Suddenly Off Center

Did the room just get bigger?

So there’s a person in a congregation (who might be in yours too, because they’re everywhere) who is really angry about what they at best term “the church is leaving me” and at worst call out as being “woke” and “invested in cancel culture.”

Sometimes they’re angry because you are “suddenly” using terms like worship and prayer and clearly this isn’t the humanist congregation they joined.

Sometimes they’re angry because they aren’t asked to serve on every committee and board, just so others with various other identities (age, gender, race, ability, etc.) can also serve, and that feels like nothing more than quotas and “affirmative action.”

Sometimes they’re angry because their “true voice of reason” is being ignored, or at the very least, not the only voice people are listening to.

Now many of us say, those shouldn’t be reasons to be angry - after all, our faith is directed toward including, honoring, and welcoming all. We work for justice and liberation. We have always longed for freedom and compassion. We are pluralistic and welcoming - and that calls us to draw the circle wide.

And that - for the person described above - is the problem.

Because when the circle is small, you have one of the only seats at the table, and your opinion is dominant. But when the circle grows wider, suddenly there are too many seats, and too many other opinions, and your seat isn’t at the center any more.

And for our person, that feels like oppression.

If that person stays the same, that is.

The circle getting wider doesn’t feel like oppression when you widen your heart and mind too, and learn how not being at the center isn’t oppression.

The circle getting wider is - for our Unitarian Universalist faith - the common endeavor. It plays out in various ways in our individual congregations, because of demographics and level of commitment, of course. But as a faith, we are looking toward where our words and actions are leading - and have been leading. And it’s this. A wider circle. A larger room. Less centralized, more expansive. People more able to go to the edges and help those outside open that circle further.

No one needs to be at the center. Being at the center is what we are taught by corporate America. Rugged individualism. Capitalism. Patriarchy. The culture of white supremacy.

The circle is going to keep getting wider, because that’s what a free, liberal faith does.

It’s only oppressive if you can’t also get wider.