Sermon: Stars in the Desert and Other Terrible Blessings

Reading: Passover: A meditation by Lynn Ungar

Sermon

Wade in the water…
God’s gonna trouble the water…

Powerful words that would have seemed like a harmless song to overseers were, in fact, for enslaved people, a sophisticated message of strategy and timing of escape. You see, dogs can’t follow a scent in water. And when God’s gonna trouble the water, it’s time to go. [1]

To Black people living under the yoke of slavery in the American South, people on whom the Judeo-Christian Bible was forced, the story of Moses and the Israelites was one that resonated. They saw themselves in the story and dreamed, like the Israelites, of freedom in a promised land.

I’ve seen those waters in the swampy lands of the Mississippi Delta, and as I passed by them on the highway years ago during a trip south, those words rang in my ears: Wade in the Water, and my eyes filled with tears; my face reddened with shame.

I was a bit surprised by my reaction. But it makes sense. Because the legacy of slavery lives in me as it lives in our nation. It is my shame as a white person raised in America, just as it is our national shame as a nation built on a foundation of white supremacy.

Those words white supremacy conjure up mobs, white hoods, neo-Nazi’s, and perhaps presidential advisors, things and people far removed from us, here, now, far removed from a Unitarian Universalist congregation in Hamden, CT in 2017, far removed from a national association of liberal religious congregations. We like to think that white supremacy has nothing to do with us.

And yet, a controversy that has unfolded over the past few weeks over hiring practices in our national association has our community – our Unitarian Universalist community – engaged in a frank and, frankly, difficult, conversation about white supremacy within our faith. [2]

Unitarian Universalists of color have invited congregations like ours to engage in a “white supremacy teach in,” to change our worship calendar, to hold workshops and forums, to preach and teach about white supremacy and how it affects each of us and our institutions.[3]

I reacted strongly to this request. Racism, fine, I thought. Let’s talk about racism. Institutional racism, absolutely. Implicit bias, sure. White privilege, yup, we’re on it.  These are all part of the lexicon of anti-racism work that I am familiar with, and I expect you are too. This is work that we are doing as individuals and as a congregation, but white supremacy? Why would we implicate our people in such a heinous thing? Are we to collapse the distance between our liberal religious association and the Aryan Brotherhood or KKK? Surely not. Surely this is hyperbole and exaggeration, moving us further toward paralysis and shut-down than an opening of hearts and minds.

Anyone else have a similar reaction? [hands raised]

Consider, then, this definition offered by our fellow Unitarian Universalists from the organization Black Lives of Unitarian Universalism or BLUU: “White supremacy [is] a set of institutional assumptions and practices, often operating unconsciously, that tend to benefit white people and exclude people of color.”

“In 2017,” BLUU says “actual ‘white supremacists’ are not required in order to uphold white supremacist culture.”

“It has become clear,” they say “that, in order for us to be more effective at tackling the white supremacy beyond our walls, we must also identify ways in which systems of supremacy and inequality live within our faith and our lives.” [4]

Ok.

I swallowed my defensiveness, and I changed my plan for today’s sermon.

This month our theme is Earth Justice. And this work this ties into our theme, for how we understand our interconnection with all living things and our relationship to the Earth is, in many ways, influenced by white supremacy culture. Let us hold this connection in our minds as we wrestle with this today.

This week, our Jewish members, friends and neighbors will celebrate Passover in homes and synagogues and here at USNH. We will re-tell the story of the Exodus, the story Jesse told this morning, a story passed down generation to generation, a story of slavery and liberation, of devastation and self-determination. The story of Moses and the Israelites, a story that was most likely woven together by the people of the Levant in Israel during their captivity in Babylon, a weaving of the stories of disparate peoples to create a common origin story, a dream of escape, a vision of homecoming and promise.

So, today we explore and seek to understand the intersectionality of oppression and domination and the universality of freedom and liberation.

Let’s start with what is happening in our Unitarian Universalist Association. [5]

For Unitarian Universalists, the country is separated into five regions: New England, the Central East Region, the Pacific Western Region, Mid-America, and the Southern Region.

Each region has a regional lead and a number of field staff. These are the people who provide consultation to congregations, help us through transitions and growth, and provide programing for congregational life. Currently, all five regional lead positions are filled with white people, and very few of the regional staff are people of color. Even this level of diversity and inclusion is only a recent improvement. As recently as eight years ago, all fifty regional staff positions were held by white people.

