The Big Question - Universalism, take 2

UU Salon's Big Question for June, part 2:
Do you resonate with Universalism, or not? What about the Universalist perspective challenges or comforts you?

I consider it oxymoronic to hold an idiosyncratic notion of Universalism, and the only shared notion of Universalism I see within contemporary Unitarian Universalism I outlined in the first post as:

"In other words, "universalism" now seems to stand for the elimination of the cultural privileging of sameness of any kind. "

So how do I feel about that kind of universalism?

In EM Forster's novel A Passage to India (1924), at the end of Chapter IV, a couple of English missionaries are discussing the limits of universal salvation within the context of a failed experiment at socially bridging the divide between Indians and their English overlords:

The gentlemen whom he had just lectured now urged one another to attend the party, although convinced at heart that his advice was unsound.

He had spoken in the little room near the Courts where the pleaders waited for clients; clients, waiting for pleaders, sat in the dust outside. These had not received a card from Mr. Turton. And there were circles even beyond these - people who wore nothing but a loincloth, people who wore not even that, and spent their lives in knocking two sticks together before a scarlet doll - humanity grading and drifting beyond the educated vision, until no earthly invitation can embrace it.

All invitations must proceed from heaven perhaps; perhaps it is futile for men to initiate their own unity, they do but widen the gulfs between them in the attempt. So at all events thought old Mr. Graysford and young Mr. Sorely, the devoted missionaries who lived out beyond the slaughterhouses, always traveled third on the railways, and never came up to the club. In our father's house are many mansions, they taught, and there alone will the incompatible multitudes of mankind be welcomed and soothed. Not one shall be turned away by the servants on the veranda, be he black or white, not one shall be kept standing who approaches with a loving heart. And why should the divine hospitality cease here? Consider, with all reverence, the monkeys. May there not be a mansion for the monkeys also? Old Mr. Graysford said No, but young Mr. Sorely, who was advanced, said Yes; he saw no reason why monkeys should not have their collateral share of bliss, and he had sympathetic discussions about them with his Hindu friends. And the jackals? Jackals were indeed less to Mr. Sorely's mind, but he admitted that the mercy of God, being infinite, may well embrace all mammals. And the wasps? He became uneasy during the descent to wasps, and was apt to change the conversation. And oranges, cactuses, crystals and mud? and the bacteria inside Mr. Sorely? No, no, this is going too far. We must exclude someone from our gathering or we shall be left with nothing.

It may be that, in the realm of theoretical theology, the pantheism and panentheism of many Unitarian Universalists now allows what Forster's early twentieth-century imperial missionaries could not: namely, that the totality of what is has a part in the divine. We believe in the oneness of everything - whether as an inextricably linked web of existence or as a unified entity, of which we are a part. However, truth be told, though we do not recognize and label all the fine gradations that Empire, class, economy, caste, race, and religion brought to imperial India, we live lives that make all manner of distinctions that "exclude [various people] from our gathering" in fear of being "left with nothing."

How many pan(en)theistic or otherwise universalist Unitarian Universalists live in neighborhoods whose populations are representative of the racial, ethnic, economic, religious, occupational, political, age, health, and ability mix of the world? of the nation? of the state? or even of their larger metropolitan area? How many of us work with people fully representing this demographic spread? How many of us engage in recreational activities with such a "them"? In every arena of our lives, we surround ourselves with people who are as much like us as possible, however we may see that sameness. We fear being left with nothing just as much as our benighted neighbors do. We want to protect our property values as much as they.

So you tell me, when we try, to some degree, to bring the people we exclude from the rest of our life into our churches, who thinks that the newly included others do not see the reality of our lives? Of course, they know that if they stopped by our offices or came to see us at our clubs or could afford to join us at the symphony or drove into our driveways or walked our sidewalk-less neighborhoods that we would be embarrassed and they would feel out of place - even if we managed to make Sunday morning an apparently welcome, inclusive space.

Yes, we're doing pretty well when it comes to LGBTQ inclusion. Yes, we're making strides in overcoming legacies of racism and sexism. But there are areas, such as class and culture, where we have a huge gap from between our ideals and our realities.

Advocating on behalf of people we do not otherwise include in our lives is not wrong. Indeed, it is laudable to do the right thing against the political economy from which one benefits on behalf of those who do not. But it does not make us, our neighborhoods, or our churches truly welcoming for those who are still Other.

If the elimination of the cultural privileging of sameness of any kind really is the universalism we want in our churches, then we have to find ways to make it an honest part of our Sunday noon to Saturday midnight reality too. Otherwise we aren't going to get where we hope to go.