Welcome to UUism!
Welcome to Unitarian Universalism!
Our faith isn’t like many others, and I’m sure it can be confusing. I’m hoping that by writing about some aspect of our faith each month, y’all can get to know us better.
Our faith is a covenantal one. We make agreements, in the form of a covenant, about how and who we want to be together. A common covenant heard in our congregations is from 1894, written by James Vila Blake: “Love is the spirit of this church, and service its law. This is our great covenant: to dwell together in peace, to seek the truth in love, and to help one another.”
Our polity – how we govern ourselves – is congregationalist. That is, each congregation chooses how it will govern itself. And this is not the board’s decision, or a committee’s decision, or the minister’s decision, or the UUA’s – it is the decision of each congregation. Every member gets to vote on the bylaws and changes to it. No two congregations are the same. This dates back to the Cambridge Platform, signed in 1648.
The Unitarian Universalist Association, or the UUA, is an association of member congregations. Just as individuals are members of congregations, congregations are members of this association. The business of the association – changing bylaws and other matters – is done by delegates of each congregation who attend our annual General Assembly, held in June. Unlike in other faiths, the UUA doesn’t (and can’t) tell congregations what to do. It offers guidance, based on what is happening across our faith. And just as importantly, the staff of the UUA serve our faith, and therefore also serve our congregations, although sometimes indirectly. For example, when we get updated hymnals, that’s the work of the UUA. (Our latest hymnal is web-based, and called Sing Out Love). Regional staff that support our congregations are UUA employees. There are other ways we benefit from the UUA as well. Also, the UUA serves as our national voice among religions. The Rev. Dr. Sofia Betancourt is currently serving as the President of the UUA, and our recently elected co-moderators of the UUA Board of Trustees are the Rev. Kimberly Quinn Johnson and Bill Young.
If you have questions that you’d like answered, let me know! Stay tuned for next month.