureaucracy, filled with forms and nagging phone calls to parents.” Goldstein goes on to report: “While no state has gone as far as Florida with parental consent requirements, dozens of states are considering bills inspired by Florida’s laws.”
I don’t expect many new laws requiring parental consent for religious education programs. Nevertheless, one result of law like this is that parents are coming to expect to be allowed to exercise more granular control over their children’s experiences. Congregations are going to have to be increasingly sensitive to parent expectations — and congregations are going to face an increasing paperwork burden as they track parent consent on a widening range of matters.
A group of social scientists at the Hartford Institute for Religion Research have been investigating the impact of the COVID pandemic on organized religion. They have just issued a new report titled “‘I’m Exhausted All the Time’: Exploring the Factors Leading to Growing Clergy Discontentment.” A PDF of the full report is available here.
One key finding in this report is that in the aftermath of the panedmic, the number of congregational clergy who are both considering leaving their current position and who are thinking about changing careers keeps increasing. We’ve been seeing some of this in Unitarian Universalism — I personally know of several UU ministers who have not only left their congregations, but who are now transitioning to a new career.
I participated in this study — I have no idea how they found my email address, but they sent me the survey forms and I filled it out. Now that I see the results of the report, it turns out that I’m in the minority of clergy who still love their jobs and who have no intention of leaving ministry.
But the fact remains that many other clergy are leaving the profession. It remains to be seen what effect this has on organized religion. Will it have a positive effect, in that new clergy come along whose expectations for the profession are more aligned with the new realities of congregational life? Will it have a negative effect, by reducing the pool of qualified ministers such that too many congregations can’t find qualified leadership? Or something else entirely?
(I don’t usually link to my sermons, because reading sermons can be about as interesting as watching paint dry. But today’s sermon had some interesting history in it, and I’ll provide direct links to the interesting bits so you can skip the boring bits.)
In the 17th century, our congregation, First Parish in Cohasset, had at least two Native American members.
Sarah Wapping joined our church on January 7, 1738 [N.S.], exactly 296 years ago today. Not much in the historical record, but I found a few things to say about her.
Naomi Isaac joined our church on September 19, 1736 [N.S.]. I may have found out more about Naomi Isaac’s life — though you have to read the footnotes so you can see why much of what I say is only tentative.
None of this is to imply that either Naomi Isaac nor Sarah Wapping was a Unitarian Universalist. Our church was not Unitarian in the 1730s. It was a fairly liberal Christian church for its time and place, since it was under the influence of Ebenezer Gay of Hingham; but it was not yet a Unitarian Universalist congregation.
Nevertheless, it’s still very interesting that our congregation had Native American members i the mid-eighteenth century. There were Black members, too. Thus, in spite of a rigid racial hierarchy, in the mid-eighteenth century ours was a multiracial congregation. Then by 1790, the town of Cohasset had become entirely White (the 1790 U.S. Census reports no non-White population at all), and the congregation was also entirely White. The town and church went from moderately racially integrated, to entirely segregated in the space of half a century.
In part 1, I reviewed the year in U.S. religion. In this second part, I’ll review they year in Unitarian Universalism.
Let’s start with how others perceived us this past year. Unitarian Universalists are a tiny, tiny group, but we made the news with four stories this year. I’ll start with the lesser stories, and save the big one for the end.
1. Religion News Service (RNS) covered the annual General Assembly of the Unitarian Universalist Association (UUA) back in June, and wrote about two main stories. One story, with the headline “Unitarian Universalism revisits identity, values at 2023 gathering,” talked about the proposed revision to ARticle II of the UUA bylaws. It was the kind of article where you felt the reporter was working pretty hard to make it sound newsworthy. Revising bylaws isn’t going to be of much interest to non-Unitarian Universalists.
2. RNS was much more interested in the fact that the “Unitarian Universalists elect first woman of color, openly queer president,” especially considering the fact that this new president was taking over from the first woman who served as president. They wrote (by my count) four separate articles on this basic story.
Continue reading “Year in review, pt. 2”It’s been an eventful year, both for U.S. organized religion generally, and for Unitarian Universalism in particular. In this post, I’ll start by reviewing some of the key developments in organized religion in the U.S. In a second post, I’ll review some of the explosive developments within Unitarian Universalism.
Religion is right at the center of the ongoing escalation of the culture wars in the United States. And the role of religion in the culture wars has gotten more complex than ever. To try to make sense out of it all, I’ll consider some of the culture wars battlegrounds separately.
Continue reading “Year in review, pt. 1”Exvangelicals are forming “spiritual collectives” — which have superficial resemblance to Unitarian Universalist (UU) congregations, because they’re LGBTQ+ friendly, open to non-Christian sources of wisdom, and don’t have doctrines or dogmas.
