Back around 1999, I was struggling with a lack of support and community, and I desperately wanted to be part of a spiritual community that would allow for my varied beliefs. I happened upon a local Unitarian Universalist Church which had an active pagan group, and I started attending. I enjoyed our monthly meetings and the times we provided service to the church. We had a sizable group, and we had large outside attendance at our events.

I joined in 2002, and I was our representative to a service we had commemorating 9/11. I stayed for a few years and heard a lot of negative, biased conversation about pagans from some people in the congregation. Then, after a fantastic evening event we had in the church’s sanctuary and social hall, we were brought in front of the minister and board and blamed for a stain that was on the carpet.

A stain that we didn’t make and that was there before the event.

We had no money, but they were requiring us to pay for the carpet cleaning or, if that didn’t work, to replace the carpet.

Members of the board were hateful to us, and after a while, I left the church, along with a few others in our group (two of whom were board members).

I returned years later–2020–because I was lacking that community again. I had no support. I also had been involved in the UU Animal Ministry, and hoped we could get a chapter started there. There was a different minister, someone I came to really like, and I was hopeful that it would be different this time.

It wasn’t. It was actually worse.

No one was running the pagan group at the time, so I accepted an offer to do so. It was tough getting started again–we had lost our membership in the national organization (CUUPs), but no one in the church would acknowledge that. I planned to have our membership renewed, had regular organizational meetings, provided pages of ideas for our participation in church life as well as things for our group to do. Although we had over 30 on our mailing list, the group never grew much larger than 6 or 7. We did several pagan services for the congregation, which my co-leader and I organized, but no one else seemed interested in stepping up and organizing any of the other activities. So they didn’t get done. Because what I was doing in terms of the services (and CUUPs meetings and worship team meetings and research around renewing with CUUPs) took up all my free time.

The biased talk never stopped. Our sacred pagan altar was a “mess,” pagan ritual was sometimes “unreasonable,” we were seen as other by some–“you people.” What I soon learned was that the predominantly white congregation was immeasurably uncomfortable with people they saw as “other” and few were willing to address it head-on. They were heavily focused on people of color and those in the LGBTQIA+ community, and to hell with everybody else. After a number of blatant episodes of hate speech, situations in which the board acted without congregational approval, and continued evidence that they had no interest in hearing any constructive criticism or in rectifying any of the issues, I decided to leave. Again.

Someone–a previous board member who used to be in our group and a prominent member of the congregation–shamed me for that. After some targeted our Iranian-American minister with hate speech and deep bias, lots of people began leaving, and several congregants made shaming statements about it. Said we were “giving up.” We weren’t. In fact, we were doing what felt like the only way to take care of ourselves.

There were a few other things. I had come to understand that I wanted everyone to be involved in organization, and I didn’t want the burden to fall on me or my co-leader. I said it in different ways at every meeting (and sometimes in private conversation), but no one was willing to step up. And as I studied the UU’s 7 Principles, I came to realize how vague and open to interpretation they are. I didn’t accept them as written–they didn’t go far enough, in my opinion.

So in addition to leaving this particular church, I left the UU. And it’s like I was never there. Those still involved in the church are silent (and silence can, at its thickest, kill), and the people taking over the group I relaunched (and devoted over a year to reintegrating into the congregation) showed no interest in my helping with a transition, even though I’ve done all the work to prepare us to move forward. They, in fact, announced the decision to “relaunch.”

It feels like a kick in the teeth. Like all that I did wasn’t important, wasn’t appreciated.

It was the only community support I had. And honestly, knowing how many of the people at that church truly are and what they think about me, it seems I am better without them.

Organizations like the church don’t understand how badly congregants (and visitors) can be hurt by their actions and inactions. Or maybe they just don’t care. Churches claiming diversity and love for all need to closely scrutinized to determine if they are just spewing BS or if they are truly walking the talk.

I found my answer a little too late.