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When people think of rock bands that are composed of family members, they think of the Partridge Family of the 1970s, but they were not even a real band, though they were inspired by a real family band called the Cowsills, considering of a mother and her children.
Using an animation app called Plotagon, I made a story about a band of UUs who were also members of a family: The Hudson Phamily. This is their story:
In 1991, this happened:
https://theterfs.com/2013/10/13/1991-michigan-womyns-music-festival/
In August, 1991 I attended my second Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival (MWMF) with Laura Ervin. Laura and I drove 1,050 miles nonstop in her vehicle… and arrived at the festival, car #33, at about 9:00 am Monday morning. We walked and talked with women waiting with us on the road, bought raffle tickets from a festival promoter, and joined women in joyous enthusiasm, camaraderie and expectation while we awaited the start of the festival at 2:00 pm. When we got onto the land Laura volunteered the use of her vehicle to help with shuttle service. Laura and I split the work shift. I worked the first two hours while Laura moved our gear to the campsite and set up her tent. She worked the next two hours while I set up my tent.
After going through an orientation run with a shuttle coordinator I began the process of loading women’s gear and driving them to their desired destinations. I felt a sense of pride in my work; welcoming the women, helping them with their gear, and answering their questions. At the completion of my shuttle shift I set up my [campsite], took a much welcomed shower and went for a long walk in the woods. I met Laura at our campsite and she invited me to walk with her to the main gate to meet a friend who was arriving on a chartered bus from Grand Rapids at 10:00 pm.
We arrived at the main gate at about 9:30 pm and sat down around the fire pit with several other women. We chatted with the women and enjoyed the warmth of the fire. At about 10:00 pm we received word that the bus was delayed and would arrive around 11:00. Laura and I decided to remain at the main gate until the bus arrived. We continued to socialize with the women who come and went from the area of the fire pit. The bus arrived at about 11:00 pm and Laura went over to the bus. A woman requested that I stay away from the bus to avoid congestion. I stopped at the edge of the road about 20 feet from the fire pit.
While I waited for Laura to return I was approached by two women, Chris Coyote and Del Kelleher. Chris said that she needed to speak with me regarding a serious and difficult matter. Sensing her urgency I suggested we move away from the women near the fire pit in order to talk privately. Chris said that the Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival was a woman-only event and she wanted to know if I was a man. I replied that I was a woman and I showed her my NH picture ID driver’s license. Then she asked me if I was a transsexual. I asked her what was the point of her questioning and she replied that transsexuals were not permitted to attend the festival. She said that MWMF policy was that the festival was open to “natural, women-born-women” only. I replied that nowhere, in any festival literature or the program guide was that policy stated. I asked Chris to please verify that policy and she went to the office to contact the festival producers, Lisa Vogel and Boo Price. Sometime during this conversation I waved Laura to come over and she witnessed much of what transpired.
I continued speaking with Del. Del stated that the reason the policy was not in any literature was because the issue of transsexuals had never come up as a problem before. Del added that the policy was for the benefit of the transsexuals’ safety and the safety of the women attending the festival. When I pointed out that there were other transsexuals on the land she acknowledged that this was true. Then she added, ‘We haven’t caught them yet, but we did catch you.”
Then in 2024:
https://caroldansereau.substack.com/p/bowing-to-gender-identity-bullies
The Unitarians have kicked us out. My partner Bruce and I aren’t allowed to go to family camp at Seabeck, Washington, the first week of August anymore.
They say we made people “unsafe.” We supposedly “harmed” trans and nonbinary people, and then we refused to sign a document admitting guilt and agreeing to restrictions on our speech. So, we’re not allowed to attend any more. The Be Kind Brigade has meted out its abject cruelty yet again, and we’ve lost something precious as a result.
We have adored that week in August, eagerly anticipating each year the moment our car would rumble across the bridge over the lagoon and enter our annual Brigadoon. A week of singing, dancing, talking, swimming, playing games, and performing for the world’s most appreciative audience did our hearts good.
Bruce has been going to the August camp for 25 years, and I’ve been going with him since 2007. We’re referred to as “valued members of the community” and Bruce was even awarded the Golden Hand and Heart Award for his contributions.
But that’s all history now. We have been kicked to the curb.
Chris Coyote and Del Kelleher were transphobic, as were Bruce and Carol Danseraeu. The first incident is what happens when transphobes are in power and the second is when they are not.
