THE CALL TO RECONCILIATION

The Rev. Dr. Morris W. Hudgins

Northwest UU Congregation

January 15, 2012

Chalice Lighting:
We rejoice this day in the unquenchable and eternal light that welcomes each one that comes into this world. Illumine Thou all our ways until every child shall be brought into Thy marvelous light of hope and promise. It is time to break the silence and seek reconciliation. (adapted from Von Ogden Vogt)

Reading: “Facing the Truth with Bill Moyers”
South Africans are on a truth-telling mission. As part of the negotiated settlement that led to the end of apartheid and the election of Nelson Mandela as president. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission was established by the South African Government to investigate the crimes committed between 1960 and 1994 during the fight against apartheid. Hailed worldwide as a model for airing gross violations of human rights without restoring to Nuremburg-style trials, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission was seen by many in South Africa as a means of healing the wounds of history. “We needed to acknowledge that we had a horrendous past, said the Commission chairman, Desmond Tutu. “We needed to look the beast in the eye, so that the past wouldn’t hold us hostage anymore.”
. . . .For the moment, in the aftermath of the hearings, South Africans are living in an echo chamber of horrors, having listened week after week to a soundtrack of human tragedy. The stories that emerge from the hearings are a litany of detentions, abduction, beatings, burnings, torture, rape, and murder. One by one, in some of the most powerful and cathartic television footage ever broadcast, the victims of apartheid and their families look perpetrators in the eye and ask them to admit and regret their actions. For some victims, it is the first time to confront their torturers in the daylight, face to face. For others, whose family members disappeared and were never heard from again, it is the opportunity finally to know the truth about how their loved ones died, and to ask the most commonly heard question during the hearings: “May we have the bones back.”

Introduction

            I joined the Unitarian Universalist movement in the 1970’s. One of the reasons why I did was because of the courageous stance many Unitarian Universalists took to fight racism in America. Unitarian Universalism was a religion immersed in the Civil Rights Movement. The Raleigh Fellowship, which I served as minister for eleven years, was founded in this period. It was organized in 1949. At its first organizational meeting someone walked out when they heard this new church would be open to everyone. He knew what everyone meant.
            I could give numerous examples of beacons of light throughout Unitarian Universalism history—men and women who fought for the rights of African-Americans--people like William Ellery Channing and Theodore Parker and Benjamin Rush, and James Reeb, and Viola Liuzzo
            What I want to do this morning is to talk about another aspect of our movement often overlooked. The beacons of light are never completely illuminated. The Unitarians of the 19^th century saw themselves as superior to the Negro. Their light had dark places.
The reading this morning was based on the situation in South Africa. Our situation in the Unitarian Universalist Association is much different. This does not, however, take away our guilt and our shame. We have buried our bones. I have been saying for years that we should not be afraid to look honestly at our history, to unbury our bones, to make known our shame, to apologize and in the end to be reconciled.
Those bones were revealed in the book, Black Pioneers in a White Denomination, by Mark Morrison-Reed. In his book Mark wrote:

The Unitarian church was not integrated because it chose not to be. Often their vision was narrow and their understanding too limited to see beyond the status quo or to step beyond the narrow class appeal of the Unitarian church. They were captives of the American caste system. Paternalistic in their racism, our leaders at the beginning of the twentieth century did not respect black men.

When I served as minister in Cincinnati, I learned that a local African-American minister by the name of W.H.G. Carter called himself a Unitarian and sought support and relationship with the American Unitarian Association in the 1930’s but was shunned by our Association. One of our ministers in response to a query by headquarters said, “His people are not very intelligent and they live in the wrong neighborhood.”
In the 19^th and early 20^th centuries our congregations often ignored African-Americans or gave them a handout and sent them on their way. Ministers did not welcome them into the brotherhood.
It was before my time in the Association, but it was clear from my colleagues when I joined the Association in the early 1970’s, that there was much pain and agony left behind from the Civil Rights movement. A member of one of my former congregations attended the General Assembly in Cleveland and in Boston where our denomination tried to deal with the racial problems of our country. He would not go back for many years because of the pain caused at those Assemblies.
The Commission on Appraisal of the UUA completed a study of our “Denomination’s Quest for Racial Justice between 1967 and 1982.” It is clear from this study that we were a denomination divided and angry. The primary issues was: How were we to encourage empowerment for African-Americans? Were we going to approach it as an integrated movement, blacks and whites together, or were African-Americans going to lead the movement themselves?
The conflict was not resolved in Cleveland and Boston. The Commission concludes:
The black empowerment issue hit the Unitarian Universalists particularly hard. It was hotly debated and contested from top to bottom, from continental headquarters to the most remote lay-led “fellowship.” The issue was especially painful to Unitarian Universalists because, as primarily middle-class whites who make democratic practice its exercise in religion and who are proud of their tradition of social progress, hearing that they were a racist church compounded a guilt they already felt for not having more members of color. (p. viii)

The Commission also concluded that a significant number of African-Americans were alienated by our inability to deal with the Black Empowerment struggle. We lost many African-Americans, including former President of our Association, Bill Sinkford, due to our lack of effectiveness. A number of the Commission said we are “missing the mark” when it comes to racial justice. Fortunately, Bill Sinkford returned to the UUA and became our President.

