"Submission 20 Erik Bailey First Parish in Needham, Unitarian Universalist (Needham, MA) 4811
What is your suggestion or idea?
I propose removing ““to flourish with”” from the Equity principle.
What is the reason for your amendment idea?
The proposed Equity principle states ““We declare that every person has the right to flourish with inherent dignity and worthiness.”” I am not a fan of the ““to flourish with”” and would prefer this to simply read ““We declare that every person has the right to inherent dignity and worthiness.”” This ties back to ““inherent worth and dignity”” in our current Principles, and eliminates what I see as an overly-flowery word.
Have you discussed this idea with your congregation or other UUs?
Not has the right. Simply has worthiness and dignity. I must confess I prefer “worth” to “worthiness” or some other word. But I’ve never thought of this “worth” as meaning having monetary value.
I agree about removing “flourish” from the first sentence, but then I think we should add it to the last sentence. Because otherwise the last sentence seems to be more about community than about every person.
Equity. We declare that every person has the right to flourish with inherent dignity and worthiness.
We respect every individual’s freedom of belief and right of conscience. We covenant to use our time, wisdom, attention, and money resources to build and sustain fully accessible and inclusive communities where every person can flourish.