After 15 Years, Our Principles and Purposes Provide Glue for UUs
By Warren R. Ross
HERE are few issues concerning Unitarian Universalism on which UUs
can agree with one another. Are we a denomination--that is, a single religious
entity--or merely an association of independent congregations? Is the
congregations' independence, what we call congregational polity, a sacrosanct
principle, or must it yield to our commitment to racial justice? Do we call the places where we gather
for worship churches or meeting halls--indeed, do we worship? Those are
all perennial subjects for debate. But few questions cause us as much discomfort
as what to say when asked what UUs believe. After all, we don't all believe
the same thing. But even as we vehemently reject any creed, we seem to
be forever searching for some verbal formula about which all (or at least
most) of us can say: "Yes, that's what I (more or less) believe."
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The importance of our being able to express a set of shared core beliefs
was well described by the Rev. Eugene Pickett when he assumed the UUA presidency
in 1979. Referring to the problems facing the denomination--his predecessor
had just died after less than two years in office--Pickett said, "The
deeper malaise lies in our confusion as to what word we have to spread.
The old watchwords of liberalism--freedom, reason, tolerance--worthy though
they may be, are simply not catching the imagination of the contemporary
world. They describe a process for approaching the religious depths, but
they testify to no intimate acquaintance with the depths themselves. If
we are ever to speak to a new age, we must supplement our seeking with
some profound religious finds."
The original statement of the purposes of the Unitarian Universalist
Association, adopted in 1960 as the Universalist Church of America and
the American Unitarian Association were consolidating, no longer served
the need. The statement's precise wording had been a matter of such heated
debate that it nearly derailed the merger at the concurrent but separate
preparatory sessions of the two denominations the year before. The contention
revolved around whether to include such phrases as "love to God and love
to man" and a reference to "our Judeo-Christian heritage." A compromise
version, including a critical change from "our" heritage to "the" heritage,
was finally hammered out in an all-day, all-night parliamentary negotiation
and debate.
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Thus it's a source of some amazement that the Principles and Purposes
that replaced the original wording in 1984 not only were adopted nearly
unanimously, but they have lasted virtually unchanged for 15 years. To
a truly astonishing extent the Principles and Purposes have been woven
into the fabric of our denominational life.
A ubiquitous appearance
Here are just a few examples: the Principles and Purposes are
featured in the front of our hymnbook--in fact, according to the hymnbook's
introduction, the commission that assembled the book took them as "the
touchstones of our decision to proclaim our diversity." They have been
widely reprinted in local congregations' orders of service, posted on church
walls, even recited in unison. At the First Unitarian Congregation of Waterloo,
Ontario, for example, the principles are the focus of the annual new members'
recognition ceremony, and as the Rev. Anne Treadwell reports, the
"responsibilities of membership can be summed up as a thoughtful commitment to the principles,
and . . . making such a commitment can change lives." On a more mundane
level, the annual report of the UU Funding Program, after stating that
the program's basic purpose is "promoting Unitarian Universalist principles
through grantmaking," groups the programs it supports by the principles
they reflect.
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Perhaps most important, the Principles and Purposes have guided
the development of a denominational religious education program that both
expresses and nurtures a UU sense of identity, with curricula ranging from
Around the Church, Around the Year, for the youngest kids, to one called
Being a UU Parent.
One final example: to assure that Beacon Press, our denominational publishing
house, carried out its mission as a public voice for Unitarian Universalist
ideals, Wendy Strothman, while director of the press, started requiring
that her editors include with every editorial proposal a statement explaining
how the proposed volume would support one or more of the UUA Principles
and Purposes--a policy still maintained by Helene Atwan, her successor.
All this agreement, it hardly needs adding, does cause some unhappiness
among those who, while acknowledging that the principles are not a creed
in the dictionary sense, still see a common statement of belief that comes
uncomfortably close to creedalism. Yet the process of reformulating our
principles proved amazingly amicable, with maximum participation and dialogue,
total transparency, and repeated General Assembly consideration.
Women were the catalysts
Much of the credit for starting on the long and meandering path that
led to adoption of the reformulated principles must go to UU women. Over
many years, women (though not women alone) had been growing unhappy with
the blatantly sexist language of the original bylaws, including a reference
to "the dignity of man." The 1970s--years when the US women's movement was
gathering momentum--saw repeated "manhunts" to find and remove the most
offensive terminology. Excised, for instance, were references to the moderator
and president--indeed to every officer and to all ministers--as "he," though
mentions of "brotherhood" and "fellowship" survived well into the 1980s.
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A free and responsible search for truth and meaning
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Granted, two other emerging understandings also helped make the existing
principles seem inadequate--first, that traditions other than the
Judeo-Christian are important to our heritage; second, that our relation to the environment
is one of our primary religious concerns. But the main impetus for change
did come from the UU Women's Federation (UUWF). Natalie Gulbrandsen, who
later served as UUA moderator, joined the UUWF board in 1971 and became
the group's president in 1978. As someone who had stayed up until 2 am
listening to "a lot of contentious speeches" when the original principles
were hammered out in 1960, Gulbrandsen says she had some idea how heated
General Assembly debates could become. She wasn't sure what to expect,
therefore, when in 1977 the UUWF and its supporters put forward a Women
in Religion resolution. As it turned out, things went relatively well.
