BEYOND SPIRITUALITY
by Rev. Carl Scovel
minister emeritus of King's Chapel in Boston
recipient of the UUA's highest honor, the Distinquished Service Award

This is the Berry Street Lecture from 1994. For more on this longest-running lecture series in America, go to www.uuma.org/berrystreet/.

The UUCF published this essay along with a wonderful post-lecture story called "Beyond The Lecture" which we hope to post here on the blog as well soon. Until then, enjoy and comment on this illuminating essay. For more of Carl Scovel's writings, see the UUCF double anthology The UU Christian Reader or our special book of Rev. Scovel's writings, An Easter Faith, or the Skinner House book Not Far From Home at www.uua.org/skinner.

Beyond Spirituality
Carl Scovel
Berry Street Essay, 1994

Delivered at the Unitarian Universalist Association General Assembly
Fort Worth, Texas
June 23, 1994

I am grateful to Berry pickers Laurel Hallman, Tom Wintle, and Lucy Hitchcock for selecting this slightly overripe grape for the pressing. May it yield a decent juice if not a heady wine. For it is an honor to address my colleagues on matters of ministry, especially in the long tradition of this lectureship, more than 1,700 miles from the corner of Federal and Berry Streets in Boston. It has been more than 174 years since Channing, in 1820, first addressed this conference on reason’s role in receiving revelation. Since then the world has changed so radically that we think more now of survival than of progress, more about avoiding evil than achieving perfection, and more, perhaps, about our souls than either reason or revelation.

Or so, at least, I address you—my peers whose business, like mine, is soul business, and who choose to stand at the uneasy boundary between the divine and the human, the holy and the humane. For there on that boundary we are constantly tempted in our loneliness to domesticate the divine, to make it easy, common, saleable, eventually irrelevant. As colleagues we face another danger—namely, to share with each other only the tales, technology, strategy, and sociability of our trade, and sharing only that, leave each other lonely in that one realm which has touched us most profoundly—the realm of the soul, the realm of the spirit.

Let me tell you of a dream I had last fall. I dreamed I was at this conference in Fort Worth, sitting on a hill at dusk or dawn, the whole sky suffused with pale orange light, a purple mist among the valleys. Sitting on hundreds of other hills as far as I could see were my colleagues, each alone, upon his hill, her hill, each contemplating the others. And that was my dream’s sense of where we were.

I realized on waking that this dream reflected my concern about this lecture—namely, that I would not be able to communicate to you what has touched and moved me most deeply as a Christian, that I would end up either talking to myself or groping for some banal commonality as a ground of discourse. I even thought most briefly of calling Rudi Nemser and telling him to find another speaker. But a call, as you know, is a call, and so I begin with where I think we may all begin—with spirituality.

But what is it? What is spirituality? Note my definition, please. As I hear the word being used, it speaks to me first of all of an individual yearning for and reaching for some experience and some conviction of that which is greater than self, yet fulfilling of self.

I do not use the word “spirituality” to describe behavior patterns, such as lighting candles or a chalice, praying, meditating, sharing concerns. Spirituality, the yearning and reaching, may lead to behavior patterns, but I hear it used to describe the motive force for behavior. I hear it as the primal, inchoate, diffuse need, often indefinable at the onset.

When someone comes to see me and say something like, “I’m not sure why I’m here. My life seems to be going pretty well. My job’s OK. I seem fine with my spouse (or partner). I just feel like there’s something I’m missing,” when I hear that, I have a strong sense that we will end up discussing spirituality. The speaker’s very vagueness at the outset betrays the seriousness of the enterprise at hand.

I called spirituality an individual yearning and groping. As you know, it is more than that. It is a movement. In the last decade we have seen in our country a growing interest in and desire for rituals, reading, retreats, workshops, disciplines, and conversations which enhance the life of the soul. We’ve seen this in our won churches and fellowships—in requests for sermons and classes and explorations dealing with “something more.” More than what? More that what Enlightenment humanism and Victorian optimism and scientific so-called certitude have been able to provide. And we as ministers, often ill-equipped by tradition, training, experience, and assumption, we are being called upon to respond to these inchoate requests for “something more.” Spirituality is a public as well as private desire, a collective as well as an individual need.

But let us be clear. Let us not rejoice too soon in this wave of spirituality. Let us remember that the longing does not per se create faith; the desire itself does not bring fulfillment; the hunger does not automatically lead to fullness. The longing, the desire, and the hunger must be focused and answered with some form if they are to grow in the life of the spirit.

It’s like music. Almost everyone can enjoy music and create music, but there is no generic “music.” To enjoy and create one must focus on a form—folk, jazz, rock, showtune, choral, string trio, symphony. The need for music must be answered through specific forms. And so with spirituality. To go deeper, we must focus.

And precisely here we hit the problem. We encounter the threat of spirituality. Unfocused spirituality is easy, mild, harmless, eclectic, almost entertaining. Focused spirituality is a threat. For then it becomes real.

Focused spirituality threatens our place in our familiar communities—families, workplace, neighborhood, and church, especially church. I think of the woman who came 300 miles to me for baptism; she did not wish, she said, to hurt the feelings of her local fellowship. I think of a colleague who wears a cross concealed from the congregation. I think of another colleague, recently returned from a retreat, who said to me, “Of course this retreat puts me at odds with some of my people. And I’m here to serve them. What do I do now?”

As people grow in the life of the spirit, they become clear on what is essential, more centered on the simple power of the soul and less subject to manipulation. And their change can be a threat to others who sense the change and react in irritation and disease. We see this often in the families of some recovered alcoholics. We can stand almost anything except a loved one’s new life.

As the diffuse potential of spirituality comes to focus in a form, what appeared as mild and even appealing may seem like a threat both to the person and the group. The grower begins to see what he or she might lose—the illusion of control over his or her life, the comfortable quilt which has excused so little transformation, the identity of victim, half-competent, or cripple which has left them an irresponsible bystander on the road of history.

When the woman with the flow of blood went out of her house to look for Jesus, and when Bartimaeus, the loud, blind beggar, called Jesus to come, they were both taking a risk. They were getting ready to surrender not only their disabilities, but their identity as disabled people. They were trusting Jesus to heal them. Small wonder he said to them, “Your own faith has healed you.” To grow in the life of the spirit is to change one’s identity and one’s direction.

