Airing my own Dirty Laundry

I've always been fairly vocal and political, so it is probably unsurprising that some of my teenage opinions found themselves in the local paper and are now online, in a nice sort of permanent-record way. So, in the interest of full online disclosure, here's the article.

Now, I stand by my 16 year old self. I've said many times on this blog that I believe in youth rights, that I think the voting age should be lowered, and that youth free speech matters. And I say this well aware that this is my example of youth free speech:

At the other end of the spectrum is Albuquerque High School junior Kelsey Atherton, who not only refuses to say the pledge, but stands facing the opposite direction. Sometimes he says different words or makes additions to the pledge. When it comes to "under God," Atherton says "under god/s, under goddess/es, or lack there of."
Atherton says he stands backward because he is angry about Bush's re-election and the war in Iraq. "Absurd" is the word he uses to describe the war and the government's handling of Hurricane Katrina. He makes additions to the pledge to focus on what he sees as a narrow interpretation of God. The pledge should have either no religion or more inclusive language, he says. He even goes so far as to compare it to fascist chanting.

There are explanations for all of these; I'll go briefly through each one.

1. "Under God/s and/or Goddess/es or lack thereof". I'm Unitarian. I have always been aware of a plurality of beliefs and belief systems, so the adoption of a formal procedure in public school to honor a very narrow interpretation of God, perhaps more broad than the Abrahamic Deity but not terribly so, is offensive as it alienates. It excludes the diversity that we as a nation cherish and celebrate, so that's why I tried to be more inclusive with my coverage of religion in the pledge. ALSO - it throws the meter of the pledge way off to say it, which helps highlight the fact that even "under God" throws off the pledges meter. "Under God" is a Cold War edition to the pledge urged by the Knights of Columbus as a way to further distinguish the US from the secular philosophy and government of Communists, specifically the USSR. The Cold War is over; if we are to still have a pledge, we don't need it to contain that.
2. We don't really need a pledge. It is a weird national ritual, and it seems like the kind of thing we as a nation make kids do because they are too young to question it, and powerless enough to not object to it. While it isn't actually a bad thing to say (I have a copy of the original, pre-"under god" version in my room), I think it is a bad thing to ask people to say when they don't know what it means. That, to me, makes it fascistic - it asks for unquestioning devotion to a symbol of a nation, and then to the nation itself, does so with a divine mandate, and it is as a matter of course done nationally by children who can get in trouble for not joining it. That's disturbing, and it is kind of what kings do. We as a nation were founded on loyalty requiring consent - we left a nation that had abused our loyalty, and we fought a war with them because they were surprised we'd questioned the arrangement. Ritual, unexamined chanting does not have a place in our democracy.
3. Protesting the Presidency of George W. Bush. I've never denied my partisan identity, and I will stand by my belief that George W. Bush is among the worst presidents this nation has ever had. While I disagreed broadly with most of his policy decisions, Iraq and Katrina stand as failures that go beyond policy approach. The Iraq War has a long litany of problems - foremost in my mind is how destabilizing and unnecessary it was, and how poorly planned it was. As for Katrina, it was the exact kind of natural disaster that we as a nation should have been able to handle. I sincerely think presidential neglect played a part in the destruction, alongside many, many other factors. So that's why I felt the need to have a symbolic protest. But the question will come to my choice of the pledge as forum for protest.
4. The Pledge in Public schools is almost-tailor-made for petty dissent. It is short, daily, and overtly national. It's done during homeroom, which is a dead time in the academic day anyway. It is done amongst a group of peers. All of these facilitate the use of the pledge as a way to express a political opinion, with a minimum of effort, to one's peers (among whom one's opinion is important), without causing any substantive problems. I did it because I was upset (as many teenagers are), but also because I was upset politically (as I can be), and because I really, really needed to show that I was intellectually not on board with the leadership and actions of my nation. And that hurts, to care about a nation and feel so alienated from it's conduct that even joining in a morning ritual becomes hard. That's a political opinion that matters, and I'm pretty sure that the pledge is as good a forum as any to voice it. It did exactly what I needed a symbolic gesture to do, and it helped me keep my head through the other inanities of high school. That, I think, is reason enough.
   

