If I felt the need to go to a church, or belong to a Western religion, I suppose it would be a Unitarian Universalist church. Years ago I visited one in the South (I can’t remember if I spoke there), and was impressed that there was no cross on the wall, no fixed set of beliefs (many members are pretty much atheists); and I was impressed by their commitment to real social justice. UUs, as they’re called, have been tremendously active in fighting racism, raising awareness of LGBTQ+ activities, and helping immigrants. As far as I can see, the church exists not to foster any beliefs or creeds, and does no proselytizing, but aim—or, rather, aimed—to create a sense of community among their liberal and largely well-off members. (I don’t feel a need for that kind of community, but of all American churches, UU is probably the one that does the most net good, since up to recently it’s caused little harm.)
But it’s the “progressive” nature of the church, and the privilege of its members, that in recent years has propelled it from the realm of social justice to that of Social Justice, with the capital letters denoting wokeness. In the article below, published at the Foundation Against Intolerance & Racism (FAIR) Substack site, Kate Rohde describes the creeping and destructive wokeness of the church, something I’ve heard about several times before. She’s now a defrocked (?) UU minister suing the UUs for defamation and for denying her her job; and she describes in detail how the church is crumbling. The cause, as you might expect, is accusations of racism, or rather accusations of white supremacy, Part of the controversy is described in the Wikipedia article on the church:
Racism:
Internal controversy over the hiring of the UUA’s Southern Region Lead (a white man from outside the region was hired rather than a Latina woman who resided within the region) led to resignations and apologies in 2017. UUA President Peter Morales, the denomination’s first Latino president, resigned amid criticism of his failure to address the diversity controversies. The three co-presidents who took over commissioned a “racism audit” to address white supremacy within the denomination. In April 2018, The Washington Post reported that the UUA “in the past year has been asked to help resolve 15 congregational conflicts involving religious professionals of color”.
Rhode has all the ideological qualifications to be a UU minister, but they booted her out anyway:
Dr. Rohde is a graduate of Reed College, University of Chicago, and Meadville Lombard Theological School. From 1980 to 2014, she served as a UU Minister. She was active in women’s rights, gay rights, civil rights, and the sanctuary movement.
Click below to read about how a decent church is going bad:
Rohde became a UU minister in 1980, and had a good 17-year run before things started to fall apart. It involved accusations of racism—in a church famous for being antiracist. I quote Rohde, and have bolded one part to show how woke the UUs have become: they’re policing language in a ridiculous way:
Things began to change dramatically six years ago, when a latina Sunday school director complained of discrimination after a white minister was chosen for a job that she wanted. The Unitarian Universalists’ first latino president resigned in the midst of an internet storm and accusations of racism against his administration. No concrete proof was offered for any of the accusations. In a closed-door meeting, the national Board of Trustees declared that Unitarian Universalism harbored “structures and patterns that foster racism, oppression, and white supremacy.” No evidence was given for this assertion. This was a surprising self-evaluation for a group with a strong civil rights record, including the highest percentage of clergy to participate in the Selma Civil Rights March.
A program of instruction in postmodern anti-racism was directed at ministers and laity. It allowed no modification or questioning of its precepts. Enlightenment values like reason, free speech, and diversity of opinion were characterized as part of the white supremacy culture. Any attempt to challenge someone else’s ideas is now frequently met not with evidence or reasoned defense, but by labeling the challenge (and often the challenger) as racist, ableist, transphobic, and the like. For example, at a national meeting of clergy in 2020 I argued in favor of allowing ministers to keep the right to legal representation in disciplinary matters, but my position was attacked as racist by a minister who more recently has become the leader of the Unitarian Universalist Association (UUA). The successful slogan “Standing on the Side of Love” was junked because a few people complained that the word “standing” was offensive to those who couldn’t stand. In discussion groups at our national assembly, people were arbitrarily removed by facilitators because some person or persons objected to their opinions.
The ideological purge ramped up in 2019 when the new leadership condemned, defamed, persecuted, and ultimately removed from the ministry the Reverend Todd Eklof after he published three essays criticizing the UU’s rejection of liberal values. I joined with others to defend him. Then they came for me too—ultimately removing me from ministry for comments I made criticizing those who were enforcing ideological uniformity in UU spaces. They accused me of “gaslighting,” and making people feel “unsafe” with my words.Ironically, one of the accusations they made against me was that I had complained about “retaliation” and “persecution” within the church. They also came after me for my political opinions—claiming, for example, that because I had the audacity to question whether individuals with male genitalia could be lesbians, I had “caused UU spaces to actually be unsafe” for “trans congregants.”
