Excerpts from a sermon by Rev. Dr. Oscar Sinclair on March 2, 2025
Emerging in our discourse about race and class at Unity Church, is the deeper consideration of the wider world, our current socio-political situation, and how we got here. In his sermon on March 2, 2025, Rev. Dr. Oscar Sinclair described a phenomenon characterized by Bruce Rogers-Vaughn, in his book, Caring for Souls in a Neoliberal Age, as “third order suffering.” Here are excerpts from his sermon, Barnraising, in which he describes the origins of this phenomenon and its antidote.

… Despite the preacherly temptation to repeat myself, I really don’t want to get in the habit, for the next four years, of starting every sermon with a litany of crises of the week. I don’t want to, because when we do we lose track, a little, of what is going on. The crises aren’t the underlying problem. Donald Trump isn’t even the underlying problem. They are symptoms. Now, symptoms can be dangerous: anyone who has had the stomach flu can tell you that. But you do not cure a disease by treating its symptoms: you seek to understand the cause, and address that.

Bruce Rogers-Vaughn knows the symptoms well. A psychologist and theologian, he’s seen a “marked change in the people he sees now in his practice compared to 30 years ago. His patients are more on edge, experiencing an amorphous dread. The selves he encounters are more diffuse and fragmented, prone to greater levels of addictive behavior, haunted by shame and loneliness, unaffiliated, and burdened with many private sufferings.” Rogers-Vaughn also has a possible cause in mind: he sees this deterioration tied up with cultural shifts over the last generation and a half, particularly the rise of neoliberalism in creating what he calls ‘Third Order Suffering.’ (…)

First order suffering is suffering that is intrinsic to life: illness, death, heartbreak, natural disasters. This suffering presents challenges to theologians and utopians alike, but it is unavoidably part of the human condition. Second order suffering is suffering caused directly by human actions. It is the suffering of Ukraine, Gaza, South Sudan, the Rohinga people, so many caught up in the system of crime and punishment in this country — both victims of crime and those who are in prison.
In third order suffering, the cause of suffering becomes more opaque. Rogers-Vaughn calls this suffering “the new chronic” rising from the cultural moment we are in. Neoliberalism (we’ll unpack this in a bit) leaves individuals more or less on their own, cut off from communities of support and consolation, left to interpret suffering as a sign of personal failure. Third order suffering is the suffering of not being able to get ahead of the bills, even when you grew up understanding that you are supposed to be better off than your parents, who never seemed to struggle in the same way. (…)

Rogers Vaughn argues that Neoliberalism turns everything into a marketplace, where value is understood in economic terms. So, education is not valuable because “an unexamined life is not worth living,” education is valuable because it is an investment in your future, specifically an investment in future earnings potential. A house is not valuable because it is a home, it is valuable because it is the vehicle for the majority of the net worth of most American homeowners. (…)

Rogers-Vaughn describes folks caught in this kind of suffering: “the terms used to describe first and second-order suffering now fail them, largely because the sources of their suffering are no longer easily identified. Their oppressors… no longer have faces. Yet to say the oppressor is some abstract ‘evil’ seems not to capture the thing. Their options are either to look within, blaming their sufferings on themselves, or to stare into the fog. Most people today take the first option. The primary [symptoms] are either profound but diffuse depressions or… addictions. An apparent symptom for the second option is a violent striking out into the fog, literally in a blind rage.” 

We can see these symptoms all around us. The symptoms are the crises we are seeing weekly in the world. “A violent striking out into the fog, literally in a blind rage,” is a description of the election last November. The system is broken, we don’t know how, so we will throw a human wrecking ball at the fog in the hopes that somehow that makes it better. That’s a symptom of third order suffering. Striking out is a response. But it is not our response.

On Sunday we tell each other we can make the world a better place. When things don’t improve that week, we repeat ourselves. What is our response, our faithful response, to this kind of suffering in the world? Religion is always concerned with understanding and alleviating suffering. What should our response be, as a church, to this particular kind of suffering? (...)

Ministry is an antidote for third order suffering, because rather than see value as economic, ministry sees value as intrinsic and connection as a need. (….)

Community Outreach Ministry Teams here at Unity, and all of them are, in different ways, courageous responses to third order suffering. In the midst of a diffuse and fragmented world, with anxieties rising and fog about who or what is to blame, these are groups of people who choose not to descent into nihilism and striking out at the fog, but to deepen their sense of ministry; to engage in connection, service, and lives of faith. (…)
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We have tools in this community, we have hope in this place, we have courage to look straight at suffering in the world, see that it is still in need of improvement, and then we repeat ourselves and get to work.

