2012 Response to Berry Street Essay: The Reverend Peter Morales
Response to “From iChurch to Beloved Community: Ecclesiology and Justice” by Fredric J. Muir
Peter Morales: “A Unitarian Universalism Beyond Unitarian
Universalism”
June 20, 2012 – Phoenix, AZ
Let me begin by thanking Fred for his
essay and for inviting me to respond. This essay is an important analysis and a
challenge to us all. Fred, you have given us a gift and issued a challenge. I
hope our colleagues and all Unitarian Universalists will use it as the basis
for discussions in the coming months.
As I reviewed my highlights and marginal
comments after reading the essay, I realized that I agree with so much of what
you say that my response was in danger of being litany of: “yep, that’s right,
preach it, well said,” and the like. I agree with at least 99 percent of what
you say. The other one percent is not important.
What is important—what is critically
important to every one of us in here today and to the future of our faith—is
what we do with these insights.
I really have two things to say in
response. First, we have to change. Second, we ministers have to lead this
change.
First, we have to change. Make no
mistake. Nothing
short of culture change will suffice. The issues before us are not
technical. The challenge before us is not to make incremental improvements in
worship, religious education, pastoral care, and social justice programs. No.
We must do what our ancestors did: We must create a religion that leaves behind
what has become stale, rigid, empty and dated. And, as Fred has explained, we
are going to have to give up the idolatries of individualism, exceptionalism,
and adolescent anti-authoritarianism. [I have an idea for a new UU t-shirt:
“Unitarian Universalism: It’s not about you.”]
We must take the core values, the
fundamental religious center, of our tradition—a religious vision of reverence,
humility, compassion, community and commitment—and create something new.
In short, we need a new Unitarian
Universalism. We
need to change, and we need our ministers to lead that change. And, dear
colleagues, if we are going to lead this change to a new Unitarian
Universalism, we ministers are going to have to change, too. This won’t be
easy. We ministers like to think of ourselves as courageous leaders of change.
Sometimes that is true. It is also true that we ministers are trained to be a
conservative force. We come from and through traditional institutional
forms—congregations, seminary, the profession of ministry. We love these
institutions and we are taught to maintain and preserve them.
We have been trained to maintain the
status quo and we have been rewarded for doing just that. This is especially
true of our parish ministers and particularly true of the ministers of our
larger churches. I know. That is my background. I am a parish minister. I loved
my large congregation. I still do.
Now we are called to move beyond the
religion we have known and loved. I am not talking about rejecting any of what
is good, but I am talking about real cultural change. We have been called to
ministry. Today being a minister means we are called to move beyond our comfort
zones.
What must we do? And what does the UU
ism beyond UU ism look like?
I don’t pretend to have all the answers.
But I think the rough outlines are pretty clear. The UU ism beyond UU ism must
be a religion that:
- Goes beyond
belief.Let me suggest that our religion is not about
what we believe, or what we think. It’s about what we love. Religion is about what we hold sacred. Religion
is about what moves us, what touches our souls. We have got to get way
beyond being a religion focused on the left frontal lobes. We have to be a
religion of the whole of human existence. As I look at congregations that
thrive, I see that what they share is more emotional than it is cognitive.
Thriving congregations are passionate, they look beyond themselves, they
take their ministry seriously. You can feel the spirit of loving
community—and we can feel that right away. It does not matter if the
minister is young or old, male or female, theist or humanist. It matters
that they arealive. It matters that they
have “gotten religion.” - Goes beyond
the congregation.
