Inspire Love (UUCP Mission, Part 3 of 3)

An Overused Word

My sixth-grade teacher was not a fan of LOVE. He urged us to be more specific and clearer in our language. “Love is an overused word,” he said. “We can love ice cream, love our favorite song, love a certain color — and this is the same word we use to describe our feelings about the people nearest and dearest to us. So what does love really mean?”

A guest columnist in a Chicago newspaper shared a similar view. He wrote, “Love probably suffers from overuse. For example, the classical Greek in which the New Testament of the Bible was written has literally dozens of words which we translate as simply ‘love.’ When one word is used in so many situations, it loses much of its distinctive meaning. Yet love is the word we’ve got, and I doubt we’ll change [it].” So LOVE is the word we’ve got and is the topic of my talk today.

Our UUCP mission is to Celebrate Diversity, Strive for Justice, and Inspire Love. Today’s talk is the third in a three-part series. Over this summer, I have explored threats and opportunities for us as UUs to Celebrate Diversity and Strive for Justice. Now we come to Inspire Love, the third line in our church mission statement. With all of the strains and heartaches that we have collectively and individually endured lately, it is worthwhile to consider the topic of inspiring and nurturing more love in our congregation and beyond. Today, I:

• Will identify different conceptions of love,
• Will consider what is involved in promoting and fostering love,
• and will discuss love as an essential moral and spiritual value for UUs.

Conceptions of Love

As I mentioned earlier, the Greeks had multiple words for love. Ancient Greeks studied love and denoted each type with a distinctive Greek name. In the Greek tradition, the eight types of love are:

1. Philia – affectionate love
2. Pragma – enduring love
3. Storge (store-gay)– familiar love
4. Eros – romantic love
5. Ludus (loo-dus) – playful love
6. Mania – obsessive love
7. Philautia (fee-low-sha) – self love
8. Agape – selfless love

For the purposes of this talk, I will spend just a little time on four of these types of love: philia, storge, agape, and philautia and their applications to our community. We’re all probably familiar with the saying that love is the only thing that you get more of by giving it away. While love and care can arise spontaneously, love can be deepened and nurtured through investment in the various types of relationships that I will be addressing.

Philia is non-romantic affectionate love that is epitomized by true friendship. According to one definition, “[Philia] occurs when both people share the same values and respect each other.” We demonstrate philia love when we engage in deep conversation, demonstrate trustworthiness and openness, express thanks, and help each other through difficult times. Here at UUCP, we see philia on display during our coffee hour socializing, when we lend a hand and follow through on what we commit to, and when we call and check in with each other, send a card, visit, or share a ride.

Storge (store-gay) is familiar love such as that between family members or lifelong friends. As a church, we count family groups among our congregants as well as chosen family members and people who have known each other for decades. Storge is defined as “an infinite love built upon acceptance and deep emotional connection.” Memories are the catalyst for storge love. Shared memories and experiences foster long-lasting bonds and increase the value of relationships. We build storge love when we practice forgiveness and acceptance, give our time, revisit our shared memories, and create new memories together. Storge is embodied when we tell stories about our treasured items like this podium made by Flo Fulwiler’s husband, the quilt of congregants’ hands behind me, and the mirrored mosaic bearing our mission statement which hangs in the lobby. Storge is also embodied in communal activities like workdays and potlucks or marching together in the MLK Parade.

Agape is selfless love and is considered the highest form of love. Agape can also be identified as an empathic attitude and unconditional love. According to one definition, “[Agape is] given without any expectations of receiving anything in return. Offering agape is a decision to spread love in any circumstances.” We demonstrate agape when we focus on the good of humanity and the earth and when we give our time, talents, or treasure to charitable causes. At UUCP, this includes mutual aid and volunteering with the church or in the community. Agape looks like our Manna food collections and other seasonal collections of coats, blankets, and personal items. And I imagine that we’d reach into the thousands if we added up all the hours that members and friends of UUCP spend regularly in support of an array of organizations, such as children’s issues, education and literacy, arts and culture, civic organizations, environmental causes, animals, and more.

Philautia (fee-low-sha) is self-love or self-compassion. To elaborate: “Philautia is a healthy form of love where you recognize your self-worth and don’t ignore your personal needs. Self-love begins with acknowledging your responsibility for your well-being.” Without good self-love, it becomes challenging to exemplify the outbound types of love; a person can’t offer what they don’t have. The influential feminist and cultural critic bell hooks, phrased it this way: “One of the best guides to how to be self-loving is to give ourselves the love we are often dreaming about receiving from others.”

Philautia involves recognizing our worth. As UUs, our legacy of philautia is exemplified in the summation of our faith by the renowned theologian Thomas Starr King. When asked the difference between the two denominations, Starr King reportedly quipped, “The Universalists think God is too good to damn them forever; the Unitarians think they are too good to be damned forever.” Philautia is embodied in our drive to create and reside in an environment that nurtures and sustains us, to spend time among people who support us, and to practice good self-care with attention to our health and appropriate boundaries.

Our lives may contain all of these types of love. For a balanced and fulfilling life and for a healthy, thriving UU congregation, we would expect to have friendships (philia), familial-type relationships (storge), selfless acts of love and commitment to a higher purpose (agape), and self-compassion (philautia) to balance our love for others with our love, care, and attention to ourselves and our needs.

Fostering Love

So how do we foster these types of love as we aspire to live out our UUCP mission? Having given it some thought as I’ve been developing this series, I see now that it would have made more sense for me to discuss love 2nd in this lineup rather than 3rd. In other words, I would have started the series with Diversity then moved to Love and finished up with Justice. I say that because diversity and love are contributing factors for justice, so the concepts flow more naturally when we consider Diversity first, Love second, and Justice third.