And so we encounter resistance to growing in soul—in ourselves, and in others. We encounter it in subtle and not-so-subtle ridicule: in misrepresentation of what soul-life means, in outright opposition (“Look, if that’s what you want, fine—but find another church.”). I have come to understand the frequent opposition to Christianity among us as something more than bad memories of Baptist preachers, as more than legitimate anger with the Christian right, as more than reaction to Christian arrogance and cruelty. This opposition is also resistance to spiritual growth itself, and in some societies this opposition is institutionalized.

A member of my church and I some years ago made a presentation on prayer to a UU conference group. I later asked her how she read the audience’s response to our presentation. She answered, “They were warm, sincere, and kind but we were in an area that was very uncomfortable for them. I saw an expression: ‘What are they talking about?’ We were alien. I wanted to tell them that I used the Jesus prayer (the Orthodox “prayer of the heart”) but I just said ‘mantra’. I felt sorry for them because they were truly looking for something more.”

As I approach the thesis of this lecture, I must state now two assumptions which contradict our historical attitude toward faith, but which, I believe, are essential to an understanding of what lies beyond spirituality.

My first assumption is this. Belief shapes experience.

Yes, I know. For centuries, or at least since Emerson, we have assumed that “experience” is the raw material, the data, the facts which form our understanding of what is real. We have assumed that experience shapes belief. We have believed what we see, hear, touch, taste, and smell, and how we react to those sensory observations is the basis for each one saying for herself or himself, “this is true” or “this is not true.” That’s been our assumption.

But it seems to me that what we perceived and how we respond to it depends upon what we assume. For example, two people find themselves stuck in traffic on the Tobin Bridge at 6:15 p.m. on Friday afternoon. One curses, fumes, gets red; his blood pressure and pulse rate and respirations per minute rise; and when he gets home, he rants and raves about the idiots who clutter up the bridge.

Another driver sits in that same traffic jam, shakes her head, laughs slightly and says, “Well, here we are again!” and turns on NPR. Same traffic, heat, immobility. Same situation. Two totally different experiences. Why? I suggest to you it is because we see in these two people two very different belief systems. I wouldn’t be surprised if the second was a Buddhist, or at least a praying Christian.

Psychiatrist Phillip Kavanaugh in his most helpful book, Magnificent Addiction, has this to say:

It may surprise you to discover that the most powerful system in our bodies, the one that controls all other systems, is actually the belief system. More than anything else, more than what we eat or drink or (even) feel, we are what we believe….Proof of the power of our beliefs has been around for centuries but there is increasing scientific evidence that beliefs profoundly affect every bodily system, particularly the immune system which influences our resistance to illness and our ability to heal.

Kavanaugh then cites in support of this statement, one study of twenty-five women in a farming community in Idaho and how they recovered from cancer, taken from a book entitled You’ll See It When You Believe It.

Please understand that when I say “belief,” I do not mean something only thought of said. I do not mean mental assent or verbal articulation. By “belief” I mean (in the New Testament sense of the word) that which is assumed and practiced as real, an assumption to which one entrusts oneself and one’s life. That is belief, as I understand it, and in that sense I reiterate my first assumption: belief shapes experience.

And now the second assumption. Community shapes belief.

Again, I wish to contradict Emerson—this time on his understanding of individualism, even though at points I accept and celebrate it. But we have overstated his case and what worked for America’s bard on the boards of America’s lyceums and in his secluded home in Concord does not with equal force apply to us who live and work in the midst of intense cities, towns, neighborhoods, congregations, and the global village.

Yes, we know the individual can shape the community but we also know that community does shape the belief of its members. In certain communities it is difficult, if not impossible, to believe certain things. Put it another way: faith is collective as well as personal. Communities tend to perpetuate certain systems of belief and exclude others.

Edwin Friedman has shown us the powerful effect of family systems on their members for good or ill. And he has shown that the destructive power of those systems continues to do harm until certain members of the family become aware of that power and counteract it.

If we are to grow in faith, if we are to go beyond the initial stages of spiritual exploration, we must identify the constructive and destructive faith systems in our own religious communities—in our churches and fellowships—in our professional alliances, in our Association. We must know and name these systems. I will identify two.

The first is denominational conformity. I refer to an implicit and at times explicit assumption that to be able to claim the name Unitarian Universalist one must make certain kinds of statements and perform certain kinds of actions. Even without the reminders of my UU Republican friends, I know that time and time again our continental resolutions and local conversations assume a single-mindedness on public issues which I can hardly call liberal. Time and again in our Association people have initiated legislation to force congregations into certain types of behavior. Recently a colleague spoke of his church as the “local franchise.” (We’re getting our polity from McDonald’s!) The past chair of the Ministerial Fellowship Committee assures the delegates of the Living Tradition ceremony that his committee will protect them. May we all be protected from such protection.

A recent visitor to our church says to our parish administrator, “You don’t have a flaming chalice, do you?” “No, we don’t.” “All right, but you do believe in the seven principles, don’t you?”

And I wish I had a dollar, just one dollar, for every time that I or one of King’s Chapel’s delegates to GA or one of the guides at our church has been asked the inevitable question, “How can you be a UU and still be Christian?” My response to that question is, “Why, in 1994, are we still being asked this question? Let’s get on with it.”

I abhor any semblance of denominational conformity not just because it stands against the legacy of Channing, Emerson, Parker, Ballou, and the whole history of a freely gathered association of churches and fellowships; but I resist such conformity because it lodges within the minds of clergy and laity and becomes the silent, unseen, unheard censor murmuring in tones too low for consciousness, “You may think this. You may not think that.” And I’d say the same thing if I were speaking to Baptists, Catholics, Episcopalians, or Methodists.

Second, I warn against professional conformity, the reduction of our role as religious leaders to a mere technocracy. I am uneasy with the argument that we as clergy are just as good as lawyers, doctors, and professors. Of course we are. We’re just not paid as much. So what? I am uneasy with the bureaucratization of our lives. I am uneasy with any action that does not take seriously our call. First of all, we were called to this work, and unless we grow in that call throughout our years of ministry we become sad and profitless technicians.

Where then do I lead with all this prolegomena? To what I call the Great Surmise. Let me approach it this way.

Some things we do not surmise, but know. We know that we are finite, have an end. We know that behind every discovery and disclosure lies a mystery. We know that there is energy and order in this universe, the principle which Heraclitus (in 500 BC) named “logos.” We know that there is fate; one person falls victim to cancer and another does not; one village is swept away by flood, another stands. And we know that we are free to make decisions and act, yet our freedom is circumscribed by genes, fate, destiny, and history. These things we know—mystery, energy, order, fate, freedom, finitude—but together they do not constitute a faith.

