Lynn Fendler
Juneteenth 2024
Dear Executive Team and Members of the Board:
After retiring from Michigan State University in June 2020, I moved to Portland to live near my daughter. I had previously attended UU churches in Wisconsin and Michigan, and have attended First UU Church regularly year-round for three years. I sang in two of the choirs, served as one of the music librarians, and developed close friendships in a beloved community. When I moved to Portland, I had hoped to find a social justice community that rejected patriarchy and white supremacy culture. I thought surely a UU Church, surely in Portland, surely in 2024 I would find such a spiritual home.
During the June 9th service I was sitting peacefully in the congregation wearing white and holding a sign that said, "I Support DeReau." At greeting time while I was standing quietly in the aisle, an angry stranger approached me and shouted, "You have been lied to!!" (Later I learned that the man who accosted me was David Snedden.) I have a life history that includes being battered, so his aggressive actions triggered my self-protective reflexes, and I quickly left the church. Later I watched the tape of the service, and witnessed yet another act of aggression when Mark Slegers attacked Alyssa Eldridge on the chancel. The attack itself was bad enough. But when I saw that church leadership made no immediate effort to protect Alyssa or to condemn Mark's actions, I was shocked that violence against women would be tolerated in First UU church. It doesn't matter what Alyssa did or didn't do; there is nothing that excuses Mark's physical aggression. In the congregation there are people in addition to me who have experienced battery and domestic abuse. They also witnessed the violence, along with church leadership's failure to respond. My guess is that some of them, like me, quietly slipped away when they learned that the church is not a safe place for all of us. Others may remain, still hoping that church leadership will live up to UU Principles by taking explicit and concrete steps to denounce all violence against women.
I grew up in a conservative white household in the United States in the 1950s. I am still in the process of unlearning what I was taught--by example and words--namely that my white middle-class cultural norms are universal and valuable. Growing up, I absorbed the cultural values I was taught as if they were normal and natural, including that women should defer to men, and everyone aspires to white middle-class norms of acceptability. White middle-class culture was my comfort zone. I remember feeling confused and offended when I saw people say or do things that challenged my learned sensibilities about respect, decorum, or propriety.
Over the years, it was a struggle to unlearn what I had been taught about acceptability. After traveling around the world and listening to people from an array of critical perspectives, I gradually came to understand that my assumptions about what was normal were culturally specific, not universal. I had to open my heart in humility to accept the uncomfortable awareness that my way was not the only way, and not necessarily the best way. This unlearning became especially painful when I began to realize that what I had been taught about acceptability was actually harming Black people and other people of color by denying their basic freedoms. In other words, my discomfort was taking precedence over other people's rights. That was the moment I had to face the fact that for most of my life I had been enabling white supremacy culture. I have to live the rest of my life with that moral shame, and strive from now on to do my best to try to prevent yet more harm done when some people's discomfort denies other people's human rights.
In First UU Church, while I read the words of the UU Principles, I experienced some violations of UU Principles in practice instead. Here are just a couple examples. During a Sunday service, we were instructed from the chancel not to applaud, but rather to rub our hands together silently to show appreciation. That instruction was an effort to restrict how people are permitted to express themselves when moved by the spirit. The message I received from that instruction is that some ways of rejoicing are not welcome in First UU Church. Another example of intolerance happened during the Duke Ellington Sacred Music celebration. I heard more than one person express disapproval when people were dancing in the sanctuary aisle. As it happens, the dancing took place during the song, "David Danced Before the Lord with All His Might." Why would people disapprove of dancing joyfully in church during a song about dancing before the lord? Apparently, there is a culture in First UU Church that has made it acceptable to express disapproval of different people's ways of worshipping. A third example is DeReau's spiritual messages to the choirs before services. Those messages were inspirational and beautiful. They added great depth to the whole service for me, and I loved hearing them. DeReau did not tell us why he stopped giving us those messages, and it was not his choice, but evidently he was no longer free to continue them. According to UU Principles and the US Constitution, all of us, including the Director of Music, have the right to express our own spiritual truth, whether that agrees with or contradicts the Senior Minister or other authority figure. Similarly, last year DeReau sent us Daily Lenten Devotions, but this year he was not free to continue that practice. DeReau did not tell us why he stopped the Lenten devotions, just that there had been objections. I am all in favor of church people expressing disapproval of fascism, oppression, genocide, bigotry, and hypocrisy; however, I can find no moral justification for church people expressing disapproval of clapping, dancing, practicing devotions, or speaking one's truth in church. These are just three examples of First UU Church practices that violated UU Principles of inherent worth and dignity of every person. These are not examples showing justice, equity and compassion. Censorship and silencing do not support a free and responsible search for truth and meaning for any of us. Recent events have shown me that in First UU Church, a white man is readily forgiven for his act of physical aggression, but a Black man's employment is jeopardized when he speaks his spiritual truth and maintains his dignity by refusing to be submissive to white authority.
From the June 9th Q&A meeting, it became clear to me that church personnel who spoke do not understand the difference between racist bigotry (on the one hand) and enabling white supremacy culture (on the other hand). The best teacher I know for helping institutions unlearn white supremacy culture is Tony Nabors, whose educational project is Racial Equity Insights. Organizations like churches can register for his workshops, consultations, and teachings, and many of his video resources are free.
Given the outcome, apparently church leadership could not manage to find a way to work cooperatively with a brilliantly talented, spiritually devoted, morally principled, musical genius who was beloved among most musicians in the church. This was a profound failure of leadership. People in the choirs could have served as powerful allies in a process to help ameliorate tensions among leadership, if you had only come to us as members of a beloved community. Instead, it was my experience that the Executive Team treated choir people as antagonists. We were not consulted, not trusted, not respected, and not included in what should have been a democratic, community-based problem-solving process. It felt to me that church leadership treated us choir people with disregard, not knowing or not caring that we gladly volunteered many hours every week, both inside and outside of rehearsals, working to make the church a more beautiful place. I don't know which is worse: that leadership didn't know how powerfully devoted and resourceful our beloved choir community was? Or that your umbrage was so great you didn't care if dozens of lives, including mine, would be devastated by the unilateral decision to oust DeReau.
What HR protocols were followed in the official interactions between the Executive Team and the Director of Music? What employee development or assessment tools were in place to resolve tensions? Which systematic mechanisms for democratic participation in governance procedures were enacted? Was DeReau always treated as an equal with inherent worth and dignity, or was he expected to act as a subordinate to the Senior Minister? Any responsible HR program systematically investigates all complaints, verifies their bases, determines whether those complaints are widespread, and then initiates cooperative employee-development mechanisms with systematic checkpoints toward improvement. I have heard nothing that indicates that systematic HR protocols were followed in First UU Church. This is another failure of leadership. And yet, from the chancel and in written communications recently, I have not heard an apology from church leadership regarding the process. I hear no humility, compassion, or reaching out for reconciliation. Instead, all I have heard from church leadership is defensiveness, self-justification, blaming DeReau, criticizing the protestors, and now a cover-up, i.e., taking down the stream of the June 9th service. I can only imagine there are things you wish you had done differently. It would go a long way toward transparency and healing if church leadership would allow honest and open reflection to replace defensiveness in the restorative process.
I will now leave First UU Church to seek a spiritual home that does not require submission to white hierarchical authority, and does not value decorum over UU Principles and freedom. I'll be looking for a place that celebrates a magnificent and diverse array of human expressions, and delights in all kinds of great music.
Thank you for taking the time to read my message. I do not expect a reply.
With much sadness,
Lynn Fendler