Love – or its close relative empathy – provides the conditions for justice. Love and empathy are similar but different. Love is an emotion represented as attachment, connection, and attraction. Empathy, meanwhile, “focuses on the tactical ways we connect with others. It incorporates three elements: honoring another’s perspective, sitting with the person and their feelings, and, finally, taking supportive action,” according to educator Cherilyn Leet. Love and empathy both require the courage to be open and vulnerable.

Composer Joyce Poley expressed this idea in her song “When Our Heart Is in a Holy Place,” one of our well-known UU hymns. Poley writes, “[When] we see our faces in each other’s eyes, then our heart is in a holy place.” When we see our own humanity reflected back to us in others – when we see ourselves and other species as a part of us, part of the interconnected web of life – we create and allow sacred space for their existence to flourish. Recall that agape love focuses on doing what is good for all.

The presence of all of these types of love along with empathy increases the likelihood that justice and equity will exist within our relationships. Former UUA President Rev. Dr. Susan Frederick-Gray put it like this: “If our justice work does not emerge from the moral and spiritual value of love, in the end [the work] will reinforce practices of domination and violence, just in new forms.” True justice and equity cannot exist where love and empathy are lacking. I’m a visual person, so, as I considered this possibility, I pictured it in my mind, and I ended up illustrating this concept.

I was going for relatability, so this here is a photo of a common Southeastern habitat, a longleaf pine forest, which is one of the most biodiverse habitats in North America. Diversity is present at all levels of the ecosystem and is integral to the health and sustainability of the habitat. Diversity and inclusion are depicted here by the double-sided purple arrows going in each direction. Love and empathy are the sustenance, the soil, nutrients, and the water, depicted here by rust-colored hearts. Justice and equity are nurtured and grow from this foundation like the tall pines and longleaf species and other flora in the photo, depicted by green circles.

Granted, this is an oversimplification of the elements necessary to foster a well-balanced society, but I am not the first person to draw a connection between love and justice. The philosopher and political activist Dr. Cornel West is known for the statement: “Justice is what love looks like in public.” Love is embodied as justice near and justice far. In 2017, in the early days of the Trump administration, the Pride Foundation published a column that drew on Dr. Cornel West’s quote. The author wrote, “We must stand firm in our belief that every person deserves the opportunity to live openly and safely … Ultimately, all of the actions we take in moments like this to lift up our shared humanity will move us along the path toward justice. Because they are, fundamentally, acts of unconditional love.”

Love as a Moral Value

The song we sang today as our meditation hymn is called “There is More Love Somewhere.” The song is an African American slavery-era hymn that, in the words of the UUA, “reminds us that no matter what our personal circumstances, focusing on the healing potential of love helps us to go on.” The song was later given the alternate title of “Biko,” in honor of South African activist Stephen Bantubiko, known as Biko, a medical student who founded the South African Student Organization in 1968 in response to the racist practices of the existing student association of apartheid South Africa at the time. Biko was beaten to death in 1977 while being interrogated after being arrested. In the words of the UUA: “His courage to work for freedom continues to inspire us in the ongoing fight against injustice in all its forms.” Biko showed great love for himself and for others even when love was in short supply in the world around him.

The hymn “There is More Love Somewhere” expresses hope and determination, like that exemplified by Biko. Kimberley Debus, who blogs about UU hymns, calls this hymn “a song of lament and aspiration.” Debus goes on to say, “Even in a loving community, there is ALWAYS more love, peace, hope, and joy to be found, as long as there is hate, oppression, war, and injustice in the world.”

The influential thinker and writer bell hooks, who I referenced earlier, described love as the will to nurture our own and another’s spiritual growth, free from domination, coercion, or abuse. Former UUA president Frederick-Gray invoked hooks in a 2019 column that Frederick-Gray wrote about love. In the column, Frederick-Gray recognized love as “the core teaching and practice of what it means to be a Unitarian Universalist.” As we recite together here each week, “Love is the spirit of this church.”

In our current moment with increasing polarization and isolation, self-retreat into defined bubbles, loneliness has become a concern. More than half of Americans report feeling lonely, including older people and younger people. Data indicates that loneliness may be as detrimental as smoking in terms of the impacts on health, physical health as well as mental health. Groups espousing racist, misogynistic, homophobic, and transphobic messages are targeting people who are lonely – especially teenage boys and men – to offer them an antidote to loneliness in the form of joining movements for hate. Love and empathy are also antidotes for loneliness. In fact, love and empathy are the best antidotes for loneliness. We see and feel that in our church.

In these days, we face a seemingly endless litany of injustices – from threats against democracy to political and religious ideologies that dehumanize whole swaths of people, from verbal insults and lies to physical violence, rape, and murder. Frederick-Gray writes, “On a fundamental level, [these injustices] are spiritual challenges, and they reflect the way we have come as a society to denigrate the value of love and compassion as an essential spiritual and moral value.”

As UUs, we must continue to enshrine the value of love and compassion in our personal, public, civic, political, and spiritual lives, in all facets of who we are, individually and collectively. We do this here at church and in the community in many of the ways that I discussed earlier. We do this on a larger scale through collective efforts such as the UU Side with Love campaign. Side with Love can be captured this way: “With the goal of creating beloved community, the campaign pursues social change through advocacy, public witness, and speaking out in solidarity with those whose lives are publicly demeaned.”