In the interest of fairness and tolerance, I have decided to unban all the users that were previously banned from this subreddit. Though in most cases I think the bans were deserved, I also think we need to give most of them one more chance to try to be productive members of this community. Forgiveness is a virtue that we UUs should appreciate.
For the sake of discussion, let us proceed to take a critical look at this UU critic who seems to hate everything the UUA stands for these days. Where does he go wrong? What points of his may actually be valid or consistent with UU Principles?
Earlier references to this issue:
https://www.reddit.com/r/UnitarianUniversalist/comments/1bfyqk8/community_conversation/
https://www.reddit.com/r/UnitarianUniversalist/comments/1blmbqa/rules_follow_up/
I have now decided to formally update the rules. The first one has been replaced completely to make the issues clearer to members and visitors alike.
1. Bigotry will not be tolerated
Intentional expressions of bigotry of any kind, including racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, classism, or anti-atheist slurs, will result in a warning for the first offense and a permanent ban for a repeat offender.
The second rule is the same as before.
Look at this:
https://weru.org/about/mission/
Mission & Values
Mission:
WERU Community Radio is an independent, listener-supported and volunteer-powered media organization, whose mission is to provide diverse programming to lift spirits, raise awareness and make connections.
Guiding Values:
Diversity, Equity and Inclusion
Civility and Respect
Social Justice
Environmental Stewardship
Community Service
Celebration of Local Communities
Diversity Statement:
All forms of diversity (and the absence of discrimination) are important to and sought by WERU, including but not limited to gender, sexual orientation, generation, geographic location, disability, race, religion, educational background and field of employment, with regards to membership on the Board of Directors, Community Advisory Board, volunteer staff and paid staff.
More About WERU’s Philosophy:
Our motto is to be a “voice of many voices” by providing a wide variety of music, information, and voices over the airwaves and Internet. Our vision is that WERU will entertain, inform, and inspire people, and will support healthy, informed and vibrant communities.
We celebrate listener support as an essential element of our financial sustainability. We likewise celebrate volunteerism as an essential element of the organization’s operations, both broadcast and behind the scenes. Hence “listener supported and volunteer powered.”
We present news and public affairs programming that meets high journalistic standards.
The bylaws of Salt Pond Community Broadcast/WERU are available upon request. Email Matt Murphy, General Manager, at [matt@weru.org](mailto:matt@weru.org).
___________
They clearly want UUs among their listeners:
https://weru.org/locations/unitarian-universalist-church/
Unitarian Universalist Church
Address
120 Park St
Bangor
ME
04401
United States
https://www.uusc.org/5-ways-higher-immigration-helps-everyone/
Contrary to all the fearmongering, increased migration is a massive net benefit.
By Josh Leach on February 21, 2024
These days, there seems to be only one thing politicians in Washington can agree on: bashing immigration. President Biden went before the cameras last month to call on Congress to grant him unprecedented authority to suspend asylum processing. Senators of both major parties recently negotiated a bill that would have gutted asylum protections for many people fleeing danger. (Fortunately, this proposal failed—but not because politicians chose to protect asylum. Rather, it was because far-right politicians preferred to leave the status quo unchanged, so they could campaign for even crueler measures!)
Yet, for all of this negative hype about “the border,” the real evidence shows that immigration brings tremendous benefits. These include not only new opportunities and increased safety for immigrants themselves, but gains for everyone else in society too. Here are just some of the ways that immigration helps us all:
To be sure, the many societal benefits of immigration do not mean the current system is working well. Politicians of both major parties are right to point to the pressures facing the asylum system; and many mayors and city officials are justifiably concerned about their ability to provide shelter for growing numbers of asylum-seekers under current budgetary constraints.
The solution to these problems, however, is not to decrease migration, but to encourage it. Processing backlogs in the asylum system are due in part to the fact that so few alternative pathways exist for immigrants to work in the United States. Opening up new migration channels would help alleviate some of the system’s administrative burden.
Likewise, the shelter capacity challenges facing American cities could be alleviated by removing the cruel and unjust restrictions that asylum-seekers face on their ability to work in the United States. Most asylum-seekers, after all, would not need or want to rely on city shelters, if current U.S. law did not perversely block them from obtaining work permits. The Asylum Seeker Work Authorization Act&text=This%20bill%20directs%20the%20Department,by%20the%20Department%20of%20Justice.) (ASWA), which UUSC and our partners support, would address this problem in part by enabling asylum-seekers to join the workforce within a month of their arrival. You can take action to support this critically-needed bill here.
