A Joyful Welcoming Religious Community
by Rev. Colin Bossen, September 20, 2009
What better day than Society Sunday to consider the adoption of a new mission and vision statement? Society Sunday is a new-old tradition when we gather to celebrate the history of our congregation and recognize longtime members. It is new because last year was the first that we held a Society Sunday. It is old because many years ago, back when the congregation was located at 82nd Street and Euclid Avenue, there was an annual service called Charter Sunday that served a similar function. Sometime after the congregation moved to Cleveland Heights this service was forgotten.
In preparation for this service, both last year and this, I spent a fair amount of time digging through our congregation's archives. Reading our congregational history I have reached the conclusion that the mission and vision statement we propose to adopt does not contain anything new for our community. Instead it is simply a re-articulation of the mission and vision that this congregation has had for itself since its inception.
Consider the first sentence: "We are a joyful, welcoming, religious community." This statement might just pass as the core theological impulse behind our Unitarian Universalist movement. As a religious movement we seek to be joyful and welcoming, celebrating the "inherent worth and dignity of every person" and trying to cast our circle wide enough that it includes all people.
When I read the first sentence of our purposed mission statement I hear echoes of one of my favorite phrases by William Ellery Channing, "I am a living member of the great family of All Souls." To be truly welcoming and inclusive means to declare that all people are welcome in our midst. Even if we fall short of our vision it provides us a beacon upon which to fix ourselves as we continue our struggles.
Both phrases suggest to me that to participate in our religious community is to participate in something lively and life giving, something larger than ourselves. I love the image of "a joyful...religious community." Religion should be a joyful matter. It is about birth, death and all that stretches in between. And if we cannot make those things in part joyful--even death for within it it contains a celebration of our very existence--then we are in real trouble, for it means that we cannot enjoy life itself.
Joy is a religious matter. The word religious stems from the Latin religare which means to bind. Religion can be understood as what binds us together. As human creatures we are bound together by our common experiences--our lives marked by the twin mysterious bookends life and death--and our common needs--for food, water, air, shelter, meaningful work and love. But in community we best be bound together by joy.
We are a welcoming community. We do our best to welcome the stranger when he or she arrives in our midst. We have something we want to share and we wish to let it be known that all people are welcome here. And of course in Unitarian Universalist parlance welcoming has another connotation. It means that we support and affirm members of the GLBT community. Sometime in the mid-1990s the congregation took a vote to participate in the Unitarian Universalist Association's Welcoming Congregation program. As a community we made a commitment, in the words of the UUA, "to being inclusive and expressive of the concerns of gay, lesbian,...bisexual [and transgender] persons at every level of congregational life—in worship, in programs, and in social occasions—welcoming not only their presence, but also the unique gifts and particularities of their lives as well."
In the past years we have done this. Not only by standing up for GLBT rights when the occasion calls but more importantly by welcoming members of the GLBT community into our midst. Today and in the past we have had GLBT worship leaders, Board members, staff members and, most importantly, congregants.
Finally, we are a religious community. The word religious can be a problematic one for many. For some it conjures to mind the faith communities of their childhood. Often these faith communities were restrictive and they were left behind when one became a Unitarian Universalist. For others the word religion suggests of superstition or belief in a supernatural realm. Worse yet it might imply a community with a specific creed, the adherence to which is required for membership.
Yet as I mentioned earlier, religion really means to bind together and more than anything else we are bound together by our relationships. As Dilworth Lupton, a minister who served our congregation at 82nd and Euclid many years ago, wrote: "Religion is something that is not a fringe of life, but permeates the fabric of life itself. I would define it as a man's yearnings to establish the right relationship with himself, with others, with the universe, and with God. Such an experience is as universal as the appreciation of music--and as indestructible." In that description I suspect that most of us would only debate the gendered language and, perhaps depending upon our personal theologies, the word God. Lupton's description suggests to me that religion is about finding a connection with all of that which surrounds us--our fellow human beings, the earth, the stars above, the rich tapestry of human life. In a religious community we strengthen these connections and connect with each other.