Currently, the Side with Love campaign is working on a project that you may have seen in the media under the title of Stop Cop City. Cop City refers to an effort by the city of Atlanta to greatly increase militarization of the police force while building a mammoth corporate-backed $90 million training complex on currently forested land. The Side with Love campaign is working alongside coalitions in Atlanta, actively collecting petitions for a citizen’s referendum that would allow Atlanta voters to decide on the future of this project. An email message I recently received from the Stop Cop City campaign described it this way: “[Our power is in] neighbors showing photos of their children, talking about their hopes for their schools. It is walking in to be greeted with a warm and familiar welcome and leaving hearing ‘Thank you, sis.’ … The reason this city has erupted with activity to collect 70,000 signatures is simply a love that is rooted and cultivated in the legacy of struggles for justice won and lost on southern soil.”

We know very well about struggles for justice won and lost on southern soil. Many of us have been intimately involved in these various struggles. Here in this part of Florida, we are a small but mighty congregation. We have an incredible capacity to see our faces in each other’s eyes and to show up in love and empathy. I have been moved time and again by the impact of this congregation as we go out into the world and live our values, creating ripples of love and justice that far exceed our numbers. It makes sense for a congregation that vows to Celebrate Diversity, Strive for Justice, and Inspire Love.

I will close with more words from Rev. Dr. Susan Frederick-Gray: “To be a faith of action with love as our doctrine doesn’t mean we live it perfectly, but it does mean we are called again and again to learn, to make amends, to restore relationship, to choose love.”

Text of a talk originally presented 08/13/23 at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Pensacola

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Strive for Justice (UUCP Mission, Part 2 of 3)

Our UUCP mission is to Celebrate Diversity, Strive for Justice, and Inspire Love. With so many social justice issues affecting our world right now, this is an appropriate time to consider what it means for us as UUs to Strive for Justice. Today’s talk is the second in a three-part series of services exploring our UUCP mission statement. Today, I:

• Will discuss our religious traditions of working for justice,
• Will identify injustices present in our current moment,
• and will share ideas and examples of striving for justice even when justice seems elusive.

Our Religious Traditions

“Do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with God.” This verse from the Old Testament, Micah 6:8, is commonly cited in Jewish and Christian communities to compel people to act in times of injustice. The well-known line is said to have been a message delivered by God to the prophet Micah. Micah was active in a small agricultural town southwest of Jerusalem in the 8^th Century BCE. Micah is notable for having ministered to common people and for prophesying judgement against corrupt leaders of the time.

In the words of one text interpretation: “The leaders practiced and tolerated false doctrine that led to a false understanding of the character of God, and, as a result, injustice towards the lowly, mistreatment of women and children, unjust business practices, and exploitation of the poor, many of whom were rural dwellers, like Micah. The rich were living in luxury while the marginalized suffered to pay for extravagances for those in power.”

Micah warned these leaders and the people that – in the face of injustice, exploitation, racism, and mistreatment of certain populations – they were not doing what they needed to do. They were not acting with righteousness, equity, and morality. They were not being just. Micah’s text is a call to action to people of the book to not be silent or complacent when others – especially people who are vulnerable – are abused, mistreated, in need, scorned, or exploited.

Those of us in this congregation who have participated in JUST Pensacola events likely have heard this text there. Micah 6:8 is used as a motto for the work of JUST Pensacola, an interfaith coalition whose acronym stands for Justice United Seeking Transformation in our area. The purpose of the organization, in their own words, is to “actively uncover injustice and mobilize [people of faith] … to create and win just, fair, and effective solutions” from decisionmakers.

Considering that there are hundreds of Christian churches alone in Pensacola and the surrounding area, one might think that there’d be dozens of congregations involved with JUST Pensacola to live out the religious mandate of Micah 6:8. There are 17 committed member congregations, which includes both Jewish temples in town, numerous Christian denominations, and, of course, UUCP. One of the local mosques also has been involved with the effort but is not an official member of the group at this time. JUST Pensacola is intentionally multiracial and utilizes a shared leadership model.

In the handful of years of its existence, the organization has made a significant contribution to this community merely by pushing the conversation about these justice issues among people of faith. The congregations involved have mobilized hundreds of folks who otherwise likely would not have gotten involved in political activism of this kind. The work of JUST Pensacola and its member congregations keeps with the legacy of religiously liberal faith traditions, including Unitarianism and Universalism, striving for justice.

According to an article on the history of progressivism published by the Center for American Progress, “Many of the most prominent social movements in American progressive history would not have been possible without the inspirational values and moral authority of socially conscious Christianity and Judaism. … The social gospel movement and Catholic social teaching played influential roles in the progressive search for economic fairness and justice in the 20th century.” Proponents of the social gospel whose names you may recognize are settlement founders Jane Addams and Ellen Gates Starr, Catholic Worker Dorothy Day, and, later, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. UUs recognize these folks and many more among the “prophetic people [who] challenge us to confront powers and structures of evil with justice, compassion, and the transforming power of love,” in the words of our Six Sources of wisdom and spirituality.

Related to the social gospel movement is liberation theology, which arose in late 20th-century Roman Catholicism and was centered in Latin America. To quote from Brittanica: “Liberation theology sought to apply religious faith by aiding the poor and oppressed through involvement in political and civic affairs. It stressed both heightened awareness of the ‘sinful’ socioeconomic structures that caused social inequities and active participation in changing those structures.”

