Faith, Anger, and Heart: Part Four (MAYBE DON’T CALL PEOPLE FREAKS?!)

As I rage-hovered off my pew at the back of the Unitarian Universalist Church of the Restoration, Substitute Minister called the children up to the front to join him for the Story for All Ages. On the big screen up front appeared…P.T. Barnum?!

“I never get tired of telling people he was Unitarian,” said the Substitute Minister. I’m skeptical whenever any old-timey (or new-timey, for that matter) white dude’s face is up on the big screen at church, but sheesh-o-rama this was the WORST.

Substitute Minister had seen The Greatest Showman the night before and was inspired to talk with the congregation’s children about it. (For a good accounting of what makes The Greatest Showman so problematic, check out this surprisingly woke episode of The Flop House: https://www.flophousepodcast.com/2018/05/episode-257-the-greatest-showman/) Substitute Minister was impressed with how Barnum had uplifted the “freaks” in the movie and convinced them they were good enough, as if that were up to him.

The. Idea. That this man. Who OWNED AND EXPLOITED HUMAN BEINGS, who called people who looked different “freaks” and CHARGED PEOPLE TO COME LOOK AT THEM was somehow a doer of good, was some white angel there to redeem them?! Was too much. This was the story he was telling the children, and everybody there was just LETTING IT HAPPEN.

This was the day that Trump’s trans erasure memo began circulating, the day we all learned of the impeding registry of genitals, the day my friends across the gender spectrum became even more afraid than they already were. On that day, Substitute Minster thought a song from the “freak” Bearded Lady was what was called for. She was just beginning her song on the big screen as I steamed out the door.

It’s hard to talk about that morning in church without becoming incoherent with rage. The weight and sum of my fear and anger and disgust at the white male entitlement that allowed Substitute Minister to think he had the right to 1. Stifle political announcements and 2. Bestow worth upon those he viewed as beneath him thought his proxy the fictionalized Barnum is heavy to carry and hard to parse. It’s garbage. It’s everything wrong. This kind of institutional white cis male supremacy needs to be stifled at every level, in EVERY edifice, in EVERY way if the rest of us are truly ever going to thrive.

I wrote to the non-substitute minister and heard back pretty quickly. Valid, he said, and offered to talk when he got back from travelling. I headed off, not wearing warm enough clothes, to our local Democrats’ campaign headquarters with my BFF. We picked up our door-knocking lists and settled into our Blue Wave work. But I felt hopeless that afternoon, the things that were wrong and broken seemed so vast and embedded that I worried they could never be healed.

That hopeless feeling would pass, but this brush with Institution, like all others for me, would steal a big swath of time and leave lasting scars.

Faith, Anger, and Heart: Part Three (Singing and Seething)

Not long after I started trying Restoration monthly, they welcomed a new minister. I’d been a fan of McKinley Sims (Okay, full disclosure: He’s super-dreamy. I had a crush. Sometimes the body leads the soul places, what can I say?) since about six years ago when he did some of his seminary work through the Unitarian Society of Germantown. He was always someone I felt like I could learn from, maybe because (as I later learned) he’s from Lubbock, Texas just like my ex-wife/BFF is. Something about that accent just makes explaining go down easy, I guess.

Still, I wondered why a congregation that had a stated goal of inclusivity and a Black Lives Matter banner out front would choose, in 2018, a white, cisgender straight man, albeit a presumably progressive one.

Encouragingly, McKinley’s first sermon as Restoration’s new minister gave me lots of hope. He said “siblings” instead of “brothers and sisters,” which suggested that he might be trained in the ways of the gender spectrum. He made it clear that he is committed to immigrants’ rights and his first month’s theme was “sanctuary.” He talked about how building sanctuary takes work, takes facing problems rather than sweeping them under the rug. He even acknowledged those harmed by church-enabled sexual abuse, which I have NEVER EVER heard a preaching minister of any denomination so. NEVER. I’ve been alive for 44 years. That’s a big deal.

One Sunday a few weeks ago, McKinley went out of town. The Substitute Minister, the layperson leading the service, was a slight, middle-aged white guy. He seemed nice enough, so I felt safe to settle in.

Ever in organizing/canvassing/yelling-at-Nazis mode, the Joy I wanted to share that week was a mini book review. Good and Mad: The Revolutionary Power of Women’s Anger by Rebecca Traister had saved my life and fired up my soul in the trigger-laden weeks following the Kavanaugh hearings, and I admit I was feeling quite evangelistic about it. I’d brought the book for McKinley because I thought he’d like it, and even though he wasn’t there, I carried it up through the Joys and Sorrows line anyway.

