Our Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Visalia often receives calls – from both members and from other organizations - to join a campaign, petition drive, or letter-writing drive to support various social and environmental justice issues. Some of these campaigns may involve controversial subjects. How do we decide what we can support through committees or the board, compared to when we need to ask the congregation to voice their opinion before we can act?
Unitarian Universalists have long been engaged in controversial social justice issues. Our voice is often in contrast to what seems to be majority opinion, especially in our local conservative area. We are trying to live by our Principles and Purposes and respond to crucial social issues at the same time that we honor the values and traditions of our democratic religious communities. How do we fulfill our mission as a religious institution to care in equal portions about being a community of healing and wholeness, while at the same time answering the call to be engaged in helping to make the world a better place?
We are a religious organization that emphasizes individual freedom of belief and conscience. We are also a religious organization which has a long history of fighting unjust social structures in our society. Our Sixth and Seventh Principles call upon us to act for social justice and to protect the web of life. We affirm every Sunday, “Love is the doctrine of this church… and service is its prayer.” Our theologians and nationally known ministers proclaim that the effectiveness of our faith is determined not so much by the beliefs that we hold but by how we act in the world. We must be involved in service, education, advocacy, witnessing, even community organizing. Our denomination’s 2007 Statement of Conscience on Moral Values in a Pluralistic Society stated: “Arising from our Principles, the common denominators of Unitarianism Universalist values are Compassion, Justice, Equity, The Right of Conscience, Reason, and Respect for Others. As Unitarian Universalists, we have a responsibility to give voice to the moral values on which our faith is grounded, not only with a statement of conscience but through acts of conscience that honor the values we espouse.”
It’s all very nice to applaud the universal principles of peace and justice, but these principles can become abstractions unless we are involved in the concrete issues that people struggle with every day. Yet, reasonable people can differ on the specifics of how to address problems of civil rights, gender equality, criminal justice, and complex environmental issues like global warming. We all want racial equality, but does that mean we support affirmative action, or prefer a “color blind” system? We all want to solve global warming, but do we oppose nuclear power or support it?
Perhaps even more important is the realization that for UUs, we do not work on social justice issues like any other political or issue-driven organization. Instead, we are called to act on social justice from a spiritual center. What this means is that for our religious communities, how the work is done—namely the extent to which it builds community and fosters personal development—is more important than the end goal of promoting justice. If the justice work we do fails to build community—or worse yet destroys it— then we will not have served our congregation – or the world - well.
Under our congregational polity form of governance, each congregation maintains some independence in decision-making even from the Unitarian Universalist Association. The UUA positions are not necessarily automatically the positions that any local UU congregation must follow. Nonetheless, your board (officially, the Executive Committee) believes that it is legitimate to follow the positions of those organizations with which our congregation has voted to become members. This includes not only the UUA, but the UU Ministry for Earth, the California Interfaith Power and Light, and the California Legislative Ministry. Since the congregation approved membership in these organizations, we conclude that these are strong indicators of our passions and priorities. It is not possible to try to do everything. It is important to narrow our passions down to one or two major issues, especially since we are a small congregation.
Our social justice leaders and committee can be effective only if we know our “charge” and focus from the congregation. Even our membership in these organizations shows we are a caring congregation about a variety of issues. For example, the priorities of the UU Legislative Ministry of California include health care reform, marriage equality, clean money for fair elections, and water justice.
We believe it is important to resist the temptation to do "a little bit of everything", as this will only dilute our power. On the other hand, we may be able to sign on to a petition or lend our voice to an existing campaign on issues which are covered by the UU Legislative Ministry or California or by UUA Statements of Conscience.
The Statements of Conscience are the highest social justice priorities for our denomination. Some of them are rather broad, like the most recent 2007 Statement of Conscience on Moral Values in a Pluralistic Society. Some of them are rather specific, like the 2005 Statement of Conscience on Criminal Justice and Prison Reform, which listed a long list of advocacy goals for prison reform. Some of them, like the 2004 Statement of Conscience on Civil Liberties embraced in a broad way the agenda of many civil liberties organizations, including the American Civil Liberties Union, Americans United for Separation of Church and State, Amnesty International USA, The Interfaith Alliance, People for the American Way, the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee, and the Unitarian Universalist United Nations Office. Some of them, like the 2006 Statement of Conscience on Global Warming, have also been a focus for our local congregation. (If you are interested in reviewing these and other social justice statements, see: http://www.uua.org/socialjustice/ ) For all of these, pragmatic implementation may be addressed by the UUA Washington Office for Advocacy, which will guide us in translating the broad Statements to more specific actions, such as positions on issues, including legislation, such as employment discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity, the Iraq occupation, and comprehensive sexuality education.
While the annual UUA General Assembly’s Actions of Immediate Witness (AIW) do not carry the full force of the UUA behind them, we believe we typically will not be led astray by following those adopted AIWs. Again, we would not expect these to become major campaigns for us, but if we can lend our voice in support, that seems appropriate, especially when guided by issues advanced by the Washington Office for Advocacy or our California Legislative Ministry.
Quite often, we will find that the long history of engagement of our Unitarian Universalist Association in social justice issues will provide a source for local policy and action. But absent these guidelines, our congregation may need to have a congregational vote on controversial social issues in the wider community. This means we may not have time to take effective immediate action on some issues. But if a member of our congregation wishes us to advance a favorite cause, we will need to find a way to have congregational discussion, education, and buy-in on the issue. We will look to the leadership of other UU organizations, but only our local congregation can decide on actual positions and priorities on these issues.
The Executive Committee welcomes your feedback on this discussion.
- Harold Wood,
Vice-President & Social Justice Committee
Page last updated July 28, 2007