Clearly, the freedom of speech and thought that was deeply embedded in the UU church is now gone: the authoritarian Left has taken over and has, in effect, now forced a creed on the church: the creed of woke antiracism. One more point:
Now, church officials regularly and without compunction defame someone and destroy their life’s work over ideological or political disagreements. When queried by lawyers about the UU’s violation of their own bylaws promising freedom of conscience and their lack of normal due process, the UUA replied that as a religious organization, they are legally entitled to contravene their own rules if they choose to do so.
Rohde was fired (and lost her pension) for opposing the creeping wokeness of the Church. For one thing, she criticized junking the “standing on the side of love” slogan on the grounds that it’s ableist. I wish her luck in her lawsuit. But as for the church itself, I’m afraid you can kiss it goodbye. Maybe it will fragment into several moieties, at least one of which will embrace the UU’s original principles. But as for me, if forced to pick a faith I’d now take Buddhism over Unitarian Universalism.
You can read more about her lawsuit at the New York Post, where this photo of Rohde appears:
Why do they do this? It seems like a form of self-immolation.
I once gave a talk at a Unitarian church gathering in the late 1980’s. It was their regular Sunday meeting but it wasn’t called a “service.” The talk was entitled “Creationism in the Public Schools: the Fallacy of Equal Time.” I was a bit concerned about giving a talk on this subject to this group, but I quickly discovered that I was preaching to the converted. It was a good group (mostly of university professors and their spouses). My colleague who convinced me to speak at the gathering called the group “The Unitarians.” He didn’t even call the institution a “church.” His definition of a Unitarian? “A person who believes in one God, … at most.”
I’ve never been able to grasp why monotheism is considered an advance over polytheism or pantheism.
And why monotheists are so *utterly* certain that all roads lead back to a single deity. Who says? Why should this be the case? If there is one eternal being, why can’t there be 12, or 96, or 8,745,391?
I believe in *no* deities or supernatural entities of any kind, having seen no credible evidence. But I’m still perplexed by monotheists’ vigorous confidence in the “one god” theory.
That’s a good question. Isn’t it just because the One God is a jealous God and told His followers to have no other gods? They have confidence because His book says so. If they were successful in battle against polytheistic tribes (instead of getting wiped out by them) there would be something of a self-fulfilling prophecy in there, which is quite unlike the evolutionary favoritism shown to binary gamete systems.
It’s like in Highlander. The Immortals chop each other’s heads off until there’s only one left to rule us all.
Unitarian congregations used to include some individuals who were agnostic or had
Jewish cultural backgrounds, joining on Sundays for a community experience. Now such individuals will have to go woke or go elsewhere—except that woke shibboleths are infiltrating alternative organizations too. Evidently, the time has arrived to form explicitly anti-wokeitarian churches, community groups, clubs, associations, NGOs, companies, caucuses, guilds, troupes, academies, schools, universities, and clans.
Yes very true. Even more amazingly, UU churches used to have ACTUAL CONSERVATIVES!! SHOW ME TO FAINTING COUCH!! I actually know some. In the fullness of time, I went from being a “liberal UU Dem” to being a “conservative UU registered republican”. I switched my registration Jan 2023.
There is a confusion between the “liberal as open-minded person” and “liberal in the political sense”. UUs confuse the 2. I often say that “UUism is a liberal religion, not a religion for liberals”. I will agree, however, that 90% of UUs are liberals, and often very far on the left. As a conservative, I don’t bother explaining why my fellow UUs are wrong about their political opinions. That’s not why I have been a UU for 30 years.
I was one of the Actual Conservatives in the UU, until I left the UU church some decades ago. Nobody ever explained to me what the necessary, mandatory, or required connection is between liberal religion and left wing politics. To this day,
nobody ever has.
Yawn. Nothing worse than a “conservative”- (made up ridiculous term meaning nothing) talking about “liberals”.
1st- Liberality is the opposite of Greed. Being “liberal” on today’s political spectrum is meaningless as Richard Nixon would qualify as a liberal today. Look around now -what do you see? White supremacy everywhere. Still. Patriarchy everywhere. Militarism and Capitalism. Not much Liberality. As for UU they try but they are for the most part neoliberal- see Clinton/HRC/Obama/Biden as they fly their Ukraine flags (pro war) and voice their support against antisemitism (a gimme but radically elides Israel’s genocide of Palestinians).
