I recently discussed the former atheist activist Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s conversion to Christianity. In it, I expressed the opinion that it is natural for human beings to gravitate towards belief systems. In the old days, this was organised religion. Now, people have lost faith in that but moved onto pastures new:
I believe that we humans have an inbuilt pull towards believing in something. In secular societies, celebrity worship has replaced the veneration of saints; football stadiums, the church. Even if we found undeniable proof that God did not exist, people would glom onto other concepts.
The byword for liberal theology in the United States is Unitarian Universalism, an offshoot of a nontrinitarian Christian tradition which harks back to the Puritans (ironic, given some of the things to be discussed in this post). While retaining many of the trappings of Christianity (such as referring to their houses of worship as churches and their ministers as Reverend), they have adopted an anything-goes theological policy. Open atheists can and have been ordained. People who hold beliefs in paganism and indigenous religion can be found in UU congregations. Ministers and lay practitioners come from all shades of belief and none, but are expected to adhere to seven basic principles:
- The inherent worth and dignity of every person;
- Justice, equity and compassion in human relations;
- Acceptance of one another and encouragement to spiritual growth in our
congregations; - A free and responsible search for truth and meaning;
- The right of conscience and the use of the democratic process within our
congregations and in society at large; - The goal of world community with peace, liberty and justice for all;
- Respect for the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part.
Yet something is afoot in the house of a God who may or may not exist. Some ministers and laypeople have been making the argument that the church is too focused on external politics- especially identity politics- to the detriment of the third, fourth and fifth principles. This harks back to the 1990s, according to (non-paywall archive) Jemima Kelly of the Financial Times. This was the decade in which the UUs adopted a recommendation that all their congregations engage in antiracism training. A noble pursuit, you might think. But some of the points made in this recommendation came in for sharp criticism and not from who you might think. One of these was the belief that white people and only white people are capable of racism. Black people can be prejudiced, but they cannot be racist as they do not hold the same institutional power as whites. The Rev. Thandeka, a black minister who was given her Xhosa name by none other than Desmond Tutu, objected to this not only on political but theological grounds. She felt that through this, the church was violating the first principle in believing that only members of a certain group could hold racist views. She also believed that this was embracing original sin, a doctrine Unitarianism had long since reputed.
The backlash by (majority-white) senior members was swift. Thandeka lost positions on committees and was attacked as racist. Over twenty years later, she found herself defending a controversial race-related position once again. This is her defence of Rev. Todd Eklof, a minister who also believes that the church is swapping its search for the truth for blind faith that a person’s salient characteristics trump all. His book, The Gadfly Papers, cites many examples of identity politics he feels is dividing the church. The time a woman wrote in the church magazine about her daughter’s relationship with a transgender woman, prompting an apology from the editor merely because the author wasn’t trans herself. The time the church’s pro-gay marriage campaign name was changed from “Standing on the Side of Love” to “Side With Love” not because it was snappier but because it was percieved by (I’m assuming) the majority ablebodied clergy as being offensive to people with physical disabilities. The time the first Hispanic president of the church resigned over a regional division appointing a white man who resided outside the area over a resident Latina. Like Thandeka before him, the backlash towards Eklof’s book was swift, but as the US was in the throes of Trumpmania at the time, it was far more ferocious. And remembering her own experiences, Thandeka defended Eklof, a good friend, as not prejudiced or bigoted. And let’s be honest, the evidence for Eklof not being a bigot far outweighs the evidence for him being such. He is a devout Bernie Sanders supporter who was fired from a job in 2005 for supporting gay marriage. Yet some of his fellow clergy smeared him as “alt-right” and accused him of inciting division. Five hundred selfidentified white UU clergy signed an open letter denouncing his work, claiming he could not speak on behalf of minorities (ironic given the composition which objected to the use of “standing” as a metaphor) as a white man, nor could he speak on behalf of white people in the UU organisation. They argued his opinions to be a form of violence, that freedom of speech principles should not apply here. They stop short of calling for his ouster, but the implication is that neither he nor his ideas are welcome.
