Who are the Unitarians and Universalists?

June 4, 1967
Plainfield

Who are the Unitarians and Universalists?

The natural answer to the question is, “we are,” unless you are a visitor or newcomer. The Survey conducted by the Goals Committee disclosed many interesting answers to the question, “who are the Unitarians and Universalists?”

First of all, the survey of opinion is thought to be reliable. No serious objection has been made to the validity of the sampling of representative churches and fellowships. Some of the questions asked may not have provided clear alternatives or sufficient choices. As this sermon proceeds, attention will be directed toward such areas of ambiguity and confusion that may be found in some of the statistical tables.

But in discovering much stimulation for response and reaction in the results of the survey, one should not make these findings a new religious authority to replace previous authorities which may have one time been one’s security. A clipping from the humor column of the Wall St. Journal underlines the need for such caution about statistics:

“If a man stands with his right foot on a hot stove and his left foot in a freezer, some statisticians would assert that, on the average, he is completely comfortable.”

No one of us is an “average” Unitarian. Nevertheless the findings reported by the Goals Committee may be indicative of trends and consequently deserve serious consideration. My interpretation is mine; other interpretations may differ.

Who are we? We are urban and suburban dwellers whose educational levels are high, who are affluent, and who for the most part came as adults to Unitarian and Universalist churches and fellowship rather than having had Unitarian family backgrounds. After elaborating somewhat on the details of our identity, together with comments on provocative situations or formidable gaps in our constituency, I would like to pursue the question of Who We Are at another level.

According to the survey, 41.6% of the members live in a large city of 100,000 or more and 37.3% live in suburbs near large cities. The remaining fractions live in small towns or cities, less than 1% numbered among the farm population. With the growing densities of urban and suburban populations, there will be increased potential membership for our churches and fellowships. In addition, the people of our religious groups are going to be among the ones who must confront the numerous problems of the urban-suburban complexities – air and water pollution, mass and private transportation, archaic forms of municipal and county government, continuing patterns of segregation in many suburbs as contrasted with the inner cities where segregation also pyramids as those who can move to the suburbs, and those who cannot, remain. Increasingly, those who remain in the cities comprise members of minority groups.

Persons in our Unitarian and Universalist societies seem to possess disproportionately high formal educational achievements. 84% have attended college. 60% have college degrees. 25% have graduate degrees. In the families surveyed, 2/3 of the main earners are professional persons. 40% work for the Government or for non-profit institutions. The observation has been made that the boom in education will result in greatly increased numbers of high school graduates, college graduates, and of those who earn graduate degrees. Here again is an abnormal increase in an area where we are especially strong and should have appeal. I’m told that proportionate to the U.U. percentage of the population, we have something like ten times our share of college graduates and ten times our share of persons in the numerous professions.

Family income seems to be keeping with the levels of education and professional training, the median family income being reported $12,000 – that is, as many of the families surveyed here have incomes in excess of that amount as those who have less.

One could generalize that if the sample has an ample measure of accuracy, then commitment is not deep when measured by the giving of money. Perhaps as incomes rise, proportion of giving to religion declines. Either we fail to challenge properly those capable of giving, or the Unitarian Church or fellowship simply does not represent the important commitment in the life of of the average Unitarian that other religions do to their constituencies who may average much less income per year.

Frequently we make use of the slogan, “unity amid diversity.” The social reality seems to be however that we are overwhelmingly middle-class and upper middle-class. Our diversities are within the limits defined by the middle class. Questions arise:

Where are the so-called “blue collar” workers?
Where are the service station owners and the maintenance men?
Where are the machinists, steam-fitters and dry-cleaning workers?
Where are the young people? Not all of them are in college or the service.

Those gaps are formidable, and I have no trust in the cliché that we can have no appeal to persons who are among such groupings. Why not?

According to the sample, our family lives are stable, at least outwardly, for 72% are married and have been married just once. 8.9% are single, never having married. 68% of the married have two or more children. But a lesser number, 58%, are registered in Church School or L.R.Y.

