There is a tradition of some years now here at UUCA to devote a month's sermons to specific features of Unitarian Universalism. And, so here we are: January is UU Identity Month, and this is the first sermon in a series of three that the ministry team has set aside for exploring the future of Unitarian Universalism. (The result of a little millenial fever, I fear.)
Today, I've decided to explore one of the growing edges in our movement. Since my first degree was in geology, I like to use a geological metaphor for a growing edge. Over the course of geologic time there have been uncountable instances of new land arising, either through volcanic eruptions, water deposition, or biological growth (think corals). Consequently, a growing edge of land can be characterized as a zone of constant change, sometimes accompanied by violent upheavals. One of the growing edges of Unitarian Universalism is the zone around the topic of congregational polity.
Now, in general, this topic draws about as much interest as a discussion of the three types of rocks - knowing that rocks can be made through three separate processes is important information, some specialists are highly interested in it, and for the rest of us, it's simply not important. It creates the "glazed eyes" effect. And so does a discussion about congregational polity.
But, the way Unitarian Universalism will look in the not-so-distant future in some ways depends on how current discussions and disagreements about congregational polity come out. So first, a little background on what exactly is going on these days.
All UU congregations are governed in a congregational manner-that is, each church or fellowship or society is responsible for itself. Our tradition of congregational polity comes from the Reformation, and the movement of people from Europe to the colonies in America for religious freedom. Our current practices reflect that tradition. Each UU congregation owns its own property, selects its own leadership, controls its own finances, sets its own criteria for membership and is the sole owner of the right to ordain ministers. There is no person or governing body that can tell us what to do. It is the perfect form of governance for the strongly independent, individualistic people who are Unitarian Universalists.
"Hey, but what about the Unitarian Universalist Association?" I hear you ask. "Don't they tell us how to do some things, like for instance, how to search for a minister?" And the correct answer is--no, technically they don't tell, they suggest.
The Unitarian Universalist Association, the UUA, is an association of free congregations. This congregation, UUCA, is linked with more than 1000 others in a national association, freely choosing to join forces with other congregations to gain the many benefits that can come from a national organization. And that is why, technically speaking, we are not a denomination. The UUA is an association, not a denomination. You personally cannot join the UUA, its only members are congregations. And the UUA cannot tell congregations what to do. We tell the UUA what to do, and we do this at the association's yearly business meetings which we call our General Assembly.
So, member congregations of the Unitarian Universalist Association, through the representatives we have sent to General Assemblies, have, over the years, asked the UUA to perform a variety of tasks that could best be done at the national level. We have asked for a central, standardized credentialing process for our ministers even though it is only at the congregational level that ministers can be ordained. We have asked for the development of Sunday School curricula and adult education curricula even though it is only at the congregational level that curricula are selected for use. We have asked for programs that could help us open our attitudes toward people with different sexual orientations, people with different skin colors, and people with disabling conditions even though we can choose not to participate in those programs. We have asked for better methods of communication among congregations even though we can choose to not read any of it. We have asked for help when we are thinking about a building project, or when we have stumbled into a crisis situation, or when we want to improve our canvassing methods even though we can choose to ignore whatever advice is given. It's a crazy-making system in some ways.
And yet, the UUA has responded to our requests. For example, they have developed a tried-and-true process for credentialing ministers and for the way that congregations select ministers. We don't have to follow their ideas, right? But, the fact is that our congregation has voluntarily joined this association, we have asked for their advice, they have worked long and hard on perfecting a workable system (no matter how byzantine it sometimes seems to us), and it is almost always in the ultimate best interests of a congregation to listen to their advice. Do we have to? No. Can they sanction us for not listening to them? Well, yes. After all, there are no organizations that we join that do not expect us to follow their rules. We can leave the organization, of course. Or, we can work to change the rules. But, as a member, we have tacitly made an agreement to abide by the association's rules.
However, there is always a tension in this set-up. An independent commission of the UUA decided to focus on this issue several years ago and presented a report to the General Assembly of 1997 following their review of our practices regarding congregational polity. The report noted the association's bylaws reveal that the extent to which congregations are fiercely independent, and the extent to which they wish to work together are in tension with each other-it's right there in the bylaws. The report says, "Sometimes we accent our shared commitments as Unitarian Universalists--our unity," our interdependence, "and sometimes we accent our independence or our freedom from the larger body. As a result we have a deep ambivalence in our attitudes toward congregational polity, even a love-hate relationship." Somehow, we never make it easy on ourselves.