While some delegates couldn't accept that they or their association was
patriarchal, "we explained it," Gulbrandsen recalls, and the resolution
passed--unanimously. Among its provisions, the resolution called on
leaders at all levels of the UUA to "make every effort to: (a) put traditional
assumptions and language in perspective, and (b) avoid sexist assumptions
and language in the future."
It helped that the UUWF members had done their homework, completing
a survey of the number of women in the UU ministry (mighty few) and positions
of power (not nearly half). Says Gulbrandsen, "We had all the facts
and figures and convinced people that they didn't want that kind of reputation."
Two years later, a UU continental conference on women in religion was
held in Loveland, Ohio. One workshop was called "The UUA Principles: Do
They Affirm Us As Women?" The response from workshop participants was a
resounding "No!" according to the Rev. Edward A. Frost, who edited a book
of essays by UU ministers called With Purpose and Principle, including
a chapter by Frost himself that discusses the women's role. Frost says
the delegates felt the original UUA principles not only failed to affirm
them as women, "but they [failed] to indicate a respect for the wholeness
of life and for the earth."
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But even in her own church the need to revise the Principles and Purposes
was not universally accepted, Gulbrandsen remembers. She had to explain
why references to "mankind" made women feel left out. "They said, 'Mankind'
doesn't leave you out," she recalls. "I replied that we are human beings
but not men, and that there are many other terms you could use--humankind,
human beings--that include women." Nor did disagreement come only from men.
"When we took the Women in Religion resolution to [the International Association
for Religious Freedom], the English women were furious. Why would we want
to do such a thing? they wanted to know. But we felt that a wave was coming
in our direction and eventually we would prevail," Gulbrandsen says.
The coming wave
Given the attachment to the existing, sexist language of so many men
and not a few women, it was highly perceptive of UUA President Pickett
to sense the coming of this wave. As he once told a UU women's gathering,
"You are changing the situation of women within our denomination and, in
so doing, you are opening up for all of us new ways of understanding and
perceiving women and, we hope, men as well." (His welcoming the change
was particularly surprising since, he had to admit, he had been thrown
off balance when one of his daughters told him she was considering the
Unitarian Universalist ministry.)
THE SIX PRINCIPLES (1961)
The original UUA Principles, as approved when the Unitarian and Universalist denominations consolidated in 1961:
In accordance with these corporate purposes, the members of the Unitarian Universalist Association, dedicated to the principles of a free faith, unite in seeking:
1. To strengthen one another in a free and disciplined search for truth as the foundation of our religious fellowship;
2. To cherish and spread the universal truths taught by the great prophets and teachers of humanity in every age and tradition, immemorially summarized in the Judeo-Christian heritage as love to God and love to man;
3. To affirm, defend and promote the supreme worth of every human personality, the dignity of man, and the use of the democratic method in human relationships;
4. To implement our vision of one world by striving for a world community founded on ideals of brotherhood, justice and peace;
5. To serve the needs of member churches and fellowships, to organize new churches and fellowships, and to extend and strengthen liberal religion;
6. To encourage cooperation with men of good will in every land.
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In 1981, a nonsexist revision of the Principles and Purposes drafted
by various women's groups was presented to the General Assembly. It caused
great uneasiness, especially among UU Christians, who saw it as tantamount
to writing them out of the UUA. A group of ministers circulated a letter
expressing concern about the lack of any reference to UUism's Christian
roots. It added that "the impending debate on whether or not to amend [the
principles] so as to eliminate the word 'God' has every prospect of becoming
the kind of contest in which, regardless of who wins, our Association will
lose. . . . We believe that it is time to recognize and empower that pluralism
which we are." The ministers called for open dialogue and the appointment
of a committee to study the situation.
Denise Davidoff, who had succeeded Gulbrandsen as UUWF president and
was later to succeed her as moderator, made a bold decision. Even though
it caused a rift among the women delegates, she broke with those who favored
immediate adoption of the proposed draft. Persuaded that a vote that year
would be needlessly divisive and in any case would probably lose, Davidoff
endorsed the proposal that a committee be set up to study the issue and
report back to the GA in a subsequent year. This concession not only avoided
confrontation but led to the formulation of a far more eloquent and inclusive
statement, one that fulfilled the wish voiced by the Rev. George "Kim"
Beach (a signer of the ministers' protest letter) for a "strong" statement
of principles "with religious integrity, intellectual coherence, and literary
quality."
The motion to study the issue passed, the committee was set up, and
it launched what Davidoff has described as "an enormously well-done, grass-roots
process." The Rev. Walter Royal Jones Jr., a parish minister now retired,
who headed the special committee for most of its existence, recalls that
they sent out questionnaires asking congregations and individual UUs for
suggestions about what the new statement of principles might say. While
some respondents expressed skepticism, considering the process a waste
of time, the committee also received many contributions of great merit
which, in turn, it circulated for further comment.