Too often, when politicians are confronted for backing anti-immigrant policies, they defend themselves by saying they are just reflecting U.S. public opinion. But public opinion does not grow in a vacuum. It comes in part from the stories we tell about migration and the ways we frame the issue.
It’s time, then, for a major reframe of the way we talk about migration. The real-world evidence is clear enough by this point: immigration is not a threat; it’s an opportunity.
This story was published in the Winter 2017 issue of UU World Magazine:
https://www.uuworld.org/articles/emptying-my-shoe
I can’t imagine where I’d be had I not found my Unitarian Universalist congregation.
How did I get here? How could I have gone so quickly from a warm loving family to a barren empty flat?
Those questions echoed in my mind’s dank chambers as I surveyed the unfamiliar living space. Floor-to-ceiling stacks of boxes obscured stark, bare walls. Could the pieces of my shattered life ever reassemble into something resembling normal? Nothing was normal, and maybe never would be again after the metaphorical hurricane that had laid waste to my life.
That hurricane had a name. Transgender.
The media would have you believe transgender people “always knew” their gender. The news shows us story after story of little girls knowing in their hearts they are boys, or boys asking to wear dresses and play with Barbie dolls. Even if this knowledge goes unexpressed for decades, we’re led to believe, their gender was obvious to them from a young age.
People are far more comfortable allowing the messy business of a gender transition if it is presented by storytellers as a foregone conclusion from the start.
But reality is nowhere near that neat. I spent the first fifty years of my life with no earthly clue I might be transgender. An observer might have found my teenage preference for female friends unusual, but I did not. Teenage gender norms and those of the liberated era in which I was raised allowed anyone to be friends with anyone else, and I put together a rich social life.
Things changed after graduation. People began pairing off, and social overtures toward single women were generally interpreted as romantic. Finding friendship among females became more challenging. However, I made the best of my opportunities, getting married and raising two children. I was mildly uncomfortable with my role as husband and father, but since I had never really felt like I fit in anywhere, that seemed unsurprising and certainly not an indication of anything unusual about my relationship with gender.
As a married man, I found that developing friendships with women was nearly impossible. I couldn’t come up with any way of approaching women socially without looking like I was interested in an affair. Luckily, my wife and I were great friends, keeping the loneliness of my married years partially at bay. I had family and career to keep me busy, so it was not until age fifty that I turned my focus toward the gaping holes in my social life.
I set about putting together the puzzle pieces of what until then had seemed unrelated traits. My reading habits involved almost exclusively books written by, for, and about women. While awaiting the doctor, I invariably chose the women’s magazines. My favorite movies featured stories about strong women who overcame adversity, and my favorite songs tended to be those from female artists whose mighty voices sang of feminine empowerment.
I also began for the first time to examine a feeling I’d had since my teen years: regret that I was not born female, with a female body. I would frequently try a thought experiment: Would I give up everything to magically become a woman? The answer invariably came back “yes.” I would gladly trade my own life for just about any female one.
My wife supported my explorations until the clues began to suggest I might be transgender. “If you transitioned, I’d probably leave you,” she told me one night, and I did not object. I certainly would have been upset to find myself suddenly married to a man, and I understood why remaining in a marriage with a woman would not be her choice.
So I was cautious. I tested the waters, first presenting as a woman in public and then joining a transgender-friendly women’s reading group. A realization took shape: I was far more comfortable as my female self. Female social interactions seemed “right” in a way that male interactions never had. I began to see my female life as the “real me,” while the prospect of spending the rest of my days as a male looked unbearably dreary. I was conscious of a part of my being that demanded I be true to it by living as a female. I could no more change it through an effort of will than I could my height or eye color.
However, many whom I took into my confidence urged me to save my marriage by remaining in my male life and avoiding disrupting my family. I had survived a half-century as a male, surely I could survive the rest of the way.
After much soul searching, I still couldn’t agree. Imagine you are on a long hike, feet throbbing with discomfort. You soldier on, because everyone on the hike is complaining. But then you all take a break, and you find that your shoe is full of pebbles, while everyone else’s shoes are clear. You realize that, though no one’s feet feel fine, it’s been far worse for you than for others. A simple solution exists—remove your shoe and empty out the pebbles.
What would you say to those who remind you that you’ve hiked this far, surely you could hike just a little farther? That the hike is more than half done, and you’d inconvenience everyone else, who would have to wait for you to untie your shoe and then lace it back up again? What would you do? Would you just finish the hike, knowing that every step will hurt, or would you beg their indulgence while you emptied your shoe?
