A sermon by the Rev. Daniel Schatz, delivered at BuxMont Unitarian Universalist Fellowship, April 27, 2003

             I want to tell you a story.

             It begins in the early 1940s, when the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People took a radical turn.  What had always been a top down organization run from New York began to reach out to its branches across the country in an effort to build local leadership and empower ordinary people.  They began to recruit members not only in churches and civic associations, but in pool halls, bars, hair salons, and anywhere else ordinary people could be found.  Membership burgeoned.  “You certainly have some nerve coming in here, talking, but I’m going to join that doggone organization,” said one man in a pool hall to Ella Baker, the leader and visionary behind the new membership drive.  And Miss Baker said, “We must have the nerve to take the Association to people wherever they are.”

             By the time she became director of branches for the NAACP, Ella Baker was already planning leadership conferences, and this was an even more radical shift, not only for the NAACP, but for the science of leadership.  The idea that anyone with passion, support, and a little training anyone could become a leader was almost unheard of in the 1940s.  Yet the kind of leadership that Miss Baker envisioned was to become the backbone of the civil rights movement.

             The title of her training conferences was almost always “Give light and the people will find a way.”

             I first heard these words when they were sung at the Washington Folk Festival by the folk duo Magpie.  They talked about Ella Baker and said she was arguably the most important person in the civil rights movement.  I, who considered myself fairly well educated on the history of Civil Rights, had never heard of her.  I also thought I knew something about leadership, but Ella Baker’s simple idea that the most important task of a leader was to give light and life to the people gave me a new perspective.  It quickly became central to my own theology, but for a long time I still knew little about this important woman who few seem to have heard of, yet whose contributions to meaningful social change were as important as those of Martin Luther King, Jr.  Ella Baker knew how to lead.

             She was always “Miss Baker,” or occasionally “Ella,” although something about her tended to demand more respect than first names.  Her style of leadership, along with her position as a lay woman in a movement dominated by male ministers, kept her obscure, but Miss Baker taught more people how to reclaim their dignity, harness their passion, and make a difference in their communities than anyone else I can think of.  She was a hero of American history, and her life and thought hold a wealth of lessons for any who would consider themselves leaders, and for most of the rest who may yet find moments when their leadership emerges. 

             Unitarian Universalists in particular, I think, have much we can learn from Ella Baker and people like her, because it is so important to us that our liberal religious faith be lived in the ways we organize ourselves as a religion.  It is not enough to speak about valuing the inherent worth and dignity of every person – our faith calls us to see that every member and every friend of our own congregation is valued, listened to, cared for and empowered.  It is not enough to give lip service to the right of conscience and the use of the democratic process; if we are to thrive as a faith we must be empower ourselves to speak our conscience and we must be listened to, and we must participate in that democratic process.

             This point cannot be overstated.  We are the democracy.

             A friend of mine in Maine made this point in a recent letter to the local paper.  Some citizens had been complaining of bad decisions made at Town Meetings they missed.  My friend reminded these people – especially those who were new to New England – that in a place like Maine, the people are the government.  Nobody here, she said, will do things for you.  You have to show up.  You have to participate.  This town is your town and ultimately you are the ones who shape its future.

             Our Unitarian Universalist traditions of congregational democracy grew out of the same culture and philosophy as those New England Town Meetings.  You, the members, are the leaders ultimately responsible for the direction and government of our fellowship.  You, the members, are more than foundation upon which our fellowship rests, you are the fellowship itself.  Each of you, in your own way, is a potential leader.  Each of you, whether or not you see yourself as a leader, should have the opportunity to be a strong, empowered member.

             We Unitarian Universalists are engaged in a free and responsible search for truth and meaning not only as individuals but also as congregations.  That process can only be responsible when people of conscience exercise their freedom to take part in that larger search. 

             When we live our faith in this way, we strengthen our community, we strengthen ourselves, and we strengthen each other.  Even if all we ever do is show up, care, and take part, we have deepened our faith and commitment, and in some small way, we have become leaders.

