If UU Politics is "shallow, ineffective, and dogmatic" - what should we do?

I have argued that Unitarian Universalism is an ethical religion, and many Unitarian Universalists seek to witness their ethics through corporate action in their congregations and through their Association of Congregations. After 45 years we could almost argue that this is a given. We may evolve new ethical concerns, and develop new methods of expressing those concerns, but I expect that Unitarian Universalists will continue to express their concerns collectively. Let us define that collective expression of ethical concern about current issues by the term Philocrites gave it, "UU Politics." And while there is a variety of political perspectives within Unitarian Universalism and that variety is represented in the delegates to General Assembly, the process of resolution making encourages the delegates to compromise around the Unitarian Universalist "consensus" which is could be described as civil libertarian, and mildly progressive on social, economic and anti racism agendas.

I also argued that "self righteousness" seems to be the shadow of ethical witnessing for a righteous cause, and that it takes wisdom to avoid demonizing ones opponents, and becoming one sided in the struggle for one's vision of the good.

Philocrites commenting on my essay adds several other concerns namely that "UU politics are often shallow, ineffective, and dogmatic." Let us agree, even if we love UU politics, and our own politics are deep, effective and creative, together we could come up with a list of examples of UU politics that would met Philocrites criticism.

Why? One explanation. We do not give this work professional attention.

A small group of singers got together in a small congregation I know and love, and formed a contemporary singing group. They volunteered to sing in church, and the minister of this small church let them sing. They were enthusiastic, but many members found that the program was not ready for prime time. They did not have a competent choral leader, After eight months they got burned out, trying to do music without leadership.

We can all think of examples of this sort. I believe in the priesthood and prophethood of all believers, but believers do not sustain themselves in ministries, lay or ordained without training, formation and spiritual awareness. We know this when it comes to worship, music, pastoral care, religious education, but when it comes to witnessing our faith in the world, we rely on inspiration and spontaneity.

Our ministers are trained to read ancient texts closely, to know their history, to respond to people in crisis, to prepare worship creatively and to manage the family systems of congregations. With few exceptions the social ethics courses in seminaries are designed to inspire these future ministers to act in the world rather than helping them to lead congregations in how do that effectively.

Our General Assemblies do provide some "how to" workshops, which last for an hour and half. The resolution making process is strickly "learn it by doing it" and I have admired watching some recently inspired UU social justice folks trying to use this process to witness their values and concerns, but honestly they were not "effective" and their speeches were a little "dogmatic" and not "deep."

But who was there to mentor them? To we pass on our knowledge to those who are coming into our faith full of desire to witness to some great moral truth? Many of us who are wise and experienced are too busy, or too jaded to pay much attention to the debate in the plenaries. I know I say to myself, "been there - done that" when I see the Social Witness agenda. Contrary to the stereotype about "GA junkies" most of the people in those seats at GA are first timers, and most of the people at the mikes sponsoring their resolutions of immediate concerns have been with us a few years. The usual suspects are there of course, but not in the numbers that the detractors allege.

And with all due respect to the Unitarian Universalist Association's "faith and action" efforts over the last several decades we have not always employed staff who knew how to train activists to do effective and creative social justice work. The UUA outsourced our training efforts around anti racism in the late 1990s to Crossroads Ministries which raised dogmatism and shallow analysis to a moral stance. We did something right, our Welcoming Congregation program has produced many good results and we have studied those times when it has not succeeded. There is an effort to apply "best practices" to our future social justice work.

If we want our Unitarian Universalist "politics" to be deep, effective and creative we need to give it leadership. Neither the UUA staff nor the UU ministry have provided that leadership and the result has been that our activists experience burnout, disillusionment, or become prey to dogmatism and self righteousness. We should look at the Society of Friends, who are like us an ethical religion. Except the Quakers educate for depth, train for effectiveness, and provide spiritual direction to their activists to designed to avoid self righteousness and dogmatism.