The Canadian Unitarian Council became independent of the Unitarian Universalist Association in 2002, and we're now an autonomous organization, directing our own affairs and supporting ourselves collectively as well as within each congregation. As member congregations of the UUA, we had covenanted to affirm and promote the UUA Principles, and at the same 2002 Annual Meeting in which we became independent, we adopted those Principles as our own on an interim basis. Then a CUC Task Force was struck to lead the Canadian congregations through a formal process to revisit the Principles which we "took over" from the UUA and consider how best to make them truly our own.
One of the immediate reactions from many people to the news that a revisiting or revisioning or revising of the Principles was underway was to ask the question, "Can they do that?" - often with a kind of shocked surprise at the very idea. I find that question quite revealing about the presuppositions which many of us have; it suggests to me, at least, that we assume there's some kind of authority or central institution which tells us what we can or can't do. Well - surprise, folks! - there is no "they" deciding what we can do; there's only "we", the congregations and the members and friends within the congregations, and the Board of the Canadian Unitarian Council who are elected by us. And yes, we can revisit and change the Principles if we want to, or decide to keep them exactly the same, or (if we wanted to get really revolutionary) ditch the whole idea and manage without any written statement at all!
I have found in talking to newcomers to our congregation and even in my own thinking as a seasoned Unitarian, that one of the hardest concepts to get across, even though paradoxically it's often the thing which most attracts people to us, is the idea of individual freedom of belief, congregational polity (which is the phrase that describes each congregation's independence and autonomy), and the absence of a governing body. The flip side of it is that there's no Big Daddy or Mommy taking care of us as congregations either - we're not only free to do things our own way, but we're responsible for doing them - for setting up our own structures and carrying out our own programmes, and financing the whole shebang from our own resources. You'll be hearing more about that in the next two or three weeks. Suffice it to say, for now, that yes, we are free to revision our principles, and moreover we have the responsibility for carrying out that task for ourselves. Not only we can, but we must - no one will do it for us!
The "revisioning" that we're called on to do is consistent with the intentions of those who framed and adopted the UUA Principles in 1985 and wrote into their bylaws a requirement to revise them every 15 years. As part of a "Living Tradition", rather than a static institution, we need to regularly revisit our statements and reflect on our current context. I was a member of the Hamilton congregation in the early eighties, and I well remember the long-drawn-out process of consultation and redrafting and voting that went on for several years before the final adoption of the Principles. We had workshops and study sessions within the congregation and at district meetings, and sent our thoughts and opinions in to the committee responsible for coming up with the final statement, and debated afterwards, too, about whether it had come out just right. I think the process will be much the same this time; it will take time and careful thought to arrive at some expression of values appropriate for our time and place. Next week we'll begin a series "revisiting" each of the Principles as they now stand, and thinking about how appropriate or otherwise they are our current context, but for today let's just "focus on the process".
The Statement of Principles Task Force met for the first time early last March. Already there had been approval of a very slight adaptation of the UUA Principles - we added a couple of "u's" to adjust for Canadian spelling and made the opening line read: "We the member congregations of the Canadian Unitarian Council" (instead of the Unitarian Universalist Association). This rather typically Canadian compromise was meant to ensure that congregations who ended their membership with the UUA would not feel they were without any statement of Principles, while allowing time to do a much more in-depth review.
The Principles Task Force was set up with as much diversity as possible in terms of age, region, theology and so on, and to reflect the old, the new and the future. It includes: a youth, a francophone, a Universalist, a second generation UU, an African Canadian, several new members and two ministers. All eight members are passionate Unitarians! The Chair is Wilf Innerd from the Unitarian Universalist Church of Olinda, and there's Denis Barsalo from the Unitarian Church of Montreal, Kalvin Drake from the First Unitarian Congregation of Toronto, John Hopewell from the First Unitarian Church of Victoria, Samantha Magnus, the youth representative from the Unitarian Church of Calgary, the Rev. Wendy McNiven from the Unitarian Fellowship of Kelowna, Rev. Mark Morrison-Reed of Toronto, former CUC Board President, and (ex officio) Mary Bennett, CUC Executive Director.
