Every once in a while, someone asks me if they can get notified by email when I post something on this blog. There are several solid email notification solutions for WordPress that charge a fee — but I can’t justify spending any more than I already do on this website. And all the email notification solutions I’ve found take time to set up and maintain — but I’d rather spend the limited amount of time I have on writing blog posts rather than on maintaining an email list.
These days, most of the web is devoted to making money. Websites are either trying to promote a business or a nonprofit, or websites are trying to show you advertisements. Those people who make money from their websites — by showing you ads, or by promoting goods or services, or by soliciting donations for a nonprofit — are more likely to have a marketing budget and staff time they can devote to their website. But on this website, it’s just me, with no marketing budget.
The Congregational Consulting Group blog has a new post by David Brubaker titled “Social Movements and Congregational Responses”:
“Congregations [in the U.S.] often experience conflict in response to social movements in the world around them. Since World War II, movements regarding civil rights, the war in Vietnam, the ordination of women, and human sexuality—each vitally important in its own right—also have raised challenges inside congregations, forcing leaders to address internal questions of power and culture.”
Brubaker gives a brief overview of four external social movements that had a big effect on U.S. congregations: the Civil Rights Movement; the movement against the Vietnam War; the movement to ordain women; and the LGBTQ+ rights movement. I’d like to take a look at Unitarian Universalist (UU) response to each of these movements.
We Unitarian Universalists like to think that we were on the “right side” (i.e., the progressive side) of each of these movements, but that’s not true. We don’t often tell this part of our history, but if you talk with older Unitarian Universalist (UUs) — or if you’re old enough to remember these movements yourself — you know that we had a very mixed record for all these movements.
Civil Rights Movement
We like to tell ourselves the story that we were early and unified and vigorous supporters of the Civil Rights Movement. There is little evidence that was true.
After a summer that’s been cool and rainy, it’s going to be hot all week here in Massachusetts. Records are going to get broken. Some local school districts are worried, because of course schools aren’t air conditioned in Massachusetts. We never used to need air conditioning in September.
In other news, clean up continues in Vermont and western Massachusetts after the devastating floods in July and August.
The phrase “global warming” now feels outdated. So does “climate change.” So does “climate weirdness.” In fact, the phrase “climate emergency” is beginning to feel a little dated….
What really amazes me is that there are still people in the U.S. who think climate change isn’t real.
Labor Day has come again — at least, the United States version of Labor Day.
Everywhere else in the world, Labor Day is celebrated on May 1. But not in the United States. May 1, 1886, was the date of a general strike throughout the United States for the right to an eight hour day: “Eight hours for work, eight hours for sleep, eight hours for what we will.” In Chicago, the strike continued through May 3, where as many as 80,000 workers stopped work. Though the workers were peaceful, the police were not — on May 3, they fired on striking workers, killing at least two workers. So a mass rally was arranged for the next day, May 1, in Haymarket Square.
Police arrived in Haymarket Square at 10:30 p.m., just as Methodist minister Samuel Fielden was concluding a short speech, and as the peaceful demonstration was beginning to wind down. Police Captain John Bonfield, backed by a large contingent of armed police officers, ordered the already dispersing workers to disperse. Then someone threw a bomb, killing one officer and wounding several others. Police began firing at the workers, and also apparently at each other. Seven police officers were killed, at least some of them probably by friendly fire. At least four workers were killed, and over a hundred people total were wounded.
Eight people were convicted of the bombing, in a trial that almost all historians agree was a travesty of justice. In 1893, the governor of Illinois pardoned the three who hadn’t been executed, saying, “Capt. Bonfield is the man who is really responsible for the deaths of the police officers.”
Detail of an illustration from the anti-union propaganda book Anarchy and Anarchists by Michael J. Schaak (F. J. Schulte & Co.: Chicago, 1889), p. 140. The original caption read: “The Haymarket Meeting, ‘In the name of the people, I command you to disperse.'”