We also know that spirituality is not simply the product of fear, frustration, or bad digestion. We know that our yearning for meaning and fulfillment is given in our very being. So! Follow that yearning, need, reaching to its source, to our creation, to our createdness and surmise with me, if you will, that this yearning, this reaching, this need, is no accident, no psychic atavism, but a reflection of that reality from which we come.

The Great Surmise says simply this: At the heart of all creation lies a good intent, a purposeful goodness, from which we come, by which we live our fullest, to which we shall at last return. And this is the supreme reality of our lives.

This goodness is ultimate—not fate nor freedom, not mystery, energy, order nor finitude, but this good intent in creation is our source, our center, and our destiny. And with everything else we know in life, the strategies and schedules, the technology and tasks, with all we must know of freedom, fate and finitude, of energy and order and mystery, we must know this, first of all, the love from which we were born, which bears us now, and which will receive us at the end. Our work on earth is to explore, enjoy, and share this goodness, to know it without reserve or hesitation. “Too much of a good thing,” said Mae West, “is wonderful.” Sound doctrine.

Do you see how the Great Surmise stands all our logic and morality on its ear? Neither duty nor suffering nor progress nor conflict—not even survival—is the aim of life, but joy. Deep, abiding, uncompromised joy.

And therefore, the symbol of the kingdom, the realm of the universally elect, is neither a lecture, nor a workshop, nor a demonstration, nor the revolutionaries mounting the barricades. The symbol is a supper, from which no one shall be excluded, save by choice. Where does most radical church action begin? With the church’s attempt to feed people—either meals or ideas. This gospel, this good news, begins with the faith, in Auden’s words, “that God will cheat no one, not even the world, of its triumph.”

And this is the good news, the gospel of apokatastasis, which we find the writings of Clement and Origen of Alexandria, Lactantius, Julian of Norwich, John Donne, William Law, Kierkegaard, and in lovely, lonely John Murray, stuck on the New Jersey coastline (What a fate!) ‘til he agreed to preach “God’s everlasting love and kindness.”

This proclamation of God’s unconquerable love lies at the heart of the teachings of that Protestant theologian, held to be the liberal nemesis par excellence, Karl Barth, who argued that even unbelief could not prevail against God’s grace, and that this world is no cesspool but the theatre of God’s glory.

We find this gospel in Robert Capon’s novel, Exit 36. He writes:

OK, then, Universalism. What should it be aimed at? Individuals? No, because if you do that you turn it into a half-truth…namely that the individual human will has nothing whatsoever to do with the ultimate universal feast. God will force you into a wedding garment whether you like it or not…which…won’t wash.

So don’t aim at individuals. Aim it at the constitution of the universe. Then it becomes the whole truth. Nobody is outside the Mystery of Reconciliation. Everyone is pre-destined to the Party. But everyone has a choice of how to attend the Party.

…The difference between the saved and the damned is that the saved are willing to step out and explore what God remembers, while the damned insist on hanging around in what God has forgotten.

These are among the testimonies to God’s love that I have read.

But what changed my life and moved me to speak today and brought me down from my private Olympus was my own discovery, or the divine disclosure, that I, who trusted least, could trust this love, that I, who believed so little, could believe it, that I, who wished to be above all self-sufficient, could receive it, that in my own imperfect way I could even sometimes live a little bit of it; and that I could do this, not because I was good, moral, clever, or wise, but because that love, that good intent at life’s own center, was beginning to transform me, not as I expected (God’s other name, after all, is surprise) but most surely and most steadily.

This comes perilously close to arrogance of the worst sort, and I know it, but I would not be faithful to the love that has been faithful to me if I did not acknowledge this power and this acceptance, and its initiative in my life even if (God forbid) I should betray it tomorrow.

I have discovered with the psalmist that we shall see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living. (Psalm 27:13)

What I have read in the texts and what I have believed and received I have also seen and heard in the lives of others: in the strange old cynic who died full of peace; in the young man with AIDS who fed us on his faith (he didn’t need our help); in the lives of countless parishioners who became free from self-doubt and repression and began to live their own souls’ journeys; in colleagues who shared with me their spirit-struggles and victories; and yes, even in those who denied their spirituality, and lived in wrath and sadness after that denial. From them all I learned.

Sadly but truly even the hells of this earth show darkly and inversely God’s good intent, if only because we know such places to be hell, to be such gross perversions of our created goodness. In its own curious way, this whole earth, through praise or perversion, testifies to goodness at its center and our freedom to choose it or lose it.

And yes, I find this in the faiths of other great traditions. Oddly it is only after my own immersion in Christian scripture, sacrament, and society that I could identify with and feel enthusiasm for the faith and worship of non-Christians. Time and again my own tradition gave me points at which I could identify with theirs, and as a Christian I can sense divine benevolence within the Torah, the Tao, the Five Pillars of Muslim wisdom, and the Eightfold Path, as I do most deeply in Christ’s ministry and death, renascence, and life within us as the Holy Spirit.

Where then, in what direction, does the Great Surmise, the source of our own spirituality, point us? For those of you who have heard me with reserved judgment, I invite you to explore that Surmise as a possibility in your life, in your parish, in history, and in the very structure of the cosmos. For those of you who feel touched and moved by the presence of divine love, I say that we must follow its call. We must know it and name it. But first we must receive it.

We must therefore abandon our role as ministers, forget that we are preachers, pastors, leaders in our town or city, set aside all identity, even as liberals, UUs, parents, and children, and to open ourselves to that one relationship which is most intimate, empowering, and accepting—our relationship with the holy.

Two things are necessary for that.

First, we need some discipline. We need some practice or practices of body, mind, and spirit which help us put away our addictions and idolatries, which clear our heads of cultural illusions, which clear our souls, and empty them to be that place of holy consciousness where we may meet, as friend and guide and healer, the divine in our own lives. We need some discipline, some practice. I don’t know how one can move beyond the first stage of spirituality without the focus forced and formed by discipline.

And, second, in order to receive this relationship we must be nourished by a community of faith which believes in the Good Intent and celebrates it. That community might be our own church or fellowship. More likely it is not. And if it’s not, that’s no one’s fault—not theirs, not ours. After all we are here to serve our people. They are not here to serve us.

And so it’s both legitimate and necessary to seek our center in another place—at a retreat house, with a director, a master or mistress of meditation, at an evening service in a black church, through Orthodox Easter, at Passover with friends or family, in Buddhist chanting or silence. Somewhere where we must come as recipients and be nourished by divine benevolence.