Meanwhile, black liberation theology emerged out of 1960s civil-rights activism to address the black experience in the United States of America, in particular. Rev. James Cone is the founder of black liberation theology, which is inspired by both Dr. King and Malcolm X. Rev. Cone comes from the African Methodist Episcopal faith tradition. Cone explains the black liberation theology movement as “mainly a theology that sees God as concerned with the poor and the weak.” Terry Gross of the NPR show Fresh Air conducted an interview with Rev. Cone in 2008. In the interview, Cone explained that “at the core of black liberation theology is an effort — in a white-dominated society, in which black has been defined as evil — to make the gospel relevant to the life and struggles of American blacks, and to help black people learn to love themselves.”

In Jewish teachings, the concept of tikkun olam, translated from Hebrew into English as “repairing of the world,” refers to various forms of action intended to repair and improve our society. Bear with me as I quote from Wikipedia here: “In classical rabbinic literature, the phrase tikkun olam referred to legal enactments intended to preserve the social order. … In Lurianic Kabbalah, the ‘repair’ is mystical: to return the sparks of Divine light to their source by means of ritual performance. In the modern era, particularly among the post-Haskalah movements, tikkun olam has come to refer to the pursuit of social justice or ‘the establishment of Godly qualities throughout the world’ based on the idea that ‘Jews bear responsibility not only for their own moral, spiritual, and material welfare, but also for the welfare of society at large.’”

I would be remiss not to acknowledge that the social gospel movements, the liberation movements, and the Jewish social justice proponents were and are seeking to repair and restore disorder and to heal pain, trauma, and injustice that was originally wrought at the hands of people, states, and institutions that also espoused strongly held religious beliefs and who claimed that they also were acting out religious mandates, which involved dispossession, death, and destruction. Religious texts have been used to justify many viewpoints and actions, often competing ones. Some would say that the texts were being corrupted and misused when they were held up as imperatives for campaigns of dispossession, death, and destruction and that the teachings, in fact, speak more to humanity, justice, and equity. There is not just one model for spiritual life, and the authoritarian religious model that we often see today has not always been and does not have to always be. It is empowering to learn and become familiar with these religious leaders for justice of earlier days. It is affirming to recognize that our religious traditions of working for justice run deep.

Faith movements have been involved in activism to free folks from bondage of many types, including slavery, prison, poverty, intimate partner violence, and labor exploitation. Abortion rights and reproductive freedom also have been causes taken up by religious organizations, and not just UUs.

If you had a chance to watch the 2022 HBO documentary “The Janes,” which I highly recommend, you may have been surprised like I was to learn about the Clergy Consultation Service, a network of religious leaders who helped thousands of women find safe, comfortable ways of having an abortion.

Most shocking of all to me was the revelation that Southern Baptists of the 1960s and ‘70s favored at least some abortion access. From a 2015 article by the Baptist Press: “When the Supreme Court legalized abortion on demand in 1973 with its Roe v. Wade decision, some Southern Baptists criticized the ruling while maintaining their support of abortion rights as defined in the 1971 resolution. Others embraced the Supreme Court’s decision. A Baptist Press analysis article written by then-Washington bureau chief Barry Garrett declared that the court had ‘advanced the cause of religious liberty, human equality, and justice.’”

Today, the organization the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice continues to advocate for reproductive freedom on the grounds of religious values. RCRC, as the group is known, describes itself as “a multifaith, intersectional, and antiracist movement for reproductive freedom and dignity leading in spiritual companionship, curating frameworks for faith leaders, and training the next generation of activists.” Some of you will remember that a beloved friend of this congregation, Tom Brown, who was a retired Methodist minister, was an avid supporter of RCRC and a regular escort at the women’s clinic to help folks safely seek care at that facility when it was still open.

There was a concerted effort within the Southern Baptist denomination starting in the 1980s to move the denomination in a more conservative direction regarding abortion rights. A Southern Baptist minister named Larry Lewis reported picking up a copy of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch newspaper in 1979 and seeing a full-page ad listing the Southern Baptist Convention among denominations that affirmed the right to abortion. Lewis said, “Right there beside the Unitarians and Universalists was the Southern Baptist Convention. … That bothered me a lot.” The Southern Baptists went on to adopt multiple antiabortion statements, to lobby for antiabortion legislation, and to become the key player that it is today.

As the Southern Baptists shifted, the dominant religious messages on important political and social issues also have come increasingly from the religious right and from rightwing evangelicals, rather than from the social gospel proponents or liberation theologists who were so active in the late 1800s and throughout the 1900s. In his book Reclaiming Prophetic Witness, Paul Rasor writes, “Religious liberals … seem to have moved into the background of public life or disappeared altogether.” Rasor, a UU minister and author of numerous books, goes on to write, “[R]eligiously grounded social justice work has declined among religious liberals. … Religious liberals have been far less likely than members of other religious groups to support any form of activism or speaking out on public issues by their clergy or denominational leaders, and they have been less likely to engage in most forms of political participation.”

There are relevant explanations for this decline in faith-based justice work among religious liberals. Rasor notes, “Mistrust of religious dogma and openness to diverse theological traditions, while generally a positive trait, can leave religious liberals uncertain about how to relate their faith commitments to their social and political commitments.” When you’re not a religious evangelical who views everything through a particular religious lens, it can be tough to speak about beliefs and values using religious language. The religious right has no such qualms, however, and they have made causes such as attacking reproductive rights, women’s rights, LGBTQIA+ rights, and the rights of people of color central to their religious crusade.

Religious discourse on social issues over the last several decades not only has come increasingly from the religious right rather than the religious left. Religious discourse on social issues has become increasingly, unceasingly authoritarian and nationalistic.

