Between Us – What Brings Us Together?

By Rev. Clyde Grubbs, November 30, 2022

There are over a thousand Unitarian Universalist congregations, community and advocacy ministries, and youth and student groups. In addition, there are support networks for identity-based groups, such as UU Scholars Network and the Diverse Revolutionary Unitarian Universalist Multicultural Ministries. There are thousands of individuals who consider themselves to be Unitarian Universalists but are not affiliated with a congregation or even any of the other expressions of Unitarian Universalism named above.

There is no person we look to to define Unitarian Universalism, no supreme leader, no central authorizing body, and no creed which we recite to indicate what we believe in common.

Most Unitarian Universalist congregations are participating members in the Unitarian Universalist Association, but the Association belongs to the member congregations. The Association does not own the congregations.

So if there is no central authority, what brings us together?
The congregations come together once a year in General Assembly and vote on the projects that the congregations want to do together, and vote to elect the leadership of the Association. Most of the various organizations and advocacy groups that I alluded to above are affiliated with but are not subservient to the Association, for example, the Liberal Religious Educators Association is an organization of religious educators but carries out its business independently of the staff of the Unitarian Universalist Association.

The Unitarian Universalist movement is cooperative and associational rather than centralized and top-down.

On November 6, Elizabeth and I facilitated a coffee hour discussion on the revision of Article 2 of the Bylaws of the Unitarian Universalist Association, the section that contains the Seven Principles and the Six Sources. The revision process will take several years; there will be a progress report to this year’s General Assembly, then one more year of the drafting of a proposal based on feedback, and then a full year of congregational discussion before adoption. There will be lots of opportunities for discussion!

What I find interesting about the discussion so far is most of the conversation is focused on the wording of the principles. But for me, the key phrase is “we the member congregations covenant to affirm and promote….”

What brings Unitarian Universalists together is Covenant, a promise to work together based on some basic principles which we seek to share with the world. Next month I will write more on the power of covenant, the promise to walk together while holding our diverse thinking as a virtue to be cultivated rather than as a deficit to be overcome.