First we receive and then, to complete the circle, we share, we name, we profess. That’s not easy in either a pious church or an angry fellowship. It’s not easy, but if we do not share what has been most nourishing and precious to us, how can we call ourselves ministers?

We must share our faith with each other as colleagues, and we must learn to share our faith. We know how to talk about fund drives, preaching, counseling, stress, sabbaticals, angst, our lives, our loves, our failures. Could we learn, I wonder, how to talk to each other about our faith, that stirring at the center of our soul? Could we share on that level of intimacy and be strengthened by such conversation?

I think of the significant conversations I’ve had with my colleagues—with Libby, Sue, Deane, Laurel, Barbara Merritt, Bob Doss (God bless him), with Ruppert and Roy, and Bob Senghas on Buddhism (at the Rochester G.A.), with Robbie and Janne—how much these people gave me in our discussions of faith. And are not such conversations part of our ministry to each other?

For the aim of all this, the aim of moving beyond spirituality, is transformation. No head trip, no heart trip, no success trip, no status trip, but to be transformed. The aim of love is to help us become the one we were meant to be, to live the life that is our life, to give the gifts that are our gifts, to become incarnations of the love that shaped us.

Beyond spirituality lies the Great Surmise, a life lived in witness to the inherent love at the heart of all creation.

No contemporary has written of this better than Trappist Thomas Merton, who died in Bangkok during a visit to the Far East. A few days before his death, at the end of a conference of Hindu, Buddhist, and Christian contemplatives he spoke ex tempore this prayer and with his words I will close my address.

Oh God, we are one with You. You have made us one with You. You have taught us that if we are open to one another, You dwell in us. Help us to preserve this openness and fight for it with all our hearts…Fill us then with love and let us be bound together and (when) we go our diverse ways, united in the spirit which makes you present to this world…a witness to the Ultimate Reality that is love. Love has overcome. Love is victorious. Amen.

Christian Voices In Unitarian Universalism
A Sermon by Rev. Ron Robinson, Executive Director, UUCF
Red River UU Church, Denison, TX and Church of the Restoration, Tulsa
August 13 and August 20, 2006


Due to my UUCF ministry, I get to preach on this topic a lot around the country, but it is always a challenge to try to do so in one sermon, one visit. I envy my former minister, Rev. John Wolf at All Souls in Tulsa, who used to do back to back sermons. One on Why I Am Not a Christian, and one on Why I Am a Christian. So much depends upon which Jesus tradition and ancient path one follows after stepping through the door of that word Christian.

This is nothing new. It has been that way for 2,000 years. In many ways today’s progressive, inclusive Christians of the 21st Century are most like those of the First Century. There have always been multiple voices of how people respond to the spirit of Jesus in their lives and world—that’s why even in the New Testament there are four different gospels, not to mention the other gospels.

Keeping these voices alive in our own historic tradition, giving them room to grow and change, has been one of the missions of the UUCF since it was formed in 1945 in by leading Unitarian clergy and laity in the New England area—including the person who would later become the first president of the UUA in 1961 when the two liberal religious bodies merged. Because at the time UU Christianity was so engrained into the church life of New England, I think it would have been almost unthinkable for those early leaders to imagine that the UUCF offices--which were once in its own building in downtown Boston, and most recently were located for several years in the historic 1635 First Church of Christ, Unitarian, of Lancaster, Mass.—that those offices would someday be located in the Tulsa, Oklahoma, area.

Still perhaps shocking to some today, both in New England and out here. In New England they say about the UUCF “It’s where?” and out here they say “It’s what?”

Of course Unitarian Universalism was different out here too in 1945. In Oklahoma, we had only two Unitarian churches, First Church in Oklahoma City and All Souls in Tulsa. But to give you something of the historical theological lay of the land, both of those churches back then included in worship the Lord’s Prayer. Even a few years later in 1949 when a small Unitarian fellowship was started in Bartlesville, OK, it first identified itself as a church for practical Christianity which was seen as something similar to the term “pure Christianity” upon which the American Unitarian Association was founded in 1825.

I lay out a little of this background as preamble to my sermon title, which comes from the recent Skinner House Book published by the UUA, called Christian Voices in Unitarian Universalism. Now, I expect to some still, both UU and Christians outside of the UUA, that title might be a little shocking or provocative, raising the old old questions of “How can you be X and Y at the same time?” Actually, if I’d been picking the title of the book, I’d have gone with an even more radical reversal of the title and called it “Unitarian Universalist Voices in Christianity.” Catch the more challenging difference?

Let me now give you a glimpse of some of the voices in the book so you can see the diversity, then I will put these voices in context. Their full stories of their journeys, recounted in the book, are amazing but here is a sampler.

From Dave Dawson: --“I share a desire for the freedom to test the outer limits of my Christian faith. Within my church I am not told I am wrong, just looked at quizzically when I say I have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ…I remain a UU Christian as a witness to those in mainline Christianity that, yes, universal salvation is alive and well, and it is a beautiful option for those people mired in shame-based churches.
From Anita Farber-Robertson: --“It was not, however, going to be enough to want Jesus in my life. I was going to have to claim him, and let him claim me. I was going to have to say, “Yes, this is my path. You are my guide, my teacher, and my savior, for without you my soul would get brittle, my mouth grow bitter, my heart hard.”
From Terry Burke: --“My baptism remains central to my religious self-understanding. As part of the confession of faith that Carl Scovel had me write, I said, “I believe that God seeks a loving, dialogical relationship with humanity, and that the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ calls us to reflect that sacrificial love in our lives. The cross and the faithful community proclaim that it is more important to love than to survive and that love is stronger than death.”
From Robert Fabre: --“So Unitarian Universalism was, for me, the pathway back to Christianity. No doubt I wouldn’t be where I am today, wouldn’t be the person I am today, without it. Ironically, the longer I’ve been associated with this liberal religious community, the more conservative I’ve become on a personal level. So now I can say, I believe that Jesus was the son of God (not God but the son of God); I believe in the resurrection (not the resuscitation of a dead body but the resurrection); and I believe that I am saved by grace (not because I accept Jesus as my personal savior but because, despite my confusion and my unbelief, despite my shortcomings and mistakes, in a mysterious way, beyond my comprehension and explanation, God accepts me).
From Victoria Weinstein: --“Who is Jesus Christ to me? He is both a teacher of the Way, and the Way itself. For one who has always had a hard time grasping the concept of God, let alone developing a working definition of God, Jesus both points me toward a definition of God and then lives that definition. Jesus Christ is the freedom that laughs uproariously at the things of this world, while loving me dearly for being human enough to lust after them. He is my soul’s safety from all harm. He is the avatar of aloneness, a compassionate and unsentimental narrator of the soul’s exile on earth, and proof of the soul’s triumphant homecoming at the end of the incarnational struggle. He is not afraid to put his hands anywhere to affect healing. He mourns, and weeps, and scolds, and invites. He is life more abundant and conqueror of the existential condition of fear.”
From Marjorie Bowens-Wheatley: Today, Jesus remains a central figure of my religious identity. And yet I don’t often call myself a Christian because there is no agreement on what the term Christian means, either within Unitarian Universalism or without…There are conservative and liberal understandings of the Jesus story and Christian witness, and none of these has any exclusive claim on Jesus or those who seek to follow him. In my Christian witness, no one’s soul (or spiritual salvation) is dependent on a particular ritual, obligation, or statement of belief. There is no giant cop up in the sky dictating who will go up and who will go down. And yet I have been moved to tears by liturgical expressions of the story of Jesus and his work as a mystical teacher. It’s most accurate to say that I am a nominal Christian who has also found truth and wisdom in pre-Christian and mystical religions, earth-centered spiritualities, religious humanism, womanism, and other theologies of liberation. I have embraced the spiritual practice of Thai Chi and the wisdom of Buddhist philosophy. I am a Unitarian Universalist because I do not exclude any particular theology. As the spiritual says, there is “plenty of good room” at the banquet table.

