Let me climb onto my soap box….
All these troubles in the Unitarian Universalist Association (UUA): yet another senior denominational positions is filled by a white man; the first Latino president of the UUA gets defensive about this fact and then resigns; people of color in the denomination call for a national teach-in about white supremacy; the president of the Unitarian Universalist Ministers Association (UUMA), who is a white man, holds forth online at great length, and somewhat incoherently, on hiring practices in the UUA; 130 members of the UUMA sign a petition calling on ministers to refrain from bringing lawsuits against other ministers in the middle of UUMA grievance procedures (a petition that was responding to a legal action by a UUMA member against other UUMA members to prevent ministers from talking about a colleague who allegedly committed sexual misconduct); a Unitarian Universalist minister pleads guilty to child pornography charges.
In the course of all these troubles, many Unitarian Universalists are openly addressing the problem of racism and white supremacy. This is a good thing.
And in the course of all these troubles, far fewer Unitarian Universalists seem to be talking about sexism and patriarchy. Maybe because all the candidates for UUA president are women. In a couple of weeks, we are sure to elect a woman as the next UUA president and therefore we have conquered patriarchy. Right?
Patriarchy within the UUA has not died. Nor is it in its death throes, nor is it even in the process of dying. All these years I’ve been going to political rallies and hearing people assert that all oppressions are linked. So guess what: patriarchy and white supremacy are linked. We cannot talk about one without talking about the other.
As a minister of religious education — that is to say, as someone who is doing “women’s work,” because taking care of children is not “real ministry,” it’s just “women’s ministry” — I can tell you that patriarchy is alive and well in the UUA. Sunday school enrollment has been dropping since 2005, even though demographically there are more and more children out there. Why? Sunday school enrollment has been dropping because in the UUA as a whole, and in most individual congregations, when money gets tight we pull resources away from children and youth ministry so that we adequately pay the patriarchal positions — the president of the UUA, the senior denominational positions, the parish minister.
We do this both because of patriarchy, and also because of white supremacy. In much of the U.S., non-white children are now the majority. If we adequately fund children’s ministries, we might bring more kids into our congregations. If we do that, not only are we saying that “women’s work” is important, we are also opening the doors to a lot of non-white people. Both these things are equally threatening. Patriarchy and white supremacy die hard.
I know, you’re sick of hearing me rant. OK, I’m off my soap box now. And I promise to reduce my ranting in the future, because the last thing we need is another rant from yet another white man.
“In order for the oppressed to [b]e able to wage the struggle for their liberation, they must perceive the reality of oppression not as a closed world from which there is no exit, but as a limiting situation which they can transform. This perception is a necessary but not a sufficient condition for liberation; it must become the motivating force for liberating action. … The oppressed can overcome the contradiction in which they are caught only when this perception enlists them in the struggle to free themselves.
“This same is true with respect to the individual oppressor as a person. Discovering himself to be an oppressor may cause considerable anguish, but it does not necessarily lead to solidarity with the oppressed. Rationalizing his guilt through paternalistic treatment of the oppressed, all the while holding them fast in a position of dependence, will not do. Solidarity requires that one enter into the situation of those with whom one is [in solidarity]; it is a radical posture. If what characterizes the oppressed is their subordination to the consciousness of the master, as Hegel affirms, (5) true solidarity with the oppressed means fighting at their side to transform the objective reality which has made them these ‘beings for another.’ The oppressor is [in solidarity] with the oppressed only when he stops regarding the oppressed as an abstract category and sees them as persons who have been unjustly dealt with, deprived of their voice, cheated in the sale of their labor — when he stops making pious, sentimental, and individualistic gestures and risks an act of love. True solidarity is found only in the plenitude of this act of love, in its existentiality, in its praxis. To affirm that men and women are persons and as persons should be free, and yet to do nothing tangible to make this affirmation a reality, is a farce.”
— Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed
Many thanks for this! Theadora
Praises!More praises for one who speaks my mind!
This isn’t a rant, Daniel. It’s a statement of fact that funds have been pulled away from religious education, and moved toward parish ministries for adults. The recent hiring fracas in Southeast Region demonstrates this clearly, along with statements about parish ministry being the only way to acquire the skills needed for regional or Associational leadership. The first woman president will have her work cut out for her.
Preach it Rev. Harper!
Helen, I’m kinda sad that what I said is a simple statement of fact, not a rant.
What makes me sadder is the apparent assumption among UUs that fighting oppression is a zero-sum game, i.e., we can EITHER fight sexism OR we can fight racism, but not both simultaneously.
No mention of Christina Rivera but a long description of Don Southworth. Why?.
Thank you, Dan. I hope this helps open the conversation, that has not taken place publicly yet that I have seen.
Polity, this post talks about people who reinforcing patriarchy. I assume you don’t think Christina Rivera is reinforcing patriarchy. So I’m not sure what your point is.
As the UU creates a new covenant statement, I am wondering why it does not contain any explicit statement that we stand against patriarchy; I’m searching on the UUA site for this, for your “rant”, for any evidence that anti-sexism and affirming gender equality is actually claimed within the center of UU identity, i.e. in modern terms that it would show up on the main page for justice and inclusion. I wish it had.
Susan, that’s a really good point. I’m going to link to your comment from my post on the Article II revision.