"Who is the 'Who' in 'Whoever You Are'?"
Peg Duthie
Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Cookeville, 21 January 2006

[Background: The opening hymn of this service was Lynn Adair Ungar's setting of a text by Rumi:

Come, come, whoever you are,
wanderer, worshiper, lover of leaving.
Ours is no caravan of despair.
Come, yet again, come.]

Happy 2006, all y'all. It's been an interesting New Year so far at my home church -- we've had a noticeable surge in visitors the past three Sundays, and our minister's been asking them what's bringing them to First UU Nashville. It turns out that many of them made "going to church" a New Year's resolution, and that, for quite a few of them, it's become a priority because they now have kids.

I have to confess that, when my minister shared this detail the other night, the very first thing that popped into my head was one of my favorite jokes: "What do you call a Unitarian Universalist? An atheist with children." It's not a joke that everybody "gets," or finds funny, and it's not even particularly representative of my experience: I happen to be a theist without children, and the worshipers at my home church include Christians, Jews, mystics, humanists, pagans, and heretics. They sometimes co-exist within the same family, and with no obvious correlation between parenthood and theology. We have an increasing number of "cradle Unitarians" who grew up within the denomination, and in addition to various interfaith couples, I know of at least one successful inter-political marriage, proving that a staunch Democrat and a lifelong Republican can in fact live together in harmony.

Even so, I'm kinda fond of this joke. It's got a little bit of a bite to it, but I like the truth that makes the joke even possible: at their best, our congregations offer people a healthy and safe environment to reacquaint themselves with religion, to introduce themselves to it for the very first time, or to deepen already-existing bonds. For people who have been hurt or threatened or disappointed by the doctrines and rules of their past religious affiliations, Unitarian Universalism can offer healing; for people who fear their children will grow up spiritually illiterate, or who realize that they themselves have so much more to learn, Unitarian Universalism can provide education. Because we do not require explicit professions of belief for people to join our churches, we are far more accessible to individuals who have finally worked up the nerve to examine what they might believe, and what they want to do about it, as well as those who know what they believe and don't quite fit anywhere else. Our members, friends, and visitors also include those who are simply curious, those who like the coffee hour best, and, last but far from least, there are Unitarian Universalists who subscribe to the traditional meanings of the terms. That is, there are Unitarians who believe in God as a single entity as opposed to a Trinity, and there are Universalists who truly believe in universal salvation.

Because we are flexible, however, it can be terribly easy for non-UUs to dismiss our collective faith as a joke, rather than merely joking about us. My choir director has spoken at length about how "many of our fellow religionists think of us as little more than the ACLU with a choir." There have been times when I've wondered if that isn't what many of our members actually expect and want -- that they would just as happy with a book group or lecture series provided the potlucks were just as good. There have times when I've found congregational life exceedingly frustrating, because Unitarian Universalists can be just dogmatic and blindered and self-righteous about our intentions and interpretations as our fundamentalist counterparts. My friend June once shared with me the saying that "democracy is the worst of governments -- except for all of the others," and I sometimes feel that way about Unitarian Universalism -- especially when someone's giving me an earful about a policy decision they don't agree with, or when some idealistic delegate to an assembly talks about all corporations or all conservatives as part of the Big Bad Evil, or when I witness the tensions both within my own church and in the wider denomination over how to balance the melange of spiritual traditions and needs all clamoring for their share of our churches' time, spaces, and budgets. I've spoken with some UUs who greatly dislike and mistrust our plethora of affiliated subgroups. They worry about whether such groups will ultimately splinter our communities rather than reinforcing them, and they also worry -- not entirely without reason -- about whether some of the more shrill or radical groups identifying themselves as UU organizations aren't diluting our collective credibility and effectiveness.

I've also witnessed several people struggling with the common-denominator aspect of our religion, and some of them do discover that Unitarian Universalism isn't the right fit them after all -- that it isn't Jewish enough, or Christian enough, or pagan enough, or diverse enough, or some other enough-ness that they're seeking to fill. There are few things more painful than watching the clash of good intentions in tandem with mutually exclusive goals or priorities. There is disagreement, for instance, among UUs of Jewish origin or affiliation as to whether the word "church" is too Christian and thus not inclusive enough, and whether the words "congregation" and "fellowship" are more welcoming or not. There has been contention over whether our denomination should take an official stance on polyamory -- and whether even discussing such a possibility damages our ability to continue working effectively on marriage equality issues. (For the record, I like the term "church," and my stance on UU marriage activism is complicated enough that we'd be here the rest of the day if I were to get started. We'll save it for another sermon...)

At any rate, I've warned people that that they cannot judge the whole of Unitarian Universalism based on any one congregant or congregation that they encounter, myself, this church, and my home church included: if you're not liking this sermon, or this service, I urge you to come back here or to try out another UU church some other Sunday, and to see whether you find things more congenial with a different preacher or a different worship configuration. I remember one conversation in my church parking lot, after a particularly contentious forum about the format of Joys and Concerns, where the man to my left complained that First UU was becoming too explicitly spiritual for him, and the man to my right replied that he'd like the church to do more in that direction. (I'm not making this up, about the left and the right.) I walked out of one UU service five years ago because it felt intellectually inadequate to me, and yet I also go to services at Nashville's Conservative synagogue, because there is a part of me that requires a very specific kind of emotional, tradition-based sustenance that I cannot reasonably expect any UU church to provide.

