FLYING FISH

The Rev. Chuck Gaines, active on the UUA Fellowship Committee which had nothing to do with the “fellowship” organizational structure of small groups, but a lot to do with certifying candidates as qualified for acting as ministers.  He was fond of a simile comparing human life to the arc of a flying fish, rising out of the darkness of the water in a brief flight of consciousness before plunging back into the unseen sea.  

An older version of this is about a night bird flying through an open window into a well-lit room (a mead-hall), but then continuing across the room and  out another open window.  But I’m thinking that if the analogy were to be used to describe Unitarian Universalist ministry these days, it might better be framed as the fish’s dive to the depths of the sea or the bird traversing some dark tunnel.  The days of the minister being the gentle virtuous vicar protected by landed gentry or the consoling but unyielding priest governing an Irish parish are gone, even if “The Quiet Man" is streaming on Netflix.

When I found the Unitarians in 1975, the big concern was giving the religious education directors the status of ministers.  Then it was the music directors who asked for recognition as ministers.  As the denomination began to shrink, there were Extension Ministers meant to either found a new group or make a pre-existing one grow, hopefully enough to employ a minister since there weren’t enough pulpits.  UU ministers are notoriously difficult to match to church styles, so occasionally a placement would blow up, leaving hard feelings, so then there were Interim Ministers who were supposed to work that through.  They shouldn’t be confused with Intern Ministers who were students working alongside a veteran.  

Now, with the rise of consciousness about “post-traumatic disorder,” the “After Pastor” has been devised to specifically minister to the traumatized, particularly women who have been traumatized by men, esp. predatory pastors.  Today, with even more ministerial aspirants than there are pulpits, the new concept is “Community Pastors” who find their own funding and define their own constituency.  In the New Testament they are called “Tentmakers” since that was often the way they earned their living.

Parallel with this phenomenon of ever proliferating ministers was the collapse of the seminary, both because of lack of money and because of a levelling policy that attacked the degree system.  Meadville/Lombard had always been prestigious because it used to include the U of Chicago MA, but a traditional MA means passing a foreign language test.  Aspiring ministers found this unjustifiable.  The MA at the U of C means passing a series of rigorous tests about history and thought, actually a filter for the Div School Ph.D. Some UU aspirants couldn’t pass them.  

The U of C in general is notorious for students who get stuck while writing their thesis and the same thing happened at M/L, in part because there were too few faculty (4 men) qualified to judge some of the subjects.  As more late-life and women wished for seminary education, there was pressure for low residency and “mail-order” classes.  Meadville, like others, sold its buildings.  But the bonding that happens in residence on a campus was impossible, which damages
the denominational networking later.  Some UU candidates were taking classes in Christian schools near them.  Though they were liberal, they pressed everything into the Christian mold.

I’ve been trying to go at this problem that is called “clergy misconduct” in a different way, since the previous approaches have all been ineffective.  Mostly they consist of denial, suppression, stone-walling — approaches that work better when they are applied by powerful people.  What becomes clear in this instance is the lack of power all around.  Even the women who come late to ministry, carrying their feminist knives with them and making this the core of their pastoral care, are not powerful enough against a culture that is rethinking sexual relationships of all kinds, from fathers entitled to kill daughters who embarrass them to the daughters of those clergy who have married almost half-a-dozen times.  This is considered reprehensible, but those daughters, loving their fathers, go into the ministry.  No one asks them what they think.  I know of at least two.  I don’t know what the mothers think.

The ground level has to be biological, both the drive to sexual intimacy and the search for the Sacred.  The two interact in hard-to-manage ways, not least because they might not be conscious.  Our denomination and our UU ministry (learned) has focused on the pre-frontal cortex functions as “rational” and “higher” to the point of triggering resistance during the Sixties and Seventies and defiant excess to the other end of the spectrum.  The frame was always either/or.  We had no concept of the power of the unconscious mammal limbic thought — we didn’t even think it was thought, just instincts or drives or libido.  We didn’t know any of this neurological stuff because it hadn’t been recorded yet.  I like it because it escapes the plaguing memes of society dragged in from some other time and place.