“Joys and Sorrows,” announced the Substitute Minister, “Are for matters of the heart, not for political announcements.”

I was SHOCKED! I had never heard them mention politics during that admonition before—one of the reasons I felt safe at Restoration was because it felt like a break from the politics-shaming of my family and of the world at large. Everyone there seemed political, I hadn’t yet had to feel like I was badly-behaved or a freak.

I SEETHED when it was my turn to share. The Substitute Minister shrugged and rolled his eyes as I said:

“I deeply resent being told that politics are not a matter of the heart so…NO…to that.”

(If I had it to do over, I would 100% say “FUCK that.” Live it, learn it.)

I gave my teensy book review, and the women of the congregation smiled and nodded.

As I sat back down in my pew, nearly shaking with anger, a tall and warmly hippie-ish white man, one of the congregation’s regular musicians, that “Thank you for saying that.”

The next person in the Joys and Sorrows line, an African American man who looked to be in his early twenties, made (YAY!) an announcement about the vigil for immigrants’ rights that his committee was hosting the following Tuesday.

Stoplight Guy wasn’t there that week. I missed him.

I tried to listen to the rest of the Joys and Sorrows of the congregation, but I was seething so badly I felt like I was hovering off my pew. I did the bad-habit thing of planning what I was going to write on the minister’s facebook page after the service. I wanted to start typing then and there, but that seemed beyond the pale. I tried joining in the singing, but everything felt dissonant and out of whack.

SURELY once McKinley knew about this, he would fix it, right? SURELY he would understand what the problem was?

Spoilers:

1.      He SORT OF understood.

2.      The service was about to get even more egregiously fucked up.

Anger, Faith, and Heart: Part One

It seems very tricky to be writing about how pissed I am at my local Unitarians at a time when every faith community that isn’t white, mainstream, and Christian (Arguably, Unitarianism IS a white, mainstream, Christian religion, but they certainly don’t like to see themselves that way!) must be feeling protective of their congregations and their faith homes. But at the same time, I see ways in which the fear can contract us into something evil, a witchhuntlike distrust of strangers that provides an excuse to prey upon (or at least silence) the marginalized. In religion, nearly everyone who isn’t a pro-colonialist Christian straight white male looks marginalized to me.

Additionally tricky, I’m writing from the position of an outsider. I was raised Catholic and I’m ALWAYS angry about it, I’ve been an on-again off-again (now probably permanently off-again) Unitarian for about ten years, and I’m too frustrated now with forced/performed feminine niceness to even attend yoga classes very often. Religion and organized spirituality are clearly not a fit for me, and I know I should probably just let them go like a would a bad match on OK Cupid. Similar to my need to be self-employed, I guess my spiritual life needs to be self-determined. Whatever is divine within me needs to be expressed freely, in its own way, without millennia of patriarchy, rape, and colonialism to weigh it down.  I may wonder forever if that’s even possible. I probably will keep trying.

I am still deeply, fundamentally angry at the Unitarian Society of Germantown for the abandonment and betrayal what was their welcome and celebration during Pope Francis’s visit to Philadelphia in 2015.https://theserotoninfactory.blogspot.com/2015/09/pope-week-is-all-of-panics-parkway-is.html  It still feels like a FUCK YOU to raped children, to LGBTQ folks, and especially especially ESPECIALLY to those of us who identify as women. I think sometimes of returning just once to have my name taken out of the USG membership book, where it remains like a bad spell.

The loss of the Unitarian Society of Germantown and the brunches, music nights, and other friend fun that went with it (I still ache when I remember that my closest church friend called me a narcissist. My blood still boils when I remember the lady who condescendingly told me she hopes I find peace. WHAT KIND OF MONSTER FINDS PEACE WITH CHILD RAPE!?)  still makes me so sad and angry. I probably should have steered clear of future attempts to join a faith community, but I missed the singing. I drive by the Unitarian Church of the Restoration on the way home from work most nights, and they seemed like they might be less patriarchal than USG.

Then, one night in the spring, in a yoga studio running a Kirtan sing with a friend of mine, a voice came to me: “Go back to church. Go back to singing.”

Why Are Women and GLBT People Still Invisible to So Many Liberals?