In the end, I reluctantly and with much trepidation decided that, while I wished I could have remained as I was for the sake of my marriage, it was asking too much of me to insist that I spend the rest of my life pretending I was someone I’m not. I needed to change, and if my wife left me because of it, I couldn’t control that and shouldn’t try.
That decision shattered our marriage. After months of vitriolic wrangling we decided she would buy my half of the house. My daughter, then a junior in high school, remained living with her. I moved into my own place, my wife furious that I’d chosen transition over her. My son was away at college by then, so for the first time since getting married I was living alone.
I had been cast from paradise. My new fabulous life as my female self had come down to barren walls and brown cardboard boxes. I needed to rebuild my life. But where to begin? How could I find a place where my brand of newly minted femininity would be supported?
Some weeks earlier, I had attended a gathering of transgender people at the First Unitarian Universalist Church of Baltimore. There, I had run into someone I had worked with years earlier. She wasn’t transgender, but was there as a member of the church. She was eager to give me a tour of the historic building, including the magnificent sanctuary where William Ellery Channing gave his famous sermon. When she learned that I didn’t know the first thing about Unitarian Universalism, she gave me a brief primer and read me the seven Principles. I recall thinking it was remarkable that they seemed to express almost precisely my own personal values.
However, I was raised Jewish, a religion that has seen itself as under siege since its inception. Jews are trained to resist the draw of other religions, seeing conversion as a betrayal of not just our faith but our very culture, our families, friends, and traditions. So I had filed my knowledge of the UU Principles among the general factual trivia that clutters my mind.
During those early days of living alone, though, feeling adrift and disconnected, the idea of joining a faith community began to seem attractive. I looked into some of the Reform Jewish congregations in the area, but I was not enticed. They appeared more focused on the observance of rituals than any real spiritual exploration.
I got a much different impression visiting the website of our local UU congregation, the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Columbia, Maryland, “UUCC” to pretty much everyone. I found myself registering for a Get Connected class, and on a windy February morning I took a seat in a makeshift circle of chairs at the center of a seemingly cavernous sanctuary in Columbia’s Owen Brown Interfaith Center. By the time the class started there were ten women seated there, and we were joined by a young couple a few minutes later. The first order of business involved introductions. As we went around the circle, I was astounded to find that among the ten original women, five of us were queer, including the assistant minister leading the class.
What I heard that day convinced me that UUCC was a great fit. I left intending to take advantage of all the social, spiritual, and educational opportunities I had time for. The only events I planned to skip were the weekly services. My childhood memories of synagogue involved excruciating hours listening to interminable chanting in Hebrew about the greatness of God. The only spiritual experience they seemed to offer me came from the overwhelming relief when they were finally over.
While leaving the Get Connected class, I said as much to one of my fellow students, who also came from a Jewish background. She persuaded me to give the service at least one try. So on a Sunday morning in early March 2014 I first heard the senior minister, the Rev. Paige Getty, preach.
The topic that week was “family,” and the service included testimony by members of three dissimilar families. One involved a blended family and the trials and rewards of merging their two households. A single woman told of her life, and a gay man spoke of initially being rejected but then finally accepted by his partner’s mother. Getty painted an expansive view of the world, one where diverse family structures contribute to beauty and variety. So sincere and affirming was her message that my eyes weren’t dry for a moment during the entire hour-long service.
Fast-forward to the present, and nearly every friend I have I met at UUCC. I never miss a chance to hear Getty preach if I can help it, and I look forward all week to the lazy lunches after services, discussing the sermon, current events, and what’s going on in our lives, or just kicking back and enjoying our food. I teach religious education classes every week, have helped lead services, and have participated in reflection groups, fun feasts, game nights, and other events too numerous to name. When I had gender-confirming surgery, I came out as transgender to the entire congregation during the sharing of joys and sorrows. I spoke of my excitement and fear, and I was met by an outpouring of support and a promise from a lay member of the Pastoral Care Committee to call me frequently during my recovery period.
As I write this, I have just returned from three days at a spiritual center after participating in the annual UUCC women’s retreat. During one of the fascinating workshops there, it occurred to me how amazing it was to bask in the love and support that warmed that all-female space. And how unremarkable it felt that no one had ever questioned whether, as a transgender woman, I belonged there. The subject simply hadn’t come up.
I can’t imagine where I’d be had I not found UUCC. My life would certainly lack much of its richness. The dark, lonely period after my separation now seems a distant memory.
Suzi Chase is a member of the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Columbia, Maryland.
