Rev. Ecklof Resigns from the NAUA

What Led to My Sudden and Unexpected Resignation from NAUA

By

Rev. Dr. Todd F. Eklof

November 2025

SUMMARY STATEMENT:

After a November 5, 2025, NAUA event in which my recent resignation from the NAUA Board of Trustees was discussed, I received various requests from confused attendees for some clarification about what happened from my perspectiveIn mid-October 2025, following an otherwise routine Board of Trustees meeting of the North American Unitarian Association (NAUA), I received a disrespectful and unprofessional email from a newly elected board member, Mr. Lincoln Baxter. His communication, sent to me and copied to the entire Board, was hostile in tone and language. When I objected to this treatment, stating I would be unable to work with him and would resign if he did not, I received no apology or acknowledgment from him or from the Board that day. Instead, he sent board members additional communications that were far more inappropriate than the first. The following morning, NAUA co-founder and Trustee Dr. Stephen Polmar wrote to the Board, stating that he found Mr. Baxter’s behavior unacceptable and that he, too, could not continue serving if such conduct were tolerated. No action as further inappropriate communications followed from Mr. Baxter—including an email excluding me but sent to the rest of the Board—containing false and disparaging statements about my leadership and asking that the Board and NAUA move forward without me.

When it became evident that Mr. Baxter wouldn’t be asked to leave and was unwilling to uphold the respectful standards expected of a liberal religious organization, I determined that I could not remain part of it. On October 18, 2025, I formally resigned from the Board of Trustees. Dr. Polmar resigned shortly thereafter, citing similar concerns about having his character attacked. My decision was not made lightly. As its founder, I have deep affection for the NAUA’s mission to uphold freedom, reason, tolerance, and human dignity within liberal religion. However, I cannot participate in a governance culture that permits personal attacks, unethical behavior, or the erosion of these foundational principles. I continue to wish the NAUA, it Board of Trustees, and its members well in their pursuit of these shared values.

EXPLANATION OF THE FOLLOWING EMAILS AND EXPLANATORY COMMENTS:

What follows is a series of email communications occurring between October 16, 2025, and October 18, 2025, that led to my resignation as President of NAUA’s Board of Trustees. Believing their contents speak for themselves, I have offered minimal context, presented with bold text, and indicated by the term: EXPLANATORY CONTEXT.

EXPLANATORY CONTEXT #1:

On October 15, 2025, NAUA held its first Board of Trustees meeting that included its newest duly elected Board of Trustees members, including Mr. Lincoln Baxter. Although I found him rather boisterous and the two of us, among others, disagreed on some issues, there was nothing overly hostile about the meeting or our interactions. The next morning, I received the following email from Mr. Baxter, sent to me but copied to the entire Board:

Hi Todd.

Today is not Monday or Tuesday.

A message like this should really ONLY be sent on Mondays and Tuesdays assuming you consider these non work days, but not in response to every email on other days of the week. Bitching about the volume of email in this way is not helpful; it make it seem like you need some help sorting your email… would you like some help? As president of the Board of the NAUA you have an obligation to respond at least to NAUA board members, and to any email that is routed to you as a board member. This message is just asking for yet more emails (including this one) when you don’t respond, especially when you don’t provide “another way”.

Lincoln

EXPLANATORY CONTEXT #2:

This message was in response to the following outgoing email that anyone sending me an email receives: Thank you for your message. I don’t attend to emails on Mondays or Tuesdays. More broadly, I’m trying to reclaim some balance in a world that demands constant response. The volume of email today is more than any human can reasonably manage. I’ll do my best to reply when I can, but if you don’t hear back, please feel free to try again or reach out another way.

Thanks for understanding,

Todd

EXPLANATORY CONTEXT #3:

I found the tone and language of Mr. Baxter’s communication incredibly offensive and replied to all as follows: Who do you think you are! Don’t ever speak to me like this again, understand! EXPLANATORY CONTEXT #4: By the end of the day, having received no response, let alone any apology, and having personally committed, especially in recent years, not to participate in hostile or disrespectful relationships, I sent the following email to the Board of Trustees:

Dear fellow board members,

My day has been so greatly disturbed by Lincoln’s incredibly disrespectful and toxic email this morning that I have decided I will not be able to continue serving with him. One of us will have to resign.

