Thanks for All the Fish (with update)
After seven years in the UU world, I've decided that I can no longer in good conscience call myself a Unitarian Universalist, and that I need to resign my membership in my local UU church. In the long and hallowed tradition of GBCW posts, though, I need to explain why--and so you can follow me below the fold if you're interested.


My most recent post on my personal LJ contained an essay that I composed with the intention of putting it up on my UU church’s online discussion forum. You’re welcome to read the whole thing if you have the time and the interest--but if not, the short version is that I am alarmed at the popularity within UUism of the work of Methodist minister and Christian theologian Rev. James Fowler. Specifically, I'm concerned about his theory of faith development, which he first stated in his 1981 book, Stages of Faith. My concern arises because it’s very clear that Fowler has nothing but bile and condescension for nontheistic and irreligious ways of seeing the world--which, unfortunately, hasn’t prevented several UU ministers from deciding that his theory is terrific. (It’s not; it’s heavily bigoted, and its pretensions to verifiable social science are absurd.) Most troubling of all is that some of these UU ministers have picked up on Fowler’s insulting attacks on atheists and other kinds of nonbelievers and are using his theory as an excuse to repeat these same attacks. My essay communicates my alarm at this development.

Before posting the essay on the church discussion forum, though, I decided to circulate it to some friends of mine from my church. I got a reasonable number of responses, and most of them were sympathetic and positive.

On the other hand, one friend of mine (who also happens to be a member of the Ministerial Selection Committee that is currently searching for a new settled minister for our church) responded to my Fowler essay by writing me to recommend strongly that I not post it. In the message my friend confidently predicted that, if I published the piece, it would provoke “a big fight” on the online forum and perhaps off of it.

I have no doubt that this friend of mine meant entirely well. And there’s a better-than-even chance that his prediction was correct; if my fellow parishioners had figured out that one of the Fowler-loving UU ministers I quote repeatedly in the essay happens to be our current interim minister (in her October 2007 sermon that I’ve posted here), there could indeed have been trouble. For one thing, forum rules forbid criticism of our ministers--and even if they didn’t, I imagine that some of my neighbors think she’s worth defending. I tried to direct my ire at James Fowler, an outsider, rather than anyone that a casual reader would realize was much closer to home; but a few people probably would have seen through it.


Anyway, at my friend’s strenuous urging, I decided not to post my Fowler essay on the church forum. But the reason I demurred--the threatened “fight”--rankled. It still does.

The first year of the tenure of my church’s interim minister has alienated me fairly significantly from the church: since I heard the infamous sermon (which is not the only issue--“Rev. Smith” has reiterated her ugly notions about nonbelieving people and our ideals in various other forums, including a few choice potshots in other sermons), I have ended my five-year tenure in the church choir and decided that I could no longer attend her services.

These decisions were weeks old by the time I composed the post above and circulated it to friends in the congregation. But in that context, “It’ll cause a big fight” feels like the last straw. An interim minister is one thing--in 2009, Rev. Smith will move on to lecture some other church about the worthlessness of those of us who don’t share her beliefs--but the congregation is another matter. The same congregation that has raised nary a peep of protest about the minister’s shameful mistreatment of religious minorities but would (if my Search Committee friend is correct) fight me for protesting such mistreatment--that congregation will still be here when Smith is gone. I’m less than convinced that it’s going to be comfortable to be part of that congregation anytime soon. I thought, during the years that our clergy were kind and respectful UUs, that my congregation would stand up and protest if atheophobia ever started issuing from the pulpit--but it appears that I was wrong.


I decided, at age 17, that my disagreement with fundamental tenets meant that I could no longer be part of a Christian congregation. A few months ago I made the decision that I couldn’t take part in services led by a woman whose platform is, I believe, deeply violative of the First and Fourth Principles--the specific ideals that attracted me to UUism in the first place. These more recent events, though, have pushed me to reconsider my connection to Unitarian Universalism writ large. As I have noticed for my entire tenure as a UU, our Association is dotted by powerful ministers and administrators who regularly push outrageous and bigoted messages about atheists, agnostics, not-particularly-“spiritual” humanists, and anyone whose skepticism leads her to an outlook that is less pious than these figures would prefer. UU discourse about atheism and skepticism is riven with bigotry, disrespect, and ignorant stereotype--and the broader community’s reponse has been... for the most part utter silence.

