Classism and Economic Injustice

a sermon by Reverend Lynn Thomas Strauss

Unitarian Universalist Church of Rockville, January 8, 2006

Reading

Mark 10: 21-31

A rich man approached Jesus and asked; "Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?"

And Jesus looking upon him loved him, and said to him, "You lack one thing: go, sell what you have, and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me."

At that saying his countenance fell and he went away sorrowful; for he had great possessions.

And Jesus looked around and said to his disciples, "How hard it will be for those who have riches to enter the kingdom of God!" And the disciples were amazed at his words.

But Jesus said to them again, "Children, how hard it is to enter the kingdom of God! It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God."

* * *

And they were exceedingly astonished, and said to him, "then who can be saved?

Jesus looked at them and said, "With men it is impossible, but not with God; For all things are possible with God." "Many that are first will be last, and the last, first."

To think about class in America, is to think about how we are divided by economic and social status. To think about class in America, is to think about how we are separated from one another…on the other side of the fence, on the other side of the tracks, on the other side of town. The "haves", the "have nots", the almost haves…the haves, for now…

To think about class in America, is to feel ambivalent, angry, confused or defensive. "Class" is the elephant in the room of our schools, our justice system, our county council meetings, our extended families …and yes, "class" is the elephant in the room of Unitarian Universalism.

So let’s talk about it. That’s the fundamental message of my sermon today, that we should talk about class…we should talk about how we, personally, have been shaped by, hurt by, privileged by, confused about socio-economic class issues. And let’s talk about whether we have the collective will to work for changes in Unitarian Universalism and in America that will help heal the class divide.

Let me tell you a story. It’s true…it happened in a small town in rural Minnesota. It’s about a cook in a diner. Picture a large, very large man working in front of the grill…it’s hot, very hot, everything is organized and prepared for the start of business….the eggs on the left, the butter melted and ready on the right…potatoes nearby, there’s a mirror over the grill, so Tiny (That’s the cook’s name…Tiny) the mirror is positioned so Tiny can look back and see the waitresses behind him.

Tiny has arrived at work at 5AM. 5AM, he’s been on the job for 14 years, five mornings a week…5AM.

It’s not a big resturant, but it’s busy in the morning, and the system here works without written orders…the waitresses just call out, two sunnyside with a side of wheat …or scrambled with bacon and grits.

This is a neighborhood place, so many customers are regulars…and sometimes the waitress just calls out…Joe and Nelly are here…or Tom wants two this morning.

Tiny handles all the orders with skill and deftness…everyone gets their breakfast just the way they like it.

The colleague who told me this story went to that diner for three years and she never saw Tiny make a mistake.

She was fascinated and she asked him once why he stayed, why he worked so hard, got up so early…Tiny said…"that it made him feel good to make breakfast for so many people on their way to work….they have a hard day ahead of them, he said, and I’m happy I can make them a good breakfast and get their day started well."

Everything is a gift. This is a fundamental religious truth. Everything we have in our lives, every relationship, every material good, every skill and talent we possess is a gift. This is a truth we often forget.

Class is about what we have, how we work, how much we earn, and what we take for granted. Tiny, the cook, knew that everything in his morning was a gift. It’ something I often forget.

I desire material things, I grieve for what I don’t have, I envy, I struggle…I forget so easily and so often, that everything is a gift.

Class is a tough issue to bring to light. Class as a category seems to belie the spiritual truth that everything is a gift. Looking through the lens of class we wonder why some are given more than others. Is there a moral equation? Are rich people better than poor people? Who’s to blame for poverty? Who’s to blame for economic injustice?

The daily newspaper shows us the disparities, the polarities, the mind-boggling reality of a greedy, well-dressed Washington lobbyist caught in flagrant disregard of the law… contrasted with the tragic deaths of hard working, not so well-paid, coal miners.

The dictionary definition of class is, "a group of people considered as a unit according to economic, occupational, or social status: especially a social rank or caste, as the working class, the middle class, the upper class."

