At this June’s annual meeting of the Unitarian Universalists in Rochester, NY, the voting delegates decisively embedded love into the bedrock of the religion, as 80 p.c selected to undertake modifications to its covenant clause, in any other case generally known as Article II of the religion’s bylaws.
The change within the bylaws, that are basically a mission assertion, is the primary since 1987. This 12 months’s vote was made attainable by a vote finally 12 months’s meeting, permitting the revision to go ahead to a ultimate vote this 12 months.
Central to Article II are the Seven Ideas, which information those that want to be a part of the spiritual neighborhood. These ideas have included “The inherent value and dignity of each individual; justice, fairness and compassion in human relations; a free and accountable seek for fact and which means; and the appropriate of conscience and using the democratic course of inside our congregations and in society at massive.”
Of the Seven Ideas developed 4 many years in the past, co-chair of the Article II Examine Fee Rob Spirko mentioned final 12 months, “not all people instantly printed it out and slapped it on their wall and mentioned, ‘Yay, Huge Seven!’” He added that whereas the Seven Ideas of the present Article II “will nonetheless be there, folks can nonetheless see them, perhaps this new imaginative and prescient may also help carry new folks in” to the religion.
The brand new imaginative and prescient is straight away distinct from the previous imaginative and prescient in two methods. First, it incorporates verbs (“We honor,” “We rejoice,” “We covenant,” “We work,” “We adapt,” and many others.), whereas the previous Article II has none. Second, it’s steeped in love: “Love is the facility that holds us collectively and is on the heart of our shared values. We’re accountable to at least one one other for doing the work of residing our shared values by means of the non secular self-discipline of Love.”
The new Article II even posts a graphic described as “a chalice with an overlay of the phrase “love” over the flame, with six outstretched arms that create a circle round every of the core values [interdependence, equity, transformation, pluralism, generosity and justice] and kind a six-petal flower form.”
For the primary time, then the seven core values of the religion are usually not co-equal however are six which can be held collectively by a seventh: love.
In a dramatic demonstration of the centrality of affection, Rev. JeKaren Olaoya used the 90 seconds allotted to her to offer a particular message to transgender, nonbinary and gender numerous folks: “I like you, I like you, I like you. . .”
In keeping with the religion’s bylaws, Article II have to be reviewed at the least each 15 years. The method for the present revisit started in 2020. “What I’m enthusiastic about is the tens of hundreds of Unitarian Universalists dedicating 4 years’ value of time to expressing the values of this religion,” the Rev. Sofía Betancourt, president of the Unitarian Universalist Affiliation, mentioned. “We perceive ourselves as a residing custom within the line of the free church custom, and having our congregations represented by their leaders and members and in articulating what we maintain most expensive, to me is admittedly, actually highly effective.” By its very nature, the Unitarian Universalist Church is an evolving religion. As co-chair of the Article II Examine Fee, Cheryl M. Walker mirrored, “We’re not writing a creed, we aren’t etching in stone, we’re writing in pencil, and we hope that in twenty to thirty years, because the world has modified once more and there are issues we have to say that we didn’t say this time, that someone modifications it once more—in order that we’re a Residing Custom, not one that’s stagnant. If we aren’t altering, we aren’t residing.”
Picture credit: We’re Unitarian Universalists by UU World. CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.