Current Injustices

The headline of this article from a publication called U.S. Catholic warrants serious consideration: “Any religion allied with nationalism is dangerous.” Religious nationalism is not merely a Christian issue. Religious nationalism is present in the form of Hindu nationalism in India, Turkish-Islamic nationalism in Turkey, and Buddhist nationalism in Burma, among others. In these cases, nationalism at the hands of the religious group involves acts such as imprisonment of dissenters, destruction of religious sites, marginalization of minorities, even rape and murder. For this talk, I am focusing on the U.S. and Christian nationalism.

The U.S. Catholic article describes a U.S. study conducted in February of this year by Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI). The study is titled “Understanding the Threat of Christian Nationalism to American Democracy and Culture.” The poll found that 29 percent of Americans are sympathetic to Christian nationalism, which involves these tenets: 1) that the U.S. should declare itself a Christian nation, 2) that God has called Christians to exercise dominion over all areas of American society, and 3) that the U.S. should not be a nation made up of people belonging to a variety of religions.

Sympathizers and adherents of Christian nationalism support the notion of an authoritarian leader, which means “a leader who is willing to break some rules if that’s what it takes to set things right.” More than eight in 10 Christian nationalist adherents agreed with the following statement: “God intended America to be a new promised land where European Christians could create a society that could be an example to the rest of the world.” It is appropriate to clarify that we are talking not just about some general Christian nationalism but White Christian Nationalism.

This statement about God’s intentions for European Christians should sound familiar. In so many words, this is the 19^th-century doctrine of Manifest Destiny, which is the assertion that the white supremacist colonial expansion of the U.S. throughout the American continents was both justified and inevitable thanks to Divine Providence.

We can easily discern that White Christian Nationalism is antithetical to justice work in the spirit of the social gospel, liberation theology, tikkum olam and our UU principles. Our humanistic traditions embrace the full worth and humanity of all people, and our pluralistic values oppose extremism in favor of engagement, openness, and inclusion of diverse groups, as I discussed in my previous talk on Celebrating Diversity.

Likewise, the international nature of many faith traditions encourages us to think beyond national boundaries and to embrace our global siblings and their experiences as bound up with ours in our interdependent web of life. This message of internationalist solidarity is epitomized in the hymn “This Is My Song,” one of my favorite songs from our UU hymnal. The lyrics refer to the God of all the nations as we sing “a song of peace for lands afar and mine.” The writer recognizes that “other hearts in other lands are beating / With hopes and dreams as true and high as mine.”

The authoritarian White Christian Nationalist movement has erupted in the last 15 years or so in direct opposition to many decades of justice work to secure rights and representation for historically marginalized groups. UU minister Rev. Cecilia Kingman contextualizes the rise of authoritarianism in her exemplary essay, “‘My Little Pony Was Right’: Reflections of Fascisms Without and Within.” In the essay, Kingman invokes the work of Jason Stanley, a professor and scholar who is the author of How Fascism Works: The Politics of Us and Them.

Kingman in her essay writes: “Fascists tell people that equality is victimizing them by making them lose their rightful place or power. Stanley says: ‘The goal is to make [people] feel like victims, to make them feel like they’ve lost something and that the thing they’ve lost has been taken from them by a specific enemy, usually some minority out-group or some opposing nation.’ According to Ejeris Dixon, writing in Truthout, ‘Fascists believe that democracy has failed them and allowed the majority […] to be tyrannized by communities that have no right to power. Therefore, fascists seek to eliminate both democratic processes and marginalized communities to return to an often fictitious and glorified past where their power reigned unchecked.’”

Ideas and Examples of Justice Work

So let me be honest: things have gotten pretty bad. As a nation, our commitment to pluralistic democracy and equity seems to have peaked some years ago and been on a downturn since. Like climate change, the danger is multiplying at an exponential rate. But there is really no sense in bemoaning the current state of affairs and being inactive. We are still here, we are still alive, and we stand on the shoulders of many giants who have resisted similar turns and far worse. That said, I want to share some examples and ideas of justice work that we UUs can engage with even when justice seems elusive.

In the words of activist-scholar Angela Davis, “We’re never assured of justice without a fight.” As UUs, we know what it means to fight for justice. Social justice work is important to us. Hence, we here at UUCP included Striving for Justice in our congregational mission statement, and what I like about the phrase is that it is aspirational. We are striving for justice, and this is an ongoing process.

UUs – and Unitarians and Universalists before the merger – have been religious movements that have wedded social justice work to theology. Our 2^nd and our 6^th principles underscore the importance of justice in our relations and broader communities. The Unitarian Universalist Association, or UUA, notes on its social justice page that many people have come to UU congregations first and foremost because of our liberal voice in the community on important issues. I know that was true for me and for Scott.

Let’s turn back to Paul Rasor and his book Reclaiming Prophetic Witness. Rasor writes that, even while many religious liberals were less likely to engage in the public sphere over the last several decades, “Unitarian Universalist clergy have remained a highly activist ‘dynamo of the left in contemporary American politics’ by translating their theology into social and political activism.”

Rasor cites the Side with Love campaign as one example of this activism. Thousands of UUs have shown up over the years in bright yellow T-shirts to participate in a variety of activities, such as protests against unjust immigration policies in Arizona and demonstrations against the white supremacists who converged on Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017 for the Unite the Right rally, which resulted in the death of Charlottesville local 32-year-old Heather Heyer and the injury of 19 other people when a white supremacist intentionally drove into the crowd.

