READING
(Working Assumptions of Chicago based Healing Racism Programs)
SERMON
Each year toward the end of June, Unitarian Universalists representing their congregations from across the Continent gather to do the business of our association of about 1000 congregations. We elect representatives to boards and committees. We vote on changes to the bylaws and business items. We discuss and pass resolutions. We hear inspirational speakers. We sing with enthusiasm. We attend workshop after workshop pausing between them as we meet old friends and make new ones in the halls.
Because there is so much to see and do, it will be hard for me to report on it all - so I have selected one particular focus of the Indianapolis General Assembly to share with you. This focus is particularly important because there have been special presentations about this subject for the last three years at General Assembly. It is a subject that many of us value in our minds but find creates a feeling of discomfort when we confront it within our congregations. It is a subject we have decided by a 1996 General Assembly resolution passed in Indianapolis to work on in our congregations this year. It is the subject of racial and cultural diversity.
At the 1992 General Assembly, that year in Calgary Alberta (it moves all around our Continent), a resolution was passed "to affirm and support" a vision of a racially diverse and multicultural Unitarian Universalism, motivated by then president Schulz and Moderator Gulbrandsen's call to respond to "the reality of a racially diverse and multicultural global village." The resolution further resolved that a task force be created to develop and implement a process to realize this vision. For the last four years, The Racial and Cultural Diversity Task Force created by this resolution has been working very hard on "developing and implementing". At each subsequent General Assembly they have presented a program as a way of sharing their work with us. At the 93 GA in Charlotte, North Carolina, Dr. Bill Jones, a professor here in Florida who did a Cluster meeting for us on the same subject recently, helped us begin to make an accurate analysis of racism. At the 94 GA in Fort Worth, Texas, Barbara Majors from Crossroads Ministries helped us begin to see the systemic nature of institutional racism and ways we participate in the system. Majors challenged us to move from being passively racist to actively anti-racist which became a theme for the Task Force. Last year in Spokane, Washington, Thandeka, an African American UU theologian, brought the themes of racism closer to us by presented a play portraying three GA attendees and their GA tour guide talking about attending the diversity day presentation, honestly showing their pro and con feelings about racial and cultural diversity.
This year was the Task Force's final report and recommendations. The Task Force concluded "we need to collectively develop with our membership accurate analyses of racism, common language and vision, along with resources and tools to create an institutional anti-oppressive, anti-racist, multicultural identity." They also concluded "an institutional desire to change (that's the leadership of the UUA) cannot be effective unless it is authentically embraced by our membership (that's you and me) and intentionally institutionalized (this is what we agree to do together)." The final recommendation I want to share with you, which is central to the Task Force recommendations and the only way they feel we can move toward the goal of becoming a more racially and culturally diverse association of congregations is to "move toward becoming an anti-racist multicultural institution."
Being against racial discrimination has been a prominent theme in our history for a very long time. Back as far as 1784 Universalist Benjamin Rush was one of the founders of the Pennsylvania Society for the Abolition of Slavery. In 1833 Unitarian Lydia Maria Child wrote "An Appeal in Favor of That Class of American called African." Many of the supporters of Abolition were drawn from Unitarian and Universalist churches. In 1909, the Unitarian minister John Haynes Holmes was a founding member of the NAACP. In the 1960's many were actively involved in the civil rights movement, marching along side Martin Luther King Jr. in the 1965 March on Selma. I would venture to say that all efforts at ending racial discrimination have had Unitarian Universalist representation and participation.
Our Principles and Purposes reflect our history. Our first principle honors "the inherent worth and dignity of all people." Our second principle directs us toward "justice, equity and compassion in human relations." From our history and our principles we are quite ready to take on racism within our congregations and in society at large.
But our record hasn't been spotless. Although Meadville Theological School admitted its first African American student in 1870, it took till 1961 for the Rev. Lewis McGee to be settled as the minister of the Chico Unitarian Fellowship in California. When McGee first approached the American Unitarian Association in 1927 he was told by then president Curtis Reese, "If you want to be a Unitarian you'd better bring your own church." African American Ministers have had difficulty finding settlements that continue to this day.