I used to be a member of the Unitarian Universalist Church, a self-proclaimed liberal religion that aimed to value “The inherent worth and dignity of all people.” I was shocked last fall when my congregation’s pastors (both men) made the decision to endorse Pope Francis on our church sign and replace our regular service with the televised pope mass.

No amount of discussion could make the pastors understand why, as a queer feminist, I would be offended by their decision to endorse a religion that opposes reproductive rights, doesn’t allow women to lead congregations, and condemns gay marriage. No one in the Unitarian Society of Germantown, gay or straight, male or female, could see my point, so I left USG and, I’m pretty sure, all of religion, behind. I would have seen this as an isolated incident, a blind spot within just this particular group, but I see the same invisibility playing out on a national level through the Bernie Sanders campaign.

I know that there are many valid reasons to choose him, and I trust that the Bernie fans near and dear to me have everyone’s best interest at heart just as much as I do, but by now I’ve scrolled through hundreds of pro-Bernie posts without seeing a single mention of protecting women’s rights or fighting for GLBT equality. He does have those things in his platform, but they don’t seem to be the reason that people are so bananas about him. That oversight, more than anything else, is why I feel that gender-normative prejudice is the unconscious driving force underlying most (but not all) of the Bernie love.

I’ve seen and heard well-reasoned arguments in his favor, but here’s what acquaintances in my friend feed seem to love about Bernie Sanders:

1.      He’s not Hillary Clinton.

2.      He is adorable.

3.      He’s against some mysterious entity called “the banks.”

When Hillary Clinton received the endorsements of Planned Parenthood and the Human Rights Campaign, Bernie dismissed those organizations, which serve to protect the health and safety of women and GLBT Americans, as “the establishment.” With women’s health under attack and anti-gay legislation taking hold all over the country, I would like those organizations to stay established. I want a president who will fight to keep the progress that Barack Obama worked so hard to create.

And now, albeit super-awkwardly, Bernie Sanders is trying to align himself with another so-called liberal, Pope Francis, who doesn’t believe women should have autonomy over our own bodies and who condemns gay marriage.

This has been my year to learn that “liberal” and “progressive” don’t automatically mean “feminist,” and although that revelation has been painful, it has inspired me to act with more self-respect, to turn away from those who don’t prioritize women and GLBT folks. I refuse to be invisible. I refuse to be talked down to. I refuse to stop asking for the same safety and rights that straight white men are born feeling entitled to. Though I’ll hang on tight to those important to me no matter how they vote, I’m enjoying pivoting my life in a more feminist direction. Whether or not we wind up with our first female president, my life will be very mush the richer for this race.

Martin Luther King, Jr. Day of Service

Photo by Wally Moyer.

You can go here for more info about the MLK Day of Service.

I’ve heard that Philadelphia has the most well-attended Day of Service in the nation—go us!

This year, it was especially festive for me because it was the first one that I’ve gotten to spend with Amy. We got up early and went over to my church, the Unitarian Society of Germantown. They had about 20 projects going on, including making meals for the homeless, caring for historic buildings, letter-writing for GLBT rights, and collecting supplies for a school that just burned down.

After we signed up for our project, we joined the stream of people going into the church’s sanctuary. It was a moving place to be, because MLK himself spoke from our pulpit back in the days. There’s a plaque and everything. If Amy and I look superserious in the above picture, it’s because we got real chocked up when we learned that Martin and Coretta met in a Unitarian congregation. (Not sure why that would choke up Amy, who’s not Unitarian—I firmly support her right to stay home on Sundays and watch Caprica and other shows that I don’t want to watch.)

The church was full to the edges, with Sesame Street levels of diversity. As I sang along to “We are standing on the side of love,” I felt the same measured optimism that I felt at the Rally to Restore Sanity: this is a really good thing to do, and I’m so glad to be in this crowd, but I hope everybody’s still gonna be working on this tomorrow. It’s beautiful, but it isn’t a solution in and of itself.

The project that Amy and I chose was helping to clean Johnson House, which I used to walk past every day on the way to work. The House’s website says it’s “Philadelphia’s only accessible and intact stop on the Underground Railroad. The Johnson House was home to three generations of Quaker families who worked to abolish slavery and improve living conditions for freed African Americans.”
Cleaning those walls was a little tiny thing, but it was satisfying. It made me happy to think that even in the midst of the nightmare of slavery, families were still reaching out to help other families. It made me want to recommit to being as loving and welcoming as I can be.