There’s a Way to be Good Again

Sermon | March 14, 2021 |Rev. Julie Lombard

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There’s a line from one of my favorite books, Khaled Hosseini’s The Kite Runner when Rahim Shah says, “There is a way to be good again.” Rahim is talking about redemption which happens to be our worship theme. It implies that we missed the mark, but fortunately, we have another opportunity to rectify the situation and make amends. But first, we have important work to do.  

The proposed 8th Principle states:

“We, the member congregations of the Unitarian Universalist Association, covenant to affirm and promote: journeying toward spiritual wholeness by working to build a diverse multicultural Beloved Community by our actions that accountably dismantle racism and other oppressions in ourselves and our institutions.”¹https://www.8thprincipleuu.org/ 2/25/2021

There is a lot of ground to cover here, but let’s first look at the origin story of this new principle. It was conceived by Paula Cole Jones, a lifelong UU who believes that we need to expand beyond our current seven principles to make space for a genuine multicultural beloved community. She teamed up with Bruce Pollack-Johnson and others and soon the 8th principle was created. Since then, some churches have formally adopted it, and work towards the entire denomination adopting began.

After working with congregations on these issues for more than 15 years, Jones realized that a person can believe they are being a “good UU” and follow the 7 Principles without thinking about or deal with racism and other oppressions at the systemic level.  

Proof of this can be found in the fact that most UU congregations are primarily European-American in membership, culture (especially music), and leadership, even when located near diverse communities or close to the border. Jones realized there was a need for an 8th Principle to right this, and talked with Bruce Pollack-Johnson about some of the components that should be in it.

In 2013, he put together an initial draft and they worked with a group of anti-racist activists to further refine it. His congregation, the UU Church of the Restoration in Philadelphia, incorporated it into their Covenant at that time. That May, they formally adopted it and recommended that the UUA adopt it, as well.

Over the years, UUs and the UUA have done very good work in fighting racism, especially during the Civil Rights Movement and again in the 1990’s, but after every stretch of success, there is a failure to follow through with the needed funding. Support wanes and our accountability mechanism fails. We must own our mixed record historically in other areas of racial justice: we had people on both sides of Abolitionism and Unitarians, sadly, were proponents of Eugenics.

Let’s face it, for people identified as white, it is way too easy to ignore these issues. This is exactly what keeps the system of racism in our society alive. We need to de-center whiteness and other dominant cultures in our faith tradition. The 8th Principle came from a feeling that we need something to renew our commitment to this work, to hold ourselves accountable, and to re-commit ourselves to fulfill the potential of our existing principles.²https://www.8thprincipleuu.org/origin 2/25/2021 

Years back, the UUA went through a crisis related to inclusive hiring practices, especially related to whites being hired over highly qualified Latinx candidates, resulting in the resignation of the UUA President, Rev. Peter Morales. In response to the crisis, Black Lives of Unitarian Universalism and Diverse Revolutionary UU Ministries approved the 8th Principle.

Their reasoning was that the UUA voted in 1997 at General Assembly to commit to intentionally becoming an Anti-Racist, Anti-Oppression Multi-Cultural institution. At the outset, good progress was made, with programs including the Journey Toward Wholeness, the Jubilee Anti-Racism Training workshops, process evaluation at meetings, and multicultural consulting services.  

However, in the early 2000s funding and support began to decline. The hiring crisis was no surprise with the decreasing support and lost focus. This time, Black Lives of UU is holding the UUA accountable to that commitment and expresses dissatisfaction that the 8th Principle has not already been supported by UUA leadership. There was a big push- the White Supremacy Teach-Ins of 2017 included the BLUU endorsement of the 8th Principle and came with the resources. Midland was one of the churches that participated in that call to action. (See: http://www.blacklivesuu.com/teachin/.)

Still, funding and focus shifted toward shallow diversity rather than deep multicultural Beloved Community and structural change. Denominational support of the movement for Black Lives has been encouraging; the best way for us to truly support racial justice in a significant way is to purge ourselves and our institutions of the culture and exclusive practices of whiteness and white supremacy. There’s a way to be good again.

Michelle Alexander’s The New Jim Crow book about mass incarceration and the criminal justice system replacing the older systems of slavery and Jim Crow laws, police violence against people of color, Supreme Court decisions on Voting Rights and Affirmative Action, and the election of a president that openly supported white supremacists showed that our country was moving in the wrong direction. We need to take strong leadership and bold action to reverse these trends.³https://www.8thprincipleuu.org/why-now2/25/2021

Whiteness and structural racism in the form of chattel slavery were made in America, at the very same time our faith tradition was being created. The Unitarians were largely from the New England European-American elite. They had a reputation for treating Native American peoples poorly, benefitting from slavery, and some were leaders in the Eugenics movement which promoted the use of birth control for people of color because they were seen as inferior.

