CLASSISM: HISTORY OF THE UNITARIANS AND THE UNIVERSALISTS Sunday, Aug 5, 2018

Classism and greed are making insignificant all the other isms. – Ruby Dee

READING

Our reading is an excerpt from a document from the Unitarian Universalist Association called

A Preliminary Report on Class in the Unitarian Universalist Association, published in June of 2015.

It was written by the Commission of Appraisal, a group that chooses a subject every four years. This is from the Definition section.

Class is a complicated topic, and the definitions and ideas used to describe class vary greatly. At its core, class is about power relative to income, wealth, and position in society.

Class affects our capacity to minister to Unitarian Universalists and the world. Class has historical, social, geographic, cultural, psychological, and institutional dimensions. Class is linked to individual, family, and group experiences in society. For instance, people’s economic position may have less to do with their lifetime earned income than with the history of their inherited wealth and the property held by their families and communities.

Class affects the way we socialize, celebrate, eat, speak, and spend our time, even if we do not see these things as part of class position. When we enter a Unitarian Universalist congregation or community, these aspects of our lives enter with us, along with the experiences, assumptions, and resources linked to them.

Class creates and provides the structure for inequalities that have had long- lasting effects on the health, well-being, and life outcomes of many people, with disproportionate impact on people of color and historically marginalized communities. The inequalities created by class lead to class struggles, in which the protection and expansion of accumulated wealth is opposed to the fulfillment of all people’s basic needs.

Despite our Principles and history of work for social and economic justice, Unitarian Universalism is deeply rooted in class and class struggles. For some Unitarian Universalists, class remains an invisible category or dimension of congregational and Associational life; for UUs who are working class or poor, class cannot be ignored because it more obviously constructs daily realities and interactions in community. Like positions in other systems of oppression, such as racism and sexism, powerful class positions in society often bring the privilege of not seeing class difference or failing to notice the widespread causes of class inequalities.

Of course, class is not all of our story. Classism is linked with other systems of oppression observed and experienced in the UUA, so understanding class struggle within our movement helps us understand its intersections with other forms of struggle. This understanding might free us to fulfill our mission with more clarity and compassion.

S - 2

SERMON

One Sunday when I was leading the service, I started with some basic words explaining Unitarian Universalism. You know the words—the kind of elevator speech or boiler plate that says who we are for newcomers or reminds us who we are.

That morning, I said the following words:

We look for the worth and dignity of all people, and, knowing that we are

part of a web of connections that expands beyond our imagination, we

strive, as best we know how, to build on our deepest values to bring

justice and compassion into the world.

On our journey together we welcome all of whatever race, class, ethnicity,

sexual orientation, gender identity, religious background, or physical

ability. We welcome you.

S - 3

After the service that Sunday, a congregant came up to me and asked me why I called out “class” in the opening words. The person said something like

“I get why we talk about race, sexual orientation, religious background and those others, but why do we specifically call out class?”

I have to admit that I didn’t have a great response. It wasn’t that I didn’t believe in the words that I had said, I just hadn’t analyzed all of them. But that question has been in the back of mind ever since then and comes up periodically. Because we talk about a lot of isms as Unitarian Universalism.

In particular, UUs have a lot about racism the last couple of years. Sexism and heterosexism and gender identity are often at the top of our awareness.

We are keenly aware of being aware of people who don’t identify as

Christians in a country where that is considered the standard for many. But what about class? Well, we have spoken a lot about income inequality, haven’t we? We’ve talked about equal access for voting, education and healthy food and water. But is that addressing class?

S - 4 My hypothesis is that we as Unitarian Universalists are still quite classist.

And that, like many isms, we are quite unaware of it. But that classism is real. We have seen the issues of class come up through the recent election.

We still struggle with it. But many people don’t know that classism is also a part of our Unitarian Universalist DNA.

For those of you who are new to Unitarian Universalism, our unwieldy denomination name comes from a merger of the Unitarians and the

Universalists that happened in 1961. Let me tell you a little about our denominational ancestors and how the story of class is interwoven into our story. It is important to know our history because, as Alice Walker said, “to acknowledge our ancestors means we are aware that we did not make ourselves.”

The Universalist side of our denomination was founded in 1770 by John

Murray, an Englishman who showed up in New Jersey and befriended by a farmer named Thomas Potter. Murray started preaching in the very humble church that Thomas Potter had built with his own hands. Murray preached S - 5 the revolutionary idea that all people were saved—not just a few chosen ones. Murray spread this message beyond Thomas Potter’s far and wide— through other small towns and farming areas. If you will, John Murray was

Universalism’s first itinerant missionary. Universalism spread through mostly grass-roots work by Murray and others who took up his mission—all across the United States. Because these towns were small and didn’t have a lot of money, the ministers were usually not educated. They were filled with purpose and they were devout and spiritual people. They preached from the heart, even if their minds were not as educated. The word Universalism came from their belief that everyone was saved, not a chosen few. They believed that God was love.