Are we joiners in organizations and efforts usually associated with liberal causes? One out of every ten belongs either to the NAACP or the Urban League; one out of every twenty belongs either to CORE or SNCC; one out of every nine belongs to the American Civil Liberties Union; one in ten belongs to the Planned Parenthood Association; 11% are members of the League of Women Voters. Nearly 9% belong to a United Nations Association; 5.4% belong to SANE or UWF; and 15% belong to “other.” The number who belong to a Memorial Society represents the highest percentage, 16%. Although I have no comparative statistics available, these organizational memberships would seem to be far above the average percentage in the general population. But it should be noted that nearly 46% of Unitarians belong to no organizations, indicating that those who are “joiners” have multiple memberships.

In the United States, Unitarian Universalist gatherings represent neither the Democratic nor Republican parties at prayer, exclusively. A majority are Democrats, 56%; Republicans represent 34%; the balance being divided among “other”, 3.7%, and “none”, 6.2%. In the last election, however, 75% voted for Johnson. The generational shift in political affiliation can be noted in the table that indicates that parents of members were more likely to be supporters of the Republican Party, 48.8%, and the Democratic Party, 37%, with politically divided parents amounting to only 9%.

One of the most important clues to who we are is found in the tables referring to former religious affiliations: 8% were Roman Catholic; 5% were Jewish; 37% were Liberal Protestant; 28% had no organized religious affiliation. Only 11% were born Unitarians or Universalists. 33% have been Unitarian Universalists for more than eleven years, but 56% have joined within the past ten years.

This is a striking set of identities. A generalization like the following would seem reasonable: Unitarians have come out of orthodox background or out of a disaffiliated situation. They have sought the U U approach to religion since World War 2, the majority joining within the past, fast-moving decade of rapid social change. But, inasmuch as a half-century has not recorded overwhelming change in total denominational statistics, most of the “birthright” Unitarians and Universalists did not stay, as only 11% of present membership were “born into it.”

Are we a one-generation religious organization? For most of you, your parents were not Unitarians. If a similar statistic prevails over the next generation, your children will have a different religious affiliation or none. Would a radically different approach to the religious training of children make a difference? Or is it inevitable that the children of religious rebels will rebel against their rebel parents? The attention and investment new being given to research in religious education may be of help in this area.

This identity problem, “Who are the Unitarians?” certainly presents itself when looking at the statistics another way. If 56% have joined in the past ten years, and only about one person in ten is a lifelong Unitarian, how do we acquire meaningful traditions and deep roots? Building a meaningful tradition in ten years or less is an extraordinary task. One could assert that the professional ministers, particularly those trained in UUA-associated theological schools, are the guardians and advocates of the Unitarian and Universalist traditions. But most ministers seem more keyed to the present and future rather than the past, however glorious. Furthermore with the average length of a ministry becoming more brief – some say it is not much more than a two-year average – the minister may be more restless and rootless than the more recent come-outers from the more traditional religious groups. Who are we? We are certainly conscious of our diversities, but our unities and shared loyalties may be more difficult to locate and maintain.

What is the meaning of Unitarian and Universalist religion for you and me as individuals? What meanings, commitments, and activities should we be sharing? These are questions that the members of each generation must answer in a church that is an open society. Our generation is not exempt from the obligation to establish our common as well as individual identity.

There was a paragraph in the SR not long ago that read like this:

“Maybe because he couldn’t find anything better being published these days, Bill Cotterell recently reviewed the telephone book for the Falcon Times, the Miami-Dade Junior College campus paper. Discussing the SOUTHERN BELL TELEPHONE DIRECTORY FOR GREATER MIAMI, the reviewer observed, ‘Although – as in his previous works – (A.G.) Bell stretches a seemingly endless cast of characters over a virtually non-existent plot, the reader’s attention is maintained by the author’s devotion to detail. Bell writes with such stark, accurate realism, such driving to-the-point brevity, that the reader always knows just whom the author is talking about.’”