These excerpts don’t do justice, of course, to their full stories, and they are only a few of the 15 contemporary essays. What I have presented to you is about what they think about their faith; in the essays themselves you get the amazing stories of how they have arrived at these conclusions of the mind. You see how their faith is as much a matter of the heart, the gut, the hands.

Marjorie Bowens-Wheatley wrote about not excluding, and UU Christianity for me is about being on a particular path, digging a particular well, but not being exclusive. I think that I could spend all my time just losing myself, and finding myself, in even just one of the short and powerful parables of Jesus, or in the Passion Parable itself, or in the Lord’s Prayer, my daily meditation practice. But when I encounter people on different paths and hear their encounters with the Holy, it only helps me go deeper and get more out of a chosen parable, or story, or prayer.

The religious landscape in America has changed vastly since 1945. In UUism, in Christianity, and in UU Christianity. These UU Christian voices now are more diverse than you would have found when the UUCF began. Surprise, surprise, they are still changing. For a faith that roots itself in the theological belief that revelation is not sealed and cannot be sealed, it seems we too still resist change. I once had a church member say “When I joined this church I guess I thought it had always been the way it was when I joined, and would always stay that way.” But when we talk about ongoing revelation, we don’t mean continually throwing the baby out with the bathwater in every successive generation, as if that is the mark of a progressive faith. Sometimes, often, it means returning to our touchstones and knowing them more fully because of where we have been, and being touched and supported by them even more deeply and strongly because of it.

There are four words that I think sum up the relationship between Christianity and Unitarian Universalism—in terms of history and still now. They are: Commonplace. Contradiction. Conundrum. Convergence. (I have borrowed the first three from the Rev. Earl Holt who was minister of First Unitarian in St. Louis and is now minister at King’s Chapel in Boston—Anglican in worship, Unitarian in theology, congregational in polity. I updated to add the fourth, convergence.)

Once upon a time, to speak of Christian voices in our movement would have been a commonplace thing, as redundant as saying Methodist or Baptist Christian. It hasn’t been all that long ago, as I mentioned earlier. In a 1936 national survey of Unitarians only, some 92 percent of the respondents said they considered their local church to be a Christian church. Now, of course, there were many in the so-called Christian church then who would have argued against that. As there are today. But, I don’t think it is spiritually healthy to let others define you, and what is interesting is how the Unitarians saw themselves. For the Universalists, by and large, they didn’t consider it then an issue to be surveyed about, so integral was Christianity to their identity.

Speaking of not letting others define you, reminds me of the story of the UU who was at another church and went up to take communion and an official there, knowing the person as a UU, tried to stop them in the aisle, to which the UU said, “I received my invitation 2000 years ago.”
But I have to confess, that though I have an ecumenical spirit, when I see what my brothers and sisters in Christ often proclaim in the name of Christ (all kinds of ways of blocking people from God’s table), I too am tempted to do some throwing out of my own, adopting the spirit of Jesus as witnessed in the Temple with the money-changers or with his own disciples. I too can point out perversions, perversions of what Jesus said and meant and lived and died for, and the people who make their exclusivist fearful proclamations from on high or from inside television studios shouldn’t be allowed to wrap themselves in the term Christian either without challenge and consequences.

Between the rise of our liberal Christian movement in America around 1800 and the time of that 1936 survey, there had been many changes and developments in how Unitarians and Universalists saw themselves as Christian, how they looked upon Jesus and God and the scriptures. I bet a small percentage in 1936 would have agreed with the official American Unitarian Association statement of 1853 that “WE BELIEVE in Jesus Christ, the everlasting Son of God, the express image of the Father, in whom dwelt all the fullness of the God-head bodily, and who to us is the Way and the Truth and the Life. WE BELIEVE in the Holy Spirit, proceeding from the Father and the Son, the teacher, renewer, and guide of mankind. WE BELIEVE in the Holy Catholic Church as the body and form of the Holy Spirit, and the presence of Christ in all ages. WE BELIEVE in the Regeneration of the human heart, which, being created upright, but corrupted by sin, is renewed and restored by the power of Christian truth. WE BELIEVE in the constant Atonement whereby God in Christ is reconciling the world to himself. WE BELIEVE in the Resurrection from mortal to immortality, in a future judgment and Eternal Life. WE BELIEVE in the coming of the Kingdom of God, and the final triumph of Christian Truth.

And that was from the heretical Unitarian Liberal Christians of the time.
No, though I am sure that there were some who still resonated with that language and those ideas, and still do among us, I expect by 1936 more would have resonated with the language of the 1935 Universalist Affirmation that “The bond of fellowship in this Convention shall be a common purpose to do the will of God as Jesus revealed it and to co-operate in establishing the kingdom for which he lived and died. To that end, we avow our faith in God as Eternal and All-conquering Love, in the spiritual leadership of Jesus, in the supreme worth of every human personality, in the authority of truth known or to be known, and in the power of men of goodwill and sacrificial spirit to overcome evil and progressively establish the Kingdom of God.”

