TJMC-UU Board of Trustees Votes Unanimously To Create Name Change Task Force

We, the Board of Trustees, acting in accordance with leadership roles at TJMC-UU, and in loving support of the increased awareness of, and efforts to dismantle, the systemic racism which plagues our community and our nation, have voted unanimously to create the 2020 Task Force To Reconsider Our Name.

We have tasked this group, which will be referred to as the Name Change Task Force, with the work of preparing our congregation for a Congregational Vote in September 2020. At that time, members of the Thomas Jefferson Memorial Church UU will have an opportunity to vote for or against the changing of the name of our congregation. Your Board of Trustees urges you to vote Yes, in favor of a name change.

In keeping with the Public Witness guidelines, the congregation will make this decision by an 80% vote if the resolution is to pass.

We observe that at one time, the name of Thomas Jefferson was associated by most of society with democratic rule and freedom of religion. While we can continue to honor those principles, we must recognize that recent decades have seen additional histories and meanings brought to light. As historian Peter Onuf notes, “Jefferson did not simply discover racial boundaries already inscribed and fixed in nature: he helped construct them, contributing significantly to the racial “science” that would in subsequent decades naturalize racial hierarchy. Jefferson … was also a race maker who defined enslaved Americans as a captive nation, an alien people who must be blotted from the face of the American earth.” Jefferson enslaved over 600 people in his lifetime, depriving them of the life, liberty and pursuit of happiness that he declared a universal truth.

Our congregation, and indeed our denomination as a whole, aspires to values that no longer are embodied in our congregation’s name. This is a time when we need our congregation to embody and live our Purposes and Principles as we are considered by religious liberals in the Charlottesville area as a possible spiritual home, as we serve with other houses of worship and other organizations as a partner in community ministry and in social justice work, and as we simply exist as an institutional entity in our local area. Our current name now sends a message of exclusion and causes harm to our neighbors as we attempt to do all of these things.

In keeping with our UU principles, your Board of Trustees urges this congregation to vote Yes to a name change, to stop causing harm to the Black and Indigenous people and people of color in our community, in our congregation, and throughout our denomination. We urge the members of this church to vote to replace the name of our congregation with one that does not convey a message of, at best, myopia, and at worst, racism and white supremacy, to those members of our community who are descended from enslaved laborers, to Indigenous people, and to all people who work to dismantle white supremacy.

The Name Change Task Force will be facilitating Cottage Conversations, open meetings, and other opportunities for engagement over the next two and a half months so that all opinions, reactions, hopes and wishes may be heard regarding this proposed name change. We as a community will be speaking from the heart and listening deeply to one another, and our Task Force, Board, and community, will be guided always by our covenant throughout this process. There will be education sessions, online materials, and other resources available to our congregation as we prepare for this important vote.

The Name Change Task Force has been charged with leading this work in the spirit of the beloved community we share, and to help us remember during the lead-up to September’s vote, that we are all part of one church family, even as we may not all agree on every issue.

We also want to emphasize that our congregation’s work in undoing racism will be an ongoing, lifelong journey. If the vote passes, changing the name of our congregation will not be an endpoint in our dismantling racism work. Whether or not the vote passes, the members of our congregation who are educating us about the harm of memorializing a slaveholder will continue to work towards racial justice, including, but not limited to, a congregational name change. It is this Board’s hope that this resolution will overwhelmingly, if not unanimously, pass at the September Congregational Meeting, which is in the process of being scheduled.

It is our honor and our privilege to serve as your elected leadership during this momentous time in our church’s history and in our nation’s history.

Black Lives Matter.

Lorie Craddock, President
Elizabeth Breeden, Vice-President
Stan Walker, Treasurer
Ann Salamini, Secretary
At-large members:
Kelsey Cowger
Breck Gastinger
Beth Jaeger-Landis
Pam McIntire
Liberty Powers

________________________________________

TJMC Covenant of Right Relations
In order to create the beloved community we all desire for ourselves, we, the Congregation of Thomas Jefferson Memorial Church Unitarian Universalist covenant to:
Communicate with compassion and respect, especially when we disagree
Celebrate diversity and nurture our inclusivity,
Promote social justice within our congregation and the larger community,
Generously support the ministries of the church with time, money and enthusiasm, and
Lovingly call each other back into covenant when we have fallen short.