FIRST UNITARIAN CHURCH OF PHILADELPHIA

A UNITARIAN UNIVERSALIST CONGREGATION

2125 Chestnut Street, Philadelphia PA 19103
Office (215) 563-3980 www.philauu.org Fax (215) 563-4209
 

The Rich Diversity of Life

Lee Paczulla, Ministerial Practicum Student
First Unitarian Church of Philadelphia
August 15, 2010

The very first principle of Unitarian Universalism calls on us to promote the inherent
worth and dignity of every person. I have always loved that first principle. Its statement of
human worth is universally accessible and radically unconditional – and it is probably my
favorite thing about our faith. But I must confess something to you all. When it comes to
practicing our first principle – affirming and promoting the inherent worth and dignity of every
person, I fail. I fail, every day. I’ve realized, in reflecting on our first principle, that I fail to
affirm the inherent worth and dignity of people I encounter, every day. Instead, like all of us do,
I create a story, based on a person’s age, their dress, patterns of speech, race or anything else I
can readily observe. My categorization of individuals in this way – my failure to recognize their
uniqueness – their own piece of this giant puzzle of creation – affects the way I treat people.
This failure I’ve experienced can also be called prejudice.
I grew up in what one might call a “monocultural” environment – just about 25 minutes
from here, in a Philadelphia suburb where the families were overwhelmingly white and middle
class. Then after college, I moved to Washington, DC and found myself working with an after-
school program for low-income teenagers. So we’ve all seen this movie, right? I knew what
their “life on the streets” was like, and what my role as the educated, young, do-gooder was
supposed to be in shaping their future. Because of all the media influence I’d absorbed – in the
absence of any real encounters with low-income African-American and Latino teenagers up to
that point in my life – the first group of kids who walked through our doors were, to me, “at-
risk,” inner-city youth. That was their story, and I’d seen on movie screens a million times
before. But ten weeks later, by the time the second group of kids walked in – they were just
kids. They were tough, sweet and vulnerable. They were funny, troubled, and brilliant. Whole
and complete young people, full of complex potential and much more diverse within themselves
than they were different from me just because of their race or economic background.
Now please don’t get me wrong – these teenagers lived in poor communities; they were
surrounded by drugs and violence to a degree I never could have imagined growing up. Their
differences from me and the ways their early life experiences diverged from mine were
important; and the systemic lack of opportunity they faced, just because of where they came
from, is a profound injustice worthy of all our righteous anger. But after ten weeks, and
eventually, three years spent in intimate conversation with these kids, I could not ignore the
feeling that to define them by their circumstances – as so many well-meaning people do – is to
deny their right to self-determination. It denies their very right to construct their own identities.
In the video clip that we just watched, Nigerian author Chimamanda Adichie talks about
her own first encounters with cultures other than the one in which she was raised. She describes
the danger of the “single story” – the story we are told, and which we then re-tell, about people
who come from different backgrounds and cultures than we do. Later in the video, Ms. Adichie
says, “the single story creates stereotypes; and the problem with stereotypes is not that they are
untrue, but that they are incomplete.” A stereotype, she says, “robs dignity.”
When I told a single story about those “at-risk” kids in my program, I robbed them of
their dignity – and I also eroded my own. My beloved first principle represents an agreement – a
covenant – that Unitarian Universalists have made to affirm and promote the inherent worth of
all people. It is not a statement of divine truth – a sort of “I’m okay, you’re okay” promise made
from on high. It is an agreement of how we will be together as people of faith. I was breaking
that agreement. It was through my first eye-opening experience of life’s diversity that I came to
see my religious community differently. I gained a new understanding of Unitarian
Universalism’s power and potential, and allowed my faith to begin to change me.
As I take this next step on my journey, into leadership in this faith, I do see another
failure. It is a similar failure to the one I recognized in myself not so long ago – between the
reality of my actions, and the values expressed in our first principle. We are part of a
“monocultural” denomination, overwhelmingly white, highly-educated, and middle- to upper-
class. Our denomination is not alone. In a presentation to the UUA General Assembly two years
ago, the director of our denomination’s Identity-Based Ministries program, Taquiena Boston,
offered discouraging statistics on congregational diversity, measured across all major organized
religions in the United States. Only 5-7% of all religious organizations in America are
multicultural, and only half of these are intentionally multicultural.
I went to General Assembly for the first time this year, and I had lunch my first day with
a woman from a suburban Philadelphia congregation. I was telling her how much I loved the
workshops on multicultural worship and building diverse communities, when she replied, quite
frankly, that she was tired of hearing about diversity. She was, in her words, “sick of being
called a racist.” I found, at our General Assembly, that many of my fellow UUs were asking,
sincerely: “Why are we placing so much emphasis on diversity? Why does it matter?” After all,
it certainly seems, based on Ms. Boston’s statistics, that monocultural religion is the norm. But I
don’t feel that this reality excuses Unitarian Universalism from the promises we have made to
each other. We’ve set forth our principles as a covenant – for how we will be together, both
inside and outside this building.
My home church, where I heard the call to ministry, is trying to be one of these
intentionally multicultural religious organizations. At All Souls Church in Washington, DC, our
senior minister has been known to call the Sunday service a “weekly rehearsal of [what Dr.
Martin Luther King called] the Beloved Community.” At the beginning of each week’s service,
we affirm our church as “a diverse, spirit-growing, justice-seeking community that is true to the
name of All Souls.” Sounds pretty good, right? But making room for difference within a
healthy multicultural congregation is immensely challenging. We engage in conflict all the time.
Our church is full of people who disagree. Some of us can barely stand to be in the same room
with each other. All Souls is a community that fails at living up to our first principle every day,
just as I do. But it is also a community that knows accepting our “monocultural” existence will
only help us tell part of the human story – “a single story”– and it will only allow us to speak to
part of our community.
I want to be the kind of minister that affirms the rich diversity of life – who makes issues
of diversity visible within our churches to make it clear that I believe valuing diversity is the

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only thing that will help us get better at recognizing the humanity in one another. It’s the only
thing that can help to make us whole.
When I was growing up, I didn’t get to practice living in a diverse world. I never had the
opportunity to deeply engage with people, over time, who had significantly different life
experiences than I had. All Souls was there for me at a time of profound confusion and
disappointment over the recognition of my own prejudice, and my Unitarian Universalist
community helped guide me out of that pain and showed me that what I was experiencing was an
opportunity for transformation. Our churches – particularly our urban churches, already located
in the messy and complicated context of life in the city – have a similar opportunity to lead
Unitarian Universalism in creating spaces where the rich diversity of life can flourish, even
amidst challenge and conflict. We can do it, in large part, by listening to each other’s whole
stories. We can also do it by having the courage to tell our own whole stories.
I have to admit that there have been many times I was tempted to believe that deep down,
we are all the same. But the truth is our differences are real. And they are just as spectacular as
the things we share in common. Our differences are what make life vital, exciting, creative –
even sexy. Our differences and our commonalities are all a part of that messy, all-embracing
reality of creation which our faith calls upon us to promote – not just “accept,” but “promote” the
inherent worth and dignity of every person. Universally. Unconditionally. May it be so, and
Amen.

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