2nd. There is very little difference between political parties when you see them under the spell of the isms.
As for UU being “woke” this needs some clarification and examination. UU’s have always been perfectionistic and highly critical of themselves and one another. Because they are for the most part godless-atheist-folk they by default become demi-gods believing they can right all wrongs and that their side has true intellectual authority in any debate. This righteousness of course mimics the worst of religions so when you walk into a UU church you’re instantly struck by how this church, their leaders and the congregations, music and pageantry can be best characterized as Judeo-christian lite. They even hold sermons on Sundays, have choirs and light candles.
And thirdly, if you’ve ever gone to more than one UU church regularly (I have for 8 years) you can quickly ascertain the best thing about them is the OWL program (Our Whole Lives) which guides children into knowledge about sexuality. Otherwise each UU church can fall into the capricious pursuits of their leader as there is no religious text or spiritual program to follow. There are principles in UU but these are untethered to a larger context and can be applied ad hoc or not.
But let me not fall prey to intellectualism and let’s give UU’s a break. They’re at least trying to address societal ills-white supremacy being at the forefront. Although the problem will always reign as very few PoC attend UU and even fewer are drawn to serve as UU ministers. As for this stern white womyn UU minister claiming “wokeness” as a reason for her ouster I can imagine she has found a place to serve- the issue of “wokeness” used as a perjorative term like the myth of reverse-racism that preceded it, is a backlash caused by white people not accepting their own limitations. But in this country there’s plenty of like-minded people in the majority culture to find one’s niche. Her grievance as such is pitiful and trifling- a by product of her privilege.
I occasionally attended UU back in the 90’s and as I recall there was a looming split between the atheist/rationalists and the spiritual/New Age-y. The tension was more or less resolved by the majority pushing the idea that everyone’s views were equally valid and the only sin was telling someone you thought they were wrong. Nice people, but I didn’t join.
Looks like they threw out the one main sin and adopted a bunch of other sins
you’re right…
This is what “Christian Nationalism” was invented for – intimidate extant churches into accepting ideological capture.
Why?
To survive as “friend” in the friend/enemy distinction — because the hollow decoy enemy of “Christian Nationalism” is set for elimination.
Side note : I only just now started reading about how Communism incubated in churches of the Russian Empire. I’m sure that is a large topic.
Oh also :
Liberation Theology was a subversion of the Catholic church. Paulo Freire used that result in his Pedagogy of the Oppressed.
Is there a book or other resource you can recommend on the incubation of Communism in Russian churches? I am interested in reading more about that.
I only scanned Wikipedia.
But Paulo Freire definitely discusses Liberation Theology – either in Pedagogy of the Oppressed or Politics of Education – there’s a heading. In fact, Ibram Kendi mentions LT in a talk out there.
So I am keen to read about this – and yes, I picked this up from James Lindsay’s spoken word/writing.
At long last, I have something :
Series :
Communism in American Life
Harcourt, Brace, & World, New York
Communism & The Churches
Ralph Lord Roy
1960
429 pages w/ Bibliographic essay, notes, and index.
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 60-10941 (pre ISBN?)
… smells good too! 😉
There’s other stuff too, it’s just this is the first one I picked.
And don’t ask how I can remember these things…
A strange kind of madness is afoot.
“Standing for…” is ableist?
A similar situation is developing in Episcopalian churches in California, Pasadena. It won’t be long before lawsuits become the standard response.
I feel for this woman.
Wishing her well. She may win, she has a good case.
Just be careful, you don’t want to be seen as being outstanding in your field! 🙂
Haha ! That’s now considered racism!
Liberal Quakerism, which has long been similar to UU in many ways, has become very much like what is described above. Dismantling Quakers’ supposed systemic racism and white supremacy, decolonizing the congregations, supporting destructive movements like BLM, marginalizing dissenters, etc. The long Quaker tradition of attaining unity in love and respect when making decisions has been abandoned for insistence on conformity of thought and exclusion of views considered unacceptable. Just raising basic questions about certain issues is not tolerated. My congregation’s ministry committee even developed a procedure for silencing people, including those speaking during worship, if they felt that the words might offend someone. That’s why I left in 2021 after decades as a Quaker author and local leader. (I expect to publish soon an essay about my leaving — I’m working on it now.)
I will be interested to read that.
I’d also like to read your essay, George.