I am not saying that I find Unitarian Universalism inadequate. The analogy I like to use is that of a cafeteria: Unitarian Universalism is a really good meat-and-three. You can pick and choose what goes on your plate, and it's ultimately up to you to choose wisely, but provided the place you're visiting is properly staffed and managed, you will partake of a fine and nourishing meal. At the same time, if you have special dietary issues, or a hankering for something simply not on the menu, you might have to go somewhere else to get it, and some families end up having to get creative and to devise several different meal plans to accommodate their spiritual needs.

To stretch the metaphor a bit further, the Sources and the Seven Principles (listed in the front of the hymnal, just after the preface) are both our cookbooks and our health code. It is simply not true that we Unitarian Universalists can believe "anything" we want. It is probably true that there are some people calling themselves Unitarian Universalists who subscribe to that myth, but those are not the people for whom our visitors are entrusting us with their children and themselves. When we take them seriously -- when we consider what the words really mean and what is therefore expected of us -- our Principles and Sources and our covenants represent a profound obligation to ourselves and each other. The list of the Sources of our "living tradition" isn't just a shopping list of nouns. It's packed with verbs: move, challenge, inspire, respond, love, and even heed and warn, as well as celebrate and instruct. Unitarian Universalism is not a religion for slackers. Unitarian Universalism is not a religion for the lazy or the complacent. Unitarian Universalism requires us to maintain the big picture even when other people want to narrow it; it demands that we be idealistic and generous of spirit even when we don't feel like it, and even to people who don't share our values.

This doesn't mean turning the other cheek. We cannot let such people dominate public discourse or hijack our liberties, be they religious or secular. One of the better-kept secrets of the Unitarian Universalist Association is that it maintains a Washington Office for Advocacy, and it is openly opposing the confirmation of Judge Alito to the Supreme Court -- as is the Union for Reform Judaism, the National Council of Jewish Women, and ecumenical groups such as the National Conference for Community and Justice and the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice. (I have a copy of the press release available for those of you who might want to peruse it after the service, and it's available on the web.) Opposing specific nominees is in fact a rare stance for the UUA, but holding public servants accountable for their actions (or lack thereof) is not. My home church is part of a multi-faith coalition called Tying Nashville Together whose mission is,

To speak in the voice of those not yet at the table, To get poor people to the table, To identify issues of importance to the broader community, and To join the self-interest of the community in an organization that can bring about change.

And they do so by inviting the mayor, the school board, the Metro Council, and other politicians to their assemblies, asking them directly whether they'll work with the community on key issues, and then tracking their actual support or lack thereof. On a national level, there were over a hundred religious leaders arrested for civil disobedience just last month in Washington, including the senior minister of All Souls DC, in hopes of steering Congress towards "a moral United States budget -- a budget that directs resources towards those who need them most," to quote the president of the UUA.

Last Sunday, my minister read from both the beginning and the conclusion of a speech called "Don't Sleep Through the Revolution," which had been delivered to the Unitarian Universalist General Assembly of 1966 by a Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. It was a service themed around MLK Day, and her themes included his initial reluctance to assume leadership, his own crisis of faith in the wake of dozens of death threats, and the friendship and respect he shared with various Unitarian Universalist colleagues and activists. She also spoke about how there won't be a solution to racism until we solve the issue of affordable housing and other economic concerns, and when I looked up the text of Dr. King's speech, this is the section that leaped out at me:

There is nothing more dangerous than to build a society with a large segment of individuals within that society who feel that they have no stake in it, who feel that they have nothing to lose. These are the people who will riot, these are the people who will turn their ears from pleas for non-violence. For the health of our nation, these problems must be solved. In the areas of housing, schooling, and employment there is still a great deal that must be done. We've come a long, long way; we still have a long, long way to go and action programs are necessary. I've heard it said that the day of demonstrations is over; this is something that we hear a great deal. Well, I'm sorry that I can't agree with that. I wish that I could say the day of demonstrations is over, but as long as these problems are with us, it will be necessary to demonstrate in order to call attention to them. I'm not saying that a demonstration is going to solve the problem of poverty, the problem of housing, the problems that we face in the schools. It's going to take something much more than a demonstration, but at least the demonstration calls attention to it; at least the demonstration creates a kind of constructive crisis that causes a community to see the problem and causes a community to begin moving toward the point of acting on it. The church must support this kind of demonstration. As the days unfold, I'm sure that we will need this more.

We are many days past the 18th of May, 1966, and we have many more days to go. Dr. King's words are almost 40 years old. We cannot guarantee to the future that the solutions will be in place in another 40 years, but we can promise each other to do our best to improve the odds, whoever we are and whatever brought us to this church. Given the negativity, cynicism, and indifference that infect and pervade our current culture, it is no small thing to strive to live according to our principles and covenants, whether our demonstrations are literally on the streets or through phone calls and letters, as well as what we teach and say to each other in our services and meetings and potlucks. Our faith is neither simple nor simple-minded, and to eschew the caravan of despair again and yet again is an act of belief. Come, come, whoever you are. Amen and alleluia.