And so it's out there and acknowledged. A political young adult was a political teenager. And while I deliberately try to be less aggressive, alienating, and partisan now, I think my actions as a youth were justified, were appropriate, and played a valuable role in shaping my present political identity.

GA Postlude

I spent today in San Francisco visiting an old friend. She's smart, and a year and a half shy of graduating from a university in Mexico City. We've been in contact for about four years, though we've seen each other hardly at all. In the total of our years of correspondence, we had somehow avoided the topic of religion. This is odd, especially for someone so focused on religion as myself, but today afforded us the opportunity to talk about it for hours. She was all questions, and so the topic became Unitarian Universalism. Within half an hour, she was fascinated. She'd never heard of the religion before outside of myself, and I had a hunch that given the right minister or the right congregation, she might actually have felt comfortable there. It was a highlight for me, to see someone so open to the religion as an entity unto itself, instead of a reaction against past unpleasantness. This, I think, is how we grow - casually, offering pluralistic spiritual fulfillment to all, not just those who have already tried and been burnt by religion.

~

Walking back from the BART, I was talking one of the friends I was staying with. I mentioned seeing the San Francisco Unitarian Universalist Church, and she mentioned having been UU until she was 10. I asked her why she left, and she said that the church she had belonged to did not believe in background checks for child care workers. This developed into a problem, and the family left the faith because a lofty ideal failed the church so utterly. This is how we shrink, and this is what has kept us small.

UUA GA Quickie #4: Backstory

Today in conversation with a group of adults from my original church, I was asked to specify why I joined my second church during college, and why I am still in the faith when so many people my age raised UU have left. There is no single factor; here's the list of things I proposed as playing some role:

• The Mid-High Guidance Committee. When I was 13, I was upset with the curriculum that year (bible-based), and with the decision to break middle schoolers into a group of 6th-7th graders, and a group of 8th-9th graders. I was in 7th grade; my closest friends were in 8th grade. I wrote a letter to my teachers and the Director of Religious Education expressing my discontent. Within months, the "Mid-High Guidance Comittee" had been created, for the purpose of sustaining community among middle schoolers.
• Church Camp, which was the first real place that I was introduced to a broader community of UU peers, and which as always to me been an affirmation of community as a religious discipline. It helps, too, that the camp has involved into a highly generationally integrated setting, with children as young as five, elementary schoolers, middle schoolers, teenagers that run programing, college kids that do behind-the-scenes camp maintence, young adults that steward high school programming, and adult adults that run elementary and middle school curriculum.
  
• Youth Leadership through Church Camp and YRUU. As mentioned in the previous point, high schoolers do a lot of the actual work of church camp. For me, that opportunity to be in a leadership position with other youth helping Unitarian kids from that age of 14 was a tremendous affirmation of the value of community, and the right of everyone involved to shape the circumstances around them. My experience with YRUU was similar. As a new youth, I did not really enjoy Conferences, but I found he business of Cons fascinating and loved the good work of improving our community. In my sophomore year, I was able to serve my home state as the New Mexico Social Action Coordinator. That too was a powerful experience for me, as it connected leadership/community involvement and works towards social justice.
  
• Religious Education Committee. In high school, I was asked to fill a vacancy left by my father leaving the RE committee, and also to accompany a fellow youth. Being able to advocate for those younger than myself, and to strike compromises between the desires of adult teachers and the needs of UU children was valuable. It also let me see the inner workings behind a significant part of my childhood, and realize what adults could be like in decision making, which helped me see myself as just as worthy of having a say.
  
• Worship Committee. In late high school, after leaving the RE committee, I was asked to be on the Worship committee, tasked with lay-leading and planning our services. This was the first leadership opportunity I had that did not involve youth or children as the primary focus, and it was a joy and an affirmation to be part of working for the larger church community. It also put me on stage as a lay leader about once a month, and that meant as a given I was at church at least once a month.
  
• Denominational Affairs Committee. I was asked again to first serve alongside and then replace the friend who had founded the committee.
  