Although infinitesimally smaller, we have a list of names as does the phone book, but is the plot similarly non-existent? Who are we? Clues will be found in the Goals Report – beliefs and attitudes, personal and group, but these will be clues only, for answers to problems will be found or not found as we deliberate, experiment, and innovate. The cogency and effectiveness of any temporary or enduring answers will be determined not only by our freedom to search but also by our personal good-will toward one another.

But beyond the important question, “Who Are Unitarians and Universalists?” there is a more fundamental and more crucial question, “Who are we as persons in this world of the 1960s?”

Notwithstanding our affluence, many of us are troubled persons. In the inner cloisters of our fears there are anxieties we are not prone to share readily. Playwright Arthur Miller touched our sensitivities in DEATH OF A SALESMAN when Willy Loman exposed the desperate intensity of his inner torment as the shallow nature of his life and values were exposed. In Edward Albee’s DELICATE BALANCE, Agnes says sardonically, “Men spend their time making ends meet until they meet the end.” When a stand-up comedian delivers satirical lines, often enough his subject is the frantic nature of our living. For example, the young performer, London Lee, observed, “Money isn’t everything. Health and happiness are one percent.” The audience laughs or chuckles, somewhat self-consciously, for this is a tender area.

Whether or not you share my particular beliefs about the Vietnam War does not alter the social reality that many persons are disturbed about it. Some are torn-up inside. I believe this is true of doves, hawks, ostriches, chickens, and a great many who are just plain blue-birds. Newspaperman Pete Lisagor wrote his admiration for another columnists Murray Kempton, “who with searing insight could capture in a single line the comic absurdity of Defense Secretary McNamara’s statistical defense of the administration’s ‘guns and butter’ position. ‘Thanks to sound management we stand at Armageddon hog fat.’” (see NEWARK STAR LEDGER, March 15, 1967. Such mixed feelings are wide-spread and even though largely unspoke, are the source of much stress.

Who are we? With all our getting, we still need more understanding of what in life is worth the spending of our years. Listen to Franz Alexander, the psychiatrist. Those of you who do not need the physician might remember that those who do are not different in kind, but are those whose anxieties have made greater inroads on emotional stability or who have accepted the fact that their emotional conflicts need professional guidance in order that insight may be obtained and a functioning stability re-established.

“After long hours of daily work, spent listening to the suffering victims of these unsettled times and trying to extract sense from the kaleidescope variety of sincere self-revelations, a hypnagogic vision appears before the eyes of the pondering psychoanalyst. The analyst sees his patients – physicians, lawyers, engineers, bankers, advertising men, teachers and laboratory research men of universities, students, and clerks – engaged in a Marathon race, their eager faces distorted by strain, their eyes focused not upon their goal but upon each other with a mixture of hate, envy, and admiration. Panting and perspiring, they run and never arrive. They would all like to stop but dare not as long as the others are running. What makes them run so frantically, as though they were driven by the threatening swish of an invisible whip wielded by an invisible slave driver? The driver and the whip they carry in their own minds. If one of them finally stops and begins leisurely to whistle a tune or watch a passing cloud or picks up a stone and with childish curiosity turns it around in his hand, they all look upon him at first with astonishment, and then with contempt and disgust. They call him names, a dreamer or a parasite, a theoretician or a schizophrenic, and above all, an effeminate. They not only do not understand him – they not only despise him but “they hate him as their own sin.” All of them would like to stop – ask each other questions, sit down to chat about futilities – they all would like to belong to each other because they all feel desperately alone – chasing on in a never ending chase. They do not dare to stop until the rest stop lest they lose all their self-respect, because they know only one value – that of running – running for its own sake.”

