This is my first GA. And so my first banner parade and opening shindig. And that’s all the academic throat clearing you get on this one. (This one’s long, so I broke into five bite-sized pieces.)
1. Ending institutional evil as we know it
The focus of the evening was three moments in UU social justice history: one part Elizabeth Cady Stanton, one part Civil Rights, and one part disability. Three moments where we took a stand and made it count.
The evening’s rhetoric took on an interesting dynamic. One moment we were being regaled with our incredible wonderfulness, our beacon-ness, if you will. The next we were bereft at our complete incompetence at making anything happen ever. Rinse and repeat.
“We so good!! Oh, but we’re so bad at being good! But, look, we’re so good!! Oh, but we’re so bad at being good!!”
Of course, when your goal is to end institutional evil as we know it, you’ve kinda set yourself up for that.
I was a little taken aback when the word flashed across the powerpoint screen, saying that we had committed ourselves to nothing less than ending racism. Wow.
It’s not every group of folks that will commit itself to ending institutional evil as we know it. Maybe most other folks limit themselves to more cautious ambitions. Or more achievable ones.
2. High hopes
Let me ask this question: Do we really expect we will end systemic evil as we know it? Because I don’t think we really do.
Do we expect we’ll raise awareness? Yes. Do we expect we’ll make changes in our own lives and in our congregations? Certainly. Do we expect we’ll make some important impacts in the wider world? Of course. But we will not end systemic evil, and we don’t really even expect to.
So why would we say such a thing? My first instinct was to label it as moral masturbation, something a room of religious liberals voted up to feel good about themselves, but I don’t think that’s it.
Let’s go back to the original “I’m so good! I’m so bad!” dynamic. If that’s a dynamic a group of folks want to set up for themselves, there are ways to make that happen. What you do is set yourself up with a noble, unattainable goal. And then fail at it.
Have we made important, significant progress in ending institutional and systemic evil as we know it, as far as that’s within our means? I think it’s fair to say that we have. I think it’s probably even fair to say that we’ve outdone other religious movements.
I don’t hear us brag about that much. Or at least we don’t brag about it and leave it at that. There’s the brag, but then the excoriation. The excoriation half of that feels much bigger to me.
3. Is that our story?
Who chooses to tell themselves the story that they should fail nobly? It is as though we wish we sing from a hymnal full of songs about our inability to follow through.
But that’s the sort of thing that happens when you say you’ll do no less than end institutional evil. You fail at that every time. That’s not Good News. That’s not a story people line up to be a part of. At least not people interested in being a part of Good News.
4. A couplet of anecdotes, wherein Chutney gets in on the excoriation
Anecdote the first: One of the small brags of the evening was how worship leaders were all asked to use the phrase, “I invite you to to rise in body or spirit.” Immediately after that we started to sing, “Guide my feet while I run this race.” Oops. Can we add “in body or spirit” to the lyrics?
Anecdote the second: At a workshop today, the leader asked folks to give feedback when they agreed with what a commenter said. She said she was going to ask for a show of hands, but she didn’t want to disinclude people with various disabilities. So she asked people to hum their affirmation instead. Oops again.
If we hadn’t have bragged about our commitment to ending ableism, I might have seen those two moments as small steps of progress and not as noble failures.
(Herein ends the rant. Don’t kill me at the bloggers’ dinner. Hafidha says I’m “surprisingly sweet and innocent,” so I’m going to expect you to go with that.)
Several times at the service of the Living Tradition, I remained seated after we’d been invited to stand.
At one point, a lady gave me a funny look. Clearly she doesn’t know rising in spirit when she sees it.
CC
We are so careful in the words we use, and I think Gini and Rev. Sinkford were careful. Whereas …
I would have been happy if the ghost of Martin Luther King Jr had risen up and read “Letters from a Birmingham Jail.” Especially that part where he says:
Human progress never rolls in on wheels of inevitability; it comes through the tireless efforts of men willing to be coworkers with God, and without this hard work, time itself becomes an ally of the forces of social stagnation. We must use time creatively, in the knowledge that the time is always ripe to do right. Now is the time to make real the promise of democracy and transform our pending national elegy into a creative psalm of brotherhood. Now is the time to lift our national policy from the quicksand of racial injustice to the solid rock of human dignity.
“Do we expect we’ll raise awareness? Yes. Do we expect we’ll make changes in our own lives and in our congregations? Certainly. Do we expect we’ll make some important impacts in the wider world? Of course. But we will not end systemic evil, and we don’t really even expect to.”
So our rallying cry should be “Raise Awareness!” or “Make Some Changes in our Lives!” or “Make Some Important Impacts in the Wider World!”?
We do not fail as a result of having lofty goals. We set ourselves up for failure when we start expecting (and settling for) less than what we want to achieve.
Jim, but do we succeed as a result of having lofty goals? There is a middle ground between lofty, unachievable goals and unambitious goals. As far as setting goals goes, if we fail, it’s because we don’t set achievable goals and then hold ourselves accountable for them.