             We have begun to give light.  We remember that we are the people.  And we begin to live the words, “Give light and the people will find a way.”

             Everything else that Ella Baker knew and taught, every other piece of wisdom she had to offer, depended upon this basic truth.  The measure of leadership is not in attention garnered nor in ability to further one’s own goals – it is the empowerment of ordinary people to exercise their freedom in responsibility.  “Strong people,” she said, “do not need strong leaders.”  “[We] must quit looking for a saviour and work to save [ourselves] and wake up others.  There is no salvation except through yourselves.”

             For ten years after leaving the staff of the NAACP Miss Baker planned, raised funds, led workshops on leadership, and organized people around issues from school conditions to cancer research.  “The cord connecting all of her activities,” wrote JoAnne Grant, “was her deep involvement with people and her desire to infuse them with a sense of their own abilities.”

             Then, in 1956, Miss Baker gave one of her leadership workshops at the Highlander Folk School in Tennessee.  One of the attendees was Rosa Parks.  Shortly afterward, Parks’s refusal to move to the back of an Alabama bus sparked the Montgomery Bus Boycott.

             Ella Baker was called, and she immediately realized the potential for a national movement.  She worked with a young Martin Luther King, Jr., as organizer and Director of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.  It was disappointing work for her.  “If you’re spending all your energy trying to project the national leader, you have very little left over to actually develop local leadership,” said Bob Moses.  What Miss Baker wanted was to lead by developing leaders among the ordinary people.  “I have always thought what is needed is the development of people who are interested not in being leaders as much as in developing leadership in others.”

             Not everyone is a Martin Luther King or a Ralph Abernathy or even an Ella Baker.  Everyone doesn’t need to be a King or an Abernathy.  Miss Baker mistrusted the charismatic leaders, especially, though it pains me to say it – ministers.  What was more important, she thought, than creating more Martin Luther Kings was creating more ordinary people who were empowered.  She spoke of the nurse who followed her night shifts at the hospital with morning work for the bus boycott, or the woman who baked pies and brought them to the meetings every week – people who felt empowered to do something, follow their conscience, exercise their freedom, and work for change.  Everyone – in their own way – can be the truest kind of leader.

             Ronald Heifitz compares two visions of leadership.  One, “influencing the community to follow the leader’s vision,” is familiar to any student of history.  The second, “influencing the community to face its problems,” challenges that traditional style of leadership.  “Leadership is about leading communities through adaptive change,” says Heifitz, it isn’t about power.  Anyone, from anywhere within an organization, can be a leader; “A President and a clerk can both lead.”  On the other hand, says Heifitz, while someone like “Hitler wielded power, he did not lead.”

             The truth is that the style of leadership in the Southern Christian Leadership Conference was too hierarchical for Ella Baker.  She tried to mentor King and make him into a community organizer, with some limited success, but ultimately she became dismayed with what she called “a leadership centered group” instead of “group centered leadership.”

             Her entire life, Miss Baker pursued the goal of a mass movement with local leaders empowered to act locally.  “We cannot lead a struggle that involves masses of people without identifying with the people and without getting the people to understand what their strengths are,” she said, but it wasn’t happening, and the civil rights movement seemed destined to fall short of its potential for lasting and meaningful change.  It was the youth who finally made the difference.  It was the youth who sat in at lunch counters, and one group followed another.  Within weeks nine states saw sit-in demonstrations – unplanned, unorganized, powerful grassroots action.