Where to start on such a task? Well, the team has begun the work of developing materials and finding ways to receive contributions from all of us. They've already been meeting as a team and with people from beyond the team - at a recent session, Rev. Wendy McNiven, led some exercises in which participants lined up according to different criteria such as preference for face-to-face communication or email; how much do you like chocolate; and whether you're primarily a "thinking" or "feeling" personality. I can imagine that we might be able to come up with all kinds of illuminating criteria for this kind of exercise - let's just try a sample now, if you're willing to go along with me.
Think about whether you place most importance on the individual or the community.
(Stand up - or raise your hand -- if you choose the individual ... the community)
Consider the relative value to you of justice or compassion.
(Stand up if you choose justice ... compassion)
What's more important to you, acceptance of how things are or growth into what can be?
(Stand up for acceptance ... or growth)
Which comes first as a value for you, the search for truth or the search for meaning?
(Stand up for truth ... or meaning)
What matters most to you, minority rights or the democratic method of decision making?
(Stand up for minority rights ... or democratic decisions)
Which would be your first goal, world community or liberty for all?
(Stand up for world community ... or liberty for all)
And finally where do you place your priority, the interdependent web or human potential?
(Stand up for the web of existence ... or human potential)
I hope that exercise may have given you a feeling for the complexity of the task which the Principles Task Force has before them. Struggling with priorities and subtleties of value is a mammoth undertaking, and trying to ensure sufficient representative feedback is possibly even more daunting. (One of my colleagues recently said, "Perhaps we should just put John Hopewell and Brian Kiely in a room together to redraft the Principles, and let them have at it, with perhaps an assist from Phillip Hewett - it would be much simpler!") It would be simpler, but it's not the way our movement works. We have to do it ourselves, as many of us who are willing. Workshops are being planned for the immediate future to help individuals explore basic questions like Why am I a Unitarian or Universalist? What can our movement offer Canada and the world? We'll all have a chance to participate, at every stage along the way.
In case you're interested in the timetable for all this - well, it's not surprisingly a little behind schedule already, but this is roughly how it will go: The task force is working on a three year plan. Material will come out to congregations during this 2003-2004 congregational year which will allow us to think and discuss among ourselves what it means to be Canadian U*Us. Then, before the 2004 CUC AGM in Edmonton, there will be a survey to quantify and qualify results of our "soul searching" and discussion. The results of that survey will be presented at the 2004 AGM. The theme for that Annual Meeting will be related to the Principles. Then at the 2005 CUC in Peterborough, a draft will be presented which could finally be adopted in 2006.
In the meantime, there will be lots of opportunity to explore and discuss. In fact, Mary Bennett suggests, "..... since we have this wonderful opportunity for introspection, why not start from scratch and see if we cannot create something truly unique? The process of finding out who we are and what it means to be a Canadian Unitarians and/or Universalists will be as important as the completed statement of principles." And Mary suggests that the process can begin if we start thinking about what it truly means to be a Canadian Unitarian and/or Universalist and what invisible forces hold us together as a religious organization. She encourages us to talk about it with friends and members of the congregation, and to take advantage of opportunities to speak our minds and exchange ideas with others. And Mary has provided some questions to get us started, which I'll present to you now, with pauses for your own reflection now -- and later.
1. What are your deepest yearnings?
2. What would be missing from your life if there was no U*U congregation. Or if you hadn't found it?
3. How would someone know what your values are?
4. What is your personal ministry?
5. What can U*U s do for Canada and the world?
6. What are the shared values and loyalties that bind us together as U*U s in Canada and make us unique?
Not surprisingly, since we are such an ornery and independent bunch of people in the Unitarian movement, there's been some resistance to the whole idea of revisioning our Principles. I mentioned the suggestion that we should simply select 2 or 3 of our most revered people and let them write a new version, but the feelings are more complicated than a sense that Task Forces and Committees don't do well with these things. I've seen and heard more of what my ministerial colleagues say than anything else. Here's an example:
"The present draft of the Principles emerged at a time when there was greater simularity among us. The theist/humanist contest was largely over. We had recovered from the dual shocks of the Holocaust and the Bomb, and were fairly optimistic once again. The full impact of what we are doing to our environment had not quite hit. While we knew that power corrupts, we had not seen this demonstrated so forcefully by the world's one remaining super power. The spiritual vacuum created by children being reared in a totally secular manner had not yet sent so many searching in Eastern religions and in the human potential movement.
