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BLUU Announces 2021 Survey Results and Gives Restructure Update

✇ Black Lives UU on Medium
14 March 2022 at 10:15
By: Black Lives UU

In spring 2021, BLUU launched a survey for all Black folks who are in community with us. We wanted to know why our community engages with us, when BLUU’s work is most impactful, and where we have some opportunities for growth.

Sixty-three people responded to the survey and gave us in-depth feedback about their experiences with and hopes for BLUU. Those who responded represented many ages, sexual orientations, regions, and genders.

While we released this survey last year, we still believe these survey results can teach us about the current state of what our community needs. We took a programmatic pause shortly after the survey was released to do organizational restructure work. (Most of BLUU’s programming is still on hiatus.)

Here is a summary of our survey results and how they impact our current restructure process.

Why does our community need BLUU?

BLUU represents many things to different people, but there were three main themes that draw people to learn more about BLUU. 1. Community (Black Sacred Space, Black-Centered Space, Black-Exclusive Space, Black-Affirming space.) 2. Worship (Spiritual Sustenance, Justaposed to UU congregations, Welcoming/Belonging, Liberation.) 3. Social Justice/Activism. (Making UU more inclusive, Equality, living the values, Building a new way.)

Based on survey results, there are three main reasons Black folks are a part of BLUU’s community. BLUU community members are seeking community, worship, and connection to social justice/activism.

It is important to BLUU community members that BLUU offers Black sacred space, or space specifically for and centering the voices of Black people. People who had an interest in BLUU social justice/activism had a particular interest in making Unitarian Universalism more inclusive.

More than 50% of respondents reported that they had no unmet needs from BLUU. For those who would like additional offerings from BLUU, the requests spanned across three main categories: Spirituality, Localization, and Additional Programming.

What is BLUU doing well?

a picture of a Black person smiling, looking away from the camera. Text next to the picture says: Conclusions: Love BLUU programming and want more of it. Supporting conclusions: Want recordings of worship, want in person programming, want expanded programming. Programming = offerings directly accessible by participants; opportunites to engage with the organization.

People enjoy how we gather. BLUU virtual worship continues to be a meaningful resource of spiritual sustenance for our community. Our community lives in many regions, so many of our community members would value having worship available to watch later if they can’t make a live, virtual service.

“There has been this beautiful sense of community and love in every service I’ve been able to attend,” one survey respondent said. “I have attended a number of faith communities over the years and this has been the only one that felt real.”

Another survey respondent said, “It really aligns with my current beliefs and where I am in life and it leaves room and supports growth. I love that it centers Black voices and our Black experiences in all its various forms. I do not have to dismiss my religious upbringings to grow in my spirituality and adopt new practices.”

While worship is a core part of BLUU’s offerings, our community wants us to expand our programming so folks can also gather in other ways.

BLUU Convenings and the Harper-Jordan Symposium were powerful experiences for people to embrace the liberating power of Unitarian Universalism through a Black-centered experience. Although we’ve understandably not been gathering during the COVID-19 pandemic, people miss our in-person gatherings.

What are BLUU’s opportunities for growth?

Picture of Black person looking into distance, wearing scarf. Text reads: Conclusions: Don’t know how to engage/support. Supporting conclusions: Mission unclear. Structure unclear. Hard to know where to get answers. Engagement is ties to an organization, feeling part of the mission and compelled to support efforts.

The survey makes it clear that we have work to do to make sure our community members know how to engage with us and know how to give us feedback. People in our community expressed not knowing how to get involved with BLUU and feeling frustrated they can’t get a response to their questions about our work or our programming. Folks also said they experience a lack of engagement with their ideas when they share them with BLUU leadership.

Others named positive interactions with individual leaders in BLUU that keep them engaged with BLUU despite dissatisfaction with overall community engagement.

“All these experiences, but especially the website content and application questions, put me under the impression that I am not welcome… like BLUU is a restrictive and exclusive club,” one survey respondent said. “And that is absolutely bizarre because everyone is so nice via Zoom and email. l decided to just be content participating in the online worship gatherings for as long they are offered.”

Community members also shared confusion about BLUU’s mission and vision. People were confused about both our organizational structure and what it means to be a BLUU member, or “BLUU Beloved.”

