The theme of Radical Hospitality/Welcome this month has been an opportunity for truth telling about work we need to do. Our guest preacher this Sunday, Rev. Carol Cissel, will bring her own message about welcome to add to our resources as we engage this issue.
Neither the Unitarian nor the Universalist sides of our tradition provide great theological depth in this area, historically. Universal salvation (our Universalists heritage) was rarely translated into a radical welcome of difference in this world. It was the dramatic decline in Universalist membership during the early 20th century that impelled them to consolidate with the Unitarians. Through much of their history they were worried about keeping who they had rather than reaching out. Race was a particular problem for them.
The Unitarians, at the mid-point of the last century, were beginning to grow and engage questions of difference. It was called “Unitarian Advance” led by A. Powell Davies of All Souls in Washington, DC, whom I quoted extensively last Sunday. That growth was more geographic – into the expanding suburbs – than demographic. Davies argued that merger with the Universalists would drain energy around outreach and growth. And it did.
Our liberal religious conversation about welcome – across lines of difference – did not become robust until the Welcoming Congregation program, centered on sexual orientation, in the 1990’s and our on-again-off-again efforts around race since then. First Unitarian became a Welcoming Congregation early in that program. We will begin the process of re-certifying this year.
The exploring of both practices of welcome and the theological grounding that calls us to that attention is current work for us.
Janice Marie Johnson now serves on the UUA staff, as Co-Director of the Ministry and Faith Development staff group. She is a religious educator and long-time tiller in the fields of diversity and inclusion. I want to share some of her reflections to help deepen our conversations.
From “The Theology of Inclusion” by Janice Marie Johnson:
“Masakhane, my theology of inclusion, is a rich and resonant word from the Nguni family of languages of South Africa, of which Zulu and Xhosa are two. Loosely translated into English it means, ‘Let us build together.’
Building a multicultural sensibility is difficult, transformative work as well as a much-needed leadership skill that allows us to plug into our Power Source as we embrace joy, solemnity, reverence, and faith. A theology of inclusion is a divinely inspired, intentional reaching out to ‘the other.’ It invites us to disregard resistance, love beyond belief, and honor inclusion… We provide the hands and feet, knowing that God [the Spirit] provides the ability to do the impossible, to make a way out of no way.
Whether we know someone or not, we are called to love greatly. bell hooks urges educators-in-training to love their students even before they know them. That is another way of describing the theology of inclusion: extending the circle to all knowing that each of us stands on holy ground.”
Masakhane. Let us build together.
Bill