The UU pre-frontal cortex turned out to be middle-class British — not even French.  That is, “proper” sexual self-management was that of a middle-class shopkeeper whose goal was order and prosperity.  Contractual monogamy, careful primogeniture, concern for storefront appearances, respect for advertising attractiveness.  This was our model for ministry in a middle-class suburban world where all children went to college.

Put that up against the political welcoming of atypical sexual pairing — same sex, one sex in the gender role of the other, changed gender, cis people in new gender roles, marriage outside contracts, multiple relationships — plus openness to other cultures where there had never been a “middle class” but only a top and bottom — plus drastic shifts of honor and status away from the humanities over to science and technology often paired with denial not just of god but of any “spiritual” dimension (commonly called “atheist”) and there are a lot of contradictions — deeply emotional ones — that need defining and sorting.  We included these “lower” classes because we needed the numbers.  “Growth” was the watchword.  “Profit” was the underlying motive.

The last thing we need are kangaroo courts that twist analysis into accusations, esp. the ones that are technically if civilly libellous.  We’ve been here before when the Unitarians and Congregationalists split and had ended up in secular court to see who got the Sacred Silver, the valuable Communion sets.  And again when the one church and the state split up and the tax money that had supported the one church was now removed, because the church had become multiple denominations in competition over such issues as how much water constitutes a baptism: total immersion or a splash on the head.

The whole matter is complicated by the mosaic regionalism of UU congregations, which leads to a lot of political manipulation because religion is institutions.  To get a national consensus means reconciling California with Massachusetts.  Religion is not sacred because institutions are not sacred.  Institutions are devised and operated by humans who may or may not use their power wisely, but who are compelled to try to preserve the institution if they want to keep their jobs and the status of their roles, which is indicated by money.

Twice now the Berry Street Essay has been used as a point of attack on the institution of the UUA.  No analysis, no practical changes suggested.  The tone is aggrieved college girls crying out over long ago abuse.  I’ve come to the conclusions that there has indeed been sexual misconduct, that there’s a lot of it, it has been accepted (ignored) or treated with amusement or kept secret, that not all the examples provided are legitimate, that there are sexual abuses far beyond the experience of these lady essayists, and that this kind of complaining and accusation is a sign of the rot of the denomination.  It’s not the subject matter that is the problem— clergy who break the rules of accepted Christian middle-class values — but the much larger consciousness of what is Sacred.  

Do these women in their home churches preach to their parishioners against the Hook-up Culture, against the consequences of unwanted children (for the CHILD), against the emotional destruction of shallow and sequential relationships?  Do they tell the men in their pews that if they behave like hounds, there are consequences?  Are they careful about their own relationships?  Do they talk about the interaction of drugs with intimacy — and I mean alcohol as much as pot or ecstasy?  

Paul Fussell proposed that there is a new class emerging, partly because of the Internet.  Highly educated but often broke, these people are redefining “class”, normally defined in part by economics.  An article called “Heterosexual hierarchies: A Commentary on class and sexuality” by Stevi Jackson at the Centre for Women’s Studies, the University of York, UK is listed on Google.  It’s a first-page “teaser” for an article that would cost $36 to buy, but I’m Class X — broke.  sex.sagepub.com/content/14/1/12.full.pdf

I’ll pass the tease on by quoting:

“The intersections between class and sexuality have only recently begun to be explored . . . most of the research has come from those focusing on the ways in which LGBT lives and identities are mediated through class.. . understanding patterns of disadvantage and exclusion entails acknowledging the social distribution and effects of privilege . . . the social advantage for sexual life. . . . other significant axes of social division should also be included, especially race and ethnicity.”