I wish to especially note the brilliant and powerful contributions of:
After receiving complaints about the troll, Expensive_Case9796, and reviewing most of the conversation that was taking place, I banned them and then got slammed with several statements blasting me and other UUs for our "hypocrisy" in not being willing to tolerate their nonsense. Well, I guess every major scientific association in the world must be hypocritical as well.
For today, I left the post made by Expensive_Case9796 up so I could make screenshots of everything that was said there, as well as the messages that were thrown at me, for future reference. It will be deleted tomorrow.
I suspect that the whole affair was an attempt by "gadflies" to make us look stupid in public, but they clearly didn't count on tgjer and others being knowledgeable enough to directly counter their trolling.
It is you advocates for genuine truth, justice, and compassion for trans people that make me proud to be a UU! And if any of you want to become a mod alongside me, feel free to comment with a request for promotion.
UPDATE: the troll made another post attacking us:
And then insulted everyone's intelligence by deleting it right after I noticed it.....and also deleted his first post. It's the same stunt Herman Goering pulled after the Nuremburg War Crimes Trials: "You can't kill me, I'm killing myself!"
Which is stupid as hell anyway. But his attempts to hide the evidence of the stunts he pulled are futile. I made over 50 screenshots of all that happened yesterday for future reference.
UPDATE TWO: Here are screenshots of both the troll's posts attacking us:
I love smartphones!
https://websites.umich.edu/~jrcole/bahai/1999/jssr/bhjssr.htm
[Part one]
Despite the large literature on American religious bodies, some groups remain curiously off-limits to careful investigation. In many instances, these largely unstudied contemporary faiths carefully cultivate public images that hide important facets of their outlook and internal workings. Thus, the collapse of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh’s Oregon commune surprised many observers. Some of these groups have developed control mechanisms that discourage adherents and often even apostates from writing about these workings. Scientology, for instance, employs techniques of harassment against critics. Others employ shunning which can be an extremely powerful deterrent, endangering a lifetime of friendships and even family relationships. The problem with strict internal controls for missionary religions, however, is that they are most often incompatible in Western societies with significant growth. One solution to this difficulty is to attempt to control what are thought of as key pressure points—vocal intellectuals, media, prominent institutions—and to give greater leeway to ordinary believers. This solution has the further advantage of making charges of repression less plausible to the rank and file, who have not personally experienced such constraints.
Here I wish to examine social control mechanisms in the American Baha’i community. These include mandatory pre-publication censorship of everything Baha'is publish about their religion, administrative expulsion, blackballing, shunning and threats of shunning. What are the ideological bases of these control mechanisms? How is power attained and managed in a lay community without a clergy? I wish to stress here that this article is not concerned with the essence or scriptures or theology of the religion, but with the actualities of its day-to-day technologies of control. Many of my remarks cannot be generalized to other national communities, and concern mainly the U.S.
Anyone familiar with the public relations literature produced by the movement will be surprised at the description of control mechanisms given above, since Baha’is are often grouped in the media with Unitarian-Universalists. Why should the Baha’i authorities wish to project an image more liberal than the reality? First, the movement’s scriptures are liberal in their orientation, and as a result even administratively conservative Baha'i leaders support the U.N. and race unity, and pay lip service to the rule of law. But when it comes to the internal governance of the religion, the same leaders wield these control mechanisms to enforce on prominent believers what might be thought of as “party discipline” in the Marxist sense. Second, Baha’i leaders are aware that if the U.S. press understood how their administration actually operates, journalists might be far less favorable to them than is now the case. Third, the Baha'i leadership and intellectual class includes some powerful liberals, and some of the contradictions between self-presentation and policy derive from conflicts among the leadership. Fourth, since the 1960s this non-Christian Iranian religion has not attracted many white evangelicals or working-class Catholics, whereas more pluralist college-educated persons have been much more open to it. Thus, an open insistence on a fundamentalist orthodoxy and a clear condemnation of human rights principles might deprive the religion of an important recruiting ground. Although antiliberals have captured the key posts, they shape the community’s ideology subtly, by controlling media and silencing liberals who begin to become prominent. Because of these techniques of dissimulation, power can remain in the hands of conservatives, while liberals can continue to be recruited at the local level, and often remain unaware of how marginalized they really are.