My other point is that we have succeeded, and often, but that we don’t give ourselves credit because our many success pale in comparison to the lofty goal of ending institutional sin as we know it. It’s demoralizing.
It also occurs to me that this language—of ending institutional evil—might be an attempt to lay out a UU eschatology. Or, at least, in a Christian context, a statement like this would have eschatological roots of one sort or another.
If it is, then we can ask: What is the eschatology implicit in it? And is that an eschatology we want?
Perhaps I’m being too simple-minded, but it seems entirely possible to hold these two ideas simultaneously: that we’ve done some great things and that we’ve got a long way to go. And, in the context of a gathering of more than 5,000 UUs, I think it makes sense to articulate big goals while also celebrating accomplishments.
I do think that keeping the larger goals in mind is critical to achieving the smaller goals along the way. It’s hard for me to see how this way of thinking is demoralizing.
It seems to me something of a stretch to try to tease out eschatological implications from a big idea (articulated on a powerpoint screen!) whose purpose is to inspire and serve as a call to action.
Jim, I don’t know where simple minded came into it.
These goals are so big that they can’t be articulated. That’s part of the problem. How do you know when you’ve finished ending racism? The goal is so abstract.
In the Christian tradition, things like the end of institutional evil are eschatological questions, are they not? The book of Revelations in particular focuses on the final defeat of institutional evil in the form of Empire/Babylon. And, going back further still, eschatology itself popped up, at least in part, because folks started to perceive that evil would never be ended aside from direct divine intervention.
Back to it being demoralizing, the problem is the script we’re using. Accomplishments are immediately framed by “how far we still have to go,” so that every success becomes a defeat. I’ve seen liberals do this for years. Nothing is ever enough.
It reminds me of the spirituality of fundamentalists and evangelicals. “Hey, I repented, sought forgiveness, and quit committing sin fill-in-the-blank.” “Oh, but you are still so, so sinful. Back to prayer and Bible study, and quickly, before you get cocky!”
I think “ending racism” makes sense (or doesn’t) depending on the definition of racism one is using. If racism is defined simply as race prejudice than I can see being dubious, as people seem pretty prone to prejudices of some type. But if one is working with the definition of “race prejudice combined with the institutional power to create a system of oppression that benefits white people at the expense of people of color” then we are talking about a human made construct that can be dismantled.
Chutney,
I find it much more demoralizing to abandon the larger goals than to recognize that we’ve still got a long way to go to reach them. And articulating ending racism as a goal is actually quite easy: “One of our goals is to end racism.” I’m content to postpone worrying about definitions of what consititutes an end to racism for a while, but Hafidha Sofia’s definition above would certainly suit me for now.
In terms of the success/defeat issue, on the one hand, you say that it’s a problem with liberals; on the other hand, you say that it’s a problem with fundamentalists and evangelicals. So maybe you’re saying that it’s a problem that everybody has.
But I think you’re making a mistake when you interpret “we still have a long way to go” as “oh, we’re such miserable, sinful failures.” Why make that leap? It may be a part of your script, but it’s not a part of mine.
As far as eschatological implications go, it seems to me that you may be trying to turn a goal into a prophecy. The end of institutional racism need not be an end of the world issue.
Hafidha, I have an easier time with your second definition. That’s much more specific. It’s still a long haul, so I still want to know what to do to get there. And I want us to give ourselves credit–without returning immediately to self-deprecation—whenever we climb one rung up the ladder.
Jim, I’m not the first one to point out the link between fundamentalist ways of being in the world and the Anti-Oppression™ way of being in the world. Let’s not act like I’m going out on a limb here.
Eschatology doesn’t have to be about “end times.” The King quote Hafidha used is straight out eschatology. And prophecy is much wider and broader than the way you seem to be painting it. The King quote, again, is straight out prophecy.
I also want to be clear that I didn’t set out writing this post with you and your scripts in mind. I’m picking up from your tone that one or the other of us is supposed to be the odd man out, that one of us is supposed to lose. Or be stupid. I don’t care for that.
I’m writing about the predominant liberal ethos around social justice victories and failures. I don’t like that ethos. And I aim to call it out.
I’m sorry if my tone has been too intense or inappropriate in some way. I certainly do not think that either of us has to be wrong or stupid. We clearly have a different perception of the way religious liberals handle, or ought to handle, shortcomings and successes in the area of social justice.
i think maybe what you need, chutney, is a work breakdown structure.
maybe we need the big goals, but we must also have smaller, achievable objectives that we can measure along the way. the big goals keep us focused on the point, the small objectives keep us happy because we see that our work is making a difference.
why, yes, i did just finish a week of project management training, why do you ask? :p
while i think project management is mostly a crock of bullshit, i don’t think this is such a bad idea in our context.
i see from the conversation here that no one is actually disagreeing, just having a difference of opinion about how to get to the ultimate goal.
sort of like how no one in the fray over choice/abortion thinks that abortion is a good idea. the opposing sides just have different opinions about how best to fix the problem.