What’s next?

There are three pictures. One is of BLack people in worship, one is of Black folks at a protest marching, and one is of a Black masculine person giving a speech. Text says: Programming: Reassess programming against the defined needs reported by respondents. Structure: Clarify structure and goals. Communication: Define a comms strategy that prioritizes responsiveness and cohesiveness so that information is accurate and timely.

We have been working with AORTA, a movement-based organizational change organization, to do a deep dive into our organizational culture and how that culture contributes to some of the opportunities for growth named in our survey. We know that how we work and communicate together impacts how we show up for the wider BLUU community.

Our new Developmental Board Chair, Natasha Walker, is doing an organizational diagnostic. This will help us consider what structural changes need to be made so that our work is clearer internally and therefore easier to explain and engage people in more broadly.

After our organizational pause is complete, we will have a new structure and refined mission for our organization that we can share with our community. This clarity of our structure will create the container for expanded capacity, which will help us expand our programming.

After our structure and workflows are clear, we will design and implement a communications strategy that prioritizes community engagement. This includes finishing work on a simplified, streamlined website that includes password-protected recordings of worship for Black folks.

We plan to engage our community members soon in our restructure conversations. There is no BLUU without community! We’re taking time to be discerning about the containers we create for community engagement and will share opportunities to connect with the Organizing Collective Board soon.

Thank You to Everyone Who Responded to Our Survey

We are so grateful to everyone who filled out the survey. We don’t take you for granted–the survey wasn’t short and the questions asked respondents to be vulnerable.

We are learning from your feedback and integrating it into our restructure work. Thank you for your continued support and trust in us.

New Legal Religious Discrimination in Michigan

✇ Misc ind sites
12 June 2015 at 13:59
By: Cynthia L. Landrum
Michigan's Governor Snyder signed a new set of discrimination laws yesterday.  "Senate Substitute for House Bill No. 4188" states:

"Private child placing agencies, including faith-based child placing agencies, have the right to free exercise of religion under both the state and federal constitutions.  Under well-settled principles of constitutional law, this right includes the freedom to abstain from conduct that conflicts with an agency's sincerely held religious beliefs."

Both faith-based and non-faith-based agencies receive government money.  Given the separation of church and state, it should be the case that agencies receiving federal or state money are not allowed to religiously discriminate in who they serve.  However, this separation has been eroded over the years in a multitude of ways, from President Bush's Faith-Based Initiative to the Supreme Court's Hobby Lobby decision. 

Even so, this is a new level of affront to freedom of religion.  Hobby Lobby isn't receiving government money to do its work.  It's a for-profit organization.  Adoption is a different sort of business.  Half of adoption agencies are faith-based in Michigan -- Catholic, Lutheran, Methodist, and the evangelical Bethany Christian Services. How much money are they receiving from the state?  Michigan Radio reports that it is "up to $10 thousand dollars a child." 

This is most notably an attack on same-sex couples.  The Catholics and Methodists both do not recognize same-sex marriage, and the president of Bethany Christian Services, William Blacquiere, has said, "At Bethany, we would never deny a family for their secular status, or single-parent, or anything of that nature. However, if the family would be in conflict with our religious beliefs, we would assist them to go to another agency."

Actually right now judges are stopped from granting two-parent same-sex adoptions already.  Same-sex parents who adopt usually end up with only one of them as the adoptive parent.  This is what started the court case that led to Michigan's challenge to the same-sex marriage ban.  And with a Supreme Court decision potentially changing the marriage equation, this might change, but right now this is the case.  So the religious right is getting ducks in a row to make sure that if you can get married in Michigan you can still be banned from adopting, denied housing, barred from public accommodations, and fired from your job the day after your wedding.  Seriously.  I do not exaggerate.  This is currently the case that all these forms of discrimination are legal, but our legislators are writing laws that ensure that they're not just legal by the default of having no legal protections from discrimination, but explicitly and purposefully legal.

