Unitarian Universalism

How many of you guys know that there is a UU running for president? I didn't at first. I had even filled out a little quiz that would tell me which candidates most closely matched my own positions on the issues and the results came back:

1. Mike Gravel
2. Dennis Kucinich
3. Barack Obama

And I thought, "Who the heck is Mike Gravel?" It turns out that Gravel is a former senator of Alaska, and a UU. That isn't enough to cause me to vote for him. But it's certainly enough to cause me to pay attention to what he does. And what he's done recently is release a kick-ass commercial on YouTube.

Well, at least in spirit. 

We UUs have a reputation for coopting famous figures whom we like. Arius, Bruno, Servetus, Hume have all "become" UUs at one time or another, so why not King?

After all, we adore the man. If there were a UU pantheon of sainthood he would be at the top. If we had a liturgical calendar the only required observances that I can think of would be Earth Day and MLK's birthday. I don't know about you guys but on the Sunday closest to MLK Day my church is packed and boy do we celebrate. And the march to Selma, where UUs answered King's call, is a defining moment in our identity as religious social activists.

King did have some connections with UU. Rosemary Bray McNatt writes in Soul Work that All Souls Church (of DC) had asked Dr. King to be the senior minister and both he and Coretta were sorely tempted. But ultimately they realized that they would not be able to build a credible black empowerment movement from within Unitarian Universalism. (Sad, huh? but true.)

But that's not why I'm claiming Dr. King as a UU today on the anniversary of his birthday. I hope he would understand that I'm making the claim both in jest and in earnest. And that I mean it as a compliment, while at the same time recognizing that he was a Baptist minister with his own thriving parish and neither he nor his congregation needed us little ol' UUs. The reason why I'm claiming him is because of what he said:

All life is interrelated. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality; tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.

If that's not the Seventh Principle, I don't know what is. It's pretty much the same thing as what Channing said about a hundred years before we codified it in a list (and the Buddha said centuries earlier). This, of course, does not prove that King was a UU so much as prove that the Seventh Principle is a universal truth recognized by more than one great person.

King's recognition of our interdependency/relatedness is the reason why his fight for justice ultimately transcended the black empowerment movement, and he spoke against all forms of oppression where he saw them including war. It's why his widow Coretta Scott King could state unequivocally that he would have supported the struggle for BGLT equality had he lived to see it.

Reverend King, may we who love and admire you and want to claim you continue to work to be worthy of your legacy.

Our office is up in Boston for a staff retreat, to have "face-time" with people with whom we closely work, to build relationships, to learn from UU clergy and social justice leaders on how we can better serve them, and to meet with the UUSC.  In all, the last two days have been informative and exhausting and, as always for me when we talk of social justice, there is the tension between the urgent need for action and feeling completely overwhelmed and powerless.

I've been told that historically there's been tension between the UUA and the UUSC - perhaps a sense of competition, I'm not sure.  Whatever it was it was before my time, those problems addressed by the hard work of my predecessors and supervisors.  The experiences I've had with the UUSC have all been amicable, and when we were told we were going to have a joint meeting, that made sense.

But what I didn't expect was to experience a very palpable lesson in the power of connections - in collaboration.  Today, as we walked into the new UUSC conference room (they recently moved), I was struck by how crowded the room was.  Our UUA staff groups, which seem so small were joining UUSC staff groups, which probably aren't much bigger, and instantly our power was doubled.  Instantly we had twice the number of people working on Darfur, twice the number of people working on the Gulf Coast, twice the number of people working on environmental justice.

Alone we are weak and easily overwhelmed.  Together we are strong.  Isn't that what religious community is all about?  I will never forget it.

Unitarianism was not a characteristically proselytizing faith.  (I doubt the Boston Brahmins thought that their religion was for the masses.)  But we did try to send missionaries out here and there, with little success.  Ironically in India, those Unitarian congregations started by missionaries were not particularly successful, but the ones that germinated on their own are still going strong. 

Hajom Kissor Singh (1865-1923) was born and lived in the Khasi Hills, in northeastern India.  He had been converted from his native beliefs to Calvinist Christianity by Methodist missionaries.  But through his own reasoning and experience, he rejected the idea of hell and the hostility the missionaries displayed for differing religious beliefs, arguing that Jesus' message was one of love.  Singh believed in universal salvation and religious pluralism.  He was at heart a UU.

Making contact with Unitarians in Britain and the U.S., Singh established a Unitarian presence in the Khasi Hills that continues today, comprising 37 churches with some 10,000 members.

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I had known that there were some Unitarians and Universalists outside of North America - every now and then there is talk of visiting sister congregations in Transylvania - but I did not really put much stock in them.  Part of this may be due to American egocentricism, but a large part of it is due to negative interactions I had had with one or two European Unitarians.  They were Unitarians in the classical sense - anti-trinitarian Christians, whereas I don't define my Unitarianism that way.  They argued that it was ridiculous to not have a creed (that rejected the trinity), whereas freedom of conscience is one of the cornerstones of my faith.  I had concluded that while we shared the name of Unitarians and Universalists with people in other parts of the world, we did not have enough in common with each other to engage in real "denominational" dialogue.

But then Dr. Khlur Mukhim, Board Member for the Unitarian Union of Northeast India (UUNEI), came to visit All Souls today.  That's when I learned about the Unitarians of the Khasi Hills - that they were universalists and that they were pluralists.  And I learned about their commitment to social justice, running schools that are sometimes the only source of education in the area.  Education is provided for anyone, regardless of religious affiliation.

I was very impressed, and am ready to explore partnership.  (It'll have to be discussed with the rest of my congregation, of course.)  For anyone looking for a partner church, I suggest considering the Unitarians in northeastern India.  We have much in common.