In the past, the paucity of anything but official literature formed a difficulty in studying the approximately 60,000 adult American Baha’is, but the emergence of Baha’i electronic mail forums in the 1990s has led to the airing of Baha’i individual opinions in public. I will outline some key control mechanisms employed in the U.S., based on published literature, following email debates, and participant observation. The author has been studying the Baha’i religion for a quarter of a century, and spent much of that time as an adherent. This movement originated as a messianic offshoot of Twelver Shi`ite Islam in nineteenth-century Iran. By the time it came to the United States, in the 1890s, it was already an established religion in Iran and elsewhere in the Middle East (Smith 1987). It is now among the more widely-spread religious bodies in the world, and since the mid-1980s has officially claimed about five million adherents (Smith and Momen 1989)--a number that has remained stagnant since then and which was probably somewhat exaggerated even at the time. Let us begin with a brief historical overview.
Historical Background of the American Baha’i Community
The religion was founded in the Middle East in 1863 by the Iranian prophet Baha'u'llah (1817-1892), who taught the unity of the world religions and the unity of humankind from his place of exile in Palestine (Cole 1998). It came to the U.S. in the early 1890s, and was nurtured by the religion's second leader, `Abdu'l-Baha (d. 1921) (Stockman 1985-1995). From 1921 to 1957, the world community was headed by Shoghi Effendi Rabbani, Baha'u'llah's great-grandson, who died childless and without a successor as "Guardian" or interpreter of the religion. After a hiatus, the Universal House of Justice, consisting of nine men, was elected by the members of the National Spiritual Assemblies of the world in Haifa, Israel, in 1963, in the wake of a Baha’i world congress held in London (Smith 1987). This legislative body, which had been called for by Baha'u'llah but was now elected for the first time, quickly confirmed that no further Guardians could be appointed (Universal House of Justice 1973:11). The Universal House of Justice created a new appointive institution, the Continental Boards of Counselors, to carry out the functions of propagation and protection—that is, of encouraging proselytizing and imposing orthodoxy (they are assisted by regional “auxiliary board members” and their “assistants”). Some members of the Universal House of Justice were drawn from the ranks of Americans who had served on the U.S. National Spiritual Assembly, and for a time vacancies on the UHJ tended to be filled by former secretaries-general of the U.S. body. More recently vacancies have been filled by counselors appointed by the UHJ. The Universal House of Justice presided over a vast expansion of Baha’i numbers among peasants in the global South, especially India (Smith and Momen 1989). Growth remained slight in Europe.
In 1963, the American Baha’i community had about 10,000 adherents. Here, the religion felt the impact of the civil rights movement, the Vietnam War, the youth counterculture, and Watergate. The late 1960s and the 1970s were for many Americans a period of profound disillusionment with their social norms and government institutions (Bellah 1976; Wuthnow 1976). This dissatisfaction significantly raised the number of potential converts to less well known religious bodies. Suddenly, the Baha’is' proselytizing ("teaching") efforts, which had had only desultory results previously, reaped tens of thousands of converts. "From 13,000 in 1969, the U.S. Baha’i community grew to 18,000 in 1970; to 31,000 in 1971; 40,000 in 1972; and 60,000 by 1974" (Stockman 1994:18). (Note, however, that Stockman is reporting all the persons who ever registered as members without formally withdrawing, whereas Baha’i authorities soon lost track of about half of them; these persons are unlikely still to be Baha’is.). There were relatively few Baha’i youth (ages 15-21) in the community in 1968, but by the early 1970s there were some 19,000. The influx of youth created frictions with the older Baha’is. Some large proportion of the converts from the youth culture subsequently withdrew (cf. Caton in Hollinger 1992:264-271). Some of those who remained went on to obtain higher degrees, giving the community for the first time a significant number of intellectuals, though these remained poorly integrated into the Baha’i milieu. The Baha’i administration was to have increasing problems with these intellectuals’ “culture of critical discourse” (Gouldner, 1979) in subsequent years. By 1978, the Baha’i administration claimed 77,396 members, though it had confirmed addresses for only 48,357 of these, and the number of youth had fallen to only about 3,500 (National Spiritual Assembly of the U.S. 1979).
