Classism–History of the Unitarians and the Universalists

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. Harriet Beecher Stowe 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.

Load more