The first sentence of our proposed mission and vision statement contains our purpose. The second sentence details what it means to live out that purpose in our wider community. If the first sentence is who we strive to be--I say strive because admittedly we cannot always be joyful and welcoming, as individuals and as a community we have days when we fail to actualize our better selves--then the second sentence is where our mission for our community will take us if we actually live it out. It lists a series of three separate goals, none of which is necessarily easily attainable. Our proposed statement is as much about where we are going as who we currently are. Our second sentence reads: "We strive," first, "to be a sanctuary for all who enter," second, "to reflect the diversity of the local community, and" third, "to work toward a more just and sustainable society." Each of these builds upon the other.
This congregation has long sought to be a sanctuary, both literally and figuratively. On the literal side, in 1968, during the ministry of Farley Wheelwright, the congregation voted to offer sanctuary to draft resisters. Then again, in 1987 and 1988 members of the Society participated in the Overground Railroad, an effort to help political refugees from the civil wars in Central America find sanctuary in Canada. During that effort members of the congregation took refugees into their own homes for several months at time, supporting them and, ultimately, helping them get to Canada. This spirit of generosity clearly continues in the work that some members of the Society are now doing with the Bhutanese refugee community.
The sanctuary that we strive to be has other aspects to. It is how we provide a spiritual home for the free thinker, the atheist, the pagan, the liberal Christian, the progressive Jew, the person whose theological thoughts do not quite line-up with the expectations of the American mainstream. We meet this objective whenever a newcomer walks into our door, sits down in a chair and as the worship starts feels a sense of relief wash through their body--when they think "ah, I am home."
The second objective laid out in our vision statement, "to reflect the diversity of the local community," is almost certainly the thing that we have struggled with the most historically. Indeed, it is impossible to consider this vision without discussing our community's long and complicated history with race.
As most of you know, the Unitarian Society of Cleveland was formed in 1951 when a slim majority of the members of the First Unitarian Church of Cleveland decided to leave their historic building at 82nd and Euclid for Belvoir Oval in Shaker Heights. 317 members objected and voted to stay in the inner city and purchase the building from the First Church. Their desire, according to an early congregational history, was to be "a Unitarian Church that will attract persons of various cultural, economic, and racial backgrounds."
For a time the Unitarian Society of Cleveland certainly did accomplish that goal. During the ministries of Jesse Cavileer, Emerson Schwenk and Dennis Kuby the membership integrated and the congregation engaged in important civil rights work--speaking out in favor of the integration of the Cleveland schools, striving to provide services and a religious home for African Americans in our original Hough neighborhood and supporting the work of Martin Luther King, the Congress for Racial Equality and other organizations in South. Our efforts earned us widespread notice and the Cleveland Plain Dealer described us as "the first integrated church in Cleveland."
Lewis McGee, one of the first African American Unitarian ministers found liberal religion through our congregation and during the 1950s and 1960s our membership was probably at least 10% African American. I have seen a picture from that time that suggest our racial diversity to be even greater. It depicts an Indian American baby being dedicated by our former minister Dennis Kuby as his mother looks on in a sari.
Those of you that know this also know that the congregation's relationship with its Hough neighborhood eventually disintegrated. Cleveland's white and economic flight in the 1950s and 1960s meant that over the course of two decades fewer and fewer members of the Society came from the surrounding neighborhood. Hough became a predominately poor African American neighborhood and on occasion members of the congregation--and in one instance the minister himself--were assaulted or harassed as they entered or exited the building.
In the wake of Martin Luther King's assassination in 1968 the vision for integration that many in the congregation held began to fall by the wayside both within the congregation itself and in the wider society. In 1968 the Society also called a new minister--Farley Wheelwright, a well known social justice activist--who soon concluded that the relationship between the Society and its Hough neighbors was no longer tenable. Shortly afterwards a young African American minister John Frazier came to Cleveland. He helped to organized the Cleveland branch of the Black Unitarian Universalist Caucus and started a small group called the Black Humanist Fellowship of Liberation that met regularly for services. With the support of the Department of Ministry and others at the UUA Wheelwright suggested that the congregation "Turn the 82nd Street Unitarian Society of Cleveland over lock, stock and barrel to a Black Unitarian movement, with the initial leadership coming from BUUC."
