Dear John Letters and Unitarian Universalism

Part of the online legendarium of Unitarian Universalism is the online “Dear John” letter. Wondertwisted posted just such a letter about leaving Universalism a few months ago, and I just saw it this weekend. It’s a good one. Well thought out. Reasonable. Not whiny or bitter, as they often are.

Fixable and Fixless Problems

People leave a church for a limited number of reasons, though individual variations will vary infinitely and may pull in some measure from more than one reason. The reasons are:

1. They move away, physically.
2. They move away, spiritually.
3. Someone hurt them, and the congregation did not resolve it to their satisfaction.
4. Systemic problems pushed them away.

There’s nothing anyone needs to do to “fix” a congregation someone left for Reason #1 or Reason #2. These Dear John letters fall in the “it’s not you, it’s me” camp.

Reasons #3 and #4 are fixable. Reason #3 is the easier one to fix—you just have to figure out what needs to happen so that people can get in the same room together and choose to reconcile. But if a congregation is unable or unwilling to promote reconciliation, we know that Reason #4 is in play.

All congregations, and all of the larger movements they’re part of, have systemic problems. Some of those systemic problems—like not caring enough about newcomers to communicate that a Sunday School class is taking this week off, because everyone who matters ought to know that already—are merely annoying, and they can be fixed by a small group of people who take it upon themselves to change the status quo over a few months.

Others—like congregations who show newcomers in a thousand tiny ways that they don’t care about them—are much harder to fix. People can fix these deeper system problems too, but it takes a concerted effort by a network of people over a number of years. Moreso if the problem effects not just an individual congregation but an entire religious movement. Eventually, change can happen, but it won’t happen accidentally apart from some great, unanticipated crisis that gives a congregation an opportunity to choose a new direction in one great moment.

Why People Leave Unitarian Universalism

Unitarian Universalist Dear John letters often include one or more of these systemic problems:

• Bad worship (in lay led services especially)
• Toleration of toxic behavior (during Joys and Concerns or congregational meetings especially)
• Devotion to cause-ism to the exclusion of, or in detriment to, other ways to promote goodness in the world

There are probably others you could add if you’ve read several of these online letters over the years. I suppose other religious movements have these letters too, and they probably say much the same things generally, calling attention their movement’s own quirks and patterns.

The thing about Dear John letters is this: If the same things keep coming up over and over again, it’s because they’re telling you the truth about yourself. To put it differently, there are some things wrong with you, that you won’t change, that are pushing people away. You ought to change them so you can stay in relationship with people who want to be in relationship with you.

Or you could decide that you’re too old and stubborn to change, and that people can just take it or leave it.¹

Again, all of these systemic problems are changeable. If they’re not, religion has no power to change things for the better, and we might as well shut the doors and stay home on Sundays. Religions will always have systemic problems, of course, but whether or not a religion chooses to try and tackle the systemic problems it’s very much aware of, in ways that stand a chance of being successful, tells us a great deal about that religion’s character. And that ought to matter in a religious movement that believes in salvation by character.

The Deal Breaker

There is one reason for leaving that I haven’t mentioned until now, and it’s one that’s even more a part of the Unitarian Universalist legendarium than the online Dear John letter. You might have been expecting it and wondered why I left it out.

It takes place in the social hall during coffee hour. Between sips of fair trade coffee, the conversation between a humanist and a liberal Christian turns to humanism, or perhaps to liberal Christianity. And one person questions why the other person even bothers to enter the building, if they believe that.

As someone whose spirituality has headed in a more universalist and unitarian direction the last year or more, this piece of the legendarium matters deeply to me.

There are a number of reasons I have been worshiping occasionally with a United Church of Christ congregation instead of a Unitarian Universalist one these past few months since I moved back to my hometown. The most banal is that the UCC church is a seven minute drive, and the UU one is a good half hour away. The most gratifying is starting to get reaquainted with a now out-of-the-closet adult who was a member of a youth group I led fifteen years ago, who sat in the pew in front of me this morning. The most philosophical is that I judge Unitarian Universalism to be a movement too devoted to small virtues (perhaps more on that in another post). The most personal is that members of my UU congregation laid me off, and I have not forgiven them for that yet.²

However, the deal breaker, above and beyond all the other reasons I’ve listed, is that, given Unitarian Universalism’s choices at present, that conversation between me and a humanist³ during coffee hour is inevitable, and I am completely unwilling to wait for that conversation in a place I consider my spiritual home. Religion should never be an argument clinic.⁴

When someone confronts someone else about their beliefs being incompatible with their church, usually one person in that conversation is right and one is wrong, though perhaps not for the reasons the wrong person expects.

I’m not willing to carry the conversation far enough to find out who that is (even though I have a strong hunch about who is who). There are a thousand other things I’d rather do. This is perhaps unfair to my local Unitarian Universalist congregation and all the people in it who would not initiate that sad scenario. But I’ve learned enough of Unitarian Universalism over ten years to know that given enough time, that confrontation will happen to me, or I will witness it. I don’t have to do either, so I won’t.

To be clear, I am not “leaving” Unitarian Universalism. This is not a Dear John letter. Since I’m still a member of a Unitarian Universalist congregation through the end of the year⁵ and my name isn’t inscribed in a United Church of Christ membership book, any such letter would be premature anyway. I still carry deep hopes that Unitarian Universalism will succeed in the world. I could very well be a part of another Unitarian Universalist congregation in another season of my life.

If you will read past the drama, Dear John letters offer a religious movement a gift. As my leading spiritual teacher would say, let those who have ears listen.

(Photo by Martha Dear. Used under Creative Commons license.)

1. This path leads to loneliness and despair for individuals, so probably for religious movements too. [↩]
2. And that’s all the dirty laundry I’ll be airing, and the most bitter this will get. [↩]
3. Though I am a humanist as well as a universalist and a unitarian. [↩]
4. To push that one to the limit, I’m unwilling to be a part of a strange sketch—skip to around 4:30 in the linked video. [↩]
5. At which point my membership will expire for lack of a financial contribution this year. I helped set that system up in my congregation and still agree with it, fwiw, so this isn’t a complaint. [↩]