Proposed CSAI—Exploring Class Barriers
Issue
Unitarian Universalists (UUs) have a reputation for being snobbish. Pursuing social justice, it is time for us to look inward and study the barriers we create inhibiting people with modest income and/or education to feel included.
Grounding in Unitarian Universalism
Believing in the inherent worth of every person, we can find truth by inclusion of persons of all income and educational statuses. Without that truth, UUs are limited in promoting peace, liberty and justice for all.
Topics for Congregational Study
- Class/Income/Education wise: who are we, who are we not?
- How can we use our discomfort in encountering someone of a higher or lower class/ income/education in making persons of other class/income/education more comfortable?
- What assumptions do we make about income and education of others?
- Do we create barriers by our purchases and expressions of our income and education?
- How can we structure UU congregational activities to be more inclusive?
- What can the Unitarian Universalist Association (UUA) do to make General Assembly (GA) and other UUA resources more inclusive?
- How does our choice of music and art express our class, income and education?
- How should we approach stewardship and fundraising to be inclusive?
- How will our class/income/education awareness inform our approach to social justice?
Possible Congregational/District Actions
To better understand others, get involved with them and their struggle:
- Remove economic barriers in using UU facilities. For example, host Alcoholic Anonymous (AA )meetings and gatherings of public interest for free.
- Do social justice outreach within our community—get involved with other churches and schools to stand in solidarity with low income persons. This might involve tutoring, providing school supplies, serving community meals to needy people, and assisting families engaged with the criminal justice system.
- Lobby local and state government to remove economic barriers to public resources.
- Lobby school boards to remove economic barriers in our school systems.
- Use Sunday services to educate the congregation what we’ve learned to combat insensitive expectations of others.
- Alter our buildings, our services, our music and our artwork to appeal to a range of people.
- Consider ways we can structure UU and UUA to avoid charging fees—example, you have to buy podcasts of GA workshops.
Related Prior Social Witness Statements
Although we have made many Statement of Conscience (SOC) concerned with Income, Race and Class (as in 2006 SOC), we have not really explored income and educational barriers to inclusiveness within UU. In searching the words income, economic and class, we've been very concerned—about what the government and culture are doing, but we've never had an SOC that specifically looked inward at who we are and how we relate to those of lower class/income/education backgrounds.
Additional Information
- Elite: Uncovering Classism in Unitarian Universalist History, written by UU minister Mark Harris. A discussion guide was created for the book by Gail Forsyth-Vail and Susan Dana Lawrence, both of the UUA.
- Rev. Dr. Mark Morrison Reed at 2011 GA discussed that lack of racial diversity was a function of lack of class diversity--so if we want to grow a multicultural/multiracial diversity, we need to tackle inclusion of different classes of people.
- Suzanne Zilber, PhD, led a workshop exploring issues of class at Midwest Unitarian Universalist Summer Assembly (MUUSA). In October, Suzanne will be sharing this workshop at UU Fellowship of Ames, Iowa.
- Rev. Lynn Thomas Strauss has led workshops on Classism with Unitarian Universalism for UU ministers in five UUMA chapters around the country.
- Doug Muder in UU World Magazine, Fall 2007 wrote Not my father's religion about how uncomfortable UU would have been for his working class father.
Contact
Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Ames, IA
For more information contact socialwitness @ uua.org.
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Last updated on Thursday, November 3, 2011.
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