That is exactly what happened. After two contentious congregational meetings--the first one featuring four votes on essentially the same agenda item and the second one supervised by the court--the congregation decided to turn its building and a substantive portion of its cash assets over to the Black Unitarian Universalist Caucus. A court case briefly ensued. William Mack, an African American member of the congregation who strongly believed in integration, sued the Board of Trustees over their actions leading up to and during the congregational vote. Mack lost and despite a clause in the deal between the Caucus and the Society that permitted the congregation’s use of the building in perpetuity we moved in Cleveland Heights in 1972. BUUC and the Humanist Fellowship collapsed by 1979. Around the same time African American membership in the Society withered to the point where a list of objectives for the Board of Trustees in the late 1970s could read "Restore a meaningfully integrated congregation."
That goal is still possible but it will take a lot of work to get there. There are only a handful of Unitarian Universalist congregations in the country with a membership of more than 10% people of color. They have only achieved that goal after years of hard work, intentional outreach and cultural change. If we are to truly pursue the objective of reflecting the local diversity of our community we will have to step outside of our comforts zones. We will have to engage in innovative outreach efforts and we will have challenge our own understandings of how race and class shape our religious community. I look forward to engaging in this work with you.
The final objective we set forth in the vision part of our mission and vision statement is "to work toward a more just and sustainable society." This is something that we have always done but it is also something we could often do better. A couple of important social justice projects or practices non-withstanding, our congregation currently has no standing social justice committee. Despite this there are many high points in our efforts to work for a better world. A brief list might include: working for the Cleveland Heights Domestic Partnership Registry earlier in this decade, the toy gun buy back we organized in the 1990s, our participation in the sanctuary movement in the 1980s, civil rights and peace work during the 1960s and 1950s and our early awareness of the growing ecological crisis.
Many of you know that this congregation currently has a Green Sanctuary Committee. The committee is seeking certification for our congregation as Green Sanctuary. In doing so they are exploring, in the words of the official UUA program, "what it means to live today within a religious community on an imperiled Earth" and seeking how to better be "stewards of the Earth." While the committee may be new--it formed last year--the impulse is not. Members of our community have long had a concern for the environment. As early as 1964 Dennis Kuby preached a sermon that garnered national attention--this was back in the days when newspapers actually covered minister's sermons--entitled "Why I Will Not Buy A Second Car." In this prophetic sermon he challenged the growing American dependence on the automobile and suggested that a continuation of our attachment to the car as a primary mode of transportation would spell disaster for our cities, our natural environs and our health. He wrote: "The cumulative effect of the automobile in our lives is staggering...She can become our servant, or she can become a Frankstein." Elsewhere he warned "because of our obsessive and sheep-like accommodation to and for the auto, we pour asphalt into our parks and meadow lands, across the country side and along the river edges." As I watch Greater Cleveland spread ever outwards and highways, strip malls and housing developments eat up farm and wild lands I cannot help but think of how well Kuby saw it forty-five years ago.
Kuby was not the only minister from the 1960s who spoke out on environmental issues. Farley Wheelwright garnered attention when, in the wake of the Cuyahoga river fire, he held a well publicized funeral for Lake Erie. While I have been unable to locate the text of the service I have seen several news clippings. They suggest it did something to raise awareness to the deplorable state of Greater Cleveland's greatest natural resource.
I hardly have time in one sermon, or even in a series of sermons, to detail all of the activities of our congregation over the last 57 years. No doubt there are important episodes that I am missing and stories yet to be uncovered either in the memories of those present here today or in our archives. I look forward to learning those stories.
"The milestones of the past...are stepping stones for future achievement," read a pamphlet celebrating the first Unitarian congregation in Cleveland. And so they are. Whatever words we use to describe ourselves--whether we adopt the new mission and vision statement or not--our identity and our aspirations will both be rooted in our heritage and fixed looking towards the future and a larger vision.
That it may always be so. I say Amen.