Unitarian Universalists: February 2006 Archives

There has been talk about making changes at GA for several years now.  What if the planning committee, and the Board of Trustee were listening?  And what if they were to propose to make some changes?  We have seen how rapidly the reform of bringing congregational presidents to G.A. and giving them lots of interface time has become institutionalized. 

I expect these changes to be instituted in the next few years.  I suspect we will hear something of these ideas soon. 

1) Plenary sessions where substantial business was brought before the delegates for discussion and decision will become the norm.

2. That means in the future the plenary agenda will see less reports (which we could read), awards, recognitions of local dignitaries, promotional films, and international delegates.  And did I mention that this might mean no sing a longs, exercise breaks, and snake dances!You asked for reform, and you get reformed.

3.  The General Assembly will ask congregations to discuss the substantial business coming before the GA and elect delegates that will represent the congregations discussions.  There will be an expectation that congregations make efforts to fund their delegates.

4. I expect to hear a proposal that we (ministerial delegates) should be expected to attend plenary.  We should model associational participation as we together work to renew our polity.

While I applaud the effort, I am know that I am part of the problem. I attended my first GA in the sixties, and have attended about 16 since then.  Lately its getting to be a habit.  Over the years, I have adjusted to what went on at GA, and found ways to make it a very productive time.  I look forward to GA, and these proposals will require me adjusting my time.

That is the problem with reforms, it means that not only "they" have to change, but "we" do as well.    It means Associational governance will be added to my "to do list."  And the idea of being expected to go to plenary while I am at GA is going to take some attitude adjustment.  I have used that time to good purposes for years, my date book for St. Louis is already full.  In years past, I have gone to DRUUM meetings,  had appointments with staff about Anti racism initiatives, met with delegates of Native American descent who wanted to connect, done UUMA business, and even had a soulful reunion with an old friend or two.

What is my response to this idea that ministerial delegates be a good example.  First,  It will take some time to make the adjustments,  maybe I can be a model participant by 2008.    Second,  I want to negotiate the expectations!  Our contracts need to be amended,  we should not be expected to take money out of our professional expenses to "do the business of the association."  Maybe the next generation will enjoy plenary and look forward to debating strategic plans, but I need a little incentive.  And I am a boy scout compared to some of my colleagues.

The ice is melting in North. In time the water will rise and our present seacoast will be under water.

I think of the Gulf Coast where I live. No use rebuilding New Orleans. We should abandon Miami and most of Tampa too. Rising oceans alone would impact the hometowns of about one third of the population of the United States directly. But another third lives in river valleys that drain into the oceans, and along the Lakes that depend on access to the Atlantic.

But isn't that a long time from now? Not at the rate the ice is melting, it means no Cape Cod (or Key West or Catalina) in life time of many of my readers.

But there are other more immediate problems. The big kill of the polar animals is happening now. Despite triumphalist interpretation of Genesis I we were not given this earth to abuse. Inuits are losing their homeland. Another genocidal attack by an arrogant and self absorbed people.

And the ice is fresh water. Melting that much ice means the saline mix of the ocean will change and that will change the circulation of the oceans. The Gulf Steam is that is moving by me right now is on its way to Western Europe. Look at a map, Europe is kind of far North. Without the Gulf Stream it will be cold like Thunder Bay, Ontario in Paris. I love Paris in the spring time will be no more.

Apparently some don't want to hear it. I receive a protest from a blogger that would prefer his Unitarian Universalism to be pablum. He writes "For a long time i quit watching nature shows because I got sick of the constant complaining about deforestation.

Constantly reminding people how bad they are and how they are ruining the world is not, in my opinion, a good way to grow our churches either."

Religion isn't about making us comfortable. Check out any serious tradition you want. Religion makes demands on our lives and on our conduct. Any religion that makes us self absorbed and comfortable is no religion at all.

And the world will go on very nicely without so many of us. No we won't ruin the world.

The struggle against deforestation reversed what could have been a disaster, and the people who made a difference did a lot more than watch nature shows. Can we reverse global warming? Yes. The earth is a living, breathing organism and she has recovered in the past and she will again if we respect what she is telling us, and begin to make the changes that are called for.

People don't need to be reminded of how bad they are, people aren't bad. We do need that gift that Universalist John Murray urged his preachers to preach, we need to give our people hope and courage.

Hope requires conviction and determination to realize those convictions. Hope without conviction is wishing.

We must reclaim the conviction that we are a nation "of the people, for the people and by the people." To realize that conviction means having the courage to rid our nation of the corrupt political culture that masquerades as democracy. Previous generations of religious liberals rose up against the powers that be, and created new political alinements. We must as well. To become effective in our rising we must become citizens once more rather than consumers and spectators of what passes for election campaigns. We must have as a goal to check the corporate vultures who have turned this land into America, Inc.

We must do this because of a religious imperative namely: we belong to the earth, the earth does not belong to us. Treating this earth as a thing is killing to our souls, and if history teaches us anything it is this, soulless people have no future.

I grew up attending Unitarian Churches. I was the child of what some people called a mixed marriage, now days I am told that we were a bi-racial family. The word my father used to describe us is not considered a nice word to use in public. Something about being partially breed.