I get stuck when I think about class. Stuck in the past, in my past. I get mired in how I am different. How my family is different. How my experiences are different. Class is personal and political. We can think of it individually or systemically.

I get angry when I think about class, for it is a category of difference, of lower and higher, a category of inequality. And equality is important to me, as it is important to you. Equality is a principle of Unitarian Universalism…toward which we all dream and sometimes, work.

I want to believe that equality can exist alongside significant difference. But the evidence is slim. Our country is split along lines of socio-economic difference…and most communities and congregations split when the differences become too great. This is why people hide behind gated communities. This is what happened to American Protestantism. How do we achieve and maintain equality and also embrace difference? This is a particular challenge to us as Uus as a denomination committed to diversity.

Historically, the mainline denominations broke into subsets based on racial and economic difference. Diversity broke them apart. Methodist, African Episcopal, AME, Zion…etc. The merger of the Unitarians and the Universalists in 1961 was in part, a merger of Boston Upper-class Unitarianism with Prairie farming Universalists. But the Unitarian majority eventually subsumed the Universalists. It often happens that difference is melted, reduced…and something important is lost.

Perhaps we avoid looking squarely at class within Unitarian Universalism because we’re afraid class differences might tear us apart. So we pretend we’re all pretty much the same. We’re not the same…of that I am sure. Each person here has an interesting, complex class story to tell.

Thinking of class brings us to a core set of American myths. Set forth by sociologist C. Wright Mills in 1959, these myths still hold power and keep class difference, class struggle, class pain…quiet and unacknowledged.
Myth #1- The United States is a classless society.
Myth #2- We are all equal in the eyes of the law.
Myth #3- We are essentially a middle class nation.
Myth #4- We are all getting richer.
Myth #5- Everyone has an equal chance to succeed.

Personal experience tells us these myths have done a lot of harm. Working people without health care coverage know that ours is not a classless society. Service men and women who joined the military as a ticket to a college education know that this is not a classless society. Innocent people on death row know that we are not all equal in the eyes of the law. Children who go to bed hungry in America know that not everyone is middle class or getting richer, and first generation college hopefuls who cannot afford a top liberal arts college know that not everyone has an equal chance to succeed.

How have you or members of your family been hurt or helped by these myths about class, these myths which we have all absorbed. We have to be careful when we think about Tiny, the cook at the diner, we’d like to put him on a pedestal, we love his generous impulse to see his work as taking care of others and making their lives easier…but we have to ask, how much money does he make ? How often can he afford to eat out? How many jobs does he hold to make ends meet?

We who live most of our lives as "haves" like to focus our concern on the poor, on the less fortunate, on those we’d like to help. But the Bible reading from Mark reminds us that the challenge for the rich man is different. Jesus said, it is hard for the rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven…the rich man went away sorrowful for his possessions were so great, that he knew it would be difficult to give them all away. In the loving and radical message of Jesus…those with riches would be last, not first. I wonder what this might mean for us…a group of people blessed with many riches?

The tragedy in New Orleans brought many of these issues to light. Those who had cars and trucks often had a means of escape from the storm and the flood, those who had money could put there families up in a hotel, those who had resources outside of the city could take advantage of them…but those who were poor had the least options.

That is the fundamental definition of poverty…its’ connection to options…the fewer options a family has, the lower they are on the socio-economic scale. Options go beyond money or assets to include education, employment, family network, good health, skills, or a safety net of some kind.

Church often provides a network or safety net when there is no other. I want our churches, I want Unitarian Universalism to be a community that welcomes people of all classes. And that won’t be possible unless we explore the issue. Unless we understand how much class matters.