” …silencing people, including those speaking during worship, if they felt that the words might offend someone.” Couldn’t they introduce a trigger warning system?
Or, alternatively, a Friends’ Committee to review flashes of the Inner Light which might, conceivably, do harm to Friends’ Meeting as the ultimate Safe Space.
That took longer than expected, but it’s posted now. I’ll try to embed the URL here: “Leaving Liberal Quakerism: What Love Would Have Me Do”
Thanks, George. I applaud your openness and sincerity. I learned some things about Quakerism I was unaware of before. I’ve also subscribed to your blog.
Thanks, Stephen. And I’m happy to be introduced to your site.
That’s a shame! I hope you inform us when your essay is published.
It’s available now: “Leaving Liberal Quakerism: What Love Would Have Me Do”
I Used to be UU, was a member of the Unitarian Universalist Assocation for 20 years, and left the Association at the time the current brouhaha was just starting when the aforementioned Todd Eklof was being cancelled. (cf. Eklof’s The Gadfly Papers https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/46250987) I could write my own “papers” on my leaving, but to be brief here, I say that I left UUism because I was both pushed by the darkness, i.e., the growing “wokeness” and authoritarianism of the UUA, and drawn by the light, i.e., a strong desire to concentrate on the “spiritual” experience à la Sam Harris’s current work, a concentration that is conspicuous by its absence from UUism, which I came to see as sterile in regards to any spiritual practice (using that term, again, as Harris does).
I hope I don’t embarrass our friend and fellow reader, David Cycleback, whose Substack, Big Ideas, contains his essays on where Unitarian Universalism has gone wrong in recent years. Check it out! https://davidcycleback.substack.com/
I’ve been on a similar journey. Glad I’m not the only one! I need to use my Waking Up app much more than I do, to make myself a better parent and human. The wokeness isn’t doing that for me. Honestly if everyone in the world was moving toward mindfulness and loving kindness, there would be few problems left.
I continue to support our local UU fellowship for one reason: so when Johnny comes home from kindergarten and says “Why don’t we go to church? Susie wants me to come with her to her [Bible thumping] church,” the parents have an option. In many smaller towns, if you don’t “go to church” you are considered weird. Yes, UU national is a lost cause. Unfortunately, as I understand it, if a local church drops its UU affiliation, the national can come in and claim all the assets, so breaking off from them is a non-starter. As I think someone once said with reference to the Freedom From Religion Foundation, “Every good organization is eventually taken over by zealots who cripple its original purpose.”
“Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket.”
— Eric Hoffer, The Temper of Our Time
I only go because of one family, who is a big part of our social world now. And because I tried the local Buddhists and they aren’t very nice. Bummer.
No wonder church attendance is down.
Riffing on one of Jerry’s closing thoughts, I think of Arthur C. Clarke. Though Clarke refers to religions as “a form of mind virus,” he also declares that “Buddhism stands apart in being tolerant, accommodating, and pragmatic” (foreword to
The Buddha’s Teachings on Prosperity by Bhikkhu Basnagoda Rahula).
Well, mostly. Kind of.
There is a good deal of nutty nonsense in actual, “Eastern” Buddhism’s history and texts, just as with any religion.
And as Myanmar and Sri Lanka have shown, practicing Buddhists are hardly above the same sort of prejudice and violence that inflicts virtually every religion.
Just one, tiny modern example: Check out the Dalai Lama’s statements on homosexuality.
“Religion poisons everything.” — Christopher Hitchens
P.S. Though I have no degree in comparative religion, I spent a decade as a journalist focused on religion.
I don’t necessarily disagree with you. I think when we look at Buddhism as a praxis and not a dogma, though, we see the tolerance and pacifism come through, as the aim of Buddhism is not a particular, correct belief but a particular, ethical behavior.
Nonetheless, along the line of Hitch’s observation, I’d recommend this book, Zen at War
https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/238872
“There is no right and there is no wrong but right is right and wrong is wrong”… I didn’t make that up. I’m quoting a person whose name I can’t remember. Is that allowed?
Sub specie aeternitatis v. in terra
Stephen, we have a few things in common. If you’re on Facebook, find me here:
https://www.facebook.com/NathanNathanNat
Thanks for reaching out, Nat. I’m not on Facebook, but you can communicate with me via my blog, thegloss.home.blog
From Wikipedia:
The long march through the institutions is a slogan coined by socialist student activist Rudi Dutschke around 1967 to describe his strategy to create radical change in government by becoming part of it.