You can see in this photo that our then-UUA President Rev. Dr. Susan Frederick-Gray was present and in solidarity with other faith leaders during the march in Charlottesville. Her yellow Side with Love stole is clearly visible. Frederick-Gray has been notable for her persistent presence in justice work, even before she was elected to the presidency of the UUA.

Frederick-Gray followed in the footsteps of other justice-minded UUs before her, including the civil rights martyr Rev. James Reeb, shown here walking in the pivotal Selma to Montgomery march with Dr. Ralph Abernathy and his children and Dr. King and Coretta Scott King in 1965 not long before he was beaten to death by white supremacists. Reeb’s legacy continues in the form of a UU congregation that bears his name as well as voting rights campaigns and education projects.

Frederick-Gray just concluded her 6-year term with the UUA and was succeeded by Rev. Dr. Sofia Betancourt, who ran unopposed and was elected at the UU General Assembly last month. Betancourt serves as Resident Scholar and Special Advisor on Justice and Equity at the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee and is expected to follow through with the UUA’s justice initiatives.

One such initiative on the national scale has been the Poor People’s Campaign begun in 2018 by Rev. William Barber. You might recall that, in 2013, Barber had helped to organize Moral Mondays, weekly protests at the North Carolina legislature led by religious progressives demanding gun-safety measures and an end to discriminatory laws. UUs were a part of that work as well.

The current Poor People’s Campaign has carried forward the economic justice work begun by Dr. King in 1968 before his assassination. According to their website, the campaign “is uniting people across the country to challenge the evils of systemic racism, poverty, the war economy, ecological devastation, and the nation’s distorted moral narrative of religious nationalism.” While there is not a physical chapter here in our area, the organization has held online rallies, teach-ins, and events to educate and mobilize folks like ourselves and to advocate for legislation and civil action.

Locally, there are several organizations that are addressing the recent book bannings in Escambia County and other school zones that have targeted materials portraying characters of color, LGBTQ characters, and storylines that depict a diversity of lived experiences. Many of you have probably heard that a lawsuit has been filed against the school district on First Amendment grounds. The plaintiffs in the suit include PEN America, a writers’ group; Penguin Random House, a publishing company; and local parents and students, including Scott and Desmond. Another plaintiff in the lawsuit is the organization Protect Democracy, whose website declares: “Our democracy is in danger. The 250-year American experiment in self-government is threatened by a global rise in authoritarianism. Together, we can preserve democracy for future generations.”

Another group working on this issue is Florida Freedom to Read Project, which works to defend students’ rights to access library materials. The group gave away copies of banned books during the recent PensaPride festival. Another non-profit that many of us are familiar with and support, Open Books, also gave away free banned books at the festival and regularly distributes books of all kinds to other non-profit groups, fills area Little Free Libraries, and sends books for free to Florida prisoners, which has been the organization’s mission for more than 20 years.

Another local group is the Pensacola Abortion Rights Taskforce or PART. The group formed just a few months ago in response to the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v Wade with the Dobbs decision. PART has held several educational events, including a screening of the film “The Janes” that I mentioned earlier, has organized rallies to demonstrate local support for choice, gives away reproductive items such as pregnancy tests and Plan B pills, and is currently working with multiple other entities to collect signatures for the Abortion on the Ballot initiative to place the issue on the 2024 ballot so that Florida voters have the option to decide about abortion access rather than leaving these decisions to legislators. We have petitions here in our lobby, and I invite any Florida voter who has not already signed to complete a petition to put abortion on the ballot in 2024.

Finally, I want to circle back to the essay that I discussed earlier by Rev. Kingman. Kingman delivered the essay “My Little Pony Was Right” at this year’s UU Minister Association’s annual Berry Street Conference in June, and the essay is the springboard for two upcoming online workshops about understanding and combatting fascism in our lifetime. The word fascism is thrown around a lot these days and not always in a reasoned way. Kingman takes great pains in her essay to explain her reasoning for using the word. These webinars will provide us with an opportunity to more fully understand how we got to the point that we are currently at so that we can fight authoritarianism in a strategic, effective way.

In the words of the philosopher and political activist Dr. Cornel West, a Christian and a religious progressive: “Justice is what love looks like in public.”

May we as UUs show up in the public sphere with our love, our faith, and our work for justice constantly on display. May we be visible and persistent in our strive for justice.

Text of a talk originally presented 07/09/23 at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Pensacola

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Celebrate Diversity (UUCP Mission, Part 1 of 3)

Our UUCP mission is to Celebrate Diversity, Strive for Justice, and Inspire Love. Pride month and the month of Juneteenth is an appropriate time to consider what it means for us as UUs to Celebrate Diversity. Today’s talk is the first in a three-part series of services exploring our UUCP mission statement. Today, I am going to establish some groundwork related to our understanding of diversity in our society, identify recent attacks on the concept and practice of diversity, equity, and inclusion, and share ideas and examples of celebrating diversity.

Understanding Our Reactions to Diversity

Let’s face it. We live in a world full of diversity. From the existence of 8.7 million species of plants and animals on our planet – including about 10,000 species of just birds alone – to the 10,000 types of minerals that exist on earth to the variations in climates across this planet. In the words of Woody Guthrie, “from the golden valley … to the diamond deserts … from the redwood forests to the Gulf Stream waters,” the non-human elements in our world are extremely diverse.

Likewise, when we focus on the humans on this planet, we can easily identify mundane differences among people like food preferences and favorite music and partiality to cats over dogs. Then there are the more serious and impactful variances like skin color, native language, disability, and religious beliefs, to name a few. Among and between us, we are very different people. There is just no escaping diversity.

