Opportunity rather than equality has shaped the American vision of Beloved Community, at least the dominant vision. Equality as a goal, in fact, has been broadly embraced only as equality of opportunity.

The conversation about reparations, which I introduced again in my sermon last Sunday, calls for a more honest understanding of the impact of trauma and oppression. That understanding raises real questions about the adequacy of opportunity as a singular standard and a goal.

Based on my inbox, looking at the way trauma is passed down provided a lens that resonated deeply for many of us. One way that lens operates for me is to place equality of outcome on at least an equal footing with equality of opportunity.

It was the deep personal resonance of that trauma lens that made the reflection on reparations possible. The personal is what opened the door to a better conversation about policy.

If equality of outcome is embraced as an essential part of our vision, then the question of repair and reparations has a context that does not depend entirely on guilt for its energy.

There is a sermon in each of these short paragraphs.

What vision we claim makes so much difference. A vision that includes equality of outcome opens the possibility of truth telling and truth seeking in new ways. It might even open new paths toward hope. It might.

These are not new thoughts. Nor is the conversation about reparations new.

In my 2007 report to the General Assembly as UUA President, I offered these comments:

“Should we collectively acknowledge that some of the beautiful white clapboard Unitarian churches in New England were built with profits from the slave trade?” I spoke of the million dollars committed by the UUA to Black economic development in 1968, but never fully paid. “Doesn’t our moral balance sheet still carry an unpaid debt?”

In that same year, the UUA’s Leadership Council developed a new vision statement, which I share here:

“With humility and courage born of our history, we are called as Unitarian Universalists to build the Beloved Community where all souls are welcome as blessings, and the human family lives whole and reconciled.”

I believe that we have yet to fully answer that call.

Blessings,

Bill