Adventures of a Religious Activist
by Betty Jeanne Rueters-WardThe scene: An "identity development" workshop, earlier this year. Our instructions were to write the words "I am" on the top of a piece of paper, and finish the sentence however we wanted. My crumpled sheet was covered in words (queer, white, womyn, sister, etc.), but I found myself most intrigued by the last two: "Religious" and "Activist". My understanding of these two parts of my identity have (thankfully) become fused, though that wasn't always my experience.
As a college student, I yearned to fill the gap in my life that youth group and district Young Religious Unitarian Universalist (YRUU) events had filled during high school. I divided my time (literally, down the middle) as a member of my campus' religious and activist communities. I sang in Catholic mass, organized a small group ministry program, and helped plan an interfaith student retreat. In my "other life," I coordinated activism workshops, wrote heated editorials to the student newspaper, and raised funds to send delegations of students to national political demonstrations. During the week, I was fueled by meeting after meeting, strategizing and debating with others working for justice. On Sundays—if I wasn't too tired by then— I took time to nurture my "inner" being, my spiritual core. Yet I always felt torn between these two communities, these two "parts" of myself.
Most of us are taught to engage in "binary (either/or) thinking". We're told to choose between a mere two options (head vs. heart, male vs. female, us vs. them, etc.) to describe the most complex, fluid aspects of our selves and the world around us. Challenging those binaries is one of the most important—and complicated—tasks I can engage in. If I haven't confused enough people by wearing my chalice and cross together on a necklace, I've certainly perplexed others by being a "religious activist"—a person of faith doing social action, and a person of action grounded in spirituality and religious beliefs. Why is this a mystifying concept? It seems unnatural and impossible for me to even think of treating spirituality and social justice as separate concepts.
I'll let you in on a little secret: I got burnt out—really burnt out—during my first few years of doing full-time social justice work. I sort of knew this was happening: friends and family worried about me, more experienced activists cautioned me. I still felt the weight of the world on my shoulders and the never-ending responsibility to do something—in fact, I wanted to do everything, and I rarely took care of myself. (As someone raised as female, I already had a tendency to internalize a lot of self-blame and guilt.) It took me a long time, after a lot of anguish, to truly understand that if we don't take care of ourselves, we can't be sustainable in taking care of others.
Part of what makes long-term engagement in social justice work challenging is that the very society we live in makes it difficult. So many of us are overworked or over-scheduled; we juggle so many commitments and responsibilities that we'll always be neglecting something, whether it's our health, spirit, family, friends, need for fun or need for sleep. (Sleep? What's that? I used to tell people my motto was "I'll sleep when I'm dead"—yikes.) I've heard words like "self-care" get thrown around for years but didn't know what they meant until I had people in my life who truly showed me; people who balanced their priorities, affirmed and loved themselves, and believed that being an "activist" was just as important as —and intimately connected with—being an artist, a parent, a friend, a lover, and so much more.
I used to think that being an activist—whether religiously/spiritually grounded or not—was only about self-sacrifice. This is a dangerous ideal; dangerous for ourselves, dangerous for others, and even dangerous for those we long to support and stand in solidarity with. Social justice work is about giving and struggling, and often involves challenge and hurt. Yet we cannot create justice without love (including self-love), care, fun, music, joy, play, and yes—sleep.
And there's one more thing that (in my humble opinion) we need in order to work for justice—faith. I'm not suggesting that activists—or anyone for that matter—need to identify as religious, or have a particular spiritual practice. Faith is something that transcends religious institutions or denominations—it is a feeling of trust and hope in something that may not even exist yet.
During an anti-racism workshop I once facilitated, I asked participants to respond to the question of whether racial justice work was a matter of "faith". The passionate responses overwhelmed and humbled me, particularly the following—one participant (we'll call him Sean Capaloff-Jones) gave the fervent reply: "Anti-racism work has to be a matter of spiritual work. To imagine and work toward a world in which justice truly exists is a measure of faith in itself."
Betty Jeanne Rueters-Ward served as a YRUU Programs Specialist in the Youth Office from June 2004 through June 2005. She is currently pursuing the newly-established Master of Arts in Religious Leadership for Social Change at Starr King School for the Ministry.
For more information contact youth @ uua.org.
Last updated on Saturday, April 19, 2008.