Those were the days when it was commonplace to consider Christianity and Unitarian Universalism as conjoined. And let me add that even today in some places this remains the same. So much so that in 1984 churches where that is so joined together to form the Council of Christian Churches within the UUA. These are churches that are free and non-creedal and have theological pluralism in the membership. They are particular in their orientation but not exclusive. This is the case at The Living Room Church (www.epiphanyspirit.org) where we are a part of that national Council, though our radical vision of being church in an emerging small group way and informal liberation-style worship and communion is itself very different from the historic churches back East. And there are those UU churches who aren’t members of the Council but who still include the Lord’s Prayer in weekly worship and celebrate the occasional Christian communion and have crosses in their sancturary, but don’t see themselves as primarily Christian-oriented.

No wonder we are confusing to folks, even to ourselves. No wonder there is the natural inclination to clarify things by simplifying things and making all churches uniform and fit into category A or B but never the two at the same time. Faith, however, as we have always stood for, as something inherently freedom loving and community driven, just keeps complicating thing.

Still, when the UUCF was formed in 1945 it could no longer be assumed that the commonplace connection between UUism and Christianity still existed, especially beyond New England. The handwriting for the next few decades was already on the wall. Instead in the 1950s things were moving toward the relationship being a contradiction. In some new places it wasn’t just that our churches were places that were More Than Christian, a phrase I’ve always liked, but they were places that were Anti-Christian. Formed more on a sense of the negative than the affirmative.
I came into UUism in the mid-1970s when much of this spirit still reigned, but I was fortunate, I think, that I attended churches in Oklahoma City and Tulsa where that spirit might have been evident on the edges but not in the mainstream. Since that time, there has been a sea-change in how Christian voices in UU churches are treated; I’m not saying it isn’t still a challenge; perhaps it never should be, but there is much less antagonism and excommunicating going on. We often say now that in the UU world we are all theological minorities.

We have moved through the contradiction stage (though I am sure there too it still exists in certain places) and into the conundrum stage. This is where people say I don’t get it but if it works for you and you don’t get in my way, that’s fine with me. Peaceful co-existence. Parallel Play religiously-speaking. In my perspective, that’s where we seem to have moved in large measure. For UU Christianity, this coincided with the rise of new Jesus scholarship, and with the popularity of the Jesus Seminar in many of our churches. Oh, you’re that kind of Christian, well then that’s all right with me. I think Jesus was a cool revolutionary in his time, too. Maybe I should be content with this kind of tolerance and even respect. When I think of how much damage has been done in the name of Jesus and in the guise of Christianity, getting communities to show that level of respect might be as good as it gets.

But I think our free faith calls us to more than that. I know my Christianity does too, that the spirit of Jesus calls me to more than this. I think living in covenant and right relationship with those who are different from us calls us to more than that. As our great UU historian and essayist Conrad Wright wrote, there is a difference in being a member of a church and a member of something like the National Geographic Society (or to update it, NPR or your non-profit of choice). A church, he said, is more than a collection of religiously-concerned individuals. It is a people. And so I think we are moving out of the state of conundrum and into the state of convergence. Of engagement. Of mutual transformation. Of self differentiation and real relationship. Of generosity and creating congregations not in the spirit of scarcity but of abundance. And I think this brings us closer to the spirit of Jesus.

There is so much more to Life and Truth than we can ever own so let’s not be afraid to see what’s out there in others, and to cast ours to the winds. This was part of the core message of Jesus, and the thrust of his life.

As he said, radically in his parable way, “to those who have, more will be given; to those who have not, more will be taken away.” Not something people at first glance might expect coming from the nice-guy long-haired hippie Jesus cool Dude. But he’s saying, in a Creation Spirituality way, If you see yourself as living in a society or culture of limited goods, or limited truth, then you will always be fighting for your morsel of it, until your morsel possesses and becomes you. If you see yourself as living in abundance where nothing that truly and everlastingly counts can be taken away from you, because of Whose you are, then the world is transformed from a battleground of conflicting fears to a playground of peaceful growth.

In the spiritual community I know best called UU Christianity we have seen an eruption of this kind of convergence. We have people at home with us who are all over the theological spectrum of Christianity, and even more widely expressed than reflected in the voices from the book.
There are, for example, those whose Christianity is in following the teachings of Jesus mainly, that’s where they encounter Jesus. Those whose Christianity is in the traditions of liturgy and prayer and community. Those who find Jesus mostly in liberation work for social justice, and those who converge all of these. There are people who answer the human-divine and Trinity questions of Jesus in lots of different ways.

As well as those who converge their Christ with their practices of Buddhism or Earth-Centered Spirituality or Passion for Science or the Arts. On one level, those folks back in Boston in 1945 wouldn’t recognize the UU Christianity as it shows up some places today—a decade ago our national president of the UUCF was also on the national Board of the Covenant of UU Pagans--but on a deeper level, if they had eyes to see and ears to hear, they too would find the spirit of Jesus shining through all these lives and voices now.

It is these voices, from the Trinitarian Universalists to the Atheists enraptured by the Jesus Seminar scholarship, whom we nurture and provide a place for convergence within the UUCF where we say you don’t have to be a UU to be among us and you don’t have to be a Christian to be among us, and we don’t think Jesus would have it any other way. In fact sometimes I am more concerned not with why more UUs aren’t Christian but why more Christians aren’t UUs—hence why I would have liked to see a reversed title to the book.

There are lifelong UUs, there are those who were raised in many other faith communities, and may still in fact be participants and members in more than one faith community, Christian and otherwise, and there are those who were raised unchurched. There are those who grew up in and only know UU Christian Churches, and those who are still in churches where the only time the name Jesus Christ is heard is when the preacher falls down the stairs, and those who transferred their Christianity in from other denominations, and many, many of those who became Christian or Jesus-smitten only after first being UU and non-Christian. What we have in common is a passion to be part of a Great Historic and Ongoing Conversation without creeds but with Jesus as a song in the heart.

As the Rev. Carl Scovel says, in the foreword to the book, “These witnesses point toward a Jesus who is not just human but humane, not just in touch with God but in touch with them. This Jesus is relational, robust, and real.”

Relational. Robust. Real. Those are good touchstones for an ancient-contemporary-future-oriented faith. May our lives, by whatever faith we commit them to, and may our churches, wonderful in their particular diversities, be known likewise. Now and forever. Amen.