On the other hand, there were the Unitarians. Contrary to being the religion of simple farmers, Unitarianism first originated with the King of Transylvania in 1568 who was an ardent supporter of religious tolerance. Other influences of Unitarianism can be traced through the Reformation movement in England. While the Universalists spread from small town to small town and spread west as the United States grew, Unitarianism was focused S - 6 predominantly around Boston and was supported by Harvard Divinity School, where the majority of the Unitarian ministers were trained. The Unitarian congregation members were often the elite of Boston’s society—rational, intellectual and privileged. summed them up when she wrote this in 1826, “All the literary men of Massachusetts were

Unitarian. All the trustees and professors of Harvard College were

Unitarians. All the elite of wealth and fashion crowded Unitarian churches.

The judges on the bench were Unitarians.” Whereas the Universalists were deeply spiritual, the Unitarians were all about the mind and the power of reason. And one of their main focuses was challenging the idea of the

Trinity—they believed God was one, hence the name Unitarian.

So we have two liberal faiths that were both rejecting some of the traditional elements of Christianity. Throughout the 1800s and 1900s, they had more and more in common theologically and philosophically. They both strongly believed that people had the freedom to believe what they wanted and that their personal conscience should dictate their beliefs in this world. As such, they both refused to have a creed or a statement of belief as a necessity for S - 7 membership. Members of both groups believed that it was more important to be a moral and good person in this life than count on an afterlife. Both were on the cutting edge of the progressive issues of their times and they were both a refuge for Christians who wanted to leave their tradition and find a religion that better fit their values.

They had so much in common. And as other Christian traditions became less strict about the creed, there was less that was differentiating about both the

Unitarians and Universalists. There were so many reasons for them to merge. There were meetings and discussions about it for approximately 100 years. But it never happened? Why? The main reason was class.

The Unitarians thought the Universalists were uneducated and that their ministers didn’t have the Harvard degrees they found so important. They thought the Universalists were too theologically conservative and were too emotional. Conversely, the Universalists felt that the Unitarians were too elite, rational and snooty. They feared that their traditions and beliefs would be subsumed by the Unitarians. S - 8

Basically, they both suffered from the belief that the other side was “not like them.” For almost 100 years, a merger was rejected because these issues could not be overcome.

It is important to stop here and note that Americans of the 18th and the 19th centuries didn’t talk about classism or really any of the isms that we understand now. For the first 100 years of our country’s history, racism wasn’t even a word that people used—in fact, slavery was the law of the land. While many Unitarians and Universalists took up the abolitionist position leading up to the Civil War and afterwards, let’s be clear and acknowledge that many of them benefitted from slavery before that and slavery was a topic of great debate in both denominations. And sexism wasn’t even acknowledged until the late 20th Century. In fact, it wasn’t until the early 1980s that language in our Unitarian Universalist hymns and readings were addressed. So classism wasn’t acknowledged or discussed as an -ism—although it was definitely there.

S - 9 So lets get back to our story of class and struggle.

Let me give you a good example of the differences in class between the two groups.

Each of the denominations saw great growth in the early 1800s, in part due to great leaders in their denomination. For the Unitarians it was William

Ellery Channing and for the Universalists it was Hosea Ballou. They were born only 9 years apart (1780 and 1771 respectively), they both lived in

Boston and they both were prolific writers and passionate about their beliefs.

Ballou was preaching about universal salvation and Channing was preaching about the importance of human dignity and the free mind. They were pushing the theologies of their denominations into new and uncharted territory. They were both preaching in prominent pulpits in Boston for more than 25 years. We know they knew about each other because they mentioned each others’ positions in their sermons. But there is no record of them ever meeting. Why? Most likely because Channing lived on the fancy

S - 10 side of Boston while Ballou lived in a more modest part of town near the

Charles River.

There seemed to be derision of each other by both sides. There is documentation of some Boston elite Unitarians making fun of Ballou’s rough and unrefined dialect and language.

Hosea Ballou, on the other hand, noted the derision of he and his fellow

Universalists, especially of their educational differences. He quoted that the

Unitarians thought that the Universalists were “little better than barbarians when compared with the graduates of Harvard College and other polished literati.”