With regrets, my decision is final.

Todd

EXPLANATORY CONTEXT #4:

The next morning, October 16, 2025, the entire Board received the following email from Dr. Stephen Polmar, a fellow Trustee and co-founder of NAUA:

Dear Board Members,

Earlier today I responded to an e-mail from Lincoln Baxter in which he requested the following of me, “In the future, I’m going to ask you to manage Todd”. I told Lincoln that I could not do that even if I wanted to, which I don’t. In my response I also made what I thought might be some constructive suggestions to restore both collegiality and functionality to the Board.

However, after re-reading Lincoln e-mail I have come to the conclusion that I too would not be able to continue as a Board member and Secretary of the Board if Lincoln remained on the Board. His email to Todd showed a lack of self-control, maturity and judgement, to say nothing of disrespect for a colleague. That is not what is expected of a Board member. If I made a statement that Lincoln disagreed with or happen to have an out of office message sent when he wanted to reach me, would I too be subjected to that degree of verbal abuse?

We are all volunteers, some of us with other jobs that have significant demands. A bit of understanding and tolerance would have been appropriate. It is with deep regret that, for the above-mentioned reasons as well as for concern for the future of NAUA, I am asking Lincoln Baxter to resign from the Board of Trustees. I do not believe that I can serve on the Board with him. If he chooses not to do so, I will resign my position as a member of the Board of Trustee and as Secretary of the Board.

Sincerely,

Stephen

EXPLANATORY CONTEXT #5:

To my knowledge, there was no reply to Mr. Polmar’s email, but I was astonished and troubled to learn Mr. Baxter had reached out to another Board member asking him to “manage” me. It made me wonder if he had. joined the board with a personal agenda in mind.

The next day, October 17, 2025, another new Trustee, Dr. Mark Reimers, sent the following reply to Mr. Baxter, which I received in the reply he copied to the entire board, myself included:

Hi Lincoln,

May I reach out to you, even though we haven’t met? Like you, I think that a virtual organization like NAUA needs to operate communications technology well; you have some facility with technology, and you offered to help. However, I was also startled and dismayed by the abrupt tone you took in your broadcast email message to Todd. I think you may be from the northeast and you may be more direct and unfiltered in your speech than most people. The board now seems to have a major rift. For the sake of our shared liberal religious mission, would you consider at least apologizing for your message’s abrupt tone?

Regards,

Mark

EXPLANATORY CONTEXT #6:

Mr. Baxter sent the following reply, copying the entire Board, soon thereafter (presented with its original font sizes, bold letters, anditalicizes):

To Mark: In a word yes, Absolutely.

Todd: I apologize. My message was over the top. Mark has in many ways nailed who I am: I did grow up in New England, and I do think (and speak) very directly, and I recognize that this can get me into trouble. I recognize I was way, way too harsh. What can be dealt with much more easily in a face to face conversion, can come across very badly in email (especially when in a hurry or in annoyance). And it did. And what I wanted to communicate was, I think, totally missed because of the tone and the medium. I’m sorry. Reconciliation would be nice, but I’m not sure its possible. This response to me did not help: “Who do you think you are! Don’t ever speak to me like this again, understand!” Now, I recognize that this was much an immediate reaction to my message to you, as my message was to you. But I’m willing to let it go.

But, since you asked, I have an answer to your question: I am a human being, 5th generation Unitarian, whose parents started a church of now 250+ members, a member of the NAUA, a member of the NAUA board, who has has some things to offer, who has promoted you for years (to my harm locally). I also have expectations, especially of leadership.

If your tone (which was I think worse than mine) were a little different (you are a pastor after all), if you had expressed your response differently, even said “we need to talk”, I would have quickly offered a public apology. Instead I decided to drop it and hope (obviously in vain) that it would pass. Frankly, I would have wanted reconciliation, AND understanding, but It is the second half of this that I now worry about. Part of reconciliation IS understanding (even if not agreement).

