Category: Unitarian Universalist Association

The hubbub at Philocrites is getting rather impassioned, and Philo (among others) is trying to get some product out of the desire and frustration. I’m trying not to be jaded, but I’ve heard murmurs like this before, something kinda happened but not really, and then the desire perished in more frustration. Then you notice formerly committed Unitarian Universalist drift off to other churches, or vanish altogether. Makes you not even want to try. Is it better to be unformed and united?

If some or all of the participants in the thread at Philocrites (plus silent readers) are serious about accomplishing something — note I haven’t hinted at what that might be — then let me suggest these unsorted ideas and warnings:

• A megalithic project will get mired in a desire to be something to all Unitarian Universalists and will prove pallid. I won’t be offended if there’s a popular project that has nothing for me (because I’ll be involved in some project.)
• It has to have a real goal. Neither “Awareness” nor “capacity development” count to me. Nor “dialog.”
• If the projects have costs, they need to be funded internally and fairly, or from easy to find “deep pockets.”
• It needs to have good boundaries with a fair and transparent way to remove disruptive persons. How many times in the Internet age — mailing list, bulletin board, blog — has someone ruined an experience for everyone?
• There needs to “awareness,” “dialog,” and “capacity development” — as a means to an end — with a govermance system appropriate to the medium. Since this discussion has run over blogs, it isn’t a stretch to think any project would be Internet based. Face-to-face governance models just don’t seem to work across the Internet, but models do exist, particularly in Free/Open Source software development teams.

Just random thoughts — feel free to comment.

Despite the small buzz around the PDF release of the Commission on Appraisal Engaging Our Theological Diversity report, I wonder if the more important report for the future of the Unitarian Universalist Association concerns the mundane — but not unimportant — matter of ministerial compensation.

I’ve written before about fair compensation for ministers and church staff, and now more than a year and a half with a secular employer, I think it would be hard to go back to conventional parish ministry. The money’s not there (I’m making more now in a middling position in a non-profit than in my last pastorate), the prestige of past generations isn’t there, but the stress and troubles have multiplied.

The old Total Cost of Ministry formula, I think, gave to a sizable number of parishoners an inflated idea of how much ministers earn. On the other hand, I well remember the mid-year (uncompensated) fee hikes in my crummy individual HMO. Any other clergy out there get the cold sweats writing those SECA checks?

The new model, beginning in 2006, calls for a simple salary plus housing rate, placed on a continuum based on parish size and geography plus benefits. Kudos to the Church Staff Finances people. (But why isn’t fundamentally a UUMA project? Why should ministers be dependent for advocacy on an arm of an organization that has its primary loyalty to the congregation-employers? Not paying my UUMA dues and quitting is the best money I never spent.) Yes, it will make planning salaries a bit harder, but that’s what you’ll need to attract and keep staff.

Download the 2006 salary recommendations and background document here.

Burning question: write about the Unitarian Universalist Association, or watch Sean Connery in You Only Live Twice?

Easily answered.

So, I was looking at the online interface that congregational leaders would use to submit their registration facts to the UUA and saw something new. There’s a new question about weekly attendance, the rationale for which is outline here.

I think it is a good idea, and will give statistics that will more adequately describe the state of the larger fellowship.

But will we, the reading public, have access to these statistics like the other facts are? I think that the Sunday attendance should be reported online. The UCC and Presbyterian Church USA does, so it isn’t hard to think the UUA should.

ChaliceChick, Dave Schroeder (Cogit8tor), Indrax (Heresiology) have each commented how much they didn’t like something about the new UUA flaming chalice logo. I wasn’t keen on it either, but regular readers know there’s a lot about UUA secretariat and General Assembly policies I don’t care for. This seemed pretty minor and easy to pass by. I just showed the new one to Hubby, whose stylistic opinion is flawless, and he said “That’s awful.” So it’s agreed, is it?

Only Cogit8tor’s comment about the new chalice logo being about fifty years old looking didn’t square with me. (The Fidelity Investments parallel made me laugh.) After all, I like the Unitarian chalice emblem from that period much better than anything used recently, or anything of the period the Universalists used. (A globe mostly, not the off-center cross as often mentioned.)

Since a lot of people haven’t seen the old one — I scanned this years ago from an official Unitarian clip art resource — this is for the record. Now, I’ll go back to not caring much about the new logo.

P.s. I wasn’t keen on Indrax’s suggested replacement. Another religion has something pretty darn close to it already.

P.p.s. I was going to mention the gawdawful 70s era “flaming brackets” chalice authorized for being engraved on veterans’ headstones. But it seems the standard was revised, and now your UU — er, “Unitarian Church” — headstone will look like letterhead. Take a look at what’s on offer: some are unpleasantly designed. I can now imagine this senario: “Oh, I didn’t mean Unitarian Church, I meant Buddhist. Or Community of Christ. That is a lamb, right? So either is fine. ”

P.p.p.s. Y’all must look at this.

High on my list of the Unitarian Universalist characteristics I find particularly repugnant is the attempt to uncover vain distinctives. Coupled with this is a tendency to believe our own propaganda (which, I believe, is why the “sixth largest denomination fact” persists; Universalists past were keen to talk up their inevitable progress) and draw strange conclusions.

Thus this tidbit from page 48 of Engaging Our Theological Diversity:

Loving was also valued highly. With little variation by congregation, 82 percent of laypersons and 87 percent of ministers assigned high importance to being people who love.

Now I have that mawkish Sting song Russians running through my head: the one that introduced the West to the notion that “the Russians [might] love their children too.”

Is human love that strange? If the report had said “fifty-five percent of laypersons, and thirty-nine percent of ministers prefer to eat human flesh, but the later group finds it too expensive for anything other than holiday meals” — well, that would be news.

Or is it that we’re supposed to make note that Unitarian Universalists own up to being loving? The COA report makes me wonder if “freedom” “eating” or “breathing air” is equally highly valued. Seeing as this revelation is followed in the next paragraph by the heretics canard (“we choose”), is the implication that non-Unitarian Universalist choose to be unloving, or lacking the other featured virtues like using reason, or being “interconnected”? I rather doubt it, but that the impression one gets from our own words, here and in published sermons.

Perhaps people in other religious groups put other answers before “loving” it is too well assumed to be highlighted.

Well, I fussed that I would read the Commission on Appraisal report when it was available online, and now is it.

Engaging Our Theological Diversity (PDF format) to download at this link.