Last month, the Southern Region hired a new lead, a process during which a white male minister was hired to replace another white male minister. After the hire was announced, a candidate of color shared that she had been told that she was “not the right fit” for the job. A public discussion of this followed, during which another candidate of color for the same position reported a similar experience. Since then, many others have shared experiences of racially biased hiring and employment practices over decades that promote white leaders and exclude of people of color from leadership positions in the UUA and in our congregations.

Because of this incident, our now-former UUA President, Rev. Peter Morales, resigned effective April 1st.  This past week, two more resignations were announced, that of the Rev. Harlan Limpert, Chief Operations Officer and Rev. Scott Tayler, Director of Congregational Life and the hiring manager for the position in the Southern Region.

The UUA Board of Trustees is in the process of selecting an interim president to serve immediately until we elect a new president in June at our General Assembly. (Stay tuned here at USNH for more information about the candidates. In May, we’ll be hosting a conversation about these events and the upcoming election.)

Now, no one called for Peter Morales’ resignation, and only a few voices called for others to resign. We do not know everything that led to these resignations, but it appears that these leaders made the decision to resign of their own accord. I have mixed feelings about their choices because it is often easier to walk away than do the hard work of facing our shortcomings and making plans to become the people – and the institutions – we say we want to be.

With these resignations, however, we have an opportunity to re imagine leadership in our denomination. And we have opened a conversation that has needed to happen for a long time.

As of April 8th, 270 congregations have signed up to engage the issue of white supremacy in the coming months. This is something that would not have happened had not courageous members of our faith – women and men of color – said: Hold it! Enough! We’ve got to talk about this. We’ve got to take a hard look at ourselves, at our systems, at our hearts, at all the ways whiteness is prioritized within our congregations and our association.

We are an imperfect people, to be sure. And we can do better.

Let’s go straight to white supremacy—the term that has fueled debate and action within our national UU community. White supremacy is like an iceberg.

Think of the KKK and neo-Nazi’s, overt racial slurs and hate crimes as the point above the water. Systemic racism lies just under the surface: Mass incarceration, hiring discrimination, police brutality, anti-immigrant policies and practices, housing discrimination…I could go on. Still further under the water, so far it is hard to see, lie the attitudes and ideas that perpetuate these systems. Ideas like: we are in a post-racial era, “I don’t see color,” fear of young black men, or even: I’m the one who can fix this. All on the same spectrum, all part of the iceberg, all imperiling our collective ship.

This is hard stuff. Extremely difficult for white people, excruciating for people of color. It is not safe. And as much as I want to comfort you as your minister, I know also that the promise is that “there is no safety, only the terrible blessing of the journey.”

The truth is, liberation is messy and it is painful: a baby’s first breath comes through cries. And we all need the messiness of liberation, because the system that privileges those of us who are white damages all of us.

In a New York Times essay, white author Eula Biss tells the story of her young son’s awakening to the horrors of slavery and Jim Crow, leaving him “worried about what it meant to be white, what legacy he had inherited. ‘I don’t want to be on this team,’ he said, with his head in his hands. ‘You might be stuck on this team,’ Biss told him, ‘but you don’t have to play by its rules.’” [6]

So, what are the rules?

A resource highlighted by our colleagues of color has been useful to me here. The author, Tema Okun, is a white researcher who credits her colleagues of color, specifically the Rev. Daniel Buford, with contributing to the following schema.

Okun identifies fifteen characteristics of white supremacy culture that “show up in our organizations.” These characteristics are damaging, she says, “because they are used as norms and standards without being proactively named or chosen by the group.” [7]

Listen to the list and see if any of these resonate with you, with what you know of the organizations of which you are a part, including USNH.

Some of the characteristics of white supremacy culture are:

  • Perfectionism and a tendency to identify what is wrong rather than what is right
  • A sense of urgency that makes it hard to be inclusive or think long term
  • Defensiveness that makes it difficult to raise new ideas
  • Quantity over quality – with things that are measurable taking precedent over quality of relationships
  • The belief there is one right way to do things and once people are introduced to the right way, they will see the light and adopt it
  • Paternalism, lack of transparency around power and authority and power hoarding
  • Either/Or Thinking with no sense of both/and
  • Fear of Open Conflict
  • Individualism that leads to isolation
  • A belief that we are being objective or “neutral”
  • The belief that those with power have a right to emotional and psychological comfort

These are cultural characteristics that many of us might not even associate with whiteness, though that they are inherent to white culture is, most likely, not news to our friends of color.