I understand your need to set expectations around managing your email (every one has this problem), and I think you need help, but I gather you have no interest in this. Your apparent aversion to email is problematic for someone who represents himself as a leader of a distributed organization. While I believe everything I said in my message, it should have been said much, much, more diplomatically. I was reacting in a hurry (just as you were in your response). I should have let my message sit, and come back to it to express it differently. Had I done so, I undoubtedly would have significantly toned it down. Instead I let my annoyance get the better of me, and hit send.

On reflection, the right way for me to have handled this would have been to ask for a board conversation about it. I subsequently did this as a requested agenda item for the next board meeting that I send to

Stephen.

Again, with apologies (and explanation), I’m sorry.

Lincoln

EXPLANATORY CONTEXT #7:

This apology, that ends up blaming me for his behavior, notwithstanding, was soon followed on the same day with another three-page email from Mr. Baxter to the entire Board of Trustees, excluding me, although it was forwarded to me by another deeply concerned Trustee: This a long (and serious) email I have worked on for hours, please read all the way through it. By now, you should have received my public apology to Todd. Todd is NOT included in THIS message, It is only sent to you board members, because I think you as a board have a crucial decision to make.

My first inclination after Stephen requested that I resign was to just do it. It would have been easy. It would gotten me out of what I see as a big time commitment. If I did resign I can tell you that I would probably walk away from supporting our website as well, not that I wouldn’t make myself available to answer questions when they come up (because I care about and like the people), I would. But I would not invest the significant energy I was planning to invest. To give you an idea: I don’t like the tools the website was developed with (nor its current design). I think it needs to be redesigned (simplified) and re-implemented in more commonly used WordPress tools (the WordPress Gutenberg block editor) that are easier for non-technical people to work with. And it needs to provide at least some of the functions I think Todd was looking for in a church app. I was willing to work slowly to migrate toward that end. At this point I am coming to the conclusion that if the NAUA were going to spend more money on technology, it should develop a specification, and do a request for proposal (RFP) to get a cost to reimplement it using the the WordPress Gutenberg block editor. Or hire a consultant to work with me and Joanne to migrate the site/ It would probably take on the order of a several weeks full time once we knew how we wanted to simplify it.

Instead, I will largely be done with the NAUA. I have come to the conclusion that while Todd was the inspiration for the NAUA, he is controlling it in a way that is likely to it’s detriment. In a distributed organization where there are really only a few hours a day when every one is available, it is even more important to use the asynchronous communication tools we have available to us.

Todd does not know me, (I can barely count on one hand my direct conversations with him, and that only after sermons he delivered in Zoom meetings.) Though I have invested many many hours supporting him and his cause, and the NAUA, now I wonder if that was time well spent. I can say that what I have learned about Todd (both from past conversations with other members, in the summit, and this incident, is extremely disappointing. He appears (despite being a Minister) not to be one who seeks reconciliation (and understanding). Rather, it appears he is more a bully who wants it his way, or no way. This was one of the reasons listed by the UUMA for disfellowhipping him. I didn’t treat that with much credence until now. This makes me very concerned about the NAUA.

Yes Todd started the NAUA, but in many ways he thinks he still owns it. And he has prevented it from becoming what I think many who initially joined expected it to become: a splinter denomination. Maybe he is right about that, but I think this is something the membership should decide, after much discussion and discernment. Read Judi Durham Summit report. Todd has foreclosed that discussion. If Todd does not get his way he will walk. That is clear. He said as much to all of you (and me), and he said it was “non negotiable.” He said toward the end of our last meeting when one of you questioned if this was the right time to watch his video: “…this is MY meeting…” and he showed the video. At the same time, he refused to allow me to show him how he could have much of what he wanted on his cell phone using our existing web technology. That was very revealing to me.