However, it is not just same-sex couples who might be denied adoption.  So who else might conflict with the religious beliefs of these Christian organizations?
  • Muslims, Jews, Buddhists, and any people of non-Christian faiths
  • Atheists, agnostics, and the unchurched
  • Single parents and unwed couples
It wasn't that long ago that people had religious objections to interracial marriage and interracial adoption.  Even that most abhorrent form of discrimination could be seen as legal with this new legislation. Our legislature has been hard at work lately making sure that their rights to discriminate are protected at every turn.  What they're worried about, it seems, is their freedom to hate, and what the corporations want. 

What's missing in all of this, of course, is what's best for the children. 

Thoughts on "Congregations and Beyond"

✇ Misc ind sites
24 January 2012 at 18:19
By: Cynthia L. Landrum
The UUA President, the Rev. Peter Morales published a working paper titled "Congregations and Beyond" last week.  It's available in its entirety here.  In it he says, "I am realizing in a profound way that congregations cannot be the only way we
 connect with people." and "We have long defined ourselves as an association of congregations. We need to think
 of ourselves as a religious movement." 

The Rev. Morales says, "
Congregations as local parishes arose in a different era. They arose in a time of limited
 mobility and communication. Most members lived within a couple of miles of their
 church."  This is something that I've been thinking about recently, as well.  The time that the church is where you go to in order to hear the latest ideas or even the latest gossip is a time that's behind us.  The church is no longer the central, or even a central, hub for how people get and exchange information and ideas.  There are still things that churches do better than other institutions, but those things are fewer and far between.  We're no longer the best source of therapy--the psychological profession, as it emerged, has taken over that role.  We're no longer where you might hear the best, most engaging lectures--you tube gives you access to the best in the world, and it's a rare church with a minister of that level of academic excellence.  We're no longer the place where you hear first what is going on in your community -- our newspapers and even our friendships are available 24/7 on the computer.  We are, still, the best form for worship, I think, although much of that is available in electronic form, as well, except for the communal aspect.  We do retain the role of being one primary way that brings together groups of people for personal connection -- the social role of face-to-face regular gathering is filled less and less by other groups in this society, while we're still going strong.  But the point is, congregations are less needed in many people's minds, and, accordingly, we're not growing.

The two-part strategy the Rev. Morales outlines is:

  1. Congregations remain the base

  2. Focus energy on creating a movement beyond the congregation
Honestly, it looks pretty much like a one-part strategy to me, as part 1 is basically just reassuring us that this congregational thing that we're already doing will still be important.  So what does part 2 entail?  Looks like his answer is social media, re-engaging the identity organizations formerly known as "affiliates," small groups of other undefined sorts, and social action. 

It is, well, vague.  And not clear exactly what it would entail that's not being done currently. 

But the question that he points to, well, that's intriguing.  Morales points out the there are, as we've known, bunches of people who identify as UU and who don't attend UU churches.  And there are bunches of people who were raised UU who don't attend UU churches.  Some of them are fairly well connected to UUism in other ways -- he points to the fact that a significant number of people who attend SUUSI don't attend any UU congregation.

I'm sure any parish minister can name dozens of potential, former, or raised-UUs in that minister's geographic area who are not church members.  And, like Morales who says we need "A great deal more research about those who identify as UUs but are not members of
 a congregation," most of us don't know why these UU-types are not UU-affiliated in our towns. 

But what I think is new about "Congregations and Beyond" is that Peter Morales is not suggesting we find out why they're not in churches, but, rather, find out what they are interested in doing that would connect them to our movement in other ways.  Some people will never be church-goers, he's saying, but that doesn't mean that they can't be part of the UU religious movement.

It's a radical concept and one we ministers often argue against, saying such things as, "You aren't a Unitarian Universalist if you're not a church member, because the Unitarian Universalist Association is an association of congregations."

But I also know that there were a few years for me -- four of them, to be exact, the college years -- where I was not in a congregation but very much considered my religion to be Unitarian Universalism.  I didn't attend church in my college town, which didn't have a vital campus ministry in those years, and I would occasionally attend when I was home from school, but not often, because my church didn't have any specific get-together for those of us home on holidays or summers from college, and so I wandered off from us as an association of congregations, but not from my UU identity. 

I have trouble envisioning the way we strengthen these sorts of connections and grow this "movement" Morales speaks of, but I hope we'll keep talking about these ideas and exploring the potential.