Who Are The Unitarian Universalist Christians?
by Rev. Tom Wintle

Some gather for worship around a Communion Table, with all the pomp and pageantry of the Episcopalians. Others meet, not in churches, but in living rooms for discussion and Bible study.
Some belong to white-steepled first parish churches on New England town greens where ancient Puritan covenants are faithfully recited every Sunday, where the Lord’s Prayer is a standard part of worship, and where “of course Unitarians are Christians!”

Others belong to churches where the Bible is seldom read, no cross is evident, and the congregation proudly emphasized its differences from orthodox Christianity.
Some could join in saying the Apostles’ Creed in an ecumenical worship service, and others are more comfortable expressing their Christianity in a peace march or working in a shelter for battered women. Many would do both.

What these members of the Unitarian Universalist Christian Fellowship have in common is their conviction that one can be both a Unitarian Universalist and a Christian, both thoroughly modern and faithful to the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Indeed, many would say it was precisely within Unitarian Universalism that they became Christians. Within the theological freedom of our churches, they found the “space” to become Christians at their own rates. Within the historic faiths of Unitarianism and Universalism, they found the expression of a creative, vibrant, and believable liberal Christianity. Within the liberal churches’ tradition of social action, they sought and found a theological basis and a personal inspiration rooted in the ministry of Jesus.

Perhaps most importantly, they found within Unitarian Universalism a religious home where their questions were not viewed with suspicion and their doubts were accepted. For many, here at last was a place to grow in faith!

In the rich theological diversity of liberal Christianity, four broad categories, or emphases, can be identified.

Classical UU Christians

Finding the dogmatism of rigid orthodoxy to be unacceptable, and the emptiness of pure secularism (or “trendy liberalism“) to be unsatisfying, these UUs affirm the liberal Christianity of classical Unitarianism and classical Universalism.

Theirs is a low-keyed Christianity that focuses on the human life and ethical teachings of Jesus. They see doctrines such as the Trinity and the Atonement as unnecessary, perhaps prefer to speak of “christenings” rather than “baptisms,” and view communion as a quiet memorial of the life of Jesus. The Bible, interpreted with reason and modern scholarship, provides the myths and symbols and stories that enable them to speak of God and to instill moral values.
Believing that theirs is “the religion of Jesus, not the religion about Jesus,” the see they Galilean as a great teacher and the exemplar of a life of love to God and love to humankind. In the words of one layperson: “Jesus is the leader you don’t adore, but can’t ignore.” To be a Christian, they might say, is “to follow Jesus.”

Catholic Christians

Catholic, or Ecumenical, Christians are attracted to a broad and inclusive Christianity that transcends old denominational differences and seeks out the best from all of Christian history. They are informed by both Protestant dissent and Catholic tradition. With Ignatius of Antioch, they believe “where Christ is, there is the universal church.”

Theologically, the affirm the unity of God who is revealed in the Christ-event, in the person of Jesus Christ and in the believing reception of the Church. Liturgically, they are nourished by the sacraments, the psalms, the proclamation of the gospel (and are now rediscovering the value of the lectionary), and the great prayers and hymns and anthems of the Church. They are interested in personal disciplines of prayer and spiritual growth.

Believing that our Unitarian Universalism provides a theological freedom afforded in few other churches, they participate in ecumenical dialogue, feel the brokenness of Christ’s Church, and affirm the common discipleship shared by all Christians. To be a Christian, they might say, is “to be part of the Body of Christ.”

Liberation Christians

Finding in Christianity a radical call for the liberation of the oppressed, these Unitarian Universalist Christians emphasize the prophetic and ethical demands of the Gospel.
Christ was “the one for others,” and the Church is the community of discipleship called to help heal the brokenness of the world. Whether the issue is urban ministry or international ministry, poverty or human liberation, the Spirit is present to ensure, empower, embarrass, and challenge; to demand a world better than it is now envisioned by the Crucified Christ.
To be a Christian, they might say, is “to do the work of Christ.”

Borrowing trinitarian terminology, these three might be summarized as three unitarianisms.
The Classical UU Christians have a kind of “unitarianism of the Father,” seeing the divine as a transcendent Creator. God is real, but somewhat distant.

The Catholic Christians have a kind of “unitarianism of the Son,” believing God is known in Christ and his Church.

The Liberation Christians have a kind of “unitarianism of the Spirit,” seeing God in the empowering work of the Holy Spirit which is found not only, not even primarily, in the Church, but in the world — urging, pulling, and dragging us to the redeemed life.

And all three are universalists, believing that God loves us, all of us. Nor would they deny that God’s love is revealed in many other religions. As one minister put it, God is like the light which shines through cathedral stained-glass windows: we cannot see the light itself, but only as it come through the various windows; and UU Christians affirm that they do, indeed, see God through the Christian window.

Questioning Christians

Finally, there is a fourth category of UU Christians — those who are drawn to Christianity, attracted to the figure of Jesus, but are uncertain of what it all means or how to reconcile Christian faith with the assumptions and the skepticism of a modern secular world.
In a sense, we are all questioning Christians, all moving theologically, and that is why we are Unitarian Universalist: the freedom from creed, hierarchy and set liturgies gives us both the room to explore and the necessity of creating our own faith.

If it all seems terribly chaotic and unorganized, I would suggest it is nevertheless a logical result of Puritan congregational polity and Unitarian creedlessness.

If it seems wonderfully rich and creative, I suggest it is the result of the diversity of God’s spiritual gifts.

There are Unitarian Universalist Christians — and we invite you to join us in the great adventure of faith.

Thomas D. Wintle
The Rev. Dr. Thomas D. Wintle is the Senior Minister of the First Parish, Weston, Massachusetts.
www.firstparishweston.org

The FAQs on the UUCF

Who are you?
We are people seeking to freely follow the spirit of Jesus and to share this spirit within and without our Association. From our bylaws: We “serve Christian Unitarians and Universalists according to their expressed religious needs; uphold and promote the Christian witness within the Unitarian Universalist Association; and uphold and promote the historic Unitarian and Universalist witness and conscience within the church universal.” Another way to put this is: We witness for the power and story of Christianity to free religion, and witness for the power and story of free religion to Christianity. We are an independent affiliate of the UUA with members from throughout the continent and world.