Further, that last agenda item annoyed me. It was his attempt to bring up a subject that I know the previous board had already made a (good) decision about, less than 6 months ago. I think he was hoping that with new members on the board he would get a different answer. I was pleased you pushed back. I think he was a very underhanded in this tactic. And that was very revealing. Why am I saying this? Because I think you AS A BOARD have a decision to make. What is the NAUA if Todd is not running it? Todd has already declared that he’s walking away in less than a year anyway. I think the board needs a different president, and it needs to decide BIG picture what the NAUA really is, and what it really stands for (minus Todd). Perhaps now is the time to start that process, I think that process will take time, maybe a good part of the year, to come to consensus about. One thing we didn’t do with respect to the “strategic plan” was ask this question. To not do so now, will just postpone those decisions. When we talked about doing a fund raising campaign I found my self thinking: What are we fund raising for? Do we know? Can we articulate it? Why should people donate? What’s in it for them?

The reason I have not already resigned at Stephen’s request, is that I do not think my leaving is a decision Stephen alone should make. I think this is a decision you have to make as a board. Do you want bend down to Todd’s ultimatum, or do you want to start to move the NAUA toward a future without Todd. I’m told by one member, that this is the third ultimatum that Todd has delivered in that members knowledge. One thing I am fairly sure of at this point is that Todd will not change his stripes. And he is certainly not acting as a pastor. In the meantime, I have withheld my resignation, because I care about the future of the NAUA, and I think you should be the ones making this decision and you should discuss it. If Stephen can not work with me, then if you keep me, you may loose both Todd and Stephen. I want to reach consensus, and I think I can work with Stephen. Some of you have experience working with me. Perhaps you can sway Stephen. It he still (after discussion) does not want to work with me, and your choice is keep me, then you loose both Todd and Stephen. If you submit to Todd’s ultimatum I think you only kick the can down the road.

Frankly this may be easier. You have a difficult choice. I could make this easy for you (and me) and just resign, but then you will not have had serious discussions and made hard decisions I think you have to have. Tell me what you want. I will be so guided. If you ask me resign, fine, at least you know what you are up against.

Lincoln

EXPLANATORY CONTEXT #8:

(Again, the font sizes, italics, underlines, in the above letter are original.)

In addition to being full of many falsehoods and fabrications about board decisions and similar ultimatums that Mr. Baxter accuses me of, which I won’t trouble myself going into, this letter suggests he has given much prior thought to the direction NAUA needs to go, without me. That he sent this to the entire Board of Trustees, excluding me, is entirely inappropriate. Yet, I decided to let it go and allow the rest of the Board to consider what was happening. Instead, to my dismay and surprise, the next day, October 18, 2025, I received another email indicating a small group of Trustees, outside of any proper board proceedings, had gotten together to formulate their own plan of action:

Rev. Todd/Stephen/Lincoln,

Even while on vacation on a riverboat on the Rhone River in France, I broke away for an hourto have a Zoom call with 4 other members of the NAUA board not directly involved in the  email exchange that has recently transpired between you three to discuss how best to respond to words and threatened actions that so deeply impact the future of the NAUA.

We unanimously agreed that a religious organization that prides itself on respecting freedom, reason, and tolerance should go to great lengths to attempt a reconciliation between the aggrieved parties. As a result of our meeting, Roy Dickerson has agreed to reach out to you three to discuss a process of reconciliation, which even if not ultimately successful, would at least benefit this board and provide the stable leadership it needs to remain a beacon of liberal religion in a world increasingly hostile to it.

With best wishes,

Bob Simoni

NAUA Treasurer

EXPLANATORY CONTEXT #9:

It remains difficult for me to believe that Mr. Baxter’s series of disrespectful and slanderous emails during the 24-hour period following his first official Board meeting were being ignored and that some felt it proper to decide that I would have to enter into a process of “reconciliation” because this has something to do with freedom, reason, and tolerance? To be clear, if human dignity, upheld through reason, freedom, and tolerance are to be equated with “reconciliation,” there would be no NAUA to begin with because we’d all still be part the UUA working to reconcile our differences. It had, thus, become clear Mr. Baxter’s problematic behavior would not be addressed, so I submitted my resignation on October 18, 2025.