Yes, our record hasn't been spotless and our attempts to respond to the cries of suffering and rage emanating from the Afro-American community in the late sixties were disastrous. Some of you here this morning may vividly remember the Black Empowerment Controversy when the Black Affairs Council staged a massive walk out of the 1969 General Assembly. It was a turbulent time of demands and counter demands which nearly split apart our Association. The legacy of that time remains with us today and can be felt in the care, commitment and intensity brought to the work of the Task Force. There is strong desire in our association, to heal, to resolve and to accomplish what could not be done in 1969. Moving toward becoming an anti-racist multicultural institution is the way the Task Force thinks we can do it.
The conclusion of the Task Force's report predicts moving toward becoming an anti-racist multicultural institution will not be easy for us. They predict we are going to be uncomfortable with moving toward becoming anti-racist. Having been through such trainings and programs I can validate that they have made me feel uncomfortable. Discovering the disease of racism hidden in one's attitudes and actions is quite unsettling.
The Task Force advises us that becoming multicultural will increase the level of ambiguity. Unfamiliar theological language and expression may be heard on Sunday morning. Non-European music might be heard and played on instruments other than the piano or the organ. Speakers may discourse on unfamiliar ideas. Strange rituals from non-European or even pre-Christian European cultures may be included. The Task Force warns us that we will see an increase in what they euphemistically call "healthy conflict" as we begin to share power with those who think and do things differently than we do. We are beginning to see some of this just by widening the diversity of ages represented in this congregation. The benefit of having little fresh young faces here on Sunday morning doesn't come without increasing the number of problems which arise from kids raiding the refrigerator to classroom space problems. I can't tell you how happy I am to have these problems but they are problems which cause discomfort none the less.
All such change, creates feelings of tension and dis-equilibrium. There is little an organization dislikes more than dis-equilibrium. Most of us are happy to keep doing things the same way we've always done them. If it ain't broke, don't fix it! All organizations dislike being off-balance and will resist those who initiate any destabilizing change. Resistance to what the Task Force is asking us to do is magnified when many of us don't think we collude with racism and deny our role in supporting the racist status quo. When we can't sense it or feel it, it is difficult for us to see how it might be operating within our Fellowship. The kind of racism the Task Force wants us to address lurks unknown and unacknowledged in shadow as our eye passes over it.
On top of the universal resistance of organizations to change, there are peculiar forces which operate to make it difficult for Unitarian Universalists to move toward becoming more racially and culturally diverse. After all, let us remember, the most racially and culturally diverse church in the world is probably the Roman Catholic Church. The Jehovah's Witnesses membership is better than half of non-European American descent. The Mormons are fairly well integrated. I think it is important to understand why they are and we are not.
The reason the Catholics, the Jehovah's Witnesses and the Mormons can have the level of racial and cultural diversity they do, is because they have an authoritarian center around which the church operates. The authority comes from the teachings of the church leaders and not from the church members. The core teachings and statements of faith are not democratically formulated. This creates a kind of stability and balance which can accommodate racial and cultural diversity. The common agreement and conformance to the core beliefs and teachings overcomes the differences, especially when the core teaching of the church is love of God AND neighbor.
The second critical reason for the racially diverse makeup of these churches is their missionary orientation. They believe all people should be members of their church as the one true faith. They actively embrace anyone who will accept their core beliefs and teaching. They don't ask you if you are a Jehovah's Witness without knowing it, they know you are and will try to convince you if you let them in your front door. Whether you are black, white, yellow, red or green doesn't matter.
Well, in Unitarian Universalism, who you are matters very much. We are the Church of Individualism. Unitarian Universalism is only what we collectively agree it is. We are supremely democratic. Some have suggested that our center is our agreement to be different. Our lack of an authoritarian center to hold us together as an organization moves us toward other ways to provide our center. That center comes from our intellectual and individualistic climate rather than conformance or missionary orientation.