As we begin the new church year, we are reminded that Unity is rich in numerous opportunities to be together as a congregation in all the ways that matter — joy, pain, grief, celebration, worship, social justice — and in learning about ourselves and one another. The arrival of Rev. Oscar brings our congregation an especially charged atmosphere of promise and renewal. The Beloved Community Staff Team (BCST) is already at work exploring opportunities for deeper connection for this new year.

What is the BCST?
The BCST was initiated in 2016 by senior co-ministers Rob and Janne Eller-Isaacs to coordinate and sustain efforts across the congregation that explore and deepen learning explicitly through the lens of antiracist multiculturalism. Aspiring to achieve the Beloved Community, prophetic practice — developing meaningful ways to integrate our values into our day-to-day lives to make qualitative changes in our souls—is a constant. The BCST serves to expand and strengthen our collective capacity for antiracist multicultural understanding, and ensures that this remains foundational across the congregation from how we operate to our programs and activities, embedding our antiracist multicultural Ends throughout congregational life. 

It was the BCST, for example, that:

• Implemented congregation-wide learning opportunities with Team Dynamics that sharpened our awareness and understanding of intersectionality and dominant culture.
• Created the Double Helix Model interlacing faith formation and spiritual practice with antiracist multiculturalism. 
• Worked closely with the Ministerial Search Team to engage the congregation in examining biases surrounding identity and expectations for a senior minister. 

Under Rev. KP’s steadfast, inspired leadership, the BCST is committed to 1) critical discernment — keeping in mind the larger historical implications of this work, 2) connection — sustaining our humanity and empathy towards one another, 3) tracking hypocrisy — aligning what we say with what we do and noticing when we have failed, and 4) hope — empowering our creativity to reimagine the future in building the Beloved Community. 

The Unity Ends Statements that ignite the BCST work are:

• Know each other in all our fullness.
• Create an ever-widening circle of belonging for all people.
• Create brave space for racial healing and dismantling the dominant culture.

“Beloved community is formed not by the eradication of difference but by its affirmation, by each of us claiming the identities and cultural legacies that shape who we are and how we live in the world.” — bell hooks, Killing Rage: Ending Racism

Who is in the BCST?
The Executive Team (ET), staff members, and lay leaders make up the BCST. The ET: Rev. KP Hong, Minister of Faith Formation; Laura Park, Executive Director; and now senior minister Rev. Dr. Oscar Sinclair. Staff members are Rev. Lara Cowtan, Minister of Congregational Care; and Drew Danielson, Coordinator of Youth and Campus Ministries. Lay member Angela Wilcox serves as project manager and scribe.

To better inform the congregation about this work, former BCST members Erika Sanders and Pauline Eichten created the Beloved Community Communications Team (BCCT). The team has been at work for over seven years and is charged with the task of sharing stories of the struggles, questions, and collaborations coming out of the multicultural work at Unity and in the wider world of our faith and city. The current team includes Shelley Butler, Becky Gonzalez-Campoy, Marjorie Otto, Suki Sun, Ray Wiedmeyer, and me, team leader and BCST liaison. Guided by the work of the BCST, the BCCT is responsible for collecting and writing Beloved Community News articles and blog posts that focus on the issues, ideas, and challenges of the antiracist multiculturalism work, and for positing questions and engaging in reflection that offers deeper understanding and multiple perspectives.

Complexity is our only safety and love is the only key to our maturity. —James Baldwin

Antiracist multiculturalism work is inherently complex. As much as we wish it were simple — “love is love,” “we are one,” and numerous other aphoristic phrases we employ that invite complacency, to build the Beloved Community is to embrace the many layers of identity and experience that each of us represents. To dig down into our own human existence and examine ways to “know one another in all our fullness” is often difficult and sometimes painful, revealing uncomfortable truths about ourselves and how we influence others to the good or ill, but ultimately redemptive. 

The BCCT would like to hear your story! What illuminates your commitment to creating an antiracist multicultural community? Share a story, image, and/or video in the All Our Fullness program, or just get in touch to let us know you are interested in working with us: [email protected].

In this new church year, may we be guided by our faith and connected in love as we aspire to build the Beloved Community. 

