Unitarian Universalism

With the short chill days, the frigid darkness, and the holidays approaching, a colleague and I had long been talking about going to the Tabard Inn after work to sit by their fire and enjoy a warm drink. Tonight we finally made it.  I had never been before.  It was a strange place - the kind of place that can claim "Washington slept here," serving as a backdrop to the conversations of the mid-level power brokers of DC.  Yet also homey.

Out of the many things that we talked about that were interesting and worthy of further thought, the one that most struck me is a comment about the future of UU. I was talking about our religious diversity - encompassing everything from atheists to liberal Christians to New Agers - and how difficult it was as a result to have a strong UU identity.  I was preoccupied with how to draft a definitive statement of our identity and yet keep everyone on board.  My colleague, otoh, gently brushed all that aside.  As I understood it, she essentially said that we would have to outgrow the hyphens.  There are other places for liberal Christians.  There are other places for religious atheists.  There needs to be a place for UUs to be UUs.

I am wrestling with this.  One the one hand, the UU that I was just a short couple of years ago would have been appalled at the idea.  If a core part of our identity is freedom of conscience, how can we have anything other than the diversity that we have now?  When we talk of bringing racial/ethnic diversity to our congregations, we talk of the spiritual benefits of celebrating difference, how it augments us all.  Isn't this true for religious identity as well?  Don't we serve as a place where people of different religious backgrounds can learn from each other - a sort of perpetual interfaith dialogue?

Otoh, having our own identity would not prevent us from learning about other faiths.  (And one might argue that we'd be in a better position to do so.)  Having studied our historical and theological roots, the UU that I am now believes that we are a religion, not just a "United Nations" of other religions.  I know that our religion incorporates elements from many faith traditions. It has from the start, not just as a PC way of "collecting" representations from them.  We have a theology that is compatible with many other faith traditions, but it is our own, born of our unique history.

My colleague is not one to just steam-roll through dissent, so I take her comments seriously. And if I am to be fully honest, these days when I speak about UU, I speak from that unified perspective, rooted in our history and theology.  I no longer think of us as a religious United Nations.  The question is, how many other UUs feel the same way.  How many UUs are we excluding?

The UUSJ is the social justice group of the Greater Washington, DC area, encompassing Baltimore and Northern Virginia. They put on a workshop today, co-sponsored by the Washington Office, on how to more effectively mobilize congregations towards social justice ministry. It was an extended version of the Washington Office's "Inspired Faith, Effective Action" workshop. The task was given to me to talk about religious grounding - lifting up that when we do social justice work we do it as religious people, and how that is different from doing it as secular advocates.

That shouldn't be a difficult task for me, since much my time is spent ruminating on how social justice is an expression of our faith. However, I was in the unfortunate position of following Rev. Sinkford, president of the UUA, who gave the opening address. And really, he said everything that I would have said, only better. He reminds me how blessed we are to have him and of the anxiety that I am feeling about his pending departure.

There are some in our congregations who say that they are tired of all this social justice stuff - that they come to church in order to worship and to be spiritually nourished, not to be bombarded with petitions to sign and actions to take. And there are some who say that faith without works is dead. That spirituality without social action is just navel gazing. I think I tend to fall into the latter category but it's because my innate tendency is to navel gaze - to ponder - and I'm (over)compensating for that.

What Rev. Sinkford reminded us today was that the two really go hand-in-hand. Our social justice work IS an expression of our faith, and if it is done right, it should be spiritually uplifting, not draining.

I hate our new chalice logo compared with the old, but I love our new slogan. Whoever is responsible, kudos. We finally got it right. A message that is not a reaction against Christianity, as was "The Uncommon Denomination" and "UUs have a different trinity." Instead, our new slogan captures what we are about. Come nurture your spirit; help heal our world. Receiving and giving, together at the same time. Relational. Mutual.

Today, even as I lament that we will soon lose Rev. Sinkford's steady guidance, I feel confident in our future. Come nurture your spirit; help heal our world. This is what it means to be a UU.

The Asian/Pacific Islander "group" of All Souls (in other words, a group of us who are of A/PI descent) had a potluck this evening and our senior minister was kind enough to accept an invitation to join us. It was billed as a purely social event, a space where A/PIs can get to know each other, but this is Washington, DC with the movers and shakers, and some stereotypes of Asians have basis, so eventually people could not resist the opportunity to get down to business. Talk turned to diversity and how to build more of it at our church. What the group was specifically interested in was how to build true multi-culturalism in our congregation as opposed to the bi-culturalism that people often mean by "diversity."

At times, being Asian in a black and white culture is like being... nothing. Persona non grata. I don't mean to play the violin of self-pity tho. I know that lots of other people are in the same boat - Latino/a/Hispanics obviously, Native Americans, a growing population of Arab-Americans, and also, something that I had not thought about until discussions within UU made me aware, people of African descent who are not "African-American." In a country that is so used to framing the discussion around the legacy of slavery and its dynamics, where do the rest of us fit in to this?

UU has many of the same problems that society has, magnified. Not because we are worse about them but because we actually talk about them. And within UU it seems to me that All Souls magnifies these problems even more. Not because we are worse about them but because we actually talk about them. So of course the A/PI community here, myself included, has not always been happy with how "diversity" has been framed. Even at All Souls, the view can become "black and white."

Yet we also recognize that this is a place that is sincerely trying, and is much better about it than most other places. So when the question came to how to increase our diversity, I was a little surprised when Rob refrained from tooting a horn he had every right to toot. He didn't talk about how great All Souls is, which it is. Nor did he point to other UU congregations, of which there are a few that are struggling with similar issues. He stated that if we really want to build diversity, we had to look outside of Unitarian Universalism. It was a statement of humility that both surprised and impressed me.

He pointed to Middle Collegiate Church, in the heart of New York City. I've heard great things about this congregation from others as well, including Taquiena. So for anyone interested in what true multi-culturalism done with intent looks like, I lift up Middle Church. It may be too Christian for many UUs, but man does it look beautiful and alive. I'm definitely going the next time I'm in NYC on a Sunday.

Who knew?

Not long ago, someone posted a link to a quiz that supposedly helps you identify the presidential candidate who most closely matches your socio-political views. (I'm not quite sure how they weigh things.)

I dutifully punched in my positions on a range of issues such as abortion rights, the Kyoto protocol, gun control, immigration, marriage-equality, minimum wage, the Patriot Act, and torturing detainees.

According to the quiz, I should vote for Mike Gravel

1. Mike Gravel - 95%
2. Dennis Kucinich - 90%
3. Barack Obama - 85%

Thanks, but I still plan to vote for Barack.

The more interesting and more scary thing is when, just for fun, I decided to flip it around and answer the opposite of my real views. I wanted to know who, from my perspective, is the anti-christ of presidential candidates. This is what I got:

1. Fred Thompson - 100%
2. Duncan Hunter - 95%
3. Mitt Romney - 95%

AAAAAAACCKK!! 100%???!! Hey, I knew he is a conservative, but he seemed like such a pleasant old man on Law and Order.