I got one of those emails today, informing me that a Unitarian Universalist minister has been removed from fellowship. It read:
“The Ministerial Fellowship Committee voted recently to remove the Rev. John Saxon from fellowship for actions and behaviors constituting bullying, creating a hostile environment, and conduct unbecoming a minister.”
A quick web search (including what appears to be his Facebook page) shows John L. Saxon as a professor of public law and government at UNC-CH, retiring from there in 2010. He graduated from Meadville/Lombard Theological School in 2009, serving as hospital chaplain for Alamance Regional Medical Center, beginning c. 2010. He was assistant at the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Raleigh, N.C., beginning in 2010, then later lead minister; he left the latter position in 2017. From 2017 to 2020 he was Executive Director of the Unitarian Universalist Social Justice Ministry for North Carolina, and then apparently from 2020 to 2022 he was president of the organization (online sources are not clear). One brief bio of him says he retired in 2022, so it’s not at all clear where he allegedly engaged in the actions that led the Ministerial Fellowship Committee to remove him from fellowship.
As usual when I publish these announcements, I’m making no judgements on the truth of the allegations. I’m publishing these because up until a few years ago the UUA did not maintain a public list of this sort of thing; and since then it has become increasingly difficult to find out where the accused ministers have worked.
I will make one general comment, though, which is that removing a minister from fellowship for bullying now appears to be more common than removing a minister from fellowship for sexual misconduct. Does this mean I believe UU ministers are no longer engaging in sexual misconduct? No, I suspect it’s simply more difficult for victims of sexual misconduct to come forward. [Plus as I outline in a later post in this series, there are societal factors leading to more bullying.]
First in a series of posts on clergy and bullying — Sigh. Not Again. — What ministerial bullying looks like — What ministers didn’t learn in theological school — When clergy get bullied — The opposite of a bullying boss