Of Britney Spears, Middle Class, and “Voices of a Liberal Faith”

You may well ask what Ms. Spears has to do with our recent discussion of UUism and the middle class and the new short film available as DVD or download from the UUA, Voices of a Liberal Religion-Unitarian Universalists . The explanation will make the most sense if you first go watch the film.

Back? Ok... What was missing in that film? They mentioned that we welcome everyone, good, that’s our biggest draw. They mentioned that we’re big on social activism, fine, and they mentioned our sex ed classes for kids. All good things, especially the OWL program- that’s a huge draw for us; many come to us only to enroll their kids in our RE classes, and leave as soon as they’re old enough. So what’s missing? Personal ministry... how to live, day by day; how to be good (other than marching in Selma), how we can help you survive the daily grind, and be righteous in the face of temptation.

As was noted by Doug Muder in his UU World article that kicked off the discussion of our “Middle Class Problem, Not my father‘s religion , these are not UU issues, or sermons. His point was that UUs are almost universally professional class people, and so we no longer need that kind of ministry- “I felt smug that morning because I knew that Ed would have been so much better off in my church. We talk about real life, his real life. He didn’t need to be told not to be bad. His issue wasn’t Good versus Evil; it was Good versus another Good versus a third kind of Good. And that’s the issue in my life and in the lives of all my professional-class friends. The primary spiritual challenge of the professional class is discernment. There are so many good things we could do with our lives. How do we choose?
That’s the kind of issue a UU sermon talks about.”

Doug is quite correct about the kind of issue a UU sermon talks about, but quite incorrect that this is the kind of sermon the professional class- or indeed, any class- needs. This is where Ms. Spears comes in. Her personal self destruction continues; she has now lost custody or her children. A multimillionaire before she was old enough to vote, she is perfectly able to take the God’s eye view above the maze of success that Doug spoke of, and she had even more choices than the usual professional- she could have taken her singing career in any direction she chose; she could have turned to acting, modeling, become a professional celebrity on the talk show circuit, or gotten her own talk show for that matter. Or even retired; she need not work another day in her life if she so chooses. But she seems bent on destroying her life. She needs help.

People in that situation most often turn to their church. Despite the growth in the therapy industry, and the lessening of any stigma attached to going to counseling, the church remains the counselor of first choice for most people. It’s not that hard to figure out why- you can go every week for free and without question, and the mainline (or “working class”) denominations teach “... the road to success is self-control. That’s what you want to teach your children: Resist temptation. Walk the narrow path. Do the hard thing you don’t want to do, so that you and the people who are counting on you won’t be punished.”- the way out of your problems, and the way to avoid them in the future. Would Britney hear these sermons in a Unitarian church? No- as Doug says, those are not our issues.

But they should be. Social activism is well and good- but as the airline safety lecture goes, “Secure your own oxygen mask before attempting to help others.” We need to teach how and why to believe in something larger than yourself. (other than the Democratic party, I mean) It doesn’t have to be an angry Jehovah- you can speak only in terms of the harm evil does to the interdependent web, as I do here . But we need to talk about good and evil. We need to make judgments. The professional and ruling classes need these lessons just as much as the working class. Moreover, they want these lessons- that’s why we’re not any better at recruiting the professional class than the working class.

How can I say that? Look at the numbers. There are more than 2.6 million millionaires in this country. What would you call the professional class- would knocking down $100,000 a year be a safe definition? According to the US Census Bureau, 17,803,000 households make 100k or above. Counting non-working spouses and children, that’s many tens of millions of people in “our class”- but there are only 200,000 regularly attending UUs. There are probably more red haired left handed professionals than UU professionals. We are not the church of the professional class, we are the church of those who are sufficiently satisfied with our lives as to have the illusion that we don’t need judgements and hard lessons- it’s just that that happens more often in the professional class.

I do not believe that this new advertising campaign will work in the long run. Oh, it will get people in the doors, no doubt about that- but we won’t retain them until we have a message that speaks to the real lives of more than one half of one percent of the populace. We can be as welcoming as we like, but Gays and Lesbians and Transgendered and African Americans and Semites and Asians and Atheists and Buddhists and Pagans and Red Haired Left Handed Professionals all want a church with a coherent message that speaks to simple human issues.