Fourteen inmates of the Minnesota Correctional Facility–Shakopee, the only women’s prison in Minnesota, enter the group room for a Restorative Justice Healing Circle. This will be their routine for the next ten Thursdays. The women, though dressed alike in gray sweatpants and sweatshirts, represent different ages, backgrounds, races, crimes and sentences. Each takes a chair in the circle, uncertain what this experience, for which they signed up, will require of them. I take roll and send the attendance sheet to the control desk. 

We talk about Restorative Justice (RJ) and the Circle process; about providing a respectful place to center on accountability and healing. And how, in contrast to the punitive consequences assigned by our criminal justice system, RJ seeks to restore wholeness to all impacted by a crime: victims and perpetrators and the broader community. 

My co-facilitator and I lay out expectations. This entire series will be conversation, we say. We then discuss as a group what values we wish to honor and uphold during our time together. Words like courage, honesty, respect, compassion are offered. 
There is coherence between the physical setup of the Circle, the quality of conversation that ensues, and building trust: 

• The talking piece designates the speaker and gets passed left from the speaker’s heart to the woman on her left. We ask people to speak from the heart in their sharing, and that emotional honesty evokes sympathy. 
• Echoing the shape of a circle, there is no hierarchy, no “boss” or intended outcomes so the conversation flows with emphasis on understanding. Everyone is equal in Circle. 
• What someone says in Circle does not get shared outside Circle. Confidentiality is the highest priority, especially in this place. 

I think of Circle as a non-white-centered way for people, both known and strangers, to engage in a slower, more attentive way to be together, in which we focus on who someone is rather than what they do. We remind the women that they are not their crimes, and then we ask them to tell their stories. All in the group feel respected and safe and, over time, the group becomes non-judgmental in their listening. 

When I think of my own experience of meetings, I am reminded of how dominant culture seems to be driven by productivity:

• Meetings are confined by time and agenda, focusing on moving the group’s business forward. 
• A few empowered individuals typically monopolize the conversation; all perspectives in the room are not usually solicited. 
• Data-supported objectivity often overrides personal insights; it is presumed that there is one right answer within an either/or approach to problem solving. 

Some have felt that the Circle process has at times been misappropriated when adapted to meet white cultural patterns. This happens when getting the work done supersedes relational values. See “White Supremacy Culture Characteristics” by Tema Okun for more on this.

I learned the Peacemaking Circle process from members of the Inland Tlingit Nation of Yukon Territory, Canada, who have been sharing “community-based justice” for years. Circle Keeper training confounded me at first. I had expected to be instructed on facilitation techniques, but training consisted of days of sitting in Circle, listening to people respond to questions about life experiences, personal challenges and aspirations, or just what was on their hearts. We were being trained to listen. 

Circles are used in a variety of situations from school to organizational settings, providing a respectful space to resolve conflict, determine appropriate amends, talk about wrongdoing, and to deepen relationships among people of differing backgrounds and experience. For example, I recently served as a Circle Keeper for Museums Advancing Racial Justice hosted at the Science Museum of Minnesota, with the Smithsonian. Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) professionals from around the country attended, and I learned this can be lonely work. At the beginning and end of each of the three days, participants attended circles to deepen their experience and new relationships, that will support their important work. 

I used to think that ending racism requires us all to interact more with people that don’t look like us, in order to dispel the knee-jerk racist perception of those people as “other.” This still seems true, but it is how we interact with people, no matter their race, that is critical. Recognizing that there is something to learn from other cultures about how to be together can catalyze the shift we yearn for towards Beloved Community.

Our Healing Circles at MCF-Shakopee are consistently comprised of mostly white inmates, and is demographically more in line with the state population, unlike men’s prisons. Written evaluations at the end of the series include statements like:
I feel better about myself; like I am willing to move on, and let go of what landed me here in prison. I owned my part even though I didn’t want to.

I am compassionate with peers because I recognize that it isn’t what’s wrong with her but more what has happened to her to get such action.

We never know if there are happy endings for the women we get to know. Though they speak of change and creating better futures for their kids, some return to the same neighborhoods, relationships, and lifestyles where old expectations do not support fresh beginnings. But most are resilient and resourceful survivors, empowered by the unique bond of Circle. They have laughed and cried together. They have seen themselves in each other’s stories and have been there for each other. 

I hope that this experience will help each woman pursue the long process of healing and forgiving herself; that she will hold in her heart the group of exceptional women who listened to her story attentively and respectfully, and that she will continue to source in herself the strength to speak her truth bravely. ​