Ministry goes to all sorts of places, and so it was I found myself in Wendy’s house, explaining to her how to organize her many bookmarks on stamps. Wendy has two kids my age, but because of how long it takes her to understand computers, they both had given up trying to explain to their mother how to do things like organize bookmarks. 

She knows me as an intern minister at the local Unitarian Universalist Church. While we were organizing die-cut from rubber stamp blogs, she told me about how she went to a Unitarian Universalist church a couple of years ago but did not quite understand it. 

“For the church service, they organized a panel of speakers who spoke out against domestic violence. I was very glad that they did that, but I did not feel like the place was church. It felt like work.”

I explained to her our historical and modern theology, and how churches are organized on congregational polity. She was delighted, saying she’d love to be able to go a place where people understood things like the occupy movement her daughter is in. “Is it a place where Jesus is forced upon you, though?” she asked. “Of course not,” I responded. “Oh good, I can’t stand those places!”

Reflecting on Wendy’s experience years ago at a UU church I wonder how it did not inform her of any basics. I can imagine the service she went to: a strong need to have women speak their truths as domestic survivors. It probably helped heal these women. There was probably a social justice aspect, where a petition to the governor or other legislative body was signed. The thing that they were speaking out for or against was probably completed in the way they had hoped. It was probably a successful social justice action.

And to Wendy, it was not church. For her, the strong humanist church did not even convey that they were not all about Jesus, though they probably respect him as much as any other religious figure. 

It is my hope that, this being a few years ago, it is a well-learned lesson from the past: the congregation does not exist only for itself. That when we sit in our meetings and plan public services, we are not thinking of not only what we like, but what of the public might like. That we do not exist to serve ourselves  -  we must serve those in the outside world with our theology as much as our social justice.

Some may say, well, that’s all fine and good, but if we want to serve the outside world instead of ourselves, you might as well say we should be Christian. Because that’s what the dominant “outside world” of the United States is. 

And I’d counter that with Wendy. Wendy is part of a growing population in the United States who can not accept what typical Christianity offers. She is part of a population of people who needs Unitarian Universalism - not our social justice, but our religion. 8 years ago, I was Wendy too. I did not join Unitarian Universalism for its politics. I joined it because of its religion. I was already doing social justice work in my own life. And I am speaking as someone who’s call to ministry is based on social justice. Our social justice efforts will succeed in the short term, but fail in the long term if we do not carefully tend to the faith aspect of our tradition. We can’t comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable all the time, because most of us are afflicted as much as we are comfortable. So is everyone else out there.

Our religion is careful and nuanced. It is like no other religion out there. For me, it’s still pretty easy to understand - our human relationships to each other are more important than theological doctrines. That revolutionary idea is simple, and yet requires explaining. The trap that we get into is that we think the only human relationships that matter are the ones we’ve made in our congregation. May we never forget that all human relationships matter, and the ones we haven’t made yet, the ones that are waiting for people like Wendy, are equally weighed with the ones that we do know in the life of our faith.