The Antiracism Literacy Partners (ALP) program is a group spiritual practice that seeks to embody the values, mission, and ends of Unity Church; and specifically, this ends statement: Create brave space for racial healing and dismantling dominant culture. Learn more about the Antiracism Literacy Partners program, and the five resources offered in the January session. Contact ALP Team Leader Becky Gonzalez-Campoy with questions: [email protected]. ​

I like to think I am free from bias and that’s a rather comfortable feeling. This spring however I had an uncomfortable thought that gave me pause. I had been listening to a lecture given by a male minister and I noticed how comfortable I was with the delivery and message. The comfort felt quite close to how I felt upon hearing many of Rev. Rob Eller-Isaacs’s sermons. There were a couple moments of comfort with that awareness, but then discomfort followed close behind. Was the comfort I was feeling a sign of some bias I had around white male ministers? I didn’t want to believe that, but the thought has stuck with me for months. 

You see, I had just been nominated to be a possible candidate on the Ministerial Search Team (MST). I was excited about the possibility of serving but I was now conscious of the fact that any kind of unchecked bias would not serve me, the team, or the congregation. If I was to be a valuable member of the MST, I needed to not let my biases rule my thinking. I realized I might have some work to do.

Recently I attended a workshop at Unity led by consultant Alfonso Wenker called “Engaging Awareness, Disrupting Dominance.” The first lesson that day was to notice when a like or irritation came up for me around another person and to notice how that showed up in my body. The ministerial lecture months before had left a sort of soft glow that I had not experienced in a while. More recently, working with a volunteer at Mano a Mano, I found myself assuming certain things because of the woman’s shy demeanor and ethnic background. I came to a certain judgement that first meeting only to find at later volunteer sessions that in her other paid employment as a student, she used skills I would never have imagined she had. My bias based simply on her gender, her demeanor and her ethnic heritage made me fall for the “single story” that many of us may have heard about from Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie on YouTube.

Let me be clear I know we all have biases, that’s quite normal. It’s when that bias becomes a perceived identity, we lay on another, that we get into trouble. We then make judgements about their character, skills, and life experience. It's a “single story” that helps me keep the dominant culture dominant. It allows me to only see their age, skin color, gender or hair style as the important measure of their worth. It’s a snap judgement that might help me find my people, but knowingly or not, excludes others, and keeps me from really being ready for the Beloved Community that I say I yearn for. 

It brings me back now to actually serving on the ministerial search team. In cottage meetings and through the congregational survey, the Unity congregation shared with us what you think is important in a new settled minister. You have shared with us the strengths and the capacity you think that person needs to have, to help us grow into the community we seek to be. If we stop at identity, we may very well fail to see the "other’s" capacity. Identity and capacity are two different but very important parts of who someone is. One’s skin color, gender, hair style, age or perceived physical ability should not be ignored but also should not block us from seeing another’s capacity to do the job. How do we discover that capacity? How is that capacity shaped and expressed by their identity? This is the work of the MST. And hopefully yours as you move out into the world.

That brings me to the last step Alfonso talked about once we make that connection between identity and capacity. Heaven knows how many books I have read seeking to raise my awareness, but how do I put that studied awareness into change? I must practice looking beyond my bias. It does not come naturally. So, if you see me pause, take a deep breath, share that I might have a certain bias or make certain assumptions about something before giving an opinion, you will know I am working on my white male privilege. I am noticing a bias, naming it, and then hopefully navigating in a way that does not center "me" but rather centers the "we" that creates Beloved Community.

In November 2023, the Unity Church Art Team featured a Parish Hall exhibit of artwork by Rose and Melvin Smith, esteemed elders in the African American artist community of the Twin Cities. It was the culmination of a journey that began in 2021 when the art team sought these artists out hoping to purchase one of their paintings. After visiting with the art team and touring Unity to see the permanent art collection, Rose and Melvin agreed to sell one of Rose’s fine paintings, an image of a woman she met in New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina. That painting now hangs in the Center Room. 

The Smiths told us they were impressed with Unity and wanted to thank our church community for its commitment to promoting the arts. Their interest and ours resulted in an exhibition of their most recent work, none of which had ever been shown. 

Over the years, the artist couple has exhibited several times in New York City; their works depicting scenes and impressions of life in the history of the Rondo neighborhood are currently being featured in a Manhattan gallery. They have also exhibited in Chicago, Oklahoma, and at the Weisman Museum in Minneapolis. It has been a privilege to have them exhibit new work at Unity Church. Rose’s latest is a series of canvases capturing flowers arranged in the style of the Japanese art form, Ikebana. Melvin’s colorful collages were inspired by the classical American dance form the Jitterbug.

Why did the art team reach out to these particular artists? In addition to the quality of the work, the team looks to questions prompted by Unity’s Ends Statements (2018) in considering the criteria to use in selecting artists for this program: 

• How does art relate to the creation of a multicultural spiritual home built on authentic relationships? 
• How does art help people know each other in all their fullness and create an ever-widening circle of belonging for all people?
• How does art help in the pursuit of justice, wholeness, and equity for the people of the earth and life on it?
• How can art create brave space for racial healing and dismantling dominant culture?

If our ends statements plus Unity’s mission to “transformation through a free and inclusive religious community …” are to be taken seriously, then the art team is determined to move forward on them. What shows that movement up to this point?
Not only have we shown and continue to invite artists of greater diversity regarding ethnicity, race, gender, culture, religion, sexual identity, socioeconomic, physical ability, and neurodiversity to participate in Unity’s monthly exhibitions but we have also expanded the church’s permanent art collection featured throughout the building to include this diversity. There are now many more artists from our greater community represented on our walls including artists of color, LGBTQ+, Hmong, Karen, and more. 

In 2022, Mica Lee Anders, a Rondo neighbor and accomplished artist and educator, led a group of Unity volunteers to create an eye-catching new Foote Room mural. The shape of the overall design is familiar to Unitarian Universalists — a chalice. In October 2023, the Parish Hall featured works created by artists incarcerated in Minnesota correctional facilities. These talented artists claim roots in a variety of ethnicities and cultures. Art From the Inside, the organization that brought them here, was able to hold a successful fundraiser at Unity, and was the recipient of a Sunday offering —another example of how the art team strives to act on our ends. 

We know there is much more to do, but it is exciting and rewarding work. The art team urges everyone at Unity Church to be curious. Take a moment to look at the artwork as you wander through the hallways or gather for a meeting. Chances are you are seeing art that represents the concerns, ideas, thoughts, and/or feelings of a member of our greater Beloved Community. That should be reason enough to take notice.