I’ve sent an inquiry to Ms. Jackson in York to see if she knows about studies that include religion and that have looked at attempts of people of color or lesser social status (women, immigrant, gay) to rise in the world by adopting high status denominational identities, as well as moving from parishioner to the once-higher status of the pastor, now much deteriorated (underwater) due to pedophilia accusations among priests (once the highest status people), notorious Elmer Gantry antics behind the revival tent, and narrow indignation from offended women of status for whom ordination is not enough.  

SNAGGING MINISTERS

Forrester Church, who divorced his wife in order to marry a parishioner

To have my next example of Dunning-Kruger come from the Unitarian Universalist Ministerial Association is not just unsurprising but hilarious.  Here you go:  https://uuma.site-ym.com/mpage/BSE2016  It may have been taken down by now.  Free speech be damned.

I’m not going to name this year’s Berry Street Essay author because she will need the anonymity more than the notoriety.  (Probably not her choice.) This feminist minister had been raped in the past (before becoming a minister), says she suffers from PTSD, and has been active in confessional women’s groups.  She talks “health” and testimony.  Somehow, evidently through a friendship contact, she was asked to deliver the Berry Street Essay at General Assembly, which is historical, prestigious, and independently commissioned.  Normally the topic is broadly “religious” but this woman launched a reform movement against what she considered sexually predatory ministers.  She names one minister specifically in a targeting takedown.  She speaks with the fervour of a pedophile hunter.  Or maybe one of those Nazi war criminal hunters.

First Unitarian Church in Portland, OR

I’ve known this man since 1975, right after the single episode of ill-advised choice for which he paid a high price.  Soon after he interned in Portland he married the woman to whom he is still married with no scandal.  They are a highly respected couple and he has continued his life with what I would consider a secular ministry, working with conciliation arbitrators, classes, addiction counselling.  Though this Berry Street woman was educated for the ministry at Harvard, the whole lecture is very much like the kind of accusation that broke open Starr King Theological School over racist issues: in that case someone incensed that her friend was passed over for president by someone she thought was a less-qualified black woman.

When the Catholics were agonizing over pedophilia, I used to quip:  “UU ministers don’t fool around with kids.  They go for rich women.”  And I would provide examples.  But not in print.  It appears that the Emerson Avenger is gaining converts.  The Emerson Avenger runs a website that attacks ministers he thinks are immoral.  No one I know of ever fingers lay people.  Except privately.

One of my Montana fellowships was powered by what I called “the demi-mondaine.”  Smart, employed, divorced, middle-aged women who seduced ministers — or anyone else with a little shine on them — and who explained candidly that the reason they became UU’s was because there were no sexual taboos.  (Usually meaning divorced, which most of them were.)  These were my first ministries, though I was over forty, and I was taken aback when one woman informed me — as a helpful service — which men in the four congregations would sleep with me.  One man asked me frankly to go to bed with him because he wanted “to see what I had.”  He was a school superintendent.  I don’t think this is a denominational problem — I think it’s a cultural problem.

These women were often vengeful, esp. when they found out I wouldn’t do what they told me to do.  They were like drunks who wanted everyone to get drunk with them.  In every church I’ve served or joined, they have been present, sometimes in small numbers and covert.  

Mary Scriver, 1998

In Canada I twice ran into laymen who propositioned me, though I am the very epitome of a tubby English teacher with spectacles.  I am NOT a sexy woman.  I told them,  “You know, I charge a lot more to be the Temple Whore.”  They were undeterred.  They were after POWER.  They thought ministers had power.  No minister ever came on to me.

In my experience UU ministers (and other denominations as well) were vulnerable to supportive intimacy from either men or women because they felt POWERLESS.  The pastor knows a lot, is held responsible for everything, and must beg a committee for any change.  Being in a pulpit is having one’s hands tied behind one’s back, even for the big traditional men.  Probably less so among the gay men because people don’t know the rules.  Lesbian women ministers are a mystery to me because normally I run like hell.  (My bad.)  As soon as the UUA accepted gay/lesbian ministers, they were possibly accepting polyamorous people who did not conform to traditional marriage assumptions, attracted because the whole schtick of the denomination is accepting people according to their own personal ethics. (UU’s purport not to believe in fencing the communion.)