I guess the long march through the Unitarian Universalism church and the Quaker church has met with little resistance. I rather suspect that Buddhism won’t escape either.
What makes it a church and not a club?
They meet on Sunday mornings.
I just remembered entryism – this is a thing – and exactly what it sounds like :
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entryism
… not a lot of church examples. But worth noting.
I had to laugh at the fact they can no longer have the word “standing” in their slogan. I’m involved with a University where they no longer will use the phrase “master plan” for their campus planning, because the word “master” could be triggering for some people. Of course, they still give out master’s degrees.
I’m a life long UU and activist for justice who was shocked by the brazenly false accusations of racism in the 2017 “hiring controversy” when UUA President Peter Morales and others chose to resign rather than endure the slander and social media mob – the first big act of “cancel culture” in recent UU history. I’ve spent much of my time since then trying to figure out what in the hell was going, as I grew up in a different era (post WW II). Finally realized that what I witnessed was a “woke” takeover of the leadership of the UUA. It had been simmering since the late 1990s and broke through with the moral panic over the election of Trump, which was blamed on hidden racism and white supremacy instead of 40 years of escalating economic inequality. And it really went berserk with the persecution of Rev. Dr. Todd Eklof in 2019 and Kate Rohde in 2022, both of whom I now know well (Kate since her Reed College days).
A number of congregations have split apart or been severely damaged, often by intolerant “woke” ministers endorsed by the UUA, supported by intolerant woke factions in the pews. But the backlash is now accelerating (I’m active in 4 national dissident groups but also zoom into UUA board meetings, have run for a UUA office, and participate in 2 UU congregations). The national UU leadership is still very dysfunctional but has begun to moderate its commitment to woke ideology and language. For example, the new national president no longer proclaims her bonafides as a leader seeking to dismantle a mythical “white supremacy culture” in the UUA and new ministers are backing off from the bogus “whiteness studies” of Critical Race Theory, lest they lose too many congregants, who are increasingly fed up with white-guilt blaming and shaming.
Todd Eklof has now helped create a new counterweight to the UUA: The “North American Unitarian Association” – to help out both individuals and churches who are fed up with the UUA. But whether this will lead to a full breakup of the UUA, as has already happened with the United Methodists, remains to be seen. It’s all part of the “societal breakdown” aspect of the “Great Unraveling” (see the quick read “Welcome to the Great Unraveling” from the Post Carbon Institute).
The main reason people are fed up with the UUA is its authoritarian policies .. you must bow down to the “ woke” ideology or else! You can be cancelled for saying that the change in a hymn( STANDING on the Side of Love) is silly if not actually offensive to disabled, or for noting that men can’t be lesbians.
Science has been thrown out for identity. Individual beliefs in freedom must be “ congregational freedom” whatever that means!
The values that once made UU an attractive choice are thrown to the winds of identity politics and Social Justice writ large! No longer can such words as “ men and women” be used in case it offends the “ “ non-binary “ (only bacteria and other lower organisms are nonbinary , but never mind!) and on and on!
My family were members of UU back in the 60s. Very liberal and classically so. It does not surprise me to see them go woke. They were a very committed folk and, I suppose, subject to guilt. They probably asked themselves, am I liberal enough? But, the church is not very unified from what I can tell. Probably enclaves of rationality out there.
UUs live in desperate fear of any accusation of racism or transphobia or homophobia. This makes them vulnerable to any form of “white guilt”. This kind of race-mail is being used, as we speak, by the UUA (UU Association) to convince UUs that they are racists, and must atone. It’s an evil and wrong approach.
As a UU since 1993 who has been a member of 3 churches, I followed the controversy about the hiring of the “regional lead”. The discussion here left out a key fact: The white guy was an ordained minister, and the Latino woman was not a minister. Traditionally, the regional leads are ministers.
The main issue there was “racism as a Woke complaint”. The use of racism was to elevate a less -qualified candidate (Latino woman) over the more qualified (white guy). This is what I call the DEIter Principle, in which less qualified candidates use their color, sexuality, immigrant status, and other “victim class” identifiers as an “alternative qualification system”. This is the manner in which Claudine Gay became President of Harvard, despite extremely thin credentials. What she DID have is the promotion and consecration of DEI stupid. She is now out, and Harvard may recover in a decade or so from the fervent application of the DEIter Principle.