The difference between the two denominations was also described by

Thomas Starr King, who actually straddled both groups--he was raised in the

Universalist church and then became the minister of a Unitarian church as an adult. He had a famous quote that summed up the difference between the two groups—he refers first the Universalists and then to the Unitarians: “the

S - 11 one thinks God is too good to damn them forever, the other thinks they are too good to be damned.” [repeat if necessary]

So, let me give away the ending of the story, as if you didn’t know it already—the Unitarians and Universalists successfully merged in 1961 and we became one denomination. But you could argue that the Universalists concerns that their practices, ministers and beliefs would be subsumed by the elite Unitarians were realized. Our current denomination, I fear, looks much more like the Unitarians than the Universalists. We are a very well- educated denomination, with a very high index of members holding higher education degrees. The majority of our congregations are in bigger cities rather than the rural communities. In many denominations, the use of reason is seen as of higher value than the intuitive connection with the spirit.

You could say that we are a NPR kind of crowd. We like to think of ourselves as educated and informed, whether formally or not. Others may consider us elitist.

S - 12 And, there is another aspect that has been concerning to me. In many UUs, I find a certain condescending manner towards those who have more traditional Christian beliefs. There is a sense that they “just don’t know” and if they were more enlightened as we were then they would come to their senses. I fear that sometimes we don’t realize how condescending we sound when we say that.

Are we classist as a denomination now? Are we classist as individuals? You should make that determination yourself, but I’d say that it is something we need to really think about. Are we out of touch with others who are different than us? Possibly. But let me ask you this: Have you ever scoffed at WalMart shoppers for being unaware of the impact of their purchasing power on the dynamics of small businesses that often have higher costs? Do you judge people who eat at McDonalds and depend on the dollar menu?

While we may want to defend the health, economic, animal-rights and so many other issues that help inform our choices, I challenge yourself to ask if your opinions about others are based on a sense that you “know better” and may have a more inromed perspective. I’m not saying that you should S - 13 change your shopping habits—believe me, I’m not advocating shopping at

WalMart or McDonalds! I’m just challenging you to look at your motivations for judging people who do.

So what do we do about this? Well, I often say that the first step acknowledging our biases is similar to the first step of any recovery program.

We need to acknowledge that there is a problem. The most difficult challenge we have in dealing with any of the isms—and it is a lifetime discovery for most of us—is noticing when it is happening and being aware that we’re doing it. This is not always pleasant, or easy. Nor is it pretty when we see it in others after we’re aware. But be aware we must. Because any time we put down any kind of “other” in order to make ourselves feel better, we are furthering the cause of oppression and discrimination. And, despite our history, I do not believe that is who we wish to be.

How can we fully embrace our principles to see the worth and dignity of all people? How can we make our congregations more welcoming to all people? How do we make our congregations—although liberal—be more S - 14 reflective of the broader population. How do we make sure that we are not just in our own little bubble and that we are seeing what is happening in the broader world? How do we become aware of the implications of our actions? I would argue that by aware of the issues of class, we can also better address the issues of racism, sexism, income inequality and all the other sources of oppression.

Our history is not exempt of differences, in fact it is defined by it. But we have the opportunity to learn from it, to grow and to rise above it.

S - 15

CLOSING WORDS

My closing words are from the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr,

While Dr. King began his work began his work as a civil rights activist working for the liberation of African Americans in our nation, at the end of his life, his perspective broadened as he began to see the connections between racism and classism, the invisible lines that poverty draws between people.

He could see that the poor white families in the South were no better off than the poor black families, except that they had pale skin and the privileges that came with it.

He wrote the following in an essay entitled “The Community of Man”:

“As long as there is poverty in the world I can never be rich, even if I have a billion dollars. As long as diseases are rampant and millions of people in this world cannot expect to live more than 28 or 30 years, I can never be totally healthy even if I just got a good checkup at Mayo Clinic.

“I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be. This is the way our world is made. No individual or nation can stand out boasting of being independent. We are interdependent.”

Interdependent—just like our 7th principle. We respect the interdependent web of which we are all a part.

The Reverend Kit Ketchum muses on the opportunity for us as this: S - 16

“The questions of privilege and wealth and education and career hover over every UU congregation. How do we provide a social and religious context here for all who enter this sanctuary?

How do we combat the impression some may have that Unitarian Universalism is mainly for educated, privileged people who are doctors or professors or lawyers or engineers or artists or social workers or therapists? Because we ARE all of those things AND we are also landscapers and hair stylists and accountants and construction workers and deep sea fishers and disabled people, limited income people, military people, retired people, small business people, young and middleaged and old people.

We are a rainbow of humanity and each of us brings to this congregation a set of traits, skills, knowhow, resources, which enriches our time together. We sometimes assume that we must all have the same kind of history, background, and upbringing, if we are in this place together. But we are remarkably different.

And as we make ourselves what we ought to be, in Martin Luther King’s immortal words, we will give others a better chance to be who and what they ought to be.”

So might it be in our little corner of the world and so might it be in the world.

Amen, Blessed Be.

S - 17