But the damage to the labor movement had already been done. The Haymarket Massacre was all the excuse that employers needed to put an end to the call for an eight hour day. Corporations, newspapers, and politicians blamed the violence on immigrants and anarchists. The Chicago city government used the Massacre as an excuse to arrest scores of labor organizers. The massacre, which was acknowledged to have been incited by a police official, turned out to be a major setback for organized labor’s efforts to win an eight hour day for all U.S. workers.
The eight hour day finally became a reality — sort of — in the 1937 Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), which required about one fifth of U.S. employers to pay overtime if a worker had to work more than 40 hours in a week. Gradually, that sort of became the norm for most workers, and atually became the law in some states. By 1984, when I started working in a Massachusetts lumber yard (because there were no jobs for philosophy majors during a recession), we were required to work a 50 hour week, but at least we got paid overtime if we worked more than 40 hours in a week, or if we worked more than 8 hours in a day.
I continued to work hourly-wage jobs until 1997 when I got a FLSA non-exempt job. Of course, I just took the eight hour day and the right to overtime for granted. The story of the Haymarket Massacre, and the rest of the bitter fight for an eight hour day — no one told me that story. It’s the kind of story that gets people worked up, that makes them believe that their employers don’t have their best interests at heart, that makes them believe that they might deserve to have more control over their working life. But I didn’t know any of that. Labor Day took place in early September, not on May 1, and rather than commemorating the Haymarket Massacre, it was just a nice way to end the summer.
Today, the age cohort known as Generation Z has become very supportive of unions. No surprise there. Employers are paying less, finding ways to ignore labor laws, and generally treating workers like they’re disposable. Many in Gen Z have realized that their most viable path to a middle class life is through unionizing. Maybe Labor Day can become more than an end to summer — maybe it can become a celebration of Gen Z’s unionization efforts.
And as we celebrate another U.S. Labor Day, perhaps some members of Gen Z will join me as I hum to myself — quietly, so as not to disturb our corporate masters — an old song that still seems to resonate today: “The Commonwealth of Toil” by Ralph Chaplin, hummed to the tune of “Nellie Gray”:
In the gloom of mighty cities, amid the roar of whirling wheels, we are toiling on like chattel slaves of old. And our masters hope to keep us, ever thus beneath their heels, and to coin our very life blood into gold.
Chorus: But we have a glowing dream of how fair the world will seem, when we each can live our lives secure and free. When the Earth is owned by labor, and there’s joy and peace for all, in the commonwealth of toil that is to be.
They would keep us cowed and beaten, cringing meekly at their feet. They would stand between the worker and their bread. Shall we yield our lives up to them for the bitter crust we eat? Shall we only hope for heaven when we’re dead?
They have laid our lives out for us to the utter end of time. Shall we stagger on beneath their heavy load? Shall we let them live forever in their gilded halls of crime, with our children doomed to toil beneath their goad?
When our cause has been triumphant, and we claim our Mother Earth, and the nightmare of the present fades away; we shall live with love and laughter; we, who now are little worth, and we’ll not regret the price we’ve had to pay!
Carol and I have been doing as little as possible over this holiday weekend. We talked about driving somewhere, but driving is always a nightmare on Labor Day weekend. So, we’ve been sleeping late and doing some desultory housecleaning. And I took a couple of walks at nearby conservation areas.
On Friday, I went to Black Pond Bog, a Nature Conservancy property in Norwell.
A small green bee (Augochlora sp.?) pollinating Rough Boneset (Eupatorum pilosum) near Black Pond Bog, Norwell
On Saturday, I took a long walk in Wompatuck State Park. The park covers about 3,500 acres, and you can spend all day walking its miles of trails. It’s mostly wooded, but there are also a number of ponds.
Heron Pond, Wompatuck State Park, Hingham
Getting to Black Pond Bog and Wompatuck State Park both required a fifteen minute drive.
Today, neither Carol nor I felt like driving even that far. So we walked down Main Street from our apartment to Wheelwright Park, and from there into Wright Woods.
Yellow Foxtail (Setaria Pumila), Wheelwright Park, CohassetCardinal Flower (Lobelia cardinalis) in Ice Pond, Wright Woods, Cohasset
We’re extraordinarily lucky to live in a place where we don’t have to drive long distances to find something to see and do on Labor Day weekend.