There are also big differences. Exvangelical spiritual collectives have a different worship style. Their preachers are more likely to do their preaching (which they may call teaching) wearing a dark polo shirt and khakis — while most UU ministers wear stoles and robes while preaching. Exvangelical spiritual collectives are still evolving rapidly. They describe themselves as “experimental” — while I don’t hear many UU congregations talking about being experimental. Exvangelical worship services remain close to their evangelical roots. Their liturgies and governance still look like low-church evanglicalism— while most UU liturgies and governance practices are much closer to mainline Protestantism. As for age demographics, there are a lot more young adults in photos of these exvangelical groups.
In spite of the obvious differences, I’d love to sit down with people from these spiritual collectives and learn more about them. How are we UUs different from them? How are we the same?
Some people are living in the past. Specifically, some people apparently think it’s still the 1970s.
So I’m volunteering on a task force for a UU nonprofit that is trying to figure out how to offer safe youth programming. As part of the research we’ve been doing on youth safety, I’ve been looking at some sample youth safety policies from other nonprofits, as well as licensing requirements, recommendations from insurers, and other legal issues around non-school youth programming.
I already knew that sexual and emotional abuse of teens has been widespread in pretty much all youth programming. The Catholic church and the Boy Scouts get all the press, but from what I can tell all youth programs had similar issues. The Boy Scouts, the Catholics, along with other nonprofit youth programs, other religious groups, youth sports programs, after school programs, etc. — none has adequately protected youth. This is well-known, and I was expecting it.
What I wasn’t expecting was how bad some of the Unitarian Universalist (UU) youth programs still are.
Back in the 1970s, youth programming throughout society was influenced by a notion that subjecting people to intense situations in a very compressed time-frame would lead to personal growth. So, for example, “est” (Erhard Seminars Training) reportedly required participants to be present for an emotionally intense training from 9 a.m. to midnight with only one meal break. This is the era when ropes courses were popularized, subjecting people to physically demanind and physically frightening experiences to promote personal growth.
Back in 1995, when I started helping to lead UU youth programs, many of these techniques still reigned supreme. Sleep deprivation was seen as a positive force for personal growth, and teens were tacitly encouraged to stay up all night. Emotional intensity was used in many situations — there were “touch groups,” small groups where you were encouraged to bare your soul; there were activities designed to encourage people to reveal intimate personal details; and once you arrived at a “con” (youth conference) on Friday afternoon, you were pretty much stuck in this emotional cauldron for the next 36 hours.
Some teens did benefit from this kind of emotional intensity. Some White, upper-middle class teens who already had good emotional skills found the con experience to be highly beneficial.
On the other hand, over time I became aware that sexual assault and racism thrived in the con setting. I still remember being at the same conference center with a conference of non-White UU youth. Some of them spoke to me of how they experienced con culture as racist. I also heard about sexual assault at cons, ranging from unwanted touching to statutory rape. Most of my knowledge was second hand, but I’ve also heard from some women who experienced sexual assault at UU youth cons when they were teens.
And no wonder. The sleep deprivation and the emotional intensity led to poor impulse control, both on the part of youth and of adults. The organizational chaos resulting from all that emotional intensity mean adequate supervision was impossible. The chaos was amplified because there was no real curriculum, no real programming. So I stopped volunteering at cons and UU summer camps about twenty years ago. It just felt too dangerous.
What blows my mind is that there are still UU groups doing youth programming based on that old 1970s-era personal growth model. I guess these UU groups don’t seem to realize that standards of care have changed a great deal in the past decade — heck, they’ve changed a great deal in the past five years. These days, you have to have constant adult supervision and no chaos.
Equally troubling, we UUs don’t seem to have much else to offer. Too many UU programs for teens still focus on “personal growth.” Or the programming has the goal of “radicalizing” teens, which mostly seems to involve encouraging teens to go to protest rallies. By contrast, we’re not taking teens to speak at city council meetings, or to participate in labor union events, or to observe courtroom proceedings. Pretty much what you’d expect from upper middle class White folk.
Maybe we’re so backward on standards of care for youth programming precisely because we have so little to offer. Why invest in youth safety if you don’t really have a meaningful program?
I’ll end on a hopeful note. I’ve helped create UU programming for teens that’s not based on “personal growth,” that’s safe, and that’s also compelling. Once you let go of personal growth (and sleep deprivation) as the highest goals, lots of possibilities open up. But the first step towards meaningful and safe teen programming is to let go of that old 1970s-era personal growth model.