I am a parish minister. A vital congregation is a precious and beautiful
thing. It can be an incarnation of the Blessed Community. Yet we also know
this: congregations that look beyond themselves thrive. Congregations
whose focus is inward tend to decline. We also have to explore forms of
spiritual community that go beyond the traditional congregation. Religion
is about connections—connections with the infinite, connection with our
deepest sense of ourselves, connection with one another. It really isn’t
about you. (Worse yet, it isn’t about me, either!) It is aboutus. People connect in more ways today and will
connect in more ways tomorrow. - Goes beyond
our traditional demographic. This is pretty simple. We either get past being
a religion of the anglo educated class or we will perish. Look, there is
nothing in our core values, in our principles, that is anglo or middle
class. At the center of our faith is the recognition that all human beings
are one and each human being is precious. We believe that all cultures
bring gifts to the common table. The implications of this are earth
shaking. We have got to move beyond our little cultural enclave.
Yes,
we have to make profound changes.
Second,we ministers
must lead this change. A few years ago I was at a consultation with a handful of
ministers from some of our fastest growing congregations. One of the major take
aways I had was the realization that these ministers were very different. Their
leadership styles varied from what I called “Joan of Arc” to “sheep dog.” Their
ages were all over the place. What they shared was a passion for our faith, an
understanding of their context, andthe willingness
to lead.
Leadership
is not tyranny. Leadership is a relationship of trust that has been earned.
Leadership is about passion, vision, honesty and competence. We Unitarian
Universalists have got to learn to trust one another. We process things to
death. We have to nurture leaders, grow leaders, authorize leaders, and let
leaders lead.
We
ministers must lead the cultural change, the religious re formation, of moving
beyond individualism, beyond exceptionalism, beyond our demographic enclave,
beyond petty anti-authoritarianism.
We
face a staggering challenge and a breathtaking opportunity. Our world is changing
with dizzying speed. This faith we love is in real danger of rapid decline. It
also has fabulous potential. The hunger for a progressive faith like ours is
palpable.
I
believe we can move from ichurch to the beloved community. I believe it because
I have experienced it, because I see hundreds of examples of it.
We
can do this. We really can. But we can do it only if our ministers lead.
Fred,
you have given us gift with this lecture. Thank you.
Response to “From iChurch to Beloved Community: Ecclesiology and Justice” by Fredric J. Muir
Kimberley Tomaszewski
June 20, 2012 – Phoenix, AZ
It is an honor to be with each of you
this afternoon, and it is my greatest privilege to be sharing the stage with my
mentor, Fred, and President Peter Morales. Following these two, I also
risk agreeing and amen-ing both Fred’s and Peter’s offerings. I do, have
a few things to add, though…
Among the many exclamation marks and underlining that I did when first reading
Fred’s lecture, there seemed to me, to be an unspoken assumption in Fred’s offering
that I continued to get hung up on. And that assumption is, as Unitarian
Universalist ministers, what drives our ministry, at least in part, is
Unitarian Universalism.
I was raised in this tradition and the oddity of that meant that I have had to
defend the long name of our faith and its meaning from an early age.
Unitarian Universalism is so much a part of my identity that the idea of
it being coined a Chosen Faith is, to be frank, tiresome, to me. As I
moved through the process of becoming a minister, I expected that I would be
held accountable to this tradition, its legacy and future.
Fred, you have often teased me after preaching, that you would have been harder
on the people, and so today I say the same to you.
It was only after entering the ministry that I was, for the first time, met
with the trinity of errors you named. Colleagues who wondered how I
didn’t know the names of ministers serving our largest congregations; who said
I couldn’t be a Unitarian Universalist with my love of the Christian texts and
rituals; who shared their call to ministry as a want to be a part of “the
club”; ministers who defined their faith, like so many of our people, by the
rejections of other religions, rather than the affirmations of belief or call.
I expected that I would be held accountable to this tradition, its legacy and
future, to the thing that drove and shaped my ministry, but instead I was
challenged to keep up with the trinity of errors. This is the muck and
mud I carry with me.
