Workshops on Proposed Changes to UU’s 7 Principles
Your delegates to this year’s General Assembly will be asked to vote on the proposed amendments to Article II of the UUA bylaws and want you to share your thoughts about them.
This month the UUA Board is hosting three online workshops to discuss the proposed amendments. UUCM’s GA delegates encourage you to attend these workshops in order to get a better sense of the changes and then help shape UUCM’s stance on whether to adopt them.
- Article II Discussion Workshop on Values and CovenantThursday, May 18, 2023 @ 4pm PT
- Article II Discussion Workshop on Purpose, Inclusion, Freedom of Belief, and Anything Else that RemainsSunday, May 21, 2023 @ 1pm PT
UUCM’s GA delegates will be holding a listening session so they can hear your thoughts before voting at this year’s convention. Stay tuned for more information!
What’s Article II? Article II of the Unitarian Universalist Association (UUA) Bylaws, Principles and Purposes, is the foundation for all of the work of our UUA and its member congregations and covenanted communities. It is the covenant to which all of our congregations and covenanted communities pledge themselves when they become members of our UUA.
Why Change Article II?
Article II is one of the “C” Bylaws, dating to the merger of the American Unitarian Association and the Universalist Association in 1961. Much of the “C” Bylaws reflects compromises that were made in order to achieve merger. Different pieces of the “C” Bylaws were important enough to one side or the other that these were made harder to amend than non-“C” Bylaws. The first major rewrite of the Principles and Purposes post-merger were adopted in 1984. Some slight changes were made after that, but the language is largely unchanged. (See the UU World article “Shared Value” and The UUA Bylaws: A Study in Ambivalence.Help
The Principles guide our actions and priorities, encouraging us to “affirm and promote” core values, while our Sources provide the context and grounding for those Purpose and Principles. This Article states our purpose, our very reason for existing. Section 2.3 commits us to being inclusive, and to replacing barriers that have kept some people and groups from full participation in our faith. Article II ends by ensuring freedom of conscience, and prohibiting creedal tests.
For some religious institutions, the equivalent of Article II would be regarded as a permanent statement of belief. Ours, however, is a Living Tradition. We commit ourselves to regularly revisiting our Principles and Purposes to ensure that we are relevant, that as we grow in understanding, our Principles and Purposes grow, too. Since “new occasions teach new duties”, we must continuously examine our Principles and Purposes to see what is missing, what is no longer important, and whether the language communicates our core values to the current times.
Since then, General Assembly committed the UUA to working toward being an Anti-Racist, Anti-Oppression, and Multicultural Association. Recent events have caused UUs to explore more deeply institutional and cultural oppressions that exist in our Association and its member congregations and covenanted communities.
We are now well into the second quarter of the 21st Century. Our Association has grown in its understanding of systemic oppressions, such as racism, ableism, and heteronormative beliefs. However, many people feel the language of Article II does not reflect these learnings. The UUA Board believes we need an Article II which leads us into the future.
For more information see Article II Study Report – Article II Study Report.