Sermon Archives : 2006/2007

A New Passover, A New Covenant

The Rev. Gail Seavey  ·  January 21, 2007

This year we have been looking at some of the hard places were injustice is woven through our lives such as war, torture, post-colonialism and racism. We will continue to look at the long arc of the moral universe and the ways that we can help it bend towards justice by considering the widening gap between the rich and the poor and how it affects immigration and living wages. Sometimes we distance these topics as if they have to do with someone else. Or we consider the facts and think, this is so obvious, if everyone knew the truth, we would set ourselves free.

But of course it is not that easy. You know that in the very marrow of your bones. You know that liberation is costly. Many of you have paid the price of freedom. And you face moving with that arc towards further justice with appropriate awe and fear. For justice requires that we change.

The first thing I learned about you when I arrived was that the people of this church defined themselves by two great Passovers of our times: the civil rights movement and the women’s rights movement. Today I would like to talk about this second Passover, “the second wave of feminism,” and how it affected you here. It affected you profoundly; it divided the church into two churches and struck terror in your hearts. You thought this church would die. You had to bear the responsibilities and difficulties of freedom. There was starvation and thirst and complaining. Those who named the oppression were falsely blamed. Some preferred the days when some were oppressed and some were the oppressors. From that Passover followed three or four wilderness years during which you created a new covenant and bylaws that invite everyone into shared power, shared ministry, the rights and responsibilities of freedom. This has resulted in what the 19th century Unitarian Transcendentalist, Margaret Fuller, called “a divine energy” that has pervaded our community to a degree unknown in the history of former ages.

So, as the Jewish story of Passover has taught us, we must pass on the whole story. We must remember what it meant to be in bondage and what it meant to shake ourselves free.

The second wave of feminism did not start here and it did not start in the 1990s when FUUN experienced this Passover. For UU historical purposes it started in 1975 with meetings and committees and resolutions, those kinds of things that appear, to some, as intellectual and safe, but that set the stage for revolution. Lucile Schuck-Longview, a member of the Lexington Mass UU church, who appeared to me when I met her to be an average “church lady,” attended the International Association for Religious Freedom in Mexico City. There she helped developed a resolution, “Equal Rights and Opportunities for Women,” considering how to examine male-biased religious assumptions.

Lucile brought that resolution to the International Association of Liberal Religious Women, where it was revised and strengthened. In 1977 Lucile worked with the women at her home church in Lexington to develop the ‘Unitarian Universalist Women and Religion Resolution.‘’ It was endorsed first by the UU Women’s Federation and then by the UUA at General Association. The next year the UUA appointed one of the few woman ministers, Leslie Westbrook, to lead women from every district to write guidelines for implementation. All sounds pretty bureaucratic so far, doesn’t it?

But it wasn’t. Women were rocking. They were playing around with worship, sporting with their spirituality, shaking up the language, and changing their relationships with the men and women in their lives. This was the fun juicy part. In 1979 the First Continental UUA Women and Religion conference was held. The women there created the first water communion and urged an update of the UUA purposes and principles because of their sexist and hierarchical language. The Battered Women Resolution was passed at General Assembly, drawing the connection between religious myths and women’s oppression.

The next five years were revolutionary. Women and allied men changed laws and created organizations to confront the ways violence was used to enforce sexism, for instance we clarified and gave teeth to laws against sexual abuse, built battered women shelters, and hospitals trained staff and volunteers in rape counseling. And we changed as women. We no longer took that violence as a given. We learned to look inside and see all the ways that violence and resultant fear had taught us to oppress ourselves with our own negative attitudes about our self worth. Meanwhile, women started to get professional jobs at UUA and a flood of women of every age started to study for the ministry. A new inclusive-language hymnal was launched and the new version of the purposes and principles was adopted.

In 1986 the adult education curriculum “Cakes for the Queen of Heaven” was introduced to encourage exploration in feminist theology. Thousands of women and hundreds of men took this class in UU churches all over the country. In 12 short years we had changed institutionally, spiritually, psychologically and politically. It was all about power. On all those levels we were learning to see when people were using power over others, how to claim our own personal power from within, and how to use that inner power with others instead of over others. When we are talking power, we are talking dangerous stuff. Something had to give. The breaking point was to be found at the most personal, private center of human relationships and sexuality.

I learned where that breaking point was in 1988 when I did my ministerial internship in Ventura, California. My supervising minister was Frederica Leigh, the first woman minister to serve that church. She saw the ravages of oppression as a new hour dawned. The first week she was there, a line of women made appointments with her. They had, unbeknownst to each other, all had affairs with the previous minister and they felt angry, hurt, ashamed, used and abused. The rules for these women had changed 180 degrees mid-life. A friend of mine put it this way, “I used to think I had to date the guy in the red sports car. Then one day I realized, I could buy MY OWN sports car.” These women were attracted to the power of the minister and there was only one way they had been taught to acquire that power--to have a special relationship with him. As Frederica quietly counseled them, she tried to work through the denominational structure to have that minister held accountable. Most of the people she went to attacked her and protected the abusing minister. Frederica quietly persisted, at first with little success.