In the early 1970s, as a result of proselytizing by young people, thousands of rural African-Americans in South Carolina and northern Georgia adopted the Baha’i faith, attracted by its emphasis on the elimination of prejudice, though most of these converts did not give up their identification with their Christian churches (Hardesty 1993). The members of the U.S. National Spiritual Assembly (based in Wilmette, Ill.) had for the most part become adults in the 1940s and 1950s when the Baha’is numbered only five thousand or so and constituted a relatively closed club. They appear to have worried that the previously-existing community might be swamped by the newcomers. The rolls were becoming cluttered with many declarations of faith based on misunderstandings, and newcomers often had no conception of the rules of Baha'i administration. According to one eyewitness Firuz Kazemzadeh, a longstanding member of the N.S.A. and then a professor of Russian history at Yale, was worried that the community did not have the resources, financial or human, to manage a further influx of poor southern Blacks, and felt that resources should be put into absorbing the thousands that had already come in (personal communication, 16 May 1997). Other, less conservative N.S.A. members strongly argued for allowing the chain conversion to take its course, but these lost the debate. The N.S.A. then deliberately halted the teaching campaign in the South. This is corroborated by a number of sources, including a message posted to the Talisman listserv discussion group (which was run 1994-1996 by John Walbridge, professor of Near Eastern Studies at Indiana University), in which a correspondent reported that he was told by an older African-American Baha'i who had been prominent in teaching the South Carolinian converts more about their religion that
his study of 25 years of national elections led him to think that there would be very little variability in the ethnic makeup of the N.S.A. membership, that a specific ratio of racial diversity was carefully being maintained (sort of an enhanced tokenism?), and that there were lots of fears by the powers that be that if the mass teaching in the south had been allowed to go forward at full steam that a black N.S.A. majority would probably have been elected, so the mass teaching was stopped. (Talisman, April 1996)
Of course, this is only one opinion, and may be incorrect, but the quote shows that some African-American Baha’is entertained these doubts. It does seem clear that the U.S. Baha'i authorities (unlike their Indian counterparts) chose to impose the sort of controls that might risk stagnation rather than take a chance on vast but uncontrolled growth. An eyewitness told me that House of Justice member Ali Nakhjavani deplored the decision as having set back the U.S. Baha’i community “by a generation.” On the other hand, the N.S.A. did show concern to socialize the new Southern African-American converts to Baha'i values; admitted a representative of that community to the N.S.A.; and has done community service work, including setting up a radio station in South Carolina.
The next large-scale event involved the immigration to the U.S. from 1978 through the mid-1980s of some 12,000 Iranian Baha’is fleeing persecution at the hands of the Khomeinist government in Iran. The American rank and file responded to these events with active campaigns on behalf of their beleaguered Iranian co-religionists and enhanced monetary offerings. The House of Justice in Haifa, however, took a different approach. At first it was reluctant to abandon its quietism in order to protest the persecutions. Moreover, it offered no support to Iranian Baha’is attempting to flee, and even punished many who succeeded, on the grounds that they could only have gotten out by denying their faith. In many instances it refused to certify such Baha’is as members, preventing them from being granted asylum and thereby putting them in severe difficulty and sometimes even danger. The U.S. N.S.A. also took this hard line, refusing to welcome large numbers of the escapees into the U.S. community. House of Justice member Ali Nakhjavani vocally and sternly defended these policies on trips to the U.S. The House of Justice did come to support the U.S. N.S.A. in its policy of putting pressure on the Iranian government through cooperation with human rights organizations, though it sometimes continued to balk at certifying escapees as Baha’is.
The period after 1979 was a time of big changes in the U.S. The influx of Iranians, some of whom eventually were accepted into the community, was sufficiently geographically dispersed to require Baha’i communities to come to terms with a more multi-cultural ethos, and most Baha’i communities now included white, Iranian and African-American members. South Carolina and California are the two biggest population centers, but Baha’is have made strenuous efforts to build communities in every state, having by the mid-1990s some 1300 local spiritual assemblies throughout the country and a national annual budget of around $20 million (though contributions to the national fund in 1996 were only $11 million and were not keeping up with inflation). The N.S.A. claims 130,000 Baha’is in the late 1990s, but this is a vast exaggeration, even if one counts the children. The N.S.A.’s own survey of 300 communities showed that only a third of members regularly attended the nineteen-day feast (National Spiritual Assembly of U.S., 1997). Wilmette insiders give a figure closer to 60,000 for adults in good standing for whom the authorities still have a confirmed address, and probably only half of these could be considered “active” or committed. After all, converts can only be removed from the rolls by writing a formal letter to the National Spiritual Assembly explicitly renouncing belief in Baha’u’llah. Most of those who leave the religion do not bother to do so. One Baha'i tells the story of how an attempt was made in the 1980s to contact the Baha’is in Compton, California. Official records showed 22 Baha’is there for which the N.S.A. had addresses. But an exhaustive search turned up only two who still considered themselves Baha’is (personal communication, May, 1997). This case cannot be typical, but it is suggestive. It is sometimes argued that those converts of whom the authorities have lost track may not have entirely given up their allegiance to the religion. In 1990 CUNY conducted a poll of 110,000 U.S. households with regard to religion, and, only finding 24 adults who reported themselves as Baha’is, estimated the size of the community as 28,000 adults. These findings, while perhaps on the low side, confirm that there are not large numbers of lost Baha’is floating about in the general population (Kosmin and Lachman 1992:17, 151, 287).
