I'm not sure what I think about this, not that it matters since I had no vote, but one of the headlines today discusses the April 30th UUA vote to change the name of the Thomas Jefferson District to Southeast District due to dismay over Jefferson's ownership of slaves and his having fathered seven children with slave Sally Hemings.

blog.beliefnet.com/news/2011/05/unitaria...

On the one hand, I can see how today's UU's consider Jefferson to have acted ignobly in carrying on a longterm sexual relationship with a slave woman he owned, a relationship recently confirmed by DNA tests.

I'm not sure what I think or feel either one about his relationship with Hemings.

Yes, one can argue that slavery always was wrong. However, slaveholding was so much a given in Virginia in Jefferson's time among his social class that I think it somewhat unfair of us to insist that he ought to have freed his slaves when doing so would have created tremendous financial hardship for any plantation owner, Jefferson in particular.

 On the whole, I see this as primarily holding Jefferson to standards that are customary today but were not in his era. I don't think that's fair even though we think we have moral and just reasons for doing so.

As a Unitarian, I myself have no difficulty considering Jefferson a Unitarian--with feet of clay who behaved as did many Southern men of his time. Unlike a good many others, Jefferson wasn't married when he took up with Hemings.

I wonder, too, if this change of name reflects UU's discomfort with the dark side of humankind and human behavior. Wouldn't it reflect better upon us today if we simply acknowledge that Jefferson lived in a manner we have the luxury of thinking inappropriate, indeed immoral? How about not judging him by our standards since we'd hardly find it appropriate for him to judge us by his? And yet, I feel squeamish about answering these questions affirmatively.

Your reactions?

Nothing like sugarcoating everything...

The UUA in always trying to be 'Politically Correct' has lost its flavor and its uniqueness.  Until it regains a path of its own, it has no path but follows in the wake of many others.  Where are the radicals and heretics who were the leaders and pushed man's awareness to new highs?

I suspect (whisper it) that it was more about Sally Hemming's race than her status once they began the relationship.  There was no meaningful difference in those days between a wife and a slave.  Both were the property of men, supported by men, and did men's bidding in bed and in the nursery.  What little has surfaced about the relationship was that Jefferson treated her as a wife, although politically he couldn't admit it publicly or have it blessed by the church.  Shame on the Church and anti-miscegenation laws of the time, not on Jefferson. 

The Unitarian religion owes more to Jefferson politically and philosophically than perhaps any other single person of that time.  Unitarians wouldn't exist if Jefferson had not won his battle with the Black Regiment of New England clergymen who wanted to Christianity to be the state religion of the US.  And it wasn't Unitarian Christianity that they had in mind.  It was the salvation from original sin by Christ Christianity they wanted embedded in the Constitution.  It is too bad the "Politically" correct UUs know neither politics or history.

Philosophically the Jefferson Bible was the foundation of the Unitarian "Creed" right up until the merger:

Unitarians believe in The [parent]hood of God, the [sibling]hood of [people], the leadership of Jesus, and the progress of [human]kind, onward and upward forever.

  [PC edits by J'C.  grrr.]

May 2, 2011 -- 6:35PM, DotNotInOz wrote:

April 30th UUA vote to change the name of the Thomas Jefferson District to Southeast District due to dismay over Jefferson's ownership of slaves and his having fathered seven children with slave Sally Hemings.

Your reactions?

Don't get me started on the hymnal revision.  What they did to Blake he probably deserved, but it sure isn't Blake anymore. 

Early in the feminist movement I argued that they should create a gender specific pronoun for males, (I suggested heman, pronounced hee-man, wonderfully ironic but the feminists wouldn't buy it.)

I was nearly asked to leave a UU church as my son's guest for taking the woman minister to task for screwing up the flow of Jefferson by F-ing with the language. 

I don't remember if you were around then but you might enjoy Disrespect Blunderbuss on the old boards. 

May 3, 2011 -- 9:16PM, DotNotInOz wrote:

Your PC edits reminded me of yet another beef I had with the UU's from the getgo: their tendency to make mealymouthed some beautifully worded traditional hymns by rendering the language gender-inclusive.