• Youth Worship. Youth Sunday at First Unitarian Church of Albuquerque stands as my favorite worship ever, and for five years I was able to speak at it. First year was with the coming of age sermon, and the next four years were all as part of the youth group. Speaking one's spiritual story is important for many UU's (all, really), and to be able to year after year speak my story as a raised UU with other raised UUs was truly an affirmation of our place within the denomination
  
• Opportunities to speak to the congregation outside of youth worship. I was at 17 asked to give a pulpit editorial for something like stewardship sunday. This was my first time speaking not with oter youth, and I was able to share my experience of church camp and its sacred community. More recently, as a college student I was invited back to contribute a pulpit editorial for Christine's presidential campaign sermon. While having the editorial ready on the day of the sermon fell through, I was able instead to speak to a post-election mindset. As someone away at college studying politics, the ability to share that part of my life with my home congregation was again affirming.
• Other programming I've forgotten. OWL, coming of age, my church extended family, the meaning found in my grandfathers memorial service at All Soul's in DC, the ability to use anti-racism training at my high school, the mid-high steered chirstmas pageants, and myriad other examples that have at the moment slipped my mind exist. While all important in their own way, they signify also that I am someone who would have the church be a part of my life as almost a given. Whether or not I am that way now because of any part of programming in my life is debatable, but I think the role played by all the programmign and engagement I have had with this faith makes it undeniable.

When asked by Albuquerque what they did right in raising my UU, I can't answer with anything other than this: they gave me religion that was not just spiritually satisfying, that was not just built around community, that was not just built around work towards social justice, and that was not just handed down to me. It was, instead, the sacred community whose work was justice, and whose rules and governance was malleable by one who felt the need to be involved and to effect change. It was holistic religion.

And it is what enabled me, in the first weeks of my freshmen year of college, to attend First Unitarian Universalist Church of New Orleans. It is the backdrop I had in my mind when I wrote these first impressions of what it was New Orleans UUs did right.

UUA GA Quickie #3: Election

There is a lot, a lot, a lot to be said about the UUA presidential election. I had at one point considered doing an objective, issue-by-issue analysis of the candidates similar to what I'd done for last years USA presidential election, but by the time I got around to writing it, my decision had been made, by ballot sent in, and my bias/partisanship would have been removed all hope at an objective reality. So for now, I will direct you to Christine's post, where she sums up most of the reasons why I support Peter Morales, and does so with less word-mincing or restraint than I would have used.

My few salient points not covered:

• Both candidates are amazingly well qualified, and we as a faith are blessed to have such a choice
• This is not the Boomer Woman/Outsider Male POC dichotomy that it superficially appears to be, and we can be greatful for this as well
• If I had to stereotype, Hallman's approach is ministerial and Morales approach is technocratic
• Given that choice, I feel a technocrat better serves the organization of the UUA, while a focus exclusively on ministry is useful on the congregational level
• That said, I think ministry gets the votes, and I'm anticipating a 52/48 Hallman/Morales split based purely on GA presence and the specificity of the audience (existing UU's with the affluence to come to GA)
  
• And, qualified though I think both are (see first bullet point), I really, really, really think that Peter Morales has the ability to lead the UUA as an organization instead of a very large church. Not that being part of the larger fellowship is unimportant, but the UUA must be treated as an organization and not a congregation
  
• Lastly, there is the matter of rhetoric. Hallman writes in the eloquent vague that could almost be called house style for Unitarians, and that's powerful with the Unitarians already present. Morales presents explicit plans, data, and is keenly aware of the nitty-gritty of the tasks he is going to undertake. Specificity allows plans to be attacked with greater ease, but at least he has set out plans

And all that said, the campaign has been only slightly uncomfortable. Cheering at candidate forums + visible candidate identification signs + leading questions all allow for tension, but I think I'm only sensitive to these tensions because of how otherwise aligned I feel with all attendees.

UUA GA Quickie #2: More about Evil

There is a lot to be said for Bill Sinkford's emphasis on the language of reverence in Unitarian Universalism today. After all, we cannot be a faith that intends to shape the world if we trap ourselves with academic formalities and euphemisms. The life we lead is profoundly affected by religion, by the divine, and if we cannot address the holy as holy, then we have failed in understanding life. And so far at GA I have seen a positive move towards the language of reverence, towards and acknowledgement of that which is divine as divine, and towards the truly meaningful parts of human life as religiously powerful. This is a positive step.