However, the existence of diverse people with diverse appearances and practices and opinions is not the same thing as respect for and inclusion of those people … and their appearances and practices and opinions. The existence of diverse people among us – in our neighborhoods, schools, our grocery stores, health clinics or at the voting booth – does not even necessarily lead to mere tolerance of these folks. In fact, the opposite may be true.

A Harvard political scientist conducted a test of what seeing more diversity in our everyday surroundings does to our political opinions. The study was reported in the book Why We’re Polarized by Ezra Klein. Before starting the study, the researcher surveyed passengers at train stations in white suburbs around Boston. The researcher than recruited Spanish-speaking people to catch trains at these stations. This went on for three days with the intent to send a message to the other passengers that the Spanish-speaking population in that area was increasing. Then the researcher again surveyed the train passengers and found that their political views had “moved sharply rightward.” According to the researcher, “The mostly liberal Democratic passengers had come to endorse policies such as deportation of children of undocumented immigrants,” a policy being advocated by Trump during his presidential campaign at the time.

We are probably all familiar with the phenomenon of White Flight. White Flight refers to the tendency of white residents to leave a neighborhood as black residents move into that neighborhood. Research indicates that white residents hold preconceived notions about racially mixed neighborhoods and predominantly black neighborhoods and that these notions of neighborhood instability and disintegration lead them to not want to live in these neighborhoods. The percentage of black residents in the neighborhood may be as low as 10%. Residents who have the means to live elsewhere may choose to do so and, as a result, their departure may contribute to the instability of those neighborhoods, which may reinforce the preconceptions about those neighborhoods that drove the residents to leave in the first place. You can see how this can become a vicious cycle.

White Flight can also occur within schools. In this scenario, parents who perceive that the population of a school is shifting and who have the means to put their children in school elsewhere may choose to do so. A historic example of White Flight from schools occurred in 1958 in Little Rock, Arkansas, the year after the Little Rock Nine integrated Central High School in that city. We often hear about and see depictions of the brave efforts of the nine black students who faced mobs of angry white residents and students and who ultimately had to be escorted by members of the National Guard just to be able to, somewhat safely, receive an education in the 1957-58 school year.

The piece of the story that we don’t often get is that Arkansas Gov. Orval Faubus closed all Little Rock public high schools the following school year rather than allow integration to continue. And the city of Little Rock wasn’t alone in this. Virginia also closed schools to avoid having to integrate. Across the South, many white families had organized “White Citizens Councils” in the 1950s to fight integration. In the 1950s and ‘60s, these same families and others formed private schools in order to continue educating their children in a segregated setting, including right here in Pensacola.

Attacking Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion

The situation in Little Rock in 1958 and the extreme measures that some groups will go to in order to avoid interacting with people different than themselves bears similarity to our current situation. Recently, various tactics have been taken to remove certain elements of history and literature from public schools – K-12 as well as, now, higher education – in order to prevent some folks from having to be exposed to other people and ideas. Those calling themselves parents’ rights proponents argue that the representation of diverse people and experiences within our schools is immoral, does not reflect American values, and is hurting students. In true Orwellian fashion, they are supposedly the champions of liberty. In their view, the equity and inclusion that has been fought for over many decades – from the Brown v Board decision to the legalization of same-sex marriage – is a conspiratorial takeover by a so-called Woke Mob.

In an effort to block this supposed takeover, Gov. Ron DeSantis recently signed a bill banning public colleges and universities from spending money on diversity, equity and inclusion programs, known as DEI programs. The governor refers to DEI instead as “discrimination, exclusion, and indoctrination.” Let me be clear: When we are talking about Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion programs at colleges and universities, we are talking about offices that managed programs to diversify staff and promoted inclusivity for faculty and students. Here in Pensacola, the DEI office a few years ago hosted a speaking event featuring the sculptor of the “Four Spirits” statue in Birmingham. The statue is a memorial to the four girls who were killed in the bombing of the 16^th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham in 1963. During the event, the sculptor, a white woman, described the process she went through to decide what to sculpt to represent the tragic loss of these girls due to hatred and white supremacy in Birmingham at that time. These are the sorts of programs that these offices would run. The DEI office at UWF no longer exists, and staff with decades of experience are looking for work elsewhere because they can no longer do the work that they have trained for and to which they have dedicated their careers.

Building Empathy and Support for Diversity

I can see where opponents of diversity and inclusion have a point. Building empathy toward diverse groups of people does contribute to more favorable opinions toward those groups. One study of teenagers in 38 countries that had experienced large waves of immigration found a correlation between the views held toward immigrants by youth native to those countries and the composition of the classrooms in the schools those youth attended. The researcher noted, “Ethnically mixed classrooms do contribute to more favorable attitudes toward immigrants. Native youngsters in mixed classrooms had significantly higher levels of inclusive views than native youngsters in all-native classrooms,” that is, classrooms without immigrant students.

Exposure to messages of diversity increases tolerance and acceptance of diversity and may even help to close gaps between diverse groups, according to another study, this one at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. In the study, a public messaging campaign was launched on campus to normalize discussions about diversity. The project included a poster campaign featuring student testimonials about embracing diversity and a four-minute video describing pro-diversity opinions among students. Follow-up 10 to 12 weeks later indicated that students who were exposed to the public messaging campaign reported more positive attitudes toward members of other groups and stronger endorsement of diversity. Students who were identified as marginalized – meaning non-White students or those who were Hispanic or who identified as a religion other than Christianity – were particularly impacted by this campaign. The researcher reported, “The students belonging to marginalized groups tell us that they have an enhanced sense of belonging. They are less anxious in interactions with students from other ethnic groups. They tell us that they’re less and less the target of discrimination. They evaluate the classroom climate more positively and feel that they are treated more respectfully by their classmates.” The campaign promoting diversity messages had tangible impacts on the lives of marginalized students at the university.

