Meleah Houseknecht

Fresh off of the inspiring and energizing events of the UU Climate Justice Revival, with its message of hope and reimagined possibility for our relationships with the earth and with each other, I can’t help but think about what it means to ground our relationships at all scales in love, equity, and justice. Particularly as we move from the individual and personal scale to the organization and congregation and on to the community and to the nation. If we are going to build a “spirit-filled and liberatory future,” as climate justice requires us to do, we must work on and through relationships of trust, but also generative conflict—relationships that value, learn from, and find creative possibilities in diversity and difference. In other words, we are going to need democracy.

The idea that all people should have a say in the decisions that impact them is a core theological commitment of Unitarian Universalism—so much so that we have codified this commitment in our covenants to one another for more than 60 years. But we don’t always stop to remember why our core beliefs call us to work tirelessly, and sometimes even risk our own comfort and safety, for a particular form of government.

As Unitarian Universalists, we come together around the shared belief that “every person is inherently worthy and has the right to flourish with dignity, love, and compassion.” We proclaim that justice is manifested in the recognition of what Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. called “respect [for] the dignity and worth of all human personality.” Unitarian Universalism teaches us that human equality is a necessary and natural outcome of humanity’s shared divinity, and that equity becomes justice when we build our communities, and our society, around the central principle of love and the idea that every person matters. 

True belief in human equality forces us to eschew hierarchical and authoritarian systems of power and decision-making and embrace democracy as a means of social relationship on every level—even and especially in moments of conflict, when mutual respect and care are most challenging and needed. 

We cannot forget that our commitment to democracy comes from and runs as deep as our affirmation of human equality—the theological concept out of which it was born. Through democracy we exercise our individual “right of conscience,” but we draw that right of conscience from our shared belief that we are divine and deserving of self-determination precisely because we are of the same ultimate substance—not because we are smart or sophisticated, educated or enterprising, but because we are human.

And no single human conscience or consciousness has the full answer as to what it right, moral, or just. Unitarian Universalism, through our shared value of pluralism, calls us to recognize and accept our own limitations of perspective and understanding. To see that our strength, resilience, and beauty are as much in our differences as in our similarities.

The right of conscience and religious commitment to the democratic process is a theological commitment to democratic society when also understood in relationship to our belief in the radical interdependence and interconnectivity of all living (and nonliving) things—King’s “inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny.” What we do matters, and “what affects one directly, affects all indirectly.”

Democracy is given sacred sanction by the simultaneous affirmation that we are all equally divine, by quality of being human, and all equally limited in our perspective, and thus dependent on the perspectives and wisdom of others to make decisions that are, in the aggregate, more moral than immoral, more liberatory than constraining. 

Democracy is thus—for Unitarian Universalists and those who profess similar beliefs in and commitments to equality and interdependence—a sacred relationship of shared power that acknowledges individual divinity in the context of interdependence, rather than the simple right to cast a vote in a competition of ideologies.

The spirit-filled and liberatory future we long for is not yet the one in which we live, but we can, and must, still make the choice every day to act on our values in ways that make democracy viable and meaningful, fair and accessible, equitable and just. It starts with loving and caring for our neighbors and building towards the Beloved Community of which we dream. It also involves giving our time and attention to the concrete activities that make democracy possible, under the leadership of those who experience the constant threat of exclusion.

This means prioritizing reaching—and supporting through ongoing solidarity—the communities and individuals who have been denied access to our systems of governance and those who have rightfully questioned whether the existing systems can or will ever address their needs. UUSJ partners and allies, such as UU the Vote and Center for Common Ground, do just that, by working with and through local people-of-color-led organizations—providing real information and support tailored to the needs of each person and each community.

Our shared UU values, and the beliefs from which they are born, call us to combat authoritarianism and manifest real democracy. What we do matters, and together we can, and must, act in solidarity with all communities so that all people have a say in the decisions that impact them. Over the next month, that means supporting get-out-the-vote efforts in marginalized communities where people are being actively suppressed from participating in the most basic act of self-governance.

But the work of democracy isn’t just, or even primarily, about voting, and it doesn’t end after November 5th. Let me return to that earlier, admittedly unconventional, definition of democracy: a sacred relationship of shared power that acknowledges individual divinity in the context of interdependence. Democracy, to be viable and meaningful, requires living out all our shared values. It requires approaching one another with humility and recognizing that we each see and hold only a piece of the bigger picture (pluralism) and being prepared to be transformed by someone else’s perspective about what we need to do, in order to be the people we want to be (transformation). 

As UU minister Rev. Nancy McDonald Ladd reminds us in her book After the Good News: Progressive Faith Beyond Optimism, “Truly beautiful things are possible when we relate as equals. Grace moves when we stop being distantly paternalistic and start being human.” The true and ongoing work of democracy will be finding ways to work more effectively across difference—to resist the temptation to evaluate the worth and worthiness of another human being, even when they see things differently. To not let our ability to witness and know divine love’s presence in us all be obscured by our own biases. 

Its antidote is to recognize what is shared, and from that place of common humanity grapple with real differences in needs and interests. Democracy will be served by our holding fast to our commitment to each person’s inherent right to define what freedom, love, and kindness look like based on their own experience. And each person’s right to access freedom, love, and kindness, as long as it does not infringe on anyone else’s ability to do the same.

Democracy is nothing less than a sacred relationship when we extend our deepest beliefs and covenantal commitments out into the world. Protecting the structures and institutions that make it possible, while continuing the task of making it more fair and accessible, more equitable and just, is the work of generations. I’m grateful to UUSJ’s Democracy Action Team, our partners, and so many of you, who are and will continue to lead this work over the coming weeks and beyond.