The Unitarian Universalist Association's systematic dehumanization of laity

The leadership moves to "decenter individual dignity"

It has been extensively documented how the Unitarian Universalist Association (UUA) was organizationally captured by political extremists who reject religious liberalism and are trying to transform Unitarian Universalism into a dogmatic top-down politically-driven religion that resembles the fundamentalist churches that UU is supposed to reject. I strongly recommend UUs read UU Minister Rev. Munro Sickafoose’s essay "Standing on the Side of Power" detailing the corruption and fanaticism in the national church and UU seminaries. You can also read my earlier post, “The True Believers: UU is in Danger of Becoming Just Another Church”.

Further, my previous post and background information for this post, linked below, is about how utopian movements create dystopias because they have impossibly idealistic visions that don’t translate to the real world and use oppressive methods to try to make them. 

Link: ‘How utopian movements create dystopias’

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The UUA leadership is trying to transform UU into a utopian collectivist movement

The current UUA leadership, the two UU seminaries and some national UU groups are trying to transform UU from a liberal church into a fundamentalist utopian political collectivist movement, explicitly describing its goal of “collective liberation.”

Collectivists prioritize the movement's goals over individual rights, freedoms and liberties. Thus, throughout history, utopian collectivist religious and political movements have employed various methods that dehumanize their members. These methods include considering members primarily as generic categories and cogs in the system rather than unique individuals, removing basic civil rights and individual liberties, authoritarian governance, dogmatism and propaganda, undermining basic democratic rights, suppressing viewpoint diversity, and shaming and guilt-tripping members into compliance.

The classic book on this topic is social philosopher Eric Hoffer’s The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements.

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How the UUA dehumanizes church members

The following are seven examples of how the current UUA leadership and ideologues dehumanize UUs. These are all standard techniques of oppressive collectivist movements:  

1: Rejecting the inherent worth and dignity of members

UUA leaders have expressly disavowed UU’s first principle of "the inherent worth and dignity of every person." This is the key principle from which all other UU principles and values eminate. However, UUA leaders say this and the other UU principles are products of the Western Enlightenment and should be discarded. The current UUA President said she does not support the principle, and other leaders have written that the church should “decenter individual dignity for our collective liberation.”  

2: Treating laity as categories rather than unique individuals

The current UUA leadership uses a postmodernist Marxist ideology based on race and other identities instead of economic class. It primarily considers UUs not based on their character and merit but by their immutable characteristics such as race.  

This is not only a regressive and bigoted stereotyping of people but infantilizes UUs, including minorities. Black academic John Mcwhorter says the UUA’s White Fragility ideology “openly infantilizes black people,” and “treats us as lesser human beings.” Rev. Rick Davis calls it “a soul-deadening political ideology that categorizes, caricatures and thereby dehumanizes people.”

3: Name-calling and shaming UUs, and considering them as inherently morally corrupt

UU is perhaps the most politically and socially progressive church in the country. While imperfect and with room for improvement, the church has a long history of social justice activism including advocating for slavery abolishment, climate justice, the anti-war movement, and racial, LGBT and immigrant civil rights. The majority of UU ministers and lay leaders are women, and it was the first American church to perform gay marriages and the first American white majority church to have a black President.

Nonetheless, the new UUA ideologues call UU and UUs “white supremacy” and regularly call members “racist,” “transphobic,” “sexist,” “ableist” and other forms of bigot. Politically left laity, whose views are more moderate or who question progressivism’s identity politics, are ad hominem attacked as “alt-right“ and “MAGA-types.” This rhetorical denigrating of members as morally corrupt is a standard tool of fundamentalist churches and cults.

4: Dogmatism, illiberalism, and demeaning of independent thought

Unitarian Universalism is founded on principles of individuality, diversity of viewpoints, freedom of belief and expression, and intellectual and spiritual open-mindedness. However, the present UUA leadership and indoctrinated ministers are trying to impose a narrow political ideology as dogma.

Questioning this ideology is disallowed, and dissenters are met with suppression, punishment, and personal attacks. As in cults, leaders have smeared and punished UUs who use reason, empiricism, and critical thinking. Ministers and congregants questioning this orthodoxy have faced disciplinary actions, including expulsion. Pushing the new orthodoxy, the previous UUA President, Rev. Susan Frederick-Gray, described UU’s natural penchant for “individualism, exceptionalism, and allergy to authority” as “a trinity of errors.”

This not only betrays the core tenets of UU but also treats UUs as if they are children who must not be allowed to think for themselves.