[to be continued]
https://www.religiousforums.com/threads/no-unitarians-on-rf.274107/
Looks like we need more representation there!
https://www.uusc.org/resources/congregations/gayt/
UUSC's longest-established fundraising and educational program for congregations.
The alarming rise of fascism, authoritarianism, and nationalism in the United States and in many places around the world is putting the lives of people, and the sustainability of the planet, in critical danger. These far-right forces have co-opted the word “freedom” for their own purposes, but the concepts of liberation and freedom mean something very tangible to UUSC’s grassroots partners in communities the world over. Whether they are fighting for the right to seek safety in Mexico and the United States, convincing the UN’s International Court of Justice to address the human rights threatened by the climate crisis in the South Pacific, or replenishing the energy of human rights activists in eastern Europe by addressing burn-out, UUSC partners invite us into an expansive, regenerative space to pursue liberation.
At UUSC, we believe that the transformational solutions we need come from communities most directly impacted by injustice. Join us for this year’s Guest at Your Table program to learn what UUSC partners are doing to address immediate injustices – as well as the collective liberation they envision for the future. At this extraordinary juncture in history, we think their stories will offer inspiration and guidance on the path toward justice and liberation for all.
Making a Gift to Guest at Your Table
Donations to Guest at Your Table help advance community-led human rights initiatives around the world. Donations of $150 or more are eligible to be matched by the UU Congregation at Shelter Rock in Manhasset, NY.
To donate online, please use this secure donation page, which can also be accessed via the shortcut uusc.org/givetoguest. To donate by mail, please make checks out to “UUSC” with “Guest” or “GAYT” in the memo field, and send to: UUSC • PO Box 808 • Newark, NJ 07101-0808.
Contact Information
If you would like to place a materials order, if you would like a personalized donation page for your congregation, or if we can be helpful with anything else related to Guest at Your Table, please contact Julian Sharp at jsharp @ uusc.org. Please allow 10 days from the time of your order for print materials to arrive.
Guest at Your Table (GAYT) is UUSC’s annual intergenerational program to raise support for and awareness about key human rights issues. Since UUSC works in more than 20 countries, with over 50 grassroots partners, there are thousands of individuals involved in and who benefit from the work that our members make possible. The program is an opportunity to celebrate grassroots partnership, support human rights, and learn about just four of these individuals—the “guests” in Guest at Your Table.
By coordinating a Guest at Your Table celebration for your congregation, you help participants of all ages nurture lasting connections with UU principles, build awareness about social justice and human rights, and strengthen UUSC’s work. Thank you for joining us in this special tradition!
To register as your congregation’s Guest at Your Table coordinator, or to request materials or information, please contact Julian Sharp, Senior Associate for Congregational Support, at jsharp @ uusc.org.
A step-by-step guide for planning your congregation’s Guest at Your Table Program is available here.
2022-2023 Theme: Hope. Courage. Action.
Through UUSC’s Guest at Your Table program, congregations provide vital support to those who need it most, including communities impacted by forced migration, climate disasters, and other human-made crises. UUSC’s global partnerships center the voices of those who are most affected by these issues and who best understand how to solve them. Join UUSC for Guest at your Table to learn more about our amazing global partners who embody the hope, the courage, and the action needed to uphold human dignity for all and honor our connections with each other and the earth.
The injustices and crises of the past year have underscored the importance of our shared goal – a world free from oppression, where all can realize their full human rights. They also have emphasized just how big a task that is.
To meet the enormous challenges of today and build a more just future, we need big ideas and bold change. We must fundamentally transform the way things are, so that we do not perpetuate systemic inequities and repeat the harms of the past.
At UUSC, we believe that the transformational solutions we need come from communities most directly impacted by injustice. Join us for this year’s Guest at Your Table program to learn what UUSC partners are doing to address immediate injustices – as well as what they envision for the future. At this extraordinary juncture in history, we think their stories will offer inspiration and guidance on the path toward justice.
This past year, we highlighted the ways the pandemic has changed the relationship many of us have with home, as well as the importance of home to our UUSC partners, who are fighting for their homes amid violence, economic devastation, and climate change.
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