Solidarity Forever

I am a fourth generation Unitarian. Before I came to Grand Rapids to serve an independent liberal church, I served four Unitarian churches as a clergyman and was a member of four before that, starting when I was in kindergarten.

While I do not know those personally affected by Sunday's tragedy at the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Society in Knoxville, I do know two previous ministers of that church and one current member. What Mr. Atkisson did in Knoxville he did to me. So yes, I am shocked and a little frightened. But in the long run I am not surprised.

After all, beginning in the 16th century, the founders of my faith were often condemned in word and hounded in deed. A few were even killed. Our intellectual founder—a Spanish physician and theologian who actually discovered the circulatory system before John Harvey did—was burned at the stake by the estimable elders of Geneva Switzerland, which was, at the time, under the spiritual leadership of John Calvin.

I live in a city that reveres Mr. Calvin. My church is often ridiculed, although mostly very nicely. This is the Midwest after all. So while almost five hundred years have passed since that first conflagration, and such acts as burning at the stake, trying people for heresy or simply running someone out of town (as the English did Joseph Priestley in the late 18th century), are not tolerated by the state, Mr. Atkisson's disturbed hatred reminds me that those who stand on the margins of religion are always in danger. My church is not Unitarian in name or heritage, but it is explicitly liberal, non-creedal, and in many respects indistinguishable from Unitarian Universalists of today. Indeed, for the last fifty years, every Senior Minister of Fountain Street Church—and almost all the other clergy who served our church as well—have been Unitarian Universalist. We too stand in the cross hairs of hatred.

The fact that my church is large and has consequential citizens who have polished educations and refined tastes makes no difference. To those for whom the word “liberal” is an epithet (I have often thought of Dr. King's image of “lips dripping with nullification” when I hear critics curl the word “liberal” from their mouths as if it were a disease), it matters not how grand the organ, how large the sanctuary, how eloquent the preacher or how excellent the choir. We stand condemned by those like Mr. Atkisson who sees us as just another of today's “usual suspects”—i.e. homosexuals, Muslims, immigrant Hispanics—to be rounded up when things go wrong.

Some weeks ago our President invoked the memory of the Second World War when he said that to negotiate with terrorists was “appeasement.” We all know what comes of giving in to bullying, do we not? Let me invoke another memory from that era, with words attributed to Pastor Niemoller of 1930s Germany, who remembered that when the Nazis came for the communists and the Jews he said nothing because he was neither a communist nor a Jew … but when later they came for him there was no one left to say anything for him.

Those who have enjoyed the low cost of being liberal, including myself, must look on this act and ask whether we are ready to pay for our privilege. Will we stand up and be counted by standing with others who have been labeled, accused or blamed for the evils of the world? Will we find the same courage that the victims in Knoxville did when they faced the man holding the gun—the courage of common cause?

In the book of Esther, Mordecai chides her for thinking that she will escape the fate of her fellow Jews whoa re marked for destruction, because she enjoys the privilege of being the king's wife. Esther rises to the challenge by claiming her heritage.

So must I. I cannot speak for you, but I stand with the Unitarians and liberals and homosexuals, immigrant Hispanics and Muslims, and all the others whom history has blamed for our ills. Despite my good fortune and success I know it can vanish any time hatred wants to take them away. The despised and rejected are my people, and what befalls them can befall me as well.

The bell has tolled, as the poet said. This time it was not for me. Can I afford to wait until it does? Can you?