My Cherokee background father experienced two kinds of responses from white liberals, insulting responses, and the responses of folks who tried to be "color blind." Some Unitarians called him chief. I noticed that they didn't treat him like a chief. Some said weird "ha ha" comments like "where is your squaw."

But others tried hard to ignore what being of Cherokee descent may have meant to him, they tried to treat him like a "white" man. In the process they made him invisible.

The assumption in our society is being colorblind is a good thing. Why? Is being unaware of the other person's identity good? Isn't the assumption in the term "color blind" that seeing color is being prejudiced against that color?

Why can't we see people in all their various colors, see them in the depth of their identity and respond with positive human feelings toward them because the content of their character is embodied in one of the many colors of humanity?

Color blindness is pretending that conquest, slavery, genocide and oppression isn't part of our common history. It is pretending that we have healed our nation's brokenness when the consequences of that history is borne by communities of color today. Color blindness is pretending that racism doesn't happen among us now.

But the problem with color blindness is deeper still, it contains the presumption that subordinate and oppressed cultures are not different from the dominant culture and have no merit, and it further presumes that subordinate and oppressed cultures do not continue to sustain and empower the people in resistance to the dominant culture. If these cultures had merit and power, why recommend that we be blind to them?

Most people of color don't seek to be just like white folk, they seek to honor their own communities of origin, their diverse cultures and their identity. They seek to be solidarity with each other and they seek a transformed relationship with white America. Unitarian Universalists of color invite people of the dominant culture to see their "color" and affirm that "color" as a wonderful way of being human.

Many Unitarian Universalist women participated in this important expression of the peace movement. On this day in 1967.


"Carrying huge photos of Napalmed Vietnamese children, 2,500 members of the group Women Strike for Peace stormed the Pentagon, demanding to see "the generals who send our sons to Vietnam." When Pentagon guards locked the main-entrance doors, the women took off their shoes and banged on the doors with their heels. They were finally allowed inside, but Defense Secretary Robert McNamara would not meet with them.


Women Strike for Peace began on November 1, 1961, when an estimated 50,000 thousand women walked out of their kitchens and off their jobs in a one-day protest against Soviet and American nuclear policies."



Thanks to peacebuttons.info.

What's this got to do with Unitarian Universalism?  Isn't Unitarian Universalism about reciting our principles and purposes and congratulating ourselves on our liberalism?  Do we have to make a difference?

This last January was the warmest year in several millennia, and the last decade was the warmest in a thousand years.  The polar ice is melting, and the snow isn't falling in North America or Europe.  Say goodbye to Maple Syrup.

We will run out of easily attainable petroleum in a decade or two, and the costs of gasoline will sky rocket.  It has already started to go up and up and up. 

The automobile has distorted our urban areas, over half of the land surface of most of our cities is dedicated to parking, highways, and sprawling single family housing.

Our children are driven to school, because the streets are too dangerous for them to walk or bike to school.  After school they are driven to after school activities.  Mothers who never heard of Betty Friedan do this driving, and experience a nagging anxiety that this is not what life is supposed to be like.

Network news organizations run documentary series on television about obesity and treat this epidemic as if it were a personal life style issue.  We experience a rise in chronic illnesses and treat those illnesses with pharmaceuticals.

Most people in the United States in two decades will be people of color.  Most of Unitarian Universalist churches fled to the suburbs in the 40s and 50s as part of the white flight, and most of our new starts have been located away from the city centers.  And we wonder why it is so hard for our congregations to achieve "diversity."  And we wonder why our prophetic voice is diminished.

We spend money on slick advertising and folks come to church. Some join.  We are not changed.

Growth for religious liberalism does not consist of counting voting members in self absorbed suburban congregations, nor does it have any thing to do with the self promotion of the UUA HQ staff.    Real growth means being deeply relational to our country and its people and that kind of growth will commence when we find our voice and our courage.  Then we will begin to speak to our country once again.

The UUA asks congregations to register their voting membership every year for purposes of determining their fair share allotment to the annual program fund. This registration is not, and never has been a measure of the growth of Unitarian Universalism. Each congregations determines their voting membership based on entirely different criteria.
While I don't fault those who use this enumeration as a basis of comparison between congregations, it seldom gives much useful information.

I could point to one problem of enumeration, there are reporting differences based on the size of congregations. Large congregations pay fair share based on the percentage of their budget, rather than the number of voting members. Smaller congregations must pay dollars for every member they report. Small congregations under report, folks who are active in the congregation but don't contribute enough money to pay their portion of the annual program fund are often left of the role. Large congregations over report, we have congregations that claim folks that haven't sat in a pew in years. Because they pay a percentage of their budget to the UUA and District rather than a per capita, reporting those lost members isn't as painful as it would be for a small congregation. Shaving twenty less than active members of the roles for a small congregation can make a balanced budget and a deficit budget.

But my real concern is counting voting members seduces us into thinking that we understand growth by looking a quantitative measurements alone. A congregation grows by becoming a qualitatively deeper and more loving community, by extending its ministries and becoming more welcoming and accessible to new constituencies. To grow in these ways may result in greater numbers in the long run, but skipping this kind of transformative work only leads to the revolving door.