Dear NAUA Board of Trustees,

Considering recent issues, it is with regret and finality that I am submitting my resignation from the NAUA Board of Trustees. As if Lincoln Baxter’s initial disrespect for me wasn’t egregious enough, that he went further by sending a private communication asking another board member to “handle” me from now on, followed by an additional communication to the entire board, excluding me, further demeaning me, and asking the board to take control and move NAUA in a new direction, is beyond acceptable behavior. Now I learn some think such abuse requires me, the victim of such disregard and treachery, to reconcile because it is the “right thing to do.” As the victim of extreme child abuse for the first third of my life, and as man whose country has been taken over by an authoritarian bully, and who has been defrocked after standing up to, not reconciling with, the abuses of the UUA, no thank you! I alone choose who I will and won’t be in relationship with, and, as I stated I would in my initial email on this matter, I have now done so. With that said, I have deep fondness and appreciation for those of you on the Board (with one exception, of course), appreciate your good intentions, and wish you well in the coming months. I will do my best to continue to support NAUA in whatever ways I’m most comfortable with.

Thank you,

Todd

EXPLANATORY CONTEXT #10:

To my further dismay, failing to remove me and other former members of the Board from their group list, I received another disturbing and distorted email generated by another Board member, who was likely the source of Mr. Baxter’s false claim that I had made previous “threats” of resignation. This same individual would be an inevitable source of Stephen Polmar’s resignation on October 24, 2025:

To the Members of the Board of Trustees of the North American Unitarian Association:

This is to inform you that effective immediately, I resign my position as Secretary of the Board of Trustees and also resign as a member of the Board of Trustees. In addition, I resign, also effective immediately, my position as Chairperson of the International Alliance Committee, Co-chairperson of the Strategic Plan Oversight Team and my membership on the NAUA Academy Advisory Board. In addition, I resign my membership in the North American Unitarian Association itself.

I am taking this action in part because of the deplorable actions of Lincoln Baxter at the last Board meeting and his subsequent e mail accusations which led to the resignation of Board President of Rev. Dr. Todd Eklof, the founder of NAUA. I dismiss the subsequent petty ad hominem attacks upon me by Bob Simoni as merely infantile behavior. However, perhaps even more significant, is my total lack of confidence in this dysfunctional Board to support NAUA’s stated Vision to “Empower Liberal Religion to Survive and Thrive” and to ensure the future of NAUA. For these reasons my relationship with NAUA has now come to an end.

Peace,

Stephen Polmar

EXPLANATORY CONTEXT #11:

A subsequent email was sent by Dr. Polmar the following day (October 25, 2025):

Dear Board members,

I have resigned from NAUA. It is no longer part of my life as it had been since early 2023. I ask those of you with any compassion to ask Bob to stop taunting me and leave me in peace. Please remove me from your mailing list, I have moved on.

Stephen

EXPLANATORY CONTEXT #12:

My sudden resignation from NAUA comes unexpectedly for many, including myself. Again, I have attempted to add only the most necessary commentary to provide context and timing of the email communications presented herein, as I believe they speak for themselves.

On a personal note, I know there are many good people on NAUA’s Board of Trustees who now find themselves in extraordinarily difficult circumstances to navigate, and I wish them all the best. I, however, cannot remain part of a board that maintains support for the sort of untenable behavior that should be obvious, including explicitly calling for a coup.

To conclude, and as a reminder, the NAUA’s website states explicitly that “The North American Unitarian Association (NAUA) is a service organization dedicated to supporting and promoting the practice of liberal religion by embracing freedom, reason, and tolerance – all rooted in our commitment to human dignity without requiring adherence to any specific theological creed.” Before allowing anyone to join, it explicitly asks, “Do you agree to join the NAUA in good faith with a sincere interest to support its Mission?” There is a box to check, “Yes. ” Mr. Baxter stated that he represents the sentiments of members who did not “sign up for this.” For those reading this, if you are or have been a member of NAUA and joined in good faith, I ask you to consider if this statement represents your values