Reading and hearing Fred’s essay, I continue to ask myself, is one of our goals
to do Unitarian Universalism well? — Or is it creating an empire around a
minister or a building or an institution? Is it simply being a liberal
community for the Spiritual But Not Religious and the Nones? I guess my
question really is, and the question I believe I heard Fred asking: Do
we want more links, or a greater density to our faith? And if it is the
latter, this is the inreach before outreach. This is the justice interdependent
with growth. This is doing Unitarian Universalist ministry.
You see, I don’t think individualism is rampant in our people by accident but
rather because we, our leaders, are not articulate in what it means to be a
Unitarian Universalist; what it means to be Religious. Not simply that a
lack of creed does not mean a lack of belief or a belief in anything.
There is, of course that issue that still needs attention.
But that as Unitarian Universalists, and therefore, as a religious community,
by joining this tradition, as Fred named, we enter into covenant with one another.
By signing our membership books, we do in fact consider it a conversion
into a larger community and a longer legacy. That there are expectations of how we will be with one
another, with ourselves, and in our search for whatever we call the sacred.
There is individuality upheld within this covenant, but there is also
vulnerable and divine connection that we are called, by this specific faith, to
seek. Individualism alone does not foster this.
I do not think exceptionalism is a narrative our people have created because
they have finally found their home and wish to mock others for differing
choices. We write our own narratives. This is, as Fred said, spoken
in the pulpit, in our New Member classes, in the banners we hang and bumper stickers
we stick. We do things differently here. The Uncommon Denomination. Once
again, never claiming what we are, what our starting point is, Unitarian
Universalism for its own sake, but rather a response to everything else.
As if we only exist if others do as well. And therefore can exist
better than.
And lastly, I do not think our allergy to authority has grown from the
grassroots. I am not so green as to not know the effects of disgruntled
congregants. And yet we have given away – and I do mean given – the authority
we have been called to live into … to members who are the loudest, the most in
need of pastoral care, those who have the largest pledges. Authority on
our faith given away to the Nones; the Spiritual But Not Religious. We have heard this question asked numerous
times already this week, Who or What are we accountable to?
I asked Fred why he wanted me to speak today. He reminded me that,
having been born the same year he began his ministry at UUCA, I represent some
piece of our future. This is strange to me because, we all know that
saying, children, who were raised in our faith, either leave or become
ministers. And I often wonder if I have done both.
Yes, I am a Unitarian Universalist minister. And yet, for a smoother
beginning into ministry with the Nones and the Spiritual But Not Religious in
our pews, I silence my faith, this tradition, and the legacy I was blessed to
be given.
In what other tradition might we hear that the words “As Unitarian
Universalists” from the pulpit of a Unitarian Universalist congregation, from
the mouth of a Unitarian Universalist minister, could offend so many? I will be
the first to admit, liberal religion to the Nones and the Spiritual But Not
Religious, preaching only to our specific communities or working without the
partnerships of neighboring colleagues, is at times, much easier than a Calling
to a tradition, a legacy, and a faith. But as long as our ministries are driven
by this trinity, and not the greater tradition, individualism, exceptionalism,
and authority issues will persist – and the justice dreams that had been
historically UU, will be only that.
For the sake of filling the pews, to show that we are a minister to take note
of, or for the stature of joining a club, I worry that we have fallen silent to
our roots and thus clipped our wings. We have become individualized when
we need each other most, at times boastful without action, and allergic even to
our own authority when we are the ones who have chosen and been chosen to lead
this faith.
We can be the best community, or many individualized unique communities, sects
even, but that will not be the depth and richness that is Unitarian
Universalism. That will not see us into the hard work of beloved
community.
We have to begin at home, in our congregations, and with our people.
Including our people in this room. We can’t expect to be saved by
those outside our walls when the people within are still waiting for each of us
to fulfill what the tradition they have been told about promises.
I pray that for the sake and drive of Unitarian Universalism, we return to our
people, and colleagues, ready to recognize and challenge this trinity of errors
of which we are a part.
Fred, thank you for your work, your guidance, and your ever-persistent love of
this faith and its traditions.