What concerns me, however, is the ease with which we adopt the language of denunciation and evil. To me, the strongest part of our UU heritage, and the most gut-reactionary part of my being, is the abscence of sin as a meaningful concept in human life. This has a lot to do with my personal character - as someone rather political, it does me only harm to assume evil on behalf of my opposition. But I have said my piece here about evil and politics, and this is more than that.

The concept of evil, of sin, of profound wrongness equal to the peaks of reverence all strike me as oppositional to the Unitarian understanding of inherent worth and dignity. More importantly than that, they to me stand in stark contrast to our Universalist heritage. The core tenent of universalism is that God loves all of us too much to ever see us without redemption. And I think the usage of evil in UU discourse removes the possibility of change and redemption for any who finds themselves as oppositional beings.

Not that I am willing to elmininate the usage of evil from our discourse entirely: the Holocaust, the genocide in Rwanda, the US slave trade, the conquest of the Americas, and myriad other actions stand out in my mind as evil. But those are actions not individuals, and while we can deplore them now, denouncing the dead is in no way helpful. For evil to be a useful concept, we have to be able to examine the why of evil; the who is almost meaningless. With a who, we can assign blame. With a why, we can understand how evil happens and has happened in the past, and we can act on that information.

~

It is also important to notice how powerfully alienating "good and evil" are for our humanist and athiest co-religionists. We should be exceptionally careful with the use of "evil" for that reason alone.

UUA GA Quickie #1

Last night, the opening sermon was given by a young and talented raised UU minister. Her speech was intricate, optimistic, and contained a call for action. It even saw the logic behind "We affirm and promote the inherent worth and dignity of every person" and transformed that into "we are already holy". Magnificent, moving stuff.

I profoundly disagree with her, however, on the necessity of evil in the systems that oppose us. It goes too strongly against my faith in humanity, and in my understanding of politics. Closest to this sentiment, I think, is James Madison, writing in the Federalist No. 51

But what is government itself, but the greatest of all reflections on human nature. If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to government, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In forming a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself.

We are not more holy than any other in creating our governance, and while I do feel that crafting society is sacred work, I do not see the evil inherent in its creation, nor in its creators. If there is evil in the result, it is because humans cannot foresee every problem, and because systems are slow to adapt to change.

But that does not make the opposition evil. It may make it obstructionist, misguided, or harmful. But that doesn't make it evil. That makes it human.

Why I'm still for Team Obama

As someone who plays with nuance all the time, the actual effect of rhetoric on politics means a lot to me. Specifically, though, it isn't just the content of a speech but the tone that is important; very rarely in US politics will I support a statement that draws its inspiration from anger or an US vs. Them mentality. That was awful during the Bush years and the Clinton years, and does not seem terribly worthwhile now.

Of course, I'm still playing for a team here. Broadly, it's the left, and more specifically it is the policy of a sane left. Not a compromising, mid-90s centrist left, but a left that is both self-assured in the correctness of its view while not being overbearing about it. It is nice to see these sentiments echoed in an analysis of Obama:

Democratic partisans think the enemy is vicious and must be met with uncompromising force. That's exactly how conservative foreign policy hawks feel about the world. Unsurprisingly, the right-wing foreign policy critique of Obama today sounds eerily like the partisan Democratic critique of Obama during the primary...

This is a perfect summation of Obama's strategy. It does not presuppose that his adversaries are people of goodwill who can be reasoned with. Rather, it assumes that, by demonstrating his own goodwill and interest in accord, Obama can win over a portion of his adversaries' constituents as well as third parties. Obama thinks he can move moderate Muslim opinion, pressure bad actors like Iran to negotiate, and, if Iran fails to comply, encourage other countries to isolate it. The strategy works whether or not Iran makes a reasonable agreement.

The full article is here, and is about 10 paragraphs. Well worth reading, and a welcome break from the angry echo chamber that is most politics on the internet.