In the end, he was “disfellowshipped”, ostensibly for refusing to review the complaints against him, something he denies. Disfellowshipping (what would be referred to as excommunication in other churches) is an extremely rare sanction against UU ministers. Between 1961 and 2020, only nine were disfellowshipped, most for serious sexual offences including possessing child pornography. Since 2020, a further five including Eklof have been disfellowshipped. Kelly of the FT asked the executive vice president of the Unitarian Universalist Association why he believes the number of disfellowshipments has drastically increased and he replied that “I would say we’ve started taking concerns and complaints more seriously in the dozen years that I’ve worked at the UUA.” Maybe so, but none of the five disfellowshipped since 2020 had CP on their hard drive or raped anyone. Whose side am I to take? Obviously, disfellowshiping is a serious punishment for someone whose biggest crime was merely critiquing some of the excess that has come to dominate UU discourse, but if he didn’t cooperate with investigators then he should have been subject to some level of sanction. And now Eklof has formed his own breakaway organisation, while the main church is toying with the idea of replacing the seven principles with a “flower of values” of six “petals”. Most of the criticism of this change is aimed at the removal of language celebrating individual autonomy, as well as an addition to the “freedom of belief” clause that “In expressing our beliefs, we do so in the spirit of love, in ways that further Beloved Community.” Some critics of the latter, including Ken Ing, consider this to be a flowery (ha!) way of saying “believe what you want unless you stray from our party line.” Ing goes on to critique the antiracism value being made explicit, whereas in the seven principles it is only implicit. To him:
The only Value that UU congregations are explicitly going to be accountable for is the value “Justice”. This is the 8th Principle phrased slightly differently. The intent is to single out Anti-Racism / Anti-Oppression as the highest priority in UU.
A religion, no matter how theologically liberal, should not be enshrining politics over theology. I’m sure most people who subscribe to UU do hold antiracist beliefs, but the search of truth is independent of identity. David Cycleback is an autistic, practicing Jew who attends a UU congregation. He has written extensively on neurodivergency and holds a PhD in the subject. Yet he strongly objects to the UUs putting idpol up on as high a pedestal as they have been. Some of the examples he gives and cites read like parody:
- A speaker at a theology school reunion was labelled as ableist (antidisabled) and anti-indigenous ancestor for making comments about her drooling and references to the Pilgrims (y’know, the forebears of all Unitarian churches);
- A minister comparing lay UUs to climate change deniers and saying that the church needs to guide them in opposition to the fourth principle;
- Another minister saying that older UUs need to “change or leave”;
- His own experience of recieving antisemitic abuse (“what do you think of Palestinian babies in cages?”) at the hands of ordained UU clergy for disagreeing with them
The last one is particularly troubling. Historically, UU has attracted a large number of Jews, but since Jews are by and large white they are considered of the oppressor class even though most of them have ancestral memory of pogroms, genocides and other acts of violence committed against their ancestors based on their faith. The status of Jews as both “white” and “other” is one of my main arguments against this sort of binary thinking. And in the months since the Hamas attack on Israeli civilians, antisemitism by socalled “progressives” has been on the rise. Even though Cycleback wrote his article at the beginning of 2023, he says that many of his Jewish friends who affiliated with UU were feeling disillusioned with UU to the point of quitting. A newly-ordained minister told him that he probably didn’t belong in UU due to his holding mainstream liberal Jewish beliefs. Why bite the hand that feeds you? White self-flagellation isn’t enough so you go for the jugular (the Jew-gular?). And it’s hypocritical. You can’t elevate antiracism to a core part of your doctrine while simultaneously bashing Jews. You just can’t.
It’s difficult for me not to see a church replacing service to spirituality with service to idpol. I have long been against dividing people up into their salience, feeling that identity is mostly grounded in personality. If you strip culture from someone, that’s all you get, personality. The (soon-erstwhile?) seventh principle acknowledges that we are all a part of an interdependent web of experience, a belief common to spiritual traditions around the world, and one that people of the Martin Luther King school once used to show that we all bleed red. Yet the UUA, lacking organised practice outside the seven principles, decides to ignore this in their quest for a dogma. The people who are against it are seen as probably the closest thing to heretics the UU can offer. And many of these are people who have spent their entire lives campaigning for the rights of minorities. Not speaking on their behalf, actually campaigning. An early UU leader, James Reeb, was murdered in Selma, Alabama while protesting for civil rights alongside the likes of MLK himself. What would he think of the contemporary bickering over whether or not identity is a part of spirituality?
I would consider myself very theologically liberal. I believe that all faiths have something to offer and that all are true to an extent. I love reading up on world religion both past and present, and it’s something that intersects in a way with my interest in genealogy. The ways of my ancestors- my Catholic, Orthodox, Protestant, Jewish, Muslim, Zoroastrian, Hindu, Tengrist, Celtic and Buddhist forebears- are a part of my identity, something that is personal to me and me only. I’m not going to prostitute my identity as a bisexual, part-Romani, neurodivergent, working-class descendant of the Plantagenets and Beauforts with no real pronoun preference except people tend to assume she/her, just to make other people feel something. I don’t want to speak on behalf of any groups- just the minority of one. UU seems very much up my theological alleyway, but when you replace dogma with politics you’re just going to end up creating schism.
Don’t pretend it’s never happened before.
Ramblings of a post-Madonna prima donna 