We have congregations that are growing in numbers and we have congregations that are declining in numbers because of changing demographics, economic dislocations, and internal conflicts. But without careful attention to the internal dynamic we know nothing about growth within those congregations based on how many voting members they report that year.

Real growth, transformative growth, goes on day by day in the congregations. The UUA HQ can serve that growth, celebrate that growth, and occasionally it can even provide resources that will enable that growth. But the congregations grow the UUA, the UUA does not grow the congregations.

This week has been so full that I haven't had the time or energy to blog.

The UUMA's Committee on Ministry for Anti Racism, Anti Oppression and Multiculturalism completed its three day retreat yesterday. The five of us who were able to attend really worked and the creativity was enormous. We looked at situations involving our ministers and seminarians, and we initiated interventions and policy recommendations. Some of the recommendations will be discussed soon with the UUA's Ministry and Professional Leadership Staff group. They have always given us a good ear and we find ways to implement our best thought out proposals. Some of our ideas are not ready for prime time, and we find that out as we discuss them with our colleagues and propose them to the UUA. Our relationship is critical and engaged, not antagonistic.

In the last twelve years we have increased the number of ministers from other than the dominant culture from a handful to sixty ministers in fellowship. Based on theological school enrollments we will double that number in less than seven years. I am assuming that we will continue to have a significant number of theological students who do not continue their studies, either because they discover another religious approach is more attractive, or they discover that ministry is not a match for their talents. If all who ever enrolled in a theological school with the intention of being a Unitarian Universalist minister continued with their studies and was successfully doing Unitarian Universalist ministry we would have well over a hundred ministers of other than the dominant culture in our ranks. And we would have over two thousand ministers in fellowship!

The growth of the Unitarian Universalist ministry in the last years scares many people, they argue that there are not enough pulpits for so many ministers. Of course, the growth of the Unitarian Universalist ministry also means the growth of non traditional, community based ministries. Over half the students in theological schools today intend ministries outside of traditional parish settlements.

What will change and what will stay the same? I believe that when more of our ministers are community ministers than parish ministers we will begin to change the nature of congregations and our relation to the world as well. History tells us, what exists now has not always been, and what exists now will change. A true traditionalist expects transformation, because radical change and renewal is the only constant in history.

I have observed that those who are on the road to ministry who engage with others in building community are most likely to succeed in ministry. I am active in the Unitarian Universalist Minister's Association because that association enables me to engage with my colleagues in our common work of building the community of ministers. It would never occur to be to look at my professional association and ask "what does it give me." An minister who values collegiality knows the answer, it gives us the community that we in turn engage in renewing.

Consumerism is destructive tendency eroding the democracy of our nation, and consumerism is now challenging many of our congregations. If it erodes our ministry then with what will the earth be salted?

This week has been so full that I haven't had the time or energy to blog.

The UUMA's Committee on Ministry for Anti Racism, Anti Oppression and Multiculturalism completed its three day retreat yesterday. The five of us who were able to attend really worked and the creativity was enormous. We looked at situations involving our ministers and seminarians, and we initiated interventions and policy recommendations. Some of the recommendations will be discussed soon with the UUA's Ministry and Professional Leadership Staff group. They have always given us a good ear and we find ways to implement our best thought out proposals. Some of our ideas are not ready for prime time, and we find that out as we discuss them with our colleagues and propose them to the UUA. Our relationship is critical and engaged, not antagonistic.

In the last twelve years we have increased the number of ministers from other than the dominant culture from a handful to sixty ministers in fellowship. Based on theological school enrollments we will double that number in less than seven years. I am assuming that we will continue to have a significant number of theological students who do not continue their studies, either because they discover another religious approach is more attractive, or they discover that ministry is not a match for their talents. If all who ever enrolled in a theological school with the intention of being a Unitarian Universalist minister continued with their studies and was successfully doing Unitarian Universalist ministry we would have well over a hundred ministers of other than the dominant culture in our ranks. And we would have over two thousand ministers in fellowship!

The growth of the Unitarian Universalist ministry in the last years scares many people, they argue that there are not enough pulpits for so many ministers. Of course, the growth of the Unitarian Universalist ministry also means the growth of non traditional, community based ministries. Over half the students in theological schools today intend ministries outside of traditional parish settlements.

What will change and what will stay the same? I believe that when more of our ministers are community ministers than parish ministers we will begin to change the nature of congregations and our relation to the world as well. History tells us, what exists now has not always been, and what exists now will change. A true traditionalist expects transformation, because radical change and renewal is the only constant in history.

I have observed that those who are on the road to ministry who engage with others in building community are most likely to succeed in ministry. I am active in the Unitarian Universalist Minister's Association because of that association enables me to engage with my colleagues in our common work of building the community of ministers. It would never occur to be to look at my professional association and ask "what does it give me." An minister who values collegiality knows the answer, it gives us the community that we in turn engage in renewing.

Consumerism is destructive tendency eroding the democracy of our nation, and consumerism is now challenging many of our congregations. If it erodes our ministry then with what will the earth be salted.