Dear Friends:
This week it was brought to the Search Committee’s attention that the question included in the Congregational Survey regarding personal feelings about calling a minister based on several different categorical identifications caused unintended but very real harm in our church community. We are grateful that we are in relationship with members in our congregation who can bring this to our attention in clear, direct ways. We sincerely apologize and are committed to putting in place a process that will allow us to begin a return to right relations.
We immediately closed the survey and removed the question. We will also reach out to those individuals who shared their hurt and pain with us. The survey will be re-released shortly. For those who have already submitted their survey responses, the response to that one question will be thrown out; answers to the other questions will be included in the survey results.
The survey is based on questions developed and provided by the Unitarian Universalist Association. The question at issue came from there but in discussion with the UUA we learned that specific question is no longer recommended. It’s not clear why that question was still included in the questions provided to us. The UUA is very sorry for their part in this issue, as expressed by our Transitions Coach, Lisa Presley. However, we want to acknowledge that the search committee also did not identify the potential for harm caused by including the question in the survey we distributed.
The work of dismantling systemic racism and confronting white supremacy and other systems of oppression is difficult and messy. White supremacy is so entrenched in both the individual lives of white people in the U.S. and our country’s institutions that we missed the potential impact of our decision with respect to the survey question even while our congregation and our national association are in the midst of making a commitment to confront and dismantle systemic racism. While we most certainly would have preferred that this harm had not occurred, we hope that as a committee and as a congregation this can be an important teaching moment. One in which we learn both more about identifying aspects of white supremacy culture and institutional racism and how to best respond when a mistake is made.