Of course, courting minorities who are looking for respectability means a certain level of prudery in order to guard that reputation, esp. in a time when right-wing religious people are so rigidly predatory.  It seems that the UUA, in order to grow, is discarding some of their free-wheeling past, growing more cautious and guarded.  The phrase “neo-Puritan” comes up.  There’s a callousness to it.

My home district as a parishioner (1975-78) was the Pacific Northwest, which at that time was international, including BC, Alberta, and Alaska.  The ministers were charismatic, high-achieving, and broad-minded.  A few were deplorable, including a gay hustler of young men and a “counselor” whose idea was to “demonstrate” true love to troubled women in their own marital beds.  When he was found out, he cost that church a LOT of money for recompense and re-counselling.  Luckily, they had malpractice insurance.

A saintly senior minister had a lover who later joined my faraway congregation where she clung to the notion that since she considered herself that very respected minister’s consort-for-life, she therefore controlled me.  Another guy was an active member of the Venusian church whose members disrobed and were stroked with feathers by chanting women.  I don’t suppose this righteous female minister ever imagined such things.  She strikes me as willfully but unknowingly unconscious, as Dunning-Kruger would predict.  Therefore I have a hard time with my feelings about such a person being in a ministry that has always claimed to serve every human being.  

I will say, mildly, that this person is old-fashioned and naive.  It appears to me that her gripe is really about ignoring marital vows, esp. in terms of multiple repeat marriages.  She says that people who are repeatedly married to parishioners should be asked to leave the ministry.  She is conservative mainstream American and probably ought to return to a Christian denomination.  The sexual revolution has only offended her, not enlightened her.  What I don’t understand is how this rant got into the UU World, where it was linked by an endorsing editor.  Has she been having coffee with the Emerson Avenger?  How could the Berry Street Essay committee choose such a vengeful person?

But her worst offense was not simply failing to understand that there are many standards of sexual relationship that are far beyond her experience.  She didn’t pick out the more egregious and offensive examples she knew, but rather the admired and politically potent.  To those of us whose ministries included knowing what went on privately, she comes off as childish and ridiculous.

I’m even more baffled that the editor who signed off on this story — I assume it’s Elaine McArdle, a UU World editor — but there are only the initials E.M. — is living in Portland where David has been well-known and respected since 1975 — a third of a century.  Why attack him now?  The facts of this essay have not been checked — they are evidently gossip from therapeutic groups in Nashville about events decades earlier than this minister’s tenure. 

William Schulz

Bill Schulz, a major UU figure, added a note saying that what she reported him saying to her was untrue, that he had never met her at the point she claims.  David Maynard says that the “facts” she told about him are also untrue.  I’m told that this woman checked with the head of the UUA (now voted out) and a UU lawyer.  I think she would have done better to consult someone outside the UU circle.  It looks like they going to have to scramble to avoid being named as co-defendants in a lawsuit as sensational as the one starring Forrester Church whom she also accuses.  Luckily for this twisted sister, he’s dead since his connections were far larger than the UU context.  I hope she has malpractice insurance.

Retired from ministry, living in a village in Montana, a free-lance writer on “religious” issues (U of Chicago Div School MA and Meadville/Lombard MDiv) of anthropological sorts rather than doctrinal allegiance, I see the world in broad brush terms.  My sexual orientation is the most shocking of all:  celibate.  From where I am, the UUA, as represented by this incompletely healed wounded woman, looks to have abandoned its inclusiveness in order to imply virtue.  Stumped as to where to go with theology, some have resorted to prudery.  I thought we were better than that.  Or at least more grown-up.

Sweet revenge?