Who are we? We are persons who may match a certain profile in a Goals Committee report in a few or many particulars. But also we are persons in a culture where it is difficult to reconcile the social expectations of both competition and cooperation. There are many who have incurred long-ranging obligations, mortgage, children, education – and belatedly believe that an entirely different occupation might be more gratifying for the self and more significant in the entire scheme of things. But obligations are stubborn confrontations and many persons accept them with periodic feelings of being trapped. Many of us are lonely even in the midst of the small and large crowds in which we move. Others are contented as the proverbial bug in the rug, although such persons seem more and more rare as the pressures increase and nerves stretch under tension. Thus it is impossible, for me at least, to answer the question, “Who are Unitarians?” without also dealing with the question, “Who are the people?”

In spite of the ominous war clouds raining death in southeast Asia and the Middle East, admitting the mammoth problems of increasing population, just to mention two of many authentic issues, we stand at the beginning of an age of much promise. There have been more miserable conditions than split-level traps and the rat-race at the office. Research in medicine prolongs lives and reduces suffering. Technical development and mass production have made labor-saving appliances and machinery available. Energies which were once exhausted by the housewife over her washboard and the laborer in his 10-12 hour day, six days a week, are now available for other activities. Leisure time is increasing steadily for many in our country.

Even though the “War on Poverty” is losing ground at present, at least the consciousness of national responsibility for the poor is being established and increasingly accepted, although the snail-like progress is small consolation for the deprived.

There is another poverty which the supposedly affluent should consider. Leonard Duhl, a sociologist, asks the question this way, “The poverties of the future may indeed be more difficult to deal with unless we avoid the trap of equating prosperity with happiness.”

Who are we? We are middle-class, upper-class persons whose physical comforts are many but whose lives may be burdened by stresses born of anxiety about continuing security, about maintaining the upward climb; whose roots are weakened not only by our mobility from city to city, but also even if we are able to stay in one house, we are shaken when friendly neighbors, relatives, and professional associates move on and we must try again for relationships which will provide the human closeness and affection all of us need.

C.A. Doxiades, a renowned architect and city planner, told a story to make a point (SR 1/1/66, p. 16), “Many years ago I was holding the tiller of a small boat in the Aegean Sea, and listening to an old sailor telling me his story. I must have been quite absorbed because he asked me to be more careful with my steering. ‘But the following wind is favorable!’ ‘It is just for that reason that the danger of going off course is so great.’”

Doxiades’ point was that many persons veer off course at the moment of success. This could be true of promising culture, too, and religious denominations, as well.

Who are we? We are persons, everyone of us, who should wrestle with the question, “What makes a livable world for me?” If I am a Unitarian, I live in the city or the suburbs, more and more people are going to live in those environments. Some predict that before long, 80% of the world’s population will live in the urban-suburban complex. What personal values shall I cherish so that I may live more productively amid the change, tension, and difficulties? Frank Lloyd Wright not only described the modern office buildings as machines, pure and simple, but also called the City a machine, “the most wonderful of all machines, but a machine that depreciates faster than ever appreciated and that the skill and maintenance to sustain it were vastly underestimated.”

Who are we? Persons who must sustain the City. Who are we? We are persons, each of us with his own individual constellation of strengths and insecurities, each with a share of contentious feelings as well as cooperative, each wondering whether habitual paths of occupation, duties, interest, efforts, and comforts bring enough fulfillments to cause us to end most days with a feeling that the day has been a good one.

Our beliefs about ourselves, our beliefs about our origin and destiny, our choices of where we exert our strength and how we give of ourselves are all central questions. If our religion is worth the effort, we who are Unitarians and Universalists should seek to deal with the anxieties and stresses of our time as well as being able to make assertive statements about our differences from other religious groups.

Who are we? We are persons seeking ways to make life livable by discovering not only the worth and value of all other persons, but also our own worth and value, to the end that we shall know more fully the productive experience of being neither entirely selfish or entirely selfless, but rather persons who believe in others and believe in ourselves. It seems to me that this “delicate balance,” when we achieve it, will provide the answer to the question and in our own experience we will know who we are.