But at least we're consistent. The same issues that afflict us on the national level are also in play at the personal level. We, as individuals, are strongly independent, marked by that rugged individualism that keeps us from knowing our neighbors or asking for help, and that resists compromise even while we pride ourselves on tolerance. We are proud that we have created our own, individualized spiritual paths, yet we succumb to our need to experience communal worship. We want to be our own person AND we want to be part of something bigger than ourselves. We want to be alone AND we want to be in relationship with others. We want to be tolerant of others AND we want things to go our own way.
At the 1998 General Assembly, the sociologist Robert Bellah was invited to speak about this issue. He said this about the preceding year's report: "I have studied carefully the very rewarding report of your Commission on Appraisal published last year as Interdependence: Renewing Congregational Polity, and I know that the central purpose of the Fulfilling the Promise initiative is to strengthen a sense of connectedness, interdependence, and community, partly to counterbalance a perceived excessive emphasis on individualism. I simply want to point out that, starting from where you start, it may not be so easy to get there from here." Bellah goes on to note that our religious tradition, just like every religious tradition in the United States, is a dissenting religion that places a major emphasis on the individual. He continues, "In the dissenting tradition the individual is primary and community, however valued, is secondary. But this voluntaristic notion of community, however treasured, is unable to bear the weight it is expected to carry. This understanding of community is perilous because individuals devote themselves to it only so long as it "meets their needs," and when it doesn't, there is no claim of perseverance or loyalty that community so understood, can exert. I am convinced that only a social understanding of human nature is ontologically true and that only a social ontology could divert American culture from the destructive course upon which it seems to be set
Bellah continues, "Beneath the surface glitter of American culture there is a deep inner core, which, I have argued, is ultimately religious: the sacredness of the conscience of every single individual. Nothing I have said tonight takes away from the enormous power for good of that idea. It is responsible for the best in our culture. But, by the very weakness of any idea of human solidarity associated with it in a culture dominated by the dissenting Protestant tradition, it opens the door to the worst in our culture. It easily leads to the idea that humans are nothing but self-interest maximizers.. It is that version that we see all around us. I don't think we can challenge that version until we come to see that the sacredness of the individual depends ultimately on our solidarity with all being, not on the vicissitudes of our private selves. You face in your very denomination the most basic conundrum of American life. If you can solve it you may help lead the larger society out of the wilderness into which it has wandered."
Bellah boldly and overtly challenges us to place our seventh principle in front of our first principle, place our position in the interdependent web above our honor for the inherent worth of all individuals. He also suggests that, if we are to survive as a religious institution, that it will be necessarily to finally agree on the object of our worship.
Well, how's that for a tough assignment? And frankly, I don't think we're up to it. We are dissension addicts and radical individualists. We don't agree on much, and the chance of us agreeing to place the good of the community before the good of the individual in the way that Bellah suggests seems mighty slim. And agreeing on the object of our worship is too heretical to even talk about. No, I don't see us leading the larger society out of THAT wilderness--especially when we have such pride in our history of dissent and religious freedom and congregational polity.
However, many Unitarian Universalists would want to go in the direction Bellah points. In fact, in some ways it seems that the time for radical congregationalism is already past. The report of the 1997 Commission on Appraisal said: we need not change what we are, but rather recover the original vision, a religious community of autonomous congregations. That means seeing the Unitarian Universalist world differently than before. In a few words, that vision is of a community of congregations, linked to each other spiritually and morally by a common faith and a common vision. Unitarian Universalist historian Conrad Wright calls it the "community of autonomous churches," where the community is as important as the church, the group as important as the individual.
Conrad Wright, who for all intents and purposes is the national UU expert on congregational polity, has also noted that individualism is based on a social situation of a small population with vast resources, and since that no longer describes our current and most probable future situation, individualism as a value will become dysfunctional if not obsolete. Of course, what this implies then is that a religion based on individualism will also become dysfunctional if not obsolete.
