Over two years ago, a massive controversy over racially biased hiring practices in the Unitarian Universalist Association caused its leadership to experience a turnover to try to solve the problem of white supremacy among them.

With the election of a new President of the UUA at the 2017 General Assembly (GA), it seemed like we could start to move forward to heal the racial divisions. But then came the GA of June 2019, which was held at Spokane, Washington. Imagine the shock among the attendees when the minister of the UU church at that city, Rev. Dr. Todd F. Eklof,  backstabbed the rest of them with a book he had written and was trying to distribute at the GA without prior notice. This book, titled The Gadfly Papers: Three Inconvenient Essays by One Pesky Minister, attacked all the efforts to solve the racial problems, angering many non-white UUs. When the UUA leadership tried to talk to Eklof about what he was doing, he refused to meet with them, putting them in the awkward position of expelling him from the GA itself! After that happened, UUs in both Facebook and Reddit had an uproar about it.

Meanwhile, a large group of white UU ministers made their own statement to address the controversy.

https://www.muusja.org/reprint-an-open-letter-from-white-uu-ministers/

Reprint: An Open Letter from White UU Ministers

June 23, 2019 / By Ashley Horan 

The following open letter was published and signed by nearly 500 white Unitarian Universalist ministers after the Rev. Todd Eklof, minister of the Spokane UU Church, distributed a self-published treatise that included vitriolic rhetoric about several marginalized groups within Unitarian Universalism. Several hundred copies of the treatise were distributed by Rev. Eklof and members of the Spokane congregation during General Assembly in Spokane.

As attendees began to understand what was happening, many groups convened to talk about how to respond. Many people sought in-person conversations with Rev. Eklof and/or members of the congregation; others to offer healing to their constituencies experiencing grief, anger, and trauma. Several groups also chose to craft public responses affirming that the contents of the publication do not reflect the beliefs or the aspirations of the vast majority of Unitarian Universalists. We encourage you to read the powerful responses from DRUUMM (Diverse & Revolutionary UU Multicultural Ministries, our national group for UUs of color and Indigenous UUs), the newly formed People of Color & Indigenous chapter of the Unitarian Universalist Ministers’ Association, and ARE (Allies for Racial Equity). Rev. Ashley Horan, MUUSJA Executive Director, has agreed to host the letter from white UU ministers on this blog. 

June 22, 2019

With sadness and anger, we, the undersigned, join our voices with the chorus of Unitarian Universalists speaking up to name the harm caused by yesterday’s release of The Gadfly Papers: Three Inconvenient Essays by One Pesky Minister, written and self-published by our colleague the Rev. Todd F. Eklof and distributed at the 2019 General Assembly in Spokane, Washington.  As white ministers, we write today to make clear that this treatise does not represent us or our values, nor does it represent our vision for the ministry or for Unitarian Universalism.  We deeply regret the harm this publication has already caused, and we know that this is another (intentionally provocative) incident that comes on the heels of months, years, generations of harm toward our colleagues of color. (We also acknowledge the harm in the treatise directed toward LGBTQ+ people, religious educators, people with disabilities, and others–many of whom are also people of color at the intersections of multiple identities.)

Rev. Eklof names the “sadness, fear, and anger I sometimes feel about what’s going on in my religion” (p. 126) as one of his primary motivations for writing.  We, too, have sadness, fear, and anger: sadness at the pervasiveness of harm being done to our members, religious professionals, and colleagues of color; our fear that the explosive resistance to facing white supremacy culture within our faith will cause even more harm; and our anger that the brilliance, compassion, power, and moral imagination of our people have yet again been channeled into responding to harm, rather than nurturing a truly liberatory Unitarian Universalism.  

What, we wonder, would be possible if the creative energy of our leaders were freed up from reacting to instances of resistance and harm, and instead were channeled into imagining, building, and experimenting with practices that embodied the kind of liberation and wholeness that is the core yearning of our faith?

We recognize that a zealous commitment to “logic” and “reason” over all other forms of knowing is one of the foundational stones of White Supremacy Culture.  Instead of accepting the frame of Rev. Eklof’s arguments and debunking them, we instead affirm the following:

• White Supremacy Culture (WSC)  is alive and well within Unitarian Universalism.  The impacts of WSC are pervasive and harmful, and while all of us are spiritually harmed within such a dehumanizing system, the primary impacts fall upon people of color and Indigenous people (POCI).  This treatise, itself, is a manifestation of WSC, and is causing harm to our siblings of color, as well as to the integrity of our ministry.
• We believe our siblings of color as the experts in their own life experiences.  They have done the emotional labor of testifying, again and again, to the consistent marginalization, aggression, and traumatization that they experience in UUism, and are pleading with us to face and dismantle the systems and structures that enable such harm to continue.  We are grateful for this painful truth-telling, which comes at great personal and professional risk, and affirm that we witness and believe their experiences, and commit to addressing harm. All politics are identity politics, and when the default is white supremacist patriarchy, we must trust the experience of those who are targeted.
• When unjust power structures–and those who benefit from them–are exposed and critiqued, backlash is predictable.  We often conflate critiques of our behavior with condemnations of our personhood.  Here, however, we affirm that Unitarian Universalist ministers must act in solidarity with those harmed by the power structures, while also unequivocally declaring that although all people have inherent worth and dignity, all behaviors and ideas do not.  Ideas and language can indeed be forms of violence, and can cause real harm.  It is disingenuous at best, and malicious at worst, to argue that those who have been targeted by systemic violence have an obligation to bear witness to “ideas and words” that demean and diminish their personhood and discount their lived experience.  The predictable “freedom of speech” arguments are commonly weaponized to perpetuate oppression and inflict further harm.
• Neither the perspectives espoused in this publication, nor the harmful process by which it was distributed, represent our understanding of competent, compassionate, courageous UU ministry. As we continue the painful but necessary process of confronting WSC in Unitarian Universalism, white ministers are being asked to take a hard look at ourselves — individually, congregationally, denominationally — and to practice new and more liberatory ways of embodying our faith.  A deep commitment to racial justice and dismantling white supremacy is a core competency of our calling as ministers, and those who cannot or will not commit to developing the musculature of resiliency, humility, and lifelong learning required may indeed find that UUism is no longer the appropriate home for their ministries.  We plead with our white colleagues who are struggling to acknowledge the realities of WSC in our faith to remain at the table and lean into this work with us, with an open heart to transformation and repair.

We yearn for the day when Unitarian Universalism fully embodies the liberated and liberating promises of our theology, and we are committed to listening to the deep wisdom of those who have been pushed to the margins as they call us toward such a faithful future.  And as we work toward that day, we, the undersigned white ministers, recognize that it is our responsibility to not only speak out against this particular harm and support processes of reparation and healing in its wake, but to actively recommit to the holy work of racial justice and dismantling all forms of oppression as a central spiritual discipline and praxis of our ministries.  

In faith and solidarity,

There followed a long list of signers of that statement, including three names in particular that I know personally:

Rev. Alex Holt, Accredited Interim Minister, Westside UU Congregation,  West Seattle, WA (He was earlier the Interim Minister of Westside UU Church of Fort Worth.)

Rev. Jennifer Innis, Interim Co-Minister, UU Society of Geneva, IL  (She used to be minister at First Jefferson UU Church in Fort Worth.)

Rev. Shari Woodbury, Minister, Westside UU Church, Fort Worth, TX   (Rev. Alex Holt’s successor.)

And my recommendations for the situation would be as follows:

1. NEVER hold another GA at Spokane again.
2. NEVER allow Rev. Todd Eklof to attend another GA.

This may seem extreme and unfair, but….

https://uuspokane.org/WP2/our-church/

The Unitarian Universalist Church of Spokane was established in 1887 and has been a beacon of progressive thought and social justice ever since. Our mission is to join together to create a nourishing liberal religious home and to champion justice, diversity, and environmental stewardship in the wider world.

If that statement has any meaning, then those who resist the efforts to eliminate white supremacy among UUs, including the very minister of that church, should be dealt with as violating the very essence of “progressive thought and social justice”.

Looking into Todd Eklof’s background, I found a clue to why he opposes the efforts at combating white supremacy.

https://uuspokane.org/WP2/our-church/our-minister-and-staff/?uid=rev-dr-todd-eklof

A native of San Francisco, CA, Rev. Eklof grew up in an “unchurched” family, but became a Born-Again Christian in his early teens and eventually began attending a Southern Baptist church. He went on to study ministry at a Southern Baptist university in Texas, was ordained a Southern Baptist Minister, and attended Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville.

The Southern Baptist Convention began in 1845 to oppose the efforts of northern Baptists to promote the abolition of slavery and exclude slaveowners from Baptist churches. Like Eklof, I am a former Southern Baptist.   Unlike him, I made a concentrated effort after leaving that racist denomination to purge my racial biases from my system. Obviously, he didn’t. And that is why I want him to go. Of course, the UU church in Spokane is independent and thus is free to conduct business as it sees fit. I just know if they do not fire their minister, I would leave that church. Even if there is not another UU church in Spokane, I can still worship online via the Church of the Larger Fellowship. Its senior minister is Rev. Meg Riley, and she signed the statement condemning Eklof.