Most of us come to UUism from a personal desire or feeling of recognition that our religious tradition matches what we already believe. We feel comfortable with the social and programmatic setting which for many reminds them of pleasant times on college campuses. Typically, the members are people who look like us and generally think about things as we do - intellectually. For many the feeling of joining a UU congregation is the feeling of coming home rather than adopting a new vision and sense of commitment.
Most people do not join a UU congregation because the congregation is a strong advocate for racial, social, cultural, and economic justice. The new member may feel intellectual comfort with "justice, equity and compassion in human relations" as a defining value of UUism, but has much less importance for us than it does for a member of the Salvation Army or a Catholic Worker. From what I observe at the denominational level though, the leaders in justice issues feel this is of primary importance to our religious identity and rail against the attitudes of members in our congregations who just want to be comfortable. The resistance to moving toward anti-racism is strong.
Overcoming resistance toward being uncomfortable in our congregations and moving toward anti-racism as a core part of our identity will take more than a resolution passed on the floor of GA and a nod to our purposes and principles.
It will take the promise of personal transformation.
We had a glimpse of this at the Task Force GA presentation this year. Different UU's shared their efforts and experience working toward the goal of racial and cultural diversity. Barbro Hansson's story illuminated the way.
She was president of the Thomas Jefferson District which includes Charlotte, North Carolina where the 93 General Assembly was held. The planning committee had come up with what they thought was a wonderful theme for evening entertainment: have a traditional southern ball and have people dress in period costumes from the time of Jefferson. Hansson herself was very excited about the ball and had bought an expensive dress from that period to wear. The African American delegates didn't see things this way. Were they expected to dress in their period costumes of rags and chains? Would they be asked to serve the drinks and sweep the floors? The symbolic issues of a southern ball celebrating the pleasure of an era of slavery got the delegates embroiled in controversy. Ms. Hansson was the leader of a group of people from both sides of this issue asked to see if they could work out a solution. As you might imagine, the meeting was tense and much anger and tears expressed. They were not comfortable. They struggled with each other. And they found a solution. And in the process, they personally received more than a solution. They had struggled with their assumptions, their values, their attitudes and been transformed. Barbro Hansson, we discovered at the end of her presentation had later decided to study for the ministry. Something spiritually transforming happened to her that day struggling with racism.
From the energy and excitement I sense from the Task Force leaders, I suspect they too have tasted the transformation within themselves which has happened through engaging in this kind of work. I hear it from my friend the Rev. Richard Speck, minister in Vero Beach, who talked about being a "recovering racist" in the GA presentation. I hear it from the people in each district who have been trained to work as anti-racism leaders. Their experience and inspiration suggest to me that if we seriously engage in this work of anti-racism, we too will be transformed - and healed - as we take steps toward purging our world of racism.
In the end, racism can only be purged through love and never through fear. White guilt and fear of Black rage is not going to do it. The history of unpleasant conflict at previous GA's is not going to do it. Demands for power sharing and equity isn't going to energize us to actively transform inner and outer racism. Even our Principles and Purposes will not be enough.
To open the way, we need to study the experience of people like us who strive to become anti-racist and have found fruit in the effort. People like Ms. Hansson who have risked the pain of seeing attitudes and behaviors lurking in the shadows of their lives and reaped the joy of beginning to let them go. This is doable. This is possible.
We need to take the risk of being willingly enter the field of ambiguity, conflict, tension and dis-equilibrium that becoming anti-racist requires and allow the transforming power of love to do the work. This is doable. This is possible.
We need the liberating experience of the transformative power of love working in our own lives as we struggle with racism to provide us the motivation to genuinely become an anti-racist congregation. Only if we are transformed and healed by this work will it become part of our institutional identity - part of our own identity. This is doable. This is possible.
So let's do it.
Copyright (c) 1996 by Rev. Samuel A. Trumbore. All rights reserved.