So, we are off and running, trying to figure out ways to strengthen the ties that bind us. After all, we Unitarian Universalists have always prided ourselves in our ability to change and adapt to new cultural circumstances. And it sounds good and I want Unitarian Universalism to be like that, don't you?
But, before we charge off in this new direction, valuing our interdependence as individuals-in-community and congregations-in-association over our individual worth, we might want to take a minute to listen to other UU voices. Earl Holt is a minister in St. Louis and has been writing about this phenomenon, most notably in an independent UU publication called the Voice. Rev. Holt writes: "The church [that we seem to be becoming] moves increasingly in the manner I used to jokingly and now seriously refer to as "creeping Methodism." This church we are becoming has obscured the distinction between its credentialing power (the granting of fellowship in the UU Minister's Association) and ordination (the exclusive province of individual congregations). It has evolved what is effectively an appointment system for many new ministers and ministries, as well as interim ministries; and there has recently been an almost casual suggestion to adopt a process of non-congregational ordination. Technically, our wider movement is for the most part, perhaps unconsciously, drifting in the direction of sectarianism. It is a tendency which as I have said I believe is natural to all religious movements and one which William Ellery Channing warned against at the very beginning of our American history. [The church that we seem to be becoming] supports the domination of the collective over the individual, the denominational over the congregational, the ideological over independent-mindedness. The centralizing tendency is natural in all religious movements and perhaps in all human organizations. But for us, it represents a fundamental challenge to what we have stood for not just in institutional terms but in religious terms, as a heretical faith, emphasizing conscience over creed, and the unique nature of each person's spiritual striving. Ours is a faith which knows that the heart of religion is the individual heart, that the soul of religion is the individual human soul."
Hmmm. In the slightly rephrased words of Walt Whitman, "Do we contradict ourselves? Very well, then, we contradict ourselves. We are large, we contain multitudes." After all, both Conrad Wright and Earl Holt are sincere, learned, thoughtful Unitarian Universalists and believe me, it's hard to figure out which one is right. The only good news I have for you is the certainty that they are both at least a little bit right, because the choice between independence and interdependence is not an either/or proposition. This growing edge, this place of turmoil in the association of Unitarian Universalist congregations comes in the form of a continuum. I kind of picture it as a sliding scale, where there is a little pointer that moves back and forth across the scale showing our position at any given moment.
We will always live in the tension between individualism and community. This is true for us as individuals, and this is true for our congregations-in-association. For the collection of churches that claim to be Unitarian Universalist, there's a setting somewhere between radical individualism and a centralized denominational system and we are currently struggling to find the place that suits us for the here and now. As the circumstances and values and norms of our culture change and as we Unitarian Universalists change demographically, the setting needs to change. And right now, this is a growing edge in the association
But there's more. Some say the future lies not so much in our ability to work with other UU congregations, not so much in where we reset the point on the independence-interdependence scale, but in our ability to work with other local congregations on matters of social justice. Not local UU congregations, but neighboring congregations of other faiths that share the experiences and needs of the people in and around our meeting places. Certainly MY interests lie there. Nothing excites me quite as much as the possibility of being "in relationship," in whatever form that may mean, with people of other religions. Here at UUCA, the partnership we have developed for the upcoming Martin Luther King, Jr. commemoration glitters with possibility for interdependence of another sort. And it becomes another growing edge in the life of our congregation. And when it happens to a large share of UU churches, it becomes a growing edge for the entire association.
There is no doubt in my mind that Unitarian Universalism will look different in the future. New setpoints will eventually be established for the way we will enact our congregational polity. And we will no doubt find other ways that we will become more interconnected with the world outside of UUCA. Can we/should we strengthen our interconnections with our Partner Church in Romania? Can we/should we strengthen our slenderest of interconnections with Mt. Zion Baptist Church and Our Lady Queen of Peace Catholic Church? Can we/should we strengthen our interconnections with the Fairfax or All Souls Unitarian Universalist Churches? Can we/should we strengthen the association of Unitarian Universalist churches to which we belong? These answers will affect who we become. It is an exciting future we have ahead of us. And, as it has always been, it is our future to decide.
