I’m going to spend the long weekend not writing about the Unitarian Universalist Ministers Association (UUMA) and the Unitarian Universalist Association (UUA).
After all,
- I have a newsletter for the Universalist Christian Initiative to write instead (sign up here if you like).
- I also have sermon to write for Pentecost.
- There’s paperwork to catch up on.
- I just got a used copy of E. Brooks Holifield’s Theology in America: Christian Thought from the Age of the Puritans to the Civil War at good price.
- Of course, I’ll listen to Sufjan Stevens. The songs from Call Me By My Name are in my head.
- And so I might read the passes about Gideon, in the book of Judges.
- And I’ll pray a communion service “dry” (without bread, wine or communicants) as a devotion, dedicated to the increase of the ministry. Using Fredrick Henry Hedge’s 1853 service, to be exact.
- I will buy a watermelon if I can find one that looks edible.
- I might even go outside.
I won’t be writing about the following, which is in no way exhaustive:
- Proposals that confuse and conflate congregational and ministerial interests;
- Plans that will embolden cranks to make specious or ideologically-driven charges against ministers (and sucking away energy to find genuine misconductors);
- How this will cause ministers to self-censor, withdraw from public life, grow suspicious and adopt other damaging habits;
- How UUMA membership should not obligatory, and if it produced something of greater value, it wouldn’t have to lock ministers into it;
- Or how “hard cases make bad law.”
I will write about the UUMA and the UUA proposals next week, and in weeks to come. Unless other ministers speak my mind before me, in which case I’ll link from here.
I’m reasonably sure the idea of making UUMA membership mandatory for Ministerial Fellowship would quickly run into legal problems. Freedom of Association is a constitutionally-guaranteed civil right. Any citizen has the right to freely associate, or not associate, with any lawful non-governmental body they wish. To make UUMA membership mandatory would therefore violate the civil rights of those ministers who did not wish to belong to the UUMA.
C. Scot Giles wrote:
I’m reasonably sure the idea of making UUMA membership mandatory for Ministerial Fellowship would quickly run into legal problems. Freedom of Association is a constitutionally-guaranteed civil right.
I’m not a lawyer but I would be surprised to see any court get involved with an internal discussions of ministerial credentialing requirements for any religious organization.
For good or for bad, religious organizations are exempt from many civil rights laws that apply to secular organizations.
After all, our Roman Catholic neighbors can require their clergy to be Roman Catholic and male.
This employment policy would not be legal in a secular setting but the Catholics are exempt from the civil rights laws prohibiting discrimination on the basis of religion and sex.
There may be good reasons against having the UUA MFC requiring UUMA membership for fellowship status. I doubt that civil rights laws that don’t apply to religious groups are among these reasons.