Slate, the online news magazine, calls this myth “America’s most pliable, pernicious, irrepressible myth,” yet its toxic presence in the American socio-political scene is of epic proportion. In our struggle for economic justice UUs all too often allow this myth to permeate our discourse and to serve as a tool of oppression, helping ensure that fewer people than ever can rise in dignity and worth. How can the giant son whose shoulders we stand help us serve our world and grow our own souls?

Rev. Bob MacDicken is in his 14th year as minister of Hickory’s UU Church of Catawba Valley. He has served as pastor, assistant minister, interim minister, minister of youth, or minister of music for several different congregations. An ordained American Baptist Minister (1967), Bob became a UU in 1982. He and his wife, artist Eileen Ross, live in Black Mountain.