Because culture is the water we swim in and we are the fish – largely unaware that we are surrounded, enveloped and dependent upon the water around us.

“When we do notice culture,” Okun writes, “we tend to assume its inevitability; we see it as ‘natural’ rather than constructed.”[8]

And, I would add, we see those who are outside our culture as deviant, and threatening to our way of life – even when we profess to value diversity.

It’s easy to find that the person who is “the right fit” is the person who looks and thinks and acts like us. It is much harder to deeply understand that the way we look and think and act is not the only right way – even when we have been taught all our lives that it is.

Here’s the good news: Okun outlines each of these characteristics of white supremacy culture and how they are damaging to individuals and organizations, and then she offers antidotes to each of them.

The antidotes include power sharing and transparency, accepting that there are many ways to reach one goal, taking the time to slow things down and gather perspectives, being open to the raising of hard issues, thinking about how future generations will be affected by decision making, and “understanding that discomfort is at the root of all growth and learning.”

These are the values we want at the center of our organizations: our congregation, our UUA, and, hopefully, at the center of our lives.

I will post on our website the article from which this work comes, and I invite you to read it, ponder it, and bring it to the groups of which you are a part here at USNH. What are the ways that we perpetuate white supremacy culture, however unwittingly?

What are some of the antidotes – alternative ways of doing things that open us up to cultures different than our own? It is not too late. These are conversations we need to have, conversations that force us to examine some of our most deeply held assumptions about others and ourselves.

This moment of intense self-reflection individually and institutionally and the impacts of action and inaction by our senior leaders is still unfolding.

What I offer today is not the final analysis, but instead a collection of the ideas and tools I have found most valuable for navigating this moment. You may even get questions from friends and loved ones about what’s going on with white supremacists at the UUA. We’ve made the national news. I want you to be equipped to answer those questions and to do this hard work together with our siblings in faith.

Unitarian Universalists of color have asked directly how our community will respond to this crisis and opportunity
within our faith. How will we answer?

The UUA Leadership Council has offered an “apology for the ways the UUA has failed to live into our highest values of equity and inclusion.” They have put forth a plan for assessing hiring practices and the absence of paid leadership of color. And in June of this year, we will elect a new leader – one of three female candidates, all of whom have pledged to see that the UUA lives up to our vision of being a multicultural and anti-racist organization.

We are slowly, slowly, making our way through the desert.

“Freedom,” artist and activist Ricardo Morales says, is “coming home to ourselves” – our true selves. [9]

The journey is filled with terrible blessings, and the desert sky is bright with stars.

The truth is, all of us have a home to which we might return. Because we are, all of us, members of the human family. We are, all of us, vulnerable beings dependent upon the mercy of our mother Earth. And the truth is, we need each other

Because the night is dark, the desert is dry, and the way is tough.

Only together, listening, loving, and letting go, will we be brave enough to take one more step: toward wholeness, toward connection, toward home.

Notes

[1] Pathways to Freedom: Maryland and the Underground Railroad
[2] Critics see white supremacy in UUA hiring practices. UU World. Elaine McArdle 3/27/2017.
[3] #WhiteSupremacyTeachIn Black Lives of Unitarian Universalism
[4] Teach In Resources: What is white supremacy?
[5] There are multiple perspectives on what is happening in Unitarian Universalism this spring around race, white supremacy and hiring practices. A useful compilation is available here.
Read a statement from Black Lives of Unitarian Universalism
Read a statement by Christina Rivera on “not being a good fit for the UUA”
The UU World also provides the following coverage:
UUA president resigns amid controversy over hiring practices
Critics see white supremacy in UUA hiring practices
Updates to presidential resignation and controversy over hiring practices
[6] “White Debt” Eula Biss New York Times Magazine December 2, 2015.
[7] “White Supremacy Culture” Tema Okun www.dismantalingracism.org
[8] The Emperor Has No Clothes: Teaching About Race And Racism To People Who Don’t Want To Know. Tema Okun, 2010.
[9] CEIO Deeper Change Forum: It is Our Duty to Win! Making Change that Matters with Ricardo Levins Morales April 6, 2017.