             It was good publicity, but it wouldn’t have made much of a difference in the long run, even after Ella Baker brought the sit-ins to Martin Luther King’s attention, but Miss Baker now saw her opportunity.  She immediately wrote to the students and planned a national conference.  Most established civil rights leaders wanted to persuade those students to become a wing of their specific organizations, but Ella Baker insisted that they be given independence and the opportunity to lead themselves.  As a result they trusted her as they trusted no other adult.  She trained them, organized them, encouraged them and mothered them.  When they faced obstacles she reminded them that “It is better to concentrate on what can be done than to despair what cannot be done.”  When they were burned out she helped them get back to college.  She gave the students light, and over the next several years her vision became the central philosophy of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee.  It was the first mass movement of the 1960s, it was organized, and the students learned and grew from Ella Baker’s vision of leadership.

             One of these students was a historian and journalist named JoAnne Grant, whose biography, Ella Baker: Freedom Bound, could be used as a textbook for a leadership course.  Grant described long meetings in which Baker was the only adult permitted.  “In these marathon meetings Baker used her old technique of asking questions. ‘I was not too sure that I had the answer,’ she recalled later. But often, her questions directed the discussions.” 

             As Unitarian Universalists, our faith is based on asking questions.  Our way of living religiously is to question, to inquire, to seek truth together.  Yet many of us, even though we live in a spirit of inquiry, too often forget the basis of our faith when we try to make decisions together.  Instead of questioning, we may find ourselves advocating.  If you recognize yourself, don’t worry; you’re not alone.  I recognize myself too.  Even Miss Baker tended to tell anyone who would listen and especially those who wouldn’t exactly what she thought.  “If you didn’t want to know what she thought,” recalled Juanita Abernathy, “don’t ask her.”

             But she also knew that asking questions was central to good leadership, because she realized that what decision was ultimately made by a community was much less important than the simple fact that a community was making decisions a community.  That alone had the power to change society.  “Somebody may have spoken for 8 hours, and seven hours and fifty-three minutes was utter bull..., but seven minutes was good.  She taught us to glean out the seven minutes,” said one of the students.

             The community organizer Si Kahn observed that  “The best leaders inspire people not just to follow the leader, but to grow in their own abilities, to give direction to their lives.”  He also said that listening is more important than talking, and that talking meant relating and not just orating.  This is the same vision of leadership that drove Nelson Mandela, who wrote, “I have always endeavored to listen to what each and every person in a discussion had to say before venturing my own opinion.  Oftentimes, my own opinion will simply represent a consensus of what I heard in the discussion.”  This was Ella Baker’s vision, and it was finally achieved in the success of the movement she mothered.

             Ella Baker died in 1986, on her 83^rd birthday, but if she were alive today, I think she’d be trying to build a new grassroots movement.  Instead of traveling to Southern cities to organize for voting rights, or training youth to fight lunch counter desegregation, she’d be in the inner city.  She’d persuade tenants to lead a struggle for better living conditions.  She’d nurture young students and teachers, helping them push for changes in policies that impoverish schools in neighborhoods that are disproportionately poor and African American.  She would organize, too, I think, for the rights of same sex couples, for Latinos, for Muslims, for the freedom of humanity.  “I was never working for an organization,” she once said, “I have always tried to work for a cause.  And to me the cause is bigger than any organization, bigger than any group of people.  It is the cause of humanity.... the freedom of the human spirit.”

             What is Unitarian Universalism if not the cause of freedom of the human spirit?  When we hear Ella Baker’s words, “We who believe in freedom cannot rest,” they stir us, because we believe in freedom.  When we hear her words, “Give light and the people will find the way,” they touch us in our souls, because we care about the dignity of every human being on this planet.  And we care about one another enough to listen to each other, empower ourselves and one another not only out in the world but also right here, in our own fellowship.  If our religion is reach its potential, we need to pay attention to people like Ella Baker.  We need to work for freedom, strive for it, and most of all live it in our communities and in our leadership.  We are Unitarian Universalists, new members and old.  We are called to live our visions of freedom, inquiry, and human dignity in every part of our lives.

             We are all called to be leaders, in large ways and small, here and out in the world.  Go out and give light.  Believe in freedom and do not rest until it comes.

With truth and knowledge,

we can and must follow the light of freedom.

We who believe in freedom cannot rest.