Class and Unitarian Universalism

Two of the workshops I attended this GA were on classism. I am finding this to be a complex issue bound up with both difficult theological questions and disturbing emotional issues. Given our historical difficulty in confronting institutional and personal racism, it is not surprising that classism is sometimes seen as a diversion from 'the real issues'. But class and race are intertwined, and are woven with other 'isms' so that such such reductionism of oppressions is unhelpful. Consider that shame is a central emotional component that emerges in conversations about both class and race. I suspect that addressing shame with one of these 'isms' will carry us much of the way with the other.

Classism in the UU movement has a complexifying component: education. In many of our congregations, education is seen as more important than economic status, but education is bound up in economic status. But being self-educated is often not seen as an adequate substitute to many of us, as one workshop participant painfully made clear.

I worry that many of us make assumptions about the theological preferences of people based on class. I bristle at the conclusion that working-class people prefer an otherworldly theology to one focused on this world, as ours is. To me that just seems to be a way to excuse classism in our movement.

I think our strength is in our universalizing ideals: that every person has worth and dignity, that salvation is available to all every person, and that our salvation is bound up in a network of mutuality. These transcend class. We need to take them beyond words and into lived action.