Last night I was trying to explain to Carol about the lingering effects of COVID burnout on the helping professions. She pointed out that many trends that were supposedly caused by COVID were simply existing trends that accelerated during lockdown. But I’m pretty sure that it actually was COVID that contributed to increased burnout in the helping professions.
The healthcare professions are an obvious example. During the first year of the COVID pandemic, doctors, nurses, and others who worked directly with COVID patients saw an increased workload, and an increased risk of infection. There were also healthcare professionals who had a very different experience of COVID — I knew a dermatologist who saw a substantial decrease in their workload during lockdown, although that decrease brought separate concerns of declining income, etc. On the whole, though, a significant number of health professionals left their profession, and reports are that there’s still a labor shortage in much of the healthcare system.
Mental health professionals saw their workload peak a bit later in the pandemic, as many people began to have mental health problems isolation caused by lockdown. We’re still seeing a high rate of depression, anxiety disorder, and other mental health problems, and mental health professionals may still be feeling overwhelmed by the lingering aftereffects of the pandemic. The end result is that someone seeking mental health care can wait weeks for an appointment.
I know less about other helping professions, but I suspect that other professions also saw increased burnout. For example, it seems likely that many social workers — depending on their specialty — also experienced burnout during COVID due to increased workload and increased job pressures.
This brings us to clergy. From what I’m seeing and hearing, clergy are also subject to COVID burnout, just like the other helping professions. In 2021, 42% of clergy reported considering leaving ministry. I suspect there were several reasons for this. Sociologist Scott Thuma has outlined some of the stresses on clergy during the pandemic: increased conflict in the congregation, increased demand for food and other assistance, increased mental health problems, and learning new ways to do ministry. I’ve watched as more Unitarian Universalist (UU) ministers than usual have left the profession over the past couple of years. I wouldn’t be surprised to learn other UU ministers are just quiet quitting.
Beyond all this, all people in the helping professions can experience the trauma or secondary trauma that everyone in society is experiencing. The epidemic of mental illness that began during lockdown continues today — we’re all feeling the effects.
I know I’m still feeling the effects. I had to put in some extra hours this week. This is normal for ministers; some weeks we have to work long hours, other weeks there’s less for us to do. Pre-COVID, I had no problem working a few extra hours. But this week, those extra hours really tired me out; I don’t have the reserves of energy I used to have pre-COVID.
I don’t have a call to action for you. Nor do I have an easy solution for clergy burnout. Nor do I mean to imply that clergy somehow have it worse than anyone else in society. I think my only point is that we all need to be understanding of each other’s ongoing stress, as the effects of the pandemic continue.
In an opinion piece on the Washington Post website, Percy Bacon, Jr., talks about why he stopped going to a Christian church: “I couldn’t ignore how the word ‘Christian’ was becoming a synonym for rabidly pro-Trump White people who argued that his and their meanness and intolerance were somehow justified and in some ways required to defend our [Christian] faith.”
That’s not the only reason Bacon stopped attending church during the Trump years. He also discovered that his church wouldn’t allow LGBTQ+ people to lead small groups. And he started reading leftist Black intellectuals who were openly skeptical about religion. Bacon contacted Daniel Cox, director of the Survey Center on American Life, who told him: “Your experience is very typical. Most people who disaffiliate do not cite a single precipitating factor. It’s more of a fading away from religion rather than a dramatic break.”
Bacon goes on to say: “People have told me to become a Unitarian Universalist. Unitarian churches I have attended had overwhelmingly White and elderly congregations and lacked the wide range of activities for adults and kids found at the Christian congregations that I was a part of. But they have a set of core beliefs that are aligned with more left-leaning people (‘justice, equity and compassion in human relations,’ for example) without a firm theology. I’ve also thought about starting some kind of weekly Sunday-morning gathering of Nones… or trying to persuade my friends to collectively attend one of the Unitarian churches in town and make it younger and more racially diverse. But I’ve not followed through on any of these options….”
In short, Bacon hasn’t found a good way to fill what he calls the “church-shaped hole” in his life. He adds, “It’s strange to me that America, particularly its left-leaning cohort, is abandoning this institution, as opposed to reinventing to align with our 2023 values.”