5: Removing standard concepts of due process and fairness

Within the UUA and some congregations, normal notions of due process have been discarded, with individuals being condemned and punished without even being given details of their alleged offenses. The subjective claims of UUs with “historically marginalized identities” cannot be questioned, and even asking them for supporting evidence is called “racist” and “causing harm.” The UU Ministers Association (UUMA) eliminated ministers' right to legal counsel during disputes, and, according to a minister, labeling those wanting to preserve this right as “racist.” Rev. Davis, a former member of the UUMA’s Good Officers program, wrote that the new disciplinary process is authoritarian, opaque, and “truly Kafkaesque.”

6: Dismantling democratic processes

The use of democratic processes is both a basic civil right and a core tenet of UU’s liberalism. It is vital for guaranteeing fair voice and representation in the church. However, the UUA leadership has worked to undermine these liberal democratic structures within UU. This involves manipulating elections, impeding outside candidates, and orchestrating a one-candidate UUA Presidential election. UU Minister Rev. Gary Kowalski details the anti-democratic moves in his essay “How the UUA manufactures consent.” You can also read about it in the post, “How the Unitarian Universalist Association is an Illiberal Democracy.”

7: Lying to UUs

The UUA controls and manipulates information to laity and congregations and prevents balanced perspectives. Acting on UUA directives, UU World ceased publishing letters to the editor and openly declared its refusal to represent the diverse viewpoints within the UU community. To win the vote, General Assembly leaders lied to congregational delegates at the General Assembly when they said that a Yes vote on the Bylaws Article II rewrite was a “vote to continue the discussion.”

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This all demonstrates that UUA leadership has a condescending disdain and distrust of the regular UU laity. UUA leaders consider the laity morally deficient and having suspect judgment. The UUA and the new breed of indoctrinated ministers see themselves as reformers and zealous reformers do not seek advice from the masses they are trying to reform.

As with many churches, the UUA and ideological ministers obscure their intentions with touchy-feely theological jargon such as “Beloveds”, “Love is at the center” and “communities of care.” Whenever UUA leaders or ministers use often-repeated words like “covenantal religion,” “accountability,” “collective liberation” and “our shared UU faith,” critically ask yourself what they mean. Many UUs have learned that covenant can mean coercion, accountability can mean punishment, and our shared UU faith can mean groupthink.

Longtime UU Minister Rev. Rick Davis, a fierce critic of the UUA leadership, writes of the new orthodoxy: “It is a path without love and compassion, without understanding and forgiveness. It is a path of enforced conformity that entails the denial of freedom of conscience and expression-- it is a path that will lead to more canceling, dis-fellowshipping, discord, mistrust, anger, fear, and oppression. This is nothing new— it’s just a modern iteration of the ancient, oppressive practices of priestcraft in progressive guise.” He also writes, “I dearly hope and pray that UU laity around the nation will awaken to the threat that is being posed to our free faith tradition by an alien and illiberal political dogma that is taking an axe to our spiritual roots, roots that have fed us and sustain us, which remind us of who we have been and who we are called to be.”

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Laity and congregations share the blame

People can lose their rights by allowing their rights to be taken and can be dehumanized because they allow themselves to be dehumanized. UU laity allowing themselves to be stereotyped by their immutable characteristics, self-flagellating, or willingly giving up critical thinking because some ministers tell them it is “racist” and ‘sexist” does not make it any less regressive. After attending a UUA-sponsored seminar, a congregant said, “We are all going to change our way of thinking.” This smacked of something a cult member not a UU would say.

Through apathy to national church politics and conflict avoidance, laity and even entire congregations allowed the church to be hijacked by fanatical forces. UU congregant Burton Brunson recently wrote, “The problem is not with the UUA. The problem is with the individual congregations. Several recent UUA actions, notably the installation of Betancourt as alleged president, should have resulted in a flood of protests from individual congregations.”

Many congregations have forgotten what liberal religion is in practice, and that dissent, debate, and the expression of diverse viewpoints is the very essence of UU. Longtime UU Miles Fidelmen has lamented UU’s transformation from what he characterizes as a church of free thinkers into a church of conformists. He speculates that one cause may be the influx of ex-Catholics who, while rejecting their former church, brought with them an ingrained psychological need for group conformity and dogma. A congregant, who is an ex-Catholic, said, “Maybe we could use some dogma,” which struck me as about the most un-UU thing I’d ever heard.

Whatever the reasons, and there are many, the church is rapidly dying. It and many congregations are bleeding membership, and, despite the nation’s population nearly doubling, the UUA now has the lowest number of members, congregations, and children in religious education programs (RE) in church history. There is a real chance the UUA might collapse. UUs and congregations must revitalize the traditions of classical liberalism, independent thinking, and the platforming of viewpoint diversity. Congregations once again must become genuinely independent and self-determining communities rather than franchises of the UUA in Boston.

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