Class has mattered a great deal in my own life. My parents were working class…both having quit high school to marry young. My father worked a variety of jobs to support me and my two brothers and two sisters. He worked in an automobile factory, as a tuck pointer on high rise buildings, as a truck driver, delivering fruits and vegetables to restaurants in downtown Chicago…and as a club musician on weekends. We lived, when I was very young with my grandparents in a very small two- bedroom apartment, sharing our bathroom, not only with our family of eight, but with the seamstress who rented the two front rooms. My mother went to work, evenings, when I was 12 and I took over the dinner preparation and babysitting.

I was the first …and the only member of my family to go to college. As my life continued a path toward the middle class, a chasm opened between my family and me. There can be a lot of pain when our life path veers from the rest of our family.

In fact, wherever we fall on the socio-economic scale- many of us suffer wounds related to class issues and experiences. There are potential wounds among the privileged as well as the poor, whether we have changed class and thus moved away from our families of origin, or if we have moved down in class and feel a sense of failure.

Again, churches are often, where people discover that suffering knows no bounds of race or class or even faith. Illness, death, addiction, abuse, loss knows no class boundaries. Difference in class creates different vulnerabilities so we must extend compassion to all people, rich or poor or in-between.

C. Wright Mills, in his 1959 work, "White Collar" isolated three predictors of class in America. The first predictor of class, he said, is property and birth. If your grandparents are upper class, there’s a good chance you will be also.

The second predictor is occupation and education. Doctors, ministers, professors are upper middle class even if they don’t earn a lot of money.

And the third class predictor is income and the power of money. If you are not born to property, if you don’t have a higher education, you can gain upper class status by earning a lot of money.

Unitarian Universalism is a middle class religion. Data from a 1990 National Survey of Religious Lifestyle and Identification found that UU’s were the most highly educated of the 30 denominations surveyed. And UU’s enjoyed the second highest income level and three out of four UU’s owned their own homes.

One can see that visitors who do not feel adequately middle class might not feel a sense of comfort and belonging within UU circles.

The UUA’s own study, The 1997 Commission on Appraisal Report speaks of the ethos of Unitarian Universalism. We have been called, the Boston religion which carries the flavor and personality of the Euro-American upper class. We tend toward the logical and rational and ours has been the religion of the successful. We have believed as T.S. Eliot said of his Unitarian relatives; to be a Unitarian was to be noble, upright and superior to all other human beings. These are some of the same traits that Garrison Keeler still needles us about.

Though we are uncomfortable with the hubris of these characterizations, we are proud of our intellectual tradition and our learned ministry…we love to list all our famous UU’s. I have led workshops on Classism with Unitarian Universalism for UU ministers in five UUMA chapters around the country. There has been great interest in the topic.

Often the ministers come to the conclusion that we should accept our heritage and our middle class status and be the best middle class denomination we can be. And I agree with that, but I also wonder what we are losing if we are too much the same. I think we should always work toward being more inclusive….toward extending our circle. It is important to be aware of how we are exclusive by class.

I want my brothers and sisters, my nephews- non-college educated people who work in low wage jobs, to feel at home in a UU congregation. Toward the end of my workshop I ask my colleagues, "What do you fear we might lose by becoming more inclusive by class?" The answer is always the same…the fear is that we might compromise or dilute our intellectual sermons.

When I ask what we might gain by becoming more inclusive by class, most often there is silence. I guess they never knew someone like the cook…Tiny. Perhaps they never imagined what people different from themselves might bring to enrich our ideas, our worship, our music, our religious education, our congregational culture.

I would call our denomination and our congregation to a radical welcoming…to a realization that everything that comes to us in a day is a gift. Let us remember that each person who comes to join us brings unique gifts and talents. Let us create a safe place for people to bring the whole of who they are. No one should have to check any parts of themselves at the door. No one should feel they have to pass in any way. No one should be ashamed or feel they don’t belong.

Whether the difference is race or gender, or sexual orientation, or differing physical or mental abilities or age or class….everyone is truly welcome here. Let us move toward the day when difference is truly celebrated – for then, and only then, can we begin to discover the ties that bind us as brothers and sisters, all.

So May it Be/Amen