All of that I’ve known (and found severely troubling, and fought tooth and nail on online forums like this one) for years. Now, though, the problem has found its way to my home congregation. My own minister has declared that I, and everyone who sees the world the way I do,

are often unaware of the sharp limits of their empathy and their abilities to construct and identify with the interior feelings and processes of others. Religiously, these persons are often drawn to the rigidities and seemingly unambiguous teachings of fundamentalism--and there are liberals and radical fundamentalist spirits. As spouses, parents and bosses, such persons are, at the best, insensitive, and at the worst, rigid, authoritarian, and emotionally abusive.

Unitarian Universalists cannot get away with firing outrageous personal insults like those at nearly any kind of minority--sexual minorities, ethnic minorities, traditional-religious (and for that matter nontraditional-religious) minorities--but they can get away with firing them at me. And no one will call them on it; instead, it is complaints about such ill treatment that cause problems. We won’t “fight” about James Fowler’s attacks on innocent people being preached from our pulpit, but we’ll fight about complaints directed at those attacks.

For now, that’s just gotten to be too much to bear. If Unitarian Universalist communities are going to tolerate bigoted personal attacks on (ir)religious minorities, then they leave me--and, it appears to me, thousands of other UUs in good standing--behind. I can’t stay here, for the same reason I couldn’t stay in Christianity: I don’t think the community shares my ideals, despite the Principles they claim.


A few weeks ago, having come to this sad conclusion, I cancelled my recurring donation to my church. All that’s left is to notify the office that I’m resigning my membership.

I hold out the faintest glimmer of hope that the new settled minister at my church will be able to turn the community in a more productive direction. I think, though, that the die is cast: I’m a double apostate now, an ex-UU.

I’m going to try out the atheist organization in my metro area. Though the group is fairly active by the standards of nonbelivers’ organizations, it can’t hold a candle to an ordinary UU church in terms of programming--especially when it comes to musical and meditative fare. On the bright side, no one is going to mock me for “imagining” that my secular ideals “are creative and important”; no one is going to declare my atheism a “demonic pseudoreligion” or tell the public that the group’s essential message is “One God, no one left behind.” Exclusionary and insulting messages like those, unfortunately, are the territory of powers-that-be within UUism.

I came to Unitarian Universalism all too well aware of the atheophobia it contained, concerned about the treatment that my nonbeliefs would receive here. For seven years I found a niche where I could be a UU without having to suffer the nastiness I had seen in A Chosen Faith and related bigotries. With the introduction of my church’s interim minister and the community’s tacit response to her assaults, though, that niche seems to have closed.

So, sadly, I’m afraid that this is farewell to Unitarian Universalism. It’s time for me to be just a plain old atheist again.

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Update (addendum):

In light of a few comments below (especially gamerchick's), I wanted to add that I definitely don't think that "Rev. Smith" is representative of my whole congregation's views on nontheists. If she were, I would have left years ago--long before she ever arrived. My sense is that the vast majority of members of the congregation are not haters. And I'd bet that that's true for all, or almost all, of the congregations in the UUA. (Though as any liberal community recognizes, distaste for minorities--be it homophobia, racism, transphobia, atheophobia, or whatever other kind--exists in all of us in larger shares than we'd like to admit.)

My frustration with the congregation is that I haven't seen any critical reaction to Rev. Smith's nastiness. It seems to me that the minister's actions (it wasn't just that sermon, BTW, though that was the most concentrated ugliness she's thrown out there) deserve some public dissent. And I've tried, but there just didn't seem to be much interest from the rest of the congregation in any public complaint. I guess, given the potency of what she has preached, that I expect better.