I appreciate his response to Unitarian Universalism, which can be summed up as: “Mm, yeah no….good set of core values, but too White and too old.”
As an old White guy, sometimes that’s my feeling about Unitarian Universalism. It’s too bad that we can’t realign Unitarian Universalism to our 2023 values of supporting children and young adults, and not being entirely White.
Back in the 1960s, a young John Hartford recorded a fragment of a song called “Self Made Man” (it was released in 2019 in a posthumous album). Then in 1971, Hartford made a nice arrangement for it and recorded the song on his album “Radio John.” It’s a witty satire of those rich men who think they are self-made, though really their rise to financial success has come at the expense of others: “How many fingers must he step on, to do the best he can… Have you seen the bones his closet holds, Do you watch hi when he sharpens his knife?” It was a pretty good song, even though it was really just a fragment of a song.
Fast forward to 2022. Rachel Baiman, a young country and old-timey musician based in Nashville, decided to fill out Hartford’s song. She added another verse, for the women in the lives of “self-made men,” which manages to duplicate some of Hartford’s wit and sparkle:
Do you think you want to sit around and play a part In the corner of his self made life Stand by his side patiently And try to be his perfect little wife? Will you tell him that he’s done everything right And that he should never take the blame For the people cast off and trampled on, Just because they got in his way? How many men do you think it takes to make a self made man….
Huh. Reminds me of certain billionaires who are in the news right now.
Then Baiman added another melody for the chorus, which Hartford had just sung to the same melody as the verses. She has turned the song into an infectious sing-along song that challenges the prevailing mythos of the current economic order. (You won’t be surprised to learn that Baiman was raised by parents who belonged to the Democratic Socialist party.)
The great showman P. T. Barnum knew the value of free publicity. He told many stories about himself to demonstrate that, and indeed his entire autobiography is an exercise in self-promotion and advertisement. In his book The Art of Getting Money, Barnum addressed this point with a statement that seems eeriely relevant in today’s political climate:
“I say if a man has got goods for sale, and he don’t advertise them in some way, the chances are that some day the sheriff will do it for him.”
And in fact the great showman of 2023, Donald Trump, got the Fulton County, Georgia, sheriff’s office to give him some of the best publicity he’s ever had — that now-famous mugshot, taken when Trump turned himself in at the Fulton County jail.
Old white guys in power find it easy to get publicity for just about anything they do. For example, compare Trump to me. Sure, I’m an old white guy, but I’m not in a position of power. So if I got arrested in Fulton County for racketeering, and my mugshot made it onto social media, I’d probably just lose my job. By contrast, when Trump’s mugshot gets spread around the interwebs, it just puts him that much closer to winning the presidential election.
The Before Columbus Foundation (BCF) was founded in 1976 “dedicated to the promotion and dissemination of contemporary American multicultural literature.” Their annual award, the American Book Award, is given by writers to other writers. Though not as well known as the National Book Award, winning this award puts you in august company. Previous recipients of the American Book Award include Edward Said, Joy Harjo, and Toni Morrison. Current members of BCF’s board of directors include Ishmael Reed, Joy Harjo, and other respected writers.
Some of the poems in Everett’s collection appeared in UU World magazine; Everett’s a member of First Unitarian in New Bedford, Mass. I got to see the book in manuscript, and loved it (Everett even invited me to write the foreword). Also, there are plenty of poems here that would work well in a Unitarian Universalist worship service, so if you’re a minister or religious educator you might want to pick up a copy.
Unfortunately, about the only place you can buy the book is through Amazon. My spouse the writer does Not Like Amazon, so I won’t provide a link here. But you can easily find it. Go buy a copy. You’ll be glad you did.
![Caricature of Donal Trump's mugshot, in which he is smiling. The text behind him reads: "That stupid Fani thinks she's so smart. This is the best [crossed out word] publicity I could get. My [crossed out word] stupid followers will eat this up. I [crossed out word] love free publicity."](https://www.danielharper.org/yauu/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/Mugshot-1024x952.jpeg)
