“Welcome home, gather ‘round / All ye refugees, come in” – words from the Christian singer-songwriter, Sandra McCracken. I suspect she’s channeling the ancient Hebrew moral principle expressed in one of God’s many commandments to the Israelites after their Egyptian exodus: “You shall not wrong or oppress the alien, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt;” expressed even more succinctly in the words of Jesus: “Love your neighbor as yourself.”
Our ministry theme for February is inclusivity. I’m going to preach two sermons on this theme. As you may anticipate, I have a lot to say. It is no secret that asking and attempting to answer questions about inclusivity within our congregation and within Unitarian Universalism more generally–questions about our welcome, our hospitality, our culture, our ways of navigating human differences and the complexities of human identities, our ways of forging and sustaining relationships in the wider community, our ways of building the beloved community–all of it is foundational to my call to ministry.
What I know to be true about Unitarian Universalists is that we want and expect to grow an inclusive faith. We want to offer an expansive welcome and robust hospitality; we want and expect to be generous, caring and compassionate toward each other, toward visitors and newcomers, toward strangers, toward the other, toward those who think, feel and believe differently, toward those who live on society’s margins, toward the immigrant, the alien, the refugee. In words adapted from the ancient Sufi poet Rumi, we sing: “Come, Come whoever you are, wander, worshipper, lover of leaving, ours is no caravan of despair. Come, yet again, come.” This desire for an inclusive faith lives at the heart of our first Unitarian Universalist principle, “the inherent worth and dignity of every person,” our third principle, “acceptance of one another and encouragement to spiritual growth in our congregations,” and our seventh principle, “respect for the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part.” It lives at the heart of the new Unitarian Universalist values: generosity, pluralism, justice, transformation, interdependence and equity, with a deep and abiding love at the center.
We want and expect to grow an inclusive faith. I know this to be true. This wanting, this expecting has always animated and guided my ministry., and I have no doubt it always will. “Welcome home, gather ‘round / All ye refugees, come in.”
It’s also no secret that my formation as a minister in the 1990s included extensive training as an anti-racism educator and organizer. That training has deeply shaped who I am, not only as a minister but as a human being. I wouldn’t be the person I am without that training. I wouldn’t be the minister you have put your trust in to guide you as a congregation over these past 23 years without that training. It has shaped and continues to shape my approach to questions of inclusivity, welcoming, hospitality, engagement with the wider community and social justice activism.
It’s also no secret–and this is the final non-secret I will share–that over the last decade, though really since 2017, the Unitarian Universalist Association–its staff and volunteer leadership, many of the clergy (myself included) and the General Assembly–have been exploring and articulating in earnest the ways in which current Unitarian Universalist culture and institutional structures actually limit our inclusivity, limit our welcome, particularly our welcome to people of color, queer people and people with disabilities. Now things are changing. Certainly the new Article 2 of the Unitarian Universalist Association bylaws emerged , at least in part , in response to this desire to address those institutional structures and aspects of our culture that work against greater inclusivity. And as things change, inevitably some feel alienated. Certainly many members and friends of this congregation have felt alienated by trends in the larger world of the Unitarian Universalist Association these past few years.
I want to speak more directly to that sense of alienation in next week’s sermon, in part because I am hopeful, though not quite 100% positive, that we will be able to share the final report of our UUA Discernment Taskforce with the congregation later this week. There’s a recommendation in the report that in my mind speaks directly the way anti-racism has been centered in national Unitarian Universalist life and what it actually means. As prelude to that, I want to review some UU history without which I can’t understand–let alone explain–who we are as a people of faith at this moment in time. The changes we’re experiencing have longstanding roots.
From the earliest days of the UUA, which was founded in 1961 through the merger of the American Unitarian Association and the Universalist Church of America, individual UUs, UU congregations, and our UUA headquarters in Boston have been wrestling with issues of inclusivity. Racially, ours is a white denomination, so there were huge questions in the beginning about how to be more inclusive to people of color. Like most mainline Protestant denominations in the 1960s, ours was male-centered. I don’t have exact numbers, but out of the approximately 1,000 ordained UU ministers in the 1960s, 12-15 of them were women. GLBTQ people were present but essentially invisible in that era. People with disabilities, present but invisible. Poor people, present but invisible. But at least some of our forebears in that era were aware of these exclusivities. Since our founding, one of our central questions has always been, “how do we make our congregations and our culture more welcoming to and inclusive of people from marginalized social groups, i.e., people of color, women, people with disabilities, children and youth, elders, eventually gay and lesbian people, and in later years, bisexual, transgender and non-binary people? A deeper question has always been both implicit and explicit: how do we make our historically white (male, heterosexual, etc.) congregations accountable to people in these marginalized groups and their institutions? How do we make space? How do we share power? How do we provide funding? How do we center voices from the margins? Although we may ask these questions differently today, these are not new. They’ve been with the UUA since its founding.
March of 1965 was an important moment. As I described last month, Martin Luther King, Jr. called for clergy from around the country to join him for the voting rights march from Selma to Montgomery, AL. More than 500 Unitarian Universalist clergy and lay people heeded the call. For me, this is a shining example of antiracist accountability.
There were also abject failures of antiracist accountability during those early years. I’ve spoken elsewhere about the so-called Black Empowerment controversy of the early 1970s–which some have renamed the White Entitlement controversy. Suffice to say, failures to deliver on financial promises to the UU Black Affairs Council plunged the UUA into a crisis over race and racism. Black UUs and their allies felt betrayed and abandoned. Many left and never returned. Institutional change has never been easy.