BLUU Presses Pause in Order to Press Forward

✇ Black Lives UU on Medium
3 June 2021 at 08:29
By: Black Lives UU
Rev. Mykal Slack, BLUU’s Community Minister for Worship & Spiritual Care, sings at the Harper-Jordan Symposium in 2019.

When a group of Black UUs first met in Cleveland at the Movement for Black Lives Convening in 2015, what would become BLUU was just a dream. BLUU’s co-founders wanted to support Black people with both a desire for spiritual community and a heart for collective liberation. BLUU’s founders had no way of knowing that this dream would blossom into an organization creating virtual worship experiences for Black people, sustaining regular programming for children and youth, and organizing to fundamentally change material conditions for Black people impacted by systemic anti-Blackness.

Because our work fulfills significant needs in our community, we’ve been doing this work at a rapid pace without any substantial pause in our work since BLUU’s founding.

Our leadership team, the Organizing Collective Board, have decided it’s time for us to take that collective pause this year. BLUU turns six this July, and we have so much to celebrate about that six years. We must also do some reflection — about what we’ve learned, where we’ve succeeded, and where there’s an opportunity for us to change and evolve.

On July 1, 2021, we will be slowing down or pausing most BLUU programming so we can reflect on our work this past six years and focus on organizational strategy for the future.

To our Black UU family and all those who hold us close, it’s important to us that you know that we are not dissolving BLUU. We are not folding, and we are not stopping this vitally important ministry we have been called to bring forth into this broken world. We have always taken the future of BLUU seriously — even as we’ve wrestled with what it means to be both a spiritual community and an organizing force for Black and collective liberation in the world. We have always been about building with intention, forethought and purpose. BLUU has been called to urgently address the injustices impacting Black people, and we’ve been able to answer that call.

We are now called into a moment of evaluation and reflection so that we may be able to learn from our earliest beginnings and fashion a future that is even better. We are living most deeply in this moment into our principles of thriving and experimentation. Thriving requires and necessitates moments of reflection, especially after periods of intense productivity. Experimentation also requires us to look back on our work and think carefully about things we want to carry into the future and things we want to put to rest, with our gratitude for the lessons they’ve taught us.

“The BLUU leadership team is being wise to take a pause at this point,” said Rev. Bill Sinkford, former UUA president and BLUU Advisory Team member. “New organizations, especially those with a record of such great success, often need a space for leadership to breathe, dropping back a bit from the urgency of delivering week after week, in order to clarify the way forward. The Financial Advisory Team (a working group within the Advisory Team) is entirely supportive of this decision.”

We want to move forward and continue building in a way that is more sustainable for the people moving the work of the organization — the staff, the OCB and our dedicated volunteers. We can’t continue our work at the current level and complete an entire restructuring effort. It is in this spirit of building a bright and bold future, where we can continue working to be the best we can be, that we endeavor to pause some of our outward programming so that we may focus inward for a bit. We pledge to give updates as we make progress, and to bring you all along with us on the journey. As part of this restructuring process, we will be imagining ways to communicate even more effectively with our Beloveds. For now, make sure you’re subscribed to our email list where we share the most important BLUU news monthly. It is the best way to stay in the loop with BLUU!

During this time, we will focus on BLUU’s organizational structure, restructuring to build clear lines of power and authority, while maintaining the intention and spirit of collaborative governance. While we’ve been having preliminary discussions about this work for years, this is the first time we’re intentionally slowing down programming to focus on restructure work.

We want our BLUU community to know what this pause means for the upcoming year. Here are some ways this pause will impact our ongoing work:

Worship:

Every year, BLUU takes a break from worship in July, and we will take this July off from worship as usual. Starting in August, BLUU will have virtual worship once a month on the first Thursday of the month at 9 p.m. Eastern until further notice. (Those who regularly attend worship are used to having worship twice a month.)

BLUUBerry and Berry Youth:

The BLUUBerry and Berry Youth Saturday jams will continue on Saturdays through June 19. After June 19, BLUUBerry and Berry Youth programming will be on hold until 2022. A relaunch date for our youth ministry will be announced at a later date.

Havens and Harbors:

Existing BLUU Havens will continue to build opportunities for local connection, and we will still be accepting Havens applications.

