The Thomas Jefferson Question

As I travel around the Thomas Jefferson District of the UUA, I can’t help but reflect on the impact Thomas Jefferson had and continues to have on our lives. Despite all the controversy that surrounds him, I am grateful for the vision that he had and his dogged determination in making that vision a reality. I know I am privileged to live in this country, to be free, and, even as a lesbian, to have some basic human rights. Recently, I reread Forester Church’s article that was published in the UU World last year at this time, “What would Jefferson and Adams do?” I have always looked to Adams as the true Unitarian, the one who was faithful to his values, the one as Church describes of Jefferson, did not “anesthetize his conscience,” the one, in other words, who did not keep slaves. And yet, if it had been left up to Adams, we might well be living in a Christian state, where religion and governance would be irrevocably intertwined.  Adams rethought this position later in his life and was able to reflect on how this view probably cost him a second term as president. But, were it not for Jefferson, his flawed thinking came dangerously close to changing our lives beyond measure.               

When I moved to the Thomas Jefferson District, the controversy surrounding the district’s name was not news to me. I didn’t know all the details but I knew a name change was considered at one time and that congregations in the district voted to retain the name. And I knew about the controversy surrounding the 1993 General Assembly and the Thomas Jefferson Ball. That was my first General Assembly and it quickly catapulted me into issues of racism within the Association. It was also my first encounter with the Reverend Hope Johnson, the courageous woman of African descent whom I am now proud to call my friend. In considering the suggestion by the GA Planning Committee to dress in costumes of the period, Hope asked of the General Assembly, and I paraphrase, “what would you have us wear? Rags and chains?” Her question sent chills down my spine as it immediately forced me to rethink whether, in becoming a UU only a few months earlier, I had only been fooled again, fooled into believing that UUs were people who truly lived their values.  How could we be who we said we were when we could cause such hurt to those among us?

And yet later that day, when I stood at the bottom of the escalator with the drummers who were respectfully protesting the Thomas Jefferson ball, I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that this was a faith community I wanted to be part of. I knew that this was a faith community where people of courage speak their minds even when it cuts deep into their souls because in this community lives a glimmer of hope, a flicker in the darkness, that what they say matters. It is that hope that guides me every day in my work.

To learn more about this General Assembly and the impact it had on two of the key players in this controversay, the Reverend Hope Johnson and former TJD President, the Reverend Barbro Hansson, attend the TJD’s Anti-Racism Conference, February 29 and March 1, 2008, in Winston-Salem.

As I’ve traveled around the district these past two years, I have been surprised to learn how unsettled the question of the name is - it continues to bubble up in all kinds of conversations. And in fact, at last year’s General Assembly in Portland, at the workshop called Breaking the Silence: Truth, Reconciliation & Racial Justice, led by President Bill Sinkford, an African American man from Maryland asked how the UUA can even begin to talk about reconciliation and racial justice when it has a district named after a slaveholder. I spent a few minutes with this man after the workshop and let him know that discussions continued in our district about the name but that it was really up to the congregations to change it. Not a very satisfying answer, I’m sure, but the only answer I could give.

As a staff member in the district, it is not appropriate for me to take a position on whether we change or retain the name of our district. That is for our congregations to decide. At their Fall 2007 meeting, the TJ District Board decided that congregations will have another chance to decide this important question at the TJD 2009 Annual Meeting. Between now and then, I will pray that the delegates remember the glimmer of hope that so many UUs hold on to that keeps them from leaving our faith — the hope that, in this faith community, being in right relationship with all people actually matters.

Especially if you are in the Thomas Jefferson District, I invite your comments.