The DEIter Principle is, of course, a take-off on the Peter Principle, which postulated that executives rise to a level just above that of their maximum effectiveness. In the DEIter Principle, there is actually no need for ANY qualifications. All you need is to be black or Latina.
+1
Yes, sadly we have come to that as a society!
As mentioned by the above poster, I’ve written often in my substack about the sorry state of affairs in UU.
My late mother, who was an atheist and longtime civil rights activist, quit the church in 2019 over the new dogmatism and illiberalism. She said, “They changed religions on me,” and compared the new version of UU to “Calvinism.”
https://davidcycleback.substack.com/
“The successful slogan “Standing on the Side of Love” was junked because a few people complained that the word “standing” was offensive to those who couldn’t stand.”
This is insanely idiotic! Don’t these people know that words can have nonliteral meanings?
When you explain something to a blind person, and she replies “I see”, will you tell her that she’s wrong because she cannot see anything? (I hope you won’t!)
It is. Most disabled find it infantilizing and don’t support it. They understand and use metaphors just like everyone else. I know a paraplegic UU who said the removal of “standing” was the “most idiotic thing I have ever heard.”
Yes, that’s the insanity of “ wokeism”!
It also implies that anyone with a different viewpoint is “Standing on the Side of Hate,” but that’s fine with most UUs.
This is a recent Facebook post of mine on the “standing” issue discussed multiple times above. It’s nice to see it isn’t just me!
UU Friends, I’d like to know if this post offends you! We used to say “We don’t have to think alike to love alike” and I hope that sentiment doesn’t fade away as the world gets more divided. Jason Shelton, a great musician and person (who I had the pleasure of meeting many years ago), wrote a wonderful song in support of LBGT folks, people of color, and others, called Standing on the Side of Love. “We are standing on the side of love. Hands joined together, as hearts beat as one.” Well, apparently the word “standing” is now offensive in that context, because not everyone can stand. It’s totally ableist! Years ago when we sang that song, and proudly marched in parades, we thought “standing” on the side of love was a good thing. What great advance in civilization has occurred to suggest some correction must be made to our errant behavior? I understand “when we know better we do better” but I’d like to ask “Is it better?” In our great wisdom, we have altered the lyrics of the song to read “answering the call of love.” But couldn’t this offend someone who cannot verbalize a response? To answer a call you must hear that call as well. Are those with deafness or hard of hearing now offended by the new lyrics? Where does it end? Are there not amputees unable to hold hands with others? Can hearts beat as one, if someone suffers from dysrhythmia? Will English teachers be offended at the idea that figurative language is no longer understood by liberals? Of all the problems in the world, is the word “standing” among them? Who benefits from any of this stuff? There are people sitting on the political fence who will jump over to the Orange Freak side because of things like this. There aren’t enough UUs to throw an election, but we are seeing this kind of thing all over the place in liberal circles. I hope this nonsense ends sooner than later, and we can get back to doing real things that help real people in the real world.
+1
I was singing in a UU choir at the time of the controversy around Shelton’s hymn. Each one of us choir members had to go through the teal hymnals, Singing the Journey, and change the words to the controversial hymn by pasting the new words over the old ones using printed stickers from the UUA. That was the beginning of the end of my membership in the UUA.
BTW, one of my friends at this church is wheelchair bound, and he was shaking his head at this non-issue.
Jason Shelton was tremendously kind to alter those lyrics. As a songwriter myself, I would have told the complainers to go to heck.
Incidentally, he’s been cancelled for sexual misconduct since then: https://www.firstunitarianportland.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/Speaking-of-Justice-Faith-in-Action-Intersectionality-February-Issue-009.pdf
I agree 100%. Used to sing in a UU choir. Honestly, this was the last straw for me. Sermons stopped being spiritual. It was a never ending series of social justice lectures. Nobody thinks. Just go with what ever the newest flavor issue of the day. Just call something racist, ableist, anti-trans, whatever. The truth of the claim don’t matter. It’s a progressive version of the Red Scare. You are right. Moderates look at this stuff and feel like they have to choose between different flavors of crazy.
As is often the case the population being protected doesn’t want the change at all. And yet we’re also told not to speak for groups if not a member of that group.
I have a deep knowledge of the UU and the UUA. Most of what you say is accurate. However, the UU congregations and UUA don’t have a pension program. They get a 401k. She did not lose her 401k. That’s fully vested from the start. What she probably lost, however, is a small “service gratuity” given by the UUA to retired ministers. It averages about $400 per quarter. So you are looking at about $100/month.