BLUU Harbor applications are on hold because we need the time and capacity it will take to hold the extensiveness of the Harbor application process, and we don’t have that capacity right now.

Community Care:

Our BLUU community will still receive Daily Affirmations and receive as-needed pastoral care. We will also continue to send email updates on an as-needed basis, including monthly reminders about worship.

BLUU at General Assembly:

We are excited to offer a week of BLUU programming during the week of the Unitarian Universalist Association’s General Assembly. Come worship with us, take a writing workshop, meet Black seminarians, or learn about our housing initiative or Havens and Harbors communities. Registration for BLUU GA programming is free and open now. Our workshops about the Havens and Harbors and Housing Initiative are open to all. All other programming is Black sacred space.

This chart explains the programming implications for BLUU’s upcoming organizational pause. A link to an audio version of this chart is available in the captions.
This chart shows the ways BLUU community spaces will be impacted by the upcoming organizational pause. For an audio version of this chart, visit bit.ly/BLUUPauseAudio

Although we are pressing pause on much of our programming for this restructure work, we are still moving forward into a bright and bold BLUU future. Here are some additional updates about BLUU’s infrastructure and ongoing work we want you to know as we head into this programming pause:

Our endowment is holding steady:

A bright future requires capital! And it is towards this end that we share with you that our endowment grew last year by about $855,000 dollars. We are proud to have established the BLUU Endowment within the UU Common Endowment Fund. BLUU currently holds $4.5 million in our endowment. This is a good position for us to be in financially. We’re hopeful that on the other end of our structuring process, we’ll be able to have more regular financial updates for our community. Transparency has always been a value of BLUU. Please sign up for leadership updates to find out when you can apply to be on the Financial Transparency Group.

BLUU Housing Initiative:

We launched The BLUU Northside Cooperative Housing Initiative in 2019 to help build permanently affordable housing for Black and Indigenous families in North Minneapolis. Through a hybrid land trust and cooperative housing model, we’ll be constructing about 30 new townhomes for families to live in and build long-term wealth. We’re excited to be partnering with the City of Lakes Community Land Trust and Urban Homeworks and for forthcoming partnerships with two other organizations to be able to make this plan a reality. In January of 2021 we applied for financing assistance from the City of Minneapolis to be able to build on one of our sites. We are still awaiting the decision of that assistance, but if we receive it, it is likely that we could break ground this year. Stay tuned to BlackLivesUU.org for our most recent updates about this project.

New Website:

We enlisted the help of The Black Tech Guy to help us with a website project that was delayed during 2020. The Black Tech Guy partnered with our Communications Director, Marchaé Grair, to get us to the finish line with that project. The website will launch this summer. We hope you’ll enjoy the streamlined information and improved accessibility of this new website when it launches!

Forthcoming publications:

Committed to the healing and spiritual growth of our people, and to a Unitarian Universalism that centers Blackness, we are thrilled to be under contract with Skinner House Books to publish a book of meditations, poems, songs, and reflections by Black folks in our movement. We’re in the process of finalizing the list of contributors with the hope that it will be published and ready for distribution by the end of 2021! A second work, an edited volume for the Voices series, has been approved for publication in the near future. We are grateful for the dedication of OCB members Dr. Takiyah Nur Amin and Rev. Mykal Slack who are serving as co-editors for both of these projects.

Team Sankofa:

During this time of rebuilding and restructuring, the OCB and Team Sankofa are exploring ways to dream together about the possibilities for change-making and engaging in supported and sustainable base building organizing trajectories. We are grateful to Team Sankofa for the dedication, commitment and hard work in the BLUU community and we are excited about what is yet to come.

BLUU Box:

Publication of the BLUU Box is currently on hold. If you have a question about an existing subscription, please contact info@BlackLivesUU.org.

We are taking time to engage in this critical strategic work because we want BLUU to exist for a long time. We’re excited to come back from this pause with clarity about our work together and a renewed dream about what BLUU will be in the years to come.

If you have questions about this time of pausing and planning, please feel free to contact us. Please send us an email at blacklivesofuu@gmail.com.

Dreaming of our future,

The BLUU Organizing Collective Board

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