In the late 1970s Unitarian Universalism experienced powerful internal organizing aimed at reducing sex-based discrimination within our faith. The 1977 General Assembly’s “Women in Religion” resolution opened the door to women having equal access to leadership positions in all aspects of UUA life, including theological education, ordination, and ministerial roles. Although that work is still ongoing, the initial decades of antisexist organizing were so successful that by the mid 1990s, the UUA had achieved gender parity among its clergy. As far as I know, the UUA was the first mainline denomination in the world to achieve gender parity among its clergy. It brings joyful, proud tears to my eyes as I speak these words. I fondly remember dear colleagues (some deceased, some still living) who participated in or led that work of smashing the glass ceiling in UUism. Knowing them, I am immensely proud to call myself a Unitarian Universalist. We all can be proud of this success.
Similarly, during the 1980s and early 1990s Unitarian Universalism experienced powerful internal organizing aimed at educating congregations about the realities of gay and lesbian life, how to welcome gay and lesbian people into our congregations, into congregational leadership, and into the ranks of the clergy. (The work expanded to include transgender and non-binary people in later years.) Oftentimes we refer to that organizing by the title of a signature UU educational curriculum, The Welcoming Congregation. That work, also, is far from complete. But the fruits of its success are abundantly clear in the high numbers of GLBTQ+ people who participate in UU congregations today as members, leaders and clergy. I believe the United Church of Christ reached key milestones in ordaining gay and lesbian people and launching its ‘Open and Affirming’ ministries before the UUA, but we were right there with them, among the first in the world, to prioritize and fund a commitment to dismantling institutional heterosexism and welcoming gay and lesbian people. It brings joyful, proud tears to my eyes to name this success out loud. I fondly remember dear colleagues (some deceased, some still living) who participated in or led the Welcoming Congregation work in its early years. Knowing them, knowing their stories, I am immensely proud to call myself a Unitarian Universalist. We all can be proud of this success.
I started working at the UUA in the spring of 1992. Almost immediately I noticed a robust conversion about racial and cultural diversity. I heard the argument that we could no longer rest on our Civil Rights movement laurels. Racism was still with us, and Unitarian Universalism was still too racially and culturally White. That June, the General Assembly passed a resolution entitled “Racial and Cultural Diversity in Unitarian Universalism.” It affirmed a vision of a racially diverse and multicultural Unitarian Universalism.”
However, the architects of that resolution understood that having a vision is not the same thing as having a strategy. They understood that achieving the vision required a strategy for anti-racist educating, training and organizing. So, in 1997, the General Assembly passed a new resolution entitled “Toward an Antiracist Unitarian Universalist Association,” which called on UUs “to examine carefully their own conscious and unconscious racism as participants in a racist society, and the effect that racism has on all our lives, regardless of color.” It called on the [UUA] and its congregations “to develop an ongoing process for the comprehensive institutionalization of anti-racism and multiculturalism, understanding that whether or not a group becomes multi-racial, there is always the opportunity to become anti-racist.” It called on all UU leaders, ministers, religious educators, governing boards, [UUA] staff, theological schools, and future General Assemblies “to engage in ongoing anti-racism training.” And it encouraged UUs “to enter into relationships of sustained engagement with all people of color with a goal of opening up authentic dialogue [on] race and racism. Such dialogue should also include how to appropriately honor and affirm the cultural traditions of … people of color.”
At that same General Assembly, delegates also passed a resolution entitled “Accessibility for Persons with Disabilities,” which called on the UUA to undertake “an aggressive plan to address accessibility within the Association for people with disabilities,” and to act as an advocate “for the human and civil rights of people with disabilities both within i[the UUA] and globally.”
I was there in 1992. I was there in 1997. Mindful of the changes that were already underway in terms of women’s leadership and the welcome to gay and lesbian people, I watched our faith, using our democratic process, make profound commitments to increasing inclusivity in our national offices, our congregations, our culture, and among our religious professionals. I watched our faith make these commitments to the dignity and worthiness of all people. I fondly remember dear colleagues (some deceased, some still living) who participated in or led this work. Knowing them, knowing their stories, I am immensely proud to call myself a Unitarian Universalist.
As an aside, this tradition of passing resolutions to express our collective desire for a more inclusive faith continues to this day. At the most recent General Assembly this past June, delegates overwhelmingly passed a resolution entitled “Affirming Transgender, Nonbinary, Intersex and Gender Diverse People is a Fundamental Expression of UU Religious Values.” which concludes “We hereby pledge our collective faithful efforts to the full affirmation and celebration of transgender, nonbinary, intersex and gender diverse people within our congregations and the wider community, and uphold this commitment as a fundamental obligation revealed by our principles and values.” At some point I plan to dedicate an entire service to exploring this resolution.
Peering back to the 1990s, those resolutions on racial and cultural diversity, antiracism, and accessibility were starting points for what we then called the Journey Toward Wholeness. It’s a long journey. The work of increasing inclusivity has been immensely difficult. It has gone more slowly than many of us had hoped in the 1990s–though we did talk about a 30-year plan then. Despite the challenges and set-backs we’ve encountered over the years, despite mistakes and unskillfulness, despite tension and conflict, I still know this truth: We Unitarian Universalists want and expect to grow an inclusive faith. We want to offer an expansive welcome, a robust hospitality; we want and expect to be generous, caring and compassionate toward each other, toward visitors and newcomers, toward strangers, toward the other, toward those who think, feel and believe differently from us, toward those who live on society’s margins, toward the immigrant, the alien, the refugee. It’s a beautiful vision and we are still called to pursue it.
Amen and blessed be.
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