With all the resulting data, the seven committee members met to
start what Jones describes as "the good old process" of posting big sheets
of paper all over the meeting room walls. "We really wanted to assure everyone
that no point of view was going to be left out," says Jones. "We wanted
to say to everyone, You belong." Davidoff says this careful search for
consensus explains why the draft the committee eventually produced was
adopted with relatively few changes and virtually no animosity.
A healing solution
But it took time. The committee had decided to come up with a proposal
that acknowledged UU diversity and to do it on the basis of a continent-wide
consultation with as many congregations and individual members as possible.
They submitted their first report at the Brunswick, Maine, GA in 1982.
"We met on the Bowdoin College campus," Davidoff recalls, "and broke into
small groups to discuss the proposal. John Cummins [the first committee
chair, who resigned almost immediately] had previously asked the UU Women's
Federation to recruit 100 discussion leaders, and I remember a beautiful
day, sitting on the lawn to discuss the language."
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The goal of world community with peace, liberty, and justice for all
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Jones recalls that one committee member, the Rev. Harry Hoehler, came
up with a solution to the problem that had created controversy both at
the 1960 meetings and again in 1981: whether to refer to the deity and
the Judeo-Christian tradition. Hoehler suggested dividing the statement
into two parts: first, the seven principles, followed by references to
five "living traditions we share." (A sixth tradition, earth-centered religions,
was added to the statement in 1995.) No one objected to language about
the "Jewish and Christian teachings which call us to respond to God's love"
when it appeared as part of an uncontroversial summary of historical influences
on UUism.
After further revisions based on the 1982 discussions, the committee
circulated a draft to all congregations that was debated in 1983, and after
some additional changes submitted its final draft to the General Assembly
in 1984, where it was adopted by a wide margin. The final wording, Jones
has said, "suddenly seemed to fall into place" at the committee's final
sessions, "where we literally rearranged almost everything we had done."
At the 1985 GA, it came up for a second vote, as is required for bylaw
changes, and passed with only one dissenting vote. Edward Frost has described
the GA's response to passage as "loud applause, sighs of relief, tears,
and a few shrugs of 'wait and see.'"
Reflections from the chair
Writing in First Days Record, a monthly publication by and for
UU clergy, Walter Royal Jones observes that while most of the wording of
the current Principles and Purposes was new, most of the concepts appeared
in one form or another in the 1961 statement--that is, except for principle
number seven. "Respect for the interdependent web of all existence of which
we are a part," Jones explains, had not been anticipated, yet "its inclusion
was overwhelmingly mandated in the responses received from churches and
fellowships, and its current happy wording emerged from the floor of the
General Assembly, where it was instantly recognized as just the right language."
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Respect for the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part
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Another change Jones considers significant is the switch from "the free
and disciplined search for truth" in the 1961 statement to "free and responsible
search for truth and meaning," suggesting that the search takes place in
community. He also considers notable the adjective "inherent," in place
of "supreme," to qualify the worth of every person, since it recognizes
that people's inner potential can be "hidden or rejected, even betrayed."
Jones reflects that "apart from Quakers and their time-honored preference
for consensus, it is unlikely that the history of religion provides any
comparable example of such intentional and committed use of inclusive,
non-hierarchical processes to produce a guiding statement."
Fifteen years on
Though the Principles and Purposes have served us well since 1985,
Jones is not suggesting that his committee produced a statement for the
ages. After 15 years, he says, "We should not be surprised at some restiveness.
On the one hand, some are uneasy with what they see as a kind of creeping
creedalism in the way we use [the principles]. On the other, there is a
perception of incompleteness, with important, arguably necessary empowering
assumptions about cosmic reality and our particular place in it that 'P
and P' leave unsaid." Still others, he says, are dissatisfied with what
they see as excessive emphasis on the individual, so that "the creative
nature of community and interdependence are only tardily and inadequately
acknowledged."
Nonetheless, no one at the moment is suggesting any drastic revisions.
And yet the commitment to "a free and responsible search for truth and
meaning," as the fourth principle puts it, carries the seeds of its own
obsolescence. Just consider: well into the 20th century, our Unitarian
predecessors used to proclaim and teach their children that we believe
in "The Fatherhood of God, the Brotherhood of Man, the Leadership of Jesus,
Salvation through Character, and the Progress of Mankind Onward and Upward
Forever." Quite apart from the fact that we tend not to use so many capital
letters, we would today have difficulty saying those words without embarrassment
and lots of "sic-ness." Yet the people who did say them were just as
intelligent, as in tune with their times, and as committed to reason and free thinking
as we are. In 2020 (when everyone presumably will have perfect vision),
our current Principles and Purposes may also be perceived to have inadequacies
that demand radical rewriting. And therein lies our genius. It's a process
that is rightly called renewal or regeneration. And that is what has not
changed and, let us hope, will remain unchanged 20 or even 100 years from
now.
Warren R. Ross is contributing editor of the UU World.
UU World XIV:6 (November/December 2000): 34-39.
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