There’s a few open letters flying around another church in my denomination, Unitarian Universalism. And because this isn’t actually meant to be a gossip column, I won’t elaborate on the church or the exact specifics but they contend with the visceral discomfort of being a community of inequality with self-purported values of equity and justice.

Words are so pretty. They can be such a pleasure strung together, pulling you past the possibilities of what actually is into a dream of what could be. There are so many things that could be! The world could be so wonderous, and let me describe how. How else would the poets be employed?

I belong to a denomination where we dream of a just world, of an equitable world, a world structured by reason and love. The one we are actually living in and co-creating? Much, much messier. So people experience a tension between our words and our experiences.

For me, it brings to mind the hook that Matthew Santos sings in Lupe Fiasco’s “Superstar,”

If you are what you say you are, a superstar, than have no fear, the crowd is here and the lights are on and they want a show

If you’re legit, meeting the expectations of the story you’re selling are easy. If you are legit, you are living it. If you are but merely aspirational, well, that’s a different story. Authenticity is like a magnet, drawing people in. Hypocrisy repels. Of course it does.

We’re mostly aspirational.

The struggle with the aspirations we claim is that they are pretty words but living them requires some to want to voluntarily put themselves into struggle that they wouldn’t otherwise find if they breezed through the status quo. What does it mean to be a person of privilege in a context of inequity? That’s a much more comfortable puzzle than the other way around, where the threat you endure are the social sanctions of hypocrisy instead of wondering how you’re paying the electrical bill or getting a job or being treated fairly when bad things happen to you.

Take economic disparity: I suspect folks who came from modest means and then find some abundance can relate to this: it’s exhilarating. Suddenly, you have power and influence on your life and the world around you. You can afford to be generous, and that feels powerful. Once you taste that, you never want to give it up.

Having been a person of modest means in a congregation where it seemed everyone else around me was quite wealthy, I can also describe the opposite dynamic: the background ambiance of exclusion. You cannot afford to do the things people around you are doing. You cannot afford to relate to the lives people are living. What do you even have a conversation about? It is alienating.

Being on the board of a church, I can tell you that operating a church takes money. A lot of money. If people of means were not generous with those means, the church does not survive. (It can be catastrophic: there’s an active church in my city where the roof collapsed because their congregation of modest means couldn’t raise money for adequate maintenance.) I am very grateful that those who have, are also those who choose to share. Lots of money helps to ensure the future. In this dynamic, you risk those who do not have as much feeling like they are, as they may feel in the rest of their life, in a sea not of their making, being tossed around.

What are ways that you can navigate this dynamic in a way authentic with values? Until capitalism changes, our churches will find themselves existing in a background of economic diversity. We need to be honest with ourselves that this is happening.

There are things we can do that are more useful than feeling guilt and stopping there. I would make the following suggestions:

• Keep as much of the budget subject to the democratic process as possible. This may mean that fewer donations go into restricted funds, because restricted funds maintain the influence of the donor.
• Confidentiality about donations. People give as generously as they can, and then experience the church community. I think the donors would prefer this too – it’s awkward to be known as the person of big pockets as it is to be of small ones.
• The impact of really large donations (let’s say funding towards capital improvements) could be subject to a congregational vote, that way there is a shared sense of destiny among members of the congregation
• Church events should feel comfortable for people of modest means as much as they are comfortable for people of extravagant ones
• …Really, any other strategy that maintains a sense that the congregation’s resources are shared assets, and the congregation’s fun is shared fun.

There’s never been a perfect group of people and we’re not likely to be the first. Our efforts to grow into our values are going to be imperfect and messy, because that is the way people have always been. I think, as a faith community, the more willing we are to be honest about the tension between who we are and what we want to be, the better we will be of closing that gap.

Key, as always: we need to mean what we say, we to do our best to act as we say we are, and not blindly reside in a comfortable status-quo (if we are lucky enough to be part of the world where the status quo is comfortable).