Leaders in the Civil Rights Movement knew about public messaging. They actively engaged in campaigns to humanize black Americans. In many cases, these efforts – such as Freedom Summer and the Freedom Riders campaign – were focused on white young people who were more open and progressive in their views.

Leaders in the Gay Rights Movement used similar tactics and often urged their peers to come out of the closet in order to normalize gay and lesbian people in the eyes of their friends, family, co-workers, and neighbors and to build support for their rights and safety in the broader society.

Leaders in the Disability Rights Movement also understood the importance of building support from the general population when they organized the Capitol Crawl in 1990. After a march to the U.S. Capitol building to protest the efforts within the U.S. Senate to stall and stop the Americans with Disabilities Act from passing, protestors with physical disabilities began throwing themselves out of their mobility devices and crawled up the 365 steps to the capitol doors. The image of this demonstration was extremely moving and ultimately led to the passage of the ADA.

Celebrating Diversity

So we can look at it this way. The presence of diversity in our society and the tolerance, support, acceptance, and inclusion that have grown over the last 50 to 70 years here in this country are a threat to some people – people for whom liberty and freedom are anathema, despite what they claim. Celebrating diversity is powerful. Celebrating diversity builds empathy and solidarity among people.

When we recognize the humanity in each of us, we approach people who are different from us with curiosity, openness, and respect. We draw our circles wider. We favor pluralism in our diversity. In the words of Rev. Dr. Jane Page of the UU Fellowship of Statesboro, Georgia, “Pluralism tries to encourage members of a society to accommodate their differences by avoiding extremism … and engaging in good-faith dialogue.” Continuing in her talk on diversity and pluralism, Rev. Dr. Page described pluralism as looking through a series of windows. “It’s the same light, but the various windows seem to provide a very different understanding and meaning for people,”  she said. Many of us as UUs prefer to explore many windows and see the world through different perspectives.

We may encounter diverse perspectives just in the course of our everyday lives, through interactions with neighbors, co-workers, and friends. But, let’s be honest, many of us do not spend a whole lot of time around people who don’t look and think a lot like we do. In that case, we have to be more intentional about exposing ourselves to diverse people and experiences. There are myriad opportunities to do so. Some simple ideas include reading books or watching movies by or about people of color, people who are LGBTQ+, people who are living with disabilities, people who are immigrants or refugees, or people from a religious background different than our own, just to get started.

Here in Pensacola, there are festivals, plays, art exhibitions, and events that celebrate diversity. Just in the last few weeks, I have attended several events of this type. I went to events celebrating the Juneteenth holiday, also known as Emancipation Day or Freedom Day. The Juneteenth holiday marks the anniversary of the day on June 19, 1865, when the last group of enslaved people, located in Galveston, Texas, were informed that they had been freed from slavery under President Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation, which had been issued one and a half years earlier.

On Friday evening, I attended the 23^rd annual Freedom is Not Free banquet hosted by the civil rights organization Movement for Change, which Scott and I have been involved with for about 18 years. During that banquet, I witnessed my first African Libations ceremony. Practiced in the Yoruba and Igbo cultures of the African continent, the libation ceremony involves making an offering of water or other liquid to pay homage to the ancestors. According to an African Libations officiant, “During the libation, we honor the wisdom, love, and legacy of our ancestors and esteemed living elders.” Some of us may be familiar with this type of ceremony by its colloquial phrase: “pouring one out for the homies,” when we pour a little beer or wine on the ground to memorialize someone who has passed.

Yesterday, I attended the annual PensaPride festival and ran into several of our church members there as well. There were musical and poetry performances, a puppet show, vendors, creators, a photo booth – and so many young people and families and elders out in the park yesterday. It was such a festive atmosphere and so beautiful to see a huge segment of our local community out celebrating pride and just enjoying themselves and being who they are despite the threats of hellfire and damnation from the protestors.

I am looking forward to several other events that will also allow me to celebrate diversity. I share them because I also encourage you to attend, if you’re able.

1. “My Ancestors’ Wildest Dreams,” an exhibit featuring the artwork of local African American artists up now through Friday, July 14, at Artel Gallery downtown Pensacola.
2. SOIL, an exhibit open until July 15 at the Alabama Contemporary Arts Center in downtown Mobile. The exhibit is subtitled “Radical Empathy in the Act of Remembrance” and is the work of the Mobile County Community Remembrance Project, a local grassroots program affiliated with the Equal Justice Initiative.
3. Bias Inside Us, an interactive community engagement project that will be at the Pensacola MESS Hall for one month starting July 15. This Smithsonian traveling exhibition raises awareness about the science and history of bias and what people can do about it.
4. Stamped, an annual free film festival that, according to the website, “is dedicated to providing a vibrant cultural experience to Pensacola by using the unique expression of films with a specific focus on the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer community to foster awareness, inclusion, and diversity.” The festival this year runs from September 28 to October 1.

 These opportunities check several boxes. I enjoy them. I learn from them. My exposure to people who look different than me, who see the world differently, fosters deeper empathy and care in me for them as fellow human beings. I build relationships across differences. And I show my support for these folks and the moments that are important to them by putting my body where my mouth is, by walking the talk.

These actions are within the reach of all of us.

Text of a talk originally presented 06/25/23 at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Pensacola

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