Are you a new group?
We organized in 1945, then as the Unitarian Christian Fellowship. In many ways our history began and is continuous with the organizing of the Universalist movement in America in 1793 and later with the organizing of the American Unitarian Association in 1825, an organization of individuals whose aims were to promote “pure Christianity.”

Do you believe in the same doctrines and practices as other Christians?
There has always been a great diversity in beliefs within the Christian tradition. The UUCF does not require common theological beliefs or spiritual practices. We welcome all who seek to be partners and participants in our tradition’s “Great Conversation” about God, Jesus, the Bible, and spiritual disciplines.

But how can you be Christian and Unitarian Universalist?
While some within Christianity would exclude us now as before because of our non-creedal basis, the term “Unitarian/Universalist Christian” would once have been considered a redundancy, the same for example as “Methodist Christian.” Unitarians and Universalists have roots in the liberalizing movements within the Protestant Christian Radical Reformation, and in many places Christianity continues to be the common way to be Unitarian Universalist. UU Christians feel they can best follow in the spirit of Jesus and best deepen their spiritual lives wilthin the freedom of UU congregations, whether or not those congregations are expressly Christian-oriented. See in particular the brochure, Who Are the UU Christians by the Rev. Tom Wintle, available on the UUCF website.

Do you have to call yourself a Christian, or a UU, to be a part of the UUCF?
No. Many among us express themselves as “Jesus followers” or as just “Unitarian Universalists” or as “liberal religionists” or some other term, and many shy away from adopting any identifying label. We simply have a central response to Jesus as a “song in our heart” that stirs us to service in the world and to growing our minds and souls. Our fellowship is also open to seekers and to those who are not Unitarian Universalist, but may be Christians in other traditions, or followers of other spiritual traditions. We welcome people regardless of religious affiliation, who find value and meaning among us and in supporting our values and purposes. We don’t think Jesus would have it any other way.

What is your mission?
We exist to be "witnesses to the transforming power of the Holy Spirit in our lives." We seek to do this through our various gatherings and events, publications, and activities--and it is the reason for our webministry.

What do you do?
We have an active publication ministry. We produce the “Good News” periodical six times a year full of essays and meditations and reviews and liturgies and interpretation of biblical passages. We produce the annual UU Christian Journal, a premier theological publication which has recently completed its 60th volume. We also produce several pamphlets and other materials. We sponsor an annual history and biblical scholarship prize contest. We hold annual Revivals, multiple day events for a variety of worship, workshops, youth programs, and service and social opportunities. We sponsor major programs at General Assembly each year. We are a presence at ecumenical and interfaith events. We help create and nurture local UUCF groups or Christian spirituality covenant groups in cities or within local churches. We offer several online discussion groups via email. We have an emerging and growing new website (www.uuchristian.org) for access to upcoming programs, commentary on recent events, historical documents, essays about UU Christianity, and links to other websites of related interests.
What online groups do you have?
We currently operate the general UUCF email list, UUCF-L@home.ease.lsoft.com, for all who wish to learn more about us and support one another on our spiritual paths; also the UUCF-min@uua.org list for ministers and seminarians (a confidential covenantal chatlist); UUCF-Chapters@home.ease.lsoft.com for people in small groups or interested in beginning one; and UUCF-Revival@uua.org for continuing conversations stemming from our annual Revivals, or in promoting upcoming Revivals.

What kind of Revivals do you have and where do you have them?
Revival 1: Creating an Inclusive Unitarian Universalist Christianity for the Next Century was held in 1999 at First UU Church of New Orleans featuring talks by then UUCF President Russ Savage and UU theologian Paul Rasor.
Revival 2: Telling the Story was held at First Unitarian Church of St. Louis in 2001 with keynote speeches by the Rev. Carl Scovel, minister emeritus of King’s Chapel in Boston and receipient of the UUA’s Distinguished Service Award.
Revival 3: Where Faith, Hope, and Love Abide was held at the Universalist National Memorial Church in Washington, D.C. in 2003 with keynote speakers past UUA President Rev. John Buehrens and his wife the Rev. Gwen Buehrens, an Episcopalian priest.
Revival 4: The Spirit That Moves Us will be held Nov. 4-7, 2004, at First Unitarian Church of Worcester, MA and feature keynote addresses by UUA President Rev. Bill Sinkford and the Rev. Erik Walker Wikstrom, UU author of a recent book on Jesus published by Skinner House Books.
Revival 5 was held Nov. 2-5, 2005 at First Jefferson UU Church in Fort Worth, TX. Revivals also include at least two worship services a day, a communion service, a healing and prayer service, rousing music and spirituals, workshops on theology, the Bible, history, spiritual practices, social action and other tracks, youth programs, social events, and small group gatherings throughout the event.
Revival 6 will be in New York City, Nov. 2-5, 2006, and Revival 7 will be in Cleveland, OH, Nov. 1-4, 2007. If your church would like to host a national or regional revival please contact the UUCF Office.

Are there other UU Christian groups?
There is a Council of Christian Churches within the UUA, founded in 1984 and which hosts an annual convocation.

How can I support you?
For only $50 a year (or $15 for students) you will receive the Good News and UU Christian Journal, and discounts on other materials and registrations. Forms are available online or contact us at P.O. Box 6702, Turley, OK 74156. Back issues of our publications are also available. To become a part of one of our various ministry teams (such as Small Groups, Editorial Team, Web Team, Seminarians, Religious Education, Music, etc.) supporting and carrying out our mission, contact the Executive Director at RevRonRobinson@aol.com or other contact information below. We also encourage and receive financial contributions above and beyond the basic level in order to fulfill our mission, and encourage and receive bequeaths and major donations to our Endowment and Operating Funds. For how you can make a major difference in the world through the mission, vision, and values of the UUCF, please contact the Rev. Ron Robinson.

Where are you located?
We have members spread across the United States and Canada, and in several countries around the globe. Our main offices are in the Tulsa, Oklahoma area.

How are you governed?
We have an annual meeting of members held each year during General Assembly and have an elected Board of Trustees to govern the organization in between Annual Meetings. An Executive Committee of officers on the Board also meets to coordinate the business of the Board. Bylaws are available through the website. Minutes of Board meetings can be received by contacting the Recording Secretary or Executive Director. The Leadership Roster is also posted on the Website and in the annual Journal.

How can I learn more and carry on this conversation?
Visit our website. Join an email list. Contact one of the UUCF Board members or Executive Director or write to us at our Administrative Office. Also contact us if you would like a speaker for your group about the UUCF or our tradition of free, vibrant, inclusive, progressive Christianity