Some Unitarian and Universalist ministers spoke out against slavery, but we did little as a denomination. After the Trayvon Martin verdict, many UU ministers said nothing in church. At the time, I was serving a church as a Field Education Student Minister. I learned a lot from serving that community, but I honestly cannot remember their response to that event.

We remember that UUs did a very good job during the Civil Rights Movement and we should be very proud of that. In the late ’60s, that movement was supported by the UUA, later de-funded because of a financial crisis, leading to a terrible conflict, after which many African-Americans left. Could we blame them? There was a long period of silence and shame until the late ’80s and early ’90s, then more progress for a decade or so, but again we regressed. Eventually, this leads us to the UUA President resigning over hiring inclusivity issues.⁴https://www.8thprincipleuu.org/why-the-uua-usa 2/25/2021

We have so many issues to tend to, so why focus on this one? At a global level, it doesn’t compute when for example, the oppression of women is fundamental to poverty and lack of development in many areas, however in the USA, racism stands out. The two worst crises of the UUA: the defunding of the late 1960s and the more recent hiring crisis were both related to race.

The UUA has come along way with women becoming ministers and leaders. The LGBTQ community is well represented as members, ministers, and other leaders in individual congregations and the UUA, and the Welcoming Congregation program has been very effective; and we have made strong progress with people who are differently-abled. Leaving us to wonder, what if we could use something similar for racism?

The UUA, our nation, and the world have so many problems deeply based on economic class oppression; this new 8th Principle includes that, however, it is not highlighting it. In order to build a more Beloved Community, we must gather people of diverse racial, ethnic, educational, class, gender, sexual orientation backgrounds/identities to come together in an interdependent relationship of love, mutual respect, and care that seeks to realize justice within the community and in the wider world.⁵https://www.8thprincipleuu.org/what-is-beloved-community 2/25/2021

All this work means very little if we are not held accountable in the end. White UUs need to hold themselves accountable to communities of color, to make sure whites do what they say they will do. In practice, that can mean having a People of Color Caucus within congregations, regions, and beyond, to discern and express needs and concerns to the rest of the community. Black UUs hold each other accountable. We help each other see and dismantle signs of internalized racism. We need an effective mechanism or structure to ensure this is done well and from that learning, we will learn how to do it for other oppressions.⁶https://www.8thprincipleuu.org/what-does-it-mean-to-be-accountable 2/25/2021

The existing 7 principles already imply the 8th principle, but it does not explicitly hold us accountable for addressing these oppressions directly, especially at the systemic level. Our faith tradition has great potential for building a diverse multicultural Beloved Community as envisioned by Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. This new dream is for more than the European/Americans and African/Americans, and includes Native Americans, Latinx people, and other cultural groups, globally and we could experience tremendous diversification, vitality, and thriving if we work to embody this vision, but it cannot happen without conscious focus and effort on our part.  

Dismantling racism, white supremacy, and other oppressions require work at the personal and institutional levels. Our principles and purposes were designed to be dynamic. It is not a fixed creed. This requires that we always continue to educate ourselves, explore truth, and raise our consciousness. Our truth evolves.  

When we arrive at a new level of understanding and clarity, we want our structure to make it possible to reflect that reality. This is a religion that intentionally builds in the needed flexibility to acknowledge the importance of ongoing revealed truth. This happened when environmental awareness reached a critical mass and voila, we added the 7th Principle.  

We are approaching a similar tipping point and level of awareness with the systemic nature of racism and other oppressions. None of the other Principles even mention love; having “Beloved Community” in the 8th Principle, heightens our commitment to love in our consciousness, consistent with our Standing on the Side of Love campaign.  

Friends, the 8th Principle is really just the beginning of the action, not the end game. It should lead to restoring funding and support for Anti-Racism trainings for any who want them. Many people of color have been attracted by the values and potential of this faith tradition, but their souls have been repeatedly wounded by our whiteness. Let’s make our actions match our values. Let’s be a movement that feeds them and let us all be born again in a spiritual wholeness that serves all.⁷https://www.8thprincipleuu.org/other-comments 2/25/2021

Our task now is to learn more collectively and individually, discuss how we want to make this our reality here, and adopt the 8th Principle for this congregation at our next annual meeting. Then, the real work begins- we must live by it. We must act because it is the only proof that we truly want to be in right relationship with people of color.  

May it be so. Amen.