"Today there seems to me less basis for consensus among us, and I fear that an effort to arrive at a new set of Principles may prove divisive, creating more heat than light. I would have preferred to just add those extra 'u's' and leave well enough alone for the present. I very much hope the Task Force will prove me wrong."
But another colleague responded:
We're wrestling like Jacob with the [angel] to identify ourselves in the midst of the sacred. My own view is that the wrestling doesn't happen just once, that it is ongoing, and that the results of the wrestling often shifts what and how I articulate the sacred.
None of us know how long the current Principles ..... will last, but I'd think generally we don't expect them to last even a century, let alone forever and for all.
There you have it, my friends. There's passion about our Principles, on all sides. Let me end with a renewed encouragement to you to begin thinking about these things and to wrestle with identifying ourselves in the midst of the sacred. And I'll come down on the side of revisioning, often, and with much care to find some correspondence between the words and forms that we use and the reality of our lives. As many of you know, I've just returned from a visit to Guyana, and last Sunday I attended a Lutheran Church Service led by a Canadian Pastor who's become a friend of John's. The church, about the same size as this, was packed - for two services - and for the celebration of Harvest Home, roughly equivalent to Thanksgiving. It was delightful and exuberant and heartfelt - and I learned a word coined by the pastor which I love: "Thanksliving". But I couldn't help being struck by three anomalies, three things which could have used revisioning. They didn't have much to do with theology - I have no problem with accepting that Lutherans see things differently from me. They had to do with relevance and appropriateness.
We sang one of my very favourite hymns which we don't often hear in Canada (but remember that Guyana used to be British Guiana) - "We plough the fields and scatter/ The good seed on the land" which refers to how God "... sends the snow in winter/ The warmth to swell the grain". Well, the day God sends snow to Guyana, or winter for that matter, is a day we should get really worried! Surely it wouldn't take much to revise this hymn to make it more real for the tropical climate in which we were gathered that day?
The front of the church was decorated with wonderful floral displays, all the gorgeous tropical blooms of the area - along with the present-day version of the old sheafs of wheat, loaves of beautiful home-baked bread, and produce from the fields. It consisted of cans of fruit and vegetables, and packages of sliced bread in plastic bags! Somehow the desired aesthetic effect was lacking ...... I'm not sure what the answer to that is; I only know that it would be worth revisiting and revisioning what it means to adorn the sacred space with the fruits of the land. What worked once is not so appropriate now.
And, because it was a special Sunday, in place of the Apostles Creed the Nicene Creed was recited. Again, I don't want to get into the theology at all, and of course creeds are not our Unitarian thing anyway. But it struck me as almost humorously anachronistic to hear this church full of mostly poor and not highly-educated people, whose daily lives are a struggle to survive with decency, proclaiming, as if it mattered, that Jesus the Son of God was begotten not created, and other such phrases. Surely, surely, there are better ways of talking about their faith!
In contrast to this, I attended an informal prayer service conducted by the student nurses who John teaches and who were to start writing some important exams the next day. They sang choruses of praise and prayed from their hearts for confidence and help in acquitting themselves well in the exams, so that they would bring honour to their families and be able to be good health professionals in the future. There was not one scrap of hypocrisy or irrelevance in the room. Never mind the theology; it's all our stumbling attempt to make sense of our human limitations anyway. What mattered, for me at least, was that religion was being expressed in words that fit the situation. I hope, I hope, that we can try to do that.
And just in case we should be under the misapprehension that our values must take a particular form or even go under the title of "Principles" I'll read you what the Unitarians in Britain use as their undergirding statement. It's from the General Assembly of Unitarians and Free Christian Churches, and it's called "Unitarian Ways":
"We believe that:
That's simple, isn't it? I hope that it and a multiplicity of other views may inspire you as you wrestle with your own revisioning. May the conversation continue and be fruitful. So may it be.