On “Not My Father’s Religion”

Doug Muder has expanded his sermon on classism within the UUA that first appeared in his blog some months back, (I commented on it here ), into an essay that now appears in the latest UU World . It is an excellent read, and has expanded my thoughts on the subject as well, but I think he is still missing the mark. Let me try to put it together by pieces, as he did.

Piece one: Doug uses the analogy of a maze, with the working class having more barriers and twists and turns to negotiate to reach the prize- but he never actually says what the prize is. It can’t be wealth, because he speaks of the professionals who seek wealth in negative terms- “There’s also a dark way out, for those professionals who are driven by fear and greed rather than pulled by love. They sell their time and energy for a lot more money than factory workers—and a lot more than many idealistic professionals—but they can get just as alienated.” No the prize is happiness- “following your bliss”.

Piece two: Doug says that the professional class does what they want to do, and the working class does what they have to do. He is wrong. As Jamie points out , the working class is driven by job satisfaction just as much as the professional class; they (we) too take “war stories” home, reminisce, look forward to the next day- doctors and lawyers have no exclusive claim to enjoying what they do. Nor do they have immunity from unhappiness. My father was a professional, lived and breathed his job, wrote articles for trade journals about it, and kept dabbling after retirement... and was bitterly unhappy for most of the time I knew him; many of my earliest memories are of my parents fighting- the kind that damages body, property, and psyche.

Piece three: Doug says, “We sometimes describe conservative churches as otherworldly because they talk about supernatural realms. Their harsh theology, we worry, can justify harshness in this world. But the connection between harsh theology and a harsh world goes both ways. If you live in a harsh world, a church with a harsh theology is talking about your life. The church with the easy theology is the otherworldly one.” He is absolutely right except for one thing: we all live in a harsh world. The working class, living somewhat closer to the edge, knows this without forcing fate to prove it to them; the professional classes, with more creature comforts at their disposal, can often fool themselves about the nature of this world for a long time- but as they say, “Nobody gets out of here alive.” History shows that education and money alone cannot protect you from addiction, despair, domestic abuse, or any other human failing. Which leads us to...

Piece four: “In the working class, the road to success is self-control. That’s what you want to teach your children: Resist temptation. Walk the narrow path. Do the hard thing you don’t want to do, so that you and the people who are counting on you won’t be punished.” He makes the same mistake here that I pointed out above; this is true for everyone. Don’t ask me, ask Michael Vick, or Lindsay Lohan, or Brittney Spears, or...

When I put these pieces together, I get this picture: The “working class” seeker knows that what he needs comes to individuals, not “classes”. Spiritual happiness- whether you mean capitol “S” spirit, salvation of the soul, or lower case, contentment in your life- comes only retail, not wholesale; anyone saying different is selling snake oil. Doug seeks “To understand why people might choose not to be with us even though we’re trying to be for them,...” Easy enough- because we talk like politicians, not theologians. Because instead of talking to people, we say things like “But we also have a problem with the working class, particularly the ones suffering from what Marx called alienation.” The working class seeker doesn’t need a church to ask “Why can’t the minimum wage be higher? Why can’t the government hire the unemployed? Why can’t college be free?”- he has politicians to ask- and answer- those questions. Why would he want to join a church so that part of his pledge can be sent to Boston to hire someone to fax his congressman when he can do it himself?

Doug asks, “Can we speak in words that make sense everywhere, from the high place to the darkest, trickiest passages of the maze? Can we teach both subtle discernment and making yourself do the obvious hard thing? Inspiration and self-control?” No, I don’t believe we can. To teach the life lessons that those we want to reach need, and are asking for, would involve things like making judgments, talking about right and wrong, and addressing spirituality. I’ll quote Doug one more time: “That almost sounds like a theology. But not a UU theology.”

Working class Unitarians?

Doug Muder has written what is in my opinion the finest UU blog post to date, entitled Unitarian Universalism and the Working Class . Go and read it before reading the rest of this post. In fact, go read it even if you never read the rest of this post.