In the meantime, a past minister of the church, who had retired more than a decade before, died. The next month, a whole new line of much older women, feeling just as angry, hurt, ashamed, used and abused as the first round, made appointments with Frederica. I was lucky. Frederica had to learn on the job how to best support these women. She taught me well.

By then Frederica Leigh and others had brought the issue to the UU Ministers Association (UUMA) and they began to consider changing their professional ethical guidelines that had nothing to say about a minister’s sexual conduct. I remember one of my first UUMA meetings. The proposed guidelines were introduced. Ministers were not to date or have sexual relationships with members of their congregations. One older man raised his hand, “But what if you marry the woman, isn’t that O.K.?” One of the presenters said, “This is a gray area. If this happened once, it may not be a problem.” Three or four hands shoot up. “What if you marry and divorce and marry another woman in the congregation? Is that against these guidelines?” “If it becomes a pattern, it is. If someone has married and divorced four women in the congregation, that is clearly a pattern of using your power as a minister for your own purposes rather than the congregation's.”

There was a long quiet pause. To my surprise, I saw several older men, well-respected ministers all, counting on their fingers. A more experienced minister whispered to me, “They are counting their marriages.” – two, three, four. A long debate ensued about whether the habit of marrying members of your congregation became a pattern of abuse at three or four marriages. It was then that I realized that, for these men, the rules where being changed 180 degrees in mid-stream. Women were gaining power. But some men, even some very good men, had been accustomed to having power over others, and now they had to learn a whole new way to be. They did not like it. That General Assembly those of us who supported the new guidelines on sexual ethics were called the “New Puritans.” But by the next year the first of those older, well respected ministers who had not bothered to marry most of the congregants he had affairs with, had his fellowship revoked. Everything had changed.

I went on to serve as “after” pastor (short hand for a minister called to clean up the mess after the previous minister has done misconduct) to a church in Minnesota when their minister divorced and married his second wife from the congregation. Things had changed indeed, for the congregation was furious long before he made it to wives #3 or #4. Meanwhile, you were going through your own revolution.

In 1992 the plagues that led to this church’s Passover began. People began to challenge the minister’s power. Two treasurers in a row left because they were having power struggles with him. A board member questioned why he had complete editorial control of the newsletter. A representative from the UUA came to consult. It was possible that these power struggles were the normal tension as a church moved from a small to a mid-size church. Several women complained to the consultant that the minister was being inappropriate with them in more personal ways. Some of those women, who had learned about the power dynamics of control and oppression at their jobs, recognized abusive patterns. Others supported the minister. They felt a part of the power of the church; the minister listened to their opinions and served their needs.

The consultant's visit resulted in a hastily called congregational meeting in February of 1993, in which the minister stated that he was “addicted to lust,” that he had had one “affair” with a counselee at church many years ago, but that he was now in an addiction treatment program. As the board became increasingly split over what to do with this announcement, some who initially supported the minister were shocked by his behavior as he manipulated people for their support and cut off people who questioned him no matter how tentatively. In the weeks that followed, several possible additional and more recent affairs surfaced. One person filed a formal complaint with the UUA Ministerial Fellowship Committee. They began an investigation.

The split in the board spread to the congregation. One group called themselves the Phoenix group, because they supported the minister to rise from the ashes. They were frightened that they would lose the minister they loved. The other group reported that the Phoenix group clustered outside of board meetings and threatened them with angry and loud verbal threats. They were afraid that they would lose the community that they loved. The hostility escalated in a congregational meeting where rival board candidates perceived as pro and con the minister were proposed. The “pro” minister candidates won.

That September the MFC issued a letter concluding that the minister was guilty of conduct unbecoming, including his confession of multiple affairs during his ministry. When the board circulated this letter, the split in the congregation escalated even higher, some organizing for a vote to dismiss the minister, others organizing to protect and retain him. A congregational meeting was scheduled for early December. Prior to the meeting, the minister voluntarily resigned.

In response, his supporters tried to force a recall of the board. In another rancorous congregational meeting facilitated by UUA representatives, the board was retained by a two to one margin. The minister left with a generous severance package. After some attempts at reconciliation, the Phoenix group left the church in 1994 to start the Greater Nashville UU Congregation.

The rest stayed -- a group smaller than before, broken, battered, grieving and free. They wandered in the desert for three years instead of 40, for they had already learned much about what it was to be free. So many congregants, hearing of the arguments during the plague years, started participating in meetings and leadership so that they could decide for themselves what was really going on. With that strong lay involvement and a new minister, the Rev. Mary Katherine Morn, who empowered and shared power with others, you rebuilt the church back to its previous size in membership and budget within four years. A new hour had come.

Many of the lay leaders of this church forged their leadership skills in those plague and desert years. You have succeeded. Some of you are weary; it may be time to pass on your leadership to members who have come to this church of a new covenant, a covenant of shared ministry. But we must remember, as we face the great injustices of our day that the change from oppression to justice is both bitter and sweet.

The Passover is always bitter; there are many plagues, people blame others, people complain, we will suffer. There are many losses; we must leave our old ways behind.

The Passover is always sweet. There are lives to be saved; we are reborn and renewed. There are spirits to be empowered; we are led forth in joy and celebration. You have known but one of many waves of deliverance on these desert seas. It was but one of many beginnings.