Carter Reconciliation

            It is not clear that we have made much progress in the last twenty-five years. I would like to present one model for helping a church move in a new direction. Two congregations in Cincinnati decided to apologize to the family of W.H. G. Carter, who felt Carter was mistreated by our denomination in the 1930’s.
A committee was formed who agreed to plan what we called “The Carter Reconciliation Weekend.” We invited the Carter family to come hear our apology. We hoped for 25 members of the family to attend. What we experienced was almost shocking. Over 100 family members came from all over the country—Texas, South Carolina, Mississippi, and Michigan. I saw over 100 African-Americans come not to fight over how to empower Blacks, but rather to hear an apology from their white brothers and sisters.
            African-Americans were welcomed as they were. We asked them to be who they are not what we wanted them to be. We celebrated their Christianity, and their commitment to the world. Most important of all we honored their grandfather and their grandmother, their father, and their mother.
            In the midst of this project, we learned that most of the family did not know where their grandfather and grandmother were buried. We then learned that Rev. Carter and his wife, Beulah Carter, were buried in unmarked graves in an African-American cemetery next to the Northern Hills Fellowship where I served as minister. When we learned this, we immediately raised money to purchase gravestones for W.H.G. Carter and Mrs. Beulah Carter, money coming from the family and Northern Hills.
            At the end of the Carter Reconciliation Weekend we walked to the cemetery, we read sacred texts, and we asked Mark Morrison-Reed to say words of dedication for this pioneer Unitarian minister and his wife Beulah. Members of the Carter family who said they would never step foot in a Unitarian church, did on that day, and they spoke eloquently of their appreciation for what was being done for their forebears and for them.
            One of my members said: “It is so difficult to do things right the first time. It is much easier to get it right later.” On that weekend we uncovered the bones, we apologized for our past, and we came together in love. Those events were only a beginning. Important events continued after the Reconciliation Weekend. For weeks I would receive letters of thanks that moved me deeply.   We did not solve all the racial problems of our world. We did, however, take one step, and we did look the beast in the eye so that our past would not hold us hostage anymore. We paid homage to a minister and his wife who could have been our friend and our comrade, and together we could have confronted our world as one voice, seeking freedom and justice for all. It is not too late to be reconciled. We must find the way.

Conclusions

My message this morning is that our cities and our nation are in need of reconciliation. Reconciliation, coming together in love, can lead to redemption, a state of wholeness. All of us, at one time or another, are in need of redemption. Redemption, according to Webster, is the state of being released, rescued, ransomed or in deliverance. We all need to be released, rescued, ransomed or delivered from our deeds of unkindness, selfishness, or in some cases evil. For purposes of this sermon redemption is the act of being whole again. We are all estranged, separated, from ourselves and from each other, and we need to be brought back to our true selves.

It is easy to be critical of other nations. We must remember that our past is not pure. In Colonial America British citizens bought their release from many conditions in their home country to come to America. They were bond-servants who worked for a period before they found freedom. This was a kind of redemption—released, rescued, delivered from their former lives in a free country. My descendents probably came to America as bond-servants, then were released and given freedom. Then later they bought slaves themselves. Our history is not pure.

            What I am learning is that there are examples of racial separation and estrangement all over our land. Before we can be redeemed as a nation we need to be reconciled as individuals and as religious communities. Before I left the Raleigh Fellowship I preached a sermon on George Moses Horton, a slave poet who sought freedom before the Civil War.   I concluded that it is a shame there is little knowledge about what happened to the slave poet. One theory is that he was only freed after the Civil War, became an alcoholic and died in obscurity. We don’t know where.
            When I returned to North Carolina I made a trip to Pittsboro. On my return drive I saw a historical marker for George Moses Horton. Some people agreed that something must be done and they took action.
We can apply this principle to international problems as well. The solution to the Arab-Israeli conflicts must begin with individuals and leaders who are willing to face the wrongs of the past and build a new future together. Wrongs are being committed on both sides.
            Redemption, a state of wholeness, can occur only when we respect the rights of others. Reconciliation can occur only when we apologize for our wrongdoings and come together as one. May this be our goal as individuals, as a religious people, as an Association, and as a nation.
            I challenge you to look at your life and ask you the question: Are you doing what you can to reconcile the races in our society? I believe we are called to reconciliation. It is my calling and I hope it is your calling. Martin Luther King, Jr. would not say we all had to agree on the solutions, but he would remind us that,

·         Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.
·         Hatred and bitterness can never cure the disease of fear, only love can do that.
·         Before it is too late, we must narrow the gaping chasm between our proclamations of peace and our lowly deeds which precipitate and perpetuate war.
·         We shall hew out of the mountain of despair, a stone of hope.

I close by reminding us that the beacons of light are not merely distant illuminations from the past, but must be courageous and loving people of the present. We must all be called to a ministry of reconciliation—releasing, rescuing, delivering all people. Thank you.

Benediction:
May the abundance of this place, the peace that is found, enter our hearts and take us into the world, so that we may be more whole and our world may be one. Go in peace.


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