I am a working class Unitarian, as obviously Doug is. He describes mindsets and attitudes from the working class that the upper classes might not understand, attitudes necessary for survival. He closes by asking, “The question I want to leave you with is whether Unitarian Universalism is bringing the world a message about life, or just a message about our lives? Can we speak in words that make sense both in the high place and in the maze?” This is possibly the most important question ever asked of UUs, and not just for the purpose of recruiting from the lower classes; it is vitally important because if we are not speaking truths that are universal, we’re not speaking truth at all!

Lessons learned from growing up poor are often in direct contradiction to lessons taught at UUA GA workshops. Let’s take a composite poor person’s life, part mine and part several friends- call him “Don”, because he might be a she, spelled “Dawn“- to see what I mean. Don’s parents drilled him in the lesson Doug mentions, “Second chances. Rich kids, professional kids – they get them. The door never completely closes on you. If your parents are doctors or lawyers, you can flunk out of two or three colleges. It’ll work out...In the working class it’s not that way...What if you had one shot? You wouldn’t blow it, would you?” And so Dawn works like a dog all through High School. Because he’s not a natural student, he spends hours every night studying rather than hanging with his friends. he works summers and weekends at the kind of menial jobs a teenager can get because he’s going to need every penny at college.

Don attends a community college or state school because even with a Pell grant and loans, that’s what he can afford. He also works while going to school. Some “Dawns” will earn enough in their blue collar day job that they can’t bear to go on with the dual life- I didn’t have the stamina nor, I’ll admit, the discipline to work full time and still finish school. Upon graduation, or upon getting his journeyman badge if he dropped out of college, he lands an entry level position behind peers with degrees from fancier schools. Don spends the decade of his 20’s, perhaps longer, either working overtime or a second job to cover the crushing student debt load (and possibly credit card debt as well) he picked up in college. Finally, somewhere in his late 30’s or 40’s, he’s down to one job and has time to think about things like re-connecting with a spiritual life; he wanders into a UU church.


Here he learns that he’s a “winner in life’s lottery”, that those with less are “less fortunate”. This is in direct contrdiction to his life experience... he’s been working 50-60 hours per week since he was 13 years old, working his youth away when his peers were having fun, and now learns the fruits of this discipline are considered “good fortune”. His life experience is that anyone who stays away from drugs, finishes high school, and doesn’t have/father a child out of wedlock can earn a decent living; outside of a physical or mental handicap, poverty is the result of bad life choices, usually multiple bad choices... but if he dares say so he’ll be denounced as a heartless Republican and shunned.

At other workshops, he’ll learn that all he has is not good fortune, but the result of “privilege”- either “White Privilege”, or “Male Privilege”, or (shudder) the dreaded “White Male Privilege”! He contemplates his scarred and callused hands, the varicose veins from being on his feet 12-14 hours a day working two jobs for a quarter of a century, and wonders how hard he’d have had to work without all that “privilege”...

In the mainstream Christian church in which he was raised, “envy” was one of the deadly sins. His life experience confirmed this; envy leads only to schadenfreude, and the inability to enjoy those blessing one does possess. Here, he learns that envy is a virtue, not a sin; the problem is not that the poor don’t have enough but that the rich have too much- it is the gap that is the problem. In his parent’s day, the diseases of the poor were kwishiorkor, pellagra, rickets, scurvy- many hundreds of thousands died in the United States before WWII from simple dietary deficiencies due to extreme poverty...today, the diseases of the poor are diabetes and heart disease from overweight- but the UUA teaches that things are worse than ever because the gap is bigger.

To Don/Dawn, the UUA does not exist in the real world, or at least not in the world inhabited by the bottom three quintiles. Don longs for a church that preaches personal responsibility, because choices have consequences; the UUA teaches that personal results have societal causes. Problems that Don sees as caused by correctable human flaws that should be preached about are seen by the UUA as societal inequities that can only be cured by political action. Oh, well, he shrugs, at least the UUA works with people from both parties- the Democrats and the Greens.

Doug ends his piece with “My hunch, my faith – or maybe just what I need to believe to do what I do – is that we can find such a message, that there can be a truth that encompasses all times and all places, a wisdom big enough for all people.” My faith is that there is just such a message. My sadness is that I don’t believe we have any intention of looking for it- that we would rather surrender the working class to the Religious Right than to admit that any position the GA’s have voted on was wrong.